"Prisoner of Hope;" Palm Sunday Sermon by Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

The word prisoner is definitely something that we could say is vexing to hear.  For the word implies bondage and servitude, something we naturally feel opposed to… or at least the ego does in context here.  There are some powerful images in all of today’s texts spanning from a broken vessel, waterless pit to the irony of Jesus entry into Jerusalem to finally St. Paul’s beautiful song of hope and encouragement in rejoicing in Christ example to be lived into in our lives as children of Grace.

We are imprisoned and allow ourselves to be imprisoned but not really for the Kingdom of God but for the kingdom of the world. You know, the “unholy Trinity of I, Me and Mine…” It’s that old saying diametrically opposed to one another: living for ourselves or living for others?  The journey of the Christian is way beyond the steeple and the people mentality of living into Christ’s impact of Grace upon our lives… For I am certainly no mercenary nor am I a chaplain to the worldly culture and its preservation of a waterless, graceless pit!

Can you fathom that for just a moment?  A dried, empty, cracked earthen tunnel… where the sun is shining above barely casting its light into that darkened and unstable place?  What if that waterless pit in Zechariah’s text was referring to the human soul?  Beginning with that conditional “if,” what if our soul—essence of who we are in spirit was allowed to be consumed with itself over and above the Living restorative waters of God? We would be dead.

It’s a sad reality in the “life” of the church that “Passion” Sunday has become the “Bandaid” solution to getting Christians to once again hear and contemplate what really “Good Friday” is to teach us about Christ’s walk to the cross.  But if we cram this intense moment to be shared with the irony of Jesus entry into Jerusalem; how are we to grasp Grace yet alone realize how truly we are in bondage to sin, death and the devil? It’s just a moment in time not fully and soulfully embraced in that waterless pit, broken vessel of our saint and sinner selves!

Building up the body is a fabulous image spiritually when you think about the anatomy of the Christ-follower also known as the disciple, the Christian.  Our heart is the seat of the soul where life began and where the New Nature is sewn.  The New Nature (in, with and through Christ), its growth and maturity are most certainly reliant on the propitiation-sacrifice of the Cross of Christ… BUT what’s the most important element here is the final result.  This final result through our hands and feet is Grace in action and in God’s hopefulness for us—our sacrifice!

If we don’t allow Christ Jesus to truly and truthfully save us; what are we really living for? The world is a place of empty promises when lived in for ourselves… We are walking on our own through a wilderness of our own divisiveness—a veritable prison, potential “hell” on earth!  It can feel that way often when we fill that waterless pit with the refuse of the world! Trust me, there’s a lot of garbage that we pack the world tight with…  Everything from servitude to the almighty dollar to indulging, engaging in the graceless behavior and constructions that Satan dumps into our lives paths.  Part of this is spiritual warfare; the other part as already mentioned is our own doing.

As a pastor though, commissioned to care for Christ’s flock, “hell fire and brimstone” preaching and teaching doesn’t shape the disciple of Jesus at all.  It merely becomes a way to control instead of magnifying the Grace of God and its purpose for our lives to infuse.  On the opposite end of the spectrum within the “not-really-progressive-grain-of-thought…” neither does preaching and teaching that Jesus is a politically correct, eunuch, 1^st century prophet who didn’t resurrect, isn’t really completely divine and just gives to us—“grace candy…” teach us anything at all about the TRUTH!

We can’t handle the TRUTH! To echo Jack Nicholson’s infamous lines… this is human nature and its frailties we can’t deny.  We want to use super glue on our broken aspects of ourselves instead of being faithfully accepting and accountable for a much more beautiful purpose.  Being beautiful spiritually is a frame of mind and coming from Jesus’ perspective it is a beautiful attitude from a restored soul.  A deep humility that is born from the death of the ego and its Old Natured prison bars!

Think about Mother Theresa, she was an amazing little nun from India who’s witness’ impact of selfless service is still something to greatly inspire us.  Inspire us beyond us is the Gospel, her hands and feet lived most graciously and humbly for the Lord!

We’ve not been hearing much “good” in the news lately. There is so much turmoil and strife taking place all over the world.  From a German pilot that the media is currently debating to either be a terrorist or a manic depressive… to political bumbling and rumbling across the nations trying to merely “patch peace” with divisive intentions. This patch work either avoids or becomes completely indifferent to the consequences and dire ramifications their actions actually echo to the world.

Thinking about that there, you have to wonder how many people who were cheering in Jesus throwing their cloaks before His feet at the “triumphal” entry into their city were also there a couple of days later, to cheer on His murder when things didn’t go their way.  Let’s face it, they were oppressed and under a military dictatorship imposed by the Romans.  They knew they were one kind of prisoner but didn’t allow themselves truly and truthfully to hear about their spiritual bondage and it’s true saving solution: JESUS. I, for one am glad that we didn’t get a “Rambo” version of Jesus for we needed to be saved in a completely different way.

Jesus “saved” us from spiritual bondage but indeed left us with an imprint that our spiritual formation, faith journey needed and continues to grapple with pursuing intentionally, willingly and sacrificially.  We hear this most beautifully in St. Paul’s pastoral voice to his Philippian flock of disciples: “⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…” I am blessed to hear the passion in his voice beginning this tiny snippet of one of his most profound witnesses to Christ’s imprint upon his faith journey as a disciple and recipient of GRACE.

One of the very few positive memories I had at the start of my seminary studies was taking a scriptures by heart class and memorizing, performing Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 18.  Talk about taking the Living Word into that impressionable, open space called the heart! You can “feel” his hopefulness for the Philippians to not only most definitely realize that “Jesus Christ is Lord to (indeed!) the Glory of God the Father,” but that through Christ, his humble obedience we are indeed free.  Free to be freely accountable, responsible servants to His Gospel of GRACE!

Grace is an everyday reality something to rejoice and most importantly respond to! Returning to that stronghold of a place of empowered faith to fight those battles against the Gospel that are either of a tangible or spiritual reality though leaves us much like Peter in the Passion’s Gospel… We are in a quagmire of our own internal battling of what should we do? After all the disciples for the most part were ordinary working class people, many of them did abandon Jesus during His moment of need.  We still do this now to one another but contrary to the Gospel, and hypocritically as Christians, we justify ourselves and it’s world over and above that of God’s Will and precepts of a Kingdom of Grace here and now for all to rejoice in!

If my pulpit doesn’t go places beyond this Sunday or beyond your ear canal to your heart for motivation and challenge…  What are you planning to BE and DO for not only Christ’s sake but for the other?  We have to begin to fill that waterless pit, that broken vessel with the Living Word, fount of GRACE and put on Christ Jesus as the reason, purpose, goal of our lives, period!  It is not to be the Gospel of the world of Nicole or Phil or Sharon or anyone else here.  It is Christ Jesus Gospel that gives us life, restores our true purpose and role in the story of creation.  We are sons and daughters of the Gospel, for the Gospel to LIVE FAITHFULLY, faith-filled tearing down, destroying sin in our lives, dying to the world of the self and busting out those prison bars of the Evil One’s bondage upon our will.

Peter’s three strikes denial in the Passion’s Gospel is more like our everyday battle with denying God’s Grace and precepts for our lives.  We have to stop living in denial about who we are and whose we are and freely be “prisoners of a hope” that is life giving and rejoice in this Hope to bear the fruit, restoration of all creation.

AMEN

Palm Sunday; March 29^th, 2015; SOLA Lectionary; 

Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 31:9–16; Zechariah 9:9-12; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:26 - 15:47

 

https://youtu.be/H1pDOXUQpCQ

"Ransom;" A Sermon for the 5th Sunday in Lent by Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to all His disciples, not just directly to James & John: “^43b……whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

A ransom is a transaction, it is a business barter in human terms, how we pay for things.  In Godly terms and understandings however it is all connected to that beautiful abstract center of all that God has to offer: GRACE.  That all caps, Hollywood sized sign reality of what drives us to obedience to love and serve both God and neighbor.  What if we truly lived into Grace meaning showing genuine selfless compassion, mercy, love, kindness etcetera?  The world wouldn’t look too normal wouldn’t it?  We probably wouldn’t recognize it! Perhaps it would even frighten us~ after all we’ve been more than comfortable with ourselves living into our own patterns more often than God’s patterns for our lives… right?

The disciples got angry with James and John.  They did seem to ask a bone-headed question, that was selfish but that’s because they really didn’t understand the discipline Christ would not only be bringing into the world but that they only seem to understand Him through a worldly lens of power, and not a spiritual one.  Jesus journey from the waters of the Jordan baptizing Him to begin His mission of Grace to its perfection, fruition at the cross—is why we gather.

The Gathering communities or churches or “gathering of Lutheran misfits” try to live into the idea of gathering or coming together to scatter.  Living into the mission of Grace God places before you as you follow Him on your faith journey. Glory for the Kingdom of God is obedience to the Holy Spirit’s mission to guide and strengthen you for the Lord’s service as one of many in His priesthood of all servants to the Gospel.

My personal relationship with our loving and gracious God began at that conversion experience I had almost 12 something years ago now.  In a tiny north side Swedish Lutheran church I heard God and His Words begin to be etched upon my heart a New Obedience I needed to yield to.  I confirmed this through a baptism of tears.  Five years after that renewal, baptism of tears, I darkened the halls of seminary and began a more formal YES to God’s call to become His servant.  Then and there I was freed from my former life and perspective and became a ransomed servant of the Lord and for the Lord through Grace.

As everyone here knows, just this January I was “made” official for service and ordained to the role of Pastor through the Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church.  Ordained pastor means simply one in charge of Word and Sacrament as a leader to the flock of believers in said care. This coming Saturday a good friend of mine or a “war-buddy,” who’s been on a similar crazy journey, will be ordained as well.  I couldn’t be happier for him and it’s not because he “deserves it” but more for the work that he will truly embark upon for the Lord and for the love of neighbor!

We both have great visions of what ministry will look like planned from our heart and acted upon through our hands and feet and it does take a profound sense of commitment as well as a lot of dreaming…  Dreaming with a hope, a much greater hope for the future of a world teetering near spiraling into a graceless wilderness of self-service, vice and personal gain, glory.  Speaking of “working for God’s glory plus dreaming” towards the future, I put up my own campaign through “Go Fund Me” for the Grace Hub to find and create its official physical plant: The Grace Hub Discipleship Center.

I got turned on to the idea by another friend of mine who was pestering me enough with his Go Fund Me campaign to pay his way in seminary; I thought I’d give it a whirl.  Not one donation yet… Which I could see this both ways, the positive side being that things take time or the negative side that people don’t believe in me having the drive, obedience and patience needed to plant a community.  The world needs to see everything in tangible terms and we don’t necessarily see or even care to realize where people are especially when they need to be given the chance to shine as a servant of the Lord.

This is a path to be sojourned alone but empowered by Grace through a faith that must endure those many days of suffering spiritually. Suffering feeling spiritually insecure about who you are in the Body of Christ and reminding ourselves of whose we are as children of God, children of Grace for Grace.  We are to be the caretakers of that Hollywood sized sign reality of GRACE. We need to be committed to more than lip service to living as a bond servant of the Lord.

The foundation of that beautiful journey of faith, that personal relationship between you and God began a long time ago.  It began at your baptism. Those bricks were laid throughout our lives shaped by and through the Living Word of God! The mortar has been comprised of the many lessons we encounter throughout the whole of our lives to “perfect” us for service.  This foundation and its’ prayerfully mortared and set reality was never built on “cheap grace” but through the precious blood and sacrifice of a crucified Lord of all for all—Jesus! A most costly GRACE.

Satan loves to try to make us feel insecure about how much we’ve done, where we are and so on.  Sure it could be easy to take out a chalkboard & draw a line each time you were asked to officiate something, write up something or counsel someone but if this is the only way you are seeing what you DO as an obedient disciple… then you are right in the same boat as James and John in misunderstanding sacrifice and service for the Love of God and neighbor.

One of the ministry moments right under my nose has been caring for our housemate.  We are buried in trying to do so many things together.  We’re looking into official care-giving certification, handicap accessible apartments and more importantly Phil & I are coming to learn what love in action is through the Gospel for neighbor.  Nothing could go more slowly than it has been…  Either people do not respond or you find yourself having to call, write or leave messages continually for people whom you are seeking to help you, to help others.  It is like we are in an age of limited care, concern and accountability.

Living into those etched Words of Grace upon my heart is shaping the desire for chaplaincy.  However, you can submit all those papers and participate in all those interviews finding yourself explaining away why you want to be living compassion to others but if it’s being filtered and judged by human terms and not really in Godly terms… People don’t seem to care what you can give if the piece of paper doesn’t have enough there or your references aren’t enough or you have to keep an outside job that you can’t drop for unpaid training…

We’re not allowing people to find their role in the priesthood of all believers.  We’ve compartmentalized it to be a Sunday morning or evening experience only and our lives separate, divided amongst ourselves.  How can we relate to the Glory of the cross and its gift to our hearts for service if we shun others from truly and truthfully serving? Perhaps each and every time we are frustrated and once again those tears flow; we must see those tears as reminding us of our baptism. Cleansing our hearts from the Evil’s One’s mottling into our affairs to drag us into his graceless wilderness of purposelessness and despair.

Our newly expanded family’s goals are to be moved May 1^st somewhere in Northern suburbia and to be firmly established to be better care-givers for Sharon.  God’s love and guidance is what helps my heart to be strong and persevere.  For I know I am of His Kingdom in the here and now but I must continue to fight the evil of all that tries to diminish Him.

Amen

Sunday March 22nd^th, 2015; 5^th Sunday in Lent; Year B; SOLA Lectionary;

Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 119:9-16; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:32-45

https://youtu.be/1sE_U-I6N44

"Conditions;" 4th Sunday in Lent Sermon by Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

Disciples of the world and for the world? Or are we to be Disciples of Christ for the sake of the world for Kingdom of God? We are conditional creatures at many times upon our journey choosing to cleave to our “Old Natured” way of “Doing” and “being” more for an ivory tower of pseudo “holiness” and skewed worldly glory…

As a pastor in the post-modern 21^st century church; I try to continually be shaped in service for Christ and His gospel over and above culture…  But it is not an easy task at all spiritually and physically speaking especially when it goes against the grain. 2,000 something years ago; Pharisees like Nicodemus were just starting to break away from that Old view of being a servant of God and began to see but a glimpse into the unconditional, radical New view of Loving God and neighbor that Jesus was trying to illumine and shape Nicodemus’ heart to hear, being the “New Moses” that He was.

Being in a “new” era of how the world both receives and perceives church…  We have fallen away to standards that are not Christ’s standards more than they are bound to the conditional standards of the world.  Trying to live against the grain as a “church world professional…” and live more for BIBLICAL standards of understanding and responding to the lifestyle of Grace will get you some “flack” more than “slack.”  You can count all of your degrees and list them on a piece of paper… but if you’re not truly and truthfully incorporating them as a disciple of JESUS why claim to be a pastoral leader or “professional” to anyone?

I thought a lot about the concept or perception of “higher” standards in recent theological conversations about pastoral leadership in the “post-modern” church.  Whose “higher” standards am I shaping myself for? Christ or for denominational polities?  I have labels and do live into them as what makes each of us naturally living in the world but not of it.  I am and firmly know that I am spiritually, definitely “evangelical” as well as I firmly know and live into quite spiritually the confessions of the Lutheran church in its “unfettered by the world view,” theologically.

How can I live, however, into Christ Gospel if the world perceives and receives one’s motives as “not fitting the mold?” This is the question and the characteristic of catering to being conditional, and conditioning others to be encased into a man-made artificial mold of the “Ken” and “Barbie” version of what the pastor “should” be.

The artist in me or my “bi-vocational journey” into ministry has always made me a rebel or frankly one who does rebel (& sometimes like it!)  I am a rebel, however, one with a cause and that cause is Christ Jesus—His Gospel and His mission to be lived out unconditionally through my conditioned heart to Love Him and neighbor, period! The only conditional existing in my life lived for, shaped for Jesus as His disciple is that I be and become accountable to my faith given through Grace.

It goes way beyond the stained glass and people under the steeple mentality to be a faith-filled pastor for the Gospel. I confess I do love sharing in tradition and its fellowship but when it becomes something that is a hindrance to living prayerfully past justification into genuine sanctification and God’s glory (our lives’ response)… then I rebel against that grain!  I rebel against that grain that paints the gospel with tainted, self-righteous brushes and hardened lines, boundaries… You may be able to contain a view of the sky on one solitary piece of canvas but why can’t the heart be conditioned by and for Christ extending that boundary into being boundless?

Our human nature doesn’t know how to grasp God’s commands to us in understanding being boundless through Grace by faith.  Our human nature doesn’t know how to grasp what truthful holiness or sanctification means in receiving faith and truly living that Grace for the Glory of God.  Instead we have a lot of graceless, professionally trained, “Ken and Barbie” formatted pastoral robots or Pharisees bound to the structure of the worldly church and its doctrinal prison over and above the Gospel and the people they are consecrated and commissioned to lead and feed!

Jesus’ prayerful conversation with Nicodemus in many ways is one to be envied for the plain fact is we WEREN’T there to witness but have sought prayerful authority in the Word handed down to us as the Bible. Just the other day, I enjoyed sharing my “secret” with my new boss that I am an ordained Lutheran pastor/ church planter...  In all honesty I was very scared to reveal this to her but I was hoping that my desire to serve in the church in any capacity as well as the practical need to survive in the world would shine through, and thanks Be to God it did!

I started my technically speaking, third job outside of serving the Gathering North & my newly chartered ministry, the Grace Hub Discipleship Ministries… first at Debbie’s flower shop learning about God’s beautiful creations and my fourth job this past Monday at “Living Faith” United Methodist Church as their secretary. After that fateful reveal, I enjoyed a long conversation with a very dedicated pastor who also like many in the Post-Modern church suffered a very hard, character shaping journey into ministry.  What raced through my mind throughout her witnessing was a lot of “been there,” “survived that” and so on.  Being and feeling oppression or lack of support when you try “Living (into your) Faith” hurts on many occasions.

People will often ask me, why do I bother engaging in online debates with people whose hearts and minds are completely closed to being receptive to understanding and loving neighbor beyond themselves?  It’s definitely not coming from a pre-packaged, man-made justification of social justice more than it is coming from an incorporated life, conditioned by Christ to unconditionally champion His Gospel through His gift of faith alive in the gracious fruits of my humble life in service to Him for the sake of others.

How do we perceive this overly used statement of Grace?: “¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  What is eternal life? It’s obviously entwined to God’s sense of time and the Holy Spirit’s activity in our lives, beyond the self and for the other, plain and simple.

For what is Love? It’s a giant abstract Word that is a Pandora’s Box of meanings for us all, beyond us all.  Known atheist and communist founder, Carl Marx said that belief was merely an opiate to the masses. Perhaps having faith is like a “drug” if you see it through graceless eyes and a lust for control and power… The Grace given through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is a freedom that knows no boundaries but is ruled with a different kind of law and conditions—Love.

Working with Debbie, the Gathering North's music minister, at her flower shop, has been a teaching layer for me pastorally in not only serving others, the blessing of getting to know her better but working with nature, the beautiful things God created…  The earth as we know it, our little sphere in the midst of millions of things He created that we have yet to even fathom were made for a beautiful purpose.  We are His children, are we not?  Or have we arrived and are just living into a world that serves no real purpose accept our own?

My soul will only ever be a completed painting through Christ’s love conditioning me, leading me to use myself to love Him and neighbor. I am not my own and before Christ came into my life during that fateful conversion experience, I did not know purpose! I had several pieces of paper with many accolades documented, much time and money spent but it didn’t really mean anything except to me, for me.  We cannot live unto ourselves even in the things we think motivates us to forge on and through.  Our lives are to serve a much greater purpose, don a much greater meaning and mission!

It’s probably a few years off from gaining enough funding to start a physical plant, but just like that same universally shared thought of God’s Grace working in our lives… I am waiting for His lead here as everything He has placed before my path has taught and shaped me into beautiful things. Moments of guiding Grace that only I can understand in my faith walk with Christ at the center, in the grey zone of the battle between the Old Nature and the New.

We can’t lead and feed into an Old Natured, conditioned church.  We can’t re-design it either by catering to culture and the world as mere chaplains to a graceless gospel of our own divisiveness! To be a pastor for Christ and His Gospel, you have to be a “rebel with a cause,” not a rebel with Satan’s curse… I am an old fool for Christ but I know my heart has felt His glory in the beautiful moments He has led me to experience to be conditioned to love unconditionally, Him and neighbor.

Amen

Sunday March 15^th, 2015; 4^th Sunday in Kent; Year B; SOLA Lectionary;

Sermon by Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 107:1-9; Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10 & John 3:14-21