Second thoughts

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Mary did not float through her pregnancy without her swollen feet touching the ground.

When Mary returned to her senses, the bread was burning, and she nearly took the skin off her hands snatching it from the fire in a hurry. A sense of unease followed her through the afternoon. She was used to her spells of absence, time lost, bread burnt; but rarely did she dream. Now, she had the nagging feeling of a veiled memory hiding, closeted behind her conscious mind, bright and hazy somehow all at the same time.

When she missed her period, and her breasts were tight and her bladder squeezed, she knew the signs; but it hardly made sense. Between bouts of sickness and fear, the memory still pressed against the door in her mind, insistent but in vain.

Except, she thought, something about Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had gone home to the family house in the hills, hiding her changing shape from the city. Older women exchanged dark looks and grim whispers; a woman of Elizabeth’s age, swelled up as though with child, more often than not was consumed instead by her own womb. But, Mary knew, there was also that story of Zechariah, the accident in the temple, which sounded a little like one of her own episodes, but with added drama.

At least, thought Mary, with Elizabeth she would have time to puzzle out her own condition, and maybe there would be wisdom, and Elizabeth would be in no condition to scold her.

Mary went in haste to the hill country.

Elizabeth saw Mary coming and cried out to her cousin, “Blessed are you among women!”

A sliver of light cracked open in Mary’s mind; as though from far away a shaft of memory pierced her brain, and she fell. When she came around, she was lying in Elizabeth’s house, singing the words as though they ran through her without troubling her present mind. She heard herself with a kind of wonder:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.”

She looked at Elizabeth, and the older woman smiled, shook her head. “When I saw you coming, he nearly leaped out of my throat.” She laid a hand on her drumskin belly. “God is with you, Mary. Only believe that, and be blessed.”

Again, that splinter of light.

Mary stayed three months, until the sickness had subsided and Elizabeth sure that she was fit for the journey home. Her own time was near, and as concerned as she was for her young cousin, Elizabeth was afraid for herself as well. She was old, she knew, for this kind of adventure. Better that Mary not witness her trouble; the young one would have trouble enough of her own to face at home.

Later, they stopped on their way to register in Bethlehem. John was growing strong, and Elizabeth looked weary but satisfied. Mary was still searching for that crack in her memory that would let the light through. Elizabeth advised her not to push it.

It was the shepherds who broke it down for her. As soon as they said the word, “angel,” Mary heard his voice again: “Do not be afraid.” When they told of the singing, she heard an echo, the sound of brightness breaking.

As the people chattered and scuttled around her, Mary looked into the light of her son’s dark eyes as he fed, and pondered it all in her heart.

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Year C Advent 3: Rejoice anyway

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

The third Sunday in Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday. The rose candle is lit – if one is used – and the readings rejoice in God our saviour. Gaudete! Rejoice always, as the letter to the Philippians commands.

And then there’s John the Baptist, speaking with a forked tongue of the wrath to come and good news for snakes. Rejoice.

Context may not be everything, but it might help to remember that John’s exhortations are all uttered against the backdrop of messianic expectation, that God will come imminently to judge and to save the world from judgement. Rejoice, then, vipers.

Zephaniah, even back in the seventh century before the Christian era, wrote of the same messianic expectation. The rest of his book reflects a much more immediate scenario, in which the world of the prophet is going to hell in a handbasket, and he fears that God will end up doing the very thing that God has promised never to do again: that God will repent of ever creating us and our world of sorrows and sin. It is against this backdrop that Zephaniah offers a new vision of a messianic age, one of a new heaven and a new earth, free from besetting sorrow and sin. Rejoice, survivors of the Flood.

As for Paul, writing to the Philippians from prison and in chains, he urges the Philippians, concerned for his fate and their own, to rejoice in the Lord always. They are embroiled in some kind of internal conflict: he urges them to agree in the Lord, to be gentle with one another; rejoice.   Against these backdrops the message of John: good news for poisonous snakes; seems a little less incongruous. Rejoice, anyway!

So what should we do? the people ask John. First of all, he says, don’t make things worse. Don’t presume upon the privilege of your ancestry. Don’t act unethically. Don’t be greedy, stingy, or fraudulent. If you can manage these, then you might have a go even at making things better. Share what you have. Distribute your surplus to those who are running at a deficit. If you have two coats, give one to someone who is cold.

John is talking about cleaning house, preparing the way for the Christ who is to come. He wants the people coming to him to understand that their hearts will receive him more easily if they are clean, and open; if they have done an inventory of their dirt and cleared it out, repenting of sin and submitting to the cleansing ritual of baptism. As we clean and decorate our houses for Christmas, we might think of John’s exhortation to clean our hearts, clean up our acts, clean out our lives, make them ready for the Christ; not paying lip service to the rituals of Christmas, but preparing a place fit for Christ to come to our table and sit with us, Emmanuel, God with us.

Are we presuming upon our privilege, of race or of background, at the expense of others? Let’s see if we can’t air out some of that dirty laundry. Are we cheating ourselves or others out of the best parts of ourselves, out of greed or fear or denial of our need for one another? Let’s clean out that closet. Are we sharing as we should? Let’s count our coats.     You know those moments of anxiety when a guest is invited and we are not ready? Instead, says John, rejoice to receive him. Be ready. He is coming. Rather than cover up the cracks with Christmas decorations, let’s do it right this time (I am preaching to myself here, you understand).

If John addresses our personal preparations, then Paul is all about our interpersonal arrangements. Let your gentleness be known, he says; let the peace of God, which passes all understanding, speak for you; keep your hearts and minds safe from unnecessary conflict, from disputes that do not matter, that distract from the good news of the gospel of Christ. Let go of envy, do not let insecurity provoke you to argument, or anxiety lead to irritation. Do not let difference divide you, when we are all made in the image of the same God. We are the image of God and of one another. Be at peace, says Paul. Pray for all that troubles you; pray for those folks who trouble you; be at peace.

And then Zephaniah goes beyond the personal, the interpersonal; he goes right to the political landscape, and the fallout from kings who defy God and depend instead upon their own power; people who worship at the altars of false idols and forget the one true God. In an age of war, confusion, and corruption of the character of religion and public life; in an age much like ours, you might think, Zephaniah exhorts the people to rejoice in God, whose way is salvation, whose will will be done, when all else is said and done.

He is coming, says John. Make ready yourselves so that you might receive him without fear, and rejoice.

He is coming, says Paul. Make ready your lives. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Philippians 4:8). Be at peace with one another, so that you might receive him in peace, and rejoice.

He is coming, says Zephaniah. Make ready your world. Do not follow after idols or leaders whose will is opposed to God, and do not be afraid, for God is greater than any of these; rejoice.

When all else fails, rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice anyway. Christ will come.

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The letter of Zephaniah to the Philippians, as recorded in the Gospel of John the Baptist according to Luke

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Wondering how to reconcile the rejoicing of Gaudete Sunday with the somewhat confrontational style of John the proverbial Baptist? Try the Glee cast approach: make of a mix-and-match mash-up approach a whole new song. Rejoice!

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, ‘Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice, you brood of vipers! Rejoice in the Lord and exult with all your heart.

Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? The Lord has taken away the judgements against you; he has turned away your enemies. Again, I will say, Rejoice!

Bear fruits worthy of repentance. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. Do not let your hands grow weak, but let your gentleness be known to everyone.

The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory. He will rejoice over you with gladness; he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.

The Lord is near. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the tree; “I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach,” says the Lord. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.  “I will save the lame and gather the outcast,” says the Lord, “I will deal with your oppressors at that time.”

Do not begin to say to yourselves, “What then should we do?” God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. “I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth,” says the Lord. “At that time, I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you.The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds at that time, when I restores your fortunes before your eyes,” says the Lord.’

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

 

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Lesser known legends of St Nicolas

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Nikolai was born in Demre, Turkey, formerly known as Myra. Nikolai was born into a wealthy family, but he was orphaned at a young age and raised by monks at a local orphanage.

When he came of age, Nikolai travelled to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage. While there, he saw first hand the places that Jesus had once walked desecrated by division and violence, and he was deeply moved. One story of the saint tells of a time when he was visiting the West Bank, when a mortar fell on a settlement there. He met a pair of parents searching frantically for their son. Nikolai told them, “Wait here!” and ran off, to their astonishment returning about an hour later with the boy, who appeared dazed but otherwise unharmed. Nikolai said that he had prayed to the boy Jesus whose parents lost him in the temple when he was twelve, and Jesus showed him where to find the boy. Later legend reports that the boy was found dead, and that Nikolai restored him to life; but neither Nikolai nor the boy would ever confirm the claim, preferring to emphasize the power of prayer.

On his journey home, Nikolai stopped at the seaside region of the Bodrum peninsula. While there, he witnessed the arrival of refugees from Syria. One day, as the waves grew larger, he saw firsthand the human cost of the civil war and terrorism in that place as a boatload of refugees was capsized, and many washed up drowned on the shore. One boy, a three-year-old, was shared around the world as an image of the terrible loss that the refugees suffered. That night, Nikolai stood vigil on the beach, by turns blessing and cursing the sea; begging it to be kind to its travellers; cursing its cold indifference to their plight. Long after the young boy’s name was forgotten by the world, Nikolai continued to pray for him and his family. He used part of his family money to organize a mission from the monastery to the refugee camps in the area, improving conditions and providing comfort as he could, while they waited to journey to safer havens. New families would be surprised to find, sometime after their arrival, new shoes for all of the children, and a bag of necessities. Rumours circulated that families that were granted a visa to travel on would find packets of money hidden in the socks at the bottom of their packs on reaching their destination, in the currency of the country to which they were travelling.

Nikolai built a prayer house at each camp, which was used in turn by people of all religions. One Good Friday, he recounted the miracle of Muslims and Christians praying together their Friday prayers of lament and loss, and hope for the resurrection.

As his reputation for philanthropy grew beyond his home region, Nikolai received many calls upon his compassion. He was particularly drawn to endeavours that assisted young women, having seen how vulnerable they were to trafficking and other dangers in the camps. He established schools for girls in areas where women’s education was deficient, and in a controversial move, he set up a mission to the United States to promote women’s health and protect women’s health clinics.

There was another side to the gentle saint. At an international church convention, Nikolai was caught on video striking a fellow bishop. The delegates had been discussing recent violent events in their host country of America, and how the church might help to diffuse the explosion of gun violence and disaffection that seemed to be taking place. A bishop had risen to propose the the convention pass a resolution to the effect that their thoughts and prayers were with all victims of violence, when Nikolai, shouting, “Enough, already!” jumped up and punching him in the nose. The subsequent YouTube viral video storm was a low point in Nikolai’s life, although even as he apologized for his outburst, he maintained that if Jesus could turn over the tables in the temple, his fellow Christians could at least turn over a ballot sheet and demand sensible reform to reduce incidents of mass violence.

Nikolai died on December 6th, and was mourned in his home country of Turkey and around the world as a patriarch, prophet, and saint. In the years that followed, countless people came forward to describe his influence in their lives; influence they sometimes described as “a miracle.” He is remembered in many denominations as a patron saint of sailors, refugees, children, especially orphans, the city of Liverpool, and, ironically, non-violence.

In a documentary made shortly after his death, Nikolai’s charitable fund manager described his “open eyes and open heart” view of the world. The success of his philanthropy, he said, was due less to Nikolai’s inexhaustible wealth and more to his inexhaustible wealth of compassion. “The man never knew when he was beaten,” said the fund manager. “If he couldn’t save the world, he would save the family down the street. If he couldn’t save the family, he’d save them a Sunday dinner.”

A consulting psychologist believed that something was arrested in Nikolai when he was orphaned at such a young age. His parents had always insisted to him that he was loved beyond measure, and that God loved him as God’s own child. Nikolai never lost that childlike wonder and trust in that early experience of love.

The documentary interviewed an ancient monk, who had known Nikolai all of his life, and who said simply, “He really, really loved Jesus.”

Because of the proximity of his feast day to Christians, Nikolai is often portrayed in icons offering gifts to the infant Jesus; although the YouTube video from the new Council of Nicaea remains his most-viewed image, as is the way of the world.

 

 

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Preaching peace unpeacefully

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

I preached peace last night. Two hours before the service started, I heard the news out of San Bernardino.

Last weekend, I felt sick writing my sermon as I read online the shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and the execution of a Waffle House waitress.

It was not my body torn and plundered, rushed to the hospital, hooked up to medical devices and drips. I did not take that phone call, feel that stomach drop, the folding of the knees, the blood run cold to the floor.

A former schoolfriend shared the news that her husband’s cancer care has turned to comfort care. At dinner, my own husband had said, “I didn’t know if I would be here to celebrate my fiftieth birthday,” and we smiled. Does my relief at his recovery render my grief for my friend insincere?

I am insulated by my privilege and a white painted pulpit from the pain which my preaching addresses. My horror at my own hand-wringing distances me even from myself. Even this post is all about me.

I preached peace anyway; the peace that passes understanding; the peace with which Jesus leaves us, although he spent a lot of time, too, promising persecution. I worry that this will not be received as good news.

I feel lately as though I am always at a funeral, where my place is not within the grave, but standing over it offering prayers. Where my place is not in the front pew, weeping, but beyond it, pleading God for comfort. Where my place is not within the casket, but at its side, making the sign of the cross and declaiming, proclaiming resurrection against the evidence of our eyes.

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Can I say “fiery cat farts” in an Advent meditation?

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

This was originally published by the RevGalBlogPals in their weekly email.

(No cats were harmed in the making of this Advent meditation.)

I adjusted my Advent prayer rituals after acquiring a third cat. Animals are supposed to have a natural fear of fire, so I was surprised when said cat wandered over my Advent candles to check out my prayer book. We were both surprised when the flame rushed up her backside. I screamed. She jumped. The flames on cat and candle, mercifully, blew out. When I caught up with the cat, she appeared relatively unsinged. I don’t think she even knew she had caught fire; she was simply confused by my sudden transformation from contemplative to banshee.

However we try to keep Advent for itself, Christmas, cat-like, has a way of creeping into every space, demanding attention. A season of mood swings: memory bleeds into nostalgia; merriment turns on a dime into hysteria; quietude explodes without warning into fiery cat farts billowing off the festive table.

It becomes ridiculous to try to hold back the chaos of Christmas, the eruption of the Incarnation of God as a mewling infant watching the stars fall. We may as well set aside our fear of fire and embrace the confusion that relocates Middle Eastern refugees into stained glass windows; satellite stations into guiding stars; the not yet into the now.

It never was a season of calm and quiet, getting ready for the birth of God. It was always going to be unpredictable, raucously holy, waiting for a God who redeems the sublime out of the ridiculous.

God, our God: God of the ridiculous and sublime; God in the quiet and the chaos; God in the crib and on the cross: in this season of anticipation and exhaustion; of joy and overwrought emotion; of decoration and decay: Emmanuel. Be God with us. Amen.

 

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Advent in the meantime

Posted on December 2, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Light and dark

his skin and mine. “Who has the time?” he asked. I had said, “I am a process person.”

He said it quietly, but I heard the harmonic ringing out: “Time is a privilege.”

The time between “thy kingdom come” and “thy will be done,” not for wasting only

waiting, glazed into oil painting, hands uplifted, light reflecting, glory hung on the wall.

Time, the first creature to be placed under the dominion of the Adam and the Eve,

but some of us are prone to squander, throw away its bones, instead

of tending, nurturing, pruning it to produce good fruit, forgetting

that our meantime is bound in service to the glory that waits, shyly, just out of time.

An Advent meditation for the Diocese of Ohio. Find more and sign up for daily meditations from around the Diocese here.

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Year C Advent 1: a new thing

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

I don’t know about you, but I am ready for this Advent. I am ready for God to do a new thing, which is what Advent is about: God breaking through our routines and rituals and riots and routs to do something new and innovative and unexpected; something wonderful. We do not know what it will be, and we get mixed messages, frankly, from the Bible and its history. Will God come in humility, as in the Incarnation, as vulnerable and human as an infant born in the Middle East before the Middle Ages, such a short and difficult life, which had such an impact? Will God come in the night, by stealth, wrestling as with Jacob at the Jabbok brook, walking as with Daniel through the lions’ den? Will God come silently, in the ringing stillness that assaults our ears after the earthquake and the bomb blast and the storm? Or will this time, this time will God come in clouds with great glory, trumpeting from heaven with angel hordes and terrifying power?

Maybe one person’s humility is another’s glory; towards the end of Advent we sing with Mary the Magnificat, which raises up the lowly, even as the mighty are cast down, and proud imaginations scattered.

We do not know exactly what new thing God will do in our lives on any given day, in any given season. We can and we do pray and discern where we are called to do a new thing in our own lives, in the life of our family, our community, our church, called and enabled by God. But God is less predictable than we are.

So Luke’s advice is to continue to pray and to discern and to act. Do not be side-tracked, he says, by dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this world. Stay alert. On a personal level, this might literally be about drunkenness; about not allowing ourselves to be seduced by the temptation to alter our reality only in our own perception, only temporarily; whether through the use of alcohol or food or over-consumption, inappropriate relationships with people or with things – the list goes on, and each of us has our own personal litany. The temptation to temporary distractions and distortions of our lives is one thing we might want to pay attention to this Advent, warns Luke.

In the lives of our communities, it might have to do with our society’s drunken addiction to violence.  I really don’t want to go here again – I wish that we would do a new thing. But one of the number of disturbing deaths that we witnessed this week was that, replayed on camera, of Laquan McDonald, aged 17, of Chicago; a video that I have not and cannot watch. The day after it was released, Bishop Jeffrey Lee, of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, issued a statement, in part:

“The video of Laquan’s death, released by the mayor’s office just hours after the officer was charged with first-degree murder, makes it impossible for us to turn away from the violence that has been done in our name by this police officer and by too many other police officers who are charged with protecting us. It makes it impossible for us to discount the power of systemic racism to distort our community. And it makes it impossible for us to tell ourselves that the peril of being young and black in Chicago is not our problem.”

A year after the death of Tamir Rice, still under investigation, we might remind ourselves how impossible it is for any of us to tell ourselves that the peril of being young and black in Cleveland is not our problem. If we really do love one another, then it really is our collective problem.

One more mass murder this week took the life of a dedicated police officer who was trying to save lives, no doubt indiscriminately. The issue is not only black, white, or black and blue. Our addiction is not only to racism and the abuse of power, but to the violence which our disconnection and disenchantment with one another leads.

After yet another mass shooting yesterday, President Obama commented,

“This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal. If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.”

If we are to pray with a clean conscience, then, God knows, we need to do something about cleaning up our collective and our cultural act, the drunkenness and dissipation that assaults it.

In the life of our church, perhaps that is where we might focus this Advent: on examining our conscience and our culture, and determining whether we are truly offering the people of God real change, real progress towards the kingdom of God, rather than temporary relief. Discerning whether we are addressing the real issues that confront us: those of racism and reconciliation; those of mistrust, misogyny, misrepresentation; those things that kill our children and their parents; those that cause us legitimate fear and trembling. Maybe we can try to get beyond and behind those things that disconnect and disenchant us, so that we can love one another as God intended; fall in love with one another anew.

During Advent, in our coffee hour, I invite us to engage some of these important conversations. Christians are called to be leaders in our community, agents of the state of God, provocateurs of peace and reconciliation. It has to begin within ourselves. If you are willing to engage in conversation about the things that disconnect and disenchant us with one another, then I invite you to gather around the last table in the Guild Room during coffee hour to share what it is we need to talk about.

If we are to pray with a clean conscience, then we cannot simply get drunk on our Communion week by week; but we need to pray soberly, truthfully, watchfully, pray constantly, and hopefully, for the permanent change of status that we long to see in the world: Christ’s kingdom come.

The book of Jeremiah is mostly full of dire predictions of doom. It is all the more striking, then, when from his own prison cell, in the middle of the siege of Jerusalem and in fear for his own life and the life of his city, his community, God’s people, Jeremiah offers this assurance, that the days are surely coming when the kingdom of God’s anointed will be seen on the earth. In a world of turmoil and temporary distractions, the one thing that is sure and always certain is that God will do a new thing, is always doing a new thing, because it is part of the character of God to be creative, and it is part of the nature of Christ to save us, and it is the part of the Holy Spirit to inspire us.

Be alert, then, says Luke. Be ready, because who knows what God will do with us next.

Amen.

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Christ the King: preaching the parable of the kingdoms

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

My kingdom, says Jesus, is not from this world.

We pray, constantly, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, because the kingdom of Christ is not from this world, but this world needs it, badly.

If my kingdom were from this world, says Jesus, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.

If my kingdom were from this world, Jesus says, then it would be business as usual: divine drones and angelic airstrikes, uprisings and revolts armed with pitchforks and swords, and always in the background the fear of a final solution, a nuclear option. But as it is, says Jesus, my kingdom is not from here.

There is a small problem, hidden in plain sight in the middle of this passage: three little words: “to the Jews.”

If my kingdom were from this world, says Jesus, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.

Leaving aside the crucial detail that Jesus is himself a Jew, that his disciples all at this point were Jewish, too, history has used these three little words to wreak havoc on the people from whom Christ came. He was the king of the Jews, branch of Jesse, Son of David. It is the hope of the Gentiles that his kingdom, coming not from this world, encompasses all. It is the despair of many that we have made our hope into a denial of the humanity of others.

We forget the breadth and scope and capacity of Christ’s redemption and merciful love. We forget the way in which Jesus took an enemy even like Saul, who looked on approvingly as the martyrs were murdered, and turned him into the chief apostle, Paul. We forget the power of God, while we are protecting our own.

In the kingdom that is not from this world, things look a little different.

In the kingdom that is not from this world, these is no Jew or Greek, male or female, cis or trans, slave or free. There is not Christian or Moslem, Syrian or Serbian, refugee or naturalized citizen. In the kingdom that is not from this world, online comments offer hope, not judgement; pundits pontificate on love, not on fear.

There is another small difficulty that we encounter with this gospel of Christ the king, whose kingdom is not from this world, and that is this: that in this world, and in its empires and its order, he is sentenced to death, and he his crucified. And his followers, the ones who do not fight to stop him from being handed over; many of them are martyred. This is why we pray constantly, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth; because in the kingdoms of this world, violence is cruel and conflict persists.

Jesus says, My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting … But as it is …

It is difficult to live in the kingdoms of this world as citizens of a kingdom that is not from this world. It is so hard not to fight: the fight and flight reflex to difference and danger is pretty deeply set within us. It is risky, to live as followers of a king whose kingdom is not from this world. But honestly, we have it easy here. It should be easy to be a Christian in America, where the threat level is low, and the culture commends us for gathering like this on a Sunday morning to share the gospel and the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. It has to be much easier to live as a Christian here, today, of all the kingdoms of this world, than in Paris or Brussels, or in Mali, or the north of Nigeria, or, God help us, in Syria or Iraq; and that makes our responsibility all the weightier, to do it right, to bear up the cross to which we bear witness, the cross that bears witness to the cost of that crown of thorns. Because that is a cost which Jesus has already borne. The Revelation describes Him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom. And the cross which we bear is empty, and light, having been freed of its burden by his resurrection.

He has made us to be a kingdom, Christ whose kingdom is not from this world, whose kingdom looks a little different, where there is no Jew or Greek, Syrian or Serbian, Moslem or Christian, slave or free, where enemies are loved and persecutors prayed for, and resurrection prevails over all.

He has made us to be a kingdom, and they shall know us not by our banners or our battle hymns, but by our love.

If your dinner table conversations stray this Thursday into the forbidden realms of religion and politics, it is worth remembering that Christ’s politics are not conformed to the kingdoms of this world, and their cycle of fear, and war, and revenge. Jesus was not a Republican, nor a Democrat. Christ’s kingdom is not from this world, although we need it badly, which is why we pray constantly, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.

As Advent approaches, we look forward to that kingdom come, to Christ’s new coming upon the earth. At the same time, we cycle back to a time when Christ the King, Jesus the Word of God was born, a wordless child, in Bethlehem. We remember the moment not long after when his parents fled persecution, stealing away as best they could to whatever neighbouring country would give them shelter, which turned out to be Egypt, Israel’s old nemesis. Irony abounds when kingdoms collide.

And there they waited as refugees from the kings of this world, until the time was right for Jesus Christ to return with his kingdom, which is not from this world.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

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My kingdom is not of this world

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

A pre-Advent poem for Christ the King

The flag

I did not come with fire and flood,
but with tender fingertips,
in flesh and squalling hunger
biting through your resignation,
splitting hearts and breaking glory
down into its humblest parts,
to clots of water; born in blood,
I came wrapped in a caul, torn
shadow of that crown of thorns,
no weapon but humility,
a hostage to humanity,
no slogan but a baby’s cry,
no banner but a swaddling cloth
hung out in the sun to dry.

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