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Wow.
Good morning friends. Morning. My name’s Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. If you’re visiting, we’d love to get a chance to say hello to you after the service. We are concluding a season in this biography of Jesus life John that we’ve been in for since September of last year. It’s been a long journey as we’ve gone verse by verse through this.
This text and what we’ve got to see throughout it is this moment that happens regularly when John skillfully like an incredible author, that he is narrows down a scene until it’s just Jesus. And one person and something wonderful takes place and this week it’s the turn of Peter and one of Jesus’s disciples, the leader of the group of disciples.
Often sometimes because he is asked to be, sometimes because he’s the guy that just puts his hand up and says, I’m in charge. And Peter. In our story, he is still waiting for that moment with Jesus. And what I hope happens is that we get to the end of this service at this table that we sometimes call communion, Eucharist, the Lord’s table, and we get to encounter the living Jesus for ourselves.
That’s the reason that we gather regularly. My oldest kids, my two girls were four and one when we took them camping for the first time. I know in Colorado that’s late, you guys are like, we get ’em out the door early. It’s six months and we’re often away and we’re camping somewhere, but, in Colorado or you have to worry about a bears and mountain lions.
In Michigan, we have mosquitoes and mold and mildew and all these other things that can ruin a camping trip. And so you gotta be a little more cautious. And so finally we got the mountain. I want you to picture the scene for me. Picture a tranquil campsite. It’s maybe 15 or 16 sites. There’s some RVs, there’s some tents, and then there’s a couple of camp events.
It’s early morning, it’s summer. It’s quiet. Birds are in the air. Solitary mosquito buzzes. Its way across the campsite. And then you see in the middle of the campsite, a camper, a, a popup one, not. Necessarily completely level and rather old. And from it, there’s the muffled giggles and screams of a couple of small children and the occasional voice of an adult telling them it’s time to be quiet.
It’s five six in the morning. And then finally, there’s this moment where the door opens and the two kids tumble out excited for the day, followed by a particularly sleepy adult male. This is me in the story. For the next few moments, I begin to do what’s necessary. I try to do too hard things at the same time, I try to stop them waking up the entire campsite, and I also try to make breakfast and coffee at the same time.
I struggle with the percolator, not having any of my normal. Kind of things. I have to make coffee happen, struggle with the breakfast, not having any of the normal tools I have to make breakfast happen. I remember in that moment a thought came to my mind, it was this one, I can’t wait to go home. Who even likes camping anyway?
What’s the purpose of it? It’s just living life without all the things that make life good to live. I remember as I struggled and finally had the bacon sizzling and the coffee starting to waft its smell over the campsite. I remember turning and seeing across the little pathway to the next site where a friend of mine was camping in his immaculate level trailer.
I remember looking at his face as he sat outside with his coffee in one hand and his book in the other. I remember thinking, how much does it cost to stay over there? That place looks good. And I remember the little smile on his face, and I remember what I said to him. I said, are you pitying me? And he said, no, I’m envying you.
You are in the good years right now. You just don’t realize that the good years in a couple of hours, my teenagers, sorry, teenagers will be awake and then they’ll want nothing to do with me for the rest of the day. They’ll only come back when they want feeding. These are the glor years right now, and after a couple of days of camping, sat around a campfire, enjoying the companionship of friends, the laughter, the slow pace of life.
I started to think, I think he’s right. And I remember getting back to work and I remember this thought coming to my mind. I can’t wait to go back. I can’t wait to go back and experience that pause in time. That’s what memories do, right? There’s this moment where we experience something beautiful.
And then we get reminded of it in the future. Every time now I smell a campfire, there’s this invite back to this beautiful slow place. The sense of smell is the most evocative and long lasting of the senses. It seems to continue to work years after other senses have diminished, and it has this power of throwing us back into old moments.
Just this summer I was staying at my parents’ house and my two girls were staying in the bedroom I grew up in as a kid. And I remember the window being open and the smell coming through the window in a particular way, the particular mix of flowers. And it was like, it was the nineties again and everything was great.
’cause that was the nineties, right? And there was, cartoons on the TV and breakfast waiting for me or something like that. That’s what happens when memory hits you. And maybe you have some favorite things, some favorite scents that grab your attention. Maybe it’s the smell of sourdough bread cooking and what it is to have a master baker in the house who says you have to wait 20 or 30 minutes before you can cut that bread and eat it.
Maybe it’s the smell of bacon. I used to cook it for students once a month when I was a youth pastor. And I’d have students turn up that I never saw at any other time. I had adult males. Parents come drop in. They never dropped in any other time. But the be and smell wafted its way all the way up to where the adults did church.
Maybe it’s the smell of grass. That reminds me of carefree days working on a golf course. Maybe it’s the smell of coffee, the thing that brings energy in the morning. Maybe it’s the smell of melted chocolate. I used to live by a chocolate factory. My life was very like, much like Charlie and Charlie in the chocolate factory, and used to experience the longing.
The, that created the sense of smell is the most evocative and long lasting of the senses. This is Theresa White a PhD in psychology. The sense of smell conjures up memory so strong. You feel as if you are experiencing the event again, but what happens when we’re reminded not of our best but of our worst?
What about when some kind of sense conspires against us? We see a place that bought misery. We hear a voice that was harsh and demanding all sorts of experiences that bring back the worst. Moments. I think this story today is about an event just like that. We have Peter, and in our story he’s reminded of something or reminded of an old story for him.
At passage centers on Jesus and Peter is waiting for his moment with Jesus. On Easter Sunday, we saw the experience of Mary and of Thomas, and they had these moments where Jesus pulls them back into the story. And Peter is still waiting for his moment, waiting and waiting.
And so that’s where we are in John chapter one. Verse one where we read afterwards, Jesus appeared again to his disciples by the Sea of Galilee happened this way. There’s some thinking that John 20 feels like a natural end. John concludes the story by saying if everything that Jesus did was written down, there’ll be no room for all the books that we would write.
To some people, this chapter feels tacked on, but the story in it feels to me necessary and very like the way John writes in this way, that this chapter will throw Peter and Jesus together in a very particular way. Verse two. Simon Peter Thomas, known as Didymus, Nathaniel from Cana in Galilee, the Sons of Zee and two other disciples were together.
Jesus has risen, but they’re not sure where the story goes from here. He hasn’t given them any particular mission. He’s dotted in and out of scenes and then removed himself again. So they’re waiting. They’re not in the fall group of the 11, but there’s enough of them around that tells you something is still continuing.
Some sense of what might happen next is possible. And then Peter says something that to us feels like just an innocuous comment, feels like a nothing statement, but in their context means a lot. Verse three, he says, I am going out to fish. Now to us, that’s a fun thing, right? I love to fish. Maybe you love to fish.
Maybe some of you wish you were fishing right now. It’s a great way to spend a Sunday morning. It’s no different than saying I love to golf. No different than saying I love to do any kind of activity for fun. But this doesn’t mean what we would assume it means. It’s not even like Norman McLean in the river runs through it.
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. Peter’s not doing something religious. Peter’s going back to the old thing. Jesus was invited. Jesus invited Peter. Into a story. Peter had grown up in the Jewish system. He’d been in education. There’d been moments where he was offered to step into the next bit of education, and somewhere along the line, someone had said to Peter, this isn’t for you.
Go and learn a trade. Go to your father, go to your cousin. Go to your uncle. Go to someone who can give you something to do to earn a living. And for Peter, that thing was fishing. Until Jesus walked along a Galilean beach or along streets of some dusty town and said to Peter, come with me. Follow me. I’m gonna make you a fisher of men.
We’re gonna go and we’re gonna change the world together. And now in the story that we heard sung for us, Peter’s blown in the story’s over. And so what choice does he have now? But to say, I’m gonna go and create another story. I’m gonna go back to my old story. I’m gonna buy a boat, I’m gonna buy some nets.
I’m gonna go and start fishing again for these guys in this story, I’m going, fishing isn’t just a statement of a hobby isn’t just an activity for a Sunday afternoon. For them. This is a way of life. And Peter’s return to it I would suggest for Peter, the resurrection was a historical reality, but it wasn’t yet a spiritual truth.
The resurrection was true, just wasn’t true for him. And so they go back to the old task, the old career, the old way of life. They went out into the boat and that night they caught nothing. The old way of doing things didn’t work anymore. The old task didn’t produce for them what it used to produce. In fact, that word nothing in Greek, this word here, udin is so absolute.
It almost is like absolutely nothing. They worked for hours and nothing came of it. I feel like in this moment, in this story, this group of disciples trying to do life the old way, finally come to the end of themselves. They finally get to a point where they say, this doesn’t work anymore. And just at that moment, a voice caused to them from the beach.
First four and five. Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus the resurrected. Jesus has this physicality. There’s all sorts of details, like Put your hand in the holes in my fingers, and this fooding and breakfast included, but he can.in and dot out whenever he wants.
The physicality is different from what you and I seem to experience. Jesus from the beach caused them friends, haven’t you? Any fish? No. They answered. I would suggest, as Jesus often does, that he asks a question to which he knows the answer perfectly well. It’s very rare in the story. Jesus asks a question, we think, oh wow.
He’s really looking for information. He’s already clued in on exactly where the story is, and in this moment he asks them, did you catch any fish for a reason? And they answer, no. And then Jesus makes a suggestion. Throw your net on the right side of the bone and you will find some. You might translate this piece of language as do something that doesn’t make any sense.
Think about the story for a second. They’re in a giant lake on a tiny boat. The Fisher are either there or they’re not there. They cast ’em on the left side. They cast ’em on the right side. It doesn’t make any difference. They’re still in a particularly small section of the lake. And there’s a second problem as well.
For Jewish people fishing In the first century, they fished intentionally from the left side of the boat. The right side of the boat had a steering oil. When you fish to the right, that net got caught up in the steering wall, it tore the net, and you have fish disappearing. They always fished from the left side of the boat, and now Jesus stands on the shore and says, cast to the right side of the boat.
And this kind of leaves them suspended between two possibilities. One is that they cast to the right when, which they never do, and there’s no fish, which is what they would expect to happen. And in this case, the person speaking from the shore is just a stranger wondering by someone winding up.
Some guys that of caught, that have caught nothing all night. But if they catch something, then that means all bets are off. All possibilities are on. When they did, when they obeyed, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. And there’s this moment when they’re told to do something that doesn’t make sense.
And when they do something wonderful happens. You might say it this way, the catch the fish is the result of divine direction. Meeting human obedience. There’s this moment where they do exactly what God says to do, and he produces something wonderful. And this is the story that we get from John, does this sound familiar to any of you?
If you’ve been around the scriptures for a while, if you’ve been reading, you might say, I feel like I’ve heard this story before, and you have, this is exactly the story we get when Jesus invited Peter into a journey. Peter was in his boat and Jesus asked to use his boat on the side of a lake as a teaching platform, and then after Peter had fished all night and caught nothing, Jesus says to him, go fish again.
This time you’ll catch something. Imagine what that feels like to be a guy who’s fished for years. Who knows exactly when the fish can bite and where the fish bite to have a teacher. Who’s maybe never been on a boat before who grew up in a hillside town, come down and tell you, this is where you go to catch fish.
And Peter listened and the fish were there. And then Jesus made Peter this wonderful invite, come follow me, get this bigger purpose. Come do what you were made to do, Peter. And then Peter blew it. Peter let Jesus down despite his promises that he would never do that. Suddenly Peter finds himself in a place doing the very thing he promised he would never do.
That’s Peter’s story started in the same place, and now here we are again. Peter is reminded of the first moment he meant Jesus. Have you ever had that kind of experience? Maybe you started following Jesus in school as a kid. You remember how wonderful the story seemed, how full of grace it seemed, how welcomed in you felt.
Maybe you followed Jesus in college. You had this first experience and amongst friends in a distant town, and suddenly there was a moment where your parents’ faith became your faith. You were an adult and you experienced the message of Jesus. Maybe it was this Easter, and you experienced the message of Jesus, and for a while it seemed like it was everything you hoped for, and then it felt like something changed, and then you got this scent of grace again.
The first notes of Grace played freshly again, and you were reminded of that first experience. That’s what Peter is experiencing now. This moment where the first time he met Jesus is rem. He’s reminded of that moment and it all feels so rich and wonderful. John, as often John does, makes a comment is the Lord he says.
And Simon Peter does exactly what if Simon Peter, you expect him to do, he puts on his clothes and jumps in to the water. As soon as Simon Peter heard him say it is the Lord, he wrapped his outer garment around him for he’d taken it off and he jumped into the water, and the other disciples followed in the normal way that you get to shore if you’re already in a boat.
They took the oars and paddled. What does John include this little bit? What it does in our minds is it allows us to imagine this moment where Peter gets to shore first and there’s just Jesus and just Peter for the first time since he betrayed Jesus for a moment, John does what John does brilliantly.
He creates a scene with just the two people and we wait to see what happens. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals in the scene by the beach where Jesus and Peter mean. There is a fire. Again, seems like just a detail until you remember what happened just a week or and a half ago, two weeks ago, whenever the story took place when Peter betrayed Jesus.
Let’s remind ourselves of a couple of details. Details. Remembering John is a master storyteller who does not waste details on us. Aren’t you one of this men’s disciples too? Are you, so she, you aren’t one of this men’s disciples too, are you? She asked Peter the, she is a servant guy. The lowest of the law, the least threat to Peter, the one who can do him no harm.
You aren’t one of his disciples, are you? He replied, I am not. Jesus is on trial in the scene. The scene Aaron taught us just a couple of weeks ago, but Peter is on trial too. And he fails his test. And in Luke’s version, not in John’s, but in Luke’s biography of Jesus, there’s this moment where the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.
Then Peter remembered the word. The Lord had spoken to him before the rooster crows. Today you will dis sole me three times and Peter leaves and weeps bitterly. But there’s a scene in John right after this that I wanna remind you of. And it’s this one. It was cold and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm.
Peter also was standing with them, warming himself. This scene takes place by a fire. Jesus and Peter staring at each other in the moment that Peter hits his lowest point in this scene by the beach, there is a fire. That reminds Peter of his past, his failure, his brokenness, his moment of lowest point rock bottom.
But this scene isn’t just a fire, is it? There’s something else. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it and some bread. The scene continues to talk about food, talks about a breakfast together. When you rise from the dead, you have an incredible appetite. Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish you have just caught.
So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and drag the net ashore. It was full of large fish 153, but even with so many, the net was not torn. That’s a podcast question, if ever. The worst one. We don’t have a time for that today. Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast. None of the disciples dead. Ask him, who are you?
They knew it was the Lord. Think about this scene now, how it’s set up perfectly for Peter to arrive at a fire reminding him of his past. But in this fire there is breakfast, which invites him to a new beginning. Isn’t that the wonderful thing about the way that God gave us day and night? Have you ever had a day that felt like a day and you’d be like, I’m so glad that tomorrow is a new day waiting for me.
Imagine if it was just one continuous day, and so everything that you’d got wrong, everything that felt broken was still this day today. But here with Jesus and Peter, there’s a fire reminding Jesus of his past and there’s breakfast ’cause it’s a new day with a new beginning. That seems to be how God set it up where he gave us this new day.
Lamentations chapter three, A story where everything is broken has one highlight in the middle. One brief moment of light where the writer says, because of the Lord’s great love. We are not consumed for compassion’s never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Jesus and Peter meet on a beach and there’s a fire reminding Peter of his lowest moment and there’s breakfast that reminds him it’s a new day with a new story.
John chapter one, verse 1314, and Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead. I love this story. I love the way Jesus invites Peter back in, but I’ve had a tension with it for a while, and then it felt like it resolved for me and ’cause I love you, I want you to experience the tension with it for a while, and then hopefully it can be resolved for you as well.
My question, my wondering was why didn’t Jesus just let Peter forget it? Why didn’t he just allow the story to just disappear into the past? That’s what I’d have done with someone who hurt me, someone I heard. I just just, let’s just not talk about it. No one has to say anything.
Let’s just let it go. And then I thought what does Peter need in this scene? What is it that might change the story for him? I would suggest that for Peter, he finds himself in a place called shame. It’s somewhere related to guilt. It’s this place of brokenness, but it’s worse than guilt. Guilt tells, tends to say, I’ve done something wrong.
Shame tends to say I am wrong. I’m now at a point where nothing can ever change about me. I’m the most broken. This is Brene Brown talking about shame. Shame damages the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed, and rare. And what the guard of the universe seems to do, it just seems to excel in bringing healing where healing is needed.
Carl Young said this, shame is a soul eating emotion. It’s like living in a revolving door. The story keeps coming back around. You go in and you go out and it goes round and round. Imagine Peter’s life. If this story isn’t healed, if Jesus just says, forget it every time he steps in front of a fire, what does he remember?
He remembers him at his lowest point. All of his senses conspire to remind him of the time he failed Jesus. What if the stories heal? I suggest this is Peter’s like fork In his potential future Peter’s failure will either heal. And become a scar still there, perhaps still visible still part of his story or it will fester and what will become a sore.
And Jesus, God of the universe believes deeply in healing for Peter and for us as well. And to make sure that Peter doesn’t miss any of the connection between a fire he betrayed Jesus at and a fire he’s received the goodness of Jesus grace at. He takes Peter for a walk after breakfast. When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
And Simon replies Les, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Some of the writers on this passage think that there’s a big importance placed on the type of love that’s referenced at each point in the Questioning Act, and I think that’s there, but I’m not gonna have us focus on it today. Jesus said to him, feed my lambs again.
Jesus said, Simonson of John, do you love me? He answered, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said, take care of my sheep and everyone in the room and everyone back then, I guess a couple of thousand years ago, knows exactly what’s coming next except Peter. ’cause Peter denied Jesus three times. And a third time he asks him, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
And Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, do you love me? And this is the moment where I think Peter, for the first time, finally just says, I give up. You know me better than I know me. I’m not gonna argue anymore. Not gonna try and have the answers anymore in this beautiful moment, Peter says, Lord, you know all things.
You know me, that I love you, and Jesus says, toed my sheep. I think what Peter deeply needed in this moment was a moment of confession. Not in the Catholic sense, not of a box with a priest and a wall in between, but in the sense of true confession, the word confession. This homo, it means confess.
Yes but more like at its core level, it means to say the same as. It means having a conversation with God where you say something like this, what I believe about me feels the most important thing. But I choose to believe. I choose to say that what you say about me is more important than what I believe about me.
It’s coming into an agreement saying that, God, you know better than I do. That’s what Peter does in this moment. For the first time, perhaps in his life, he says, Jesus, you know me better than I know me. All of his life, he’s had an answer. When Jesus says, you’ll betray me, Peter says, it’s not me. When Jesus says it again, Peter says, I would die before I betray you.
He always has an answer, always a reason that he can disagree. And in this moment, all of his reasons have gone and he says, Jesus, you know me. You know all things. You know that I love you. Confession at its core simply means say. The same as, and some wise person once said that confession, this agreement with God is saying that his statements about us are more true than our statements about us.
It is like a car wash for our souls. It’s this moment where all the dirt and all the stuff in crusted upon us starts to wash away. Where we suddenly experience the beauty of believing what Jesus says about us over what we say about us. Think about Peter’s story for a second. Whenever Jesus pointed at Peter’s weakness, Peter replied, not me.
You’ve got the wrong person. It’s not me. For the first time, Jesus points at something, Peter says, I agree. All things. You know that I love you. That’s this part of the story. CS Lewis, the great writer thinker, was once asked, what’s the most important conversation that we have each day? The expected answer was that he would say, the conversation we have with God and CS Lewis replied, no.
It’s the conversation you have with yourself before you speak to God. ’cause in that conversation with yourself, you decide whether you’re going to be honest and authentic with God. Or whether you’re going to meet God with a false face, a mask, an act, a pretense. In this story, Peter finally comes with none of the cover stories.
Comes with none of the explanations. None of the caveats. He simply stands in front of Jesus and says, Jesus, you are right about me. You know all things. You know that I love you and Jesus, as Jesus does, invites him into a grace story like he does in with a whole crowd of people in Matthew 11. Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion?
Come to me, get away with me, and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest, walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or real fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. This is what Jesus invites Peter into.
He invites him into grace, fresh and new, and suddenly the old dissonant notes of his failure start to fade away. Suddenly the story of a fire is redeemed, not as his failure. But is this moment where Jesus met him with breakfast and Jesus finishes with one more thought. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted.
But when you’re a old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go. Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Jesus says in coded language, in the future, you’ll have a chance to not deny me. And in the future, you won’t fail.
In the future, you’ll stay true to your word, and in the future, Peter, you’ll die for me. Two more words left from Jesus to Peter. And these might be my two favorite. Remember the story, Peter, a fisherman invited in to something bigger, something more with two words. Follow me. And in this moment, in this story.
Jesus ends with his last two words to Peter on earth. Follow me. Think about what that means to Peter in the moments where he wanders. Am I still included in the story? Is there still something more for me than fishing? Am I invited in? He gets Jesus words, follow me, ringing in his ears for the rest of his life, and that’s the grace of Jesus.
Some years ago I’ve shared with you some of this story. Some years ago I was volunteering in a big youth ministry. I was back in England. I was 19, 20 years old, and I was asked to run some events by my friend Matt, the youth pastor. And at the same time I was addicted to pornography, just really struggling and finally got to this point where I got all my courage up and I went to my boss and I just owned up, and I just said, this is the story.
And what I expected him to say was this, okay clearly you’re not fit for this kind of thing. When you go home in a couple of weeks, we’ll get together and we’ll work out a plan to try and fix you, and then you’ll be okay. It’s not what he said at tour. He listened to me for an hour, shared stories about how grace of the grace of God had worked in his life about his own failures, his own struggles.
And then about an hour later, he looked at his watch and he said to me, aren’t you late for the event you run? You better go and do your job. To me, it was like the words of Jesus follow me. It told me that the story I had weaved for myself, that I must be outside of God’s grace, not good enough a failure.
The shame story that Peter tells himself in these moments was suddenly recast as something else. It became a great story. I think that’s what confession does in the moments we confess, we feel like we have to cover up in the moment, sorry, in the moments we don’t confess, we feel like we have to cover up.
And then when we confess, we find that God had us covered all along, and that’s what Peter discovers today. Some questions as we come to communion. Where do you experience guilt or shame? Is there a story for you that you hold that says that you’re not good enough, that you’re more than guilty, but you are bad, wrong, broken.
What story do you feel stuck in are the moments where your senses bring back a memory, a building, a person, an action, something that’s on repeat for you that feels like a revolving door. You walk through it and circle and circle where might you need confession? Is there something that you say about yourself that is different to what God says about you?
And is there a moment where you might agree that God is right and you Aren? What might it take for you to believe in Jesus or to believe Jesus? That’s the invite. It’s why we come to this table and remember, we remember that in his goodness, God says anyone can come. All you have to put your hand do is put your hand up and say, Jesus, I believe what you say about me.
For Aaron sings this beautiful old song, have some words I’d love us to say together. So when you say these with me. Merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed by what we have done and what we have left under undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We justly deserve your judgment For our sake and the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us. And lead us so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways that lead to glory. Amen. When we say things like that, we’re not trying to pressure God into forgiving us.
Simply saying yes to what he already offered. And what he already offered is at this table. It’s in the story that we received from the beginning, that on the night he was betrayed. Jesus gathered with his disciples. And taking the bread. He handed it to each of them and said, this is my body broken for you.
And the same way he took the cup said, this is my bloodshed for the sins of the world. As long as you gather together. Do this in remembrance of me. And that’s what we do. And our moments that are hard, moments that are easy moments when we walk in limping moments where we walk in leaping. Moments of gladness and joy, moments of grief and sorrow.
We come to this table and we remember Jesus and what he says about us, and we acknowledge that it is more true than the things we might say about ourselves, and we are grateful. As you come forward, please take the bread and the cup, take the bread whenever you’re ready, as a personal moment, and I’ll come up and we’ll take the cup together.
