My Blog

Tag: Belief

  • What does it mean to have faith?

    Religion has never meant quite the same thing to all persons. In history there have been essentially four ways in which religion has been meaningful to people: To some religion is inward fellowship with God; to others, religion is a standard for life and a power to reach that standard; to others religion is the highest satisfaction of their minds; and, to yet others, religion is access to God, that which removes the barriers and opens the doors to God’s living presence.

    It was this fourth conception of religion that attracted the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. He found in Christ the one person who could take him into the presence of God. Jesus, for the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, was the one person who gave access to reality and access to God. That is the key thought of this letter, this book of the Bible. In the eleventh chapter we find a magnificent exhortation to have faith. What does it mean to have faith?

    To have faith is to have a new way of looking at reality. Each of us is born with five senses, which enable us to apprehend reality as it appears on the surface. We see, hear, taste, touch, and smell the world in which we live. The organs that make this possible are a part of our natural equipment.

    We might think of faith as an organ that takes us beyond the five senses and enables us to perceive another, deeper level of reality. By means of faith, we are able to trust the truths of God that are beyond our natural ability to understand. Thus, faith is itself a verification – the verification of the things we cannot see. So, we often speak of seeing with the eyes of faith.

    Such faith, according to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, enabled people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac to trust God’s promises and to obey God. When faith dawns and begins to develop in a person’s life, one is able to look at reality as it appears to the five senses and apprehend still another dimension that gives things a meaning and purpose they did not have before. Faith gives us a new way of looking at things.

    To have faith is to have a new source of energy. The key to understanding the power of faith lies in the wonder of the human psyche. Faith is itself the power given to those who have made a decision to believe and to trust. It is the power to act. Indecision keeps all that power locked up and causes depression, anxiety, and frustration.

    On the other hand, confident decisions unlock enormous reservoirs of power and energy we will need to carry out those decisions. Thus, if we want to experience the energy of faith, we have to decide what we’re going to do about the new understandings we have seen through the eyes of faith.

    Finding creative solutions to complicated problems is the specialty of people of faith. Faith keeps us from giving in easily to problems and provides energy to struggle with them until they have been mastered and overcome. It doesn’t take eyes of faith to look at the past or to maintain the status quo. What about tomorrow?

    I believe we can and we will keep our eye on tomorrow because we are people of faith. The kind of faith we have is the sort that guided and empowered the patriarchs and prophets and our Savior and the early Church to persevere. It will be the same for us. We have a vision and we will act on it, trusting in the promises of God. This faith is nothing less than the fuel cell of the Church! To have faith is to have a new source of energy.

    To have faith is to have a new kind of security. Jesus said, “Have no fear, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom. Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor. Provide for yourselves purses that don’t wear out and save your riches in heaven, where they will never decrease, because no thief can get to them. For your heart will always be where your riches are” (Luke 12:32-34).

    What does he mean? He means that the Kingdom of Heaven, the Realm of God, is the most valuable thing in the universe and it is God’s desire to give it to those who place their primary trust in him. Whatever we possess here is but a shadow and dim reflection of the great treasury of that Kingdom. Like Abraham, who lived in a tent, with no permanent home, we look for that city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And yet, we cling for security to so many things.

    Whether or not we actually sell all that we have and give the money to the poor, the role of faith is that it produces a sense of security apart from our attachments to the present material world and our possessions. Faith gives us a new kind of security.

    Finally, to have faith is to have new life. When Abraham answered God’s call to leave his safe, secure homeland and journey into a land he did not know, he began a new life. All who have such faith are the descendants of Abraham and have God’s gift of new life.

    Martin Luther said, “Faith is a living trust of the heart.” To live in faith is to live under the conviction that everything and everyone belongs to God. Faith, therefore, conditions the way we relate to our world and the people in it. And what is the opposite of trust? Fear. The good news is that faith is the agent that enables us to overcome fear. It relives us of some anxiety that is produced by our idea that God won’t come through. It frees us to accept our place in the divine plan for all things.

    We have a commission to live life to the fullest, equipped with this living trust of the heart. So, we have new life to live today and every day, until for ever. When, with the YES of faith, we see and greet from afar the heavenly city where life never ends, we begin to experience a foretaste of that life here and now. That vision illuminates and transforms our present reality and we are alive unto God. To have faith is to have new life.

    In a Nutshell… To have faith is to have a new way of looking at reality, a new source of energy, a new security, and a new life. So, fear not, little flock. for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Don’t trust your fears more than you trust your God to keep promises. Reach out and experience the world and the persons around you with the five senses. Then, experience all of these things with the faith that comes from God so that you might see it all as God does. It will transform you and free you become all you were made to be! And, it will attract you to other people of faith in ways that overcome differences for the greater glory of God as together we work, pray, and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God.

    I'll see you in Church!

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

     

    The Very Reverend Ronald D. Pogue
    Interim Dean
    St. Andrew’s Cathedral
    Jackson, Mississippi

     

    P.S.  I have always found these lines from this secular song to be a beautiful illustration of faith.

    The Rose

    It’s the heart that fears the breaking
    that never learns the dance.

    It’s the dream afraid of waking
    that never takes a chance.

    It’s the one who won’t be taken
    who cannot seem to give.

    And the soul afraid of dying
    who never learns to live.

    When the night has been too long
    when you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong

    Just remember in the winter – far beneath the winter snows
    lies the seed that with the sun’s love
    becomes the rose.

  • The Gospel in a Capsule

    From time to time, people ask me which verse of the Bible is the most important. Any answer to that question is a personal value judgment. That said, I usually tell them that, in my opinion, the greatest verse in the Bible is the magnificent affirmation by St. John, “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).

    “That statement,” said Martin Luther, “is the Gospel in a capsule.” A perceptive theologian once pointed out 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. John 3:16 is the very heart of the Christian message.

    This well-known verse is set in the context of a clandestine meeting between Jesus and a man named Nicodemus. As John tells the story of their meeting, it is obvious that Nicodemus has come to Jesus to discuss the process of salvation. Jesus talks to this leader about the miracle of rebirth, the mystery of the Holy Spirit, and the meaning of Baptism. At the end of their conversation, Jesus sums up the whole meaning of who he is and what his mission is in one simple statement about God’s universal love, humanity's response, and the promise of life eternal.

    God’s Universal Love

    Here as in most places in the sacred texts, the writer is not referring simply to the planet earth, but to the entire universe. God loves all of it! Love Divine was the motivation in the heart of God from the beginning. God’s universal love always goes the greatest lengths to find expression.

    In Jesus Christ, God says to God’s universe, “I love you.” The only fitting response is for us to spend our lives finding ways to say, “I love you too.” God is constantly searching for us, calling to us, wooing us into that relationship that heals what is broken and unwell – that makes us whole.

    Humanity’s search for God is the basic premise of most of the world's religions. Judaism and Christianity are exceptions. Both Testaments are the long record of God’s search for humanity – a quest that is grounded in God’s love. Listen carefully: Jesus does not say, “For humanity so loved God.” He says, “For God so loved the world.” That is the basic premise upon which the Gospel is built. It all begins with the love of God.

    The Extent of God’s Love

    When the New Testament uses the term Son of God to explain the impact of Jesus upon the human situation, the words are chosen very carefully. In the ancient mind, a Son was the extension of his father’s personality. He was part and parcel of his father’s personhood. Thus, when the Bible identifies Jesus as the Son of God, it is portraying Jesus as a projection of God. Jesus is not just a representative of God, he is an expression of God’s very being. God’s gift of the Son is the gift of God’s own life.

    A seminary professor made the case that in reading the Prologue to John’s Gospel, one could substitute “Gift” for “Word” so that it reads, “In the beginning was the Gift…and the Gift was with God and the Gift was God.” His point was that from the beginning of time God has been giving God’s self and Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of that divine self-giving.

    God’s Promise of Life Eternal

    The first Christian teachings about eternal life were based on the thought of St. Paul. Paul believed that death was a sort of sleep and that we shall be resurrected when Christ returns. For example: “I would not have you ignorant of those who have fallen asleep” (I Thessalonians 4:13) and “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (I Corinthians 15:51). There is one occasion in the writings attributed to Paul in which he looks at resurrection in terms other than in the future. In it, he speaks of how in our union with Christ, God “made us alive with Christ…and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:5, 6).

    In this exception, Paul is more like St. John, who looks at eternal life as a NOW experience. Eternal life is not just a quantity of existence, but a quality as well. Those who comprehend the depth of God’s love and receive the gift of God’s Son by the response of faith (believing) are already participating in eternal life here and now. In fact, the term eternal life is synonymous with abundant life, Kingdom of God, and Kingdom of Heaven – the central theme of Jesus’ mission.

    Eternal life is a life in which we are constantly learning to love as God loved, through radical self-giving. Jesus taught that whenever we love like that, his joy is in us and our joy is complete. “Love one another,” says Jesus, “just as I have loved you.”

    HERE is a beautiful rendition of John Stainer's famous anthem on this verse by the Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, London.

    I'll see you in Church!

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

    The Very Reverend Ronald D. Pogue
    Interim Dean
    St. Andrew’s Cathedral
    Jackson, Mississippi

     

     

  • 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

     

     

     

  • The Journey of Faith: The Long and Short of It

    Since the Third Century C.E., the Feast of the Epiphany has been observed on January 6.  From the Greek epiphaneia, meaning “manifestation” or “appearance,” the feast commemorates the appearance of God to humanity in the form of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.  The account of the visit of the wise men or magi who followed the star seeking the promised Messiah has traditionally been associated with this day.  It also marks the disclosure of Christ to the gentile world – that world outside the Hebrew nation.

    Actually, two groups paid a visit to Bethlehem at the Savior’s birth.  One group was close by, the shepherds, just down the hill from the manger.  The other group, the wise men, came a long way.  They followed a star from faraway Persia in a journey to the newborn King.  Both the shepherds and the wise men were on a journey of faith.

    The shepherds made the short trip.  It was easier for them.  They were prepared for the news of the Savior’s birth because they were part of the people to whom the promise of a Messiah had been given.  They were expecting the promise to be kept.  It wasn’t hard to convince them and they had only a few short steps to take in their journey. The shepherds didn’t care about all the theological implications that were involved.  They were not concerned about the problem of relating ancient truth to modern knowledge or the historical accuracy of the scriptures.

    The wise men, on the other hand, will walk out on you if you skip over those intellectual problems of faith, because they expect all journeys to be long and it doesn’t seem right to them to take short cuts.  The wise men and women of faith have always been the ones who take the long way, those who come the farthest distance, and have had the more torturous trek.  For them, believing isn’t easy.  It takes awhile.  It is a long, hard journey.

    You’ll find both groups in church and synagogue, just as surely as you would have found them at the manger so long ago.  It’s a fact of human intellectual and psychological make up and neither group is preferred over the other.

    What is critical for each of us to remember, whether the journey of faith has been short or long, is that it isn’t how long it takes or how complicated the task of believing, but the fact that we’ve taken the journey.

    You remember the popular and legendary children’s story The Wizard of Oz.  Dorothy is swept up by a cyclone in Kansas and deposited in Oz.  There, she is joined by those three remarkable characters in the search for the Wizard of Oz, who will answer all of their questions.

    The Scarecrow wants a brain. The Tin Woodsman yearns for a heart. The Cowardly Lion wants courage.

    Their journey is perilous, through many obstacles, just like the wise men, but they finally come thru it all.  The way they come through is really the point of the story.  For, whenever they are confronted with some sort of physical danger, it is always the Cowardly Lion who manages to fight their way out.  When the danger is more cerebral, it is the brainless Scarecrow who manages to get them out of it.  And, as for the Tin Woodsman, who is journeying in search of a heart, he lends a hand whenever he can and he has so much pity and sympathy for other people that they have to gather around him all of the time with an oil can so that his tears don’t rust his joints. When they finally reach the Wizard, he points out that each of them already has what they traveled so far to find.

    This is where the story of The Wizard of Oz becomes more than a story and teaches us.  Things like courage and love and wisdom come to us when we take the first step on the journey toward finding them.  It is the same way with faith. Faith is not something simply handed down to us prepackaged for us to accept on the authority of some institution or even some book.  Faith begins when we begin the journey!  Like those characters in their journey to see the Wizard of Oz or like those in their journey to the Christ of Bethlehem.

    It is easy for people who come to faith easily and quickly to assume an attitude of righteous superiority over those who have a more difficult time of it.  If you are one of those, let me remind you that nowhere in the scriptures do we find the Shepherds saying to the Wise Men, “What took you guys so long?”

    At the same time, it is common to find those who have had a hard intellectual struggle in faith’s journey assuming an attitude of intellectual superiority over those who have not.  To you, I say, scripture does say that the Savior reveals some things to the humble and meek that he conceals from the wise.  True wisdom is achieved when the intellect and the heart become friends.

    All of us are sojourners, looking for a new way to believe that will guide us in a new way to live. And, as we will see in the weeks following the Feast of the Epiphany, the manger is not the end of the journey nor the end of the epiphanies.

    Ron Short Sig Blue