"A New Confidence;" Sermon for Sunday November 29th, 2015 by Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

“Confidence in God’s righteousness enables belief in a new reality.”  This was a wonderful observation made from a commentary I took a gander at in doing my weekly studying towards preaching here today. Confidence itself is a difficult reality at times for us to grapple with though—am I right?

Confidence as a bold witness in the world sent to reveal the Gospel to the harsh reality of sin, death and evil in this world… It is a tall order, something we finds ways of retreating from, even diminishing our existence in order to spin our wheels in despair and doubt. Despair is an easy tool that Satan uses to divide our hearts from following the path of truth and light that Jesus continues to try to lead us upon!

As my mentoring pastor has told me time and time again: “When the chips are down: Are you a faithful servant to the Lord and His kingdom?”  And I had to think about that…  Well am I? What the world sees and what God sees—who do I give more credence to? Each bead upon that Franciscan rosary a prayer is lifted to the Lord weekly in wondering…  Am I answering God’s call in doing and being who He needs me to be and become?  Or am I toiling and anguishing what the world thinks I should be and become? Who am I anyway? I am as you are a child of God—a child of Grace and promise!

Back and forth the saint and sinner heart debates within me; am I being and becoming all things through Christ Jesus to whom I have confessed to strengthen me for this ongoing, uncertain and often perilous journey? As more and more of my former self goes into a local storage unit (my art that is); am I looking towards the future with hopeful eyes or towards an end? It’s up to me to either retreat or move boldly forward.

God’s timing is something we will never truly and truthfully understand until we are joined with the Lord in His kingdom in our true spiritual reality.  For we must realize that our finite reality is also an attitude problem we harbor which we can merely dismiss as purely being human…  But aren’t we as disciples of Jesus to strive for something greater? Are we not to strive for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness being in the world but definitely not of it? In my own meager ways, I try but perhaps as we all must hear: Don’t Try but Do! Yep that old 1^st unit of CPE or pastoral boot camp still sticks with me today…

Doing and being is painful a lot like moving is…. Physically transplanting oneself some 17 miles southeast is not just organizing boxes and the assorted junk of your lives but it is also spiritually challenging. It becomes a challenge when you continually find yourself trying to control the journey of your life and God says: “Uh uh, Nicole, I don’t think so.” And I say, ok God I am listening, what now? He is silent.  If you recall last week’s Gospel had Jesus telling Pilate: “^37b…. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Listening to the truth is one thing, living into it however, is the challenge of having faith. My “visiting angel” nightly continues to faintly whisper “not now…” Truth be told, I’m really having a hard time hearing her words… yet alone wanting to consider it as prayerful caution in both spiritually and physically “moving” forward! But when I feel I am taking a step backwards God is really saying there was unfinished business here—I need you to stay put in one sense but not in the other. You will always be moving forward whether you like it or not! Is God being the punishing parent here or truly trying to teach me something I shouldn’t spend time on trying to fully understand yet?

Well that definitely goes against our human nature doesn’t it? I want to understand everything, I want order!  I used to like to joke that perhaps I must have been German in another life because I don’t like being “Spontane,” I want order, I want control! Everything in its place, every purpose defined clearly for “MY” benefit…  There’s the problem—it’s not about I, Me or Mine—it will always be something beyond me and far greater—GOD! The servant leader’s heart is obedient to this confident, new reality.

Living into the reality of Grace—the New Nature and all its fruits is very hard even when you take in for a moment all that’s going on in the world around us.  Black Friday protestors in Chicago trying to disrupt and shake the conscience of those needling their way to the shopping district. A lone gunman busts through a Colorado Planned Parenthood on a quiet murderous rampage to political turmoil over war planes shot down and government agendas…

There’s enough on the world’s plate—what’s on yours? Is it a plate of burdens and despair or can you be hopeful?!  You faith is always going to be challenged whether it’s God doing the challenging or the world shaking you, trying to shatter your fragile self.  Are you going to let the world shatter, divide, diminish you through appealing to your old ways of doing and being?  Or are you going to open yourself up to something much greater? The words I speak are typed by the Holy Spirit—they are God’s poetry working through my fragile frame—in His timing and purposes.  He uses me as He does you in all you do and say when you focus your heart on building faith.

Being grateful for all things even good and bad is living into Grace—living faith.  The past is gone and the present is at your spiritual doorstep.  There is nowhere to go, you must open that door. Opening that door with some fear and trembling is ok, you’re not perfect—God is! At least you’re opening the door… 

But what if you retreated instead? Many people do, eventually they erupt in violence as with the shooter at Planned Parenthood. What if you still try to control and manage God’s leading? You get political agendas, negative rallies and protests that don’t truthfully address the concern at hand but manage to hurt innocent bystanders instead.

Living into the truth as disciples of Jesus is knowing and growing with something we have a terrible time hearing yet alone accepting:  God loves us! We are embraced by His Grace and Righteousness!  He planted the New Nature in our hearts to reap not to fester! We will all die in our own way being that we are finite, human… but don’t you want to live beyond “your expectations” and live for God’s instead?

Every town you’ve lived in, every place you’ve laid your head… they could be counted and made a levy upon you as an uncertain future… OR you could look at it as a new leaf—the advent of things to come! It’s not going backwards, it’s a new beginning that is always going forward.  May the heart, that first church, hear what the mind will continue to debate. It’s your faith journey challenge. I know mine and God is turning those tears into hopeful confidence in a future I have yet to experience, know.

Let us pray—

Gracious and Loving God,

Help our hearts to daily live into that process

Of discerning our faith

By reflecting, confessing, repenting and renewing

May we shed the Old Nature

And reap the fruit of the New

With a bold confidence Your Son, Christ Jesus

Empowers and challenges our lives to adhere to.

May we build a New reality

In Grace, Love and Faith—

AMEN

November 29th, 2015; 1st Sunday of Advent; Year C; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 25:1-10; Jeremiah 33:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

The link below is to the sermon being delivered at the Grace Hub Lutheran Orthodox Church's house service 8am
https://youtu.be/VQx2qw0jiLg

"The Sovereign Truth;" Christ the King Sunday Sermon By: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

The famous line missing from today’s Gospel is also missing from our naming and claiming the cost of discipleship that challenges all Christians in one form or another. This line is Pilate’s cold serve, cynical retort to Jesus speaking of the Truth as voice heard in the heart: “What is Truth?”

Well, what is truth? Especially when we live in our own dream land drifting in and out of our indecisiveness (spinning our wheels…) as well as our own denial of the truth that action does indeed speak louder than words (indifference).  Our actions can either be graceless and founded, grounded only upon the self and its unknowing path of destruction or can be a reveal about our persevering capacity to make the best out of anything the worldly Kingdom throws our way to be dealt with.

Sometimes the power of the truth of God and His saving integrity blanketing our bewildered world can be too much for us since we always want to control where we are on the journey—where we think we ought to be.  Sometimes we need to hear from our “visiting angels” to know, think about what we must do.

What is a visiting angel? No this isn’t about the senior care company though I am back caregiving for them.  A visiting angel in this sense is an amazing voice, sometimes a pair of voices that trail off disembodied ambers of thought and have been for the last four years within the unassuming walls of a “haunted,” Mundelein townhouse on the cusp of the house boat canal to Diamond Lake.

Water is the conduit of the Spirit so it is said but even more of a revelation around this visiting angel is that the concept of God’s Time—Kairos time is given a tangible sense of reality.  “All in God’s time…” has made many of nice tee-shirts, mugs, key chains & bumper stickers but do we ever ponder fully the truth to God’s timing, plans for us & just what that will be like once we cross that dimension between this world to the next?

Yes there is an element of God’s timing that revolves around Good and Evil; but God’s timing reveals something even greater to challenge us with & it’s more or less dealing with what we Do and don’t do motivated by the spirit of a heart shaped for the Gospel—while we are in this world! This gets to the heart of what Jesus’ battle plan is for us all.

We cannot deny the spiritual aspect of ourselves because the ruler of this world does indeed battle for the control and oppression of it daily. My visiting angel is one of my grandmothers, who lately has been even more concerned for me & my family to hear her gentle faint crackling whispers in the dead of the night. From what I could gather in to understand her, she is now able to see the future, has met the Lord and knows of things that are of mystery.  Is she in the Kingdom of God or is she in limbo? She’s in another dimension of time, space and understanding better left to be revealed when we come to a finite material end.

It is as if, as the Gospel calls to us all ordinary people to embrace the hope and promise of faithful living into the priesthood of all believers.  Who are we to say, as well, that our call to service stops when our physical frame does? We return to creation as the fertile soil to a new generation, turn of the world into the future!

What I have been talking about so far however has focused on the literal concept of life and death in light of the sovereignty of God & the marker of His Divine activity in this world—His timing.  We must now turn the spiritual page over to talk about a being force in the world that Jesus gave us—our New Nature, New Creature with the potential to bear the fruit of the Kingdom of God—Love, peace, mercy, compassion, unity and understanding not “tolerance,” “politics,” intellectual progressivism but faith alone built by grace alone and given by Christ alone who is the very center of the Kingdom and our goal.

The waves of attacks in the world by the evil known as ISIS and related allies has shifted from an ideological attack and persecution upon Christians & non-conforming Muslims to now an attack upon the culture, way of life of others.  It has been haunting to me to recall what my friend in the Paris Metro area was telling me for weeks through his near daily chats with me through social media.  Basically he would say over and over how it seemed as if he and his wife were surrounded.  It was no longer the Paris they knew but one that festering to become the calm before the storm of diabolical death, destruction and evil waiting & planning to take action.

Bombs, bullets, knives, swords, torture are the markers of a wave in the world of profound evil.  We saw this pattern before with Hitler and the Nazis did we ever thought history would try to once again begin to repeat itself?  Has it really? Perhaps to some degree or another but as we talked about in this in our Saturday text study think about the amazing transformation of the Romans during the time of Jesus and to the formation of the early established church!  They went from mass crucifixions, oppression, torture and various crimes to Constantine turning the tide to establishing what would eventually become the modern Christian church.

It’s a change that took centuries but maybe doesn’t always have to.  We are a world in transition but we are still too much into denying our true calling as well as denying our role in living for and through Christ, the Sovereign King.  We have firmly established islands unto ourselves that not only circumvent owning up to our sins but turn the Kingdom of God and all its righteousness into merely being relevant and useful to our own agendas, “game plans.”

Instead of seeking out to join in aiding your neighbor to better serve their neighbors to Love and grow with God through the Holy Spirit…  Some people play games of power, corruption and are anything but living faithfully into truly hearing Christ Jesus voice speaking to them to live into change for a much greater purpose! They are motivated in bandaging a dying “body” that they have sewn together on the broken hearts and dreams of others who don’t fit their mold.  Are they just as bad as ISIS?  That’s really a stretch but the evil and intention is there.

Whether you are a Pastor for Christ or faithful member of the priesthood of all believers…. It is the living by giving or as Pastor Eric would say doing the do’s versus the don’ts of the Gospel imperative that reveals that wonderful construction of the Kingdom’s reality in this world through our persevering, unwavering faith.

Fighting the good fight is going to be so much more than boots on the ground to defeat the wars of man & its diabolical evil…  It is a painful battle to be waged in the soul of the believer to realize victory through the glory of the cross in one’s life.  It is a reconstruction, resurrection from the past and living, breaking away from that chrysalis to fly into the horizon of a New Hope the love of God and His “visiting angels” can reveal to us.

Those words whispered within the calm of deep night were of comfort and love: “Nicole…. What I know now…God has another plan for you” or “Nicole… I believe in you, you need to….” Or yet another disembodied message from my grandmother was: “Nicole… not now… be careful…only God can…” God’s message from her spirit’s voice reaching through God’s time into the here and now of mine speaks volumes just how far and just how powerful our God and His presence in our lives truly is!

None of those fragments are finished statements but what they are statements of is where God needs me to sojourn, be strong to move forward into.  He is doing this as well, whether you realize it or not in your own lives—daily! Who said living into the lifestyle of Grace would ever be easy?  Faith is NOT easy nor should it ever be taught that it is.

On a final note, I have been doing some wonderful spiritual preparation towards my postulant journey into the Lutheran Franciscan Order of Divine Mercy by daily reflecting, confessing, repenting and renewing to Psalm 51.  If you recall, this is the heavily repentant Psalm of David owning up to his sins against Bathsheba and her husband who David killed.

Here’s a snippet that I felt I heard God connecting for me to this week’s texts:

Psalm 51

¹Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

³For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

⁴Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.

⁵Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

⁶You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

The Psalm continues as a beautiful hymn of the heart seeking to deconstruct the evil and construct a positive, right and New spirit.  Yes, the Lord still does desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach us all Lord, enlighten our darkness with a beautiful wisdom we must not feel we must explain but have faith and live into!

AMEN

November 22nd, 2015; Christ the King Sunday; Proper 29; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon By: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 93; Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Revelation 1:4-8 & John 18:33-37

Below is a link to the sermon being delivered at the Grace Hub house church service at 8am
https://youtu.be/_wFPAp94aSI

"Resurrecting Promise;" Sermon for November 15th, 2015 by Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Our church plant’s Thursday night study made an interesting revelation that perhaps we theologize more than we witness.  I think it’s a mixed bag and truly relies on circumstance; which in many ways is the natural ebb and flow of life.  Speaking of the ebb and flow of life what do we understand as the concept of resurrection?

What is resurrection?  Do we only equate it to Jesus?  What is the TRUE power behind, beyond the Word—Resurrection?

According to Wikipedia: “Resurrection (from Latin resurrectio) is the concept of a living being coming back to life after death. It is a religious concept, where it is used in two distinct respects: a belief in the resurrection of individual souls that is current and ongoing (Christian idealism, realized eschatology), or else a belief in a singular resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The resurrection of the dead is a standard eschatological belief in the Abrahamic religions. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the central focus of Christianity.

The soul is believed by some to be the divine and immortal part of the human being, and some believe it is the actual vehicle by which people are resurrected. Theological debate ensues with regard to what kind of resurrection is factual – either a spiritual resurrection with a spirit body into Heaven, or a material resurrection with a restored human body. While most Christians believe Jesus' resurrection from the dead and ascension to Heaven was in a material body, a very small minority believe it was spiritual.”

This is from an online dictionary/ encyclopedia of “understanding” accumulated to reveal and teach in my opinion HOPE & PROMISE.  Of course, as a disciple of Jesus Christ—HE is our Hope and has fulfilled His promise of victory over sin, death and the devil… but on our individual paths towards realizing Christ Jesus’ call to us all to carry on His Gospel at all costs—it carries a much more profound challenge and meaning for us.

ISIS, in their pledge to serve the ideology of religious cleansing first assaulted the faith and culture of the Resurrection by annihilating the ancient tomb of Jonah. This was a few years ago. Jonah and the Whale serves as an Old Testament “satire” of one man’s determination & God’s determination to challenge his faith to be renewed.  For the ancient Christians, the Biblical story of Jonah was a code of faith or a coat of arms surviving the persecutions of the day.  It became a powerful and mighty symbol of the resurrection— its wonderful hope, promise it carries.

In some ways the 911 attacks of Bin Laden & proto-ISIS didn’t really “hurt” as they were hoping it would for they only attacked us “financially” by hitting the World Trade Towers & the Pentagon for this they thought would bring to life, their chant: “Death to America!” With great irony all it has caused for us, truthfully to do, is to stop and ponder on legalizing a systemic governmental paranoia of ruining travel, polarizing thought into the ugly distractions and entertainment of “partisan” politics and divide and diminish American Christianity.

This divide has now become a chasm where the media ignores ISIS’ persecutions and success in trying to destroy tenants of our faith! In this week’s Gospel we have Mark’s mini apocalypse where Jesus alludes to both the destruction of the temple and cryptically alludes to the great promise of His resurrection to come. “²Then Jesus says to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” What did this mean?

The disciples were always challenged by what Jesus would try to teach them. They went directly to it being about the wars of man.  There was a half-truth to that since the Romans basically leveled the temple in 70ad—the center of where the Jews put their faith…. But Jesus was once again trying to teach us about something much greater.  The destruction of sin, death and the power of evil and the resurrection promise of the New Creation waiting after the end of all things. This is more than about the end times but spiritually as well—moving onward, boldly carrying on the critical task of living, breathing, teaching and preaching the Gospel of Christ till our earthly life draws to a close.

We are a people built and are called to build upon a Resurrection Hope—Promise that New Life is our spiritual formation journey to serving Christ and caring for neighbor.  Perhaps ISIS doesn’t know enough about Christianity but just like the Romans and like Hitler, they line the streets with death and destruction.  Their barbarism is beyond medieval and frankly more or less diabolical!  There have only been a smattering of articles and photographs mostly from foreign media outlets showing the grizzly after effects of the numerous Christian crucifixions.

What was a horrible spiritual revelation for me to rest upon with a heavy heart in thinking about these crucifixions of primarily children, women and clergy…. Was finding out that they killed the person first before stringing them up upon a cross.  They were already raped, tortured, some beheaded, brutalized and assassinated before they were “displayed” upon the cross… The central heart of the Christian faith lies upon that Cross—when Jesus drew His last breath—the three day journey towards the Resurrection began!

How horrible and ironic that ISIS found a way to assault or “shake the foundation” of the core of our faith and yet the mainstream secularized, American culture media lightly acknowledges this horror has even taken place! The Resurrection and its power is being threatened… but are we really cognoscente to this truly being “the beginning of the birth pangs” we must bear before the end of days?

Of all things a small snippet of dialogue from the film around ‘the Lord of the Rings’—‘Return of the King,’ nails that hope & promise we must persevere, hold on to:

“PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.

GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.

PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?

GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

The glory of the Kingdom of God and our next journey into our true spiritual reality in joining Christ should be our motivation to being.  A motivation to being (beyond ourselves) and living into a greater purpose—the Gospel.  The devil is working with great success through ISIS currently as well as he is working with great success in the struggling Christian church…

If we cannot or refuse to support our brother and sister who wants to serve Jesus but in fact hinder, slander and sabotage their efforts in order to preserve and control the Church of Christ… We have not only failed the Gospel but are living into an indifferent diabolical Gospel of power and corruption and are no better than the arrogant Pharisees & soulless intellectuals who claim to “know” God!

With snobby arrogance some turn their nose upwards to condemn the concept of church planting and mission congregations.  They hold many lofty seminars and convocations claiming the “noble beauty” to planting house churches and nomadic church plants meeting in hotels and whatever they can find to spread the Gospel but then turn around to condemn, slander and go out of their way to destroy someone’s efforts to obey Jesus’ command to serve!  It’s not a command to serve THEM, their doctrinal correctness and political BS—it’s supposed to be about GOD!

Of course church planting has its limitations, there is no financial security in it unless you get all 5 numbers in the Powerball! And of course the weight and burden falls much more heavily upon volunteers, commitment towards a greater goal and their family members… But what did Jesus say to His disciples even in today’s texts?!!

“⁹“As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. ¹⁰And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. ¹¹When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. ¹²Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; ¹³and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

But the one who endures to the end will be saved—I’m still here~ a rebel with a slandered reputation by the “new” church hypocrites for Christ.  Many a friend I know, are still here—fighting the good fight of faith!  My final question to you is this:  What are you doing for the Gospel? Are you a late-bloomer?  Will you be a breach birth or will you come out and tear down the walls of evil, death and destruction & resurrect a Gospel-centered world!? If you can’t go there, I don’t know what to say.

That old Cursillo statement of beautiful hope and promise is on the back of every cursillista’s cross who sojourns the challenge of the retreat:  “Christ is counting on You!”  He’s counting on you to stand up against evil.  He’s counting on you to spiritually change—transform and truly LIVE into GRACE—a lifestyle commitment, period.

God is calling you—not the “church”…  God is calling you to teach, use everything you were given as a gift to bear the Gospel to the world! DO it! LIVE it!

AMEN

November 15^th, 2015; 25^th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 28; Year B; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 16; Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-25 & Mark 13:1-13

Being a Bold witness to the Word is essential if the Gospel is to survive...  Below is a link to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's house church service:
https://youtu.be/Z75IoFOigfM