Tag Archives: Jesus

Sore wounded

Posted on April 18, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

First purple, then green new leaves unfurl as though winter had never been; veined and vain, they bear no marks of last year’s deer, no signs of decay. This is not the resurrection of the dead; this is a conjuring … Continue reading →

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Are we there yet?

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is nothing in Christ’s story that would justify our sacrifice of children, women, grocery shoppers, police officers, and passers by to defend our right to reserve weapons of violence to ourselves. On the contrary, the resurrection is God’s ultimate judgement on the violence that nailed Jesus to the cross. The resurrection is God’s utter negation and reversal of all that would kill the beloved. Continue reading →

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On judgement

Posted on November 15, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Only the unjust know no shame, and say that because God does not change the dynamic of cause and effect, but lets us lead human lives of substance, agency, and consequence; only the foolish say that this means that God, our Judge and our Redeemer, does not notice nor care what goes on in our hearts, nor in our homes, nor in our nation. Continue reading →

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The wedding parable

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

What if this wedding were not about the king and his slaves, the guests and their clothing, the invited and the uninvited and the smited?
What if this parable were about the bridegroom and his beloved? Continue reading →

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Crumbs

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

If Jesus was putting on a scene in order to convict his disciples of their own exclusionary, xenophobic, racist, sexist, selfish attitudes towards the woman – “Make her go away!” they say. “Make her stop talking” – then we have yet fully to learn our lesson. Continue reading →

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Preaching Pentecost

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

More than 100,000 people have died in the US of COVID-19.
Nearly 360,000 people have died from the disease worldwide. Close to 6 million cases have been confirmed overall.
George Floyd died after saying, “I can’t breathe,” as a police officer knelt on his neck in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Continue reading →

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Sermon from the edge of a pandemic

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus was not great at social distancing. Wherever he went he attracted crowds that pressed against the lake shore, against one another, against him and the hem of his garments. Once, he filled a house so full that they had to take the roof off to fit one more person in.

Even out in the sticks, he managed to find the one woman next to a well, and asked her for a drink. Continue reading →

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Words matter

Posted on February 16, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus does not want us less than whole. He does not want our bodies abused, nor for our relationships to become a prison or a torment. The instructions he gives us, time and again, are to love God and to love one another; anything more is hyperbole; anything less is parody. Continue reading →

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Fight the good fight

Posted on October 27, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

The good fight, Paul has learned, is the one that he doesn’t mind losing, so long as he may keep his martyr’s crown, so long as he has hold of the hem of Jesus’ robe.

After all, Jesus himself faced the same judgement of the empire, and the same ignominious, criminal execution at its hands. His enemies thought that it was a defeat. They were wrong. Continue reading →

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Word and deed

Posted on September 29, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Prophets, true prophets, are truth-tellers. They are not in the prophecy business for popularity. Unlike politicians, their constituency is not power brokers but the poor in spirit, the people of God who seek hope not in empires and armies but in the word of God, God’s promise to their ancestors to walk with them and not to leave them lost and alone. Continue reading →

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