Tag Archives: healing

Sabbath rest

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is Jesus who initiates the interaction with the weighed-down woman. It is he who chooses her healing, her liberation, before she has even a chance to ask for it. He is continuing his call, living into and living out the promises of our life-giving, liberating, loving God, whose first gift was life and all that sustains it, and perhaps whose second was sabbath: rest, relief, jubilee joy. Continue reading →

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Sabbath

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Sabbath jubilee: release for the withering will, slow unfurling of a sharply-curved grasp to rejoice in defiant mercy, revolutionary rest; the gift and obligation to lie down like a branch strewn before the quiet feet of God After a hiatus, … Continue reading →

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Which story do we tell?

Posted on February 4, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A fever could be, can be deadly. It is debilitating. It wrings the humanity out of one. She couldn’t tell how long she had lain there, hovering between earth and heaven, but when Jesus came, and took her hand, heaven and earth came together as one, and she felt that new kingdom flowing through her veins, and her heart stopped only long enough to miss a beat as she leapt for joy, and in gratitude ran through the house to celebrate with cakes and oil and wine, to serve and celebrate him who had healed her. Continue reading →

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Pressed

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

What if the robes were reversed and among the throng of sweaty suitors for my notice you were plucking at my sleeve; would I know your touch from the pickpockets of power, care enough to turn and ask what you … Continue reading →

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Take up your mat

Posted on May 26, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus does not help the man to get to the water. Jesus does not need to buy into the system that has kept this man down for thirty-eight years. Jesus is the living water, and he has power to heal the man, and he does that; but he does more. He tells the man to take up his mat, and walk home. Continue reading →

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Your faith

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for hard times. The readings include Mark 5:21-43, in which a woman with a 12-year chronic condition sneaks up to the hem of Jesus robe to be healed, and a child is restored to her parents. There is … Continue reading →

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Facing God

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

All that the leader of the synagogue really needed to do, was to say, “Amen.” Continue reading →

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Pray

Posted on November 26, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

Pray, not for an end to grief; tears fall, the waters of a hard labour.

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PTSD Jesus

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

When he was raised, he bore the marks, which must mean he remembered. Then does each adulterous kiss make him wince at its betrayal; each flash of the needle, of the knife make him flinch? Does he recoil at the … Continue reading →

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Year A Advent 1: starting in the middle

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

In the middle of the story, in the middle of the day, when two women are in the middle of a studied silence over the millstone. They are not speaking. One of them is not speaking so hard, she disappears. … Continue reading →

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