Nevertheless, God persisted

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for 16 October 2022, Year C Proper 24

In the Geneva Bible Notes, late in the sixteenth century, someone commented upon this parable, “God will have us to continue in prayer, not to weary us, but to exercise us; therefore we must fight against impatience so that a long delay does not cause us to quit our praying.”[i]

Some of the people involved in creating this Bible translation and its annotations had fled their home country for fear of persecution. They were living in exile, refugees among like-minded neighbours in the heart of Europe, while in England Bloody Mary wielded her faith like a flaming sword, putting heretics, as she saw them, to the pyre. They had plenty need of patience, of the endurance of faith, and see how their words of encouragement have endured, and continue to challenge us today.[ii]

Paul, urging persistence in proclaiming the gospel, whether the time be favourable or not, told Timothy not to be stubborn and self-righteous, nor to be discouraged by the discouraging ears of the world (or its heretics), but to be persistent in patience, knowing that God’s compassion endures forever. (2 Timothy 3:14-4:5)

God wrestled with Jacob in the Jabbok, not to wear him down, but to build him up, to ready his conscience and his heart to meet his brother, whom he had wronged long before. God held Jacob in the water long enough to remind him to ask for a blessing, to remember God, to realize that God was with him as he journeyed home by the long road. (Genesis 32:22-31)

But the widow – what if the widow in the parable were not the innocent victim but the instigator of a lawsuit of vengeance? What if the judge knew it, and only acquiesced to shut her up, because his own conscience was not strong enough to resist her? What if he needed to pray persistently to train up his conscience and his courage? (Luke 18:1-8)

Amy-Jill Levine, Jewish New Testament scholar and author of Short Stories by Jesus, suggests that the judge, “may be prompted not by greed or even a preferential option for one class or another, but by irascibility, self-protection, or simply not wanting to be inconvenienced.”[iii] Perhaps he simply could not be bothered to do the work commended by the prophet Micah of doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with God – even though it was literally his job. (Micah 6:8)

God held onto Jacob, Timothy was enfolded in faith, Jesus, the Son of God, walked among us and remains with us, faithful to us; yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth, or will we have put our trust elsewhere: in vengeance, in the punishment of those who think otherwise than us, in the expulsion into exile of those fleeing persecution, in the false administration of justice, in powers and principalities?

What if this parable is about where we put our trust, how we exercise compassion, to whom it is that we pray?

Returning for a moment to Levine’s commentary, she writes, “The parable disturbs again because the only form of closure it creates is that in which widow and judge – and so readers – become complicit in a plan possibly to take vengeance and certainly not to find reconciliation. We may resist that complicity and so opt out of the system that promotes it. We may decide that court cases are not worth our time, that compassion is less time consuming and less corrupting than vengeance.”[iv]

What if our role in the parable is not that of the widow, but of the judge who really needs a change of heart, a conversion experience, to grow a spine and to do the work set before him: do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly alongside God?

What if our role in the parable is not to persist in unjust systems, but to turn instead to God, whose justice is absolute, whose mercy is everlasting, whose compassion endures forever, and for all?

Persistence, in and of itself, is of morally neutral value. The persistence of climate activists in pressing their cause is matched by the persistence of the world insisting it must continue as it always, or most recently has. 

Endurance can be for good or for ill. The endurance of racism that persists in our culture; the persistence of violence and vengeance that manifests in gun violence and the death penalty; the suffering that we demand must be endured before asylum is granted, or a safety order handed down, or truth be told; some things endure that should not.

But then, there is the persistence of the passionate who clamour for their freedom, for the freedom of others, for the good of the world. The doggedness of the parent who spent days and nights camped outside of the school district buildings in Uvalde demanding justice, the determination of dandelion roots to hang onto the ground. The sheer stamina of those who work nights and days to care for the sick. Then, there is the endurance of a solid marriage; like fine wine that deepens and broadens its flavours with age, it is a joy to all whom it touches. We find strength, we find hope in some forms of persistence.

The persistence of God, the compassionate endurance that became incarnate in Jesus, that persisted through death and hell and refuses to let us go, refuses to leave us without a mark, without a blessing: that is something worth placing our faith in.

To persist in prayer, at its foundation, is to persist in our relationship with that God. It is not to lose hope that God’s will will be done, not to turn away to other, more immediate but more corruptible resolutions. This call to persistence is the call of the prophets, to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly beside God, deep in conversation, or indeed in a conversational silence, knowing that our faith is not misplaced.

The rhythms of our seasons, our weeks, our days are marked by prayer: the Sunday Eucharist, the Daily Office, the sentence of thanksgiving upon awakening; the moment of reflection before we fall asleep. I invite you as you go about your week to pray persistently: to choose a word or phrase that will remind you, when you most need it, that God is holding on to you, in the midst of rushing waters and strong currents, and beside still waters alike. Write it down and put it in your pocket, or set it to a tune and let it take hold of that place in your head that will not let it go.

Because when all else fails, when we fail, when all else seems false, nevertheless, God persists.

Amen

[i] https://www.ccel.org/g/geneva/notes/Luke/18.html

[ii] http://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/igb.htm

[iii] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: the enigmatic parables of a controversial rabbi (HarperOne, 2014), 241

[iv] Levine, op cit, 242

The featured image is from the Jabbok River in Jordan, taken by the author in 2016

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Who am I to judge?

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

I have heard her as a warrior, cudgeling her way toward the judge’s seat; as a hag, as a nag, that tag attached to women who dare to ask for anything, let alone justice; I have heard her described as persistent, precocious, privileged, pernicious, pesky, and prevailing.

She has been used as a picture of prayer, and yet the unjust judge, who turns away with indifference and disgust, who dismisses and dispatches her as though she were a bluebottle or a horsefly about to bite, is not one I recognize as the God to whom I pray. 

He is a broken clock, occasionally accurate in his pronouncements, not because of rightness, mercy, or justice, but despite his own, profound and tragic, alienation.

Can I affirm the widow’s faithfulness to her own cause, and to the cause of justice, without falling prey to the unjust assertion that God responds to the squeaky wheel, and not to the meek? 

Can I maintain hope for her (and not only for the resolution of her current crisis or dispute, but for true and lasting restitution, reconciliation) without succumbing to the hopelessness that attends the daily grind of indifference? 

Can I maintain hope even for the unjust judge, that while his heart was not moved this time, but only his self-interest, that a crease or a crack might have been opened as he turned, enough for a little salve to spill in? 

First of all, can I free Jesus from my old and calcified, allegorically literal, algebraic interpretation of his parable about prayer and remember that God is not worn down by my cries, nor eroded by my need, nor numb to my grief, nor impassive to my witting and unwitting, egregious, and unnecessary participation in injustice?

The judge of the parable had no regard for anyone, but the God who will pass judgement upon me so loved the world as to become Emmanuel, God with us, to suffer under our unjust judgement, and to die. The God who will, I pray, have mercy upon me hears the cries of the widows to whom I turn a cloth ear, and continues to importune me with opportunities for penitence. 

I will pray, then, and not give up hope that the hardness of my heart will one day become flesh; that I may fear God enough to look up, and to see her face to face.

This lectionary reflection first appeared in the Episcopal Cafe, part of the Episcopal Journal. The featured image is The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow (The Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ), Brothers Dalziel, CC0, via wikimedia commons

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Unashamed

Posted on October 9, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for 9 October 2022, Year C Proper 23

Every Sunday we say together the Nicene Creed. Morning and night, in the daily office, we recite the Apostles’ Creed. We proclaim, unashamed and aloud, the faith that we have inherited: that, however we think it was managed, God is the author and originator of all that we know and all that remains a mystery to us. That Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became one flesh with us, because God so loved the world. That there is forgiveness for sins and hope in this life and beyond. That God remains with us, in Spirit and in truth. 

Some several years ago, when I was beginning the final stages of my journey toward ordination, I had a conversation with a colleague who was on the same track. I remember them saying that one of the benefits they had accrued from the process of conversation, discernment, and successive interviews with various church bodies was that they found it much easier to say the name of Jesus aloud than they had before.

I remember this because at the time it was arresting. Here was someone whom I knew through the church, through our shared faith, and whom I knew well only because we were both on the same path towards priesthood; and here she was confessing that up until quite recently, it had been a bit awkward talking with people about Jesus. It’s alright in church, couched in the Creeds, but still, in the world, the name of Jesus is one that can evoke caution. It has too often been used as a cudgel rather than a comfort; hence, I think, the embarrassment of those of us who long to shout from the rooftops, “Jesus loves you!”, in case we are misunderstood.

But if this is what we believe: God loves you, no exceptions, and Jesus is the living proof of that, well, then, isn’t that something to sing about?

The middle lines of the piece that we read from Paul’s letter to Timothy today are thought by many scholars to be from a hymn, which must make it one of the oldest in the Christian canon. The poetry of the paired propositions: 

If we have died with him,                   we will also live with him;

if we endure,                                       we will also reign with him;

if we deny him,                                   he will also deny us;

if we are faithless,                              he remains faithful

point to that musicality, that repetition, the refrain that tends to form us in faith.

The commentaries that I had to hand to consult this week debated whether the first line, dying and living with Jesus Christ, point to baptism or to physical death and its counterpoint, resurrection. The final line, telling of the incorruptible faithfulness of God in Christ Jesus is our blessed assurance. God is with us, God does love us, without regard to how lovable or otherwise we are.

The commentaries were less inclined to scrutinize that third line: “If we deny him, he will also deny us.” I can understand why. It is a hard word in the midst of such a glorious and warm song.

It seems important, though: both Mark and Matthew record Jesus saying something similar to his followers during his earthly ministry. Mark helpfully renders the saying, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father in the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38)

That makes sense to me. I am not ashamed of the love of Jesus; but I can sometimes feel a little abashed, almost embarrassed, by some of his commands: to give away everything, to love even enemies, to eat with tax collectors and sinners, the greedy and the grasping. But worse, I confess sometimes to having my own purity code against which Jesus Christ himself might, at moments, be judged. That, as cringy as it is, might be my moment of denial.

And here’s the thing that I think might be most dangerous and insidious about it: when we are embarrassed by the largesse of God’s mercy towards those of whom we do not approve, we are tempted to deny Jesus’ love for them, Christ’s love to them. Personally, I find it easy and obvious to proclaim God’s love for the straight, gay, trans, questioning, single, married, black, white, Asian, uncertain, stranger; but I can’t kid myself that there are not lines that I draw, ironically enough, mostly between those who agree with me and those whom I think are just plain wrong. And when I find my limits, when I close the door on understanding and the possibility of reconciliation, when I deny Jesus to them, that’s when I pass judgement upon myself. 

And let’s be clear: I am not ashamed of the gospel that I have received. I won’t wrangle over the words “black lives matter”, nor the good news that trans children are God’s beloved children. I am not ashamed or embarrassed to proclaim the love of Jesus, except when it comes to the people whom I find it hardest to love. But I know that “If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-2)

If I deny the love that Christ has even for my enemies, I become like the people at the dinner table where Jesus sat, who prided themselves on being in his presence, while he only had eyes for the weeping woman at his feet. I become like the nine who were healed, who received mercy, who went on their way happy, no doubt, and whole, but who missed out on the profound and deep joy of the Samaritan who saw more clearly than any of them the depth and breadth of God’s grace, and fell on his face before Jesus in gratitude for the limitless love that he embodied.

Still, I am comforted by the last line of the hymn; perhaps that’s why its composers put it there, to remind us that even though we fall down in faith, Jesus remains faithful to us.

After the cock crowed the morning after Jesus’ violent arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter broke down weeping, knowing that he had just done precisely what he had vowed he never would: denied Jesus before the onlookers around the fire, afraid of what they might say to him, do to him, tell others about him. Peter wept; but after the resurrection, when Jesus found him, he greeted him with peace, with the peace that passes understanding. Even Peter fell, but Christ was faithful, because that is his nature, and his being.

And that’s a love worth shouting from the rooftops.

Amen.

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Of faith, tides, and tables

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for 2 October 2022 at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio. Readings for Year C Proper 22 Track 2

King Cnut the Great ruled in England, as well as Denmark and Norway, toward the very beginning of the second millennium of the Christian era (c. 1016-35).[i] He was, by accounts, a religious man, one who travelled to Rome to make penitence. He was a man of faith, and he knew, even so, his limitations. 

The legend is told that Cnut demonstrated this by setting himself before the rising tide and bidding the waves to cease at his royal command. The waves did not, in fact, turn aside, instead splashing his legs and his robe as they rolled in before he leapt up and cried out, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name but He whom heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws”. Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote down this account of Cnut’s legend, added that Cnut would no more wear his crown of gold, but instead placed it permanently upon an image of the crucified Christ.[ii]

The apostles ask for more faith, but Jesus doesn’t seem to think that it is more faith that they need, any more than it is necessary to uproot trees and throw them into the sea.

“If you had faith as a mustard seed,” he says. Elsewhere, that little piece of seasoning has been heralded as a sign of the kingdom of God; small enough to be overlooked by many, but capable of growing into something that provides shelter to many more. 

The apostles have left everything to follow Jesus, and they are with him still on the road to Jerusalem, despite storms and strife, hunger and miraculous food; they have faith, they believe in Jesus, or else they would not be there with him, knowing that they were heading into trouble. Faith, whether as a mustard seed or a tree of life growing through their spines and their souls, was not at issue.

What prompted this little piece of conversation was Jesus’ telling them a little more about the life to which he was calling them. It was not simply about faith, believing that he was the Messiah, being assured that God was with them. That was – almost – the easy part. The hint of a suspicion that Jesus was of God was enough to keep them near him, is enough to keep us coming back to him, and to his table.

But Jesus kept reminding them of the implications of walking in God’s grace, in the footsteps of love. It meant taking care of others, neighbours and strangers, enemies alike; and it meant forgiving more times than we would like to those whom we find it impossible otherwise to love.

What the apostles needed was not to believe harder, or more, but to accept that the life of faith, the way of Christ, which is the way of the cross, would require them to give over their own will to that of their God: thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

The prophet Habbakuk writes, “the righteous live by their faith”; that is, they do not simply set it as a rare jewel on a cushioned seat in their hearts and minds, congratulating themselves on their right and deep belief; but they are governed and guided by it. They have given themselves over to the consequences of it: the knowledge that we are walking in the way of One whose property is always to have mercy, and who asks nothing less of us.

Faith: Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “If you have faith as of a mustard seed, hot, that is, and fervent …”;[iii] faith, hot and fervent, spicy as a mustard seed, is not an end or ambition in itself but the flavour of life, and the means to its sharing. 

Paul writes to Timothy (in so many words), “Do not be ashamed of the faith whose testimony I have given”; faith is a gift, but not one to be locked away in a secret safe, nor set on the shelf for later, nor even hung as a piece of art, an installation, or an exhibit. Like a musical instrument, like a precious crystal flute, as it were, faith is designed to be taken out and played, not merely looked upon, but heard, heeded, acted upon, perhaps even danced with.

Paul preaches elsewhere, “If I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2b). Faith is everything, and it is nothing if it does not lead to a faithful, which is a loving, way of life.

“You want to uproot trees and plant them in the ocean?” Jesus asks the apostles. You want to turn aside the tide? You want to commit spectacles and put on miracles? Make the Guardians of Traffic disappear from the Hope Memorial Bridge and show up in First Energy Stadium? Is that how you want to use your mustard seed of faith?

But the work of faith, the life of faith is more prosaic, and more humble. It is to tend the sheep, to care for those on the outside, and at the end of the day to feed the hungry, and to serve God so that God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done, rather than our own.

It is not, we might consider, the commanding of the waves and the weather, the turning away of the hurricane, but the steadfast and steady work of addressing and arresting the changes to our climate that bring ever-stronger storms, and in the meantime, the bringing of relief and succour to those most affected.

Faith fills in the ditches and brings down the mountains, makes the paths straight and helps the weary not to stumble, but not for the sake of the miracle itself, but because the faithful life participates in the prophetic mercy of God.

And then Jesus offers this little parable of severe humility, the reminder that there is nothing we can do to earn God’s gratitude and love, but that all we have, all we are depends upon and is owed unto God’s grace, and that the work of mercy is never done.

And having said that, Jesus stops, and removes his outer robe, and ties a towel around his waist, and tells his disciples, “Now, sit a while, and let me wash your feet, and serve you.”

Because here is the miracle: not how many trees we can toss into the ocean nor even whether we can still the storm, but that God cares enough to bring us back, time and again, to the table, to feed us with mercy and love.

Amen

[i] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Canute-I

[ii] “Canute and the Waves”, by Lord Raglan, in Man, Vol. 60 (Jan., 1960), pp. 7-8, Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, accessed via JSTOR, October 1, 2022

[iii] Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke (Beloved Publishing, 2014), 340

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Angel

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Hide stretched taut, 
a little frayed at the edges – 
homage to the fantasy of feathers – 
humming as the updraft plays 
its song of praise to the author 
of breath; 
                        you have become  
an instrument of glory, 
the terrible call and echoing, 
empty response, symphony 
on skins full of water and light 
prepared to weep over the world

The Collect for Saint Michael and All Angels
(September 29th)

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The chasm

Posted on September 25, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Year C Proper 21, September 25, 2022

I remember the first time I stumbled across a ha-ha – almost literally! 

A ha-ha is a deep and broad ditch with a wall at the bottom, creating a boundary in a park or garden – think grand country estate – that is invisible from a distance. Your eye skips over to the gap in the green grass so that it doesn’t interrupt the view from the great house, and only becomes obvious when you walk right up to the edge, but it is quite effective in keeping out deer and other riffraff. The name – “ha-ha” – comes from the surprise that it elicits from the one who stumbles into it.

In Jesus’ story, Abraham is given to say, “between you and us a great chasm has been fixed”. 

This, unusually for Jesus, is not a parable but a straight up moral fable: a rich man ignores the poor man at his gate at his own eternal peril. The rich man had either never read Moses and the prophets, or he thought that the warnings we heard from Amos this morning simply didn’t apply to him. There are always those who believe themselves to be exempt from the usual consequences of their decisions and character. This rich man continues in his self-deception even after death. He attempts to recruit Lazarus as a servant, believing himself even now to be sufficiently superior to make demands even of Abraham.

The chasm that has opened up between the rich man and Lazarus was long in the making, and yet he didn’t see it coming. As patient as a glacier, Lazarus sat at the gate awaiting mercy, while the rich man accrued deposits and encrusted himself with accoutrements, until they were as distantly separated from one another’s experience as the estuary is from the mountaintop. It is, in a true sense, a tragedy.

As with any good fable, there is a multitude of applications that we could make of this morality play to our own lives and times. 

At a global level, we could talk about the hunger of rich nations for more and more power and influence, consumption and growth, while others far and all too near pay the price with the symptoms of climate change: flooding and fire, the sores left on our planet by an impoverished diet stripped of green leafy forests and inadequate shelter from the ozone layer. Do we notice the suffering of Pakistan and Puerto Rico, or continue to pride ourselves on our own fragile and temporary comfort?

At a national level, we might talk about the chasm between those who consider themselves well insulated from disease, disaster, disability, gun violence, injustice, inequity, and those who carry the open wounds of grief, trauma, and the reprehensible poverty of Lazarus in the country of the rich man.

We could look at ourselves, church, and wonder whether we are doing enough to create relationships with those neighbours who are right on our doorstep.

All of this before we even get to the individual considerations of whether we, like the rich man, are isolating ourselves by our selfishness from those whom God has given us as neighbours, or whether we with Lazarus need the comfort of the angels and the promise of Abraham’s eventual embrace.

But the piece of the story that sticks to me like a burr is that chasm, how long it has been in the making, how deep and broad it has become, so that even Abraham no longer sees any way to bridge it. Like a ha-ha, the rich man doesn’t even see it until he is right up against it.

We read this story with a sense of dramatic irony. Jesus’ original audience, upon hearing the line, “neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead,'” did not know what Jesus was about to do, to accomplish on the cross, in the harrowing of hell, and by his resurrection. They had no idea how astounded the world would be by the telling of his new beginning, how the gospel would girdle the earth and cross unimaginable chasms of culture and time to bring us here, against the odds, to celebrate the one who was raised from the dead, who brought new life to the living and hope to depths of despair.

There is no chasm that Christ cannot cross.

In this I am of a mind with Paul, convinced that nothing, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). There is no chasm that Christ cannot and has not crossed for us.

However, we can divide ourselves from one another pretty effectively, and in doing so create hell on earth for some. Will we build a ha-ha, gazing past the chasm, letting nothing spoil our view, or will we practise seeing Christ in all people, as our baptismal covenant puts it?

We see the choice starkly, on the news, in the decisions that are made on our behalf whether to isolate and separate and put away those who come to this country for help, or whether to embrace the stranger and relieve the refugee. Will we dig a chasm or build a bridge?

We make the choice each time a stranger presents themselves, perhaps with their hand out, or with their handmade cardboard signs; whether or not we have anything material to help them with, we make the choice whether to see them, whether to see them as siblings, as beloved children of God worthy and in need of a blessing, or whether to pretend not to notice them at all.

We make the choice each time we notice the old and new gashes and scars that racism, sexism, plain selfishness, all kinds of hurts and harms have opened up between us; each time we choose to repent, to return, to ask forgiveness.

Our Collect for today praises God for declaring power in showing mercy and pity, the treasures of heaven. The richness of grace, of mercy, is that which denies the economy of separation and defines the boundaries of God’s love, which is limitless. It shows us the way to fill in the ditches and bring down the fences and level the stumbling places between us, by following in the footsteps of Christ, who has harrowed hell to be with us and to call us into new life with him. There is no chasm that love cannot cross.

Amen.

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The Call of Matthew

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

If you were to write a gospel,

what would you include?

What might you leave out?

 

Would you slide in a cameo

of the time that Jesus,

passing through your toll booth,

caught your eye, mouthed,

“Follow me”?

 

Would you elide the moment

of mad fear, somersaults

of stomach and soul,

taste of metal as you bit

your tongue stumbling

to shuck off your tabard,

un-tag your name,

agonize for less than a second

too long whether to lock up,

where to leave the keys,

afraid that he will turn

his face away?

 

Will you tell

of the love that he levied

as he set you free?

___________________________

Featured image: Saint Matthew, by Joachim Wtewael (public domain via wikimediacommons). First published at https://episcopaljournal.org/the-call-of-matthew/

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Power and piety

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for September 4 2022; Year C Proper 18

Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:25-26

Elsewhere – specifically, in fact, while preaching the sermon on the mount – Jesus tells his disciples and anyone who will listen, “I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:22)

So how do we hold that sermon in tension with this rather harsh set of demands that Jesus offers the crowd who are thinking of following him to Jerusalem?

The context for that difficult set of words about hating your family and even your life is on one side the crowd and on the other, the parable.

Great crowds were following Jesus, looking for healing, or food, or living water, something of hope in a harsh landscape – and rightly so. He is the image of God’s grace and mercy among us. He is hope for the helpless and life for the powerless.

But he worries that the crowd does not understand that he has not come to take them out of this world, but to be with them through it – he is God with us, Emmanuel. He knows that although resurrection is coming, it comes through the cross.

The commentary in The Jewish Annotated New Testament notes that the people following Jesus down this road are the type with the disposable income to build a tower with their name emblazoned upon it, according to the parable he offers them.[i] Power and piety are a dangerous combination.

So he asks them, “Are you sure?” Because he wants them to know what they are getting into, the cost of loving neighbour as self, enemy as neighbour, denying pride and vengeance for the sake of love, denying self for the sake of God, giving and forgiving, and never counting the cost.

“Are you ready for the cross?” he is asking them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his masterpiece, The Cost of Discipleship, offers that “The life of discipleship is not the hero-worship we would pay to a good master, but obedience to the Son of God.”[ii] Jesus is not offering a get-even-richer-quick scheme, nor even a decent return on investment. He is offering a radical re-ordering of the lives of his followers, and they, and we, may not be prepared for what that might entail.

I met a man in a hospital once, long ago and far away, who had suffered a major medical event which would involve a long and arduous recovery and, once that was underway, a complete transformation of his lifestyle. He told me that God had done this to him, struck him low and smitten him, and I thought that would make him angry; but no, he told me, he was grateful.

He had prayed to Jesus to help him get free from a way of life that was killing him and destroying his family, and this total and devastating disaster, he believed, was in fact Christ’s way of healing him, of getting him the help he needed, and setting him on a new path.

Bonhoeffer says, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die … because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ.”[iii]

In our own rite of Baptism, in that blessed Sacrament, we speak of dying to an old way of life, of drowning it in the waters of a new creation, a new life in Christ. We say we mean it metaphorically, of course, but metaphor is not without meaning.

Elsewhere, the disciples cried out, “Look, we have left everything and follow you!” And Jesus told them, “Yes, and anyone who is prepared to give it all up for me will get it back now and in the age to come; and you may expect hardship, too.” (Mark 10:28-30, paraphrased)

In order to love as Christ loves, to love even family, friends, life itself as God so loved the world, we have to recognize the breach within it, which is the cross, which is sin, which is every selfish impulse that would lead us away from Jesus toward something that, someone that, in the moment, we prefer.[iv]

Jesus challenges those who would follow him to hate, to abhor, to detach from, to cleave their relationships with that which they hold most closely, be that money or family or reputation, and cleave unto him, not because it is wrong to have a happy family life. Far from it. He does not want anyone to hate those who should be beloved. Love God, and your neighbour. He does not want us to hate the life which is our gift from a generous and gracious God, I don’t think. Love God, and your neighbour as yourself.

But when we come to a crossroads, and the gospel calls us to walk one way, and the world tells us that way leads to ruin, or rejection, Jesus wants us to have the courage to follow him, even in the way of the cross.

The people followed Jesus looking for healing, or food, or living water, something of hope in a harsh landscape – and rightly so. He is the image of God’s grace and mercy among us. He is hope for the helpless and life for the powerless. He became our hope by becoming as helpless and as powerless as we are, and by resisting the temptation to find any better way than this: the love of God made perfect and living among us, now and for ever. Amen.

 

 

[i] The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Amy-Jill Levine, Marc Zvi Brettler, editors (Oxford University Press, 2011), commentary to Luke 14:28

[ii] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, revd edn (Macmillan, 1963), 84

[iii] Bonhoeffer, 99

[iv] See Bonhoeffer, 110

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Did Jesus dream?

Posted on August 31, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Did Jesus dream? 
Were his dreams oracular, spectular, unconsciously omniscient, encompassing future and past, nebulae and black holes? 
Were there days when night hung from his shoulders, unlight, leaden remnants of memory or premonition? 
Did Jesus delight in the absurdity of dreamscape? 
Was he ever afraid to close his eyes? 
Did he crawl into bed with his father and mother, wrapped like a warm loaf, dreaming a knock at the door, importuning, 
“Friend! I want only a piece of your bread …” 
I ask as one in search of rest, tired of caterwauling chaos. 
Jesus, did you dream that it would come to this?

You are Emmanuel.
From the milk dream of the infant barely aware of world beyond the womb to the tremor of the cross, the absent vision of the grave, you have harrowed humanity, our conscious and unconscious need,
and hallowed it.

__________________

This poem was first published at the Episcopal Cafe, part of the Episcopal Journal

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Things I made this week*

Posted on August 26, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Bread
A dress
Communion
A poem
Goat milk vanilla bean ice cream
A discovery: the cats adore goats’ milk
Love
A sermon
A cross out of dismantled gunmetal
A deal with the lake, God, and the sky
that if they will endure
a little longer so will I

*some details may vary week to week, while others remain constant

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