Year B Lent 2: The cross: hoping against hope

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus began to teach his disciples that he, the Son of Man, must undergo great suffering and be rejected by his own people, and killed, and after three days rise again. The promise of God with us is a strange promise of outrageous and impossible hope; the hope that life will come out of death; that God’s glory will be revealed in the grotesque, the horrible crucifixion of the hope of the world on a Roman cross.

After weeks of Jesus telling people to keep his work secret, this he tells them quite openly. And Peter, taking Jesus to one side, talking to him face to face, earnestly, tells the Son of Man that he, Peter, just can’t face it. It’s a strange way to bring about the promises of God, and Peter isn’t sure that he sees any hope in this way forward.

But Paul, in his letter to the Romans, describes faith as “hoping against hope.”

Hoping against hope: Hoping in the promises of God, the promise of life, of life abundant, of God with us, in the face of unknowing and of incredible odds.

Unlike Peter, we are in a position to look back and know that the story doesn’t end on the cross. We know that Jesus spoke the truth when he said that three days after he was killed the Son of Man would rise again.

We who know that the story does not end on the cross may hear the call of Jesus to take up our crosses and follow him, to give up our lives to have them saved by him, and know that Jesus Christ has already died on that cross and risen; we follow him into life through his death; he does not lead us to the grave and leave us there, without hope.

To bear the cross is to bear witness to that hope in the world, even hope against hope, in the knowledge that God is with us, whatever befalls; that God has already suffered with us, died with us, in order to take our suffering into the heart of God. Hoping against hope, the women crept back to the tomb, bearing the scars of Jesus’ cross on their hearts, and found it empty, death defeated, Jesus risen.

This week we have seen a lot of hoping against hope, in the news, in the lives around us; in Chardon, inSyria, in our own Midwestern states. We have had our hope chipped away at in the past week or so, and the burdens of grief that we see around us shed their weight on our shoulders as we pray.

Sometimes that is the cross that we as disciples bear; the burden of hoping against hope when the news of the world threatens to leave us hopeless.

This past week, hoping against hope has meant for some donating life to another out of the death of one they have loved. It has meant praying for those who do harm, as well as those whom they have harmed. It has meant waiting patiently on the edge of a besieged city, ready to offer help. For one group of teenagers, it has meant loving each other back to everyday life after lives were ended. For communities across the country it has meant beginning to pick up the pieces even when it’s hard to know where to start.

Hoping against hope may mean offering food to others even though hunger will return; offering warmth, in the knowledge that the night will be cold; offering comfort through solidarity with one another in sorrow as well as in celebration. Hoping against hope is to pray with those who will forget, once we are gone, that we were ever there, knowing that God has not forgotten our prayers. Hoping against hope is to live out the baptismal promises to seek and serve Christ in all persons, praying for the hopeless and the happy; using the power of the cross to reach out to those on the margins; allowing the crucified and the risen Christ to live through us.

Like Peter, we prefer to find our hope in the Resurrection, in the Ascension, in the return of the Son of Man with his Father and the holy angels, a glorious victory. The way of the cross is a mysterious and strange way to go about redeeming the world. But without the cross, there can be no resurrection. And, as we live in the shadow of difficult news, perhaps it makes some kind of sense that the hope that Jesus offers us is the entering into the life of God through the death of a man outside the city walls, and the entering into a new way of life through the death of God for us on the cross.

 

While writing this, I’ve been inspired by reading Kenneth Leech, We Preach Christ Crucified (New York: Church Publishing, 1994), and listening to Martyn Joseph, “Strange Way,” on Faith, Folk and Anarchy – go to www.faithfolkanarchy.com to hear it for yourself!

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A Tuesday lunchtime homily

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily for today’s Eucharist. We used the weekdays of Lent lectionary:

Isaiah 55: 6-11

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;

let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts;

let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Matthew 6: 7-15

“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us to the time of trial,

but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

We all came here today with the events of yesterday and the sadness of our neighbours heavy on our hearts and minds. In Isaiah we find wisdom: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” There is much that we do not understand, that we cannot account for, that we trust that God knows and will account for and take care of. It’s a comfort, perhaps, but it is not really too much of a comfort. We feel as though there should be something more.

And there is more. Jesus tells us that our heavenly Father knows what we need even before we ask. God knows our needs, and Jesus is quite direct in how he advises us to pray about them.

We need food to live, and we ask for our daily bread.

We need company, fellowship, community, and we ask for the grace to live together with goodwill and forgiveness, to fight fairly, and to be reconciled.

We are afraid of evil that we see around us, and we pray to be saved from it. We pray that we will not come face to face with it.

Even Jesus prayed not to have to walk into the time of trial, not to have to suffer evil, when he prayed in the garden.

Even Jesus had to face that time of trial, come face to face with the evil one, suffer and die on the cross.

In our Bible Study class we are reading Revelation. The audience to whom John wrote was in the midst of suffering, and John told them that God’s kingdom was coming, was already here; God’s will be done. It was hard to see; it’s still hard to read. Still, God’s word does not return empty, but accomplishes that which God purposed.

God knows our needs before we ask them. God knows that we suffer in the face of evil, in the times of trial. God’s ways are not our ways, nor God’s thoughts our thoughts, but God loves us as a father.

And God’s Word, Jesus Christ, did not return empty from his time of trial, did not lay empty in the grave, but he accomplished and accomplishes God’s purpose, that for which he was sent. And in him lies our hope.

 

May light perpetual shine upon those who have lost their lives to violence. May God’s Spirit and God’s people comfort those who grieve for them. May God’s kingdom come, and with it, the peace that passes all understanding.

 

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Juxtapositions

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last Wednesday, I told a score of people or more that they were going to die. “You are dust,” I reminded them, “and to dust you will return.” And I marked their faces with ash.

In the line was my youngest child. She knelt near the centre of the altar rail, and we shared a brief smile. She was just off-centre enough that I felt justified moving away and leaving my rector to mark her face, to remind her of her mortality. We both know it, but I was grateful not to speak those words to my daughter. A mother should offer life, not death to her children, no?

On Saturday, I walked the Stations of the Cross at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland. A priest and artist, the Reverend Thomas Faulkner, had interpreted the stations through sculptural installations; shocking, visceral, prayer-provoking. The penultimate station places the body of Jesus in the arms of his mother. Above the old stone font a photograph of a famine-stricken mother in a USA t-shirt cradled a starving, dying child. Underneath, around the font were piled soft, fat pillows dressed in white. On Sunday mornings, the children play there. They climb on the wall where photograph hangs, and peep through the open stonework at the people in the nave. They clamber around the font to see the stones from the River Jordan in its basin. Their voices carry.

Looking at that mother and her child, who is surely now dead, looking at Mary’s heart broken, the space was haunted by those living children, ghost images delighted at the discovery of the soft, fat, white pillows.

The following day, I was back at Trinity to pick up my daughters, son, goddaughter, their friend from Happening. One of my former Sunday School students greeted me with a warm hug. These young people were overflowing with love, joy, hope and faith. They were spilling it over one another, baptizing one another in friendship and fellowship found.

This morning, that student’s local high school is on the news for all the wrong reasons. Pain, anger, sorrow and blood were spilled there

Please pray for the child who has died. Please pray for his family. Please pray for those injured and their families. Please pray for those who would hurt others out of their own pain or any other reason; may God touch and turn their hearts. 

Please pray for all our children: the living and the dying; the beloved and the hopeless; the joyful and the fearful; the hungry and the satisfied; and pray for their mothers and fathers, too.

*A second death was confirmed early this morning, Tuesday February 28th, and a third later the same day. May light perpetual shine upon the boys who lost their lives; may their loved ones be comforted. May God bless and keep the community of Chardon in its time of suffering.

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The slow fast

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

The slow fast ekes out

each last bite of emptiness,

hungry for desire.

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Fasting = Feasting on Life

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last night, as we finished serving the people, I looked into the chalice and made a quick decision: contrary to our usual practice, the remaining consecrated wine would be sent to the sacristy to be consumed or reverently disposed of later, instead of being finished straight away and the chalice cleaned at the altar.

I had been fasting, and I had to drive home. I was faced with evidence of abundance in the midst of hunger: too much wine to drink on an empty stomach.

Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality – “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” It is a day of fasting, but the fast, paradoxically, can remind us all day long that we are alive.

If – and the “if” is vital and not to be taken for granted – we are usually well-fe, then the deliberate practice of courting hunger provokes in us an awareness of our bodies as living, desiring, hungry. In the midst of death – ashes and dust – we realize how hungry we are for life.

Then we are offered bread – not just bread, but the bread of life. And we are offered wine – not just wine, but life blood.

In the midst of our fast, we are offered it in abundance.

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Based on a true story

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Wednesday’s child

The pale girl carried a dark bruise so fresh I flinched,

my breath drawn pity and a rush of outrage.

I wanted to hold a cold hand to her brow.

I wanted to grab her mother’s arm, demand to know how

she could let this violence fall .

The girl hit me with a hard stare.

I mumbled a smile, shuffled away with a guilty face

and grains of shame and grit in my hair.

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An untitled, unfinished poem for Transfiguration Sunday

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

One on the plain, with water and a dove

falling from the mouth of God, feathers chalking words

onto the sky, its beak a piercing kiss;

one on the mountaintop between the cairns,

with fiery Spirit, lightning bright and thundering love,

hailing acclamation …

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Year B: Last Sunday after the Epiphany

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

When I told my youngest child that my mother had died, she said, “But she was supposed to get better!”

A week or so later, when I was talking to my father about talking to an old friend, he asked, “Was he surprised to hear it?” “Not really,” I told him. My father sighed. “I suppose I was the only one taken by surprise, then.”

And I wondered, was I the only one not lost in denial while she was dying?

Except, of course, I was as lost as the rest of us. A week before she died, I was at a wedding, dancing and drinking and laughing. My friends commented afterward on what a good time I seemed to have had, never noticing that this was me, shouting into the wind; this was me, raging against the dying of the light; this was me, living defiantly in the face of death:

“You know, she’s dying.”   “I know. Shut up. I’m going to dance.”

While accompanying Elijah on his farewell tour, Elisha found that his denial came under challenge everywhere he went.

They kept asking him, “You know he’s as good as gone, right?” and Elisha said,”I know. Shut up. I’m going over there.”

Obstinately loyal, stubbornly loving, Elisha would not leave Elijah’s side. Elijah asked him, in so many words, “What do you need in order to let me go?”

“Give me yourself to hold onto, so that I will always remember what this feels like, to be with you,” Elisha might as well have replied.

And when Elijah was gone, he tore his clothes.

Perhaps that is why this mountaintop mystery is one of the few gospel stories in which Jesus tells people not to talk about a sign or a wonder that has surrounded him with revealed glory, and they actually obey. The disciples do not tell what they have seen on the mountaintop, because telling it means letting Jesus go, letting him go to Jerusalem, letting him go to his death.

Because they did not want to lose this feeling, of being close to him, being in his presence:

“I know. Shut up. I want to build a booth.” –

and they did not yet know about his unreasonable and irrepressible love for them, for all of them, which meant that he would return to his friends and to his Father, and to us, even from the grave.

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Creating Love

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Like a table spread in the desert,

a sheet of sand, shifting,

alive with irridesence,

moving grain against grain,

rubbed smooth by one another;

like a table spread in the desert –

an oasis for a parched mouth,

ripe figs brush the tongue –

intoxicating,

unexpected sweetness.

My love spreads a table in the desert;

she soothes my skin with fine sand;

he slakes my hunger with the fruit of the grain

and feeds me red wine.

My cup runneth over.

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Year B Epiphany 6: people first

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I mentioned earlier this week the ecumenical lectionary group that I am blessed to attend each Tuesday morning, and my colleagues’ influence on my understanding of this Sunday’s readings.

A few days later, I am still grappling with one of the effects of hearing, instead only of reading, this week’s lectionary selection.

In my NRSV copy of the Gospel, a leper approaches Jesus: “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

I heard another read the NIV, in which a man with leprosy approaches Jesus.

I commented at the time about the difference in language, and I noted my preference for the “person-first” construction of the NIV. But,

thinking further, using a person-first translation does not restore the image of the man who comes to Jesus. Still, all that we know about him is his defining disease and his hope for healing and restoration. Unlike Naaman, who has a whole career, family, access to the king, companionship, power – oh, and a nasty skin disease – this man is, however we introduce him, a walking symbol, not a character in his own right, but a symptom of a system broken by dis-ease, disconnection, disappointment, refusing to despair.

In which case, is it in fact more appropriate to use the symbolic language of the NRSV than attempt to construct a character out of person-first language?

What do you think?

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