In this time of confusion and chaos, Bishop Hughes invites us to remember that God, who called all creation into being, is with us and even now is calling into being compassion, courage, faithfulness, and justice. (Time: 5:16.)

Video Transcript

This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. One of the things I do when I am facing a challenge or confusion or a time like the time that we’re in right now, is to ask myself, what does it remind me of in Scripture? I find the Bible very helpful to use to think through life. And so as I think about the situation that I’m facing, I ask that question, what does it remind me of in Scripture?

And when I’ve been asking that question over the last two weeks – and it really has been the last two weeks that things have been full of intense change – when I ask that question, what comes to mind to me the most often is the very first story in Holy Scripture, and that is the creation story. And I think what draws me to that story, which is one of my favorites, is it tells us something about who God is, that God calls things into being, that God makes order out of chaos, that God created everything on the planet. God called all those things good. And when God called humankind into being, God called us in God’s image in some way, saying, let us make humankind, and let us make humankind in our image. Just that right alone, let us make humankind in our image says something about the vastness of who God is. We tend to think of God as this one person, but God is so much bigger than we can even imagine, think of, or describe.

That all brings me great comfort in a time of confusion and chaos and a time where there are people who are really – terrified is the word – very scared about what might happen to them, and people who are navigating all those things around them, that in the midst of this, God is calling things into being. So as confusion and chaos continue, I’m going to invite you to do what I do, and start looking for how God is calling things into being.

I think some of the things you can see. One, that there have been plenty of compassionate responses around us, that God is calling compassion into being – that when you see something happening to somebody else, if you know that person well, or even if you don’t know that person well, and your heart goes out to them, God is calling that into being.

God is calling care into being. God is calling respect into being. God is calling justice into being. God is also calling this enjoyment of diversity, of all the differences that there are between us, and the many ways that we take a look at that and we even celebrate it. This is just the beginning of Black History Month. We celebrate the diversity that is Black History, and take some time to say, okay, in a world where our baseline is European culture, and our baseline is white, and especially in The Episcopal Church, where our Book of Common Prayer comes from England, and therefore it’s based on English culture, and that is the way we worship, and that we have our being together. But in the midst of that, we honor the diversity that is around us, and we see that not only as a blessing, but we see that as a way God calls things into being. God didn’t just call one animal and one plant and one person and one planet and one star. God called all kinds, all variations of those things, and all of them working together.

And remembering the way God calls things into being and the vastness of God’s creativity and the joy that God took in that creation is a helpful reminder in the midst of this time that while things may seem simply confusing or simply dangerous, that even In the midst of that, there are people around us, many of them in our churches, many of them are clergy, many of them are laity, many of them who are leaning into compassion. Who are working as hard and as creatively as they can to show care for others. That all of that is coming into being at the same time. God is calling on our courage and God is calling on our faithfulness.

We are not in this alone, and anytime that we have some sense of not quite knowing how to act, I invite you to ask that same question, what does this remind me of in Scripture? Scripture is a story of how God has been with God’s people at all times. So there are stories, there are things, there are prophecies, there are verses, there are words that can bring us hope and bring us the comfort that we need at any given time. And right now, it’s important to know that God that brought all of this into being is with us right now, working hard to bring goodness and to bring justice and to bring order where there is chaos.