Between

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

I’m not altogether certain this one is finished; but it’s been hanging about for a month, gaining and losing words, lines and order, so I’m letting it loose. The beach is always a good place to visit when I’m contemplating a preaching moment. There’s something about an empty horizon that evokes eternity and mortality mixed together …

 

Between

I am always moved to bare my feet;

they shush and shuffle in the narrow strand

where the land ends and the Spirit moves the deep,

as if it were holy ground.

As if it were holy ground,

the city stands a decent silence away

as the thin place between the lake and the land

returns the horizon’s empty stare.

As if it were holy ground,

the Holy Ghost in seagull’s form

falls raucously to earth –

as if it were holy ground.

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Knitting a chasuble

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

For the context to this post, please see https://rosalindhughes.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/vergers-and-vestments/ and https://rosalindhughes.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/a-plastic-story/

 

General Notes: I am not a designer, by any stretch, nor do I write knitting patterns. So, what you have here is a description of what I did to make the chasuble that we gave to Trinity Cathedral, from notes I took along the way. There are probably better ways to do it. If you work one out, please share!

To make a chasuble from these notes you should be fairly happy with adjusting patterns to your own needs and preferences. Experience, confidence and enthusiasm will go a long way!

 

CHASUBLE PATTERN

 

Materials: approx 500 bags cut into 1” strips and looped together

1 pair circular needles, between 10.5 and 13

 

Method: The chasuble is knit in 6 sections: 2 centre bands (front and back), each with 2 “wings” knit from the centre to the wingtip at the wrist. The whole thing is then finished at the neck.

 

Centre band – make 2    I used clear newspaper bags to create a contrast to the rest of the garment.

  • Cast on 8 stitches.
  • Knit in stocking stitch until band measures 43” or to desired length. Cast off.

 

Wings – make 4 (2 off of each centre band)

  • Pick up and knit 154 sts down one side of the centre band. Work 8 more rows in St St.
  • Increase 3 sts at neck edge of next row. Work a row. Repeat these two rows 2 more times (163 sts).
  • Work 4 rows even.
  • Decrease 1 stitch at bottom edge of next row. Work a row. Repeat these two rows 5 more times (151 sts).
  • Next right side row begin decreasing 1 stitch every row. Continue until 132 stitches remain.
  • Begin decreasing 2 stitches every row. Continue until 62 remain.
  • Decrease 3 stitches at end of next 6 rows (44 stitches).
  • Cast off 11. Knit to end of row. Decrease 3 in next row. Repeat. Cast off.
  • Repeat on other side, reversing shaping.
  • Do the same for the other centre band.

 

Making up

  • Sew shoulder seams together.
  • For the neck, pick up stitches evenly around the neck opening, join, and cast off in the next round. You will have to experiment with the number of stitches needed to get the right tension for your neck opening. You want it to hold on the shoulders without being too tight to get over the head, bearing in mind that it will stretch with wear. Alternatively, crochet a neck border.
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Vergers and vestments

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

This, roughly speaking, is the text of an address given at a workshop of the 23rd Conference of the Vergers’ Guild of the Episcopal Church at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, on September 30th, 2011, explaining the existence of recycled plastic vestments and altar hangings at the cathedral. More about the project can be found at https://rosalindhughes.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/a-plastic-story/ :

In a timely release, as though they knew this day was coming, the House of Bishops issued a pastoral teaching in the past week which talks about our environmental responsibilities as a church.1 Some of you will already have seen it, but let me just read to you a little bit from it:

They begin with a quotation from the prophet Jeremiah, always a hint that a hard challenge is to follow:

We, your bishops, believe these words of Jeremiah describe these times and call us to repentance as we face the unfolding environmental crisis of the earth: How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither? For the wickedness of those who live in it the animals and the birds are swept away, and because people said, “He is blind to our ways.” (Jeremiah 12:4) The mounting urgency of our environmental crisis challenges us at this time to confess “our self-indulgent appetites and ways,” “our waste and pollution of God’s creation,” and “our lack of concern for those who come after us” (Ash Wednesday Liturgy, Book of Common Prayer, p. 268). It also challenges us to amend our lives and to work for environmental justice and for more environmentally sustainable practices.

And two of the five commitments that the bishops make on behalf of all Episcopalians are particularly relevant to this ministry:

    • To lift up prayers in personal and public worship for environmental justice, for sustainable development, and for help in restoring right relations both among humankind and between humankind and the rest of creation;
    • To take steps in our individual lives, and in community, public policy, business, and other forms of corporate decision-making, to practice environmental stewardship and justice, including (1) a commitment to energy conservation and the use of clean, renewable sources of energy; and (2) efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and whenever possible to buy products made from recycled materials.

It is just that call to repentance and sustainability that made us here at Trinity think that using recycled plastic bags was a good idea for liturgical vestments.

I’ll be honest, not everyone agrees. When I was making our chasuble, I was hauling around bags of grocery bags, reels of cut plastic, and rustling wherever I went. It didn’t look pretty or tidy or sacred. It didn’t sound genteel. There were those whom I met who asked about the project and were horrified, just plain appalled, at the idea of vestments made out of recycled plastic.

Do they have sufficient dignity, sufficient fineness and integrity to stand as aids to our worship of the Most High God?

My bottom line, if you like, is that vestments are part of the fabric of our worship. They are not there simply to look pretty, although if they are truly beautiful they may move us in the same way that any art does. They are not there to make the officers of the liturgy look good, although if they make us look silly and become a distraction, that’s a problem. They are not designed to separate the presider from the people. Like the physical environment of the space, like the music and the silence and the use of different voices and people to bring the liturgy to the heart of the life of the people and the life of the people to the heart of the liturgy, vestments – well, they are just the same.2

We are often told that “praying shapes believing;” that how we pray and what we pray not only reflects but influences our core values and the actions that flow from them.

So, returning to the Bishops’ letter, if our worship is to include repentance for our sinfulness in wasting the world’s resources, using the recycled plastic is appropriate. As a material, plastic is a wonder of modern science. Almost infinitely variable in its presentation and uses, it has unfortunately come to represent the one-way, single-use culture which has come to be recognized as a plague of modern consumptionist society.*

If our worship is to raise thanksgiving for the gifts of creation, including the oil under the earth and the talents and imaginations of the scientists who developed plastic out of it, using the recycled plastic is appropriate. Recycling the plastic bags is one way of reclaiming the dignity of the creativity of science and technology represented in them, gifts of God given to human minds. It is one way to repent of our casual attitude towards our own gifts of creativity and the resources of creation.

If our worship is to be an expression of our selves, our imaginations and creativity, our coming together as a faithful community, then using the recycled plastic is appropriate. The things that we created came from dozens of people working together: Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, Jewish, and agnostic friends, drawn into worship of the one Living God together.

If our worship is an offering, well, one of our members has described the knitting of the vestments as sacrificial giving. Although they cost nothing in monetary terms, they are hard and trying to knit. The joy that went into their creation was not the joy of light-hearted comfort but the joy of determination and the overcoming of obstacles.

The[se] vestments were presented to Trinity Cathedral as part of that congregation’s acknowledgement of our responsibilities to our Creator and creation, as an act of repentance for our abuse, neglect and sheer carelessness of the gift within which we live, as an act of praise for the variety and inventiveness of creation and the gift of creativity, and as an offering. (rosalindhughes.wordpress.com: A plastic story)

“All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee”

(1 Ch 29:14)

_________________________________________ 

1The pastoral teaching is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/newsline_12891_ENG_HTM.htm

2Cf Patrick Malloy, Celebrating the Eucharist (New York: Church Publishing, 2007), chapter 5

* For further discussion of the practicality and the plague of plastic, see my review of Freinkel’s Plastic: A Toxic Love Story at https://rosalindhughes.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/book-review-plastic-a-toxic-love-story-by-susan-freinkel/

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Breath of Angels

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

This feast day reflection was first delivered in the Gloria Dei Chapel of Trinity Lutheran Seminary at a joint worship service of Trinity and Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminaries on St Michael and All Angels’ day, September 29th, 2009

It was my second form English teacher – that would be, I think, around seventh grade – who first introduced me to the metaphysical poets. I thought they were great, and she, my teacher, suffered from adulation by association. Unfortunately, my admiration was unrequited; she thought I took these poets too seriously, entered too readily into their labyrinths of metaphor and emotion. She might have been right.

I remember reading John Donne’s Air and Angels, and the teacher explained the central conceit as being based on a contemporary belief that angels, those messengers of God and servants of the heavens and earth, were made in their essence out of condensed or compressed air; that you could see them in the disturbance around a candle flame, or the shimmering of a heat-filled horizon. Although the poem itself is not really about air or angels, but women and men, that was the image which stayed with me. Just as in the letter to the Hebrews we heard about God making the angels into and out of winds and fire (Hebrews 1:7), so Donne cast the angels into and out of the air, and found them shimmering there.

Those of you who were also once thirteen-year-old girls may not be too surprised that I spent the next several weeks (or months) looking over my shoulder and peering into shadows. But that’s ok, I tell myself; if we are to love God with our whole hearts, minds, souls and strength, that must include our imaginations.

So here’s the thing.

As unscientific and impossible as it is, I want you to imagine for a moment that angels, those messengers and servants of God, are hidden between the molecules of the air all around us; that they are in fact the very air we breathe.

What, then, would it be like to inhale an angel?

What would happen if the messenger angel were to oxygenate our blood, serve our muscles, to build and strengthen our sinews, to pump our hearts? What would it feel like to have God’s message, the gospel, become one with our very essence, to course through our veins and calcify in our bones?

And what would happen if we were to exhale that angel?

Would we, like the angel, find ourselves spontaneously moved to cry out, “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might! Heaven and earth are full of your glory! Hosanna in the highest!”

Would we find ourselves joining our breath with the company of heaven? Singing with choirs of angels? Proclaiming the gospel with tongues of fire?

I’d like that.

Of course, we don’t have to do much more than inhale to encounter God’s messengers. Just open our lungs. Open our ears. Open our eyes. Open our hearts and our imaginations.

Thanks be to God.

Note: John Donne’s Air and Angels can be found in many anthologies, but here’s a handy link to an online version, if you’d care to refresh your memory: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/air-and-angels/

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Stewardship

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

As the new programme year gets started in churches across the country, there’s a phrase that’s started its annual whispering into our ears, and I’ve been thinking about the idea of sacrificial giving, and how we present our requests for financial support, aka the stewardship campaign.

There is a school of thought that feels that our culture is not accustomed to the idea of sacrificial giving, and that even the biblical tithe is not the standard that it once was. I don’t disagree – but the Bible teaches us that it may be just those people who are least able to give who are most likely to sacrifice.

I’m thinking of the widow and her mite (Luke 21:1-4).

In a strange way, it makes sense that those who have the least are the most likely to hear the call to the financial giving which we call stewardship.

Because when the rector or stewardship committee chair tells the congregation frankly that they are responsible for paying the bills for the services and utilities that the parish uses, it is those people who struggle to pay for their own heat and light who will understand most clearly reality behind the appeal.

When the buildings and grounds committee points out that repairs are essential, let alone improvements, and that the parish must foot the bill, it is those people who have already had to compromise on their own care and maintenance – from annual physicals to haircuts – who will nod in sympathy with their beloved building.

When the spectre of staff cuts is raised, unless revenue is raised, it is those who are without sufficient paid work who shiver.

And it is when that rector or that committee chair points to the doors and says, “It is up to us all to keep those doors open,” it is those whose doors are at risk of shutting them out of foreclosed homes who know in their bones that it is true.

And, it is true.

Fortunately, there are those joyful givers who are willing to share out of their abundance. Others of us (I include myself) could perhaps contribute more. But I worry about those who feel called to give more than they afford.

So (one of) my question(s) to myself and to anyone who’d like to contribute an answer is: how can we combine a call the people for stewardship -real support, commitment, care – of our churches as institutions with a call to our instutions for stewardship – support, commitment, tender care – of its members?

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Honest to God

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Year A Proper 21, delivered at St Peter’s Episcopal Church, Lakewood, OH on September 25, 2011

Exodus 17:1-7; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

Over the summer, while I was visiting with someone, he began to talk about his prayer life. He told me that he always included in his prayers the hope that when it comes, his death will be painless. “Isn’t that a bit selfish, though?” he asked me. He was afraid that his prayer was inappropriate, that the prayer for an easy passage was the wrong thing to ask for, the wrong thing to say to God.

In this morning’s gospel reading there is a whole group of people looking for the right words to say, hoping not to say the wrong thing, because they are afraid of losing face. They are afraid that losing face will lose them power, and authority. So they lie. “I don’t know” can be a perfectly acceptable answer to any question, if it’s the truth, but the evangelist makes it perfectly clear here that when the chief priests and the elders of the people tell Jesus that they do not know how to answer his question about the authority of John the Baptist, they don’t even care about the truth of their answer. They do not care to know where John’s authority came from. They are concerned only for their own.

Jesus, as usual, sees right through them. He tells them a story, “What do you think?” he asks them. A father has two sons. He asks them to work the family vineyard. This, mind you, is to their own advantage. This is the crop on which their family’s business rests. This is the land which they will inherit.

One son wants to tell his father what his father wants to hear, so he says yes. We don’t know if he knows at the time that he is lying. Perhaps he thought he had every intention of going into the vineyard later, but the weather changed, or something good came on tv, or he ate too big a lunch and no longer felt up to it. However it came about, because he was more concerned with telling his father what he wanted to hear than telling it like it is, he ended up making his words into a false promise.

The other son said no. He didn’t want to go into the vineyard. Perhaps he didn’t like the heat of the day, which might give him a headache. Maybe he was afraid of the wild animals that competed for food. At any rate, “No,” he said, “I don’t want to do it.” But having let out his “no,” his frustration, anger, tiredness, whatever – he saw that the vineyard really did need tending, and he went. Because that was, after all, his job as a son of the family that owned the vineyard.

As a parent of teenagers, I have met both of these children. And I love them both. Sometimes, I do wish that just for once, one of them would both say yes and do it – just get on with the work! But I think that this story suggests that God would rather hear an honest, “no,” from one who loves God than a servile “yes” from one who loves herself a whole lot more.

We hear in Paul’s letter to the Philippians that we are to have in ourselves the same mind that is in Christ, and that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and we might be frightened by such a tall order into thinking that it means that we need to present ourselves perfectly, always saying and doing the right thing, in the right words, so as not to lose face as Christians.

That has not been easy just lately. We have been given some challenges. Forgiveness has been demanded of us on a day when we would rather think about our own grief. Generous justice has been described, and we do not really know how to respond. When love for our enemies is been commanded, we are speechless.

When Jesus was faced with the ultimate challenge that his life’s work offered him, when God asked him to continue working in the vineyard, no matter what it might cost him, as he looked toward his own betrayal and death, Jesus prayed “no”.

Jesus went away by himself to a quiet place, and he prayed as hard as he had ever prayed in his life that this would not be what was asked of him, that there could be some other way, that he would not have to drink the cup of sorrows that was being offered him.

He poured out his “no” to God in sweat and tears and prayers beating with the blood of his heart.

He was open with God, honest to God.

The problem for the chief priests and the elders was that they were afraid to be honest to God. They were afraid to answer honestly what they thought of John the Baptist, because they knew in their hearts that when he proclaimed repentance, he was talking to them.

Jesus, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, all humbled themselves, meanwhile, and submitted to John’s baptism of repentance.

The ones whom one might have expected to say “no” – because they lived outside of the margins of agreeable society, because they were above it or below it – they were very the ones who were touched by John’s message and did the work of salvation anyway, working it out in fear and trembling.

Those of us whose hearts are broken open will be most ready to see salvation when it is offered. Those of us who think that we know it all, and can work it out for ourselves, will be less able to see the opportunity to repent, to reach out, to be humble and wait upon God.

If we are to have this mind which is in Christ, we need to be open to God, honest to God. We can tell God what we are hungry and thirsty for. We can tell God what we need. God knows it already. We can tell God the work that we find the hardest to face, the forgiveness that we don’t want to seek, or to offer; the gift we would rather receive than give; the pride that we hold on to for dear life. We can confess to God that we are afraid of the pain of dying. Jesus did.

When we open ourselves to God, when we let God into the centre of our being, that protected place, that walled-off, secure unit where we keep our secret fears and failings – that is when we will find that we are, as St Paul advises, beginning to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and that God is at work in us and through us. As Frederick Beuchner puts it, salvation “is an experience first, and a doctrine second.”1 When we love God enough to be honest to God, then we begin to conform ourselves to the mind that was in Christ. We find ourselves willing and eager despite ourselves to tend the vineyard of the kingdom of God which is, after all, our work to do, our inheritance. When we are humble enough to allow God a place at the centre of our lives, at the centre of our life as a church, we find ourselves free to serve God’s people, to take care of our community, to build accord and peace with our neighbours. When we are honest about our own fears and failings, hungers and pain, the things that make us want to say “no”, we can hear our neighbours’ – even our enemies – fears and hunger, too.

When we are honest to God, and we ask God for strength, for courage, for perseverance, we will hear God’s honest “Yes.”

“Yes, I will help you. Yes, I will stay with you and work in you. Yes, I love you.” Beyond the cross, there is resurrection. Thanks be to God.

1Frederick Buechner, Wishful thinking: A seeker’s ABC, revised edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 102

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Naturalization process: Biometrics and skin-care consultation

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

This morning I had my appointment downtown to get my fingerprints “captured” and photo taken as part of my application for US citizenship. I knew from the start that this was not going to be as simple as it sounds.

It was pouring with rain. Actually, that didn’t make parking as bad as I’d worried. Plenty of meters outside the place, and I had quarters in the car. Out of the twelfth-flour window the morning sky was the slate grey of early night; but that wasn’t a problem.

Neither am I germophobic. Having my fingers squidged and squished by strangers on a glass plate which hundreds of fingers have graced before is not a problem for me.

But the glass plate does not feel the same way about my fingers. It rejects them. It turns up its electronic software nose at their rings and wrinkles. It said that my little finger didn’t match ITSELF!

I apologized for my fingers. They always have trouble with the machine, I explained. Last time, I ended up applying lotion, and that seemed to help.

“Do you use lotion?” the (second) lady asked accusingly (she had come to save the day after the hand-wrestling of the first lady and my fingers had petered out).

“Yeees?” I tried.

“Humph. That doesn’t sound like you use it properly. You have to use a good moisturizer at least at night, EVERY night,” she ordered.

The machine announced, “Your capture requirements have been met.” We all sighed with relief.

“Remember,” said the lady, “use lotion! Every day!”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, and they thought that was funny.

“Come visit any time,” she said, and I left, past the security guards and the metal detectors and out into the lovely, cold, grey rain.

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The Unremembered

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

The ones who fade away at the back of the newsreel, hungry eyes accusing;

The one whose face we never saw, for whom there is no stone or sign;

The ones whose warm breath froze in the cold air; the ones who left in silence;

The ones whose names were painted high and shouted tall for a time, until it was over;

The ones we thought deserved to be unremembered, unregretted, forgotten unforgiven.

Remember … your servant, because you have given me hope.

This is my comfort in my trouble, that your promise gives me life.

(Psalm 119: 49-50, BCP 767)

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Actions and words: some pre-emptive reflections

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

This coming Sunday’s Gospel reading (from the RCL) tells the story of two sons asked to go and work in the family vineyard. One says no, but later goes anyway. One says yes, but fails to carry through.

There are various cultural cliches about words and actions that spring to mind at this point:

“Actions speak louder than words”

“Do as I say, not as I do”

or even Mary Poppins’ “pie crust promise: easily made and easily broken”

I am struck by our culture’s description of a basic contrast between words and actions. Because it seems to me that words are active. A word can create a bond, a vow, a promise. It can end a relationship. Working side by side, words can build universes. They are spoken, or written, or read, or heard, or promised, or preached, or emailed, blogged and facebooked; they are tweeted and calligraphed, signed, whispered, shouted, translated and misunderstood. Otherwise, they are like trees in the forest falling with no one around.

I don’t know where this week’s readings are taking me yet. I really hope I get a clue before Sunday. But, for the moment, I am letting my imagination be piqued not so much by what the sons did as by what they said. Why did they answer their father in the ways that they did? What were they trying to hide, prove, provoke, promise?

What were they trying to say?

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Grace, mystery food (and kangaroos)

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon preached at St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Norwalk, September 25, 2011. Year A, Proper 20. Exodus 16:2-15; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

There is a story told – which may or may not be true – that when Captain Cook first arrived in Australia, after wandering in the wilderness of the world’s oceans and encountering wonderful and dangerous lands, he and his crew were bewildered by the appearance of some of that continent’s animals. They described a large, grey creature, which, legend tells, Cook pointed out to a local guide, asking, “What is it?” The guide replied, “I don’t know;” but in his language, “I don’t know” was pronounced, “Kangaroo.”

When the people of Israel, afer their complaints and carping and genuine hunger, were given bread from heaven, their first response was, “What is it?” In Hebrew, we are told,* the words are pronounced something like, “Manna.”

Manna. What is it?

The story we tell today begins with the whole congregation united in their complaints against Moses and Aaron. Why, they ask, have they been brought to the wilderness to starve? With breath-taking selectivity, they choose to remember Egypt as a land of plenty, flowing, one might say, with milk and honey. Only weeks ago, we heard the stories of the Pharaoh killing infant children in order to keep the Hebrew population down. Ethnic cleansing, we would call it today. Genocide. Only weeks ago we heard of forced labour, of slavery and exploitation, of fear and death. But already, it is forgotten. Hunger for today’s bread has wiped out the memory of how much yesterday’s provisions cost the Israelites.

And what was God’s answer to all of this complaining and forgetfulness and downright ingratitude?

According to Psalm 78,

[God] commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of heaven.

24 He rained down manna upon them to eat and gave them grain from heaven.

25 So mortals ate the bread of angels; he provided for them food enough.

26 He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens and led out the south wind by his might.

27 He rained down flesh upon them like dust and wingèd birds like the sand of the sea. (BCP, 696-7)

According to biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, this story is about the contrast between the economy of grace offered by God to God’s beloved people, and the economy of exploitation which the corrupt systems of slavery, oppression and forced productivity exemplified in Egypt. The generosity with which God provides for the needs of the Israelites, the abundance and superfluity of provision which is offered, must surely overwhelm the habits of fear and anxious hunger, of mistrust and precariousness which they learnt in captivity!**

In the gospel this morning, the contrast continues between an economy of grace, of generous provision, of mercy and kindness, and one of strict legalism, of quid pro quo, of the measure of a person being the ability to work and to produce. Instead of measuring out the deserved reward in terms of a notion of productivity, the landowner recognizes that each person is valuable enough to deserve the means to live, their daily bread. Beloved of God, each person receives enough.

Some respond with envy and anger; we do not hear the response of the lucky ones who were paid first. Perhaps they asked, “What is this?”, then left quickly in case the manager changed his mind.

We find it so difficult to receive what we think we do not deserve, and we find it even more difficult to see someone else receiving what we think they do not deserve. Like the Israelites, we look with suspicion as well as wonder upon acts of unprompted kindness and generosity; we ask, “What is it?”

We are so used to the ways of competition and mutual exploitation that we are bewildered by the free gifts of grace. We are so used to stranger-danger and learned fear that we find the call to community, the example of embracing the outsider, that we hear in the gospel challenging and unnerving. Freed from slavery to sin, to envy and judgement, oppression and condemnation, we look with astonishment on the grace that God offers: forgiveness to the unforgivable; salvation to those beyond hope; peace to the unreconciled; love to the lonely and lost; hope to the broken-hearted.

We are so used to practicality and pragmatism that when we are faced with the poetry of the Eucharist,

Christ’s body given up for us, bread for the world,

we ask, “What is it?” Manna. Bread from heaven.

When we pray for our own daily bread, we may think that we know what it is we are asking for. A job. A fair day’s wage. Health. Hunger satisfied. And those things are good things to ask for.

The Israelites asked for food, and when the quail came into their camp, you’d better believe that they knew they were going to feast tonight.

But sometimes, when we are hungry, and lost, and complaining, God takes us by surprise, and it may be that it is in those moments that we least expect to find grace, when we are most bewildered and confused, bleary-eyed, morning-breathed and weary, when we are moved to cry out,

“What’s going on?”

“What is it?”

Manna

it is in those moments that God reaches out to us and rains down bread from heaven: mercy so abundant that we barely recognize it, grace beyond our imaginings.

Amen.

* Gail Ramshaw, Treasures Old and New: Images in the Lectionary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 183

** New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 812-5

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