"Night and Day;" Sermon for November 27th, 2016 by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

I don’t know how many people saw that strange GE commercial with a creature looking something like a ‘Muppet’ walking around representing an “idea.”  For an electric company advertisement, it was actually quite profound… It talks about ideas being scary and going against our human inclination, acceptance and comfort zone. The commercial goes on till concluding with someone accepting the idea in its “fragile” state and taking it, in to flourish, fully bloom!

What a wonderfully bizarre metaphor for helping our hearts wrap around these texts for this inaugural first Sunday in Advent. For a moment, if you took the time to replace the idea with the Word, love—I think you would find that we have the same problem there.  Love is the culmination of what the Gospel wants for us to spiritually evolve into incorporating and acting through.  This kind of love goes beyond our tempered “philos” love or brotherly love but dares to touch a toe into Christ’s challenge of agape love or unconditional love.  Love in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is no “flower power,” “warm-fuzzies” motif to living our lives in Grace, but a “full-monty” challenge to us as St. Paul preaches to the Romans to: “¹⁴… put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

When we sojourn to the heart of God on our spiritual formation journeys; it is there, that we learn and fully become awake to the notion of love bringing God’s peace or Shalom across the world.  Bridging the reality of an end, to a New beginning is scary.  Remember we don’t like change?  We don’t trust God, yet alone ourselves enough to step boldly into the future or dive off that proverbial diving board into New waters… But we must.  We must, if we are ever to truly taste the blessing of realizing the beautiful fruit the Kingdom of God has to offer us, to encourage and empower us with.  The peace of God is that reality lived from love in action! This is being and doing for the Love of God and neighbor.

It is fair to say that these past few months have been filled with everything, but peace.  In fact I would dare to say, that the American mindset is on the verge of civil war over politics, lifestyles, ideologies, agendas and so forth!  Coming from faith I believe that the notion of tolerance is merely an ugly bandaid born from the Old Nature’s way of controlling how much someone is to “give” of themselves in any given situation. Thanksgiving, being truly grateful has collapsed into angry, rowdy protests, gunfire, murder and other evil acts in the name of “justice” that only bear those withered fruits of anything but “love in action” and peace! Instead of “buying” into the same routine these past few years and now much more these past few months…  Why not come to the table beating down the swords coming from our mouths, and angry hearts… to reap a beautiful prayer together—live a beautiful prayer together, as the children of Grace and promise, we truly are!

For all lives, all of humanity, all of creation for that matter, matters to God—this is why we now await once more to live into the Greatest Story Ever Told.  This story is the coming of the Christ child—the hope of the world, coming in as the light of the world to shine brightly into our lives—the dawning of a Brand New Day!  Like that curtain being torn in two in the temple giving way to the light from beyond, we must rend our hearts with hopeful expectation to the coming of the King. Perhaps though as Luther once said, we choose to stay spiritually asleep with the curtains drawn tightly closed in our hearts to any in breaking of the light? Instead only choosing to sit in our sanctuaries, “safe-places” (of the self), crying on each other’s shoulders instead of waking up to opening wide those drapes… to the truth!

There is a lot of work to be done and technology, war-mongering and grandstanding is not the answer God is seeking for us to realize at all. Truth be told, using terms such as “post-modern” and “progressive” are not being realized as God is needing for us to step to action through.  If anything we are going backwards in time, recoiling into our intellectualized self-righteousness and warped sense of justice where the reality of a kinder and gentler world—the one Christ’ Gospel gave us over 2,000 years ago is being lost! For how can we harbor peace within the walls of our hearts if we cannot incorporate the Gospel’s command to love?

Love is scary just like the “idea” in that commercial. Love came into our world however through God’s only Son being born into humanity to live in example to us and die for us to free us from the darkness, night of our sins! 2,000 something years later how have we been truthfully accountable to real “modernity” or being truly “progressive” as Christ is counting on is to be?  The other day I donned one of my favorite crosses.  This cross in particular was the one I was given in serving a Kairos’ Outside retreat.  Kairos Outside is a wonderful program to prayerfully empower family members with the love of Christ, who have incarcerated loved ones.  On the front of the cross it says: Kairos.  The design is of the Christian fish symbol and the word Kairos which means in God’s time.  On the back of the cross it says: “Christ is Counting on You!”

Every time I feel compelled to wear that cross, I have been prayerfully struggling with being “patient.”  I have struggled with trusting towards a future yet to be revealed to me.  The moment though, I feel any sense of despair, I just turn over that cross and hear those words as a call to me to “buck up.”  I need to be stronger not just for myself but for others’ sakes, I need to be tougher for the evil in the world is only getting greater by my metaphorically sitting home with the curtains drawn crying in my beer!  John Lennon of all people has the best quote here—“life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans…”

Yes, life is what happens and continues to happen all around you without ceasing.  Life is continually moving forward truthfully, in time only, and more or less, backwards or stagnant thanks to our own stumbling blocks.  These stumbling blocks are our caving into the temptations of sin and intellectually justifying them from our own “little gospel,” that truth be told, does not really include God at all.  These sins are justified through our graceless behavior and unrest.  As we’re seeing daily all around us—an Old Nature victory of intolerance or better said—non-acceptance, condemnation, robbery in its many forms, and murder upon one another or new life.  Wake up and smell the coffee people!  What are we doing in the here and now of our everyday lives to be real with the Gospel to love and grow to learn, enact peace?

Are we being “real” out of a love for God and neighbor?  Can Christ truly count upon us to enact “real” progress as instructed through His Gospel alone?  With perhaps a tear or two in my eyes, I can only truthfully say that I do not know.  Perhaps, I just don’t want to go there and say or speak out my fears, that maybe we just can’t… We can’t look enough beyond our own noses to see a whole New world, brand New day outside that window within our souls.  Outside that window where Christ tore those drapes in two, in order to have us see—come truly awake!

The peace of Christ indeed surpasses all understanding.  Awaiting aspiring towards this peace is calling us as St. Paul says—to “¹¹… know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;” He continues to say that “¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; ¹³let us live honorably as in the day… putting on Christ…” This is putting on Christ as our hearts’ model—taking his commission to us all, seriously—love is our true goal to “modernity,” to REAL “progress.”

If we can’t come to that table, not only in letting the “dialogue” begin (beat down those swords!), but partaking in one another—truly giving towards each other the gift of acceptance over tolerance, kindness over contempt and intellectualized hate, mercy and compassion over indifference and greed, understanding…  The REAL fruits of Grace lived through faith in action(!)  How can we ever know, progress to love, yet alone know and progress to realize peace?  These coming days of Advent still hold great instruction to how we are to be spiritually shaped, prepared to truly become God’s children of Grace and Promise. 

Coming awake and keeping watch is the reality of faith in God’s sense of timing.  For we really don’t know that day or hour when the Son of Man will return…  What we DO know, however, is that we can’t close our hearts to what we need to do.  Love is all we need to be our “post-modern” goal to progress as Jesus’ disciples in the world, but truly not of it.  Trim those trees, open those Advent calendar windows, watch the remaining leaves fall… but don’t just gather those gifts for under the tree—BE the gift to others.  Be that peace—voice of Grace in the world for a brand New day is coming soon!

Let us pray,

Gracious and Loving Lord Jesus,

Your life’s story is our instruction

Your peace is what tore those curtains in two

Help us to awaken, to put on that armor of light

Help us to know and realize genuine progress as love being the fulfillment of the Law

You are counting on us to grow and go with Your commands

May we do so with a humble and open heart.

Amen

November 27^th, 2016; First Sunday in Advent; Year A; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon By: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 122; Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 24:36-44

The link below is this sermon being delivered at the 8am service of the Grace Hub:
https://youtu.be/SKzZM5MtO6E