The kingdom of God is at hand

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

The kingdom of God has drawn near. The kingdom of God is at hand.

That’s how the Revised Standard Version translates Jesus’ opening message: that the kingdom of God is at hand, at your fingertips, so close that it is almost within our grasp, if we will repent, that is turn around, and reach for it.

Last week, we heard from John that Jesus decided to return to Galilee, where he was from, and there began to form his group of disciples. A colleague reminded me that what John didn’t say, which Mark tells us today, is that the reason Jesus left Judea and fled north was because John, his cousin, who had baptized him, had been arrested and imprisoned by Herod.

This was not the same Herod as the one who, according to Matthew, ordered the destruction of a generation of infants in Bethlehem, back when John and Jesus were each young enough to be at risk. Still, this Herod, the one who imprisoned John, would be implicated in each of the cousin’s deaths, in the end, and for now, forewarned by the stories of their childhood and the fears of their parents, the vague memories of Egypt and the common knowledge of Herod’s dungeon caves built into the hillside of Makawir, Jesus left the region east of Jerusalem and retreated to the relative safety of Galilee, where he began to call to himself the people who would become his closest friends and companions on the way, and to preach the message to all who would hear it, that the kingdom of God was at hand.

The way of Herod is to arrest those who criticize, to kill those who oppose, to build fortresses against his own people and pay obeisance to the occupiers who keep him on his throne. The kingdom of God is not like that of Herod.

Because there is no higher authority than God, the kingdom of God does not pay homage to the powers of this world nor any other. It does not submit itself to our control, nor does it have any need for force or coercion. Because the kingdom of God is above all and over all, it has no need to trumpet its glory nor to impose its will nor to persuade its citizens. Because there is no threat that can undo the kingdom of God, it does not build fortresses nor arm itself against invaders nor against infidels. There is no army that can undo God, nor any act of violence that can unthrone God, nor any siege that can affect the liberty of God’s covenant with the living.

Because God is not dependent upon anyone’s approval to keep God in power, God can love indiscriminately, show mercy without restraint, do right without obligation, live unconditionally.

No, the kingdom of God is not like that of Herod.

And Jesus turns away from Herod and returns to Galilee to proclaim the gospel: that the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, he says, and believe it. Believe it. Believe that it is within reach.

Do we believe that the kingdom of God is still possible, let alone at hand, in this time, in this place, today? Are we willing to repent of all that keeps us from reaching out for it, touching it, grasping it? Or are we still on the run from Herod, or worse, under Herod’s thumb?

Is God truly our highest authority, our king, if you like, or have we compromised with the powers and principalities of everyday life in a compromised world, in order to get by, to rub along?

I mean, what is the alternative, after all? Get out of the boat like James and John and follow Jesus without a second thought or safety net? 

I do find these stories of scripture humbling. John knew he was playing with fury when he preached repentance to Herod and his wife, but he wouldn’t stop. Those disciples, who dropped everything without knowing what they might find in return. Paul, who practiced what he preached to the Corinthians, living as though each day was the first of his call to serve Christ, and the last chance he had to respond. Jesus, Jesus knew that he himself would one day fall under Herod’s wrath, but that didn’t stop him reaching for the kingdom of God, and finding it to be at hand, like a ripe fig. 

The rest of us are more like Jonah, aren’t we? We will go to some lengths to avoid the call of God upon us to radically change our allegiances and our priorities away from vengeance and toward mercy, away from power and toward service, away from violence toward self-sacrifice, away from righteousness toward humility, from turning directly to the throne of heaven without considering the Cross. And God’s mercy pursues us anyway. 

The present form of this world is passing away, Paul wrote to Corinth. The kingdom of God is at hand, Jesus told anyone who would listen. The present form of this world is always passing away, nothing stays still, nothing stays the same. From the miraculous, like the development of medicines to treat deadly disease, to the terrifying, like the climate crisis, we walk through an ever-changing and kaleidoscopic landscape. What will become of it all, which way the world will turn, that is up to us.

It is unlikely that we will be called from our boats or our desks or our couches by an itinerant preacher, or be blinded by a dazzling vision on the road to Cleveland or Damascus, or be sent single-handedly to preach penitence to a people like Nineveh, although it could happen.

But the kingdom of God is closer than that. It is at hand every time we have a choice to make between the ways of Herod and the way of the Cross, to be powerful or to be kind, to be safe or to be humble, to love indiscriminately, show mercy without restraint, do right without obligation, live unconditionally.

The kingdom of God is at hand, within our grasp, within our hearts, if we will but turn and follow Jesus.

Year B Epiphany 3 readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

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Fisher

Posted on January 18, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

You flee again to Galilee,
another Herod, another threat,
kings and prophets always at odds
and you, raised with the memory
of blood and fire, fishing
for another way, the kingdom
of God, as it were, silver-scaled
and just, within your grasp,
slipping like sand between your fingers.

 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God,  and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)

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It is the Lord: Come and see

Posted on January 14, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Eli was not the perfect priest, by any means. When we first meet him at the high place in Shiloh, he fails to understand Hannah’s prayer; he thinks that she is drunk and tries to put her out of the presence of God. Later, we learn that he has not prevented his own sons from abusing the altar of the shrine for their own appetites; although he knew of it and asked them about it, he did not put a stop to it (1 Samuel 2). By the time we meet him in the night, as Samuel sleeps before the ark of the covenant, Eli has turned a blind eye so often and so long that he is blind himself.

Yet when the voice of God comes, to one who does not know it, and does not recognize it, it is Eli who tells Samuel, “It is the Lord.” And when God’s righteous judgement is revealed, Eli does not resist it, but says again, simply, “It is the Lord.” Eli, for all of his failings and faults, knows and trusts that whatever God has in mind will be just, and merciful, and worth his faith.

When Philip first told Nathanael that they had found the Messiah, the one “about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth,” Nathanael was at first disinclined to believe him. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he grumbled. And Philip responded simply, “Come and see.”

“It is the Lord.” “Come and see.” Two responses from two people separated by millennia, who recognized the Lord, and who were willing to share that vision with others, to pass on their faith, hard to come by and hard to hold on to in a world where visions are rare and the word of God rarely heard, where disappointments abound and the stain of sin clings and seems to resurface again and again even in our own well-meant lives.

“It is the Lord; come and see.” Two responses full of hope and trembling, full of the fear of rejection and the promise of fulfillment.

Philip was young and eager and bold. I like Philip. I remember being young and eager and still a little shy. I remember meeting a woman, a mother like me, with babies and small toddlers slung all over our shoulders and whatever else they could get a foothold on. This was long before I became a priest. We met at a playgroup held in a community hall. As time went on, she opened up about the ways in which church had let her down in the past. Not let her down, broken her heart, opened up a pit in her stomach and her soul which had not yet healed after years. “I will never darken the doorstep of a church again,” she said. It was my church, she was talking about.

Over time, I shared with her some of the ways that our church had repented and had recovered from some of the sins that had hurt her and harmed her. That the priest who had – I hope unwittingly – pierced her soul had moved on, and that in his wake, we were working on healing. That she was not alone in her hurt, nor in her judgement. I hesitated, knowing that our church was still far from perfect, that there would be plenty of thorns and thistles still to navigate, should she choose to darken our doorstep. Still, I could tell that she knew what she was missing, in the sacrament, in the word of community; otherwise her exile would not still sting. “If you ever want to come and see,” I told her, “I’ll bring you with me.”

And then there’s Eli: older, unsure if he’s any the wiser for it, worn down by battles he could never win against his own sin and the sins of his sons, and still waiting by night for the voice of the Lord. Instead of hearing it himself, he recognizes it in Samuel’s dream, and he is ready. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” he tells Samuel to say, and he means it for himself as well as for the boy.

A few years ago I had a phone call from a stranger asking about baptism. This person was asking for a grown child who had developmental difficulties. One church had declined to baptize her because she could not make a profession of faith. “She may never understand what it means,” the father on the phone told me. We talked a little while, and I explained that we are far from perfect as a church ourselves, and that while we prepare as best we can for baptism, whether as adults or on behalf of our small children who do not yet understand, we know that we can only approach the mystery of the sacrament, that it is God who does the rest, grace upon grace, and that we do not need to understand it all to know that God is love, God is mercy, and that in the waters, God pours forth grace. And we wept together over the phone. I invited him and his daughter to come and see us; to my knowledge they never did, but I trust that those tears watered something in him that needed it. They did for me.

Many years after my children graduated playgroup, I heard from an old friend back at our old church about a woman who had come seeking baptism for her children. She did not bring them to the doorstep we knew, but under the parish system asked our priest to sign off for them to be baptized at the next church down the street. I recognized her story, and I rejoiced at the long arc of God’s love.

Church, we are not perfect. We do not understand it all, and sometimes our vision is dim. But the word of God is not rare in this place, and the mercy of God that passes understanding abounds. In the sacrament, we are reminded regularly that the stain of sin cannot cling to us more closely than the grace of God. And in community, at its best, we find that rippled reflection of the love of Christ that binds us together.

Whether we identify with Philip, eager and enthusiastic, or with Nathanael, a little jaded; with Samuel, new to it all and bewildered, or Eli, old enough to hope only for mercy, we have the vision and the word of God to share with those who so need it. So here’s my invitation, to think about to whom will we say, this week, this year, in this life, “It is the Lord! Come and see.”

Year B Epiphany 2: 1 Samuel 3:1-20, John 1:43-51

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Anything good

Posted on January 9, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Anything good this way comes,
fragrant from the desert,
fat from fasting,
presumptuous in his humility,
faint traces of aloe
following him like a draft,
children hanging from his heels
like lambs trying to suckle
from the hem of his garment.
He plucked a vision
from green air
like a fig, ripe,
ready to bit and share.

Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” John 1:46

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

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Epiphany 2024

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

I have probably said this before, but the Gospel story of the visitation of the Magi to the manger of the Christ never mentions three kings, nor their names, nor their camels. It does not specify their country or countries of origin. The traditions of Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar, kings of such places as India, Persia, and Ethiopia, with which many of us were raised are just that: later traditions, from perhaps five hundred years and more after the events they describe, that attempt to give colour to a scene that is already iridescent with the glory of God.

It is noticeable, too, that other churches in other parts of the world did not adopt the same details: some nominate twelve magi; others give different names to the same three kings, relating to time, place, or revelation.[i]

There is nothing wrong with applying our God-given imagination to God’s revelation, nor to exploring it in art and story, wondering how it might speak to us today. At least, I hope not because I do it all the time. I do wonder, though, why we feel the need so often to defend our embellishments: the kings, the names, the little details, as though they were the point of the story, rather than going back to the source of our revelation, our epiphany, and finding the Christ child there.

In the scripture that we have received, wise ones from the east, magi, travelled to Judea because they had perceived through a sign in the heavens that a new king had been born. We don’t know how many of them there were, nor how large their entourage. They were well-connected and noticeable enough to be introduced to the court of Herod, who was frightened by their portents. The Herod family history was full of palace intrigues, usurpations, and the theft of thrones, so Herod had some reason to be concerned at the announcement of a new king born for God’s people. 

The scribes of the people, the wise ones whose revelation came not from the stars but from the diligent and faithful, prayerful study of scripture told the secret assembly that Bethlehem was clearly indicated as the birthplace of the Messiah. So it was that the magi continued their journey informed by God’s word and by the natural revelation of God’s movements within the world, until they came to the place where the child lay with his mother, and word and star stood still together, and all worshipped the Christ child.

This is the centrepiece of the story: that God’s revelation, through God’s word to God’s people throughout the ages, came together with the natural revelation that God as Creator has made known to all people with a heart to hear and see it, so that Jews and Gentiles alike and together might come and know that Christ has been born, not only king of the Jews but saviour of the world, Jesus; that God has come for all people, not only a chosen few, and that the love of God shines out for everyone.

And that God makes that love known by any means possible.

I think that the reason that I thought about our traditions and our embellishments and our insistences on details that we can’t really defend is that as we come to this new year, we know that we face a lot of campaigning, that we will be fed a steady diet of information and partial information, outrage and disinformation, that it will be difficult at times to know what is solid and what has been manipulated to produce the traditional stories that we want to hear. We have all heard of confirmation bias: we want to believe what we have always believed, and we want that to be the truth, never mind if it divides us one from another.

And so it is worth, from time to time and regularly, coming back to the centre, to the child and the manger, to the cross and the empty tomb, to remember that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and our life. To examine the words of scripture and the revelation of God’s love in the world: the patterns of mercy and the economy of grace. To remember that it is where the love of God is revealed in all of its humility and all of its wonder that we find the Christ, God among us, Emmanuel. One might think that whatever does not fit that story is not worth following.

In order to stay on that track, on the trail of truth, we can take some lessons from the unnamed and uncounted wise ones, the magi, who consulted with the heavens, using all of the knowledge and wisdom they could. It was Galileo who declared that, “I do not think it necessary to believe that the same God who gave us our senses, our speech, our intellect, would have put aside the use of these, to teach us instead such things as with their help we could find out for ourselves.”[ii] Galileo, whose proofs of the movements of the planets were considered heresy in his time; yet who knew that God meets us in our world, in our senses and our reason, and helps us to understand our place in creation, and in relation to our Creator. 

The magi also consulted the community of faith. First, they came to Jerusalem, and asked all around town where the Messiah was to be born. In humility they did not pretend that their revelation was the beginning and end of that knowledge, but they applied to those they knew to be in close relationship with God and with the scriptures. Galileo, again, writing that, “Holy Scripture and Nature are both emanations from the divine word: the former dictated by the Holy Spirit, the latter the observant executrix of God’s commands.”[iii] In turning to the scribes of the scriptures, the magi were seeking the source material for their star. When Herod summoned them, then, they followed his direction, but with discretion; when God told them not to return to Herod, they left for home by another road.

Full circle, then: they examined the ways in which God had already revealed Godself to them; they consulted with the community of faith; they examined within that community the words of scripture; they listened always for the whisper of God in their dreams, so as not to stray too far, nor be seduced by the false friendship of Herod. They worshipped the Christ. 

It isn’t bad advice for a Christian life in the midst of a noisy world: listen for God, expect to find God in our daily lives and experience; consult closely with the community of faith; study the scriptures; pray without ceasing; listen for the whispers of God in the night; do not be seduced by the trappings of power, but remember the Christ child, humble and full of glory, God among us, always.

[i] https://www.stcatherinercc.org/single-post/2020/01/01/where-do-we-get-the-names-of-the-three-magi

[ii] As quoted in Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Drama of Science, Faith and Love (Fourth Estate, 1999), 65

[iii] Ibid, 64

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Forewarned

Posted on January 4, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

They left by another way 
to avoid the falling stars 
bombarding the night sky, 
minor apocalypses scoring 
their trails across the Red Sea. 
They dreamed of corridors 
between the waters knowing 
that God created dry land 
once. Cradled by sand dunes 
haunted by Herod’s gaudy 
and the Child’s humble glory 
they observed the tilt and sway 
of constellations as their light 
spilled out toward Bethlehem.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. Matthew 2:12

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Word, words, wordless

Posted on December 31, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

In the beginning, says John, and you can tell that he is thinking back to that old story of beginnings, the one in Genesis that begins, In the beginning…

And so as God spoke light into creation, and life, so God’s Word, which was as close a part of God as God’s mind and imagination, so the Word formed the vowels of the oceans and the consonants of land, the sibilants of the serpents and crawling things, the mooing of mammals. The Word thrilled with the trilling of the birds and insects. When God created the human in God’s image, then they developed language, words from the Word, reaching back always in prayer to their Creator.

But sometimes words are insufficient. Sometimes we do not have the words, or we are afraid to speak the words, or we are tired of hearing in our own voice the words we would use to petition God, to praise God, to lament and to thank our Creator. So we turn to art, or music, or silence, or we turn away.

Is it possible that God could also exhaust the language of words? Time and again, so many words spoken through the prophets, through the scriptures, through the reading of the law and its promises, even through direct conversation with Adam, with Eve, even with Cain; God has spoken words of covenant, of mercy, of judgement, of love. And still, so often, too often, we would not listen. So we have a world full of war and hearts weary of hearing about it, of hearing the words.

There are other languages. Art, music, dance, silence – each has its place in the panoply of human expression. And presence, too. Being with someone speaks volumes, even without words. Yesterday, this church was full to bursting with people who came mostly just to be with: to be with the people they love, to be with God.

So the Word became flesh. God showed up to be with the people God loves.

Once, long ago but not too far away, I sat in a church service on a Sunday morning feeling pretty bereft. When the time came to approach the altar for Communion, I didn’t want to leave my seat. I didn’t want to show my face. I certainly didn’t want to have to explain my tears. And a stranger came and sat beside me, and took my hand, and told me, “I’m going to stay here with you. Because you are my sister, and I’m not going anywhere without you.” And just like that, and without another word, she stayed. And because she did, I found my way back to the Sacrament of flesh and blood, God’s love made manifest in and for the world.

The language of being with is powerful. The Word may have begun by calling out light and spitting stars and tongue-twisting duck-billed platypi. But in the beginning, and the end, and in our times, our history, our generations, the Word became flesh, and lived among us, because sometimes showing up is the only way to show how much we love, how much we are beloved. And because God knows, that is what matters.

Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas, 2023: John 1:1-18

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The Word

Posted on December 28, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

In the beginning, the Word breathed light. 
In the beginning, the Word formed the vowels 
of the ocean, hard consonants of land. In 
the beginning, Word crawled, swam, flew, 
blossomed. Before flesh, there was the Word; 
utter God, utter Being, utter Love.

John 1:1-18

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Christmas Day 2023

Posted on December 25, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Yesterday, during a short break in a long day, I spent an hour at the art museum, and it crossed my mind yet once again how many ways we have of communicating with one another. The brush strokes of a painter, like the word choices of a poet, are designed to convey not only the surface of meaning, but to resonate within the soul, to evoke something that binds us together in our understanding of our humanity, our place in the world, in creation.

And the Word became flesh. The Word of God, the way in which God reaches out to us became a wordless infant, and a prophet, and a preacher, and a mortal man who died and was buried, and who rose again because the Word of God is irrepressible, because the Word of God cannot fall silent when it resonates deep within the human spirit. Because the love of God will use any means, go to any length to help us understand that we are made in God’s image, and that God inhabits ours.

The solidity of a sculpture, the fragility of glass, the intricacy of brushwork, the multivalency of language, the mystery of music, the bodies of dance, art become flesh: all of these are ways that we communicate with one another and seek to understand the human condition, even the divine. And God, who danced across the waters of creation and descended like a dove and painted the sky with stars and whispered loud words into the brains of prophets: this God who would stop at nothing to let us know that God is with us, became flesh, took on the language of love, of touch, of breath, of death, of life.

This incarnation, this child in the manger, this is the choice that God has made to be among us and to come alongside us and to share our burdens and our joy. Because love is the language that resonates within the soul of a human being, and makes it sing. Because love is the way that God will heal us, eventually, from our warring madness and sin. Because God is love, and whatever words or music or art or dance or silence is needed to convey that, God will stop at nothing, not at birth, not at death, to become new life with and for God’s beloved ones.

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Christmas Eve 2023

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Christmas Eve children’s time

Mary and Joseph had a long journey ahead of them, all the way from Nazareth in Galilee down though the wilderness road to Bethlehem. They were tired and they were hungry, they were ready to lie down and rest by the time they reached the city. The sky had grown dark already, and the stars were beginning to appear. Mary was feeling twinges in her tummy, different from the ones she felt when the baby kicked. It was time to find a bed for the night.

But when they reached the city, the rooms were all full. There was nowhere to lie down except in a stable, a cave used to house animals. Well, if that’s all they had, thought Mary and Joseph, that’s where they would stay. And so they did, and Mary had her baby right there in that stable, and they laid him in a manger, which is a food trough for the animals, because was full of straw and soft enough to put a baby down for a little bit.

Even when there was no room for them, even though no one else would make room for them, the animals shared their space, their warmth, even their food. Amid their soft gentleness, Mary and Joseph found a place to lay their newborn baby, and because of it, those animals were the very first to welcome Jesus into the world. Which just goes to show what miracles can happen when we are kind to one another.

And nearby there were shepherds, keeping watch over their sheep, and suddenly they saw a bright light, and angels singing, and even though they were a bit frightened, they hurried to see what was happening, and so they found Jesus, which just goes to show what we can find when we are a little bit brave.

And in the midst of it all, the baby slept, filled and content with all of the love that surrounded him, and the warmth that enfolded him, and the love of God that had brought him into this place, and that continues to touch us all to this very day.

Christmas Eve, 2023                                                                                        

The angels sang Glory! Peace on earth. We love to tell the story; it takes us back to childhood and a more innocent time. It reminds us, with its carols and its Christmas cards, of the joy of the season – and it should. God is with us; Emmanuel. There is nothing more hopeful and joyful and lasting than that. 

But this first, this was no Christmas card journey to Bethlehem. More likely than moonlight on a couple with a few bags and a donkey, this would have been a caravan of displaced people trekking days through the wilderness, ordered south by their occupiers, in order to be registered by their officials. And at the end of the line, crammed and jammed into a town too small for all of its descendants to come home at once, there was no room left, no bed but the floor of a cave strewn with straw for the animals. Even there, they were not safe from the Herods of the world, their envy and gluttony for violence. And it was in the midst of all of this that Mary went into labour with her first child, the difficult one that demands that your body do something it has never done before, achieve the impossible, deliver into the air a whole new living, breathing human being. Impossible, the body says, can’t be done. And yet with God, nothing is impossible.

It is only too easy to see the hardships of incarnation this Christmas. I have not forgotten the atrocities of October 7, nor the hostages that are still missing even after the miracle of Hanukkah. But in Gaza, nearly one percent of the population, and far too many children, have been killed. There is not enough shelter, food, water, humanity. up to 85% of the people are internally displaced, that is, they have been driven from their homes by evacuation orders, and they are not safe when they stay and in danger when they obey. And these, mourned tonight in Bethlehem, are not the only casualties of wars and violence that continue across the globe.

And yet, the angels over the Bethlehem hills cry Glory! And still, they sing of peace, even if it frightens the shepherds half insensible. And still, they speak of God’s good favour, over the birth of one small child in impossible circumstances.

Because that is what incarnation is. It is the enduring sign of God’s love for us, that God would become a child, take on flesh, be born even into a world torn up by oppression and quaking with war and steeped in a tea of its own tears. It is a sign of God’s love for us that in tenderness and innocence, in vulnerability and humility, God became not the heir to a kingly throne but the passing tenant of a stableful of animals. It matters that God chose to come among us not at the head of a battalion of angels come to join in our warring ways, but to be born from within us, to convert us from the inside out into people charged with carrying and feeding and tending to and growing the love of God among us. For with God, nothing will be impossible.

We look at ourselves, we look at one another, and we wonder whether we can, in fact, ever become worthy of that babe in the manger. And in one way, it doesn’t matter. It matters, of course, that we do everything we can to create a world of love for him to grow in, a world of safety for him to explore, a world of peace so that he can learn to sleep through the night; of course that matters. It matters that we practice love as often and as widely as we are able, so that we can give him the best love of which we are capable. But he will come to us whether we are fabulous or whether we fail again and again; he will love us just the same. And that is a heavy responsibility, and a huge relief.

We don’t need to romanticize the Christmas story in order to celebrate it, even now. We don’t need to turn our faces away from the suffering of the world; far from it. This story, this reality, that God is born among us, it is why, when we are torn by strife and worn by grief, yet we gather still to proclaim with the angels the joy of Christmas, the incarnation of the Christ, because this is what life is for: to love God, to love one another, to know ourselves beloved of our Creator and our End; Emmanuel, God with us, come once again to touch our hearts and turn us inside out.

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