… But do not be afraid

Posted on June 25, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the first week of the Chautauqua Institution season, 2023, Year A Proper 7

_____________

There’s nothing like starting in the middle. With no context, no backstory to soften the blow, we arrive for a week at Chautauqua focused on friendship, only to have Jesus announce that he has come to ginger up our divisions. But do not be afraid.

Just as this is one week out of many, a Sunday in the middle of most of our lives, these verses, this word, is one out of a whole speech that Jesus is in the middle of giving to his disciples in the middle of his ministry. This speech began with him sending them out in great power: to cast out demons, heal the sick, raise the dead. It continues with warnings: sheep among wolves, fallen sparrows, dissent, and even persecution. But do not worry, he says, and do not be afraid.

It’s the personal divisions that catch at us, though, isn’t it? The threat of family arguments, the breakdown of peace talks at home. The Psalmist laments,

For if it had been an adversary who taunted me, then I could have borne it;
But it was you, one after my own heart,
my companion, my own familiar friend;
you have broken your covenant. (Psalm 55:13a,14,21b, pronouns altered)

Still, do not be afraid. God is faithful to God’s covenants. And this is only part of the story.

You remember elsewhere in the gospels, when Jesus’ mother and his brothers came to take him home by force if necessary, for they said, he has gone mad. He is a laughing stock. That boy is going to get himself in trouble. And Jesus, feeling a little salty perhaps, looked around at the crowd of friends and strangers gathered around him and said, “Well, maybe you’re my family now.” (Mark 3:21;31-35) And yet at the end, which was not the end, he saw his mother and his friend and he made them family: “Woman, here is your son; Here is your mother.” (John 19:26-27) And at the beginning of the following book (because that was not the end), Jesus’ mother and his brothers were gathered together with his disciples in prayer (Acts 1:14).

Yes, Jesus came to put a cat among the pigeons, and see what a flurry of fur and feathers and wool would ensue. But he also came to heal, to cast out demons, to raise the dead, and those whose hope was no longer alive. If we don’t read these verses in the context of the whole story of God’s grace to us sinners in the Incarnation, we miss that.

At our parish bible study last week, we read this passage and someone asked about the sparrows. One person described them as “junk birds”, but there is more to their story, too. The house sparrow, it turns out, is not indigenous to the Americas. Millennia ago, they evolved in Asia and Europe to live among humans: they are house sparrows because they have adapted to build their homes among us. I read somewhere on the Audubon website that you will not find a sparrow’s nest in a completely natural setting, only among the structures that humans have built or altered. The house sparrows nestle up against us.[i]

That sounds lovely, but when they were imported to America, in order to deal with a caterpillar infestation, they did tend to proliferate, and they became the source of great consternation and even conflict, as bird people argued over whether they had become a pest, an invasive species, an enemy.[ii] But if they have, it is we who made them so.

Yet not one sparrow falls that God does not notice, and catch. There are no junk birds in God’s economy, and however far we fall out over them, and however we devalue not only them but one another over them, and over bigger issues than a sparrow, let those with ears to hear understand, God does not stop noticing.

Whatever our divisions, however they devalue us and others, God does not stop counting the hairs on the heads of enemies and strangers, wolves and friends alike. So do not be afraid, even in the midst of conflict and rumours of more, but be humbled by the love of God that passes human understanding and calculation.

None of this is to make light of the very real divisions and decisions we are left with among family and friends, former family and former friends. Jesus, the incarnation of the unimaginable grace of God, does put a cat among the pigeons, does sometimes demand that we risk offending one side of the bird debate by standing up for the sparrow, whom we have cast as a junk bird, but who isn’t junk to God. The risk of fallout is real.

But do not be afraid. For we are not called to remain rankled, but to let our peace return to us, and shake the dust from our feet, and walk on in the way of the cross. We will find dissent and division (we may even feel persecuted), but we are called to cast out demons and heal those in need of it.

Remember where this word from Jesus started: Proclaim good news. Cleanse the leprous, raise the dead. As you enter the house, greet it with peace. If the house will receive it, peace be upon it. If not, let your peace return to you (Matthew 10:7-8;12-14).

Do not be afraid, but let your peace return to you. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in the knowledge of the love of God, which is Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7, altered).

Amen

[i] https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/house-sparrow

[ii] https://www.audubon.org/news/meet-little-brown-bird-holds-mirror-humanity

Also read on background: D. Mark Davis, https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/

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When the cat preached the sermon

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for 18 June 2023, Year A Proper 6: Sheep among wolves

It was a good morning for birds at my window feeder. I have it set up across from my desk, close enough that I could reach out and touch it, except that the glass is in the way, and I have a small square of reflective film taped up to make that section of window into a two-way mirror. As long as I keep fairly still and quiet, the birds don’t see me. It means that my cup of tea is growing cold while they eat – the pair of finches that dropped by yesterday were really making the most of the breakfast buffet. After them there was a pair of tufted titmice (titmouses?). I know nothing about birds, but I know that I love it when they come close, as though I were trustworthy. Is this what it is, to be cunning as a serpent, with my two-way glass to fool them close, and as tender as a dove, with my cooling cup of tea and my rapt admiration? Of course, if they could see me, they would recognize a predator. And when the cats come flying across my desk, everyone’s breakfast is all over.

When Jesus sends out his disciples, he tells them, he tells us, that he is sending them like sheep among wolves. It is not an insult, mind you, to be a sheep, not in Jesus’ mouth. Sheep are communal animals: they are God’s flock, God’s people, God’s community. Throughout the scriptures, the ancient and the merely old, God’s sheep are beloved, sought after. They are valuable, they are valued. They belong together, and they belong to God.

Wolves are fairly self-explanatory. They are beautiful, but dangerous. They are almost seductive in their wildness, their mystique, their strength; but they are dangerous. They belong in the ecosystem, because nothing, no one that God has made does not belong somewhere; and if you see one up close, you know it to be a predator.

Jesus did not call his disciples to be wolves. Predation is not one of the gifts of the Spirit. Jesus was not a lone wolf, but the Lamb of God, born into the flock of God’s own people.

This sending of Jesus’ disciples is full of apparent contradictions. Be like serpents, and like doves. Stay, and flee. Beware, but do not worry. Offer peace, and shake the dust off your feet. Raise the dead.

Life is full of contradictions, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to every situation. Except the gospel.

Be wise; be gentle. Be not afraid; cast out demons. Carry peace with you; leave peace behind you; let your peace return to you. Be sheep, for you are the flock of God; stay together, and remember the green pastures in which the Good Shepherd leads you, the deep and still waters of creation among which your Shepherd feeds you.

This morning, we had a reminder of what it is to be the flock, the sheep-fold of God. A little lamb escaped from his barn up the street. His mother came running to the church, crying for him, where she found our open doors and people to help seek him out. On the other side of the church, a man found a little one walking outside by himself and was concerned; he pulled into the church parking lot and picked up the boy, recognizing this as a safe place to seek help for a lost lamb. Because they saw us as a safe place for all sheep, we were able to play a small role in reuniting the little lamb with his mother, a little healing to our neighborhood.

In the next month or so I will not be around so much. Next Sunday, I’ll be at Chautauqua as the Episcopal chaplain for the week, taking some time for continuing education and refreshment in that meadow. Though we are many, we are one body, for we all share in the same bread, and as I break it there, I will be thinking of you.

The following Sunday morning, I’ll be back here briefly before I leave for a month’s sabbatical for the remainder of July. You are going to hear new voices: newly licensed Worship Leaders, and visiting priests; and always when you hear it you will know the voice of Jesus, the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls each of us by name. Stay together, flock, people of God, gifts of God for the world.

While I was typing this sermon into my laptop, one of the kittens did, indeed, come to join in the bird-watching. As you may imagine, that put the cat among the pigeons for real. The birds still chanced it once in a while. They have come to know that they are safe here.

The cat also did a bit of typing while she was rolling around on the desk. She wanted to add a word on behalf of the wolf. She said:

“Once, in my ancestral imagination, I was a lioness, fierce and feared. I still sometimes examine my claws in awe at what havoc they might wreak. I look at my sister’s teeth and recognize the fangs of an ancient nature. Yet here we lie, content to be coddled and cuddled by a softer species. Even if I caught the cardinal, I wouldn’t know quite what to do with him. I am not sorry, but while I am still shaped like a predator, I have become quite domesticated, tamed by love. You see, a leopard cannot change his spots, and a wolf will always have a complicated relationship with the sheep, but love changes everything. Love feeds the birds and saves me from my worst impulses towards them. Love sets a table before me in the midst of many distractions and attractions, and bids me eat.”

She made a number of typos while inputting this message, but I think I got the gist of it. I like to think that she was channeling the words of the prophet:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, 
the calf and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together,
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox…

They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
[when] the earth [is] full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.              (Isaiah 11:6-7,9)

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Sheep

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Can a sheep teach a wolf to eat grass?
To enjoy the tender snap of clover stalk,
the flake of its flower upon the red and eager tongue?
What does the wolf know or love of green pastures,
still less peace; yet
waterfalls spill like wine at an abundant feast
and pool beside the meadow you have spread
like a cloth before my hungry feet
in the presence of those who snap at my heels,
who have eyes only for the shadow of death.

_______________________

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves…” (Matthew 10:16a) Year A Proper 6: Matthew 9:35-10:23

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Radical

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost and the day after our latest Guns to Gardens event

It’s a story of radical transformation. First, the tax collector turned convert, the taker turned giver of banquets in honour of Jesus, the Messiah, the money-grubber turned gracious host to sinners and self-righteous folk alike – for how else did the Pharisees observe his company, and how else get into conversation with Jesus, unless they, too, were among Matthew’s guests. Talk about dining across the divide!

Then, then no sooner had Jesus spoken about coming to heal the sick, to bring mercy to the needful, than a woman, taking him at his word, but secretly, stole up to him to touch the fringe of his prayer shawl. And he saw her, and he knew her need, and he healed her with a word of affirmation: “Your faith has made you well.” He healed her body and her bowed down, but still secretly hopeful, spirit.

It’s a story of radical transformation, and none more so than the final twist, the turning from death to life. The child, already surrounded by paid mourners and undertakers, lifted from her deathbed by the Author of Life, who wrote her a new chapter, unexpected and unlike anything that had been seen before.

The radical transformation from death into life. It is our hope, and a challenge to our world-weary faith. How rarely do we expect a miracle, how rarely do we anticipate real change?

Yesterday morning, when the sun rose, this was a shotgun barrel, designed for hunting, for ending life. By lunchtime, it had become a garden tool, forged in fire and hammered out (not by me this time, but by my talented husband), designed to dig into the earth that God has made, out of which God formed the plants and the trees, out of which God crafted humanity, and breathed into it the spark of life, according to the stories of Genesis. Radical transformation: a tool designed to kill had been converted into a tool to grow new life.

There was an array of humanity on display in our parking lot yesterday, from different backgrounds, philosophies, different deeply held beliefs on how to bring to awakening the beloved community imagined by those who dreamed of peace on earth. But all were willing to try something, some radical transformation. The Pharisees, as much as the tax collectors, wanted Jesus to be the real thing; they had more to lose by challenging the status quo and being wrong than those who were already in the wrong, so it made them somewhat spiky; still, they were there.

And what if Matthew had decided that it wasn’t worth risking a solid, if squalid, career to follow Jesus? And what if the woman had given up hope, and failed to reach out to Jesus? And what if the leader of the synagogue had not had the courage or the foolhardiness to go beyond anything that was reasonable or expected or had any hope of success for the sake of his child? What if he had not come to Jesus and asked, as unrealistic as it was, for that radical twist of creation that would bring his daughter back from the dead?

But they did. All of them, each of them trusted God more than their own imaginations. And they were right so to do. Because Jesus treated each of them, groundbreaking physician that he was, that he is, to the radical grace of an infinitely compassionate and merciful God.

That is not to say that their lives became trouble-free. The girl would grow up to know grief as well as joy, pain as well as pleasure. But she would at least grow up. And she would grow up knowing that Jesus had brought her into a new and marvellous life. 

A Facebook memory popped up this morning: three years ago on June 11th, a number of us here today were marching up E222nd Street, demanding a radical transformation of this nation and its powers and principalities following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, while others looked on. We are still waiting on a radical transformation.

And, I heard recently from someone who said, “Oh, and now they’re telling us to do this Guns to Gardens thing, as though that’s going to solve the problem …” At which point, having been uncharacteristically quiet for a while, I said, “Oh, I think that’s us; I think that’s me. I’m doing Guns to Gardens with my parish and our community. Not because I think that it will end all of our problems with gun violence. But if it removes one gun from a home with a child who is at risk from its presence, or an elder who is heading for an accident; or if it hands a lifeline to someone feeling the weight of despair and the matching heaviness of the handgun – if it saves one life, one family temporarily from grief, isn’t it worth it?”

The story is told within the group that does these things across the country of a woman who kept guns under her bed for years because she didn’t know what else to do. She brought them to an event and watched them go under the saw. “I’ll finally sleep tonight,” she told her hosts. 

And what of the grace that brings together police and pacifists, gun rights advocates and abolitionists, the fearful, the bold, and the faithful, all in one place and one mission? We can’t often do that, but God does, and God has.

Next time the opportunity for something radical presents itself – perhaps it’s a new relationship, or a chance for conversation with someone you never in a million years would imagine exchanging words with, or the chance to get truly creative, or the chance to challenge an addiction, or the chance to turn an avenue of death into a route back to life – next time you hear that voice of doubt asking, “But is it really worth it; worth the effort, the upheaval, the risk of disappointment, or of failure?” remember Matthew, and the Pharisees, and the woman, and the child.

There will always be enough grief in the world, enough obligations, enough left undone. But the leader of the synagogue came to Jesus to ask for one more chance at life with his daughter. The woman with the haemorrhage came with one more dose of hope. Matthew heard his chance to do something radical, something new with his life, and he got up without a word, without a murmur. Because we may not know where he will lead us, but following Jesus is never the wrong choice. Because we may not know how much we need him, but he has come to save us. Because turning to Jesus is never the wrong choice, and it may lead us to a radical transformation, even if it takes some time, and always to unexpected grace.

Amen.

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Mercy

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Learn what this means, he says: 
I desire mercy, not sacrifice. 
But mercy, pitiless in its command, 
requires the sacrifice of satisfaction, 
Schadenfreude, 
vengeance. Righteous 
indignation; 
the bitter little consolations 
that coddle a sore, soured, soul.

It makes one wonder, 
honestly, 
if he truly, truly understands 
the meaning of either Word.

Year A Proper 5, Sunday, 11 June 2023: Matthew 9:9-13,18-26

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The Visitation

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

I love that, for a moment, you embraced, 
neither wondering how the other came to be 
in her loosened state, knowing 
next to nothing of the contractions to come, 
spasms of envy slaughtering the innocents 
and the barely belated, cruel blows which would fell 
them both, whom you had sheltered 
with your bodies. I love that, for a moment, 
fear was masked by morning sickness, 
mourning by the interruption of a dove 
bearing witness that a shiver can be ecstasy, 
the skip of a heartbeat, love 
instead of danger, the leap of a womb, joy 
among the relentless tug and snag of life, 
its swelling bruise a blessing.

This post also appears in the Episcopal Journal

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Pentecost 2023: Would that all of God’s people would prophesy!

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Moses said … “… Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”(Numbers 11:29)

Oh, but God has put the Spirit of the living God into every last person God has made; we are imbued with the breath of life, which is the Holy Spirit. It’s what the old story from Genesis means, in which the human being, the earthling, Adam was fashioned out of the earth itself, creature of creation, and brought to life by the breath of the Divine, binding our lives to God’s forever.

It is when we remember that connection, as close as our own breath, when we lean into it, when we listen for the whispers or the roar of the wind, the gales of the Holy Spirit and join our voices to them, that we prophesy.

And what will we prophesy? Prophecy, remember, is not fortune-telling. It is not about seeing into the future so much as it is gazing into the mind of God, and telling what you see. 

When Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit over and into his disciples, he said, “Peace. Peace be with you.” He spoke of forgiveness, of the terrible responsibility that we have for forgiving one another, of forgiving ourselves, rather than retaining our sins, as he has forgiven us of all of our betrayals; of reconciling ourselves to one another, as he returned to them even from the dead to speak peace into their fearful hearts; of loving one another, as God has loved us.

Is this what we prophesy among the people? Peace and penitence, forgiveness and reconciliation, the love of Jesus? Is this what we prophesy among all the people?

Or are we like Joshua, jealous of the spirit of others, hoarding our power, our privilege, our authority, our prophecy – which is not ours, for all that comes from God belongs to God? 

Even Joshua, who would become a leader of the people, had much to learn about the Spirit of the living God, who will not be subject to our direction or discretion or defined limits, but blows where she will. But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”(Numbers 11:29)

Of course, Joshua’s jealousy also meant that he missed Eldad and Medad’s prophecy. He was so busy policing who could prophesy and where they could prophesy and how they could prophesy that he forgot to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit emanating from these two men who had as legitimate a claim on the voice of the Spirit as anyone else with breath.

The thing is, when we don’t listen to the voices that we have not authorized, or asked for, or that we have already dismissed, we miss the fullness of the Spirit. Worse, we reinforce a status quo that is as we have made it: unequal and unfair, racist, ableist, ageist, sexist, where some voices, however loud they get, are dismissed for disturbing our peace and quiet. But ignoring the inconvenient prophets will not bring about peace and penitence, forgiveness and reconciliation, the beloved community filled with the Spirit of God.

Medad and Eldad were not silenced. Peter, when the people grumbled and dismissed the disciples as drunk and deluded, said, “Nah, the bars aren’t even open for brunch yet!” They knew that they had their commission directly from the Holy Spirit. And I wonder what it was that Eldad and Medad were saying to the people in the camp, the ones getting on with their daily lives, prophesying in the midst of them while the elders and elite were pontificating from the outside.

  • [the congregation was invited to prophesy at the prompting of the Spirit]

Do you notice that John’s version of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, happens not at the festival of weeks, fifty days after Easter, but on the evening of the Resurrection itself. The disciples are back in the same upper room where they had supper three days earlier, and they are afraid, because of all that has happened: the arrest, the injustice, the execution, the blood and the pain and the threats of persecution; and Jesus comes to them, and says, “Peace be with you.”

For John, the coming of the Holy Spirit is indivisible from the joy and the hope, the impossible astonishment and the healing of the Resurrection. It is new life. Just as the Spirit of God breathed life into the Adam at the beginning, so now the Spirit of the living God makes all things new, witness and evidence of the Resurrected life of Christ, and in Christ. For the powers of death are no match for the life of God. The doors, the barriers that we set up between us will not keep out the Spirit of God. There is no keeping the Holy Spirit in her place, because her place is everywhere. And this is good news for all of God’s people (and we are all God’s people). Amen.

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Ascension (2023)

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

With skin like an apple streaked with red,
weathered toward ripeness, her hair
a wood-stained frame for the pearl earring,
moon to her sun, the woman
in the seat in front never turned her face
to me but from the tilt of her brow,
parting corner of her lips escaped
her longing and her hope as we watched
the great heron diving upward,
wings wide, beak and feet outstretched,
feathered corpus fixed against an empty sky

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Christ, our true Mother

Posted on May 14, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, which this year coincides with international Mother’s Day

In today’s first reading, Paul is in the heart of the classical world, the seat of learning and philosophy, the seed of so much that continues to influence our lives today. And among the idols, he has found an altar dedicated to an unknown god – the “just in case you missed one” altar. I know whom you are missing, Paul tells them, although you cannot cast an idol of the true, living God.

The world will always create idols and define good and evil by its own imagination, which makes it hard to know who to trust, where to turn; but Jesus tells his disciples, “I will not leave you orphaned.”

You know my way.

The commandment he gives is love, not of idols, but of God first, and of the image of God in every single, every last, every lonely person. The image of God which is not an idol, but a glimmer of glory, sometimes hard to see because we dress it up like an idol, mistaking the reflection for the original. We are like the child who reaches for the wrong hand in line at the supermarket, the false mother our distracted imagination has created. We do have a tendency to trust demigods instead of God for our salvation. We are not so far removed from the Athenians.

We mistake God for false idols, and we love them instead of our true Love. And then, we try to mould humans into the forms we have set and created for them, instead of recognizing in our beautiful biodiversity and cultural range the unlimits of God’s creativity, and loving all aspects of God’s image in them.

But disobedient children that we are, Jesus, whom Dame Julian of Norwich called our true Mother who carries us always,[i] tells his disciples, “I will not leave you orphaned.”

You know that I don’t dwell on Mother’s Day in church. It’s painful for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. It isn’t a festival of the church, and it wasn’t designed to celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ – but given that Jesus himself has given the opening this morning, telling us that he, our true Mother, will not leave us orphaned, perhaps this is the moment to acknowledge that if we are to keep his commandments, truly to love God, our first Mother, and to love one another, all of God’s children, to create fewer orphans ourselves, then we should support safer mothering.

For example, our nation is the worst place in the over-developed world to have a baby in terms of health outcomes. That is a travesty. Just so that we know that this is a product of our broken systems, our wrongful idolatry of wealth and whiteness, the health outcomes for babies and birthing parents of colour are even worse than they are for white families. 

If we were to undermine our national racism and undergird those most in need of healthcare and help, we could change that.

But the number one killer of pregnant and post-partum women in this country is not obstetric complications. It is homicide. Mostly by intimate partners, many with a gun.

I told another parish this week that even that tray of cookies for the women’s shelter at Christmas is violence reduction, because when we support women’s efforts to get out of abusive relationships, we save lives. We leave fewer orphans.

If we were to undermine our national idolatry of violence as a social tool and undergird efforts to remove lethal weapons from those with a track record of abuse, we would save lives. We would leave fewer orphans.

If Mother’s Day were a day to observe the commandments of Christ, our true Mother, to love God and to love one another as Christ has loved us, we would leave fewer orphans.

And if Mother’s Day is painful for you, I am so sorry. I remember the first one after we lost our first pregnancy. Knowing that Christ is her Mother, too, helped me to know that she was in safe and loving arms, even if they weren’t mine. But grief abides, I know. Lean on Jesus, lean into the heart of God. She will hold you. She will not leave you orphaned.

I imagine the Athenian in the marketplace of idols like that child in the supermarket, searching among the shrines for the right god, the right hand to hold, lost among the monuments to human pride, stumbling across the altar to the unknown god, and weeping, because he doesn’t know where else to turn.

And Paul says, “What you do not know, I have seen. And this God will not leave you bereft, or lost, or alone.”

For Christ is our true Mother, and She will not, has not, does not leave us orphaned.

Amen.

[i] “and our Saviour is our Very Mother in whom we be endlessly borne,[254] and never shall come out of Him.” Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love Digireads.com. Kindle Edition.

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One or the other

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

One says,
Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb;
another,
Thou shalt not covet the livestock.

One says,
Give as good as you get;
another,
Do not repay evil for evil,
but overcome evil with good.

One says,
I’d rather be sent down by twelve
than carried out by six;
another,
It is better to suffer for doing good
than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ
also

This Sunday’s readings include verses from 1 Peter 3: “It is better to suffer for doing good … than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered … the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:17-18)

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