By faith

Posted on August 11, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A word of encouragement for the ninth Sunday after Pentecost in Year C.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews was not, to our knowledge, a theoretical physicist; although they might have been.

To declare that “faith is the conviction of things not seen,” and that, “by faith we understand … that what is seen was made from things that are not visible” is to describe the very basis on which we live with our feet fixed to the ground by gravity, and our orbit informed by the intricate, if not infinite, dimensions of space.

What we understand, what we grasp and believe that we know about our place in the universe is based on our (or at least, our scientists’) observation of the world around us, how it works, and how unseen forces seem to affect our everyday lives. We know that things happen before we know why they happen. In other words, we live by faith. Gravity caused the apple to fall from the tree before Isaac Newton decided to do the mathematics in order to try to understand why. The concept of the Higgs boson came from observing its theoretical effects on creation long before the Large Hadron Collider was built to test the hypothesis.

We live by faith, and our faith is living, and evolving, and developing in understanding, and testing its theories and refining its findings. Faith does not walk blindfolded or blinkered. It is highly observant.

As you may or may not have heard, the letter to the Hebrews was probably not written by Paul, author of so many other letters, but by someone else early in the Christian tradition, in the second half of the first century of the Christian era. This was a time when a new generation was coming of age who had not known Jesus, in the flesh or by repute, while he was walking the earth. They inherited a faith from their fathers and mothers and godparents which had at first assumed that the Second Coming was imminent; that God’s kingdom would come in power and great glory within their lifetime; that God’s will would be done on earth as in heaven, within their sight.

As time and generations wore on, and we still had the work to do of repentance, of preparation, of waiting upon Christ’s coming, the theory had to be modified. Under the observation that empires still oppress, that cruelty still has currency, that the will of God continues to be subverted by a fallen humanity – those who prefer power to love, satisfaction to service, law and order to grace and mercy – the timeline for the Christian experiment had to be extended. As parents were buried, and children fell ill with no miracle to save them, our understanding of eternal life had to be deepened. It no longer meant that the first generation of Christians would never die, but that each of us would follow Jesus to the Cross, and through the tomb, to the day of Resurrection.

This adjustment, this evolution of faith was not new, the Hebrews’ guide assured them. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and his children died before they realized in their lives all that God had promised them. Moses, looking over the Promised Land from Mount Nebo, whence you can see the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan valley laid out all the way to the Dead Sea and beyond, whence you can see Mount Zion, knew that he would not return that way with his people. But he trusted God to bring them home.

There is nothing wrong with acknowledging at this point, by the way, that each of these people were migrants, at times even refugees, wandering the earth at the direction and under the protection of God, who has always prescribed mercy for the exile, since the time of Eve, Adam, and even Cain.

Moses named his son Gershom, because, he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

By faith, they wandered the earth. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is the basis for our understanding that day will follow night, and that what goes up must come down, and that life will follow death, even as death stalks this life. Faith observes the empty tomb of Jesus, and posits resurrection, because “what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

No one has seen the Higgs boson, but its effects have been observed, and our theory of how the world works invests confidence and faith in its existence. Gravity is not visible, but we trust not only that it exists, but that we have a reasonable understanding of how it works.

No one has seen the love and ever-giving life of God, but its effects have been observed, and our lives are built on the confidence and faith that God is with us. We have not had the pleasure nor the awe of encountering God face to face, but we believe that God is with us, and we have a reasonable understanding of how God reveals Godself to us.

We find the effects of God in creation itself – in the mystery and the puzzle and the intellectual exercise of unravelling space and time and the beauty, the sheer breathtaking-ness of a butterfly, and a cloudscape, and the hypnotic rhythm of the rise and fall of a child’s sleeping body at peace.

We find the effects of God in the love of strangers, who draw together in completely altruistic, self-sacrificing kindness, to rescue someone from danger, to wipe the tears of a mourner, to comfort the child of a stranger, to demand a better world to live in, something closer to the one God wills here as in heaven.

We find the effects of God at the bedside of one crossing the permeable but invisible veil between this life and another. We see how a man at the end of a long life is reassured by visitors from his past, how he recognizes them. We learn from observation that life is not ended by death, but transformed, and even then, into something we will recognize, and trust.

We remain, with the readers of the letter to the Hebrews, impatient for God’s will to be done, on earth as in heaven: for violence to be beaten into the earth, swords into ploughshares; for cruelty to be converted into kindness; for the valley of the shadow of death to be flooded with the light of everlasting life.

In the meantime, we walk by faith, not unthinking but informed by what we see around us: that God is with us. We find grace in the journey of Jesus, the incarnation of God’s Word made flesh, for us and for our salvation; love nailed to the Cross; the quiet victory of the empty tomb; the broken bread and wine poured out for all.

We live by faith, with thanksgiving. Amen.

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A Vigil for the victims of gun violence

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

We were heart-stricken but honoured to host at Epiphany a Vigil for the most recent victims of mass murder and gun violence, in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton, organized by God Before Guns. The Rector’s welcome follows the video of Noah Budin singing us into a circle at the close.

I invite you to pray with us.

Good evening. My name is Rosalind Hughes, and as the Rector of the Church of the Epiphany it is my privilege to welcome God Before Guns, our friends, our neighbours, clergy colleagues, and our Mayor to the Episcopal Church in Euclid.

You are welcome here.

You are welcome here whether you are grieving or angry, traumatized, energized or worn dry crying. You are welcome whether you come seeking God’s comfort or whether you just want, for God’s sake, to do something about the gun violence in this nation.

You are welcome here, regardless of age, gender, relationship status, religion, race, or history.

You are welcome here, whether you have ever owned a gun, or whether the very thought makes you shiver. To be clear: no guns are welcome in this sacred space. But you are.

You are welcome here, regardless of how you vote, whether you have given up, or have yet to vote; although you will hear a word this evening about using your power as We the People to do something about gun violence.

You are welcome whether you were born here, whether your ancestors were brought here by force, or came of their own free will. If your family tended this land before America was born, standing on the inheritance of the Erie people, we are grateful to you. If you only just got here, we welcome you.

You are welcome here whether you call on the name of Jesus, or whether you know God through some other name, or whether you are not sure if you know God at all, but God knows, you want to do something about all this gun violence.

You are welcome here whether you are on fire, or whether you feel burned out.

You are welcome in the name of the One who created us each in Their own image, in the name of the One who calls us back from the brink of the abyss time and again, in the name of the One who catches our breath so that we can contemplate the climb out the valley of the shadow of death, the one to whom we pray:

O God, whose Name is Love and whose Word is Welcome,
we ask your consolation on those who mourn this night
your inspiration for those who act on your command
to love your children, to care for your creation, to heal this nation;
may your will win out here as in heaven.
Deliver us from the evil of gun violence,
and from all evil ideas and ideologies that inspire it.
Let your Spirit of life and truth be our only firepower.
Let your Love be our only temptation.
Let your Presence be our protection and our provocation as we remember
your people murdered and maimed most recently in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton.
May they rest in peace, and may we rise up in your Name. Amen.

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America, it is past time to repent

Posted on August 4, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio, after a week of White supremacy and gun violence culminating in two mass shootings in less than 24 hours. The readings include Hosea, Colossians, and the parable of the self-satisfied rich man.

God has always loved you.

This is the message that the prophet Hosea wants us to hear, even in the midst of mess, even in the turmoil of a life filled with strife; even in the aftermath of sin: God has always loved you.

“I taught Ephraim to walk,” God croons, “I lifted them into my arms. … I was their mother, their father, their nurse, who lift infants to their cheeks, and cradle them to feed them.”

But “the more I called them, the more they went from me.”

Hosea is writing to a people who have turned away from the covenant that their ancestors made with God: to love God first and best; to refrain from lying, stealing, covetousness, or greed, and from killing. The people have forgotten the commandment and their promise to put no gain ahead of the love of God.

In the latter part of the eighth century BCE, a succession of assassinations and coups d’etat left the northern kingdom of Israel in tatters and disarray. Eventually, there was no king left in Israel, and the kingdom was partitioned by its adversaries.

Hosea, watching all of this befall throughout his career as a prophet of the living God, recognized that while nothing, and no one, can end nor defeat the love of God, God’s forgiveness does not necessarily remove the consequences of our fallen, foolish, and sinful decisions to turn away from the covenant of righteousness established in perpetuity even in our prehistory.

Israel, Ephraim, and Samaria have sown the wind, the prophet says, and now they are reaping the whirlwind (Hosea 7:7a).

Hosea recounts how tenderly, as a nursing mother, God loves Israel. Hosea loves his country. And he is calling it to repentance.

You may have seen recently on social media the church sign that commanded, under the seriously ironic name of Friendship Baptist Church: America. Love it or leave it. Of course, the pastor was quoting President Trump, not the prophets, when he posted the sign.

Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld of New Hampshire responded this week, in part by writing,

Some six centuries before the birth of Jesus, a prophet burst on the scene in Jerusalem. Jeremiah was disgusted with the state of his nation which he saw was threatened, not so much by outside empires poised to invade and conquer, but by the loss of its soul. …

The mistreatment of immigrants, refugees, and strangers, the neglect of orphans and widows, and pledging fidelity to material idols were rampant in Jeremiah’s day. He saw the injustice and brutality of his time as a betrayal of God. …

Jeremiah loved his country, though its betrayal of the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor caused a burning within him that would not allow him to be silent.

Jeremiah, prophesying a century or so later and a few miles south of Hosea followed in his prophetic footsteps. Both knew firsthand the love of God, God’s tenderness for God’s people; and both knew that the nation bears responsibility for its own acceptance or rejection of the way of God’s love.

The murders of two children and a young man last week at Gilroy, and the death of their teenaged killer, drew little notice in a country so attuned to gun violence by now that we are almost numb. The fact that White supremacist literature and statements were linked to the gunman surprised nobody, and elicited little comment. Yesterday, we saw the same sorry story played out again in El Paso, Texas, resulting in even greater loss of life, pain, and injury. And of course, overnight, it visited Dayton, Ohio.

The deadly combination of targeted hatred coupled with widespread individual armouries – an obscene proliferation of weapons of death tucked into our daily life – continues to wreak havoc among us. This is the product and the consequence of sin.

If we love our country, it is past time to call it to repentance.

You know that the clergy of Washington National Cathedral – an Episcopal Bishop and two Deans – called the question in an open letter, addressing the racist rhetoric coming from the highest office of the nation most recently. They wrote (again I am quoting in part):

Make no mistake about it, words matter. And, Mr. Trump’s words are dangerous.

These words are more than a “dog-whistle.” When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human “infestation” in America. They serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation. Violent words lead to violent actions.

When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the president’s sense of decency, but of ours.

If we continue to allow the wind to be sown with prejudice, greed, idolatry, and weaponry we will continue to reap the whirlwind of violence, mass shootings, and civil despair.

Certainly, the prophets would agree that words matter. Certainly, we who follow the very Word of God, Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, must agree that words matter, and have power. Words make things happen, for better or for worse. In the beginning, God spoke the word, “Light,” and it sprang into being.

Paul agrees that words matter. “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the higher things,” he says. “Get rid of … anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.” Shun the hatred and selfishness, the idolatry that breaks in two the tablets of God’s covenant with God’s people, the commandments handed down through Moses and the prophets. Seek the life of Christ, who died to fulfill the Law and the prophets, rather than succumb to the temptations of the hour to arm himself with battalions even of angels; who put away violence, and who took up the little children in his arms.

God has always loved you, the prophets tell us. For God’s sake, love one another! Reject all calls to discrimination, to the disinheritance of your brothers and sisters and siblings. Restore justice for the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the alien among you. Do not imagine that you can hoard blessings for yourself without showering your neighbour, the stranger with love, too. Isn’t that the message of Jesus’ parable? It’s a message straight from the prophets.

God has always loved you, the prophets and saints continue to tell us. God is not far from you, even in times of great trial. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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Gilroy, guns, and White anger

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Red Letter Christians published a piece I wrote reflecting on the uncivil war simmering in the soul of America, one that breaks out all too often in acts of violence like last weekend’s tragedy in Gilroy, California.

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:18, after Jeremiah 31:15)

When Jeremiah spoke of Rachel weeping, it was to offer comfort: a vision of peace and restoration after the invasion of a foreign force. By the time Matthew quoted him, the picture of harm was from within. It was the people’s own king and his interests that murdered the innocents in Bethlehem. A king, who perceived a threat to his power and influence in the wail of a swaddled infant of his own house, wreaked havoc and let loose his instruments of death. No wonder Rachel refused consolation.

There is a civil war raging in the soul of America, and its violence is not constrained to the Twitter feeds of trolls. From family separation at our borders to the devastation of families by gun violence, the anger against those defined as “others” stems from a similar source. Instead of shouting insurrection on street corners, some angry men spray it across crowds, spreading harm far beyond the death toll. 

Read the whole piece at Red Letter Christians.

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When you pray

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Church of the Epiphany, Year C Proper 12. The lectionary readings include Luke’s narration of Jesus’ introduction of the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples.

This was the prayer that first made me fall for Jesus, when I was a child. Of course, I learnt the expanded form that we use in worship; the one that we prayed, hands together, eyes closed, every morning at school assembly time (never at home). But even in its stripped down, barest form, as Luke presents Jesus teaching it, the world which this prayer conjures into being is enough to set my spirit on fire.

Your kingdom come.

This, for me, is the heart and soul of the vision that Jesus creates with his prayer, the world in which his prayer is completed.

Jesus came preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” The foundation of his prayer is this petition, that God complete the establishment of that kingdom.

A kingdom in which everyone is fed, and has enough to eat. In which second chances are granted. Where penury is unheard of, because instead of owing one another, we forgive one another. We work it out. We work together. A kingdom in which there are no dirty tricks, no deceit, no hidden obstacles to trip a person up and try her faith. There is no need for all of that, when everyone has enough, and all are cared for, and repentance is a normal, every day activity.

As a child, focused on fairness (the worst indictment a child can offer is, “but that’s not fair!”), the justice enacted in this kingdom was clear to me. As a child, one is powerless, always in debt to others for her life, her food, her family. This prayer, with its direct address to the Father, affirmed my dignity in the world order of God’s kingdom. As a child, often confused by the state of the world and the actions of others, the promise of a straightforward, uncrooked regime offered me safety. The buzz words of love, grace, faith, hope do not feature in this prayer; but the world that it envisions is one crafted by those gospel values that first made me fall in love with God, and with Christ Jesus.

Thy kingdom come.

If you were to take the Book of Common Prayer from the pew pocket in front of you, and read it from front to back, skipping the calendar charts, perhaps, and the historical documents, but checking every single form of worship offered for prayer together, I challenge you to find one that omits the Lord’s Prayer. I’m not saying that you won’t find any orders in which you could technically get away without it, but you’d be hard pressed to deny the intent of our common life to stay close to the directions that Jesus gave to his disciples: “When you pray, say this.”

So what, we might reasonably ask, is the purpose of praying the same words over and over again, every time we come together, and often when we are apart, day in and day out, till kingdom come?

A few months ago, I reviewed a book by Derek Penwell called, Outlandish: An Unlikely Messiah, A Messy Ministry, and the Call to Mobilize, published by Chalice Press. Penwell examines this prayer of Jesus and posits that as much as it calls upon God to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth, it is also designed to galvanize us towards action. Think about it: why, after asking God to forgive our sins, would we add a line in our own prayer about forgiving those who owe us? Penwell argues that we are begging for freedom from economic oppression, the systems of debt and exploitation that have kept us from loving our neighbours freely. He offers that when we ask God to deliver us from the time of trial, we are begging quite literally for freedom from our present and oppressive systems of injustice.

“Of course [I concluded in my review], the implication is that if we are asking God to deliver us from systems that we the people have organized around ourselves (or one another, or just those others), then we had better get to work answering our own prayers, with God’s help.”

In other words, instead of ticking off what life owes us, we might examine our conscience for which sins we still need forgiven.

We might consider, while praying for our own daily bread, who is feeding our neighbour’s children.

We might wonder whether the scaffold of our legal system is really so robust and so righteous and reaches so far towards the heavens that we have every right to sit in the Almighty’s judgement seat and consign individuals to die, and to execute them; or whether we are building ourselves a Babel tower. “Save us from the time of trial,” indeed.

We pray to repent, as Jesus taught us, because the kingdom of God is at hand.

Last week, we talked about taking care whose vision of the world we chose to follow towards glory; about choosing to invest ourselves in that which is loving, liberating, life-giving. Once again this week, we read in the epistle to the Colossians the warning, Take care not to become captivated by worldly philosophies that lead to ruin. Do not invest in empty promises.

As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7)

Stay rooted in the life of Jesus, and bring forth the fruit of Christ’s kingdom.

The story that Jesus tells right after teaching us this prayer, at least according to Luke, reminds us that the plant cannot produce fruit unless it exists in an ecosystem that pollinates it; one that is cooperative and collaborative.

In the kingdom of God, the absolute duty of one man to offer hospitality to the unexpected guest is matched by the duty of his neighbour to help him out, when he is short of the resources to meet his obligations. Even in the dead of night, when no other help is in sight, and the world is sleeping, these friends meet in a circle of giving, receiving, and loving the stranger. The values of sharing daily bread, forgiving what is lacking, resisting the temptation to fall back to sleep and ignore the needs of a neighbour are illustrated against the backdrop of darkness.

This, perhaps, is the point of our constant, almost redundant repetition of this prayer every single day: to train us, like vines, to stay close to the root and shoot of Jesus; to produce the fruit of the kingdom of God.

But if it achieved nothing else, the idea that this prayer could cause a child to fall in love with God may be enough. Because, in the kingdom of God that Jesus and the prophets describe, even the child who is named without pity, Lo-ruhamah, finds consolation; and even the child who is “not my people” Lo-ammi, finds a home:

and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God,” (Hosea 1:10b)

when the kingdom of God is revealed, and God’s will is done on earth, as it is in heaven, and God’s Name, the name of Love, is hallowed through all our worlds.

Derek Penwell, Outlandish: An Unlikely Messiah, A Messy Ministry, and the Call to Mobilize, (Chalice Press, 2018)

Also in the background: The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9: Luke-John (Abingdon Press, 1996)

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Go back home

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Some of us have talked about this before. I am not always nice about it. Sometimes, I pretend obtusely to misunderstand. “When do I go home? At about 5 o’clock,” I say (that’s a lie; it’s never 5 o’clock), forcing friendly faces to explain, “No, I meant when do you go back to Britain.”

I knew that, I do not say, but your assumption seems to be that I have no home here, only in the land I left behind. “We’re visiting family in July,” I offer.

There is no animosity in their question, which is why I feel almost guilty for playing with them. But when I have crossed oceans, taken oaths, paid plenty of taxes, and filled in a forest full of paperwork to make a home here, it is a little galling to be asked on a regular basis when I am leaving.

These exchanges are prickly only on my side. And the ones that come with thorns, telling me to “go back where I came from,” arise only when I have said something offensive, such as that gun violence in this country is out of control, or that children deserve to go to schools that do not need armed guards., for example I have decided that I do not owe those anonymous callers an explanation of my citizenship status. I do not ask them for theirs.

My White skin and English-accented sentences protect me from being ordered away by strangers in the parking lot, or at the supermarket. I am privileged that way, which is why I sometimes get to play the innocent.

On my better days, I might take the time to explain that it would be more appropriate not to choose any person’s story for them, assuming a whole lot about their history,  their identity, their family, their future.

I may try to persuade you that it is impossible to tell, at a glance, whether the child of God waiting at the bus stop is fleeing for Egypt, or seeking the Promised Land, or petitioning Rome, or is simply heading home.

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Prophets and privateers: by their fruits shall ye know them

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost at the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio. In the news this week, the crisis of immigrant and refugee detention centers continues. A presidential campaign rally broke into chants of “Send her back,” targeting a congressional representative. It is the fiftieth anniversary weekend of the first footsteps on the moon. We also memorialized a parishioner who died in the spring, and his wife of some sixty years.

From the readings: Amos had a vision of a basket of summer fruits, and the people’s just desserts.

Amos has been seeing visions of how things will end up. His basket of fruit, in Hebrew, is a play on words: fruits and ends. The fruits which he sets before our vision are the end, the outcome, the results of the people’s actions and inactions, religion and rebellion.

At best, a basket of fruit might conjure up appetite, and gratitude, and wonder at the Providence of God. I have been following, as I am sure many of you have, the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the first human footprints on the moon. But landing on a space rock, as astonishing an accomplishment as it is, is not an end to itself. The men who went there took Communion, took a Bible, took their sense of wonder. They understood that there is an end beyond our imaginings, in which all our journeys are begun and run their course; the imagination of our Creator.

We have mentioned Angus and Anna this morning, and we will again; Angus, as a physicist and an astronomer knew well this sense of wonder. In our book group this morning, we heard C.S. Lewis describe it:

“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy.”

And so, in a shaft of sunlight, like a still life, Amos presents to us as a vision of endings a bowl of summer fruit – an appealing, appetizing image, you might think. But Amos’ words to the people do not match that palatable impression. They are, instead, a warning against strange fruit.

“Beware,” Jesus preaches elsewhere, “of false prophets.” He doesn’t mean Amos. Amos’ vision is faithful. But beware, Jesus says, “of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. … Thus you will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-20)

Amos warns the people to be careful of the fruit we produce. Jesus warns us to be wary whom we follow, into whose visions we invest our faith. Watch out for the fruit they produce.

Amos places before us a basket of summer fruit. We turn over the pieces, looking for something sweet – a glossy cherry, perhaps, or a crisp apple. But something is not right. There is a hardness to the grapes, and a waxiness to the skin of the pear. There is sawdust at the bottom of the bowl, instead of the dusting of peach fuzz that we expected to find. We have been fooled. The fruit is a fake. It is plastic and wood, made only to decorate the room. It is not even a still life. There is no nurture or nutrition in it. It is lifeless. It is a scam.

By their fruits shall you know them. If the vision painted for us does not nourish God’s children, nor foster their freedom, their health and wellbeing; if it proffers life with one hand and snatches it away with the other; if it distorts or defrauds, diminishes or shortchanges the image of God imprinted on any of God’s children, then it is a false vision. Watch for the bait and switch. Look out for the privateers who profit from false prophecy, while others bear the cost of their sin. By their fruits shall you know them. If the basket does not feed life, love, liberty, then it is false, and ungodly.

Try another basket. While on the surface, there is a blush to the fruit, underneath, it has gone bad. There is a bruise, and an infection that spreads from one apple to the next, until all dissolve together in their rottenness. Any new, good fruit that joins them risks their mould.

“I do not sit with false men, nor do I consort with dissemblers,” said the Psalmist. “I hate the company of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.” (Psalm 26:4-5)

Of course, wickedness has become a matter of opinion to us; but by their fruits you shall know them, says Jesus. If they produce strange fruit (you remember the Billie Holiday song, written by Abel Meeropol: “ …strange fruit/blood on the leaves and blood at the root”); if they look to be producing or pollinating strange fruit, be very wary. If their fruit is poisonous to any one of God’s children, they are false prophets, and ungodly.

Fortunately, we have a healthier vision to follow. We have sounder and more sustaining food at hand. “Those who eat my flesh, and drink my blood,” Jesus says, share in the life of Christ. And those who abide close to the root and shoot of Jesus will bring forth fruit for the good of the world: lifegiving, healing, and sustaining food. That is the vision we would rather follow, and the fruit we would rather eat and offer to our neighbours, to our children, and at the altar of our God.

You know that this morning we are remembering particularly in our prayers Angus and Anna, bringing them home, as it were, one last time to Epiphany. One story that stuck with me was about how Angus would choose where to sit in this church. It was a system of randomized coin selections and manipulations that were assigned mathematical calculations that would eventually land on a point on an imaginary grid laid over the pews, and wherever that was, Angus would set himself and his family down. It was a system designed to promote equity and to eliminate bias. We each have a tendency to love best those who are like us, and to lean towards those whose sympathy we can rely on. But the love of God in Christ is unbiased and rather indiscriminate. The only way to buy into that, Angus felt, was intentionally and randomly.

“By their fruit you shall know them.” We recognize those who are sound of spirit by their actions, by their interactions with others, by the way in which they live out their faith in their daily life, in acts of wonder, of service, of kindness.

When we taste the good fruit, we know its sweetness, and its soundness. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit:

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22)

How could anyone outlaw kindness, such as offering water to a parched man in the desert? How would anyone pass a law against gentleness, and the tender treatment of the traveller found at the side of the road? Why would anyone want to draw up rules against love?

Instead, like pollen on the breeze, or like the bees, let us randomly and intentionally propagate good fruit, seeding kindness where we can, settling gently where we land, leaving footprints grainy with wonder, spreading love across creation; for by our fruits we shall be known.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1963), 91

Strange Fruit, by Abel Meeropol, performed most famously by Billie Holiday (YouTube)

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Morning meditation

Posted on July 9, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

I squeezed in a swim
before work; the lake
was grumpy, turning
its shoulder to the shore.

Now, traffic shimmers
the road like fish, still,
something within me
flexes her wings, soaring

among the shrill gulls,
over the water.

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Do good. Don’t stop.

Posted on July 7, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Year C Proper 9). Also in the news today, the humanitarian crisis in detention centers and camps holding asylum seekers and other immigrants to the United States, including children; the Women’s World Cup Final; and the July 4th weekend. Readings include the healing of Naaman, Paul’s admonition not to become weary of doing good, and the sending out and return of the seventy by Jesus.

The seventy returned to Jesus excited and amped up, saying, “You should see how we owned the forces of evil! How we slayed in the name of the Spirit! We are on fire!”

And Jesus said, “Yesss. Awesome. You are amazing. You are undefeatable. I know, I know that the way of love wins (because, ahem, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life). I know that you have it in you to do great things.

“But, not to rain on your parade or anything, but … don’t peg your faith, your hope, your sense of self too closely to the score. It is more important to endure.

Do not become distracted, even by your own indisputable awesomeness, from the way of love.”

This morning’s readings contrast the thrill of the grand gesture against the quiet satisfaction of doing the right thing, come what may, do or die, in a world that may or may not reward it. They encourage us to stay strong, to stay the course, knowing that whether or not the world recognizes it, the reign of God is not far from us.

So Naaman is angry that his healing miracle is not more splashy (pun intended) – but Elisha is more interested in witnessing to the word of God than in pandering to the preferences of an imperial commander. And still, Naaman is healed, when he decides to submit to God’s way, because God is merciful, when we look to them for loving kindness.

Jesus sends the seventy out “like lambs among wolves,” travelling quietly, preaching generously, refusing to be distracted from the way of Jesus into arguments, disputes, or discouragement.

Paul counsels gentleness, and warns against the weariness that comes from setting one’s sights on showy achievements, rather than the steady work of simply doing what is right and loving, for the good of all people and the glory of God.

This is not to discourage grand gestures, and there is certainly a place in our worship for God to celebrate the achievements of the gospel, especially when we have been granted a part in them – what joy! But the way of the gospel, of the cross and the resurrection is walked one step at a time. Sometimes it runs uphill. Sometimes it is dirty, dusty, full of stumbling blocks. Sometimes, it requires assistance, like Simon of Cyrene stepping in to help Jesus with his cross – “bear one another’s burdens,” Paul advises, even as each carries their own. Sometimes, it requires a Sabbath rest in the quiet darkness of the tomb, awaiting resurrection. Sometimes, seemingly insignificant actions build to big rewards.

I read a sweet story recently about a woman in British Columbia who waved every day out of her front window to the schoolchildren going by. It was perhaps the smallest and simplest of gestures, yet it conveyed the message that every child of God needs to hear: You are seen. You are recognized. Your presence matters. You are loved.

The story hit the papers because in May, Mrs Davidson moved from her house to an assisted living facility, no longer on the children’s route to school. Before she left, hundreds of the students she had greeted through the years gathered on her lawn to blow her kisses and wave their signs of love and gratitude to her. Who knows how many times a child had set out on a day that didn’t feel so good, that loomed like a forbidding mountain before them. Who knows how many times they had pegged their hope, their encouragement on seeing that wave, that smile, that small gesture of acknowledgement, the love that would keep them going, one foot in front of another, giving them courage to face the day to come. Through small and faithful gestures of love, Mrs Davidson had taught a generation of children that there would always be someone watching for them, waiting for them, caring about them, their lives, their feelings, their seasons; and they delighted in her affection, and their own love grew. What a parable of God’s loving care for God’s children.

Of course, it isn’t always so simple. Last summer, you remember that while I was visiting General Convention, some hundreds of us travelled to a detention center in Texas holding immigrant and refugee women, many separated from their children. We prayed, we sang, we preached (even better, Michael Curry preached). About half the group or more defied the limits of our event permit, broke away from the pack, and walked the road to the front of the detention center, and waved to the women inside. The imprisoned women described through their contacts later the strength they derived from being seen, being loved; those waves of love mattered. Yet we know that so many of them, or other women and men like them, might still be separated from their children; that they are suffering in squalid conditions unbecoming of one made in the image of God; and that we continue to fail miserably to sustain their children in the knowledge that they are deeply and deservedly beloved.

“The enormity of the challenge is daunting. It is easy to feel helpless to make a difference. While we cannot do everything, we can do something,” Bishop Curry said this month. We can call those representatives who, on our behalf, are elected to organize a righteous, respectful, and human response to those seeking asylum in this country, and call them to account where that response is unacceptable. Where we find opportunity, we can share our resources with refugees resettling in our local communities. We can always pray. We can promote, with our lips and with our lives, in actions large and small, with faithfulness the dignity of every human being made in the very image of our God.

Do not grow weary, Paul advises. Do not pin your hopes on the glorious accolades of empires, splashy success stories, Jesus warns; but don’t give up. As labourers in God’s fields of justice, and of mercy, hoe a straight row, feed the good seed, and do not get tangled up in the weeds. Do good wherever and however you can, for the love of God.

Jesus tells his disciples – and you are his disciples – “You are indisputably awesome. You have infinite potential to love and to be loved. You have great power over all of your adversaries, the serpents and scorpions that bite and sting. Their poison cannot contaminate you, who are sustained by the blood of Christ. Your names are written in heaven.

And even when it seems that no one is paying attention, when no one will hear you, your love, large or small, is not wasted. Let your peace return to you. For in Christ, in love, in fierce righteousness, justice, and in peace, the kingdom of God draws ever near.”

Amen.

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The cathedral

Posted on July 2, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Entering a slanted cathedral,

pilgrim feet sheathed in tourist shoes,

watching for the Spirit’s tell

between the illustrated tombs;

some unquiet air consecrated

to the sighs of an unquiet world.

If our hearts remain stone, and cold,

at least, let their chambers echo mercy.

Attune their empty rhythm to

these stubborn remnants of your praise.

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