"The Gospel's Temple;" Sermon for May 29th, 2016 by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins, FODM

One of the most ironic thoughts that came to mind in chewing upon the Old Testament passage from First Kings is that it was an elaborate prayer of dedication for Solomon’s Temple. As we know, the temple was essentially destroyed twice. The second time left but a remnant which we know today as the wailing wall.

The prayerful but cynical Ecclesiastes says it best: “¹For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: ²a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; ³a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up…”

The Holy Spirit imparts many lessons to us in regards to “building up.”  Building up in the texts we have this week is about building faith.  This faith is something that is begun in the heart and over time reveals the openness of God working through us for the sake of the Gospel.

For the sake of the Gospel is something we don’t necessarily have in the background of all we “do and say” as disciples of Jesus.  The human struggle is our self-made obstacle of spiritually growing beyond the self to be open to Love God and neighbor in the most prayerful and beautiful way we can muster!

The other day I was dusting my trinkets on my pastor’s study desk.  One item in particular, was a simple pair of glasses that another pastor had left behind.  This pastor was the first pastor at the beginning of my journey into ministry. Upon thinking about his example and witness in the world, I wondered for a moment what it looked like through those glasses…  Well, let’s just say I didn’t know he was almost blind… All humor aside, the “picture” of  “church” that this man painted upon my very impressionable mind at the time was beautiful.  It had nothing to do with buildings, polities or traditions… it was a powerful faith coming from a prayerful wisdom that only can begin with Jesus in the heart.

He was just one person, and one pastor out of many who are called forward into something they can’t help building upon—the Gospel of Christ Jesus, the Lord.  As some of you know I’ve been writing a lot of essays lately about serving, what ministry looks like and why I am called.  One batch of essays in particular kept asking the same question essentially over and over.  This question was: what is church?  I know in some senses the intention of the series of essays is to see how consistent my theology is… And I met the challenge with exampling how consistent my faith is.

It is not a faith built by works righteousness’ bricks and the mortar is certainly not of a physical form but a spiritual one! The physical church is actually to be a metaphysical place of building from the inside-out.  The inside being the heart and nurturing, developing its prayerful wisdom and the outward is our naturally motivated and missional response in the world, but not of it.  Unfortunately something got lost in translation there where the building of the Body is more concerned with numbers, politics and agenda over and above the True work of the Gospel.  I believe in realizing this, needs us to ask ourselves:  Why do we Gather?  What does it mean to scatter?

The answer to why we gather to scatter is also its solution: faith.  Faith is a fickle creature, it takes a life time’s journey to develop (and of course we’re too impatient for that!). As well as it seeks us to live into our promise to God to be humble and gracious.  This leads me to the powerful Gospel character today, being the centurion.  Here’s a political figure, example of Roman “muscle and oppression” basically, coming to Jesus with a bizarre but amazing faith asking Him to heal his servant.

“Only say the Word, and let my servant be healed…”  What if we changed this around to be an introspective question we challenge ourselves with as disciples of Jesus?  Only say the Word, Lord Jesus, to help me be healed to continue on as your Faith-filled servant!  I think I rather prefer faith-filled to faithful.  Perhaps this is so since it literally is much clearer for me to contemplate.  Being faith-filled is taking into consideration the development of the heart’s wisdom (remember the heart is the first church) to grow and then be incorporated, expressed through the body (with a small b) as being faithful.

The notion of the Body with a larger B, is a place to share and grow together as a different kind of family.  Again, the bricks and mortar have confused our sense of mission…but all is not lost…  We don’t have wailing walls to weep upon but the walls of our hearts need to be opened and baptized with the Gospel’s command to us to go therefore and make disciples in all that we prayerfully do and say through a transformed heart.  The Gospel’s temple that Christ Jesus exampled for us is by no means exclusive but inclusive. It is by no means a Gospel invented for the health and wealth of those who evangelize it.  It is by no means a Gospel of propaganda for self-concerned ideologies or agendas…  It is a simple one stringed Banjo song: Grace is lived by and through faith—a simple gift received, a complex spiritual task for us to incorporate and share.

My task as a pastoral leader is to help others through my compassion, discernment and inner peace realize, develop and open that faith in the heart that is seeking to grow.  St. Paul, as we have been blessed to see in many of his letters, the task was the same as well.  Through Paul we not only have the example of someone who’s experienced a profound spiritual transformation—his conversion experience, but we have an example of the first pastor, the first “theologian” and the first disciple to push the envelope… in “doing and being” church together.

I remember the wonderful study class I had at TEDS around St. Paul and some of his letters.  By the time the class looked at Galatians, the professor gave us a wonderful insight to think about, but he said: “Can’t you just literally hear him yelling at them?”  And I must confess, that yes I did!  St. Paul starts out rather gracious in the beginning but then definitely gives them a piece of his mind about their derailment from the Gospel.  A verse that sticks out as the strongest or most powerful for me is verse 10 where he says: “¹⁰Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

WOW, what an amazing insight of faith and a powerful lesson that we still truly need to think about today!  The Joy of the Gospel alongside of the prayerful work of the Gospel can only come from realizing Christ Jesus in the heart.  The heart must be opened and shaped by the Gospel in order to share it naturally.  Sharing it naturally is not legalism—applied obedience and it is certainly not building an idolatry to the world of the self! God can’t work through us if we are only curved inward to satisfy the self and its gospel…

The Galatians in many ways, classically mirror the problems we have today in “doing and being” church…  They were what was known as “Judaizers” they basically wanted anyone who converted to the faith to become a Jew first.  You could sort of say that they were treating “joining” the church as some sort of initiation rite.  Unfortunately Baptism today in the church has become mistakenly, as well, an initiation rite to membership in the church…. And that frankly is NOT to be the true purpose at all… 

St. Paul had to set things straight since his teaching and witness to the Gospel as a church planter and pastor were basically under attack.  It’s 2,000 something years later, and the Gospel alongside its witnesses and teachers, is still under attack.  How do we move forward?  Where do we prayerfully go from here?  Go back to asking yourself that question I put out there earlier: Why do we Gather?  What does it mean to scatter?

Gathering to scatter takes putting on those glasses of peering into a beautiful example—Jesus.  Gathering to scatter means allowing that beautiful light of the Gospel Christ Jesus, to enter in, opening the doors of the heart to harbor a humility and faith that can grow to move mountains… Being a child of Grace and promise is just that.  We are children of the King—only the heart knows how long the road will go forward… Promise is our lives together lived in love, peace, mercy, kindness, compassion and so on.

Let us Pray—

Gracious Lord Jesus,

Your example should align our hearts

To open prayerfully to the mission of the Gospel

Help us build a mighty temple in the Heart

Of a beautiful and humble wisdom

To live and love You and our neighbor

Through a mighty faith that can and will move mountains!

Amen

May 29th, 2016; Second Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 4; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins, FODM

Psalm 96:1-9; 1 Kings 8:22-24,27-29,41-43; Galatians 1:1-12 & Luke 7:1-10

Below is the link to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's house church service at 8am
https://youtu.be/GQ7yoVo4hXg 

"The Purpose of LIFE;" Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins, FODM

What always makes this Sunday in particular special for me is thinking about or wrestling with the “dreaded” Athanasian Creed.  I am not coming from a place necessarily wrestling with it as a Lutheran pastor more than I am hearing the struggles the author of the creed lays forth every time I read it.  Every year I have composed worship, I have re-tooled hearing this creed.  I have partly done this because of the problems it has had in being received in worship (since its two miles long!).

This year I have approached teaching this creed as a litany of response—the part I say is in the role of an apologist (no, not apologizing for reading the creed! But as a confessor, witness…) and the part the congregation says serves to hear segments of the creed more prayerfully.  More prayerfully is the key here, and before this begins to sound like a theological essay on the creed… The point I’m truly trying to address is beyond how we receive the Trinity but do we genuinely wrestle with realizing the sovereignty of God—three persons and our humble role as His children of Grace and promise in the world, but not of it?

There was an amazing quote I saw on social media made by the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth.  He says: “The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, Forgiveness without repentance, Salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell…”

Wow, that is one seriously loaded paragraph of concern this man lays forth to think about…  Sounds like it could almost be the promotional poster quip for George Orwell’s book 1984.  Chewing on this Sunday’s Gospel text you can hear just how radical and counter-cultural Christ’s Words are towards the Jews who just accused Him of harboring a demon… “⁴⁹Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. ⁵⁰Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks it and He is the judge.  ⁵¹Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my Word will never see death.” 

Now Jesus repeats this… since they really aren’t listening to Him.  They choose to misunderstand Him since He is not fitting their worldly understanding of God.  They are missing the boat as the saying goes and as soon as Jesus nearly echoes the Words of YHWH by saying: “…Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am…”  They started grabbing stones to consider stoning Him!

What is truly ironic about how this story unfolds in the Gospel, is that many of these “leaders” of the church saw many of His miracles and probably heard many a sermon He delivered while He was ministering those three years throughout the ancient world…  Think about this in the here and now, God, as Christ came down into the world, to, in three years’ time, try to teach us and lead us by His New Natured example, the changed heart and path one must take to truly “LIVE.”

It’s now 2,000 plus something years later and what the world has evidenced in some senses is a further falling away from God.  Just listening or seeing some of the news lately has been painful spiritually for me in wondering… what if we did truly listen to Him and live into reaping that New Natured seed… How different would the world genuinely have become? 

Just the other day, Brother Ken from the Franciscan Order I am involved with, posted a very disturbing video from a young college student’s dorm window… She filmed something like three minutes of the planes going into the World Trade Center towers…  As you can imagine, the voices of these young girls screaming and crying at the horrible site of this diabolical evil taking place before their very eyes was nearly too much to bear!  When I heard, as well as saw what I saw, taking place in this tiny film… a beautiful and tragic thought entered my heart through the tears, what if at that very moment God once again came down into every evil heart and instantly changed them to immediately grieve, repent and turn to Him?

Just hear that again:  God entering every evil heart and immediately transforming, regenerating the individual to make a complete 180 ° turn around in what they were about to commit? On a smaller scale, I wondered about this in hearing about another horrible story where there was an awful “planned murder” of an entire family of four adults and two children by a relative for merely $550 dollars, an X-Box toy console and a child’s piggy bank… Chicago this year in particular has become a blood bath for murders, robberies gone wrong and other heinous crimes. Not only was this individual who committed these murders not hearing God, yet alone the Holy Spirit, but in going back to that statement by William Booth, this person felt no sense of accountability or regard for life—there was no heaven or hell for them at all…

The prayerful purpose of Holy Trinity Sunday following right after Pentecost is contemplating: Do we know in our hearts, do we live into our hearts as Disciples—who God is as Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  It’s all around us!  The earth beneath our feet, the flowering trees, blue skies, birds chirping… our very BREATH or as said in the ancient Hebrew—Ruach, coming in and out of us! LIFE is God’s gift to the world.  Through Christ Jesus coming down ministering to us, taking up that Cross, Resurrecting and Ascending for us: we now have New Life planted within us waiting to be reaped by our growing faith.  The Holy Spirit is our guide, Christ is our model, the Father is our Heavenly parent and promise.

But just like anything else, the Gospel has become lost in translation.  Lost to our hearing of it with humble and prayerful ears. Lost to our hearts truly incorporating its message to LIVE into being truly children of Grace and Promise.  The Jews to whom Jesus was directing His message to in today’s Gospel most ironically not only refused to listen but in many senses even negated what Abraham gave to them through faith which was the thought of the Promised land of being or considering themselves a chosen people!

For thousands of years before Jesus, they were a people with a huge identity crisis because they kept getting “screwed” by various invaders, conquerors and whatnot out of feeling that they have a place to call “home” or an identity beyond that.  Being and becoming a Chosen people got lost in translation back then into becoming a spiritual straight jacket of rules and regulations they thought would bring them “closer” to God. We know this today as works righteousness. Last week if you recall, with the Tower of Babel text, it did not. Why? Because it is not something we can intellectually create or control…  The moment we begin to develop ideologies and agendas over and above God is when we deny where God is really wanting us to develop—which is a transformed Heart.

We have received Grace from the Beautiful Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, the Lord—He planted that seed in our hearts to be reaped by faith.  A faith that isn’t easy, takes a life-time of experiences, failures and victories NOT about ourselves BUT beyond ourselves! In essence, Peter’s speech in the Book of Acts makes this clear in saying: ^“32This Jesus God raised up, and of that— all of us are witnesses. ³³Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you both see and hear. ³⁴For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, ³⁵until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ ³⁶Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Returning to the voices of those young university girls’ screams and tears of seeing what they saw and the clipped phone recording of one of the young victims in the family massacre, pleading for his life to be spared… What if the wheel would instantly be pulled up and the planes would miss the World Trade towers… The jihadists upon hearing Christ telling them how Satan deceived them to try to commit mass murder; they instantly felt great grief and repented and abandoned what evil they were about the commit! The same goes for the young man and his indifferent, bystander girlfriend; what if they had Christ meet them at that very moment before walking up those steps of his relative’s home with the intent to rob and murder? Perhaps not only would they both feel the pain of the evil they were thinking of committing but decided to seek help and spare three generations of family members’ lives…

Growing faith, living into a faith where you can truly know, hear and see God active in your life is very little of what God seeks from us to live into something very grand, He has given! The Kingdom of God is not in the clouds… it is in the tabernacle of the Heart, that first church.  It is that New Nature seed planted and waiting to be reaped with love, humility, patience, kindness, selflessness, compassion, mercy and so much more! Living it, to be giving it, is our natural purpose from prayerfully aspiring to grow a faith that could move mountains! One of my favorite scriptures to motivate my spiritual formation journey is Psalm 69:32—“Let the oppressed see it and be glad; You, who seek God, let your hearts revive!” Another favorite that encourages me is Philippians 4:13—“I can do all things through Christ who indeed strengthens me!”

The Living Word of God alongside the Trinity is our true guide and our true future.  Without it, are we really in control of the “life” we’re leading consequences and all? Have we given ourselves the kind of worth, purpose and mission God needs us to harbor? If we can’t or won’t realize the meaning of Heaven…  Hell is something we’re already knee-deep in, unaware of what it really is… and where it truly leads

Let us pray

Gracious and Loving Trinity

Help to continue to shape our hearts

To stay on the right path—

The way this is done is by coming

To see, hear and know you with a humble and opened heart

Help us to realize being and purpose and mission

Through the lens of Your Gospel—FAITH

A faith that could move mountains

It is from all You have given us

That we grow a Godly knowledge through the heart

As children of Grace and Promise

AMEN

May 22nd, 2016; Holy Trinity Sunday; Year C; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins, FODM

Psalm 8; Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Acts 2:14, 22-36; & John 8:48-59

The immediate link below is to the sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's house church service at 8am:
https://youtu.be/ykZKXEzGS9Q

Check back for a link to the sermon's delivery at the Gathering North church's evening service at 7pm.
https://youtu.be/5TwK7DNrlCw