It’s All About Grace; Reformation Sunday sermon by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

By the glory of God, through Christ alone, His grace alone freed us through a faith alone, we can only harbor through God’s Word alone. It’s all ‘bout the grace, ‘bout the grace, ‘bout the grace, no devil… It’s all ‘bout the grace, ‘bout that grace, oh yeah! The little ditty I just sang came from some fun, the other spiritual directors and I invented, to sing at one point in this past Fall’s Via De Cristo Cursillo weekend.  Let me tell you, it was a lot of fun.  BUT, it really IS all about the Grace of God that freed us to hear the truth!

You want the truth?!  You can’t handle the Truth! Can you almost just see Jack Nicholson lips biting out those famous words from the 1992 film drama, ‘A Few Good Men?’ They do apply here, however, too. We may say that we want to know the truth God needs for us to hear but we, more often than not, can’t handle it! This, ironically, is known to be the “age of authenticity” for humanity according to the modern philosopher, Charles Taylor, about our current times, and the secular age. What is authentic, though, about avoiding reform?  The Protestant Reformation sounds a lot better than saying the protestors’ revolution against things that were not willing to change for the better.  In fact, it probably even sounds better to say that people needed to re-form, re-shape their outlook on what God’s priorities are for us and how we are to have responded.

All Hallows’ Eve, October 31^st, is the actual marker for the 500^th anniversary of the 1517 act of an Augustinian monk to nail his 95 grievances upon the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral in Germany.  Contrary to what history some people may actually know, but, throughout our Christian heritage, there have been several moments, cries for reform and change in Christianity.  From the spark of the institutionalized form of the church in the 4^th century by the emperor Constantine, there have been many moments of a cry for change.  The great schism of 1054ad is the very first departure where Byzantium split with the Roman west, simply upon a theological argument about the aspects of the Holy Trinity, being: “of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...” 

The 14^th century saw its first martyred reformers before Martin Luther being Jan Hus and John Wycliffe. Nearly 200 years before that infamous event, we now consider the official start of Protestantism in the world, these men were already “upsetting the apple cart.”  The only differences to why the events of 1517 were successful, was thanks to the invention of Gutenberg printing press.  See advertising works!  All these history nuggets aside, humanity loves to find or search out battles that do everything but address the truth of what we should all abide in—God’s Word.  Jesus’ disciples in today’s beautiful cryptic passage from the Gospel of John didn’t get it then, and we still struggle with it today: GRACE.

A number of years back, I thought it was fascinating that it took some 500 years for the Roman Catholic church to come to an agreement or accord with the Protestants, about that very issue Martin Luther posted upon to which we are celebrating today.  This would be what we hear from St. Paul’s snippet from the Romans this morning: “²⁸For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.”  This became known most completely and debated for the past 1,900 years or so, as justification by Grace through faith.  Why is this still important for us today? That conditional, “if,” from Jesus in today’s Gospel should give us a clue: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

At the time of the formation of the 95 theses, the Roman church invented, “gift certificates,” for sale, that more or less, acted as a legal receipt, transaction in receiving God’s mercy and forgiveness.  These receipts were known as “indulgences,” sounds like some kind of candy, doesn’t it? A little-known fact is that the Roman church, at the time, had to shake people up for money to finish the Sistine chapel.  How many people here, actually knew that?  It was an ingenious, but incredibly evil agenda placed in front of willful and fear-filled peasant people, that they won’t receive God’s Grace to go to heaven, if they didn’t pay this tax, buy the indulgence.  Human nature wants to try to find ways to manipulate around the truth to do what it wants to do and not be accountable to our actions. 

The Protestant Reformation, through the aid of the printing press and several concerned reformers, helped to illumine that a return to God’s Word is really what is needed, to see the truth behind Paul’s treatise to the Romans to know their place in relation to God’s free gift of Grace.  We are all culpable to sin and fall short of the glory of God… Yes, this is true, but Christ saved us to strive forward on our lives’ journey to respond through faith by loving Him and neighbor with the fruits of our lives.  There’s no transaction or barter here, but a calling for our spirit to change—re-form, re-shape to God’s destined path for each and every one of us!

Several days ago, I saw a beautiful short video of a caterpillar’s journey into transforming into a butterfly.  What a truly wonderful image to compare that to the Christian’s spiritual formation journey!  The creature literally changed inside and out. Then, we could say that it’s New life officially took off, began.  The caterpillar realized its purpose before its life-changing journey, which was to eat leaves.  It was given a mission and stepped up, to just DO it.  There was no bargaining chips or barter, you could say even for this simple creature, there was a willingness to simply do and see where life leads next.  Caterpillar faith? Sounds kind of hilarious but that’s our problem as well.  Why have we not stayed true to our humble place as children of God?

From the humble beginnings of church planting and one on one faith based discipleship throughout the Book of Acts and all of Paul’s letters… We’ve re-invented gathering together as the Body over the centuries, with lots of failures and lots of triumphs. All in all, discipleship over this time, should have taught us, shown us the truth to where God really needs us to be.  Paul’s letter to the Roman church, just like Martin Luther’s 95 theses were epiphanies to getting back down to the basics of God’s Gracious hand in guiding humanity.  Seeing, realizing the truth of God, resisting God’s hand in leading us to change is where we are still stuck.  We’re still children of Grace and promise, but we can’t live into our end of keeping that promise, being children of God living into the lifestyle of Grace.

Our willfulness is our sin and we turn away from the mirror of God’s law to know and grow from that truth.  In this 21^st century quote, “age of authenticity…” All we can say, that is genuinely authentic, is our justification of our willfulness over and above God’s Will and an avoidance, abandonment of God’s Law for our temporal, self-concerned purposes.  Is this really progress? Returning to that caterpillar’s journey, I recalled a memory from when I was on fellowship doing art in Johnson, Vermont.  In the summer of 1994, I won a full fellowship to study and paint for a whole month in the small little town of Johnson, Vermont.  Never previously been to the east coast before, it was a delightful, small little country town just outside of Burlington, Vermont.  The entire town was composed of little B-n-B’s as well as this studio program, artists’ colony was there.

What was, at the time, such a strange memory for me painting there, was that the studios were built inside a beautiful shell of a tragically abandoned Congregational Church.  This was before I found God to have re-entered my life some nine years later… I would be placed in an upper make-shift room above the altar area where the giant beautiful stained-glass window would make up a corner of my studio’s room.  In retrospect, with Christ most fully in my life now, what a powerful image to think about spiritually?  Creating as humans do, within a shell of a place once created to grow within, and go about from, to share the faith. At the time, I really didn’t see how tragic that place really was, in regard, to commenting on where we are at as disciples of Jesus. 

Life is a series of challenges upon us all, once we become truly aware of God’s guiding and saving Grace active and on-going in our lives.  It isn’t a challenge we should willfully backdown from, or manipulate to our agendas. We are called to reform.  The Reformation is, and will always be ongoing, but the ball is in your court to whom, it is to truly serve.  The early Reformers of the Protestant Reformation needed us to realize the truth to God’s Grace and our call to respond in faith. Reformation Sunday should be a Sunday that we not only celebrate our Protestant heritages, but spiritually celebrate persevering answering God’s challenge to us all, to grow and go boldly into an unknown future with great courage, hope and most importantly a gracious and grateful faith!

Let us Pray,

By the glory of God,

We have freely received through Christ alone,

His grace alone, which freed us through a faith alone

we can only harbor through God’s Word alone,

For a Re-forming future growing towards His Kingdom goals

For this one solitary life and our journey in the next.

Thank You Lord for Your Amazing Grace.

AMEN

October 29th, 2017; Reformation Sunday; Year A; SOLA Lectionary

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

Psalm 46; Revelation 14:6-7; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36 RCL: Jeremiah 31:31-34

The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church

 https://youtu.be/9dHNpj_70Cw

'City of the Heart;' Sermon for October 22nd, 2017 by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins

You could say humanity is defined by more or less, as a tale of two cities.  Anyone remember reading that classic book?  I think I read it about 40 something years ago in grade school. The tale of two cities here, has to do with what would be known by Augustine and the early reformers as two kingdoms.  The first kingdom is the world, and the other, is the Kingdom of God.  We are called to survive essentially in both.  We are called to be civically, ethically accountable towards neighbor in matters of the world as well as most importantly we are called to be spiritually accountable to God through a willingness of the heart to be shaped towards the righteousness, God seeks for us to develop.

The temporal world of the self is overfed by the temptations available around us, in this one earthly life. Some of the early reformers, actually took the Gospel’s view of the two Kingdoms quite literally in wondering if the ruler of the world is God’s adversary—Satan. That’s a difficult thing for us to think about, still.  The problem of evil, being tempted and justifying it becomes an intellectual battle masked today, by politics and divisiveness.  It seems harder and harder to muster up that energy for a faith that can move the great obstacle of this, out of our path.  Graceless behavior, in the form of mistrust, hostility and turning away from being a listening presence, become easier when we think we are “protecting” ourselves.

Sometimes the act of protecting ourselves does more harm than good, to the truth that needs to be revealed.  Today’s scene with the Pharisees is just that.  They are playing once again, a political game with Jesus in seeing if they can trap him in saying something against the Romans and their governance.  Jesus in a very clever way clearly defines God’s priorities.  Yes we are in this world and it does have things we are called to be accountable to.  We also, most importantly, to which the Pharisees could never see, we have a spiritual priority of being humbly accountable to God.  This call to accountability would be what we would understand today as living conscientiously towards being a freely responsible servant of Christ.

‘The Bondage of the Will,’ was probably one of the most important books to come out of the Protestant Reformation which is what we’ll be celebrating its 500^th anniversary next Sunday. The Bondage of the Will is a classic book to talk about humanity’s struggle with willfully caving into temptations the world bombards us with or willingly finding a new sense of freedom by choosing to be spiritually accountable to God and neighbor. This accountability would be nicknamed in future generations as the “Protestant work ethic.”  Does this really still exist today? I think that’s hard to say because of where we’ve advanced to, hasn’t really gone in the direction God would’ve hoped for us to.  We’ve advanced in technology, intellectualism and self-oriented concerns, which perhaps have made us go backwards, truthfully, in socially and spiritually advancing as a people of God.

Being or owning up to the notion of being a people of God doesn’t just mean coming to church.  But that’s where the institution of “church” has failed the early discipleship goal of spreading, living truly into the Good News.  Churches abroad battle with defining their communal efforts in the world to be a “hub” of all things by and for the Gospel.  It was really nice to talk the other day about planning, building towards what ministries we could open up to once we get a new building.  As delightful as that conversation was, what we must not forget is that we are called to be the church in our hearts first.  There’s no building or steeple and people there…  This is the most important beginning place, however.

The last several weeks I have been investigating different communities’ mid-week or Saturday services to see how they think or imagine themselves as a central hub of “being and doing,” church.  Some churches I visited were mega-churches with elaborate programs literally involving every day of the week.  How wonderful in some senses!  I remember when I first came to the church of the pastor I would study and serve with for nearly 8 years, I was amazed at what he got going there.  St. Philip’s was by no means a big church, in fact, before he came to serve there, they were nearly on the verge of closing.  Within three years before Phil & I came to join there, he had a study going on almost every night of the week as well as a Saturday service and a second contemporary service on Sundays.  This church was only a little bit bigger than ours but not by much.

What was it that made the difference? What made this “little church that could,” so much greater than that to live into becoming “Faithfully connected to serve?” Basically, hard work and an attitude of gratitude is what made the difference.  A note of trivia there, the saying, “the little church that could…” was St. Philip’s former marketing statement…  After the vision committee meetings, we came up with the statement of: “Faithfully Connected to Serve.”  What a difference that made!  It was like night and day. This logo you see here would be used with lots of different marketing materials and yes, with pictures of the church and its activities…  What was very important about doing this, is returning to some important themes from all of today’s scriptures.  God is here and God is now, as the Psalmist says, and we do need to discover new ways of not only celebrating God’s presence in the world today but become a true sanctuary of that 2^nd Kingdom—the City of God.

Reflecting, reaping, sharing the Kingdom of God needs us to work on that internal city first—our hearts.  This image and few words came after everyone on the committee prayerfully reflected in their hearts what this community meant to them, and most obviously, it went way beyond the people and the steeple…  This is what all who participated in St. Phil’s vision committee came to develop.  This was by no means, an easy task for Pastor Dawson, people debated him and challenged every little thing he tried to do to help them grow.  By the time he retired and we embarked on the journey of beginning to plant the Gathering for Christ Church, they grew from something like 40 to almost 200 members.  The church he served before St. Phil’s, he served for 23 years.  That church was in the same boat but grew to something like 1500 members.

Putting numbers aside, commitment, graciousness, trust and truly an amazing faith, is what was the fire that empowered Pastor Dawson to move those worldly obstacles out of the way and build up a spiritual presence, place to gather and truly grow from.  I have been recounting these wonderful memories of growing, in hopes that you can hear me, truly, that I intend on following this path myself.  Re-planting is hard, but it’s even harder when you can’t see or recognize the daily battle we all undertake between the rule of the Kingdom of the world or striving for the Kingdom of God.  They say the city is a jungle and living some 14 years proper in a big city, it does toughen you up!  Spiritually as well, this is case for all churches today.

We are a hub of many individuals coming together to be in common mission and commitment towards a greater end.  Jesus once said a few Sundays’ lection back, that, “the last will be first, and the first will be last. “ What is First Congregational Church last in contemplating, praying about?  What is First Congregational Church truly the first or number one about?  Don’t answer that now, but take it into your hearts and think about what it really means for you?  What is God calling your heart to contribute to our church family here?  Are you ready for it? Are you willing to?

I’ll leave you with one last story, Henry was a fellow student at the beginning of my seminary journey at the first school I studied at.  He and his wife had been studying there for something like 8 years already, when I started there.  He was someone who got tossed back and forth into the political ugliness of candidacy, so much so, that he started to give up.  In fact, he did give up, and after 12 years of trying, he packed up all of he and his wife’s things and moved to Washington state to write books and sell life insurance.  I have occasionally seen a blip or two about how he’s doing out there and I can’t put my finger on it per say, but there is some deep seeded emptiness, he is hiding behind his humor and stories.

Were those in charge of the candidacy process he struggled with like the Pharisees in some senses; where they weren’t willing to see his spiritual potential?  I wonder and have prayed for him and others who may have succumbed to the same abusive system of “filtering” potential pastors.  It’s human nature to be inclined to put people to the test, to be judge, jury and prosecutor…  Kingdom of God thinking, however, looks beyond the self to see the light of God in each of us to truly understand, see great potential.  St. Paul in this amazing letter, we’ve heard from this morning, of pastoral thankfulness and encouragement, is beaming a great light of hope into the hearts and ears of the Thessalonians, that they moved beyond their former ways of understanding life to see and realize their Kingdom potential.

Yes, you’ve heard that before, Kingdom steps, Kingdom thinking, the Evangelicals have a lot to teach people about living into empowered discipleship.  In fact, being open-minded to many Protestant traditions, there will always be something to learn from everyone.  The Pharisees were unwilling to listen, unwilling to learn and were too absorbed into their politicking to serve the God they fawned their showy piety, to all upon.  This still happens today, churches aren’t to be elite social clubs or mere fellowships, they are to be dynamic, mutually-encouraging teams of people working for the mission of the Gospel together and out into the world beyond the hub of what the church is supposed to be.  As Pastor Dawson would say at times and I would have to agree—we are truly here to gather, then we are called to scatter with the Gospel in our hearts and the Holy Spirit to motivate our hands and feet to action.

Let us Pray,

Loving and Gracious God,

Help us to truly see those boundaries and challenges between both Kingdoms

Help us to be strong in faith while we work in the Kingdom of the world

Help us to continue to grow spiritually accountable to Your Kingdom’s mission and goal for us

Help us to bring forth the City of God in the here and now of our efforts.

Thank You Lord for all You have encouraged us to see and become,

In Your Name, we pray

AMEN 

October 22nd, 2017; Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 24; Year A; SOLA Lectionary

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

Psalm 96:1-13; Isaiah 45:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

The link below is to this sermon's deliver at First Congregational Church at 9:30am
https://youtu.be/ECoBz2Q7Q4w