Tag: Emmanuel

How Can We Name a Love?

As I sit here contemplating the Christmas message, I am reminded that someone once said "The best way to send a message is to wrap it in a person." That's what God did in sending Jesus to us. In Jesus, the Messiah, we receive the message of God's love for us. In Jesus, God's redemptive work continues to transform lives – not just change them, but transform them.

In this context, for one to change means to do something different but to be transformed means to become a new creature. In Jesus, God Incarnate, "things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made" (BCP, p. 515).

That's the message for us this Christmas, and every Christmas. And that's my prayer for you and those whom you love as we join the shepherds at the manger to "see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us" (Luke 2:15).

These lines from the English hymn writer, Brian Wren, sum it up beautifully:

How can we name a Love that wakens heart and mind,
indwelling all we know or think or do or seek or find?
Within our daily world, in every human face,
Love's echoes sound and God is found, hid in the commonplace

So in a hundred names, each day we all can meet
a presence, sensed and shown at work, at home, or in the street.
Yet every name we see, shines in a brighter sun:
In Christ alone is Love full grown and life and hope begun.

I'll see you in Church!

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

December 20, 2018
Word Made Flesh – The Toughest and Tenderest Love

It is a happy coincidence that the commemoration of St. Ambrose, the fourth century Bishop of Milan, occurs during the Advent season on December 7. I say that because one of the chief contributions of Bishop Ambrose was his defense of Athanasian (orthodox) Christianity against Arianism. Athanasians affirm that the Logos or Word (John 1:1 ) is fully God in the same sense that the Father is, while Arians affirm that the Logos is a creature, the first being created by the Father. So it is appropriate that his feast day occurs during the season in which we are preparing for the coming of the Messiah because Bishop Ambrose helps us better understand what kind of Messiah we are talking about.

Ambrose may have written the Athanasian Creed (BCP p. 864), the first creed in which the equality of the three persons of the Trinity is explicitly stated. Episcopalians seldom recite it in corporate worship, but it is one of our historical documents and one of our theological foundations. Whether Ambrose wrote it or not, it is consistent with his theology:

And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

The Messiah who came as a little child and died on a cross as a man is not just a messenger. He is Emmanuel, God With Us in the flesh. That was as incomprehensible a Mystery in the first and fourth centuries as it is today – the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, “became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son; full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The proof of it is a matter of faith. This Word Made Flesh, Jesus, the Messiah, matters so much to us because he is the ultimate expression of God’s eternal love for us.

His entire life demonstrates to us that God’s love does not shrink in the face of tragedy, injustice, exploitation, and alienation. Love Divine embraces everything that happens to human beings from birth to death. God With Us heals brokenness, overcomes oppression, and reconciles estrangement. There is no love in the universe that is tougher or more tender!

A meditation attributed to Bishop Ambrose beautifully expresses what God’s love means to us in these words: “Lord Jesus Christ, you are for me medicine when I am sick; you are my strength when I need help; you are life itself when I fear death; you are the way when I long for heaven; you are light when all is dark; you are my food when I need nourishment.”

I'll see you in Church!

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

P.S. Several hymns are attributed to St. Ambrose, including the Advent hymn "Savior of the Nations, Come" (Hymnal 1982 #54).

December 7, 2017
What kind of heart is receptive and spacious enough for Emmanuel?

Childrens' Advocate Marian Wright Edelman passed along a story told to her by The Rev. William Sloan Coffin when he was Pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City.

It was Christmas Eve and the pews at New York City's Riverside Church were packed. The Christmas pageant was underway and had come to the point at which the innkeeper was to turn away Mary and Joseph with the resounding line, "There's no room at the inn!"

The innkeeper was played by Tim, an earnest youth of the congregation who had Down Syndrome. Only one line to remember: "There's no room at the inn!" He had practiced it again and again with his parents and the pageant director and seemed to have mastered it.

So Tim stood at the altar, bathrobe costume firmly belted over his broad stomach, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed, and waited for his reply. Tim's parents, the pageant director, and the whole congregation almost leaned forward as if willing him to remember his line.

"There's no room at the inn!" Tim boomed out, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled "Wait!" They turned back, startled, and looked at him in surprise.

"You can stay at my house!" he called.

Such childlike generosity and hospitality are qualities of the heart that is receptive enough and spacious enough for Emmanuel. The One whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain is graciously pleased to come under our roof and dwell with us. May our hearts prepare for him and may he dwell in us as we celebrate his Holy Incarnation.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born to us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.

December 22, 2011
Word Made Flesh – The Toughest and Tenderest Love

It is a happy coincidence that the commemoration of St. Ambrose, the fourth century Bishop of Milan, occurs during the Advent season on December 7. I say that because one of the chief contributions of Bishop Ambrose was his defense of Athanasian (orthodox) Christianity against Arianism. Athanasians affirm that the Logos or Word (John 1:1) is fully God in the same sense that the Father is, while Arians affirm that the Logos is a creature, the first being created by the Father. So it is appropriate that his feast day occurs during the season in which we are preparing for the coming of the Messiah because Bishop Ambrose helps us better understand what kind of Messiah we are talking about.

Ambrose may have written the Athanasian Creed (BCP p. 864), the first creed in which the equality of the three persons of the Trinity is explicitly stated. Whether he wrote it or not, it is consistent with his theology:

And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

The Messiah who came as a little child and died on a cross as a man is not just a messenger. He is Emmanuel, God With Us in the flesh. That was as incomprehensible a Mystery in the first and fourth centuries as it is today – the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, “became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son; full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The proof of it is a matter of faith. This Word Made Flesh, Jesus, the Messiah, matters so much to us because he is the ultimate expression of God’s eternal love for us.

His entire life demonstrates to us that God’s love does not shrink in the face of tragedy, injustice, exploitation, and alienation. Love Divine embraces everything that happens to human beings from birth to death. God With Us heals brokenness, overcomes oppression, and reconciles estrangement. There is no love in the universe that is tougher or more tender!

A meditation attributed to Bishop Ambrose beautifully expresses what God’s love means to us in these words: “Lord Jesus Christ, you are for me medicine when I am sick; you are my strength when I need help; you are life itself when I fear death; you are the way when I long for heaven; you are light when all is dark; you are my food when I need nourishment.”

December 8, 2011