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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Year C Proper 9: God-mother

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Extract from this weeks readings (Isaiah 66:10-14; Track 2):

Thus says the Lord:
“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her –
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious bosom.

For thus says the Lord: …
As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
you will be comforted in Jerusalem.”

**
Children of the promise, your God
lifts you up as a nursing mother
comforts her child;
her nipples cracked and bleeding, she
pours out her blood like milk,
washes your face in her tears.

She will not lay you down
until you are satisfied; she
will not give you up until
you are filled
with the goodness she
created for you.

Children of the promise, your God
sings you lullabies of sweet surrender;
binds you with tenderness to her breast.

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On being right

Posted on June 26, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

So the shock take-home of today’s lessons might be that the Gospel is not always about being right.

James and John, two of Jesus’ inner circle of inner circles, right at Jesus’ side all the way to Jerusalem – they could not be more in the right. The Samaritan village which turned them away could not be more wrong. For one thing, it was full of Samaritans. We hear the name now and think of the parable of the Good Samaritan – but there was a reason that story was surprising enough for Jesus’ listeners to remember it verbatim. Samaritans were not friends of the Jewish people. They were foreign, and their religion was twisted, and they were just plain wrong. And then they had the audacity to turn Jesus away?

James and John could not be more in the right. Pumped up with righteous indignation, they asked Jesus if they should call down fire to consume the village, but Jesus rebuked them. He rebuked them, even though the Samaritans were clearly on the wrong side of history, even though they disrespected Jesus. Still, the answer was not to consume them with fire.

It’s not always about being right.

We have seen all too graphically how the conviction of rightness can call down fire to consume not only our enemies but all manner of innocent lives, collateral damage. From the horrors of war and the ultimate disasters of the atom bomb and drive-by drones, to the all-too personal murder of a politician, even the mowing down of party-goers. Last night in Texas, a family argument called down fire on two sisters and then their mother, who had shot them to death. Was the cost of being right ever higher? Calling down fire to consume our enemies is a poor way to promote the common good, let alone the gospel.

It’s not just about calling down fire from heaven. Paul uses the same word – consume – to describe how we bite and tear at one another in everyday arguments and microaggressions, little slights and dents in one another’s humanity that eat away at us, consume us.

I deleted a comment on social media this week that suggested that the way to pass gun safety legislation – the things that the Senate filibustered for and those Representatives sat in for – that the hope for such legislation lay in a few well-placed political funerals. It is a common enough way for speaking, these days; but such speech and attitudes consume our love for one another and spit it out, chewed up and slimed up and unrecognizable as anything related to the Gospel. I might add that after the murder of Jo Cox, the Member of Parliament murdered in Britain in the lead-up to the Brexit vote, it is hardly a thing to be heard lightly.

Beware, says Paul. If we allow our love for one another to be eaten away by our differences, eroding the image of God within us, we will find ourselves consumed.

Consumed by anger, passion, self-righteousness, envy; never have I heard anyone describe being consumed by gentleness, or self-control, peace or patience, those things on Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit.

But if the Gospel is not always about being right, that doesn’t mean that we are off the hook for doing right, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we are to give up standing up for what is right.

We have heard time and again the wisdom that all that is needed for evil to flourish is for good men and women to do nothing. We dare not blink at evil, nor turn a blind eye to hatred. We cannot stay silent when our brothers and sisters are abused for their race, or their religion, or for their tendency to love.

But not because we are so right, but for the sake of the Gospel, that God loves each one made in the image of God.

Even the Psalmist knew that silence in the face of the provocation of ill deeds would be heard as complicity. In Psalm 50 God is speaking:

“When you see a thief, you make him your friend, and you cast in your lot with adulterers.
You have loosed your lips for evil, and harnessed your tongue to a lie.
You are always speaking evil of your brother, and slandering your own mother’s son.
These things you have done, and I kept silent, and you thought that I am like you.”

In the silence of God’s speech, we have written our own lines for God, assuming that holiness will condemn whatever we condemn, and approve whatever we approve, and collude in our calling down fire from heaven to consume our enemies.

But then Jesus rebukes us.

Our righteousness, such as it is, does not depend on our being right. We can be right till the cows come home, and unless we are loving it will do us no good.

We can be right, but it is not our place to have the final word: that will always belong to God, just as the first word belonged to the one who called words into being.

We can be right; but if we define the one who is wrong as anything less than the image of God, then we may as well be stuck in a Samaritan village with our eyes closed the Christhood of Jesus and our ears stopped up to the Gospel.

Doing right, which Jesus defined as loving God with everything that we have and loving our neighbours as ourselves; that kind of doing right is much harder work than being right. It requires our constant attention, through prayer and practice, listening for Jesus in the silence, rather than assuming that he is like us, because we have walked with him a while.

So James and John got it wrong, this time. It happened. It happens to us; and Jesus rebuked them, and Jesus rebukes us, but the thing about Jesus is, even though he is right, he does not feel the need to call down fire from heaven to consume us.

Instead he continues to walk with James and John, even with Judas, towards Jerusalem. He takes on all that can be called down, he allows himself to be consumed by our self-righteous anger and envy and passion; with gentleness, peace, and self-control he takes it with him to the grave.

And even then, he is not consumed, but he devours death, spits it out, unrecognizable. For the way of the Gospel is not fire from heaven, but the quiet touch of the morning, speaking our names in love.

Featured image: Lightning. Public domain, via wikicommons

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Year C Proper 7: a brief litany of idolatry

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

The prophet drips irony using the voice of the idolatrous and indolent who say, “do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.”

It is in itself idolatrous: the idolatry of the one who worships their own sense of self.
It is the idolatry of fundamentalism: my way or the highway to hell.

It is the idolatry of fear: do not touch me.

It is the idolatry of purity: do not contaminate my quarantine.

It is the idolatry of violence and violation: if you touch me, my holiness will burn you.

It is the idolatry of judgement: I am much holier than you.

It is the idolatry of isolation: I will not love you.

Such idolatry leads us away from love. Such holiness is the opposite of godliness. The Christ of God is the one who deigned to become unholy, unsanitary, hanging with the unhinged, indiscriminate in his attention, promiscuous with his mercy, down and dirty with his love, laying himself into our hands: “This is my body.”

“Touch me, for you are not too holy for me.”

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Elegy

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

The world is still, on the edge of tears, even as it continues, as it must, to turn night to day and business to money and traffic to weariness. The leaves tremble at an unseen adjustment of air pressure; an atmosphere of tears, held back for now, are felt as a prickling of the hairs on the back of your hand.

Outside the cathedral, a rainbow flag drips colour across the sidewalk, while the buses shiver and hiss at the traffic lights: Stop. Go. Wait …

Inside, the air is quiet, but it is not at peace. Grief, anger, the memory of all that it took to build stone upon stone, the dust and ashes of lives spent in hope unrealized; hope trembles still on the humidity rising, shed and unshed tears evaporating, clouding, condensing upon the stone cold throne of God,

while on the street the exhausted heat breathes a weary defiance of death, the throb and pulse and ache of life.

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