Epiphany 2020: First, do no harm

Posted on January 5, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is January 2020 at the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio. We are worried by portents of war in the Middle East. At home, our faith communities wrestle with the demands of security measured against the commandments of our faith – not to kill, to love our neighbours, even our enemies. The Gospel reading is from Matthew. The Magi seek the infant Christ. Herod seeks him, too. The Holy Family is warned to flee to Egypt, and the Magi return home by another road.

I am struck by the order of events in Matthew’s story of exile and exodus, the salvation history running through Jesus’ backstory like a pulled thread.

If Joseph was already warned to run before Herod’s soldiers arrived, then why did the wise men need to return by a different road?

Think about it: Even if they had returned to Herod, and told him where the baby lay, Herod would have searched and come up empty. The child was already gone.

It is almost as though the angel of the Lord, appearing to them in a dream, was warning them not so much as to trick Herod, but in order to protect the innocence, the idealism of the Magi from the East.

It is as though the wise ones, having once discovered and worshipped Jesus, found themselves unable, unwilling to betray him, even if it would make no difference, even if the way home would be shorter, even if it might have been safer, more politic; even if stopping by Herod’s palace might have replenished their treasure chests of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, which they had emptied in an act of spontaneous worship and sacrifice at the feet of the little, holy family.

Either way, Jesus would have been safely away, bundled across the desert by night, by his frightened and faithful parents. 

(Did they travel alone? Were others forewarned, by dream or by rumour, by well-connected neighbour, to flee the coming wrath? Was there a caravan of families lined up across the Sinai, seeking shelter across the river? History does not tell us much; we are left to our faithful imaginations.)

If the Magi had reported back to Herod, might it have deterred his murderous rage? It seems not. He still would not know where the child and his parents had gone. He would still scorch the earth beneath Bethlehem rather than risk allowing God’s Son to grow and challenge his comfortable status quo.

Nevertheless, the wise ones went home by another road, poorer, wiser, and more purposeful than when a star led their way.

Blessed, Jesus said later, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

It should be no surprise that the Magi were advised by the angel to act on principle, if that is what they were doing by washing their hands of Herod. We follow a Christ who is the ultimate principled actor, who refused to bend his ethics of love and self-sacrifice to save his own life; who healed the ear of his enemy; who would not dirty his tongue by debating with Pilate what, after all, is truth; who would not give false witness to acquit himself of uncommitted crimes.

Some years ago, I read (in Lest Innocent Blood be Shed, by Philip Hallie) about a village commune in southern France dedicated to nonviolence, diverted by their Christian faith toward the active and/but peaceful resistance of evil. During the Second World War, as you might expect of such people, they sheltered Jewish refugees and hid them from harm, refusing to betray them to the authorities. To choose such a good seems on the face of it simple, although we might quietly ask our hearts whether we would have the courage to risk our own lives and liberty, to open our own homes to a stranger. 

One passage that stuck with me always describes the conscience of the pastor’s wife, Magda Trocmé. Often enough, it was easy to put off the questions of the authorities without prevarication: not asking a refugee’s real name meant that one could not repeat it. But duplicity was unavoidable, the creation of fake id cards and ration books, for example: Magda

“[found] her integrity diminished when she [thought] of those cards. … She still [felt] anguish for the children of Le Chambon who had to unlearn lying after the war, and who could, perhaps, never again be able to understand the importance of simply telling the truth.” (Hallie, 126)

It is not as though Magda would ever have put her purity above the lives of the refugees that were saved by a few white lies. Instead, she has stayed with me because her scruples remind me of our hope for a kingdom in which one may do good without injury to the commandments of God’s covenant, in which it is not necessary to manage the wrath of Herod either by evasion or complicity or conquest; because she was not able to avoid Herod. There was no other road open to her.

The pastors of Le Chambon, André Trocmé and Edouard Theis, were not impractical nor impotent. They saved lives by their faithfulness, and their adherence to the way of peace. They were not passive pacifists. They knew that neutrality capitulates to evil. But, they preached, 

“In attacking evil, we must cherish the preciousness of all human life. Our obligation to diminish the evil in the world must begin at home; we must not do evil, must not ourselves do harm. To be against evil is to be against the destruction of human life and against the passions that motivate that destruction.” (Hallie, 85)

The wise ones, having once found Jesus, the Saviour in a stable, the Messiah in a manger, God in his infancy, could not return to Herod’s court. They may not do harm to themselves, by betraying the love that they had found at his bedside. They may not do harm by consorting, even for a moment more, with the king of destruction, the murderer of innocents. They had to find another way home.

If we are people of the Epiphany, then we, too, are stargazers. We have been told, commissioned by angels and dreams, to find another road. We worship the Prince of Peace in a world at war. We would rather offer gifts of gold to helpless babies than bribes to politicians or kings. We find truth in the gospel of love rather than the mantra of success. We worship the God of the manger and the Christ of the Cross. We follow Christ through the empty tomb, knowing that the star can take us only so far.

We wonder, sometimes, what difference it makes. We struggle to find the straight path. We pray for God’s reign to come. 

In the meantime, the holy family is once again on the road, seeking safety, and we have room at the inn. Let us seek and serve Christ, not in the starlit heavens alone, but in the street, and on the corner, in peace and in love, and as a stranger, taking the long road home.

Philip P. Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (Harper Collins, 1994)

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Star of Bethlehem

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

I scour the skies to find

The light shines in the darkness

a false star rising

and the darkness did not overcome it

haloed with fire power

When they saw that the star had stopped

(not everything that wears

(he sent and killed 

a halo is holy)

all the children)

the new star of Bethlehem pauses

they were overwhelmed

satellite silence falling

A voice was heard in Ramah

I scour the skies for a sign

weeping and loud lamentation

that will set the world

An angel of the Lord suddenly

or at least my heart

appeared in a dream

on fire

and the darkness did not overcome it

 

John 1:5, Matthew 2:10 (Matthew 2:16), Matthew 2:18, Matthew 2:19, John 1:5b

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Word and witness

Posted on December 29, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas, 2019. In our prayers, we remembered the victims of antiSemitic attacks in New York and elsewhere this Hanukkah.

Isaac Asimov is not an author I usually turn to for biblical commentary. Like many of you, I know him more as a writer of science fiction, but I recently stumbled across a secondhand copy of Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, and he has some interesting ponderings to share about the star of Bethlehem, for example, and the Word of God, the opening character of John’s Gospel.

Asimov describes the term Logos, which we translate Word, as defining the creative principle and order of the universe. We use it today, he notes, to talk about the creative order of animals, in zoology or of the earth, in geology (or of God, in theology; although that is where we find the boundary to our own wisdom, since God is the Logos, the Word that we are seeking to define).

Asimov traces this interpretation to one Thales of Miletus, living before the biblical time of the Babylonian Exile. He describes how the term was developed and refined around the Greek-speaking world, and found its way into Jewish thought as Wisdom, the character of God portrayed in Proverbs and some of the Apocryphal writings.

In John, then, we find this creative order, this first principle of God’s relationship with the world made flesh, this Word of God, this God incorporated into the world that it has made and shaped, enfleshed and enmeshed with creation.

Matthew and Luke flesh out this story, if you’ll forgive the pun, with their narratives of angels and birth, heaven and earth met in Bethlehem, in a manger, in a baby. John skips the pageant; he is more interested in what it all means now, after the angels have left and the skies have fallen silent, except for their storms.

In his Christmas message this year, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry noted that it is no accident that Jesus is born when all seems at its darkest. He wrote,

I don’t think it’s an accident that long ago, followers of Jesus began to commemorate his coming into the world when the world seemed to be at its darkest. …

Undoubtedly, these ancient Christians who began to celebrate the coming of God into the world, they knew very well that this Jesus, his teachings, his message, his spirit, his example, his life points us to the way of life itself, a way of life, where we take care of each other. A way of life, where we care for God’s world. A way of life, where we are in a loving relationship with our God, and with each other as children of the one God, who has created us all.

They also knew John’s Gospel and John’s Christmas story. Now there are no angels in John’s Christmas story. There are no wise men coming from afar. There’s no baby lying in a manger. There’s no angel choir singing Gloria in excelsis Deo in the highest of the heavens. There are no shepherds tending their flocks by night. Matthew and Luke tell those stories. In John, it is the poetry of new possibility, born of the reality of God when God breaks into the world.

It’s not an accident that long ago, followers of Jesus began to commemorate his birth, his coming into the world. When the world seemed darkest. When hope seemed to be dashed on the altar of reality. It is not an accident that we too, commemorate his coming, when things do not always look right in this world.

But there is a God. And there is Jesus. And even in the darkest night. That light once shined and will shine still.  His way of love is the way of life. It is the light of the world. And the light of that love shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.

But for Matthew and Luke, too, it is when the sky is dark and the inns are full and the doors are locked and where walls are built and the bullets are waiting and Herod is king and Rome pretends to peace through oppression and repression that the life that is the light of the world is born, and the darkness cannot stop it.

And good news is announced to the poor out on the hillside, and the rich and the wise are humbled into worship and generosity, and only Herod, jealous for the little piece of proxy power that the empire allows him, fails to see the majesty of the moment.

And John bears witness. He has Word and witness ready at the beginning. And his whole gospel is written so that we might bear witness to the life and the light that has been borne into the world, so that we might become midwives of the kingdom of God, advocates for making room at the inn, defenders of the innocent children at risk of Herod’s jealous wrath.

This is what John sets before us: that it is only the creative order of the Word, of God, that makes sense of the world, that sheds light on the life of the world. It is in Jesus, in the humility of birth and Incarnation, even in the confusion of the Cross, in the victory of Resurrection, the transcendence of Ascension that we find light in the darkness. It is in the light of the Word that life makes sense, with all of its joy and all of its promise, even its pain; with forgiveness and with justice, in the Word it becomes a story we can live with.

On Christmas Day I shared this R.S. Thomas poem as we gathered in the Chapel:

Nativity

The moon is born
and a child is born,
lying among white clothes
as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.

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. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: Volume 2, The New Testament (Avon Books, 1969), 298-303

R.S. Thomas, “Nativity,” in R.S. Thomas Collected Poems 1945-1990 (J.M. Dent/Phoenix, 1993/2000), 508

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Bethlehem

Posted on December 28, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

In the ancient city, haunted by memories of feast and famine,
exile and exodus,
the earth itself makes room, Creation shifting and splitting
as angels sing Glory out of cold stars shining with old light.

Out of the holy darkness, a flood of warmth
resurrects Rachel’s cry,
the piercing wail of her sons of sorrow,
matching the bitterness of Mara with the searing sweetness of birth:

This, blood and mire its circumstance,
is the great and terrible day of the Lord.

Image: The slaughter of the innocents, by Duccio di Buoninsegna. Public Domain, via wikimedia commons

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Making room

Posted on December 24, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Christmas Eve at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

When we were young, my family would often spend Christmas in the homes of relatives. I remember being at my grandmother’s house in the north of England – a tiny council house, I have no idea how she fit us all in. More often I remember staying at an aunt and uncle’s large Edwardian home. It was much bigger than my grandmother’s house, but then so was their family. Eventually, my brother and I petitioned our parents to stay home for Christmas. We wanted our own space, our own tree, stockings outside our own bedroom doors. We were children, after all; but still, it shocks me to realize how little thought I gave to the accommodations our relatives made in their homes, their lives, their own Christmases in order to let us stay and celebrate with them.

This year, one of our grown children is bringing a new family member home – a cat, whom our cat is quite unsure about welcoming into his territory. That may be why I was thinking of those details and shifts and makeshifts that my grandmother and our cousins must have hidden in order to make us welcome.

It’s said that the inn from which Mary and Joseph were banished to the stable might have been the home of distant family members, full of out-of-town guests travelling in like our holy family for the census. It would not have been the most private place for the onset of Labour. Some say that that sending Mary to the stable was an act of hospitality, of kindness rather than exclusion.

You may have seen or read that the stable itself was an adapted cave below the main house, a cellar sheltering the typical smallholder’s animals and equipped with a manger to feed them. Maybe, after all, it was the safest, warmest place to accommodate such an inconvenient event as a visitor giving birth.

Whatever the details of the establishment, of the house, or the inn, we are told clearly that there was no room for Jesus to be born within, and that alternative arrangements needed to be offered, whether out of generosity or duty we do not know. But someone had to make room for this rapidly dilating and expanding family.

So Jesus is born into our world. He barely fits into a schematic that has no room for pregnant virgins, no harbour for miracles, no time for angels interrupting the satellite signals.

We do our best to make room for him, out of love of duty; to love his image in the face of the stranger, inconveniently and abruptly born among us. We try to make room for him as for the unexpected, and the precariously situated. We try to reassure ourselves that we have made room for him in our hearts, at least, even while more and more, it can feel as though the world has little room for commandments or covenants like loving one’s neighbour at least as much as oneself, or entertaining strangers as though they were angels come from afar, refugees from a foreign plane sent by God with good news.

Still, into this tight and griping world, Jesus is born, with the effortful but determined, sometimes complicated but unanswerable, slow but urgent pangs of labour, the contract between heaven and earth that will not be denied. God finds room, becoming small enough to be swaddled and laid in a manger, as the glory of the new covenant splits open the skies and lets the angels loose:

“Peace on earth,” they cry. Good will toward all people, whom God loves, whom God loves.

To enter our world, in love, God becomes meek enough, weak enough, vulnerable enough to slip into our image, small enough to be born among us, Emmanuel; and we try to make room.

John Donne, the old English poet, wrote

Immensitie cloistered in thy deare wombe …
Weake enough, now into our world to come;
But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th’Inne no roome?

But, hold on a minute. Hold the donkey now. God is come into our world? Who is making room for whom here?

God, who made the heavens and the earth; God who made humanity to fit into God’s image; God who is above all and under all and within and without all – God who made room for us, a garden earth to inhabit, God who made room for us in the Ark, and between the waters of the Red Sea, and within the mercy of God’s steadfast love – that God is the One who is with us, Emmanuel.

So who is making room for whom here?

While we think we might be making room for Jesus, Jesus makes room for us in the generosity of his Incarnation. By the sweeping gesture of his birth, he enfolds all of us, swaddles us in the grace of God. How, we wonder, can an infant, a newborn baby do all this? It is because he is Jesus, which means Saviour; he is Emmanuel, which means God has come among us.

Whether we finished our Advent meditations or our spiritual Christmas shopping, Christ is coming. Whether we have cleaned our houses or decorated our hearts, he is near. Whether we have brought in the food or set the table, he is with us, he is here

In our foolish imaginations, we consider that we are making room, making time, making space for Jesus in our lives, but the joke is on us, and Christmas tells it. The One who made time and space has made room for us in the covenant of grace, the contract of love that is sealed by the blood and water of birth, and witnessed by shepherds and angels. God has made room for us in the stable, and fed us from the manger. God is an ever gracious host, in whose dwelling place are many mansions, and God makes room for us all: Thanks be to God.

“La Corona: Nativitie”, in The Complete Poetry of John Donne, edited by John T. Shawcross (Anchor Books, 1967), 33

See also Maggi Dawn, Beginnings and Endings [and what happens in between] (The Bible Reading Fellowship, 2007), 116-7

Other Christmas messages: Blue Christmas, Solstice (a poem)

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Dreamers

Posted on December 22, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent: Joseph’s story (Matthew 1:18-25)

If I were Joseph’s sister, or cousin, or mother, how might I advise him? By now everyone and his wife (sorry, Joseph) knows about Mary’s condition. There is murmuring and even muttering. All eyes are on Joseph’s house, waiting for him to confirm their outrage and complete their judgement.

At dinner, Joseph was quiet. His parents pressed him for an answer, “What will you do about her?” He needed time to think, he said. “What’s to think about?” they asked. “What do you think she thought about?” they asked. Joseph’s eyes did not reflect their anger and righteous indignation. He simply looked sad.

That night he dreamed. At breakfast, he appeared straighter, stronger, more resolute than his family had seen him these past days and weeks. They looked up to him in a nervous thrill of expectation. Judgement is always exciting, especially when applied to somebody else.

“The child,” Joseph announced, “is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is the Son of God. He will be named Saviour. And I will raise him to know his Father. The Lord has spoken.”

There were a few theories around the village.

One, the simplest, was that Joseph had slept with Mary, his betrothed, and she had become pregnant. These things happen. But out of embarrassment, Mary had denied the deed, and Joseph was left to smooth over her story. No one would have thought anything of it, had she not denied, out of some squeamishness, that the child was his. They laughed at Joseph’s clumsy attempts to cover up for Mary’s innocent lie.

Those less inclined to be generous questioned why, in that case, the young couple would ever have raised doubts about the baby’s origins. Perhaps there was something more to the story, someone more to the story, those neighbors suggested, and they turned away from Mary and Joseph’s families in the marketplace, and they watched the young men watching Mary, and wondered. They laughed at Joseph’s gullibility, raising a cuckoo in his own nest.

Then there was the explanation that Joseph himself offered. Few believed him. Dreams of angelic announcements were a little medieval, they agreed over the water well. It had been several centuries since Isaiah’s prophecy of a woman bearing the child of God to live as Emmanuel, and nothing had come of it yet. Who did these young people think they were anyway? They laughed at the idea that God could still surprise them.

If I were Joseph’s sister, or mother, or cousin I might counsel him that it was not too late to put Mary aside. She had gone, after the quick wedding ceremony, to her own cousin’s house in the country, Elizabeth’s home in the hills. Perhaps it would be better if she stayed there. But Joseph insisted on welcoming her home, even into our home. He insisted on believing that the promises of God through the prophets still stood, that angels still spoke through dreams, and that love would always find a way into a weary and cynical world.

And what do we believe?

There are a couple of possibilities for why and how Joseph was so ready to accept the word of God that came to him in a dream. One is that he was so in tune with the will of God, so ready in prayer and in spirit to receive the revelation of God that it came as no surprise to him when God answered his misgivings with a word of challenge and of reassurance: never give up on the way of love.

The other is that Joseph was so besotted with Mary, so in love that he would believe anything that would allow him to keep her by his side, that would let him continue loving her, come what may.

I suppose the question for us is, how ready are we to receive the challenging and reassuring word of God? And where do we invest and spend our love?

If God asked us to accept something quite unreasonable to the outside world – like self-sacrifice, like selflessness, like the possibility that all of the answers to our troubles might not be found at the bottom of a ballot box, or the middle of a bottle, or at the top of a pecking order – would we believe it?

If God asked us to go ahead and accept the unacceptable – the person whom society had written off, laughed at, scorned – if God told us instead that this person carries the image of God, and bears the love of God, would we believe it?

And if we were to believe it, would we be brave enough to suffer the scorn of our neighbours to stand up for God’s beloved? Would we be foolish enough to go against our own self-interest for the good of someone else, just because the Holy Spirit said so in a dream?

What are we willing to give up, to let go for the love of God?

On the night before Jesus died, his closest friend denied three times that he even knew the man. In the nights before Jesus was born, Joseph dreamed. Would we be ready to stake our reputation on the acknowledgement that yes, Jesus is the Son of God; that yes, the way of the Cross, the way of self-giving, selfless, vengeance-denying love is the way to life, liberty, and the pursuit of heaven; that yes, Jesus, born of Mary, is God Incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us?

And if we are prepared to say it, are we prepared to live it? Joseph did not only say that he believed Mary: he dedicated the rest of his life to living like it. He married her. He loved her. He loved Jesus. He was no longer afraid of what the neighbours might say, that he had gone soft. He understood that love is more powerful than any law, any jealousy, any weapon or word, because he saw God in a dream, and he knew that it was real.

If I had been Joseph’s mother, or sister, or cousin, in that moment I am afraid that I would have failed him. But Jesus would have been born anyway, and perhaps I would have come to see, in time, what I had been afraid to understand: that the love of God will not be constrained by our imaginations, nor by our self-righteousness.

All I can pray today is that God will guide my heart to know the foolishness of love, the scandal of the Incarnation, the ridiculous victory of the Cross, the miracle of Emmanuel, God with us. To quote a countryman of mine, “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.”*

John Lennon, Imagine (Apple Records, 1971)

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Be patient

Posted on December 15, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent, 2019, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

“Be patient, beloved.” It’s a wonderful message for this time of year, although I don’t think James meant it just for Advent and Christmas.

He repeats it four times, one way or another, in the space of seven sentences: “Be patient, beloved.”

You can hear in his words the echo of the mother of a small child, over-excited and eager for Christmas morning. You can hear the mantra of the patient awaiting surgery, or recovery, of the spouse pacing the waiting room. You can hear the prayer of the person pursuing justice. You can hear the silent plea of the person hurrying to get things done in twice the time that it takes to make everyone behind them in line impatient, unaware of their invisible struggle. You can hear the silent smile of a lover who hides a secret gift with which to surprise their spouse:

“Be patient, beloved.”

You can hear the words of Jesus to the disciples of John, worried and anxious that the Son of Man is not coming quickly enough, on sufficient clouds of glory, with enough might and majesty to wreak havoc on the earth. John sends from prison messengers to ask, “How long, O Lord, how long?” And Jesus answers, in so many words, “Be patient, beloved.”

In the meantime good things are happening, because Jesus is among us, God made Incarnate, taking on our image, Emmanuel, and the kingdom of heaven has drawn near. The eyes of the blind have been cleared, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. The legs of the stumbling have been set free, and the poor have received good news. Even the dead have a new lease on life. 

Do not be offended at what I have not yet done for you, says Jesus, but open your eyes to the grace and mercy of God that already surrounds you.

Be patient, beloved.

And do not be offended at what I do not do, says Jesus.

John is still waiting for the powerful to be overthrown. Isaiah is waiting for the haunt of jackals to become an oasis, and for life to become straightforward. James is waiting for the Second Coming of Christ, as a farmer waits for his crops to come to harvest.

We tried planting a garden a couple of times at home. Each time, we waited as spring turned to summer and the sun and the rain took turns playing with our hopeful expectations. This year’s garden didn’t do well, although the cat enjoyed the mint crop. The first garden grew better, but just as the food was coming ready, someone, something else came in and ate it.

The hungry will be filled with good things, sings Mary in the Magnificat, but the rich will be sent away empty.

We are rich in many things, my family and I. Perhaps it was the turn of some other beloved creature of God to receive the bounty of daily bread, the blessing of Providence, the fruit of creation.

Do not be offended at what I do for others, says Jesus. Be patient, beloved.

When our children were small and there were too many things to do with the two hands that I have, one of the children, wise and observant, noticed that often their requests were met with the same, repeated phrase. I realized this one day when they asked me, “for a drink, please, now and not in a minute.”

Be patient, beloved.

But why, we wonder, does God make us wait a minute? Why does Jesus keep John in suspense? Why is James still waiting, patiently, for the coming of the final judgement and the day of revelation? Why are we still waiting for the day when no one, not even a fool, will go astray; because we know we’re not there yet?

It is not because God is distracted with too many things, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8, ESV).

It is not because God does not have enough hands to do it all, for, “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 66:2, ESV)

So why do we need to remain patient, beloved? 

Well, there are many good answers, but in this season, I can think of one. 

In ten days’ time, we will celebrate once more that anniversary that calls for two thousand candles, for several billion voices to sing with the angels, “Glory to God! For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, unto us a Saviour is delivered into this earthly life, with all of its hope, and its promise, and its demanding patience, and its merciful mortality, and its hints of the heaven to follow.”

After Christmas, and Epiphany, in a minute or a month, we are rushing towards Jerusalem, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Holy Spirit, then back again here to the Advent holding back, the patient season of pregnant waiting.

We reduce the whole of that infant’s life to a year, to a succession of seasons. But in the meantime, he takes his time to grow, to become fully and carefully, patiently the person he was born to be. He waits decades before he is baptized by John and begins his public ministry. He experiences hunger and hatred, hope and love, grief and the touch of a woman’s hair, wiping his feet. He is patient, beloved. He does not rush to his redeeming death, nor leap from the Cross but waits three days in the ground to return, labouring once more toward a new birth.

He takes the time to live well in this life; to do good where he can, and spread healing where he finds hurt, to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly in the image of God. He takes the time to bear that image of God in which humanity was made: the image of creativity, grace, inspiration, of love.

Be patient, beloved.

It takes time for us to grow into that image that God has of us, as humans capable of faith and redemption, fit for mercy, hungry for righteousness and humbled by mortality. It takes time for us to beat our gun barrels into ploughshares, to learn war no more, to humble our proud imaginations to the vision that God has for God’s creation. We have time to repent and make amends for our personal sins, things done and let undone; time to atone for our communal sins of racism, sexism, antisemitsm, selfishness. 

We have time to enjoy this life that God has lent us: time to discover the beauty of love, time to encourage joy, time to live in hope.

In the meantime, beloved, be patient. Do not be offended at God’s slow and steadfast loving-kindness to lowly. Do not be offended by Christ’s indiscriminate healing and hope-giving, spread among the undeserving, the undesirable: God knows, we need it, too. Take the chance that we have been given actively and with awe to await with patience, with growing wonder, the birth of something new in the heart of the world.

Be patient, beloved. Christ is come among us, and Christ is coming.

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The imagination of eternity

Posted on December 4, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily for the commemoration of St John of Damascus at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland

I hope that I will never forget the first time I visited the Garden Tomb outside the city walls of Old Jerusalem. The vision of its emptiness was full of the memory of resurrection. A stone bed lay smooth and untroubled. At either end, a rise in the stone brought to mind the linen cloths, folded and rolled, and the angels at the head and the foot of the place where the body had been (John 20:12); images and echoes of the cherubim stationed beside the mercy seat, guarding the invisible and invincible presence of God, rendered in gold by human hands while the living God remained unrendered, but barely out of reach.

Deeper into the city stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is full of noise and colour, shadows and light, telling the story of Christ and his Passion in every language at once, through sight and the smell of incense, the press of pilgrim bodies, the smooth stone of anointing, the small cave of mystery.

The preacher of Ecclesiastes, poetically translated, observes that God “has set eternity in the hearts of [humanity];” (NIV) and otherwise that God “hath set the world in their heart;” (KJV) although no one may know it from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

God has opened our hearts, and if our hearts then our minds and spirits, and if our minds then our imaginations, and if our imaginations then our senses to understand something, if not all of eternity; something, if not all of the creative love God has for us; something, if not all of the mystery of that love expressed through the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It is rendered in art, and hidden in the heart of the quiet, empty tomb.

John of Damascus, whom we remember this evening, argued fondly for the rendering of the image of Christ and his holy Mother in iconography and image, and thank God for that. My imagination and the shelves of my office at church and at home would be emptier had he not.

John’s major work, The Fount of Knowledge: An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, gives honour to the full and human Incarnation of Christ as a worthy and wonderful means of God’s self-revelation and redeeming love. He knew the value of mystery as well as anyone, despite his attempts to wrestle into a single book a systematic and sensible summary of all that his Fathers in the faith had understood and worked out and ironed out and stamped with their approval regarding the nature, the substance, the persons, the providence of God.

Honestly, a book that begins by defining five modes of philosophy and eight kinds of division and four aspects of the term “individual” is probably a little beyond my patience; but behind and beneath his erudition lies John’s absolute delight in the revelation of God through creation, through philosophy, through humanity, and especially the Incarnation.

Why else would he choose, to illustrate the property inherent in humanity, the image of laughter? “Thus,” he says, “every man can laugh and everything that can laugh is a man.” John did not choose his words lightly; he must mean particularly that Jesus laughed, and that his imagination of the Messiah goes deeper than his words can describe, into the realms of humour and delight.

While certain others of his day deplored the veneration of images and icons, citing the second commandment against the worship of graven images, John remembered that we ourselves are made in the image and likeness of God. “On what grounds, then,” he asked, “do we shew reverence to each other unless because we are made in God’s image?”

As we love and show reverence to one another, that love and reverence is remitted beyond the image to the prototype, to God, so that in loving one another, we also fulfill our duty of loving God.

And Christ has proved that point beyond doubt by his Incarnation, becoming flesh with us, laughing and weeping, bearing his own image among us, laying his body down before us, his Mother’s arms gentling him into the manger, the swaddling clothes, and the winding cloth: the world and eternity met in the heart of humanity, as Ecclesiastes, through various translations, foretold.

There is danger, nonetheless, in rendering Christ in wood and ink, oil and water, his features flattened, pressed under the weight of our expectations and experience, Mary’s milky flesh lightened and whitened, the divine darkness artificially brightened with gilt and gold. There is the danger that instead of conforming our imaginations to Christ’s likeness, we will attempt to fix him in ours. Even John, describing great mysteries, would have them explicated and enumerated just so.

Advent teaches us to keep our eyes open to the deepening shadows behind the frame, the absence between the angels, the emptiness that promises the fullness of eternity, the fullness of that which has yet to come to light. God has opened the heart of humanity to understand eternity – but not all of it, yet, from start to finish.

The quiet solitude of the Garden Tomb, set against the feast of Holy Sepulchre, brings to mind the holy absence of a beloved body at the holiday table, the image of a face fading from sight and memory, hope sitting heavy in the empty chair. There is comfort, when grief attends the holiday feast, in remembering the cherubim guarding the presence of God in the empty space between them, the pregnant life of resurrection rendered in the space, empty but for shadows, between the head and the foot of the Garden Tomb.

I am glad that John and his cohort prevailed in the argument over icons and images in worship. My heart would be colder and my eyes emptier without them.

And there is something to be said for remembering in this season which contemplates all that we cannot see the absence that promises that which is yet beyond our sight or understanding; that there is a life yet to come, in which all will be restored to the glory that God has created from the beginning, which will flood the heart and sense of humanity with the full measure of the enormity of the love of Christ, Incarnate, Crucified, Resurrected, Risen, and yet to come again.

The Fount of Knowledge: An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, by St. John Damscene, derived from a translation by Rev. G. N. Warwick of The Patristic Society, via https://gotiskakyrkan.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/9/5/12957650/thefountofknowledge.pdf, accessed 12/2/19-12/4/19

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Sneaky Jesus

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, 2019, at the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio. In the gospel, Jesus warns of the suddenness of the second coming of the Son of Man. In the news, London is recovering from a terrorist stabbing attack on London Bridge.

There’s a strange notion buried in the middle of this gospel and it has got me thinking. For most of the text, Matthew has Jesus warning his disciples that they do not know when the kingdom of God will be finally and fully revealed, with all of its glory and all of its judgement and all of its salvation. Keep awake, be ready, be open to the coming of the Day of the Lord.

And yet in this one little line, Jesus goes off script. If the owner of the house had known the hour of the invasion, he would have defended himself against it.

In one breath and more, Jesus is advising vigilance in order to receive the Son of Man at any moment.

The bridesmaids must keep their lamps lit, the stewards must keep the house ready to welcome the bridegroom, the master, the Messiah.

And yet in this one, quick breath, Jesus describes himself as a thief in the night, against whom the householder might do well to defend himself.

I do not think that this is an accident.

On the one hand, the message to the church and to the people of the church is simple: live as you would want Jesus to find you. Be prepared, be ready to receive your judge, confident that you are living out the gospel in word and in deed. Be confident in your salvation, and through that confidence have the courage to extend the mercy, the justice, the grace that Jesus has offered you throughout your own sphere of influence.

This collection of passages about the day and the hour and the coming of the Son of Man culminates in the familiar parable of the sheep and the goats, and the naked and the hungry, and those who did right by their neighbours, and those who failed to love them, and by so doing failed to love Jesus as themselves.

The message is clear: do unto others as you would like to be discovered doing at the day of revelation.

But it is also untenable. We cannot righteous our way to redemption. We will fall asleep, make mistakes. We have all sinned against God and against one another. Speaking for myself, with the best will in the world, I know that I will sin again.

I can’t help thinking of that man on London Bridge. You may have heard that one of the people who tackled the man with the knife had been in prison with him. You may have read that one of the have-a-go heroes who tackled the terrorist was, is, a convicted murderer. If the judgement had come at that moment, when he was doing good (and he did good that day); even if he devoted the rest of his life to heroic actions, would it restore the life that he had already stolen?

Our only hope is in mercy. Our help, our encouragement is in forgiveness. We cannot righteous our way to redemption.

And that’s where Jesus comes in.

No matter how hard we try to be ready for God and for judgement and for salvation, we have this tendency to fall back into fear, worried about what will happen if God catches us at the wrong moment.

We become so worried about the future of our salvation that we forget to notice that Jesus has already arrived, sneaking in through the back door, and is sitting at the kitchen table having already helped himself to a cup of tea.
While we are waiting for him, he is waiting for us.

In this odd little aside, the Son of Man is not a king, nor a bridegroom, but a burglar.

That’s a difficult image for some of us who have been the victims of criminal activity – but bear in mind that this is a metaphor, Jesus being sneaky and a little bit cheeky in describing to his disciples how the coming of the Christ might work.

I think that part of what Jesus is saying in this odd little aside is that we construct defences against him, against Christ, against grace. We make rules for who can receive salvation. We build walls around our hearts, fencing pieces off from God out of guilt, out of self-interest, out of shame, out of sin. In the beginning, when Adam and Eve discovered their nakedness, the story is told, they tried to hide from God and cover themselves from God’s sight.

But sneaky Jesus always finds a way around or through our defenses.

Whatever the deepest and most untold secret of your soul, Jesus has already seen it, broken it open, laid it out on the kitchen table next to that cup of tea he’s drinking. You might as well just turn it over to him. He will know what to do with it.

Whatever the most jagged scar on your psyche, Jesus has already touched it. You might as well turn it over to him. He knows how to help with the healing.

Whatever your sin, Jesus has already judged it. You might as well turn it over to him so that he will redeem it.

In the medieval church, Advent was known as the little Lent. Both are seasons of preparation for the coming of Christ, for the renewal of resurrection, for the hope of the kingdom of God. In each we are advised to make ourselves ready through study and prayer, self-examination and confession, repentance and revision, trusting in the goodness of Christ to come.

This being a Christian journey can be hard work. This call to love God, simple enough on the surface, demands sacrifice. It means loving our neighbours, all of them who also carry the image of God, as ourselves. It demands mercy and forgiveness and grace. It demands the letting go of grudges and judgements, prejudice and private, reserved bias. It demands that at any moment, we are ready to receive the judgement day, to be surprised by God doing exactly what Jesus has asked us to do: to make ready his table, his house, to keep his doors open to all.

And it demands that we have mercy on ourselves, when we fall asleep, when we fail to love as Christ loves us, keeping our hearts open to that love for us, and Christ’s forgiveness.

That’s why Jesus breaks in. It’s a paradox, but as we are bustling around the house making ready, he has snuck in through the service entrance and is working with us as one of the waiters in disguise, the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve. As we are trimming our oil lamps and counting our reserves, he is the light of the world, unextinguished. As we are wondering how on earth we will get it all done, he has already set a table for us, lit a barbecue on the beach, divided the loaves and fishes,made a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table.

The Son of Man will come again in clouds and great glory; but he has also already arrived, slipping in through the very human entrance, through the womb. He is coming, and he is already with us.

And just as he came as a small, defenseless child, so we are defenseless against the tenderness and faithfulness of his just and forgiving, always surprising and deeply subversive love.

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Underwater Jesus

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

First published at the Episcopal Cafe

Today is a heavy travel day here in the US. For many, a trip home brings feelings of relief and deep joy. For others, the air is electric with anxiety and dangers. For some, there is no going home, only the wilderness wandering within sight but not touch of the Promised Land. For not a few, the opening of the holiday season begins a pilgrimage to the abyss of grief.

I am not travelling today, but yesterday I arrived home from a far-flung vacation. Travelling that way fills me with awe and inspiration – the breadth of God’s creative imagination and delight never ceases to amaze me.

On the last day of this most recent journey, we visited an island city where Spaniards celebrated the first Christian Eucharist in the area that was to become the republic of Mexico. One commemoration of the occasion was a plaque tucked outside a church on the corner of a busy marketplace. More surprising was the sunken Jesus, a statue deliberately submerged beside a coral reef just off a busy beach.

The history is of course fraught. So much of our shared and family life contains shipwrecks and subterrranean memories, hidden and uncovered histories.

But sinking statues of Jesus is, it turns out, a niche but profound tradition spread around the seabeds of the earth; a reminder that there is no place beyond the reach of God’s love and mercy. It provides the astonishment, at the end of one’s breath, of finding God waiting even in the depths.

In the Psalm for this evening’s prayer, the psalmist writes,

Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice (Psalm 130:1)

In the Apostles’ Creed, in the morning and in the evening we remember Christ who descended even to Hell.

I hope and pray that your Thanksgiving comings, goings, and stayings are joyful, peaceful, and blessed.

And in the lonely places, and when you find yourself underwater, I pray that you will find Jesus even so, waiting to embrace you and help you to resurface, as in the beginning, the Spirit of God brooded over the deep waters, calling forth a new creation.

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