My Blog

Tag: Realm of God

  • 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."

     

  • 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 Emerging Question

    Sunday’s Gospel finds Jesus in Gentile territory. He first encounters a Syrophonecian woman who pleads with him to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Next he encounters a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. They are not his people. Why is he there and why would he heal people like them?

    Behind this story is the question of whether Jesus’ mission was consciously just to the Jews or intentionally extended to Gentiles. The biblical record is clear; Jesus never turned away anyone, Jew or Gentile, who sought his help. The realm he proclaimed is an inclusive realm of grace, open to everyone.

    In the early Church, the question shifted to whether one had to become a Jew first before becoming a Christian. Paul's more inclusive way prevailed over the more exclusive approach of Peter. The grace of God was offered freely, without the need for circumcision or a particular religious pedigree.

    Today, this question has emerged in yet another way. It comes to us transformed by the growing awareness that Christendom as we have known it in the West no longer is (and perhaps never was) the dominant religion in the world, and by the growing visibility of the diversity and vitality of the many other religious and spiritual traditions in the world. The emerging question is: What does it mean to be a Christian in the world?

    Biblical scholar and preacher, Fred Craddock, tells the story of a missionary sent to India near the end of WW II. After many months the time came for a furlough back home. His church wired him the money for passage on a steamer. When he got to the port city, he discovered that a boatload of Jews had just been allowed to land temporarily. They were staying in attics and warehouses and basements all over that port city.

    It happened to be Christmas, and on Christmas morning, this missionary went to one of the attics where scores of Jews were staying. He walked in and said, “Merry Christmas.” The people looked at him as if he were crazy and responded, “We're Jews.” “I know that," said the missionary, “What would you like for Christmas?” In utter amazement the Jews responded, “We'd like pastries, good pastries like the ones we used to have in Germany.”

    So the missionary used the money for his ticket home to buy pastries for all the Jews he could find. Of course, then he had to wire home asking for more money to book his passage back to the States. As you might expect, they wired back asking what happened to the money they had already sent.

    He replied that he had used it to buy Christmas pastries for some Jews. They wired back, “Why did you do that? They don't even believe in Jesus.” He wired back: “Yes, but I do.”

    This missionary was a doer of the word and not a hearer only! So are we when our ears are opened and our tongues are loosened, for the hearing and the doing of the reconciling word entrusted to us.

    In May of 1738, Peter Bohler, a Moravian missionary, said to Charles Wesley, “If I had a thousand tongues, I’d praise Christ with all of them.” On the 21st of May, Charles’ quest for such a faith was fulfilled. He was so stirred by those words of Peter Bohler that near the first anniversary of his conversion he wrote a hymn beginning, “Glory to God, and praise, and love.” The seventh stanza recalls Peter Bohler’s words: “O for a thousand tongues to sing my dear Redeemer’s praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumphs of his grace!” (Here is a lively rendering of that great hymn.)

    Much of what passes for evangelical Christianity today is aimed at closing ears, tying tongues, and excluding people. It sometimes seems to me that much of what is presented as good is in fact demonic. In contrast, we have the inclusive, healing, liberating ministry of our Redeemer, who not only talked about God’s love, but did something about it. Each of us can only ask that he liberate us from whatever demons torment us, unstop our ears to hear him, and loosen our tongues to praise him – with our words and with our actions – so that we become an extension of the heart and hands of Incarnate One who came not to condemn, but to give life.

    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