The baptism of Jesus

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

Jesus’ ministry is bookmarked by humility. From his humble birth and early childhood as a child of refugees, seeking asylum in a foreign land. And here, coming to John for baptism, the Lord of all has no need to lord it over anyone. There is no pomp, pride, parading. The only display of power is that of the Holy Spirit, descending upon him like a dove, and the voice from heaven falling down like thunder: this is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.

And when we ask what it is that has pleased God so much, it is clear that God delights simply in Jesus’ very existence: God’s Son. God’s Beloved. Nothing has yet happened by way of miracle or sacrifice. Only Jesus, coming to the water to meet his maker. That is how God’s love is: not earned, not commanded, not pretended to, but wrapped up in our very existence, ordained by God,

who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,

who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it.

Many, many years ago, I visited Galilee, and I nearly drowned in its rivers, except that of course I didn’t; but only because others pulled me to safety.

When Jesus was baptized, in that river, if he fell beneath the running waters, twisted by its currents and submerged by its strong steam, the Word silenced by the Flood; then the waters of chaos witnessed once more the Spirit of God brooding over them like a bird; then the Spirit sought out Jesus like a dove, so that the moment he broke through the surface, gasped a breath, it was there to breathe new life into his lungs, the new creation.

And John was there, too, because one of the gifts of the incarnation, the coming of God among us as one of us, Jesus, is the knowledge that none of us does any of this alone. Righteousness, struggling to breathe, glorifying God from the heavens; none of it is a solo but a community chorus. No one baptizes themselves, not even Jesus.

A few years ago, I went back and I visited Jordan, and the region where John was said to have baptized Jesus. It’s in what is known as the demilitarized zone, a tense strip of truce between neighbours. The border runs through the river, dividing pilgrims renewing their baptismal promises on one side or the other.

But the pilgrims are remembering their baptism, in which they promised to resist all powers that would separate them from the love of God for them and for one another, and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who made no distinction between himself and his cousin. And so the pilgrims sing to one another. They know that running water knows no borders, and that the Spirit of God makes no distinction between them, beloved children of God every one. For this is the new creation, in which such artificial divisions have not even been imagined.

God gives us our part in the dispensation of grace: what a gift! And we have done nothing to earn it. John asks Jesus, should I baptize you? And the answer is yes: our witness that Gods invites us to share in the mystery of the new creation, in the sacraments, gives us our part in the dispensation of grace. Jesus tells John: the grace that God has given you to administer, pour out freely and share with abandon. It is the right thing to do.

We know, we have heard of the love of God that is without exception. We know, and we have heard of the Son of God who is all humility and whose superpower is love. We are called to share that good news with whoever will listen, and with those who will not listen, but who may one day hear the voice of God falling like thunder, “my Beloved.”

We don’t need anything to do it, except the knowledge that God loves us. We don’t need great power. We don’t need to win any arguments, we don’t need the trappings of the world. Only the knowledge of the love of God, falling from the heavens like a dove, like dew, like rain upon the river, and a community of faith to remind us of it.

We live in a world and a country and a time that needs so badly to hear the good news, – from the holy lands to Venezuela, to Minneapolis to here, for all lands are holy and all people in them beloved – that Jesus, the Lord of all, isn’t interested in lording it over anyone, but only in the free-flowing, everliving mercy and love of God. For even

a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.

And, thanks be to God, we have been offered our part in that mercy, that love, that justice – not because we are powerful, nor because we are proud, but because God delights in us, delights in you, God’s own beloved, baptized with the same running water as Jesus, and filled with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 

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Lenses

Posted on January 7, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

I was busy. It wasn’t until late in the day that I finally sat down to prepare a prayer for our meeting. I found one, a good one, except for one word that rang untrue.

Do we need to be forgiven the blindness that keeps us from seeing? Or healed of it? Is blindness often chosen?

I understood the sentiment behind the phrase, but chose to substitute “lenses”. Oh yes, I can see myself playing with the tints, the exposure, the contrast, the brightness. Forgive me my choice of lens.

It wasn’t until much later that I read the news. I recognized that it had been run through a series of lenses. Even eye-witness accounts and supposedly objective video were subject to interpretation.

Because of our lenses. Because we choose what to magnify, flatten, or obscure.

It is not an affliction. It is our choice. That is our sin.

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A prayer for the leaders

Posted on January 6, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes
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Intended

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

Sermons are always contextual, of course; this one included acknowledgement of a particular pastoral leave-taking which I have omitted, it being most meaningful to the parish in which it was preached. Here’s the rest of the sermon, on the holy family’s flight to Egypt as described in Matthew 2

Today, we pick up the story after the wise men, the magi have visited Bethlehem with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and after they have accidentally alerted Herod that there is something seismic happening among the people, affecting even the heavens, with the appearance of a bright new star. Warned in a dream not to return to Herod, having paid homage to the holy family and to Jesus, they have left for their own country by another road.

Have you ever had one of those dreams that was so vivid and lifelike that when you woke up you weren’t altogether certain it was a dream? The dreams that make you reach for the phone just to check in with a loved one, or to look out for the promised sign on the way to work, sure that God is speaking through the birds and the bystanders?

Joseph, too, was a dreamer, and it served him well. As he made the cruel and arduous journey toward Egypt, surrounded no doubt by other refugees from Herod’s atrocity, I wonder if he remembered the stories of his namesake, Joseph the dreamer, with the coat of many colours, and the brothers, and the exile to Egypt, the imprisonment, and the eventual redemption. I wonder if this Joseph remembered that Joseph’s words to his brothers as they fretted over his forgiveness: what you intended as evil toward me, God has repurposed for good toward all, for the saving and sustaining of many people.

It is not God’s will that people should do evil. It is not in God’s nature to create chaos, but to bring comfort to God’s people, mercy to the lost, love to those most in need of it. The backstory of this flight to Egypt is one of the most awful examples of evil in the Christian canon – yet the message of Matthew’s gospel is not one of humanity’s horrors but of God’s persistent and providential love and mercy. The warning to Joseph to flee comes even before the order of Herod to kill. The message to Joseph, through his dreams, through his faith, is that no matter how hard it becomes to see it, the grace and protective love of God surround this holy family, that God is with us: Emmanuel.

The inhumanity in this story belongs to us alone: to humans jealous of their power and influence, drunk on the dregs of empire and determined to hold on to whatever worldly rewards that they can. Herod, fearful of the interventions of God to redeem God’s people, to remake the world in the image of the kingdom of God, goes to unimaginable lengths to resist that vision, that mercy, that light.

But you don’t have to be Herod to resist the call of God’s kingdom. A little hoarding here, a little envy there. The ranking of those deserving and undeserving of help, of dignity, of a home and safety and love. The temptations of the human heart to choose hardness are legendary. How many of our new year’s resolutions have to do with maintaining or improving our own status, rather than easing the way of others?

If we saw the holy family fleeing violence in their homeland, on the run with whatever they could muster, surrounded by fellow refugees, fueled by nothing more than fear, faith, and dreams – would we find room for them?

No, God does not cause harm to happen – we are well equipped to do that for ourselves – but God does give us the opportunity to participate in the healing of our humanity, the repairing of the breach, the resistance of evil, the resurrection of hope. What one intends for evil, we can, with God’s help, turn toward something better.

That said, I am, as I suspect many of us are, still processing the news of this weekend, how this world seems addicted to acts of war or aggression, despite the angels’ songs of peace on earth; we wonder how to act on the side of the angels when all around is on fire.

 …

Still, we are called to continue wherever we find ourselves to echo what we have heard from angels and from one another, and from the birth of Jesus himself: that God’s love is more powerful, more persistent, more present than the work of empire, and worth more than any amount of gold, frankincense, or myrrh. Because despite the siren songs of the world, even the wail of the air raid sirens, we do know when it is God who is speaking to us. We have heard the angels singing peace. We know that the dreams are real.

We are sustained by the same love that supported Joseph, and when there are disruptions or upheavals, whether excitedly anticipated or wildly unexpected, it is the same providence that visits us, and lets us know that God is with us in it all: Emmanuel.

That was the vision in which Joseph placed his faith and his family: that God is with us, God’s promises endure forever. It didn’t make life easier, by any means. God knows it didn’t remove the obstacles of grief and the graft and grimness of the world or the wilderness, its empires, its wars, its little kings.

But what it did mean is that he, Joseph, spent the rest of his days in the close and intimate presence of the love of God among us, Jesus. And who knows how many were saved, through one man’s dream, and courage, and faith, who listened to the Word of God crying in the night and heard and heeded the voice of God among us, the kingdom of heaven drawn near.

Amen.

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Wise

Posted on January 2, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

I don’t know how you dealt  with clouded nights
or languishing days,
how long you paused before you even
began to pack or give thought to presents. 
Who was first to bring it up: 
the unlikely journey and unlikelier child? 

I can guess why you stopped at the seat of power, 
presuming an answer before the question was asked. 
And that was when it really began, wasn’t it? 

Those last two nights beneath the star, 
haunted by dreams and pursued by your own hubris, 
assuming that God’s throne was built by proud men 
rather than chosen from the caverns of the earth, 
formed by divine hands at creation. 

By the time you reached the star-struck place 
you were ready to crawl in on bended knees 
and babble your praises like a newborn; 
for the foolishness of God’s incarnation 
was wiser than you or I ever could imagine.

Matthew 2:1-18; 1 Corinthians 1:25-29; Psalm 95:4-5
Image: Adoration of the Magi, Konrad Laib, early 1400s, photographed at the Cleveland Museum of Art (detail)

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Christmas Eve 2025

Posted on December 24, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Being a guest priest and preacher on Christmas Eve

It is a joy to be with you on Christmas Eve, this most joyful of our festival nights. And I am grateful to you for inviting me into your church home. So often we think of Christmas as a family time, a comfortable, slippers-on time. Even the intruder who comes down the chimney is not a stranger but a welcome and familiar figure.

So to be invited into the family Christmas is something special. It can be a big step in a relationship. Of course, the family thing can create some extra loneliness, too, for those marking the holiday alone, for those grieving, or angry, or stubbornly unloved.

That first Christmas, though, that was hardly a private affair. First of all, it wasn’t even celebrated at home. Mary and Joseph were called away by the government to present themselves, to be accounted for, to give an account of themselves. They dared not disobey the summons, not when it came with the name of the Emperor attached. Not even when they didn’t know where it would lead, what to expect when they got there. Not even if it would leave them temporarily homeless, banished to a foreign land, to wait out the wrath of those given or grasping temporal power, Herod and his henchmen.

As you can tell, already there was a lot to be uneasy about, when they finally arrived in the birthplace of David, Joseph’s forefather. And now Bethlehem was bustling, and there was no room for newcomers. They had to make do among the animals, and how private was that, do you think? How many times in the night were they disturbed by someone just stopping in to check on their donkey or their ox? Not to mention the shepherds, wild and out of their minds with fear and the songs of angels.

No, that was no picture-postcard Christmas. The holy family did not spend it relaxing at home, nor even in safety. And yet, this might just be the moment when God invites us home for Christmas, takes the next step in our relationship.

When I think about Christmas in the abstract, the snowscapes and the fireplace, that’s one thing; but the actual, individual, real-time Christmases I remember the most were not those picture postcard affairs, and they always involve the unexpected inclusion of others.

There was the time that my mum was in the hospital. She was supposed to come home on day release, but that didn’t work out, so we packed up everything from under the tree, stockings and all, Christmas dinners plated and packaged into a cooler on top of a hot water bottle, and took it all with us to share on the hospital ward, with the nurses in their party hats, those who worked the Christmas shift for us and to save our mother.

There was the time when we were living 13,000 miles away from family, literally on the other side of the world, and were invited to make a new family with others dislocated and far from home. The quilted stockings that one of them made for our children are still part of our Christmas traditions a quarter century later, long after her memory became blessed.

Then there was the pageant. So far from home and familiar things, our neighbours missed the ritual of dressing the children up and acting out the Christmas story – so we did it ourselves. Only, when the holy couple knocked on the door of our apartment, so tired and footsore from their journey, seeking just some room at the inn, my husband, who was playing the innkeeper, flung the door wide open and announced, “Sure, come on in – there’s loads of room!”

So maybe it wasn’t the line we were expecting, but I think that he was onto something. This is God’s line, at Christmas and always. This is God inviting us to take the next step in our relationship, God stepping into the world, into our home, humble as a guest, holy as a child, and breaking us open to receive the love of God made manifest.

This is the message of Christmas, isn’t it – not so much the drawing in and closing down, the drawing of the curtains against the dark and cold, as it is the opening up; the labour of effacing little by little the things that come between us and keep us from seeing the glory of God incarnate in our neighbours, from realizing the strength and endurance of God’s love, the capacity and tenacity of God’s mercy. When the very heavens are opened for angels to sing to shepherds on the earth, how can we be short of room for one another, friend and stranger, lover and lost, family and fallen alike? And not for one day, but year after year and for millennia.

When Jesus was born among the homeless, the homespun, the animal, and the oppressed, angels sang. When the shepherds told of it, peace on earth and all, all those who heard it were rightly amazed. When his mother wrapped the child in cloth and wonder, treasuring his fingerprints and the furrow of his brow, her heart overflowed like deep waters.

 And when he, Jesus, the Son of God born of Mary, opened his mouth and cried out, and when he opened his eyes to see her, it was as though Creation itself had been made anew: Let there be light.  

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Solstice

Posted on December 20, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

When the night is longest, stretching

deep and dark beyond our sight,

light a candle;

see its flame flicker as the breath of God

inhales our prayers,

sighs out a shimmer of hope.

 

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Advent I

Posted on November 29, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is not as simple as the poet makes it

sound to transform the form of metal,

a sword into farm equipment.

Just hit it with a hammer,

the prophecy implies,

and all will fall,

seeds into their furrows and nations

in obeisance to the Prince of Peace.

Yet rumours of the spoils of war

echo in the ears of rulers,

and fear forges weapons from the elements.

Still, when the fire of the Spirit burns

and melts the hearts of humanity,

something new will breathe,

rising and falling through clouds

of smoke and glory,

fermenting life from dirt and ashes.

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. – Isaiah 2:4

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Seven

Posted on November 5, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

And then, imagine it from her point of view:

seven lifetimes of love, regret, loss, laughter.

Seven lifetimes of abuse – pray not.

Seven lifetimes of blessing, despite the woes,

hope despite it all. Seven lifetimes and here,

in eternity, she was no one’s to own:

the richest woman with lifetimes to spare

in a sky-blue heaven, the angels attendants,

white cloud gown, bridegroom waiting

since before the lifetime of earth for this

glorious consummation

 

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” – Luke 20:27-38

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Woe to you who are self-satisfied

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

We know that the words of Jesus are timeless. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away, he says elsewhere (Matthew 24:35). And yet, on this particular weekend, in this particular country, to preach that those who are hungry are blessed can feel out of step.

Jesus, of course, was echoing the song his mother sang when she was carrying him, the one we know as the Magnificat; the one that includes the lines,

God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty – Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. (Luke 1:53; 6:25)

And Mary, in turn, was riffing off of Hannah, who sang so many centuries before.

Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry are fat with spoil – Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. (1 Samuel 2:5; Luke 6:21)

Timeless. For so many centuries, that see-saw of hunger and satisfaction, blessing and warning, joy and mourning has been rising and falling in song and in society, without, apparently, any resolution as yet.

I’m not here to talk politics. I believe that there are choices as a nation that we could make to bless the hungry and raise up the poor and put-upon in spirit. And, the choices that Jesus invites us to make go beyond the politics of the moment. They are fundamental. They are timeless.

Here is what Jesus offers by way of instruction after he repeats his foremothers’ song:

Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer, and do not wit hhold. Give without asking for return. Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:27-31)

That’s where the see-saw balances, isn’t it? Do to others as you would have them do to you. Love one another, love your neighbour, love your enemy. Love God before all and the image of God in every person, as you would have them see you, beloved of God and worthy of the love of neighbour. This is the pivot point of the see-saw, the fulcrum of the lever: the love of God.

I don’t think that it’s much of a stretch to say that this balance is present when we come to baptism, or to the commemoration of All Saints and All Souls. In each, death and resurrection, a new life, are represented and made visible. Regret is turned into repentance and the communion of saints murmur absolution; oil and water meet at the font; mourning and singing mingle at the altar.

And in each of these commemorations we recognize that we are none of us Christians alone, none of human alone; that each of our blessings and woes adds to the movement of the see-saw.

It is a joy and a privilege to return to this place, where I learned – where you taught me – so much about how to become a priest. And as I look out among the pews, I see so much that has changed, and so much that remains the same. I see the memories, spirits of people who are no longer here, who have joined the Communion of Saints, the cloud of witnesses, or simply moved on. I see new life that has emerged to join this crowd of witnesses and worshippers. What a joy and a privilege to be part of the sacrament of baptism this morning, the promise of a future filled with the Holy Spirit, the breath of life.

When we are baptized into the Body of Christ, we join ourselves with something that is dynamic, living and therefore ever-changing; and yet which is eternal, and thereby constant. Whatever the ups and downs of this life, the foundation of the church, Jesus, stands. That is a comfort, and a constancy that we need in these tumultuous times – and when are the affairs of humanity ever not tumultuous?

And as we stand on that foundation, swaying a little, but trusting, Jesus says, Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray.

Be the blessing that will bring us closer to the kingdom of God that Mary and Hannah sang of. Do the good in this moment, at this time that will let others know the enduring love of God, who feeds us on bread and wine. Listen, heed the warnings that Jesus offers to those who think that they are untouched by the needs of others. Love God, love your neighbour, change their world, change our world.

Archimedes is widely reported to have said, Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world (to paraphrase a diocesan tagline).

The love of God, unfailing, unflinching, all-blessing, baptizing creation God’s mercy: that is the support, the pivot point, the fulcrum upon which the lever rests. All we are asked to do is to lean into it.

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