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You want the truth? You can't handle
the truth, and this truth is that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the
life. We know that Pontius Pilate is reported to have said: “what is truth...?”
just before Jesus was taken to the cross. The Gospel for Pentecost Sunday this
year, is one of those beautiful conversations Jesus has with His disciples.
This conversation was more less to be both a farewell message to them, as well
as His instruction on just who is coming to aid them once He is gone. We know
that this aid is the advocate, the paraclete, the helper, the mysterious
nebulous “ghost” of the Trinity that is to guide our very thoughts and our very
hearts to live for the revelation of Christ and the building of His Gospel in
this world.
We all lay claims to understanding,
just what is the truth of God; but we will never know that complete reality
until we stop looking, and we start living into the lifestyle of Grace freed
for us, given to us to “grow and go” in this world as the Body. Both of our
first lessons this morning is wonderful. We have this fantastic, surreal
vision from Ezekiel writing and prophesying during the Babylonian
exile. Here is the valley of dried bones! I don't know about you, but I can
just see one of those 1950’s style “Claymation” staged movies with Charleston
Heston, and a cast of favorites from that era, watching the Resurrection of
these bones into a renewed humanity, a renewed Israel!
What you must realize with this
writing, when it came out during the time of the Old Testament, and who it came
from, it was considered fairly outrageous. Some speculation out there wondered
if the elevator was going to the top floor for Ezekiel… But then similar speculation exists for
Jeremiah and Elijah. Another more important aspect was they didn't believe in
the resurrection, and just take out Jesus here, they didn't believe in the
resurrection of the dead, at all. This was a very radical image that Ezekiel
prophesized to the bewildered, wandering people in a crisis of faith, oppressed
and indentured to the Babylonians. The
exile away from their homeland and their lives in general, was a long time. I
think the image in this scripture alongside Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead
is wonderful to imagine and think about in regard to this profound hope for New
Life.
As mentioned last Sunday, the entire
Book of Acts, you could say, is the Gospel of the Holy Spirit. It is a grand
effort to remind us and renew us to what we DO as the body of Believers in the
world, as Jesus disciples. This is that classic scripture, that classic moment,
that some have over-simplified by saying it is purely the birthday of the
"church." I'd say it's the birth of our realizing a new language and
this is the Holy Spirit working through us. I love a lot of modern mystical
Christians out there such as Brother Wayne Teasdale and Thomas Moore… They talk about and share their deep
spiritual journey with striving to be in touch with God. Let’s just say their personal faith practices
are admirable and profound. The
bare-bones truth, if you can handle it, that is, is that we are called,
enlightened, sanctified and renewed by this invisible advocate, paraclete,
helper, “essence” of God, to DO, what is right in the world.
In keeping with the thought of the “bare
bones truth” and New Life; just behind me, just around us is our replanting
efforts. All of the fertilizer hasn't been patted down yet. All of our weed and
feed has not been sprinkled upon us, our branches haven't been fully pruned....
but we are officially Resurrected. Today is the resurrection of our community
First Congregational United Church of Christ. The Holy Spirit is speaking to
you right now, through me, and He needs for you to hear what He has to say, in regard
to coming to know the truth. The truth will set us free. The truth has set us
free. This week, I couldn't spare you the “four-mile-long” reading from
the Book of Acts, because it is important to hear. I did gloss over verses 9
through 10 to spare the poor Lector, from getting tongue tied… but if you saw
those verses what is it really saying about language? Here are those lines
starting from verse 8: “8And
how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians,
Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and
Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya
belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans
and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of
power.”
I have talked about my skepticism in
regard to speaking in tongues, and what I think this passage really means or
this whole entire event of the day of Pentecost. The Spirit moving through all
who were there that day, in this surreal scene of wind & fire and the
multitude of languages, is more about a unified diversity under the central
truth, that is Jesus Christ. Our prose written Gospel from John has many
beautiful things coming from Jesus to try to teach us things that are very hard
for our human nature to grasp.
The wood, bricks, mortar and glass
around us, is an Earthly symbol of gathering together to then GO, scatter with
the good news. For us, here and now, this very day, it has more meaning perhaps
since it's been a long way back, living in transition, coming to understand who
we really are as a people of faith on the Eastside of Las Vegas. I've
been spending a lot of time down here this past week doing some literal grassroots
evangelism. This included trying to post flyers, leave postcards and look
around the neighborhood, see who our neighbors are.... it's been very
enlightening. Very few places allow you to post flyers, though Starbucks and
Albertsons on Eastern, officially have some word on our church posted, as well
as UNLV’s student union bulletin board. These are just the beginnings of what
it takes to grow into this new life as a renewed, replanted body. The Holy
Spirit and Tylenol rapid release gel caps is what kept me inspired this week to
get the word out!
A few years back, I remember a very
pleasant experience I had at a bilingual Parish doing some field ed. The pastor
actually gathered up a bunch of the Youth in the neighborhood and those needing
to do community service as well as some people who had enough Tylenol and
Bengay to walk with him down the streets of Joliet Illinois, to meet and greet
and give out flyers on his church. I might be a little too introverted to go
knocking door-to-door and we don't want to set a precedence like some of our
Christian brothers and sisters have done, but we do need to spread the Word.
This isn't just spreading the Word for ourselves, for this church, but it's for
a greater purpose. Everything around us
here today and tomorrow should inspire you to see God’s great purposes for us
to DO and BE as His Body in the world!
There is that powerful word that is
a part of the truth of the Gospel—purpose. Purpose is a wonderful word that in
some senses, is the motivation for life in general. All of creation is a gift
from God and truly has an ultimate purpose, destiny. Purpose for the disciple
of Jesus, is resurrecting from those dry bones. It is opening the doors of our
hearts to not only truly know and hear Jesus and His Gospel, but to grow that fire
within, as a Holy spirited fire, to make the mountains move with our faith and
resolve. We are to be the change in the world, through Jesus Christ, through His
Grace and the help of His Advocate, the Holy Spirit, we are to reap that New Nature.
This building behind us, around us is our potential New Nature as First
Congregational Church, United Church of Christ. I loved Carla's idea of having
everyone write on the wooden beam supports in the new walls that are being put
up for our main sanctuary wall… It's so fitting to this scripture. It's so
fitting to Our Gospel today. Wood is the most porous, most flexible element
used in construction. It is the substructure to many a building. The Church of
the heart and its structure is influenced and buttressed by this nebulous
reality, the Holy Spirit.
Our very soul is the creation of
God. It is the Tabernacle for the Holy Spirit to work within. We are challenged
and called to testify to the Truth of Jesus Christ and His gift to the world:
GRACE. This testimony comes in many forms. It comes through our Ministries we
do out of this place, this new beginning for us. It comes with new friendships.
Most importantly, it comes with growing into another chapter and not looking
back to the past but moving forward. As your pastor, it is my duty to God to aid
you to see where you are, and what you are to be in the know of because of
growing with God, growing your faith. And I know it's only been a year and a
month or so of hopping into your story, at now chapter 53, but I am concerned
and hoping that you grasp the reins of this New hope and move forward without
looking back. You need to move forward just as those ancient Israelites did
during the exile. They moved forward, resurrected their Spirits from the dead
those dry bones in the wilderness and listened to God. They became obedient to
God and His mission for them.
When I came by the other day you had
your electrician working on all the dangling wires from the ceiling, so we'd
have lights and nothing in danger. That reminds me of a funny story of when a
few pastors back at Bethany, it was discovered that he tried to do some amateur
re-wiring of his basement parsonage lights…
Let just say when the inspectors came through, they were amazed the
whole building didn’t burn down… Returning to our new building here, what I
thought was amazing was when I walked out into the backyard. It was the first
time seeing the pool completely gone and buried under who knows how many tons
of sand and dirt.... it was impressive. But then, like the visionary in me and
perhaps even like our Old Testament writer this morning, I saw a vision of
having perhaps a Christian meditation labyrinth built in various colored stones
set into the sand on top of that mound. I also saw this as a place where we
could set up to have various youth activities and places for Spiritual
retreats. Living into a vision is important. Every disciple should be bold and
take that step forward. If you have ideas, share them grow with one another.
Those early church disciples that were talked about throughout the Book of Acts
did everything together. They were truly united in their diversity. They were
united in their diversity of languages of the things that they knew and did.
They were united in their love for Christ and saw the truth to what He was
preaching and leading them to. Most importantly, this event, that Luke was not
even an eyewitness to, but wrote about what Peter eye witnessed, is a concrete
symbol, message that we are not alone in the work that we do as the Body of
Christ in the world.
We are not alone in the work that we
DO as the Body of Christ in the world; is supposed to be beyond the steeple,
even beyond ourselves, in living truly into the kingdom of God. We do get hung
up on our things though, in the world. We do look back to the past, too often
with grieving eyes, not necessarily ones that have learned a harsh lesson well.
This is a part of the human journey, we have to “grow and go” with one another
through. I was saddened to hear the other day, on the news, that a very
beautiful, very old historic church in Milwaukee Wisconsin nearly burnt down to
the ground. It was 140-year-old church with, as you can imagine the efforts of
many artists, designers… inside the architecture, the craftsmanship and so on.
All that remains of Trinity Church is a nearly hollowed-out shell of the former
building with some of the beautiful murals left behind the altar intact. This
beautiful mural has the center panel showing Jesus resurrected right behind a
beautiful crucifix.
Think about that image in the shell
of this building, what remains is Christ. After all else is Gone, Christ
remains! It was nice to hear that the congregants of this church will still be
holding services today at the campus of Milwaukee Area Technical College. I
think that is a lovely gesture reaching out to people from another place of
learning. Out of the tragedy of death, the hope of a New Horizon is ahead.
Perhaps these remaining items within the former hull of what was Trinity
Church, is a message of Hope from the Holy Spirit to these congregants who lost
their church building. We have the crucifix in front with Jesus upon the cross
and we have the mural behind him of Him resurrected. Jesus is at the head
of the church on the Sacristy wall of this former great Cathedral dedicated to Him. Another
beautiful and similar image of Hope was the 911 cross as they have called it,
that stood out slightly twisted amongst the rubble of the former twin towers…
The Church of the heart, our hearts
also has Christ at the center. The Holy Spirit helps us here in keeping us
focused as well as in keeping us grounded to what we need to do in the world to
change the world for the Kingdom of God. I have yet to see the giant
cross that you have saved from your former Church location on Eastern, but I am
looking forward to seeing that in this New Life Hope that the Holy Spirit is to
lead us with, on our New Journey here on Horseshoe Drive.
We don't have those little tongues
of fire or great rushes of wind and the Dove of the Holy Spirit floating right
above us, right now visibly, but I think we need to put ourselves there, just
for today. Just for today let us see ourselves stepping on top of the dried
bones of our past and looking outward into a New horizon that Jesus needs us to
grow and go forward into for the sake of the truth: Gospel for all the world to
hear. We are united by the Holy Spirit. We are united as a family
of believers on the Eastside of Las Vegas. But we are not just for the Eastside
of Las Vegas… We need to set our sights much higher and farther. DO it, BE it,
live into this gracious lifestyle of Grace, Jesus has right before us to tap
into. Be that New creation, be that resurrected spirit for the sake of
something much greater...
Gracious and loving Lord Jesus,
We thank you for this wonderful day
of Pentecost
We are blessed with this wonderful
celebration, this wonderful Hope!
Help us to be united in Spirit
through our hearts as we act upon this Spirit
In our thoughts, words and deeds
Lead us, our great comforter, as we
begin this New chapter
In our journey to serve you and our neighbor
Amen
May 20th, 2018; Day of Pentecost;
Year B; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M.
Collins, OSST
Psalm 139:1-16; Ezekiel 37:1-14;
Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church at 10am:
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