Christmas Eve

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A message for and from the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

There’s something strange about the sign that the shepherds outside Bethlehem received that Christmas night so long ago. After all, if a choir of angels appears above the hillside, lighting up the night sky and singing of God’s glory, the most likely explanations are that you’ve been sampling the sheep dip, or that God is up to something. The shepherds received a fairly clear and unambiguous sign, you might think, that something unusual was afoot. And yet, the angels tell another story. “This shall be the sign,” they say. There will be a child, a newborn baby in the city, lying in a manger for a crib.

A child is born. As signs go, it is one that could be said to blend in a little as ordinary life goes by. How many babies are born in the city at night, wrapped and swaddled with love, laid down to sleep? Even the manger isn’t that unusual. How many parents are unprepared, or under-resourced, or out of luck? In my grandmother’s day, the child would have been laid in a dresser drawer, the indoors, upstairs equivalent of a manger. It happened all the time. The sign is not as unusual, as spectacular, as we make it out to be, with our costuming and our carols. It would have gone unnoticed to so many of the people of the city: God arriving in plain sight, and in the most open of secrets.

While the angels cannot help but bear witness, because something so special is happening that night, in that barn in the city of Bethlehem, in that baby; still, the sign is not after all that God has broken the sky, filling with world with ungodly fear. It is rather that God has entered the world in the most humble and the most human way possible: being born of a woman, as were we all.

Nothing in the world is completely ordinary. All of it is the creation and fulfilment of God’s purpose, even this. And to make an infant the sign of God’s presence among us was a stroke of genius.

They convict us, these small creatures, of our sinfulness. They call out our pride, spitting up without regard for the status of the person singled out for such an honour. They call out our greed, demanding that we share our time, our bodies, our hair and glasses and keys. They call out our selfishness, the inward-looking self-preservation that is split open by a picture of a child washed up on a beach, or sitting smeared in the back of an ambulance. Peace on earth; goodwill to all people? The children call for our repentance, for us to do better, for their sake, for Christ’s sake.

And yet, babies do not judge us. They offer chance after chance for us to do better, to love harder, to grow into the image of God. They are the most merciful human beings.

The sign of God’s love for us is love made manifest. The song of God’s glory is the soft lullaby of a weary, happy woman; and the sigh of relief of a man who didn’t know he was holding his breath. The sign of God’s presence among us is more mundane than we expect, because the open secret is that God is always with us; that God has always loved us; that God doesn’t need to break the sky to reach us or light up the night in order to tell us that God is always with us: Emmanuel. God is with us, demanding our repentance, our best efforts to do better, love harder, forgive more freely. God is with us, loving us into new life, promising peace at the last, offering infinite opportunities for love to glory over its alternatives.

May the signs and sounds of God’s presence surround you and those whom you love this Christmastide. May they soothe your sorrows, lift you up with laughter, and may flights of angels sing you to your rest. Amen.

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Married to the miracle

Posted on December 18, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year A. Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

So this is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: his mother, Mary, engaged but not married, was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

It would appear, to inquiring minds, that there is a whole lot of background missing from this bold and forward statement: “was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.”

On the face of it, it’s a simple statement of the facts. Mary found herself pregnant; the author of the child was the Holy Spirit. But we have inquiring minds. We want to know more. We are inclined to press for details.

When my children were very small, and they began asking where children came from, the first task of their parent was to ascertain what sort of information they were looking for. Was it scientific information: biology, genetics, mechanics? Or was it social information? Had they encountered a pattern of family life that had set them to wondering about how one brought a new family into being? Was it, even, theological? They were told from a young age that they were children of God.

We had some very interesting conversations, which I will not repeat from the pulpit in order to save the blushes of everyone concerned, but children really do get to the heart of the matter when there’s something they really want to know. Most of our conversations, in the end, got to the point at which a weary mother, stretched to the limits of her knowledge of science, metaphysics, and tact would say, “And that’s when the miracle happens.”

The miracle. Because what else is the creation of a whole new human being, body and soul, out of the genetic material of its ancestors? Made in the image of God, indeed.

The Gospel according to Matthew traces Jesus’ bloodline in the flesh back to King David. This is necessary in order to legitimate the claim that he is the long-awaited Messiah. Matthew traces this genealogy through Joseph. So in one very real and earthly fashion, Matthew affirms Joseph’s paternity. On the other hand, Matthew assures his readers that Mary and Joseph had yet to become man and wife in the fullest sense; so that Joseph had reason to doubt his paternity of this new wrinkle on Mary’s brow, such that it needed to be explained to him by a dream, by an angel, that this was an act of God.

So there is an extent to which, I think, if you put the evangelist Matthew in front of an inquiry panel, and pressed him for the details behind that bald, bold statement: “She was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit;” there would come a point when he would be forced to say, under oath, “That’s where the miracle happens.” This was an act of God. Some things still can bear a little mystery.

His earliest followers did not seem to be particularly hung up on Jesus’ human or divine origins. They were more focused on his life, death, and resurrection. They were more interested in the way in which he brought God to life for them; brought God down to earth for them; raised their view to the heavens. They saw a vision of a new kingdom, one in which God’s plans for humanity have been brought to fruition; in which the labour has given birth to deep joy; profound justice; mutual mercy; glorious humility. They did not, I think, expect that the labour would be so long; that we today would still be witnesses to war, to the slaughter of innocents, and the perversions of power.

And so what are we to do? Paul writes to the Romans, “you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.” We are called to belong to Jesus Christ. We are not called to explain the inexplicable or to get hung up on the unravelling of that which rightly remains mysterious. Rather, we are called to marry the miracle, to labour with Mary, with God to deliver the kingdom promised from of old, in which the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the Spirit of God will be known across the earth. We are called to belong to Christ.

We who feel helpless at the enormity of the task of peace, the needs of the children; we are called to belong to Christ. We may start by going beyond the quiet dismissal of others and instead asking them to tell us their stories. Instead of labelling those of another religion, those of another belief, we might inquire about their experience of the Holy Spirit. Instead of turning aside from those we do not understand, we might ask them to teach us their language. We may begin by demanding, wherever the opportunity arises, that compassion overturn convention, that mercy is the hallmark stamp of those who belong to Christ.

Do not be afraid to speak peace in a world that shouts of its power. Do not be afraid to whisper mercy in a world that seeks revenge on itself. Do not be afraid of acts of love, nor acts of God – mysterious and miraculous in their results, unconditional and unconventional in their reach.

Joseph listened to the God of his dreams; he listened to the dream of God. “Do not be afraid,” said the angel. Do not be afraid to be part of the miracle, embrace the mystery, go further than you thought was possible into the heart of God. Do not be afraid to belong to Christ.

It could have been otherwise. Joseph could quietly have dismissed Mary. Who knows where she would have ended up, with her baby in tow. No one would have blamed him for doing the right thing. No one would have looked twice at her again. Instead, he embraced the mystery, he married the miracle.

Mary and Joseph found their lives taken over by the Christ child. Babies will do that to you – take over your life. From the moment that each of them said “yes” to the Incarnation of God, their lives were no longer their own alone; they belonged to Christ.

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Do not be afraid of the dark

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

An Advent devotion for the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio. Today is the commemoration of St John of the Cross; Juan de la Cruz

Juan de la Cruz is best known to us for his luminous phrase, “the dark night of the soul.” But Juan was not afraid of the dark.

I imagine that the nights were pretty dark where Juan grew up, near Avila in sixteenth-century Spain. He learned to find his way through rigorous discipline, and austere devotion. In the dark, it is easier to stay safe and uninjured if everything else stays in its place and out of your way.

When it is truly dark, they say, the mind begins to see things differently; it finds its own light, its own sight. Juan saw visions.

He describes, in his spiritual poems, the secret journey of the soul on a darkened staircase, sneaking out to meet the beloved, his God,

In the joy of night,
in secret so none saw me,
no object in my sight,
no other light to guide me,
but what burned here inside me.[1]

“No other light to guide me, but what burned here inside me.”

In the beginning, God declared, “Let there be light,” where previously there was only darkness. So we, made in God’s image, need not be afraid of darkness which was part of our being before the world began; it does not hide God, but announces God’s imminence, God’s immanence; the urgent announcement of the advent of light within.

[1] “Song of the Soul that Delights in Reaching the Supreme State,” Juan de la Cruz, translated by A.S. Kline, http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/StJohnoftheCross.htm#_Toc200278188

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Of prophets and (im)patience

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for a snowy third Sunday of Advent in Euclid, Ohio. Isaiah 35:1-10, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11,  Canticle 15 (the Song of Mary)

Isaiah the prophet wrote the better part of three thousand years ago, maybe in the eighth century BCE, “Here is your God. … He will come and save you.”

And the haunt of jackals shall become a lively swamp, and the tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy.

Mary’s song reclaims the prophetic vision, raising her voice in heartfelt expectation and exultation of God’s justice: God has filled the hungry with good things; God has remembered the promise of mercy. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my saviour,” sings Mary, while Jesus and John are still being formed in the secrecy of their mothers’ wombs.

And now, John asks, is it true? Is it soon? James answers, “Be patient; do not grumble; strengthen your heart.”

Be patient. For three thousand years and counting (but who’s counting?), we have waited on the promise of the prophets, while the jackals still haunt the edges of our lives, cancer preys on those whom we love; death comes too soon to too many; addiction like a mirage in the desert leads us astray to the haunts of the jackals and mortal danger. We wait, three thousand years later, for the promise of mercy to be remembered, while sin still rages around us and, if we are honest, within us, dividing us from one another, and from God.

But, “Be patient,” advises James.

Right.

When John’s disciples came to Jesus and asked him if it’s true, if the promises hold true, if they are truly to be fulfilled in him, in Jesus of Nazareth, this unlikely, itinerant, unconventional rabbi, with his ragtag band of followers and his cavalier attitude to the ascetic disciplines of camel hair and honeyed locusts: when John’s disciples ask him, Jesus doesn’t tell them to be patient. He doesn’t advise them at all. He describes to them. He tells them what he is doing. In direct fulfillment of the prophets’ promises, he tells them that he has healed the sick, opened the eyes of those who were blind, raised the dead, brought good news to the poor. He is, he says doing everything that was promised. And blessed are they who do not take offence at him for it.

Then, Jesus tells them about John, the prophet who prepared the way.

For three thousand years, the prophets have promised God’s mercy, but they have receive little mercy from those to whom they preached. Now, John was imprisoned in a small cave on the side of the hill, on top of which was built the fortress palace of King Herod. In the night, he would have heard them carousing, the girls dancing, and he must have wondered if wickedness had won, after all. It was ever thus, the burden of the prophet, to know, to see the promise of God, the mercy of God’s loving-kindness; and to witness its frustration by the power of sin, greed, and misplaced authority.

John didn’t live to see that frustration played out on the cross. I have no doubt, though, that he was made thoroughly aware of the resurrection.

Alone in his prison cave, John was wondering, and worrying, whether he had done enough; and whether he had done it right; and whether it was all worth it. Jesus, rather than comforting or cajoling him to be patient, told him, this is who we are. This is what we have done, and what we are doing. It is enough. There will be more.

“Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Tell them what you have seen, Jesus says, but wait: there’s more!

For John, his very birth was a miracle, announced by an angel. His life was touched by God from its beginnings, and he knew the Word of God, and the mercy of God. He baptized countless crowds who came to him at the River Jordan, for forgiveness of their sins. He baptized Jesus. “No one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.”

And yet there was more to come. John prepared the way for Jesus, for the incarnation of God’s mercy, the body and soul of God’s love for us.

Two thousand years later, we sometimes find ourselves asking, “Are we to wait for another?” And Jesus answers us, “Go and tell what you see. Tell of the miracles that were unthought of by John. That you have developed technologies capable of filling the hungry with good things. That you have found new and miraculous ways to cure the sick, give sight to the blind. Sometimes, it seems, you can even raise the dead.” I am not the only one here who has flatlined on an operating theatre table. Raising the dead? There are people who do it in our sleep!

We have reached further into the heavens than John – that John – dreamed possible. We have witnessed countless miracles of birth, of mercy, of love. Three thousand years since the prophet Isaiah’s promises, and God still bears with us, still promises mercy, still shares God’s love with us.

There is no one else to wait for. Jesus is here, with us. We witness to his frustration, his death on the cross, every time we fall into the swamp of sin, the haunt of jackals; but we witness also to his resurrection, his ascension, every time we remember him, in the everyday miracles we share with one another, in the water, the wine, the bread.

Two thousand years later, with Herod’s fortress palace and John’s prison in ruins, a fallen down hilltop, we await Christ’s coming in glory; in the meantime, Jesus reminds us, tell what you see. That God’s mercy endures, wherever the promises of the prophets are kept: to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

Strengthen your hearts, then, to do the work that Christ has given us to do. It is enough for today. Still we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Photo: the ruined hilltop fortress palace where John was imprisoned and beheaded by Herod

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Shoulder season

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Spirit keeps reaching,
gripping my shoulders, telling
me to sit, stay a while.
Over my shoulder, promising,
promising soon, soon,
surging on to one more thing,
I feel the snag of her fingers
between my bones, aching from
raking leaves, wrestling sleep.
I am afraid that I will turn back
to find her before me, square
shouldered, crossed arms,
feet planted firmly as
a brick wall; or that after all she
will finally let me go.

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Advent joy

Posted on December 4, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

I was blessed to hear our deacon-in-training preach this morning, so instead of a sermon for Advent 2, I am sharing the reflection from the closing Eucharist of yesterday’s Advent Quiet Day at St Peter’s Episcopal Church, Lakewood, Ohio.

The practice of joy, of setting light to our souls, is a holy calling.

I wrote on Twitter this week about the winnowing fork and the burning of chaff, “I am about ready for some chaff to be burned away: Bring it on!” Of course, we are advised to be careful what we wish for. But prayers are not wishes. Prayer is less careful, less cautious. In fact I think that our most reckless prayer is where we find ourselves closest to what God has prepared for us and for our salvation: Bring it on.

We may be surprised at what is burned away. We may need to think twice about reaching into the flames to pull back a burning brand; but we may well, too, be surprised by joy to find in the fire the face of God looking back at us, unhindered and unhazed by the dust and ashes, the chaff that gets in our eyes and blurs our vision.

The practice of joy, of setting light to our souls has its hard moments. It has its long nights. It has its season of Advent, darkness closing in, chasing light further into the midwinter midnight. Yet that season of waiting, of watching, of chasing has its own joy, if only we keep it in sight, not as a goal but as a method of being, a way of living, as W.H. Auden would say, in the meantime.

Another favourite poet, R.S. Thomas wrote of kneeling in prayer, “waiting for the God/To speak.”

Prompt me, O God;
But not yet. When I speak,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting.       – R.S. Thomas, Kneeling

The meaning, the joy, is in the meantime.

 

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Burnt blessings

Posted on December 3, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

On Twitter last night, reflecting on the readings to come in a week that was … chaffy … I posted that I could stand to see some chaff burn: Bring it on, was the prayer that I tweeted.

Whether rashly or otherwise, it was, I felt, a reasonable response, and I have reason to think that John the Baptizer might have agreed. At a quiet day today, the wisdom of the group remembered John’s great crowds of followers, and the moments of almost unbearably poignant joy that must have accompanied his many baptisms. Yet he also had his moments of viper broods and burning chaff.

May God burn the chaff from your threshing floor.
May God wash the dirt from your face.
May God bless you, and keep you, restore your faith and resurrect hope
in the name of the Messiah and the Spirit, One God for ever. Amen.

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The Feast of St Andrew

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

“No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” (Deuteronomy 30:14)

“And he said to them, ‘Follow me …’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” (Matthew 4:19-20)

Waiting
through the words of prayer,
the wordless nights spent
wrestling with the One Beloved,
suffering silence; suffering nothing
to break the thread that weaves
and cleaves faith to the sea,
washes doubt clean. The rasp
of rope, hauling hands deep,
delving flesh, silvered, shining,
waiting, suffering silence, till,
torn nets spread open on the sand,
a word breaks ashore:
Follow

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Advent light

Posted on November 27, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2016, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio.
Year A Advent 1:

When we have finished the act of Baptism with water, and sealed the baptized with the sign of the cross, it is our tradition to hand them a lighted candle, saying,

“Receive the light of Christ, a sign of the new life enkindled within you. Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.”

During Advent, each week we light another candle, working towards the center, the light made manifest in the world, the light of Christ.

Advent is a time for the church – for the assembly of the baptized –especially to shine as a light in the world.

So we begin with the words of Isaiah,

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

With Paul, we pray in our Collect,

“Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.”

For you know what time it is. Time to awaken from sleep.

When this season draws to its close, on Christmas Eve, we will gather here in the dark, and as the last person receives the Sacrament, and our shufflings cease and our buzzing overhead lights are silences, we will light candles and sing of the night that fell, and the Light that came into the world to brighten it, to break open the darkness, to bring us within sight of God.

Shine as a light in the world…

I’ve been reflecting, and praying, and wondering about what it means for us to be a light in the world. What is it that we think we are called to do; what is the grace that we are asking to exercise?

Isaiah speaks of the mountain of the Lord being established as the highest of hills, visible to all around.

During the nineteenth century, a Presbyterian minister by the name of John Rankin lived in a house atop a 300-foot hill on the banks of the Ohio River, in Ripley. An avid abolitionist, he used his elevation to signal with lights to refugee slaves when it was safe to cross the water, and come up the hill to his house for safe keeping, for rest and refuge, before the next stage of their journey north.

Your Vestry talked a week or so ago about what it means for us to hang a sign that says, “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.” If we turn up our lights and signal to a weary world that we are a place of safety, of refuge, of rest, then we had better mean it. We had better be ready to receive those who come with nothing but their pain. We had better be ready to open our home to those who have been wandering, those who have been wondering if there is a place for them, a safe place left in this world. We had better be ready truly to welcome those whom we do not know or understand. We had better be ready to set a place at the table for each one who answers the call of our welcome sign, our light lit in the window of the house on the hill.

Incidentally, John Rankin had a neighbour, John Parker, who would go out with his boat to ferry people across the river. It is not necessarily enough to turn on the light and expect people to find their own way across the dark waters to find us. We might have to put ourselves out there.

Shine as a light in the world.

One of the few dates which stuck with me from my school history classes is 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. Philip of Spain wanted to unseat Elizabeth I of England – for various reasons of personal pride and power, politics, and religion: he didn’t like the establishment of the Church of England separate and free from the influence of the Pope and the Catholic countries of Europe.

The south of England is a landscape of hills and downs, ancient sand dunes. As the Armada came into sight off the coast, fires were lit on the hilltops near the coast, and the message spread like lightning from hilltop to hilltop, all the way to London, warning, and calling the people to the defense of their land, and incidentally, their church. The beacons, those lights on the hilltops, were a sign of imminent danger.

Shine as a light in the world.

It is the work of the church not only to signal safety but to warn of imminent danger. St David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana, tagged with hateful homophobic slurs, swastikas, and slogans has let the graffiti stay, for now, to shine a light on the dangers that have arisen around us, raising spectres we had thought to put to rest. They have lit a beacon, warning of the dangers of capitulating to evil. They have staked their claim to welcome all of God’s children in the name of Christ.

Steve Bannon, named as chief strategist to the next White House administration, gave an interview to the Hollywood Reporter recently in which he praised the power of darkness.
“Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power,” he said admiringly.
As difficult as it may be to take Bannon’s words seriously, whose call it is but the church’s to light a beacon to warn against the strategies of Satan? The first question asked at our baptism, after all, is “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” It is the duty of the church – the house on the hill – to light a beacon warning that we will not go over to the dark side; that the darkness cannot overcome the light of Christ.

Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

When we come together at the close of this season of Advent; when we gather in the darkness and light our candles to welcome the Christ child, the Light of Christ born into the world, let’s do so knowing that we have not spent the rest of the season hiding our light under a bushel. Let’s do so knowing that we have sought out safe passage for those needing to find their way to the light – the frightened, the fleeing. Let’s do so knowing that we have lit our beacons to warn of the dangers where we see them, not tolerating the works of darkness, but speaking out against Satan and sin, evil and intolerance, the opposition to God’s work of love, wherever we encounter it.

For you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Put on the armor of Christ. Shine as a light in the world, to the glory of God. Amen.

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Beacon blessings 

Posted on November 26, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Collect for the First Sunday in Advent calls upon God for 

the grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.

When we handed the infant child baptized last week a lit candle, what kind of blessing did we offer him? The Light of Christ is not only a comfort, but it is a warning. It is not only a guide, but an armory. The work of walking in the shadow of the cross is not all sweetness and light, but it may be a fierce trail to blaze.

In my imagination, I am transported back to the southern downs of England, in 1588. As the Spanish Armada is spied out at sea, the message leaps like lightning from beacon to beacon across the hilltops; a warning, a command, a call to arms.

This is the Advent I anticipate.

Shine as a beacon in the darkness.
Shine as a lighthouse in the storm.
Shine with the light of Christ,
   which will never be overcome.

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