Witness

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for All Saints Sunday

We all know about Lazarus, don’t we? Lazarus has become a byword for those who return from the dead. In paleontology, Lazarus names those species that disappear from the fossil record as though extinct, only to reappear maybe even millions of years later in the same form. Even in contemporary biology, the name Lazarus adheres to those we thought were lost, but that we find again. Everybody knows about Lazarus, but paradoxically, we know next to nothing about Lazarus.

We know from the biblical record that Lazarus lived in Bethany. We know that he had two sisters, but we don’t know if he was older, younger, or in between them. While his sisters give voice in the gospels, none of their brother’s words are recorded. Despite later legend, we really know nothing of his parents, whether he was ever married, had children, took lovers. We don’t know if he was a particularly good man, or a particularly grumpy man, or a particularly ordinary man. We don’t know what he did, what he said, how he lived.

The thing that everyone knows about Lazarus, though, is that he spent four days in the tomb before Jesus called him out. That is what he is famous for. That is why everyone knows Lazarus’ name.

Lazarus is a saint of the church not for anything that he did, but for what the love of God, whom we know as Jesus, did for him.

It’s quite a thought, isn’t it? We call the church as it is gathered together the saints of God. We are the saints of God, but not because of anything that we have done. Not because we got up and showed up and sat in church on a Sunday morning. Not even because we let the other person go through the door ahead of us, or resisted the temptation to honk our horn at the person sitting two seconds too long at the green light in front of us. Not because of what we believe, or fail to believe, or hold in tension, neither believing nor disbelieving, but because of what the love of God, whom we know as Jesus, has done for us.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that we are free to slam the door in the face of another, or succumb to road rage. On the contrary, it means that we are called to live as saints in the world, but not for fear of punishment or death, but because of love, because of gratitude, because of mercy.

We are called to live as saints in the world because, after he had regained control of his emotions – for he was deeply and gravely disturbed by the grief of those around him, and the grief he had on their behalf, and the troubling and tumultuous effects of love – after he had regained his composure and his voice, Jesus looked up to heaven and spoke aloud. He said, “I know you always hear me, but I need these witnesses also to know that you and I are one in love and in life.” He spoke his prayer aloud for the sake of those listening, to bear witness to the power of the mercy of God.

So it is that what the love of God, whom we know as Jesus, what Jesus has done for us is not for our sakes alone, but so that others may see and hear and know what it is to experience the mercy of God, to feel the power of the life-giving Creator, the liberation of the Saviour, the fire of the Spirit. Our new Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said in his sermon yesterday that Jesus left the miracle unfinished, telling the crowd to step forward and unbind Lazarus, and set him free, finish setting him free from death and the tomb. This is the work of the saints, isn’t it, to bear witness to the love of God in the world, and to make it manifest. To make it real. To make it human. To bring it near, as though the very kingdom of heaven were at hand.

And we do not need to be especially good nor especially wise nor especially gifted nor especially anything in order to bear witness to what the love of God, what Jesus has done for us. Lazarus – what did he do? What could he do? Only hear the voice of Jesus from beyond the door of the tomb, and shuffle his way toward it. So we have only hear the love of God, and make our unwieldy way toward it.

My friends, we live in untrusting, unyielding, unforgiving times. We are weighed down with many worries and bound by many ties. But Jesus is calling to us, to bear witness with Lazarus, to bear witness by our very lives to the unstoppable, unconquerable justice, which is the mercy, which is the love of God. Jesus is calling to us, and if we will hear him,

It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for God, so that God might save us.
This is the Love of God for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in Love’s salvation. (Isaiah 25:9, amended)

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Jesus wept

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

To suffer the indignity of grief, 
that utter exhaustion of the spirit 
that has sucked hope from the air 
too long after the dew has dried; 
the kind of defeat that drives you 
to your knees and elbows, heaving 
with the ground, troubling 
the very earth upon its axis; 
so it is to be the Son of Man. So, 
casting your eyes and voice to heaven 
you dare God not to listen, 
hurl your ultimatum: 
come out now 
from the shadow of death. 

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Ransom

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

I know that you know Aesop’s fable of the sun and the wind:

The north wind and the sun were having a “conversation” about who was stronger, better, greater.

The north wind blustered, “I’m obviously strong. I can blow the anything off anyone.”

“Is that so?” answered the sun.

“Anyone can see,” the north wind continued huffily, “that I am the greatest. I can blow anything you like into kingdom come.”

“Is that so?” replied the sun.

“I’ll prove it,” the north wind pouted out its cheeks ready to blow. “Any time you like.”

“Is that so,” smiled the sun. Then it continued, “Look! See down there that traveller, with the cloak and the staff. I tell you what, whichever of us can get his cloak off him, that one will be acknowledged as the greater.”

The north wind agreed readily. Thinking this was its game, it blustered and blew and huffed and whistled, but the traveller, disturbed and chilled, only pulled his cloak tighter. The more the north wind assailed him, the more closely the traveller wrapped himself in his cloak, as though he might blow away with it if he dared to let go.

Eventually, the traveller sat down for a rest beneath a tree. The north wind also needed a breather. So the sun took over.

First, it shone gently through the leaves, dappling the traveller into soft dreams. As the beams grew stronger, and the traveller more relaxed, he began to loose his grip on his cloak. As the sun cleared the tree’s canopy and shone fully on the traveller, he shrugged off his cloak, folded it up, and put it in his pack to use as a pillow.

***

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. The Son came to serve, to warm and melt the hearts of the heartless, to overcome the coldness of sin with love.

I am reminded by a preacher’s podcast called The Lectionary Lab that the language of ransom can cause some theological problems for some of us. So let’s be clear: God is not a hostage-taker. Jesus is not saving us from God; Jesus is God, who loves the world and its creatures so much that God became human to set us free, to show us the way of freedom, the way of love.

God is not a hostage-taker. We, like James and John, like their aggrieved and angry companions, tie ourselves up in knots, bind ourselves to ambition and external recognition, envy and rage – these are not the attributes of God.

Left to our own devices, to our own imaginations, to ourselves – well, the devil makes play for idle hands and inflated egos. James and John, the anger of the disciples, left to spiral like a cyclonic wind, their bloviating would only cause them to wrap their errors more closely around themselves. If Jesus had agreed that they could sit at his left and right hands, the next argument would be who got right and who got left!

But the ransom of love, the profligate and abundant outpouring of love, that is the ransom that frees us, not from God, but from sin and its consequences in and for us.  

When Jesus asks James and John, can you be baptized with my baptism, isn’t he remembering that moment in the river, with his cousin John, who said, “Should I baptize you?” Isn’t he remembering that immediately afterward the Spirit drove him into the desert where he fasted until he was famished, until he could dream of stones becoming bread, until he was tempted to simply grasp the power of the world, and let it go to the devil, rather than wait a minute longer for a single sip of water?

But he resisted. He stayed true to his journey of love. In the desert and on the cross, he defeated the devil and all of its evil ways. He put to death in his body, through fasting and through death, the sin of the world.

When he asks James and John, can you drink the cup I drink? He is asking them, can you, too, absorb the pain of this world, the pain caused by its overweening ambition and selfish pride, can you absorb that pain and turn it to healing? Because that is what resurrection requires. That is the ransom.

The disciples, the twins, say, “Yes, Lord, we’ll get right on that,” but they still don’t understand. We still don’t get it most of the time ourselves. We get caught up in power plays and righteous anger and we imagine that God wants us to fight for God.

But what if instead, God wants us to love for Them, to warm the hearts of those around us with the love of God, to melt the armour off them, as Jesus, God’s Son, has melted our coating of sin until, at least from time to time, the glory of mercy shines through.

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Greatness

Posted on October 17, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

The body remembers, quakes away a frisson
as though the cool river ran still from your shoulders
beneath the treacherous sun, hollows out a growl
as though still hungry enough to break your teeth on stone,
suffer the delirium of flight, temptation to succumb
to the delegations of power and principality in return
for the bread of mercy; palms the smooth river rock
that once became a crumb gathered from a thousand
leftover from the fast that became a feast. All this
in the briefest lowering of the lashes, blinking away
astonishment that anyone would seek a baptism
of such dereliction, rinsing away glamour,
as chaotic and pluripotent as the waters over which
your Spirit brooded before creation began.

And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.”  Mark 10:37-39

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Worth it

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

It’s not about the money – or at least, it’s not only about the money. It’s about everything that the money represents. 

As I have said before when considering this text,[i] money buys prestige, reputation, name recognition. How many impoverished famous people can you name? How many billionaires? Money buys airtime, advertising. Money raises profiles, puts faces in front of the public. Money talks. Money buys privilege, which means, literally, private law. You have heard it said that there is one rule for the rich, and another for the rest. Maybe a democratic society tries to close the gap, but we know that if we were in trouble, we would do better if we had money to bail ourselves out, buy ourselves sound legal advice. Money brings privilege. Money buys influence. It buys access to the people of power; it buys their attention. A word or two at a fundraising event. Money is a lever to move the world. 

So no, it’s not just about the money. It’s about that young man having to tell his father and his mother that he no longer wants to take over the family business, that it’s not going to be as all-consuming for him as it was for them, that he wants something better, something more. It’s about telling his friends that he won’t be coming to dinner on the town Thursday night because he’s going to be volunteering down at the soup kitchen instead. It’s about suffering their jeers and their mutterings as he walks away from the hedonistic playground of the rich and the famous. It’s about risking shedding the protections of privilege and walking around in his own skin. It’s about a whole new way of life, and it’s going to hurt, not only his pocketbook. He has to ask himself, is Jesus worth it?

Jesus looked at him and loved him. That’s the line. That’s the hook. That’s the promise: Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus didn’t want to destroy the young man’s life. He wanted to show him something better, something deeper, something more. He wanted to show him the love of God.

A colleague asked earlier this week, what’s your one thing? What is the one thing that keeps you from going all in with Jesus? What is it I need to let go of, with all of its baggage and weight and freight, if I am going to travel with Jesus?

It may be something tangible, like money or overly-prized possessions. It may be an addiction to something that is diverting our love away from its proper source and end. It may be more elusive, like the culture of busyness and time poverty that keeps us from spending time with the one who loved us into being and who loves us through eternity. It may be the mask that we wear in order to appear to ourselves and to the world as though we were self-sufficient, as though we didn’t need saving. It may be something we need God to take for us: some grief or pain that we need healing from in order to see past it.

Whatever it is, whatever we are relying on to save us, to make us good, or good enough – if it is not the love of God, it is not good, it is not enough, for no one is good but God alone, says Jesus. 

Jesus looks at each of us, you, me, and loves us. That’s the line. That’s the hook. That’s the promise.

I went to a wedding yesterday. Two young women made promises that can’t possibly be kept without giving something up, whether it’s the upper hand in an argument or the need to know that everything will be alright. Promises that cannot be kept except through the grace of love, through the mercy of God, with the support of a loving community.

It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle – yet God shrank Godself into a human body, a human soul, a human being, in order to reach us. It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle – yet God reaches through the eye of the storm to grasp our hands and pull us through. It is harder for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle, yet Jesus looked that young man in the eye, and he loved him.

The young man is trying to be good enough for Jesus, without giving away the farm, and the disciples worry whether they have done enough, given away enough to follow Jesus, but Jesus tells them that all they have to do, all they need to know is that God is good, and that God loves them. To trust in that love instead of in the powers and privileges of a corrupt and sinful generation. 

What is it that keeps us from living in the skin that God created us in, living into the love into whose mould God poured us, living into the intimacy with which Jesus looks at us, and loves us?

Is it worth it?

[i] https://rosalindhughes.com/2012/10/14/year-b-proper-23-sermon/

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Earth and angels

Posted on October 6, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them, 
or mortals, that you care for them? 

You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; 
you have crowned them with glory and honor, 
subjecting all things under their feet:

“All sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea …”[i]

The author of the letter to the Hebrews quotes from Psalm 8, and Psalm 8 refers to the stories of creation in Genesis, in which God gave the human authority and dominion over all of God’s creatures; in which God delegated the loving care with which God had made every good and living thing, delegated that love and protection to the creature made most like an angel on earth, most closely in the image of the living and loving God.

My friends, I don’t know about you, but I am no angel. This language of subjection, of dominion, the language of our Eucharistic prayer, in which we remember that God made us to rule and to serve all of creation: this language makes me deeply uncomfortable. To serve, sure, I can get down with that; but to rule? Please don’t put me in charge. I don’t think that I am capable. I don’t think that I am worthy.

But here’s the thing: it’s right there in the holy Bible that God gave us, gave humanity, the responsibility, the role, the power, to govern God’s good and beautiful and bountiful creation, in the name and image of its living and loving Creator. Part of what it means to be human is that we, like it or not, for better or for worse, affect every other piece of creation with every move we make, every decision we break, every breath we take.

And we’re good with some of that, right? We have our pet blessing today, because we love to live in harmony with the birds of the air, and the wild beasts of the field, and the small creatures we have invited into our homes and our hearts. We get that love of God that named every living thing when we tickle the ears of our furry family members, and we weep for their trials as though they were human. We get what it is like to be other, and to be connected, and to love across categories of creation.

But we are less good with the pieces that take real sacrifice. Do we respect the dignity of the mountains, are we as careful not to harm the forests as the trees, do we consider our exploitation of the environment part of the loving kindness which God has delegated to us, or are we content to be powerful, and to forget the charge of protection that comes with it? Do we even think about facing up to, let alone curbing our addiction to oil before opening up new habitats to destroy with the drill?

What happens when we reap the harvest of environmental destruction that we have sown? Are we willing to accept climate refugees and call them our neighbours, and share our resources, without reserve, without resentment, because it is, for many of us, sheer dumb luck that we live in a place with fewer storms than many others? It is not because we have managed our environment better, polluted less, sacrificed any more for God’s good and beautiful and bountiful creation than anyone else. Far from it.

When we look at the devastation of the storms over North Carolina, when we consider the suffering of our neighbours, we should be moved to help, to contribute to their care, but we should also confess that we are part of a human race that has fallen short of its responsibility to care for and tend and nurture creation as God intended for us to do.

There are no easy answers to the predicament in which we find ourselves. But denial is not an option. God created humanity to be the stewards, the servants of creation, and it is part of who we are, made in God’s image, to care. We are made in the image of love, and if we set our hearts to love, as God loves us, then we will find ourselves to be only a little less than angels. 

Amen.

[i] Hebrews 2:6-8; Psalm 8:8-9

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For the hardness of your heart

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

For the times you turned your face
to reflect in the silver of idols,
the glittering teeth of that which dreams
but which is not God;
for the sake of forgiving,
I let you go, so that
upon awakening you might find me
anew,
as though you never were faithless,
as though I were never lost to you.
For the hardness of your heart
bruised me, who cannot be moved
yet time and age again
reaches for you in the night.

Mark 10:2-16; Year B Proper 22. Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.

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What is the church for?

Posted on September 29, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

This is an approximation of the sermon I delivered this morning

What is church for? This is what James the letter-writer is talking about – what he has been talking about for some time now. 

We know that we come here to worship, to stand, kneel, sing, and sigh before God, to receive the blessed Sacrament, to be renewed by its ineffable grace. For healing and renewal, prayer and praise, redemption, community, comfort. But there is a reason that we do it all together. 

James says that if any has need of healing, they should call the church to them. If any has need to give thanksgiving, they should sing – and you know he didn’t mean in the shower. He speaks of the power of prayer, but also of the necessity of community. We are here for one another, because we follow Jesus, and he was here for us, for the sake of us; so we are here for one another. 

I want to tell you a story from a church long ago and far away. Thirty-eight years ago on the last Sunday in May, I came home from church to find the house empty. I knew immediately that something was wrong. I called the hospital, and the nurse on the ward told me that my mother had been taken down for emergency open heart surgery. My father and brother had just been in; the hospital called them to come quickly before they took her down, in case it was their last chance to see her.

When they came home, I asked why they had not come to get me, too. My father said, “The service had already started.” It never crossed my father’s mind that it would be ok – in fact, a good and faithful thing – to come and get me and my prayers out of the pew after service had started, so that I could join them on their pilgrimage to the hospital.

My mother survived that surgery, thank God, but I have never quite got over the idea that it could be so socially mortifying to walk into a church service – a service dedicated to the gracious and merciful God – once it had started that I would have missed saying goodbye. 

I think, and I hope, that my father was wrong. I believe that had he opened those heavy oak doors and stepped inside, Mr Evans, the churchwarden, would first have stepped quickly forward with a prayerbook and hymnal; then, he would have seen my father’s face, and he would have asked, “What’s wrong?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he would have continued, “I’ll get Rosalind,” because Mr Evans was a retired school principal, so he watched out for us teenagers, and he knew exactly where I was sitting. He wouldn’t have thought twice about the propriety of interrupting the psalm. I know that. But my father didn’t.

How do we let people know that we are here for them? Not, as James said a couple of weeks ago, only if they are properly turned out and prompt in their arrival, if they know their way around the service, and sing in tune. I love that in my twelve years with you, there have always been people who come late, leave early, get up and stretch mid-service, act like human beings in the middle of divine worship. Just as Jesus became human with us. And that matters, so much, that we can be human in church, drawn toward the one in whose image we all share. How else do we let people know that we are here if they are sick, if they are suffering, if they are singing, if they are sighing, that they can be human here? 

How do we let them know that just as Jesus excelled in being interrupted, we are here to welcome sinners and saints alike? How do we let the hurting and hopeful know what church is for?

We follow Jesus, and he became human so that we would know that God is with us; so that we would know that God gets what it’s like to be human; so that we could be human with each other, and in doing so, share the love of God not only amongst ourselves, but with the world.

Amen.

Text: James 5:13-20, Year B Proper 21

Featured image: Jaggery / All Saints Church, Penarth, via Wikimedia Commons,  CC BY-SA 2.0

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If salt has lost its saltiness

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

If my salt has lost its saltiness 
will the sun still rise in the morning? 
If my fire has lost its spark 
will the moon still hang pale in the afternoon sky? 
There are days, Lord, not to get salty 
with you, when I might feel 
as though the ocean has rolled me 
and the pestle has crushed me 
and I am granulated, smattered, dissolved. 
And not to get heated, but was it not you 
who promised not to break the bruised reed, 
nor smother the smouldering wick, 
so that when I am at my wick’s end, 
you understand, it is you –  
when I am not worth my salt, 
it is you I rely on to season me with light, 
with spice. If salt has lost its saltiness, 
how can you season it? With respect, 
my Lord and my God, 
I think that is my question to you.

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” – Mark 9:49-50

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Succession

Posted on September 22, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

I must admit, with the news and all, I couldn’t help wondering about whether the disciples were actually arguing about the succession plan. After all, Mark says that they didn’t understand when Jesus told him about his death and coming resurrection, and that they were afraid to ask. There’s little not to understand about dying; rising to life again – that’s probably the part that gave them pause.

So if they didn’t understand that this was a new way of being, a new way of dying, a new way of living – perhaps they fell back on the old arguments about who would be the next leader, who was the best qualified to step into Jesus’ sandals, who was the greatest. No wonder they didn’t want to tell him what they’d been talking about.

Of course, with Jesus, it’s all new.

“Look,” said Jesus, scooping up a spare small child as it scurried by; “Look. This is what greatness looks like.”

He sat on the floor with the little one and its grubby little feet kicking at him. The child peered into the ears of the Son of Man, and pulled the beard of the Son of God. The child rubbed its snotty nose on Jesus’ shoulder. It wriggled and began to snivel a little.

The disciples waited for Jesus to elaborate, to draw some great lesson, some marvellous metaphor out of this admittedly very physical spiritual encounter with the child. There must be something special about it, they thought.

But Jesus continued to sit on the floor, cradling the little one, wincing whenever it caught its chubby little fingers in his hair and pulled; making soothing, sighing, songful noises whenever it became fretful; like a woman, like a nursemaid, like a mother.

The child’s own mother, a woman of no consequence, one of the servants of the household, hung around the edges of the room a little bashfully, watching as the most honoured guest of all time whispered a lullaby to her drooling child. As the little one’s eyelids drooped, Jesus murmured quietly to his disciples, who had to lean in to hear him,

“Whoever can welcome such a child as this in my name embraces me. And whoever can embrace and welcome me has opened his heart and mind and body and soul to God.”

The disciples, still a little out of sorts from their argument about greatness, could not find it in themselves to dispute or question Jesus’ teaching, since no one wanted to waken the now-sleeping infant who still rested on the knees of the Messiah, who still sat on the floor, and whose right foot had now quite definitely fallen asleep along with the baby.

And now Jesus was stuck on the floor with a sleeping baby, his hands full, his feet with no feeling left in them, and the child’s mother had gone back to work. There was nothing for it but to continue to wait on the baby, serving it with patience and with love.*

 

It’s the way not of great power, but of great love. It’s the way not of great strength, but of great service. It’s not the way of might, but of mercy.

Instead of a winner-takes-all system, Jesus’ race is about looping back around the slow kid trailing way behind the back of the pack and lifting that child onto his shoulders like a champion. Instead of fighting violence with violence, he turns his cheek slowly, looks hate in the eye, and says, “Is that really the best that you can do?” He blesses the meek, the mournful, the poor in spirit, the peacemakers. It’s a whole new world.

The disciples did not understand, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant. That was their mistake, not that they didn’t get it right away – who could imagine resurrection? – but that they let their fear, their embarrassment, their greatness get in the way of coming to Jesus as a curious child, asking, “Why?”

But Jesus is always ready to receive the curious, the coy, the confused child in need of comfort and wisdom.

I don’t know about you, but the news around us lately makes me curious and confused, and not a little in need of comfort and encouragement. I wonder where resurrection – where new life – is to be found in the midst of old arguments and enmities, age-old fights over who is the greatest, and who should succeed.

 And it’s ok to be confused, and bewildered, and to wonder what he means by resurrection, and when the new life will dawn. But let’s not make the mistake of the disciples who were afraid to turn back to Jesus to ask for help, for encouragement, for enlightenment, who fell instead into their own old patterns.

If instead we overcome our hesitation and humble ourselves to ask God for guidance, for wisdom, for forgiveness, as St James suggests, seeking gentleness instead of greatness, and peace instead of pride, then “a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

And if, remembering our baptismal covenant, we can extend that approach to all in whom we seek and serve Christ, remembering that every person is made in the image of God, if we can, like Jesus, let our feet fall asleep not from disuse but because we are carrying the burden of another child of God for an hour or so; if we can put aside our need to be right, to be great, to win for a hot minute, maybe more; then perhaps we will find what resurrection means, new life, the prize of mercy, the winning ways of love.

 

*https://rosalindhughes.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/the-great-and-the-good/

Year B Proper 20: Mark 9:30-37

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