But who do you say that I am?

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

This poem was first published at the Episcopal Cafe

When Christ confronted the demons, they cried out
in loud voices and with forked tongues,
“We know who you are, Holy One, Son of God,
hope of the nations and light of the world!”
And he bid them be silent. [i]

Some said he was a prophet.[ii]
Some said he had a demon.[iii]
Some said he should not go around saying
that the Son of Man must suffer,
but he had already had that conversation
with the devil in the wilderness;
he recognized the forked tongue twisting in Peter’s mouth.[iv]

“Who do you say that I am?” he asks us,[v]
and it is not enough to recognize,
to idolize,
to pay homage with forked tongue and fractured loyalties.

It is not enough
to say who he is, unless
we will become whom he has called us to become.

The rich will hunger to turn over tables,[vi]
the joyful will drown out the songs of the stones,[vii]
the hawks will hang up their talons
and eat olives offered by the dove,[viii]
the princes and powers will burn their thrones to
warm the hearts of the people.[ix]

“A broken and contrite heart you will not despise.”[x]The body bending under the weight of grief,
slung crosswise along the shoulders,
will find a lighter yoke in love.[xi]

“Who do you say that I am?” he asked them.
You are my way, my truth, my life.[xii]
If I am slow to follow, wait for me, reach back to me.
If I am hard of understanding, be patient with me.
Bind my heart to yours, that I may hear the rhythm of your passion.
Let the rest be silence.

[i] See Mark 1:23-26; [ii] Mark 8:27-28; [iii] Mark 3:22; [iv] Mark 8:31-33; Matthew 4:5-7; [v] Mark 8:29; [vi] See Luke 1:53; John 2:13-18; [vii] See Luke 19:37-40; [viii] See Isaiah 11:7; Genesis 8:8-11; [ix] See Luke 1:52; [x] Psalm 51:17; [xi] See Matthew 11:29-30; [xii] John 14:6

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Vengeance is not ours

Posted on August 29, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Sunday, 29 August, 2021

From the cross, Jesus cried out against his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing!” (Luke 23:34)

As though God’s mercy endures even this outrage; as though Christ’s faithfulness to God’s mission of mercy were eternal, and indestructible. As though, even after all that he had been and seen and lived and taught, we still did not quite understand the enormity of God’s steadfast loving-kindness and hope for humankind.

In conversation (read, warm disagreement) with the Pharisees, who were, after all, his own people, Jesus turns to the prophet Isaiah and tells them, 

‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ (Mark 7:1-8; Isaiah 29:13)

The irony that this particular scripture, from this particular prophet, shows up in this week’s lectionary is rather terrible; a little too much.

Whether our disagreements are political, petty, religious, personal, or otherwise, when we elevate our own precepts to the level of law, instead of inscribing God’s law on our hearts, we have a tendency to decline into disarray, and even violent disaster.

When I say, “we”, I do not mean in the sense of “us” and “them”. The problem appears to be, tragically, universal. Just this past week we have seen it destroy lives and bodies and families. Those who have elevated their doctrines of terror over the dictates of God, whose prophets have long preached peace have wrought havoc and will no doubt wreak more.

Last week, I preached that when the moment of crisis comes, that is when we are challenged to choose to stay with Jesus, to remain in his footsteps, not to deny his Cross.

In this moment of crisis, the human precepts articulated by we, the people may be revenge and retribution. Yet Jesus taught his disciples to love their enemies, pray for their persecutors, forgive their executioners, as he did from the Cross, lamenting our poor understanding of God’s grace.

That does not mean that we accept, let alone condone violence. We do seek to contain it, to protect the vulnerable, which is what the service members who died were doing at the gate, ironically; trying to make an end to this war. But vengeance? That does not belong to us.

It is a problem.

The disagreement that Jesus and the Pharisees had was about proper rituals, the right (rite) way to do things. It was not life and death. It didn’t rise even to the level of our arguments about masks and vaccinations. It was, in the grand scheme, a little thing.

But when we allow even these small things to breed evil intentions in our hearts, to divide us from the humanity of another, we are headed for trouble. Jesus is heading us off, reminding us to stay close to God’s law: the law that begins with loving God, and ends with loving our neighbours as ourselves. To develop and feed habits of the heart and soul that lead to life, rather than to revenge.

And so, as we pray for our armed service members, may we also pray for an end to war. If we pray for those whom our nation lost this week, and those who mourn, may we pray also for the hundreds of Afghans killed on their own soil. If we pray for our loved ones, may we pray also for our enemies. If we pray for victory, may it be for the victory of the kingdom of God, which transcends the human divisions of nations.

And may God continue to have mercy upon us.

Amen.

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What we owe one another

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

We came to the US on a special visa – one of those “highly qualified” rations awarded to my husband, and we were part of the package. These things do not last forever. Three years later, knowing that we were ready to throw in our lot with Ohio, we applied for green cards.

We were lucky. We had the resources of the firm behind us. Still, there are processes and procedures – and gaps. In order to apply for our green cards, we had to surrender the visas granted under the original agreement to let us into the country. Instead, we were issued “provisional papers”, to be used for travel “only if necessary”.

That was the summer that my mother was dying. Travel was, repeatedly, necessary.

Leaving the country was easy. No one knew quite what to make of my “provisional papers”, but I was on my way out, so it wasn’t much of an issue. Coming home (because yes, home was here; home is where my children sleep and my husband watches endless episodes of culinary competitions on tv and the cats ruck up the rugs) was a little more time-consuming.

If you have been in that line at the airport, you have seen the individuals and families pulled aside, sent to the back room, a cage of windows, to await further scrutiny after the line has been processed and dismissed. If you were in the line, your passport stamped, passed on to customs to collect your bags, you may have wondered what happened to those people in that side room, who they might be, and why they were there.

That was the summer of the side room for me.

For the most part, we were processed separately. I do think that one family was seeking asylum. Then there was, on that last trip, the slightly older (white) man who wanted to enter on a British passport but stay forever (instead of the 90 days allowed without a visa). “I am a veteran!” he kept insisting. “I served in [I think] Vietnam! I am a US citizen!” The immigration guys gathered around his burgundy passport and scratched their heads. Then they shrugged and let him in, indefinitely.

“Look at you, big man harassing a veteran!” one of them teased another.

I was the last one left after the old man. For the third time that summer, the immigration officer, the “big man”, scrutinized my provisional papers, trying to work out how he or his colleagues had dealt with them before. No one knew quite what was correct.

“When are they going to give you your green card?” he sighed, as he tried one more combo of stamps and hoped for the best.

“Put in a good word for me!” I told him as we waved goodbye.

This country owed me nothing, yet it consistently (and somewhat arbitrarily) erred on the side of eroding red tape with understanding, if not of bureaucracy then of relationship. And I, caught between my mother and my children, between continents, homes, waves of grief, needed that moment of compassion more than anything.

And I understood that it was a privilege.

One day at the federal building downtown, the machine refused to recognize my fingerprints (then when it did, said they didn’t match themselves?). An older woman came over to take charge of my hand, massaging it vigorously, trying to bully my blood vessels into provoking a reaction from the scanner.

“It’s worst for the ones who’ve worked with their hands. Some of them, their fingerprints have worn completely away,” she told me.

“What happens to them?” I asked. She did not answer me.

I have been a citizen of these United States for nearly a decade now, and from the start, my experience of it was as far a cry from the plight of those families and individuals at that other airport, or trying to reach it, or trying to persuade someone to accept their papers, or to stamp their application, or to see their family sitting silently behind them, urging their plea with piercing eyes, or fading into hiding, or worse, as the wail of a newborn infant from the ululation of a bereaved mother.

But looking back at all I have been given and granted, it is easy to see what I owe them: the people caught between countries, who have wagered their lives on the integrity and honor, on the humanity of America.

If you are looking for ways to help, Episcopal Migration Ministries directly supports Afghan people arriving in America as refugees from the current crisis.

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To whom shall we go?

Posted on August 22, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio, one week after the fall of Kabul, the earthquake in Haiti, and in the midst of hurricane season and extended pandemic surge. In the gospel, many disciples find Jesus’ teaching hard to follow and turn away, but when Jesus asks the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:69)

Featured image: Kings Palace, Kabul, by Casimiri at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

There is a hurricane heading into New England. To the west and across the ocean, wildfires are burning. To our south, earthquake has devastated people’s lives and homes, and left them without shelter from the next storm. All around us there are signs of pandemic disease and a pandemic of anger as we try to navigate our way out of trouble that seems to have us firmly by the ankles.

It is in the moment of crisis that we are challenged to stay with Jesus, or to turn aside to some other saviour. 

I am with Peter. I know of no better way to live than in the shadow of the Cross and the hope of Resurrection, in the story of God’s love, and of our redemption. However imperfectly, if I can follow Jesus, if I can hear him, if I can abide in him, and let him take root in me, then I may not avoid the storms that surround us all, but I will not be altogether sunk by them.

The way of the Cross is a way of hope, because it is forged in love, because it is forged in God. To whom else should we turn for eternal life?

Eternal life is not mere survival, in this life or the next. It is not mere endurance, the defeat of time and mortality. Eternal life is our share in the image of God in which we are created. It is the flourishing of the life of Christ within us; he who became human so that we might see the fullness of humanity, the potential for our partnership with God, in this life as well as in whatever comes next.

The way of Jesus, the way of the Cross, which is the way of love, of selflessness, of obstinate faithfulness, defiant forgiveness; which is the uncompromising love of God: this is the way of eternal life that leads to Resurrection, now and in the age to come.

We have grown up used to seeing Christianity as we practice it as the respectable and popular, the politically astute and advantageous choice. But the way of Jesus is not always the most acceptable path, and the choices of the gospel do not always favour those whom society elevates.

There were other days when Jesus’ teaching and preaching led to him losing followers instead of making them.

When he told the rich man to sell his possessions and distribute them among the poor, he lost a potentially powerful patron.

When he turned over the tables of the money changers, he lost a whole parcel of patience from those who set the exchange rate.

When he healed some and disturbed the sabbath peace of others, he made the neighbours grumble and murmur that he was not following proper procedure, nor observing the rules.

What do you think they said when he told us to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute?

When he raised the dead, they planned to kill him.

At the moment of crisis, we need to ask whether we are still following Christ, or turning aside to other idols: militancy and Mammon, the saviour complexes of the west or the authoritarian pretensions of theocracy. A civil religion, in which might makes right, respectability is next to godliness, and success is measured by each individual and not by the measure of grace and hope that is spread across creation, to dignify each and every person made in the image of God. 

We have seen terrible things this past week. We have seen the desperation of people whose lives have been altogether changed in an instant. We have witnessed the destruction of homes and lives by earthquake, of lives and futures by war and by its complicated and devastating repercussions. We have heard the anger of those who feel betrayed by its ending, and we have absorbed the grief and fear of those whom we have abandoned in the end. We who have grown up as women and girls know in our bones, in the depths of our bodies and souls how badly this will go for them.

We are in a moment of crisis, and soon it will come home, and we will be asked to consider where our allegiances lie: whether we will embody the love and sacrifice of Christ, or turn aside to our own interests, more strategic measures. Whether we are prepared to welcome with open arms and open pockets refugees from war and terror. Whether we will ration the bread and the fish, or trust that we have enough to share, and baskets left over, if only we will listen to Jesus. Whether we will walk with them in love.

And, in the weeks and months to come, we may be well asked to make further sacrifices to further the health and safety of our children, and their families, and their teachers and caregivers; of our healthcare workers, so that they can continue to care for our whole community. Will we stand upon our own rights and freedoms, or choose the way of Christ, the way of love, the way which gives way?

You know that in another gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats: those who have sought out and served Jesus in every person they have seen and known, who have shared the mercy of God with everyone they could; and those who withheld it, and in doing so, denied the humanity of Christ, the image of God within those they could have honoured.

We know the call of Christ upon us. The question is, every time, do we still want to follow?

Others may, but I do not know another way that leads to eternal life, in this life and the next. I do know that if I abide in him, however imperfectly, he will stay with me, for he is faithful, and merciful, and his love endures for ever.

Amen. 

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Prayer for a day when there are no words

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

I do not have words to imagine the prayers of the falling.
It feels ironic to light a candle
when fires burn freely and fast;
to kneel as though the earth might otherwise
flee from beneath me.
Breathing has become
an act of defiance. 
Baptism threatens 
to flood the floor with tears.
Where will we look for the words of salvation 
but in the static,
silent space between thunderclap and lightning,
the gap between 
perception and impact,
sound and fury,
fear and revelation?

I do not have words to imagine the thoughts of the falling.
I pray for them anyway: 
swift and surprising currents of grace,
an explosion of peace.

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On Spiritual Communion

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Church of the Epiphany in the midst of a pandemic.

When I was a young child, I took myself off to church. At first, it was the words that drew me in: bible stories, prayers, especially the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, even songs and hymns told their own stories and painted pictures of God and of the kingdom to come, the will that might one day be done on earth as in heaven.

I liked what I heard, so different from the day-to-day injustices of life: the mercy of God so removed from the images on the 6 o’clock news; the dignity of being made in the image of God, although I didn’t yet have those words, nor words to describe the concept of Christ’s Incarnation, hallowing our flesh by inhabiting it.

But I knew that there was something there that I badly wanted. I took myself to church to find it.

What I found was more words – the beauty of Cranmer’s poetry barely translated into twentieth-century English for a Welsh church; but beyond their murmurs I saw the mystery enacted at the altar, the bread and the wine that were transformed somehow into the Body and Blood of Christ, and offered among the people who reverently approached – but not to me. I was too young and unconfirmed (in those days that was the gateway to full Communion). I relished the blessing that Dilwyn or one of the curates would press upon my head, but I wanted that Bread badly.

A small confession: in my childish judgement I thought it a little unfair that I should be required to repeat the words of the postcommunion prayer, offering thanks for the spiritual food which had been physically withheld from me. I said them anyway; I understood on some level that I had become a member of the mystical body of Christ, that I had my part in the mystery that had been performed that morning, and that I was not unchanged by it – far from it. No one had explained to me the idea of spiritual Communion, but something in my spirit resonated with it.

Even if I could not yet receive the Bread and the Wine bodily, it was important beyond measure that they were consecrated, and that others, some-bodies, shared them on my behalf and enfolded me in their mysteries.

I share this with you because, to state the obvious, we are in a season when our bodily relationship with the Eucharist is altered. There are indicators such as the change from proper bread to wafers, and the inclusion of the prayer for spiritual Communion in our order of service. Then there is the Cup.

I long for the days when we can share the Cup among us. Every time I pray the words of Jesus, “Drink this all of you,” I feel that childish pang, knowing that I will consume the wine, the Blood of Christ, on behalf of and in the midst of us all. I find a gap between the words and the actions of the liturgy. 

Sometimes a gap is the space we need for reflection, for diving more deeply into the mystery of what God is doing with us in these sacramental moments.

Practically, there have always been times when Communion is more appropriately offered in one kind. A person who cannot swallow solid food might receive a drop of wine offered on a spoon with gratitude. A person in recovery or on medication or in fear of giving or receiving contagion might find that sipping from the shared Cup risks their physical and spiritual safety. Not to mention the opportunities for spreading germs that introducing multiple handfuls of bread into a common Cup presents.

In the middle of a pandemic, we are all at risk. It seems prudent, therefore, to resume the admittedly medieval practice of reserving the Cup to one person, who consumes it on behalf of the assembled body, and distributing the Real Presence of Jesus by means of the Bread alone, and by spiritual Communion for those at even greater risk.

This does not mean that we are not sorry to have to abstain, if only for a season, from some familiar and comforting practices. In the meantime, you have heard me say time and again that Christ is fully present in either form, and that we lose nothing of his grace by receiving him in one form or the other, nor by making our spiritual Communion as we have need. God is not constrained by our rituals, but allows us to approach heaven by means of them. The doorway to grace that is opened by the Eucharist opens towards us, and not by our hands.

And when we approach it, with trembling hearts and outstretched hands, we do so not only on our own behalf, but aware of the whole world for which Christ offered himself. Nothing we do as Christians, as followers of Jesus’s example, is for ourselves alone. So when we come to Communion, we do so on behalf of the sinful, the needy, the joyous, and the proud; we do so in humility, loving God and loving our neighbour enough to do it for them; we do so as that church family back in Wales did for the young girl who was not yet allowed or able to do so herself.

Odo Casel, a German theologian of a century or so ago, wrote that,

When the Church performs her exterior rites, Christ is inwardly at work in them; thus what the church does is truly mystery … The deepest ground for it lies in the fact … that Christ has given the mysteries to his Church … The content, and so the essential form of the mysteries have been instituted and commanded by our Lord himself; he has entrusted their performance to the Church, but not laid down to the last detail what is necessary or desirable for a communal celebration. By leaving the Spirit to his Church, he has given her the ability as well, to mint inexhaustible treasure from the mystery entrusted to her, to develop it and to display it to her children in ever new words and gestures.[i]

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

This is mystery, entrusted to us to develop and to display to the children of God as we are enabled by the Spirit, ancient as days, and new for every season.

In every season, this is inexhaustible treasure.

Amen.

[i] Odo Casel, Mystery and Liturgy, part iii, ch. 2, “The Mystery of Worship in the Christian Cosmos,” excerpted in Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology: A Reader, Dwight W. Vogel, editor (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 2000), 31

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Brushstrokes

Posted on August 11, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

Leaded clouds filter

light to the lake;

deep calls to deep.

The layered air is

painted on;

brushstrokes of the wind,

movements of the Spirit,

fade into the canvas

of the storm.

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A sustaining hope

Posted on August 8, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for August 8th, 2021, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid. The Delta variant of the continuing COVID pandemic is on the rise locally and nationally as schools prepare for their new year. In today’s readings, Elijah sits under a broom tree in the desert and prays to God to take him home; Jesus is the Bread of Life.

There must have been some small part of Elijah that still held out hope. Even in his despair, he sought out the shade of the broom tree – the only respite from the scorching desert to be seen. Before he placed himself at God’s mercy, to take or to leave, Elijah placed himself under the shelter of its shrubbery.

It’s worth remembering how Elijah got to where we find him, exhausted and exasperated, under the broom. 

In the days of Ahab, king over Israel but corrupt at his job, God called the prophet Elijah out of Tishbe in Gilead to pronounce a drought upon the land because of the king’s unfaithfulness. You may remember that Elijah waited out the drought in the home of a widow in Zarephath. His time was not without emotional upheaval and uncertainty, but Elijah waited upon God, and eventually, God sent Elijah back to Ahab to bring back the rain (1 Kings 16:29-18:2).

The toll was heavy. Elijah ended up in a duel against the prophets of Baal, the idol with whom Ahab and his household had been unfaithful. Many lost their lives that day before the rains came. Elijah had won out against them, but at a terrible human cost (1 Kings 18:22-45).

Now, Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, was seeking to avenge the prophets of Baal with Elijah’s own blood: violence has forever bred violence. It was a frightened, traumatized, and demoralized man who dismissed his servant and companion, and set out alone into the desert, trailed by death (1 Kings 19:1-5).

Even so, Elijah retained just enough hope within his body and his spirit to find the solitary broom bush, a cool patch of sandy earth in which to curl up and pray for the oblivion of sleep (1 Kings 19:3-9; today’s lesson).

What he thought when the angel woke him with food and drink, and the instruction to eat so that he would have strength to journey still further is not recorded. Perhaps it wasn’t printable. But the hope that resided somewhere deep within Elijah’s spirit and the sustenance with which God provided him were enough somehow to get him to the holy mountain, where Moses had once communed with the divine presence, and where Elijah would now witness God’s power and glory wrapped up in a still, small, almost silent voice (1 Kings 19:9-13).

I don’t know but that this is an apt metaphor for the stage of life that we are in right now. As a community, we are wearied by repeated waves of pandemic disease and anxiety. Our children are being called back into school just as things are heating back up, and without the protection of vaccination for the younger ones. We who have survived so far bear witness to tremendous losses sustained over the past several months: not only the loss of life, but loss of ways of life, of company, of confidence.

Add to that pandemic toll the news that gun violence has now become the leading cause of death in children and teens up to the age of 19 in the US, and that at a time when gun purchases are also rising. Make no mistake, there is a correlation.

In our personal and individual lives, many of us I am sure have things going on that could drive us into the desert to sit beneath and broom tree and wonder whether we have what it takes to stand back up.

And still, we are here, reaching forth our hands for the bread of heaven, expecting the intervention of God, to send us on our way.

We are here – whether in person or online, staying distant, staying safe; in the midst of it all, we have hope, because we have Jesus. He is our bread for the journey.

The interventions of God come in many forms. For Moses and his generation, there was manna from heaven. For Elijah, there was bread baked by an angel on hot stones.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry told a story this week via video that some of us have heard him tell before: the story of a sugar cube. Many of us remember receiving those pink drops of polio vaccine on a sugar cube at school. Strength for the journey – Bishop Curry told how pleased and relieved his father was to know that his son would not bear the ravages of polio in his body, as his father did, because vaccination had defeated it here.

The interventions of God, strength for the journey, can come from humans sweating over laboratory test tubes as easily and as often as angels baking on hot stones.

We live with the uncertainty of Elijah, and some of his exhaustion. We live with his hope. We know that God is with us – Emmanuel – we have seen God in the person and the passion of Jesus. We believe him when he tells us that he is our bread, and that he will not leave us hungry (John 6:35). We listen for the still, small voice of silence, the presence of God in the midst of trouble.

We pray, in the words of the prayer book, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” (Eucharistic Prayer C, Book of Common Prayer)

We are here, not only because we have hope for ourselves, but because we carry hope for the world. We who know the promises of God, not to leave us helpless, not to leave us hungry, we pray for strength to counter fear with wisdom, to turn aside violence with the way of the cross, to defeat death with the promise of resurrection, in this life as well as the next; in our communities, as well as in ourselves. To listen for the quiet interventions of God and to share them with our neighbours: “Look, here is help. Here is bread for the journey. Here is hope.”

In a sugar cube, or in a pharmacist’s needle; in a friend, or in a stranger; in the bread of angels and in the Body of Christ, God is with us.

Psalm 34:7 The angel of the Lord encompasses those who fear God, and God will deliver them.
8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are they who trust in the Lord!

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Vaccines, masks, love, and religion

Posted on August 4, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

Back in the early months of 2020, we were introduced to a novel coronavirus. We knew quickly that it would make history. We did not understand that far from witnessing history in the making, we would be the ones making and shaping it. 

Nearly a year and a half later, we are older, wiser, and weary of this pandemic. Still, it has not tired of trying us. So here we are, trying once more to turn back the tide of novel variants, with the help of vaccinations, masks, and physical distancing. Handwashing is the order of the day, but we cannot wash our hands of this virus or our responsibility to love our neighbours by looking out for their safety as well as our own.

2 Thessalonians 3:13: “Brothers and sisters [and siblings], do not be weary in doing what is right.”

Yes, this has gone on longer than any of us imagined. No, it is not over yet. Yes, we are still responsible, each of us, for playing our part, moving history toward better health.

If you do become sick, do not despair. The prayers of angels surround you, and the love and mercy of God, God’s rod and staff will be faithful to you, in sickness and in health, to the end of the ages.

1 Peter 5:8-9: “Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters [and siblings] in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.”

Like a demon, this virus prowls around looking for someone to devour. Deny it houseroom, as far as you can help it; keep alert, practice good mask discipline, protect yourself and in doing so help protect others from catching it from you.

Matthew 4:5-7: “Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you,” 
and “On their hands they will bear you up, 
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’ 
Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’”

We have safety nets in place to help guard against this disease. Do not side with temptation. Vaccines prevent an impressive proportion of infections, and protect even those who do fall ill from the most serious consequences, in most cases.

These vaccines have been tested and approved in the midst of a public health emergency. They have been successfully and safely taken up by millions of people so far. Including me.

The vaccines are distributed for free – no small miracle itself in this cynically capitalist society. “Yes, your vaccination is free. The federal government is providing the vaccine free of charge to all people living in the United States, regardless of their immigration or health insurance status,” says the CDC (emphasis added).

Matthew 18:5-7 “[Jesus said] ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!’”

We know that, as of just now, children younger than 12 are not eligible for COVID vaccinations, even as they head back to school. Likewise, people with certain health conditions may not receive the full benefits of vaccination, either because they cannot take it, or because of diminished uptake by their own immune systems.

Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, Jesus reminds us; the risk of illness remains for anyone breathing during these dangerous times. No one should be blamed or shamed for falling sick. But we should all be doing what we can to interrupt this invidious disease, not only for our own sakes but in order not to become a vector for another’s illness. I got vaccinated in no small part because I would not want to become a stumbling block to a child’s or another’s health and safety.

1 Corinthians 12:14,18-22,26-27: “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. … But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ One the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable … If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

For the love of Christ, let’s take care of this body, with tenderness, respect, selflessness, wisdom, and love, so that in good time and good health, we may rejoice together.

Scriptures referenced from the NRSV

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Some people are never satisfied

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Sunday, August 1st 2021, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid. In the news, billionaires race to the edge of space; at the Olympics, Simone Biles chooses health and teamwork over personal triumph; the moratorium on evictions extended through earlier seasons of the pandemic is allowed to expire. In the Gospel, the people fed by the thousands want more from Jesus.

Some people are never satisfied.

Jesus had fed five thousand people with a few fish and some bread, and now they wanted more. “What will you do for us?” they asked. “Moses gave us manna in the wilderness and it came morning after morning. Where is our bread and fish for today?” (John 6:31)

They had witnessed, they had consumed what Jesus could provide, and now they wanted him to dance to their tune. They wanted to own him.

In the wilderness, the people grumbled about Moses, and whether he was doing enough for them now that they were free, now that he had saved them from Pharaoh’s army and from the Red Sea. “Where is today’s bread?” they demanded. And God provided (Exodus 16:2-15).

God rained down quail in the evening and manna in the morning, and the people ate – but were they satisfied?

Jesus told the people, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life. … For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. … I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.” (John 6:27-35)

When he called the fishermen, James and John, Andrew and Simon Peter, he told them that from now on they would be catching people instead of fish. Their appetite for satisfaction would no longer be bound by the sea but would be caught up in the imagination of God, the revelation of God’s grace to God’s people (Matthew 4:18-22).

From the hillside, he told them, “Blessed are you when you hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you will be filled.” (Matthew 5:6)

Some people are never satisfied. But that’s the kind of hunger that comes not from want but from envy. 

Envy sees a young woman full of grace and power, and demands that she perform for them, as though she owes them her vitality, which is the life of God within us all.

Envy can twist our appetites and our priorities in awful ways.

Envy sees the heavens and instead of being humbled seeks to conquer, to dominate, to crown themselves among the stars.

While down below, hundreds of thousands and more suffer the consequences of climate change, pandemic disease, and the kind of envious and unmitigated capitalism that seeks to profit from everything, at any expense, from peoples’ homes to their health, life-giving water to the air that we breathe.

I wonder how many evictions one trip into the atmosphere could offset.

Yes, there is real hunger here, in this life, in this world; some of you perhaps have known it. Jesus has instructed his disciples already by their resources and their resourcefulness and with their faith, by all means to feed the hungry. And then there are those who are full, but who are never satisfied.

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life,” Jesus advised them, as they tore into the baskets of bread and fish left over from the night before. (John 6:27; imaginatively, John 6:13)

“I am the bread of life.” (John 6:35)

In her 1939 retelling of Exodus, Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston had Moses tell the people,

“This freedom is a funny thing,” … “It ain’t something permanent like rocks and hills. It’s like manna; you just got to keep on gathering it fresh every day. If you don’t, one day you’re going to find you ain’t got none no more.”

Hurston, Zora Neale. Moses, Man of the Mountain (p. 252). Amistad. Kindle Edition.

Like manna, God provides for us the food of eternal life: the kind of love and justice, selflessness and peace; the healing mercies that Jesus shed like manna wherever he trod – but we have to gather it fresh every day, and to share it, if we are to sustain it and be sustained by it. 

We have to wake up with our faces set to follow Jesus – not for breadcrumbs but for full satisfaction, thy kingdom come; not to own him, nor to bend him to our will, but for thy will be done.

Not for the love of our own bellies, but for the love of God, and of our neighbours.

“No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them,” wrote Paul; “if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” (Romans 12:20)

Only then will everyone be fed. And if the envious are still not satisfied, maybe they just need some more Jesus. “I am the bread of life,” he said. (John 6:35)

And they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6:34)

Amen.

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