Advent IV: Impossible love

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Either the angel knew more than they were telling, and were sparing Mary’s feelings for the moment, or perhaps Gabriel really only saw the glory of the coming Christ, the throne, the kingdom, the eternal hope. Because when Jesus is described, that is all that Gabriel reveals. Only the glory. There is no mention of the trials to come, the betrayal, the temptations, the execution. Perhaps Gabriel was afraid that Mary would say no, if she knew how hard it would be to mother the love of God into and out of this world.

But I think that the angel, not being human, nor able to become a parent, or a lover, or a child, underestimated Mary. I don’t think that Gabriel understood the power of love to will into being a child, or any relationship, even knowing the risk of grief, the incomprehensibility of loss. Anyone who has loved can recognize that risk, the pain that follows us even through our moments of greatest joy. Yet we love anyway, and send our hearts into impossible places, into the lives and loves of others, because we have heard that with God nothing is impossible.

You know that our parish family suffered an impossible loss this week. It is untenable, and unbearable so close the celebration of Christmas and incarnation. And yet it is out of grief that we turn to God, and in our sorrow that we seek consolation among the angels and saints. We look to Mary for empathy; you know, favoured one, how dangerous love is, and still you said yes to God, yes to life, yes to Christ. Because it is only with God that nothing is impossible. It is in Jesus that we see resurrection. We see that life, his life, our life goes on.

When Gabriel came to Mary to suggest or announce the impossible, she didn’t ask, how will I survive this? What will people say? How will my body endure the pain, my heart the anguish of a labour of love? Perhaps because she knew already that it is impossible to know in advance of love how hard it will hit us, in advance of grief how low it will bring us. But with God, nothing is impossible. Despite our mortality, in love we see glimpses of heaven. Despite our knowledge of grief, we risk joy for the sake of it.

Despite Gabriel’s perplexing announcement, I do not think that in the days of his gestation and infancy Mary (nor, for that matter, Joseph) thought too much about greatness, or thrones, or kingdoms. I imagine that she was more taken with toes and fingers and flutters and feeding and the utter exhaustion of sleepless nights and colic, his and hers, and the utter joy of a baby’s smile. Gabriel could have saved their breath (provided, that is, that angels breathe). The angel didn’t need to oversell the child, the mundanity of human love, which is become the love of God made manifest, evidence that God loves us despite the risk, despite our sin, despite our pain, because God delights in us, because God is love. 

Perhaps the angel didn’t know, or perhaps they didn’t want to look too far ahead, or perhaps they were protecting Mary’s heart for as long as they could. But Mary knew already what love is, what love can be, what life gives and what it takes away from us. She knew that the Author and Source of that life is to be trusted. For with God nothing is impossible, even the unbearable.

Let it be, then, she said. Let it be.

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Nothing is impossible

Posted on December 21, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

If nothing is impossible
with God, what can be trusted?
The sun may lose its grip on heaven,
fall helpless to the ocean,
sink or set the world aflame,
melting its willing, molten heart.
Birds of prey may sing lullabies
understood by fools and babies –
but not by the wise and cynical –
in a conspiracy of kinds.
God may labour to become a child
born of laughable mercy,
conceived in the creatively
impossible, aching love of God.

#PreparingforSundaywithpoetry, Advent IV edition. Luke 1:37

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Rejoice, repent, renew

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

I had a realization on Tuesday evening that our Bible Study group witnessed me coming to in real time: that John the Baptist was an Episcopalian.

In our daily office prayers, and even in our Sunday Eucharist, if we turn back the pages, we begin our approach to God always with our confession of and repentance for our sins. We hear the assurance of forgiveness, of God’s mercy upon us, and the promise of a clean slate, a new opportunity to live into the promises of love that God has made to and for us.

John came baptizing for the forgiveness of sins, washing away guilt and making ready the people for the coming of Christ, for their recognition of and worship of and following of Jesus. The great forerunner is a model of our liturgy, and a message for our lives: Be ready, for Christ is coming.

This is a promise of great joy: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16)

Making ready for the Messiah, confessing our sins and asking forgiveness and assistance not to repeat them is a matter of hope. Though we may grieve what we have wrought, through confession we hope to do better. With forgiveness we have the hope once more to take on the mantle of discipleship, to follow Jesus with the expectation of joy and peace. We repent, we rely on the mercy of God, we are freed to find and follow Jesus.

The people sent to John questioned who he thought he was, to promise such forgiveness, to proclaim such a hope, in a land oppressed by occupation, and riven by war, and stricken. What good could the waters of the Jordan do, they wondered, when they run only into the Dead Sea, and there become stagnant and still.

But the Spirit of God sent the prophet to bring good news to the oppressed, relief to the brokenhearted, liberty to those held captive to the sins of the world; to proclaim the coming of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

These past two weeks we’ve had artwork hanging in the Chapel made from guns. It is a strange thing to take apart the pieces of a weapon made for death and turn it into something that brings hope to life. It is a blessing. This past week, someone who pastors the living and the dying came and took away with him the heart that you all forged together out of broken pieces of a broken gun. In it I imagine that he saw the brokenness of our world, our conflict and our violence and our constant appetite for war, and at the heart of it the Cross, the breaking in of God’s compassion to break open our compassion and draw out our understanding of the way of mercy, the way of love. The coming together of those broken pieces, surrounding the Cross, making a new thing out of an old means of dying, the way in which all of us together have found a new pattern modeled on the way of Christ’s Cross; that is hope.

Choosing to repent of old ways and forge a new path; that is hope. It is a reason for rejoicing. 

There is no doubt that we find ourselves in the waning days of Advent in need of hope. We are busy, we are stretched and stressed, we are missing those whom we have lost. We see the perfect gift and remember that there is no one left to unwrap it. The nights grow long and cold, and the days are brief and the sun gets in our eyes. Who are you, we ask the prophet, to promise rejoicing in the midst of winter?

And John replies honestly, “You are right. I am not the light; but Light is coming.” 

You are right, a few strings of Christmas lights and strains of Christmas carols cannot undo nor drown out the news of human suffering and continuing strife. But the Light is coming. And the way that we prepare for him is with rejoicing.

Not rejoicing in the sins that we confess, but rejoicing that God sanctifies us nonetheless, because the mercy of God endures forever.

Not rejoicing despite the wars and ways of the world, but rejoicing that we have seen a better way, have glimpsed the glory that emanates from the humility and vulnerability at the heart of the human condition: the way in which we become not less but more human when our hearts our broken open by compassion, when our tenderness is piqued by the plight of a baby born in a broken manger instead of a hospital or home. The way that we come closer to Christ when we confess, in all honesty, our need for forgiveness and our hope for a more peaceful future, a more peaceable spirit, a more peaceful world. 

It’s even a good way to prepare for the holidays at home, isn’t it? To confess our faults, clear the air, make way for a better relationship.

John came proclaiming baptism for the forgiveness of sins in preparation for the coming of Christ. The people sent to confront him asked who he thought he was to declare with such audacity the faithfulness of God. They wondered what good it could do to submerge themselves in the River Jordan when it runs only into the Dead Sea. But there is another prophet, Ezekiel, who sees a river of life running down from the city of God and renewing everything in its path. “When it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters,” he said, “the water will become fresh … It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes.” (Ezekiel 47:8-9)

Because God makes all things new, and Christ is coming anew, and we are ready to rejoice in that good news, which is our salvation. 

Advent 3: John 1:6-8,19-28, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 , Isaiah 6:1-4,8-11

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The great forerunner

Posted on December 14, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A star is a miraculous being, 
born of the infalling of dust 
and ashes, the sacred debris 
of creation set aflame 
on the altar of nightfall; 

A miracle blazing by night, 
as dawn breaks open the path 
of the rising Sun, outshone, 
the star remains, its fire burning 
still in the cold heart of space.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.” Year B Advent 3: John 1:6-8,19-28  

Information on stars: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-is-a-star-born/

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Lucy and the Light of the World

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily for Evensong at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio

If there were no space between the stars, we would not know their light. They shine in our vision, twinkle on our retinas, because they are set against a velvet jewelers cloth of midnight and the occasional occlusion of a cloud. 

The Light of the World came into a world that did not recognize him among the jostle and hustle of human birth, rejoicing, suffering, and death. But from the distance of time, we see him shine like one transfigured on the mountaintop, and against the shadowed backdrop of the empty grave, even those closest to him could not miss the brush-strokes of glory. 

Lucy, in mid-winter, light in the darkening days, stretches herself toward the Light that will not be extinguished, nor overcome. I learned at school from the poet and priest John Donne that Lucy’s was the shortest day of the northern year; “the year’s midnight.” But that was before the calendar was changed and Lucy’s day gained eight grains of extra time between the darkness before dawn and the gathering of nightfall; now, she sits at the cusp of the yeares midnight, a week’s waning before the longest night. When the calendar was changed, and the days shifted, there were riots. Never mind the light that Lucy gained; the people had lost eleven days, and they were astonished and outraged that such a thing could happen. I suppose if one of them were your birthday you would be rightfully aggrieved. What they did not recognize is that whatever names and numbers we put to the days, the stars do not follow our designs, but we their dance, and that we cannot contain the turning of the world. Midnight will come, and dawn will follow. The Light of the World cannot be suppressed.

Change is not an easy thing, even for the enlightened. It always involves loss. I say this knowing that in the background of this evening, in the shadow of the candles and the glorious lightness of music lifted up to heaven, we are a little maudlin with the knowledge that when we return next spring, our beloved Todd Wilson will be making music elsewhere. I am not about to riot, but I’ll admit to feeling a little salty about it. But I remind myself not only that I should celebrate his new beginnings, new dawns, new shoots; not only that I should be grateful for the many times we have worshipped together over the years; but that all light, all music, all prayer comes from the same source and will comingle on its way back to heaven; we will still be singing together, in a sense, wherever we are making prayer out of music. Seen from above, from a distance, the lights of a city become one: one symphony, one score of grace notes and sustaining harmony.

We don’t know a lot about Lucy of Syracuse, the Sicilian martyr of long ago. We see her dimly through the clouds of time, yet the way in which her day on our calendar stretches toward the light that is to come continues to illuminate us.

We have seen enough of shadows this year to make us shudder. In the land of Jesus’ birth, chaos appears to reign. In Bethlehem this season, the manger scene is surrounded, almost buried, by the rubble of war. There are no festival lights, no tree or markets in the square outside the Christmas church; only the kind of sombre silence that accompanies the empty seat at the family table; the silence of search and rescue crews; the kind of silence that hopes valiantly to find signs of life beneath the architecture of death. I was reminded today, though, of a quote from the late and gracious Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”

There is a legend that – and pardon me, this is a bit gruesome – there is a legend that Saint Lucy’s eyes were put out before her martyrdom, and that her sight was nevertheless miraculously restored. We know that our vision is an interpretation of the light that surrounds us; I imagine that her vision was able to return because she saw the Light of the World, because she had drawn close enough that Christ’s light could not be extinguished within her.

I think of the long aperture of a camera taking pictures of the night; instant to instant, our eyes see only the tiniest pinpricks in the darkness, but left open to the sky, the camera is able to absorb and interpret those tiny messages into images of great light and beauty; images of hope.

Lucy, whose name means “light”, was not herself the Light, but Christ’s light filled her so that nothing, not even those torturers and persecutors, could touch her vision of him. Her memory no longer illuminates the longest night of the year, but accompanies us steadfastly into that darkness. While we continue through the ages to face changes and challenges, loss and life, sparks of hope and anxious moments, her legend reminds us that we have seen the changeless and unextinguishable Light, which shines in the darkness; that come what may, the darkness has not, and will never, overcome it.

Featured image: Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve (Dark Sky Preserve), courtesy of Edward Hughes

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Not in glory

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Not in glory 
but in the gloom of winter 
glimmers a light born 
of love, warmed 
by love, worshipped 
by angels; humble 
beginnings swaddled 
and held close promise 
the earth and deliver 
the heavens.

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John, the post-traumatic prophet

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A voice cries out from the razed earth, 
wilderness born of the scouring rage 
of Herod and his descendants, 
ancestors and antecedents

A voice cries out, infant prophet 
unsoothed by honey, hoarse from trauma, 
murder of the innocents, blood and milk
abomination on the altar of envy

A voice cries out, how long, o Lord,
how long? The road is bombed out, 
bone-filled, the way to peace serpentine, 
its lines washed away by floods of terror

A voice cries out, make way, 
for one is coming, dragging his cross 
with him like a birthmark, 
rising above the city on wings of the 

Voice that cried out across the waters 
of creation, calling forth wild, resinous sap 
of an uncultured earth seeping to the surface, 
a gentle trap baited with hope.

My first Advent as a priest was the season of Sandy Hook. That Sunday the Gospel was about John. I realized that he must have grown up in the shadow of that massacre of innocents committed by Herod; although he, like his cousin, escaped, it would leave its mark on his parents and his small self.

I find myself this Advent once again, for obvious reasons, contemplating post-traumatic John the Baptist, his infant self and all that imprinted itself upon him through the coming of the Christ child and the world’s unwillingness to accept the angels’ proclamation of peace upon the earth.

The final stanza is informed by the opinion offered by a guide in Jordan that the wild honey that John ate was not made by bees but exuded by fruit trees, remnants of the garden of Eden.

#preparingforSundaywithpoetry Year B Advent 2, December 2023

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The promise of apocalypse

Posted on December 3, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Did you see the sun this morning? It was as pale and flat and solid as a full moon. Still, I didn’t dare watch it for too long, in case the misty clouds should suddenly part and its full brightness shine through. It did seem fitting, though, to go with this morning’s Gospel. And there is something fitting about beginning our church year with the end of the world. The first Sunday of Advent, a new beginning, and what do we read but the apocalypse recorded by Mark. I am reminded of an old saying of my mother’s: “Is that a threat or a promise?”

In part, perhaps it is a warning: that Christianity is not a meagre undertaking. I was going to say “not for the faint of heart”, but of course it is for the fearful and the feeble as much as for the strong and the brave, maybe even more so; it specializes in lost sheep. But it is no small thing, to wait eagerly anticipating not only the infant in the manger but the man on the cross; not only the resurrection, but the trials that precede it; not only epiphany, but betrayal and heartbreak, too. 

And it is a promise, too, that all of this, all of it brings to birth God’s new creation, God’s completion of the creation in which we yearn and labour for the time being. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus says, “but my words will not pass away,” proclaims the very Word of God. In other words, “I am with you, to the end of the ages,” and beyond. As surely as day follows night, and springtime emerges from winter, and the green shoots unfurl toward the sun, so sure is the constancy of God’s presence with us, God’s love toward us.

When Jesus told his disciples this tale of apocalypse and destruction, they were already in the midst of it. Overrun by successive empires, beaten down and about to witness worse, in the destruction of their Temple, the disciples and all of the peoples of Galilee and Judea wondered how much they could bear before the reign of God might break in and save them. Perhaps, like us, they turned to the prophet Isaiah, who confesses that we have sinned, we have transgressed, we are living with our own iniquities; and who appeals to God who has created us to rescue us from all that we have miscreated.

We know all too well the harm that we have wrought, miscreated with our weapons and with our well-intentioned or unintentioned technology. We have made it so that the world can be effectively ended with the push of a few buttons’ worth of code. We have made it so that worlds are ended regularly within our homes and families, where deadly weapons share space with cribs and swaddling clothes. Little apocalypses abound in every corner of the earth, some making more news than others. We have made it so that we wonder how long we can rely on the seasons to come in their turn, so far have we perverted the planet and its climate from the natural order of creation with our consumption. We wonder, in a whisper, is this really, now, the end of the world?

In the apocalypse that Jesus describes, the sun, moon, and stars are shaken out of their usual routine and function by the opening of heaven. But this is not a catastrophe, a failure of the light; rather, the created order and its finite light is overwhelmed and outshone by the inbreaking of the glory of God. Angels stream from the clouds like rays of a sun seventy-seven times brighter than the one we have known. They permeate the ends of the earth, the most hidden places, seeking out those whom God loves, to gather them, to save them from all of the afflictions that our iniquities have inflicted upon this creation. This apocalypse is not a threat but a promise. The visitation of God can never be anything less.

When Jesus advises his disciples to keep awake, to stay alert for this reordering of all that is and all that will be, it is not a threat, but a promise that however long it seems to be taking, however close the edge they might seem to have come, Christ is still coming. Emmanuel, God with us, is on the way, just as spring follows winter, and sometimes more than once in a season in Cleveland. It is an encouragement not to give up.

Not to give up on our stewardship of creation, because it is God’s creation, and God’s gift to us. Not to give up on the way of love, because it is the only way to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Not to give up on mercy, because God’s mercy endures forever. Heaven and earth may pass away, but Gods’ mercy endures forever. Not to give up hope, even when it seems as though the end of the world is upon us. Because in Advent while we are waiting for the birth of the Christ child and the coming of the Messiah, he is already with us. And he has promised that will not change, though the stars fall from the sky; from the beginning through whatever ends, he is with us, the Word of God that will not pass away, but renews God’s promises season by season, constant and ever new, like the leaves unfurling on the shoots that even now wait beneath the earth for the warmth that comes when the world turns.

The readings for the First Sunday of Advent include Mark 13:24-37

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Endings and beginnings

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Unfurl the sails and let them

cover the sun, the moon, the stars

with the urgency of glory

glorying in the new creation,

with tender attention to the fig tree

that you always loved,

seeing it swell and fall over

and over again.

______________________________________

#preparingforSundaywithpoetry , Mark’s little apocalypse edition

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Words that do not pass away

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

I do not remember well
my mother’s voice any more;
the soprano on the cd is younger
than I knew her.
What I carry buried
deep within my skull
are nursery rhymes and nonsense
that emerge like sea mammals,
occasionally, then sink
again, unfathomable;
words that remain
alive beneath the surface
along with her passing murmur,
“very much loved.”

I’m not sure whether this counts as an official #preparingforSundaywithpoetry, but Jesus’ pronouncement of words that will not pass away, though all else fails, reminded me somehow of this; of love. Year B Advent 1, Mark 13:24-37

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