Overcome

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

The readings for today are here
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The weather cannot be described in terms of good and evil. It has no conscience, no moral compass; and yet Jesus rebuked the wind and the waves, saving the lives of all aboard his boat. So maybe it is not out of line altogether to read Paul’s instruction with a weather eye towards the south, and the destruction dealt by #HurricaneHarvey since last weekend.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

Over the past month people have joked about bringing back the old-style school desks, under which some of us were invited to “duck and cover” in case of a nuclear attack back in the day. Yes, and our children today practice “active shooter” drills and lockdowns. It’s not just about tornadoes any more, or monthly fire alarm tests.

But do not be overcome by evil. Do not be dismayed. “Do not lag in zeal,” writes Paul; “be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.” (Romans 12:11)

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. (Romans 12:13)

We saw a lot of criticism this week of a certain megachurch and its leader in Houston, who was apparently slow to extend hospitality to strangers fleeing Hurricane Harvey and its wake of devastation. We saw his response contrasted with the actions of myriad smaller churches, synagogues, and mosques around the area. The world is watching to see if we mean what we say, when we say that our God is love, and that we walk in the way of the cross. So let our love be genuine.

Let love be genuine. (Romans 12:9a)

So I got to thinking about what a disaster preparedness plan for a church should look like. What does it mean for us not only to resist being overcome by evil; not only to escape disaster; not only to save ourselves, but to overcome evil with good; to contribute to the needs of the saints, and extend hospitality to strangers? How can compassion be built into a disaster preparedness plan?

Some of this could be practical stuff. Having an up-to-date phone list to check on one another in times of distress. We’ll be working on that soon with a program coming from the diocesan offices.

Last winter, a friend lamented that when the schools are closed due to weather emergencies, the children have no place to go and the parents are often at a loss for what to do, if they can’t miss work. She said, “Surely the churches should be the first to step up and open their doors,” and a lively Facebook discussion ensued about whether the churches themselves might be inaccessible due to the weather, and whether they had the right staffing and volunteers and readiness to be able to offer such help; the kind of discussions that we saw rehearsed and dismissed as excuses this week as the floods rose in Houston.

I was one of those who made excuses; but what if we were to recruit and maintain a list of volunteers willing to undergo background checks and safeguarding training; a standing corps of compassionate friends, ready to receive stranded students in case of closed schools and stressed parents?

How will we build compassion into our disaster preparedness plan?

What if we had a team of prayer partners well versed in non-violence and active listening standing ready to respond in case of civil unrest in our city; ready to respond with open hearts and clear minds, with prayerful hands and compassionate lips?

Beyond and behind the practical considerations, there is the foundational stuff. The stuff of theology. Knowing our place in the world and in God’s kingdom. Do we have the theology in place, and the relationship with God and our neighbours to combat a sudden attack of homophobia and transphobia such as the #NashvilleStatement released this week? Do we have the tools to deny demeaning words and replace them with the gospel of love? Do we have the humility and wisdom to call out the unbenevolent dictatorship of structural racism, and to clean out our own biased souls?

Does our personal disaster preparedness plan include repentance, and rejoicing in the way of the cross?

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

We have the ultimate example of evil upended, overcome in the death and resurrection of Jesus. How much more evil does it get than to crucify the Son of God? The very sky turned dark at the sight of it. And yet Jesus would not be turned from his plan of compassion, of love and mercy, by this disaster. He would not call on forces of violence to trample the evil that faced him. Instead, he overcame evil with his own good offering of love, steadfast faithfulness, self-sacrifice.

How very good, then, to see God’s new world order: “Let there be life!” triumphing over the forces of evil and death.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themself, and take up their cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

If we are to take up that cross, that good means of victory that combats violence with compassion, smothers death with life, breaks open heaven without harming the earth; if we are to take up that cross, then we are to proclaim God’s love to the world in word and deed, as Jesus did, to the ends of our lives and beyond.

Walking in the way of the cross, our plan is for compassion; our zeal is for service; our love is for God and for our neighbours.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good. … Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:9,21)

Come hell or high water, hold fast to that cross. Walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice for the sake of the world.

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A few affirmations and denials

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

+ I affirm that God loves you. God loves you more than you can know or imagine. God loves you without reason or reservation. There is nothing missing from God’s love for you. There is no gap to mind. God loves you – oh my God, how God loves you!

+ I affirm that the Bible is a received revelation, opening hearts and minds to the story of God’s love pursuing us from creation to new creation, genesis to revelation.

– I deny that God is limited by the Bible, its translators, nor by its preachers.

+ I affirm that biblical statements such as “male and female he created them” may be only the beginning, the genesis of God’s self-revelation and our self-understanding in relationship with God.

+ I affirm that God continues to reveal Godself through prayer, study, community, and direct relationship. [How many times has God invited people to run for President of the United States?] God continues to speak to the people of God, through the rehearsal of God’s Incarnation in the sacraments; through the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit; through the growth of the self-knowledge of this creation that God has wrought; because God loves you.

+ I affirm that gender, sex, and their expression are an essential part of our self-understanding, and therefore of our relationship with one another and with God.

+ I affirm that God loves you. All of you. This bears repeating.

– I “deny that [the affirmation of non-cishet people and their relationships] is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.” Homophobia and transphobia are killing people. The denial of the full expression of selfhood of anyone made in God’s image is a denial of the creativity and infinite love of God.

+ I affirm that God loves you. God loves you more than I can know, imagine, or describe to you. God loves you beyond words, beyond life, beyond.

– I deny that anything, nor anyone: neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers [nor priests, politicians, prophets, nor pastors], nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39)

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Living parables

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

Today’s readings include the story of the birth of Moses, the baby in the bulrushes.
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The story of Moses’ genesis reads like a parable (Exodus 1:8-2:10).

There are times when I wish I had been a better student of Hebrew. Times such as when I read that the words that Moses’ mother used to describe her child were actually the same words that God used in the act of creation: God created, and saw that it was good. Moses’ mother gave birth to a son, and she saw that the child was good.[i]

And then there is the basket into which she placed him, entrusting him to the river. It is the same word as is used for only one other watercraft in the Bible: the Ark. Noah built an ark, on instructions from God, to save the remnants of humanity and of all creation from the Flood. Moses’ mother built an ark to save her son, the remnant of the sons of her people, from the Pharaoh.[ii]

It is almost as though the birth of Moses recapitulates the whole prehistory of Genesis; as though God were once again creating something new, something good, something worth saving.

But Pharaoh did not know the stories of Genesis that began with creation and ended with the saga of Joseph and his brothers. The Pharaoh failed to recognize the divine salvation history that was being played out in real time, in his time; and so he violated that creation, abused God’s people, and rejected God’s love, mirrored in the love of a mother, Moses’ mother, for her child.[iii]

The Pharaoh failed to see what was good: what God had made and called God’s own; what his mother had loved and saved and sacrificed. Pharaoh failed even to notice the irony that while he considered himself strong, and subjugated the Hebrews to oppression and forced labour; still he declared himself to be afraid of them. Pharaoh gave himself and his own the power of life and death over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and yet he lived in dread of them.

Such is the injury that we impose upon ourselves when we fail to recognize, to honor God’s image in one another.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2)

Pharaoh failed to see what was good, because he would not see God at work in the world around him, creating, redeeming, sustaining God’s people.

We are not to be conformed to this world, like Pharaoh, trapped in the trappings of power and authority, and forever afraid that someone would take them from him. We are to be transformed by the knowledge that no one, and nothing, can separate us from the love of God; that there is nothing we can grasp that hasn’t already been given to us by God; that God is already, and still, and forever writing the parables of our lives, and of the lives we have yet to recognize.

“Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15)

When Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was (Matthew 16:13-20), he set the question in the context of a tradition, a faith history that expected the Son of Man, the Messiah. That faith history helped them to recognize him. Their practice of prayer and their reading of Moses and the prophets set them up to see God’s work in the world, God’s new creation in the ongoing salvation history, in real time, in their time.

But he ordered them not to tell others that he was the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God, because he wanted them to see in him not simply a story, or a symbol, or a parable. He wanted them to see him for what he was: a person, a full human being, born in the image of God; and the embodiment, the Incarnation of God’s love for the world. No one could see Jesus as the embodiment of God’s love unless they saw him first as a person, a human being, born of a woman who looked at her son and saw that he was good. No one could recognize God’s love unless they would see God’s work in the world around them, in the people of God. No one could recognize God’s Christ, God’s Son unless they would allow their imaginations to be transformed, re-created to see what is good.

On this rock I will build my church (Matthew 16:18)

The church is built on this knowledge and transformation of will that finds what is good in the world, and acceptable, and perfect, and remembers that we live within God’s story, the divine salvation history. The church is built on the rock that recognizes love when it sees it, and humbles itself before the broad and deep mercy of God. This is the story that we have to tell to the world: not one of imperialism and oppression; not the fear and loathing of Pharaoh; not living in the past, conjuring up dead prophets to define the living.

The story that we tell, the parables within which we live are those of the midwives, Shiprah and Puah, who resist evil, unwilling and unmoved from their vocation, which is to deliver life. They told Pharaoh a story in which the mothers of Moses and Jesus had strength beyond his imaginations of armies: the strength of love, of creation, of life.

The parables within which we live are those of Moses’ mother, who shares in the history of God, remembering creation, rebuilding the ark, reclaiming her son to raise and to nurse, her love subverting the powers of imperialism even in its most beautiful and seductive form, the young woman bathing by the river.

She would have told Moses the stories of his people at her breast, taught him the songs of her own childhood. He would not grow up without knowing Joseph, and Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. He would know his place in the divine drama, the history of God that begins with creation, which is replete with revelation, which ends always in our salvation; the undercurrent to all rivers, that is the grace of God.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.

I was in the grocery store the other day, and a man was struggling with the self-checkout machine. A couple more of us were in line, shifting from foot to foot. The man in front of me looked around and caught sight of the box of seltzer water under my arm. “Go ahead,” he said, “set that down.” He ushered me in front of him. I told him it was fine, but he looked me in the eye and said, “I wouldn’t feel right going ahead of you.”

He was a young man of a different generation, a different race, a different background than my own, and I wondered how he saw me: middle-aged, tired and pale, no doubt; no matter, he decided that in this moment of very mild shared frustration, while another man struggled against technology, he had the power to do something to ease the situation, something to make it a little more human. He chose to look for something good to do. He chose to tell the parable of the patient man, and the graceful grocery store encounter.

It is not always so easy to transform a situation. Shiprah and Puah risked their lives for their vocation to care for the mothers and children in their midst. Jesus went to the cross. His disciples spread the gospel of his embodiment of the love of God at great personal cost and crisis. Still, we live within this parable of creation, redemption, and continuing grace, and it is possible for each of us, in any given moment, to write another chapter, another small parable of mercy.

Pharaoh failed to recognize God, and the people of God. He tried to murder them out of existence, to take away their future. But Pharaoh failed to recognize his own place within God’s salvation history. Nothing, and no one:

neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which has been manifest to us in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).

That is our foundation. That is our story. That is the hope that will transform our world.

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[i] The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd edition (Oxford University Press, 2001), text notes

[ii] ibid

[iii] From Eucharistic Prayer 1, Enriching Our Worship 1 (Church Publishing Inc, 1998): “But we failed to honor your image in one another and ourselves; we would not see your goodness in the world around us; and so we violated your creation, abused one another, and rejected your love.”

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Listen to her

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, 2017, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio. The readings for the day include the story of the Canaanite (or Syro-Phoenician) woman.

Last week, I went to a meeting at Euclid City Hall. It was a listening meeting held by the Community Task Force in the wake of that video of a violent arrest last weekend. If you haven’t seen or heard of the video, just think of any of the videos of violent arrests of black men during traffic stops that have circulated over the past several years and you will get the picture. This one happened in Euclid.

At the meeting, we heard some positive appreciation for the city of Euclid, and its police force in general. We also heard loud and clear that despite all that is good, the experience of living in Euclid as a black person is too often too different from the experience of living in Euclid as a white person. After the week we’ve had in this country, I wonder how anyone can doubt it.

I heard a comment after the meeting praising how respectful it was; opining that the only person to get up in anyone’s face was that woman from Black Lives Matter. And I thought, fleetingly, of the Canaanite woman, getting up in the disciples’ face, in Jesus’ face; but I missed my cue. I was silent, because I didn’t know what to say, and because I didn’t want to offend a friend. This is my confession: I was wrong.

 

In the gospel, we hear that the Pharisees were offended. The disciples were worried that the Pharisees were offended. Jesus did not care who he offended. In fact, he displayed a stunning disregard for softening the truth, spinning his message, diluting his gospel to make it more palatable to the masses.

He also was unafraid to repent; to change direction, as we see when the Canaanite woman persists in pestering him for her human rights; her right to be seen as human.

It would be much easier to follow the sanitized, saintly, saccharine Jesus whose face shines out of Sunday School pictures, surrounded by a halo of light yellow hair and smiling children. “Just play nicely,” that Jesus says, “and all will be well.”

Real Jesus, on the other hand, lived in the real world, as a real man, facing real world problems with real struggle and strife. He was also the real embodiment of God’s love, which should tell us something about what it takes to really love our own neighbours.

 

A couple of years ago, I heard a speaker from the Cuyahoga County Board of Health reporting on the horrific rates of infant mortality in our cities and suburbs. These numbers are appalling. These numbers, each of which represents a family torn apart by grief, do not belong in a modern, affluent, compassionate society. When you break them down by black and white, they get even worse.

In January of 2015, the Board of Health woman told us the cold truth that the simple stress of living as a black woman in America, and in our county in particular, increased the infant mortality rate to three times that suffered by white women. Structural racism is a real and measurable public health crisis. It is deadly.

The Canaanite woman who came to Jesus for the sake of her child, for the sake of her baby, was dismissed by his disciples as a hysterical distraction. She was in danger even of being dismissed by Jesus: first, he ignored her; then, he called her a dog.

I would like to explain his words away. But perhaps it is more valuable to be offended by Jesus, to recognize in his response our own tendency to tribalism, to relativism, to ignorance, offence, and a certain lack of humanity to the strident women who demand justice of us. Or perhaps you find yourself striking back with the woman, getting in his face and demanding of the Son of God that he explain himself.

When she did; when this woman broke through the trenchant tribalism that is a hallmark of our humanity, she reminded Jesus of something else that is the first and enduring hallmark of our humanity: that each of us is made in the image of God. That each of us deserves dignity and respect. That no one who is made in the image of God deserves anything less than to be treated as such.

This woman’s daughter deserved the same kind of health outcomes as her counterparts within the network of Jesus’ family, tribe, race, and creed. Jesus recognized the justice in her demand, and he acted accordingly. If we are to follow him in this, we, his disciples need to first hear the woman, and not dismiss her cries of anguish and anger. We need to dismantle the barriers that we have set up around her, the remains of redlining, the structural impediments to health and wellbeing. We need to stop treating her like a dog under the table, who should be grateful for our crumbs. We need to stop treating her like a nuisance when she raises her voice and demands to be heard by the disciples of Jesus.

 

Jesus offence to the Pharisees was to place their priorities into question. He said that following the rules and respecting ritual norms is meaningless if the heart is rotten. Not that the rituals are wrong, nor that rules and respectability don’t matter; but that they cannot cover up for what is in the heart, whether it produces love, or its opposite. Where was my respectable heart, when I refused to offend a friend, refrained from standing up for the challenging woman?

I feel as though I am among the blind leading the blind, but, God help me, I am reaching for the light of Jesus. I am crawling up among his disciples. And when the Canaanite woman comes out yelling and carrying on – then I find out just how far I still have to go to reach the promised land.

 

Jesus fixed his offence against the Canaanite woman. He redeemed himself by healing her daughter, although there might be some residual embarrassment in his rapid retreat to the region of Galilee. Jesus redeemed himself, and fortunately he has redeemed us; but he has left us with some work to do, to love God, and love our neighbour as ourselves.

It’s easy enough, to condemn Nazi rhetoric and racist rallies, and single and aberrant acts of violence. That should be easy; although we are always to remember that the gospel meets enmity with love, violence with self-sacrifice, death with defiant life. What is harder than that is to work out how we will take down, piece by piece, the structure of racism that has allowed this kind of division and discrepancy to flourish in this country, this county, this city; to do the redemptive work of repentance, and healing.

At the very least, we can begin by listening to the Canaanite woman. We can start by hearing her out. We can follow Jesus’ example by allowing our hearts to be converted, washed clean of evil intentions and ignorance, so that what comes out of our mouths does not shame us nor our neighbour.

Jesus was not afraid to call out what was wrong, not afraid to cause offence in the name of love. He was not afraid to be converted when his love was called into corners he had not considered. His redemption was in his ability to bridge divisions by means of repentance, mercy, and love.

He has redeemed us by his love, and called us to repent and follow in his example, so that by his mercy, we may be healed, along with our babies, our children, our daughters and sons; all of them, each of them, the children of God.

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It’s not my place to say

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

During Eastertide, I attended a meeting where a prominent public theologian declared that one cannot be White and be a Christian in America today. As she unpacked this provocative statement, it became clear, to my mind, that Kelly Brown Douglas was saying what many people have been saying this past week; since Charlottesville; since Ferguson; since the civil rights era; since the Civil War; since; since; … she was saying that sitting in the seat of White privilege is not the same as standing for a gospel of love. She was saying – what I heard – was that silence and compliance with the systems that support our supremacy is complicity. What I heard is that it is not enough to become unracist in a society that is built on the struts of White supremacy, White nationalism, White pride, call it what you will. Affirmative, off-the-butt action is what the gospel demands of those who preach peace that passes understanding, and the acceptable Day of the Lord.

Of course, it was a provocative statement and it made many of us uncomfortable. Did I squirm? I’m sure I tried to pass it off as a settling of my old, white bones in an uncomfortable chair.

There are those who say that we should not make people uncomfortable, because then they won’t listen, they won’t hear what we have to say. It is not my place to say it, but I imagine that those whose lives have been made … uncomfortable … by the sins of racism across the centuries still heard loudly and clearly the hateful philosophies that underpin oppression.

It is not my place to speak from the experience of others, except that of course I do it all the time when I preach from the Bible. In the sequel to Luke’s gospel, the book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost, Peter, that upstart fisherman from Galilee with the authority of a wet cod, makes many of his countrymen uncomfortable when he tells them, “That man whom you would have killed was the Messiah.” But they heard him.

“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’” (Acts 1:37)

Paul, trading on his privilege as a Roman citizen to get an audience, confessed his own part in the persecution of the gospel, and was heard, was heard even by those who were afraid to have their own minds and hearts converted;

“Agrippa said to Paul, ‘Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?’” (Acts 26:28)

Many centuries later, a couple of oceans away, Frederick Douglass was not afraid of uncomfortable language:

“What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?”

he asked; and as for the churches,

“The church-going bell and the auctioneer’s bell chime in with each other; the pulpit and the auctioneer’s block stand in the same neighbourhood; while the blood-stained gold goes to support he pulpit, the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy bibles and communion services for the churches.” (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; via Google Books)

Despite his profoundly uncomfortable observations, I have heard that Mr Douglass is being recognized more and more these days.

There are a few reasons that I feel uncomfortable speaking about race; not least because my personal experience of racism is as its beneficiary; because I am late to this nation and to the conversation, and the former is no excuse for the latter.

Still, the gospel does not give me any excuse nor reason to shy away from uncomfortable conversations, nor from preaching discomfort. This Sunday, while the Canaanite woman takes Jesus himself to task, I will be hanging out with the Pharisees in the previous paragraph of the optionally extended reading. If I cause any to fall, I ask forgiveness; I am blind among the blind; but I am trying to feel my way forward.

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Praying with icons

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

I light a candle. I find it hard
to meet your painted eyes.
I say, “I’m sorry, sorry,
sorry, sorry.” Looking down
from your cross, unfocused,
you say, “I forgive you.”
But, “You have to say that;
you’re Jesus,” I complain.
Your face is wooden.

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Standing on the side of love

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

A word before worship this morning.

Welcome to the Church of the Epiphany. I am glad you are here.

We come together for one reason, one purpose: to worship God. To give thanks for our creation, redemption, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.

When that life is challenged, slighted, or blighted by sin, disease, and death, there is room in our worship, as there is room in God’s heart, for our struggles, our lament, our righteous anger.

So we come together to pray.

In a week that has witnessed talk of nuclear war, Nazi marches, questions even about our own police’s use of force, we come together to pray.

We pray for peace amid rumours of war. We pray for love amid demonstrations of White supremacist, racist hate. We pray, “Thy kingdom come.” We set our lives within the context of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We pray in the name of Jesus, a brown man, the descendant of slaves; a man whose skin marked him out as a suspect, second-class citizen in the political system in which he lived; a man who was unjustly executed.

He was a man whose kind the Nazis sought to exterminate, within the lifetime of some of us here. He was the Incarnation of God, the very image of God, in whom some failed to recognize even his full humanity.

The Incarnation of Jesus as the Christ is a reminder to us that God does not choose the power of privilege nor the face of fury to further God’s kingdom. His resurrection reminds us that God will not allow hatred to bury the power of love.

Jesus has said that, “Whoever is not for me is against me” (Matthew 12:30).

As we come together today, let us take care that our hearts are for Jesus, who gave his life for us.

I invite you into a moment of silent prayer.

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But deliver us from evil

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last month, I went on a camping trip to the coast with my daughter. It was glorious: the ocean does something to my soul which even the greatest of Great Lakes can’t match. There is a tug in that salt undertow which at once tempts a person to combine with the most profound elements of creation, and to fight against her assimilation, to try earnestly to stand against the surf and stay alive. I love the sea.

On our last night there, a storm rolled in. Rolled, as in went through the motions of a steamroller.

Never mind the rain, which, inspired by the sea, fell like a crashing wave, sweeping out the ground from under its newborn rivers, running back, like the undertow, to the shore.

Never mind the thunder and lightning, which got seriously overexcited and insisted on dancing a reel around and around and around us for hours, dropping its flash-bombs and rumbling with laughter, pinning us inside its circle for as long as it pleased. So rude; so boorish.

No, what really had me worried was the wind. It was the wind that picked up tables and chairs, shelters no longer worthy of the name, and threw them angrily against building walls. It was the wind that bellied up against our tent, flattening us to the floor, aggressive and unrelenting.

I began to pray. It seemed unlikely that you would walk out across the waterlogged campsite speaking, “Peace. Be still.” I prayed for smaller miracles: that our tent would survive. That we would survive. That the tree would not fall. That you would not let me let my daughter down.

That was the crux of it. Isn’t it always?

My fear is less of the elements, because what can I do against them, and who am I to them? My fear is of my own decisions, whether they are wise, and good, and capable; whether they will save my daughters and son, or lead them into danger. That is where your guidance would come in handy.

And now, on a clear day, far from the coast and its healing saltwater salve, I hear men speak storms of fire and fury, and once again I pray, from the small, dark space in which my heart has pitched its tent.  I pray that you will inspire most of us to wise choices, to lead our feet into the way of peace. I pray that you will provoke in many of us the courage that comes from faith, and the obstinacy that accompanies love, to resist evil. I pray that you will not let me let our children down.

 

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Heaven on earth

Posted on August 1, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

Looking ahead to Sunday’s Transfiguration and the disciples’ awe-filled witness to the glory of God revealed in Christ, I have been thinking about religious experiences; extraordinary revelations of the divine. I occasionally wonder if I was “done out of” a heavenly vision when I flatlined once in an operating theatre and noticed nothing out of the ordinary; but maybe such ingratitude misses a vision of the kingdom of heaven that is already to hand …

If my soul was untethered, then it was too far gone in sleep to know it. I only learned of my dance with death in the recovery room, where I came back cold, so much colder than I had ever felt in my life. My only intimations of a world beyond my own cold bones came from a heated blanket, and another, wrapped around by a nurse who swaddled me as though I were her child. They came from the awkward, hurried prayers of a friend, holding hands at the bedside as though it were not strange for us to meet this way.

In other words, heaven was brought near to me not by any out of body experience, but by the earthy and earthly mediation of loving bodies, moving in and out of my field of vision, in a white and stainless steel temple devoted to the merciful care of all who might pass by.

Almost as though the love of God could be clothed in flesh, stained and sagging, unilluminated, and glorious.

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Preachers, politicians, and parables

Posted on July 30, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

In St Paul’s finest moment, he asserts that “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So let’s not let parables, preachers, or politicians divide us, either. (Romans 8:38-39)

The readings are for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A Proper 12)

Jesus asked his disciples, “Have you understood all this?” And they answered, “Yes. Got it.”

The consensus at Tuesday’s Bible Study was that they might have been trying just to stop Jesus telling them more parables because their heads were spinning, but perhaps that’s unfair. Each parable is a pearl in its own right, but when they are strung together like this, they make something else, a pearl necklace perhaps; something more personal than commercial.

Jesus asked his disciples, “Have you understood all this?” And they said, “Yes;” and if they meant it, then honestly, they were wiser fishermen than I.

But when we look at the parables as a set, we find patterns woven between them. Nothing is clear in itself, and yet we hear, between the lines and between the riddles, intimations of the kingdom of heaven, and how it might relate to us, and to Jesus.

Taken together, the parables are like a net, knit together and cast over the crowd, pulling in the hopeful, the weary, the obtuse, and the understanding. All of that can be sorted out later.

I admit, I find the treasure parables problematic. A man finds treasure in a field, and instead of running to his neighbours, shouting for them to come and see what good fortune is lying on their doorstep, he reburies it, deceives the landowner of its value, and keeps it for himself.

This is not an appropriate way to approach the kingdom of God. Don’t be that guy.

The merchant is looking for pearls to buy and sell; he, too, thinks that the kingdom of heaven is a commodity that he can possess. Don’t be that guy, either. Perhaps they are bad fish; something about them smells a little.

We see around us too many people who claim to have found the kingdom of heaven, to know the mind of God, and who yet want to keep it for themselves. They judge themselves to be worthy, and treat others with contempt. They celebrate the chance to exclude swathes of God’s children: transgender children, poor children, immigrant children, gay children, black children, unarmed children, female children. We find them in the comments sections of the online news, and in the media, and in the churches, and in the government. Whenever they turn their judgement upon someone we love, we notice them, and we are afflicted.

But are we so indiscriminate in deciding with whom we share our hidden treasure? Or are we dealing in grace like merchants buying and selling pearls? Are we cheating on our disclosure statements regarding the treasure that we hold, and hide? Whom do we exclude, in the secret hidden thoughts of our hearts?

Speaking of cheating, the saga of Jacob continues this morning with that trickster finding one of his own in Uncle Laban. The first family of God is full of surprises, and secrets, and side-deals; and yet God remains faithful throughout all of our sins and stumblings.

As Paul writes centuries later, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Not the church, not the media, not the government, not even we ourselves.

When Jesus began his ministry in the regions of Galilee, the gospels agree, he told the people two things: to repent, that is to be turned and transformed by their response to the gospel; because the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent: turn away from sin and stumbling, and towards God, who is already close at hand, to catch us up and sort us out. This is the good news of God in Christ: that the kingdom of heaven is already at hand, whether we notice it or not; God is already here, with us, waiting for us. The kingdom of heaven is something like a sinner who stumbles across something wonderful, or a seeker who finds perfection, in the midst of the fish market.

Actually, if we’re going back to parables, I’d prefer the aroma of fresh baked bread from the woman with the yeast. You could spread it with mustard to make a sandwich.

The mustard seed is an interesting illustration. It isn’t really, I am told, the smallest of all seeds and it doesn’t really, I am further informed, become that great of a grown-up plant; but it does of course undergo a transformation. If it is to grow, it must first be buried in the dirt, and broken up, broken open, before it will embark upon its new life above ground. When it does, that formerly self-contained seed is now part of a greater system, giving food and shelter to the birds, cleaning the air that we breathe. From something dead and buried, it has transformed into something life-giving.

It is possible that Jesus is speaking of his own death and resurrection?

The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who hides starter yeast in a whole heap of flour, so that it blows up the whole bunch. Did you know that in first-century Judaism, there existed an idea that bore a distinct resemblance to our own expression, “She’s got a bun in the oven”?[1]

Is it possible that in telling this parable, Jesus is referring to his own advent; that the kingdom of heaven is like one born of a woman? That the kingdom of heaven is like a bun, born of an oven, who is called the Bread of Life?

Fun fact: if you put the yeasty bread parable together with the net full of fish parable, you end up with loaves and fishes, feeding the thousands on the hillside.

If we are the fish, caught up in the net of the kingdom, all sorts and conditions; if we fish are gathered together with the bread that is Jesus, then we are enough for thousands. We are enough to satisfy multitudes. We can perform miracles, extending the feast, the treasure, the grace across those who are hungry for a word from God, a crumb of comfort, a solid meal, something that doesn’t taste sour.

Or at least we can proclaim the miracle: God loves you, no exceptions. And we can assure every child of God that nothing, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,”

[nor preachers, politicians, Popes, or people]

“nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [you] from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Amen.

 

[1] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: the enigmatic parables of a controversial rabbi (HarperOne, 2014), 124

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