Posts
The title of my sermon this morning should hopefully intrigue you to what it actually means. What do we think of when we think of God’s sense of time and our sense of time? God’s sense of time is known as Kairos time. Kairos is the Greek word for timeless, eternal, unknowable or even perhaps, hidden from us to be revealed when God feels we are ready to receive it. This is a central part of understanding Christianity as well as its’ Advent. Today begins the Advent season, beginning of something New… but living into and through Christ to realize just what New life means. Philosophers such as Charles Taylor, would call this humanity’s quest to be “flourishing.” What does flourishing mean through Christ? We have only studied the past several months in discipleship school about it. Flourishing through Christ means reaping that seed of Grace within us—that New Creation within us and fully committing, covenanting to live into it. We are to be the change in the world for the Good of humanity, in and through the Love of God.
Flourishing means so much more than “eat, drink and be
merry for tomorrow we die…” It is the
fullness of our being, creation through God to live into the promise of
Hope. We are all called to be witnesses
to love God and neighbor with our spiritual gifts. God begins speaking to us about this, through
the Psalmist’s ironic words: “3Restore us, O God; let Your face
shine, that we may be saved.” Isaiah finishes the Psalmist’s prayer for saving
Grace by declaring that the Lord is the potter and we are the clay; we are all
the works of His hand. What a wonderful
affirmation about the loving parent and guide, God truly is for us! I remember when I first started to go back to
church and hearing this wonderful doxology about humanity being empty vessels
and seeking God to fill us with all good things. Soon after hearing that doxology I joined my
first choir.
There is something about singing our faith that does
indeed fill our hearts. This is
experiencing our faith, expressing it truly through the self, within community.
This is when our lives through Christ begin to take off. For discipleship is so much more than we
could realize in a Sunday-shackled mentality.
Every day is to be Son-day.
Christ Jesus is to be at the center of our lives like a loving parent,
teacher and guide. The rebellious
children that we are however, has Jesus in Mark’s Gospel spouting a
mini-apocalypse of spiritual warning to us to be prepared for God’s New life
coming into the world. In this case,
Jesus is alluding to the second coming.
When I started studying these texts early this past week, I recalled a
funny memory, Pastor Eric would share when he would talk about the parental
image of God in the Old Testament. He
would say that both Isaiah and the Psalmist are talking about the glad hand or
the back hand of God also known as the punishing parent of the Old Testament.
The New Testament examples
God’s parental image are strikingly different from the Old Testament’s parental
image. Here, Jesus is and has been
continuing to help us see what we must do to be the change in the world God
truly needs for us to be. Truth be told, we all have a problem with seeking or
thinking in terms of what the fullness of time will bear forth. We’re either scared of the future or are too
involved with ourselves, our little worlds and our little crises. Through the
hustle and bustle of our mini-worlds, we are often asleep to God and His
warning to us about the cause and effects of our willfulness above a
willingness to strive, flourish in the Gracious love of God and His gifts. Jesus is right, life is like a personal
journey we all traverse upon, but we need to be awakened to our true life
waiting within us to be reaped by the fullness of God’s timing, plans for us,
not necessarily ours.
Paul’s very brief snippet we
have this morning from his first letter to the Corinthians, is the beginning of
his New Natured teaching, reaching out to his wayward Corinthian congregation.
Another funny memory there, is remembering studying this text, when I was being
mentored by Pastor Eric. He penned the Corinthians to be the “Las Vegas people”
of the early church! What I think he
meant by that is, that they were very independent people who lived life to its
fullest but not in the way God was hoping for them to. The Corinthian congregation saw a lot of
division, either through rivalries, arguing about theology or debating who is
“best” pleasing God and so forth. They
just couldn’t disconnect themselves from the world enough for St. Paul. Instead of yelling at them, which he could of,
very well started this letter that way, he chose instead to tape into the power
of God’s grace and encourage them, even bless them! He thanks God for their congregation,
instead of maybe his Old Nature wanting to say that you people are driving me
nuts.
Our lives could fade away like
the falling leaves and our iniquities can take us away like the wind… but they
don’t have to. God’s faithfulness should
be more than evident to us by now, some 2,000 plus years later after Christ
came down to His people, died, rose and instilled within us His gift of Grace….
But we haven’t been awakened enough to truly see it, realize it. Our sense of time, should sound familiar in
the ancient Greek, our sense of time is Chronos time. Chronological… beginning and an end… but do we or can we see
both beyond ourselves and beyond the finite boundaries to which we’ve
imprisoned our efforts to? Here’s yet another leap of faith the scriptures try
to jar our hearts to take. We’re so bound to the here and now and to the
past. It’s hard work! Often times, we just don’t want to go there…
Earlier this week, I was
motivated to put up Christmas decorations.
Years past, it would be hit or miss either because I didn’t feel too
hopeful about where my journey was going, or just not feeling the “joy” of the
season grieving where the world was going.
They say that the times between Thanksgiving and New Years are the most
spiritually challenging for people. There are numbers upon numbers of reports
on suicides and depression, delivered by the news each year. I can agree with
that time being spiritually challenging, for there is that beginning and end
frame of thinking, lending to our fears or trepidations about the future. We are, as disciples of Jesus, to believe in
the hope for a resurrected life—a New beginning, in the fullness of time beyond
how we know it or better said, understand it!
This year, Phil & I put up
two trees which is truly a first for us.
We’ve successfully kitty-proofed the trees with about 50 pounds of
gravel bags distributed evenly under each tree, upon each leg of the
trees. So, I know, we will not have or
be making any rival videos of our cats attempting to destroy the trees! Not
being too hope-filled in finding my family’s inherited glass ornaments in one
piece, I indulged in traveling over to Hobby Lobby and going nuts at their
holiday ornament sale. Thanks be to God,
we eventually found our ornaments in one piece, and now we have way too many
ornaments, even for two trees! Those
Christmases of years past are long gone and each and every year I have to stop
myself from grieving about their loss.
There is so much to hope for, especially here in serving my new church
family. There are great things, God has
in store for all of us!
That kind of hopefulness isn’t
being a “Pollyanna” about the roller coaster of challenges life has us all wrestle
with. It is being a realist through
Christ Jesus who has given us the Grace, to be hope-filled, to open that door
to our hearts, wide awake and ready for the Holy Spirit to transform us, help
us grow in more ways than one. The New Adam, Christ Jesus, will soon be coming
to refresh our hearts and minds with His Gospel’s story. Are we ready for
it? Are we ready for the New year ahead?
Or like the rebellious perpetual teenagers we often are, are we resisting
it? The Holy Spirit had a funny image
pop into my mind about “growing up.” I
don’t know how many people here saw Talladega Nights, the story of Ricky Bobby
with Will Ferrell, but there’s a really funny scene where he’s arguing with his
wife that he won’t stop saying every prayer to the Baby Jesus. Beyond the silliness of their fighting, Jesus
does grow up and we can’t fit Him or His Gospel in a box for our convenience.
Thinking beyond the box of
what we claim to know, is just the beginning to becoming awake to God’s Word
and His challenge to us to be prepared for our journeys ahead. Living beyond
ourselves, isn’t the end of the world, it is the beginning of a new world
shaped by our great potter. We are the
worldly children of Adam, whose name literally means earth in Hebrew, but we
are the spiritually blessed children of God, whose Son did shine in our lives
His Holy and Timeless Gospel. Now is the
beginning of flourishing in and through Christ as best as we are able, to truly
become God’s children of Grace and Promise.
We will never be able to pinpoint God’s sense of timing and plans for
our lives, but the Holy Spirit gives our hearts’ a map. The map is God’s Words written upon our
hearts, His Son’s victory for us all to come to know—Grace.
In the closing of this
message, may these Words become a timeless preparation for the fullness of your
hearts to hear: “ 5for in every way you have been enriched in Him… 8He
will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of
our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God is faithful; by Him you were called into
the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” During this time of preparation, think of
yourselves at the Advent of the blessing and hope of a New, changed life to
begin the new chronological calendar year ahead. Be the change God needs you to
flourish from.
Let us Pray,
Gracious and Loving Lord,
Help us to come to flourish
In the fullness of Your timing
and plans for us
Help us to be awake in our
hearts for the coming Hope
Your Gospel story is to shape
the clay of our lives with.
May our love for You and our
neighbor
Never fade away or be blown by
the whims and temptations of Sin
To divide us from Your
timeless Word’s Truth.
It is in and through You, we
truly become Your people.
AMEN
December 3rd,
2017; First Sunday of Advent; Year B; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon By: Reverend
Nicole A.M. Collins, OSST
Psalm 80:1-7;
Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
https://youtu.be/5b2lMdxA1pY
~
No comments:
Post a Comment