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Jesus rebukes the scribes in parable: “24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.”
That garden once treaded hand in
hand with the Lord, joined in spirit is now one we are to walk through as both
spiritually fallen and a work in progress… For we are living these last days as
a reality of a world divided unto itself.
Out of the depths we cry to the Lord for change, for progress but if we
deny the Spirit… just what kind of a world are we developing? Just what kind of
kingdom are we building towards?
These are the thoughts left with me about
these texts as well as all that is going on in the world currently entrenched
in war. You can just see it—civil
unrest, religious wars, persecutions, violence and turmoil abroad as the
rolling daily headlines. “If it feels right, just do it…” The motto of this
generation seems to make sense: if it seems correct, appropriate, of sound
judgment then take action. Who are we to judge? What have we become? We are in
bondage to the Kingdom of the world, its flesh, artifice, empty promises & “self-proclaimed
logic!”
You know as the family of God, the
Body… We do a pretty good job on many
occasions to exclude, divide, and deride others from building, restoring that
garden… Within that sanctuary of the
Holy Spirit’s church deep in the depths of the soul, there is a garden where
the seed of the New Nature is sown and our lives lived through Grace ought to
reap.
Reaping a harvest for the glory of
the Kingdom of God, in the form of spiritual fruits, blessings of innumerable
kinds to bring the world together once again. Speaking of reaping a harvest, I
thought it was interesting to hear about scientific experiments taking place up
in Alaska and the polar caps to change the jet stream’s flow to help farmer’s
crops & industries grow. This geo-engineering as one scientist calls it, is
tearing apart our eco-system by using ‘lanosphere heating installations’ to
create a larger aura borealis to force the jet stream to dip lower into
agricultural states to create more rain for better crop yielding.
Little did they realize how much would be
compromised by all terms and accounts, playing “God,” in changing the patterns
of the jet stream just to make money. They
are now realizing that the severe droughts and fires in California & other
neighboring states are a part of the after effects of their experiments. The
turbulent flooding in Texas and other places are still another casuality.
Perhaps even more earthly consequences will be discovered linked to their
experiments…
Nearly on the opposite side of the
globe, the armies of death, destruction and evil march forward as ISIS intends
on capturing St. Matthew’s Monastery in northern Iraq, a monastery of
Christians to continue their severe persecutions upon. It seems as if all the
world is in turmoil and crisis as we speak. I don’t like the word tribulation
for it is conceived to be measured by time as well as doesn’t accurately
portray just what is taking place in the world today against the dimensions of
God… Living into our own gospel over and above God’s does bear fruit but
definitely with temporal, artificial and often detrimental consequences.
Going back into the Garden of Eden,
the moment Adam & Eve realized themselves and their capacities is when they
truly fell away, out of commune, out of spirits and alienated. It goes way beyond the snake and the apple
and blaming one another for the choices made… What if they continued on their
walk with the Lord and they were never drawn away, where would we be?
Growing into being the children of
God, the children of Grace is much more than taking those training wheels off
your spiritual formation journey. It is
waiting in hope for the Lord’s guidance to KNOW when to take a stand. Taking a
stand coming from the right place, right intentions, purpose is our challenge,
not only as disciples but as both saints and sinners. For there is a lot we can
“create” but if it is not truly and truthfully centered in God’s will for us,
for this life… What are we really
creating?
An artist can only build an image
with lines, colors and material things.
True the impressions it makes can stir one to see beyond the image but there
is so much more we are called to task upon.
The Kingdom of God is most definitely not the kingdom of the world…. St.
Paul realizes this in his snippet to the wayward Corinthians in saying: “16b…Even
though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day
by day.” He is saying the world, the
flesh is temporal, Old Nature and there is a New life, which is a spiritual
life that is waiting to bloom.
He continues in calling this earthly life, an “affliction.”
He says: “17For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for
an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, 18because we look not
at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is
temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. 1For we know that if
the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
Taking a stand in this world for the
Kingdom of God is going to take radical obedience. Obedience is thicker than blood for God’s
Holy Spirit has a much greater role in our lives than we realize it to be. Taking
a stand for the Gospel of Jesus is a hard road for you will face affliction
yourself. Many cave and fall away to the
torrents of the world wanting to go counter to everything you need to do and be
for the reality of Grace to be firmly established. We need to resurrect from the Old ways of
doing and being and Live, RISE into truthfully living into the lifestyle of
Grace as the New. The New is the way of
Jesus, that New creation planted deeply within the garden of the soul to reap!
You can’t control nature but change
yourself in light of the Gospel, for the Gospel. There is no “quick fix” or something to
invent as a temporal solution to life’s challenges… However, we cave into this all the time. We want to go from a to z losing the steps
between that are in reality a life time’s formation to the Spirit, mold of
Jesus’ “perfection.” Perfection is an
allusion just as the apple was supposed to be the fruit of the tree
knowledge. Have we come away any wiser?
For perfection in Godly terms means something quite different. It means coming to a point of complete
spiritual maturity in your relationship to loving God and neighbor. This is a
life time’s journey led by God’s timing, not your own.
Watching the very green lush leaves
develop and the blades of grass almost unnaturally overgrown, I wondered about
those scientists and their aura borealis experiment. We are blessed in the Midwest with an over-abundance
of growing things… but at what cost? There is so much more life is to be and
become through Him who loved us with a steadfast love, we will never truly and
completely understand.
The things we need to keep an eye on
are slithering their path of destruction in the east. Satan’s rise this century is realized in and
through ISIS. While we become lost in
that lush landscape of man-ipulated “success,” the devil slithers past our feet
sowing death, destruction and evil. If
we don’t take a stand, who will fall? We
cannot go on as a spiritually divided people.
We need to truly live into what we were created to be for the sake of
God and neighbor.
However many earthly years we have
on this floating rock called the Milky Way within a vast and expanding universe,
we have yet to fully understand… Jesus is calling us, He is commissioning us to
a New reality—the Kingdom of Grace—the Kingdom of God, A spiritual Eden.
AMEN
Second Sunday After Pentecost; Year
B; June 7th, 2015; SOLA Lectionary; Proper 5
Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A. M.
Collins
Psalm 130; Genesis 3:8-15; 2
Corinthians 4:13—5:1; Mark 3:20-35
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