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The use of the word Joy throughout today’s texts speak to a beautiful thought that we need to wrap our hearts around for a while. With the concept of Joy, God’s Living Word is teaching us that Joy itself is an aspect of being and becoming aware of God’s Grace active in your life. This awareness is realized in developing the heart’s knowledge to compassion which is a gift harbored through humbly walking with God.
God
with us is yet again a theme as we see Jesus out and about being this Living
& life-giving, affirming fount of compassion and mercy to all who seek
Him. I found it an interesting fact that
both the age of the young girl and the years of suffering for the woman in
today’s Gospel was that missional number 12.
I am sure that the Gospel writer’s heart was more than shaped by God to
speak to the 12 tribes of Israel to truly HEAR and be LED by that binding
commonality—We are a people of God.
We are
a people of God, but more importantly children of the King, children of Grace
and promise. Promise is that aspect of
perseverance, an overarching hope for things to come. We are always a people in waiting and our
human nature allows us at times to feel the suffering, anxiety and literal pain
of this all too temporal world. We are not to be a world unto ourselves however,
but that is what we’ve allowed to take place in some form or fashion. We are stripping the miraculous away from
Jesus as well as our everyday lives to be centered around the self and its
graceless temptations to fall prey to greed, indifference and darkness.
For the
victories and seeming miracles that are centered around the self or truly said
the unholy Trinity of I, Me and Mine are shallow victories at best. These are
Satan’s victories or empty promises—For a temporal and fading purpose does not
seek a God with us for it can’t open itself to even really and truthfully
understand Grace. The Psalmist again
struggles with understanding evil and why things happen, he says: “9
‘What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit?”
Truth truly being told, we can’t
understand evil especially when we unknowingly are both blind to it as well as
fall into temptation from it. The
graceless wilderness or better said the reality of Hell is one where we don’t
traverse that valley of suffering with a grace-filled, humble accountability to
KNOW that there is always hope! That
whether the storms of life are too deep and too dark, we have a God with us, a
God of true compassion, mercy, love and Grace—Jesus!
This past week I formed a petition
through change.org. An interesting title
for a ministry of political petitions to address issues in this worldly
culture, society. Many of the petitions
I have signed for them were to care for animals that were tortured and abused
for the sake of making money. Other
petitions ranged from failing cultural ethics to ethical accountability. There’s that big secularized,
overly-politicized concept of being responsible: ethical accountability.
It is more than a sad reality that
the Body of Christ today has been straightjacketed to political ideologies and
agendas as well as reconstructing the TRUTH of the Gospel of Jesus to strip Him
down to not really being any kind of voice reaching and TRUTHFULLY shaping the
hearts of humanity. My petition posted
was addressing the concern for sky-rocketing rents and the new burden and
suffering it will cause working class families and of course the poor! Not the
poor in Spirit but the worldly poor, outcast by greed and indifference, plain
and simple!
As with most petition-type
ministries such as Change.org; they post to social media sites in order to grow
the petition in awareness and in signage.
Facebook literally lives up to its name in the sense that people get a
surface impression of who you are, what you do and where you are on the journey
of your life. Being in the midst of a
current, judgmental, “intellectually-arrived” culture; makes it more than easy
to label, categorize and condemn through “self-righteous” indignation.
This one acquaintance essentially
labelled and condemned my petition because of my husband being in
politics. The hypocrisy of it, as well,
was a sad addition to truly acting out of graceless behavior since they
consider themselves active in their church! Just hop into the shoes for a
moment of the poor, suffering woman who was condemned for her illness by being
labeled unclean. She had to walk those
streets with a Scarlet letter upon her head created by indifference and
heartless law.
Yes, she needed a miracle, she
needed to find compassion which she found in Jesus! Saving Grace is more than
the reality of the gift of the Cross… It
is harboring a beautiful hope that grows love, that resurrects the soul to
service for God and neighbor! Her
gratitude and gracious response to the love, compassion and mercy Jesus
imparted to her came through her falling at His feet and confessing that she
was the one to touch His cloak. What
faith! What a beautiful sense of
commitment, honesty and humility!
If this acquaintance would’ve
removed the lens of judgment, political polarization and self-righteous
condemnation; they would’ve perhaps even opened their hearts to the problem and
plight of greedy landlords, indifferent politics put in place to act as a “band-aid”
to really solving the problem of housing.
The person instead chose to publically shame me and blame my husband and
friends simply based on their surface labels of political agenda.
Being an Evangelical Christian are
labels I live into in the Biblical, NON-POLITICAL sense of the words. As a member of the priesthood of all
believers and now a called and ordained pastor to the Church of Christ, I am
spiritually accountable in all humility and formation to preach, teach and
spread the Living Words of Christ to a weary and struggling world! My life is but temporal here on this floating
rock amongst billions of things the Good Lord has created… I willingly choose to serve Christ, His
Gospel imperative to love Him and neighbor as my gracious response to all He
continually showers me with daily that I do not truly deserve!
The moment we all come to the
realization of the TRUTH at the center of the Living Words of God—we will
suffer to battle against the growing graceless wilderness that surrounds us in
reality and in our thoughts tempted and blinded by Satan’s efforts to tear us
away from continuing that walk with Christ.
We can’t live in a graceless wilderness, we will only die there. We will only die there bereft of hope, joy,
mercy and compassion. We will be in
bondage to evil, lawlessness and purposelessness—for we can’t survive in a
world centered and catering to the self.
Perhaps blocking and unfriending
someone on Facebook isn’t really the answer.
It was a simple solution to not grow further a graceless debate with
someone who didn’t want to even listen.
We have to pick our battles.
Jesus could’ve simply chosen not to heal Jarius’ daughter for political
reasons, and judgmentalism but He didn’t at all. The same for the woman, perhaps like the Old
Testament God, He would’ve shown anger towards her daring move to seek healing
but He didn’t. Jesus is our example of
beautiful, New Natured behavior. As a
God who came down to us to save us in more ways than one—Christ Jesus’ love,
mercy, compassion and Grace are the glory, joy and hope of the Kingdom of God!
Picking our battles as a freely,
responsible child of Grace, child of promise needs to be about Christ alone,
faith alone, through Grace alone and by Word alone if we are to triumph the
Gospel beyond ourselves, into the coming century. I am not a warrior for political agendas,
ideologies. I am not a warrior for
denominational polity or for the preservation of the institutional church. I am not warrior for the world and the
culture of the self. I am a servant, I
am a disciple of Jesus, called and commissioned to live by, through and for the
Gospel. The battleground is the turf war
between the Evil One and God for the transformation of your soul to BE
compassion for neighbor, to BECOME a beacon of hope and promise to others—therefore
releasing Joy, the fruit of Grace.
Amen
June 28th, 2015; Fifth Sunday after
Pentecost; Year B; Proper 8; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon by Reverend Nicole A.M.
Collins
Psalm 30; Lamentations 3:22-33; 2
Corinthians 8:1-9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43
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