"Ushering in the Truth;" Sermon for April 26th, 2015 By: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

Anyone recall the Edgar Allan Poe short story, ‘The Fall of the House Usher?’ Its actually a fascinating drama that basically the people who lived in this house caused the house itself to cave in upon them to take them to their death…  It is often said that the human body or seat of the soul is like a house. If this house has a firm foundation and cornerstone, it should weather all kinds of destructive outside forces coming down upon it; shouldn’t it?

It all depends however, on who you have listened to and who is the true “key” that you have built your house upon. I found this a fascinating motif in recently experiencing literal giant cracks in several places in my home. Being an avid sensitive to all things spiritual; both my housemate and myself have wondered how these cracks have now all but shrunken back to nearly be invisible and hairline.  Disappearing back into the foundation of our three story town home.

Our housemate feels that it is our guardian spirits who have forced the evil back at bay in my home for all humor aside, our home literally is haunted.  It is terribly funny and surreal to say that but it most definitely has three active “ghosts.”  Two of the spirits I have even witnessed in hearing for the most part constantly whisper at night & I have even recognized my grandmother’s voice to be one of the spirits here! I know what you’re thinking, sounds like you’ve been watching too many ghost hunter type shows, but truth be told… A lot has been confirmed by simply hearing, and not seeing to believe to pursue with a careful curiosity why these spirits are here in the first place?

Jesus in today’s Gospel text tells his disciples through a metaphor about the Shepherd and the sheep, how they are to both listen and stay together for the sake of each other through love.  Keeping it together, building that firm foundation of who you are as a body within the greater Body is ushering in the truth that listening and growing spiritually to the law of love keeps the wolves at bay and builds the body for Christ in thought, word and deed.

We must not forget however that we are broken vessels and have weathered more than our fair share of storms, and evil nearly trying to assault us down to our very core! Which we don’t really want to go down there, down that road to see the cracks and begin to worry and fear why did this even begin?  How did I let this happen in the first place? It could be like going to the dentist and having them say that you’re grinding your teeth and that is why you now have cracked one on both sides needing to be filled to retain a solid structure, integrity.

Contemplating, fretting, moving forward with fear is a human battle in trusting and listening to the Shepherd to steer them towards peace and resolve.  It is much like what John says in his first letter this morning from the overly “ample,” Amplified Bible: “¹⁹ By this we shall come to know (perceive, recognize, and understand) that we are of the Truth, and can reassure (quiet, conciliate, and pacify) our hearts in His presence, ²⁰ Whenever our hearts in [tormenting] self-accusation make us feel guilty and condemn us. [For we are in God’s hands.] For He is above and greater than our consciences (our hearts), and He knows (perceives and understands) everything [nothing is hidden from Him].”

What an amazing realization to have about God truly being not only John’s personal shepherd for his life but for them all as a gathering of disciples! For we must tend to the body in order to truly and truthfully be the greater Body in the world through Love, Grace, mercy, peace, compassion and all beautiful fruits Christ has taught us to abide in and bear!  The world around us however has treated the human soul and its needs to be built up and firmed as just patch it and ignore it.  Put a fresh coat of white wash over it all and it will simply just disappear for a while…

Returning to that infamous story of Poe’s and my own true haunted house story… one can just easily ignore the signs and merely say it is the weather or things that are simply causing changes to the home’s foundation; but then that would be greatly ignoring all those voices heard at night, and light grey figures in silhouette seen on occasion at the foot of our bed and the white mists caught in more than a few photographs! Am I scared, strangely enough, no, because I’ve learned who they are and have been deeply listening to what they are trying to say to me and take it into consideration. 

The moral of the story here, is can we take this same attention and apply it to listening deeply to God’s voice, the Great Shepherd speaking to our hearts to hear and abide to CHANGE? Change not to where the soul’s foundation is twisted to fall, cave in upon ourselves, but be transformed like a caterpillar to a butterfly! In the physical world, we move from the homes we’ve come to outgrow much like the caterpillar to the butterfly but it is only lived into on a very empirical, surface level.  Which doesn’t seem connected, like the seemingly dualistic frame of flesh and the spirit… BUT first of all, we are of flesh AND we DO have spirit, we have inherited the Holy Spirit, the breath of true life being born and then reborn in a sense as the children of Grace, the sheep of the Kingdom’s flock where Christ Jesus is our Good and loving Shepherd!

Staying off Satan’s wolves is our spiritual formation battle.  The battle is real and if you can’t handle the truth of that; how can you say you really know what God needs from you and what He does for you?  The BAD theology out there in the growing godless and graceless wilderness of our current troubled times declares with a bold voice built upon a foundation of self: Jesus may have not really been divine at all! He certainly didn’t resurrect and Satan is just a metaphor only for our intellectual edification, moral growth…  Must be nice to be so firmed up by a veneer of empty and dark promises!

Belief just as much as the art of listening itself draws us away from ourselves.  This is the New Nature’s mortar around that fabulous and growing Grace with Christ as the center, purpose and completion to our very being!  Being alive as Spirit and flesh is that reality of the first temple of living “church.”  We are all bodies within the greater Body of Christ.  We must tend to both.  Tending to both bodies can’t be done with a layer of shellac or a band-aid upon the things we want to ignore or close our minds off to for the moment…  We need to truly LIVE for the moment guided by prayer, study and our hands and feet dedicated to Christ out of love for Him and neighbor.

Verse 24 of the First John lesson, in the overly “ample,” Amplified Bible says our task most beautifully and profoundly in my perception of Hearing God’s Word in this very moment(!), he says: “²⁴ All who keep His commandments [who obey His orders and follow His plan, live and continue to live, to stay and] abide in Him, and He in them. [They let Christ be a home to them and they are the home of Christ.] And by this we know and understand and have the proof that He [really] lives and makes His home in us: by the [Holy] Spirit Whom He has given us.”

If we are to usher in, truly and truthfully as Jesus’ disciples in this dark age, the Gospel of love and peace for all the world to build towards a greater foundation…  We must start with ourselves.  The temple of the self to be rededicated to and for Christ.  It is through Him, we have life.  It is through Him we become truly aware, way beyond ourselves for the sake of the other. 

I’ll leave you with a closing note on something I read the other day from a secular “existentialist magazine” about being selfless.  Basically the author says that being or becoming selfless, altruism is an urgent quest of “humanistic psychology.”  I would like to couple this with the lens of faith given, however, being that we were created by God for God and became “human.”  The mind is not its own temple but one to truly be shaped.  This must begin in the “gut” as one of the fabulous Greek words in today’s lessons uses: splagxnon.  This word literally means the internal organs and figuratively in John’s first letter means to have a gut-level compassion; to have the capacity to feel deep emotions.  For me, I understand this as heart knowledge, led, fed by God’s Living Word and its impact upon my life.

Heart knowledge is the mortar to who I am through Christ who indeed I am listening and aspiring continually to abide in.  To abide in Him who has made my body for His will and precepts out of love, through love; I move forward!  Weathering those settling cracks, keeping the “ghosts of the past,” and my Old Nature at bay to break free. To truly and truthfully break free to fly into the horizon towards that beautiful guiding Light of the Great and Good Shepherd, Christ Jesus my Lord and truly, always, my Savior!

AMEN

4^th Sunday of Easter; April 26^th, 2015; Year B; SOLA Lectionary; 
Sermon by Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 23; Acts 4:1-12; 1 John 3:16-24 & John 10:11-18

https://youtu.be/vq0WWxKd6CQ

"Authorship;" Sermon for April 19th, 2015 by Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

The author to life as we understand it as people of ‘faith,’ is God.  Perhaps to many however, who challenge the notion and need of faith see themselves alone as the author to all they have in their own tiny sphere. The latter in this thinking can become lawlessness and as we hear in some of today’s lessons, this lawlessness is sin.

Just like there are many planets that surround the earth, we often can see ourselves unto ourselves—in our own worlds.  There is actually a psychological movement now rather dated called Jungianism, that entertains this thought. It makes perfect sense to the questioning artistic type that sees themselves unique and alone and creating…

Before being and becoming a witness to Christ Jesus’ Gospel and His impact upon my life; I felt as though I was truly in charge of completing the novel of where my life was to go and what I would be doing.  It didn’t have boundaries more than just sitting back and letting my wheels spin in discerning what should I do now and where should I go?  I didn’t know Jesus till that one fateful moment in the late summer of 2003 where He called to me and resurrected, restored my soul for a new purpose.  A New purpose not unto itself but for all that surrounds me.  This resurrection was my conversion experience.

What I have just said is called witnessing; something we as the church shouldn’t stifle or try to control but allow and encourage each other to share the journey.  Sharing the journey is what feeds people to spiritually be shaped both by the Living Word of God as well as living into being shaped by the beautiful example, God and Man—Jesus Christ, the true author of life as we know it.

Sharing the journey or witnessing, being truly evangelical can get you into a lot of flack.  I was always being challenged for my preaching in the beginning.  This was more the case when I was in seminary.  I was blessed beyond measure for a pastor who always encouraged me to both grow with the Living Word in study and practice through preaching.  There is a lot to continually grow and learn from each and every time you sit down and compose.  It is a lifetime’s process.  There is a methodology as well as truly a spiritual discipline to consider that does border on being or becoming “creedal” for the disciple.

Being creedal is realizing the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ impact in, with and through your faith journey.  Taking ‘credence’ literally means to hold belief in or acceptance of something as true.  This is abiding in the gift of faith as we have been justified by an undeserved Grace.  This undeserved Grace was made complete and possible by the victory of the Cross and the literal rising from the grave of Jesus Christ, the Messiah—to defeat sin, death and the power of evil in the world.

Take Peter’s gutsy sermon in the book of Acts, calling out the Israelites whose indifference and ignorance essentially aided to put Jesus to death.  He not only defines His faithful understanding of Jesus as the author of Life but challenges them to repent and turn to God.  Turning to God is allowing that Living Word to resurrect, transform and transcribe upon your heart, the path of Grace the Lord needs you to follow.

Not much has changed however, in the past 2,000 something years for the lawlessness of our indifference and ignorance have clouded over the path of where we are in the reality of living into Grace as well as being creedal and obedient to our discipleship task.  This opens up that greater Pandora’s box of what is sin, yet alone what is forgiveness? How can we really know righteous if we have come to feel as if we are the authors and judges to the world and its’ path over and above God?

Within that sphere of the ego’s dominion over the self; we are turned away from God and focused blindly inward perpetuating ignorance as well as growing in strengthening the sub-structure to all sin—greed and indifference.  If our whole world is predicated and dictated by and for the self; how can we know or have compassion, repentance and forgiveness to give freely in loving God and neighbor?  You can’t because you have made your own God.  This is at the heart of the lawlessness of sin.  This is what keeps our lives from growing past that saint and sinner quagmire or roadblock to truthful spiritual formation.

There have been on-going “quiet” new feeds either on social media or in even smaller places showing the path of the Evil One’s work through ISIS.  Some of the latest horrors include the murder of several Christian college students in Africa to the torture and beatings of young Christian school children.  Women as still be singled out either to be killed or “justifiably” raped on account of ISIS’ radical “ideology…”  If we were exposed to what was really going on; what would people do?  This goes beyond Christian and Muslim but is about humanity!  This indifference has happened before, for how many years did it take America to get involved in WWII?  How many people were murdered in the Evil One’s path of destruction lived out through Hitler and the Nazi’s?

Once we allow our lives to cave into the lawless temptations of the author of death, Satan; we turn away from even understanding or needing a crucified Lord who resurrected to start the journey of Grace! We build instead a solid foundation of sin that we justify to know no real kind of love or grace to live into as purpose and goal to our very being.  We condemn humanity to dwell in the graceless wilderness of a dry and dead desert of the self.

Speaking of desert and reflecting upon this past week; I was once again encouraged to dream about “moving…”  Moving upward in ministry as well as moving to somewhere completely different and refreshing~ This potential ministry opportunity is in the middle of the desert of three bordering states: California, Arizona and Nevada.  Looking into or just investigating housing has been a lot of fun.  In the middle of the desert, homes for rent or for sale are ridiculously or unbelievably cheap….

One place had me going back to the link over and over to speculate and enjoy coming up with sarcastic quips to make upon it…  Ok, it’s only $49 grand, 3,000 plus square feet, a fireplace, a restaurant style giant kitchen with the cherry on the top being an in-ground pool in the backyard… OK… What’s wrong with it? Were people murdered there? Is it haunted? Or is the home made out of Legos & stucco?  I enjoyed living into my doubt in the form of humor for quite some time, almost like a sport!

It was looking into that desert, however, with potential.  Potential for never seeing snow, no more coats & Chicago weather wardrobes!  All humor aside, what if this desert metaphorically speaking was our life before we came to realize, recognize and know Christ Jesus truly leading and feeding us the novel, path of Grace He needs us to follow?  This is how Christ is both the author of life and the creator of a New Law we follow when we truthfully live into realizing potential, for God, through God to love Him and neighbor.

It a lot like hearing the hopeful voice of the Psalmist sing: “^6b…O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!”  That light is warm, and leading where everything comes together and your heart is turned towards this light to be shaped by love and Grace. Just as the light upon the field sown in the desert shows profound hopefulness for growth and survival… we need to resurrect hope in, with and through the Gospel of Grace to grow that endless Garden!

If I do get this ministry opportunity out there in the middle of the desert divided by the mighty Colorado River; I can only earnestly abide in the Lord’s lead here.  This is living into Grace, abiding to its path and growing into a creedal understanding of accountability God needs His children to faithfully follow, not doubt.  Faithfully follow and not doubting that humanity can die to the Old Nature and rise with potential obedience into the New Creation.  A New Creature sewn in the desert of our saint and sinner hearts to be watered with the Living Word and grown with a resurrecting light!

AMEN

Sunday April 19^th, 2015; 3^rd Sunday of Easter; Year B; SOLA Lectionary; 

Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 4; Acts 3:11-21; 1 John 3:1-7 & Luke 24:36-49

https://youtu.be/uwgUltybH80