The Third Sunday of Easter
Listen to the Sermon for April 19, 2015
Read the Sermon for April 19, 2015
Category: Diocese of Wyoming
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The Episcopal Church: The Original Discovery Channel
An inclusive and authentic community of faith ought to stand by us and encourage us through all the stages and struggles of faith. I am reminded of this every year on the Second Sunday of Easter when we always read the account of the experience of St. Thomas the Apostle with the Risen Christ (John 20:19-31). This incident shows us that even the most empirical evidence is incomplete without the evidence from personal experience. One role of a faith community is to be a safe place where we can explore and seek understanding of all our experiences, especially those that puzzle and confound us. While the biblical revelation is primary in our faith journey, we believe tradition, reason, and experience are necessary lenses through which we discover the way forward together.
What are the five senses without experience? A scientist must rely on experience of the evidences that are seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled in conducting an experiment. How is the experience of the presence, the love, and the power of the living Christ in a person’s life any less real? No experiment is complete or valid, no philosophical argument is authentic, apart from the existential fact of human experience. After all, the words experience, experiment, and expert all have their origin in the Latin word experimentum, from experiri, which means to “test” or “try.”
One of my seminary professors used to say, “One can neither confirm nor deny in the armchair what has been established in the laboratory of the human soul.” Without experiential evidence, faith cannot survive and the doubts that live on the edge of our lives will consume us.
I’m grateful to be in a Church that recognizes that doubt plays a role in the quest for truth. Honest doubt is the forbearer of discovery! A questing spirit is normal and necessary in the development of a growing person. Thomas expressed his doubts in the security of the community of those whom Jesus had called along with him. He could have chosen other friends. Instead, he chose to remain among the friends of Jesus.
Never did one of them say, “Thomas, you’re through here. Out you go. You can’t stay in our midst because you are a heretic, a skeptic, and an unbeliever.” The disciples stood by Thomas in his struggle to believe.
Fundamentalism has gained a stronghold in our culture and, I suspect, driven more people away from faith than it has attracted. Our Church offers a healthy alternative. My friend Bill Cherry described The Episcopal Church this way: “Here's the deal about being an Episcopalian. You get to tinker with what you're taught until you get a personal encompassing belief that you're comfortable with. Meanwhile, your Church doesn't scream at you that what you've just done is the work of the devil. Consequently, you love being an Episcopalian and can't imagine being anything else. I'm one of those.” Me too!
If you have doubts about the Resurrection, about your relationship with God, about life eternal, take heart! You are not the first and you will not be the last. You’ve come to the right Church. All are welcome here in the company of others who have been lovingly guided through doubt to faith. It’s the original Discovery Channel.
I’ll see you in Church!
P.S. Join us for a Discovery Weekend, either May 8-10 or June 12-14.
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Many Paths to Easter Faith
How do you feel about your faith this Easter? St. John’s account (John 20:1-18) of the experiences of those first disciples on that first Easter morning offers an important message: not everyone takes the same path to faith in the Risen Christ. In this account of the resurrection, the responses Simon Peter, the "Beloved Disciple", and Mary Magdalene are carefully interwoven. In their responses, the writer is able to show how faith in Christ's resurrection is generated in different ways.
Some people come to an Easter faith on the basis of evidence. And the process of gathering external evidence can take time! Peter arrived at the tomb second, but entered it first, looked around, saw everything and yet nothing. Then, he left. There is no evidence that what he saw generated any faith in him at all. All Peter took away from the empty tomb was a personal confirmation that indeed, Jesus' body was not present, just as Mary had reported. It took some time for Peter’s faith to develop because he required the additional evidence that came as the Risen Christ appeared to the Apostles over the next few weeks.
Other people come to their Easter faith in a relational way. The disciple whom Jesus loved ran with Peter to the tomb and arrived first, but he entered the tomb after Peter. He saw the same things Peter saw but his response was different. When he entered the tomb "he saw and believed." But he did not know what to do with his belief. He, like Peter, returned home. He believed Christ is risen. But what are the implications of the Resurrection for him? He seems to have come to understand the implications as he participated in the community of believers. Some think that it is this "beloved disciple" who wrote the gospel attributed to St. John. This gospel is characterized by both an understanding of love divine that is both deep and broad. Long after the first Easter, this writer remembered that Jesus had said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," and "love one another, just as I have loved you…I have told you this so that my joy will be in you, and your joy might be complete."
Mary Magdalene represents faith formed yet another way. The empty tomb, rather than even hinting resurrection, saddened Mary with the thought of Jesus' body being stolen. Even the appearance of two angels does not break her sorrow. In fact, the voice and the appearance of Jesus do not at first stir her to belief. Only when he speaks her name does she believe. Mary comes to faith through the word of Christ and by that word she must be sustained. She cannot resume her old relationship with her Lord. When Jesus says to Mary, "Do not hold on to me," he wants Mary to understand that "the past is prologue." There is much more to faith than what has gone before. Mary’s path to an Easter faith is no more normative than any other. We don't know whatever happened to her, but we do know what happened to her message. It spread around the world until it reached us.
Not everyone takes the same path to faith in the Risen Christ. There is not one normative way. Some respond to a word, others to evidence, and others to a relationship. But whatever the path, and whether sudden or slow, it is always faith that removes the distance between the first Easter and our own.
I’ll see you in Church!
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Holy Week: A Time to Remember Who and Whose We Are
In Baptism, we are incorporated into the Paschal Mystery. That is, we are incorporated into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His life is our life. His death is our death. His resurrection is our resurrection. It is for this reason that Christians observe Holy Week every year. It is a commemoration intended to put us in touch with that life which the world can neither give nor take away. It is a time to look at the Paschal Mystery and to recover our true identity, our authentic self, in him.
Five hundred years before Jesus rode into Jerusalem, Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah would be a king. Since the time of the Exile, no Jewish ruler had borne the title of king. “Look, your king is coming to you. Rejoice, rejoice, people of Zion” (Zech. 9:9). The time was just right and the people were happy that day to acknowledge it.
They wished to crown him their king. In their enthusiasm, they missed the paradox. They saw the glory but overlooked the shadow. But Jesus was conscious of both.
He knew who he was so the acclamations of the crowd did not impress him. He saw that their palm branches cast the shadow of a cross. He sensed that the kingly crown they were offering to him that day would become a crown of thorns by the end of the week. Jesus knew that the identity the world offered was not a secure identity, not a legitimate identity, and certainly not a dependable identity. No, for Jesus, the only true identity is consciousness of who we are in the eyes of our Creator.
To the disciples, on the next weekend, it must have looked like the world’s biggest failure, a cruel joke. Imagine being sucked in to a group like “the Twelve.” To them “the Way” must have appeared more like a primrose path. Because they were still so dependent upon the things of the world for their sense of identity, they had to be the most embarrassed people around Jerusalem.
Then came Easter. Out of the tomb came the Risen Messiah with his identity still intact. “He is risen” is shorthand for Jesus message of resurrection, “Behold, I have overcome the world. Behold, I died and I am alive. Behold, who you are need never again depend upon who you know, what you wear, where you live, what you do, how much you possess, or even what people say about you. Because I live, you will live also. You will experience new life in me and you will be able to face the popularity contest the world is running with confidence that you don’t really have to enter it in order to find out who you are. Here is my crown. It is yours! Take it! And believe me when I tell you that this crown of glory, which is both mine and yours, will never fade away.”
Who and whose we truly are – that’s what Holy Week and Easter are all about.
I’ll see you in Church!
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An Aspen Epiphany
Signs of spring are appearing a little earlier than usual in Jackson Hole. The snow is almost all gone in our yard and little green sprigs are pushing their way up through the soil. Buds are appearing on the branches of various members of the willow family. When I was out walking yesterday, I noticed the change on the branches of some aspen trees beside the road. This sight gladdened my heart because I’ve never before seen aspens in springtime. I’ve loved aspens for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I played among them. When I was a youth, I hiked and camped among them. I’ve spent time around their white trunks in the summer, in the fall, and in the winter, but never before in springtime.
Jews have a tradition of offering a brief prayer of thanks to God (berakhah) whenever they have a new experience. I appreciate the tradition and try to practice it daily at every point when I experience the hand of God at work in the world around me. So, on the occasion of seeing the buds on the aspen tree, I said, “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, Sovereign of the Universe and Creator of all things, for showing me your handiwork.”
The function of a berakhah is to acknowledge God as the source of all blessing. These short prayers also serve to transform a variety of everyday actions and occurrences into religious experiences that increase awareness of God at all times. For this purpose, ancient rabbis taught that it was the duty of every Jew to recite one hundred berakhot every day.
I wonder what would happen if every believer from every faith tradition were to adopt this practice. Greater awareness of the One who created all things might make us better neighbors, better stewards, better parents, and better sons and daughters. Offering a blessing to God for the abundance of blessings from God could, over time, transform us into more generous people. Acknowledging the majesty and wonder of our Creator would humble us and change us into more grateful creatures.
Let’s try it for a few days and see what happens!
I’ll see you in Church!
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God So Loved the World…
In his book, Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, And How They Can Change Your Life, author Eric Metaxas asks this question: “If God could speak the universe into existence, could he not afterward speak into that existence?” Our Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday in Lent presupposes God’s ability to speak into our universe. The heart of that passage is something many of us long ago committed to memory: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Martin Luther called that statement “the Gospel in a capsule.” One theologian said that if all the Bibles in the world were destroyed and every page of scripture obliterated, if one Christian could remember that one verse, the most basic premise of our faith would survive.
And the message is not just words; it is the Word made flesh. The best way to send a message is to wrap it in a person. The Creator and Sovereign of the universe wrapped himself in the person of Jesus Christ and spoke into our existence in a unique way. In his life and ministry, Jesus demonstrates in words and actions that all things came into existence and have their being by and for the Love of God. When we contemplate his passion, death, and resurrection, we are reminded that the Love of God knows no limits. Even death, which we humans usually consider the final limitation, is not stronger than the Love of God.
St. Paul said it this way: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38, 39).
We have to be careful to remember that this particular kind of love is not primarily a feeling or an emotion. It is a firm decision made in the heart and mind of the Creator before he spoke the universe into existence. So firm and unbreakable is God’s decision that it provides the best explanation we have of God’s nature.
This knowledge has implications for those who believe it to be true. The implications are summed up in Our Lord’s Summary of the Law: Jesus said unto him, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-39). The overriding purpose of human life is to love God and to love what God has created in the same way God loves us.
That would be a very tall order if it were up to us alone. But it’s not and that’s the best news of all. Our own efforts to love like God are effective only because of God at work in us. Christians sometimes refer to that partnership as being “in Christ.” God has great plans for the universe. Our only reliable glimpses into God’s plans tell us that Divine Love is the driving force and human beings are specially designed and called to be partners in carrying out the plan. Please pray about that as you contemplate how “God so loved the world…”
I’ll see you in Church!
The Reverend Ronald D. Pogue
Interim Rector -
Remember Who You Are – A Responsible Being
Lent is a time to remember who we are and, in the light of the Biblical revelation, responsibility is one essential ingredient of our human identity. Responsibility is something human beings consider important. In the context of the Christian faith, what am I really saying when I say, “I am responsible?”
To say that one is responsible is to assume a given condition of human life.
To be fully human is to be able to respond. When we unable to respond, our humanity is diminished. With the exception of those who are mentally or physically handicapped, responsibility is something humans have in common.
Who am I in the eyes of my Creator?
I am formed of the dust – a part of the material universe.
I am washed and cleansed – by water from living springs flowing from the Source of all life.
I am chosen – to play a special role in the life of creation.
I am responsible – for how I deal with all this information about myself.Our Creator asks for a response from creatures like us. In expecting a response, God is expecting something that is a reasonable and universal expectation in the set of human expectations.
Whereas the Law implies that it is the duty of God’s people to respond, the Gospel proclaims it is a joy!
The contemporary meaning of the Ten Commandments is more than moralism; their meaning in any age helps to define God’s call to us.
For example, the commandment to serve no other gods needs to be seen in a world where our other gods are no longer Baal or Astarte, but political ideologies, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, race or ethnicity, culture, or class consciousness. The commandment to honor our fathers and mothers is not a call to fulfill the obligations of the extended family in a patriarchal agrarian society, but it has some profound implications for living with our parents who are always a part of us. The admonition against adultery today exists neither for the purpose of protecting our property nor for guaranteeing our immortality in our children. It relates to a profound sense of mutual fidelity only recently identified in the Christian theology of marriage.
The God revealed in Christ, who is the same God who both spoke and fulfilled the Ten Commandments, calls us into a covenant that is not prescribed by laws written on stone or in a book. This is the God, as Jeremiah tells us, who writes a covenant on our hearts. In any age, the ethical norms for our behavior do not exist for their own ends. They are efforts to describe action that is most human, the best response to what God has expressed to us.
It is the believer’s joy to respond to God!
This is at the heart of Jesus’ outburst at the Temple. He recognized a forced, oppressive response and literally overturned it. He was not seeking to destroy the worship in the Temple but to transform it. God reaches out to us in an expression of love. Christ is the clearest expression of that love. God yearns for a response of love answering love. And, remember, God's covenant includes the promise to respond to us when we call.
Viewed in this way, our response to everything becomes a response to God. We learn that responding is the way we experience a relationship with God. Exercising our freedom to respond to God is an attitude of remaining open to the power of God as manifest in the profound mystery of the cross. This Lenten pilgrimage is an opportunity to more completely embrace and rejoice in our God-given ability to respond!
I’ll see you in Church,
The Rev’d Ron Pogue, Interim Rector