Epiphany: we need another way

Posted on January 3, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

What I didn’t write in the parish newsletter

This Sunday, we celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men at the manger; the completion of many a Christmas tableau.

On Christmas Eve, we pondered a moment how the birth of a child is always revolutionary. Whether it changes the succession of the royal throne or simply the direction of its parent’s affection, it always wreaks havoc on the settled order of those surrounding it.

In the biblical story, Herod was unsettled, and wrought havoc on those within his reach in order to shore up his own throne and exercise his own rage. Still, we borrow the story of the Holy Innocents to describe the tragedies and atrocities of our own time: the children separated from their families, the children imprisoned, the children dying at our southern border. Authorities more concerned with their own security and rage, more intent on funding walls than finding help, exacerbate the situation, we are told [1]. A world away from the desert, families spent Christmas stranded at sea, denied a safe harbour by a continent unsettled at their advent [2]. In our streets, in our houses, children are maimed and murdered by the incurious, impassive, inanimate availability of guns [3]. The madness of King Herod has not yet found its cure, nor learned submission to the kingdom of God.

Christmas is not a holiday from these realities. The Incarnation is not an excuse to look away. The coming and going of the Magi at Epiphany reminds us that after we have spent our moments lost in wonder at the Christmas Incarnation, the time comes to recognize the havoc that Herod still wreaks in the world and in the lives of the children of God and humanity.

When the wise men left the manger, they were warned not to return to their country by the same road. The birth of Jesus had changed everything between here and home, and they needed to find a new way. If we are wise, we will follow their example, for the sake of the Holy Innocents; for the sake of Christ’s infant innocence.

[1] “Border Patrol has come under heavy criticism over the deaths of two Guatemalan children. In the wake of the second death, Nielsen ordered that all children be given a medical screening after they are apprehended. McAleenan acknowledged the capability to provide medical support will be hampered if the government shutdown becomes lengthy.” – More children arriving very sick at the US border, by Carol Morello, for the Washington Post

[2] “Already on Saturday, the crew of the Sea-Watch 3 has saved 32 people from drowning, including four women, three unaccompanied minors, two young children and a baby. Five countries (Italy, Malta, Spain, Netherlands, Germany) refused to take responsibility and grant the rescued a port of safety for Christmas.” – Sea-Watch.org

[3] Watch this telling video from the End Family Fire campaign

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Beholding glory

Posted on December 30, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas Day, 2018, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

In the beginning was the Word … and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory …

It may seem strange, but we hear this more times than the story of the manger and the angels, the shepherds and the star, across the Christmas season.

I first heard it, this year, on Christmas Eve, listening to the service of Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge on the radio. The Provost of the College announces the ninth and final Lesson,

St John unfolds the great mystery of the Incarnation.

I always wonder what they mean by “unfold,” when John’s words fold in the glory of God like a piece of  origami, glorious in its intricacy and effect, but not exactly straightforward.

We read this gospel again on Christmas morning, after a night of angels and sheep, the manger and the glory of the heavens breaking through. In the morning light, we were left with poetry, the glory of the Word made flesh, God’s timely and timeless presence among us.

We talked about that timeliness and timelessness on Christmas morning; how John’s gospel, reaching back beyond creation and deep into the mystery of Christ’s birth reminds us that, while no one has seen the glory of God face to face, God’s grace and mercy have never left us, which leaves us the promise that they never will.

No one has seen God, John says, and he name-checks Moses. We remember how Moses longed for a closer revelation of God – closer than the burning bush, and the Red Sea, the pillars of cloud and of fire, the personal conversations. God told Moses that a man could not handle such naked glory. Moses hid himself in the crevice of a rock, and God guarded Moses from the glory with God’s hand, letting him peek out only as God disappeared around a corner, like a familiar friend passing just out of reach, out of earshot, beloved, but lost.

Still, when Moses met with God on the mountaintop, his face shone with the reflection of God’s glory, and the people were afraid even of his afterglow.

God’s grace and mercy have never left us, passing over us and shielding us from more than we can imagine; but how much glory can we handle, human as we are?

When Elijah hid in the cave, fleeing for his life and resenting rather how much of it he had dedicated to God, God showed him a different lesson. All of the power of creation passed by as Elijah, like Moses, hid in the cleft of the rock; and after it was done, he veiled his face to come to the cave entrance, drawn by the quietness that followed the storm, the back end of God’s power, the quiet insistence that God is faithful, God’s presence persistent, even in the stillness, God’s mercy endures forever.

If the sky were full of angels and noise tonight, I wonder who would be the first, and how long it would take to launch missiles to disperse them. We, no more than Moses and Elijah, are not equipped to deal with too much of God’s unfiltered, powerful glory.

In the end, Elijah was taken up by chariots of fire, directly immolated by the nearer presence of God, consumed by glory.

When John speaks of the timelessness, the eternity of God’s Word, and of the glory of God veiled and revealed by the flesh of his Incarnation, John reminds us that while the birth of Jesus is unique, and ultimate, and unrepeatable, and shines with the glory of the only Son of the Father; still, the mercy of God has endured forever.

When we wish that God would do more, and more dramatically, in our own lives, in our own time, it might be that God is protecting us from too much glory, so as not to overwhelm our humanity. If the Word of God that spoke light into being, caused the land to rise and the seas to shift, if that Word were to break loose upon us, how would we respond? Instead, God covers us with God’s hand, shielding us from the full weight of glory, veiling divine power in the miracle of a birth, muting the clamour of glory with the cry of a child, presenting God’s mercy and grace to us as one born of a woman, in need of love, care, tenderness.

And will we receive God’s glory this way?

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

Will we recognize the glory of God when it passes before us, covered by God’s hand to shield us from its divine force, clothed instead in flesh and mercy?

While we demand divinity, glory unleashed, God appeals to our humanity, teaching us by God’s own example to exercise the image of God within us, whose graciousness is revealed by acts of mercy and protection, whose power is found in faithfulness, whose glory is borne by love.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. …

No one has ever seen God. It is God’s only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Even in the ultimate revelation of glory, God is shielding us, protecting and directing us, preferring for us mercy to might, grace to glory. God’s mercy endures forever.

And what even is this thing called glory? As the gospel tells it, it is no less than the birth of new life, the wonder of love revealed.

No wonder the shepherds and angels sing, Glory to God in the highest. Glory, and peace, goodwill towards the people, whom God loves.

Amen

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Christmas Eve: even unto Bethlehem

Posted on December 24, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

And so here we are, drawn to the manger once more by the promise of the angels:

Peace on earth, goodwill to all people whom God loves;
for to us has been born a saviour, who is Christ, the Lord.

And because the promises of God will not fail, and the faithfulness of God endures forever, our hope is born anew for that peace that passes understanding, and the love of God that prevails over all ills, even in the face of the evidence all around us that life still has its ups and downs, to say the least.

Bethlehem has always been a hotbed of political as well as religious activity. The actions of God in the world are not without consequence for the powers and principalities that we erect, our Babel congregations.

Centuries ago, David was born in Bethlehem, and anointed king while there was somebody else already and still wearing the crown. And Luke’s gospel is clear about setting the Christmas story within a clear historical and geopolitical landscape, in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, when Quirinius was governor in Syria, and Herod was the king in Judea.

The birth of a child itself has often been political. It changes the line of succession, whether the succession of power, or wealth, or of affection. The birth of a child wreaks havoc on the settled order of the world, as any parent or relatively close observer knows.

And what more political, and welcome, declaration can there be than the announcement of peace to a people under occupation and oppression; or the anointing of a new king from among a poor and politically helpless people shuffled like pawns on a board by the empire that rules over them.

Two months ago, I visited Bethlehem for the first time. To get there, we passed through militarized zones and the security wall, erected to keep the people of the West Bank in their place. On the wall, amongst the other graffiti, we saw the familiar emblem of the dove that announces peace between God and the world, carrying an olive branch. But this dove, rendered by Banksy, wore a flak jacket, against which the laser sights of a rifle were reflected.

In Manger Square, people thronged. We slipped through the back of a church and down into the grotto, the cave where Jesus was said to have been born. Most pilgrims were lined up in the church next door, more ornate and older, to enter the same shrine, but on the other side of a wall which the Christian denominations had built between them, dividing the site of the birth of Christ as though defining their shares in him.

When we had had our fill of the manger, we headed out to the Shepherds’ Field, where the angels sang their Gloria, and announced peace to the weary and waiting world. Wandering into a chapel, we stumbled into a choir of pilgrims from another far-off land, singing the angels’ song, but slowly, as though it were a prayer, awaiting an answer.

The answer, God tells us at Christmas, the answer does not come from pomp, power, or the proliferation of the potential for violence, the weaponry of war, the mechanisms of might. It does not come from defending our piece of the pie, nor even our piece of Jesus, at the expense of others.The peace of the world is not the Pax Romana of emperor Augustus, nor the capitulation of Herod and Quirinius to its principalities. The hope of the world, God tells us, is found in the love of its creator, shown forth at Christmas in the birth of Jesus, the love of God breaking into the world, demolishing walls between heaven and earth, so that shepherds hear the angels sing; demolishing the divisions between inside and out, Christ the saviour sharing space with the homeless and the helpless; demolishing the thrones of the mighty, by anointing a new king; demolishing our hearts, breaking them open with the cry of a child; committing revolution, not with the blood of battle but with the blood of the birthing room, the complete surrender of love.

With the utter dependence of a newborn infant upon its mother’s blood, its mother’s breast, God wails out, “See how much I have loved you?”

And outside the stable, the politics of Bethlehem and Judea continued to swirl. Pontius Pilate’s wife had her first dream about the stranger who would ruin her husband’s reputation. Herod began his spiralling descent into madness. Augustus wondered whether he had felt some kind of an earthquake, a tremor disturbing his sleep.

Even now, we rebuild walls that God would demolish, and wonder why our prayers for peace were so slow to grow into fruition; but for the shepherds, who heard the angels sing and came quickly to find Jesus for themselves; for Mary, and Joseph, and for their child there was no doubt that God had broken through their defenses, and changed their lives for ever, for good, and for a moment, in the fullness of their hearts, it was enough.

May the coming of Christ this Christmas be enough to break our hearts open to God’s goodness, to demolish the walls of sin that divide us from Christ and from one another, and the love of God bring us once more to our knees, astonished anew at the love that God has for us all, without exception; the good news that the angels bring.

Amen.

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As God is my promise

Posted on December 23, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C, drawing on the backstory to Elizabeth and Mary’s meeting in Luke 1

We don’t know very much about Elizabeth, mother of the baptizing prophet and cousin to the mother of God, but I think that the evidence points to her as a generous and joyful woman.

Her name is derived from one that might mean, “God is my oath,” or “God is my satisfaction, my abundance.” Perhaps it is designed to mean both: “God is the promise, and God its fulfillment.”

Despite the promise of her name, life had not always been kind to Elizabeth. She lived blamelessly, according to Luke, and came from a good, strong line – she was descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses; Aaron, whose own wife was named Elisheva, another form of Elizabeth. Still, this Elizabeth’s plans for her home and family were unfulfilled, and she found herself often ashamed and awkward in community gatherings, unable to account for her loneliness and empty hands.

 

Then, her husband had suffered some kind of an episode at work that had left him speechless, and with symptoms suspicious of a delusional illness, and she must have been worried sick.

The people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak.

And that’s the exact and inconvenient point in time when, after all of those years of trying and giving up, her sickness resolved itself into morning sickness, and Elizabeth found herself pregnant, with an aging and at-risk body, and a silent and dubiously sane husband.

Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, ‘This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.’

And so another woman might have responded a little differently when her young cousin, Mary, dropped by for an extended visit, bringing the news that, by the way, she was also pregnant, although not yet married, in a time and a place where that did matter, and that she was on the run from the same angel whom Elizabeth’s husband claimed to know.

If I were Elizabeth, for example, I might think, “Here we go again. Just like Zechariah, another one gone mad. Angel? Angel dust, more like it.”

Or, in Elizabeth’s place, I might wonder, “Why does she get all the glory? The Bible explicitly says that I have led a blameless life. I have suffered, I have served my time, my husband was just in the Holy of Holies, for heaven’s sake – and here she is, my upstart cousin, barely out of the playground, playing at becoming the Mother of God, creating gossip and carrying on, not to mention stealing my thunder, and my husband’s angel. What about us? What about me?” she might have been tempted to say.

But Elizabeth was a better woman than I am.

Elizabeth embraced Mary warmly, without judgement, without reservation, and with every encouragement, imputing joy even to the infant in her womb; reading all possible joy and satisfaction into any possible interpretation of their meeting.

And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy.

“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord,” concluded Elizabeth, named for God’s promise, and God’s faithfulness in its fulfillment.

What would the world be if we all acted as Elizabeth? How would it be if we were to greet everyone as Mary, the God-bearer, since we know that everyone who passes before us bears the image of God? (#ExpectGod!)

What if, as a nation, in all humility we were to greet those seeking sanctuary here as Elizabeth, asking, “And who are we, that you choose us to confide in?” What if we were to embrace those wandering in the wilderness, “And blessed are you! We are so glad that you made it, that you are alive! You are safe here, now.”

Elizabeth, I think, is who we aspire to be, when our fears, our egos, and our own wounds don’t get in the way. Because it is our woundedness that snags at our sleeves, plucking at our best intentions, reminding us that we were not always greeted with joy.

But what if, instead of seeing one another as a burden to be borne, we embraced one another as a joy to be shared? What if, in this community, this city, this church we talked less about who had been here longer, and what is changing, and instead, as Elizabeth, asked, “And who are we, that you have chosen us to come amongst, and how blessed are we to behold you?”

And if we are beginning to feel, “Well, who was Elizabeth to me? Where is my joy? Where is my blessing?” That’s fair. Elizabeth waited a long time, too. In the end, she decided to make her own joy, by choosing to find the fulfillment of God’s promises wherever the possibility presented itself.

God is our promise, and God is our satisfaction. We are Elizabeth, and the next person we meet, on the road to Bethlehem, on the way to Christmas, might just be bearing the incarnate image of God, if we will only open our eyes, and our hearts, to see God’s promise fulfilled.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Image: La Visitacion (detail), by El Greco (public domain)

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I heard it from an angel …

Posted on December 21, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

Scenes from a “pick-up pageant,” Christmas Eve, 2017, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

The thing about putting on a pick-up pageant is that with no sign-ups or rehearsal, you never know quite what will happen. This is both delightful and terrifying, more or less so depending on your tolerance for ambiguity.

Last year, Christmas Eve 2017, of the handful of children in attendance on a snowy winter’s evening, only two wanted to participate in the pageant. The little girl wanted to be Mary, and her brother, in all innocence, decided to play Joseph. At the designated time in the Gospel story, they came forward and sat on the step in front of the manger scene. As the story progressed, they were joined by animals and a shepherd from the cast of plaster characters behind them. Oh, and a cabbage patch Jesus.

After the Gospel was read, I sat on the step next to Mary.

“I hear you’ve been causing quite a commotion in Bethlehem tonight,” I said. “What’s been going on?”

“Well,” she cast about for context clues, coming up with, “we’ve been travelling, and we saw cows, and sheep, and maybe a goat.” Her brother nodded his agreement.

Time to move this story along.

“I heard it from an angel, who heard it from a shepherd, who heard it from his sheep, who heard it from a donkey, who heard it from an ox,” I told them, “that you had a baby tonight. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see him? What’s his name?”

Brother Joseph loudly stage-whispered, “Jesus!”

“Jesus,” agreed Mary. We observed a respectful moment of silence. Then,

“So I heard from this angel, who heard it from the shepherd, who heard it from the sheep, who heard it from the donkey, that not only was this baby not born in a hospital, or a birthing centre, or even a bedroom, but that he was born in a barn! The ox’s stable, to be precise! Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And, what’s more, I heard that when you had washed the baby and fed the baby, you wrapped him up and put him down for a nap right in the middle of the ox’s dinner, in the manger. So now what is a poor ox supposed to do for his dinner when there’s a baby in his food?”

The Mary-child pondered. “Well, he could bark at me, and then I would pick the baby up and he could eat his hay.”

(Unbeknownst to me, at this moment, a conversation was breaking out in the back pews, where my heathen husband suggested to our children that the ox should simply, as he put it, “eat the baby.”

He has form for this kind of thing. I once let him play the innkeeper. When Joseph offered the time-honoured line, “Do you have any room? We have travelled such a long way and my wife is going to have a baby,” my hospitable and heretical husband replied, “Sure! We have loads of room! Come on in!” and flung open the door.

But back to the more temperate and reliable members of the cast.)

“Good idea,” I told Mary, “but actually I heard that the ox went next door to see if his friend the donkey had any spare hay to share, and she did, so they ate dinner together, and that’s how the ox came to tell the donkey about the baby.
And the donkey is friends with a local sheep, so she told him, and the sheep told his shepherd, so when an angel showed up and sang ‘Gloria!’ and told the shepherd that a baby had been born, the shepherd said, ‘I know, my sheep told me.’
So the angel had to go off to the hillsides outside the city where the out-of-town shepherds were watching their sheep and tell them instead.
And then they came down to see what was going on, and so now the ox not only has a manger full of baby but he has a barn full of strangers to-boot, and you know what?”

“What?” Mary looks a little bewildered by now, and I can hardly blame her.

“Well,” I said, “I heard it from the angel, who heard it from a shepherd, who heard it from the sheep, who heard it from a donkey that the ox told her it was the best night of his life. Because, he said, when he looked at Jesus, it was as though he was seeing for the first time ever what life is all about.
It was as though he was seeing that God had made us for living together and for loving God and one another, all the creatures that God has made.
He said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever felt.”

(I didn’t add that I had heard this from other people who have found Jesus, not necessarily, but occasionally, in their food. But I think the message was received.

“So you made quite a commotion in Bethlehem tonight,” I told Mary and her brother Joseph, “but you seem to have done quite a good job of it.”)

And everyone applauded them back to their family, where their unborn sister dreamt of her chance to star next year as the baby Jesus, and hopefully did not have nightmares of being eaten by an ox.

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Mary’s first Christmas

Posted on December 20, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

The first Christmas after he had died, Mary wasn’t even sure how to feel. Her heart had never completely healed from that afternoon watching him on the hillside, on a Roman cross, muttering and crying, praying and raving. He had seen her, standing near. He told her to go home with someone else’s son. She didn’t know if he said it out of love, or out of bitterness, for the times she had tried to drag him home, out of danger, out of sight, out of his mind. She had not dared to ask him, afterwards.

Since that day, her heart had a habit of missing a beat, making her catch her breath painfully, as though the spear with which they had pierced him were jabbing at her ribs.

He had returned. It was a miracle; she should have seen it coming. They had already entombed him, but he walked out without his grave clothes, shrugging off his new swaddling bands.

She had always been a little afraid of his body. He was her first-born, and she was young, and far from home, and the midwives were strangers, and Joseph was kind but distant; they didn’t know one another so intimately, yet. She thought that he would tear her apart, as small and helpless as he was. She was afraid of his naked hunger, his eagerness to feed on her, on the stories she told him (how could she not?) of angels and God’s favour. And then, that naked ambition, returning from the grave, trouncing death, renouncing the execution of Rome; dangerous hunger, perilous power, risky resurrection. Her heart trembled again, its spear-point peaks threatening her.

She remembered the soothing sighs of the midwives, tried to match her breathing to their words, to calm her body and spirit. He had left again, after forty days, during which time she had seen as little of him as in his former life, which he spent on everyone who had need of him, his friends and strangers. She tried not to mind, that he had outgrown her womb, her breasts, her bosom, but ever since the cord was cut, it was hard to let him go.

The first Christmas after he died, she spent the dawn remembering that night in Bethlehem, and the stars, and the straw. Her sobs rehearsed those frantic convulsions of her body, his first cries; the first time she heard his voice, it was as though angels were singing. She would not touch his head again, nor cradle his feet, although they had hardened long since from their baby fatness into something more suitable for the journey of life. She missed the baby scent of him, and the sound of his laughter, disappearing around the corner of his childhood. If she tried hard enough, she could make herself see him coming through the door, as though he had never left home, and her whole being strained with the effort of recognizing reality: that the shadow in the corner was simply a broom, illuminated by the gray morning light; that he was not asleep upstairs, but sitting at God’s right hand in the heavens, wherever that might be.

Her heart was heavy, so that it was an effort to stand, when she found herself lying on the floor in front of the fire, warm on one side, and cold on the other, but she did stand up, and pick up the kettle to make the morning tea, before the rest of the household would awaken, his friends, her family, and wonder anew, as they did every day, if those were the clouds of glory that they was rolling down from the hills to the east, with the sun rising behind them.

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Good news, you brood of vipers!

Posted on December 16, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the third Sunday of Advent, Year C, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

John was quite a preacher. He could call people snakes, and threaten them with fire, and they called it good news!

At another time, in another place, Jesus said of John that no prophet greater than him had ever arisen – and that even so, John was but a speck of a man in the kingdom of God (Matthew 11:11). Why would Jesus say that? People were thrilled with John’s message. They were convicted by his preaching. They were filled with expectation, wondering whether he might even be the Messiah.

But John said, “No; I am water, he is fire. I am wheat, he is the sickle and the scythe. I am prophetic, he is powerful.”

The encompassing message of this story is that while John is good, and his message is sound, and his heart is on fire for God, nevertheless, the repentance that he preaches and the instruction that he gives is merely a baseline for living. It is not revolutionary. It is not messianic. It is enduring, but it is not eternal.

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 might be counter-cultural, now as then, to promote honesty over gain, fairness over profit, humility over success; it may be counter-cultural, but it is hardly ground-breaking. 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. What would he say to a police officer today, or to a parent, or to a parishioner at Epiphany? Do the right thing. It is pretty basic stuff.

Or take his invitation to share our abundance with those experiencing scarcity. “If you have two coats, give one to someone who has been left out in the cold,” offers John. “If you have enough to eat, show your gratitude by sharing with someone who doesn’t have enough (instead of complaining about how they spend their food stamps, for example, or whether they deserve them).” It is good and sound policy, based on God’s law of loving our neighbours as ourself, and showing kindness and mercy to the orphan and the alien. But let’s face it, it’s pretty basic. It is almost literally the least we could do.

John’s message, the need for his words, the impact that they have on the people around him – “He said to do good, to share, to be fair and merciful! Could he be the Messiah?” – the fact that such basic tenets of human cooperation are received as astonishing and revolutionary should be shocking, to us, and to his original brood of vipers. If it isn’t, then it’s time for us to wake up and smell the wickedness that has seduced us into accepting an environment of tawdry and banal selfishness, casual corruption. Have we fallen so far that simply not doing evil sounds like salvation?

We will not save ourselves by the baptism of John, but God has more in store for us. We will not save ourselves by the baptism of John, but to get our own house in order, to deal with our own sin, to clean up our own station, to share what overflows from our bucket of blessing: that is almost literally the least we can do. Because God wills so much more for us than to be concerned with counting tokens. We will not get into the Good Place because we earn enough points.

The good news, John prophesies, is that there is more to the story than trying not to do wrong and fighting to do good. It would be so depressing if the pinnacle of human achievement, the redemption of humanity, the restoration within us of the image of God were so pedestrian, so basic. But the gospel was not designed to be depressing. The gospel was designed for our rejoicing, for the revelation of the overwhelming, unimaginable, indescribably, beyond reasoning goodness of God, revealed to us ultimately not by the prophecies of John, but by the presence among us of Jesus Christ.

Of course, you know that two months ago we travelled to the places where John was preaching, to the cave of Elijah where he made his wilderness home, on the banks of the Jordan River, still militarized, still full of soldiers. We went to the hilltop palace where Herod Antipas imprisoned John and had him killed, and it was empty, and razed to the ground, stripped of its glory and abandoned. Such is the fate of tyrants, and the end of egotism.

But the glory of God endures for ever, and the grace of God cannot be destroyed. Even in death, Christ became alive. Nothing can burn down the kingdom of God.

And what does that look like? I’m sure you all know the story of Silent Night during WWI. Last month, we celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the armistice that ended the Great War, which was supposed to end all wars. We know that it didn’t. But even in the midst of that turmoil and great suffering, there was a glimpse of what life could be like in the kingdom of God. You remember that at Christmas, the carol Silent Night served as a sign of truce that produced a pause in the fighting. But more than that, the troops came out of their trenches and played football together. But more than that, they shared the gifts they had received from home. Those of you who have served away from home and family know what a sacrifice that was. These people, these men, not only ceased from fighting, but more than that, as a sign of the coming of Christ they shared their mothers’ home cooking with the enemies they had been paid to kill. That is what the kingdom of God looks like. That is what we are looking for.

We follow the preaching of John as a prelude to the coming of Christ, not as an end in itself, as though if we could only keep our heads down and our hands clean while the world swirls around us in systems of sin, we could earn our own salvation. We know that’s not how it works. We’re in this world together, and we do the best we can, not for our own sakes but for the sake of the gospel that is breaking through with good news for all people, for the poor and the neglected, for those in pain and the forgotten, for the lost and the last in line for benefits and blessings. We do it, not for our own salvation, but because we know that it is the will of God that all should know the coming of Christ, the love of God born into the world, and rejoice.

Christ is coming, with his winnowing fork and his fire, with his infant cry and his table-turning rage, with his death-defying life and the blazing love of God. That’s the good news.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

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Invested

Posted on December 14, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

It’s the sixth anniversary of the mass murder of children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and I have been invited to comment on the topic of shareholder advocacy in gun manufacturing, and it’s about breaking my heart.

Even as naïve as I am, I recognize that we are in the marketplace, and that we cannot pretend, like Pontius Pilate, to wash our hands and be clean of the whole shooting match. We walk the Via Dolorosa. We live under the shadow of Golgotha, and of Sandy Hook, and of Stoneman Douglas, and of Pulse, and of Aurora, and of Chardon, and of Columbine. In life, we are in the midst of death, and there is something to be said for managing the morbidity the best we can.

But the idea of actively investing in the manufacture of guns does not sit well with me. At best, I read it as a mixed message. Gun manufacturers exist to fabricate, market, and profit from the proliferation of these weapons, of which we already have too many, circulating too freely, wreaking too much harm.

We may say that it is impossible to do any better than to invest in these weapons and try by our votes and voices, our purchased influence, to turn their fire away from our schools and offices and yoga studios. But it feels like as though we are making a dangerous deal.

This Sunday, I will be preaching about how John the Baptizer’s message of repentance was about doing the best you can to live right within a system that is all wrong, and the people were so impressed that they thought he might be the Messiah. But the gospel is more revolutionary than that. Jesus asks more of us than to make do within systems of sin and do our best to keep our hands clean.

I admit, I don’t know that much about investing. I didn’t come from a portfolio family. I think that the guidelines established by Do Not Stand Idly By and cited by Resolution B007, passed by this summer’s General Convention of the Episcopal Church, do help investors to consider and evaluate their effect on the gun industry.

But the gospel convinces me that we can do so much better than to fund the manufacture of weapons that cause chronic and devastating death in this country day by day, year in, year out.

It may seem impossible, but so is resurrection, and in the face of death, we believe it anyway.

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Advent obligations and indulgences

Posted on December 13, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

A version of this piece was first posted at the Episcopal Cafe under the title “Speaking to the Soul: Look up and raise your heads”

On the first Sunday of Advent, my church distributed calendars with suggested activities for each day between now and Christmas. They included things like:

“Support a charity”
“Look for something positive to say to everyone you meet today”
“Invite someone over who would otherwise be alone”
“Turn off digital devices and really listen to people”

I didn’t take a copy of the calendar, not because I don’t think that its suggestions are good, nor that kindness shouldn’t be scheduled (why not?), but because these daily things feed my anxiety and fear of failure. What if I miss a day? What if I’m having an incurable introvert day when I’m supposed to invite someone over? What if I am just not a very good person?

So I didn’t take the calendar, but kindness followed me home anyway. It happened this way:

That Monday morning I woke up grumpy (reading the above, you might not be surprised). It had been a beautiful weekend, with temperatures in the 60s, and everyone else on the street had raked their leaves while I was at church sunrise till sunset. I had just finished Morning Prayer with the cat when we heard the leaf-sucky-truck turn onto our cul de sac. I wondered if there was any chance I could at least clear a few leaves off the driveway before they got to our house.

Outside, the weather had turned its switchback bend and an icy rain was struggling to fall. I battled the wind for control of the leaves while the sucky-truck driver and I eyed one another across the circle. Halfway through my neighbour’s mammoth pile, they had filled the truck, and had to go and unload. In a rash rush of enthusiasm, I not only cleared the driveway but decided, as long as they were gone, that I might as well get started on the lawn.

About halfway through, they came back. About three-quarters way through, they started on my own leaf pile, began to suck it up – then stopped. Apparently, they decided that they’d better go and empty the truck again. Now, no way was that truck full.

I finished the leaves in time to shower and change for work, but I would need to wait until the leaf people came back and cleared a pathway off my drive, which was now blocked by a trench of leaves a couple of feet high all the way across. From behind my blinds I soon saw them return, pick up a “thank you” card from the top of the leaf pile, and carry on with their sucky work.

On Sunday morning, before the calendars and the climbing temperatures, I had preached on Jesus’ words to his disciples in the Gospel of Luke:

“Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

It occurred to me that the leaf collectors had given me a demonstration of exactly that: looking up, raising their heads, noticing the stressed-out, slightly frantic woman with the flying leaves, they decided that it was in their power to make her task a little bit easier, to give her a small break, to redeem her day, by emptying their truck a pile or two early. Looking up, taking notice, seeing where help could be extended, without even a word; just kindness.

I did feel better after my encounter with the leaf collectors. The physical exercise no doubt helped, and the fresh air, but also it reminded me that it is almost impossible to calculate or to know what the smallest notice, the most minor kindness, done deliberately and without ceremony, can do to lift the spirits of one who might need it more than we imagine.

I am still eschewing the calendar, in case it’s a guilt-trap; but I grateful for the example of the good people on the sucky truck, of how to look up, raise my head, and try to notice where redemption may be within my reach.

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TLK W GOD

Posted on December 9, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the second Sunday of Advent in Year C at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

See, I am sending my messenger before me to prepare the way …” (Malachi 3:1)

Last Sunday, driving between this church and the Church of the Good Shepherd for our Advent Lessons and Carols, I found myself surrounded by cars proclaiming prophetic messages. I still find that surprising. I grew up in a much more secular country than this one. It’s also a lot more expensive to customize a license plate there, so it would be almost unheard of to find the prophets of God driving their messages down the highway on the bumper of their cars.

The ones that frustrate me are the ones with random bible verse references. I feel as though I am supposed to know the words to which they refer, but I don’t memorize chapter and verse numbers easily, so instead I have to remember to look them up when I get home, and sometimes they are so obscure that I can’t for the life of me work out why someone would take the trouble to display them in heavy traffic.

But the messages that surrounded me last Sunday were pretty clear.

In front of me, the number plate spelt out TLK W GOD. Next to me, a lady in a real church hat was driving a car with a Jesus fish; and not just the fish, but one that spelt out JESUS inside the fish shape. On the other side of me, a big SUV had a big poster message plastered across its flat back: JESUS IS SO AMAZING! (Not just amazing, but SO amazing.) PRAY FOR THE POLICE, it continued, MORE GOOD COPS (pray for more good cops, or pray because there are more good cops than the ones we see on the bad news stories? You decide); IF YOU NEED A LAWYER, CALL 216 …

Now, I don’t know the story behind the decal, so I will try to reserve judgement, but I couldn’t help feeling just a little as though they were beginning to drift off-message towards the end there. What’s worse, they started out using their space, their presence, everything at their disposal to proclaim that Jesus is so awesome, but they ended up using Jesus, using the gospel, to advertise themselves instead.

But then, the SUV-driving lawyer decided they needed a change of scenery, and shifted over to pull in behind me, and I thought of my own bumper sticker: God Loves You. No Exceptions. And I wondered what the lawyer read into that. After all, people do read, and decipher, and evaluate, or judge, the signs and messages we put out about ourselves, about God, about Jesus and the gospel. My own little sticker has provoked a few casual, brief conversations. It’s even provoked the occasional mild outburst of road-rage – at least I don’t think it was my driving.

Last Sunday’s brief encounter with the messengers of God at a stop light made me think about the messages that we send out to those around us, in every encounter, whether we mean to or not. Are they clear? Are they internally consistent? Are they faithful? Do they proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, not of Rosalind Hughes? Do they prepare the way of the Lord?

“See, I am sending my messenger before me to prepare the way…”

We are messengers going before Christmas during Advent. I am not suggesting, like Micah, that we all need to act like refiners’ fires, purifying the metal of the people to make of it acceptable ornaments for the household of God, although if you know that you are carrying some dross and sin, there has never been a better time to repent, come clean, sweep out your own soul ready to receive Christ.

But I’m thinking more about that voice crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the paths. Smooth the rough ways.” We who live in what can often feel like a wilderness; we are the ones invited to clear the ground, to manage our eternal infrastructure, to build a highway to God, to remove all obstacles to the gospel, so that the most weary and furthest removed and least likely to look up will see and know the coming of Christ, and have a chance to rejoice.

It is our calling to be straightforward about the faith we have received: to be honest, that we don’t own the glory of God; that we don’t have all the answers; but that we trust in the gospel of Christ, clinging to it like a life preserver at times; trusting that God is with us.

It is our calling to smooth the way for people to come to Christ, offering our company, a ride, a shoulder, a seat at the table, a translator, an ally: whatever is needed to remove the obstacles and ease the passageway for weary feet.

It is our calling to cry out the goodness of God in Christ; not as a way of advertising our own services, but for the sake of the gospel itself, because we know that life is better with God, that we are comforted by the Sacraments of Christ, and the communion of saints.

At coffee hour today we’ll have the opportunity to create and post a message from God: of hope, of love, of mercy, for those who use this building to find. Some of them come with no hope or expectation of finding Jesus here. Let’s let them know that God loves them, no exceptions; that God is here for them.

Just as my little bumper-stickered car found itself surrounded last Sunday by signs and indications that God was at work all around this city, so we are not only the messengers, but we are the people in need of a good word ourselves. And God has us covered.

“See, I am sending my messenger before me …”

This is not an idle promise. Throughout the ages, God has raised up prophets to prepare the people for the coming of God’s glory. Throughout the generations, God has sent messengers to announce good news, to declare that God is with us. We should expect God to show up, especially now, in Advent, when we are supposed to be looking for the signs all around us that God is with us, born as one of us, as close as the palms of our own hands.

Expect God. I think that should be my next bumper sticker. Expect God to show up in the first cry of a child, in the last gasp of hope. Expect God to be with us on the journey.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

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