What heals history?

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Feast of the Epiphany at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland. This sermon has some passages in common with, but is not the same as, the sermon preached the previous day at the Church of the Epiphany.

The story of the magi told by Matthew is intriguing in its choice of detail. There is no background to the visitors given, no hint of numbers or nationality, despite subsequent legend. Yet their consultation with Herod merits a specific and pertinent prophecy, and launches a whole other story, other journeys of migration, flight, and grief. The story that should conclude with angels singing the music of the heavens in harmony with the star ends instead with a warning: this, too, is part of our understanding of the incarnation of our God: that God understands all too well the dangers inherent in being human, vulnerable to one another. 

There is an ancient tale of the journey of the Magi that builds a mountain of myths out of the mysterious story from Matthew. It is called The Revelation of the Magi (and I’m indebted here to the translation of it and notes on it of Brent Landau).[i] The Revelation of the Magi tells the story of a legendary people descended from Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, living in the land of Shir, on the easternmost edge of the world. For generations, these Magi had passed on the prophecy of God’s incarnation. Now, the time had come to pass and the generation of people now in worship finally saw the Star that would bear witness to the birth of God on earth.

Each of the Magi saw within the Star an image, an icon of Christ, some in one phase or another of his earthly life, and others as he is in eternity. For Christ had – has – the ability to appear to each as they have need or desire to see him; although Herod, in this legend, did not have the heart to see the Son of God within the Star of Bethlehem. Hence the warning to return by another road.

There are dangers, of course, in claiming each to see Jesus according to our own vision, our individual revelation. The temptation to dissect the stories of Jesus, to see his life through incarnation and eternity not as a single prism with many facets, but as a set of disparate and discrete revelations, can lead us down some dangerous roads, to divide us from one another instead of bringing us together to marvel at the humility, the vulnerability, the immense and all-consuming love of God, to become like us.

I have been wondering how long it takes for history to heal. August 6th was the Feast of the Transfiguration for millennia before it became the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; January 6th the Feast of the Epiphany and now synonymous, in this country, with a very different set of political events. How long does history take to heal? The atrocities of Herod would take more than the lifetime of creation to set aside.

We enter this new year, and this new season after Christmas, with some trepidation, don’t we? We are haunted by the shadows of the past, concerned for the present, warned by the violence that greeted the new year in New Orleans and Nevada and far beyond; our hopes and fears for the future year clash and mingle in the air like smoke. 

And yet this is the Feast-day, the celebration of the Epiphany, the manifestation of God’s incarnation to the nations, to us. The bright promise that God is with us, even us. 

In the legend of the Magi of Shir, the Star-Jesus not only led the Magi but helped them on their way, sustained them in the wilderness, both coming to and going from Bethlehem. Rugged mountains and rushing rivers became no obstacle to them. Wild beasts and poisonous serpents were no threat to them. Food and drink were provided to them, and they had no need of sun nor moon for light nor for guidance, with the star to illumine and guide them; with Jesus beside, above, and before them. Returning to the land of Shir and to their people, they shared the holy food and drink given them by the Star-Jesus, and told them (in Landau’s translation),

“… Everyone who wishes, receive without doubt, with a whole heart and true faith, and eat from these provisions, which have come with us. And be deemed worthy, and you, too, join in his blessing, which accompanies us and is with us forever” …and, the story tells us, those who ate shared in the visions of Christ.

The backdrop of the glorious Epiphany story of treasures and kings and starlight and wonder is a constant reminder of the shadows around its edges: the roads will be rough, and full of obstacles. The very earth will overflow sometimes; the journey will be arduous. Violence will erupt out of the envy of human hearts, from petty political leaders like Herod, like Pontius Pilate. People will be displaced, haunted and hunted from their homes. Food will be scarce in the wilderness. This is not new. This is, too, the world in which the Magi lived, outside of the myth. Isn’t that why they wrote it that way?

But if the Gospel of Matthew begins with danger and dreams and risk and the precariousness of being human, if that is the world into which the infant Jesus is born, it is still good news. It ends not at the cross but in resurrection; it is our hope.

Outside of the myth, the protection and providence we enjoy from Christ’s presence with us is mostly less miraculous than the stilling of storms and the levelling of mountains, the taming of bears and lions. But it is real. The nativity of Jesus as a vulnerable and helpless infant, the instinct to worship his humility, his humanity, this is how we are drawn together, to love one another, to serve one another, to protect and provide for one another, each made in the same image of God expressed in that manger.

And he is with us, every step of the way, every step taken in the name of Love, every piece of bread broken and shared in the name of the living Christ.

The lesson, the legacy of the Epiphany is the living hope that the incarnation of God among us can bring the most exalted and wise and wealthy and worthy to their knees: that Love is what will heal history, and our present, and our future; and that Love is with us, remains with us, Emmanuel, bright shining as the noonday star, and within our reach. 

Amen.

[i] Summary and quotes derived from Revelation of the Magi: the lost tale of the wise men’s journey to Bethlehem, by Brent Landau (HarperCollins E-books, 2010), accessed via Kindle

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A departing

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

This was my final sermon as Rector of the Church of the Epiphany, a parish I have served with gratitude for twelve years, a people formed by and for the light and love of Christ. And yes, we did sing This Little Light of Mine as our sending hymn.

Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. I have been thinking a lot, it may not surprise you to learn, about that other road; those called to the manger to give witness to the birth of Christ the saviour, now being sent another way. 

I don’t know where it was that they found one another to travel together to Jerusalem and thence to Bethlehem. I do not know at what point on the journey home they said their goodbyes and parted ways, each to his own country. I imagine it was not easy to let go of such a fellowship forged in the fire of the star and the cold light of Herod’s treachery, and the gentle light of the stable full of the love of God. But at some point they divided their camel train and took the gospel home, each according to his own language, country, and call. 

You can see where I am going here. Nothing was lost. Nothing abandoned. Nothing diminished of what they had shared. They could not go back unchanged, unaffected by the stable light and the star’s insistent brightness and the soft glow of love that attended the infant and his mother. And they would always share that bond of knowledge of the love of God revealed there. Nothing could take away from that marvelous, miraculous journey, nor the moment of meeting Jesus. They simply travelled different roads home.

Now this version of events obviously makes some assumptions that build clouds of imagination out of the tight text of Matthew. It borrows from legends spun out over centuries of kings from continents and subcontinents converging on the holy land in search of a savior who would bring the world together.

There is another ancient version of events that builds its own mountain of myths. It is called The Revelation of the Magi,[i] and it tells the story of a people descended from Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, living in the land of Shir, on the easternmost edge of the world. For generations, the story goes, these Magi had passed on the prophecy of God’s incarnation and set aside treasure to bring as an offering. Now, the time had come to pass and the people in worship saw the star that would bear witness to the birth of God on earth.

It was not only three of the Magi, but a whole community, and each saw within the star an image, an icon of Christ, some in one phase or another of his earthly life, and others as he is in eternity. For Christ had – has – the ability to appear to each as they have need or desire to see him. We have seen him here, in community: life, in death, in life eternal; although Herod, of course, did not notice the Son of God within the Star of Bethlehem. 

In this legend, this Star-Jesus not only led the Magi but fed them on their way, sustained them in the wilderness, both coming to and going from Bethlehem. Returning to the land of Shir and to their people, they shared the holy food and drink given them by the Star-Jesus, and told them (and here I quote from the translation provided by Brent Landau),

“… his great power and his revelations will indeed stay with you, because he is also here in truth, as he spoke to us, and we believe that his light is not removed from our encampment. Indeed, again, he is in the entire world, for he is the light that is all-sufficient and all-enlightening by his perfect love. Everyone who wishes, receive without doubt, with a whole heart and true faith, and eat from these provisions, which have come with us. And be deemed worthy, and you, too, join in his blessing, which accompanies us and is with us forever.”

Doesn’t that sound familiar? It sounds to me like a Holy Communion.

The legends and myths of the kings and the Magi, drawn from faithful, imaginative engagement with the biblical text, resonate with us as a church as we draw together to seek the same saving grace: God with us, Emmanuel; a holy Communion in Christ. The legends reflect our life together as a church, as people, whose paths converge and cross and diverge on the journey toward Christ. We will mark one such departure this morning. After twelve years together, we will remain always united in our experience of God in Christ and in this gathering at the manger and the table and the cross; and yet we will leave by different roads. I will still love you and serve you as I can, but I will no longer be your rector. And you, you will still be the Church of the Epiphany, called and commissioned to shine as Christ’s light in the world, radiant with the revelation of the love of God that is for everyone; a whole community, called together and blessed to be a blessing for the world around you. I have seen, over the years, the gifts that you bring, the way that you shine, and the way that you love one another. And so you are, so you have been, and so you will be. And you will meet up with others on the same journey toward Bethlehem, and travel together for the time that God has given you on the same road, and Jesus will sustain you.

If the legends of the three kings emphasize our journey to find Christ, the Revelation of the Magi is concerned with Jesus’ journey to find us. He came to a whole community and showed them who he is, who he was, who he will be; and they bore witness to him, and shared with one another the light and the joy of his coming. When the Magi marvelled that Jesus could be in the Star, and on their mountain, and becoming born in Bethlehem, all at once, he told them (again, in the translation of Landau),

 “I am everywhere, and there is no land in which I am not. I am also where you departed from me, for I am greater than the sun, and there is no place in the world that is deprived of it, even though it is a single entity; yet if it departs from the world, all its inhabitants sit in darkness. How much more I, who am the Lord of the sun, … my light and word … more abundant … than the sun.”

“His great power and his revelations will indeed stay with you.” There is nowhere that Jesus is not, and no one for whom Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, and his star, his light shines upon and within and among us, all of us, wherever we are, wherever we go, forever, and undimmed. 

[i] Summary and quotes derived from Revelation of the Magi: the lost tale of the wise men’s journey to Bethlehem, by Brent Landau (HarperCollins E-books, 2010), accessed via Kindle

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New Year’s resolutions

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

More Jesus, less judgement

More Magnificat, less might makes right

More mercy, less Schadenfreude

More love, less envy

More transformation, less conformation

More inspiration, less trepidation

More Jesus, less me

More Jesus 

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A Christmas Message

Posted on December 25, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was the cry of a newborn infant, swaddled in cloth and laid in a feeding trough. …

Christmas. It’s a time of tradition. We all know what to expect, from the decorations to the dinner table. We know which family member will fall asleep on the sofa in the afternoon. We know who will be leading the Christmas carols. We all have our traditions.

But when families change, when life is altered by natural disaster or the unnatural disasters of war, as it still is in Bethlehem tonight; even when someone marries into a new family, or there’s a new child, or the person who always hosts dinner moves away, or is lost to us, then our traditions are disrupted. Nothing is as we expected it to be. We have to shift and make way for something new, whether we would like to or not.

For Mary and Joseph, everything was new and unexpected. Of course, they didn’t have Christmas traditions, but even so. It can’t have been what Mary imagined the birth of her first child would be like. Instead of being in her own home, surrounded by her mother, maybe Elizabeth, for sure the familiar local midwives, comforted by those who knew this road, who had been this way before; instead she was on the long and difficult road to Bethlehem, scrabbling for room somewhere, anywhere, to give birth to a child announced by angels, sharing this most intimate moment of her life so far with Joseph, her husband, but a man with whom she’d never yet got naked, and a stable full of animals for company.

Into this confusion, into this new and unexpected turn of events, into this strange new world and way of being, Jesus is born. Jesus is born and all heaven is let loose with singing and angels and bright stars, and a baby lying in a manger full of animal food.

There is a profound gift in the chaos of Christmas, the reminder that nothing in this world is fixed, nothing final, nothing as enduring as love. Our traditions come and go with the supply chain and the growing children and the eldering generations and the grief that weaves its way through any life. New music is written, old ornaments break, they don’t make the same sweets they used to. The priest moves on. Things change.

And every Christmas, we are drawn back to the stable, back to the makeshift maternity bed of straw, back to the strangeness of a baby born to a virgin mother, the love of God made manifest, incarnate, taking flesh, taking form, giving voice with his cry to the song of God for the world, the song of creation, peace over the earth. Everything is strange and new there, too; and as old and enduring as eternity.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was the cry of a newborn infant, swaddled in cloth and laid in a feeding trough. The Word caught on the tears of his astonished and exhausted mother, drawing from her milk and love. The Word filled the mind of Joseph such that he could think of nothing, nothing but the child, and his love for him. The Word startled the sheep, and the shepherds followed them in wonder toward the light coming from the cave in which he was stabled. The Word ululated with the angels, as it had since before time began, and will after all time is ended. As the world continues to turn and spin and pivot and dance, and we with it, whirling with the fates and the weather, the Word remains, year after year the same: Emmanuel. God is with us.

May the good news of angels disturb you.

May the bright star of Bethlehem disrupt your dreams.

May the strangeness of this season of our Saviour’s birth comfort you with the familiar knowledge that God is with us: Emmanuel.

Amen.

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Emmanuel

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

I misremembered the title of the children’s story that I cited in the middle of this reflection: I think it still works.

In the Advent to Christmas stories we find a lot of fear, and a balancing dose of faith. From Mary running to the hills to Joseph’s misgivings, the fear of the anunciation of the birth of Christ is palpable. And the angels say, Do not be afraid.

The message of the incarnation is that we have a God who knows what it is to be afraid, to have faith, to feel everything in between. Not just theoretically, or philosophically: I made everything, so of course I know about everything. But a God who, in the person of Jesus, had a body, and fear, and faith, and grief, delight, and disgust; who tasted sour and sweet.

And so we have that name, Emmanuel. God is with us. God who gets us. And that is a little scary, too; it means there is nowhere to hide from what we feel.

And sometimes, if we’re honest (and we might as well be, since God knows) we wonder if what we really want is an Emmanuel, or a God beyond it all, to fix it all.

When Job’s friends first came to visit him after his devastating losses, they sat for days in silence. They waited for literal days while he felt his pain and grief and anger until he was ready to speak. They were much better, in fact, when they were simply with him than when they began to try to rationalize his pain.

Someone recently read me a book, The Rabbit Listened, by Cori Doerrfeld. What I remember from the story is that a child built something, which, being ephemeral as mortal creations are, fell down. That the child was devastated. And that various creatures came to give their advice on what to do next.

The hyenas said to laugh. The elephant to remember all of the details so as to be able to replicate them. Some fierce animal suggested wrecking someone else’s creation, to share the misery. But the child did not want their advice, so they all left. But then, in the book, there is a rabbit. The rabbit did not offer advice. The rabbit waited. As the title says, the rabbit listened; what I remembered was that the rabbit stayed.

This is Emmanuel, the God who stays with us as we weep and wail, throw things and shout, collapse and hide under the blankets, find our courage to try again. The God who listens. The God who stays.

The God who is patient. God who is kind. God who bears all things, believes all things. God who does not delight in the things that hurt but in the things that heal. God who endures. God who is love.

May such a God stay with us. May such a God be our Emmanuel.

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Bearing Jesus

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Mary’s song has become the song of us all: the Almighty has done great things for me. Mary’s hope has become our hope: the hope of a holy revolution in which the inequalities and inequities and unfairnesses of this age are flipped like the tables in the temple, upended and leveled by the merciful justice of God. Mary’s rejoicing has become our own.

And it is in the gentlest, subtlest, quietest of ways that God’s kingdom comes: the division of a cell, and another. The first flutterings of a foot against a ribcage, which Elizabeth translates as John jumping for joy at the approach of the embryonic saviour. God’s reign is one of new life, not of destruction; God’s revolution is one of love.

This is a revolution that will stretch us. If we are in solidarity with Mary this morning – and we have sung her song together, so we’d better be – if we are with Mary then we know that this revelation of God’s reign comes with fear as well as with delight, with nausea as well as with rest, that it will stretch us, even tear us, even as we breathe with it, and bear down with it. That a sword will pierce our souls with grief at the enormity of love that has come into being, a love that will sweep before it all that we otherwise knew to be true.

The Collect that we pray this morning asks God to make in us a mansion worthy of Jesus’ abiding. We think of that line from the Gospel of John that we hear, too often at funerals, but which applies at all times: In my father’s house are many mansions … and I go there to prepare a place for you. 

The fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart, here translated and interpreted by Matthew Fox[i], asked, “What help is it to me that Mary is full of grace, if I am not also full of grace? And what help is it to me that the Father gives birth to his Son unless I too give birth to him?”

In uniting ourselves with Mary and her song, with Mary and her blessing, with Mary and her greeting, we take to ourselves that responsibility, that calling, that joy of preparing a mansion for Jesus within our own lives, within our own world.

Mary ran with haste into the hill country of Judea to take comfort and courage from her cousin, Elizabeth. The region was dangerous, and under occupation, and then as now it is easy to see the map overlaid with political power struggles and obliterations. And under the blanket of the news, of the maps, of the raids, of the violence, women and children run to one another to wonder how, in this world, in this time, in this place, in this barren landscape will they grow love? How will it live? How will they live?

Mary ran with haste to Elizabeth, and John the foetus jumped for joy at hearing her. Already, Mary’s voice had been altered, had been fused and infused with the one she carried, had been filled with grace, and with the salvation that grew within her. John heard the harmonics of heaven in her greeting, and he leaped at the sound. And here, the dye was set, and he would spend the rest of his life preparing the way for Jesus, for the coming of God with us, for the revolution that Mary sang.

And if Mary’s song has become our song, then we, too, have joined our chords with the never silent, yet-to-come voice of Jesus, the living Word of God. That should make us good news, the kind that causes that inner leap within the person who hears us coming; does it?

Bearing Jesus into the world is not only a matter of inward preparation, but of moving heaven and earth to make a world worthy of having such a child born into it. A world in which they can grow in love and in safety, each one knowing herself to be made in the very image and likeness of God. A world without violence or terrorism. A world without school shootings. A world in which their health is worth more than money or influence. A world in which they do not have to dig their way out of the rubble of the wars we have made. John heard the challenge, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight …

Mary, full of grace, sang not only for herself, the Almighty has done great things for me, but also for the proud spirits in need of disruption, and the poor spirits in need of nurture and nutrition; her song is not hers alone, but it belongs to us all.

Her call is not hers alone, to bear Christ into the world, to bring to light the joy of God’s mercy and love, which is our salvation. 

Blessed and blessing are we, when our souls proclaim the greatness of the Lord; the Almighty has done great things for us, and holy is God’s name.

Amen.

Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year C: Micah 5:2-5a, Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:39-45, 46-55) Canticle 15

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Solstice

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Through darkest day and longest night
shines the terrifying angel’s light,
illuminating more than we can bear:
the reversal of gravity
proclaimed by a magnificat,
revolution of earth and heaven on earth
borne by the bodies intertwined
of mother and child, full of grace
enough to endure the darkest day,
the longest night pierced by the infant cry.

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Rejoice!

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

The third Sunday in Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete! Rejoice always, as the letter to the Philippians commands. Rejoice, you brood of vipers! With these and many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news.

The people came to John looking for a way into the kingdom of heaven, looking for a way out of oppression, looking for a saviour. They asked him, So what should we do? 

We’ve talked about this before. Nearly ten years ago I preached right here: Take his advice to the tax collectors and soldiers: don’t exploit people. Don’t extort money. Do the right thing, even if others around you seem to be profiting from doing wrong. …. It’s how we know the world should work, how we know we should act, if we could only keep our heads, our consciences, God’s commandments, even in a cultural context that has a tendency to excuse a sliding scale of corruption. It’s as though a border patrol agent asked him, “What should we do?”, and he told them to treat asylum seekers as children of God, or a drug company CEO, and he told them to put healthy people ahead of inflated profits.

How is it that we are still talking about the same problems ten years later, or two thousand years after we allegedly repented of our addiction to violence and greed, our idolatry of money and power? And let’s not even think about the first time we talked through this gospel together, in the wake of devastating gun violence and grief. Has nothing changed? 

And yet, John believes in us. He believes that we can change. He exhorts us to bear fruits worthy of repentance, worthy of our baptism. He knows that we need help beyond water and words to do it; he also knows that Christ is coming, that the Holy Spirit has the power to transform our spirits as fire melts the hardest steel and splits the heart of stone. John is a prophet: he sees more than the surface, and he believes that this is good news.

Sometimes, rejoicing is resistance against a world that steals joy from children and sells it. Sometimes we look around and we wonder whether things will ever change. We have heard from Dr King that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, and we wonder how long, how long will it take? One of our local representatives, Shontel Brown, said a couple of years ago that the arc will take some bending from our end, that we need to pull on it. I can’t help thinking of the forge and the anvil, and the heat, light, and cooperative creativity it takes to bend the barrel of a gun into something less lethal, more life-giving. But it is possible.

John the baptizer would not have poured water on all of those people if he didn’t think that some difference could be made, that it wasn’t worth making a commitment, a covenant to do good, to give thanks, to rejoice in God and act as though God were in charge of our lives and our world, rather than waiting passively and helplessly, hopelessly for the Second Coming. Sometimes, rejoicing is resistance; repentance is rejoicing; believing, with John, that we can change, and that Christ can and will change us. Do you think that we have changed at all, in the past twelve years together?

John believes that we can change, and he begins not with what not to do, but with generosity. Share what you have, he says, don’t hold back from one another. Paul picks up the theme in his letter to the Philippians: 

First, give thanks. He goes on to write, Look for what is good, look for what is honourable, what is peaceable, what is just and right and true – keep on doing those things which you know show God’s love. For the God of peace is with you.

Keep on doing those things which you know show God’s love: Love God, love your neighbour, change the world, to borrow a tagline from the Diocese of Ohio. 

And, as the prophet Zephaniah says, it is God, in the end, who will rejoice over you: 

The Lord, your God, 
will rejoice over you with gladness,
will renew you with God’s love.

Rejoice.

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(Un)Documented

Posted on December 8, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

The grand histories of the world tell of kings and empresses, governors and battles, wars and conquests. We talk about the Victorian era, as though she were queen of the world. We talk about who was president when this or that happened, to contextualize ourselves among famous or infamous events. Even within the church, we look to the seats of power to define our times: archbishops, popes, presiding bishops and primates. We live under the shadow of the kinds of names that Luke throws out and writes down: Tiberius, Herod, Lysanias, Caiaphas; the names that appear in the papers: Trump, Biden, DeWine, Francis, Welby.

But is this really where history is made? I am indebted to a colleague for the timely reminder that while Luke is careful, as a historian, to add that context and name those names, Luke the evangelist pivots immediately away from those seats of power into the wilderness, where John, son of a backwater priest from the hill country, clothed in camel hair and the Holy Spirit, is proclaiming the coming of Christ.

It is here, in the wilderness, that the real action is happening, where ancient prophesies are fulfilling themselves, coming to life. 

I wonder if John ever worried that his voice was not strong enough, would not carry far enough, was not close enough to the megaphone of worldly power structures to make a difference. If he thought, What am I doing here, by the river, when I could be in the Temple, taking my turn as my father did, to oversee the incense and meet with archangels? I wonder if John ever wondered, at the end of another long day, wringing out his camel hair coat and watching the sun set behind the hill of Jerusalem, whether he was making any difference at all.

But it is not proximity to the palace that makes for power: it is closeness to God, the drawing near of Jesus, the clothing of the Holy Spirit. It is his faithfulness, faith in the wilderness, listening in the silent, secret spaces, immersing himself in a river of prayer that makes John a prophet.

And what he prophesies to the people who will hear him is that Messiah, Jesus is coming.

Here he is, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Make a way in the crooked and rocky places for the coming of the salvation of our God.

Here’s a funny thing about road building. The Bills that order the infrastructure, raise the money through taxes and tariffs, the bodies that cut the ceremonial ribbons tend to bear the names of the politicians and power-mongers that end up in the history books. But the people who build the roads, who clear the land, who pour hot tar and heavy cement, who stand beside the speeding semis and sway in their after-draught: these are not people whose names are in the history books. These are not people whose names are on the overhead signs or the radio traffic reports. These peoples’ names are sometimes not written down at all. They are, to borrow a term, undocumented.

But drive down any highway and dare to say that they are unimportant, or that we have no need of them, that we do not depend upon them as partners in the work of the world.

This doesn’t mean that who holds the reins of political power doesn’t matter. Luke, the historian, is careful to name them. The systems that govern our lives together do affect our health, the health of body and of spirit and of the body political. The systems of government can help or harm the planet and its people, can propagate systems of mutual understanding or affliction. They bear our attention. And (spoiler alert) we’ll hear more from John the prophet about the ethical implications of all of that next Sunday.

But, Luke shows us, what we document, what we record, whom we remember is a choice. It is a choice that reflects what we consider to be important. Luke recognizes the culture of a world that requires context, but he also sees where God is at work in the wilderness, in the oddball person of faith standing in a river of prayer. He pivots quickly from the traditional seats of power because he sees, too, the one making a way out of rocks and rifts and building bridges where none seemed possible. Because Luke has seen Christ coming, and he knows that all manner of heaven is about to break loose.

And you don’t have to have your name in the papers or up in lights to be a part of it. All you need in the wilderness, in the wild, wild west, in this barren and broken world is love. The love of God that flows like a river through the parched places and restores them. The love of God that can move mountains and fill in valleys of shades and shadows. The love of God that does not discriminate between the famous, the infamous, and the forlorn, and the forgotten.

All you need is the courage to step into that river of prayer, and let the currents of God’s love sweep you off your feet, until the kingdom come.

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Advent: out of time

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Stand up, raise your heads, for your redemption is drawing near. This is no time for despair. Though those around you faint from fear and the signs of the times are terrible and terrifying, this is not the time to despair.

When the storm was about to overwhelm the boat in which the disciples thought they were perishing, Jesus was close at hand to quell the fury. When the crowd was exhausted and hungry and quite possibly on the point of revolt and violence (because hangry crowds can get that way), Jesus took bread, took pause to look up and give thanks, and fed thousands with next to nothing. Even when Lazarus was lying in the tomb, in his graveclothes, in death, Jesus was already on his way to call him out.

Jesus said, these things will happen, and I will be close at hand.

Then he told them a parable, about a fig tree, and spring, and the warmth of summer, and the green shoots, and the providence of God that is hardy and persistent and that grows sweet fruit for all creatures to eat. Don’t miss the parable for the apocalypse, the fig tree for the forest of prophecy. The signs of the second coming of Christ are the signs of God’s continuing love for the world that God has created, and sustains, and has redeemed.

And Jesus advises, pray for the providence, the sustenance – give us this day our daily bread – the strength to endure all of the things, so that you might still be standing and see the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Sun of Righteousness at his next dawning.

He tells his disciples not to get weighed down, bogged down in the dissipation and despair of the world. It’s so easy, isn’t it, to follow the signs of fury, the signs of distress, the signs of indulgence and ignorance and exploitation, the signs of corruption and capitalizing and capitulation, the signs of the world as we know it, and the end of the world as we know it.

But there is more to the world than its ending, and more to creation than its corruption, and more to humanity than its worse moments. There is hope in fragile ceasefires, despite the ongoing famine and war. There is joy in family reunions, despite the ongoing feuds and the missing faces. There is laughter to be found in the children’s snowman, despite the snarled up snowstorm traffic. There is repentance in the recognition that this land is not our own. There is love in the resolution to respect the dignity of every human being, and it is more than a fig leaf.

Advent is an odd season, a disruption of the calendar. We look forward to the birth of Christ which happened millennia ago in our history. We look back through the apocalyptic scriptures which told generation after generation that they were living through the end of the world. Time is out of joint, and we are unsettled by it.

But it is in this break, through this fracture, that the light of Christ shines, through clouds and glory, through sunspots and shooting stars, through the darkness of the longest night. This is the sign that Jesus is close at hand – that we need him, now as much if not more than ever.

But what I really wanted to say to you, church, is what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: how glad you make me feel because of your faith; And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. You are good news for Euclid and further afield. You stand, in the shortened days and lengthening nights, as a lighthouse, a beacon of good news. You are hope for the sinner, welcome for all of God’s children, affirmation that God’s love is without exception.

And the good news for you, for us, is that Jesus is near. His arrival is at hand. His birth, his new birth, his coming in all humility and in great glory. When we need him the most, he is already on his way.

Amen; come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

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