Miracles

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

“He went to a town called Nain, and hid disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!'”

I know we’ve been here before. My guess is we’ll pass through again. This morning’s reading made me think, once more, about miracles, about they don’t make miracles like they used to, and we no longer expect them to.
I worked for a little while at a hospital. One day, a young man died, suddenly, tragically, bizarrely. Irrevocably.
His family, his friends, his church decided to perform a resurrection. Loudly, tearfully, prayerfully, ecstatically, noisily, they tried, for hours I’m told, to raise their dead son.
I wasn’t there that day; I know the story because when I came in the next morning, my colleagues were still shaking, shaken by what they had witnessed, in the lives of a bereaved family, in the life of their own faith.
They had done all that they could to help, offered their space and time, oils and candles, advocacy and prayers. But not their faith. They knew dead when they saw it, and they had no expectation or belief that this young man would “sit up and begin to speak,” no matter how hard his mother hoped.
I thought of this family of strangers this morning, reading this other story which ended more happily.
I wondered what would have happened if they had got their miracle, beyond the obvious joy of a son restored to his mother.

“Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us,’ and ‘God has looked favorably upon his people!'”

Would this small and fervent church have collapsed under the weight of the glory, even as it stood, broken-hearted but unbowed by its grief?
What would have happened to the reasonable, fragile faith of my own friends, myself?
Does the absence, or rarity, of those old-time miracles help to save us from ourselves, help to save us for the sake of our reasonable, fragile, fervent faith?

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Year B Proper 22: Little children

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for my first Sunday at Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio – October 7, 2012

I think that, with your indulgence, I’ll save talking about Jesus’ take on divorce and remarriage for when we have got to know one another a little better. For now, I’ll simply say that when Jesus talks about hardness of hearts, he is talking about a state that we have all lived in, lived through, because, God knows, we are none of us perfect.

And that brings me to what I would like to talk about this morning: how we can live more fully, more hopefully, more perfectly into the promises that God has for us, that Jesus offers to us, into the kingdom of God.

“People were bringing little children to Jesus in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant, and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’”

It is to such as these, it is to the little children, that the kingdom of God belongs, and to enter into it, we need to learn from them.

There has been a thread running through the readings of the past few weeks in which the disciples of Jesus persist in getting themselves into a grumbly sort of trouble with him. Actually, I think it goes back to when Peter made his leap of faith and told Jesus that he believed him to be the Messiah, the Son of God. And just after that he said some other stuff that caused Jesus to call him Satan! Then there were the arguments about who was the greatest, and Jesus told them off and told them to look to the children to see how discipleship was to be done. And then last week the disciples told someone off for unauthorized good works, because he was not one of them, and Jesus gave them a lecture for that.

It appears that the disciples, emboldened by their true and brave realization that Jesus is the Messiah, have grasped an authority and a role in leadership in which – as good as those things are – they have forgotten what they had learned before, about service, about kindness, about inclusion, about healing and touching and feeding and forgiving. They have become drunk on power, acting like gatekeepers to Jesus’ love and attention, and they have forgotten that the only power that they have derives from following him and sharing the good news of him.

They need to re-learn that childlike wonder and humility, dependence and joy, fear and curiosity that had brought them to this place of faith in the Christ; otherwise they are in danger of hardening their hearts and missing the point, the hope of it all.

It’s too easy for any of us to become hardened, to let cynicism drown out the voice of the little child.

A little child looks to the adults in his life for safety and care, for food, for warmth, for knowledge and security, for love. Hopefully, he finds it in his parents and family, in his teachers and guides. Hopefully.

We look to our leaders with different eyes. We are cynical about those who have the power to affect our lifestyles, and those who hold our paychecks. We struggle to trust the right people, and to discern which are the right people to trust; we either withhold our faith from them all, or we put too much faith in one or another individual to save us all – elect the right person, and restore our future.

We forget that only God is really the leader of the free world, that only God can hold it all together. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t do the best that we can to elect good and trustworthy leaders, and to improve the conditions of our families and our fellow citizens, and to do the right thing. Speaking of which, if you are not yet registered to vote, you have until this Tuesday to make that happen, to have that say in how we wrestle with these problems for the next four years.

But the next four years of this country, or, for that matter, the next four years in the life of this parish, are not the same thing as the kingdom of God, and when we get cynical and tired and fixated on one detail or another, we miss that bigger picture, that God is in the midst not only of this country, of this parish, of our lives, but of all life, that God is in the midst of our whole lives, and that our whole existence is dependent upon God’s loving care.

When the disciples tried to restrict the grace that Jesus offered, Jesus called them out on it, and brought the children in.

We need to be sure, in our work as disciples, in this parish, in our daily lives, in our prayer and in our families, that we are doing that work of God, the work of welcoming and caring for the little ones, the ones who cannot care for themselves. We need to be sure that we are welcoming the ones who are confused and curious, who are joyful or who throw tantrums, who get smelly (that’s characteristic of very small children, I’m told), who are difficult to understand and to reason with, who are afraid of the dark and of the monsters that hide under the bed.

We do not get to discriminate, to judge, to gatekeep for God.

It’s a challenge, to receive the kingdom of God as a little child, to ask questions as though we don’t know all the answers already, to be frank and forthright about our feelings and our friends as little children are, to admit that we are dependent on one another and on God, that none of us can stand all alone, without any help, any comfort, from the people around us.

It’s a challenge for our new relationship together; it’s a challenge to trust, to be hopeful, frank, and loving with one another, little children of God together, believing that God has work for us to do together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And there is joy in it as well, there is a playfulness and a lightness to be found in little children, to be found in being little children of God.

Do you remember, when you were a little child, and the grown-ups would ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up, and the possibilities seemed limitless – astronaut, president, farmer, lion-tamer – nothing was impossible or beyond your reach?

Little children know how to live with boundless belief, with hope beyond measure, with a fierce and joyful faith. They have not yet learned what is beyond their reach, and they know that, with the right help, they can achieve anything. We can learn a lot from them, as individuals, as a church, about believing that with God, all things are possible, that with God’s help, we can do great things we have yet to imagine.

And here’s one more thing: have you ever noticed how children have the ability to make you smile just by being? A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a church and there was a baby in front of me who feel asleep before the sermon, and slept like, well, like a baby the whole way through it, so peaceful, a baby who knew the peace that passes understanding, and every time my eye fell on him, I just had to smile.

There are those who talk about the children that Jesus received as the poorest of the poor, as having no power or influence, or even value in that time; but I don’t know that that’s true. When God’s Spirit fell upon Jesus at his baptism, and God said, “This is my Son,” that was an expression of delight and love. When those childless parents in the Bible prayed desperately for children of their own, they were asking for something of infinite value.

Jesus took the children in his arms, and blessed them. To accept the kingdom of God as a little child is to accept the blessing of Jesus, to accept God’s love and delight in us. It is to know that we are beloved of God, infinitely valued by God, who has made us barely a little lower than the angels.

And yes, we sometimes get it wrong, and we give up on happily ever after, and we forget to hope and to trust boundlessly; but God loves us anyway, and welcomes us back with loving arms. God smiles at us, just because we are. And that’s good news that we can, and that we are called to share with anybody, and, like little children, with everybody who will listen.

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William Tyndale and the passionate vocation

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily for the Thursday morning Eucharist at Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary, October 4, 2012

William Tyndale was a man with a passion, a man with a mission, with a calling so strong it drove him crazy. How else to explain the risks he took for the sake of his work, for the sake of a few words, for the sake of his vocation?

We talk a lot these days about passion – on the Food Network, every chef and aspiring next food network star is passionate about his or her culinary point of view; on American Idol, or the X-Factor, passion is the mot du jour to express a longing to sing, a vocation that cannot be denied. It may even be genuine, but through overuse, it is losing some of its cachet; its currency is getting seriously devalued.

William Tyndale, who knew very well the value of words, their weight and heft, was so impassioned by his discerned vocation – to translate the Bible so that the humblest ploughboy could know its meaning – that he allowed himself to be exiled, gave up the comfort of a rich mans employ, headed overseas, and was, in the end, betrayed by a friend, given up to the gallows.

That last part might just ring a bell.

We talk a lot about passion these days, and mostly we are talking about lust, about libido, about drive and desire, ambition and envy. We talk about what we want, and what we want to do. But when we think of those men betrayed by their friends and led to the gallows, when we talk of their passion, we mean something a little different.

It isn’t all about suffering, except in the sense of “suffer the little children,” of allowing to come to pass that which will. On the other hand, it isn’t all about being passive. The drive to do something well is not a bad thing. There is much hard work to be done at seminary, lots to be completed and achieved and simply got through. William Tyndale worked hard, by God, but not for ambition, not even the good kind; according to C.S. Lewis, who has written about his theology, Tyndale considered that good works for profit, whether profit in this world or the next, came from an equally corrupt motivation. Passion is dispassionate about its reward; it simply lets come into being that which already is; something which cannot be willed or driven, but only let in.

It’s about grace, the grace of the cross, the grace of a vocation which fills us with passion, with a longing for God.

That longing, that passion for the wisdom of God, the knowledge of God’s grace is better than the silver and gold that the world lusts after, the Proverbs tell us, and a good thing too, we might reply. Only Wisdom, the knowledge of God, marks out the true leader of the free world, the truly just ruler, the real seat of power. That might be worth keeping in mind for the next month or so, if not longer.

What feeds such a passion? If it isn’t ambition, or the will to succeed or to be good enough for earthly or heavenly reward?

Perhaps, these moments, these moments of Eucharist, of thanksgiving, when we revisit the passion of those who have gone before us – the One, especially, whose Passion ignited all of ours. These moments are vital in keeping our own flames alive and lively, not only now, slogging through classes and early mornings and CPE and process interviews; but later, much later, too. They will sustain us when friends fall away, or employment falls through, or we are far from home. They are the promise of God to be with us in the dank darkness of the garden as well as in the soft and celebratory candlelight; to be sufficient when our own reserves of faithfulness and sheer perseverance are depleted; to renew our resolve, reignite our passion.

Even the words, plain words, simply spoken, in these moments can be the difference between life and death, light and darkness. Tyndale knew the value of plain – or plain-ish – English; the Wisdom behind the words of Jesus that he translated; the Word that spoke the words; the grace, the life. He saw it and rendered it and proclaimed it, because it sustained him, because it mattered.

And that, in the life of Tyndale, is what passion is all about. Passion, the passionate vocation, is to be overwhelmed by God, to be swept along with God, to be swept up in the wonder of it all, that God would use our work for God’s glorious purpose, even when the work itself looks plain or inglorious.

Actually, I think that some of Tyndale’s work was quite glorious: Lewis claims that he not only coined such phrases as “filthy lucre,” “peacemaker,” and “long-suffering,” but was also “among the first who used the word beautiful.”**

Beautiful. It’s not a bad legacy for an exiled translator, a betrayed friend, a condemned criminal and supposedly hardened heretic.

But then, it’s always quite astonishing what God can do with a little bit of passion.

_______________

*C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixeenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1954), 188
** Lewis, 207

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Ohio!

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Early voting opens today! Check your local listings for times and locations!
You also have one more week to register or to update your registration to vote.
However you intend voting,
Don’t miss this opportunity.
Don’t shirk this responsibility.
Stand up for what you believe in, and make your voice heard, for the good of us all.
Vote!

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On aging gracefully

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is a bit of a cliche right now to harp on about youth and young adults rejecting traditional modes of church in the contemporary culture, or conversely to bang on about how they all really want to be medieval monks. Still, cliches become such for a reason, so I’ll join in.

In conversation with my small and select family focus group this weekend, we arrived at some simple but elegant conclusions:

1) “Contemporary” culture is a moving target, and try as we like, the church will never hit it. By the time the bulletins are printed, or the amps rented, or the tent erected, or the tweets re-tweeted sufficient times, the populace will have moved on to the next thing with barely a sigh or a shrug, and only the friendliest of regretful smiles over their shoulders.

2 So, church might as well put its energy into what it does well: reflecting the timelessness of God, the permanence of grace, the fluidity or forgiveness.

3) That said, if there had never been movements, or ages, or epochs in the church we would not have solidified our liturgies into Latin, nor would we have broken them out again into a thousand tongues.

4) So, recognizing that contemporary is old hat, and modern is outmoded, here are some suggestions for presenting worship in a faithful and timeless way, which nevertheless appeals to the fashion-hungry teens of today (or, at least, yesterday):

5) Instead of trying to sell the music of the last century as the latest in pop culture, acknowledge its “RETRO” power;

6) If “traditional” sounds stuffy and old-fashioned to your ears, try “VINTAGE.” Tasty, tasteful, and never goes out of style;

7) As for the renewal of the most antique of liturgies, enjoy the archeology and call them “POSITIVELY PREHISTORIC.” After all, who doesn’t love a dinosaur? Especially in animal blessing season.

Peace out.

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Year B Proper 21: salted with fire

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

It was bedtime, so I gave the fire a stir to make sure it really was dying down, and of course, as fires are wont to do when stirred up, it sprang back into life.

So the cat and I sat on the mat in front of the fireplace and watched with fascination as it flamed up and ember-glowed and generally did its fiery thing. And I thought of the candles that we light for prayer, and how this was a really big one, and I sat a little longer on the mat with the cat, and we contemplated the holiness of it all.

And I thought of the phrase from the gospel, “salted with fire,” and what it might mean to be seasoned by this stuff that burns and soothes and gives comfort and causes pain and flares up and crumbles to ashes, all in the course of a single evening.

Salt, like fire, needs to be used sparingly. Salt, like fire, is helpful to add spice to life, to liven up flavours, to excite our palates. It cleanses, as fire purifies. It drowns not only flavours but life itself if overused; like fire, it is best kept in check, used in moderation.

A colleague suggested that the fire with which we are salted is the Holy Spirit, and that made some sense. I am worried by the concept of having “too much” of the Holy Spirit, mind you, but I also sense that she might become overwhelming, more than life can bear, if she is poured on rather than sprinkled.

Perhaps that’s why she seems to make herself occasionally elusive.

On a slightly different tack, at the beginning of this piece of the story, John boasts (or worries?) that the disciples have tried to stop unauthorized agents from acting in Jesus’ name, because they do not follow them, because they are not recognized by the named and legitimized disciples of Christ. And Jesus scolds him (or puzzles it out?); no one who acts in my name will be able soon afterward to speak ill of me. If they are for us, they are at least not against us. Why worry?

Too much of the wrong sort of zeal, the wrong sort of seasoning, the wrong sort of salt can harden our attitudes, just as too much sodium hardens the walls of our arteries (as another wise colleague advised).

Fire that burns itself out is no longer useful as fire; like the rest of us, it returns to the earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Salt that has lost its saltiness is no longer useful as seasoning.

Faith that has hardened and crumbled into rectitude and self-righteousness, or resignation and drudgery, has little flavour, little flame, little life left.

By the time I left it, the fire had soothed itself to sleep (as had the cat). Its heat was spent, its light faded, its fuel depleted.

But not gone. There were pieces of fresh wood still waiting for another day, another chance to light the world, or at least one small room of it, on fire. Not all was ash and dust. Not everything had decayed. Not everything was burnt out of fiery potential; not all of the salt had lost its saltiness.

I suppose this is more poetry than theology (although some, like John Keble, would look askance at one who tried to separate the two), and ant metaphor, pressed too hard, will crumble like rock salt, disintegrate like ash.

But there is something hiding in this enigmatic language, something which belies the violent imagery in between, something about second chances, second wind, and the spark of the Spirit which will find tomorrow’s fire and salt tomorrow’s food.

And even those who don’t quite know what they are doing (they do not follow us), or who do it a different way (like I said …), and even those who prefer their food bland (they shouldn’t do it differently, they should follow in our footsteps, fit the mould) will find ourselves salted with fire, surprised by the seasoning of the Spirit.

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Rites of passage

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

My mother’s funeral
did not take place in an
American high school auditorum,
neither was the local rag
reporter in attendance.
No one wore football pads or swimming gear;
I was not in clericals,
being unordained as yet,
and having no
burning desire to bury her.

 
My father was, in fact, messily, bodily,
solidly present. Excepting these things,
the dream was remarkably accurate,
and waking, wrung out, and exhausted.

 

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The summer stole project

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I know, summer is technically over, and we’re into autumn around here, but I promised finished photos of the t-shirt stole, and it’s a sunny day on the north coast, so …

Recycling, knitting, and by no means least liturgy are some of my passions. Combining them into, er, unique liturgical wear has been a project which had me working with some great friends and some colourful plastic bags in the past (https://rosalindhughes.com/2011/06/17/a-plastic-story/) ; this time, it’s the humble t-shirt’s turn for a role in the artful worship of God.

There are many ways to reuse t-shirts, and if they’re clean enough, many places to donate them. But for the truly old, holey and stained beyond redemption, here’s a way to redeem them after all, and put them to really Good use.

Suitable for sweltering summer Sundays when even the Queen of England wears a t-shirt to church:

… for outdoor services on the lawn:

 

 

 

 

 

For those parish picnics at the park:

 

 

 

 

 

Even, had one sufficient “white” t-shirts to recycle, those beachside baptisms or destination weddings:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know it looks frivolous. And okay, maybe I had a little bit too much fun at the beach :). But don’t take offence. I am serious about sustainable worship, in many senses of the phrase.

The technical details:

This stole used seven t-shirts, cut into single strips (t-shirts without side seams are best, and just cut round and round from the bottom to the bottom of the sleeves). I divided the t-shirt strips in half to provide two symmetrical sides to the stole. I cast on 16 stitches using 10.5 needles, then switched to 13 or 15 needles to continue in linen stitch for about 50 inches – don’t go too long, it’s t-shirt and it will stretch when finished (for a description of how to knit linen stitch, click here:
http://knitting.about.com/od/stitchglossary/g/linen-stitch.htm )

I repeated the same pattern for the second side.

Holding both sides together, I cast off using the three-needle technique (here you go:
http://knitting.about.com/od/bindoffs/qt/3-needle.htm )

A good wash is necessary to get rid of all the little t-shirt specks that have accumulated on the stole, your clothes, floor, couch and cats while the knitting was in process. The stole will stretch on washing; shape it appropriately to dry. Embroider a cross on the seam if you wish.

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Seven signs that you may be taking a Sunday off …

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

1) The alarm is set an hour later than on Monday morning.

2) Sitting down for the sermon.

3) Sitting in someone else’s seat for the sermon.

4) Dancing (discreetly) with one’s daughter during the Communion music 🙂

5) Packing knitting and a novel for the education hour.

6) Playing hookey during the education hour to knit and read novels in the cafe.

7) Red nail polish. Yeah, baby!

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Was Jesus married?

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Huffington Post is persisting in cluttering up my facebook newsfeed with tidbits designed to tantalize people into tearing out their hair over the marital status of Jesus.

I am finding it difficult to get as over-excited as they would seem to like: haven’t we been here before? Still, I am sufficiently engaged to give some sort of an inexpert opinion as to the significance of what has happened this past week with the introduction of a “new” piece of papyrus which appears to give credence to the idea that Jesus was a married man.

To recap: on Tuesday, a Harvard Divinity School professor, Karen King, introduced the world to a fragment of papyrus dating from the early few centuries following the life of Jesus which contained the words, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'”

(http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/18/living/fragment-suggests-jesus-was-married/index.html?iref=allsearch)

It’s worth noting that she, in the same presentation, argued that this does not constitute evidence that Jesus was married, and that there is a lot of context missing from this fragment, because of its fragmentary nature.

A flurry of commentary followed. Dan Brown’s name came up numerous times. Predictions of mass wailing and gnashing of teeth among the communities of the religiously celibate were offered. And the Huffington Post insists and persists in trying to flog new life into this horse via facebook and, presumably, other outlets to which I am not privy.

(No offence to Huffpost Religion, whose feed I actually rather enjoy from time to time, and which provides a convenient snapshot of what’s “out there” on any given day.)

But the fact is that there are already a lot of fragments, large and small, from the early centuries of Christianity which reflect the conflicting and conflicted views of early Christians regarding sex, marriage, women, and the celibacy or otherwise of the saviour and other perfect beings.

In Marvin Meyer’s book, The Gospels of Mary, a number of Gnostic texts are set side by side with their stories about and attitudes towards Mary Magdalene exposed in all of their contrast and confusion. Among these readings, the Gospel of Thomas, for example, seems pretty negative with regard to womanliness, gender and sexuality, and Jesus answers Peter’s jealous questioning of Mary (Magdalene?)’s worthiness to join the disciples of Christ by promising to make a man of her. On the other hand, in the Gospel of Philip the mystical union of male and female will undo death, the marital bedchamber is the harbinger of light, Mary Magdalene is the one who sees the light, and Jesus kisses her often and loves her the most of all…

(Marvin Meyer, The Gospels of Mary: the secret tradition of Mary Magdalene, the companion of Jesus, with Esther A. De Boer (HarperOne, 2004))

In other words, the Christians of the earlier centuries may have been just as confused, screwed up and fascinated by sex and how it works within our spirituality, and how it applied to Jesus, our saviour, as the current century of Christians. There is nothing new under the sun.

Or, to quote a certain seminary dean with plenty of expert opinion to offer, “In the end, like most popular forays into the early church, the interest and reaction to this will be a cipher that tells us more about ourselves and our contemporary society, and what we project back into the past, than anything else.”

(http://crustyoldean.blogspot.com/)

In the end, even if we knew whether or not Jesus was married, I suspect that it would not determine whether or not we as individuals should, or will, or won’t marry; that seems to have carried on regardless, in different ways and with varying norms throughout many more than the Christian centuries and in many more than the Christian cultures of the world.

Whether or not Jesus was married will not change the relationship of creation to its Creator, the nature of the Incarnation itself, or the fact of our salvation.

So really, isn’t it just a very, very old piece of gossip?

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