No stray bullets

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared …” (Mt. 18:21-23)

The headline this morning: 10-year-old girl shot in arm in Euclid, suspect arrested.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and her school had just let out. She was about home. Thank God, she is reported as recovering from her injury; how long it will take her, her family, her friends, her community to stop shaking was not speculated upon in the article.

The report went on to say that she was hit by a stray bullet. I was struck by the all-too-familiar phrase, one that has resonance far beyond this sad case. Think about it: stray bullets with no home nor owner, wandering our streets, looking for somewhere to lodge.

Last evening, at Bible Study, we discussed our responsibility not only to forgive, but to change situations, structures, and relationships that give rise to trespass, so that the sin does not keep repeating; to create conditions where true repentance and healing are possible. We talked about the need not to paper over patterns of harm, but to confront them with truthful, hopeful, discerning hearts, in order to bring mercy not only to sinners but to the sinned against.

Calling a bullet stray, like a wandering and mangy dog, is akin to brushing off offence without regard to healing the conditions that gave rise to it or the harm its kind can continue to cause as long as we refuse to call it what it is. Justice is not just a matter of calling the bullet-owner to account. It is coming to terms with our loose culture of bullet-ownership.

The way of the Cross calls us to look death (its dominions and its minions) in the eye and call it what it is, not in fear but in faith that Christ has already trodden this path for us. There are no stray bullets, just as there were no stray nails pounding themselves into the Cross.

It is up to us to choose another way, another Word, to choose life. Our children – every child – deserves better than “a stray bullet.”

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Our hope is in Jesus

Posted on September 10, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, 10 September 2023. Matthew 18:15-20

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

Jesus is here. Jesus is with us. I’d better watch what I say!

So let’s start with, I messed up last week. I mean, I mess up all of the time, but last week, in a particular and specific way, I erred and I hurt someone, without meaning to, but with effect. I didn’t know until they told me, and I was able to apologize, and repent, and ask forgiveness. And because this community is steeped in the Gospel of God’s great mercy to us, I believe that I have been forgiven.

In the broader church context, we have heard over the past week how we do not always behave, as an institution, or as individuals within it, in the ways that would bring glory to God and do justice to that mercy, or love to one another. You may have read the letter from the President of our House of Deputies decrying the outcome of a complaint that was taken to the church, with more than one witness, and that has not resulted yet in healing or reconciliation.

There are so many layers to this: layers of sexism, racism, hierarchical power dynamics, clericalism, and abuse.

We are doing some soul-searching about it all, as an institution. Our House of Bishops is particularly implicated in this business, and our Bishop Anne has written to us with her commitment and hope to be part of the healing that is needed. But as House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris wrote in her letter, “Transforming the culture within our church is a collaborative effort that requires participation from everyone. Together, we have work to do to ensure the safety of all people within our community and to strengthen the integrity of our disciplinary processes.”

It is no doubt notable that we read this gospel on UBE (Union of Black Episcopalians) Sunday. As such, we have paired it with a reading and psalm appointed for the commemoration of Alexander Crummell. You can read more of his experience here, but even a quick glance at the beginnings of his ministry, the ways in which the system repeatedly attempted to exclude him simply because of his colour, makes a poignant juxtaposition to Matthew’s appeal to the church itself to resolve disputes. What if it is the church that is in the wrong? What if the problem is not individual offences but the deep and abiding offence of racism that is dug into the foundations of the church in America (and too many other places)? Then to whom should we go?

We are a house full of sinners. We are hurt and hurting, hurt-full people.

So when Matthew describes how the church is to be, in matters of discipline, order, and offence, it is no surprise that he anticipates that it will not always be easy to repair the breach. But it is telling, I think, that he ends with this promise from Jesus, that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is with us.

He is with us. He is God with us, Emmanuel.

And here is our hope: not in disciplinary measures and Title IV task forces – as important as they truly are to our life together and our integrity, they are not where we invest our hope. Our hope is in the healing power and merciful grace of Jesus Christ, who lived and died and lives still for us sinners.

Trusting in Christ, we need not be afraid to confess our sins, our neediness, our brokenness. When Matthew writes to the church that if one will not listen to discipline, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector,” do we remember how Jesus treated tax collectors and outsiders, outcasts and even his betrayer? There is such irony there, isn’t there?

And there is hope. If we, as followers of Jesus, if we can trust in his healing power and merciful grace and understanding, then can we trust one another enough to confess when we are wrong and forgive when we have been wronged? Are we able to build a community that protects the innocent and brings to repentance those who are ready to be reconciled? 

This is not a call to paper over errors and worse with whitewashed words of false or cheap forgiveness. That does not move the needle on justice. Matthew describes a process that involves difficult truth-telling, the need often for allies, and the risk of a breach. But, he hears Jesus promising, when you do this work, I am with you. Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

I appeal to you, if I have sinned against you, let me know, and I will do my best to humble myself to admit my error and amend my ways. If the church sins against you, we do have processes in place to help with the work of truth-telling, repentance, and healing, and we’re still working on them. You can start with me, or with our Wardens, or with our Bishop’s Office, as you feel best served. I messed up, and because someone told me about it, I was able to repent, and to be forgiven.

If we lean on the love of Jesus, even when we fail, even when we cannot accomplish that healing ourselves, we know how Jesus will pursue even those we call Gentiles and tax collectors, how he will angle for them with his love, even when we are no longer able; how he will love us indefatigably into repentance.

And if we are in the wrong, when we are in the wrong, when I am in the wrong, Jesus still shows up for us, comes to our table, despite our betrayals, and feeds us with his righteous, indiscriminate, abundant mercy.

Thanks be to God.

Alexander Crummell: Ecclesiasticus 39:6-11, Psalm 19:7-11; Year A Proper 18: Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

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Two or three

Posted on September 7, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Two or three: Jesus

why are you afraid to be

too alone with me?

______________

#preparingforSundaywithpoetry. This Sunday’s Gospel is full of numbers – no, not of numbers, of people, unalone.

Matthew 18:15-20

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Who I am

Posted on September 3, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last week, when Jesus asked his disciples who people said he was, who they said he was, when Simon Peter confessed him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Jesus told Simon Peter who he was, the rock. And here, the rock has so soon become a stumbling block, because he wants to deny that the Son of the living God can suffer and die – understandable! But we do not follow a saviour, lean on a saviour who is indifferent to or ignorant of the trials of this world, but rather one who has gone through them so that he can bring us through into new life. 

Who we say God is determines who we say we are, who are made in God’s image, who are neighbour is, also made in God’s image. Who we say we are, in turn, has a whole lot of influence over what we do, how we are in the world.

It’s strange that Jesus tells Peter that his mind is stuck on human things rather than the divine. In some ways, it seems as though the opposite applies: Peter is looking for a miracle, a theophany, a deus ex machina to usher in the Messianic age; he doesn’t want Jesus to take the very human road of suffering in body and in spirit that is the symptom of our mortality. Peter wants to skip straight to heaven.

Perhaps the problem is our definition of what is human and what is divine. What if our hope is not only in the heavens – although that is true hope, too. But what it this life, created and sustained and shared by the Son of the living God – is our share in the work of the Divine? What if we were to take seriously the doctrine of creation – not as a substitute for scientific knowledge, mind you, but as a window open to it? What if we remember that God created us to be in relationship with God, to reflect God’s image in our relationship with the rest of creation? What if we owned not only our authority but our responsibility to God, to one another, to creation?

Then we would be with it in the hurting and the harm of climate change. We wouldn’t deny it, or just hope for the best. Those temptations, to find ourselves above it all, or to throw ourselves from the pinnacle of the temple, devil-may-care, and trust that the angels will catch us – Jesus dealt with those, too. And he said, Away with you, Satan. Get behind me. 

We will suffer with the planet, grieve with the earth and the oceans. And that is where God is, how Jesus is with us. Not here to escape our humanity but to heal it, to perfect it, and in his commitment to the way of the Cross, we see that humanity is perfected in love, in humility, in the mercy modelled by the Son of the living God. We see that these traits are the image of the divine: that compassion – not turning away, not denying, but bearing with – that the compassion that gave birth to the Incarnation is at the heart of the Divine. 

Who we say God is matters. Moses, faced with a burning bush which is yet unconsumed – because our God is a Creator, not a destroyer – Moses asks God for a name, for a divine identity to share with his people. And God answers in the purest, most generous form: I am. 

When God says, I am, God says, I am with you. When God says, I am the God of your ancestors, God says, I have always been with you. When Jesus said, I will go to the Cross for you, God with us, Emmanuel, is saying, I am always with you. Through it all, in it all, so that I can bring you through the storm to safe harbour, still waters.

I am who I am – I am God! I am the God who has always been and I am the God who will be with you. Be still, then, child, and know that I am.

Year A Proper 17: Exodus 3:1-15, Matthew 16:21-28

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Savour

Posted on August 31, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

This week’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry perhaps bears more relation to the stories of Jesus’ original temptation than to his twin command to Peter to, “Get behind me, Satan!” But between those threads, and the idea that one could follow Jesus, taking up the cross but not tasting death? – that is where this poem caught me today. I hope it’s still useful to your prayer and preparation for Sunday’s strange interpretation of what is good news.

Savour

Some will not taste death; others 
lick it like salt from their skin, 
the ones with eyes like atlases. 
Flashback to the desert, sand 
gritted between teeth and palate, 
tongue coated with a sapour that 
no vinegar will slake, spitting 
drily at the devil, “Go to hell!” 
rising like acid with the effort. 
Shadows fall crosswise, shifting 
and lengthening with the tide 
of the sun. In their wings, 
angels and wild beasts hover,  
patient for the suffering of the saviour. 

Year A Proper 17: Matthew 16: 21-28

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Don’t we?

Posted on August 27, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

It has been a horrible weekend for gun violence in America. I cannot keep my heart from going out to the family of the teenager gunned down at a high school football game, while I was listening to the strains of the halftime band drift over from our own local school on Friday evening.

Even so, I confessed God and the congregation during the prayers of the people, in the midst of all of the gun violence of this weekend the Jacksonville shooting stands out for its chilling hatred. Steeped in the blood of past victims and dragging injustice and prejudice with it like a standard, such ugliness pulls us back toward the history we hope so hard to escape.

I prayed, something like, Convert the hearts of this nation, O God. Subvert the forces of racism, hatred, violence, and evil. Help the broken, comfort the grief-stricken, stand close to those who are fearful, break open stony hearts, heal our hope.

Prayer, of course, does not alter the mind of God, who was anti-racist before we invented ways to shatter the image of God into pieces so that we could pick up an individual piece of mirror and call it whole, never mind that it cut us. Rather, I prayed it in order dimly to remember what I once heard God whisper to me: love wholly, trouble the demons, do not repay evil for evil, but overcome evil with good, with God, who alone is good, who alone is holy, who alone is whole.

From the cross we hear the incarnation of a sigh, Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

But don’t we?

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Who do you say that I am?

Posted on August 27, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for 27 August 2023, Year A Proper 16: Peter’s confession of the Christ at Caesarea Philippi

I have been to that place in Galilee, now called Banias. There is a wonderful waterfall there, a spring and dance of living water. I didn’t know back then that its name echoes its past. It was once called Paneas, named for Pan, of Greek mythology. Even earlier, the spring would have been associated with the Baals.[i] When the Romans annexed the area, and set up Philip, one of the Herod family, as Tetrarch, he named the place Caesarea Philippi. 

It is an apt place for new beginnings. Named and renamed, with Simon Peter’s words the Baals, the gods of Pan and of Rome, the idolatry of empire, all were buried beneath the cataracts, and the name of the living God was spoken over the water, like a baptism.

This is not the first time that the disciples have identified Jesus as the Messiah, their Lord. Out of the storm they called him the Son of God, and they worshipped him (Matthew 14:33). Yet something is different about this moment. As soon as Simon names Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, Son of the living God, Jesus names him, Peter, the rock, and calls him into his place in the new community of the church that Jesus is building.[ii]

It was like a baptism when Jesus told Simon, “You are Peter,” when he named him and charged him with his place in the church, the church that Jesus himself would build. I do think that it is important to notice that Jesus promises to build the church himself. “This,” says my commentary, “is part of Matthew’s theology of the continuing active presence of Christ in the church.”[iii] Commissioning Simon Peter to undergird the church, to hold the keys, to be faithful and wise in its administration does not mean that Jesus has left the building, has left the building entirely to Peter and us, his spiritual descendants. Jesus is the head of the church, and its cornerstone, and its life. He is present and active, or it is not a church. After all, he is the Son of the living God, not an idol of stone.

That is what caught my attention about this exchange, this time around. When Peter says who Jesus is, in heaven and on earth, Jesus says who Peter is in and to and for the community of that faith.

Who we think Jesus is has a bearing on how we understand our place in the church, our role in the community of faith, and our vocation in the world.

I met the man, Jesus. He asked me who I say he is. I told him, You are the way, the truth, you are life. He said, You are Sophia, which means wisdom. I will cause you curiosity, so that you might make out my mystery and the truth of my salvation to the world.

I met that man, Jesus. He asked me who I say he is. I told him, You are the Word of God. He said, You are Mohadissa, the storyteller. I will lay down my words and you will tell my story to those in need of a song to lift their hearts.

I met some friends who said that they had met a man called Jesus, from Nazareth. I said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He met me with, “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” If I am named Nathanael for the prophet who told truth to King David, he can be no other than the King of Israel. Stranger things have happened, and he tells me stranger things yet will. (John 1:43-51)

Jesus asked me, Who do you say that I am? I said, You are Glory. He said, Then you are Raphael. With you the angels will partner to sing to the highest heavens.

I met a stranger. His hands were scarred, his feet bandaged, he favoured one side with his breath. He said, Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head (Luke 9:58). I told him, Tonight you are my guest (for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares) (Hebrews 13:2). He parted in the morning with an odd blessing: You are Chesed, for a bruised reed you did not break, and a dimly burning wick you did not quench. (Isaiah 42:3)

We met Jesus, and he asked us who we thought he was. We told him, We saw you walking upon the water! You are the vessel of God’s power, the brooding Spirit, the Creating One. He said, You are Shiprah, and you are Puah. You will be the midwives of faith and salvation to my people.

I saw Jesus, and he asked me who I say he is. I told him, You are Emmanuel. You are God with us, the very Incarnation of the Divine. He said, You are Adam, the human one. We are family.

Who do you say Jesus is? Who does he say you are?

I went to Banias as a green teenager because I had heard that it was the place of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ; I had no idea how beautiful it would be. It was bordering against no-man’s-land, the strip of scorched earth that separated us from the rocket launchers that punctuated every night with their explosive lullabies, near the Golan Heights with their watching eyes and suspicious and unsettled borders. I didn’t expect that baptism of living water. I should have known the healing properties of bathing, wallowing in the name of Christ, the Son of the living God, even under the shadow of death, war, and idolatry.

We are his church. He builds us, names us, raises us, sustains us. When we call upon him, when we call him who he is, he tells us who we are, each beloved and called and vital, because we belong to Christ, and to the living God.

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banias

[ii] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII

[iii] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII, 345

Year A Proper 16 readings: Exodus 1:8-2:10, Psalm 124, Romans 12:1-8 ,Matthew 16:13-20

The Banias Waterfall in the Golan Heights. Author: Nahum Dam (2004), via wikipedia

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On this rock

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

They carved the rock as though they 
were its creator, hauled its calves 
across hills and valleys, raised 
them on the plain for centuries 
to see and on them build 
mists and legends of cyphers 
binding and loosing the sun. 
Is this pebbled faith I carry 
an anchor or a millwheel, 
foundation or faltering? 

They set a boulder to blot life 
from the garden, light from the tomb. 
When it was rolled away you spoke 
her name into the morning like dew.

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Silent prayer

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Nothing is silent.
The breath of God 
is not absent. 
The wheeze of trees in full leaf 
hefting their branches 
in dance. 
The sigh of waves 
that fall before they reach 
the shore. 
The call of an ant 
six whispery feet one side
of a blade of grass. 
The sun raging with fire 
far, the moon rattling 
as it rotates, all speak.
In the language of prayer,
electric impulses chorus 
in harmony. 
The Spirit broods 
like a shuffling winged thing 
settling over the soul. 

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On forgiveness

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Joseph and his brothers, as well as the rest of us. Year A Proper 15

Forgiveness is a transcendent thing. Mercy, the unlimited and unlimiting grace of God, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”; the gift of the Cross, the love of God that surges like a wave through the salvation story, drowning out sin and guilt over and over, washing us clean; these endure. 

But this story of Joseph and his brothers, the power dynamics (literally) at play, remind me that while to forgive is divine, we – well, we do our best. 

Let me ask it plainly: Would Joseph have forgiven his brothers so completely if they had not been completely beholden to him? Would he have been so magnanimous if he were not dressed in magnificent robes? Remember, a lot has passed since last week when we heard them throw him into a pit and then sell him to passing strangers, passing slave-traders. He has been in a place of privilege and he has been in prison. He has been in chains and he has been in charge. Now, in the midst of a regional famine, he is the one able to feed the multitudes, or to cut them off. He has played with his brothers, sending them away like thieves, tricking them and tearing his father’s heart in two. Joseph, generous, has nevertheless exacted payment for the food he gave them with the power of the puppeteer: payment in panic, payback for the terror he felt in that dry pit when they sold him down the desert. Joseph has been at least, at the very least, as cruel as he was kind to his brothers in this little drama of forgiveness. Even now, while he weeps upon their necks, he holds their fate cradled in his hands. Is that forgiveness, to refrain from retribution? 

I commend to you L. William Countryman’s Forgiven and Forgiving. He writes that,

“we are apt to think of forgiveness as a kind of complicated transaction between people that usually involves a good deal of misrepresentation, emotional manipulation, denial, presumption, and outright lying. It becomes a formula to be invoked, an obligation to be fulfilled. Then, afterward, we sometimes wonder why we haven’t really succeeded in turning loose our anger about the past.”[i] 

Don’t we see all of that in the melodrama between Joseph and his brothers?

Is it a stretch to wonder whether the secret bitterness that Joseph still harbours in his heart, that plays out in the way that he plays with his brothers as they cross and recross the desert; does his false witness, do his less kind intentions, defile or diminish his forgiveness? Or do they simply show up, as a CT scan of the soul, the scar tissue of the hurt and harm that he has suffered, that which has to be forgiven if family life is to start over in the shadow of Egypt’s grain silos? Some injuries leave a permanent mark. Forgiveness is part of the healing.

There are power dynamics at play here, there are family histories and hurts, all complicate the story of forgiveness that unfolds, and all are present when we wrestle with how to achieve that holy grail of forgiving. It is the burden of being human. For Joseph and his brothers, that drama will continue to play out, in small and subtle ways, for as long as they live together; forgiven and forgiving, none has forgotten what he did nor what was done to him, and the practice of daily forgiveness, the assumption of grace, will be essential to their settling side by side.

It helps that they all have changed almost beyond recognition since that day in the desert. It is not always so.

There are limits to how much of the complexity of human forgiveness and healing that we can cover in a ten-minute sermon. But it would be irresponsible, too, not to name those obstacles to forgiveness that exist in abusive relationships and patterns, whether those are personal and domestic, or social and systemic. Forgiveness should change us – all of us. God’s forgiveness does change us. It transforms a fallen humanity into one that can look up from the ground, where Abel’s blood is crying out, where Joseph wails up from the pit, and know that God still loves us, that God wants better for us than this.

Forgiveness heals harm. It does not help to perpetuate it. In relationships, systems, patterns of abuse where nothing is changing, the first step to forgiveness may be to tell the truth about the ongoing harm, to hear Abel’s blood crying out from the ground, Joseph from the pit, and to refuse to cover up the crime or cover our ears. God heard them. God hears us. 

If, as the adage goes, to forgive is divine, then forgiveness is clear-sighted, it creates good and does not condone evil, it is creative and transformative and it tells the truth. It brings close the kingdom of heaven, in which there is room for all people, but not for any form of abuse. 

If to forgive is divine, then to live a forgiving life is partnering with God to create new and better ways of being. It means that when we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others”, we acknowledge that this is part and parcel of “Thy kingdom come”: a world in which healing interrupts the currents of harm and remembers the love of God that is for all.[ii] It is transcendent.  

It is not easy, it is often complicated by power dynamics, personal, social, and family histories, scar tissue, and, let’s face it, the very real fear of further harm. But to return to Countryman’s book once more, he concludes, “Love is the powerful attraction that the all-powerful God uses to draw us into relationship with our creator – and with one another. … Forgiveness merely shows the depth and strength of this love, which is not deflected even by repeated failure nor exhausted even by repeated rejection. 
Only the strong can forgive. God, who is strongest, forgives best. But we have been invited to become members of God’s household, sharers in God’s wisdom and knowledge, people strong with God’s strength and generosity. We too, can join in the infinite exchange of love and forgiveness that opens the door to the future.”[iii]

In those moments of inspiration, of prayer, of grace when we remember God’s forgiveness, that is supreme, and all-encompassing, and perpetual, and healing; when we find ourselves caught up in the salvation story instead of our own, when we remember that to forgive is divine; then, when we know ourselves to be forgiven, as God forgives us, then any future is possible, even the one where love really does win.

[i] L. William Countryman, Forgiven and Forgiving (Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 11

[ii] See Countryman, 42-44

[iii] Countryman, 131

Readings: Genesis 45:1-15, Psalm 133, Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32, Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

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