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During this third Sunday of Lent, we
are walking once again into the meta valley, but we are reminded of the
Israelites in the wilderness with their mana and their water miracle from the rock.
The Israelites still found a way to complain about everything anyway and didn't
understand that you can't test the rock. The Corinthians in today’s little
snippet from Saint Paul were in a similar situation. They were definitely, as
my mentoring pastor had a wonderful joke for them, being the “Las Vegas’
people.” If there was any kind of temptation to dive right into, yet alone any
kind of challenge to the heart to turn to God, the Corinthians didn't really want
to have anything of that.
2000 something years later, we still
haven't learned our lesson about the “Brussel sprouts” subject and yes, I once
again will remind everyone of my disclaimer: if you like them, I'm sorry.
Returning to the thought, that “Brussel sprouts” word is repentance. Kind of
makes you cringe a little bit, doesn’t it? It's that uncomfortable aspect of
the truth of the Christian Journey. God continues to call us to turn our hearts
to Him and realize His true plan and purposes for our journey. I believe
though, there's a little Murphy's Law going on with the scriptures we have this
Sunday. This is in the sense, that I see once again that “easy button” desire
of the Corinthians as well as the object of Ezekiel's text this morning, the
house of Israel, are trying to find a shortcut through that valley.
There is no shortcut through the
valley. We all must go through it together. Hopefully not the same as the
Israelites first in the wilderness complaining after manna and complaining
after the water from the rock. Hopefully by where we are now, we realize the
mercy God has given us and the infinite number of second chances. Perhaps we
are like those withering fig trees in the back of God's Garden, God’s Vineyard?
There is no shortcut to Eden, and we must not put Christ to the test, Paul says
this very clearly. Sometimes hope seems like a miracle that passes us by
because we fail to realize it. The saying however is truth: Hope indeed, spring
eternal because we can reflect, confess, repent and renew. God gave us this capacity.
When we really are in the thick of
the valley, when suffering seems to be overwhelming our situation and we seem
to be reaching beyond ourselves for some clarity and definition... the Murphy's
Law challenge is not to justify the self over and above God. We love to fall
prey to that every time we try to rationalize God’s sense of timing and our
sense of “priorities…” Job had to learn that the hard way in the sense of not
getting frustrated and despairing. His friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad
the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite; who talked way too much during most of
that wisdom book tried in vain to convince him to stay encouraged in the face
of evil and misunderstanding. “Nice guys finish last” is like that “little
violin of comfort,” when we are in that place of suffering. There aren't always
going to be all the answers in front of us, especially when we are clouded by
our own way.
Being in the world and feeling
overwhelmed by the world, can blind you to the gifts that God has given you.
These are gifts that He has given you to share for His sake and for the benefit
of others. If we let the evil of it overwhelm us, we do not produce fruit. We
do not produce that spiritual fruit of praying even in the face of something
that doesn't make sense to pray about or for, I should say. Last week I had
mentioned in my message that I have been praying regularly in the middle of the
night to the delight of my two kitty cats, Issy and Louie. During that time of
prayer, I've also been repenting. I have been repenting of feeling anxiety and
fear. I have been repenting of way too many tears of despair and
frustration. What the devil wants you to feel death. He wants to crush
your spirits, your momentum. He wants you to feel despair. He wants you to be
discouraged and most gravely, he wants you to become indifferent because things
cannot change, seemingly.
Things can change and do change. Every
single day forward from dawn to dusk is change. Why then, does it seem that the
human can’t change and turn the heart, the soul to God? I believe we just don't
understand the wideness of God's mercy. We don't heed that warning, like the
Corinthians didn't heed to, in order to turn off the old nature and reap the new
or die. It does sound black and white. It doesn’t seem like there is any leeway
for us to be comfortable in adapting. We are the middle, but we are given a
choice by God in the sense of “choose or perish.” We test God quite often
though, not only in just questioning the reality of Him being everywhere with us,
but we test him by not believing. We test Him by not having enough hope that we
can get through our times of trial. It's like we don't want to make it out of
that valley, we give up too soon.
The words that Saint Paul was saying
today as well as the words that Jesus was saying were taking people out of
their comfort zones, that's for sure. But who's really doing the afflicting?
Perhaps we're the ones that are truly guilty here. We have all been submerged by
the waters from the spiritual Rock of Christ. We are His disciples and we need
to strive for righteousness and peace to embrace .... We need to strive through
the challenges we don't think we can handle and let God guide us. We need to
let Go, and let God, even when we don't trust enough in His guidance at the
moment, because of our suffering and our poor decisions. We must in many ways,
like this very beautiful picture I found online of the crucifixion: “Believe in something, even if it means
sacrificing everything.”
The last time I saw that picture was
the last time I felt greatly challenged by where life was going, and the road
seemingly being truncated, and my spirits seemingly crushed. God wasn't done
with me yet, though, either. Taking me out of my comfort zone and making me
experience things I really wasn't ready to experience… that was the deepest
part of my valley. This is when God encourages you to think of those
things the truly make us freely responsible servants of the Gospel. What do I
mean by that? God encourages us to think of those waters as christening our
discipleship journey into the world, that we are spiritually not to be of. We
are to be an ongoing works of progress and part of its change to His kingdom.
I immediately had two images flash
into my mind. Well, one was a song, I should say, from the musical, ‘Godspell’
that we heard as our prelude this morning, ‘Turn Back, Old Man.’ The
other image I had, that I thought was very interesting incidentally to our
scriptures today, is that we literally live in a giant valley, the Las Vegas
Valley. We're like in a giant bowl trimmed by mountains as well as sprinkled
with God’s greenery, here and there. It's so bizarre that it's been such a
rainy winter and now we're supposed to be in Spring. It's still chilly here for
Las Vegas. Coming from the Midwest, I still like joking about that though. I
know that's not a nice thing to do to tease friends and family back east. I am,
however, happy for the plants. They've been getting a second chance you could
say with all this strange climate change related weather.
God reaches down to us in our
spiritual valley, in just the same way. We don't realize when he is trying to reign
in our hearts with His steadfast love and endless mercy. We become indifferent
because of persevering in the faith at times. It is all too tempting for us to
become easily discouraged in how our neighbors choose to treat us at times. We
wonder about our children. What kind of world are we leaving them with, when we
will be gone someday? Just like looking at one of those turn of the century
rise of the Communist Manifesto pictures of Stalin and Lenin, I saw a series of
paintings, in of all places, a public school that championed radical ideologies
you could say. I will go no further with that but do wonder what are we
teaching our children about survival? What are we helping them to “prioritize” beyond
themselves?
Some people know I've recently been
doing or beginning, some light substitute teaching in grade schools I really do
think I have a guardian angel, because on my very first day with only a scant
amount of information, I am sent to a troubled school that not only had special
needs students, but had students as well with a propensity towards violence....
I could say I dodged a bullet that day, because they had a field trip that
afternoon to the ‘Spring Reserves,’ in the middle of the valley of Vegas. I've
only passed by the ‘Spring Reserves, every time I've buzzed down Valley View
Boulevard to make a shortcut to Sahara to help drive my husband to work
downtown. It was like a “Mini Field Museum of the Wild West” and the outside
was even just as interesting. There were many exotic desert plants and flowers
and related all over the grounds. I was with four other teachers, thanks be to
God(!) who knew the children very well. They were well seasoned to help people
as well as I believe that they saw where God truly needed them to serve. The
very next day after that, I was assigned a kindergarten class. This was another
troubled school but not with special needs students, with regular neighborhood
children. Now I know I've had 20 years plus of cats as well as I've been told
Ministry is like herding cats and I am probably an expert at it now… But
dealing with 20 screaming little children that perhaps barely go past your knee,
all asking questions different questions at the same time, I think was God's
test for me that day.
Saying to the self: “Okay you love
all of God's people even the little one. You have been serving people for a
couple of years now. You have been shaping your life to God's mission in this
world(!)” Well I'm not going from Mother Teresa God, I'm sorry 😊 I have lots of patience. I have
lots of persevering qualities, but I was being stretched a little thin there
the other day. Did I start going back there and acting like the Corinthians in
pushing the envelope with being self-righteous about it or indifferent and
arrogant about well I'm just a Minister doing this temporarily till I get
greater venues of service… If anything, God taught me more about Ministry with
thinking about our young people those being born into a whole other wilderness
that we may never see completely in our lifetime.
From afar, I recently wrote a giant
paper on critiquing my doctoral colleague’s program Parish in Minnesota. I have
no idea the youth that she is serving there in Suburban Minneapolis/ Saint Paul
Area. But it is interesting what we try to do to help our children bear
spiritual fruit. “God is faithful,” Saint Paul says, “and he will not let you
be tested beyond your strength but with the testing, He will also provide the
way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Great words of wisdom there,
Paul. There is no “easy button” but God does keep trying to knock on the door
of our hearts to open and turn down the path He needs us to. This is in order
for us to realize personal growth and perseverance as freely responsible
Ministers of the Gospel. You have heard that as an echo, “freely
responsible Ministers of the Gospel.” We were all given a task. We were all
given a challenge. It's even greater than just thinking it's the human journey
for we are Disciples of Christ. We are also His children of Grace and promise.
Within our Public Schools, there
seems to be a lot of indifference to the things that fall between the cracks. Even
just a few days of serving in that setting made me wonder: No, we can't be “Mother
Teresas” in that environment, that's for sure... Though the lady I was
substituting for in that kindergarten class… I really do think she must be some
special kind of saint. Here are the children of Grace and promise, though the
world has stifled that voice embracing the grace and Joy of being a part of
God's creation. That voice embracing Grace and joy of being a part of God's
creation has been replaced by worldly models of delusions of
"success," and the "right" way of thinking. We are in
the real world that needs to radically embrace and love all people, this is true.
As Disciples of Christ, we are to stretch beyond that and think of the whole of
the world, that indeed, we can move mountains because of Christ.
When we think even further about
these young children, we could perhaps see them as the young saplings in the
vineyard that God has planted in the world. From the womb till they return to
dust again someday, there is a lot that we are challenged by to do to help our
children grow. We need to help our young people through their valleys. We
should never sugarcoat what we think they need to really learn and grow from.
By the time they are adults, they still will be growing and that needs to be a Gospel
truth continually taught. The season of Lent, as we get further into walking
that meta valley together, God challenges us about our continual need to grow
our continual journey to turning our hearts to Him. Beyond the meta valley is
the Kingdom of God, where righteousness and peace will someday, once again,
meet and embrace. May we shine with God’s hope leading the way!
Let us pray
Loving and Gracious Lord Jesus,
As the problem of evil and death
continue to challenge us daily
Help us to grow beyond that with Your
living and Restorative Word as liquid grace to the soul.
Help us to embrace all good gifts
that You bring
Help us to have our light shine to bear
good fruit to others.
We lift our hearts to You for Your
ever-flowing grace and mercy. Amen
March 24th,
2019; Third Sunday in Lent; Year C; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon by: Reverend
Nicole A.M. Collins
Psalm 85; Ezekiel
33:7-20; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub at 12:30pm
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