Let’s give them a round of applause as they leave.

My name is Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. If you are visiting, we are delighted to have you here.

Let’s clap these guys as well.

As I was saying, oh, if you’re visiting, welcome. I’m gonna invite you to stand in this Advent season for the reading of the words. If you’ll stand with me, I’d appreciate it. I’m a little nervous about two things. The first is that this is the smallest print copy of the Bible I have ever seen. And I hope I can read it.

And I know if I can’t, I’ll have loads of you bringing me reading glasses and things, thinking that you’re funny. The second is that I have chosen during this Advent season to read the sermon to you as opposed to pronounce it. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is that the language when you read is just so much more precise.

Usually when you’re not reading, you have an idea of what you want to say, but you recognize that you adapt as you go. It’s just not really feasible to memorize 40 minutes every single week. And so to a certain degree, what you’re going to hear is read this morning. That could be wonderful and deep and weighty.

It could be less good than normal and as someone who, if I’m honest, one of my big parameters for speaking is don’t be boring. Don’t be boring. Don’t be boring. It creates some nerves for me, but beautifully, this is Jesus words, not mine, and so we’re gonna be okay, and you’re gonna be okay. And if you’re bored for a week, I’m okay with that.

I don’t mind. Revelation chapter 5, if you want to read along with me. Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaim with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?

And no one in heaven or on earth was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, Weep no more. Behold, Now, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. And between the throne and the four living creatures, and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain, with seven horns, with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out from all the earth.

And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty four elders bowed down before the Lamb, each holding a harp and a golden bowl full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song.

Saying, worthy are you to take the scroll, and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God. From every tribe, and language, and people, and nation. And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth. Then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders and the voices of many angels numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.

These are the words of God for the people of God and for the world. And we reply, thanks be to God. And you may be seated. Most importantly, or no, I’m not second really important. Today we begin our advent journey. The first candle has been lit. We picked adults to light it this week. And it seems like there’s a couple of good reasons for that.

First, this community and this story we celebrate is for everybody. whether young or old, and we want to make space for more than just nuclear families. And secondly, and perhaps most importantly, we were not quite ready for the chaos of children on stage this early into the season. Although I wonder if we thought that through.

If you do burn down a building accidentally, it seems like it’d be nice to have an extra week to find another one to use before Christmas. Advent is the first season of the Christian calendar. Today we begin the telling of the story again. Counterintuitively, we tell the story with the end first in mind.

That a new month comes first as we wait for, not as the average Trader Joe’s Advent calendar will tell you for Christmas, but for Jesus return. It means that Revelation is a wonderful text to be in. Just catch hold for a second of this first. Passage in Revelation, look, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him and all people on earth will mourn because of him.

So it shall be. Amen. Traditionally, Advent brings a focus not on the birth of Jesus, but on an expectant waiting of the return of Jesus. Through this time, we’ll primarily use Revelation as a place to jump off from. We’ll look at the ways that Jesus is described in this book and then we’ll track backwards to see how he’s described in the same way all through scripture.

My hope is that we get to experience Jesus in new ways and to feel again his story through his multifaceted person. I love story. I’m convinced with Joan Didion, spoiler alert, there’s 10 of that slide all the way through, it’s just gonna keep coming. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. That was her heartbeat.

My longing is to be a storyteller for Jesus. I love how stories shape us, but I’m aware at times we live by some rather substandard and poultry stories. I said poultry, not poultry. I know you’ve got Thanksgiving on the brain. They are different words for the uninitiated. Some of you may know. I enter into this rivalry with a ton of joy.

And I don’t actually show you this Michigan vs. Ohio State slide to gloat. Biggest underdog since 1978, in case you knew or didn’t know. Or to rub salt in a wound. Predicted to lose by three touchdowns by some people. But to observe something I heard in the aftermath of this. I spent perhaps too much time on different social media platforms watching Ohio State fans melt down with just annoyance at the state of their team.

It was fun for a while and then I came across this video. Where a man with a straight face finished with these words. He said, I wish I was dead. I really mean that. I wish I was dead. I really mean that. With a passion he said these words. We choose some stories. We have a tendency to hang our hope on stories that when it comes to it don’t actually matter.

very much at all. Now, ironically, stories like this one, they have a clear weakness to their grip on us because eventually we come to a point where something big and important happens in our lives and we realize that Michigan versus Ohio State doesn’t matter as much as we thought it did. It still matters, of course, but just not as much as we might believe at different points.

Whereas some of the more pernicious stories are harder to see through. I found this story on TikTok recently that I thought was fascinating. Says this, I used to love summer, but then I realized that summer can be any time of the year if you have money. I had 35 days of summer in Japan this year. Now I love money.

Now I love money. It’s a person that feels like they found a cheat code to life and actually, in the end, that is just as unsatisfying as Michigan versus Ohio State. Maybe some of the stories seem more noble. The story is my family. It’s all about owning a house instead of renting it. It’s all about having a nest egg.

All about having kids that are married, maybe grandkids. All about having good health. Or maybe they’re the aspirational alternatives to each of those. Where you find yourselves living to see them happen. All, I would suggest, are insufficient stories to ground in. Good things. But never enough. A little while ago, the BBC published a list of the most influential stories of all times.

These are just a pick of some of the top 10. Harry Potter. Story about a kid who’s miserable because he lives in a home where he’s much happier when he’s pursued by a dark wizard for seven years and nearly killed repeatedly. Interesting. Hamlet. A story of a guy who is miserable and then becomes more miserable And then more miserable.

Again, maybe not as influential as we might think, Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights. 1984. Wait, is that a story? I thought we were living that story. Is that not where we are now? Frankenstein. The Odyssey was the number one. The Odyssey was the most influential story according to the BBC. One poet writing about it said this, I rarely find someone, really anyone, who doesn’t know some part of this story.

The Odyssey. The idea of a lost man who can’t get home after the war. The woman at home with the suitors. Everyone can tell me some version of it, which is to say, it lives in them. The BBC in the article said, It’s not a definitive list, this is just a starting point aiming to spark a conversation about why some stories endure, and how they continue to resonate centuries and millennia after they created.

But perhaps you, like me, might say there is a story that seems more influential than any of them that is missing from the list. Nowhere did they have a space. for the story of Jesus. Maybe there was a caveat in which they said that it was fictional stories only. But the story of Jesus is in itself a story.

Scripture is a story. Sixty six books, sure, but written by multiple authors, all telling one cohesive story that has a flow and it has a pattern to it. This is a kind of an adaption of Freytag’s triangle, which kind of describes story as something that begins with an inciting incident and has a climax point.

But most people have started to say that builds and builds with all of these tiny little circles that eventually reach this one point that is ultimately the moment of the story that we are waiting for and then finishes with this beautiful denouement. That is what scripture does for us.

Christianity is a grand story where events are recorded in Scripture can get forgotten. When we focus all our energy on looking at the Bible from the outside, trying to discover what rules it might give us, even though that can be an important and necessary study, but we never consider placing ourselves inside the story, asking what it is inviting us to.

It is this kind of study that takes in what God has been up to for a long time. Bernard Anderson, the Princeton theologian, says this, many people, like any awareness of the Bible as a whole, they knew a few snatches here and there, like the 23rd Psalm or the Sermon on the Mount, but are very hazy, if not completely ignorant, about the larger dramatic context within which these favorite passages have meaning.

We all need to stand back from the trees, So that we can see the woods. C. S. Lewis once said this, We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed. Sermons and teaching that focus only on instruction forget the fact that sometimes we just need to be reminded of how wonderful this story we have been invited to is.

Perhaps reminded that this story is for us. God does the working out of the story, and it forms us. It is supposed to transform us into the image of Jesus, but it is not primarily about us. Individually, at least. We are not the center of the story, despite our inclination to make ourselves the center of everything.

A step back into the book of Revelation, there is a reason that it is not, it is called the revelation of Jesus Christ, not the revelation of Alex Walton, not the revelation of anyone sitting here. The story primarily is about him. I recently, in a podcast, shared a hashtag I love called Main Character Energy.

It’s when somebody exhibits an energy that suggests that they are the center of everything. My favorite is of a girl skating through the airport, coffee in hand, pushing her luggage, dressed all in white. She seems like a main character, but the truth is in life, you’re not the main character. And this is important both for your interpersonal life here now with those around you, and for your ability and my ability.

to live out the way of Jesus. It’s easy for us to treat our kids, spouses, grandkids, roommates as side characters in our grand story. To believe that we are simply more important. That our present comfort and convenient safety and security are God’s primary concern in this world. And yet they aren’t. We often need to be reminded of the story, be reminded of what the triune God of Scripture has done in bringing it about, and be reminded of how good the story that we are here to share is, if only we could get away from our petty squabbles, our irrational fears, our crippling narcissism, to be able to live it out compellingly.

Regularly, my wife and kids and I sit and watch Pride and Prejudice together. Any Pride and Prejudice fans in the house? Usually there’s a few, yeah, I love it. So they like the movie version. I’m more of a miniseries BBC 1990s, that’s my kind of vibe, but I can deal with the movie if I have to.

There’s one compelling moment that I’d love to share in the denouement. That’s when Elizabeth Bennet says of Mr. Darcy to her skeptical father, if only you knew what he has done. To which the father replies, what has he done? On a much grander level, this is the Christian story. People sharing excitedly and heartfeltly what Jesus has done and waiting for people to answer in return.

What has he done? It’s this retelling that allows us to experience the good God of the universe, lest we fall prey to the false replicas that so easily. Grip our souls. Brennan Manning noted these. The splenetic god of alternating moods. The prejudiced god partial to one denomination. The irritated god, disgusted with believers.

The warrior god of the just war. The fickle god of causistic morality, tut tutting over every little weakness. The pedantic God of the spiritually sophisticated. The myriad of gods, he said, that have imprisoned me with fear. All fall away when we capture the heart of the God of Scripture who loves over all other things.

Hans Urs von Balthasar said this, Love alone is credible. And God loves us not such as we are by our merit, but such as we will be by his own gift. And it’s that love that in this story, God has lavished on the world. The morning, this morning, at the beginning of Advent, my hope is that we simply come to this table here, retelling that story.

Counterintuitively with Revelation, we begin. our retelling of the denouement. In Revelation chapter 5, we return to a courtroom drama. And to those under the rule of the Roman Empire, the scene would have contained this surprising twist. High and lifted up on the throne in the center of the scene is not Caesar, but Yahweh, the God of Israel.

To anybody still mourning or celebrating an election, there was only one throne in the scene. Its inhabitant remains unchanged, regardless of how you feel about the result. In the midst of this drama, there is a mourning. There is no one who can act in the language of revelation, none who can open the scroll.

On one hand, we are invited to watch the conclusion of the story, but on another level we are watching a heavenly, timeless drama of salvation unfold. From this we might draw together Scarlet, threads of Scarlet that tie together scripture from all over that I hope bring us to this table today. Then one of the elders said to me, do not weep.

See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals. Then I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

Then he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying, You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

You have made them to be a kingdom of priests, to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth. Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and 10, 000 times 10, 000, they encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. And in a loud voice, they were saying, worthy is the lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.

This is this grand conclusion to the story. But for a moment before we come to this table, let us think about where that story has come from. In time immemorial, the good God of the universe purposed to make himself a people, beings that he could bring into relationship to risk himself upon. With incredible trust, the God of the universe risked his sense of completion upon human beings.

These first human beings were of unimaginable glory, carrying the imago dei of their creator. In C. S. Lewis words, you were in your real nature, and you are. A being that if you could see yourself, you would be tempted to bow down and worship. The centerpiece of this creation falls in Genesis chapter 3, and the first time the God of the universe experiences loss.

His question of Adam, where are you, is not a lack of knowledge, but a loss of relationship. The God who has existed in perfect union of Trinity has a peace missing, and death, not intended for humanity, enters their story as the cold, relentless, uncertain ending. For the next eight chapters in the book of Genesis, we see God interact with humanity as a whole.

But from Genesis chapter 12, we see God begin to relate through one man, Abraham. He and his offspring are a chosen people, designed to bring about and reconnect God with his current creation. After much waiting and wandering, Abraham receives a son to continue his line. In Genesis 22, we have a complicated story in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son.

While this story appears to function as a polemic against other nations child sacrifices, the central point at its conclusion is that instead of Isaac, there is a substitute. God provides just as Abraham said he would. But perhaps, in a way, he dared not believe. In verse 1 and 2, God says to Abraham, Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah.

Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain, I will show you. In the midst of their journey, and hold in your mind for a second that the Isaac we imagine sometimes as being six or seven is probably eighteen, twenty five, thirty, something in that region. During the journey, Isaac questions, the wood and the fire are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. In the final verses, Abraham looks up and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place the Lord will provide and to this day it is said on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.

I brought for you some of these. that took some time to prepare. I’m gonna throw them out to each section. I want you to hold onto these as threads. Someone at the front, if you can grab hold of the start, that’s pretty nutty, and pass it all the way back. Send it all the way to the back. And we’ll think about this as the courtroom scene of Revelation chapter five, and each of these strands are strands that work their way from Revelation chapter five, revealing something of the character of God.

A misunderstanding of sacrifice is that the priest is the one who takes the life, but this is rare, it is almost the one for whom the sacrifice is given. As Abraham’s descendants grow in number, they endure hardship. Their fortunes take a surprising turn when after being offered favor and food in the land of Egypt, they find themselves to be slaves.

300 years later, God reenters their story, revealing himself by the covenant name Yahweh. And through his deliverer Moses, they find themselves walking out of Egypt into freedom. In their final moments in Egypt, they are given a command. In Exodus chapter 12, our second dropping point in the story of scripture, we read that the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, this month is to be for you the first month, the last month of the year.

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, each man is to take a lamb from his family and sacrifice it.

Take a lamb for his family and sacrifice it. The blood is placed on the door, and in this moment of danger, when the life of each firstborn is at risk, death passes over. Take the blood and put it on the sides. On that same night, I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.

I am the Lord, the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass. over you. Death passes over, but just for now and just temporarily. As Abraham’s descendants now called the Israelites or Jews find their own space to dwell, they are ruled by judges. Despite God’s rescue, the brokenness is evident to all.

This nation enters into a cycle of sin followed by inevitable judgment. When each cycle, the sin gets worse and the need for redemption gets greater. Through another surprising turn, the kingless nation ends up with a king. Although flawed, their most famous king, David, is a man after God’s own heart, sinful and brokenhearted in the face of his own brokenness.

Despite the heart, this heart, he leaves a trail of brokenness in his wake. Forty kings across two kingdoms. In the northern kingdom, twenty of twenty are bad, adding a thousand to the northern kingdom. In the southern, twenty out of the twenty seven are good by a generous measure. The people of God who were intended to demonstrate His goodness to all peoples look no different and are often worse.

And yet promise lingers of one who will enter the story bringing something greater than the sacrifice of a lamb. Amen. Many prophets speak of the coming king, the prophet Isaiah sees in the distance one who will be a suffering servant of God. In Isaiah 53, we read these words. He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought about our peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We will, like sheep, we all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. Yet he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open up his mouth.

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent. So he did not open up his mouth. After years of waiting, an angel appears On a day, perhaps a normal Tuesday afternoon, to a young Jewish girl, a nobody, a person intended to be an indistinct side character in a side character nation suffering under conflict.

A girl such as you might find today in Gaza, in Israel, in Jordan, maybe 15, 16 years old, a nobody, a blip in the story. To this girl, Mary, the angel brings a promise that she will be chosen to bring the promised one into this world. It is she, with all the fear of public reaction, of retribution, of loss, who says yes to the angel’s word.

Let it be to me as you have spoken. She enters into the story at great cost to herself to be a vessel who will make possible the greatest mystery of this grand cosmic tale. One ancient hymn puts it like this. Isaiah twas foretold it, the rose I have in mind. With Mary we behold it, the virgin mother kind.

To show God’s love aright, she brought to man a savior, when half spent was the night. The child grows. He is immersed deeply in the teachings of his people, faithful to his parents, supports his mother when his father passes away by learning a trade until walking by the river one day, a prophet announces his, this, announces him and declares this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This is the one I meant, says John, and when I said a man comes after me, he surpassed me because he was a man. When Jesus announces Himself, He will stand up and begin with the words, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. In the words of the prophet, Will.

I am. Let’s get this party started. He teaches and he heals. He cares for those most downtrodden. He believes himself to be a physician to those most sick who find themselves to believe themselves furthest from God’s interest or care. And then on one Friday on the night of Passover, he’s arrested, beaten and hung on a cross where for six hours he hangs between life and death.

And Friday afternoon at 3, he draws a final breath and calls out in a loud voice, It is finished. Three days later, everything is changed. He wakes from sleep and with a swagger and a question for death, Is that your best shot on Easter Sunday? He does what no other human being has done. He walks from the grave, never to die again.

It is in the explaining of this grand moment of history that more ink and paper have been used here than any other. To all surprise, his broken followers are ignited with the bravery and the passion that begins to carry the story to every single place human beings dwell. One writer, John, expresses it like this.

This is how God showed his love for us. God sent his own son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love that we are talking about. Not that we, once upon a time, loved God. But that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

Peter, a follower of Jesus, says this. Catch these words. That you are a chosen people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, God’s special possession. That you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness. into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.

Once you had not received mercy. Now you have received mercy. 2000 years later, this is a story that inspires more people than any of the stories we’ve listed combined. And it’s a story that we remember at this table where each of these red strands actually leads. Paul writer says, gee, Christ died for our sins.

according to my gospel. It’s this story that makes sense of other stories. Even when we sit in the places of our most brokenness, the author and theologian Don Davis talks of his own upbringing in a small black community. And recollects that at the end of each week, the pastor, having expressed what he could of the story, would invite an elderly woman to come and sing the story from them.

He recollects that she took a place and began to sing these words, He’s sweet, I know. He’s sweet, I know. Storm clouds may gather. Storm winds may blow. I’ll tell the world, wherever I go, that I found a Savior, and He’s sweet, I know. I know. He recalls looking at his parents as tears poured from their eyes and ran down their faces wondering what sort of story is this that can inspire so much emotion.

It wasn’t until he was older that he could look back at their hard lives worn down by difficult manual jobs living in 1940s America where they were run down, worked out, put back and yet uplifted by the magnificent story of Jesus. Every stopping place that we’ve paused on this journey is to remind ourselves of this story, are tied to our beginning in Revelation where we see the grand gospel story play out, and hear all heaven reverberate with the words, worthy is the lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.

And they tie us to this table. Where we remember the moment where everything changed. Where, close to the same spot Abraham nearly sacrificed his own son, God’s son, was slain. In fact, while I’ve weaved scarlet threads into our community, each moment of scripture represents part of a scarlet thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation, and to which we are invited to step into sacramentally at this table 2, 000 years later.

This table is sometimes called Mass, the Lord’s Supper, Communion, or my favorite, Eucharist, which simply means Thanksgiving. In the Catholic Church, it’s made too high as the wine becomes the literal blood of Jesus. In the Protestant Church, it’s made too low, where the wine becomes some really bad grape juice.

It ties us to the story of Jesus. And I would love for a moment to illustrate that by returning briefly to the Exodus story and what this table means for you as you come to it. Imagine yourself on the night of the Exodus some three and a half thousand years ago. Imagine yourself watching two Jewish guys, we’ll call them Bill and Ted, having a conversation.

And in the midst of the planning, Bill turns to Ted and says, Are you going to kill the lamb and put blood on the doorframe tonight, and Bill says, absolutely I’m just concerned about what might happen if I don’t, so I’m definitely gonna do that, and everything’s gonna be fine, because God says it will be fine.

And then the question is reversed, as Bill now asks Ted, what will you do tonight? And Ted says, yeah, I’m gonna put the blood on my door. But I’m just really worried if I’m honest. What if it doesn’t work? I’m worried about my family. I’m worried about your family. I just have so many questions, so many doubts about whether it’s gonna work tonight.

I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it anyway. A question for you. When they wake up the next morning, having both put blood on their door, which of them has sons that are still alive in the story? It’s both, right? It’s both. We make the story of Jesus about how much faith we can produce in the story. And yet the beauty is in the story itself.

As we come to this table, we enter again into this story with thanksgiving, knowing we enter in freely by grace to a story that’s not ours. but is gifted to us. Brennan Manning says that I believe Christianity happens when men and women experience the reckless rage and confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ.

Sergius Bulgakov says this, redemption through self identification with the sacrifice, such as the scheme of sanctification through sacrifice, which is transferred in full from the Old Testament to the new with just one difference, Redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ and communion with the New Testament Lamb bring together on a higher plane in its totality the meaning of all sacrifices.

Across almost every major religion across history, something has to die for somebody else to be forgiven. Only Christianity goes to this point of saying that God intervenes himself and says, I am the one that will make the sacrifice. Through Jesus sacrifice, though it occurred on one day, At a specific place in time, it also takes place super temporally in heaven, in just the same way that it is repeated here on Earth, as we remember it.

We come to this table, and remember that Jesus died for every single one of us, and we enter again into that story. Our moment, right now, mysteriously, is closer to the moments in time than we have reflected on into, is closer, in time to the moments we have reflected on this morning than this morning when you argued with your spouse or last night when you found yourself in a place of shame and self loathing and doubt.

Every moment where you felt you were at your weakest is farther away from this moment and the moment where Jesus gave his life for you. Everything centers right here, right now. A sacrament is a manifestation of God’s power that creates oneness under a veil of empirical actions in the flesh of the world.

We gather here today, and Jesus real presence is here for you. This story is here for you, and your faith in it, while important, is secondary to the story itself. The invitation to you is to come and enter into a story again. of a God who loves this world, gave everything he had for it, and is here today, present with you.

God, as we come to this table, thank you for your transformation. Thank you that you would take this story of thousands of years and weave it together with this scarlet thread. Each part of it telling us that you are in this world working for it, transforming it, bringing new life for each of us here that finds ourselves in a place of brokenness.

We come perhaps knowing this story is all we have. Everything else has been stripped away. For every one of us that believes we have a story that anchors us, at some point that story too will go. This story will be all that we’re left with. It has to be enough. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus gathered with his earliest followers.

Taking the bread, he broke it and said, This is my body, broken for you. In the same way he took the cup and offering 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. Today, I’ve tried to share that grand story, but your entry into it is the goal and most important thing.

So I finished with a question just to ponder for a second, what does this story that began so small and Christmas a couple of thousand years ago, what does it mean to you?

Jesus as we come. Would you meet each of us at the point of our need, bring transformation to us.

Amen.