Good morning, friends. Welcome, especially if you’re visiting. So good to have you here today. My name’s Alex. I get the privilege of being one of the pastors here at South. Today, we’re gonna move, I hope slowly, carefully towards the tables that you see dotted around the room. We’re going to come to this thing that’s an ancient practice, Eucharist, Mass, the Lord’s Table, all of those names that you might know it by.

It’s a place where we come to experience God’s presence, hopefully something that’s important and that you’ll catch as we continue to move forward. This week, We’ll be talking about perhaps my least favorite of the practices, the disciplines, the discipline of fasting. Last time we talked about fasting, I made the mistake of getting rid of all the doughnuts before the service.

Honestly, I feared for my life. Not because of you guys, but because of the children. I actually think they were hunting in packs. It was like a whole system that they had together. My own kids were leading it, so it’s not any blame on any of you, but there was a serious sense of outrage of what is wrong with this person and and who would do that.

I dislike fasting, perhaps because I’m what’s called a grazer. I like to just eat throughout the day. I actually have a lot in common with Peregrine took the hobbit from the Lord of the Rings when I feel this leaning this sense of God saying I want you to fast today My first question is what about elevenses?

What about lunch and afternoon tea dinner supper? He knows about them doesn’t he and of course the point is yes, he does and he might say Fast those as well, which is not what I want to hear before we get too deep into fasting a couple of things to cover This series in the way of Jesus finishes this week and we’ll probably keep living in the way of Jesus We liked it so much.

We wrote it on the wall But we’re wrapping this idea up that we live Life with God empowers life for God. So we’ve used this image all the way through of a trellis. A trellis is something that a plant grows up. And so the idea has been this like a trellis supports plant life, a rule of life.

Support spiritual life. It’s the practices, the habits that we put into place to help us to continue to flourish, to support the life that we’re living. So what’s been a joy for me in this series is to have conversations with so many of you where you’ll say, oh, there’s this practice. There’s just been so helpful to me in my life.

Or there’s this one that I used to do and I forgot about, and now I’m coming back to just hearing people say I tried this. For the first time. Those things are a joy and so what we hope that you continue to do is to put this into some kind of form that continue to function. You might ask this question.

What does my rule of life What are the things I want to put into place that will continue to allow me to flourish this? And one of the things we’re inviting you to do this week is to follow this link. This is an organization called Practicing the Way. Just one of those organizations that we just share a common heartbeat with.

They did some amazing work. putting together a whole plan of how you shape this. And when you look at it, you’re like we can’t replicate that in a short piece of time. So why not invite you guys to come and do that there? So if you’ve got a phone, you can take a picture of the QR code. You can go to southfellowship.

org stroke life. We have a link to it there, but it will take you kind of line by line through how you might. Establish that practice. Fasting worked perfectly for this week because we’re just about to enter into a season called Lent. A Lent, a time where Christians just through thousands of years across all sorts of denominations have entered into times of fasting, of withdrawing.

from something. Sometimes it might be just practices and fasting without the week. One of my favorites that I regularly enter into during Lent is during the week, like the fast time of Monday through Saturday I’ll drink only water. And then on the weekend you enter into what’s called the fast day.

So Lent is this practice, this rhythm of fasting, Monday through Saturday. And then this feasting moment. Again, something that I hope becomes important to you as we continue through this teaching. And Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent. That will run for the next six weeks. Just prayerfully, maybe the conversation for you with God is, What are you calling me?

to enter into there. If you have text in front of you, turn to Luke chapter 5,

and we’re going to start at verse

Let’s start at 27. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. Follow me. Jesus said to him, and Levi got up and left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them, but the Pharisees.

And the teachers of the law who belong to their sect complained to his disciples. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus answered them, it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. They said to him, John’s disciples often fast and pray.

And so the disciples of the pharaoh do the disciples of the pharisees. But yours? Go on eating and drinking. Jesus answered, Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them. In those days, they will fast. Jesus, as we unpack this, as we try to ask, What does it look like to live a life of fasting?

And feasting in the way of Jesus as we bring perhaps our own assumptions about that, our own dislike of fasting, our own love of food perhaps, our own love of ease and comfort, help us to come not feeling a sense of guilt, not feeling a sense of shame. But a sense of openness, a longing to hear what you have to say to us, a willingness to step into something new if it’s something we haven’t tried before.

Open our hearts to be challenged. Open our lives to change. Help us to hear your voice. Would you, as you always do, would you comfort the afflicted? Would you afflict the comfortable? Lead us deeper into your way and your heart. Amen. Perhaps I think my resentment from for fasting is that very idea I just mentioned in prayer.

I deeply love food. I consider myself a foodie. I moved from Ann Arbor, which is like the quintessential foodie town. It’s a college town, but with loads of people that couldn’t leave because they love the town so much. So they all start businesses. And so one of the half of the towns is like cool, like hip restaurants for the college students.

The other half is like highbrow restaurants. It just has all of this range of food. And so we lived there. And then we moved to upstate New York, where we could just get to the city in easy reach. So we got the food culture of New York City. And then we got this sense that we were supposed to move to Denver.

And I was excited about so many things, but concerned about the food culture here. And it turns out I was right. It’s just not, as you might expect, quite the same as those other two places. I love preparing food for people. I love when I have friends and people in my life that make great food. We were recently eating with the Switzer family and my daughter’s birthday was coming up and Sean made steak for us.

And my daughter said to my face, I would love it if Sean cooked steak for us for my birthday. That hurt quite a lot. It was a deep shot that she, I don’t think she realized the wound that she caused. I love how hospitality can invite people into something rich and deep, help them experience something that actually goes back all the way to our childhood.

Someone once said that in an ideal world, the first things that a baby experiences are a hug, the flesh to flesh of human. contact, eye contact, and then food. There’s something about that’s ingrained from that early on. The writer, Danny Meyer, who founded Shake Shack, a bunch of other restaurants said this.

He noticed when he’s dad ate at a particular restaurant that the host, the owner made him feel like the king he longed to be. Hospitality transcends the food at times. And yet. I would suggest that in this country, especially, we have a deeply complicated relationship with food as a whole. The average American eats 220 pounds of meat per year.

That’s comfortably higher than everyone except Austria. Austria are a close second, a little bit of a little bit of a surprise. But everybody else way, way behind. And at least, according to one theory, has five pounds. of undigested meat in their system. None of you are hungry now, are you? This is gonna help me push fasting to you.

The U. S. throws away about 500 billion of food per year, enough to feed the rest of the world that finds themselves to be short of food. Despite the fact, and many of us would say we go to the grocery store now, we’re like Ouch, that feels expensive, but the cost of food, in terms of our income, has gone down sharply to the right over the last hundred years.

At one point, the average person would spend 90 percent of their income on food, and then even in 1900, like 80 percent on necessities, and now has dropped significantly. But despite that, food has gotten cheaper. And considerably worse. Generally, you might look at the way that we live and say we have a deep problem with consumption.

We constantly want to take more, and it’s broader than just food. We talked about it on the level of dopamine, our desire for more and more technology, to spend more and more time looking at screens, which has an effect across the whole spectrum of humanity. It’s true of our houses over the last 60 years, our houses have got 50 percent bigger, but the number of people in them has dropped.

by 50 percent as well. We buy bigger houses and we have less people to put in them. You might say that if we’re not careful, our natural stance, and I know so many of you live generously and give to all sorts of things, but our natural stance across food, across housing, across everything might be In the words of Jack Sparrow, take all you can, give nothing back.

There’s a constant pulling in of resources. There’s an awareness of that to a degree in culture, but most of the time, the language about fasting is not on a spiritual level, but on a weight loss level. If you go on Amazon and search fasting, all of the key books are around intermittent fasting. How you can lose weight quickly by entering into a practice like that.

Christians included, fasting has disappeared from culture. And perhaps most concerningly, you might say, in the Christian world. This is a quote from John Wesley that I think I read a year ago when we preached on fasting, but it was just so good, I couldn’t avoid it again. This is what he says. I fear there are now a thousand.

John Wesley was an 18th century revivalist, so he wrote this a couple of hundred years ago. I fear there are now a thousand of Methodists, so called, both in England and Ireland who, following the same bad example, have entirely left off fasting, who are so far from fasting twice in the week. as all the strict Pharisees did, that they have not fasted twice in the month.

Ye, there are not some of you here who have not fasted one day from beginning of the year to the end. But what excuse can there be for this? John Wesley grew up with the expectation that most Christians would enter into fasting at some point, and then saw its rapid decline with his own organization.

There’s something lost there. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who led the confessing church that protested the Nazi party in Germany in the Second World War, said this, If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, If we give free reign to the desires of the flesh, we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ.

He saw a need to resist some of the, just the broad desires to get, to take everything that we could find. But there’s a tension here that I hope you’ll feel all the way through. the teaching. Because this is one of those issues that I suspect Christians tend to pendulum on a lot. What I mean by that is that I know followers of Jesus who are deeply convinced that fasting is a central aspect of their lives, but seem to have no room left for feasting.

On the other side of the spectrum, on the other side of the pendulum, there’s followers of Jesus who live only to feast and don’t have any space for fasting. But as we look into the teachings of Jesus, I would suggest that there’s a balance and a rhythm to maintain. There across both of them. So to go back a little bit before Jesus to catch the kind of Jewish framework You should have notes in front of you.

I recommend them. They’ll help you follow where we’re going We might say this when we look at the Old Testament before we get to Jesus in the Old Testament framework Fasting was an irregular practice used most commonly in times of desperation. Jewish people would fast one day a year where everybody would come together and they’d refrain from eating.

They’d do that on the Day of Atonement. That was the one place that they were commanded to do that. Leviticus 23 says this, The Lord said to Moses, The tenth day of this month is the Day of Atonement. Hold a sacred assembly and fast and present a food offering to the Lord. Do not do any work on that day because it is the day of atonement.

When atonement is made for you before the Lord your God. That was the one day. That was their rhythm. Once a year. And that shifted over the time of the Old Testament. There were ways that people would enter into fasting out of desperation. There’d be a sense of, I’ve perhaps done something wrong, something has become broken in my living situation.

Perhaps there’d be ways that they’d need somebody to be healed. And then, out of choice, They would enter into a process of fasting. They’d come before God and plead longingly for him to meet them in their situation. But by the time of Jesus, fasting had become a regular practice of denial. The Pharisees, one of the sects that Jesus seems to butt up against a lot.

He, they fasted at least twice a week. They would enter into that practice regularly. Jesus, himself, seemed to find fasting an important part of his life. Before his ministry began, Jesus enters into the wilderness and fasts for 40 days and 40 nights. A pattern that had been set by Moses, who was the first person to fast in scriptures, by Elijah, who had also fasted for 40 days, and now Jesus.

We’ll fast for 40 days as well in the midst of that 40 day fast He’s tempted by this character the devil and he turns up and invites him in the midst of his hunger to turn stones Into bread and this is the message version that just I think just captures it beautifully It takes more than bread to really live is Jesus answer.

To that, it takes more than bread to really live. Which brings us to this passage. I just love just the dynamism of it. It just moves across these table settings just beautifully. Open your texts again, Luke chapter 5, verse 27. Here we go. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.

Follow me, Jesus said to him, and Levi got up and left everything and followed him. This is the calling of Jesus first band of twelve disciples that come from all sorts of backgrounds. Some of them deep followers of Yahweh, some of them orthodox Jews, some of them people that seem to operate outside that Jewish framework.

Levi is a tax collector revolting to the Jewish people in general. Someone who had sided with the Romans, probably someone who’s taking taxes off the general populace, or maybe as people move things from one area to another. But generally, despised. If you want a modern day equivalent, it’s probably a mafia boss or someone like that.

Someone extorting the people, someone gaining massive wealth and then flaunting it in their faces by throwing huge parties. To the Jewish people of the day just an awful way to live and now in this passage we find Jesus Inviting Levi to be one of his followers and Levi responds by getting up leaving everything and following him The Pharisees would become deeply confused by Jesus approach to food.

They’d seen and heard of him fasting for 40 days, something that was out of reach for most people, was a deep kind of discipleship process. And then now, in the next passage, Inviting pharisees inviting tax collectors to eat at a table with him. Robert Karras, and we talked about this when we did the Luke series a couple of years ago, says this, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.

But what’s confusing to the Pharisees is this. He doesn’t seem to care who he eats with. To a Jewish person, who you ate with, said something about how you approved of their lifestyle, and Jesus. It seems we’ll take a meal with anybody, man after my own heart, right? If you’re making good food, Jesus is there.

In Luke chapter 5 verse 29 we see him sat with Levi and his fellow tax collectors at a table. Levi held a great banquet using the funds that he collected from the Jewish population. For Jesus at his house and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belong to their sect complained to his disciples Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

Notice the categorization It’s not enough to just say just generally sinners the sinners and then there’s the worst of sinners these tax collector characters who are Beyond a doubt worse than anybody else in the Jewish system lowest of the low and here’s Jesus Sat at a table with them. Why do you eat?

and drink with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus answered them, It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Then they said to him, John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. But yours, will they just go on eating?

and drinking. How do you explain this? To the disciples, the confusion was based around Jesus attitude to fasting and feasting. The way of Jesus, as they saw it, was counterintuitively

Jesus had fasted once, sure, but for the most part, what they saw was a man who sat and gathered with the worst kinds of people, shared huge banquets with them, celebrated with them, shared company with them. Jesus seems intent on moving the center, the religious center out towards the margins to where these people lived.

And to them, it’s just a baffling way. And this is Jesus answer. Jesus answered, Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast? While he is with them. How can you feast? How can you fast in the midst of grace appearing on this earth? How could you fast in the midst of God at work with those who are on the margins pulling them towards him?

How can you fast when God is actively at work in the world? Isn’t that, Jesus says, essentially a time to feast? A time to celebrate? Perhaps you remember the stories in Luke 15 where Jesus shares three stories in a row, one about a man who has lost a sheep, one about a woman who has lost a ring, and one about a father who has lost a son, and the ending for each of those stories is, come celebrate with me.

The thing that I have lost, I have found this is a moment of joy, not a moment of fasting. The friends of the bridegroom is a very specific term. It’s like in actual tra in actual fact the Greek translation would be more like the sons or the children of the bridegroom. But it got changed because it gives the implication that did Jesus have children, which he didn’t.

And so there’s this idea of the friends of the bridegroom as the bridal party. Imagine yourself for a moment, perhaps you’ve been invited to be the best man for a friend, or the maid of honor for a friend, and in the midst of their celebration, in the midst of their moment of joy, in the midst of their union, in the midst of this moment that’s designed to be celebration, you sit there and when the food comes, you casually reach out and you push the plate away from you and you say, I’m not eating, I’m fasting today.

Doesn’t that instantly feel wrong? Doesn’t that feel like missing out on their beautiful moment? You’re almost refusing to celebrate. You’re drawing attention to your own spirituality in the midst of this moment. That’s what Jesus says it would be to do for his disciples to fast in this moment. The kingdom of God is appearing.

It’s pulling in people from the margins. This is a time to feast, not to fast. How can he fast while they, while he is with them? It’s a feasting moment, a grace moment. Often when we hear the idea of feasting in scripture, it’s tied to that revelation of grace, that idea of God’s presence. So the question is, is if Jesus says this, why ever fast?

Why not be feasting people constantly? And perhaps the answer is in the next verse. Why would we fast? Jesus says this, But the time will come. When the bridegroom will be taken from them, in those days they will fast. The time will come when Jesus presence will be removed from them. Time will come when he’ll be betrayed.

Time will come when he’ll be crucified. Some of the commentators suggest this is the only time for fasting, but most of them would generally say no, there’s continued times for fasting as Jesus ascension has removed his presence from the church. But fasting here, according to Luke, comes out of this experience of loss.

Which is perhaps best understood. in terms of romance, or at least romantic love. When Laura and I met in 2008, we lived across the opposite side of the Atlantic. This is a bad picture. It was 2008. The quality of technology back then was way worse. And we would have these long conversations on FaceTime across the Atlantic, just hour after hour.

Sometimes one of us would just have to go to bed, and we’d leave the camera on, and we’d fall asleep. It’s that sense. Of longing, that sense of loss, that sense of, you’re so far away now. This idea, and I’m going to stick with this idea for a moment, although romantic love isn’t the perfect kind of way of explaining this but we’ll push into it because it’s all we have for the moment.

This idea is all across literature. This is the character Frederick Wentworth in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I’m half agony, half hope. Tell me that I’m not too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.

I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. It’s that sense of longing, of distance, that for certain people ends with this lack of desire to eat, this sense of just, I just, I need you, I miss you, I’m distant from you.

This language is in scripture as well. This is Song of Songs, a passage or a book about romantic love, but one. that’s read every Passover when Jewish people celebrate the Exodus on the day that Jesus, in his turn, was crucified. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. Have you seen the one my heart loves?

Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go. It’s a story that some people see the allegory of God’s love for his people. I gain this sense of longing, this sense of distance. Psalm 63 verse 1. You God and 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. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands. I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods, with singing lips, my mouth will praise you.

Somewhere in this story, in these ideas, is this sense that, this sense of longing replaces the desire. To for food that it leads to fasting somewhere for the earliest followers of Jesus This became true when Jesus died was raised and ascended heaven There was a process where fasting became a central part of their lives Where the Jewish people fasted, some people say Tuesday Monday and Wednesday, some people say Monday and, Tuesday and Thursday, the first Christians would fast on Wednesday and Friday.

They would remember Jesus death on a Friday. by fasting there, by remembering the loss to the church community. Perhaps romantic love feels like it doesn’t land where you need it to land. Perhaps your idea is that the church almost lands there too much and yet the love of the first Christians.

For Jesus was profound and rich. They died often for their faith, refused to give it up even in the face of persecution of all kinds. I experienced a moment of this kind of longing just the other day. It was a Friday and we practiced Sabbath on a Friday. And so we had one of the, one of our older kids, I won’t name them so they don’t get blamed, but they were looking after Leo, our youngest.

And Laura and I had made tea, and we were sat on the bed, looking at the mountains, just enjoying like a slow Sabbath day. Nice cup of tea, just to like just to set the day off perfectly. An English Sabbath, I grant you. And after a while, after about half an hour, I wandered downstairs to go and just check everything was okay, grab some food.

As I looked around, I noticed that some of the breakfast stuff had been left out by one of our kids, so I went down to just let them know it was time for them to come and clear it up. As I walked down, I walked into the living room and noticed Leo wasn’t there, and no other kids were there.

Opened the basement door and yelled for my older kids and said, is Leo down there with you? And they said, no, Leo’s not here. Apparently they no longer thought they were supposed to be watching him. So suddenly we start like dashing all around the house looking in every possible corner, and it’s not a big house, just wondering where this small two year old could have got to and no Leo anywhere.

And so you have that moment where you begin to panic. All thoughts of breakfast are out the window now. I’m just desperately seeking for this child that has gone missing. I’d opened the window earlier to just bring air into the house. And so I had this immediate thought, I bet this kid, this little two year old, has climbed out the window.

And so I went to the window and just unconcerned about neighbors, I just began to yell Leo. And then I heard this tiny little voice. Just call him back. Dad. Daddy. Dad. Climbed out of the window, I think, anyway. Maybe I just went out the door, but I went looking for him everywhere I could find him, and then came to our car, and Leo, as you remember, maybe from a story just not long ago, had climbed out of the window, got into the car, locked himself in again, and had been stuck there for the last 20 minutes or so, trying to get himself back out.

It was this moment of this fear of loss. This sense of where is this little kid and this joy in finding him. That, to me, is just a picture of what fasting is. It’s a sense of longing, a sense of absence, and a sense of needing for that absence to be filled with presence. Here’s the beautiful idea of physical fasting.

Fasting creates a longing. for what is physical that can, with the right attitude, turn into a longing for what is spiritual. The moment that you begin to fast, something happens inside your body, you know it well. You know it every time you have to miss a meal just out of circumstance, but there’s this constant reminder in you, I’m really hungry, that grows throughout the day.

The opportunity with fasting is this, in every moment that it grows, to turn your mind to the spiritual instead. To begin to praise something like God, the same hunger that is in me for food, the same longing in me. Would you turn it into hunger for you, for your presence? The same longing I have for physical sustenance, would you give me a longing for spiritual sustenance?

If you’re someone who would put your hand up maybe and say, I’ve just never had that kind of desire before. It’s not a thing to feel guilty about. But this is the tool that maybe gets you to that point of saying God. And learning what it is to desire you. Dallas Willard said this, fasting has two dimensions.

One is withdrawal and the other is appropriation. Withdrawal and appropriation. Never take one part without part two. Just fasting, perhaps to lose weight, intermittent fasting, something like that is, is the first, you’re trying to give up something, lose something. But it misses. the point of Christian fasting, which is to gain something as well.

Any fast which is merely withdrawal is not a fast in the way of Christ. It’s merely a withdrawal. It’s not it. It’s a turning from one thing to another. It’s a turning from the physical to desire the spiritual. Fasting has a way of bringing us face to face with the hunger at the core of our soul.

Something that we easily satiate. When we eat lots, when we buy lots, when we’re chasing after other things, the moment that we create that denial It reveals to us we’re actually hungry for something more, something real. Ronald Rollheiser said this, And so we stall, distract ourselves, drug the pain, party and travel, stay busy, try this and that, cling to people and moments, junk up the surface of our lives and find any and every excuse to avoid being alone and having to face ourselves.

Fasting, when it’s coupled with prayer, does that very thing. It reminds us that the new house may not give us what we hope it gives us. Reminds us that the new car may not do the same. Reminds us that the meal that we carefully prepared, as good as it is, may not fill the need in the depths of our soul.

Fasting and feasting become this pair then. In fasting, we express our desire for God’s presence. In feasting, we sub, we celebrate a delight in God’s presence, fasting. Our desire for God’s presence feasting a delight in God’s presence. Dan Allen, the psychologist, counselor, says this, fasting from any nourishment, activity, involvement, or pursuit for any season sets the stage for God.

To appear. It creates the possibility that God might do something in our lives. It creates space for him to act. And in that moment, we find that maybe, that’s what we’ve been desiring all along. Hasn’t been the other stuff. It’s been this God who meets all desires. Joshua Gibbs, who talks about fasting, feasting a lot, said feasting can enlarge the soul.

Feasting is only true feasting. When it completes a fast, the man who feasts without cease is simply a glutton. When I was about 19, 20, I had this really great group of friends. We did church together a couple of times a week, and on a Tuesday, we would fast. We had a prayer meeting that we were part of, about 800 or so people.

It was a meeting that we saw people healed of all kinds of sicknesses, a meeting where people experienced God in all sorts of profound ways, and each Tuesday, we were together. We would choose to fast. It was hard at times. A struggle, painful. And then on Tuesday after celebrating, after worshiping together, we all go out as a community and we would feast.

The beautiful joy in that was this fasting may be about creating desire for God, but in feasting in community, we experienced God with us in a particular way. Some level of fasting is simply this. It’s a pathway. to feasting. It’s an expression of a desire for God, where in feasting we experience him, know his presence, allow him to enter into our lives in new ways, which is exactly what this table is all about.

This is a table of presence. It’s a table where regardless of what this week has looked like, tradition tells us that God is present in a particular way. It’s a place where we come and remember God’s gift for us, but we celebrate his presence in us, his life with us today as a community. Whoever you are, whatever your story looks like, whatever this week looks like, God’s presence is here.

And you are invited to come. It’s a table of grace, just like the party of Levi, where those far from God are invited in. You are invited too. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus gathered with his earliest followers, taking bread. He handed it to each of them, saying, this is my body. Broken for you in the same way he took the cup and sharing it with each of them.

He said, this is my blood shed for the sins of the world. As long as you gather together, do the sin remembrance of me as we come to the table, we remember Jesus, his gift for us for a moment, we process processes, absence. The church is called a bride and we’re called to long for the one who will come and fulfill all things.

There will come a day where. He will come back for his people.

But in the midst of that, we celebrate the already not yet. Though he’s still absent physical, his return is destined. He’s going to come at some point. And we know that he’s present here with us now. Present to heal, present to restore, present to bring joy in the midst of grief, present to meet. Bring comfort, present to remind you that you’re loved and that you’re going to be okay.

Jesus, as we come to this table, perhaps spiritual hunger seems a foreign concept to us. Perhaps we’d say something like, church is fine, I come. But that idea of that real connection between God and I, that seems a little bit of a stretch. Perhaps for people that have had that and would put our hand up and say, I’ve lost it at some point.

There’s too much feasting. There’s too much good stuff to get hold of,

perhaps with people that delight in your presence. The beautiful message of this table is like the table of Levi. It’s open to anyone who will come. Would you stand with me, friends?

Just take a moment to confess your own needs.

Maybe there’s a confession of A need for a revived hunger, a need perhaps for more fasting. Maybe you’ve been a person only of fasting, and you need to allow time for feasting.

Maybe there’s a new practice to try. Or maybe you’re someone who’s following Jesus for the first time,

as Aaron leads us. Come to this table, take the bread and the wine. In your own space, in your own time, take the bread whenever you’re ready. We’ll come and take the wine together. Come when you’re ready.