Category: Easter

Discoveries in Worship

There are students of the Bible who firmly believe that Luke's account of the pilgrims on the road to Emmaus is the most dramatic story in all Scripture. It certainly is one that gets our attention. Perhaps the drama and simplicity of it is the reason this story has become the one that gives thematic unity to a worldwide movement among Christians, the movement overseen known in this Church as Cursillio. It is a movement of people who are caught up in the surprising discoveries experienced by Cleopas and his companion when they walked and talked and broke bread with the Risen Christ in a village called Emmaus.

All of Luke's accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus have about them the quality of the worship life of the early church. There is a familiar pattern that reflects or is reflected in the pattern of worship among early Christians; disciples experiencing doubt and despair, Jesus appearance and confrontation, opening of scripture, sharing of a meal, followed by rejoicing and witness. There is an integral and unbreakable connection between our worship together and our experience of the Risen Savior. Worship is the center of the corporate life of the followers of Jesus Christ. Worship is the place of surprise and discovery. If we join that pair on the road to Emmaus we will find…

In worship we are discovered by the Risen Christ. While they were walking, Jesus came near and went with them. But they didn't realize it, they were not expecting him or looking for him. It takes a special opening of the eyes to see the Risen Christ because there is an inward blindness that must be overcome. John Newton's line “was blind but now I see” in Amazing Grace refers to this blindness. Fanny Crosby, whose hymns have inspired many, sang about spiritual blindness from the perspective of a person who was actually physically blind. We have a way of seeing what we want to or the way we want to. Jesus discovers us in this condition and desires to correct it!

In worship we discover him. Recognition of Jesus did not occur until they received the witness of Scripture and Sacrament. It always amazes me that so many people are amazed that the Church expects its members to be regular participants in worship. Some say, “attending worship doesn't guarantee that you'll be a good Christian. I can be a good Christian and never darken the doors of a church.” You can be a good person but not a new creature. You can do your own thing, but Christianity is not one's own thing. It is a corporate experience. The witness of Scripture, the teaching of the Church, the experience of millions of Christians for nearly 2000 years is that gathering for Word and Sacrament on a regular basis is essential because it is in worship that the chief means of grace are offered to nourish and sustain us in the Christian life. It is true that we can discover Christ anywhere. But the normal way, the primary way, the most reliable way is through word and sacrament with the gathered community of his followers.

In worship we discover our faith. Faith is, first and foremost, trust in God. St. Peter wrote, “Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised [Jesus] from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God” (I Peter 1:21). For most of us, mature faith does not come all at once as a finished product. We grow into it over time. In fact, the most exemplary saints are never sure the process is ever complete. I recall a scene from the movie, Tender Mercies, in which a boy and his stepfather are baptized. Going home, the boy says he doesn't feel much different. He asks his stepfather if he does. And his stepfather replies, “not yet.” In the experience of worship, more than any experience of our lives, we place ourselves in the presence of the Risen Christ and in his presence we discover our faith.

In worship we discover one another. After he broke bread and was recognized them, he left. Then “they said to each other…” We need to learn to share our faith one-on-one. Faith that is never shared isn't faith. We need to overcome fear that we might reveal weakness or that our insights might be challenged. Faith that is never questioned isn't worth having. We need to make all our meals and all our meetings experiences of shared faith in the Risen Christ…especially those meetings that have to do with money.

In worship we discover our feet. After their encounter with the Risen One in Emmaus, those disciples went to the others. The sense of the text is that they couldn't wait to get there. What if this Cathedral community became that excited about its mission, so that we couldn't wait to get out there and roll up our sleeves? Serving a meal or spending the night helping with the Women’s Homeless Initiative, getting involved with St. Francis Center, combating hunger with Metro Caring, signing up to tend the Cathedral Learning Garden, supporting Episcopal Relief and Development. What mission takes is people whose experience with the Risen Christ gets them out of their seat and up on their feet and moving. There is energy and power in it. And, it is not our own energy and power but the energy of God that raised Jesus from the dead. He shows us in Jesus that he also desires to give life to our mortal bodies. I submit to you today that our decisions to reach out to others are grounded in worship. What we do in worship produces results out there. We are able to bear fruit because we return week after week to make sure we are still grafted into the Vine, without whom we can do nothing.

In worship we discover our voice to witness and praise. When Cleopas and his companion arrived in Jerusalem and found the other disciples, they told what they'd seen. They found the others telling about their experience of the Resurrection also. There was amazement. There was praise. There was energy in that room when all those who'd encountered the Risen Christ got there. That energy freed their voices to go to others and tell. On the Day of Pentecost, 3,000 responded to their witness and joined them in following Christ. In worship we discover the courage to give all and risk all for the sake of his gospel. People need to give and risk in order to experience a growing and vital faith. Through Word and Sacrament, we are encountered by the Risen Christ, our fears and our faith are put in balance, we discover ways to share faith with one another, we discover our feet moving out to where our priestly ministry is needed, we discover our voice to praise and witness, and we discover the courage to give all and risk all for the sake of this gospel.

I'll see you in Church!

The Very Reverend Ron Pogue
Interim Dean
Saint John's Cathedral – Denver

April 26, 2017
Easter is more than a day!

During the forty days of Lent each year we spend time getting ready for the celebration of Easter. There is fasting, self-denial, prayer, intensified devotion, scripture study, and other disciplines designed to cleanse our hearts.

Then, comes the big celebration. Easter. Like so many Christian holy days, Easter seems to disappear the next day as life returns to "normal." But Easter should be more than that to us! It certainly was to those early disciples. Easter is more than a day!

Easter is a season of celebration. The Risen Christ walked among his disciples for forty days after his resurrection. He taught them, ate with them, prayed with them, and loved them. Before he was taken up into heaven, he promised to send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The promise was fulfilled on the fiftieth day when they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Jewish feast of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. In Greek, it is called Pentecost. Pentecost is seven weeks, or fifty days, after the observance of Passover and commemorates the spring wheat harvest. This feast has also been associated with the remembrance of the giving of the Law to Moses. As the law was written on tablets of stone, the Spirit would write God's law upon the hearts of believers. When Moses came down from the mountain, he found God's people worshipping an idol and 3,000 of them died. When the Spirit was given, the disciples were obediently waiting in Jerusalem. 3,000 people were saved! The New People of the New Covenant were empowered by the Life-giving Spirit to be Christ's Body in the world, proclaiming to everyone the Easter message that Christ is alive.

Easter is a lifestyle. We are Easter People! As those early disciples in Emmaus and Jerusalem and in Galilee experienced the living presence of the Risen Christ, so we recognize that he stands among us today. To paraphrase Jesus, "believing is seeing." When we gather to hear the Word and share in the Holy Meal, it is usually easy to experience his presence "enthroned upon the praises of his people." The challenging part comes when we disperse. As Christ's Body touches the world through you and me when we are apart from one another, do you suppose the Living Presence is felt?

Easter is our only hope. St. Peter writes, "By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…" (I Peter 1:3). There is a lot of help out there for people with all kinds of needs. But Christians believe that beyond help, people need hope. So what if you are physically or emotionally well. Life is just not complete without hope. The Easter faith gives the world hope.

So, don't let Easter fade like the blooms on your Easter Lily! Easter is more than a day; it is a season, a lifestyle, and a faith that fills our lives with hope.

I’ll see you in Church!

The Very Reverend Ron Pogue
Interim Dean
Saint John’s Cathedral
Denver, Colorado

April 13, 2017
Holy Week: A Time to Remember Who and Whose We Are

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!

The Very Reverend Ron Pogue
Interim Dean
Saint John’s Cathedral
Denver, Colorado

April 6, 2017
Sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church ~ April 24, 2016

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Listen to the Sermon for April 24, 2016

Read the Sermon for April 24, 2016

April 24, 2016
Sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church ~ April 17, 2016

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Listen to the Sermon for April 17, 2016

Read the Sermon for April 17, 2016

April 17, 2016
The Good Shepherd

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is Good Shepherd Sunday every year. Our collect and readings remind us that in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament, the Middle Eastern shepherd is a metaphor for the divine nature.

Like the flocks they tended, the shepherds of the Bible were often dirty and woolly, enduring sun and rain for days or weeks on end. But unlike their flocks, they were vigilant and uncomplaining, watching for danger and trouble, providing pasture, and allaying thirst. The shepherd knew his flock as no one else. And the sheep followed him “because they know his voice.”

Jesus speaks of himself as “the gate for the sheep.” Some scholars contend that shepherds of the period would often place their own bodies across the small opening of the sheep enclosure at night and during times of danger, risking their lives for the sake of their flock. Perhaps it is this image of the shepherd as human gate that Jesus has in mind with this metaphor, his own presence stretched out and bridging our insecurities. “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me,” he assures us, “will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture” (John 10:9).

Sometimes we are like lost sheep. We live in a world where it is easy to lose direction, to lose our bearings, and to lose a sense of who we are and where we are going. It is easy to go astray. It is then that we are most vulnerable to the “thieves and bandits” of the world. We are also most vulnerable to the more destructive animal instincts that lurk in every human heart, such as hatred, anger, and violence.

Week by week, we come to the Paschal Banquet ready to keep the feast, eager to partake of the Lord’s abundance, and to be nourished for the journey ahead. But the world is still a dangerous place. The human heart listens for the voice of the Shepherd who brings peace and God’s reconciling love. He is the Gate through whom we pass as we come to be fed and as we go back out to feed others in his Name.

I’ll see you in Church!

P.S. I want to share with you one of my favorite musical settings of the twenty-third psalm. It is by composer Howard Goodall and some of you will recognize it as the theme song from a BBC television production about a flock that was tended by a very interesting shepherd. The choir is that of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

April 13, 2016
Now the Green Blade Rises

Three weeks ago, the Lawn of St. John’s Church was covered with snow. A few days after Easter the snow is gone and the grass is amazingly green. I'm reminded one of my favorite Easter hymns, Now the Green Blade Rises. Take a moment to read these wonderful words of new life, hope, and springtime:

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

We all know those seasons of life when things seem frozen, lifeless, hopeless, or entirely unfair. Easter is God's word of hope that life and love will triumph over all that. In the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we find that news most perfectly expressed.

May the Great Fifty Days of Easter be filled with reminders of that good news. And, beyond that, may we all be Easter People throughout the year, bringing that message of hope to others.

Enjoy this rendition of the hymn by the Choir of Ely Cathedral.

I’ll see you in Church!

April 8, 2016
About the Paschal Candle

At the beginning of the Great Vigil of Easter a “new fire” is ignited and blessed with this prayer:

O God, through your Son you have bestowed upon your people the brightness of your light: Sanctify this new fire, and grant that in this Paschal feast we may so burn with heavenly desires, that with pure minds we may attain to the festival of everlasting light; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Paschal candle is the first candle to be lighted from this sacred fire. The flame of the Paschal candle symbolizes the eternal presence of Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the Light of the World in the midst of his people, the Light which darkness has never overcome.

The Paschal candle is sometimes referred to as the “Easter candle” or the “Christ candle.” The term “Paschal” comes from the word Pesach, which in Hebrew means Passover, and relates to the Paschal mystery of salvation. The tall white candle may also remind us of the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that led the Israelites in their Exodus from slavery in Egypt.

The minister may trace symbols on the Paschal Candle. These symbols may include the cross, five grains of incense embedded in five red or gold wax nails, the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, and the number of the current year. The five nails are symbolic of the five “glorious wounds” on Christ’s crucified body. The Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, remind us that Christ is the beginning and the end of creation. The number of the year represents the “today” in “Christ, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

The worshiping assembly then processes into the dark church led by the Paschal candle. The candle is raised three times during the procession, accompanied by the chant “The light of Christ” to which the congregation responds “Thanks be to God.” Following the procession, a prayer known as the Exultet is chanted, traditionally by a deacon, but it may be chanted by the priest, a cantor, or a choir. The Exultet concludes with a blessing of the candle:

Holy Father, accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning – he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

It is customary for the Paschal candle to burn at all services during the Great Fifty Days of Easter as well as at Baptisms and funerals. It reminds us of the presence of the Risen Christ and his call to the Baptized to bear his light in the world.

During these fifty days and whenever we see the Paschal candle burning, let it remind us of the words of Jesus:

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14, 15).

Enjoy this hymn from our Hymnal 1982, sung by the Choir of All Saints' Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, California. May your Easter life be flooded with light and my you reflect that light wherever you may be.

I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light

I want to walk as a child of the light;
I want to follow Jesus.
God set the stars to give light to the world;
The star of my life is Jesus.

Refrain

    In him there is no darkness at all;
    The night and the day are both alike.
    The Lamb is the light of the city of God;
    Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.

I want to see the brightness of God;
I want to look at Jesus.
Clear Sun of righteousness, shine on my path,
And show me the way to the Father.

Refrain

I’m looking for the coming of Christ;
I want to be with Jesus.
When we have run with patience the race,
We shall know the joy of Jesus.

Refrain

I’ll see you in Church!

March 31, 2016
Sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church ~ March 27, 2016

Easter Day

Listen to the Sermon for March 27, 2016

Read the Sermon for March 27, 2016

March 27, 2016
Easter is more than a day.

During the forty days of Lent each year we spend time getting ready for the celebration of Easter. There is fasting, self-denial, prayer, intensified devotion, scripture study, and other disciplines designed to cleanse our hearts.

Then, comes the big celebration. Easter. Like so many Christian holy days, Easter seems to disappear the next day as life returns to "normal." But Easter should be more than that to us! It certainly was to those early disciples. Easter is more than a day!

Easter is a season of celebration. The Risen Christ walked among his disciples for forty days after his resurrection. He taught them, ate with them, prayed with them, and loved them. Before he was taken up into heaven, he promised to send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The promise was fulfilled on the fiftieth day when they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Jewish feast of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. In Greek, it is called Pentecost. Pentecost is seven weeks, or fifty days, after the observance of Passover and commemorates the spring wheat harvest. This feast has also been associated with the remembrance of the giving of the Law to Moses. As the law was written on tablets of stone, the Spirit would write God's law upon the hearts of believers. When Moses came down from the mountain, he found God's people worshipping an idol and 3,000 of them died. When the Spirit was given, the disciples were obediently waiting in Jerusalem. 3,000 people were saved! The New People of the New Covenant were empowered by the Life-giving Spirit to be Christ's Body in the world, proclaiming to everyone the Easter message that Christ is alive.

Easter is a lifestyle. We are Easter People! As those early disciples in Emmaus and Jerusalem and in Galilee experienced the living presence of the Risen Christ, so we recognize that he stands among us today. To paraphrase Jesus, "believing is seeing." When we gather to hear the Word and share in the Holy Meal, it is usually easy to experience his presence "enthroned upon the praises of his people." The challenging part comes when we disperse. When Christ's Body touches the world through you and me when we are apart from one another, do you suppose the Living Presence is felt?

Easter is our only hope. St. Peter writes, "By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…" There is a lot of help out there for people with all kinds of needs. But Christians believe that beyond help, people need hope. So what if you are physically or emotionally well. Life is just not complete without hope. The Easter faith gives the world hope.

So, don't let Easter fade like the blooms on your Easter Lily! Easter is more than a day; it is a season, a lifestyle, and a faith that fills our lives with hope.

I’ll see you in Church!

March 23, 2016