Year C Proper 14: faith, hope, and a promise

Posted on August 7, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A promise delayed, but not deferred ...

You know all of those charts – we’ve all seen them – showing how much wealth is in the world, how much food, how much of God’s good plenty to go around? Enough that no one should be hungry, if only we could learn how to share. Enough that no one should feel that their life simply doesn’t matter.

Jesus is often obscure in his messages to his disciples. Like any good teacher, he has an annoying habit of offering more questions than answers. But not this time.

“Sell your possessions, and give alms,” he says. You can’t get much clearer than that. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

“Ah, but we live in the real world,” we say. Have we lost faith in the coming of the kingdom of God?

“Faith,” writes the author of the letter to the Hebrews, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

What do we, living in the real world, consider articles of faith? I hope for an end to ISIS activities, and the diminishment of violence and violent rhetoric around the world; but I do not place my faith, my hope, in politics. My faith is in God, and the living Christ.

I do not see too much progress in the reconciliation of races, in the elimination of racism, in the equity of opportunity, and privilege, and power. But after all, my faith is not in history, nor in legislation, no matter how worthy and important. My faith is in the Spirit of God that moved upon the waters, bringing life into being, one life, and it was good. My hope is in the goodness of God, and of God’s kingdom.

It helps that I have a comfortable life in which to wait, I acknowledge that. But I would be more than foolish to place my faith in the stock markets, or the invisible finger on the scale.

There are those, the letter writer adds, who died without seeing their promise fulfilled. We know about that, too. We know about the promise delayed.

The choice that our faith offers us is whether to continue in hope, knowing that God is good and will come through, whether in our lifetime or another; or whether we turn cynical, and fall asleep, or turn away, or try ourselves to play God.

What happens when the promise is delayed?

The example of Abraham is not as instructive as we are sometimes given to understand. He is held up as a model of faith, reckoned to him as righteousness; but in the face of delay, and a crumbling decay of hope, he and Sarah decided to edit God’s promise, and design a detour so that they might achieve the same means by another way.

God promised that Abraham and Sarah would have a son, even as old as they were, and that this would be a sign of God’s promise. But at a certain point, Abraham and Sarah had a conversation in which they agreed that this was ridiculous, impossible, could never happen. And so they decided to use Hagar.

They decided to use Hagar.

Hagar was a slave. She was Sarah’s slave. Maybe she was well-fed, well-housed, perhaps well-treated, until her mistress decided otherwise and tormented her into running away. No matter; what is abundantly clear is that Hagar was a slave, and at this point in the story, she became Abraham’s sex slave, and Sarah’s reproductive slave.

Sarah and Abraham would not wait on God’s promise, they would not keep faith with the covenant, and they used and abused Hagar because hope was not enough for them. They decided to play God with the promise and with this poor Egyptian woman, and I have to say, I think they got it wrong.

Fortunately, my faith is not in Abraham and Sarah, but in the living God and the new covenant that Christ has made with and for us.

Because that is just where Abraham went wrong. God’s promise was not a fairy godmother’s wish for Abraham and Sarah, the wave of a magic wand. It was a covenant. It was part of a relationship which said, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

Of course, God remained faithful to the promise, despite Abraham and Sarah’s detour, despite our unfaithfulness:

“I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

People of the kingdom of God, in which the meek inherit the earth, and the poor are blessed, and the prisoners, the slaves, the captives are set free. In which swords are beaten into ploughshares, and war is no longer studied, except as a subject of ancient history.

We meet this morning the day after the anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons as an act of war.

We meet in a world still waiting for the ploughshares to outnumber the guns.

We meet at a time when the meek are mocked for harbouring hope, and the poor are as likely to be blamed as blessed.

What do we do when that promise is delayed?

We know that we are part of the promise, that we have a part to play in God’s plan, in God’s kingdom. Whatever we do to act on the promise of the kingdom of God, it must be for all of God’s people. We cannot focus on the promise to ourselves and forget our neighbours, much worse use them for our own purposes.

Abraham and Sarah used Hagar to further their part in the promise at her expense. They forgot that she had her own relationship, her own covenant with the living God, just as valid and vivid as theirs. God spoke to Hagar directly more than once. She was not expendable, exploitable, in God’s economy.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Risk believing in the promises of God, says Jesus. Have faith. Risk the faith that the promise is not for us alone, but also for Hagar, that there is enough of God’s mercy for everyone. Spend hugely on the welfare of others, and know that there is enough for all. Do not forget to bless the poor, nor to lean into the wisdom of the meek.

Have faith that God will be true to the covenant, be assured of the kingdom of God, sight unseen. Live now as people of the living God, children of the promise.

Follow in the way of the cross, knowing that only such boundless sacrificial love rebounds as glory.

Would that this world could see such faith.

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Collateral

Posted on August 6, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

I do not know what will grow, whether

the markets will bustle with plenty,

or if the barometer’s fall will pressure

them into silence ahead of the storm;

I know that this morning a child

said her father’s name for the first time,

and another broke her mother’s heart,

while in between, the fierce starlings fought

over tiny seeds fallen from the feeder

that you had hung out for the sparrows.

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Year C Proper 11: echoes of eternity

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Vanity, all is vanity: A brief reflection on the lawn.

Ludwig van Beethoven was, for the latter portion of his life, profoundly deaf. A musician to his core, he could so easily have fallen into cynicism and despair (and often did); but he had an overarching conviction that he had a purpose – a God-given purpose – in his art that transcended his present suffering. Also, he had great affection for his brothers.

He wrote to them:

…from childhood my heard and mind were disposed to the gentle feelings of good will, I was even eager to accomplish great deeds, but reflect now that for six years I have been a hopeless case, aggravated by senseless physicians, cheated year after year in the hope of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady …

what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such inidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life – only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce …

Patience – it is said I must now choose for my guide ….

Divine One thou lookest into my inmost soul, thou knowest it, thou knowest that love of man and desire to do good live therein…

The writer of Ecclesiastes tended liberally towards the attitude of cynicism and despair. Yet even he, when pushed, agreed that in the end, the overarching theme of God’s creation supercedes our little place within it.

Jesus quotes Ecclesiastes in his story of the rich man, who seeks to “eat, drink, and be merry.” He confirms the source of our cynicism, when we live only for ourselves; that when we live only to ourselves all is vanity. There is no goal that may sustain us past its completion, or its defeat, or beyond the knowledge of our certain death, if we hoard ourselves into this life alone.

But what transcends such cynicism is God. What transcends is love, enduring relationship. What transcended for Beethoven was music, art, creativity, those things which bridge the chasm between here and eternity, give us glimpses of might be, beyond our sight, our understanding, our hearing.

When the brother came to ask Jesus to divide up the family inheritance, Jesus refused. He would not divide their spoils only to leave them spoilt and divided. He wanted them to find something beyond the division of baubles and come together as brothers, in the recognition that what they share: one lifetime, infinite possibilities under God; that these things are far greater than what they divide up.

In the final years of his life, profoundly deaf and increasingly ill, Beethoven composed his ninth and final symphony. Undefeated by life’s cynicism, he included in it a choral setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy. He never heard it sung, but he directed its premier, to the deep joy and satisfaction of those with ears left to hear.

 

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She’s leaving home

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

My eldest child left home this week. It was a lot less dramatic than you might think.

Just as the act of birthing her was fraught with all of the emotion under the sun, but revolved in the moment around the contracting of muscles and the monitoring of heartbeats, so on Monday we moved furniture and boxes, panted, ached, and ate lunch.

She had some things to finish up, so she said she would follow me home.

By the time she was ready, I had been called to attend to the next child’s travelling needs, and while I was gone, her new life came and swept her away to Buffalo.

Of course, she hasn’t really lived at home, as such, for a while; but I felt a difference entering that empty room yesterday, with boxes to stack and store, to wait for her call. There was a falling away; the room had dropped its guard. I no longer needed to pause for permission to enter. She had moved on.

She was born for this: to find new love, seek out adventure and meaningful work, to forge for herself a life she can embody.

She said that she would like a new crockpot, one big enough to cook meals for the two of them. I hope I get the right one. It is my small offering to lay at her feet, of peace, of love, of faith in her future, because what more, now, can I do?

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Ruined – a memoir by Ruth Everhart: Review

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way first: yes, I have met the author. We are both members of an online group of (mostly) female clergy-types called the RevGalBlogPals. We both contributed to a book edited by the RevGals director, Martha Spong, called There’s A Woman in the Pulpit. And that’s how I came to be in possession of an Advanced Reader Copy of Ruth Everhart’s memoir, Ruined, provided by Tyndale House Publishers.

I met Ruth irl at the Festival of Faith & Writing this spring. We were at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. To tell the truth, I was a little intimidated. The seats she had reserved for our online group of connected strangers were in the middle of the front row. She seemed to be surrounded by people she knew. She was confident and competent and firm on her feet, seemingly on home ground.

The college scene of Grand Rapids is a fairly major character in the book; reading the background, it becomes remarkable that this woman has found such (apparent) peace in her “homecoming” here. But her memoir is, in the end, more about redemption than rape, after all.

A difficult thing to narrate, such an intrusion, invasion, injury as rape. The level of detail which Ruth provides is objectively astonishing. As an aid to reading the story of that pivotal event, it is perversely comforting. It reduces evil to its banality. It slows the pace enough for this reader, at least, somewhat to catch her breath.

The stories of Ruth’s struggle to reconcile her rape with her faith in a providential God, and the paths and rabbit holes down which her head and heart lead her, are told with little retrospect, so that at the end, we find ourselves blinking a little in the unexpected light of a life that is good after all, if imperfect; certainly not ruined. Perhaps that is the author’s way of conveying miracle, or grace.

I am one of those horrid readers who, at a certain point, has to flick to a few pages short of the end, just to be sure of her destination. Here I found Ruth’s letter to her daughters, explaining some of her purpose in writing this book. This was the retrospect, the hindsight which, for me, tidied the narrative into a comfortable structure for an uncomfortable content. The decision not to begin the book with this perspective, though, allows the reader to walk more closely, more fully with Ruth through her journey past the spectre of ruin to the spirit of redemption, and to appreciate more thoroughly her fortitude, and forthrightness as she “continues to work out [her] own salvation with fear and trembling,” as she herself quotes from Philippians 2:12.

I am still a little awed by the author, but I think for good reason. Telling this kind of truth is a feat of remarkable faith and courage. I hope that by reading this book, a little of that might rub off on me.

Ruined, by Ruth Everhart, is published by Tyndale House Publishers this coming Tuesday, August 1. It can be ordered from the publisher, from Amazon, or from your favourite book seller today. This review refers to an advance copy that may differ from the final product.

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Psalmbird

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

At last week’s Summer Music Camp, we learned all about David the songwriter (the one from the Bible, as we had constantly to disambiguate).

We learned to sing Psalm 23 in childlike form. We listened to Kiri te Kanawa singing “O for the wings of a dove,” Mendelssohn’s beautiful response to Psalm 55.

Today’s Morning Prayer included the verse, “I will dwell in your house for ever; I will take refuge under the cover of your wings” (Psalm 61:4), which reminded me of the second verse of our own little Psalmbird refrain that we learned on dovewing day last Wednesday.

In case you need a little ditty to hum while you watch the seagulls circle and the eagles disappear over the horizon, here is the Epiphany Summer Music Camp version of David’s psalmbirds.psalmbird

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Year C Proper 12: Teach us to pray

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus gave a couple of different words of advice to his disciples about prayer. In one, he tells his disciples to lock themselves behind closed doors in secret, to pray privately to God, and there is a place for that in each of our hearts. But here, too, he speaks aloud, invites his disciples to “us” and “we,” to share their prayer, to share his prayer, together. That is what we do on Sunday mornings.

It is not the silent prayer of our locked hearts, but it is not, either, the loud, showy prayer of the Pharisee. It is a tuning of our hearts and voices to one another, as the Body of Christ working in harmony, to lift our prayers to God with angels and archangels, with all the company of heaven, with the person standing next to us.

We don’t use the exact words that we read in this morning’s Gospel. Over time, we have become used to traditional forms, renderings of the prayer that Jesus taught us, which we can recite together anywhere, almost without thinking. Almost without thinking.

Sometimes, a change of translation: ancient to modern, musical to spoken, choral to plainsong, trips us up, and we are tempted to fall away.

It can be difficult to adjust the habits of a lifetime to the gathered community in the moment; but we are called by Jesus not only to pray in the privacy of our locked hearts, but to open our prayers to one another, “us” and “we.”

There are many ways to pray as Jesus taught his disciples, and each community has its own tradition, and if we visit one another, we may find ourselves straining to match our tone, our pace, the habits of our heart; but it is worth it to experience the Body of Christ in unity, in harmony, praying together.

So some of us have found it a stretch, this summer, to speak in contemporary language instead of borrowing the language of our ancestors to pray to God; but we are in good company, and we will find ourselves on familiar ground if we visit another church where this is the tradition.

The habits of our hearts will spring back into place as soon as we are behind locked doors, or as soon as the season changes and a new, or old setting presents itself as the prayer of the gathered community before God; we have lost nothing.

Jesus taught his disciples to pray, not in rhythmic lines, but in stark petitions to the God whom we trust to hear us.

Father, hallowed be your name.

In God we trust, and there is no other name that we dare elevate to the place of saviour, sustainer. We belong to God, every tribe and nation; we are called by the same name, creatures made in the image of God. IN the excitement and fear, in the rhetoric and threat, in the promises and the pageantry that flood our news feeds, let us remember whose name it is that we hallow, hold sacred, alone, and temper our hearts accordingly.

Your kingdom come.

Come to Kabul, to Munich, to Nice, to Baton Rouge, St Paul, Dallas, Orlando, Cleveland, and Euclid. Your kingdom come; the kingdom in which no weapon is raised, no death remains, but the light of your life leads us in paths of righteousness. Before any more grief, any more graphic fear grips us, let your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

And let it be enough for us.

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

Or at least, we try. And if we cannot forgive other, how will we forgive ourselves? And if we will not forgive anyone, what do we say, that we know better than Jesus who is deserving of his blood, and sweat, and tears? No; but forgiveness sets us free, in the giving and in the receiving, and reminds us of our humility, and our own need for God’s grace and mercy, which is given ungrudgingly.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.

Last Sunday night, 200-300 young people gathered on Sims Park Beach for a party that they labelled, Stop the Violence. The Violence visited them. One young man is dead, a child is in the hospital. A juvenile is charged with aggravated murder before he has reached adulthood.

“Which of you, if your child asks for an egg, gives him a scorpion?” asks Jesus. And I’m afraid that we do, with our excess of guns and our tendency to play God with one another’s lives.

Do not bring us to the time of trial, because we just might fail. Instead, deliver us from evil.

Jesus does not add a doxology, but it is the cry of our unlocked, unleashed hearts. We know that in God alone our prayers are answered, and that there is power beyond ourselves that we can borrow, lean on. Those young people last weekend knew that they were strong together in their love, strong enough to bring a message to Stop the Violence. Earlier in the day, on a bridge in Cleveland, thousands gathered in silent prayer to hold our city in hope, in faith, in peace, drawing on something much larger than ourselves, something beyond our closed-door hearts.

Jesus does not add a doxology, but we do, to remind ourselves when it is hard to pray that there is power that we can borrow, lean on, to bring ourselves closer to that kingdom come, in which no evil is done. It is our hope, our faith, and our promise:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

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About prayer

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Father, Mother, source of life, all being;
your very name fills us with awe.

We long to know you, ruler of all; unelected,
you elect us to do your will, here, now, forever.

You who nursed creation as it grew,
fill us now with solid food;
leave no room for envy,
release resentment,
that our lives may be made whole.

Catch us when we are falling;
save us from harm,

for without you, we perish,
we are bereft; you only have
the power to raise us up to glory.

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Martha & Mary

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is so much to be done:
the sweeping of the streets,
the hanging of bags full of plasma,
saline, the careful placement of Kleenex.
There are so many distractions:
tanks and trucks, bullets and bombs,
the cleaning of windows shattered,
the salvage of strangers’ belongings,
urgent attention to medical alarms,
news alerts, hatches to batten; there is
one thing that is needed more than all,
that is, to stop. Sweet Jesus, to stop.

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“Do not be overcome by evil”

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

… “but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21

If I were asked, I suppose I would say,
“Continue to do good.
Teach kindness to children,
in hope that we might learn it from them.
Tell them to be unafraid,
that we will stay close by,
that there is more to love in this life than to fear.
Teach them to pray for our enemies,
as a bulwark against bitterness.
If only to hear ourselves say it aloud,
remind them to praise God in all things;
God who made hearts to be broken,
and hearts to soar before the dawn,
when in the turning they see for a moment
the face of the beloved once more.”

Written on a morning when the radio tube.JPGdescribes terror, a body in the street, a child’s stroller, run over. On a morning when the Daily Office advises, nonetheless,

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:9-21

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