Tag: Jesus

Life Beyond the Law

In Sunday's Gospel, Jesus says to his followers, "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). That's a tall order, isn't it? Let's reflect on that.

Jesus says that the goodness of his followers must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees and then he offers examples of how the letter and the spirit of the law need to be joined together for abundant living. As we consciously align our lives with divine commandments and principles, over time we are formed into living expressions of them. Jesus tells us that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. The fulfillment of the law occurs when external rules become internal inclinations, when rules for living become a way of life, when the seed takes root and produces virtuous fruit.

When Jesus says, “You have heard it said in ancient times… but I say to you,” he is calling us from merely avoiding negative behaviors to intentionally behaving in positive, life-affirming ways. A life beyond the law is not a lawless life but an abundant life. Abundant life, according to the teachings of Jesus, is about more than following the rules; it is about the formation of character and virtue. Following the rules is but the first step toward fruitful and virtuous living in the realm where God reigns.

St. Paul refers to the Law of God as a tutor, which guides us until our characters are so formed that the point of the Law is inherent in the way we live. He also likens the following of spiritual rules to the discipline followed by an athlete during training; when the contest comes, the athlete is prepared.

My career on the track team did not last long. But it lasted long enough for me to recognize the discipline of training, including the use of ankle weights. After weeks of running a quarter of a mile with weights strapped to my ankles, I discovered I was much faster without them on the day of the race.

We practice things like not lying so that we might become people who are known for our truthfulness. We avoid coveting and stealing what belongs to others so that we learn to be grateful for and generous with what is ours. We refrain from murder so that even our murderous thoughts are replaced by loving actions toward our neighbors.

The things God has commanded us to do or not do are supposed to lead us to a point when we are not merely slaves to the rules but people in whom the deeper purpose of the rules is fully expressed in the way we live. God has given us the Church so that through our gathering together we might help each other grow toward the greater righteousness of which Jesus spoke in his Sermon on the Mount.

I’ll conclude with a prayer we sometimes pray prior to worship. It is the Chorister’s Prayer of the Royal School of Church Music. This prayer has origins at least as far back the fourth Council of Carthage (398 AD) and beautifully expresses the relationship between the actions of our lives and the inner results for which we hope.

Bless, O Lord, us Thy servants,
who minister in Thy temple.
Grant that what we sing with our lips,
we may believe in our hearts,
and what we believe in our hearts,
we may show forth in our lives.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

I’ll see you in Church!

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

February 6, 2020
The Message of Love

The season after The Epiphany of Our Lord is one in which we consider our own calling against the backdrop of God's call to those who have gone before us. God’s call is accompanied by gifts that will be needed in order to be who we are called to be and to do what we are called to do. The life of those who are called is to be lived out in the company of others who are also called. Sometimes, as we will see in Sunday's readings regarding Jeremiah, Jesus, and St. Paul, the call is to deliver a message. And, sometimes, that message is one that people would rather not hear.

You would think that a message of love would be one that everybody wants to hear, wouldn’t you? Think of how we like to exalt love. We like to talk about it and sing about it. Of all the things God might want us to tell others about and of all the things we might want to hear about, talk of love seems like the kind of message that ought to be universally welcomed.

However, as we can see from the examples of Jeremiah, Jesus, and St. Paul, you can get run out of town pretty fast for too much talk about love – Love Divine.

The witness of Jeremiah was to call forth the best from God’s people by reminding them of God’s covenant love. His message met with a great deal of rejection. The witness of Jesus and of St. Paul was the same. It is a love that pours itself out for the other, the beloved, without regard for a return on the investment. It feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, shelters the homeless, forgives the offender, and enables us to live with ourselves and others. It is willing to risk an entire relationship if that is what is necessary to tell the truth. And, the first step toward giving this sort of love, Love Divine, is to experience it for ourselves. To be brought face-to-face with the best and the worst that is in us in the presence of the Lover of our Souls.

We may miss the point because we are so self-absorbed. There is a reservoir of love already standing within us. Like the subject of a song about love that was popular a few years ago, we are “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

When we come to the time in our lives where we do see ourselves as we really are, a mixture of beauty and beast, our only salvation is in the realization that God, too, sees both sides of our nature and loves them both. God seeks the transformation of the lower, darker side and the exaltation and maturity of the other. God’s love for us is tough, authentic, just, and unquenchable!

The ongoing expression of God’s desire to love us is the Holy Eucharist. It is also the communion of those who are willing to be open to the giving and receiving of that love.

I'll see you in Church!

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

January 31, 2019
Follow Him, Seek Him, Love Him

The chorus from W.H. Auden's Christmas Oratorio is on my mind today as I reflect upon my life and ministry and the people and places I have known:

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

(W H Auden – 1907-1973)

All of life is about transition, change, rebirth. The places to which we are led on the way, the truths we discover, and the people who enter our lives become part of our story. Woven into the story is the One who revealed himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Word Incarnate holds all the places, discoveries, and people together in our experience and helps us to find meaning. In him, the unfamiliar becomes familiar, fears are transformed into faith, and life becomes joy. I am filled with gratitude.

This poem is set to two different tunes in The Hymnal 1982 of The Episcopal Church. Here's a beautiful choral setting by Carson Cooman: The Way, The Truth, The Life (Royal Holloway Choir, University of London, Samuel Rathbone & Rupert Gough) I hope it will help you reflect on your own journey and feel deep gratitude for the difference his presence makes.

I'll see you in Church!

The Very Reverend Ronald D. Pogue
Interim Dean
Saint John's Cathedral
Denver, Colorado

August 16, 2016
Sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Hole ~ February 14, 2015

The First Sunday in Lent

Listen to the Sermon for February 14, 2015

Read the Sermon for February 14, 2015

Listen to the Children's Sermon for February 14, 2015

February 14, 2016
Al Tirah

If I asked the average Christian what is the greatest of God’s commandments, I suspect most would respond, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” And, if I asked what is the second greatest commandment, I’m pretty sure most would respond, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said that all the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments. Like a door depends on its hinges.

If I asked what is the most frequent commandment in the canon of Scripture, I might not find as much a strong consensus. There is one commandment that is found in most books of the Bible. Often, it is spoken by God. Many times, it is spoken by an angel. Sometimes it is spoken by Jesus.

Here is the answer: The most frequent commandment in the Bible is

Do you recognize that? Probably not. It’s Hebrew and is pronounced Al tirah. Still don’t recognize it? Okay, I’ll bet you recognize the English translation FEAR NOT. This commandment appears 365 times in the canon of Scripture, once for every day of the year. In my review of the occasions in which the commandment is expressed, it seems that it is usually spoken in a situation in which anxiety is running very high. Now is one of those times.

People are anxious about terrorists, gun rights, politicians, access to healthcare, the world economy, travel, job security, and a host of other things that can be perceived as threatening to our lives or at least our way of life. Many are feeling that the situation around them has moved beyond their control. They feel powerless and maybe hopeless. When human beings reach such a state of anxiety, our primitive “fight or flight” program instinctively engages. When that happens, we lose some of our ability to reason. We might say or do all sorts of irrational and hurtful things as we express our anxiety and even take extreme, sometimes violent measures to regain control to protect ourselves, our loved ones, our values, and our possessions.

Our brains are designed to react in frightening situations. We have that in common with other living creatures, such as lizards. Without our survival instinct, our ancestors would not have made it. But human brains are also designed to help us reason and work with other humans in finding meaningful ways to respond to what threatens us.

That’s where the most frequent Biblical commandment comes in. God who designed and equipped us to care for each other and oversee the entire creation, tells us not to let our fears conquer our faith, our hope, our love, and our reason.! Al tirah! Don’t be afraid!

I guess my mother had something like that in mind when she would stop me in mid-sentence and say, “Take a deep breath and count to ten before you say another word.”

Advent, the time between Thanksgiving and the New Year, is supposed to be a time of expectation, hope, peace, and joy. An angel said to some shepherds on a Judean hillside long ago,"Al tirah!, Fear not! for I have good news of a great joy that shall be to all the people.”

In spite of that, many people are anxious right now. Not everyone is having a good time. Not everyone feels secure. Even good news is frightening to some people. I have friends who don’t have the best memories of the holidays. There are those who are not going to be surrounded by family and loved ones. One thing is sure, everybody needs to know that they are safe, that they are loved, and that someone cares about them.

So, let’s resolve to be a light in someone’s darkness. Let’s take the time to listen to one another and honestly try to understand what is really being said. Let’s resolve to make our words and our actions to be expressions of the most frequent commandment. Let’s start with ourselves; look into the mirror and say, “Fear not!” Then, let’s find a way to help those around us conquer their own fears.

The promise is that faith conquers fear. Our hope is that perfect love casts out fear.

I’ll see you in Church!

December 10, 2015
Sermon at the Church of St. John the Baptist in Big Piney, Wyoming ~ The Ordination of Brian Nystrom

Listen to the Sermon

Read the Sermon

December 9, 2015
Sermon at Christ Church Cranbrook ~ August 10, 2014

The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

Listen to the Sermon for August 10, 2014

Read the Sermon for August 10, 2014

August 10, 2014
Managing Our Fear in the Pursuit of Faith

Last weekend, Dr. Richard Blackburn, Executive Director of the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center, was at Christ Church Cranbrook to lead a Healthy Congregations Workshop. The guiding principles of this workshop are derived from the work of Dr. Murray Bowen and Rabbi Edwin Friedman in family systems theory.

“Family systems theory postulates that the operation of the emotional system reflects an interplay between two counterbalancing forces – individuality and togetherness.” Of particular significance is their study of how anxiety affects any emotional system and the individuals in it.

Anxiety is the response of an organism to a real or imagined threat and is present in every person and relationship. Acute anxiety is a response to a real threat and most people usually adapt fairly successfully to acute anxiety. Chronic anxiety occurs in response to imaginary threats and often strains people’s ability to adapt to it.

An emotional system may be a family, a company, a sports team, a governmental entity, or a congregation. Individuals find ways to adapt to the anxieties of the family systems from which they come and bring those behaviors into other emotional systems.

Two key objectives of the workshop were to help each person explore and manage the anxiety in his or her life and to learn to recognize and appropriately respond to anxiety at work in the emotional systems in which they are involved.

An example from the story of our faith is the reaction of the Hebrews when Moses was on the mountain and did not return to them as soon as some expected (Exodus 32). Aaron was left in charge of the people while Moses was away. The people gathered around Aaron and expressed their anxiety about the delayed return of Moses. Instead of responding to the anxiety of the people from grounding in the divine values and principles that shaped them as a people and him as their leader, he reacted by abdicating his leadership role and instructed them to make a golden calf, which they could worship. As a poorly defined leader, Aaron let the anxieties of the herd take charge and proposed a quick-fix solution to the imagined problem they brought to him. When Moses confronted Aaron about what he did, he blamed the people instead of accepting responsibility. He even went so far as to give a completely passive explanation for the idol’s existence: “So, I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

Moses himself failed in leadership in the face of the fears of the people at Kadesh-barnea. When the spies brought back a fear-laden report from the land God had commanded them to enter, the people said, “Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear” (Deut.1:28 NIV). Instead of responding to their fear of an imagined threat from the reality of God’s promise of protection, Moses reacted by caving in. The result, as you know, was that the people had to wander around in the wilderness until that faithless generation had died and Moses was not permitted to enter the Promised Land.

Contrast these two examples with the leadership of Jesus during his temptation in the wilderness, where he responded to Satan by managing his own inner being, during the occasion at Caesarea Philipi when Peter urged him to take another path than the one that would lead to the cross, and during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane when his struggle with anxiety was so intense that he sweated blood.

Maybe Lent can be a time for us to search ourselves and discover the anxieties that interfere with our life in community and our ability to remain calm when others around us are losing their heads. When we do that, the life of the emotional systems of which we are members become healthier and we become more human, because we make better use of the uniquely human part of our brain that allows reason to overcome the reactions that come from the more primitive parts of our brains.

I am aware that many of the things that emerge from those more primitive parts of the human brain are necessary for survival. But when we are faced with imaginary or even potential threats, we have the God-given resources and opportunities to more fully express our humanity. And, as St. Irenaeus once said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.” It is God who calls us to live our lives from divine values and principles so that we can build up the Church, advance God’s reign on earth, and embrace God’s vision of a creation restored in God’s Son.

That’s a worthy objective for the observance of a holy Lent.

I’ll see you in Church!

March 10, 2014
Sermon at Christ Church Cranbrook ~ November 10, 2013

Sermon for November 10, 2013 ~ Proper 27C

Listen to the Sermon for November 10, 2013

Read the Sermon for November 10, 2013

November 10, 2013
Sermon at Christ Church Cranbrook ~ March 31, 2013

Easter Day

Listen to the Sermon for March 31, 2013

Read the Sermon for March 31, 2013

March 31, 2013