The Enduring Road; Sermon for April 30th, 2017 by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

I don’t know how many people have heard of the Walk to Emmaus Cursillo retreat, but I think it is interesting how today’s texts brings us all together on focusing upon our spiritual walk, our formation to faith both individually and as the Body, (to be in the world, not of it). With that “short course” in Christianity, which is what the word Cursillo literally means, we are brought through to remember and spiritually grow from what the power of the life, death and resurrection of Christ is to mean to drive, inspire our lives, to live beyond ourselves with genuine New being and purpose!  This is the reality of the lifestyle of Grace—that enduring road we all must travel.

This past week, I was blessed to talk on Radio Tribune, a small media company right here on the east side of Las Vegas.  The circumstances were actually an amazing moment of unrelated events connecting in conversation to eventually be invited to talk about ministry and our church.  This unrelated event was simply initially coming into a U-Haul center to rent a truck to move items my husband and I have sorted to go into an air-conditioned storage unit.  These would basically be things we couldn’t keep in our garage.  Unbeknownst to us, the proprietor of the U-Haul center was the wife of a Las Vegas Tribune reporter who came from Chicago as well, and whose studio/ office was literally right behind the U-Haul center!  Talk about serendipity, God leads you into amazing unexpected things—daily, if you pay attention! I really believe that as a person of faith.

Now keeping that unexpectedness in mind, let’s dive into this week’s Gospel. This week’s Gospel is St. Luke’s picture of these two disciples on the road to Emmaus.  These two disciples are grieving Jesus, and they encountered Jesus as a stranger at first. They were clouded and spiritually weighed down by the many things of their recent circumstances, experiences… They listened to Jesus teach them the scriptures as well as declare why the Messiah had to suffer.  Their hearts would only be opened completely, however, by the Living Word and the breaking of bread to truly realize Jesus was there!  How incredible, it is even more incredible that St. Luke, a companion of St. Paul, mind you, and the writer of the Book of Acts (!) wrote from what he experienced as a church planter for the early church!  He experienced spiritually, first hand, where people were with their spiritual formation and discipleship—he was led by God to share his witness on describing that journey for 2,000 years of hearts to hear and take heed to.

This probably is to be an “ah-ha” moment, of thinking once again, about our call and commissioning into the great cloud of witnesses… or to use one of those old Reformation terms, realize our place within the priesthood of all believers.  For all of the New Testament is literally “testament” to what is seen, heard and experienced both literally and most importantly spiritually, of the Greatest story ever told—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord!  I think we have a hard time with remembering all of that, especially because we have the finished Bible in our hands and don’t necessarily see the years and centuries of blood, sweat and tears, it took to put it together to concretize our faith as we know it today! 

Correct tense of verbs as well, should begin to open the eyes of your heart to see… For when I said testament to what is seen, heard and experienced; hopefully you noticed, I didn’t use the past tense of has or have seen.  The way the world so successfully interferes with our faith formation, we hardly ever see or understand things in life as happening with a purpose or a mission to it.  We see death or “a past tense,” we rarely think about the reality of the life of grace as Jesus’ disciples in the here and now. The power of the Resurrection within a faith-filled, obedient heart has grown spiritually above the world to live in both the here and now of always trusting, knowing that God is with them, but also graciously accepts the mystery of God’s timing and work in our lives—Kairos time.

Kairos time is a wonderful Biblical Greek word that begins to address the notion of time through a lens of faith, God’s sovereign presence and activity in our daily lives.  He knows the beginning and the end as well as of course everything in between!  This is what we witness in today’s Gospel, when Jesus makes his all of the sudden appearance to the two disciples on the road.  Their hearts were troubled, but they were still enduring that road… The interview I was blessed to have, reinforced these Easter texts upon my own heart, for I did feel like Peter in both the snippet from the Book of Acts and his first letter addressing purpose, mission and goal!  I was being very bold in sharing and not shying away from what the Gospel means, what ministry means for all of us individually and as the Body—the church.  To answer what we hear the Apostles say—“What should we DO?”  We have plenty to do but we need to begin that internal work first for it to genuinely flow as faith from our hearts through our voices, hands and feet!

As that old Christian evangelist saying goes, in order to “walk the talk,” we must spiritually embody, realize the talk—opening our heart to hear, see, and experience, the promises of the Gospel at work in our everyday lives.  God is always speaking… He is always teaching us something whether we realize it or even want to understand it(!)  He’s got a lot to impart to us and our Baptism is to remind us of how we spiritually come to discipline our lives to His Living Word. We are always living into an internal process of reconciling ourselves to the power of the cross and it’s Resurrection—this is responding naturally to God’s Grace through a transformed heart.

“Words,” as we know, as a person of faith, disciple of Jesus, can get you into trouble…  It is hard to fathom but Christians are still being persecuted today, but with greater and more complicated measures.  This goes beyond the persecuting evil acts of ISIS and related, but Christians are being polarized by politics, sadly, pigeon-holed by Old Nature terms such as intolerance/ tolerance and having their voices forcefully shut or muted by a growing populace of those seeking to erase the reign of God, spiritually from culture.  Instead of walking down that spiritual path towards the Son rising in our lives as restoration, New Life, hope and faith; we are falling back into a spiritual bondage of willfulness, lawlessness and temptation.

Just like those disciples on the road to Emmaus, even meditating upon, preaching those thoughts are something that I have grieved to see and experience, not just as a pastor, but truly and most importantly as a disciple of Jesus.  The Living Word of God will affect you that way—what can I do in the here and now, as His disciple? This is one of the spiritual challenges that the Easter season encourages us to look at and reconcile our hearts and minds to God with.  It is seeing the resurrection of our very spiritual selves to realize the New Nature planted within us! Peter once again, is wonderful encouragement for us to understand this, he says: “²¹Through Him you have come to trust in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. ²²Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. ²³You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. ²⁴For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, ²⁵but the word of the Lord endures forever.” That word is the good news that was announced to you.”

For all flesh is like grass… but is it allowed to freely grow?  No, we mow it down, pour poison upon it to mold it into our picture of perfection and live unto ourselves and it’s our so-called “raison d’etre…”  This is basically human Nature with the Good News, the Gospel, removed.  The next few months I am greatly looking forward to, as I have agreed to, talk once a month at Radio Tribune and share not only how the Good News has renewed and restored my life as a disciple of Jesus, but how we, as a burgeoning church family, walk forward into that Son set which soon turns to be the Son rising! Don’t let the Son go down upon your heart, keep your eyes and ears open through Grace to see Christ’s invitation.  This is His invitation to come to the table to break the bread of salvation—reconciliation not just between you and He, but prayerfully with your neighbor.  As a closing thought, we are called to harbor the brotherly love of motivation to naturally DO so, is our walk to Emmaus.

Let us pray,

Gracious Lord Jesus

May our lives reconcile to Your ever-flowing Grace

May we realize the power of Your Resurrection burning in our hearts

As that continuing purpose, You have restored our lives with

May enduring that road only grow our faith, hope and resolve

For a “here and now” that reveals the promise of Easter

The Kingdom of God—

AMEN

April 30^th, 2017; 3^rd Sunday of Easter; Year A; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 116:1-14; Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Peter 1:17-25 & Luke 24:13-35

The link below is to this sermon's delivery at 9:30am at First Congregational UCC Church:
https://youtu.be/mhTsgJ97w9g

"Undertaking Hope;" Sermon for Sunday April 23rd, 2017 by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

I think the whole notion of using the word, undertaking, sounds like an arduous task, but that’s what today’s lessons are beginning to teach us. What we must not forget is that faith is a mystery of the heart that the mind wants to solve. All of the Sundays in the Easter season are teaching us about faith—its messiness, and the human condition. The human condition, we cannot escape from but should learn and spiritually grow from!  As best put, it is a war of the soul, it vexes the human spirit to change, to grow beyond the self for the sake of God and others. 

In speaking of the war of the soul, I am surprised that we don’t have a comparison conversation between the story of the Old Testament’s Job and the New Testament’s Thomas.  Here were two people who were most definitely challenged by their faith, challenged to realize and understand why things came to be…  The key difference between them was that Job didn’t have the assurance and knowledge of the Resurrection to help him take that grand leap of faith and be restored by undertaking the challenge of “living Hope!” Christ is our living Hope that once we relationally understand Him at the core of that first church, the heart, is when we can persevere, move forward—onward in spiritually struggling with being, becoming hopeful, or better put, hope-filled.

In some senses, you could conclude that Job more or less got wound up in the crucible of the trials and suffering that he underwent at the hands of the Evil One and God.  His heart and mind were far from knowing or hoping for a savior, Messiah…  He was, more or less, a tortured soul.  Perhaps what he only had in common with Thomas was that maybe he was what you would call a bit of a pessimist. What is a pessimist anyway?  They’re the glass half-empty people.  They’re the one saying in the back of their minds… it will never work!  “Never say never,” is a lovely starter to reconciling ourselves to confess our faith, not only to God but truly to ourselves to carry on.  Never say never is actually as beautiful as hearing what we heard Jesus say in the Gospel to the disciples: “Peace BE with you.”  Jesus knows the human heart, though we hide in our willful solitude, thinking He doesn’t.  Isn’t this most often true? 

In our “fix it, consumerist society,” we have tried to find ways around confronting the war within our hearts to reconcile our faith in order to undertake Hope—LIVE hope. We have therapists, “happy” pills and self-help platitudes of shallow comfort… that are, truth-be-told, merely man-made solutions that do not address the “heart” of the matter. These are all but shadows to the greatest peace we have to calm the soul, this peace is Christ Jesus! This reminds me of a difficult counseling case I had at the beginning of my ministry.  It was difficult on two levels, since it was someone I knew before my conversion experience, someone in the art and poetry world, and now I was counseling them in my new spiritual-self as a minister of the Gospel.  This person tried to commit suicide.

From what they had shared with me, in arguing with a well-meaning friend, as well as drinking to drown out their hopelessness, they flung open their second floor apartment window and perched upon the ledge for a moment or two.  It was a bright and sunny day but they said they couldn’t see the sun shining, it was as if they were looking into utter darkness. Of course, the cops were called and all they could tell them was if they tried it again, they would be humiliated and reported on the local news…  Not too comforting or assuring of anything, right?  Thankfully this same well-meaning friend reached out to them and had them come to my church as well as had them start coming to AA.

Alcoholics Anonymous actually offers some very powerful subliminal Christian messages to their program.  The twelve steps begin by acknowledging our human condition—our frailty to succumbing to things we cannot control, this leads to hopelessness.  Control and surrender are a part of that spiritual sword, we sharply fall to either side upon, when it comes to moving forward, enduring the challenges, and sufferings of faith.  This person was agnostic, as I once was before Christ resurrected my heart to BELIEVE in things I never saw myself ever reaching…  Right there, was my own struggle with “never say never!”

Take this now into thinking about poor Thomas and the remaining disciples…  Here was a man who knew and witnessed the horror of what the crucifixion does.  He most certainly knew Christ suffered and died.  What he didn’t know or didn’t witness was what the other disciples did, Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus literally appearing before them!  Even upon hearing that Jesus had returned, Thomas just couldn’t make that leap of faith to accept it, he had to witness it, period. He needed to “solve” his doubt.  This is simply being human. The solution he originally chose was to go off into his loneliness and grieve Jesus.  The person I was counseling thought that escape via death was their only solution to their hopelessness…  In fact, they saw all that they even created as Art and poetry, as moments of grief and death.  That is very sad when you think about creation, when you think about God and all Good gifts He has indeed given us!

The other day in unpacking yet more of my seemingly never-ending library…  I unwrapped my ordination chalice.  That will always be a wonderful moment of hope and assurance for me.  That chalice would make the very first official time I would consecrate the elements of Holy Communion, revealing the mystery of why we come to the table… For every time we eat and drink from the cup of salvation, we are to remember and realize the death of our Lord and the profound Grace that would be spiritually overflowing from that chalice to lead and strengthen us daily! Amen and Alleluia, I say. The communion hymn I used for that service as well, was from the movie Godspell.  It was the song, ‘All Good Gifts.’

Our Psalm for this morning is Psalm 148 which is all about creation and being confessional about all that God’s grace has provided us—this is faith.  The kind of Joy we spiritually realize in faith, has the same root word in the Biblical Greek as the word Grace. That moment when Thomas proclaims, “my Lord and My God,” is his amazing moment of realizing God’s Grace as a healing balm to his grief and a wonderful assurance of why we have come to believe, live for Jesus as His disciples!  All Good Gifts come from heaven above…  Is one of the lines from this song from Godspell.

Living Hope, which is a part of the messiness of persevering faith, beckons us to come to terms with spiritual rebirth, conversion.  As a child of genuine conversion myself, it is all about witnessing and realization.  It is the building blocks to the whole person through Christ. It is a rebirth to love, because Christ is at the center of our lives and has cleansed us from the unforgiving bitterness of the self-concerned life—it is realizing, beyond the self, the sacrificial love and life of God.  The person I was counseling needed to do this for themselves.  Empathy is a spiritual gift, for from my own life’s story, I knew where this person was about their art and creative writing.

In hanging dozens of pictures in our new home here, I must confess there were moments of grief and remembering…  BUT there were also many reassuring moments of witnessing God continually leading my heart to know why I am in the here and now, preaching, teaching and leading others to His Gospel!  This is the New Nature breaking through in guiding us to be hope-filled, in guiding us to see and know, the Son shining brightly in that spiritual battleground, the soul. So you see, we all have those “doubting Thomas” moments constantly, daily but here, we are gathered together—living in Hope, worshipping God and sharing our Christian journeys in fellowship together—how wonderful! How inspiring!  Never say never, even in this here and now, for a New horizon awaits for us to cross as His Body—His Church, in the world.

Thomas may have learned this the hard way but went on to lead an amazing life as a missionary to India bearing the Gospel abroad.  In fact, all of the disciples went on beyond the Book of Acts introduction to their journeys, to build, most spiritually and literally, the church in the world.  Christ commissioned them, He was at the center of their hope and their genuine faithfulness to His Gospel, we have witnessed, carried on for 2,000 something years. Commentary writer, William Barclay said of today’s Gospel that when Christ commissioned and absolved the disciples with, “peace be with you,” He was also saying may God give you every good thing.  All good gifts flow freely from the power of the resurrection.  Grace conquered death and is continuing to work upon us… here and now.  Never saying never, is a start.

Let us Pray,

Gracious and loving Lord Jesus

You continue to help us

With the battle in our soul to live Hope

You continue to shower us with Grace

To realize our rebirth and to never say never

May we rejoice and share

All Good Gifts you have given through the New Nature

To undertake and realize out of love for You and our neighbor

In Your most holy presence throughout our lives

We pray to You—

AMEN

April 23rd, 2017; Second Sunday of Easter; Year A; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins

Psalm 148; Acts 5:29-42; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church, Las Vegas, Nevada

https://youtu.be/iqLN032fC1E

"Earth" Moved; Sermon for Easter Sunday by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

Spiritually “unpacking” this special Sunday’s scriptures had the Holy Spirit dust off one of those old record albums from my childhood, to hear the beginning of Carole King’s ‘I Feel the Earth Move.’  If anyone recalls that song, it is aptly placed in an album called Tapestry from 1971.  When we think of the word tapestry, we are drawn to see the whole of the human story as stitched into place by our trial and error journey throughout our lives.

This trial and error journey as we know, began with Adam and Eve.  Adam, the name itself, in Hebrew, means “earth.”  The name for Eve, I believe, alludes to its use as a verb—on the “eve” of a New beginning. We understand that through Christ to mean the New Creation.  We’ve been on that road ever since, perhaps wondering and wandering where it will truly lead us—this is faith.  This is the hope and promise, we, as the children of God cling to in order to follow and deliver the Good News through our hearts, voices, hands and feet to a weary world.

Today’s Gospel is Matthew’s telling of the women at the tomb being commissioned by an angel, who comes down striking the earthquake to roll the rock away from the tomb. I think it’s interesting how the angel rather nonchalantly perches himself atop this stone.  But, then, right there, we have Matthew enhancing the victory of the Resurrection over death…  Right there, think about that for a moment, what is rock, anyway?  A rock is fossilized soil, deadened, impermeable earth! Not impermeable however to the powers of God!  Years ago I used to go fossil collecting with my friend Jurek.  He was the expert in Paleontology, the earthen record of ancient life.  In the southwest suburb of Thornton, Illinois lies a 600 million year old ancient ocean reef.  And a mere couple of hundred feet from my new doorstep are the Lone mountains of western Las Vegas, Nevada.

Frozen in time, is the irony of how we find stone.  Take this thought now, into a spiritual understanding of life and death and the human spirit.  For just like the chrysalis of a butterfly, waiting to shed from its hardened cocoon, Christ Jesus victoriously struck a “quake” in our hearts to be in the here and now as His disciples called, just as the two Mary’s were to herald Jesus’ Resurrection to the remaining disciples in hiding.  St. Paul epitomizes this awakening within us, when he says to the Colossians: “¹So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, ³for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”

Yes, that is, literally, our entire snippet from Paul for this blessed Easter Sunday but it encapsulates it all—Christ’s Victory through the cross to defeat sin, death and the power of evil by His resurrection. All of our sin, death and evil was absorbed in His death upon the cross and the glory of Grace was revealed and released as a profound spiritual freedom for our hearts to embrace, at the revelation of the power, meaning, and reality of His resurrection!  Just like those three days or Triduum towards the Resurrection, what we call Easter Sunday; is this perhaps too sudden or too brief a time for us to fully grasp what all has taken place?  If you recall, what I left you to pray and think about from last week’s sermon were these questions: Am I doing the do’s of the Gospel?  Am I disciplining my heart to lead a cross-shaped life? Where am I on this discipleship road?

The Last question is what comes into focus today, for truly resurrecting our lives into the will and purposes of the victory of the Gospel: Where are you on this discipleship road?  Are you still trapped in the chrysalis, hardened shell of the self or have you allowed yourself to be emptied—freed by God’s Grace to be filled with the Holy Spirit’s empowerment to strive to reap that New Nature planted by Christ within you to be like Christ, in loving neighbor? Love is that great force that can bring those walls, “a tumblin’ down,” like the first lines of that Carole King song. A tumblin’ down, came the walls, forces of sin, death and the power of the devil, went.  This is the triumph of Easter!

The triumph of Easter declares, proclaims that even those “fleshy stones” can most certainly be MOVED!  When you actually think about mountains themselves, they at one point in time moved themselves…  So hard to imagine, isn’t?  Do we think of the world as a giant seismic “Rubik’s cube,” or constantly changing?  I don’t think we fully can grasp that.  And this is an even stronger reality when we think of ourselves needing to change.  Human nature loves to resist it.  It’s comfortable to stay just where we are. Frozen in “our ways,” the way it’s always been done…  Sound familiar?  Those are words used in many a training “manual” for church building ministries.  “The way it’s always been done…” is closing without full understanding, however, many a church door…  Shellacking and reforming that Chrysalis with the life and hope of the Gospel stifled inside!

We are here and now, as His disciples, not to be in hiding or unto ourselves, but OUT and about in this world with what we were commissioned just like the two Mary’s, to SHARE, give to the world with a bold witness—the Gospel.  This past Maundy Thursday was delightful to network and meet some of our neighbors, at the joint service of First Christian Church and Northwest Community Church.  Instead of a sermon, there was a performance from the perspective of Judas on why Jesus had to be betrayed.  It reminded me a lot of the singing Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar.  It was the angry, confused ranting of a disciple who just couldn’t rationalize Jesus with the world or through a worldly perspective. Judas had a tunnel-vision to his own understanding of the future and it was one that didn’t move or change the heart…

St. Paul rebukes the worldly perspective when he not only reminds us of living with Christ at the center of our lives (within that first church of the heart), but looking above and beyond.  Looking above and beyond those mountains of hardened rock, what is it that you truly see?  The skies aren’t tumbling down, they are quite crystal clear, open, open to a seemingly, ever extending horizon—here is the landscape of Hope!  The Resurrection is God’s great revelation to us—the pick axe, if you will upon our hardened ways to transform spiritually—reap the New Nature, that the grace of the cross planted within us!  Are we allowing the New Life within us to be realized?  This is the question we will need to carry with us for our whole lives as disciples of Jesus.

The Book of Acts is an amazing testimony to both the power of the Holy Spirit and His tasks in the world, but also to the continuing witness of Jesus’ disciples.  The Apostle Peter is no exception.  If you have followed Peter in particular throughout the four Gospels’ vision of him, he definitely suffered by trial and error.  He often didn’t understand many things Jesus did, yet alone in a most human way, “chickened out” or caved into fear by denying Jesus three times.  Here, in the Book of Acts, post-Resurrection, we get to see a truly changed man, thanks BE to God!  The snippet we have for this Easter Sunday is from Peter’s noted sermon to the Jews.  The reality of the heart of the Good News is open to Peter—and like the rock he formerly was spiritually—he has been broken open and freed to a whole New Life to share!

Many of us are still like pre-resurrection Peter, this is simply being human.  We see those “mountains of challenges” ahead as impermeable walls that we can’t break down with the Gospel alone. We sink into our fears, like Peter treading over the waters— we “think” we need politicking, war-mongering and divisiveness to build a fortress guarding ourselves… From what I ask? Whose Gospel is it anyway?  If it is one that only preaches to the world of the self, we are merely rebuilding, re-forming that Chrysalis with the New Nature, New Creation suffocating inside.  Without cracking away at this, breaking free, we, just like the cause of death upon the cross, die from a lack of air!

Wherever we are on that discipleship road, the Resurrection is our reason, our motivation for carrying on.  And it is never a lonely road.  Satan only paints it to truly be alone.  You may not fully realize it or understand it now, but, God is carrying you in the palm of His hand.  His Holy Spirit, as St. Paul and St. Peter saw, is always speaking and never puts a period where there will always be a comma!  We are all called to bear witness to the Gospel.  This is a shared, everyday reality! We have been restored, made right with God, but just like the Gospel, the never-ending story, obviously never ends.  We have work to do—it starts in that first church, the heart and together we are the branches from the great vine of New Life, Christ—spreading, growing all over the world—Alleluia! Christ has risen, indeed! Alleluia and Amen!

Let us Pray,

Gracious Jesus,

Your whole life is one that has freed us

Freed us from sin, death and the power of evil

Your Resurrection planted that seed of Grace

Within the heart, the first church You have restored

We are called to reap that seed

We are commissioned to break down the walls the world tries to imprison us within

We are to love You and neighbor with that New Nature boldness

Seeking to share with our neighbor the Good News and work

Of Your Living and restorative Word!

Thank You for everything You have given us

May we never not be grateful!  AMEN

April 16th, 2017; Resurrection of Our Lord; Easter Day; Year A; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins
Psalm 16; Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; & Matthew 28:1-10

The link below is the video to this message:
https://youtu.be/itwrtzcHmKc