My Blog

Tag: abundant life

  • The Greatest Benchmark

    Benchmark-FAQNot far from wherever you are is a benchmark. You may have never seen it. If you have seen it, you may have paid it little attention. It is a round metal plate, about four inches in diameter, embedded in concrete or rock or in the ground so that it cannot move even a fraction of an inch. Benchmarks are essential to civil engineers as reliable reference points for their surveying instruments. They can go back to the benchmarks again and again to check all their work.

    I find it helpful to think of the commandments, ordinances, and precepts of Scripture as the benchmarks of our faith, rather than merely orders from on high. Our Creator has provided them to help us align our lives with God’s divine intentions for our own well being and to help us live abundantly. To ignore them or forget them is to construct an inadequate or incomplete life, just as an engineer or contractor builds poorly when neglecting the benchmark. We can return to the divine benchmarks again and again to check the alignment of our lives.

    A Pharisee asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:36-40).

    Jesus, is the embodiment of the Great Commandment. Jesus was Love Incarnate, Love-in-the-Flesh. To look at Jesus is to look at the fullest expression of Love Divine. To look like Jesus is to live life to the fullest, as God desires. To trust Jesus is to persistently turn to him and align one’s life to him. All of the Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in him. A favorite saying of our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, is “If it’s not about love, it’s not about Jesus.”

    Turning to Jesus Christ week by week for Word and Sacrament is our communal act of aligning our lives with his life, the benchmark of the Way of Love. It is difficult in this age of COVID and we’ve had to find extraordinary means in these extraordinary times. No matter what life throws at us, we persist in the practice of seeking the grace to be the ordinary and normal way God’s love is expressed in the world around us.

    Bishop Curry’s latest book, “Love Is the Way,” was released on Sept. 22, and like his 2018 book, “The Power of Love,” it emphasizes Christian teachings, particularly Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor, as a powerful force for unity and healing in a hurting world. We will be reading the book and having virtual conversations about it during the Season of Advent. Watch for details for signing up.

    In the meantime, let us be reminded that our Creator has provided us with a benchmark for abundant living to which we can return week by week, day by day, hour by hour.

    Blessings,

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

     

    The Very Rev'd Ron Pogue
    Interim Rector
    St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church
    Keller, Texas

  • Looking for God Too High Up and Too Far Away

    The play "Inherit the Wind" is a dramatic account of the 1925 Dayton, Tennessee trial of John Thomas Scopes, a schoolteacher who taught the theory of evolution in defiance of a state law prohibiting the teaching of any doctrine contrary to the Bible. The prosecutor was William Jennings Bryan. The defense attorney was Clarence Darrow. Bryan won the "The Monkey Trial," and Scopes was fined $100. Several days after the trial ended, Bryan died. In the play, the character representing reporter H.L. Mencken, after hearing of Bryan's death, says to Darrow, "Why should we weep for him? You know that he was-a Barnum-bunkum Bible-beating blowhard." To an agnostic Mencken, Darrow says of Bryan, "A giant once lived in that body. But the man got lost – lost because he was looking for God too high up and too far away."

    In the 13th chapter of Matthew, we find Jesus in the midst of his Galilean ministry. Jesus had previously employed comparative and figurative analogies, but at this point Jesus chooses to teach in parables.  James A. Fowler provides an interesting explanation of parables:

    The Greek word for "parable" is derived from two other Greek words, para meaning "beside" and ballo meaning "to throw." Literally, then, a parable is an illustrative story that is "thrown alongside" or "placed side by side" a similar or comparative concept. A parable brings parallel ideas together by drawing a figurative word-picture to illustrate a particular thought. It is often a thought-provoking analogy that leaves the mind of the listener in sufficient doubt as to its application that it stimulates further consideration thereof … This enigmatic nature of a parable allows the story to function as a pictorial ponderable, which leaves an image on one's mind to be considered again and again. As such, the Biblical parables grate against dogmatism and the fundamentalistic desire to have everything figured out and nailed down in precision of under-standing. When attempting to interpret Jesus' parables the issue is not so much whether we "get it" figured out, as whether Jesus "gets to us" by planting a glimmer of His divine perspective of spiritual realities. The parable serves as a dum-dum bullet shot into our brain, which then explodes and begins to color our thinking in accord with the "mind of Christ." (Parables of the Kingdom, James A Fowler, 1996)

    The parables of the kingdom, which we will be reading on the next four Sundays, challenge us to look beyond the obvious in our search for the realm where Jesus reigns and into which he invites us to live abundantly. We can get lost in our search by looking for God “too high up and too far away.” God’s realm, as Luke tells us, is to be found within and between us – close in, as near as heartbeat and breath and hands touching. Jesus’ parables call us to look at things in a new way and discover the abundant life we’ve been looking for all along right under our noses, even in the weeds and the dark corners where we'd rather not look.

    Blessings,

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

     

    The Very Rev'd Ron Pogue
    Interim Rector
    St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church
    Keller, Texas

    P.S.  Enjoy this recording of the Cambridge Singers performing John Rutter's setting of Psalm 119:18-24, "Open Thou Mine Eyes."

     

  • A Fruitful Life

    Modern personnel practices in secular business settings emphasize the importance of performance appraisals. Some of that spills over into our perspective on our life as followers of Jesus Christ. That is not necessarily a good thing.

    Business and the economy are concerned with performance and productivity. People are useful as long as they are able to contribute to the bottom line. People easily become cogs in the wheels of commerce.

    Jesus was concerned about fruitfulness. He said, "Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:4-5).

    I recently helped a family say goodbye to a loved one. He was a renowned surgeon, husband, father, and Christian gentleman. During those last minutes of his life, they were not concerned in the least with his performance. They spoke of the wonderful life he lived and the stewardship of his gifts as a physician that allowed him to heal, save lives, give people another chance. "That was why he was put here," they said. He understood that God had made him a physician and guided his hands in God's healing work. He lived a fruitful life.

    Every life he touched made a difference to others. We'll never know how many.  Something The Rev. Robert H. Schuller said came to mind. "Anyone can count the number of seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed." Fruitful people go around planting seeds. Those seeds germinate, take root, sprout, grow, and produce fruit. And so the process continues from generation to generation.

    Here's a question: When you die, do you want someone to say about you, "He always had good performance appraisals," or do you want it said, "He lived a fruitful life"?

    Do what you have to do to earn a living, keep your job, and provide for your family. Be a top performer. But don't confuse being a cog in the wheel with living a fruitful, abundant, Christian life.

    I'll see you in Church!

    Ron Short Sig Blue

     

     

     

     

     

  • More Than a Meal

    Sunday’s Gospel (John 6:24-35) finds Jesus and his disciples in Capernaum. The crowd that he fed with loaves and fishes on the other side of the lake has been searching for him. Their search led them to Capernaum. “Rabbi, when did you come here?” they asked when they found him.

    Jesus responded, “You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill yesterday. Do not work for the food that perishes. Work for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God has set his seal.”

    The Gospel of John repeatedly has Jesus giving a sign only to have his audience struggle to see beyond the sign to the thing signified. Here, he points his listeners beyond the meal of the evening before to the true, life-giving, heavenly Bread. Jesus wanted them to understand that there was more to him than acting as a kind of miraculous commissary, handing out bread to satisfy their physical hunger. 

    So, then, as if they hadn't had a sign the day before, they ask for a sign. They remind him of their ancestors who got bread from heaven as a sign from Moses in the wilderness. And, Jesus tells them that God has also sent bread from heaven to this generation. Only this time, the bread is different. The bread has a human face – HIS. And, even more, it doesn't perish the way the manna did. They ask him to give them this bread. And he does, telling them, “I am the bread of life.”

    In what sense is Jesus is the true bread from heaven? There are several layers of meaning that will unfold as we continue the story from the sixth chapter of John over the next few Sundays. For now, in this particular passage, Jesus seems to be trying to make it clear that he is the life-giving Logos or Word as in the Prologue to this Gospel (“In the beginning was the Word … “).

    This Gospel's theological assumption is that the fundamental human appetite is for a word from God. Jesus, says our writer, not only speaks the word that proceeds from the mouth of God; Jesus is that Word. Jesus is not only the messenger; Jesus is that message. He is the Bread that is more than bread.

    Some churches emphasize the irritable side of God and the nasty side of humanity. Our church emphasizes God's closeness and God's bountiful care for humanity. In our Baptism, God promises to be close to us and to care for us. In our pilgrimage as disciples of Jesus, we are going to experience getting lost, confused, scared, tired, angry, and hungry. God never promised us that our Baptism would insulate us from those experiences. But God promises when those things happen to us, God is going to be in the midst of those experiences, not causing them but caring for us and feeding us with the Bread of Life.

    In Jesus, the messenger and the message are rolled into one loaf. Whoever lives in a relationship with him is baked into that same loaf and will find that the deepest hungers of their lives will be satisfied. Life comes with the message, the Living Bread, as a gift from God.

    I’ll see you in Church!

    Ron Short Sig Blue

     

     

     

     

     

  • A Topic for a Month of Sundays

    In Year B of our Eucharistic Lectionary, the semi continuous reading of the Gospel of Mark is interrupted by a sequence of five excerpts from the sixth chapter of John on the Bread of Life. This happens once every three years and when it does, people in the pews ask why we spend so many Sundays hearing about Jesus Christ as the Bread of Life.  It’s a great question and I hope my attempt at an answer will be almost as great, or at least helpful.

    Each one of the three synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – has its own year in the three-year Revised Common Lectionary.  John is sprinkled around during Lent, Christmas, and a couple of other times.  Because of this, there is no really suitable niche for the important teaching on the Bread of Life.  Since our lectionary is a Eucharistic lectionary, it would be inconceivable for those who developed the lectionary to omit this important discourse in the three-year cycle.  They decided to interrupt the semi continuous reading of the Gospel of Mark at the point when Mark is about to recount the story of the feeding of the multitude in order to give us John’s more elaborate account.

    We are a Eucharist-centered Church and we need the instruction provided by the Bread of Life Discourse of John’s Gospel in our Eucharistic lectionary.  It is so important and so powerful that we have devoted five Sundays in a row to explore the depth of its message.

    Last Sunday, we read the account of Jesus’ feeding of the multitude at the beginning of the sixth chapter.  As we continue to read from this chapter for the next four Sundays, we will examine John’s indirect account of the Eucharist. Bear in mind that in John’s report of the Last Supper there is no mention of the bread and wine.

    The crowds that both witnessed and participated in the miracle of the loaves and fishes didn’t really understand that Jesus came to give more than the bread that satisfies physical hunger.  In this discourse, he refers to himself again and again as “The Bread of Life.” 

    Jesus is inviting everyone to eat this living bread.  The bread our Hebrew ancestors in the faith ate in the wilderness sustained them in their journey.  The Living Bread, Jesus Christ, is food that sustains the cosmos – not just our tribe, or race, or nation, but the cosmos!

    That means that if we feast at the table with The Bread of Life, we are not the only invitees.  There are others, many of whom are not like us, some of whom we don’t like, and plenty with whom we will disagree.

    Several years ago when I was a Canon at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, Texas, I was giving a tour to a confirmation class from one of the parishes in the Diocese of Texas.  We were exploring the Chancel and the Sanctuary when some of the youth spotted the needlepoint cushions on the Altar rail. I asked if they could figure out the meaning of the symbols on those cushions.  One boy said, “That cross and crown in the middle is probably Jesus and the other twelve symbols represent his disciples gathered around the table with him.”  That seemed like a pretty satisfactory answer, until a girl pointed out that one of the symbols looked for all the world like the symbol for Judas Iscariot.  “He doesn’t belong here?” she said.  “He betrayed Jesus.”

    I pointed out to the class that a number of ladies from the Cathedral had painstakingly and lovingly applied every single stitch by hand on those cushions and that I would be very cautious about telling them that one of the symbols didn’t belong there.  “If that’s Judas and they went to so much trouble to include him, I wonder what that might mean for us?”

    After some conversation, one young man said, “Maybe it means that God’s love big enough to include Judas along with the rest of us.”

    My response was to suggest that there will be times when we come to the Altar to dine with Jesus, the Bread of Life, and notice someone we can’t abide kneeling beside us or across from us.  “When that happens,” I said, “remember this moment and remember that the same divine Love that welcomes you to this feast welcomes others who need it just as much.”  After all, as someone has said, the bread that Jesus gives for the life of the universe (John 6:51) is multigrain.

    John 6:51 says that those who eat of this bread will “live forever.”  That is the consistent translation in almost all the versions of the Bible.  However, some scholars point out that the literal translation of the Greek text says we will “live into the age.”  The “age” – eternal life, abundant life, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven – is a state of being where we live with God who is both in and beyond time and space.  When we feast upon the Bread of Life, we are living into this divine cosmic reality.  It nourishes us for the ways we touch and change that reality.

    So, in this banquet, we all become one body not because we all agree or because we all are alike.  We become one body because we share in one bread – the Living Bread, Jesus, who is present for us in a wonderful and mysterious way in this banquet that is happening in the here and now and at the same moment in the age into which we are living, with faith, hope, and love.  This Bread of Life is our true sustenance.  As we are fed, so we are sent to feed others.

    It really is going to be good to spend a month of Sundays on this topic!

    Ron Short Sig Blue

  • Promises are not enough.

    Autumn is the time of year during which the theme of the gospel readings is that of the inbreaking Reign of God.  In these passages, Jesus provides us with insights into the nature of that state of being he called “eternal life” or “abundant life” or “the Kingdom of God.”  Through metaphor and parable, we are able to catch a glimpse of what life in that state of being is, to gain a perspective on what kinds of people are there, and to examine our own hearts and minds with regard to our own citizenship in that realm.

    The Parable of the Two Sons (Mt. 21:28-32) appears in Matthew in the context of a confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders of Jerusalem. It concerns the Kingdom of God and the makeup of the Kingdom’s population.

    Why was the Kingdom so important?  To get at this question, it helps to have an overview of sacred history.  As the Bible tells the story, in the act of creation, God made our first ancestor in God’s own image.  And, like God and the angels, the human creature was androgynous.  We call the creature “Adam,” which really isn’t a name but a description of a unique kind of being – one that is capable of having complete communion with God and one that has resources beyond what any other creature possesses.

    Then, as the Bible tells it, God divided the creature into two, male and female.  While they were separate, they still lived in communion, in harmony with one another.  There was a spiritual union.  But then, the desire to become gods overcame our first parents.  Ever since, we have felt disconnected, dysfunctional, diseased, dissatisfied, and disempowered.  We struggle to fill the hole at the core of our being with something that will make us feel whole.  We try all kinds of things but all fall short of our unconscious goal of unity within and reconciliation with our human brothers and sisters.

    Finally, one like us was sent to become the New Adam.  He was the first person since the beginning of time to get it all back together.  And, the way the Bible tells the story; we know that it was painful for him, just as separation was painful for our first ancestors.  Yet there is salvation and a sublime joy in the case of Jesus.  He called that experience of having it back together “Eternal Life”, “Abundant Life”, “Kingdom of God.”

    What was Jesus saying to those religious leaders?  They, of all people, should be sensitive and receptive to the signs of God’s activity, but they were not.  So, he told them a story about two sons. One son refused to do what he was asked to do, but ended up doing it anyway.  The other son said he would do what he was asked to do, but didn’t follow through.  Jesus wanted the religious leaders to know that, in his opinion, they were the ones who were not following through and that the people they most despised were going to catch on and get it together before they did.

    God keeps coming to the aid of the broken, unscrubbed, ritually unclean, outcast, and marginalized.  Really, that is the only kind of people there are.  Jesus wanted the washed and scrubbed to know and acknowledge that fact.  Such self-awareness and humility are the prelude to big changes in the heart and the mind that are the very gateway to the experience of back-togetherness.  So, what he was saying to those leaders was, “You are bringing up the rear!  Promises are not enough."

    What does this have to do with us?  We resemble the people in this parable. The self-emptying of Christ for us in the Incarnation was not his victory of the human temptation to be like God – the sin of our first parents.  Rather, his victory was the free renunciation of divine prerogatives in order to fully share the human condition, which of its very nature is a service to God.  By his humiliation and exaltation, Jesus has conquered, as a human, all the cosmic powers that are hostile to God and humanity. Adam and the offspring of Adam were disobedient and fragmented the human family. Jesus and the followers of Jesus restore the human family to koinonia – to fellowship, communion, spiritual union – with God and one another.  All creation is watching just to see the sons and daughters of God come into their full inheritance.  And, to bring it home right where we live today, everybody is waiting to see what God can do with us. What an opportunity!

    Ron