Living and dying

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Lent 1

A few hours after our services ended on Ash Wednesday, we got up in the dark and travelled to Georgia to see our son. Flying home last night, I was at first nervous that we’d miss our connection – our plane was late due to an earlier maintenance issue – and that we’d have to drive home from Dulles through the night. But by the time we approached the lights of the capital, we’d made up a lot of time. As the plane began to descend, it picked up some crosswinds. By the time the ground reached out to greet us, it was rocking like a boat on the wide ocean. I braced myself for a hard landing; but instead the plane pulled up sharply and we found ourselves once more climbing over the city, going around to try again.

We began Lent on Ash Wednesday with a stark reminder of our mortality: the grit and dust of ash smeared on our faces to remind us that we have been formed from dust by the One in whose image we are made – that we will one day crumble away with all of our monuments and memories. Yet we were made by One who never crumbles or stumbles, whose life-giving love endures forever. We are a shadow of what sustains us – a smudge of ashes forming part of a picture of glory.

There are many ways to die. Modern plagues continue to disturb our peaceful denial and threaten to isolate us even further from one another. Xenophobia and racism have gone viral along with the fear of the virus itself. We owe it to one another, to our communities and our families, to practice safe living – washing hands, staying home when we are sick, the sensible stuff – but we owe it to one another also not to care only for our own health, but for the welfare of those most vulnerable to disease, to economic distress. Without one another, our way of life cannot continue. We are held up by the arms of others – the face of the pilot emerging from the cockpit once we finally made landfall said it all – and how heavy a burden will we place on them?

There are many ways to die. On two Ash Wednesdays two years apart now, mass shootings have claimed the lives of the innocent, adults and children alike. How many of them wore ashes to school or to work that day, never dreaming that the end would come so soon? How has our temptation to the idolatry of violence and its tools, for protection and revenge, our insistence on our rights and our firepower over the commandment to love played into the hands of death and the devil?

Through the displacement of war and terror, through famine and unfair economic practices, too many still die of hunger in a world that is destroying its own environment for food production. The irony is crushing.

In addition to all of the little means of death that haunt us daily, there are the dramatic and the tragic, the unnatural and the unnecessary, the chaotic and deadly fruits of the Fall.

What would have happened if Jesus had chosen to take Satan’s suggestion, turn stone into bread? It could have been the beginning and the end of his feeding miracles. His compassion for the hungry crowds on the hillside would have been disrupted and damaged by the memory of how easy it is to fill one’s own stomach, and forget to pray for the hungry.

What would have happened if Jesus had consented to bow down before the devil, in order to harness his power and take over the principalities of the world? It would have been the end of the Cross and the Resurrection. It would have been the end of humility. It would have been the end of the Prince of Peace.

What would have happened if Jesus had chosen to take Satan’s suggestion, in front of festival crowds, and tossed himself from the pinnacle of the Temple? Whether or not the angels materialized, the divine experiment of the Incarnation would be over.

Jesus chose to be mortal, to be hungry, to be powerless. God chose humanity, so that we would have a new chance to choose life, to recognize the difference between good and evil.

There are many ways to die, and the Cross might be one of the worst of them; but Jesus came to show us life, the way to live.

His way of living is not grasping, nor self-satisfied. It is not death-denying, but it stands in solidarity with those who live in the valley of its shadow. It makes no deals with the devil. It is the way of love.

In the sacred story of our ancestors, the serpent told the woman that she would not die if she disobeyed God; she would, in fact, become more like a god herself. And it’s true that she didn’t fall like a fairytale character after one bite of the apple. But we die a little bit every time we turn away from the providence and mercy of the God, from our source of life and love. We die a little, we become a little less fully human, a little less connected to God and to one another, when anything less than love for God, love for our neighbour and our enemy made in the image of God guides our choices.

We do not become more godlike by striving for more power or satisfaction. Jesus showed us that in the wilderness.

And at the end of his fast, unbidden, the angels who would have broken his fall, had he needed them, came and ministered to him anyway.

We began Lent with the gritty reminder of our mortality, and we will end it with the glorious remembrance that God became mortal so that we might be raised to eternity. In the meantime, through the trials and temptations of the wilderness of life, may we be sustained and encouraged by the steadfastness of Jesus, and remember our common source and journey, and may angels come and minister to us when we need them the most.

Featured image: Jesus and Angel by Ary Scheffer (public domain), via wikimedia commons

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Ash Wednesday: grace is not in vain

Posted on February 26, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

What a curious thing for Paul to write to the Corinthians: “We urge you … not to accept the grace of God in vain.”

How could God’s grace ever become vain, or be wasted in vanity?

God’s grace cannot be diminished, nor wasted, nor diverted because it is in all and sustains all of creation and the entirety of eternity.

But our response to God’s grace – well, that’s another matter. We are all too capable of wasting and diverting and diminishing and completely missing the point of God’s love for us and all whom God has made. We are barely capable of appreciating the magnitude of Christ’s love – its height and breadth and depth. And isn’t that the point of a season like Lent, to remind us and restore us and reconcile us to the remembrance of God’s grace, God’s love, God’s steadfast mercy towards us mortals?

Last summer, we put out the lawn chairs in front of the church so that we could sit out and meet some of our neighbours going by. On the very first day a strange encounter occurred.

Someone else got to the church parking lot before me that morning. As they were getting out of their car, a stranger approached, looking for the priest and some prayer. “The priest isn’t here yet,” our member said, “but I can pray with you.” Perfect.

They went to the chairs, and that’s how I found them when I arrived, heads bent together in prayer.

Before he left, the stranger asked if we could spare some bus fare, which we found that we could. He left with a blessing and blessed us in return. We turned back towards the church.

While we had been talking, it seems, a police car had arrived and pulled into the lot. The officer was watching us. He wanted to know what the stranger wanted, and how we had responded. He was not wild about the way our encounter ended, but we pointed out that this is a church, and sometimes people come here looking for help of one sort or another, and sometimes they find it, in one kind or another.

There were a few things about that morning that stuck with me, and that stuck in me. Our member behaved beautifully toward our passing visitor, but I noticed that when I was confronted by the police officer, I became a little defensive. I think that it was quite right to point out that sometimes, when people are looking for it, they find help here, of one sort or another, and I do not want anyone hindered or deterred who is looking here for the grace of God.

But while I was making that point, I forgot to add to the officer that he, too, was welcome to find help here, should he need it: prayers for peace, and for protection; the grace and healing of confession, the mercy of reconciliation.

Even while we were doing some good, I failed to do all the good that I could with the grace of God that I had to hand.

That does not mean that the grace of God to me, to him, to them, to anyone in the story is in vain. It might mean that my ego, my defensiveness, my vanity interrupted my full acceptance and recognition of all the grace that was available in that moment.

This is why Lent is a good discipline for me. The soul-searching, the self-denial, the study of God’s grace is something that I need constantly if I am to recognize the enormity, the ridiculous span and spread of God’s mercy.

But constantly is hard to do. Setting aside a time, a season, a time of day to pray, a day of the week to fast, a pattern in which to remember that God who made us from the dust of the earth loves us, and redeems us helps me to remember that God who made us in God’s image will restore us one day so that we may look upon the true image, the face of the Divine.

In the meantime, in this mortal life, in which one thing comes after another and there are barely enough moments in the day to remember how to breathe, let alone how God breathed life into the human creature made out of dust and earth; in this mortal life, to set a moment apart to remember God’s grace seems essential, if we are not to accept it in vain, and squander our opportunities to live as those in love with God and loved by Christ, that we might learn to love one another.

But there is help for us here, wretched as we may be. There is the grace of confession and the mercy of reconciliation. There is the bread of life and the cup of salvation. There is the remembrance, once more, that Jesus loved us enough to become mortal with us, to enter the tomb and the realm of the dead, so that we need not fear our mortality, but recognize God’s mercy in returning us, at last, to the hands of our Creator.

As I pray for each of us a holy Lent, and a season of penitence and grace such that our fast shall not be in vain, I ask that you would in turn pray for me, a sinner. Amen.

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Words matter

Posted on February 16, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon at St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

Words matter. Language matters. Throughout our history, human communication has taken place increasingly through language, through words. Since God paraded the animals before Adam so that the human could give them names, we have named and labelled every new idea and thought and sub-creation that has sprung from our inspired imaginations.

Words have power: God’s words spoke creation into being. On the other hand, our language fell apart and lost itself to translation among the crumbling ruins of our original vanity project, the tower of Babel. But then, the Word of God, Jesus Christ spoke salvation into a fallen world.

Words are not the only means that we have of communication, of course. A wise man once told me that while humans have acquired more and more language, our communication skills have not necessarily increased in proportion. We see that whenever diplomacy devolves into war, wherever walls are created in place of bridges. We see that in the caveats around online conversations: that it’s hard to read tone through a backlit screen; that when the softening effects of body language are lost, words meant to unite us can devolve into division.

Maybe you, as I, grew up with the rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” We all knew it wasn’t true; the ones with bravely trembling lips and the bullies who drew the lie out of us. Words have power.

The language we use between ourselves and God matters. The language we use for one another speaks volumes about our ability to love our neighbour, our enemy, to recognize the image of God, the dignity of every human being. The language we use for God speaks comfort, or judgement, or awe, or longing, or all of the above. As James wrote elsewhere, “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.” (James 3:5b-6a) Where it has scalded, Jesus says, go and heal the hurt with soothing words. While at its best, we may cry out, “O for a thousand tongues to sing, My great Redeemer’s praise” (Charles Wesley).

Language matters, Jesus agrees: If you insult or defame your brother or sister or sibling, you are wounding the image of God within them, you are destroying something important and potentially irretrievable.

Even reading Jesus’ words, through layers and levels of translation, interpretation, copying and curation, miles and millennia away from the originals, we find ourselves brought up short, wondering what in heaven and on earth he might have meant.

He cannot, we feel, have really been recommending the removal of eyes and limbs (or tongues) for the good of the soul. Becoming less than whole for the sake of holiness just doesn’t ring true. When one of my children was in third grade, several centuries ago, their teacher threatened the class that if he caught them penning words except in cursive, he would cut off their arms at the elbow with a rusty pair of scissors. It took a while to convince an eight-year-old with a very active imagination that the teacher was not telling the absolute truth, even though it seemed obvious among adults; but if even wicked teachers would not chop off their students’ lazy or clumsy or undeveloped hands, how much more will your Father in heaven, or Jesus, the good teacher, have mercy on your wandering eye, your hasty mouth, your itchy hand, to paraphrase something Jesus said elsewhere?

But if we are able to extend the grace of hyperbole, exaggeration to those instructions, why have we, as a church, in other times drawn that grace back when it comes to the instruction about divorce? How do we decide what is hyperbolic and what to take as the letter of the law? Always we are making choices about interpretation, how we hear the words that are cast our way; and the less context, the less human contact we have around them, the easier it is to lose in their translation the undercurrent, Jesus’ underlying love, the tone that tunes all of his gospel to us, for us.

Jesus, at the end of this portion of his sermon, argues ironically for simplicity of expression: Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No;” but we can hardly leave it there and sit for the rest of our service in silence, can we?

You asked me here today to talk about Jesus, but also to talk about liturgy, and especially its language. The language of our common prayer, like any other, doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is interpreted and echoed by ritual and response, by the experiences and echoes that we bring with us from the breadth of our lives. It is run through the simultaneous translator device of our memory, of conversations we have had with those whom we love and with whom we argue. It runs up against the fences of our tradition, and the open gates of our imagination.

R.S. Thomas, twentieth-century Anglican priest and poet, said once in an interview that,

… in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet …; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. [1]

John Keble, nineteenth-century priest, professor, and poet wrote a century or so earlier that,

If we suppose Poetry in general to mean the expression of an overflowing mind, relieving itself more or less indirectly and reservedly, of the thoughts and passions which most oppress it: … – if this be so, what follows will not perhaps be thought altogether an unwarrantable conjecture; proposed, as it ought, and is wished to be, with all fear and religious reverence. May it not, then, be so, that our Blessed LORD, in union and communion with all his members… may it not be affirmed that He condescends … to have a Poetry of His own, a set of holy and divine associations and meanings, wherewith it is His will to invest all material things,” [2]

Material things, that is, such as words spoken by tongue and teeth, breath made solid by meaning, Word incarnate.

Words are not the only way that we communicate or pray, but words do give shape and structure to our prayer, to our knowledge of God and of one another. Words name reality and shape our imaginations. We cannot use them as idols, nor can they bring us all the way to the realm of God – the Babel story taught us that. Where words fail us, may the Spirit intervene with sighs too deep for words. Where they have hurt, may we be given words to heal. Where we find the words to worship in spirit and in truth, may we join with a thousand thousand tongues to sing our Redeemer’s praise. But our words are not only one concrete way that we speak to one another and to God in love; they are at least one instrument of God’s creating and saving grace to us. Jesus, the very Word of God, has taught us that much.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (John 1:1-4)
[1] A 1972 BBC interview with John Ormond was broadcast April 1972, and its transcript published in Poetry Wales; accessed here as quoted by William V. Davis, in R.S. Thomas, Poetry and Theology (Baylor University Press, 2007), p. 43

[2] John Keble, On the mysticism attributed to the early fathers of the Church, “Tracts for the Times” Vol. 6, no. 89, p. 144, accessed via Google Books 2/13-15/2020

Image: “Adam Naming the Animals,” from the Haggadah for Passover (the ‘Sister Haggadah’), 14th century, British Library collection via wikimedia commons. Public domain.

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Valentine

Posted on February 14, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Happy valentine’s day; no matter your circumstance today, you are beloved, more than words can say. In the meantime, my valentine said I could share this with you:

The undertow sucks sand from underfoot,

but I stand firm.

Wild horses swim across the strand;

I will not follow.

Turtles play; I tear myself away

even from them:

The rising tide of my love for you

runs ever full.

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Salt of the earth

Posted on February 9, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany in an election year …

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

You are God’s gift to creation.

This month during our coffee hour formation we will be talking about spiritual gifts, how to discern them and how to use them; but let’s start here: you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are God’s gift to creation.

Many of us, perhaps especially those of us raised female, have been taught too long to be oh so humble and self-effacing; too much salt spoils the soup, and too much light is glaring. But no one lights a lamp to hide it under a bushel, and the prophet Isaiah rails against a people that practices false humility, pretending to bow down before God, piling on sackcloth and ashes while in their hearts they hide greed and anger, violence and vengeance, the fruits of selfishness and pride.

Instead, Isaiah advises, turn yourselves inside out. Instead of feeding your own piety, feed your neighbour. Instead of building up your capitol, build shelter for your homeless neighbour. Instead of clothing yourself in self-righteousness, cover the cold and the shivering. Instead of locking in your own security, open the prisons, release the captives, and loose the bonds of injustice.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly.

You are God’s gift to creation, after all.

I notice, by the way, that the list that Isaiah puts before the people bears a striking resemblance to the list that Jesus sets out in the parable of the sheep and the goats, when the king separates those who clothed the naked and fed the hungry and visited the imprisoned from those who did not even notice their needs. And both of them, Isaiah and Jesus, are preaching a political message, about the end of oppression and the elevation of equality, about the mercy and justice of God, and that new world order, the kingdom of God.

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.

You are God’s gift, God’s political campaign contribution. You are God’s PAC.

The last time we looked at this passage together, I noted that

In the older church rites, salt was added to the rituals surrounding baptism. It was placed in the mouths of those being presented for the baptismal rite. That combination of salt and water – that is to say, the combination of you and your baptism – is powerfully good.

Even salt that is thrown out and trampled underfoot is useful, we know from our experience, for helping us to get a grip when the roads are icy and it’s hard to stay upright.

We know that the next several months in this country will be difficult and fraught. The twin temptations to pride and to silence, to excuse our pride with piety and our silence with false humility, will be strong.

But you are the salt of the earth, baptized with water and seasoned by Word and Sacrament. You are the light of the world, lit on fire by the Holy Spirit. What a gift God has given through you to the nations!

By keeping our salt, ready to speak God’s truth in a world of spin, we can help keep our grip on reality, the truth that matters, the justice of God. Don’t hold back, Isaiah advises: announce to my people their rebellion. Point out their sin.

But not with quarrelling and violence. Not with finger pointing and evil words. Advocate for equality, but in doing so, do not lose your own humanity, however funny the meme, however cheap and tempting the shot. Do not spoil your speech with insult and injury against anyone. Respect the dignity of every human being, even those with whom we disagree; do not insult the image of God within them. Love your enemies, as Jesus might have said elsewhere. Take care of their tender dignity. But salt your speech with truth. Be unafraid in countering sin with the mercy and justice of God, oppression with the glory of Christ crucified and risen.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, your healing shall spring up quickly. Sunlight, too, is a powerful disinfectant, a cleansing element, as well as a guide and a comfort.

You are the light of the world, sent to shine with the knowledge of Christ, to lift the gloom and make it like the noonday sun. It is not a glaring, harsh light. It does not hurt or blind the eyes of those whom it seeks to illuminate. But it is clear, and unwavering. That means that we must be careful of where we find our illumination, our information.

If we are to have a reputation for clarity and truth, for keeping a grip on reality and salting a pathway, not a slippery slope, but the road to righteousness, then we had better make sure that the story we are sharing on our social media feeds or in the barber shop comes not from a Russian troll bot, but is a true word worthy of the Word of God, the Christ for whom we are named Christians. Sources matter.

And why does it matter that what we say and share is trustworthy and true, and kind and dignified? We live in a weary and cynical world, where trust is hard to come by and even harder to restore once lost or damaged. Checking that the stories we share, the stories we tell are trustworthy and true matters first because Jesus is the Truth, so untruth is antithetical to him. But also, if your neighbour knows that you have been taken in by the latest conspiracy theory or doctored meme, their trust in your discernment of Christ and his true doctrine may also be damaged. At worst, they may suspect that the very gospel we proclaim is just one more conspiracy theory.

When “Paul” wrote to Timothy, “The saying is trustworthy and true, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” he was believed because Paul was known to be a trustworthy and true source. (1 Tim 1:15)

We are the salt of the earth, Jesus says, so we must develop a discerning palate for what is good and in accord with the justice of God which is always merciful, which is never in error but which errs on the side of grace. We are not to lose our salt over anything less.

We are the light of the world, Jesus says. We must be unafraid to uncover dark corners and disinfect our internal newsfeeds with the Sonlight, the Christlight. Eschew false humility, dispense with hypocrisy. Take pride only in Christ crucified, and trust in his resurrection.

You are the gift of God to the world. We are called, as Christians, as salt and light to represent Christ to a cynical and weary world. We have seen a vision of the kingdom of God, the release of the captives, the relief of the oppressed, the justification of the maligned and misunderstood, the mercy of God. That is our gift from God in Christ.

So guard the flame. Salt the soup. Shine as a light to the world, and always to the glory of Christ crucified, our risen and ascended Saviour.

You are salt: be bold. You are light: be illuminating. You are God’s gift: live with love. Amen.

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When we can’t see the end of the story

Posted on February 3, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Yesterday was our parish Annual Meeting, but of course, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple takes precedence …

Simeon said, “Now I can die happy.” Anna had been waiting eighty-four years – now she was running around like a spring lamb telling everyone that she had seen the redemption of Jerusalem; she should know, since she was a prophet.

What they had witnessed, these two faithful devotees, was one small family among many, coming to the Temple as so many did, to circumcise their firstborn son, to sacrifice turtle doves of thanksgiving for his safe delivery and survival, which then as now was not to be taken for granted. 

The baby who squalled and screamed as they “[did] for him what was customary under the law” would soon return to Galilee and its backwaters. It would be twelve years before he was heard from again in the Temple. Anna would most likely be dead; Simeon maybe too. 

It would be more than thirty years before Jesus returned as a man on a mission, cleansing the Temple of corrupt dealers and dirt, paving the way for his own destruction, his criminal crucifixion, setting himself up for the fall.

Certainly Anna, and probably Simeon, would not live to see the day of Resurrection, nor gather with the disciples of this babe in the Temple as, weary and confused, they heard the rumours of an empty tomb, a garden encounter, the promise of their Messiah fulfilled.

Within another generation, the Temple itself would be razed by the Romans, its rubble to this day the matter of archaeologists more than priests and prophets, the subject of conflict and the object of desire, but rarely associated with peace.

And yet on this morning, thousands of years ago, the prophet proclaimed the redemption of Jerusalem, and the prayerful man, drawn to the Temple and the child by the Spirit, prayed, “Now I can die happy.”

The genius of Simeon and of Anna, I think, was that they were able to see hope without seeing the whole story, the whole blueprint. They saw Jesus, and he was enough to inspire them with the firm and secure knowledge that in the midst of occupation and strife, God was still with them. They saw Jesus and knew that eighty-four years of widowhood, or however long it had been for Anna, were not empty, but that love had never left her. They saw Jesus and knew that whatever the other cares and caveats of life, in this moment of sacrifice, of flesh, blood, and Spirit, life made sense, as it was offered back to God in thanksgiving, and returned to the child and his parents as a promise.

They saw Jesus, and they knew God.

Waiting is hard. I am the last person to pretend that it isn’t. I do not have the patience of the saints. Waiting, for good news or for bad, takes its toll on a person’s spirit, even on their faith, if we are not careful.

Some of you may be waiting for health news, or for healing, for test results, or for treatment plans.

Some of you may be learning the new, slow life of widowhood, or the empty nest, or waiting for a new home or relationship to feel normal, or hoping that it never does.

Some of us may be waiting for the world to stop fighting itself, for the country to stop dividing itself, for the realm of God to replace the imperfect, fallen systems of governance that we try to prop up as best we can.

Some of us may be waiting for the restoration of the Temple, the rebuilding of the church, the rebirth of bustling Sunday School classes and bursting pews.

It can feel sometimes as though Jesus has withdrawn to the backwaters of Galilee, , and we do not know when we will see him again, nor whether he will come with whips and cords to clean out the temples of power, or even our own house; or whether he will come in chains, bowed down by the burdens of the principalities that still oppose the reign of God, its justice, its mercy, its peace; or whether he will come in glory, a light to shine the world toward salvation.

But Simeon, and perhaps especially Anna, the prophet, show us that we do not need to see the end of the story to know, in its beginnings, in our first encounters with Jesus, however incomplete and inarticulate and inchoate they may be; Simeon and Anna show us that if we allow our hearts to be melted by the love of God borne into the world, we will know the peace that passes understanding, and endures beyond the moment of pause, and silences the rabbling, quarrelling chaos of the world with its cry of flesh and blood and Spirit, the covenant of God with God’s children, the promise of God’s enduring and surviving grace.

Anna and Simeon found the love of God, after all, in the simple, everyday act of parents, and step-parents, doing what was required and customary for their child, and giving thanks for his survival. Anna, long-widowed and childless, was generous of spirit to take solace in the joy of others, even though it might have pierced her, too.

Simeon and Anna found the love of God even under the knife, something I find hard to understand or accept; but that might, after all, without too much of a stretch, remind me of the love of God guiding the hand of a surgeon, and the comfort and healing touch of the theatre nurse in the recovery room; for the presence of God even in pain.

Anna and Simeon found the love of God while witnessing another’s act of faith, of sacrifice, of prayer, and it sustained them.

Most immediately, they found the love of God in Jesus. They knew, when they encountered him, that the promises of God, Emmanuel, God with us were true, and that even if they saw nothing else, never knew how the story of this child would grow and how many peoples would know it, if they saw no more of the story, they knew that they had seen the salvation of God, the mercy of the Creator manifest in creation, the coming of the reign of God, slow but unstoppable.

We meet today for our Annual Meeting, of course, and we wonder what God has in store for us as we continue the mission and meetings of our founders in this place, in a setting and situation they could not have imagined even ninety-some years ago. So much has changed; and yet we meet as Christians always have, to witness the coming of Christ among us, as Word and Sacrament, to give thanks for the enduring life of the child born to give light to the nations, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

We come with our burdens of grief, of suspense, of disappointment. We come with our gifts of faith, hope, and love. We come not knowing how this story will end, but here at the altar, Jesus is present, and in his presence, may we find, if not what we are looking for, then instead what we most need, and what God most longs for us, to see.

Amen.

Image: The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Sarum Missal c. 1310-1320, National Library of Wales [CC0], via wikimedia commons

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Kittens

Posted on January 29, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is a lot going on in the world, in the country, in our communities and families.

Sometimes, the best antidote to overwhelm is to give in to kittens the overwhelming, particular, peculiar love of God.

Sometimes, this can be expressed in kittens.

This is a prayer I shared on the Episcopal Cafe for the celebration of the arrival of new feline family members:

For eyes that pierce the dark,
when we least expect it,
let us give thanks;
For the duty of care,
feeding, scooping,
cleaning, and scouring,
let us give thanks;
For fragility and agility,
the dance on the stairs,
dangerous vulnerability,
give thanks;
For the purring murmur in the night,
reminder of love awakened,
give thanks;
For the strange song,
not altogether holy,
give thanks to all that is Holy;
For the incantation of
all creation contained in the call
to the stewardship of a cat,
I give thanks;
For the foreshadowing in claws
of judgement,
and for their retraction,
I give thanks;
For curiosity that God has seeded;
for negligent affection,
hiding the impossible:
comprehension, connection
with the ineffable mind of One
who would create camels and scorpions
out of the same clay;
I give thanks for this feline revelation,
mediation, distracting reification:

Thanks be to God for the cat.

(Yes, there are cats in the book:

The humble housecat has domesticated the earth so entirely that there is no escape from her influence, nor from her evangelism on behalf of the omnipresent Lion-tamer.

From A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing, out from Upper Room Books on April 1!)

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It is too light a thing

Posted on January 19, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the second Sunday after the Epiphany, and Martin Luther King, Jr, weekend, at the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)

I love that God is not above playing with words. Since the beginning, when the Word went forth and created light, the pun has been in development: It is too light a thing/I will give you as a light to the nations.

This is not to make light of God’s charge to the people. It is not enough, God says, to restore your own people, to take care of your own, to protect your own interests and your own inheritance. That is too easy and too ordinary a thing for those called by God’s name, chosen as God’s covenanted people, inheritors of the promises to Abraham forever; and we have claimed the inheritance of that mantle alongside our brothers, sisters, and siblings who first heard the call to light.

No, God says, whatever you do you do on behalf of the world. Because when God created light, it did not shine only in the east, or only in the west, nor did it turn away from anyone except to return with the morning and the dawning and the seasons. God created light for the benefit of the whole of creation, that we might see and understand even toward the heavens, exploring the darkness of the skies with their faraway, fading, and guiding stars.

When we claim to have seen the light, it is not because it shines more brightly on us than on our neighbour, but because we have only just opened our eyes.

It is too light a thing, says the LORD, that you should only take care of your own. Other translations say it is too easy, it is too slight, it is too small a thing, too narrow a focus when there is a wideness in God’s mercy that spans creation, all who are created in God’s image.

If only God didn’t think so highly of us! God’s mercy is wide, we might say, but our reach is limited, and our influence waning in the world. We can’t save everyone.

We can’t save every black child from the stress that comes from growing up in a country riddled with racism. We may mourn, amongst other things, the vast discrepancies in health outcomes from the moment of their birth, and the mortality of black mothers, to the crippling indignities that accompany disparities in pain relief and pain belief. It’s unconscionable. But what can we do?

We can’t save every white child from the insidious lies of white supremacy that continue to drive those disparities and underwrite all kinds of inequality and evil. You cannot rescue a fish from water. You have to clean up the stream.

We can’t save every migrant child, every refugee, every asylum seeker, apparently, nor their families, from things done on our behalf.

We can’t save every country from war, from tyranny, from oppression.

God’s mercy is wide, we might say, but our reach is limited and our influence is waning. We can’t save everyone, can we?

“I formed you in the womb,” says the LORD, “to be my servant.” (Isaiah 49:5)

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

And by the way, says the LORD, I am relying on you to help relieve the burden of anti-Semitism and hatred from tribes of Jacob and from the survivors of Israel, too.

We cannot save everyone, but God’s salvation will reach to the ends of the earth. We are called to be its light, its harbinger.

We are to light torches and build beacons and in every wave and particle of our lives to be a light in the darkness, to be the lightness that relieves our neighbour’s burden, to be the hope that keeps feet climbing until we reach the mountaintop, to do all the good that we can for all the people we can, to defeat all the evil that we can in all the ways that we can along the way; and not to return evil for evil, but to replace curses with a blessing, “for to this you have been called, that you may obtain a blessing.” (1 Peter 3:9)

“Come to me,” Jesus said, “all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

How hard is it, after all, to love God, to love our neighbours, to love our enemies, to love even those for whom we have no passion one way or the other, those who are almost invisible to us? For it is too light a thing, says God, to love only those whom we see.

We see our fellow godchildren as like us, or not like us, or invisible to us. But it is God’s salvation that we proclaim, and that we claim for ourselves, and God created light to shine from one end of the universe to the other.

The light of God’s salvation is for everyone. It is the light which enlightens every body, which lifts every burden, which anoints every wound with healing.

The Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, preached a sermon titled, “Our God is Able:”

God is able to conquer the evils of history. His control is never usurped. If at times we despair because of the relatively slow progress being made in ending racial discrimination and if we become disappointed because of the undue cautiousness of the federal government, let us gain new heart in the fact that God is able. In our sometimes difficult and lonesome walk up freedom’s road, we do not walk alone. God walks with us. He has placed within the very structure of this universe certain absolute moral laws. We can neither defy nor break them. If we disobey them, they will break us. The forces of evil may temporarily conquer truth, but truth will ultimately conquer its conqueror. Our God is able. (MLK, 114)

And Dr King told of the night when, in the midst of work and trouble, a threatening phone disturbed him so that he wondered if he could continue. The work seemed all at once too heavy. He prayed,

“I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. (MLK, 117)

We are called to be beacons of courage. King continued,

I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”

At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.” (MLK, 117)

The salvation of God will reach to the end of the earth.

Three nights later, King said, his home was bombed, but he already knew by then that he could take it, that God have given him all that he needed to do the work God had given him to do. He ended his sermon,

“Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world. (MLK, 117)

It is surely not too light a thing. But it is not too great a burden, either, is it? – the burden, the yoke of God’s love for all of God’s children.

Amen.

All sermon quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, “Our God is Able,” in Strength to Love (Fortress Press, 2010)

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Light speaks

Posted on January 16, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Preparing for Sunday, amongst other things I’m struck by God’s pun on light in Isaiah (It is too light a thing that you should be my servant…/I will give you as a light to the nations [Isaiah 49:6]), and I remembered this that came to me last October, watching the light bouncing off the lake, impossible to capture and tame into a frame, the first wild creature of God (Let there be light. [Genesis 1:3])

Light speaks

Light speaks, flashing warnings
off of white-capped waves,
slamming into STOP signs,
seeping, insidious, around closed doors.

Deer by night absorb bites
of car headlights, secreting them
beneath their hides, creating
cloaks of invisibility, but
“’Tis only the splendour
of light hideth thee!”*

A change of light
may indicate an exit.

Even in the dark room, light is not silent;
light whispers, flushed and fevered,
smouldering out of sight to
the point of conflagration.

 

*From the familiar hymn, “Immortal, invisible, God only wise,” words by Walter C. Smith (1867)

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Baptizing Christ, becoming Christlike

Posted on January 12, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord, with the baptism of a new and infant member of our parish family, and our rehearsal of the Baptismal Covenant*

In the service for marriage in the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer is included that “all … who have witnessed these vows may find their lives strengthened and their loyalties confirmed.” In the same way at ordinations, and most universally at baptisms, the assembled congregation is challenged and affirmed by the vows that they witness to remember their own promises, their own misgivings, to turn once more to God in trust, in penitence, in faith that we are adopted by the Holy Spirit as children of the living God, and confirmed by grace as heirs to the kingdom of heaven.

Kennedy’s parents and godparents make promises on her behalf today, since she is too young to make them for herself; and as we witness them we promise to do all in our power to support not only Kennedy, but those who stand with her as they attempt to live into those bold oaths. And we renew our own Baptismal Covenant, affirming our faith in the One who Created, Redeemed, and continues to Inspire us.

We promise, with God’s help, to remain faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to continue to come together in the Communion of Word and Sacrament, to avail ourselves of the food for the journey with which Christ has provided us, our daily bread; to come together often, to become the Church that Christ called into being to bring good news to the world.

We promise, with God’s help, to resist evil. We know that temptations surround us on every side: temptations to carelessness and contempt, cynicism and snark, deals with the devil, and despair. All that would divide us from God and from one another, from the call to love God and our neighbour as ourselves – all that falls under the banner of sin. When it is deliberate, when it is destructive, when it is cruel, when it is demeaning to the image of God borne by each member of humanity; when it is done by someone else, we call it evil; but we are not immune to evil. We are not immune to the temptations to smear the image of God in the mirror of the person before us. Whenever we fall into sin, we promise with God’s help to seek God’s help to return to righteousness, to restore the vision of God within us, that we may love as Christ loved us.

And that is the good news of God in Christ: that God so loves the world that God gave us Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, to live among us, to die before us, to defeat the powers of evil and death and raise us to a new life, dripping with grace and with blessing. We promise, by word and example, with God’s help to shout it from the rooftops: God loves you, no exceptions. God will meet you where you are. God will raise you from the river, and set you on dry ground.

We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbours as ourselves, with God’s help becoming selfless, becoming Christlike. There is a virtuous cycle in which the more we find Christ in one another, the more we reflect his love in our own lives. Coming before John, Jesus did not lord it over him. Even when John would demur, Jesus insisted on submitting to John’s ministrations, to joining in his mission of grace. The more we humble ourselves before our neighbours’ needs, the greater our Christlight becomes.

Finally, we promise, with God’s help, to strive for justice, to strive for peace, to respect the dignity of every human being. Peter told the new Christians, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” God shows no partiality between peoples and nations, between denominations and demographics, between one child and the next, but we do. We tend always to favour our own family, our own country, our own party, our own religion over another; it’s human nature. And it is right to be judicious in choosing which policies to support, which doctrines to promote, which actions to pursue, good or evil, so long as we do not, in doing so, find ourselves choosing between one person’s humanity and another.

We are more than a baseline of human nature. We are created in the image of God. We have died with Christ in baptism, and we have been raised to a new life. We have levelled up. We are called to go beyond the basics, to love even our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us.

So we promise, with God’s help, to do all that is good, and peaceable, and righteous, loving God with our whole being, and our neighbours as ourselves.

All this we promise for ourselves, and on Kennedy’s behalf. It is a lot to ask of a small child. But what does God promise in return?

God promises mercy:

a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice. (Isaiah 42:3)

God promises consistency and indefatigability:

he will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Isaiah 42:4)

God promises impartiality, “healing all who [are] oppressed by the devil.” (Acts 10:38)

God promises liberty,

to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness. (Isaiah 42:7)

God promises life:

Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it: (Isaiah 42:5)

God promises steadfast love, sending love into the world in dramatic and bodily form:

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

All of these promises Kennedy inherits as she is baptized today. All of the promises we keep, all of the promises we break, all of the promises we mend are held in trust for us by the same grace that flows over her this morning.

With God’s help, we baptize her. With God’s help, we rise refreshed with her, remembering that God is with us, Emmanuel, come hell or high water, and that God has anointed us to bring that good news to the world.

Amen.

*The Baptismal Covenant

Celebrant Do you believe in God the Father?
People I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
Celebrant Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
People I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
Celebrant Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
People I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Celebrant Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent  and return to the Lord?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People I will, with God’s help.

(Book of Common Prayer, 305-6)

Featured image: the house of Simon the Tanner, where Peter discovered the impartiality of God through a vision of various animals

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