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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First and last

Posted on August 16, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Do you remember how,
in the parable, 
he paid them, last and first?
To the first he was fair, 
but to the last he was 
magnificent. 
Neither knew 
whether to laugh or shout 
or fall to their knees; 
so we, too, 
swayed between the thirsty 
and the relieved, 
envying and blaming 
each in turn …

So too, at last, 
he spoke glory
to whom he first served silence 
more merciful 
than his passing 
words, and she, 
risen lately from her Baals 
and run with twisted tongue 
to the Son of David, 
was buried by the weight 
of faith worth its salt 
and borne again; 
and we stumble to understand 
her meaning

This Sunday’s Gospel includes the challenging story of the Canaanite woman who comes seeking healing for her daughter, “crumbs under the children’s table,” whom Jesus seems at first to reject, but whose faith he then praises with healing power.

Featured image: Bowyer Bible Print. The Syro-Phoenician Woman. Jan Luyken. wikimediacommons

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Have a heart

Posted on August 13, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for 13th August, 2023; Year A Proper 14.

Once upon a time, some forty+ years ago, an academic who was not a mathematician did some wage review for the civil service, and accidentally became responsible for the teachers of England and Wales receiving a well-deserved but rather unexpected – on all sides – pay boost. That is how my father ended up buying a boat.

It was a small boat, with a very small outboard motor. Did you know that the Bristol Channel, that little strip of salt water between England and Wales, has the second largest tidal drop in the entire world, second only to somewhere up north of here (Canada? Alaska?)? Having been in a very small boat with a very, very small outboard motor, boat-surfing around Lavernock Point in a foolhardy effort to get home ahead of the tidal turn, swamped by waves that I worked ravenously to put back into the Channel using a very small bucket, I can believe it. My father tells the story of one such outing; when we finally got back to dry land, he asked me, “Were you scared?” With as much teenaged bile and bravado as I could muster, I replied, “Scared? I was too busy bailing out!”

I know who I am in this morning’s Gospel story. If I had seen Jesus walking towards us on the water from Flatholme, I would have thought he was a ghost, too, because I would have assumed at that point that I was a ghost. 

Evening had come and gone, and it was already the dead of night. Wind and the waves were battering the boat; if there was a moon it was obscured by the spray. The elements were against them, and they knew themselves no match for the chaos.

Then came Jesus. Then came Jesus, descending the mountain on a cloud of prayer, drifting across the sea like a breath, like an angel, like a ghost. Then came Jesus, and he said to them, “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27)

There is a theological aspect to this story, of course. It speaks not only to what happened, what Jesus did out there in the dark and the storm, but it speaks, he speaks of who he is. “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.”

In the beginning, when the world was formless and void, the authors of Genesis imagine a storm of oily water, suffocating and chaotic, devoid of life, empty of breath, but full of chaos. Then came the Word of God, speaking light, speaking land, speaking heavens and earth and ocean, speaking life. (Genesis 1)

When Jesus treads upon the storm, he reminds his disciples, he reminds us, that he is that Word of God that quells any force that mitigates against life, against light, against hope. The commentaries tell us that walking on water is a feat reserved to the divine; it is a quelling of the chaos, a subjugation of the elements that belongs only to the Creator of all things.[i] Jesus, coming to his disciples on the sea, was showing them who he was, who he is. The wind and the waves may have been against them, but Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I.” No one, nothing can stand against the love of God made manifest and standing before them, in the heart of the storm.

“Do not be afraid,” he tells them, because perfect love casts out fear, and he is the perfect love of God. “Do not be afraid,” speaks Emmanuel; “I am with you.”

In the midst of the storm, or facing down the wildfire, in the deep pit, in the wake of bitter betrayal, after the scary diagnosis, even when planning the funeral, the question arises, “But what of it?” The text does not tell us that the wind and the waves subsided when Jesus made himself known – this is not the same story as the, “Peace, be still!” moment. No, but Peter says, “If you call me, I can come to you on the water.” And when he starts to sink back in fear, Jesus catches him. (Matthew 14:28-31)

I know who I am in this story. Sometimes I think I only went out in that ridiculous boat on the Bristol Channel because no one else would, and I didn’t want the man to die alone, and I hope that counts for something. I am hoping for courage but my heart is sinking. I am too busy bailing out the boat to pray. The wind and the waves are against me, I am underpowered and overwhelmed, and as much as I want to keep my attention fixed on Jesus, the storm is stealing it, and sinking me. That’s just how it goes, sometimes. 

But I know who Jesus is, too. When he says, “Take heart, have courage” – because courage is heart, encouragement is the giving of one’s heart, votre coeur, to another – when Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I,” he is not saying, “Be brave. Man up!” Rather, he is offering his heart, himself, his courage, his power, his love and mercy, his life to his disciples. He will not leave them to face the storm, the fire, the flood, the betrayal, alone. And when he does get in the boat, the wind drops immediately, like the others, falling down in worship before him.

From the very early centuries of the church, our prayers have included the Sursum Corda: Lift up your hearts; we lift them to the Lord. The original said simply, “Up with your hearts.” “We have them with the Lord,” was the response.[ii] As we come to celebrate and commemorate and rely on Christ’s presence with us, we begin by taking heart, taking encouragement, that his heart is with us; and we place our hearts with his. 

So take heart, whatever the storm, whatever is against you, whatever has you sick or afraid or wanting to walk on water; take heart, Jesus is with you. Even when we are distracted and rightly dismayed, he is already reaching for us to pull us back from the abyss. Nothing, no distance nor elements nor trouble can keep him from you. Indeed, “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” (Romans 10:8)

Amen.

[i] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume III, pp. 326-330

[ii] Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed: Texts translated and edited with commentary, R.C.D. Jasper and G.J. Cuming, third edition (The Liturgical Press, 1990), 31-38

Year A Proper 14: Genesis 37:1-4,12-28 (Joseph’s is sold into slavery by his brothers); Psalm 105, Romans 10:5-15 (“the word is very near you”), Matthew 14:22-33

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Walking on water

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Heart
racing like the tide
ebbing and flowing without
volition, permission
battering this vessel
battered by the moon
and its phases
fading

Do not be afraid
of ghosts
conjured of foam
and fearsome prayer
on the cusp of
translation

Take
a step
my hand
my life and let it be
take heart
the storm by its horns
a bucket and bail, kneeling
at the back of the boat

It is
I am

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Transfiguration and the transformative gospel

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty,” writes the letter attributed to Peter (2 Peter 1:16).

Myself, I enjoy a cleverly-devised myth, one that illustrates truth as through a poem, constructing a work of art that speaks to the soul without claiming accuracy or articulation, but empathy and experience. Story tells truth without objective data. It relies on the innermost secrets of the human soul to recognize it.

Such, over the centuries, has been our experience of the gospel. Translated and retranslated through language and art, music and light, liturgy and drama, even bread and wine: whatever comes to hand, mouth, and heart to convey the truth of that Majestic Glory, that Jesus is the Son of God, that God loves us enough to stand with us in the cloud, on the mountaintop, in the valleys of shadows, shining like the sun.

But Peter was there. He needed no one to describe to him the chill of the cloud, the sudden warmth that broke through, the terror of the thunderous voice, the familiar comfort of figures he knew without ever having seen them before, they were so sound a part of his faith, his formation, his family: Moses and Elijah. Peter saw it all, he knew that what he saw and heard and felt was real, as real as life in the valley; and he was dazzled and dazed into silence by its glory. “They kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.”

This time last month, I was at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, a wonderfully and marvellously devised dome in the heart of the city, full of colour and light, stories told in paint and stone and glass, and the music, of course, soaring at eventide. I went for Evensong, and I went back in the morning to join the throng of tourists, a few school groups, people from every language and nation gathered with their cameras – with our cameras – and our cacophony. I climbed the several hundred stairs to the galleries high up on the dome. I found the effigy of John Donne, that constructor of clever conceits and poetry, who knew for himself the transformative power of the glory of God. I lit candles for some of you, for all of you, for us.

Then, as I was crossing the transept for one more look up into the dome from the centre, a woman in a black cassock stepped unobtrusively up to a lectern and began to speak gently but clearly into the mass of sightseers. She took a just a minute or two to introduce a prayer for all those in need of healing, and I thought of our candles; then she led the Lord’s Prayer, and I couldn’t tell you what proportion of the visitors joined in, but I was fixed as if by lightning to my spot on that tiled floor until the final Amen.

They do it every hour, stripping away the veil of the tourist trap and reminding those with the will to hear why it is that the cathedral stands, and sings, and prays. They do not dwell on it; there are no booths built for Moses and Elijah. The moment passes like a cloud across the sun. But it is unmistakable.

I’m not sure how else to describe it to you, except that in that moment the grand cathedral had put on the garment of prayer; and the glory of the world and its myths and its memories of war and its forgetfulness of mercy – all of this had been transfigured by the quiet voice that insisted that we listen, for a moment, to the Word of God, and the prayer that Jesus himself has taught us, to a God who listens to us.

After Moses went up the mountain in those earlier days, even the reflected glory of the experience was enough to light him up so that people were afraid to come near him. He had to put on a veil, tone it down, in order that his experience of the living God might be acceptable to the general population.

So it goes. We tame our religious experience with cleverly designed veils and shadows, artifice and myths, even the music and art that we lean into as through a window disguises as much as describes that Majestic Glory that shines like nothing on earth.

We are afraid to tell the truth, as eyewitnesses, of what it is really like to encounter God, in case it makes people back away. Peter even says, I am only saying this now because I am about to die.

But what if we were to be honest about what brings us here, week by week, hands open and hearts guarded, eyes glistening with unshed words, unmet hopes, unveiled desire? What if we were to tell the true story of how we met God, in all of that terrible glory, on the mountaintop or at our lowest ebb, and heard the voice of truth say, “Here is my Son, beloved so that you might know yourself beloved. Listen to him!” What if we were to share that light with the world, a world awash with cleverly devised myths and arguments?

When I first met Jesus, listening with the curiosity of a child, I heard him proclaim that the kingdom of God was at hand. I heard him heal the sick, comfort the demon-assaulted, undo grief, reconcile life and death, mortality and eternity within his own body. That gospel was, for me, life saving. It still is. I enjoy a cleverly devised myth as much as the next person; but what sustains me is this: that I know that God is with us, that God loves us more than we love life itself; that when the world is too loud, or stuns us into silence, Christ is still speaking in that still, small voice, the language of mercy. Listen to him.

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The mountain

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

The mountain 
was known for its faces: 
old as time and containing 
the capricious moods of a newborn, 
mewling and frost-bitten on day, 
green and friendly another. 
squalling cloud and light 
enough to keep its suitors guessing 
and hoping, climbing into eternity 
just for the view. 

                                    Nothing 
so elementally expressive 
could contain the steadfast, 
implacable, 
untimely mercy that met them 
beyond the tree line, 
muttering amongst the crows, 
“Listen …”

This poem first appeared at the Episcopal Journal. This Sunday celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration, that mysterious moment upon the mountaintop …

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Pressed

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

What if the robes were reversed
and among the throng of sweaty suitors
for my notice you
were plucking at my sleeve;
would I know your touch
from the pickpockets of power,
care enough to turn and ask
what you require, hear
from you the whole truth
that makes of the world a liar; follow
through the mob of mourners
for a life worth leaving behind?

A brief reflection on the Gospel reading from today’s Daily Office: Mark 5:21-43

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