Michael and all angels

Posted on September 29, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

I am tired of angels.
I am tired of their wings beating hollow drums of war,
their obsequious, their patronizing, “Do not be afraid;’
their inconvenient words to frightened virgins and old women.
I am tired of their entrapment
of innocent rams; their oppression and possession
of dumb asses, their impassive stance, swords of fire and backs
turned towards the gate of Eden, while we trudge east,
casting glances beyond the reach
of their shimmering glory.

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Of refrigerators, the Borg, and Jesus’ prayer for his disciples

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily for Unity at the first Euclid Ecumenical Service at the Cathedral Worship Center of Euclid, Ohio

We read from John 17.

You know those public prayers where the person praying ostensibly addresses themselves to God, but in reality they have a whole other audience in mind? Something like:

“Father God, we praise you and we bless you. We ask that you would turn the hearts and minds of your children so that they would remember, and not forget, that without the refrigeration of your grace, the milk of human kindness sours and spoils. Remind them, Lord, to put the milk back in the fridge, so that we may be cool with one another.”

There is a turning point, at which you realize that this prayer has now gone way beyond metaphor, and that someone other than God may be the one called upon to answer it.

So that, of course, is not exactly what Jesus is doing when he prays out loud for his disciples to come together as one: “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me – so that they may be one as we are one.”

But.

There is a difference between the prayer that we make in the silence of our own hearts, and the prayers that we speak aloud among those for whom we pray. When we pray aloud, with and for someone, there is a part of us that hopes that the act of praying may itself be part of the answer to prayer: that it may be a source of encouragement, comfort, challenge, peace.

And while we pray for ourselves, for one another, for our city and our community, we do hope to be overheard. We hope that in the act of coming together, as one body, we may answer some of those prayers for peace, for unity, for common civility, for humanity which cry out for some grace, some mercy, some peace in our times.

Jesus prayed out loud: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

We read Jesus’ prayer as those eavesdropping on his conversation with God, but we are meant to hear him, and perhaps we are even meant to answer him.

Is that possible, that we are called to answer Jesus’ prayer, by coming together as one?

Now, there are wildly different ways that we can think about becoming one.

You know the Borg, from Star Trek, which assimilates everyone into one mind? Resistance, famously, is futile. I am suspicious of the kind of unity that depends on squashing differences, that commands conformity over comprehension.

Fortunately, there are other models that we have for becoming one. When two people come together in one marriage, for example, and we say that they become one flesh, although they walk around and talk as though they were still two completely different and independent individuals, sometimes even with opposing opinions and beliefs. Still, at the heart of a marriage is a singularity that is born out of that commitment, that covenant; a unity of purpose, and of faithfulness, and of love.

Or when a child is born or adopted, brought home, and a new family unit comes into being – a unit, a oneness. The individuals within the family might not even always agree.

Especially when the child is a toddler or a teenager; parents at that age always seem to think that we know best. There may be times when the bonds of love may be stretched, even strained; but there is a unity, a singularity that comes out of a commitment, a faithfulness to the family unit.

The vows that we make when we come together in one marriage, in one family, in one body of Christ: those are vows that we find lived out in the life of Jesus, who is, as he says, one with his Father, and the Father one with him.

We promise to put one another’s interests ahead of our own; as Jesus prayed even in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Your will, not mine, be done.”

We promise to bear with one another for better or for worse, as Jesus shared his table even with Judas, and embraced Peter with a kiss of peace even after Peter denied him three times. doing his Father’s work of loving us no matter how hard it became, how hurtful. Bearing with us and bearing all for us in order to reconcile us to God and to one another, that we may be one, with one another, and with God.

We promise to be together in praise, transported, as Jesus told the thief crucified next to him, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

We know well enough all the things that divide us. I am not going to list them here; I hardly think that would be helpful.

But if Jesus has the will to pray that our differences may not divide us, then he also has the power to heal our divisions.

If Jesus has the will to pray that the valleys be lifted up and the mountains laid low and the paths be made straight between us, then he has the power to say that today, this has been fulfilled in our sight.

If Jesus has the will to pray that his disciples may be one body, then who are we to resist his prayer?

And if we will hear it, and heed it, and maybe even answer it, then who knows what God will do with our own prayers? We can only guess that it will be something beyond our wildest imaginations.

After all, who would have imagined that God would become Incarnate as a man, only to be one with us?

Jesus prayed out loud: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” Amen.

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The chasms fixed between us

Posted on September 25, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon on Luke 16:19-31: the parable of the rich man and Lazarus

The parable describes a way of life which starkly separates the rich man from the poor, the privileged from the dispossessed. It describes how these differences and divisions set up an exponentially greater divide in the life to come: “A great chasm has been fixed between you and us,” advises Father Abraham.

It is, more clearly than most of Jesus’ parables, a fantasy. I do not think that we are to read literally the illustrations of an afterlife; but I do think that we are to take seriously the warnings that the divisions between us in the lives that we lead today have much greater consequences than we can imagine.

I think, too, that the one telling the parable knows all about the chasms that are fixed between worlds; and I think that he knows the way to heal them, and that this is his purpose: not to condemn, but to plumb the depths of those chasms of sin and division that threaten to keep us forever apart, and to pull us up out of them, set us on solid ground before the throne of God.

Because if we are divided from one another, then we are divided from God. If we cannot love our neighbour as ourselves, we have already failed to love God with our whole imaginations, since we have failed to love God’s image set before us, ready for love, fixed in our sights daily.

*

If the story of Lazarus and the rich man is one of an exponentially expanding chasm, it’s possible to imagine a backstory in which they were, at one time, not quite so far apart.

Of course, there was always a division. The rich man was always a rich man, but once upon a time –

[this is not in the Bible, you understand, but in my imagination] –

once upon a time, perhaps, Lazarus worked for the rich man. He lived in employer-provided accommodation, out in the rich man’s fields. He was reasonably healthy and well fed. He even had a family – a wife and a son.

Every so often, the rich man would come out to visit the workers’ village, and everyone would stop what they were doing and stand still, out of respect, until he laughed and waved them on with their work.

The rich man’s son and Lazarus’ son used to play together when they were younger. As they grew, Lazarus and his wife worried about the association, and warned their son, but he was young.

No one knew exactly what happened in the town the night of the troubles. This was before the days of CCTV, and dashboard cameras, smart phones and body cams.

When the rich man’s son came home, he was shuffled straight back out to live with one of his uncles in the country.

Lazarus’ son never did come home. They say his wife died of a broken heart.

The next time the rich man came to visit his fields, Lazarus did not stop, and stand still. His back bent over, he carried on working. The rich man was outraged by the insult and what he called the sheer ingratitude. I think he was mostly embarrassed.

He had Lazarus fired, and put out of his employer-provided accommodation.

Lazarus didn’t go far. He set up his little shelter outside the rich man’s gates. Every time the rich man came and went from his house, his conscience was offended by Lazarus’ plight. He was sick of the sight of him. From time to time, he would let out the dogs, but they were house dogs and not much good at chasing people off.

By the time the two men died, the chasm between them had grown so large that they could barely see one another.

And then the rich man had the audacity to ask Lazarus to go and warn his brothers – the ones raising his son – about the dangers of digging ditches!

Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

As though we could see and hear again from the dead: see Tamir playing in the park; hear Eric pleading to breathe; see Terence shot with his hands up.

*

By the time Jesus returned from the dead, he had bridged many chasms. Born as a brown-skinned child in a city ruled by the Roman Empire; taken as a refugee on a moonlight flit to Egypt; killed as a criminal on trumped-up charges, sacrificed as a scapegoat, condemned as a rabble-rouser.

He returned from the dead alright, and told us yet again about the love that God has for the least of God’s people, for the littlest piece of God’s image in the world, for the lives of the children of God.

He laid his cross across the chasm between life and death. He put the lie to Father Abraham’s claim that there is no way back, no way to reconciliation; but he didn’t take an easy path, and he never denied the divisions, the depth of the chasms that he had to plumb.

What he did was to proclaim that the kingdom of God entertains no such chasms or divides, but in the kingdom of God, we shall live on level ground. As the prophet writes,

Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people will see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 40:4-5)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Rich blessings

Posted on September 22, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

An ironic title, given the gospel text?

This Sunday, we hear of Lazarus and the rich man, known by some as Dives, although that may or may not be what his brothers called him.

Paul warns that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil; but it’s too late for Dives. Isn’t it?

May the God of Abraham hold you close; the God of Moses lead you in paths of righteousness and peace.

May you be rich in mercy and generous in spirit.

May God’s Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, who raised Lazarus from the dead, keep alive in you the promise of his saving grace, 

in this world and the next. Amen.

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The yearning

Posted on September 21, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

I dare not reach for glory,

for fear of falling.

I cannot bear to love you,

for fear of drowning.

I dare not turn away from you,

for fear of desolation.

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Pray even for kings

Posted on September 18, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Year C Proper 20: Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

For Paul to write in his letter that we should pray for kings is akin almost to Jesus’ commandment that we pray for our enemies.

When you consider the kings that we hear of in the New Testament – the Herods of infamy, murdering children and beheading Baptists – and the emperor with this idolatry of office, his “desolating sacrilege” – well, then we get some measure of how radical and unreasonable Paul’s plea for prayer might be.

It doesn’t come easily, that prayer for those with whom we disagree, or even for our enemies.

John Calvin, the famous Swiss reformer, writes in his commentaries of Paul’s instruction:

He expressly mentions kings and other magistrates, because more than all others, they might be hated by Christians. All the magistrates who existed at that time were so many sworn enemies of Christ; and therefore this thought might occur to them, that they ought not to pray for those who devoted all their power and wealth to fight against the kingdom of Christ, the extension of which is above all things desirable. The apostle meets this difficulty, and expressly enjoins Christians to pray for them also. And, indeed, the depravity of men is not a reason why God’s ordinance should not be loved.

The depravity of men should not undo the commands of Christ to pray for the good of all.

Paul and Calvin shared a concern to keep the peace even while they knew that they lived under imperfect rulers, far short of the godly ideal. Calvin had his own issues with authority; he considered that the best political system was one where he was in charge, and his church would recruit the civil services as enforces of law and order.

Paul asks us to pray so that “we might lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” Amos and the Gospel give an ethical framework within which to locate such godly and peaceable lives: simple stuff: be fair; be honest; be faithful.

The temptations of daily life to slip, to cheat and prevaricate are well known to us, and they become magnified in public life.

I don’t think there is any political system ordained by God outside of the kingdom of heaven; and we’re certainly not there yet. But I do agree with Calvin that we invest authority, delegate power to the civil authorities in return for the promises of protection, peace, and stability in our daily lives. The failure of some, or even of many to deliver on those promises cannot undo the commandment, nor the necessity, to pray for them.

So how are we to pray for “kings and those in high office,” especially in a contentious election season?

I know that there are serious flaws in our political system. I know that there are many of us who are angry with those in power and those seeking power, but the depravity of men is not a reason, Calvin reminds us, why God’s ordinance should not be loved.

I am bound by law not to get too specific from the pulpit about any one political official or candidate. I am saved from some serious internal injury at times only by referring back to my baptismal covenant, to promote the dignity and respect of every human being, no matter their personal deficiencies in my own eyes; remembering that this one, too, is made in God’s image; remembering the beam of wood in my own vision.

I am scarred and I am saved by my kitchen sink epiphany of mashed potatoes. I told you in the spring that I was brought up short by the sudden revelation of Jesus sitting at table with Pharisees and tax collectors and my least favourite candidate for public office; passing the food and sharing it together.

Calvin, again, puts it this way:

It is our duty, therefore, not only to pray for those who are already worthy, but we must pray to God that he may make bad men good.

I am encouraged by the prayers of others. Every so often – maybe once a year – I get a postcard in the mail from my seminary, telling me that on such and such a date, I was included by name in their intercessions. It is remarkable the effect that such a simple message has. It provides warm comfort. It provokes my conscience. It makes me a better priest.

When all else fails, I remember the opening scene from Fiddler on the Roof. A man asks the Rabbi,

“Is there a proper blessing for the Czar?”

“A blessing for the Czar?” the old man repeats. “Of course! May God bless and keep the Czar – far away from us!”

That we may lead godly and peaceable lives.

It is, as Paul says, God’s will that all people should be saved, and come to the knowledge of God’s love and grace demonstrated to us by the Christ, Jesus. It is our duty to pray that this should come to pass, not neglecting to offer thanksgiving for those who are faithful in their public service, and to pray for the encouragement, correction, and even the repentance of those who may need it.

It is such an encouragement to me to receive those postcards of prayer from my seminary successors that I thought we would offer some encouragement this morning to those who need it, following the directions of Paul to offer intercession, supplication, and thanksgiving for those in high office.

You are invited to write on a postcard the name of someone – elected or seeking election, or someone of great influence in your own community – someone who needs your prayer, either of thanksgiving or of encouragement; or someone for whom your own conscience would have you intercede. If you wish to add a blessing, or to sign your own name at the bottom, you may do that, too.

[At the Prayers of the People, I invite you to speak aloud the name which you have written down. Then, at the Offering, we will gather the postcards, and I will see to it that they are mailed to their intended recipients.]

For, “This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Amen.

 

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Sea and sky

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A week ago, I was in the tropics, enjoying the ocean, the rain forest, the island. flower
I took my first ever ride on a jet ski; we saw sea turtles, swimming fast and deep, glinting green. I thought about the petroglyphs in the caves we had visited the day before, that spoke of our ancestors’ deep appreciation of these dinosaur-descended, unmissable links between Creation, Evolution, and ourselves; if one is inclined to see them in such terms.

arecibo-observatoryThe previous day, our car had clambered us into the midst of the karst hills, to find hidden in the heights not only ancient caverns, but the largest radio telescope of the twentieth-century race to explore space. Evolution, it may seem, breeds within itself dissatisfaction with the status quo: we want more.

It is a truism that we make God in our own image: but do we look within, for the seeds of our being, or without, to developments as yet beyond our imagination? Did our ancestors reverence the sun, or the sea turtle, searching for signs of alien life, for the Other, which is God?

sky

Underneath it all, girding the sea with grace,
green beneath the surface, quick and gone, keeping
the secret of an epoch-old understanding, creature
to Creator, unevolved, unchanging, suspended in salt-water

Above the firmament, stars turn, burn out: which
will we worship; turning God into our highest reach,
or deep within the womb of the world,
resting in unbroken waters?

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Character reference 

Posted on September 15, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

This week’s readings focus on character. 

The virtues of honesty, faithfulness, and godliness are lifted up; although the “advice” of Jesus to “make friends by means of dishonest wealth” is a bit of a curveball. Those of us who grew up with a British sense of sarcasm may hear his lip curl through the ink of the text; especially if we read Amos first.

Paul urges prayer for kings and those in authority – so that they might leave us alone and in peace. Those of us embroiled in US election coverage may detect a sigh of resignation through the syllables of Paul’s epistle.

May you be blessed with the finely tuned hearing of a bat, the wisdom of a snake, and the faithfulness of a labrador in the study of this week’s lectionary selection.

That’s not my biblical blessing for the week, by the way.

God help you to find faithful and peaceable lives,

graced by godliness and the quiet dignity of Jesus,

in the service of God our Saviour;

and the blessing of God: Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit; be among you always. Amen.

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One in a hundred

Posted on September 11, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for Year C, Proper 19, and the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, from the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, OH.

It’s easy to wax allegorical about the parable of the one hundredth sheep. I could enjoy the idea that God would leave behind ninety-nine also-ran sheep to come looking only for me. But how often have I been lost, and would I expect God always to pay attention only to me? Of course, in an infinite God there are infinite possibilities, and in ninety-nine out of one hundred of them I am the sheep left behind in the wilderness. And how does that feel?

Then there’s the parable of the lost coin.

It’s clear that the stories go together, but if I am the lost sheep, and God is the shepherd, then I am also the lost coin, and God had so many of us that She lost track. Or was She counting us, and dozing before the fire, so that I slipped between the cushions of the universe without God noticing?

The Psalms tell of One who never slumbers nor sleeps, but the parable tells a different story.

And who are God’s neighbours, God’s peers, invited to party over a spring cleaning session that turns up loose change from under the sofa?

I wonder if we need to take another look at this allegory of a parable.

(I am indebted to Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (HarperCollins, 2014) for provoking new readings of familiar stories.)

What if I am the woman who has plenty – nine out of ten, which is an A-grade life, after all. What if I have all of that, but I am missing the piece that makes life whole, complete. Worth living. What if I have lost sight of the one piece of treasure that really counts?

“Store up treasure in heaven,” advises Jesus elsewhere. Treasure God. Treasure the one currency that underpins all of the commerce of life, relationship, joy.

If that is what I have lost, then it is worth turning everything upside down, moving every piece of furniture, routine, habit, every strut and structure to find that one piece of currency without which none of the rest works, or counts. And what joy, what cause for celebration, when it is found.

That could make some sense to me.

Oh, but then am I the shepherd of that relationship? Is it my responsibility to tend it, to feed it, to set out to find it when I have lost track of it among the ninety-nine other claims on my time and attention? Couldn’t I just wait for God to come and find me?

The perfect thing about a parable is that it is not a fixed allegory, where this means that. It is not a code to be broken, but an invitation to find ourselves in the lifelong story of God’s relationship with the sheep of His pasture, the people of God’s hand.

So in that spirit, here’s another possibility. What if we think of the shepherd, or the woman, as the church, and we are collectively responsible for the sheep, for the treasure, for the currency of place, time, community, not only dollars and cents but souls placed within our care. And what if we find that we are slipping, losing track of those whom we think and know deep down we love and value, but of whom we have lost sight.

Is it their task to find their way to us? Or ours to pursue them, leaving safe in their pews the ninety-nine, or the forty-nine, or whatever the count may be? Setting out with loving inquiry and concern for the safety and place of the lost one.

Before you get too far along the path of noticing that the shepherd is employed, contracted and commissioned especially to tend to the sheep, notice too that the woman is in an ordinary domestic setting, and it is within her own home and family and circle of friends that she seeks and sweeps and celebrates.

Of course, one thing to remember in this version of the parable is that the repentant sinner in this scene is not the sheep which doesn’t even know that it is lost, but the shepherd who redeems his dereliction of duty by going back for his missing charge. A coin is almost certainly exempt from sin or repentance, but the woman who decides to clean up her act and get her – ahem – items together is the one for whom the angels sing out their joy.

In any case, it is we who are called to repent; to turn and to seek God. God who has never lost sight of us; never stopped loving us.

Fifteen years ago today, some brave people stepped up to seek and serve the lost and the missing. Many laid down their lives out there in the dust and ashes, sweeping for survivors, restoring hope when all seemed lost.

And this is where the parable gets flipped.

Ninety-nine percent of us were at a loss that day, and afraid. Only a few found their feet on solid ground. Like those few in a plane over Pennsylvania, bound for the Pentagon. When all seemed irretrievably lost, they found the way of the cross. They stood as with Jesus before Pilate, saying, “You do not take my life from me, because I give it freely, for the sake of strangers.” Each life offered for the sake of saving ninety-nine more.

There are those for whom the losses of that day will last a lifetime. There are those for whom the losses of everyday life and love are sufficient to give pause, afraid to trust in the security of God’s shepherding skills.

Paul has a word for those lost sheep, assuring them out of his own story of being lost and found that the overwhelming grace of God is sufficient to all of our needs; that the love and faith of Jesus is more than enough to save us from our own lost selves.

However we read the parables, it is, after all, grace that pursues life in the midst of destruction; love in the face of loathing. It is grace that promises that peace will drown out violence. It is only by the grace of God, unearned treasure, that we find the will, the hope to endure, and to keep our hearts fixed on restoration, redemption, reconciliation with one another, and with God.

It is grace that allows us even in solemnity to imagine the angels rejoicing in heaven over every life, every soul that has been found to have been marked with God’s sheep-tag, pressed from God’s mould, counted as precious in God’s sight.

Amen.

_________

From the first letter of Paul to Timothy:
I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

From the Gospel according to Luke:
He told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

 

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Blessings lost and found

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

This week’s post is late, partly because I’m on vacation, but also because I have had some struggles settling into a place of blessing in this week’s gospel reading.

It should be easy: we love the idea that God would gladly leave behind ninety-nine of you to come and find me whenever I am lost. I am, after all, that special.

But if I am the sheep, then I am also the lost coin; currency; lost between the sofa cushions of the universe, fallen out of God’s apron pockets  when She wasn’t paying attention. To me.

You see the problem.*

On the other hand, Paul has a perfect blessing nestled into his letter to Timothy this week. Perhaps that will help.

May you set out from here secure in God’s faithfulness and love;

may you find reassurance at each turning, looking to the cross of Jesus to point your way;

may resounding joy always accompany your homecoming;

and when you do find yourself lost, may the overwhelming grace of God sweep you back to where you belong,

redeemed, restored, beloved. Amen.


* For inspiration and wisdom in working through the allegorization and de-same of the parables, I recommend reading Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (HarperCollins, 2014)

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