Bread, bridge, stones

Posted on February 26, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the first Sunday of Lent

There’s a fable by Edwin Friedman called, “The Bridge”.[i] In it, a man on a mission is interrupted by a stranger on a bridge, who asks him to hold the end of a rope he is carrying. The man obliges, upon which, the stranger, securely attached to the other end of the rope, jumps off the bridge. The fable unfolds as the protagonist considers his obligations to the stranger who has now put him in a frankly untenable position.

Now, we are familiar, through our prayers, with the fact that we are dependent on one another and on God for our life and its welfare: we pray during Compline, “O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: … and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.”[ii] We are, in all sort of ways, yoked together, and we are nothing without the grace of God.

The second temptation, though, is enacted by the stranger, who by his action chooses to abdicate all accountability for his life, with all of its gifts and its promise and its problems; he throws off all responsibility for its (literal) trajectory, and tries to make another bear its entire weight.

The temptation to fall from the pinnacle of the temple is less, “Let go and let God” than “Let go and force God’s hand”; or, as Jesus would have it, “Let go and test God”. Let go and try to manipulate your Maker. Then wait and see how that goes.

Oh, it is a temptation, to put all of the weight of the world on someone else; to shed accountability by means of another’s responsibility; to elude guilt by making a scapegoat; to become helpless, and in doing so, pretend to innocence.

We see it in the stories of Genesis. You know, although we didn’t read it today, that Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent, for their disobedience; yet Eve told the serpent the command that God had given them, and as we did read this morning, Adam was right there with her – he was as much a part of the whole thing as was she.

If the first temptation was to eat what should not be eaten (and we will come back to that), the second was to deny all responsibility for what was consumed; to pretend that we were taken in.

It’s how we deal with racism, with sexism, with poverty: we didn’t create these conditions, we didn’t know right from wrong, we didn’t see …

It’s how we deal with one another, sometimes: if they’d behaved better, I’d behave better. They shouldn’t be so sensitive. They should just get a job. I didn’t think they were serious. I didn’t know, they didn’t tell me, it was loaded.

The man on the bridge, in the story, the man on a mission left holding the rope was not oblivious to his new and unwanted responsibility. He was, whether he liked it or not, for now his brother’s keeper. He tried to help the stranger by handing him back the agency for his own rescue:

“While he could not pull this other up solely by his own efforts, if the other would shorten the rope from his end by curling it around his waist again and again, together they could do it. …

“Now listen,” he shouted down. “I think I know how to save you.” And he explained his plan.”[iii]

I’ll let you look up the ending of the story for yourselves, and decide on its moral. I think it’s taken us about as far as its rope will stretch; while “our common life depends upon each other’s toil”, our salvation is not in our own hands, it is the gift of God.

But, oh, if we would be human to one another, and to ourselves; own our agency, help those at the end of their rope as we are able, and participate in our own rescue, through repentance and a return to the community of love … God has never yet let us down, let us go.

The temptation to abscond from our own lives, our agency, our responsibility, by throwing ourselves not even on the mercy but on the miracle-working of God, strikes me as peculiarly selfish. In the third temptation, the pitfalls of absolute power are obvious. In the first, the hunger for bread is thoroughly human and understandable; it is no sin to eat. But in the centre, here on the pinnacle of the temple, the temptation to make our lives everyone’ and anyone’s responsibility but our own, at least once we have reached the age of maturity, is a thorough corruption of the human spirit, and the image in which we were made.

Of course, Jesus, who is all integrity and wisdom, will not fall for the devil’s tricks.

Jesus, whose very life embodies the self-giving love of God, a life lived not for himself alone but for the whole world, will not fall prey to the temptations of selfishness.

Which brings us back to the first temptation. Interestingly, although the second and third temptations switch places throughout the Gospels, this one always comes first. I wonder what that means.

There is no sin in eating bread, in sustaining body and soul together. There is no virtue in fasting for its own sake, but only if it is used to bring us closer to the God who sustains our lives, and reminds us of the hunger for righteousness which seeks the kingdom of heaven, in which all are fed, and forgiven, and beloved.

What Jesus resists is the temptation, once more, to selfishness. When we see Jesus with bread in the Gospels, it is always to share. Whether it is feeding the multitude on the mountainside, or remembering the plea of the child: “Who among you when your child asks for bread would give her a stone?”, or giving of himself on the night before he died, breaking bread and handing it to his disciples, saying, “Take, eat: this is my body”; not falling but freely giving of himself. Not falling, but giving freely of oneself; for that is how we find ourselves among the ministe

[i] Edwin H. Friedman, “The Bridge”, in Friedman’s Fables (The Guildford Press, 1990)

[ii] Book of Common Prayer, 134

[iii] Friedman, “The Bridge”

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The story of Barry Baker

Posted on February 25, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A little legend for Lent

Once upon a time, an indeterminate number of centuries ago, a little boy was found on the Barry Island beach. The child, not more than a year old, was wrapped in a blanket and laid in a basket to shield him from the stiff sea breeze, and he was sleeping peacefully when he was stumbled across – almost literally – by the village baker. Where he had come from was a mystery, to be sure, but a hastily-assembled town meeting decided that he must stay; he was their gift and their treasure. Because the baker had found him, he went to live at the bakery with the Master Baker and her wife. The villagers called him Barry, since he was theirs, and Baker seemed as good a surname as any.

Barry Baker grew up like any child, although on a summer’s day the clouds reflected in his eyes seemed to tell of faraway places and unseen dimensions. He was liked well enough, and was a great help in the bakery.

When Barry was about grown, a terrible drought fell across South Wales. The rivers stopped running, the crops failed, the lambs cried for milk, and their mothers lowed mournfully. There was a terrible hunger in the Vale. 

The time came in which there was no more flour at all with which to bake bread. The people dragged themselves through the days, forty or more, of emptiness. They were losing hope.

At the end of a particularly tortuous day, the baker and her wife kissed Barry good night and said goodbye; they no longer relied on the rising of another sun. 

But Barry did not go to bed. He went instead to the baking counter, and drew together a large clump of thin air. He began to knead, as though kneading a great lump of dough. He kneaded away at the nothingness, and he worked so hard and so long that droplets of sweat ran down his hair and fell into a puddle on the countertop. He kneaded away such that the nothingness at last seemed almost to begin to turn into somethingness.

The next morning, the baker thought she was hallucinating; a new phase of the unchosen fast. There was the delicious aroma of fresh bread coming from the bakery kitchen. She went to shake her wife awake, but she was already sitting on the edge of the bed, her mouth open and her eyes wild: “Is this heaven?” she asked.

They crawled down the stairs and found the fire ablaze and a perfect loaf, fresh from the oven, steaming quietly on the countertop. They threw open the doors and called hoarsely to their neighbours to come, come quickly!

They divided the bread between them, savouring every morsel, and they found beside it even a pool of water, fresh and clear, on the bakery counter. A shallow dip had appeared, as though worn away by a century of dripping water, and there was enough to dampen everyone’s lips and tongue as they enjoyed the bread between them.

Only one person was missing from the simplest and most sustaining of feasts. The baker and her wife would hear their neighbours often sorrow that Barry seemed to have left just as salvation was within their grasp. But in their hearts, they knew where he was. 

After the drought was over, and the times of plenty returned, long after the baker was old and gray, the village would gather annually at the bakery to share bread and toast with water sweet as wine the memory of Barry Baker.

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Bread

Posted on February 24, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A little Lenten story

I made my own bread when the children were small, with the aid of a machine. They ate it ravenously, sometimes playing Eucharist: “This is my toast, given for you.”

My eldest bequeathed me a recipe that needs no kneading, no machine but the oven. It is the easiest, the most forgiving bread recipe. I have made it many times, in many variations. I have sometimes made it to share, but more often it sits upon the counter at home, barely cooling, tempting me to gorge myself on its soft, warm flesh.

I bought a smaller cast iron oven in which to lessen the lure. I should have bought larger, or more, multiplied the loaves so that I have no choice but to give them away, to share the satisfaction of solid, fluffy bread, the many variations, the “taste and see”, to defeat the temptation not of enjoyment, but of selfishness.

Well, of course you want the recipe! (The photo is not of this bread. I ate it all.) https://tasty.co/recipe/dutch-oven-jalapeno-cheddar-bread

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Stigmata?

Posted on February 23, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A little Lenten story

She found a strange bruise on one foot –

stigmata, perhaps, if it spread? –

but it soaked away in the bath instead,

leaving an emptiness to blossom

somewhere behind her left breast, unseen.

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Ash Wednesday

Posted on February 22, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

We are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Lent is a time, if nowhen else is, to get real about who we are, what we are, how we are. It is a time, Jesus says, to forget about performing for the public. It is a time to get close to our maker, closer than is comfortable; to take off the masks and the fine words and the perfect prayers, and to be the dust and ashes of ourselves in the presence of the one who breathes dust and ashes into life.

We are dust, and we are ashes. We are lighter than a breath, ready to be erased by the slightest breeze; yet also we smudge, leaving our mark on those we touch, for good or for ill. We are elements moulded into the image of life, of God.

We are dust, and we are moved, swept up by the breath of God.

Lent is the time to take courage, to have the structure to pull our dust together and face God, face the one who is unseen but who sees us more clearly than any mirror, to be real, to be honest, to ask forgiveness, to expect renewal, to practice being exactly whom God has created us to be.

It is not about piety, choosing the right fast or the correct discipline, taking up the perfect number of extra duties, laying down the measured amount of penitence. 

God sees us, sees our secret selves, our inner being, our dust and ashes, our shining faces. God sees through us.

Lent is a time, if nowhen else is, not to perform piety, but to practice humility; not to perform beneficence, but to practice generosity; not to perform mourning but to practice grief, for all that is done that should have been left undone; for all that should have been done that has been left undone; with tears and trembling, and the sure and certain knowledge that God, who is compassion and mercy, sees us.

Lent is a time to remember that although we are but dust, God is life itself. Although we are but ashes, God burns with a passion for us that has no equal and makes no sense. Although we are lighter than the breath of an angel, we have weight and value on the scales of God’s mercy. Nothing, no one whom God has made can escape without being beloved.

We are dust, and it is truly extraordinary what God can do with that.

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Shrove Tuesday

Posted on February 21, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

O God of branches and hosannas,
forgive the dried state of last year’s palms;
trampled by Holy Week and scant adoration,
they have desiccated, as our hearts
too often do, too.

Kindle them, our hearts and our psalms,
to fresh devotion.

Let their very ashes be the sign
of our sifting and turning,
awakening once more to the mercy
of You.

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Dwelling in glory

Posted on February 19, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany in Year A, February 19 2023

There is a temptation on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany to look forward to Lent. The foreshadowing is there in the forty days and nights that Moses spent on the mountain, and in the Collect, the warning that we will need strengthening for the days to come, the days of the Cross.

But Peter says something, on the mountaintop, that is often brushed away but, whether he knew it or not, contains some wisdom. “It is good for us to be here; let us dwell in the moment a while longer.”

Forty days and forty nights Moses remained on the mountain, and that after he had been summoned into the cloud on the seventh day. But the people had no patience, and by the time Moses returned to them, although they could see his congress with the Lord, in lightning and in fire on the top of the mountain, they had made themselves a golden calf, an idol because they could not bear to wait upon God, to stay in the moment that God had created in that cloud covering the mountaintop.

I don’t know how long it felt to Moses, whether the time passed slowly, or whether he opened his eyes as though from a brief dream; either way, the come-down was brutal. No doubt, he wished he could have stayed a little longer in the cloud.

So instead of looking towards Lent, let’s dwell in the season of the Epiphany, God’s self-revelation, just a moment longer.

Just before Moses enters the cloud, the elders of Israel, the people of the Exodus, encounter God. In an astonishing theophany, God allows Godself to be seen by the likes of Aaron and at least seventy-two other elders. They eat and drink in the divine presence, proving perhaps that they have not given up their mortality, their humanity, in order to gaze upon God.

It is this generosity of God’s unveiling that makes Aaron’s participation and even precipitation of the golden calf debacle all the more cynical.

Just before Peter, James, and John find themselves enveloped in the cloud of glory with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Peter has had an epiphany of his own, realizing out loud that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And still, such faith does not free him yet from quailing at the spectre of the Cross.

In fact, it takes repeated exposure to the truth and glory of God’s incarnation – law, prophets, transfiguration, resurrection, the transformative power of Pentecost – before Peter is fully ready to live into his calling as the Rock, the bedrock of the church.

It takes time for the glory of God to sink in, to make our bones tingle with it, to make our hearts glad of it, and our spirits ready to respond in kind.

It is good to dwell in it a little longer.

At the foot of the mountain, people are making golden calves, idols out of metal and their own hands. They are worshipping gold and making sacrifice to that which cannot give life.

At the foot of the mountain there is disease and terror, and the helplessness of the disciples who have no clue how to make it right, until Jesus should return, descend, and cast out the demons for them.

At the foot of the mountain lies the road to Jerusalem, to the Cross, to the tomb, to the emptiness of the next day.

It is good to dwell a little longer in the foreshadowing, the fore-brightening, of the resurrection.

You may have seen or heard on the news or the social medias something about a “revival” taking place at a small Christian college in Kentucky. For two weeks, they (whoever they are) have kept the chapel service going around the clock, dwelling in moments of prayer and spiritual song, conversation and hopeful conversion. Responses to the event have ranged from excitement to bewilderment, even suspicion. How long, some wonder, can these students and others remain on the mountaintop, while in the foothills earthquakes happen, disease, death, and rampant unrighteousness with idols and metal that cannot offer life?

It is good to dwell in the glory of God, but even the President of this evangelical college, Timothy Tennent, warns, “Despite the endless coverage in social media and the regular media which is calling this a revival, I think it is wise to see this, at the current phase, as an awakening.  Only if we see lasting transformation which shakes the comfortable foundations of the church and truly brings us all to a new and deeper place can we look back, in hindsight and say “yes, this has been a revival.”  An awakening is where God begins to stir and awaken people up from their spiritual slumber. … But, we must keep our hearts and eyes fixed on Jesus and ask for him to complete the work he has begun so that, over time, there is a lasting transformation in the lives of those who are being touched by God.”

It is good to dwell in the glory of God, but only if by doing so we are awakened to the presence of God in all the world, in our daily lives in the foothills of glory, in the cloud of everyday unknowing, in the dilemmas and desperation of all that assails us, and those around us. If we have seen Christ transfigured into the image of resurrection, can we see our neighbours transfigured into images of the living Christ, whom we seek to serve on every available occasion? “For the glory of God is a living human; and the life of a person consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God … affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God.”[i] If we have seen the glory of God, can we see a better way of life than the idolatry of the world toward gold and metal that cannot offer a single breath?

When Moses became aware of the transgressions of his people, how they had turned from the true God to the worship of gold and metal that cannot give life, he could not leave them to their folly or their fate. He came down from the mountain with the tablets of stone in his hands, and he confronted them with the anger of righteousness against such abominations. And he interceded for the people before God, because he had, in those forty days, imbibed something of the compassion of God.

When the disciples heard the voice of God coming from the cloud on the mountaintop, they were terrified. Their legs crumpled, their faces fell. But the voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him,” and Jesus said, “Do not be afraid,” and led them trembling down the hill toward everything that was to come next, beginning with the healing of a child.

O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; and by this beholding may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory. Amen.

[i] Irenaus, Adverses Haereses 4.34.5-7

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Fall silent

Posted on February 18, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A short (but true) story for the Sunday Last before Lent: “We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven” (2 Peter 1)

_______

Every day, at around about eleven in the morning, the world stood still. Teachers fell quiet mid-lesson, principals mid-lecture, parents part-way through a nursery rhyme. No one heard a baby cry or the teller call out, “Next!” It was an accidental, almost religious observation – a moment not of silence, since the sky filled the earth with sound such as none could counter, but of the withholding of breath, a suspended sentence.

After the iconic birds were grounded, the opposite transpired: the skies fell silent, only the scrawl of vapour left to tell their tale, while the world prattled on, oblivious still to the voice of heaven.

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A psalm of lament

Posted on February 14, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

How long, Compassionate One, how long
will you allow our angry spirits to arm themselves
against their own children, our own children, your own children?

Every night we soak our news cycle with tears;
in the morning, the sun rises only to illuminate fresh wounds.

Not a day goes by that isn’t the anniversary
of someone’s grief, some atrocity.

We wring our hands, 
we mangle-press our souls with mourning;
our tears add salt to the wounded.

To whom will we turn, and who will save us
from the heart’s desire for blood?

Idols of metal will not breathe life,
and icons with feet of clay do not walk their words.

What then; are we left to our own devices?
But they are deadly.

No: we turn to you, Compassionate One,
with your endless forbearance and infinite mercy,
and pray that your patience will one day break;

because it seems some days that ours,
our capacity for carnage,
is everlasting.

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Fire and water

Posted on February 12, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, 12 February 2023, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

I heard something phenomenal this week. It was on a call with the folks who’ve taught me this business of turning guns into garden tools, helping our little congregation run buybacks for our broader community. 

One district, far from here, has had trouble with youngsters, teens and preteens, bringing guns to school. We know the problem. We’ve seen it here, too. Children who are afraid of their peers on the walk to and from home, those with scores to settle, those too young and too foolish to differentiate between bravado and brazenness, those whose hearts harbour violence too big for their bodies, too advanced for their age, who have inherited dangerous ideas from those around them. Those whose adults have failed them.

Anyway, in this other district, the discovery of a firearm in a student’s possession means immediate and irreversible expulsion from the school system. Leaving troubled teens to work it out for themselves is not everybody’s idea of wisdom, so someone got a grant to put together a diversion program that teaches these very children who have transgressed to beat guns into garden tools. The ones found with the firearm in their locker are now forging a new future, for the weapons and for themselves. The ones who may have been sorely tempted to choose death have been given a chance to grow a new life.

Of course, it’s not going to work for everyone. But for those whose lives are changed by the program, it’s not just about the lessons, or the forge, or the little bit of money they earn from working the metal. It’s also, of course, about the relationships that they are forging with mentors devoted to life, to peace, to them. Like I said, it sounds phenomenal.

Because the phenomenon of forgiveness, of second chances, of investment in those who have little enough to offer, on the surface, is not widespread enough, not commonplace enough in our culture and society. It’s certainly something I could work on, too.

Ben Sira writes, “He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.” (Sirach 15:16)  Do we choose to baptize, or to burn, those who come before us in dire need of a good word? And again, “Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.” (Sirach 15:17)

We can choose how to deal with one another, in which currency we barter: life or death.

Even when it seems as though all agency has been taken away, when the very earth turns on its inhabitants, and death chooses all too many, thousands upon thousands; still, we see the response of those who choose to spend their lives rescuing, helping, uplifting others, where they can, as they are able, and we recognize in their service something of God, who is compassion, and mercy, and the Creator of love.

The thing about pursuing an ethic of life, an ethic of love, is that it’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of humility, a lot of patience, and a lot of forgiveness. Jesus sets out the barriers of perfection, the impossibility of consistent and undeviant adherence to the code: never get angry, never desire, never despair. Even Jesus got angry. The psalmist calls people fools left, right, and centre.  Who among us has never made a promise we couldn’t hope to keep?

The image Jesus sets out of the person approaching the altar, who remembers suddenly the person they offended, or defrauded, or damaged, and runs out of the church to track them down and fall at their feet with an apology; it’s very dramatic. Maybe sometimes it is within our power to make things right with those we know hold us to be in the wrong. More likely, each of us approaches in the knowledge of our sin, in the sorrow of the things done and left undone that cannot be made right, because it’s too late or too little or we don’t even know who we hurt. 

So we come with our feeble promises: I will do better, I will love more, I will live more faithfully, more humbly, more mercifully, I swear … Oh, swearing was off the table, too.

God knows how many chances we will need, how many dead-ends we will choose, how often we will have to return, to leave our souls at the altar and hope to have them returned in a better state than we left them, before we are ready to go into the world to make right what we have gotten wrong, to forgive others before ourselves, to humble ourselves before the image of God among us. 

“For great is the wisdom of the Lord;
he is mighty in power and sees everything;…
and he knows every human action.” (Sirach 15:18-19)

“He has placed before you fire and water;
stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.
Before each person are life and death,
and whichever one chooses will be given.” (Sirach 15:16-17)

We come again and again because we choose life, the one who gives us life, the one who saves our life. The one who forgives us, and gives us every chance and opportunity to forgive ourselves and others. The one who shows us the way into life. The one who sets before us fire and water: Spirit and baptism; the pillar of fire and the divided waters of the Red Sea; the light of the world and the waters of creation. It’s a trick question, you see: in the end, there is no direction in which we can turn where God is not waiting for us, patient and long-suffering, waiting for us to choose to see Her.

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