Sunday, September 15, 2019

'Shepherding Hearts;' Sermon for Sunday September 15th, 2019 by Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins


Jesus had told His disciples in another Gospel not the one for this Sunday: “11aBlessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven…”  In another passage from the suffering servant writings of the Prophet Isaiah chapter 50 he says: “4The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 5The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. 6I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. 7The Lord God helps me; therefore, I have not been disgraced; therefore, I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; 8he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. 9It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?”

Both our Lord Jesus and the Prophet Isaiah say something profound in regard to persecution, and in greater regards to just how awfully hard the journey of the disciple is to harbor a beautiful attitude.  A beautiful attitude coming from faith, is one that understands even a speck of God’s love to share it with His people.  I haven’t delivered a sermon this way since earlier this year when my husband and I were preparing to move out of the desert of Las Vegas and back to Illinois for a transitional time to be with family, and like Abraham and Sarah, follow God’s leading to go back east.  Following the Good Shepherd is something we’re “supposed” to be naturally inclined to do deep in our heart of hearts as children of God.  Easier said than done should be the “flippant” comment from the millions of voices of the martyrs that built the church with their own blood and sacrifice upon the Lord’s altar.

That is why in some senses the Holy Spirit of the Lord called me to “etch” these words unto pen and paper…  They are still flowing from a reflective, confessing, repenting and renewing heart.  This is a daily part of remembering the waters that washed us with the Living Words of our ceaselessly Loving and Gracious Lord, Jesus Christ.  One of the Lord’s many servants, Paul, preaches from the heart through his letter we have this morning from 1st Timothy. “… the aim of such instruction that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience and sincere faith…” (and now I will add my reflection upon this): is one that comes out of the mouth of a great sinner.  The moment we even remotely think we’ve arrived as disciples of the Lord and as it has been said in Cursillo talks I used to hear in the recent past, act like “Holy Hannahs, Righteous Rays, Sanctimonious Sallys… we seem to have completely forgotten yet another profound snippet from Paul in his letter to the Romans from chapter 3: “21But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”

“We all fall short of the glory of God…;” That shouldn’t be seen with a negative light more than a truly humbling light to the reality of just who exactly we are(!), we are human!  What is the human being? But a willful creature drawn to whims of leaning more into the world of the self than the world of truth led from the heart: the Kingdom of God, the Gospel of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Using the recently learned form of Ignatian contemplation or praying/ imagining yourself in the story of the scriptures, learning and living with the Lord alongside the who knows how many disciples growing by every Word He said(!) I thought about this scene we have today from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus sensing the self-righteous grumblings of the scribes and Pharisees, shares His parable of the lost sheep and the woman who finds her coins.  He literally has to say it twice to them after each: “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents…”  He concludes to say: “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

If we’re always “right and perfect,” why then is there murder, hatred, evil, depravity and much more to hurt our ears in hearing? The Pharisees as you can imagine did everything under the sun to catch Jesus breaking their laws and their self-righteous agendas in “ruling” the people with the laws of God they felt privy to be the only recipients and interpreters of!  Really? Yikes, I say. It must be amazing to claim to understand and hear from God and know exactly what He wants His people to do(!) Whatever happened to harboring a great humility and a profound faith that is a child-like faith that can and will move mountains of doubt and pain in this one solitary earthly life?  As was once quoted in my seminary studies supposedly from Luther’s own lips… I am a rot-gut sinner BUT I have a great and glorious HOPE of reaping, aspiring, growing the “saintly” side of myself not for myself but for the Glory of God and loving my neighbor!

What is the greatest and most timeless statement, command from God that we have in the Bible that Jesus says to His disciples in Luke’s Gospel as He commissions them for the hard road ahead?: “27…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  Wow, that’s a tall order but a profound truth! But as Jack Nicholson said in ‘A Few Good Men,:’ “You want the Truth? You can’t handle the Truth!”  And its true to a degree~ isn’t it or are we perfect disciples of the Lord? The Pharisees couldn’t stand that Jesus ministered to EVERYONE.  He saw potential in everyone, outcasts, tax collectors, whores, etc.  All lives mattered to Him and guess what?  He’s God incarnate!  Fully human and fully divine… as we profess in the creeds… wrap your mind around that a dozen times~ God sandwich? Nope… do not doubt but fully accept the mystery that is Jesus Christ our Lord, period.

Today we all kinds of opinions and perspectives in Christianity to make Jesus into our own image not visca versa. But then trying to wrap your mind around the idea of the Holy Spirit of God with in has us thinking of a mini Jesus taking up residence in our hearts or the dove of the Holy Spirit following us around like “me and my shadow.” That relationship with God however is extremely important.  When and if we can ever get past navel-gazing philosophizing about God and tap into harboring a faith that comes from the heart alone…. We will truly begin to know what being and faith most beautifully mean. In His short ministry here incarnate, He took on our humanity and lived, blessed and died for our sakes.  His resurrection needs to be our timeless truth to what the love of God most certainly is.  I took up my cross and followed Him as soon as I had my conversion experience back in that fateful summer of 2003.  I’ve learned from every valley as well as HAVE moved through many mountains that’s the understatement of the century for me anyway!

Just this past Wednesday, we once again remembered the horror of what became known as 911.  We know those scenes… when those planes went in…  Can we hear and even imagine God’s tears at how much we essentially failed and gravely sinned?  Yikes, ok~ yes down from the soap box.  But as I’ve said before, an aspect of Isaiah 50’s “giving the weary the Word” or comforting the afflicted is realizing that the comfortable have to be afflicted.  A harsh truth, but the Gospel is one not to be ever sugar coated.  What makes the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ so beautiful and Amazing is the most costly Grace that God has showered upon us, period.  All God seeks from our willful selves is to respond in love back to Him and our neighbor!  It is not an exclusionary Gospel. It is a Gospel for all people, all of us! There are no labels in the Kingdom of God for He knows our hearts—He knows our “spiritual warts.”  He knows us and loves us anyway BUT as we learned from the Reformation, He is calling each and everyone of us to be freely responsible servants of His Gospel into world. 

Servants? Really~ yes.  It was from one of the church’s most recent unknowing martyrs, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said and I’m paraphrasing here, that we are called into a discipleship that is to be a prayerful obedience: God calls us—we are to DO and to BE not only for His sake but beyond the self for our neighbor! Is this too much to ask?  He didn’t have to go back to fight Hitler and try to save the church of Germany, but God called him to live beyond himself against evil.  He heard, lived into a deep faith, a shepherding faith that motivated him to “try” to move a seemingly unsurmountable mountain.  Dietrich was living into his calling as a pastor of our Lord’s church.  He had to DO something. He had to BE someone that perhaps was taking on a Goliath task, but he DID it.  If we don’t try, how do we ever break the ego and cycle of doubt that Satan laces our hearts with daily?  My life’s journey has been built by tears as well as it has been built by a joy that is all my own between God and myself.

The Lord Jesus Christ showers our hearts everyday with a never-ceasing love and grace we can never fully understand until we see His bright light shining within us upon our death beds. In the meantime, it is this faith I know and nurture in my own heart to grow in believing, seeing His Living Word and work in my life.  Receiving His love and Grace into my very self and using my voice, hands, and feet as His pastor in the world but not to be of it.  We are in the very muck and mire of the world, listen to the truth.  Even if seeing is not available only hearing…  we must not doubt but believe there is something better out there for us because of the Lord and we are to be an active part of His plans for this one solitary earthly life.  We are those willful sheep but we were given a willingness to listen, do and be because of Christ and that is the New Nature, the New Creation.  The New Nature is the Kingdom of God.  It is the beautiful attitude of the Beatitudes lived out even if it doesn’t seem possible or too uncomfortable and radical for us to consider…  We have to try.

I’ll leave you with one last image or story to think about from my early seminary days taking my first CPE Unit.  What is CPE?  Clinical Pastoral Education or in layman’s snarkiness “boot-camp for pre-pastors.” I did my first unit at Alexian Brothers hospital out in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.  Being 15 years out of the loop of studies and so forth, it was a rude but wonderful awakening for me as a “rose-colored glasses” seminarian.  Outside of one of many painfully and brutally honest “critiquing” sessions as a group, we had to write down our ideals and goals on a piece of paper and share them….  One of the women in the group made a paper puppet out of my paper and threw it back at me.  Let’s just say that did not bring out the “good” side of my human nature at all.  If that wasn’t something to still remember some 9 something years later, I still remember the tough as nails supervisor telling me basically to: “Quit trying!!  Just DO!”  He has since sadly passed away but now after a few years under my belt of ministry, I greatly appreciate what he said to me, it has new life for me and a great truth from God: Just DO it.

Doing it as a willful sinner—move those mountains by loving yourself through the eyes of God to have faith in something you may always fall short upon.  God needs us to be doers of His Word.  He needs our lives to give the weary in our own lives His Living restorative Word.  He needs us to roll with the punches while handing out the olive branches of peace.  His amazing Grace has found me, and I have been lost many a times in my mistakes and sinfulness…  At least I admit it and I couldn’t love God more than I do every single day I fall and get up to climb that hill, waiting in hopefulness over despair into a brand New day!

Let us Pray,
Loving and Gracious Lord Jesus,
Thank You for Your love that rescues us daily
To repent, reclaim and reap that New Life within us
You have freely given.
May we weave Your Living Word and its profound truth
Into our hearts over our minds.
Let us “be and do” as Your children of Grace and Promise
For You are our immortal, invisible and most Holy God
All honor and glory to You, O Christ
Forever.
AMEN

September 15th, 2019; 14th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 19; Year C; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon By: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins
Psalm 119:169-176; Ezekiel 34:11-24; 1 Timothy 1:5-17; Luke 15:1-10