"Sojourning On;" Sermon for May 18th, 2014 by Nicole Collins

Knowing the Way, the truth and the life to live is indeed having Christ at the center of who you are.  It is realizing yourself beyond the unmoving spiritual stone you once were.  It is an ongoing process of formation that is both painful at times and at others, an amazing blessing!

The road there however, to knowing the Way will not have easy sign posts if any at all.  Your very core will be shaken by Satan and his minions’ efforts to move you away from the truth and steep you into death and doubt.  A life to live is not just marked between our parameters of time but God’s time.

For the past month and a half I have worn a necklace designed for Kairos ministries.  Kairos itself, is a Greek word that means in God’s time.  It is one that goes beyond referring to perseverance and suffering for the sake of the Gospel...  It asks you what basically is printed on the back of the cross which is:  “Christ is counting on you.”

Sojourning the journey is introspective and personal, for how can we TRUTHFULLY share the Gospel if we do not authentically share as one human being to another?  What are we afraid of?  Stephen, like John the Baptist, couldn’t keep his mouth shut and incensed people to the point of killing him by the stone.

The same material used for building—stones can be either of progress or of stagnation and death.  There is one stone that is the building block to the life of faith that is Christ, the cornerstone.  He is not only the pillar of strength to your entire structure of faith (a manifestation of Grace) but he is also that stone that guides the structure of your faith to turn that corner.  Is it really turning that corner into the unknown (?) or is it trusting in that corner holding onto the Lord’s hand with grateful tears that you are blessed and set apart to be a blessing to others.

Blessed to being a blessing to others is something I learned on the journey from Pastor Eric.  There will be many people the Lord places in your path to help His efforts in leading and guiding you as you journey to find your place within the priesthood of Christ Jesus.  At the beginning of this “sojourn,” Pastor Bill was the one whom God first used to point me up the road to experience my conversion experience the late summer of 2003.

Grace is an all-caps, Hollywood sign-sized reality etched into the heart of those who truthfully allow God to lead.  There is no other formulation, it is a ‘concrete,’ truth.  It is a concrete truth contrary to the ways of the world... where tears are shed for joy rather than sadness and loss... where heads and hearts are turned sternly and often painfully away from the past to look directly into the new path ahead.

The valley of the Sun is the next leg of the journey.  Perhaps it should be called the valley of the Son since the new life lived will be one realized as Ministry in all caps as the fruit of Grace and perseverance. Living into being/ becoming the hands and feet of Christ in the world as His ardent disciple discipling others to grow and go.

Serendipity is one of the pleasant aspects of sojourning God’s path, formation into His priesthood.  I say this for of all unusual circumstances waiting in a long line to practice processing for our diplomas, this past Friday; I met another Lutheran.  Never saw her around the campus for she was in an entirely different program than I was.  The jokes were:  “And I thought I was the only token Lutheran at TEDS...  Calvinism gives me a headache.”

She by no means had an easy journey, in fact her former pastor was vehemently against her studying at Trinity concerned about doctrinal issues over truthfully more important ones: spiritual.  “Things they don’t teach you in seminary,” has become a staple pet phrase that has become popular enough to even be a face book forum discussion page.  Perhaps this could be renamed as “Things they don’t teach you to truly/ truthfully follow Jesus.”

Stephen unlike Thomas, knew what the issues were and said it like it is via the “honest planet:”  “⁵¹You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. ⁵²Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. ⁵³You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.”

Well of course as we know, people didn’t like hearing the truth of Stephen’s words and stoned him to death.  Burying the light and life of Christ under impermeable stones—out of sight, out of mind...  Jesus in today’s Gospel had to lay it out in concrete and unbending terms for the disciples to truly know what they indeed needed to hear: “’ ⁶Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

As children of God always learning and growing into following Jesus; everything we do shapes the next leg of the journey.  The way to survival is an unwavering hope.  It may not be fully understood at the moment but necessary to hear.  The disciples of Jesus were ordinary men from all walks of life and gifts.  Many things Jesus said and did were very difficult for them to grasp: ⁷If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’

⁸ Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ ⁹Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

Being and becoming in union with Christ spiritually is what shapes the discipleship journey.  There are a lot of valleys and deserts one can become stranded in—to be buried in the darkness of contemplation and death... Another friend at my former school and I recently talked about our journeys to serve the Lord.  He is still in the “school of Athens for Jesus,” wound up in doctrinal, political forums and frankly buried alive, spiritually-deprived... where his journey has no guiding light or prospects of serving.  He is merely accepting this unguided valley/ darkened desert and dwindling more dollars and years away as a “professional student” with no human support and very little faith.

This is a lot like Stephen’s words to the crowd of leaders in the temple, they are harsh but what is the gospel if it is not TRUTHFULLY and honestly proclaimed?  If it is not truly, authentically heard?  It becomes doctrinal, pious platitudes—impermeable, indifferent stones crumbling away around the cornerstone of faith: Christ Jesus—our reason to live into the Way, Truth and the Life of GRACE.  Can’t break away from that or bury it in small, visually comfortable letters or expressions, world news and politics... It is the reality of faith.

We are all capable builders.  The raw material is the heart where God’s Holy Spirit first works within us to build a great and glorious faith.  A great and glorious faith that has sojourned through and down all kinds of paths where the Love and Grace of God is the light and life keeping you alive and regenerating you to die to the past and move into the future.  A future lived, continually fed by the spiritual milk of the Gospel, to know and grow into the Way, TRUTH and the Life--JESUS.

AMEN

May 18^th, 2014; 5^th Sunday of Easter; Year A; SOLA Lectionary              Nicole Collins

Psalm 146; Acts 6:1-9, 7:2, 51-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14