Nicole A.M. Collins: Faith Illuminations: "Pathways;" Sermon for Sunday August 21st, 2016 by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins, FODM

This Past weekend I was in an interesting old home, I believe it was over hundred twenty-five years old. What was really unusual about the second story of this home is that all the bedrooms were interconnected with shared little doors between them. I wasn't sure whether or not the person who built the home was a M.C. Escher fan or into the "ghostly arts." A couple of years ago I saw a real interesting special on one of the cable networks where this woman had a house specifically built to have interconnected rooms. All of these rooms and hallways were leading to a particular end. She had done this in efforts to try to free the spirits she thought were inhabiting her home and could not leave.... Let’s just say that the final product was fascinating—a gigantic Victorian Mansion that had and featured all these elaborate rooms and pathways.... On a smaller scale with this lovely home I had the opportunity to see this past weekend, it just was so bizarre going from room to room and seeing these little doors connected to one another and to the other rooms....

Why did this image get stuck in my head when I started thinking about this week's texts? We hear from the Gospel, Jesus talks about getting through the "narrow door" but we also hear from the author of Hebrews, the pathways we must walk as a child of God. We will always be God's children and life doesn't necessarily have shortcuts that's just our pride and perhaps arrogance to assume "we've arrived."

They often say that if you dream of a home, even ones that you're in briefly that they must be saying something about your "reconstructive work." This is work that the Holy Spirit is undertaking spiritually upon your heart. If you can relate to this or have experienced something like this before, what have you seen? Did you see the homes you grew up in as a child? I know I have. Were they still standing or partially deconstructed? Were they connected to one another as a mental collage that did not seem to make real sense? Or did you see a pathway going through all of these homes and out through a narrow door that led to something much greater?

As many of you know, I have been doing a lot of reflecting about the 21st century notion of “church” and our challenge to be a renewing community, a renewing force of the Gospel, for the Gospel’s goal. The church plants, I currently serve are like those early churches in some senses, where the disciples go from house to house, but in this case, we are meeting in a hotel. Envisioning the future together is the task of the Body to be a team for Christ and to seek a Justice the world has not been too acquainted with... or even perhaps has shunned away from its pursuit....

Another powerful image to consider with that first church, the heart, is the actual physical heart itself. Much like that beautiful turn of the century home, there are many interconnecting chambers, places of "ebb and flow..." creating essentially movements in time, memory and emotion. The heart as we know is that amazing place—center of life— for if it did not beat we would literally not be alive!

The flow of blood goes in courses through your whole body over and over and changes as you change, but it continues. Think of this metaphor in regards to the flow and pathway of your own life: Are you willfully living into the Christian Life or are you willingly open to live as a disciple, God’s child of Grace and promise?

Jesus words in today's Gospel seems rather strange to our hearing for it almost seems as if He is preaching and teaching an “exclusive” note to these new disciples. What He is trying to do is to teach us to be intentional, to grow with as the author of Hebrews has said, a childlike earnestness and humility to always learn and grow from our Heavenly parent. How many of you here today think about God as your heavenly parent?

The chambers of the heart comprise the engine to keeping us alive physically but in spiritual terms it is our process of growth. This is how we grow to love our neighbor and how we grow to respond to God with the beautiful fruit of Our Lives, not lived around or catering to ourselves, but around others and in care and concern for others! Caring for others, it is so much a part of the daily calling from Christ for us to choose to Do.

Caring for the elderly can be so rewarding. It is truly rewarding when you get to journey with them through all of their memories, their life lived. The elderly gentleman with advanced dementia, that I care for on a regular basis, often fades in and out of remembering the exact dates, times, and years of when things had happened... What little he does recall is what his heart has experienced—this is important. This has been seeing his children grow up, grandchildren and the fruits from working a hard life as a carpenter. Now he is relatively at peace, content to enjoy the simpler things of life such as sitting outside watching the day go by and playing with his cat.

Now can you imagine for a moment how God sees us as His children? What If instead of this elderly man talking about his life it is God looking back and talking about his creation and his children on Earth. And we must always remember and truthfully spiritually know, that we are children of Grace and promise. This is what the author of Hebrews was striving for us to hear. God's discipline and God's love in and throughout our lives is our process of growing in Grace.

Living into the lifestyle of Grace isn't to be understood in our human sense of “willfully doing things,” being just to get a prize or reward... this is Works righteousness which is an empty gesture of superficial faith. This was Jesus’ whole point in his seemingly harsh words: “the last will be first and the first will be last.” Living into the lifestyle of Grace is truly a life built on personal reflection, upholding a conviction, belief in God, His place in your life, repentance as more or less to be a humble perspective of growing into your life with Christ at the center... The most important and last step of this process: are you faithfully, willingly and intentionally seeking to spiritually transform?

Let's face it though, however, human nature doesn't like change too much. More often than not change is associated with negative things, it is associated with loss, it is clinging onto empty accolades that do not build your life into the future that you have and that God needs you to strive for. It is true that this world is finite but on that same note we must know as well it is physical. The Gospel is seeking to transform us spiritually! Upon this spiritual conversion and our acceptance of it, is when we begin to naturally begin to bear fruit that builds the vision and mission of the kingdom of God in the “here-and-now” of our very lives!

My spiritual walk with the Franciscan order, has taught me beautiful lessons about my faith journey. Here I am now living faithfully as a pastor to serve His disciples guiding them on their spiritual formation journeys. The more you look back into your life and see it as humble stages of growing as well as realizing what God sees as quote “perfection” in what discipline means through God's perspective and not ours, you will see yourself like that chrysalis emerging from the shell soon to become a beautiful butterfly.

You do only truly have this one solitary earthly life but you have an eternal life waiting. This eternal life is our true home the kingdom of God and it's real righteousness it's real justice. Be and strive to become a visionary for that greater purpose planted in your life—God's will, the New Nature in our hearts to be reaped faithfully. I often have people from my past ask me do I miss being an artist, being creative? And I tell them I've not given up being an artist and I am most definitely being creative! I'm using everything God has given me to Love Him and love my neighbor. In fact more than ever, do I feel my whole self being and living into that greater goal, purpose for my life as God sees fit. It truly possesses a humbling Beauty and I will always be grateful for that.

Perhaps the best summary I came across in reflecting upon these texts from the letter of Hebrews is from that wonderful, now long out-of-print book called 'Epistles Now!' This book and the adjoining series of books, come from an early project that the author of The Message Bible would complete. The author says: "Faith is capable of embracing suffering and despair and molding and maneuvering them into instruments that mature us and make us more sensitive to the hurts of others even while we learn how to more graciously accept the difficulties and hardships of this life."

In essence the pathways of faith are a lifetime’s process. It is a growth and it is a goal that you creatively respond and move forward through with Christ at the center of it all.

Let us pray
Most Loving, Gracious God
We thank You for everything that You hope to teach us
May we strive to develop that humble spirit of faithfully being Your children of Grace and promise.
Help our hearts to flow into all of those stages, those chambers of what we need to “grow and go” with in order to live into Your Gospel’s Purpose.
Help us to spiritually transform and willingly open those interconnected doors allowing You to flow freely in, with and through our lives and all that we do and say.
Amen

August 21st 2016; 14th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 16; Year C; SOLA Lectionary

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

Psalm 50:1-15; Isaiah 66:18-23; Hebrews 12:4-29; Luke 13:22-30