Love one another?

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the fifth Sunday of Easter in 2025.

Love is not a light undertaking.

Love will break your heart. Love will ask you to move mountains. Love will require that you sacrifice your most closely held prejudices, melt down your idols and break their pedestals. Love is stronger than death, stronger than life.

When Jesus says to his disciples, “You should love one another,” he is not being cute. When he tells them, “Just as I have loved you,” he hints at how much love will cost them.
When he says, “By this, everyone will know that you belong with me,” he promises that love will be enough.

 

The way that Peter’s story is told in the book of Acts is almost humorous in its repetition. First, Peter has the vision, exactly as it is described here. Then, when it is time for the lesson of the vision to be applied, he repeats its description exactly, almost word for word. It makes me think that there is something in the repetition, in the telling of it, that is as important as the vision itself.

After all, if God wanted to declare all foods clean, or at least to invite to the table those who did not keep the food laws, why not give everyone the same vision all at the same time? Why not make it abundantly clear to everyone in the church and in the community, that What God has made clean, you must not call profane?

The people to whom God has sent repentance and declared the forgiveness of sins; their sins you shall not retain. The people whom God has invited to the table you shall not send away. The people whom God loves, and the people whom they love, you also must love; by this, they will know that you belong with and to God through Christ Jesus our Saviour and Lord.

But God did not send the vision to everyone everywhere all at once. Only to Peter. Peter, who had worked so hard to overcome the shame of his denials that night of the trial. Peter, who had worked miracles in the name of Jesus. Peter, who still carried his prejudices and held the keys to the kingdom heavily, perhaps a little too tightly?

I heard a study some years ago, when my children were still in school, that found that giving older children the task of teaching, tutoring, or mentoring younger children helped the older students absorb and understand and retain the material they were learning together. As the ten-year-old struggled to explain fractions to the seven-year-old, he needed to make sense of it all in a new way in order to be able to express the magic of mathematics to his young disciple, and it formed new pathways in his own mind.

So with Peter, perhaps, having to make sense of the vision not only in the moment to receive his Gentile visitors, but to be able to explain it, preach it to his peers: that caused Peter to learn and translate and embody, ensoul in a new way the knowledge that God’s love is not to be conditioned or categorized. When we preach to others we are always preaching to ourselves, and hoping for transformation.

I had a mentor who once told me that when people were driving them to the brink of madness and beyond, they would try to remember that God loved those people, that they loved those people. It made it easier to bear the frustration, they said, if they could remember to love them. Love takes practice.

 

No, love is not faint-hearted. Love is not weak-willed. Love abides in the meek, in the frail, in the exhausted, as easily as in the strong; maybe it’s even easier to see in the dark. Love is a flame that will not be extinguished, but that will not drain the room of oxygen, that will not consume but enlighten, like the bush that burned before Moses and erupted with the voice of God, with every leaf and twig still intact.

 

Love – listen. If we believe that Jesus knew whereof he spoke, what he was talking about, then he knew that he was giving this commandment to love one another against the backdrop of a vicious and pernicious Roman occupation. He knew that the local police were about to arrest him on trumped-up charges in the Garden. He was not naïve. His closest circle of disciples included both a zealot and a tax collector; a collaborator and a conspirator. Still, he believed that love was the way, the only way. “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

Loving like Jesus heals the sick, frees the bound up, sets the sinner on a new path, brings good news, real good news, to the poor. Brings new life to those left for dead.

This is the love that Peter committed to, that Peter committed. And even he needed to have his vision expanded, if he were to understand and embody the love that would mark him out as an undeniable follower of Jesus.

Love, the love that Jesus commands of and offers us, is not sentimental but sacrificial. It stands by itself, and it does make all the difference in the world.

 

It may sound naïve to say that love will save us, when still we hear of war and rumours of war, destruction wrought by man and devastation wrought by storms.

But throughout this season of Easter we have been reading from the Revelation to John on the island of Patmos. Exiled; in modern parlance, deported from his community because of persecutions, he nevertheless persisted in his vision of God’s faithfulness, God’s love for God’s people,

See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Even in the midst of Resurrection, we have been reminded time and again not only that the work of love continues, and that it will continue until the kingdom come, but that God is with us, still with us, still Emmanuel. That nothing, not death nor life, angels nor demons, powers, princes, persecutions, paranoia, nor privilege can get in the way of God’s saving embrace. Love may not be for the faint of heart; but love will endure.

Readings include Peter’s vision in Acts 11, part of John’s Revelation on Patmos, and Jesus’ new commandment: to love one another (John 13).

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Mother’s Day

Posted on May 11, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Including words from the original Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe

The very Earth is heaving beneath the weight of war.
Fire consumes and leaves no food for the rest of God’s creatures;
lead pollutes the soil, the seas, the blood of the children.
Earth, their mother, of whose clay they were formed,
bone from bone, groans with the labour of holding the poles 
of want and greed, fear and history, oppression and liberation. 
They clash in the sky like eagles and fall to the ground like the dead.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says, “Disarm, disarm!” The sword is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession. [i]

And God, walking in the garden, heard the blood, shed but not silent.
And God, human in the garden healed the injury inflicted and rebuked the sword.
And God, lying in the tomb, bore the wounds of the dead, the destruction of the proud.

And God, how long before peace becomes the birdsong of that place? 
Bear witness: we cannot bear much more of war.
Bear down love, the Holy Spirit like a dove, driving and directing our fast.
Bear down peace: lead us out of the valley of shadows, 
where the very earth hugs herself together on her knees. 
Heal her grief. Bear down mercy: save us by your labour. 
We cannot bear our anger any longer. Bear down peace.

[i] The original Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe

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Lessons from my cat

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

I have decided to join my cat

in growling at the storm.

We both know when it is coming.

I don’t know if she feels the same

pain behind the temple,

or whether her whiskers

quiver barometrically;

we look at one another. I try

to whisper reassuring quietnesses.

She doesn’t believe in my ability

to shield her from the loud, piercing

lightness of the sky.

She is not wrong. So I

have decided to join her.

I shall set my ears and turn my back

and let the falling pressure know

the depths of my displeasure.

I shall growl at the roaring thunder,

snarl at the lightning, flashing my teeth. 

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Unbegrudging Jesus

Posted on May 4, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

_______________

The readings for today, the third Sunday of Easter, include the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus, Jesus’ third appearance to his disciples according to John, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and the eschatological vision of Revelation.

There are new beginnings all over these Easter readings, and none of them is perfect. There are second, third, fifth chances, and some of them might even feel like setbacks. Still, the light streams through, the light of God’s love made manifest in the crucified and risen Christ.

In Saul’s case, the light shines through so harshly that it knocks him to the ground. Even this is mercy, because Jesus is giving Saul the opportunity for repentance, every reason to rethink his current course, full as it is with violence and threats, breathy with vengeance. Saul is given the space, the grace of three days of darkness, as though, as it were, he were to share in the three days in the tomb of Lazarus, or of Jesus, so that he might better appreciate and share in the alternative, the risen life.

Saul is not the only one given a chance to reconsider in this story. Ananias, when he is first approached to become the instrument of Saul’s conversion and healing – Ananias is reluctant. He is afraid, and he is uncertain how much he wants this man’s salvation.

I mean, we can relate to that, can’t we? We would love for everyone to be on the same page, to understand the right way, to know what we know about how the world should work, how God should work, who should be in charge. There is also a little part of us that doesn’t want our neighbours to change, to realize the errors of their ways, to become as right and as righteous as we are. Sometimes – only sometimes, and only secretly, or else on social media – sometimes we would prefer their judgement, their downfall, their continuing blindness to their salvation. Like Jonah after God spared Nineveh sulking, “I just knew you were going to be kind to them! I never should have come,” forgetting, for a moment, just how kind God was to rescue Jonah from the belly of the whale.

It is human, this reluctance, this begrudging, and so it humours me that Ananias agrees to go to Saul only after Jesus says, “Don’t worry; I’ll show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” “Well, that’s alright then,” says Ananias, and goes on his way.

But Jesus is not begrudging, nor reluctant. Jesus is more than forthcoming in reaching out to Saul, reaching into Saul, to bring him not to his destruction but to his salvation, despite all that he has done. Jesus sees how his zeal, redirected and disarmed, can be used for the gospel.

There are visions all over this story: Ananias and his vision of Saul, Saul and his vision of Ananias, Saul and his vision of Jesus. Jesus and his perfect vision. Different visions of different men, and it is only in Jesus that they are brought into harmony, and become one story, and Saul is reconciled not only to Jesus, but to the very people he had come to Damascus to persecute. He is baptized, and eats with them, and they with him – what a brilliant, dazzling image of the church.

We may not get there in our lifetime; it may take until the kingdom come, until the revelation at the end of it all that we find our true harmony with one another; it will only come through the grace of God and the example of the love and forgiveness of Jesus.

 

Back in Galilee, the brothers and friends had returned to their nets. They had walked away from all of the drama in Jerusalem, whether as a retreat and a respite or for good, who knows. They had gone fishing, but they were out of practice, or they were out of sorts, or they were plain out of luck; they caught nothing.

Then Jesus showed up. Just as the light was dawning, just as the sun was rising behind them, the shore becoming shadowy and obscured by the smoke of his charcoal fire, so that they could barely make him out, but there he was.

There he was, waiting for them with breakfast cooking on the fire, and grace beyond measure; their nets would not break however full he filled them. There he was, still providing for them, still tending to them and feeding them, before his conversation with Peter.

 

Neither Peter nor Paul would have it easy. The history of the earliest churches makes no secret of their conflict. They would persist in their different visions and take different tacks, despite the visions from God that would bring them together. Because of the visions from God, because of their experiences of Jesus, because of the love that they knew of the crucified and risen Christ, they were able, between them, to shepherd a church that would grow and multiply, that would survive hard times and persecution, that would be the source of life itself to so many people; only by the vision of Christ.

It required sacrifice of them both; the humility to see repentance as a gift, reconciliation as a grace. Saul had to stop breathing threats and murder; Peter had to take back his trifold denials; Ananias had to swallow his fear and trepidation. If they hadn’t, if they had not known and followed the Lord Jesus, none of this would have come to pass and we would not be here together today.

Still, we are a world away from that vision of the Revelation, when all will be reconciled, and all forgiven. Still, we are troubled by threats and murder, visions of what might be and what could be, who we have been, who we are called to be. How God might call upon us, like Ananias, in fear and trembling and faith to fulfill the prayers of another – it is almost unfathomable.

And still, Jesus shows up for us, not once, or twice, but early in the morning, when we can barely see him. First, he breaks the bread for us. He feeds us and tends us. Then he says to us, Follow me. 

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Catherine and the world on fire

Posted on April 29, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire. – Catherine of Siena
But what if the world were already on fire?

Set the world on fire,
blaze like oil across the waters
such that none may break the surface;
oxygen-consuming, irradiating light
scorching creation, cauterize the wound
of life; still, the depths
mirror the mountaintops,
the thinness of the atmosphere,
reversing the lightness of the air,
waters pregnant with the heaviness of
God’s word ready to erupt.

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Forgiving and retaining

Posted on April 27, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Contrary to what you might have heard, perhaps Thomas never doubted Jesus. As soon as he saw him, he fell to his knees and worshipped him: My Lord and my God!

Thomas may have had some doubts, on the other hand, about his fellow disciples. After all, Judas, who had been with them through all of the miracles, the storms, the prayers, the feasts, the threats, the revelations; Judas who had sat with them at supper as though butter wouldn’t melt; well, it didn’t bear repeating what Judas had done.

Of course, Judas was no longer with them, but what about James and John, competing for power, who’s the greatest, who’s the right hand man and who the left, vying for, jostling for position as Jesus’ favourite.

Even Peter – they all heard him in the courtyard of Caiaphas, swearing up and down that he had never even met Jesus before in his life.

No, it wasn’t Jesus that Thomas was doubting when they told him that Jesus had been and gone, and that he, Thomas, had missed him.

I’ve always loved this story, when Jesus came back just for Thomas. Like a shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to find the one stuck bleating on the hillside, Jesus would not let enough be enough, ten out of eleven. And this was the Jesus that Thomas knew – the one who would always, always come back for him, no matter what.

But Jesus didn’t come back only for Thomas. He had come back already for Peter, for James and for John, for the weary and frightened, the spiky and argumentative, the doubting and the doubtful. He came back for all of them, and his greeting was Peace.

His greeting was peace, and his gift was the breath of the Holy Spirit, the breath of life, the breath of forgiveness, the breath of reconciliation, making all things anew.

He spoke to them of forgiveness, of sins that need not be retained, but that could be set free, their debts paid by the economy of grace.

He came to those who most needed to hear it: those who had fled from the cross, those who had shut themselves off from their neighbours and their friends for fear, for fear of them. He came to Peter, the man who had disowned him, because he would not do the same in return, because he who retained the marks of the cross and the spear would not retain also the sins of his beloved friend. Because those had become the marks of a new life, not of punishment. Because Jesus had already forgiven them all, and more, from the cross.

Forgiveness is a complicated set of propositions, isn’t it? It is, it seems, essential not only to our life together but to our life with God. Over and over again, we see God’s forgiveness as the only way for us to return to relationship with the one who made us, who loves us, who has never left the relationship with us. Forgiveness is vital to our lives as Christians, as a forgiven and forgiving people.

At the same time, there were no Roman authorities in the room when Jesus appeared, no police presence from those who had conducted the arrest in the garden, tearing them away from their prayers in the peace of the olive grove. Jesus had forgiven even them from the cross, suggesting that they had forgotten what it was to be human, bound together by the image of God. They knew not what they were doing.

But I imagine that they would need to remember that humanity, that humility, to lay down their swords and clubs, to shed their armour and their allegiance to the forces of violence before they could enter that room filled with the peace of the breath of God. Forgiveness is one thing, can even be a one-sided thing; reconciliation, real healing, takes work from both sides.

In his book reflecting on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up in the aftermath of apartheid in South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrestled with these problems of forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is necessary, he asserted, because to withhold it, to become as vengeful and violent as those who have rendered harm, damages our own humanity. And yet, as another theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has famously said, there is danger in cheap grace.

In No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu wrote that forgiving is not forgetting the harm that has been done, nor condoning it, nor minimizing it. It is not saying that the crucifixion was fine because it led to the resurrected life of Christ. Forgiveness tells the truth; Jesus still carries the marks of the nails in his hands and his feet, and the soldiers and the scoffers cannot enter the space of peace while they are still carrying their hammers.

Still, forgiveness opens a window, a crack in a doorway to reconciliation, to repentance, to recognizing the shared humanity of sinner and sinned against. Forgiveness tells the truth, that love is stronger than death, and that Jesus will always come back for us, no matter what.

I think that Jesus was urging his disciples, wherever it is possible, to err on the side of grace. For the sake of their community, for the sake of peace, for the sake of his love.

Yes, Jesus came back for Thomas because he loved him, loved him to death and beyond, because he would never leave him hanging, wondering, or wandering. Thomas was right to trust him. Thomas was right about Jesus.

Jesus also came back to Thomas so that his relationship with his fellow disciples could be healed, so that their relationship could be made right; so that Jesus could demonstrate for Thomas and the other ten what it is to breathe peace, to embody forgiveness, to go forward with grace. To take the risk of loving not only God but one another, imperfect neighbours as we are, for the sake of the good news of the resurrection. To be peace in a profoundly troubled and troubling world; to overflow disarmingly with love and mercy.

You see? Jesus asked Thomas. Blessed are those who have not seen, but who believe, who forgive, who love, who bless abundantly, anyway. 

________

John 20:19-31

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Easter (without a happy ending)

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Easter is not a happy ending. It is hopeful, it is healing, it is a powerful rebuke of death and a defiant proclamation of the life, the mercy, and the love of God that persists throughout human history, throughout human failure, despite human sin. But it is not an ending. Even Jesus’ most astonished and delighted disciples did not live happily ever after. Easter is not the end of their story, it is far from the end of Jesus’ story, and it is not the end of ours.

Perhaps the dilemma of Easter is perfect to our present moment in the world: we need, we long, we are allowed and we are encouraged to rejoice in the resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ against impossible odds; against the powers of death itself. And the world continues to turn and to churn out its iterations of betrayal, crucifixion, and its counterparts. We are inordinately blessed by the mercy of God to have life beyond our imagining; and life on earth continues to find itself under substantial pressure.

Even so, and rightly so, we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Mary went to the garden very early in the morning, before it was properly light, before she had properly shaken off the sleeplessness of the previous night, with its grief and its ineffective remedies. So bleary and weary and beside herself was she that, at first, she didn’t even recognize him.

I mean, I can relate, in a way. It is sometimes easier to become wrapped up in my own grief, swaddled and shrouded in my own complaints and unhappiness, the worries and weariness of the world, that when the miracle breaks through, the Word of God, the word of grace, the glimpse of grace in the garden, I would as likely miss it as not.

But Jesus called out Mary’s name, and in that electric current of relationship, she knew him. In that recognition, she heard him. It’s like when we are at prayer, unsure whether or not God is listening, and we hear, all of a sudden, the song of a bird, or the whisper of a memory, and we know that we are connected to a conversation that transcends the moment.

And in that moment, Jesus warned Mary not to cling to him, not to hang on him, not to make this moment one that was all and only about the two of them; but to run and tell the others what she had witnessed, so that they, too, could know and believe that God is still with us. That Emmanuel is an eternal promise, not a limited, mortal way of being. That Jesus is with us through the end of the ages and beyond.

Jesus sent Mary to tell the others, because resurrection, because prayer, because salvation, while it is always an intensely personal experience, is never only about the individual. I mean, it is personal, of course it’s personal; it is because of the profoundly personal relationship that they had that Mary recognized Jesus from the way he said her name. And yet, God so loved the world …

God loves not only us but the whole world.

Here’s where we get into that dilemma, that paradox of Easter: that death has been defeated, that mercy has prevailed, that the life and love and magnificence of God cannot he killed nor negated.

And that it takes all of us who believe in the resurrection, who believe in the mercy, who believe that the love of God conquers all human sin and suffering; it takes all of us to share that message with those who are still suffering, with those from whom mercy has been stolen, for those who are dwelling in the valleys of the shadow of death, to make it real, just as Mary shared the good news with Peter, and the beloved disciple, and all of the others so that they could experience it for themselves.

No, God does not need us to succeed; Christ is risen. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, the victory over death and death-dealers and empire-builders and betrayers and envy, the world and the devil – the resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s free gift to us, and we need do nothing to earn it.

And the world continues to turn and to churn out its iterations of betrayal, crucifixion, and its counterparts. Still, the earth groans under their pressure, the children cry, the exiles wander, those who deal in greed and death still seem too often to have the upper hand. But we know better. We know that love has already won. We have seen it in the empty tomb. We have heard it in the voice of Jesus, calling us each by name.

The resurrection of life and love today might look a lot like us mirroring the love of God among our neighbours, our communities, even to our enemies. Like Mary running to tell the others what she had discovered of the enduring, unending, undefeatable love of God.

I am going to trust you to decide what that looks like as a community of faith here in America, here in the 21st century world. I am a privileged immigrant, a pilgrim, the mother of a queer and beloved family, one who relies on God’s grace to resurrect me out of bed every new morning, a priest; I have some idea of where Christ is calling me to preach good news. You know where it is that you are called to live the good news, the good love of God.

Because Easter is not a happy ending. It is hopeful, it is healing, it is a powerful, the most powerful, rebuke of death and a defiant proclamation of the life, the mercy, and the love of God that persists; and it is a story that we get to tell over and over again, wherever new life is needed, wherever love may heal; because this is the never-ending story of his God loves us: enough to go beyond even the grave to show us that God is with us, Emmanuel, yesterday, today, in this fragile life, and forever.

 Amen.

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Holy Saturday: quiet as the grave

Posted on April 19, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

But did the very earth fall silent? 
Or was the drumbeat of falling rain, 
children of the waters of creation falling again, 
amplified by the rock roof, turning the storm 
into an orchestra of praise; what of susurrating ants, 
murmuring earthworms, galvanized by the hewing of the tomb 
into frantic activity, antithesis of the stillness of death? 
The olive trees swayed and dipped and dripped 
their sap into the fruit that would become fat 
over the sabbath rest left undisturbed. 
Perhaps it is only when we fall silent for long enough 
to forget the distraction of our own hearts beating 
that we hear creation’s call to prayer, and in that stillness, 
God turning back, preparing the reply …  

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Palm Sunday: Gleanings

Posted on April 13, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Did they leave their cast-off garments for the poor
to pick up and wear after the parade?
Who kept watch for the Romans,
and what was the signal to disperse in a hurry,
and who knew and who was left to fend for herself?
Did Jesus scratch the ears of the donkey,
feed it fruit from the cut-off branches
from his own hand?
Did the street vendors see an opportunity,
or board up their businesses for the day?
What did they leave behind?
Whom did they have behind?
What were their demands, and were they accomplished?

Did they leave their cast-off coats
in the street for the weary?
Were the olives fully trampled,
or did they leave the gleanings for the hungry?
What kind of a protest, what prophecy was this?

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The prodigal

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

We are, Paul says, ambassadors for Christ, entrusted with the message and the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:16-21).

That’s some charge, so let’s set it to one side for a moment and look at the parable instead, the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Such a familiar name, even if we rarely use the word prodigal in any other context any more. But who named it this way?

I have to think that, if the father had named it, it would be called the forgiven son.

If the servants had named it, it would be called he’s so lucky he doesn’t know he’s born.

If the younger son had named it, he might have called it amazing grace.

But we know it as the parable of the prodigal, the profligate, the wasted, the wastrel son.

Why? Why do we persist in calling him by his sin instead of by his salvation?

If Jesus published a collection of his short stories, what would he call this parable? I think it’s worth asking, since Paul says that from now on we regard from no one from a human point of view. In Christ, rather, each becomes a new creation. We’re known no longer by our sin, but by our salvation.

It could, and would, have been such a simple and straightforward and frankly delightful tale of sin and sorrow, fallout and forgiveness, ruin and reconciliation, were it not for the insertion at the end of the elder brother’s bitterness. Surely it is he who has named this story for us, so that still we read it from his point of view.

I mean, I get it. We are all tired right now, tired of bad news and bad actors and bad outcomes.

But let’s be honest, we get tired, too, of new awakenings; the people who have only just noticed that there is injustice in the world, who have only recently recognized that all is not well with the world that God created to be good, so very good. We see the people rushing in with their repentance and their suggestions for repair, and, hey, I could count myself among them.

And the person who has been out tending the fields, day in day out, without so much as a goat to celebrate the little wins, to commiserate the myriad losses, they see the scene that is made, the fuss and the palaver, and they are weary.

It would be such a simple tale of family forgiveness, were it not for that wrinkle at the end, but that’s what makes it real. If there were no sin, there would be no need of salvation. If there were no rift, there would be no need for reconciliation. That’s why this story calls us to remember our charge as ambassadors for Christ, ministers and messengers of reconciliation, members of the beloved community of Christ that somehow brings together the sinner and the sinned against.

It isn’t easy work. It isn’t a fairytale. Howard Thurman wasn’t commenting on it but he might as well have been thinking of this parable when he wrote, “Disagreements and conflicts will be real and germane to the vast undertaking of man’s becoming at home … under the eaves of his brother’s house.”[1]

The response of the elder brother recognizes that while all may be forgiven, there is still work to be done on the other side of repentance.

Nor is the decision to cut his losses and come home the end of the story for the younger man. He has squandered his entire inheritance – he possesses nothing. He has burned so many bridges; his father has forgiven him generously, but how will he make amends to the others he abandoned, betrayed, or worse on his way out the door? Including his brother. What will the household look like now, this family, as they shift and adjust and bump elbows and hips and sharp corners making room for one another in a new configuration?

Repentance is not easy. Forgiveness is not easy, either. It is not as simple as rolling out the barbeque to roast the fatted calf. It is the work of the next morning, waking to a new reality, finding a way to go on. What does the next day look like for this family, broken, shattered, then pieced back together by the blood of the fatted calf? What comes next for them?

Back in the snippet of the story from Joshua that we read this morning, the people whom God rescued, liberated from slavery in Egypt have spent forty years wandering in the wilderness. Only now, two generations later, have they come to the promised land (Joshua 5:9-12). God’s grace has preceded and pursued them through the wilderness years, and yet we know that in the stories to come, there will be further trials, more faith and faithlessness, even greater grace and forbearance needed. We know from the stories on the news and the cries that we hear even from here that there is still little peace to be found in the promised land.

Living into the grace and mercy of God is more than the work of a lifetime, more than the work of a generation. It is more than our work. We know that.

Yet we are ambassadors of Christ, entrusted with the message of reconciliation in our time, in this place, today.

Jesus told this parable to those who were grumbling at his welcome of sinners and outcasts. He told it not to the prodigal sons, sure enough of the father’s forbearance and love to ask too much to begin with and to run home when he needed – would that life were so simple. But Jesus told this story to the elder brothers, the ones struggling to come to terms with God’s expansive forgiveness and generous grace, struggling to put it into practice themselves, struggling to see how it could possibly make right what has gone so wrong, how one could ever break bread with one’s own betrayer, as Jesus did, and will soon.

Yet in the parable the father loves both of his sons. Runs out of the house for each of them. There is nothing either of them can do to make their father love them more or love them less. And so God not only runs out into the road to welcome us home with open arms, but God has been there all along, saying, “All that is mine is yours. All that I have created is for you. Beloveds, you need do nothing to possess it, only rejoice with me in the life, the love, the freedom that grace embodies.”

Wherever we find ourselves in the story, whatever we want to call it, that’s what it’s about in the end. That’s what we are about, in the end, as ambassadors for Christ, our reconciler: the love of God, ever-present, ever-living, all-forgiving, all-embracing, all-reconciling, forever.

[1] https://www.bu.edu/htpp/files/2017/06/1965-Desegregation-Integration-Beloved-Community.pdf

Lectionary readings for Year C Lent 4

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