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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PokemonGO to the RNC

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

The signs on the highways into Cleveland have changed from their regular warnings against distracted driving to vague warnings to report odd distractions to the FBI RNC tip line. But have authorities taken into consideration the prevalence of odd sightings around and even within the security perimeter in recent days?

At least two of these odd characters were spotted sneaking into a sold-out final performance of The Phantom of the Opera last Sunday at Playhouse Square. Fortunately, theatre-goers were able swiftly and quietly to put them in their place.

ratata

They are no respecters of personal space

But their sheer ubiquity is frightening. “There are wild Pidgey everywhere,” remarked Edward H, of Bay Village, Ohio.

And they are not always as easy to dispense with as the Phantom interlopers. “Zubats are hard to catch,” confirmed Freya H, currently of Columbus, Ohio.

How will the security forces police these potential gatecrashers of the RNC?

Are Pokeballs on the list of restricted items within the secure zone?

How are the police planning for the inevitable battles breaking out in Public Square?

At Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, notorious for its radically inclusive welcome of all, a peaceful but unusual guest sat in on a recent staff meeting.

Does the RNC Rules Committee, meeting today, need to consider providing space for the presence of such uninvited observers?

Idle minds want to know: Will PokemonGo to the RNC?

 

Seriously, though: Please pray for the peace of our city in the coming week. Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland will host noonday prayer Monday through Wednesday and Friday, with a Healing Eucharist on Thursday. Church of the Epiphany in Euclid hosts healing services tonight and next Thursday at 6pm. Circle the City will see thousands standing in silent prayer on the Hope Memorial Bridge this Sunday afternoon.

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Year C Proper 10: who is my neighbour? (read: which lives matter?)

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

It’s not a pretty story about being kind to people. Put it back into its context, in which Jesus is asked the question, not by a devoted disciple seeking enlightenment, but by a cynic trying to trip him up, looking for a gotcha moment to discredit the Messiah.

“Who is my neighbour?” he asks, and Jesus launches into a rant, told in the form of the traditional three-part folktale. He tells the man, in so many words, “Even the Samaritans know how to treat people like human beings. Even they would not be so crass and arrogant as to ask, ‘Who do I have to bother to care about?’”

There is a strong, stale odour of ethnic division, inequality, and tension behind the choice of a Samaritan as the hero of the story; all the better to demonstrate that quality of keeping his humanity that the third man works out of. He is a human being to the man laying by the side of the road, because he sees that man’s full humanity, laid out and bleeding out before him, and he is moved with compassion, fellow suffering, because he recognizes their kinship, fellow humans, made in the image of one God. Despite their history, humanity saves the day.

But it is not a pretty story. Do you remember, a few years ago, a woman’s body was left on the side of the highway a few miles from here? A motorist called it in. When the police rolled by, they thought they were seeing a deer carcass, and went to take their lunch break. They failed to see her humanity. A second caller reported the body almost an hour later, leaving us to wonder how many more passed by without seeing, without heeding her. When ODOT arrived to clean up, they found a third motorist, waiting with her body, the third caller. Finally, someone who saw her clearly in all of her humanity, and stayed with her, through the end of the story.

It’s not a pretty story. Jesus is on the offensive, angry. It is as offensive a story, in fact, as his whole, “Love your enemies,” piece.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” (Mt 5:43-35a) Love your enemies, because the old ways of dividing ourselves into those whom we claim and those whom we kill, those ways are not working. They do not bring us to life. They bring death daily to our doorstep.

We have not covered ourselves with glory this week in America. We are not even the heroes of our own stories today. Instead, three separate instances of gun violence have shown how deeply divided we are from one another’s humanity.

In the first two, in separate incidents on consecutive nights, men were shot to death by police officers, and disturbing camera footage brought home, literally into our homes, the faces of those numbers we see but do not read, or read but do not recognize: that our criminal justice system from top to bottom, from the sterile death chamber to the very streets we walk and drive upon, the system is failing African Americans, and especially young black men. There is a strong, stale odour of ethnic division, inequality, and tension behind these videos. And too many of us have passed by too often, failing to see humanity falling by the side of the road.

That was two. Then on Thursday, a military veteran took his knowledge of weaponry and his easy access to it onto the streets of Dallas. While a thousand people peacefully demonstrated their right to be seen, their right to have their humanity recognized, their lives to matter, and while officers protected and policed and served that right, stood guard over their bodies and their voices and their lives, that’s when one man chose to shoot and kill five public servants right there, wounding several others.

When we divide ourselves into those whom we claim and those whom we kill, we bring death daily to our own doorstep.

In the story that Jesus told, the Samaritan man recognized the humanity of the man lying in the road, left for dead by bandits. That same Samaritan man knew that his own humanity demanded something of him. To love his neighbour as himself, he had to treat them both as human beings made in the image of God. He had to recognize the need of his neighbour, and he had to recognize the nobility of his own soul. He had to call upon his human ability for humility before an enemy, love before a stranger, sacrifice for the sake of justice and of mercy.

In a story stale with the odour of ethnic violence and division, Jesus poured out oil and wine, his own blood, for the sake of our humanity, because somehow he saw himself in us, in his humanity.

“Go,” he told the lawyer, “and do likewise.”

The story of the Samaritan, of the Levite and the priest and the man left for dead, by bandits hiding in the shadows; that story is told for one purpose: to answer the one who asks, “With whom should I be bothered? Who is deserving of my care?” Which lives matter?

And into a story stale with the odour of violence, Jesus pours out oil and wine, his own blood, for the sake of his humanity, for the sake of our humanity, made in the image of God, saying “Go, and do likewise.”

Amen.

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Morning Prayer for July 7, 2016: Psalm 18, Part I

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last time, I came back cold;
colder than any living thing was meant to feel.
Your burning coals, flung from your flaming tongue,
extinguished themselves against the skin of my unclaimed body,
and I didn’t feel a thing, except cold;
colder than a living thing was even meant to feel.

You harnessed the storm clouds,
you rode the winds like winged horses;
the beds of the seas were uncovered and laid bare,
because many waters cannot quench love,
nor can the floodwaters drown it* – ah!
but the cold carries it deeper than any living thing can suffer.

You drew me out of great waters, and the cold coated me
with its thick, numb covering, impervious; impermeable.

 

  • Song of Solomon 8:7
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Samaritans and street vendors

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Here’s what happens: the priest looks back and sees the Levite pass by. Their eyes meet. They are of the same tribe, and their unspoken concurrence in the decision not to stop reinforces itself in that consecrated moment of collusion, comprehension.

They find it hard to credit what happens next. A Samaritan, in traditional garb,* is bending over the man, kneeling at his side, rummaging over his body. Excited, they call the police, who arrive at speed and in force, on the understanding that they are witnessing a murder – what else would you expect from a Samaritan?

We know what might happen next. But for a moment, let’s decide to be hopeful. Nobody dies.

The Samaritan is wrestled to the ground, searched, shaken, sent on his way with an obscure warning, never returns to the Jericho Road.

It’s a debacle, and someone has to pay for it. The man attacked by bandits, still bleeding, is arrested for selling his wares on the sidewalk without a permit;  also for false reporting and inciting panic. He is hauled away to the hospital in handcuffs. Later, he is released quietly through the back door. He has no choice but to return to the Jericho Road to ply his trade, to pay off the hospital bills, including transport.

The priest and the Levite continue to pass by on the other side, refusing to meet his eye, for fear that their guilt will show; guilt which over time, unassuaged, hardens into anger at the emotional turmoil he has put them through.

 

  • A word about words: I have heard the word “garb” more times in the past week than in my whole life before it. I regularly appear in robes in public, and even so have never heard my clothing described as garb.
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The business traveller

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

After the incident; forever after
as he travelled from city to stone city,
he would look across the crowd, scanning
the horizon and its fall, not for danger –
he never saw the robbers coming,
never would – blissfully ignorant,
he nodded civilly to priest and prelates.

He searched each face for tenderness,
for the long cool water that streamed away
his blood, the proximity of love, so close
beneath the veil of diffidence, political
reserve. His heart, never quite the same again,
would skip a beat each time the beloved
enemy passed by.

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Year C Proper 9: Make Jerusalem Great Again

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

On this July fourth weekend, it is perhaps appropriate that we hear a word from some of our political campaigners.*

Towards the end of Isaiah, the “Make Jerusalem Great Again” party is gaining in popularity. The prophet paints a vivid picture of the land of milk and honey, food flowing from God’s glorious bosom, with just a little sweetness from the righteous judgement that will justify us.

“Can a country be born in a day,” asks the prophet, “or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labour than she gives birth to her children.”

I tell you, it’s going to be great.

I heard Walter Brueggemann speak at the Old Stone Church a few weeks ago. I don’t want to put words into his mouth, but I believe that what that Old Testament scholar was teaching us was that the oracles written from a place of Exile about a homeland flowing with milk and honey are written from a place of deep nostalgia and deft denial.

Jerusalem fell because it could not sustain a dream that lifted a few by treading on the necks of too many; the cream at the top of the milk was too rich and too heavy, and it broke down.

Jerusalem fell because it believed in its own greatness over the greatness of God. The prophets warned of it time and time again.

In the epistle of Paul to the Galatians, his new little church is suffering under the campaign of the Make Christianity Great Again. There are people coming to the new converts and trying to persuade them that in order to become Christians, little Christs, disciples of Jesus, they first need to be circumcised. After all, Jesus was a circumcised Jew. So were his first disciples. “To be one of us,” they tell the Galatians, “you first need to be like us.”

Within a single generation, the nostalgia has already started for a movement that raised up an inner circle to a position of prominence. Within a single generation, the nostalgia for a false memory of generic greatness has set in.

Forgotten already is the core of Jesus’ teaching that those who would be great must become servants to all, that greatness is of God, and not something to be grasped. That the Gospel is not a great campaign slogan, but good news for all people.

When Jesus sends out the seventy-odd messengers ahead of him to pave the way of the gospel into the hearts and minds of the people to whom he is coming, they have a fine adventure. They are high on the power of the peace that they bring, amped up by their ability to heal the sick and to cast out demons. And Jesus says, “Yes, I saw Satan fall from heaven, and I knew that you were up to something. But do not imagine that this was to prove your power.”

Do not imagine that your mission was about your ability to make Judea great again. Do not rejoice in your own greatness, but in the greatness of God, who has restored you to a right relationship with heaven and earth, who has written your names in the book of life.

You can cast out demons till the cows come home, but still, there will be people in poverty, overlooked and overwhelmed, and there will be those who lord it over them, reveling in their own greatness, and there will be lightning from heaven to fall and scorch the land and flood the valleys again. Until the kingdom of heaven is come, until the reign of God is complete upon the earth.

All of us, when we talk about making things great again – any of us, left, right, or middle – have a tendency to remember a false past. Whether it is an America in which everyone is White and middle class and lives in a sitcom suburb, or a pre-European Britain, where everyone speaks English and the Empire with its colonies and colonials is far, far away. Since the Brexit vote a week ago, racist attacks in Britain have risen by 57%. Nostalgia for a false past is never a sound or safe basis on which to build our future.

Whether it is a church where every pew is filled with tidily dressed children who are seen but never heard; when we remember how great things were, we only remember how great they were for us. Or for people like us. People willing to become like us, or pass for people like us. We make an idol of our memories, and a religion of nostalgia. We build a campaign out of curses for all that separates us from a past that never really was.

Do not rejoice, says Jesus, in your own greatness, but in the greatness of God, who has restored you to a right relationship with heaven and earth, who has written your names in the book of life.

“See,” said Jesus, “I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” Cleveland sports aside, greatness is overrated. The Gospel is so much better than that: good news for all people.

*Disclaimer: Jesus never registered as a Democrat, or a Republican, Libertarian or Green. He never even registered to vote; but you should.

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