TRANSCRIPT
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good morning friends how you doing my name is alex I’m one of the pastors here if you’re visiting it’s great to have you apparently we’re now giving rounds of applause to the announcements but maybe that’s just because aaron is back and we’re all delighted and yes you did run a little over the allotted time but that’s okay on your first week back I guess in the first service aaron rambled on stage for a while and I fixed the tv I was like well through the looking glass here we’re just switching roles all over the place usually it’s me rambling and it’s aaron fixing stuff and so maybe one week I’ll lead worship and and he’ll preach those of you that sit over in this section know that would not be a good thing many of you would leave if I led worship on any week but here we go we’re jumping into the new series I’m going to start by reading you a passage from a book called matthew if you’re unfamiliar with the bible that’s fine
matthew is one of the four biographies gospels of Jesus life and so this is chapter 22 verse 34 hearing that Jesus had silenced the sadducees the pharisees got together one of them an expert in the law tested him with this question teacher which is the greatest commandment in the law Jesus replied love the lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind this is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments let’s pray together God as we open this book that you have given us we believe as your followers that you breathed on this it is alive in a particular way it is life-changing in a particular way as we study together would you comfort those that are afflicted would you afflict those that are comfortable would you bring new stories out of old stories would you do what you so faithfully
do would you turn up in our lives and bring transformation and we ask this because of Jesus your son amen so today we get to begin a new series we’ve walked through this journey called build a bigger table for the last few weeks and now we move on to a series throughout the month of august that we’re calling what if we it’s this opportunity to come together and say what kind of community do we want to see here at south what what purpose do we have for existing what kind of community does littleton and the surrounding area need us to be if we believe that the local church is the hope of the world then a great question for us to be asking is what kind of local church is needed in this particular season this particular age now here’s where it gets a little bit interesting I get to play this role in helping lead south but really south has been around for a long long time it’s an old community so how I see my role is this is not
just creating new things but it’s this role of listening and saying well God who did you make us how can we be the best south that we can possibly be in this particular time in this particular place maybe a visual image if you get on board with visual images is it’s kind of like seeing a block of marble and and the thing is already somewhat shaped but there’s some little odds and ends that we’re still knocking around with and still moving about and we as a group of people get to say God well who are we what are you using us for in this particular time and to do that we’re going to begin with the thing that’s on the wall as soon as you walk through the door you walk through the doors here at 6560 and you see emblazoned all over that wooden wall we are a group of people we are living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus but think about that phrase for a second even if you’re new to church new to faith and your sort of stance at the
moment will be well Jesus was a great moral teacher but I’m not sure he was much more than that well he was a great moral teacher whose teachings have lasted a few thousand years and and to encapsulate that teacher’s thoughts down to one or two things that’s a difficult thing to do and if he was really who he said he was nothing less than God living as a human on earth and well wow that’s even more difficult how do we take the teachings of this master teacher and how do we boil them down to a couple of things and so we’re going to begin this process this journey with that passage that we just read Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment how do you sort of sum up everything in the old testament and he landed on the past passage that we just read but before we get too far into that before we jump into this idea of of loving the lord our God with all our hearts let me just say this so often I feel sermons
are like love letters what do I mean by them being love letters for those of you that have ever written a love letter there’s a good chance that you’ve written a love letter and never sent it the reason for that is this you were the person that needed to read it you were the person that needed to write it it’s you getting out your emotions your feelings your processing onto paper it may not need to go to the person to whom it’s directed but you you needed to say it and sometimes sermons are like that sometimes you find yourself creating sermons specifically for a community and then sometimes in the process of doing it you’re like wow this I I am the person that needs to hear this because when you think about pastoring a church what I would say I have discovered in my life limited years of doing it admittedly is this the whole of the world now tells you that to do that you have to lead and there’s truth in that there is an importance of
leadership and yet what does Jesus say to me personally he says you alex your primary role is as a follower you follow me on a journey and you invite people along and if my leading of south along with the elders and the staff if that effort gets in the way of my following us then the whole thing falls apart I first and foremost you first and foremost no matter what your position you are a follower of Jesus and nothing nothing gets to come before or get in the way of that so I’m going to throw you out a thesis to start this whole thing I’m going to let you just hover with it hold intention this is my thesis as we approach this topic what has your attention will ultimately will gain your affection what has your attention will gain your affection I’ll just leave it hovering there write it down if you want to ponder it and we’re going to jump into this passage let’s give it some more context a very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while
others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road the crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted hosanna to the son of david blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord hosanna in the highest heaven when Jesus entered jerusalem the whole city was stirred and asked who is this the crowds answered this is Jesus the prophet from nazareth in galilee up until this point Jesus in his ministry has spent most of his time on the edges the periphery of jerusalem maybe we’d talk about it as the commuter belt maybe we’d talk about it as the suburbs he has been distant now depending on which of the four biographies or gospels of Jesus life you read you get a different impression just how long he’s been teaching for when you read matthew mark and luke you might get the impression this has been maybe a few months when you read john you definitely get the impression we’re talking
about a few years Jesus has come and gone from jerusalem for different festivals but still regardless most of his time has been spent outside of the city on the peripheries he’s gained this incredible reputation and now he makes his entry into jerusalem for this final season before the crucifixion and imagine yourself a few thousand years ago when there is no entertainment there is no television cinemas imagine what it feels like when a celebrity comes to town because Jesus at this point is nothing less than a celebrity he has done things that nobody else has done he has said things that nobody else can say and so when he arrives in town the crowds that gather must be immense some of them have just heard rumors they may not know particularly who he is but others know specifically oh this is the guy that everybody has been talking about Jesus names has been on everybody’s lips and so when he arrives in
town there’s a whole bunch of different emotions for some people there’s joy celebration excitement for some people there’s danger this threat for the religious leaders Jesus is dangerous what does him coming to town mean and so they for the next chapter or so we’ll throw him as many questions as possible you know how especially in today’s world the some questions they’re really unwinnable right someone asks you a question you could ask me a bunch of questions now on stage and there’s some things that no matter what I said I would irritate some of you you’d be like that’s just not what I wanted to hear maybe now more than ever it was still true then to a certain extent there were questions that just would put you at odds with somebody and so for these religious leaders like if we can trap him if we can trick him he’s going to lose support with a bunch of people and maybe even better he’ll really annoy the
romans who are ruling and then maybe they’ll deal with him for us so these questions have this ulterior motive to them and as we jump into our passage today what we hear is this hearing that Jesus had silenced the sadducees a religious group the pharisees got together another religious group one of them an expert in the lord tested him with this question teacher which is the greatest commandment in the law now this wouldn’t have been a particularly unusual question to wrestle with in the first century in actual fact we can go back in history and we can find multiple rabbinic debates about what what what tells us what the law is how does it how do we understand it what’s fascinating is this for so many of the people that gave answer to this question they went to the most complex some of them said well if you read psalm 15 then it breaks the law down into 11 different sections if you read isaiah 33 it breaks it down into six
different sections now if you don’t know what any of those books or names mean that’s absolutely fine you may be familiar with this one because it’s been popular again more recently some of the rabbis would say if you read micah chapter 6 verse 8 well that gives you a good breakdown of what the law is he has shown you oh more to what is good and what the lord what does the lord require of you to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God for some people they would say well that is basically a good summary of all of the old testament rules 613 of them if you can love justice if you can be merciful to others and if you can keep walking with the God of israel that’s that’s a good summary Jesus is asked this question and while everybody else seems to go for the complex and Jesus goes for the simple he takes these two passages that every single jewish person listening would be familiar with
may not be familiar with micah 6 verse 8 may not be familiar with isaiah 33 but every single person listening to him would know that deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4 said that you shall love the lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind this was a prayer that a good jewish person would pray twice a day it was written on their doorposts this is how central this was to jewish way of life and love your neighbor this is finds itself in leviticus chapter 19 and in leviticus this first book a jewish boy would be taught to memorize in the middle of this chapter that’s all about what types of clothing you can wear in the middle of this chapter that’s about sexual ethics suddenly there’s this bomb this nuclear bomb of love your neighbor as you love yourself Jesus picks the two most familiar commandments and he picks the first two commandments where love becomes an imperative what do I mean by that for for
the rest of the old testament love has been used as a verb this the talk of a relationship it might say jacob loved rachel or something like that but this for the first time in leviticus and then deuteronomy is this moment where it says no you shall love this is your responsibility you shall love Jesus picks the most simple and the most familiar and he picks the two that talk about love hear o israel the lord our God the lord is one love the lord your God with all of your heart with all of your soul and with all your strength you shall love but the question I have for us there is what does it mean by love because you and I know that the word love is is maybe the broadest word that we use think about the number of contexts that we use that in I love my wife I love my kids I love my God I love my boots I love my boots I have had these boots for years and I will not throw them away even though the bottoms looked like that they have so many holes in
them I wore them on ash wednesday this is the extent of my love for this community let me just say this I wore them accidentally on ash wednesday and we did ashes outside in the snow dan and I stood for an hour and a half in the snow for anyone that drove past and these do not as you might guess from looking at them hold water I mean they just leak like crazy and I stood there in the soaking wet in the freezing cold with these boots that leak and yet did the boots go no they didn’t I will fix the boots I will continue to wear the boots and I may wear them because it’s denver and it hardly ever rains even when they’re not fixed you may see me up on stage in them and say I wonder if you fix those or not I love the boots and the boots will stay I love I love I love we use that language we use that word in so many different contexts love can be used as as a way of getting people to do things that they do not want to do it can be used in a
manipulative sense it’s so broad so varied what does it mean what does love mean and what does it mean for a group of people that were writing this 50 3500 years ago what did they mean when they said love the lord your God with all of your heart hear o israel the lord our God the lord is one love the lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength most commentators on deuteronomy would say this this is not an emotional statement it is not asking you to feel anything it’s not saying you have to feel some fluffy feeling inside this for the most part you might say is a transactional statement there is a transactional element to this relationship to give you some ways of understanding this that might be familiar some of you may have grown up saying the pledge of allegiance in school I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america you may have seen like an old drama like a medieval
period film where a knight will declare his fealty to his liege lord and what would happen historically is this they would kneel in front of them they would place their hands in between the knees of this lord they were declaring allegiance to and they would promise to love them they would promise to protect them they would promise to do everything they were told to do by them this language here when we read love has far more in common with that than it does with the language of emotion for this group of people it was essentially saying this God has done all of these things for you now you owe him your allegiance now you owe him your obedience the language in deuteronomy is so much about what you do rather than what you feel it is transactional and and as the language of judah and deuteronomy unpacks what we start to get a sense of is this God has done all of these things for this group of people and and if
they don’t hold up their end of the bargain well something bad may follow maybe judgment in terms of they may get conquered by another nation there may be famines there may be sicknesses again all of the language is transactional it’s not about emotion yet but what’s incredible is this as we start to unpack this old testament as we read some of the different authors that God calls to write we start to see that while the relationship here may be transactional there is deep deep emotion and God’s part towards his people and to track with that to learn from that we’re going to jump into a book that you may not have read some of you may this book called josiah it’s a book that you can maybe read in 15 20 minutes if you want to go away and read it it’s a fascinating journey a fascinating narrative that starts with this passage when the lord began to speak through hosea the lord said to him go marry a
promiscuous woman and have children with her for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the lord go and marry a promiscuous woman now when we hear the word prophet there’s a good chance that what we hear in the 21st century is we hear someone who predicts the future now now is that a part that profits played yes but but a better way I would suggest to understand this word profit is to understand activists so think of someone in the world that you see as an activist who protests against a certain element of society it works better for the illustration always if you hate that person because it ruffles your feathers a little bit but think about someone who you see standing up saying this is wrong in the world that is the best way to understand how a prophet worked in this time period they were people that saw society as broken and they spoke up against it but there’s these incredible moments where
God asks these prophets to do some of the most outrageous things a prophet called isaiah he tells to walk around naked for three years it’s only after the period of three years that he says something like oh by the way you’ll have noticed my prophet isaiah has been naked for a certain period of time and you think about all of the the struggle must have been there in isaiah as he’s obedient even in the midst of this sort of crazy request another prophet ezekiel is told to lie on his side for 90 days and then to roll over and lie on his other side they were often asked to do these things to demonstrate something about God’s message but but none of them quite compares to hosea whose whole life is taken apart with this one sentence go and marry a promiscuous woman and have children something about this relationship that hosea has is reflective of God’s relationship with his chosen people God says are like a promiscuous person
they have broken the relationship we were supposed to be in fealty together we were supposed to be in relationship and they’ve broken it they’ve they’ve messed it up and then he goes on in verse chapter 11 to to start to talk about the relationship now not as a marriage but he starts to talk about it in the context of having children it was I who taught ephraim that is israel to walk taking them by the arms but they they did not realize it was I who healed them I led them with cords of human kindness with ties of love to them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek and I bent down to feed them this relationship that we’re told to start with were given in transactional terms now in hosea has this deep deep emotion in it God loves this people he sees himself like a father of these children now for those of you that are parents I’m guessing if you think back you maybe have some favorite photos of you with particular kids and
I have a couple to share that helps us understand this a little bit more so I picked elena this week because I get to pick whichever one of them I want they’re not here to complain so this is one of my favorite photos with elena this is one we took underwater with my phone because my phone said it was waterproof this is what apple told me turns out if you have an iphone that is not true they are not waterproof after they leave the store so we took this photo because she said it would be really fun to take an underwater photo I love this photo because the story behind it is this it cost me a thousand dollars this is how much this photo is worth now what made it more irritating was this right after I took it and the phone essentially disintegrated uh I remembered someone had bought me a waterproof camera the year before so I could have had the photo for free but the question is would it have meant as much if it had been free I love
this photo but I also love this photo I love this photo because I know where I was in this photo now you may say very intuitively I’m I’m not in the photo no I’m not but I was stood somewhere about where this table is as this photo was taken it was my sister-in-law that took it she’s a professional photographer and she said what I want you to do is I want you to be the one that gets her attention and we were trying to get the leaves falling around us she said at the right moment I want you to throw the leaves and get her to throw the leaves as well and I want you to get her focus looking that way I remember being stood right here and the fact that that joy that face that smile is created by our relationship by the joy that we have that the way that hosea unpacks this relationship he has with his people israel is really similar to the way we may say the relationship of a father or a parent and a child it seems like so many in so many other
narratives God is stood off to the side just trying to get his children’s attention he picks these two big images these two big relationships one of a marriage one of a parent and he says this is what it’s like and then look as the passage unfolds and he starts to talk about the ways that his people have they’ve not lived up to their side of the transaction a sword will flash in their cities it will devour their false prophets and put an end to their plans my people are determined to turn from me even though they call me mo God most high I will by no means exalt them we sense that the judgment that he said would come if they didn’t live up to the transaction is coming and we’re waiting to see what it looks like and then the next verse how can I give you up a frame how can I hand you over israel how can I treat you like admira how can I make you like zoboyim my heart is changed within me all my compassion is aroused it’s like in this
moment of judgment God’s heart catches and he’s like no I can’t do it you are you are loved judgment is suspended it seems like God in his humility is willing to be characterized like this he’s like the father of a teenager out way beyond curfew that father stands there angry upset hurt rejected and yet stands in front of the screen door waiting for the headlights to come into the driveway longing to forgive longing to start over again longing to be gracious that is how this book characterizes that relationship and this book is really building to that Jesus story where ultimately God will go the the complete distance to win our hearts to win the hearts of his people as we get to Jesus taking deuteronomy chapter six verse four yes it began as transactional but now as Jesus speaks it it can be read with all of the emotion and all of the heart that God has for people just like you and I Jesus replied love the lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind as his followers are left to unpack exactly what this means and how it happens every time they seem to land on this idea we love him because of the love he first sent our way because of what we receive this is his follower john this is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins we love him because he first loved us this is what the those new testament writers land on our love is inspired by his love for us and as they wrestled with that word love they had options that we didn’t many of you may know the greek language has multiple words for love whereas we have only one so they landed so often on this word agapasis in this particular particular verse but you may know it as agape or agapeo to love as God loves to love sacrificially to love with all of your being with everything this is the word that they picked so
unique was this word see did this word seem to be that there was a time when they believed these new testament writers created it out of nothing but as we’ve learned more about this period there are other examples of this word being used but this is the word they landed on we love and reflect God’s love we might say this we are called to love with all our hearts soul and mind the one who consistently loves with all of his heart soul and mind when we we see this language of heart soul and mind it’s not asking us to spend a ton of time thinking about how the different parts of a human being is split up it’s it’s really just trying to capture everything this God loves with every part of him and we are called to love him in return with every part of us and so here’s this question for you and I what stops this happening it brings us back to the thesis I gave you to start with what has your attention will gain your affection what has your
attention will gain your affection what has our attention and how is it so easily brought to other things or how much how does it so easily focus on other things there is this famous meme that’s been around for a while it’s called the uh the distracted boyfriend and then there was the distracted girlfriend that followed it’s the hosea image it’s unfaithfulness captured in a picture it’s a guy that looks behind him to notice another girl when he has a beautiful girlfriend with him and she has this look of shock and horror in his face as he stares at another woman walking in the other direction and because we see it in both genders there is this other picture that same thing and and it’s now used as a meme to capture how we get focused on the wrong things so often but it’s the hosea picture it’s this picture of unfaithfulness what has your attention what is it that captures and captivates you and I if what has our attention will gain our
affection and we know that this passage pushes us to be people whose attention and focus is on the God of the universe who loves us what what are the other things now I think so many of those other things can be good it can be your job it can be promotion it can be the career of the business it can be the family which is a wonderful gift that can be the attention it can be the cryptocurrency market it can be the stock exchange it can be so many things it can be the hobby the interest it can be things that are good but if they take our attention ultimately from this God that calls us to know and love him then they become negative things right but as I sort of wrestled with this myself as I asked myself all of these questions about myself it wasn’t all of those things particularly when I have to sort of narrow it down to the thing that gains the most of my attention this is what I landed on this is a greek myth it’s not a biblical story can you hear
me um or another microphone would work as well or I could just speak really loud we had to do this in seminary just as a topic of interest we had to stand at the bottom of the ground and preach from the bottom of the ground just so we could feel like uh what it would be like to be john wesley or something like that it’s batteries yeah you know how to change them I don’t you’re the technology guy my first day back come on this is like a challenge sure there you go can someone climb this for us how many worship leaders does it take to change imagine if you’d still been on sabbatical two rounds of applause in one uh one one week that’s a new record for south congratulations we’re going to put you on a plaque somewhere on this day august 1st 2021 aaron bjorkland received two rounds of applause from the south community so back to this this isn’t a biblical story it’s a human story narcissus is a hunter that is incredibly
beautiful no woman can gain his affection or his attention and yet one day while out hunting we’re told he stares into a pool of water and catches sight of his own reflection and as he does as he looks at this over a period of time he becomes deeply infatuated with himself now in the greek version of the story he uh commits suicide in the roman story he turns into a flower which is a very different ending one is much more grim than the other but this story doesn’t end well and yet we see this story reflected so often in the prayer life of people attempting like you and I to walk in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus this is a prayer from flannery o’connor the catholic writer dear God I cannot love you the way I want to you are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and myself is the earth shadow that keeps me from seeing all of the moon she writes about it like this I’m just seeing the very edges I’m just seeing the fringes
and I could see more if it wasn’t for me I am the thing that gets in the way it is me it’s not the good stuff it is me and myself my self-importance my involvement with every aspect of who I am that’s the thing for most of us I would suggest it’s not the good stuff it’s the me so as a question to try and clear the pathway to help us to become those people living in the way of Jesus to move into what Jesus asks us to do which is to be people that love this God with all of our heart what might you and I do to make that happen I would suggest that the rhythm of life that you have might be something that helps you what rhythm of life might help you if we believe that prayer is fundamental to knowing this God what what rhythm of prayer might help you and I wanted to give you some ideas now depending on where you are in your spiritual journey something as simple as this might be something that you want to begin praying
regularly God if you are real please make yourself known to me it’s a dangerous pr brave prayer from for someone who finds themselves lost in that uncertainty maybe you look at a world and he’s like I’m just not sure what I see about God in this world this is a prayer that maybe helps you articulate that need or longing that the God of the universe may make himself real maybe a prayer for people like you and I if we find ourselves with our attention constantly wandering to other things a short prayer that gives us this reminder and pulls our gaze back might be this Jesus son of God have mercy on me a sinner it’s a prayer that comes from luke 18 verse 13 or is inspired by it it’s the story about a a very unreligious person who watches the long prayers of those that call themselves religious and says I don’t have that in me all I have is the ability to keep my eyes downwards and say Jesus God have mercy on me a sinner the great baptist
preacher charles spurgeon suggested this one he said I think that in the same way jewish people would pray the shema every day I would suggest every follower of Jesus could benefit from praying this it’s from psalm 63 verse 1. you got gather my God earnestly I seek you I thirst for you my whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water it’s this expression of our attention and the affection that follows God I have this deep longing that only you can fill and then maybe there’s this thought or this idea from brennan manning the contemplative priest he was asked about prayer in the contemplative tradition and he said this in our tradition the hour you spend in the prayer room is when you refocus re-center on Jesus becoming fully aware of his presence once again when this happens you can carry God’s presence with you into the other 23 hours of the day knowing all the time that he is with you he
is for you he likes you and he hears your thoughts you’ll see people and situations the way he sees them when problems arise you’ll pray in real time right then and there instead of compiling prayer lists for a later holier moment in fact your life will become that moment a continual conversation with God a continual conversation with God you and I are invited into these types of relationship and yet our attention we would probably only so often distracted prayer then becomes this decision to direct our attention towards the one who loves us completely are there other aspects to prayer definitely is prayer a list of requests is prayer an intercession for the world around us it is all of those things and yet at its heartbeat it seems that prayer is centered around relationship it is this decision to say God you in this moment have my attention you have my attention what has your attention will gain your affection when
Jesus says to this group of people love the lord your God with all of your heart all of your mind and all of your soul really what he’s saying is this this God loves you completely longs for your attention you don’t manufacture this feeling this emotion this response it is a response of us seeing the incredible love of this God as individuals living in the way of Jesus and the heart of Jesus to me begins by that fundamental relationship that that decision to love this God with all of our heart this decision to give him her attention to see the wonderful ways that we are loved and to respond in kind but it’s not just individual either is it because this series is designed to ask us what sort of community we want and I would suggest that a community full of people that do that thing is what we want I would suggest that whatever we can shape out for south in ways of vision of mission of purpose of however we want to operate in the world what I would
suggest is if it doesn’t begin by that process of prayer and that process of engagement with God then ultimately the system is flawed and broken it begins by saying God who have you made us to be it’s why we have groups like the watchmen it’s why we have prayer in staff it’s why we do those things regularly and with rhythm and seek to do them more because we long to hear from him what has our attention as a community will also have our affection as a community this is who we are made to be we are made to live in relationship with this God and it brings me back to something I said to the first service ultimately we see a world right now where so many young people are leaving the church why are they leaving the church not because of Jesus Jesus and his message are just as compelling today as they have ever been believing is because the church is seen as flawed broken and out of date and yet a community of people that love the
God who loved them and then loved the world around them because of that is just as compelling today as it has ever been our core first of all is to be that type of community what has your attention will get your affection we’re going to move to a time of the communion table I’m going to invite the worship team to come back depending on your religious upbringing your tradition you may know this thing as the eucharist you may know it as mass you may know it as the lord’s supper or multiple other names but we do it because it’s the one thing that Jesus a couple of things that Jesus gave us to do repeatedly when he left he said continue to baptize and continue to remember me through this table so what we’ll do over the next few minutes is this these guys will come and they will lead us in this time of worship this first song is maybe a song of repentance it’s a song of crying out saying God would you would you revive us would
you revive this world around us would you work in our hearts would you bring out of us all of the things that you need to bring out of us so we’re going to sing that as a community together and then I’m going to invite you in the space to come and take from this table to take the elements back to your chair and we’re going to sing a very familiar hymn to many of you it’s called my Jesus I love thee it has some old-fashioned language but the sentiment the the affection that we’re expressing is unchanging so as we prepare ourselves I’m going to invite you to close your eyes and I’m going to remind us of a passage of scripture written by a guy called paul some thousand years ago I pass on to you what I also received as a first importance that on the night he was betrayed Jesus gathered with his followers and during the meal he took bread and handed it to each of them he said this is my body broken for you in the same way he took
the wine handed it to each of them said this is my blood shed for the sins of the world as long as you gather together do this in remembrance of me this sacrament is about attention with all of the distractions in this moment we place our attention firmly on Jesus who came and gave his life for us and for the world we come and we place our attention on this story that works through deuteronomy through hosea but is ultimately moving in the direction of the God who would come to fix this well it would bring it new life who would create a better story from the old story it’s a story that you and I need and it’s a story that the world around us needs Jesus in this moment we give you our attention as individuals as a community as we sing together would you prepare our hearts amen if you would like prayer during this time ivana formations pastor dana care pastor are at the front it’s not a judgment thing it doesn’t need to be anything
wrong but maybe you need wisdom maybe you need guidance healing if you would like prayer you’re welcome to come and receive it as this song finishes feel free to come and take the elements when you’re ready take them back to your seats and we’ll take communion together if you’re watching online feel free to grab those elements
