Still

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

At the eclipse, the birds fall
silent, the earth shrugs its mantle
of shadows close; death comes
easily, a simple matter of forgiving all
that life still owes

Resurrection rises with the spring
equinox sun pressing home its higher vantage.
The very rock unfurls; the tomb is warmed;
salt dissolves; the taste of something
almost forgotten

The night before, the world turned still
toward its winter moon, the garden chill
with sleep, shifting friends face down
dreams of betrayal, torches burn a false dawn.
The hardest is to stay, still

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Small world 

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

… Those moments when the world telescopes down, folds up like a map that will not go back the same way, creases turning inside out and sideways. Like that one time in an dim alcove of Notre Dame: “Of all the cathedrals in all the cities of all the world…”

Those moments when the lines of latitude grow short and the longitude cinches its britches.

Once, when I was a child, an elderly couple asked me for directions and I said, “I’m going that way, I’ll show you,” and they followed me through my own front door, old friends of my mother.

It is either that the world is small, and we have not come far, after all, from Adam and Eve, from Eden; or else I myself travel in slender spirals, always circling back unknowing to the hilly fields where life was simple, and my brother found the grass snake, smooth and harmless, yellow-green, coiled in his hand.

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Year C Lent 1: reading and meditating on God’s holy Word

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

So it is Lent; but because we are not Puritans but Episcopalians, we can still have a little fun. Today, I have brought a new game to get us in the mood to consider this morning’s gospel. It is called, “Bible or Bard,” and it’s very easy: for each of the following quotations you have simply to decide whether they are written in the Bible (King James Version) or in the works of William Shakespeare, aka the Bard.

(Answers are at the bottom of this post!)

  1. To be, or not to be – that is the question.
  2. In the beginning was the Word.
  3. Why should the private pleasure of some one become the public plague of many more?
  4. Every man shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer.
  5. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
  6. They were children of fools, yea, children of base men; they were viler than the earth.
  7. What is your substance, whereof are you made…?
  8. If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain? If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean…
  9. Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news.
  10. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
  11. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
  12. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

 

In the exhortation to a holy Lent, which we read and heard on Ash Wednesday, we are invited to

self-examination and repentance; [by] prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and [by] reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

Given the biblical battle enacted between Jesus and the devil in this morning’s gospel, I thought we’d take a look at that instruction, to read and meditate on God’s holy Word. How do we read the Bible? How do we use what we read, in our lives of prayer, in our lives as a whole? The second letter of Timothy tells us that all scripture is inspired, and is profitable, but Shakespeare is not wrong when he says that “Even the devil can cite scripture for his own purposes.” We see that pretty clearly in this morning’s story. And many people think it comes from the Bible, precisely because it so clearly recalls this scene with Jesus and the tempter, throwing Bible verses back and forth in a battle of steadfast faith against feckless self-interest. So how do we discern what we hear from others, when they use the Bible to bolster a political argument, or shore up their own authority, or suggest an action with consequences for those beyond themselves?

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that we cast anyone, let alone everyone; and certainly not only those with whom we disagree in the role of the devil when they quote scripture. I think that the danger is a lot more subtle than that. The temptation to abuse scripture is what comes between us, not from within any one of us. It is in that tug of war that characterizes the exchange between Jesus and the tempter that the devil comes and lends weight to anything that will divide us, that will keep us from loving God and our neighbour as ourselves.

We all proof-text. We all pick the words that fit our purposes, and that’s reasonable; even Jesus did it right back at the devil. “Make bread out of stones,” said the devil. “It is written,” replied Jesus. “Have the angels hold you up,” said the devil. “It is said,” replied Jesus. “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

But we can test our own understanding of scripture, and whether we are being tempted to twist it into a divisive device. We can use the authority of scripture itself, we can use our tradition, we can use our own reasoning, our own common sense, to know what we are reading, what we are hearing, and whether it comes from God.

Since the time of the English Reformation, the people who would become Anglicans (and Episcopalians) were “exhort[ed] … to read [the Bible] as the very lively word of God.”* It is inspired; the Holy Spirit moves within it. That, in fact, is the only reason that we can read a sermon from centuries before Christ, and a letter written to Roman Christians of our own first century, and find any relevance whatsoever for ourselves. We are not the same people as those to whom these words were addressed; and yet we read it in the sure and certain knowledge that God is speaking clearly, intimately, to each one of us in our daily prayer. The Bible is a lively, a living word, when we read it as part of our relationship with a lively and living God.

John A. T. Robinson said of scripture that “The Christian message is offered as a faith and a way of life which you can trust … [But] ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ for the writers of the New Testament is not a timeless prescription for good living, but a person born at a moment of history.”**

The Word of God, says Bishop Robinson, is Jesus Christ. Not a set of rules or instructions, but a person with whom we can have a real and lively relationship: Jesus is the lively, the living Word of God.

So we can test our understanding of the Bible by its own authority in our tradition, and in light of our understanding of Jesus as the lively and living Word of God.

One day, Jesus was interviewed by a lawyer in Jerusalem who asked him, “Which is the greatest commandment?” And Jesus told him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments,” said Jesus, “hang all the Law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:35-40)

In other words, Jesus, the incarnate, the lively and living Word of God, declared that the commandments to love God with all of our being, and our neighbours as ourselves, are the foundation of all of that God-inspired scripture; are the source from which all talk of God may come.

As our own Presiding Bishop might say, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

That is the test for ourselves, when we are tempted to use scripture as a tool for argument, or worse, a weapon. It is the test of how we hear others’ use of scripture, when they make declarations to further their own ends. Only if that use of scripture is made in the service of loving God, and loving our neighbours as ourselves, is it legitimate. Anything else might as well have been made up by William Shakespeare, rather than inspired by the Holy Spirit. “The devil cites scripture” indeed.

“If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

And so, dear people of God,

I invite you, … in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

Amen

_______________

*”The second Injunction of 1538, Walter Howard Frere and William McClure Kennedy, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, 3 vols (AC, London, 1910), Vol ii, 35-66, 118,” in Stephen Sykes, John Booty, Jonathan Knight, eds, The Study of Anglicanism (SPCK/Fortress Press, 1968/1988), 11 & note 7

**John A. T. Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament? (William B. Eerdmans, 1977), 7

__________________

Bible or Bard Answers:

  1. The Bard. Hamlet, Act III, scene i, line 56
  2. The Bible. John 1:1
  3. The Bard. The Rape of Lucretia, lines 1478-9
  4. The Bible. Proverbs 24:26
  5. The Bible. Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) 2:5
  6. The Bible. Job 30:8
  7. The Bard. Sonnet 53, line 1
  8. The Bible. Job 9:29-30
  9. The Bard. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, scene v, line 85
  10. The Bard. Hamlet, Act I, scene iv, line 75
  11. The Bible. II Timothy 3:16
  12. The Bard. The Merchant of Venice, Act I, scene iii, line 93
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An Ash Wednesday meditation

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

We are dust, and to dust we shall return. That much is true, and yet it is not the whole truth.

We are dust. We are accounted as dust in the scales of creation and God, of the nations and the oceans. We are the dust that blows through the ravaged streets of Syria. We are the dust that settles on the lungs of the miners. We are dust, and dust in an instant might be wiped clean away. We are the dust swept under the rug. We are dust, and we get everywhere; we get all over everything. Sometimes we end up where we are not wanted. We are the dust that accumulates while we are busy doing other things. This much is true, and yet it is not the whole truth.

We are – to borrow another image, one that Isaiah liked – we are so much grass, that grows up and withers. We are like grass that withers when the breath of God blows upon it. We are the flower that fades, the rose, the lily, the daisy, the blown dandelion. We are poison ivy. We are the trees that shed their leaves. That much is true, and yet it is not the whole truth.

We grow like weeds, and if we can find our proper roots, and allow a little pruning, we may put forth green shoots and, who knows, fruit – because we share our DNA with every living thing, and we can germinate and cross-pollinate and we can share in the work of creation.

The prophet Joel says, even now, return to God, for our God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Our God will not pull on her white gloves and wipe us away with pursed lips and a clucking of the tongue. We are the dust, after all, that God created with that swirl of activity back at the beginnings of time, when all creation was swept into being.

Yes: we are dust, and we share our dusty beginnings with the whole of creation: with the dirt, with the worms, with the rats and with their fleas. We share our DNA with the least living thing. We are connected and implicated in everything that happens in creation, everything that expires and becomes extinct. That is not the whole truth.

We are dust, and we share our dusty beginnings with the stars. We were born from the same singularity as the sun and the red planet and the pole star.

We are dust, and that’s ok, because we share our origins with everything that God has made. We are partners with our world, creatures of one God, and we are beloved.

Jesus says, even when you are driven to hiding in your closet, behind closed doors, buried under coats and cats, pretending the doorbell is only the ringing in your ears, even then, your Father who sees all secrets will find you out, and be gracious to you, because God remembers that creature formed from the dust, rolled between divine palms, wound up and set in motion with a push from the divine lungs, the breath of God. You are the very design and image of God, and you are beloved.

We begin our Lenten journey in ashes, and we end in the new fire of the Easter Vigil. Ashes rekindled. A friend said that he uses the lint from a tumble dryer to light the new fire at the other end of this Lent. We are dust, we are ashes, we are lint from the dryer, and we are still flammable, and capable of new fire. We are dust that is receptive, susceptible to the breath of God, the Holy Spirit, the divine fire. We are not burnt out, we ashes, we dust. We can still catch alight. We have life in us yet, if we can open our selves to the breath of God, if we can sigh away our sins, our regrets, and breathe in the love that awaits us, the peace that passes understanding.

At the end of Sunday’s gospel message, Jesus shining on the mountaintop, I said that today, we would declare that we are but dust, and to dust we shall return, and that we tell the truth. But it is not the whole truth. We know that there is more to life than the earth can contain. We have seen the mountaintop. We have glimpsed the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; and it is our light in dark times, and our joy in times of celebration.

We are dust, but we are moved, swept up by the breath of God.

Amen.

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany: shining through

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

The closer we come to the core, the center of the gospel, the more clarity and the more mystery we encounter. On the one hand, the story is straightforward. A child’s board book would show Jesus and the disciples dusty and tired, wiping sweat from their brows as the come to rest at the summit. Another page would have Jesus shining bright, two shiny-shadowed men beside him, the astonished disciples wiping sleep from their eyes. Peter thought-bubbles booths, tents. A loud cloud descends and speaks with the voice of God. Then, with a turn of the page, all is back as it was at the beginning, and the men start down the mountain.

It seems beyond much doubt that something strange happened when Jesus took three of his disciples up a mountain about halfway through his ministry. Something sort of straightforward as the story goes; but there are many questions left unanswered.

Such as: how did the disciples know who these two strangers were, who had appeared either side of Jesus? Why jump straight to the conclusion that this is Elijah, and this one Moses? What do we make of the detail that he and his brother disciples were weighed down with sleep? Was this a vision, or a dream, or an objective happening, or something else, of a category we have yet to understand?

One way of framing the question might be to ask not what Peter saw, but how he saw it.

A couple of weeks ago, a young person asked me, “How will we see things in heaven?”

Not, “What does heaven look like?” or “What will we look like in heaven?” He gestured around the room: “You see how we see everything around us. Will we see things in the same way in heaven?”

Which is a much more interesting way of looking at it.

We talked back and forth a little bit about what we might mean by heaven, and how we might know how it works, and we stumbled across the phrase, “heaven on earth.”

You know those moments when the light breaks through, when the voice from heaven rivets your mind into place. Those moments when the mundane is transfigured, and the sacred shows itself clearly. You can see back through creation into the heart of God. Or if not that far, at least you can see the crack on the wall where the light might shine through.

Those moments are what we call heaven on earth.

The next day, I was with a group of much older individuals, all living in a place they hadn’t necessarily chosen to be, in circumstances that they had never planned for themselves. I asked them, “Where did you last see heaven on earth?” One woman replied, “Here.” I looked around at the bare, institutional walls, the contraptions everywhere, reminders of human frailty and decay. “Here?” I asked her. “Yes. Everyone who works here is here to take care of us. They care for us.” Heaven on earth. A different way of looking at things.

The young person and I talked about practicing spotting heaven on earth, about noticing when we were able to see it, strengthening our ability to find it, to glimpse it, taking down the clues of what brings it closer to our senses. The theory being that if we practice, we might find that we see it more readily, and come a little closer in our everyday lives to seeing things as we would see them in heaven: transfigured.

Of course, that elder saint then reminded me that I have far too little practice; in her vision of heaven around her, she saw far further than I ever had.

If we had been on that mountaintop, slumbering with the disciples, which of us would have seen what Peter saw, or heard what he heard? I wonder if I have had sufficient practice to see God’s glory even when it is shining me full in the face.

Of course, Lent, beginning this week, this Wednesday, is a time to practice seeing clearly, through the eyes of repentance, the lens undistorted by sin, undistracted by the world, to see the undisguised image of God, shining through.

We’ll do a couple of Wednesday soup suppers, as usual. We’re going to space them through Lent, and use the time to undertake a couple of service projects, ones that can be done sitting down, around a table; always a little piece of heaven. And we’ll take a couple of trips out, to the Art Museum; for a contemplative run (I am interested to find out how that works. Breathing and contemplation go together beautifully; heavy breathing and contemplation? We’ll see). We’ll take a trip out to volunteer at our local hunger center, and anywhere else that will have us.

We talked just briefly last week about the program, Growing a Rule of Life, which is being undertaken across the diocese, and across the world, by those wanting to nurture their relationship with God and the world this Lent, who want to practice seeing heaven on earth. If you take a book, you can use the program on your own, starting on Wednesday. There’s a link to sign up for daily video prompts, which relate to the questions in the book. You can also choose to come together, on Tuesday nights at 7pm, or on Sundays after church, to view the videos and share your progress, your insights and visions.

We will practice in any way we can seeing with the eyes of heaven; finding heaven on earth. Because when we declare on Ash Wednesday that we are but dust, and to dust we shall return, we tell the truth. But we know that there is more to life than the earth can contain. We have seen the mountaintop. We have glimpsed the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; and it is our light in dark times, and our joy in times of celebration: heaven on earth.

Amen.

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Unseasonable

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

On a bridge, blue hat;

on a log, red glove; breaking 

winter, discarded 

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Postscript

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

… I mentioned in last night’s homily that the fate and faith of the Dorchester chaplains brought to my mind the musicians of the Titanic, and their own cords of friendship.

Grave

A hair’s breadth from panic,

taut, trembling disguised as vibrato,

bravado; the young men drawn

together as with one accord, buoyed

by the rising air, and the falling:

morendo.

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The Dorchester chaplains: friends of God

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Homily for Evensong at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland

A website dedicated to the memory of the Dorchester chaplains describes a fine detail:

Petty Officer John J. Mahoney, tried to reenter his cabin but Rabbi Goode stopped him. Mahoney, concerned about the cold Arctic air, explained he had forgotten his gloves.

“Never mind,” Goode responded. “I have two pairs.” The rabbi then gave the petty officer his own gloves. In retrospect, Mahoney realized that Rabbi Goode was not conveniently carrying two pairs of gloves, and that the rabbi had decided not to leave the Dorchester.”

In Holy Women, Holy Men, we read of the heroic actions of the four chaplains of the Dorchester, a converted cruise ship redeployed to carry US troops from New York to Greenland in the midst of the Second World War.

A day from shore, the ship was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. In the confusion and panic that ensued, only two of the fourteen lifeboats were launched.

The four chaplains moved among the men, assisting, calming, and passing out life jackets … to those forced to jump into the freezing ocean. Having given up their own life vests to save the lives of the soldiers, the chaplains remained on the aft deck, arms linked in prayer until the ship sank, claiming their lives. Two hundred thirty men were rescued from the icy waters by other ships in the convoy. Many survived because of the selflessness and heroism of the four chaplains.

George Fox, a Methodist minister. Alexander Goode, the Rabbi. Clark Poling, Dutch Reformed. John Washington, Catholic priest. It would be foolish to attempt to find words that would outmatch the example of their actions.

But then the same could be said of the gospel. “Greater love has no one than this, that a person lay down their life for their friends,” said Jesus, and the words barely skimmed the surface of the Incarnation, the work of the Messiah, the crucifixion and its consequences; that life given over completely for the sake of God’s friends, the creatures whom God loves.

 

When I read the stories of the four men on the Dorchester, the image that stayed with me was of them standing arm in arm, praying as the ship went down, holding on to one another. They were heroes not only to the men that they saved that night, but they were the most essential creatures to one another: friends. They helped one another, they held one another.

And my mind kept sliding towards another image, of the band playing on the deck of the Titanic as it, too, slipped beneath the icy north Atlantic. Such love that bound those eight young men together; their shared love of that mystery by which simple changes to the vibrations of the air around the ear can bring comfort and catharsis, music. Would one have stayed, have played, if not for the others?

Teresa of Avila wrote of her friends, her companions in what she titled The Way of Perfection:

When one of you is striving after perfection, she will at once be told that she has no need to know such people – that it is enough for her to have God. But to get to know God’s friends is a very good way of ‘having’ Him; as I have discovered by experience, it is most helpful. For, under the Lord, I owe it to such persons that I am not in hell …

Friends can make a man braver than he would otherwise be. They break open our hearts. In their incarnation, we see glimpses of God.

Even Jesus needed, named and claimed as his friends his companions on the way.

 

Last week, I was in London for a short while, staying at a Christian guest house, a very friendly place, where they served us breakfast. Guests were assigned to communal tables by room number. Now, it may seem a small thing to surrender one’s breakfast time to the common life, but for a raging introvert, being sent to sit with a table of random strangers is a high-wire of terror. But I survived.

And half an hour later, breathless and bruised amongst the hulking mass of humanity working to heave itself into the sausage-skin carriages of London Underground at rush hour, there was one face in the crowd, my new friend from the breakfast table, able to communicate courage across the crush:

“You’ll be ‘right.”

It is never wasted to share our humanity with one another.

 

Most of us, God willing, will not be called to the heights of heroism; yet each of us can do immeasurable good by reaching out the hand of friendship, by standing arm in arm with one who is afraid, or perishing, or persecuted; by praying with those in the shadow of death; by affirming the joy of the fortunate.

There were nine hundred and two men aboard the Dorchester that February night. Two hundred and thirty were rescued. Six hundred and seventy-two died in the north Atlantic ice water. War is hell, and that night, hell had frozen.

The chaplains knew that it was not their task to save everybody; but to love. To love God, to love God’s children aboard this sinking boat; to love one another.

Whether or not they knew the teachings of Teresa – and why a twentieth-century Rabbi would have studied a medieval Carmelite nun is a fine question; whether or not they knew the teachings of Teresa, that they should ignore the virtuous voices that say that God is enough, no need for other friends, still by good human and godly instinct they clung together, to warm one another’s hearts and courage. As Teresa said, “I owe it to such [friends] that I am not in hell.”

Whether or not they had the words of Jesus in their minds – that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends – they all knew those other commandments of God: be not afraid. Love one another.

Amen.

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Year C Epiphany 4: bread and stones

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is a curious thing that so many of the people whom Jesus meets want very quickly to kill him.

He has only just begun his ministry, after the baptism in the River Jordan; after the forty days of desert fasting and devilish temptation; delirium. Within sixteen verses, he has returned from the wilderness full of the power of the Spirit of God. He has taught in the synagogues, being glorified – glorified – by all. He has proclaimed the good news of the day of the Lord, and all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, and halfway through the sixteen verses they said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” And by the end of the paragraph, Jesus, by his own words and teaching, has led them to attempt a lynching (Luke 4:21-30)

This is something of an aside, but last weekend, some of us participated, one way or another, in the program from Trinity, Wall Street: Listen for a Change. We heard Presiding Bishop Curry preach. We listened to Michelle Norris from NPR and the race card project. We sang songs of freedom and of praise and of sorrow. We heard from Nicholas Kristoff and Kelly Brown Douglas and an impressive gathering of saints. They were not always easy to listen to. We were challenged to listen, for a change, to something we might not have chosen to hear. We were challenged to listen for a change; and we will be determining ways of listening further as the weeks go by.

I was struck enough by Kelly Brown Douglas’ challenge to download her latest book, Stand your ground; black bodies and the justice of God. She has many wise words, but this, I think, gives some clue as to what was going on with Jesus on that hilltop.

Jesus’ identification with the lynched/crucified class is not accidental. It is intentional. It did not begin with his death on the cross. In fact, that Jesus was crucified signals his prior bond with the “crucified class” of his day.

All spoke well of him, and they claimed his as their own: “Is this not [our] Joseph’s son?” And he taught in their synagogues being glorified – glorified – by all.

The thing is that Jesus has just come from the desert and from the devil. When he was in the wilderness, he was tempted sorely: “physician, heal thyself.” Assauge thy hunger. Turn these stones into bread. And he was tempted with promises of power and glory, and he answered, “You shall worship the Lord your God.”

As Jesus read from the scroll in the synagogue, presenting the proclamation of God’s mercy and loving kindness, he heard their adulation, their adoration. It would be so easy to turn stones into bread, to accept an exalted status as the local boy elevated to stardom; a celebrity preacher. To be glorified. But he had heard those whispers before, in the wilderness; and he knew his answer.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

As Elijah was sent to the widow and her sickly son, and Elisha commissioned to heal the foreigner, the leper, so Jesus knew his call to the lost and the lonely, the despised and the dispossessed. He heard the call of the crucified class. He could not reach them from the pedestal upon which his people wanted to set him in stone. Indeed, the more deeply we need him, the more depth he has plumbed to reach us.

What does this mean, for a parish like Epiphany, for people like us?

We heard a sobering story at our recent Annual Meeting. We have tightened our belts, and still we feel the chill wind at our backs, the demands of money, of dollars and cents, of a balance sheet teetering, unbalanced.

And then I read this: William Stringfellow quoted in an article by Chris Hedges about the seduction of the church by the temptation to make bread out of stones (he doesn’t put it that way, but it’s what he is talking about: the first temptation).

Stringfellow wrote,

The premise of most urban church work, it seems, is that in order for the Church to minister among the poor, the church has to be rich, that is, to have specially trained personnel, huge funds and many facilities, rummage to distribute, and a whole battery of social services. Just the opposite is the case. The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the poor. The Church must trust the Gospel enough to come among the poor with nothing to offer the poor except the Gospel, except the power to apprehend and the courage to reveal the Word of God as it is already mediated in the life of the poor. When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world.

This is not a call to romantic naivety or monastic poverty, but it is a call to remember our roots, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who threw off the temptation to make bread out of stones, to stand on a pedestal and preach to the adoring crowds; who slipped away to heal the widow, the leper, to bless the child, and embrace the untouchable. Who did it all not for his own sake, but for ours.

When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world.

The more freedom we find to identify ourselves with the crucified class, the more closely we find ourselves following in the footsteps of Jesus. And God is with us.

In the story that we hear of Jeremiah’s call, the prophet argues with God,

“Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”

But God has already given the answer:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. … Be not afraid, for I am with you to deliver you.” (Jeremiah 1:4-10)

We may not plead weakness, or ignorance; we may not stand on our dignity, nor protect nor presume upon our fine reputation and family history; certainly, we may not plead poverty to avoid the call of God to proclaim God’s good news to the poor, to the captive, to the oppressed; that God loves us all, no exceptions.

In his same book, out of Harlem, Stringfellow writes,

If the mere Gospel is not a whole salvation for the most afflicted men, it is no comfort to other men in less affliction.

In other words, how dare we whisper that the Gospel is not enough? We are called not to make bread out of stones, but to feast on every good word that comes forth from the mouth of God, and to share our bounty. That is our work. That is our mission. That is our call. And God says to us,

“Before I formed you in the Shore Center I knew you, and before you were built I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to Euclid and to the nations. … To all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak. Be not afraid then, for I am yet with you, to deliver you.”

Amen.

______

Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground; Black Bodies and the Justice of God (2015)

William Stringfellow, My People Is The Enemy (1964)

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Birth Mother

Posted on January 30, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

God, whose womb broke
the waters of chaos,
gave birth to creation;
whose breath stirred the earth,
air for our words, spoken
first in wonder, and want,
our lungs newborn
crying out of
bewildered love.

Prayer Writing Workshop – Diocese of Ohio, Convocation 2016

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