A Noble Task; Sermon for Sunday September 25th, 2016 by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

It is in 1st Timothy that the author tells us: “…we must hold fast to the mystery of Faith with a clear conscience and be tested if we are to prove ourselves blameless so then we can serve.” For to truly serve as the Gospel is calling us to serve; it is by spiritually humbling one’s self to become a servant leader. Both of these words seem to create a chasm between themselves when we look at them through our Old Nature lens.  This is because we have assigned understanding a leader to be one who is served… but through Christ and our New Nature potential, we are to lead in serving others.  This is a spiritual task, a humbling, noble task that the Gospel is seeking for all of us to realize.

I believe we often put ourselves however, into exile to God when we are so invested in ourselves, we can no longer see the true pursuit of Justice. This then becomes our sins of commission and omission. We no longer see the mission of the Gospel to be about leading—going forth boldly empowered by the Living Word to serve our neighbor with love and compassion.  This is an exile truly created out of our self-righteousness and worldly concerns. True justice, in terms of the Gospel’s mission, is what our faith is calling upon us to do and become as disciples. 

There is a growing chasm between us and God and it's a spiritual one that we have built upon what we consider to be "progress." If we no longer hold hope in God and do not have the heart or harbor a heart to hold fast to His promises; how are we not like both the oppressor and the oppressed? Pre-packaging what the world deems as “justice” becomes agenda.  Agenda is just another word for angle.  What’s our angle or personal goal—what do we get back from what we do? This is human nature—this is our Old Nature to think is way, be this way…

Luke, the fellow sojourner with Saint Paul, the early church planter and Gospel writer has not only gifted Christianity with speaking to the journey of the Holy Spirit through the Book of Acts but with this Gospel text he preaches to the internal struggle and pain that we have with understanding what Justice and living into the lifestyle of Grace truly requires.  When Paul is discussing and instructing the various beginning offices in the Body, he is coming from an understanding we have lost.  Christ as the leader, the bishop as the pastor to the pastors or overseer and the priesthood of all believers—EVERYONE serving together with one vision given by Christ and one mission to have our hearts in sync to carry this out in service—our true purpose!

The love of money and greed in general, has created a bondage upon the soul in some senses, where it feeds that Old Nature beast. The distorted fruit born from this is indifference—politicizing the Gospel’s mission to develop and execute personal agendas, conquests. The Gospel writer Luke is right in sharing where Jesus is telling us truly what the reality of hell is. With Satan's help, we create our own hell and it could become a graceless wilderness, wantonly bereft of hope because of not understanding what God's grace and True Justice is and means, to our journeys.  Our sin here is that we have made the concept of justice, among many things, divisive to serve our agendas and missions… not God’s.

The rich man only held faith in the world and in himself and as the saying goes no person is an island. An island unto themselves, indeed, a very lonely place full of empty treasures and promises, this is the landscape of hell.  We are not to be living into our own world but sharing the world with others. This brings me to share a sad story of a person of faith who initially wanted to serve the Gospel but became consumed by the “wealth” of the power their position afforded them and wound up losing their friends, position and respect.

Jennifer was great at what she did in ministering to the other women she was in charge of in her fellowship circle.  In fact, you could say that at first she really did understand the role of “overseer” for her counseling sessions with the women she was aiding in spiritual formation, were growing in number and enthusiasm.  You could see and hear it from many of the women involved, how the Holy Spirit was working, how our faith was growing and how the Gospel’s purposes, you could say, were becoming crystal clear.

Jennifer started to notice how the fellowship circle was growing and even began sharing dreams of online group discussions, a unified time of prayer, group workshops, retreats and so forth.  Unfortunately at this peak of hopefulness and “prosperity,” the Old Nature won her over and encouraged her to seek separating from the very supportive community of faith that was allowing her to host this ministry.  Instead of connecting with the women who joined her and trusted in her guidance through this fellowship about this decision; she tried to manipulate them to “join,” her side on this matter, period.  When the Gospel truth was brought up about being one family on God’s mission NOT ours—she decided to force people to leave the fellowship circle.

This kind of behavior was beyond being disappointing, for I felt both sad and angry for some of the women affected by this self-serving mission that in essence destroyed a vibrant fellowship of women who merely wanted to grow and go with the Living Word through love and service to God and to their neighbor!  This is not what ministry is to be or do but this is what happens when we become consumed with our plans over God’s.  The key word there is consumed.  Why not substitute that word with humbled?  Becoming humbled by our plans in the sight of God our heavenly parent showing us a much better path and future to come!

My dear friend who has served alongside me for a couple of years now, always has a wonderful witness to share in how God has been working in, with and through her life.  She has been a police officer, nurse, travel agent and now a florist soon to be consecrated into the Lutheran Orthodox Church.  All of these experiences have not made her a worldly wealthy person by any means, but have made her a wealthy person spiritually in all that she has now to share with others.  In fact, out of the 48 years of life on this floating rock in space, I believe everything that God has you experience, become anxious and insecure about teaches you a prayerful lesson about both leadership and service.  We must fight those tears and misunderstandings to experience, realize God’s guiding Grace in everything we do and say—our lives as a whole—become ministry!

True wealth or nobility is one that harbors a poverty towards worldly “riches” (consumerism) and conquest and builds a faith through loving service that is beyond the self. A noble task is living intentionally faithful and prayerful in order to answer God's call upon your life to love and serve Him and neighbor.  A worldly task is one that adds more chains, oppresses the soul with emptiness and delusion.  When we begin to turn blind eyes towards the plight and suffering of others is when we see an uprising of evil taking place in the world in different forms.

Every day it seems lately, that we have been bombarded on the news with violence, crimes, unethical and amoral challenges taking place all over the world.  Perhaps it is a time of testing and darkness for humanity but we must not turn our backs upon what’s taking place.  Prayerful action is acting upon Grace through faith.  Which in today’s Gospel, the rich man was clueless even when festering in hell, he still lives into his indifference and self-concern by arguing with Abraham and wanting Lazarus to serve him.

The rich man, in Jesus’ parable was most likely addressing both the disciples and the Pharisees in ear shot of His delivery.  The roles we have in our lives whether they are jobs, skills or a calling, have to be lived out reflecting Grace.  Reflecting Grace is living with a humbling honesty into your faith.  It is being grounded in a genuine purpose that doesn’t serve the self but empowers the self when we selflessly share, love and care for others.  The beauty of this reality doesn’t make sense to our logic but it is God’s call to all of us to realize.

Realizing what God requires of us as His disciples is very hard for us.  We struggle all the time spiritually with what is the just thing to do.  Our selfishness, foolish pride gets us into a lot of trouble—the longer we willfully go down that road and feed and lead through the Old Nature’s divisive agendas, we grow in rebellion, lawlessness, and destruction.  We begin to lose the meaning and purpose of life—welcome to hell.   God has better plans for us, now is the time to reform.

Let us Pray,

Loving and Gracious God,

Let us truly become open

Open our hearts to be vessels

Of Compassion, selflessness and peace

Towards our neighbors for the Gospel’s mission

Which is to be acted upon in this world, but from a Kingdom of God perspective

May our lives be empowered to love and serve You and our neighbor

With a leadership that transforms the world

For Your purposes as we are Your children of Grace and Promise

AMEN

September 25th, 2016; Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 21; Year C; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 146; Amos 6:1-7; 1 Timothy 3:1-13; Luke 16:19-31

This sermon was delivered at the Grace Hub's House church service at 8am:
https://youtu.be/fQCO4GZEZCI

True Wisdom; Sermon for Sunday September 18th, 2016 by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

God's economy and God's sense of justice cannot truly be understood from an Old Nature perspective. This is what is difficult for us to grapple with. To truly begin to grow into that prayerful wisdom the gospel is needing, we must look spiritually through the New Nature's lens.... This past Sunday we looked for a long time at the 15th anniversary of 9/11. What we really looked at was truly about the fine line of being prey to evil or following the good and Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In some senses, another misused word in our vocabulary of wisdom is shrewdness or the act of being shrewd.

This coming Sunday’s lessons are really complex. There are many things that are being talked about here. Is it all about money being greedy and indifferent? Or is it about the wisdom of being intentional for God’s purposes, NOT ours. The ethics of what we choose and how intricate the challenge becomes for us to be disciplined to the Gospel, is coming back to being both an external worldly battle and an internal spiritual battle of the will and our priorities...

Being disciplined to the Gospel or developing a “godly shrewdness;” I believe is the closest connection you can glean from these texts. We start with the wonderful Prophet Amos with his fabulous descriptions putting people in their place in regards to what God’s economy truly is and what it requires from us.  Again, we have a word we misunderstand spiritually—economy. Our sense of economy equates the term purely in connection to money….  God’s sense of guiding our New Nature is talking about a spiritual economy of discerning on behalf of others, on behalf of the Kingdom of God and its goals, priorities.

From 1st Timothy the first half of the lessons is pretty cut-and-dry in regards to talking about how prayer helps to discipline and shape our lives alongside everything else we do when we are following Christ. In essence, he is teaching the culture of that time to develop a New-Natured wisdom of ethics, justice and how how to harbor a “Godly economy.”  

The latter half ironically speaks to what we are guilty of towards much of God’s Word, we are guilty of cherry-picking and manipulating scripture without understanding or caring to understand the complete context and the consequences of our choice. I make this statement because these are some of the famous patriarchal texts that Christian denominations have used against women serving and have laid a foundation of prejudice that people have mal-aligned and abused for power....

How I could even fall victim to preaching these texts through a lens of misunderstanding; is if I allow myself to go off on a tangent about this or go off on a tangent about the economic plight in America and so on.  How does that get to the Good News, though? It doesn’t, it misses the mark. The Good News that we need to hear is how our hearts need to avoid the sin of greed and indifference. In short, this means that the world needs to stop revolving around ourselves. Both of these words, greed and indifference make up a Pandora’s box of meanings onto themselves. Over the centuries walking our Christian Journeys, we have added quite a few definitions and judgments to what these terms truly mean. Why are the sins of greed and indifference considered to be systemic? 

If you recall last week we talked about spiritual warfare. To a certain extent, we talked about those internal choices we make to spiritually change for Christ. This is known as transformation and metanoia also known as repentance...  What the devil has worked on within our battle to be disciplined and grow with the Gospel, is the self. Yes I'm coming from that $20 word understanding of it, existentialism. It does come down to that though, our human nature, our Old Nature, our awareness of our physical selves automatically lends itself to a consuming concern for the self.  An aspect of this, is something we can't avoid to use one of those famous Reformation quotes, we cannot avoid that we are both Saint and sinner.

The texts this week in essence are aspiring towards our hopes to be intentionally upright. To quote St. Paul in Timothy here as well, we are to be prayerfully disciplined; which Jesus and his very complex Parable for this Sunday in some senses is indirectly trying to teach the Pharisees. The Pharisees shallow morality or ethics is skewed by their agenda which has been built on indifference and to a lesser extent greed.  For God does know our hearts, this is beyond being a faith-filled observation, but it is a fact.  And maybe we should be hurt or offended by the last verse in today’s Gospel, but we must hear it from Jesus as a prayerful warning to align to.  What we may treasure and justify may truly be an abomination through God’s eyes, His wisdom…

Where we are as an American culture currently perhaps would initially look at the Gospel and blankly see it as a statement of Justice against the Love of Money alone. There is more here than meets the eye and I think this is the more important message to all of scripture, we cannot assume there is one blanket concept or layer of understanding to the profound truth The Living Word is trying to reveal to us. Unfortunately we have catered to polarizing scripture with politics, consumerism and universalism that takes away from Christ's victory as Our Savior, in many ways….

The law of love that is the heart of Jesus mission through the Gospels is a complex road but not an impossible road for us to journey down. This is important because we can feel as if there's only one thing we can do or one thing that we understand. It has often been said that being a disciple of Jesus is one having a faith seeking understanding. We are always seeking, but do we really come to understand? Do our hearts’ questions truthfully and truly get answered? We need to not toil on the anxiety of that but look brightly into the future with a hope-filled innocence with promise and joy in the heart.

The riches of God and the economy of God have completely different meanings than to what we understand of the two words or I should better say how we have transformed the understanding of those two words not successfully battling the self to think beyond the self.

A prayerful spiritual formation economy is one where we stay focused, we stay disciplined.  So if you do take a look past the biases of the patriarchal context that St. Paul lectures the early Christian women with... you can hear it as perhaps a lecture to us all to how we should be or respond in a civilized manner, how we conduct our lives living into that lifestyle of Grace.  The mere fact that Paul even acknowledged women and faith together in this text…  Was amazing for that cultural context of that time.  Hard to believe, but we must remember as well, we’ve come a long, long way…  still not there in some issues but we have progressed!

What we see in the Gospel and even hear about with the prophet Amos is when we have, through our own Human Nature, blurred the boundaries of sin verses righteousness, to fit our needs. This adjustment comes from greed. The consequence for us to bear is being and becoming indifferent. What I like to call indifference is something that we are plagued with I believe today, and that is what I would like to call graceless Behavior.

I actually penned the thought, “graceless behavior,” a few years back when I was interviewing and looking into different schools in order to stay in a particular degree. I was parking the car and the key broke off in the ignition. I go in for the interview to be met with a very judgmental, unfriendly attitude; which as we know can be or feel quite oppressive. I shared honestly that I was upset that my key was broke off in the ignition the woman acted fairly annoyed and basically dismissed me.

Regardless of why I was there and what she was doing as a part of her “job,” when we get so wound up into our fixed agendas that we need to accomplish and we can't see or care about our neighbor… What fruit does this truly bear?  This is what the Prophet Amos said we do, we trample on our neighbor. How can we live into understanding what God sees as our priorities, what our economy should be, what are mission and purpose should be, if we serve our own agendas and pursuits?

Perhaps the best illustration to think about in regards to coming in from a skewed perspective or a particular angle that is not in a pure frame of mind.... is thinking about our crazy Healthcare System. Our Healthcare System is all over the map but does it completely and comprehensively see all sides of the picture, come from a place of maybe a Gospel-oriented sense of justice?

Doctors and hospitals have to have a lot of insurance coverage which makes everything and anything almost completely unaffordable. Regardless to what has been invented to address these problems, think about the image here of Care itself.  Think about the shrewd money manager that Jesus talks about in the Gospel. Then think about all the segments of things that are charged for.   It may be very hard to tell where there might be some injustice or unethical decisions because now it has become very complex.

Just this past Labor Day there was a middle-aged man at Pastor Debbie’s party who came with a friend and he began to choke unknowingly at the time on a small piece of meat. There were an awful lot of bees buzzing around, as well, and some of them were going into the cans of soda pop… Since he could still talk and the Heimlich maneuver did not work, we called the ambulance. Less than 15 minutes later, an ambulance came by, picked him up totaling something like $1,400 and he waited in the waiting room for some five hours while they did an x-ray, and an upper GI. They also insisted on having him wait for a upper G.I. Specialist to come to basically look into his mouth or down his throat and find this piece of meat that they just needed to help shove into his stomach. In the meantime this has now ballooned into the $3,000 range of a simple visit for this man who may have been stung in his throat by a bee, or as we would find out, simply choking.

Did the hospital and the insurance companies really need $3,000 something dollars, is this really ethical? But then we have to be careful here and think about the economy and the spiritual focus that Jesus is trying to teach the Pharisees to realize. Everything that Jesus tried to teach us even about ethics is around the spiritual. This is what we often forget when we are coming from a perspective of the world, or should I say fighting that perspective of the world, which is our Old Nature and our spiritual warfare battle.

Discerning the spirit and growing spiritually is the most complex aspect of growing as a Christian, but this is the cost of discipleship.  Jesus is always hoping that we consult that first church. As you know I have preached many a sermon that talk about that first church being the heart.  The heart is the Tabernacle of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives for the purposes of the Gospel. Jesus would like us to look deeply into adapting a disciplined heart that would internalize that law of love to be lived in all that we do and say and in our ethics and economy too.

Let us Pray,

Teach our hearts, O Lord, a true economy

This is one built by a prayerful wisdom

Only Your love and Grace reveal to our Old Natured ways

Help us to harbor a restorative New Natured justice

That we bear towards our neighbor

With a humbling hope and inspired intentionality

Amen

September 18th, 2016; Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 20; Year C; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 113; Amos 8:4-7;  1 Timothy 2:1-15; Luke 16:1-15

Below is a link to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's house church service at 8am:
https://youtu.be/o7nTll0UvIc

Foundling in the Wilderness; 911 Memorial Sermon by Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

The problem with coming to know God's grace and trusting in it, is often feeling lost. We may be in a culture that is lost, that does not seek to change. We may be many sheep that have gone out into the wilderness with no hopes of being found. We may be some of those sheep that have wantonly chosen to be an island unto ourselves, seeking a justification suited to our purposes and agendas. We may be those sheep that have heard the Lord’s voice and ran towards that voice to be carried upon His shoulders and taken home.

Is it a wilderness that has no hope of growth, no hope of sustaining and harboring life? Or is it a Wilderness that could be resurrected into a New Creation? Out in the Wilderness of the world currently the wolves of Satan tread the Earth seeking those lost sheep to kill them in one form or another. This may be in physical murder or it is the death that takes place in the soul. I begin with these profound words when I think about the notion of war and of spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is a Battleground indeed, here, the turf is your heart that could either be saved for the Lord or can be won by Satan. Both kinds of war share one thing in common, both are very real…

I remember waking up to my roommate, Jurek, turning on the TV and seeing like almost a vision from a dream, a horrible dream obviously, where one airplane goes into one World Trade Tower and another into the adjoining World Trade Tower. After that point, just barely wiping the sleep from my eyes, I scurry to make a cup of coffee... to come back to the news going on and on all day long. I think it’s fair to say at that very moment, at that time, we all didn't know what to think of it, what it truly meant. This was the morning of September 11^th, 2001. 

Days after this event took place I was talking with a poet world friend of mine who wrote this poem capturing the epitome of world at that time.  She penned a lament about a man jumping from window to save himself with his Gucci tie wafting behind him. This was the irony of the moment where Artists and Poets and other creative people came together to express a very real human pain and grieve... Some with an air of concern as well as some an air of cynicism.  Even before Christ officially came back into my life 2 years later with my conversion experience, I was compelled to create a very large painted sculpture.  The sculpture eventually was reviewed by the Daily Herald in the exhibit I was in at the Athenaeum Museum in the suburbs of Chicago. The sculpture emerged so quickly it was as if it was created out of raw emotion…  For a moment in time, didn’t it seem as if the world stood still for many of us?

Putting all the politics aside and everything else that we have justified as the answer to why this even happened.... the more important thing to look at and pray about is this: where were we spiritually, as a people?   15 years later we can now say that the Wolves of Satan currently prowling about is ISIS. Back then it was Al Qaeda and even further back within the “century of progress…” the wolves of Satan realized through the Nazis, created the Holocaust—which as we know ended some 6 million plus lives.  The fact remains, and may be difficult to want to see or hear, but once these wolves were those lost sheep and then something happened.  Whoever was in charge behind the 911 attacks had seen God's love as an edict, call to murder.  The numbers are lost to the surreality of the horror that we as humanity, have in some senses, stood by and witnessed…

There’s a bigger theme percolating here that must be addressed in a humble way.  This word is best revealed in light of both the Gospel and in Paul's first letter to Timothy as a response to Grace: metanoia.  It most literally means in the Biblical Greek to “change the inner person.”  To have a spiritual change which we don’t truly understand to be, but it is, repentance. Repentance has become a loaded word, perhaps too uncomfortable to hear it in a prayerful way. In the light of the Living Word it is to be that transformational mirror of the Law of love—Christ’s law that inspires the inner person—the soul, to a righteousness.  This is not the righteousness that we see the Pharisees and our current culture engaged within being agenda-oriented, divisive judgments and condemnation. To the contrary, this is a righteousness realized as children of Grace and Promise.

America in the here-and-now moving past by 15 years we are still those lost sheep in one form or another.... Some may be angry at God and growing more Godless and lawless, while others may be seeing the answer as oppressive control, a move toward revised socialism. We are not anywhere near walking towards that path God needs us to, as a whole, as a formerly Free Nation... If those rallying for the removal of Ground Zero’s cross think they are championing freedom…They are no better than those the prophet Ezekiel accuses of trampling upon others for their own selves. What about the hundreds of responders crushed under the weight of over 200 tons of concrete and twisted metal?! Is that loving neighbor?  Oppressing others in the guise of freedom? To even think of removing something of God’s loving presence to the countless families and surviving victims of that horrible day?

Just the other day, I was talking with my dear friend of 29 years and former roommate, Jurek. We talked about that day.  We talked about what happened, why perhaps it happened…  His painful memory of the thousands of hours of round the clock news was hearing about those first responders and their beepers of life tweeting away while no one above could reach them in time to save them! It is, it was, a horrible sight to imagine…

What all this leaves my heart to question is this—where and why have we wandered away from the shepherd's voice? Are we now willfully controlling the shepherd? Do we as a people in American culture, society really want God to seek us with His unconditional transforming love? This should have us think about our gatherings for Christ. What are our congregations, our communities of faith saying? Many are angry at their pastors. Many don't understand the purpose of gathering anymore. Many don't understand and don't want to grow into the truth of God's Living Word they would rather reinvent it or circumvent the truth. They would rather wear the Gospel like designer clothing something they can just put on to fit their needs and purposes... God's love and loving neighbor becomes irrelevant. God’s love, Grace, Peace and mercy are lost to the wilderness of our own making.  The battlefield lines are blurred and we are no longer being fed true justice, that is, the Grace of Christ Jesus’ as a living repentance to be heard and incorporated.

Listen People of God here now is the Good News from the Lord Jesus Christ! There is and will always be hope. There is and will always be promise! Never say never! Satan says never. God has not abandoned us He has searched out each and every one of us and saved us in many different ways! Big ways, small ways, its inconsequential.  What truly matters is that it becomes a matter of the heart in where we live into that lifestyle of Grace.  For that lifestyle of grace is woven throughout that wilderness.  The Wolves of Satan are waiting.  They are waiting and wondering how humanity will sojourn truthfully into the future.  For what we may think is genuine progress, some are indifferent to the looming death that is surrounding us…  There is life and it’s not just merely living aimlessly without purpose! Evil comes from convoluted empty promises, nothingness is the foundation to the wilderness Satan rules.

One of the most beautiful images to come from that horrible tragedy 15 years past, is that memorial fount...  Where the foundations of the former World Trade twin towers stood, now stands a beautiful pair of fountains. Fountains where the waters never cease in flowing. The waters flow as a balm to this earthly gouge, this wound by and for evil as a failed human chess match—where the stakes of humanity lay in the balance. 15 years later, things have been rebuilt, the Pentagon restored… but is it more or less like an un-healing scab that we have quickly covered, digressed with our “earthly” Band-Aids, never to truly heal?

Water as we know, is the source of all life not just literally through what science has revealed to us, but spiritually as well through our baptism, through our conversion, through the many things that we experience as the Sheep of Christ in the wilderness of the world. Those lights shooting out from the twin towers memorial fountains, through those waters… are not aimlessly pointed to the above.  Perhaps we should think of them, then and now, as those search lights. Those search lights of our inner person seeking to be found.  To be truly found as a foundling living naturally into that metanoia—inner change that IS TRUE PROGRESS! 

Let us pray,

It is a broken world but we must never say never

Hope and Promise is the fuel for the New Nature

To renew and resurrect through God’s love in this earthly realm

Loving Lord Jesus, we seek and need that inner change

May we turn those scars into bright beaming stars

Shining into that wilderness to love our neighbor by seeking the lost

Loving our neighbor through that inner change righteousness

Only Your Grace can reveal for our hearts to sojourn

Your love is that flowing, living water…

AMEN

September 11^th, 2016; 17^th Sunday After Pentecost; Proper 19; Year C; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon By Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 119:169-176;  Ezekiel 34: 11-24; 1 Timothy 1:5-17; Luke 15:1-10

Below is a close up picture of one view of the sculpture made around the 911 tragedies.  

It is called 'September's Trust' C. 2001 Watercolor painting, paper sculpture

Below this close up is the art and the article around the 2002 exhibit this piece was shown in

The link below is to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's house church service at 8am:
https://youtu.be/Zkhig7pghBc

The link below is to this sermon's delivery at the Gathering North Church at 7pm:
https://youtu.be/KbswcFqpnPE