The sin of Sodom

Posted on July 24, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Year C, Proper 12, track 2: Genesis 18:20-32

It reads more like a folktale than theology. God says to Abraham, “I’ve heard reports about this place called Sodom. I’m wondering if they’re true,” as though God could not see into the very souls of Abraham, Lot, and all in existence. And Abraham bargains for the lives of the righteous, as though God does not have mercy upon sinners and saints alike; as though we are not all a bit of both. (Genesis 18:20-32)

It reads like a folktale, and as such it has taken on a resonance that permeates our culture. When we think of Sodom, we think of sin. But when we think of the sin of Sodom, we often get it quite wrong.

Dozens of biblical references to Sodom and its destruction fall into a few patterns.

Some reference Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of faithlessness, of infidelity to God. Sometimes this is cast as adultery, but the context makes clear that this is idolatry. This is the turning aside from the God who has created us and covenanted with us and borne with us all our lives on this planet, to covet something altogether other. Echoing the story that follows our Genesis reading, Jude describes it as an unnatural lust for angels, a discontent with being human. (See Jude 1:5-7.) Like the story of the Tower of Babel, or the legend of the Nephilim, the image is of humanity breaking the bonds of Creator and creation, seeking to be something other than the humans that God made us to be.

And yet humanity was sufficient for Jesus. God willingly entered into our humanity, having more humility than we ourselves apparently possess.

Some use Sodom as a byword for the results of its destruction: the tale is told to explain how the salt flats along banks of the Dead Sea came into being, and to warn against future desolation. (See for example Deuteronomy 29:32, Zephaniah 2:9, Matthew 10:15 and parallels.) A modern-day prophecy along these lines might warn of our climate crisis, the wildfires that are devastating parts of our planet, the heat that is killing us. “Turn!” the prophets of climate change urge us: “Turn, or burn like the plains of Wyoming.” Even London is burning, not for its own sin alone, but for the recklessness of us all.

These references should warn us against categorizing the sin of Sodom as something specific to those people, in that city, in that story; the prophets recognize that the same danger awaits us all.

This is important, not only but righteously because for centuries, LGBTQ people, and particularly gay men, have been made scapegoats for the sins of Sodom, which had nothing to do with loving relationships, and everything to do with selfishness, violence, and blasphemy.

It is important to recognize what the sin of Sodom is and what it is not – and I will repeat until the cows come home that it has nothing whatsoever to do with love, or loving, or the delight of happy human relationships. It is important because when some of us make others of us scapegoats for the sins of the world, we miss our chance at repentance.

Ezekiel writes to Jerusalem, a city so full of its own satisfaction that it is fit to burst, a love letter from God, but it is a bitter letter, from a spurned lover: Jerusalem has forgotten her covenant with her beloved. Ezekiel writes that even Sodom and her daughters have not committed the crimes of her sister, Jerusalem. “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:50.) This is the perhaps most explicit description of Sodom’s sin that we find in the Bible: selfishness, pride, and contempt.

The judgement which was pronounced upon Sodom in the old folktale is the judgement pronounced upon Jerusalem and upon all of us, when we are faithless, dissatisfied with the wonderful and variegated humanity with which God has blessed us; when we either become self-righteous, or turn to other gods to fill our covetousness and our envy.

And yet, God entertains Abraham’s pleas to stay the hand of judgement, for the sake of the little bit of righteousness that exists among us, the spark of humanity, which is made in the image of God, that inhabits each of us. And yet, says Isaiah, just as Lot and his family were plucked as a brand from the burning fire (see Amos 4:11), God does not delight in our destruction. (See Isaiah 1:9-10.) And yet, as the arc of scripture unfurls, and the prophets post warnings, God is merciful. And yet, God not only sends angels disguised as men, but God becomes human, comes to us, lives with us, would die for us to save us from the tribulation that we are about to bring upon ourselves.

“I will restore their fortunes, the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughters, and I will restore your own fortunes along with theirs,” prophesies Ezekiel, “in order that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all that you have done, becoming a consolation to them.” (Ezekiel 16:53-54.)

In a divine twist, God uses mercy and forgiveness as the instruments to provoke repentance from Jerusalem, to bring hope even to the destroyed Sodom and the abandoned Samaria.

The folktale of Sodom’s destruction seeks on one level to explain the sulphurous landscape of the Dead Sea plains that lie between the fertile Jordan Valley and the Red Sea. Today, even the Dead Sea is dying, drying up as the planet warms. Yet it is Ezekiel, again, who has a word even for that desolate region, prophesying in a vision that even the Dead Sea will be restored to new life by the waters that flow from the new, the renewed Jerusalem. (See Ezekiel 47:1-12)

May we be the prophets we need for this time, this place, this peril; and may God continue to be merciful to saints and sinners alike, for as long as we are human, we are both.

The story of Sodom is one that has been repeated as a cautionary tale for generations, and it has done such harm when it has been wielded as a weapon against God’s beloved children, when it has been used to deny love. And yet, God is love. Even for us, there is hope in the mercy of Jesus Christ, who is the very life of our loving, liberating God.

Amen.

Image: Wildfire photo by Mike Newbry on Unsplash

Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon, story | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Heron

Posted on July 21, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

The heron is back. No doubt
it is not the same one as before.
This heron is taller, leaner,
fixes me with a bolder eye. No doubt
the old one is buried beneath the surface 
of shared memory, guiding this newcome
to fertile fishing grounds. No doubt
“One day tells its tale to another”; that 
which one has heard and known is passed
from shell to feather. No doubt
God is faithful from one season
to the next.

___________

Psalm 19:2 “One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another.”
Psalm 78:3-4 “That which we have heard and known, and what our forefathers have told us, we will not hide from their children.
   We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the Lord, and the wonderful works he has done.”

___________

This poem first appeared at the Episcopal Journal

Posted in poetry, prayer | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Where we sit

Posted on July 17, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for July 17, 2022: Year C Proper 11

Abraham was camped out at the oaks of Mamre, when God visited him and Sarah at their home. In a flurry of activity, Abraham set Sarah to making quick cakes of bread, then he ran to the field and picked out a calf, handing it to a servant to complete the preparations – he had that liberty – then he stands by his unexpected guests while they eat, attentive to their bodily needs (do angels have bodily needs?), but also to their wildly improbable message: you, Abraham, and Sarah are about to have a son.

Abraham and Sarah both laughed when they first heard that promise (see Genesis 17:17). Yet God is faithful and merciful, and apparently did not hold it against them.

Jesus visited Mary and Martha in their home at Bethany, and they scurried about like schoolgirls making ready. Then Mary sat at his feet, rapt with attention, while Martha continued to attend to the details that she was sure her hospitality demanded. In fact, she was so wrapped up in them that she forgot herself, and asked the guest of honour himself to intervene. Can you imagine hosting a dinner party and then telling your guests they are simply too much work for you? Jesus demurred, but kindly. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.” (Luke 10:42)

Sarah laughed, Martha forgot her manners, yet God is faithful and merciful, and, as Jesus has shown us, endlessly loving.

I am struck, reading these stories again, by their settings. Abraham was at the oaks of Mamre, which was most likely a shrine of sorts: he had chosen the site to pitch his tent as one of refuge, of contemplation.(1) He located himself on holy ground, then he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day, and looked up to find three men, three angels of the Lord, attending him.

Martha and Mary live in Bethany, on the far slope of the Mount of Olives, a stone’s throw from Jerusalem. They are close to the centre and climax of Jesus’ action on earth, and Mary wants only to become closer still, to sit at his feet, and to anoint them. Both sisters recognize Jesus for who he is, and they love him, and he loves them, too.

I found myself reflecting on these settings as I return from a General Convention that was busy and full and tight, as I remember the work that was done and all that is left to be done, the tasks we have set ourselves, and the commandments that God has given us.

We met against a background of violence. Even we arrived, there was tension between those who heard Baltimore as a code for danger, and those who saw its humanity through a more merciful and loving lens. We were told, moreover, that we would be in the tourist part of town, protected by economics from harm.

But while I was inside the Convention Center for the first time, registering, outside something had broken on the streets. A motorist apparently raged at some windscreen squeegee people, armed with a baseball bat. One of them struck back with a gun. Now a father of two is dead, and a child is charged as an adult with his murder.

Inside the Convention Center, we did a lot of work: we passed a budget, we reformed the budget process, we commissioned an audit of how we came by our wealth, and what reparations might be owed. We heard emotional testimony from those affected by our historical support of boarding schools for indigenous children. We agreed to re-read our common prayers with our eyes open and our hearts broken to the language of colonialism and white supremacy. We discussed the hospitality of our future Conventions and how we will protect the health and welfare of pregnant people in places where certain kinds of healthcare are hard to come by, even in an emergency.

But this is the setting against which we do our work. The inequality of labour and economics: Abraham ordering his servant to butcher and prepare a calf in short order, while he stands with his guests; Martha run off her feet and out of her mind. The violence that erupts between those who do not understand nor see one another as a father, as a child, as a person, but code them as an obstacle, an aggressor, or a threat.

We met, too, on holy ground, not because we hallowed it with prayers, anointed it with the promises that God has made to us, the church, and through us to the children of God: but because even in the valley of the shadow of death, there is no one who is beyond the reach of God’s mercy; because God so loved the world as to come among us, to live for us and die for us; because God is in the mayhem, with the living and the dying; because with God, nothing wonderful will be impossible, like peace, like justice, however outlandish and improbable it may seem; because God’s mercy endures forever, and everywhere.

Abraham had positioned himself and his home in a holy space in readiness to receive the messengers of God. Martha and Mary lived likewise, and Mary made sure that she did not miss a moment of Jesus’ time among them, because she knew where it would end. That was what she meant when she anointed him (John 12). She knew, because she paid attention. Abraham and Sarah heard the angels’ promise, because they paid attention. They placed themselves in the presence of the Spirit of God, and that, too, is our work, and our joy, and our promise.

They still laughed when they heard what the angels had to say, and Martha still stumbled, and Jesus caught her, “Martha, Martha,” and bid her sit with her sister next to him.

We are distracted with many things, and there are many things that rightly call for our attention. But if we can locate ourselves in the presence of God, at the feet of Christ, at the foot of the Cross; if we can remember that we occupy holy ground – and in all the wonders of the universe, in the vastness of the abyss, there is nowhere that is not holy ground -; if we set alarms as reminders to pray, and never hit snooze; if we will make time, in the heat of the day and its demands, in the cool of the night and its shadows, to pay attention to the presence of God, the gentle voice of Jesus, we will find mercy, perhaps even mercy enough to share with the living and the dying.

If we will prepare ourselves and live with prayer and pay attention to the Word of God, not only within the walls of the church, or our own conventional work, but especially when we think there is no time, no place for it, out in the world, then we will be ready with Abraham and Sarah for the improbable promises of God, for unexpected laughter, for mercy, and hope, even joy; for such is the irrepressible grace of God, and it is only by God’s grace that we live.

(1) See W Sibley Towner, Genesis, Westminster Bible Companion series (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 169

Posted in sermon, story | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

At the intersection, revisited

Posted on July 10, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

At the intersection of arrogance
and mercy a memorial seeps
into the earth: oil from the olive,
water from the enemy,
blood of the wounded, its anthem
a tattoo of pilgrim feet released
from the mountaintop, hurrying
down. Underground it feeds
roots of weeds and olive trees.
One springs up for a day, wreaks
its seeds and withers;
the other stands staunch witness
to the precipitous descent of violence
and the breathless, dangerous rise of love.

I am away at General Convention and not preaching today. However, listening to this morning’s Gospel of the parable of the Good Samaritan, envisioning the steep and scary road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, I was moved to revisit also the intersection referenced in yesterday’s prayer poem, to seek hope in the mercy that Jesus related. Where is our mercy? Where is our hope?

Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, story | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

At the intersection

Posted on July 9, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

At the intersection of futility and rage
hangs a monument to discord,
its anthem the harsh horn punctuated
by arguments, epithets, and gunshots.
It is not rooted in earth or tarmac,
not rendered in stone or broken glass.
You will breathe it unknowing in air
hung heavy with pollutants
dampened but never washed clean
by rain that falls like a lament
and rises like grief, the ghost
of a sigh murmuring beneath
the breath of the street preacher:
Vanity; all is vanity.

Posted in current events, gun violence, poetry, prayer | 1 Comment

Peace, and if not peace, then protest

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Even during and after the Civil War, Americans used Independence Day to argue and to advocate for their idea of America, their ideals for America. A project from Virginia Tech reports,

… a wide range of Americans — northern and southern, white and black, male and female, Democrat and Republican, immigrant and native born — all used the Fourth to articulate their deepest beliefs about American identity during the great crisis of the Civil War.
…  For everyone, the Fourth was a day to argue about who counted as an American and what that meant.[i]

Certainly, we are still debating what it means to be free, and whose life matters in America. I am aware, as we meet today, of our neighbours in Akron, and another family grieving for answers.

Jesus was not an American, except insofar as he was Everyman.

He began with peace: “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’” (Luke 10:5). If the house would not receive the kind of peace that belongs to the kingdom of God, the kind of peace preached by the Prince of Peace, the kind of uncompromising love and mercy that accompanied his lambs into the midst of the wolves – well then Jesus advised protest. “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.” (Luke 10:11)

How does the lamb protest against the wolves?

How do we, who know that the kingdom of God requires mercy, not sacrifice; love, not legalism; courage, not arrogance or violence; how do we offer peace to a world full of wolves? 

“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” writes Paul (Galatians 6:14)

I have probably shared this quote with you before, but I appreciate Donald Mackinnon’s warning not to take this kind of talk as simple and traditional piety. Instead, he reminds us, the cross, the crucifixion was as real and true and deadly a defeat as could be imagined. Christ crucified: my God!

“It is a lesson to be learnt from tragedy,” MacKinnon writes, “that there is no solution of the problem of evil; … In the Cross the conflicting claims of truth and mercy are reconciled by deed and not by word.”[ii]

The apostles, the seventy, return rejoicing in the power that they have handled and handed out: “Even the demons submit to us!” And Jesus responds, “Yes; and I have seen Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Nevertheless.”

Nevertheless, Jerusalem and the cross await.

Jesus did not come to start a cult, nor a country. He did not come into the world for a select few people, twelve, or twenty, or seventy. He had no desire to keep the kingdom of God to or for himself, nor was he in any mood to argue about who should belong. Instead, he sent out lambs into the midst of wolves, loving disciples into the unpeaceful world, and bid them become messengers of God, speaking peace, and leaving protest in their wake where that peace that passes our understanding was not welcomed.

I like how this gospel passage frames the disciples’ engagement with the world. Peace, but if not peace, then protest. Lambs among wolves do not resort to the tearing and shredding with teeth that typifies their oppressors; yet they have a voice, and a flock, and a shepherd upon whom to call. 

The disciples, the seventy have power, but it is used only in the service of healing. The only beings cast out, cast down, are demons. Even then, Jesus warns them not to bask in their own good deeds, but to revel instead in the mercy, the love, the life that the kingdom of God has brought near to them.

If it had just been for the select few, for him and his crew, he could have stayed safe, done some good, cast out some demons, unmasked a few wolves in sheep’s clothing. But the Lamb of God was sent for the sins of the whole world, including ours.

We are living in wolfish times, full of appetite and anger, a pack mentality it sometimes seems; but the Lamb of God, our own Good Shepherd still sends us out to speak peace, and to bring healing where we may, with acts, with deeds of mercy, and of grace; to protest inhospitality and inhumanity to our siblings and cousins made in God’s image wherever it is found.

An email from the Episcopal Public Policy Network last week addressed the persistence of hard times, even of evil, and our constant need to boast only in the cross, that ignominious defeat that brought a whole new way of life, of victory, especially when the world seems wolfishly ravenous in its appetite for unmercy and unlove:

As Christians, we believe that Christ already is victorious. And so, even if the odds are long, even if we face defeat after defeat and do not see a way ahead, even if we feel that we are fighting the long defeat, we remain steadfast, our eyes fixed on the cross. As advocates, this means we continue to carry out our work and strive for justice. We do not do so because we will win every time, because we won’t. We do not do so because we are assured of progress, because we are not. We recognize that on a human scale, we may face defeat. We keep striving for justice because that is what we are called to do.[iii] 

If we feel as though defeat is always at hand, may it be a reminder of the cross of Christ, and be turned to our hope. If we feel as though the world is at war with itself, with us; if we think the world we thought we knew is strange and full of wolves, may it be a reminder of our own status as lost sheep, dependent on the love of our shepherd to find us and bring us home. If we feel as though peace has dissolved into protest, may we lift up our feet and find ourselves on the way of the Cross.

May we learn to boast of nothing but Christ, and him crucified; may we find our deepest identity in his merciful love.

Amen

[i] https://civilwar.vt.edu/mapping-the-fourth-of-july-in-the-civil-war-era/

[ii] Donald MacKinnon, “Atonement and Tragedy”, in Borderlands of Theology and other essays (Wipf and Stock, 2011), 97-104, here quoted 104

[iii] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ogr/why-do-we-advocate/

Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

#GunstoGardens

Posted on June 29, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Pistols into ploughshares

Starve a fever, feed cold 
steel barrels into the forge

Beneath scorched earth cool clay
the kiln at earth’s core;
creation’s heart of stone

Beneath the concrete floor
reverb of the hammer starts a rumour
 – revolution, evolution, healing – 
over the anvil, fever breaks

swords into ploughshares
long guns into garden tools
threat into the promise of
life grown from a mustard seed …

This poem first appeared at https://episcopaljournal.org/pistols-into-ploughshares/

Posted in current events, gun violence, poetry, prayer | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Among the living and the dead

Posted on June 19, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for June 19th 2022

I woke up yesterday morning thinking of the people of St Stephen’s in Vestavia Hills, about the altar guild getting the church dressed for Sunday morning, and the Rector doing his damnedest to get a flight home. About the people, each and every one debating internally whether or how to show up.  I wondered who will preach, and what they will say to a congregation in shock.

Of course, they will preach the Gospel. For church people, the reason we are here is because Jesus called us to him, to hear him, to know him, to listen to his charge – to love God and all people, to forgive where forgiveness seems impossible, to care for the grieving – and to rest in his embrace when we need it. He has gone to the grave for us, and he does not leave lonely those who walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

The man – the Gerasene man now, not that other one – the man lived among the tombs (Luke 8:26-39). As I have written elsewhere,[i] he was a local boy, a man of the city. The people knew him, knew his worst. They had tried imprisoning him with guards and shackles; they had driven him out to live alone; he lived among the tombs, among the dead, and not among the living.

The man, from accounts that I have read, who murdered three people at a potluck supper Thursday evening was known to some of his dinner companions. He was described at a press conference as an occasional attendee of the church. One police update said that he was seated as one of them, welcomed to the potluck table before he opened fire. A statement from the family of the first person to die by his hand said this:

The family of Walter Bartlett Rainey (Bartlett) wishes to thank every person who has reached out to offer prayers and a thousand different kindnesses to ease the loss we all all feel acutely today while still finding it so hard to believe. Bartlett was a husband of 61 years to Linda Foster Rainey, and we are all grateful that she was spared and that he died in her arms while she murmured words of comfort and love into his ears. We also feel a sense of peace that his last hours were spent in one of his favorite places on earth, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, a place that welcomes everyone with love. We are proud that in his last act on earth, he extended the hand of community and fellowship to a stranger, regardless of the outcome. Bart Rainey was strong in faith and secure in the love of his family and friends. He made everyone he encountered feel special. We hope you will honor him by extending your hand to those around you who are in need. We—his wife, children, and grandchildren–will miss him

My God, what love is bound up in those words.

When the demons saw Jesus, they were afraid. They begged for their lives. When Jesus showed mercy even to the demons, they proved their destructive nature by plunging the herd of swine into the sea. Did he not know it must be so? It was their nature to be evil spirits. It was, it is Jesus’ nature to be love.

When things like Thursday happen, it makes it easier to justify exclusion, an abundance of caution. With the townspeople, we are afraid, and not without reason, not without evidence. Yet I notice that Jesus does not take the former demoniac away with him, as he requests and everyone would prefer. He, Jesus, insists that they work it out among themselves, how to live together, how to be human to one another, even knowing that the evil spirits may return. “Tell them all that God has done for you,” Jesus urges him. Preach the gospel of Christ’s incarnation and healing mercy. 

The man who perpetrated murder in an Episcopal Church this week has been charged with capital crimes, meaning that his prosecutors will seek the death penalty. But that is not what we do. Our church has been consistent in insisting that we deal in life, not death. That does not mean that this man should not be restrained and that a deeply wounded community does not need to know that it is safe from further harm from him. It does mean that we, that they, will need to work out how to pursue justice with mercy, life with humanity. It is a tall call.

Again, elsewhere I have written, “Everyone is welcome in the house of God, but not all behaviours are welcome. Everyone is welcome, and for the sake of safety and dignity, we set boundaries for how to be together respectfully.”[ii] We have had to navigate that line ourselves over the years and recently. “We all have fallen short of the glory of the “All Are Welcome” sign”, myself included and in particular.[iii]

This weekend, we saw, too, the anniversary of the Mother Emmanuel murders, the racist massacre of the Charleston Nine. Trouble is never far from us. Today, we celebrate Juneteenth, the complicated commemoration of good news too long delayed, and the beginning of the end of an atrocity committed against an entire image of God in God’s people. And no, I did not forget that it’s Father’s Day, too.

It is the nature of the world to be complicated, to be confused and confusing. It is the nature of God to have mercy upon those whom God has made, even in our confusion, our disobedience, our idolatry, our sin. It is the nature of certain spirits to pursue evil. It is the nature of Jesus, anyway and always, to be love.

Not for nothing do we pray today from Psalm22, which we so often associate with trouble, dereliction, and despair; that cry from the Cross. But today, we remember that God is not far from us, nor from our cousins in Alabama, and we pray that they will know the comfort of Christ’s rod and staff, to guide them and protect them in the valley of shadows:

18 Be not far away, O Lord; *you are my strength; hasten to help me.
19 Save me from the sword, *my life from the power of the dog.
21 I will declare your Name to my brethren; *in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.

[i] Whom Shall I Fear? Urgent Questions in an Age of Violence (Upper Room Books, 2021), 62

[ii] Whom Shall I Fear?, 59

[iii] Whom Shall I Fear?, 60

Posted in current events, gun violence, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon, Whom Shall I Fear? | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Goose

Posted on June 17, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

On the lakeshore stood a goose. The rest of the flock were in the water, feeding on the flotsam that the impending storm was churning up as the wind announced its imminence. This goose was having trouble. One leg was bad. In the water, it was at the mercy of the currents. On land, it was no help. The goose was trying to hop up the bank, but it was clearly heavy going.

I don’t know that Canada geese are anyone’s favourite bird. They make a noise, they make a mess, they slow down traffic, they are ubiquitous and often rude. They have a reputation for aggression that makes one wary of offering help.

What’s more, what could I do? I have no expertise in bird veterinary services. Just catching and calming the thing would be a trial for us both. But there we were, the goose and I, watching one another, and one of us was injured, and the other was whole.

I told the goose that I would try to find help.

A nature center lies beside my walk home. They often do animal rehab. I stopped in and asked if they had any interest in an injured goose. “Can you catch him and bring him in?” asked the animal man. 

Back home, I scouted out a goose-sized box in the basement. I retrieved from the garage the leather gloves I just acquired to assist me at the forge. I threw in a cloth bag and a couple of towels and drove back to the beach.

The goose was on the water. He was still far behind his flock, but he was out of my reach. I stopped back in the nature center with the update. I prayed for his safety, for the absence of pain, that his flock would take care of him. There was nothing else to do.

Perhaps if I had acted sooner I could have helped, not that he would have thanked me. Perhaps he would have flown away. Perhaps, perhaps. In any case, I knew that just because I was inadequate to the task, that did not let me off the hook for doing what I could to try to relieve the suffering of another creature. Seeing his pain made me, in some obscure way, responsible for his healing.

Perhaps I have heard that pesky parable one too many times.

I know that I will think of that goose whenever I feel inadequate to facing up to the pain that demands address: the frightening paroxysms of racism, misogyny, transphobia and homophobia, xenophobia, these things that are not really fear but loathing. I will think of him when the chronic pain of gun violence feels beyond reach, beyond help, beyond healing.

Once you have seen them, passing by on the other side is simply not option.

Posted in current events, gun violence, story | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

It’s not nothing

Posted on June 15, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

This weekend, as we were setting up, or taking down, or hammering out the details for Saturday’s gun buyback and vigil to end gun violence at church, somewhere in Washington a group of senators announced a bipartisan breakthrough on gun regulation legislative proposals.

Forgive me for not pinning down the exact timing. There was a lot going on.

But that’s just it. A new agreement, after decades of petulant refusal to budge on firearms regulation – decades in which mass shootings have become a cultural phenomenon, and gun violence has become the leading cause of death for children and teens in America – this bipartisan (my auto-text suggests) “effort” is something. But in its details, many bemoan, it is not a lot.

And again, this is the rub. On Saturday, scores of volunteers and interested parties joined together to lament, repent, and recommit to ending gun violence, and as a sign and symbol of our commitment we took in guns from anyone who was willing to drive through our parking lot, and we rewarded them with a modest gas-and-grocery gift card, about a score of people with their stories and their secrets and their unwanted, sometimes scary, guns.

We took in north of forty firearms, of various types and heritage. An officer ran the numbers: none were stolen (we set the officer away from the guests so that anonymity would be preserved: if he flagged something, he would not know from which car it came). In a way, this confirmed the argument of some who said, “No criminal is going to give up their gun for a measly gift card!”

Of course not. But gun violence is not only the criminal activity, the atrocities we see on the news. It is the deaths from suicide, the childish “accidents”, the trauma that has a nation so on edge that it seems as though any loud bang could be the death of us. If doing nothing in the face of this new reality is not an option, then doing something is worth the effort.

The people who came to us on Saturday were (almost unanimously) grateful for the opportunity to turn their guns into something life-giving; to remove danger from their homes; to make an act of change, which in the Christian tradition we might call repentance.

The turn, the decision, is only a beginning, however. That’s one reason that we held the Vigil in the afternoon, to cement our commitment, in solidarity with a broader community, to make sure that we remained aware of the movement of the Spirit that has been known to hover, to rest, but never to relinquish the work of breathing life into the people of God and the creation.

What we did is not enough, but it was, I believe, inspired. What happened in DC this weekend is certainly not enough, nor is it yet even a done deal, but if it is a beginning, it is something. I remember learning about inertia in high school physics: a body at rest is inclined to continue to do nothing. A body that begins to move has the chance to collect momentum.

If we thought, on Saturday, that we were done, that we had done our part, it would be more than we imagined we could, and it would not be very much. But within an hour of our beginning, I had people asking me, telling me, advising me about “next time”, and next steps. There was movement, and there may even be momentum.

The danger exists in the celebration of any small progress of the corruption of complacency. The racism that killed in Buffalo, the undomesticated violence that triggered a massacre in Uvalde, the despair that steals lives daily continue to cry out for our attention, and to be disarmed.

But there is danger, too, in writing off the whispers of the Spirit, the slight breeze on the edge of hearing that, with a following wind, may become a perfect storm.

May her currents lift our wings.

[Jesus said] ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. ‘(Matthew 17:20)

Posted in current events, gun violence, Whom Shall I Fear? | Tagged , | Leave a comment