Posts
Luther’s “favorite author,” James, actually has the most beautiful verses to drive home today’s Gospel Truth, He says: “17Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.”
Let’s
digest these two verses again via the overly ample, Amplified Bible: “17 Every good gift and every perfect (free, large,
full) gift is from above; it comes down from the Father of all [that gives]
light, in [the shining of] Whom there can be no variation [rising or setting]
or shadow cast by His turning [as in an eclipse].18 And it was
of His own [free] will that He gave us birth [as sons & daughters] by [His]
Word of Truth, so that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures [a
sample of what He created to be consecrated to Himself].”
What
is James, taken in light of both the Old covenant and New covenant connection,
being tested with? In regards to Abraham in today’s Old Testament passage from the
Book of Genesis; God is the one doing the testing upon Abe’s faithful obedience. With the New Covenant as well as today’s
Gospel; it is Satan doing the testing not only upon Jesus in the wilderness,
but in James’ letter where the wilderness is our heart & the turf war—spiritual
warfare battle, is between faithful obedience to the Will of God versus
submission to the temptations of the Evil One.
The
last words to come from one of the Coptic Christian’s martyred lips was: “Jesus!” A Word, impression, expression and Divine
presence to be the seal of Grace upon our lives stories—Jesus! Son of man, Son
of God, Fully Divine and Fully human we confess this… How deeply though, is the journey and sacrifice,
we all grow into as disciples of Jesus.
That
brings me to a funny realization I had the other day in thinking about being
and truly/ truthfully living into the “E” word—Evangelical. We must remember, we Lutherans have almost a
near aversion or mild ambivalence to taking up the task of being EVANGELICAL
all caps, full Monty style. We’d rather hide behind our ‘mighty fortress’ of
man-made precedence and earthly expansiveness. But hey, we’re human, this is
the reality of human nature across the board!
The
other worldliness of the Kingdom of God however, is the first fruits to be born
into and be transformed by… this is the Spiritual. We are physical as well as we are spiritual,
this is an existential truth that God has born us to bear. That’s sounds painful doesn’t it? To bear… we
bear burdens, we bear the cost of persevering and suffering the graceless
wilderness reality of Satan’s evil all around us on this tiny little sphere
(earth) floating in a vast sea of a great and glorious landscape of God’s
creations! All of these “shining lights” are evolving, revolving and revealing
the magnificence of God’s ALL TOO PRESENT reality: LIFE.
As
we know though, when we give birth, it is painful but the Joy it brings into
the world is amazing. God’s Grace is
amazing and bearing forth all around us and most importantly within us as that
New Nature potential due to the reality of God coming to us through Jesus to bear
our sins and BE the light of the world! The whole reality of life is a
spiritual evolution and the time of Lent is our spiritual preparation for
battle….
The
words off the lips of that martyred Coptic Christian were from the voice of
that man’s heart crying out the profound truth of what has driven his whole
life’s journey: JESUS! Jesus was the healing balm and battle cry for a man to
slash out with his last spirited breath before the enemy… the true victor. This very moment reminded me of my favorite
film version of the story of Jesus being Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth
from 1977.
As
we know, John the Baptist never became a New Covenant figure yet alone a
disciple of Jesus but knew deeply where and how God was qualifying and calling
him to be used for His plans. In many ways similar to Abe’s story in Genesis,
John was obedient and very much an evangelist!
So much so, was John bound and determined to persevere his suffering in
Herod’s prison cell, that he was unceasing in his efforts to try to talk Herod
out of committing grave sin. Herod as we
know caved into temptation and “silenced” supposedly John’s voice by beheading
him much like the ISIS soldier.
For
all we know, Herod could’ve been using John the Baptist’s beheading as
propaganda to further his cause to rule with “perfect” obedience from his
subjects…. The ISIS acts are very much
in the same vein, to rule with terror, paranoia and other ugly fruits of the
Evil One’s plans for domination. We don’t really hear about John the Baptist’s
beheading in today’s Gospel but it is alluded to. On that same note, we haven’t heard much
about the activities of ISIS except for the one’s the media’s allowed to reveal
strategically that is…
These
are events, places and people revealing all too clearly and profoundly just how
successful evil can become in the world when we are not living deeply into our
accountability to growing, harboring the reality of Grace as children of God—implanted
with that New Nature capacity to Go that extra mile in loving God and neighbor. That extra mile is that “radical” role we are
called by and for faith through Grace to BEAR. My love for Jesus, my Lord and
Savior is NOT an ideology… it is the fruit of the Good News impact on my soul—that
invisible, non-material, abstract “entity” of the spiritual realm of who we all
really are!
Life
is spirit at the very core—that Spirit is Christ to whom we owe our lives in
faithful, gracious response to, plain and simple. We have to stop turning away
from this reality, hiding it away in our intellectual idolatries, sophistries
of worldly temptations. We have not “arrived”
nor will we truly ever, for we must remember as St. Paul said that we all fall
short of the Glory of God, period. We are however, all called to spiritually
mature which is hard for the Old Adam and the Old Eve to bear. We are both
aspiring saints as well as wanton sinners.
Truth be told as well, we really CAN’T have our cake and eat it too…
though we always continue to try, to our own destruction and others’ detriment.
We
need our hearts to deeply embrace the Psalmist’s song: “4Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths. 5Lead me in your truth, and teach
me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.” The Psalmist
continues: “9He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the
humble his way. 10All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and
faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.”
Keeping
the faith is all Jesus beckons us through His Grace to prayerfully, spiritually
adhere to. While the road becomes ever more burdened with the Evil One’s traps,
pits, glass ceilings and temptations; we are all called to press on. We will
have moments where the sword of the enemy will cut down our spirits, seemingly
truncating our efforts to either his victory of utter despair and sadness or for
Christ. Christ will be the victor, where
our tears remind and shape us through our Baptism and the pain felt in our
hearts is quieted by a profound, joyous hope…
We need
to look out at that wilderness of the world as spiritual soldiers for the
Gospel… and say to ourselves: Do I want
to be a part of growing the graceless wilderness, reality of HELL that the Evil
One, who is real btw… or DO I want to live for Christ and be and become a New
Nature driven Child of Grace growing the reality of the Kingdom of God? I chose
Christ.
AMEN
1st Sunday in Lent;
February 22nd, 2015; Year B; SOLA Lectionary;
Sermon By: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins
Psalm 25:1-10; Genesis 22:1-18;
James 1:12-18; Mark 1:9-15
No comments:
Post a Comment