The Fifth Sunday in Lent
Listen to the Sermon for March 22,2015
Read the Sermon for March 22, 2015
Category: Religion
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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
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The Phenomenon of Faith
Christian faith means hearing and responding with trust in God when God reaches out to us, offering a promise, wooing us, and calling us into a living redemptive relationship. There is an historic pattern to the phenomenon of faith: God calls, promising to use our lives for God's high purposes. The recipient of the call expresses fear, doubt, or anxiety. Then comes divine reassurance. Finally, there is a faithful response. We see it in the life of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, Jeremiah, Mary and Joseph, the Apostles, and others through the ages.
We also see it in the life of Jesus. In his Baptism and Transfiguration there is the call. In the wilderness there is the question and divine reassurance. In the cross there is the faithful response. He does not allow the warning of friends nor the threat of foes deter him from what God has called him to do and the promise before him.
In his book, Living Faith While Holding Doubt, Martin Copenhaver writes, “There are times when we must make a 100% commitment to something about which we are only 51% certain.”
But faith is not a momentary phenomenon, an act at one point in time. Faith is a long-term trust, a committed, continuous response to God’s promises. Out of real doubts and deep questions, Abram ventures forth with God. The venturing forth does not erase those doubts and questions. Rather, he gathers up his doubts and stumbles on trusting God into a future on the basis of nothing but the promise.
God told Abraham that he and his descendants would be a blessing to all the people of the earth and that the promise would last forever. The old Rabbis said that when God promised Abraham that his descendants would be like the dust, he was referring not only to numbers but to the fact that they would outlast those who trampled upon them. Given the way some in the three great Abrahamic faiths have fought one another for centuries, it is a wonder we have survived thus far.
St. Paul tells us that all who trust God like Abraham are his descendants, not just those who have his genes (Romans 4:13-25). Jesus shows us that the way of the cross is the way of faith. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
When God calls, how do you answer? With doubts, anxieties, fears? You are not alone! But can you listen beyond those obstacles to God's reassuring voice, calling you to trust him to lead you through them, perhaps even to use those obstacles as bridges into the future where he is trying to get you to go with him? Can you say, I'm 51% sure, Lord, but I'll trust you with the other 49%?
There is a beautiful prayer by Thomas a’ Kempis that expresses the heart’s desire to live with faith in God:
Write thy blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart, there to remain so indelibly engraven, that no prosperity, no adversity shall ever move me from thy love. Be thou to me a strong tower of defense, a comforter in tribulation, a deliverer in distress, a very present help in trouble, and a guide to heaven through the many temptations and dangers of this life. Amen.
In our Lenten journey together with our Savior, let this prayer be on our lips and learn from him what it truly means to trust in God.
I’ll see you in Church!
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Sermon at The Episcopal Church in Parker County ~ January 25, 2015
The Third Sunday After the Epiphany
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Today's icon: Call of Simon and Andew by Duccio di Buoninsegna
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Sermon at The Episcopal Church in Parker County ~ January 18, 2015
The Second Sunday After the Epiphany
Listen to the Sermon for January 18, 2015
Read the Sermon for January 18, 2015