All rights reserved
© Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, 2011-2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
https://bookstore.upperroom.org/Products/1921/a-family-like-mine.aspxWhom Shall I Fear: Urgent Questions for Christians in an Age of Violence
https://www.amazon.com/Whom-Shall-Fear-Questions-Christians/dp/0835819671-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
RevGalBlogPals
Meta
Tag Archives: gun violence
For the love of God
You have to wonder how the Song of Songs ever made it into the Bible. … The poem never explicitly mentions God, but if we read it as sacred story, then we affirm and proclaim that this is God’s love for us; this is God’s love song.
That’s what I wanted to preach about this morning. Then, the night before last, there was a mass shooting outside the high school down the street. Five teenagers were hospitalized. One of them has since died.
God loves these children too much for us to continue to let this happen. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, sermon
Tagged gun violence, James 1:17-27, Jesus, Mark 7, nonviolence, Song of Solomon, Song of Songs
Leave a comment
Healing miracles
Let’s look for the good news, though. Jesus supports our efforts toward healing, whether they be grand gestures or creeping, shuffling steps through the crowd. Jesus affirms our faith that things can be better, and that he will help make it so. For the sake of Jesus, we are gathered not as individuals wounded by violence, but as a community pulling together to heal one another’s hurts, to pray and to salve with balm the troubled spirit. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged community healing, gun violence, Mark 5:21-43, Psalm 130, Year B Proper 8
Leave a comment
This world
When Jesus prays for his disciples, when Jesus prays for us, who will become his disciples generations later, when Jesus prays he casts the world as a dangerous place, even an ugly place in its tendency toward hate; and yet still, he sends his disciples into the world, just as Jesus himself was sent into the world, that all who know him and see God’s love in him might know the life that is eternal. That they may know the joy that God takes in the world, the joy that Jesus knew in this world, despite everything. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Ascension, discipleship, gun violence, Jesus, ordination, prayer
Leave a comment
Good Shepherd Sunday: no other Name
Let us not pretend that there is any name – Smith, Wesson, Glock, Remington – by which we may be saved, but only the name of Jesus. Let us not pretend that there is any power in us to save ourselves, except the power of love that Jesus has demonstrated for us, to lay down our lives, little by little, piece by piece, for our neighbours, for love, for the love of God. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged 1John 3:16-24, Acts 3-4, Good Shepherd, gun violence, Jesus, John 10:11-18, Lectionary Lab, Name of Jesus, Psalm 23, sheep, Year B Easter 4
Leave a comment
The day after
In the days of Noah, God saw that “the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11b), and so “God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them’” (Genesis 6:13). Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, sermon
Tagged #Parkland, Genesis 6-9, gun violence, Kansas City, Lent 1 Year B, mercy, Noah, Ohio
Leave a comment
Quality and quantity
This discourse about the community of mercy is exposed, laid bare, solved by Jesus’ unmathematical formula. Seven, the perfect number of creation, used biblically to represent what is holy, is itself multiplied until we no longer know even what the number is supposed to be. Seven, the number that crowns creation with sabbath, with rest, is multiplied toward the peace of God that passes understanding.
It is not the quantity of forgiveness that is in question, then, but the quality. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged forgiveness, gun violence, Matthew 18:21-35, racism, repentance, seventy times seven, Year A Proper 19
Leave a comment
No stray bullets
There are no stray bullets, just as there were no stray nails pounding themselves into the Cross. Continue reading
Don’t we?
It has been a horrible weekend for gun violence in America. I cannot keep my heart from going out to the family of the teenager gunned down at a high school football game, while I was listening to the strains … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, prayer
Tagged gun violence, Jacksonville, prayer, racism, school shootings
Leave a comment
Good Friday
The cross is a mirror. It shows us what we are not, as well as what we are; the embodiment of God, the epitome of humanity: images mundane and immortal in one body.The cross is a mirror. The cross is a mirror. The hammer falls and innocent flesh … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, poetry, prayer
Tagged Good Friday, gun violence, Holy Week, Lent, mercy, the Cross
Leave a comment
Hosanna – save us!
We are used to thinking of them as the same crowd, moving from one Sunday to the next, but what if they were more like us: divided among themselves, one crying one thing and one another, each with their own ideas of whom should be saved, and how? Continue reading
Posted in holy days
Tagged cross, gun violence, Holy Week, Jesus, Palm Sunday, Passion Gospel, school shootings
Leave a comment
over the water 