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St. Paul says it best in order for our minds to wrap around the heart of today’s texts via the ‘Message’: “Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.”
I have a colleague of mine, who in his
own right is a great pastor and very much a carefree spirit when it comes to
the task of ministry. The other day he
wanted me to look up Rick Warren’s ‘Purpose Driven Church.’ He partly was interested in my opinion as
well as he, in his wonderful carefree spirit was entertaining, the idea of
serving together as a duo ministry team.
He would get the call and basically I would be batman #2 waiting in the
wings and serving voluntarily. Nice thought in a perfect world but definitely
not realistic in the sense of caring for and providing for my family…
I haven’t yet acquired the book or
really have the extra money and time to get it at the moment… but you have to
love the title as it is: Purpose,
Driven, and the last word can be looked at later: church. Being a former agnostic existentialist before
my conversion experience had those words: “Purpose” and “driven” nearly
spinning in my head. Our whole lives are
driven towards purpose! The key here
however, is what purpose, and truthfully to what goal? Are we Christ-centered as a people of faith/
disciples of Jesus or Ego-centered? Or
are we mere chaplains to the world around us as we strive for anything and
everything except the will of God!
One of the funny incidents of this past
week, which if anyone knows the highs and lows of caring for an elderly person
with advanced dementia… There are good
days and definitely some that are truly challenging… The meltdown, my
care-receiver had this week created an exceptional result. Apparently my trying to calm him down from
his hallucinations he experienced (and were definitely spooked by most of that
day), had him complain to his daughter and then to my boss, Visiting Angels,
that I was caring too much for him. He
felt I was hovering over him in reaching out to care for him. My boss, actually found it funny since we
have regularly talked about his progress and the many concerns charted
weekly. In fact she was concerned that
the daughter was perhaps neglectful in her role to care for her father when we weren’t
there to serve him.
My boss continued in saying that this
kind of complaint is actually typical and laughed it off. I admit it was both funny and truly ironic
when we look at it in context to the human condition. The one string banjo message my heart as a
disciple of Jesus and a servant to His Gospel as a pastoral leader, says to me that
my purpose and drive is to love God and neighbor. I have never thought of my efforts as trying
to be the “best” caregiver for someone but to just genuinely CARE.
The human condition is that we cannot
divorce ourselves from the nature and condition that is the “ego.” The ego is the Old Nature as well as it is
the reality of the “self.” I think,
therefore I am. I BE, but do I
become? There is that challenge from the
Gospel of that greater umbrella of Christianity that isn’t really all too
popular. I ‘be’ a child of God and through Christ Jesus— a redeemed child of
Grace and promise but do I strive to “become” for myself or for God?
If I were like that Pharisee in today’s
Gospel, I would be concerned with myself. A volunteer pastor not serving yet
fully as I would like to serve in parish ministry and chaplaincy but shouldn’t
I count my blessings? Shouldn’t I have
more faith in myself through Christ whom I have proclaimed many a time, has given
me strength? Shouldn’t I listen more to God and not to other voices feeding
that spiritual sin of not feeling good enough about my journey and my service
to the Lord?
Satan tries very hard here, he may even
compliment you in saying how “astonishing” your faith is… but he wants you to
undermine it with your own lack of faith in yourself to be all you naturally
can be for Christ who is to be our center and is our strength. For we must
remember that it is Christ whose love is that blinding light erasing all the
blackness trying to overpower your soul! You may find yourself grabbing hold of
that spiritual warfare sword and fighting off this evil… But the battle will be ongoing.
Continuing on into talking about the
real, physical battle, it has been a bloody start to the summer in
Chicago. Every other new broadcast
relays to the deaths of innocence to gun fire, stabbings, cruelty and violence
in one of the oldest forms of violence—Rape.
King Dave in today’s Old Testament text was a typical man of power in
some senses: he wanted, what he wanted,
when he wanted it. And he got it by taking
out Uriah and acquiring Bathsheba as his sexual “prize.” The young man whom the news is on fire for
discussing lately, is an up and coming “man of privilege and collegial prestige,”
but his animal urges saw something to take advantage of. He raped an incapacitated woman behind a
dumpster after a frat party. Around the
time of the trial, his father basically said in not so many words that “boys
will be boys” and the judge not wanting to taint this young man of privilege’s
future agreed… Justice is a two way
street but the Gospel isn’t!
Before this becomes a tainted parable to
our modern times of testing or tribulation, I am hoping that two things become
crystal clear: accountability and motivation.
Accountability is a part of that one string banjo note that the Gospel
is trying to teach us as children of grace and promise. Being accountable for our actions, not as “works
righteousness,” but as genuine fruits of faith is very important! The ego however, thinks otherwise, for the
voices of the other gospel to the Unholy trinity of I, Me, Mine becomes our
motivation and the only fruits born there make the Blessing and reality of
Christ’s sacrifice null and void.
Justification of the world over and
above Christ is the denial of sin, period.
The laws we have established to justify and shape the ego only produce
nihilism—purposelessness to being and becoming for so much more! For so much more is that which sets us free:
Christ Jesus, the Lord! It is as if we willfully chose to live in a curse of
our own making. If you are unsure what
the reality of hell is maybe, perhaps it isn’t flames and whatnot but it is the
curse of being without purpose. Being
without the motivation to live and love for so much more… something that Grace
has given us: HOPE that is the inertia of FAITH! We need to live—Faith is that gift and
freedom to do so.
It is hard, it is that unpopular
challenge the Gospel leaves us with to carry on. Those tears we cry are not to be in vain but are
to bless our memory with our baptismal calling to be affirmed by and through,
who carries us all: Christ Jesus, The Lord.
The very first creed St. Paul wrote as his maverick pastoral self and
proclaimer to the truth revealed to him on his post-conversion journey, is what
is to be the center of our motivation and Gospel: “Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.’
Paul continues to teach us in this text from Philippians
that: “13… it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to
will and to work for His good pleasure.” Grace is a beautiful gift as well as
it is a fruit that truly frees us. It
frees us to live beyond ourselves which is amazing indeed. It is not only an amazing challenge for us to
be faithful to and contemplate deeply in our hearts to choose to DO, but it
frees us from Satan’s continuing efforts to derail us with the false Gospel of
the world, of the self and its agendas, self-righteous social justices and
whatnot.
If we cannot look into that mirror, the Living Word is
beckoning us to take heed of; what kind of life are we really living? I’ll leave you with one last story. There was a young woman who was married and
fell in love with a college student at the local college she was teaching at. The college student was also married and even
had a whole family of small children to care for. After the both of them went
through really nasty divorces, they still couldn’t face the fact that they
couldn’t even commit to one another in their new relationship forged by their
baser needs. They are trapped and
surrounded currently by waring countries and have no real hope for the future,
yet alone for themselves to carry. I daily pray for them.
We are all in that maze however, where do we go from
here? If Christ Jesus is truly becoming the center of your life, the path should
begin to become clear especially when you are motivated to take that bold step
forward—in faith, love, and hope…
Willingness is that first step to being and becoming a freely responsible
servant of Christ. Actions naturally
produced by faith in the heart reveal the promise of the Gospel which is the
Kingdom of God. It is a Kingdom that is
LOVE, it is the land and reality of Grace.
Let us Pray—
Gracious Lord Jesus,
Help our hearts to faithfully realize
Our sins and faithfully grow to know
You are our purpose and our motivation
Center to our living into the promise of the Gospel
May we be and become all that You truly need us to be
For Your righteousness
Amen
June 12th 2016; Fourth Sunday
after Pentecost; Proper 6; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M.
Collins, FODM
Psalm 32:1-7; 2 Sam.
11:26—12:10,13-14; Galatians 2:15-21;
3:10-14 Luke 7:36-8:3
Below is a link to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's house church service at 8am
https://youtu.be/M1ATYMjLz5k
https://youtu.be/M1ATYMjLz5k
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