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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Though the fig tree does not blossom

Posted on March 23, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

The prophet Habakkuk, at the end of his prophecy which reads like a psalm, like a prayer, like a song; at the end he writes,

Though the fig tree does not blossom,
            and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
            and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
            and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
            I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
            he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
            and makes me tread upon the heights. (Habakkuk 3:17-19)

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines … yet … I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.

I do not generally relate well to parables about growing things. The thing about me and plants is that we do not go well together. I cannot grow a dandelion on purpose. If I plant a fig tree, let’s be clear, and it does not blossom or bear fruit, it is not going to be the fault of the fig tree.

So perhaps this is one horticultural parable that I can relate to, after all. This fig tree is struggling. Who knows why – whether the soil is too poor, whether it is too young or too old to put forth the fruit the man demands? Yet the gardener defends it. I learned this from Eugene Peterson: “Let it alone,” the gardener says, using the exact words (in the original language) that Jesus will utter from the Cross to defend even his enemies, when he prays, “Father, forgive them.”[i]

I can relate to mercy, to second chances, even when they involve some manure, or forty years wandering in the wilderness, often grumpy, sometimes lost, always there by the grace and strength of God.

There is a whole lot of grief dug into the readings we hear today. Moses is an exile from not one but two families, his birth family, his adopted family, two backgrounds, nationalities, caught between cultures and in exile from them both. He is on the run and finding comfort where he can. Can you imagine?

Even in the voice of God, there is the foreshadowing of terrible grief: the ruination of the Egyptians at the Red Sea, the rout of the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hivites, the Perizzites yet to come, not to mention the thousands lost to the wilderness, as Paul describes.

How do we not hear these stories without seeing the map of current conflicts and terrible grief overlaid and undergirded, without wondering where we would go, to whom we could possibly turn for comfort, were we there, were we them?

Jesus tells his parable to those who were reeling from the news of national disaster: of Pilate’s political murder and manslaughter in Jerusalem; worshippers taken at the altar for their rebellious resistance, and workers slain by deadly working conditions. Jesus tells his parable to those who are afraid that they will be next, that the powers that be will determine that they, too, are a waste of the soil in which they are planted and rooted.

And Jesus tells the story of the gardener, son of Adam, the Son of Man, who will stand in the breach for them, handle the manure for them, until it is transformed by the earth into better things. The gardener who will push back against the axe with patience and persistence and mercy.

In the story of Exodus, God does not wait for Moses to stumble across God’s presence. God, the creator of the universe, the Lord of life, the almighty secretes Godself within the flames emanating from a shrub, to attract Moses’ attention; God calls to Moses by name. God tells Moses that God has been listening, that God has heard the cries of the people, that God has seen Moses’ wanderings. God promises, moreover, to stay – “I will be with you” – for as long as it takes.

In the parable that Jesus tells, the gardener, the son of Adam, the Son of Man stands in the breach between the fig tree and the axe. God almighty made human, God incarnate stands with his people, his anxious, grieving, fearful people, and tells them a story of protection, provision, and mercy. He is telling them, telling us, “I will be with you, as long as it takes.”

He also tells his listeners, tells us, to repent.

You have heard, I am sure, that repentance is not the same thing as penitence, although penitence is rightly commended to us, too, particularly in this season of Lent. But while penitence reflects our grief and sorrow for our sin, repentance is about repair. It is about new beginnings, second, third, and forty-fifth chances; it is about turning from the axe toward mercy, about turning from oppression to find God. It is about turning from death toward the source and end of our life.

Repentance is about standing next to Jesus in the breach. It is about recognizing that nothing, no one whom God has made can be called a waste of the soil, a waste of their space on earth.

Perhaps the soil was not well-fed enough for the fig tree to flourish. Perhaps conditions were too harsh. Perhaps the man was too impatient. But look to your own righteousness, Jesus says. Repent: make sure you are facing in the right direction; the direction of mercy, of love, of feeding the five thousand fig trees, of patient and persistent protection of the vulnerable, those in danger of being cut down.

But there is more. Where the man is impatient, the gardener sees potential. Where the man sees barrenness, the gardener sees life. Where the man sees a waste of the soil, a waste of space, the gardener sees a tree. When we feel as dry as dust, when our efforts at life seem fruitless – then, God is near, drawing closer and closer in the burning bush, standing in the breach, dealing with the manure, seeing your potential, your life, proclaiming that you, too, are worthy of the space you take up, that you are beloved. Jesus, God with us, even from the Cross proclaiming, “Let it alone! Father, forgive them.”

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines … yet … I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.

 

[i] Eugene Peterson, Tell it Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), 74

Year C Lent 3 readings include Exodus 3:1-15, 1 Corinthians 10:1-11, Luke 13:1-9, Psalm 63:1-8

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    Purple

    Posted on March 7, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    Purple crocuses bruise the front lawn,
    among last year’s dead leaves
    and this morning’s snow.
    I wonder at them; I do not know
    if they struggle to emerge
    through the blanket of accumulated grief,
    only to be chilled by the state
    of the world that greets them,
    or whether they are simply optimistic,
    resilient in their joy,
    royally, foolishly, fondly hopeful.

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    On grief

    Posted on February 25, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    And so he died, and all at once I understood 
    more of grief than I had before.
    It beckoned from beyond the door 
    of the tomb. In its mosaic floor 
    I saw mourning not for what was lost 
    only but for what never was,
    and missing for an amputated pain, 
    numbness being a disordered sensation. 
    I read forgiveness in the tessellated tiles
    of other lives reordering themselves 
    to fit in this last loss; grace in the merciful 
    embrace of life beyond experience. 

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    Stock

    Posted on February 14, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    The tree had never dreamt to kill; 
    that stuff, it thought, was for the birds,
    although it knew it, too, had grown 
    rich on the sinew and marrow left 
    at its feet by the hawks and the owls.
    Still, if anyone had thought to ask, 
    it would have preferred to be used for caskets,
    helping to shoulder the burden of grief, 
    than pressed into the service of death;
    knowing full well, as it did, that its roots
    were once one with the tree of life.

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    The death of Simeon

    Posted on February 2, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    Simeon, having left the temple, put his affairs in order, ate a hearty if bittersweet supper, and went to bed. He was surprised, waking early the next morning, to find the feather of a dove clinging to his pillow.

    At first, he thought that it must have come home on his clothes, which led to the other reason for his surprise: Simeon had not expected to wake up that morning at all. He had, after all, completed all that was required of him, had blessed the child and its parents, had prophesied weal and woe, sung his swansong. It was almost embarrassing to awaken to the sunlight striping his bed, the sounds of the marketplace, louder and more cacophonous than ever, and the soft, white dove’s feather.

    The feather. Now, Simeon began to remember.

    Simeon, a man full of the Spirit of God, had been told by that same Spirit that he would live to see the face of God. What more could a man want? Yet who could see God and live?

    But when he held the child, Simeon also saw something else. He saw, so clearly that he almost dropped the child, swords flashing. He heard the cries of infants and the screams of their mothers. He shook his head; it was as though he could hear them still. When he held the child, he saw a cloud draped over the holy city like a mourning cloth. Even when he looked into the eyes of the young mother before him, still he saw such scenes reflected in the infinite wells of her pupils.

    They seemed so vulnerable, this young and fragile family, to carry the salvation of the world in their weary arms.

    As he remembered, Simeon’s hands were moving absent-mindedly, and now he noticed how they were playing with the sunbeam, turning this way and that, cupping and reflecting its light, as yesterday he had wanted to inhale the essence of the child, keep the lightness of his little body as a talisman, his aroma as armour against the horrors of the world.

    But Simeon was filled with the Spirit, and it whispered within his soul, this is not a symbol, Simeon, but a sign. This is God fleshed out, love embodied, for there is none greater.

    Understanding at last, Simeon rose like one still sleeping, walking through a dream, unstoppable. Opening the door, he stepped out onto the point of a soldier’s sword. Falling into the void of fear and hope, the wide, wild eyes of the young mother cradling her child beside him, he murmured, Run.

    Crumpled into the space her flight left behind him, he saw more feathers falling, wondered briefly, what now? before he saw across the way Anna, opening the cages of the turtle doves, loosening the leashes of the sheep and the cattle, running them out under the feet and over the heads of Herod’s army.

    As though she were right beside him, he heard her speak in the voice of his mother, a whisper within his brain and his marrow, who could see God and not live like it?

    Featured image: Simeon the God-Receiver (Old Believers, 19th c, priv.coll), public domain, via wikimedia commons

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    Anna in the sanctuary

    Posted on February 1, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    Widowed, but not alone,

    shrouded in the living stone

    of temple prayers woven

    as a garment of grace

    haunting the holy place,

    sanctified and sanctifying

    the very air with praise.

    She would not follow them

    to Egypt, return with them

    to Nazareth, re-enter

    the river Jordan, yet

    her voice runs down

    like the rivers of life still

    from the sanctuary.

    Featured image: Presentation of Christ in the aTemple, from the Melisende Psalter, C12th British Library, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (detail)

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    A prayer out of time

    Posted on January 29, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    O God, take up this day,
    cradle it like the newborn thing that it is,
    turn it this way and see the pink sunrise,
    the bruise of clouds, the barely-lit night
    which to you is as bright as the day,
    though I can hardly see your hand
    before my face;
    lift it to your Word
    and hear the mourning dove,
    the morning alarm, the siren; discern
    whether it be a threat or a prayer. Speak –
    no, sing to it a lullaby in a minor key,
    turn its pain into melody.
    Our times are in your hands, O God,
    and we cannot handle them without you.

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    Mercy

    Posted on January 24, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    filled with the power of the Spirit, 
    the prophet
    found the place where it was written:

    good news to the poor, 

    release to the captives,
    and recovery of sight to the blind,

    The Spirit of the Lord 
    has
    let the oppressed go free      

     –  as was his custom,
    and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.

    Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

    Today’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry uses not my own words (what words do I own, anyway?), but only those found in Sundays’ Gospel. What is left – if most of the words of the prophet, that Jesus sought and found and read aloud, are omitted – those words are pasted below. The title is not found in this week’s Gospel but throughout our salvation history – God’s history of mercy upon us – and echoes from the pulpit occupied by Bp Mariann Budde earlier this week.

    Jesus,
    returned to Galilee.
    He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

    When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day,
    He stood up to read, and the scroll of
    Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and:

    “is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to bring. 

    He
    sent me to proclaim 
    to 

    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

    And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “

    Luke 4:14-21

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    Schrödinger’s wedding

    Posted on January 14, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

    Until its surface tension breaks 

    upon the steward’s tongue –

    dissipating sweetness, 

    sweat of vineyard labourers, 

    honey of the sun-ripened harvest –

    it is neither water nor wine; 

    until the jars are filled to overflowing,

    until a drop is spilled, 

    staining the ground with promise;

    until the sides run with condensation 

    like an ever-flowing stream;

    it is neither water nor wine

    until the hour is come; 

    yet every hour is thine. 

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