My Blog

Tag: Paul

  • Getting Ready for Lent

    Next Wednesday, we will begin our annual observance of the Season of Lent. Lent is a time for engaging our new life in Christ more deeply, risking new levels of trust. The purpose of Lent is not to dwell on suffering, or to spend forty days bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness for the sake of feeling our pain. Lent is about engaging in the ongoing process of renewal, regeneration, and new birth; it is about encouraging us to trust and to risk going forth and being sent out with the promise of new life.

    Lent may require us to “think outside the box” of piety and religiosity, just as Abram and Sarai had to break with their past, and Saul and Nicodemus the Pharisees with theirs. The promises of God bear not only upon the future of our individual lives in relationship to God, but also upon the future of our parish, our diocese, and our Church as a whole.

    To respond to the promise for new life means we have to be ready to redraw and rename the places on the journey. When the ancient ones told the story of Abram and Sarai, they were also inscribing new place names and creating a new social geography on the territories of their migrations in company with God.

    God may be inviting us to rethink how we do Church in light of the socio-geographies of the times we live in. When Saul the Pharisee became Paul the Apostle as we know him, he brought new words, images, and new community structures into being, “calling into existence things which do not exist,” by trustfully following Jesus into new life.

    Lent is for listening to that call in our own lives. In the words of James Russell Lowell, “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.” Lent is for careful thinking about how to step into the as-yet-unmapped future, to deepen our relationship to God, to trust the picture of new life in Christ, and for identifying the breaks with the past that we need to make in order to respond to the promises of God.

    I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

    Blessings,

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

     

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

  • New Life Requires Risk and Trust

    The readings for this Sunday are filled with images of renewal – new birth, new life, new creation. These images imply that God’s promise for new life entails God’s gift of a fresh start, freed from the restrictions of our past lives in order to enter a new relationship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Lent is a time for engaging our new life in Christ more deeply, risking new levels of trust. The purpose of Lent is not to dwell on suffering, or to spend forty days bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness for the sake of feeling our pain. Lent is about engaging in the ongoing process of renewal, regeneration, and new birth; it is about encouraging us to trust and to risk going forth and being sent out with the promise of new life.

    Lent may require us to “think outside the box” of piety and religiosity, just as Abram and Sarai had to break with their past, and the Pharisees Saul and Nicodemus with theirs. The promises of God bear not only upon the future of our individual lives in relationship to God, but also upon the future of our parish, our diocese, and our Church as a whole

    To respond to the promise for new life means we have to be ready to redraw and rename the places on the journey. When the ancient ones told the story of Abram and Sarai, they were also inscribing new place names and creating a new social geography on the territories of their migrations in company with God.

    God may be inviting us to rethink how we do Church in light of the socio-geographies of the times we live in. When Saul the Pharisee became Paul the Apostle as we know him, he brought new words, images, and new community structures into being, “calling into existence things which do not exist,” by trustfully following Jesus into new life.

    Lent is for listening to that call in our own lives. In the words of James Russell Lowell, “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.” Lent is for careful thinking about how to step into the as-yet-unmapped future, to deepen our relationship to God, to trust the picture of new life in Christ, and for identifying the breaks with the past that we need to make in order to respond to the promises of God.

    I'll see you in Church!

    Ron Short Blue Sig Cropped

     

     

     

     

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

  • Sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Hole ~ October 25, 2015

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    The Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost

    Listen to the Sermon for  October 25, 2015  

    Read the Sermon for October 25, 2015

     

     

  • Sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Hole ~ March 1, 2015

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    The Second Sunday in Lent

    Listen to the Sermon for March 1,  2015

    Read the Sermon for March 1, 2015

     

     

     

     

  • Sermon at Christ Church Cranbrook ~ March 17, 2013

    The Fifth Sunday in Lent

    Listen to the Sermon for March 17, 2013

     Read the Sermon for March 17, 2013

     


  • Eternal Life and Perfect Freedom

    Each summer, Calvary Episcopal Church and First Christian Church of Ashland, Kentucky join together to offer a Vacation Bible School, open to children throughout the community.  This year's theme is "Adventures on Promise Island: Where Children Discover God's Lifesaving Love."  We will meet on the evenings of July 16-19 to assist the children in discovering some of God's promises:

    •  July 16 – The Story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego – God's promise: I am with you.

    •  July 17 – The Story of the Raising of Lazarus – God's promise: I care about you.

    •  July 18 – The Story of Jesus' Resurrection – God's promise: I will save you.

    •  July 19 – The Story of Paul and Silas in Prison – God's promise: I will answer you.

    Last night we had a meeting with the VBS teachers to review these four scriptures from an adult perspective in order to help them think about ways they will present them to the children. First Christian's Pastor Ike Nicholson and I took turns providing exegesis and commentary for the teachers.

    In the course of our discussions, I was struck by how each of the four readings involves liberation.  For example, King Nebuchadnezzar has the hands and feet of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego bound before they are thrown into the firey furnace.  When he looks into the fire, he sees them (and a fourth figure who looks like a Son of God) walking around freely.  They emerge from the firey furnace completely unsinged.  Then, when Jesus calls Lazarus forth from his tomb, he instructs the bystanders to "Unbind him and let him go."  Likewise, Jesus leaves tomb and the grave clothes behind when he is raised from the dead on the first Easter.  During the earthquake, the chains the hold Paul and Silas are broken and the gates of their cell are opened so that they can go free. In each case, the miraculous liberation provides an opportunity for God's message to be shared – the message of a kind of freedom that can be found only in our relationship with the Living God.

    It was an epiphany!  God has been at work delivering people from one form of slavery or another for ever.  When God reigns in our lives, we are completely liberated. Whatever binds us and holds us back is removed so that we can live with a freedom we can't find any other place.

    Today is the feast day of St. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea. Basil knew and boldly expressed that unfettered liberty when the emperor Valens passed through Caesarea in 371.  Valens demanded Basil's theological submission and Basil flatly refused. The imperial prefect expressed astonishment at Basil's defiance, to which Basil replied, "Perhaps you have never met a real bishop before."  His freedom was derived not from a temporal ruler, but from the Sovereign of the Universe.

    This collect from the office of Morning Prayer expresses it very well:

    O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

    Our children need to know that God gives them the freedom to be who God wants them to be and to follow God's leading in their lives no matter what happens. We need to impart that message to them in the words we say and the lives we live.  God, liberate from whatever attachments may interfere with our ability to freely represent you to the children you have given into our care!

    Ron Short Sig Blue 

  • New life requires risk, trust

    Sunday's readings are filled with images of renewal – new birth, new life, new creation.  These images imply that God’s promise for new life entails God’s gift of a fresh start, freed from the restrictions of our past lives in order to enter a new relationship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Lent is a time for engaging our new life in Christ more deeply, risking new levels of trust.  The purpose of Lent is not to dwell on suffering, or to spend forty days bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness for the sake of feeling our pain.  Lent is about engaging in the ongoing process of renewal, regeneration, and new birth; it is about encouraging us to trust and to risk going forth and being sent out with the promise of new life.

    Lent may require us to “think outside the box” of piety and religiosity, just as Abram and Sarai had to break with their past, and Saul and Nicodemus the Pharisees with theirs.  The promises of God bear not only upon the future of our individual lives in relationship to God, but also upon the future of our parish, our diocese, and our Church as a whole

    To respond to the promise for new life means we have to be ready to redraw and rename the places on the journey.  When the ancient ones told the story of Abram and Sarai, they were also inscribing new place names and creating a new social geography on the territories of their migrations in company with God.

    God may be inviting us to rethink how we do Church in light of the socio-geographies of the times we live in.  When Saul the Pharisee became Paul the Apostle as we know him, he brought new words, images, and new community structures into being, “calling into existence things which do not exist,” by trustfully following Jesus into new life.

    Lent is for listening to that call in our own lives.  In the words of James Russell Lowell, “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.”  Lent is for careful thinking about how to step into the as-yet-unmapped future, to deepen our relationship to God, to trust the picture of new life in Christ, and for identifying the breaks with the past that we need to make in order to respond to the promises of God.

    Ron Short Signature