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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
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