Hungry

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

Now I could quibble and say that elsewhere Jesus said that a person does not live by bread alone – but since Jesus is, also, the very Word of God, I think he has that covered.

So what does it mean for him to say, “Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”?

Surely it cannot mean that I don’t need my electricity back on after all!

It doesn’t mean that I’m wrong to long for the love of another human being, or even a cat; no, because Jesus is all about loving one another.

How does this verse sound to a child in Gaza, months into a humanitarian crisis, a war-mongered famine? Or to her parents, at their wits end on how to feed her?

Jesus said, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. … Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” And yet everyone who heard him has since died, and we will too, one day.

So what does Jesus mean in saying that he is the living, breathing, satisfying, undying bread, that we who come to him will want for nothing more, forever?

In the earliest days of the church, when Jesus’ disciples came together, everyone shared what they had and no one was in need of anything (Acts 2:44-45; 4:34). No one was in need of anything. They had given their all to following Jesus. They had trusted him to death and beyond, and now they continued to trust in the way of Jesus, in the way of love, in the way of life. And no one wanted for anything.

What Jesus is talking about is the kingdom of heaven, the way in which we would live if we truly trusted in God, in the promises of providence, instead of walking in our fallen ways, our human, humble, stumbling ways.

This past week, I saw online a post meant for those whose food stamp food had perished in the storm, about how to get a replacement. This post was meant for those most in need, who couldn’t afford food to begin with, let alone to buy it twice. It was meant to help. But the post, unfortunately, was followed by the meanest comments, from those who said, “If I can’t have it, why should they?”, but in less kind terms. Instead of working out how we can help one another, those comments turned away from love of neighbour and into miserliness. It was as though the boy with the five loaves and two fish had refused to share them with Jesus, and scuppered the miracle that fed the multitude. But if we trust Jesus, he can do more with our little than we can ask or imagine.

Every time I saw someone post online that their power had come back on, I had to practice being grateful for their good fortune. It helped me to remember that every crew that finished working on someone else’s problem was a fraction of a step closer to fixing mine; it shouldn’t take a selfish motive to be grateful for someone else’s relief, but sometimes it helps.

If we all were able to lean into the way of love, the way of life, the way of Jesus, perhaps we would find that we could all eat our fill, and no one would be in need.

If we were able to lean into the way of love, the way of Jesus, the way of life, then perhaps we would find ourselves so full of life that we could want for nothing. Perhaps.

At the last day, Jesus says, all will be revealed and restored and raised up. At the last day, we will know that abundant life and bread and have our fill of love, when the kingdom comes.

In the meantime, what does it mean for us, that Jesus is the bread of life? That whoever believes in him, trusts in him, leans into him will not go hungry?

I think, in part, it means that if we have an appetite for justice, we will find ways of feeding it, through the way of love, the way of the cross, the paths of the prophets. I had a conversation earlier this week about the prophets as political animals: they were not politicians – far from it. None of them sat in nor sought the seats of power. But they were interested, and involved, and influential in the political landscape around them. They argued for the poor and condemned the corrupt and whispered God’s truth into the ears of kings and their consorts. They had an appetite for justice, and they found ways to feed it. 

If we have an appetite for mercy, we will find ways to satisfy that. Acts of kindness, acts of humility, acts of selflessness, acts of gratitude, all feed that appetite for mercy. We find that when we show, demonstrate, make evident mercy to another, we find our souls sing out in response. We love kindness, as Micah prophesied. 

If we are hungry for love, we know that God loves us, no exceptions. We know that Jesus has room for us, time for us, walks with us. 

I know that it is hard sometimes, many times. That we still hunger, thirst, even die. But Jesus tells us, believe in me, trust in me, stay with me, for I will not let you down. And he never has, not yet. He is the bread of life, and he still feeds me. He is living water, and he refreshes me. He is living bread, and he has saved my life more times than I can reckon.

Believe in him. Trust him. Stay with him, for he is the bread, and the Word, and the way, and the truth, and he is life.

Amen.

Year B Pentecost 12/Proper 14: John 6:35, 41-51

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Body parts

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

I don’t know about you, but I read the epistle differently these days than when I was a little younger.

Paul writes of “the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly…”

I didn’t used to notice quite as loudly the part about “as each part is working properly” when all of the parts of my own body were a little more reliable than they are these days. Still, I can read the hope, and the intent – I know what my hips and knees are supposed to do, working together – and we know that with God all things are possible, even if they are not always convenient, easy, or pain-free.

Here’s the thing: if every part of the body were working properly, joined and knit together with smooth and stretchy ligaments, to promote the body’s growth in building itself up in love to him who is the head, that is, Jesus Christ – if everything were working perfectly, we would no longer be here, but in the kingdom of heaven.

As it is, we work with what we have: our imperfect, slightly broken, somewhat pre-worn selves, and each other, to do what we can “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called in love,” as Paul also says. 

And we have been called in love. We have been called into being and into being together by a God who loves us, who has created us, who heals us, who sustains us, who welcomes us home. There is nothing in our slightly broken or worn bodies that can undo the love with which God has called and created us.

Now, to push the metaphor a little further, there are different kinds of brokenness, and different levels of pain, that require different interventions.

A break may be ugly, open, prone to infection, like the running sores of racism and contempt that continue to plague our country and its discourse. This will not heal itself by running its course. It requires a more radical intervention, and we had better look out for the signs and symptoms in ourselves, too, excise from our speech and actions the tendency to contemptuousness, the conscious or unconscious bias that distorts our perception of the image of God in another. We had better look for the antidote of justice.

There may be a lesser kind of injury – a strain or a sprain – that simply needs support and rest, warmth and elevation. Grief, regret, disappointment might fall into this category. There is a balm in Gilead; there is a balm right here in the heart of a loving community, to soothe the troubled soul.

And there is pain that is productive – ask anyone who has been in labour. My God, it does hurt. But it is a generative use of muscle and strength that brings new life into being. Elsewhere Paul writes of the whole creation groaning to bring into being the kingdom of God; here he invites us, each one, to bear down upon love, to support one another in the work of love, cry out the truth of God’s justice and mercy, to breathe the love of Christ into being.

Don’t give up, Paul might say, despite the worn and broken nature of the world, despite our own limitations, whether every part works or not. For we are each formed by God and called together in the love of Christ, and when we work together, to support and to encourage and grow one another’s faith, we will discover and do more than we can ask or imagine, by the love of God.

 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:16)

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Abundance

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus was a good teacher. He himself knew what he was going to do to feed the crowds before him, but first he asked Philip, “What would you do?” He invited Philip, and the others in class, to consider for themselves how to engage with the work of feeding the flock – because this is the same crowd as we encountered last week, upon whom Jesus had compassion, because they were as sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:30-34).

Later, after he was risen from the dead, Jesus at breakfast on the beach with these same disciples would tell Peter, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17) Today, the lesson begins: Feed these people, the ones before us, the ones gathered around us.

Jesus knew what he was going to do. First, he gave thanks to God for the abundance of God’s grace upon him and among them, for God’s providence in the world of all that we need to live and to grow and to know God’s presence with us, feeding us, sustaining us. Having given thanks for what he had, instead of worrying about what he lacked, he began to distribute the bread and the fish.

You know that if you divide a loaf of bread in half, and then in half again, and then in half again, that sequence can go on into infinity; but you will very quickly find yourself in the realm of invisible crumbs. This is not what happened on that lakeside. This was not a division but a multiplication. It was, after all, a miracle; but it was a miracle whose purpose was not only to fill the bellies of the crowd, who would not suffer terribly if they went hungry for just one night. It was a miracle designed to demonstrate the abundance of God’s providence, the wideness of God’s mercy, the tenderness of God’s faithful loving-kindness.

I love that there were left-overs. I love that Jesus told his disciples to gather up every last crumb so that nothing would be wasted. There was enough bread and fish to feed five thousand and more people, with plenty to spare – and he would not allow a morsel of God’s mercy to be wasted. Rather, it would be used up and consumed and allowed to continue the work of reminding all who received it of the abundance of God’s faithful loving-kindness.

Whenever they ate it, they would remember.

We gather at the table and we remember, in the bread and in the cup, the overflowing mercies of God and how they have sustained us and continue to provoke us to share the blessing, to proclaim good news to those in sore need of it, to recommend the faithful loving-kindness of God to a world that has become, too often, cruel.

Sometimes, we wonder how we will make it happen, whether we can really make a difference in a big world from our small place in it. Six months’ wages, we cry with Philip, would be a drop in the ocean of need.

Sometimes, we want Jesus to overrule our enemies and solve our crises and mandate the mercy of God on those whom we would have mercy, at least.

The people tried to make Jesus king; did you know that five thousand is the number of soldiers in a Roman legion? The people wanted Jesus to take charge of an army and impose his rule over the empire – they knew he could do it better. But Jesus instead slipped away to pray. He knew that there was another way to save the world; the way of love.

He asked his disciples, he asks us, what will you do about it? How will you remember God’s mercy, recommend God’s faithful loving-kindness to a world that fights over power and authority as though it were the answer. Elsewhere, he tells his disciples, the Gentiles lord it over one another, but you are called to serve.

To feed my sheep.

Like a good teacher, Jesus leads his disciples toward the answer by example. He gives thanks to God for all that is, for all that will be; he has faith that God is good, that God will provide what is necessary and more. He takes care of the abundant resources that God provides: he will not waste a crumb leftover, but gathers them up so that they can continue the good work once begun. He will not be distracted by ego nor by power but he withdraws instead to pray, to centre himself repeatedly in the relationship he has with God. Notice how this miracle begins and ends in prayer. Without it, we can do little.

And notice, too, how Jesus does not divide the bread and the fish but allows them to multiply. How he refuses the mathematical draw down to infinity, but challenges our understanding of how the world works with the alternative reality of grace. It is a miracle, and it is the reality of God’s relationship with the world, with us, that the grace and love of God cannot be divided up but only shared out.

We live in a world, in a country and a community, hungry for love, starving for mercy, thirsty for good news. We have all that is needed to provide those essential nutrients to the people before us, around us, among us. And that is exactly where Jesus asks us to begin.

Day by day, week by week, he provides the reminder in the bread and the cup and the prayers, not divided but shared between us, of the faithful abundance of God’s loving-kindness. And he asks us, What will you do?

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Year B Proper 12 John 6:1-21

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Walking on water

Posted on July 26, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Because the clutch between creation and Creator is solid.
Because the Word that spoke light into being fills 
the space between waves and atoms so that none is wasted, 
so that there is not room between one thought of God 
and another to slip between the cracks. 
Because he has knit together wind and water, earth and heaven; 
because he would not dip his sole into that division.
Because mercy is buoyant and humility light. 
Because love, rising, lifts all.

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Leftovers

Posted on July 24, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

One made bread pudding, another, croutons for soup.
One mashed them in milk next day for the baby’s breakfast.
The important thing was, they got to keep the crumbs,
got to bring bread home, swapping hunger for sufficiency,
sharing recipes for remainders;
that their very bodies should remember;
he was all about that.

from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets

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The compassion of Christ

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, 21 July 2024

I have to admit, I was uncomfortable this morning reciting the line from the Psalm that invokes – or evokes – a phrase that has become a tinderbox in today’s conflicted society. But if David’s realm once extended from the Great Sea to the River (Psalm 89:25), God’s reign is greater. Jesus, Son of David, is not confined by any borders drawn or redrawn on a political map, nor did he confine his healing activities to one side of the Jordan or the other, nor did he despise nor reject the Gentiles, the Syro-Phoenicians, the Canaanites, the Samaritans, the inhabitants of the lands that have been complicated and contested, it seems, since before time lifted them out of the ocean. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Ephesians 2:14)

If only we had Jesus’ compassion for one another.

When his disciples returned from their travels around the region, where he had sent them to heal and to cast out demons and to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom drawn near to them – when his disciples returned full of good and weary joy at all that they had seen and done and wrought, Jesus had compassion on them. He knew what it is to be worn out even by good and faithful and rewarding work. He knew how the Holy Spirit can fill and can wring out a soul, overwhelm one with its power. He told them, come away and rest awhile. For he knew that there would be more, so much more, to follow.

And the crowd saw them going, and because celebrity-spotting is nothing new, they sprinted around the sea to meet them on the other side, so that when they landed, they were not in a quiet place but one of commotion and clamour and a mess of human need. And Jesus had compassion on the crowd, too, and tended to them.

Filling everybody’s needs, he healed, and he fed the thousands that had gathered, and he shielded his disciples from the extra work – he sent them back out on their boat into the night, to be at peace upon the water. He took upon himself the burden of the shepherd, because he had compassion for the sheep.

Even so, even Jesus did not put off forever his need for private prayer, for quiet communion with God. When everyone was fed and healed and put away for the night – we didn’t hear this part this morning, but it’s there, between the lines that we did read – in the night, he went up the mountainside alone, to pray.

No one can keep the well of compassion full without refreshment, without leaning into the providence of our shepherding God, who leads us beside still waters, and in green pastures, who feeds us and anoints us with the oil of gladness and of healing. Even Jesus did not put off for too very long his need to be apart, and to pray.

Provocatively enough, Martin Luther once wrote, “The Kingdom [of heaven] is to be in the midst of your enemies. And [t]he [one] who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ.”[i]

The people who raced around the countryside to cut off Jesus and the disciples’ access to solitude were not their enemies, but they were the enemies of their intentions and desires for solitude, and of their peace in the moment. In order to have compassion upon them took the love of God made manifest in Christ.

Another way of saying this might be that we cannot will ourselves toward compassion for our fellow human, especially when they are at their least convenient, or most demanding, sheepish, or bestial. Yet if we belong to Christ, that is the compassion that is available to us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that, while “human love is directed to the other person for [their] own sake, spiritual love loves [them] for Christ’s sake.”[ii] Bonhoeffer argues that because human love desires to bind itself to the other, or rather to bind the other to oneself, by persuasion or coercion, if fails in the face of the enemy; human love cannot abide rejection, nor resistance. But the love of Christ can overcome all. “Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ”[iii] It’s a kind of letting go and letting Jesus love them.

The most direct path towards the compassion of Christ is prayer. The most essential action of love is prayer. Jesus knew it, practised it, modelled it in the night, on the mountainside; and his compassion was such that it overcame even death.

The compassionate life is tricky enough in the everyday, and my guess is that even the least political among us will find our last nerve twanged by the rhetoric and anxiety and all that will pile onto the social psyche in the coming months. We may be tempted to try to love our enemies into submission. We may be tempted to try to grind out compassion through our clenched teeth. We will not succeed unless we are grounded in the love of Christ, in letting God love those whom we cannot stand, made as they are in the image of God; unless we abandon ourselves to prayer. Unless we abandon ourselves, our preferences and prejudices, and hand the whole lot over to Jesus for healing.

And when we seek Christ, we will find him ready to shepherd us, full of compassion for us, ready to feed us with bread and fill us with stillness and anoint us with healing oil. We have only to reach for him. For he is our peace. (Ephesians 2:14a)

May [the peace] and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore (2 Corinthians 13:14). Amen. 

[i] Quoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together (Harper & Row, 1954), 17

[ii] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 34

[iii] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 36-7

2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

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Genesis

Posted on July 18, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

I heard that they found a cave on the moon.
Even from this twilight I can see craters and cliffs;
I cannot imagine that there would not be a cave,
but this, they said, could become a home
from home, a place to put down roots, conduit
to a new life in the sifting, lifeless soil so far
from the oceans that yearn and fall for its orbit.

Even with our rocket science and subtle scorn,
we are still children of the rock,
cave-dwellers bound by umbilical strata
to the ground out of which we were first formed,
for our heart is restless until we rest in you.

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Let Jesus be Jesus

Posted on July 14, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 14, 2024

I’m curious, so curious why people thought that Jesus had to be someone else. Why they couldn’t allow him to be someone new, someone that God had created specifically to be himself. Why they were afraid to let God do a new thing.

When news of Jesus reached Herod Antipas, he was troubled. He was troubled because people were saying that this was John the baptizer come back to life, or Elijah, or another prophet come back to life; come back to haunt him.

So I’m curious why people, why Herod, thought that Jesus had to be someone else.

I’m afraid, too, that the identification with John the Baptist underscores a nasty point in that story; that his head was not buried with his body. You can imagine the conspiracy theories that transpired: that it was not really John that the disciples claimed and buried; that John had somehow been spirited away, and was now living as Jesus. 

The people who were not able to let Jesus be himself might also have been people tied up in grief, bound up by hope, caught up in flights of fantasy and false information. Or people like Herod, mired in guilt.

But that’s why it is so important to set Jesus free to be himself! The patterns we see in the Bible, of hope and sin, greed and guilt, destruction and God’s patient, repetitive redemption, that is always new, always doing the unexpected, merciful thing: these patterns teach us that left to our own imagination, we are lost. With God’s creativity, nothing, no one is beyond new life.

It is a gift to us that God created a world that has discernable patterns, rhythms, predictable days and seasons (although we are not beyond messing with those). We see patterns in history, in relationships, in the fractals of snowflakes. We use them to guide our anticipation, to help us to plan next steps, to choose what to wear when we get up in the morning: sundress or snowsuit? We can learn from the examples of history and experience, positive and negative, what to do and what not to do. 

But when we take for granted the patterns that God has created – the seasons, the tides, the swirl of the oceans and all that spins from them – when we forget that our stewardship of the earth means to maintain and to learn and to dance with rather than to mooch off those patterns, then we get into the kind of climate mess we face today.

It is a gift to us that God has created us each in the image of the One, so that we might recognize in one another that spark, that template of the divine that reminds us to love one another. Yet that image, like God, is infinite in its potential and its variety and its expression.

When we reduce people to patterns, stereotypes, when we assume that we know who they are because they’re just the new Elijah, right? Or the new John, or the new Stacy, or the new Hitler – when  we forget the intricacy of God’s creation of every soul, fearfully and wonderfully made, then we forget something about God, and about ourselves. 

When we treat people as patterns, as immigrants, as Republicans, as white folk, or Black; when we reduce people to patterns, we forget that we, too, are people, who prefer to be known by our own names, as individuals, rather than as the type of someone else. When we reduce people to patterns, violence is done to the image of God. The people injured in Butler County last evening, the people killed, including the perpetrator, had he but remembered it, were made in the image of God. Let’s not do that to one another. Let’s not lose our humanity.

It’s frightening, what happened last night. The attempted assassination of a former president and current candidate for the presidency. It’s frightening because mass shootings are frightening, and all too common in America today. The one in Butler County was not the only one to occur last evening. It’s frightening because it breaks the pattern of our image of ourselves as a nation intent on the peaceful transfer of power. There is a lot to work through here. It’s going to take some time, and some prayer, and some divine providence. But how often have we heard in the word of God, “Do not be afraid”? And St Paul has written elsewhere, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). For God is always able to find a new way, even when we see no way.

There is a lot going on in this morning’s readings. There is dancing, there is despising, there is death, there is adoption, there is the Ark of the Presence of the Living God. In the background, before the ecstatic dancing, there are months when David is afraid to bring the Ark home, and afraid of what new thing God might be doing with it, with him.

Then there’s Herod, and Herodias, and the intrigue of political alliances and family drama. At the end, there is the choice between vengeance, vindication, and integrity. Herod is afraid that if he goes back on his word to give the girl anything – anything – that she asks for, then he will look weak and foolish. But how strong a lesson would it have been for him to stand before his guests and say, “I will give you anything, but I will not become a murderer for you. Choose again.” If he had been willing, not to break his word, but to break it open to the grace of God, the capacity of God to find a new pattern, free from violence and vengeance. 

For us, and for the sake of our country, this is not a choice between the bullet and the ballot box. This is a choice between the bullet and our souls. This is a choice between politics and prophetic witness to the power of God’s way of love. Jesus had a choice: call down legions of angels or go to the cross, subvert the power of political violence by defeating death itself. Defeat hatred with the overpowering love of God. Overwhelm vengeance with the suffocating aroma of mercy. Break open the patterns of this world, and let in the kingdom of heaven.

When we forget to let God do a new thing, when we try to fit Jesus into old patterns, our patterns of vengeance and vindication, patterns and pigeon-holes that lead us to violence; when we do that, we forget that the cross broke apart the very structures of life and death; that his incarnation broke the rules of separation between humanity and divinity; we forget that God can make us new, too, if we need it, and we want it, if we will remember it, and have the courage to live it. 

There is no part of us, of me, or of you, that God has not created in God’s image. There is no part of us, nor of anyone, so tarnished that God cannot re-create it in God’s image. Even when we cannot see the way forward, that is only because there is no pattern or rule of our imagination that can contain the love of God. Jesus is the proof of it. He was, he is his own Person, and the God of our salvation.

Amen. 

Readings include the beheading of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-29); David dancing before the Ark (verses from 2 Samuel 6:1-19). The news of the day includes the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally.

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Expectations

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A brief sermon for an outdoor service at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

I’m always amused, and slightly bemused, by the way in which the evangelists describe Jesus’ visit to his hometown. “He could do no deed of power there,” they say, “ –  oh, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”

It makes you wonder what their expectations were. Laying hands on the sick and healing them sounds pretty powerful to me. No doubt, for the people healed, for their friends and families, it was life-changing. But to the gospel writer, apparently, no big deal.

It makes me wonder about the expectations we have for God, for the presence of Christ among us, for the actions of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

In Nazareth, Jesus encountered a few different reactions to his home visit. There were those who were just astonished and in wonderment at his teaching, his wisdom, his deeds of power. There were those who were offended that someone who should be just like them seemed different, spoke differently, acted strangely, never mind that it was all good, it was not right in their eyes. And then there were the few who humbled themselves to ask him for healing, who accepted him for who he was, without worrying about who he had been, or who he might become. And they were the ones whose lives were changed in that moment, in that encounter, on that visit. 

We’ve all been each of them, at one time or another, haven’t we? 

The times when we are caught up by the glory, the wonder, the sheer magnitude of God, of God reflected in creation, in the stars or in a sunset; God reflected in the experience of falling in love, of realizing the depths and breadth of being that love opens up to us; of God whispering to us in the night, wisdom that cuts through the noise of the world – we’ve known wonder, haven’t we?

Then there are the times when we wonder what God is doing, and why God is not acting according to our image, why God doesn’t do what we would do to this person, or in this situation; when we question whether God is really everything that God is cracked up to be; when we are offended by God’s mercy, or restraint, or ineffability. Never mind that God is good; we want God to be more like us.

And then there are those blessed moments when our eyes are opened, not dazzled by glory nor dimmed by cynicism, but open and honest, when in all humility we are able to come before God trusting in our Creator’s mercy, and Christ’s grace, and the power of the Holy Spirit to help and to heal us. It was those who trusted Jesus, who trusted in Jesus, who found him ready and powerful to save them.

And then he sent his disciples out to do the same, to offer his grace and his mercy and his healing power to anyone who might need it, to any suffering from sickness of body or spirit or soul, from the torment of disease or demons. It is not necessarily a life free from pain. Paul writes of the thorn in his flesh, the discomfort of being human, of remaining grounded in this frail and friable body. It is a life worth living, knowing the living God, knowing the love of God made manifest in Jesus. And still, Christ sends us to share what we have known, what we have found when we have been truly open to the grace of God.

We have all been there: dazzled by glory and disappointed in God; but it is when we can be humble in seeking out God, and open to God’s reality, Christ’s presence within us and beside us, that we find the grace we need. And that is powerful beyond words.

Amen. 

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Healing miracles

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; *
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication. (Psalm 130:1)

When I came home and got back here on Monday, I noticed that some of the t-shirts from our gun violence memorial out front were beginning to fall down. The wind and the weather was taking its toll. It was time to take the whole thing down before it fell down. The question became, what to do with those t-shirts that bore the stories of real people, real flesh and blood suffering. So I brought them into the church, and they are seated among us this morning, because these are members of our community, of this city of Euclid, each of them injured or killed here, one within a block of here, just since last year’s Guns to Gardens event. They are our neighbours.

In each of the healing stories interwoven into today’s Gospels, there is someone who is at their wits end, desperate for healing. The woman has spent everything she had, she has bankrupted herself with medical debt, and nothing is helping. She is getting worse. She has nothing left to lose, she thinks, by trying the power of this miracle man.

Jairus, leader of the synagogue, upstanding citizen throws himself into the dust at the feet of this itinerant preacher, because if he doesn’t do something, and soon, his daughter will die. He is desperate enough to prostrate himself in front of his congregation, in front of those whom he leads, and beg Jesus for help.

In one tight hour, Jesus has the community covered with his grace and mercy, from the highest official to the invisible woman; from the worship leader who makes his annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem to one who has not been to the temple in over twelve years.

Of course, it is not Jairus who is sick, but his daughter; still, Jairus is as much in need of Jesus’ healing as anyone, just as the family of the woman made miserable by her affliction need mercy, too. I wonder if that is why Jesus calls her out of the crowd. She is already cured, but he wants the community to see and hear that she is healed, that she, their beloved daughter, is whole, that he affirms her actions and her faith, so that they may begin to heal their relationship with her. So that they may also show her mercy.

As for Jairus, he has risked his reputation on this roving street preacher and miracle-worker. The people outside his home laugh at Jesus and his optimism that the girl’s life can be restored. Jesus does not let Jairus’ faith down; but more, and unasked, he will not allow the girl to become the source of gossip and stories that might harm her reputation: he tells them that she is not dead, only sleeping, because he does not want the stench of death to follow her around the marketplace once she is well.

Jesus understands and demonstrates that healing has not only to do with the body, but with the soul, and with the heart, and with the community.

I don’t know what faith lies in the soul of the Surgeon General, but I noticed this call to action at the close of his advisory on gun violence as a public health crisis, published earlier this week: it will take … the collective commitment of the nation – to turn the tide on the crisis of firearm violence in America. 

Experts and miracle workers, first responders and medics, community violence interrupters and kindergarten teachers each have their part to play in preventing and reducing the harm from gun violence; but it will take a change in the heart of our community to bring healing to a wound that has gone toxic. It will require repentance, a hard look at where we are going and the willingness to turn aside to Jesus, to mercy, to compassion. It will require humility, from the foremost leaders to the secret hurting souls. It will require faith, that things can change, that we can change, that we are worthy to be healed.

Are we desperate enough, keen enough, eager enough, yet?

Let’s look for the good news, though. Jesus supports our efforts toward healing, whether they be grand gestures or creeping, shuffling steps through the crowd. Jesus affirms our faith that things can be better, and that he will help make it so. For the sake of Jesus, we are gathered not as individuals wounded by violence, but as a community pulling together to heal one another’s hurts, to pray and to salve with balm the troubled spirit.

This month I have been participating in a blacksmithing marathon, part of the RAWTools 44k, a minute for each of the 44k+ lives lost to gun violence in America in 2023. By myself, I think I’ve put in barely over one thousand minutes; but between the whole community of makers, we’ve achieved well over 44 thousand. A month of minutes dedicated to the victims of gun violence, and committed to bringing healing to a horrible situation. 

I wrote to the organizer earlier this week:

No one could do it alone. No one can keep up the heat and the hammer for a month without rest, without breaking. … No one seems to have the answer to this culture of violence, of a weaponized life that can only point toward more death and destruction. 

But in community, we can do more. In community, we can create more than can be imagined in one place. In community, the tightness of our time, the tiredness of our arms, the aching of our hearts need not seem small against the Goliath of gun violence. In community, we are each contributing to a whole movement toward peace, one preached by the prophets, beating swords into ploughshares, guns into garden trowels.

My friends, we are the body of Christ. We may be a tiny fingernail on the body of Christ, but we have more healing power in that fingernail than the world has in all of its fine metal and methods. We can make a difference. For the sake of our neighbours, for the sake of ourselves, our homes and our families, as St Paul encourages, it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something– now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. (2 Corinthians 8:11)

Healing is within our reach, if we stay within the reach of Jesus.

Amen.

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio, at the end of Gun Violence Awareness month, on the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B Proper 8

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