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You're probably wondering why I
titled this sermon the ‘Full Monty Gospel.’ Well basically the idea of a Faith
that conquers the world is truly one of those fantastic nuggets of the Truth of
the Gospel we have within all the lessons, we have this morning. “I can do all
things through the love of Christ, this gives me strength.” That actually isn't
how the original verse from Paul’s fourth chapter of his letter to the
Philippians goes. It actually says: “I can do all things through Him, who
strengthens me.” Saint Paul was obviously talking about Jesus. From the book of
Acts today, we have another great witness of Peter: “I truly understand that
God shows no partiality.” What do you think he means by that? We have always
tried to put God on our side of doing things? God loves, cares and judges
us all equally that’s what it really means.
A few years back or so, I had to disconnect
from contact with a colleague because of unpleasant theological debates we
would always wind up getting into. Sometimes, the words that were exchanged
were hardly Christian and very divisive. For instance, one of the things that
he loved to argue, and challenge was that he believed Jesus was a socialist and
that all outside viewpoints to this belief of his defined you as racist.... The
Divinity and sovereignty of Christ was never uttered from his lips, just politics.
Here’s my voice of faith speaking: Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is the Son
of God, and He has nothing to do with our politicking. The sad state of affairs
though, is that we do not witness to the truth more than we are activists for
all the wrong reasons. Today's lesson from the Book of Acts, which opens
our readings for this morning, is another wonderful speech from Peter releasing
some profound truths, revealing “the full Monty,” you could say, of the Gospel.
We are indeed those witnesses, for He
commanded us all, to preach to all people and testify.
The snippet we have this morning
from the first letter of John is a continuing beautiful discourse over the
power of love, obedience to this love of God, and that first commandment and a
most beautiful fantastic statements: this is the victory that conquers the
world, our faith! Just this past September, I was given a wonderful gift from a
new friend I made out here through the Via de Cristo. He is a Jewish convert to
Christianity and attends First Disciples of Christ church there on Rancho. He
gave me a shirt that says: “Faith can move— mountains.” He also gave me a coin
that says Trust. On the other side of the coin was a small verse from Proverbs
chapter 3 verse 5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your
own understanding.” Simple enough
statement, can you do it, though?
Trust has a lot to do with the power
and efficacy of faith. You could almost say it's a pivotal place spiritually to
be, to trust in not only God, but trust in the circumstances around you. The
following line is even more beautiful from 1st John, this is verse 5: “who is
it that conquers the world, but the one who believes that Jesus is the son of
God.” Trust took me a long time and I still have issues with it, welcome
to being human. All of that worrying, anxiety and stress of failing not to
trust in the moment, trust in God and yourself… is such wasted energy!
Sometimes it picks away at your being able to be a full witness to God in your
life. We're too scared to share with one another where we are, what we're truly
feeling. I still would love to have the ‘Honest Planet’ cartoon come to life,
perhaps just to have a day in a life like that, where everybody just spoke
exactly what they were thinking and opened up to all their feelings... Will we
have a nuclear explosion with lots of mushroom clouds? I'd like to hope not! I
hope there would be something wonderful to take place from sharing with one
another and that it helps you to grow your faith.
Our new space is going to be our
testing ground. It's going to be a testing ground, not only of our faith in the
future, but our faith in each other. This needs through communication, as well
as there needs to be confidence in the spirit. In today's Gospel, another
beautiful passage from John, Jesus is telling the disciples that they need to
be true to one another and adhere, abide in His Commandments. He commissioned them,
even before the Great Commission that we hear about in The Gospel of Matthew. He
appoints them to go forth and bear fruit— be active in their faith. This
doesn't mean being a politician, this means being a human being and loving your
neighbor. Love shouldn’t be so difficult for us, but it is. We’re only so
willing to give and sacrifice of ourselves, for the benefit of others. God's
love is not partisan, it is for all and it is unconditional. We’re the only
ones with conditions! We need to return to the truth of God's Word, and reveal
it. We need to allow God’s Word to be resurrected for all hearts and Minds to
truly come to the Faith and believe.
There are some curious few verses in
1st John today that probably take you back to the cross where the spear had
gone into Jesus side and water and blood flowed out... What John is doing here
though, however, is going further in talking about sacrifice and what I've
mentioned before, living into your baptismal calling as a disciple. And it is the
Spirit that testifies, works through us, for the Spirit is the truth. It bears
repeating, not only because it is such a powerful verse, but it is things, we
have taken for granted as the Body to be led by the Spirit. We need to
stop turning away from God with our worldly thoughts and agendas and focus our
hearts and minds to the Truth, which is found in His Word.
At our ‘Coffee with Jesus’ study
this past Monday morning, we started talking about the last few verses in today’s
reading from the Book of Acts. We know that these verses have been taken by
some groups to be a literal manifestation of the Spirit. The Day of Pentecost
itself has fallen into this interpretation by some as well. In all honesty I
have a very difficult time understanding or grasping the truth of, speaking in
tongues. Maybe it's fair to say, I just don't believe in it. I personally think
that the Gospel writer Luke, in his efforts to reach out to all people with the
Gospel, wanted for people to hear that the Spirit can even be speaking through
them, in their own voices from all nations. What we really must hold as the
truth however, is that Jesus Christ’ Gospel is truly one for all people, for He
is Lord of all. I asked a while back, when I was studying with Pastor Dawson
and planting the two churches I help the plant; what he thought of speaking in
tongues. He said he experienced it, but really couldn’t explain it at all. I
just don't know what to think, but perhaps just like “Thomas,” things like that
are what we would have to experience for ourselves, to say it is real or not.
Running with the thought if it is
real or not, regarding Faith… Regarding the Gospel, behind the scenes for
nearly 2,000 years this one solitary Faith, the Christian Faith, has survived
because of those who made their lives both a sacrifice and a witness to the
Word of God. It has survived because of baptized converts whose blood was shed
in some form or another defending the Gospel, spreading the Gospel as living
into being a witness. Beginning the process of being a faith-filled
witness is a unity, a voice that starts in the heart. The heart is where the Spirit
works, that first church. The very first line of today's Psalm talks about the Spirit
as witness: “Oh sing to the Lord, a New song.” “Make a Joyful Noise.” I'm sure we make noise…
but perhaps not joyfully, all too often and it is hard for us to turn over that
record album and play a New song.
Changing the channel and tuning into
God takes some effort. The lesson that is right before this reading, that we
have this morning from the Book of Acts, is Peter’s famous dream, the “floating
kosher sheet” dream as I like to call it humorously. If you recall that
scripture it is where a sheet with a lot of unclean animals floats down and God
says to him, “Get up Peter, kill and eat…”
Still hung up on human laws and what not, Peter would never allow
himself to have bacon… Basically, what God does here is to calls him out and
ask him what's most important? God then commissions him to go out to preach and
teach. We probably only think of preaching as something just being what I'm doing
right now, or what is talked about in the Bible and it seems alien to us to
think of practicing it, incorporating it into our daily lives.
The art of preaching though goes
back to basics, with the many ways we witness to God's work in our lives. I'm
always teaching you or trying to reach out to you, to show you where people
were at, in the scriptures that we study. Most importantly, you probably wonder about
the things that I talk about in stories that I share. It's not just for the
sake of sharing but truly it is my testimony of God's active work in my life
and through my Ministry and what I've seen happened with others. We are ALL called to this same task.
The “Full Monty” of the Gospel is
Ministry itself. It is your voice is
hands and feet active with a burning light of love in your heart for both God
and neighbor. This is being obedient and willing to grow. Everyday I'm hearing
about the hard work you all have been doing inside and out of our new church
building. That's a labor of love right there. That is a labor of Faith and Hope alongside a
bright future we can share together, as we work together to bring the Good News
to our small little world here in Vegas. Remember though, we need to start
seeing, believing and doing beyond our little world of the East side of Vegas
into greater things God needs for us to accomplish!
It's the little things that we do
out there that matter. What makes them even matter more, is when it comes
through, because of love. Love is that fantastic power of God, that as I talked
about last week, we only can understand and tap into moments of that Divine
love, Agape love. We are, more or less, a people who can relate to brotherly
love, more unconditional love. The “City of Brotherly Love,” Philadelphia, a
fantastic Greek word used for an entire city’s name. Philos is brotherly love
that's the root of that word. As we know from America's history, Philadelphia
has a reputation for being a pretty rough place and has suffered the blight of
economic depression, murder and crushed dreams. I even knew of a girl in my
high school class who was murdered in Philadelphia. Someone threw a brick at
her bike, dragged her off, raped her and stabbed her and left her for dead in a
stairwell… The name of the city is one thing, but perhaps has been anything but
“loving” to one another.
I was reading a number of articles
this past week. I love watching the news (probably too much) and reading
different things… They were talking about the great problem of not only
homelessness, but of drug addiction, in and throughout the streets of San
Francisco. The documentary, about a half hour long, filmed the streets lined
with people, debris, needles and whatnot. All the while the acting government
interviewed, doesn't really know what to do to reach out and help these people.
Restorative justice is too expensive, we don't do that well or enough in this
country. We don't have enough capacity or desire to be “Mother Theresas” to
those in the streets. It's too hard, it's too expensive and it takes too much
time. There is that “little faith” speaking up, right there. For if that
mustard-seed faith was empowered enough by the love of God and heard the
calling of fully becoming a disciple of Jesus, people would be getting out
there and making the “mountains move” with agape love, healing and hope.
I feel sad sometime and frustrated,
when I can't help people enough. When I don't feel as if I'm making enough of a
difference. God's love keeps me encouraged. Just as mentioned in the beginning,
I CAN do all things through the love of Christ! I have to hear this deeply and
live into this strength. I can be a voice of extravagant welcome not just as a
pastor here, but as a witness, a Christian Witness to the world. Even this “small,
little universe,” here in Las Vegas. I was delighted to receive some progress
updates from my best friend who's been suffering moving this whole past month…
I was delighted and surprised how many people did finally come up to help him,
and even people I never gave much thought to being interested in reaching out
to him to help. Those are ugly thoughts, when you don't have enough faith in
someone else to think that they could help or interested enough at all and
helping someone. Boy was I surprised. In regard to all that this man has
suffered, I know those who have inflicted evil and been a party to evil— There
is “Christian Karma.” That sounds very funny, but truly~ “what goes around,
comes around,” that is a profound truth! For money doesn't make the world go around,
LOVE does. The sooner we “wake up and smell the coffee” to that reality, the
sooner we will be a Resurrected people, a New Natured people for all the world
to be in awe of our Witness!
Returning to what everything I've
been talking about today truly is. This is a witness of God's work being shared
with you. The Holy Spirit falls upon all those who do hear the Word. You're
being here this morning, IS faith in action. You may not feel strong enough to “move
mountains,” yet but here is the beginning of that effort. As you’re chiseling
up floors, putting up drywall, digging up swimming pools, painting walls,
making signs, connecting wires… there is that wonderful Faith, for you are
beginning to “move mountains,” not just material. 2014 should be something that
you look back to and say: look how far we've come!? Here's a whole new road
ahead— thanks be to God (!) for God's love and concern for us. He gives us
purpose, meaning and a plan to carry on, and we are certainly doing that!
Let us pray,
Gracious and loving Lord Jesus
Help us to abide in Your love
Help us to abide in your truth and
know that the Spirit is what keeps us going.
It is Your Holy Spirit that grows
our faith to move those mountains,
To feel strong enough and trust
enough
To be able to make great sacrifices
for one another,
And do great things in Your Name,
through Your love for others, truly out of love.
We lift this prayer to Your ever-gracious
heart
Amen
May
6th, 2018; Sixth Sunday of Easter; Year B; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon
by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins, OSST
Psalm 98; Acts 10:34-48; 1 John 5:1-8 & John
15:9-17
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church at 9:30am
https://youtu.be/6GoKdQU6yEw
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