A dark night

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Around three this morning, I heard my daughter come up the stairs, and I rolled over and went back to sleep. Later this morning I read the news from across the country of those who did not come home from their own night out at the movies.
We take so much for granted.
To those wounded in body and soul by last night’s horror, I can offer only my prayers, love and sorrow. I hope that you will forgive me that, even as I pray, somewhere behind my heart I am hugging and holding on to my own daughter for dear life.
‘Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake. Amen.’
(BCP, 134)

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The wellness gospel

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last week, driving a bunch of overtired teens back from a rollercoaster day (literally; they were at Cedar Point), my car flashed me a warning light. Well-trained in the vagaries of overworked technology, I ignored it until it went away. Then it came back. Then it flashed me a few more signs. We were almost home, so I held my breath and crossed my fingers and sure enough it got us there, albeit in darkness and without the benefit of power steering, since all the electrics appeared to shut down just as I hauled it onto the driveway.

Next morning, of course, it started first time. It got halfway to the service centre before giving up for good.

All was well. I had AAA, and the tow truck got me to the repair place in time to get back and pick up the cake in time for the graduation party we were throwing that afternoon, and the rain held off on Monday while I got around all my errands by bike (my daughter pointing out that it was very fortunate that I had picked this summer to train for the Bishop’s Bike Ride and was thus capable of sustaining forward motion for more than a mile or two), and the car was fixed just in time to swing by and pick it up at the end of another essential outing yesterday – all was well. Everything got done for everyone that needed things doing.

One of my spiritual friends disputes the “all was well” approach. She insists that the car is a symbol of my lifestyle: I ignore warning signs, I drive it when it really needs to go in for a good rest and a few repairs, until it breaks down uncontrollably at the side of the road. According to her, I should have ditched the bike and taken a day or two off while my car and my equilibrium recovered.

“But,” I argue, “things needed doing. This person needed to go here, and that one there, and I needed to get this for them and and get that done …” And I only work half time, and my family is a lot more self-sufficient than it once was, and I have it a lot easier than many other people do all the time. (I think that my friend sometimes overestimates my work ethic and altruism.) And it did, after all, work out pretty well in the end. Didn’t it?

The gospel story we read this Sunday gives ammunition to both me and my friend. She will point out that Jesus went away to a deserted place. He led his friends away to a deserted place, knowing that they all needed a time-out, some peace and quiet, a retreat, a rest. They had been so busy that they barely had time to eat, and when they did, they never had time or space to sit down to a meal.

But, I will reply, when the people followed them, Jesus was moved with compassion to help them anyway, and he taught them, and (in the part that we leave out this Sunday) he fed them, and even after they moved on again, so many people were healed as they pressed back around him, how could he fail to help them? He couldn’t; he didn’t.

Other friends have shared online a story about clergy wellness which is headlined “Selflessness can threaten clergy members’ health” (http://www.womenshealth.gov/news/headlines/666244.cfm). It tells of clergy who know that self-care is important, but who still make it secondary to their ministry to others. It speaks of the need to address clergy health in language that clergy will accept; by implication, language which shows them the benefits to their ministry and those to whom they minister of care for themselves. Still, at the bottom of the piece, the journalist acknowledges that, “The study, recently published in the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, doesn’t prove that ministering to others causes chronic disease. It merely noted an association between clergy members and poor health.”

So is my friend right or wrong to be concerned about the state of my car and whether or not it is symptomatic for my life and well-being? Or is the emphasis on self-care and the wellness of the minister overstated? Should ministry – and let’s expand this now to the ministry of all believers, to the parents who are constantly ministering to their children, and the grown children caring for older parents, and those who feed, and those who heal, and those who teach, and those who clean up, and those who pray for all of the above – should ministry be understood as sacrificial, and if so, how far does one go in self-giving before one has to go into hiding or on vacation? And how many compassionate demands should it take to drag the minister back from his or her wilderness retreat? What about the other aspects of the minister’s life which seek attention: family, friends, valued causes and groups? How much is too much to give of ourselves? How far is too far to retreat?

(I don’t pretend to have answers. I’m just asking questions here.)

Jesus still tries to take time out to retreat, to pray, to recharge and refresh himself and his relationships with God and with his closest companions. He got interrupted; but if we don’t even try, we don’t stand a chance of success.

Returning briefly to yesterday’s comment on the Old Testament lesson, and Nathan’s God-check moment, if we forget to take time out, to pray, to rest in the presence of God, what will we miss?

Where are the warning lights which you are ignoring? How long can you drive safely forward without stopping to get them taken care of?

And yet, I tell my friend, my wise and compassionate friend, Jesus, in this gospel, still hasn’t reached his limit of sacrificial self-giving. Will he? Will we?

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God-check

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A first glance at this week’s lectionary readings:

IN 2 Samuel, David, still high on his worship of the living God last week, wants to take things a step or three further, and build a temple in which to house the ark of the covenant, the symbol (in the true and living meaning of symbolic elements: the thing that points beyond itself and which also embodies the thing to which it points) of God’s presence with the people of promise, the people of God’s choosing.

David’s professed motive seems sound: humility. He does not think it fitting that the king should live in a prouder building than the Living Presence of the Living God.

Nathan, the prophet, concurs. “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.”

But that night, the Lord puts Nathan straight.

Nathan is not afraid to contradict the king. In chapter 12, he sets David up to be hoist with his own petard, uncovering his guilt in the matter of Bathsheba and her poor, murdered husband by means of a parable. He is loyal, nevertheless; in 1 Kings, he is the one reported to have alerted David to the plot to subvert the succession of Solomon. Familiar from Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”, Nathan the prophet, along with Zadok the priest (and others) anointed Solomon king.

Nathan is a prophet of the court, a man trusted to tell the truth about the word and will of God. He is frank, loyal, and faithful: everything you might want in a prophet. Yet, on this occasion, he was wrong. He spoke too soon.

David is reminded through Nathan’s late night encounter with the Lord that it is not for him to choose the way forward. It is not for him to decide where God’s presence will stay, or stop moving. God is not leaving David: the promise of an abiding household and an abiding presence is repeated, as it was to Abraham, to Jacob. God is with David; but God will not be fenced in with cedar or gated or built up or set in stone. Not until God chooses.

But why doesn’t Nathan, the one trusted to tell the truth, understand this sooner? David comes to Nathan for a God-check, a gut-check with one he trusts to keep his gut aligned with God’s, and Nathan is momentarily dazzled by the image that the king presents. Perhaps he is still reeling from seeing David dance into town in front of the ark, the picture of religious ecstasy; and ecstasy which Nathan may yearn for himself. He has been swept up on a wave of emotion and experience, and he has forgotten to find his feet, to ground himself in prayer, before taking the next step forward.

Worship is wonderful. Ecstatic experience is a gift. It cannot be a distraction from discernment. God knows the way forward when we come back down to earth, and we could do worse than to check with God, with our prophets and trusted prayers, before letting our emotions run away with us. Worship, in the end, is supposed to find its end in the glory of God, not in our own emotional experience. It is for God to choose us, and to teach us the ways that God wants us to work in the world; it is not for us to choose to teach God what to do next.

David, speaking with all apparent humility, still needed one lesson more in that important virtue. So did Nathan, his impatient prophet. What do we, or our parishes, need to run by a God-check, and not just a gut-check, before discovering God’s will for our way forward?

 

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Collect for the anniversary of a death

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Almighty God, whose memory is longer than time;
we remember especially today your daughter N.
Grant us patience, peace, healing and hope as remember good times and bad;
so that even our grief may become an instrument of your grace.
May light perpetual shine upon N.,
and may we with all your saints come to see your glory; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Herodias’ Revenge

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

“Revenge is a dish best served cold,”
someone said; but it burns in your veins,
beating you without remorse until
the heat sears out sweet reason,
with its cool, calm attempts at peace;
its urgent rationale adds fuel to the fire
which smelts the mind,
melts the soul in white anger.
Who looks at another with hatred
commits murder in their heart;
he has killed her over, she thinks,
it is time for him to depart.

But the plattered head, barely cool, chills her,
and revenge is frozen by his still-speaking eyes.

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Despicable dancing?

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is a theme of dance, loss, enmity, and faithfulness running from the Old Testament lesson to the gospel. I don’t know quite what to make of it, because it keeps twirling away every time I think I’ve caught the rhythm, changing direction every time I find my footing.

Michal despised David when she saw him dance.
Herod salivated over Salome.
Herodias rubbed her hands like an evil chancellor in an animated fairy tale.
John lost his head.

Dancing then is dangerous? Seducing us to murder, drawing forth feelings of contempt and lust and disgust?

Except that the dancers are innocent of all of this. They dance, lost in the moment, lost in the ecstasy of being in their bodies or being in the moment or being next to the Ark of the Covenant, in the presence of God. They transcend their observers, the objects around them, the objectionable reactions of despisement, desire, devious plots of revenge.

It is those who refuse to be drawn into the dance, who remain reserved, resisting the music, who cause the trouble. Eventually, the worst happens, and the music dies, killed by the lust of Herod married to the bloodlust of Herodias.

So where does that leave us?

David dances on, laughing and leaping and dancing and singing and distributing a feast of fancy fruit and cake to the people, oblivious of Michal’s despising, oblivious of everything except the moment, the now, the Presence. It is tempting to follow him, but it is not easy to let go, to pull back from the window and run into the street and join the dance.

At the very least, though, perhaps we can smile as we watch, leaning out next to Michal, remembering the ruddy and handsome boy that he was, delighting in his laughter and his lightness, letting it lift our spirits, whether we lift our feet in the dance, or weight them to the ground, still fearful of losing our heads.

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Thinking out loud

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Since yesterday, I’ve seen a number of emails, tweets and Facebook posts along the lines of “What are you going to say on Sunday?” It’s a little bit like the supreme court affirmation of affordable care all over again.
I think that the majority of these posts and messages relate to the consent of both houses of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to the authorizing of a liturgy to bless same-sex covenanted unions. It’s possible that they’re talking about the budget, but I doubt it.
A couple of things strike me.
First, the gospel reading for this Sunday is a graphic illustration of how dangerous, disputable and disagreeable we (people) can become when we begin to argue about who may (not) be married to whom (although it should be noted that this rite is not called marriage by this convention). Not that fear should shut us up; but that we should take care not to behead our own prophets, whether or not we like what they tell us.
Second, my heart rejoices in God, who loves more completely than we ever can imagine, more equally and equitably, more wisely and truly; and who invests the church with blessings abundant to be abundantly shared. Thanks be to God.

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Year B, Proper 9: Hometown preaching

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

July7/8th, 2012, St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Elyria, Ohio

One summer, my son wanted to buy me a gift. All through our vacation, whenever there was a gift shop or stall, he asked to buy me something, and I kept saying no. I kept insisting that the pocket money he had (which his grandparents had given him) was for him, and that he didn’t need to spend it on me. But he kept asking, and one day, at the Royal Welsh Show, where he had already picked out a little silver bracelet and insisted that he should buy it for me, I let him.

Off he went to make his purchase, and back he came, so proud and so pleased that he could offer me his own gift, bought with his own money, chosen by himself and freely given, and it was only then that I realized how blind I had been, and how selfish in trying to save him from his own loving generosity.

So many stories get stirred up when we read about Jesus and his family. We all have stories of feeling unappreciated in our own homes or hometowns; when those who have become inured to our talents seem to take them for granted and it takes a stranger to recognize our gifts and compliment us on them.

For some among you, it may be that home has been worse than unappreciative. The very places which should nurture and protect us too often are places of danger and anxiety. Family is a complex animal, and it can be friendly and it can be fierce. So it can be difficult to separate, when we read stories about Jesus and his family, our own stuff from his, our own stories from the story we read about a hometown long ago and far away.

Jesus went home. He had been travelling the region for a while, and we have heard how he healed so many people, and taught crowds which made it hard for him even to move about, they were so large and pressing. He was famous. He was celebrated. He was a star.

Then, he came home.

A friend of mine described the difference between envy and jealousy as the difference between desire and destruction. Envy wants what the other has, wishes it could get hold of it. Jealousy knows that it can’t have it, so it wills only to destroy it.

There might have been those who were envious of Jesus, because he had a following, because he had shown himself to be remarkably talented at teaching and opening up the scriptures, and at healing; there were also those who were jealous of him, who wished to destroy what he had, because they saw no hope in it for themselves. And he was astonished at their unbelief, and it must have hurt.

Because Jesus didn’t go there to show anyone up. Jesus went home to share with the people of his hometown exactly what he had been giving to everyone else. There are plenty of different explanations offered in different books for why he couldn’t do the same work there as in other places – the gospel says, “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them,” – but to me, that exception says it all. To those who came to him, those few sick people that he cured, he gave his power, he gave his gifts, all that he had to offer.

But so few people took him up on it that there was little he could do. It was a shame, because all they had to do was ask him, and he would have shown them the power of the love of God.

I heard a good word this week which was attributed to Elizabeth Eaton, bishop in the ELCA. She said, “The Jesus we know is not the Jesus who will save us,” or something to that effect. The Jesus that the people knew who had seen him grow up and run around the neighbourhood and chase the dogs and climb the trees and learn slowly to make things of wood with his hands, and whose brothers and sisters and mother had never left town – that Jesus was not the one who would save his people. The Jesus they didn’t know, the one who had been baptized with the Holy Spirit and walked the wilderness with only the devil and the angels for company, who had been filled with the power of God to do astonishing things and to preach amazing sermons – that was the Jesus who might save them, but they never thought to ask him, because they were too busy remembering the Jesus they thought that they knew.

Sometimes we are afraid to ask God for what we want, what we need, what we really wish we could pray for, because we think that we already know the answer. We think that we know how God works, and we are afraid that the answer will be no. Sometimes we are angry, because we think that the Bible and the church makes God out to be all that, and yet we are still suffering, still waiting to see that deed of power, still waiting to be saved from ourselves. Sometimes we are jealous, because for God, it must all be just so easy. And sometimes, we pack God so tightly into a box, into an idea or a theory or a corner of our lives – one hour on a Sunday morning, or ten minutes each night at bedtime – we pack God up so tightly that we imagine that God is too small to be able to offer us anything.

The Jesus we know is not the Jesus who will save us. The God we think we have all tied up and tied down is not the God who has the power to save us. But God doesn’t give up. God tracks down the last lost sheep, the last hair of hope on our heads, and holds on to it and doesn’t let go. And God asks us, over and over, “Can I give you something? Can I offer you something? Will you receive it from me? Will you?”

And if we only allow ourselves to wonder what might happen if we let God be God’s own generous, loving self, without restriction, without resentments or refusals, without reservation, what deeds of power might we see? We are prepared to be surprised and excited by the discovery of a God particle in a Large Hadron Collider deep under Switzerland – rightly so – but what if we were as prepared to be surprised and excited by God? If we allow ourselves to pray as our souls really would like to in their wildest dreams, what healing might we find? If we gave up knowing what was best, and stopped to ask God, and really listened with a fully open mind for an answer, what might we hear? What joy might we discover in the love of God set free? What does God long to offer us?

We all know that there are miracles that do not happen, and they make us afraid to ask for the ones that might. But the Jesus we know, whose miracles are locked in a book of the past, that Jesus is not the one who will save us. The Jesus we don’t know is just waiting for us to notice him in the mystery, in the stranger, in the surprises of the universe, in the everydays of our own home lives. He is only waiting for us to call upon him so that he can show us amazing deeds of power, of healing, wisdom and love.

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A prophet without honour

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Two brothers grew up a few years apart. They were close for a time, but grew somewhat apart. They moved in different circles. The elder brother worked hard and achieved some recognition, even notoriety. Every so often the younger brother would see his name in the local newspaper, his photograph in a supermarket magazine.

The younger brother also worked hard. He had a decent life. He managed a comfortable home and raised a pleasant family. His name, his photograph, were never in the local paper. As happy as his life was, and as much as he loved his elder brother, there was still a part of him which winced when he saw his brother’s face on the front page of the social interest section. He could tell a tale or two, from when they were young, which would burst his bubble. Of course, he never would.

The elder brother died. At his funeral, the younger brother was astonished at the number of people who made a point to come to him and with great gratitude tell him stories about his brother, about his generosity, his encouragement, his gifts. One had received free services when he couldn’t pay; another’s child had received a generous loan as a down-payment on her first married home. Another had been driven twice-weekly by the elder brother to a medical appointment; he had always refused money for gas or any other compensation, but would take a cup of tea with the patient after the appointment, and chat for a while.

The younger brother was a little ashamed that he had not known this side of his brother. He was also a little angry.

“When did he give me anything?” he asked his wife that night.

She looked at him, a little strangely, he thought. “When did you ever ask?” she responded, quietly.

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Fireworks, funfairs and ferris wheels

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I have had occasion to mention before that I am quite privileged. I live, by my own free choice, in an unimpeachably respectable suburb to the west of Cleveland, with good schools, a sense of community, a beach, three coffee shops, an Irish pub and a gazillion churches, all contained in a few small square miles. It used to be a holiday resort for the wealthy of Cleveland, who would come along the coast on the electric train to take the air away from the city, and who built sweet and large little holiday homes along Lake Road, which are now regularly bulldozed to make way for something more deserving of a lake view.

There are people here who talk about the “Bay Bubble;” the peculiarity of the place that makes it seem somewhat set apart. Few people drive through it to get from A to B. There are faster roads than Lake going west and east, and if you go too far north you fall off the cliff, so there’s not too much traffic there. Many families have raised generations here, and grown children move back “home” when their own babies are born. People who went to school together share the view from their front porches.

There are those who dislike the phrase, “Bay Bubble,” because they know that it’s unreal. In the summer especially, the beach is full of people visiting, and the town’s old identity as a resort echoes across Lake Road to the overflow parking on the grass. In the winter, the nature centre parking lot is full of school buses from across the region, other people’s children. Year round, contractors drive in and out to fix our houses, mend our roofs, cut our grass and mulch our flowerbeds. The Irish pub and the churches do not require proof of residence at the door.

There are those who dislike the phrase because they think it shouldn’t be real; because they would like to think that all of that traffic makes us more cosmopolitan, more open-doored and open-armed, more streetwise and more friendly than we really are.

There are those who dislike those who dislike the phrase because they want it to be real; they want the safety of the bubble; they don’t want to think that drugs can find their way over the railroad tracks and into our middle- and high-school lockers; that they might need to start locking their front doors at night. One parent told me that he liked Bay particularly for raising children because there are so few strangers, and the few that there are tend to be easily spotted. There was the neighbour who totally failed to see the irony in complaining to us, with our out-of-town accents, about the newcomers to the bubble, the ones moving from the east of us, the strangers trying to make the bubble their home.

Then comes July Fourth. Mostly, it is a community event, watching the fireworks at the end of the fair, on blankets or lawn chairs on the Cahoon land which is so carefully used (no games on Sundays, no alcohol ever, no no). But the fair draws people from further afield, and Bay becomes a messy bath of bubbles for just a day or two. The carnies set up next to the Kiwanis; the Democrats and the Republicans of Bay Village nestle to the left and the right of the curly fries stand.

I always work the fireworks shift. I love seeing my children’s friends all grown up since second grade, girls and boys shifty and shy with one another, and shocked to recognize us old mothers sitting behind the cash box in the ticket booth. I love seeing the families who have made this their summer holiday, who  require astronomical amounts of change for rather large bills which they took out of the bank for the occasion, determined and hopeful that they will have a great time, and make their children smile. They ask, towards the end of the evening, where is the nearest ATM; they do not want to run out of fun, and there is pathos. Everyone is counting their quarters and working out their last rides, last chances, last deals of the season. I love seeing them surreptitiously trading in unused tickets and sharing the feel and the fun of the fair. The people of the bubble feel safe because they never left home. The visitors feel welcome in the chaos and anonymity of the fair, which is itself an interloper. The colours of the bubble swirl.

One thing has always been a puzzle, though. The ferris wheel, which could have a gorgeous view of the lake, of the city beyond, of the fireworks over the water, instead looks inland, across the little town, and turns its riders’ backs to the horizon.

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