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So, Jesus went up on that mountain
and then He began to deliver His ordination address to His disciples. Pretty
much a tall order for ordinary men and women, who were given a glimpse into the
world of the New Nature—the other Kingdom, the city of God.... "The reason
the world does not know us,” says John the Elder, “is it did not know
Him." No Jesus, no peace and now the more positive aspect on that is: “Knowing
Jesus is knowing peace!” We like to act like we know everything however, and
God keeps having to come in and remind us what “being-the-attitude” is all
about.
The Beatitudes are all about incorporation.
You've seen me do that before, in regard to what is the daily process of
remembering our baptism each day; it is believe, receive, incorporate and
share. Being a child of God holding to that promise, that wonderful hope is
reflecting on everything that the Word of God is teaching us. It is coming to a
place of confessing in what we believe. It then is coming to that point of
understanding what real change requires of us, which is reconciliation. It is
realizing our saint-sinner selves to finally renew into that New Nature.
What do we really understand as the New
Nature? My Missouri Synod friend would be worried that I am preaching and
teaching too much of a sense of the law, but we don't reflect enough on
response prayerfully. We don’t contemplate enough in what Grace really means in
our lives. To “be-the-attitude” of Christ is reaping that New Nature, the New
Creation that has been planted by the Word of God in the heart. The heart is
the first church that God does His work and I’ve mentioned that before in a
couple of my messages. On the sides of the heart or on our shoulders perhaps,
we have a little angel and a little devil that tries to persuade us to choosing
one side or the other. The idea and the word, choice, is problematic to the
uncomfortable truth of what God's Word calls us to do, to be.
Jesus was addressing His disciples
that day to live into a cross-shape life. He didn't want a little bit of their
commitment, He wanted the full-Monty! He wanted the whole 180 degrees of not
only doing the do's, to use that "legal" sense of things, but being
and becoming, beyond the self as the Gospel of Grace reveals. We have a 4-Mile-Long
reading from The Book of Revelation which I don't normally give much credence
to but out of all those verses… we see this fantastic vision of what both the
children and witnesses of God see as Sovereign in their life and that is Jesus
Christ, Our crucified Lord and Savior. The opening hymn we sang this afternoon,
‘All Glory, Laud and Honor,’ kind of sounds like the soundtrack to this passage
from Revelation. But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his ‘Cost of Discipleship,’
reflection on the Beatitudes: “The Fellowship of the Beatitudes is The
Fellowship of the crucified.”
Harsh stuff… are we really committed
to the task? This is completely opening the self up to God's time, not ours.
God's time, Kairos time, accepting it with a grateful faith is living life as
if it was a work of art. Life is art. Those three simple words are going to get
a lot of criticism because some people are going to see the world the way they
want to see it and not see much of anything else. The fact is however, we are
all a part of creation. God the Creator is an artist. He created everything
except sin, we did that. And since the fall, our Saint-sinner selves certainly
create our own worlds of thought and is pretty much the creative expression of our
lives. But even if we consider ourselves artists, there are certain standards
that hold our lives together. To “be-the-attitude” of Christ is living into
that standard that God gives us through Jesus Christ, Our Crucified Lord.
To live into “being-the-attitude” of
Christ, is filling that empty vessel to capacity with God's Word. It is to fill
the self with a great hope and realize just how much of a blessing it is to be
blessed by God as His child of Grace and promise. I read a wonderful article
the other day about Mother Teresa. That woman lived an amazing life. She found
a path of commitment to not only incorporating God's Word but truly sharing it.
She truly lived into being an advocate of restorative justice for the poor and
suffering in the Calcutta slums. From the ordinary God called her to the
extraordinary. The extraordinary of being an advocate and witness to His truth.
She is just one of many persons who strove for that 180 degrees of a
cross-shaped life.
When God created us, He hoped we
would realize to see ourselves as those empty vessels needing to be filled to
capacity with all the good things, He strove to reveal to us. When you think of
it in one perspective, it's like seeing the Gospel of the woman at the well in
a different light. Here was this person, certainly no saint… but her heart was
open like that well to receive God. She needed to hear Him in order to follow.
The disciples certainly weren't saints, they were ordinary people. What is
ordinary anyway? Ordinary People is our own understanding, judgement of the
world. They are no one special that's just a matter of our opinions, though
aren't they? God made us to be “extra-ordinary” that's what the New Nature is.
The New Nature is being, becoming “extra-ordinary.” It is beyond the self. It
is beyond the judgments and boundaries of our thinking versus God's designs.
Being extraordinary children of
Grace and promise, chosen by God shouldn't put us in a box of sainthood. There
is no hierarchy except for God Alone. Much like a loving parent helping their
child to understand aspects of growing up, our gracious and loving God has not
stopped doing this with us. It's funny how the Holy Spirit connects different
images and memories and so forth to how we receive His Word daily. When I was
thinking about children and being a child of God and following, being
disciplined to God and his standards… I saw of all things, that one scene from ‘Raiders
of the Lost Ark.’ Hard to believe that movie is 39 years old. The scene I'm
thinking of is when the French archaeologist and the Nazis are preparing to
open the Ark of the Covenant, the place of Gods first Commandments, first
promise to us. Like little children getting ready to do something that
they know they shouldn't, the box is opened. Indy and Miriam keep their eyes
closed while all hell breaks loose basically, and God's Wrath is taken upon all
the soldiers that were there as well as the French archaeologist. What struck
me to connect this with the scriptures we have today for All Saints Sunday, was
that all the people who were not supposed to see, did not know who God was and
so they were left with the mark of Fire to shoot right through them. What was
interesting is that the marks of the special effects of the lightning like fire
to go through everyone had nearly a horizon and rising cross like shape shot
through them.
After all were essentially
destroyed, the sky opens up and takes the lid as well as all of the ashes up
into the atmosphere. For one brief moment, it looks like it makes a shepherd's
staff and then the lid is returned slamming to the Earth most evenly and
perfectly upon the ark to close it. Indy's and Miriam’s hands were no longer
bound by rope they were miraculously freed because they didn't look at what
they shouldn't have. Indy, we could say perhaps had faith and knew the wrath of
God was right around the corner. It may have been a mustard seed of faith,
for the man was a scientist and a devout archaeologist, but it is that mustard seed
faith that connects us all to being a part of God's family. We will always be a
“works-in-progress.” We will always need to be put in our place by a loving and
gracious God to know the truth and see what He needs us to see, in His timing.
Whether our human reality is
grounded by the fact that we are aspiring saints but willful sinners, shouldn't
discourage us but inspire us to “be-the-attitude” of Christ. We need to follow
Jesus up to that spiritual mountaintop and think about being blessed to be a
blessing to others. We need to realize the truth, that we are seekers. The
question of what we're seeking is our discipleship Journey. For that Journey is
going to have a lot of things in the path. It’s going to have some boulders
that we will have to trip over and other things that the evil one puts in our
way to putting our priorities together and being motivated enough to be like
that woman at the well to at least begin to listen.
Ours is loving and gracious God, our
sovereign as the crucified Lord and we are His children of Grace looking to Him
as our great Shepherd to wipe away each and every one of our tears of progress,
as we persevere in hope. Hope is the fire for a willingness to serve.
Hope is that fuel, promise what we will be has not yet been revealed, all in
God's time. A number of years ago, I was involved with ‘Kairos Outside
Ministries.’ For those of you who are not familiar Kairos Outside, as well as
Kairos Inside; they are both prison ministries for both the prisoners as well
as their loved ones. Kairos outside is for family members of the incarcerated
individuals. Similar to a Cursillo, it is a mini retreat time of reflection and
sharing. It looks at empowering someone's faith almost as looking through a
perspective of God's love being in the “underdog.” These people, their loved
ones and then whole of their families feel the “scarlet letter” upon them of
judgment.
Their moments of lawlessness did
have a justice done upon them in one sense, but in a spiritual sense, what they
were genuinely seeking… wasn't addressed. Does that notion sound familiar? It
should, it is restorative justice. It's not cost effective. It's not paid
attention to enough, but it is both thinking through the eyes of a visionary
and a realist. It's looking at the picture of helping others, but in a creative
way bringing the persons a breath of God's love and grace and understanding.
That reconciliation with God will take some time. But then growing to know who
Jesus is, is that process to finding peace. It is that process to finding peace
with not only what was done but being renewed to see what still needs to be
done in the world for it to be the kingdom of God Here and Now.
Mother Teresa was spiritually called
beyond the comfort and closure of the convent to go out into the streets and
help those imprisoned by their circumstances. She wasn't being paid anything to
do that yet alone no one was motivating her except for Christ. She put on “being-the-attitude”
of Christ out of love for neighbor, out of a dire need of neighbor to find
healing and care. She was like one of those disciples in another gospel
listening to Jesus Great Commission for she did take up her cross and followed Him.
Perhaps the ancestors of us all were on that mountain with Jesus hearing His
ordination address out to us to live into the calling of the priesthood of all
believers. We are aspiring Saints and willful sinners. This is a reality we
cannot break away from, but it never means to give up. Jesus, Our Crucified
Lord and Sovereign Shepherd reigns in with His compassion and mercy for He is
the Living Word, the living bread who has given us New life. Our new life is
waiting to be reaped.
In a few weeks, we will be blessed
to be ordaining Mary. And let us just
say, there is truly something about Mary that hardly makes her ordinary but
truly extra-ordinary. When I first met Mary was where she was serving across
town at Mary Magdalene and Friends UCC.
We soon became dear friends in ministry, prayer and serving
together. My first impression of her
came through her gift from God, prayer.
If there’s ever a devoted prayer warrior, that certainly is Mary. But like many colleagues I’ve had the
pleasure to come to know, she became a victim to the system or better said,
“symptom” of the post-modern church. This
is when we are no longer encouraging disciples of Jesus to serve but
demotivating them as a sacrifice to serve the world’s culture. What we are
doing however, is tearing down the foundation of God’s work in the world. Mary’s up and coming ordination, much like my
own experiences in ministry, are examples of restorative justice. If we close
the door on God’s Word, we will eventually open our eyes to see the devastation
we started…
Let us pray
Loving and gracious Lord Jesus
Help us strive to be the attitude of
Grace and promise
In this world for Your kingdom’s
sake
May we be active love in the world
May we reflect Your peace
May we persevere our enemies and
Satan's work
To do the gospel in the world.
We lift this to Your most loving
heart
AMEN
All
Saints Sunday; November 4th, 2018; Proper 26; Year B; SOLA
Lectionary
Sermon
by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub at 12:30pm
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