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