Community Of Truth: Friendship- Ian Graham

Pastor Ian Graham looks at the Transfiguration in Mark 9 and Jesus’ words in John 17 as an invitation to kingdom friendship.

Transcript

Welcome, Series Context, Framing Community

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Good morning friends. My name is Ian. It's a joy to be with you and to welcome you here today. A couple things. If you have a child or a baby and they cry, excellent. It's not a big deal. It's good for a lot of us to be in a room with a baby. Many of us have not been in such a setting this week, so what a gift. What a joy. If you need a seat, there are seats up front, but you know, feel free to stand about the room. It's a joy to be together today. We've been in a fall teaching series we've called the Community of Truth. And for the last three weeks, we've focused explicitly on what is the truth that Jesus is trying to guide us into. We looked at some scripts that we default to living in and out of. And there's a pastor in the UK called Pete Hughes, and he says this great little phrase, I think it's so powerful, the story that you live in is the story that you live out. And so we examined some of the stories that we naturally live in, and thus the stories we naturally live out. And then we looked at the call to be holy as God is holy. And then last week we looked at Jesus' word that is often so much bigger and so much more beautiful than we would give it credit for. We think he's giving us a bunch of regulations and laws, and really he is undoing the shackles of shame and of guilt and is setting us free by his mercy. So today we want to focus on the first part of that phrase, this ambitious claim, a community of truth. A community. And to see how that truth is then embodied in the face of other people. Now we live in an interesting time when we talk about things like gathering together and community. In many ways, there has been an acceleration of a trend where people are spending more and more time alone. Derek Thompson was a columnist for The Atlantic. Now he built his platform, he's on Substack all by himself now, so good for him. But he had this great article at the beginning of 2025 that he called the Antisocial Century. And it's really insightful. I think it provides a lot of explanatory power and value. So I encourage you, you can even do it while we're here. You can look that up and read it for yourself. But I want to just draw you into a couple of his observations as we gather in here today. Thompson writes: He says Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data going back to 1965. Between that year and the end of the 20th century, in-person socializing slowly declined. From 2003 to 2023, it plunged by more than 20%, according to the American Time Use Survey, an annual study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Specifically, among unmarried men and people younger than 25, the decline was more than 35%. Alone time predictably spiked during the pandemic. That makes sense to us, right? But the trend had started long before most people had ever heard of a novel coronavirus and continued after the pandemic was declared over. He goes on and he writes the individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America's civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality. There's been a whole host of research done by social psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt, people like Richard Reeves, that are just examining the outcomes that we are seeing early on in the world of the phone. The iPhone was introduced as a technology pretty much in 2009, which I think was when most of us were born at that point. But many of you have not grown up in any other time than a time with a phone. And so that's been your whole reality. I can remember a time before smartphones, and now I live in the aftermath of the after. And these social psychologists have seen that these technologies have often contributed to an increased amount of time spent alone, and the residual effects that that has on people. Being around other people causes you to have to learn how to empathize, how to take risks, how to be a human. And the more time that we spend alone, the more that that humanity is often scaled back. And so we're sort of seeing this wider crisis of loneliness that is present in many facets of our society. And we see its effects in many places as well. And for us as a people, you look around the room, and it's like clearly there's something that is so important about this people telling this story and being together. And as we're here, we have to begin to examine what the shape of that togetherness looks like. What does it mean? Do we just gather in a room and I dispense some content? We sing some songs and then you go from here? Is that the kind of community that we're called to? Well, the good news for you, if that's the case, then you should definitely not be here. You should go listen to a podcast. Because there are much better teachers than I am. Now, the music, you might not be able to get better than that, but the teaching you can you can scale up. What does it mean for us to be together in this room? What is God up to? Uh, gentlemen in the booth, I think those lights one and three are not fully open and they are flickering, and I know that really bothers some people. Yeah, if you guys could just address that, thank you so much. For us, we're gonna look today at the kind of community that Jesus is enlisting and our part and joining in what he's up to. Let's look in Mark chapter 9. I have to disclose that in the first service, and I think it might still be labeled on my slides, Mark 13. I don't know where I got that. But I was very grateful that many people in our church came up after and said, You know it's not Mark 13, right? And I was like, I definitely knew that. I was testing you. I wasn't, I just made a mistake. Uh Mark chapter 9, beginning in verse 2. After six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and led them up a high mountain where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. He did not know what to say, because they were so frightened. Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud. This is my son, whom I love. Listen to him. Suddenly, when they looked around, they saw, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. So in Mark chapter 9, you can almost envision Jesus takes some of his closest friends on a hike.

unknown 6:48

Right?

Revelation, Triune Community, and Mission

A Miracle of Difference: One New People

Friendship: Brick and Mortar of the Kingdom

John 17: Joy, Presence, and Purpose

Mission-Critical Friendships and Small Beginnings

Covenant Not Consumerism: Unity and Cost

Gethsemane: Glory in Sorrow and Disappointment

The God Who Sees: Naming, Noticing, Belonging

Community as Soil of Transfiguration

Invitation, Prayer, and Response at the Table

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And he doesn't tell them what they're going to do. He's like, hey, come away with me for a little while. Let's go up the mountain. As they reach the summit, suddenly Jesus' face, his clothes begin to dazzle with glowing radiance. And they see Jesus, and there's all these remarkable things going on here. And Peter, it's the most understandable thing about Peter to me at times. Do you have those friends that when something's happening, they almost have to talk? Like they have to fill it with words? Like Mark even tells us, and historically, Peter was the sort of contributor to Mark's gospel. So Peter's relating all these stories to Mark, and Mark just fills in with parentheses. Peter had no idea what to say because he was afraid, and yet he kept talking anyway. And Peter's like, let's just stay here. And it's also the most understandable response. I think in that moment in Mark 9, Peter seeing Jesus unveiling his glory, his radiance. Peter had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. And that kind of beauty draws us in. It makes us want to stop and just plant ourselves there. It's like I never want to leave this place. Peter says, Let's build a shelter. Let's start a movement right here on this mountain. This is it. Jesus subtly is just saying, I've got more. There's more beauty to behold here. But Jesus takes his closest friends, Peter, James, and John, up on the mountain in order to reveal himself. There are so many beautiful things happening in this moment. But I want to look at what's happening here in Mark chapter 9 from the lens of friendship and community. The Mount of Transfiguration is a revelation of God. We have the triune God present, Jesus the Son incarnate, the Father, the voice saying, This is my Son with whom I'm well pleased. The Spirit, the cloud. We see the Spirit as a revelation of God throughout the scriptural story. We see it in Exodus when the people of Israel are leaving Egypt in slavery, pillar of cloud by day, fire by night. We see it in Acts 2 as a rushing wind descends upon the place where the disciples are meeting. And here we see this cloud envelope and cover Jesus. We have insight into the reality of God, which we call revelation. Jesus is unveiling himself. And I love at the end of this little story here, it just says, and then all that was left was Jesus. And all this flash of glory and brilliance and radiance as the disciples are undone in awe and wonder and in terror, the scene suddenly shifts to a close. And all they can see is Jesus. The community and the creation of a community is at the heart of what God is up to in the world. We've talked about this often because it is so important. If you look at the post-Easter stories in the Gospels, Jesus had so many means available to him to communicate to the world that he was the risen king of the entire universe. He could have done it in so many ways. But we have to look at the way that he chose. Again, did he use mass media that was available to him? Again, God has the massist media available to him. He can appear in the sky. Like you can you can go viral. You can't go that viral. He didn't do that. And if God's design were to enlist a bunch of subservient slaves to obey him and to never question him, he could have done that. And we would all be mindlessly following this God because we're like, well, he's appearing in the sky. Clearly, he's God. But Jesus doesn't do that, does he? If you know the story, or if you're unfamiliar with it, Jesus reveals the reality of his resurrection in the same way that he declares the reality of his kingdom throughout his earthly life. He sits down to meals with his friends. And there's something so vital about not just the message itself, but the transmission of the message. And it reminds us often that the way that we convey the message has everything to say about the message itself. The message will not be conveyed through political ascendancy. We do not legislate the knowledge of God. But we, through the beauty of our lives, through the fruit of the Spirit, bearing fruit in our lives, we declare the reality and the beauty of God and we beckon and we join God's beckoning heart towards all the world. This is our call. And what God is up to in the world is the revelation of a community, Father, Son, and Spirit, and the creation of a community. Look at us. What a miracle we are in here today. And friends, you should never let the astonishment of this picture right now escape your grasp. Where else in Princeton right now? Are there people from different nations, people from different political affiliations, people from different ethnicities? Where are they all gathered in a room right now? A couple of other churches. That's the answer. This is a miracle. And it's not our own doing. It's not something that we have conquered and enlisted ourselves. It is something that God is up to in answering his own promises to the entire world to create a new covenant family. You are the inheritors of the promise that was given to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, that out of the line of Abraham, God would create a new covenant family of blessing, that through Abraham's line, of which Jesus is a part, all the nations on the earth would be blessed. And what we find throughout the story is that God is constantly breaking down the societal and cultural barriers that we have erected. In the first century, it's about Jew and Gentile. These are the barriers that they're having to figure out how to traverse. And the good news for us today is that we're told constantly that this is really hard work, that it's really hard to unpack your cultural preferences and defaults and to live in community with somebody who has very different, particular cultural preferences and defaults. It's not easy. And that's why we have a New Testament. Read it closely. So much of Paul's letters are about helping Jew and Gentile figure out how to live together with one another. But he is insistent. Ephesians chapter 2. You are God's workmanship. He has broken down the wall which divided you and made you into one new people. Galatians chapter 3, there's no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, but all are one in Christ Jesus. And somehow the power of the gospel is not dissolving our differences, but is melding them, is transfiguring them in no small way into something more glorious. And if you scroll ahead to the end of the story, you read at the end of Revelation that all the cultures, all the peoples in the world are bringing the beauty and the treasures of their culture in worship and in service to this eternal kingdom. So the stuff that you maybe grew up with, the stuff that is beautiful about where you're from or the people that you're a part of, is a building block of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city, the eternal kingdom. That's pretty good, right? It's a miracle that we're here. And in a time that is often very divided and very isolated, here we stand, recipients of God's grace, woven together by the power of his spirit, a declaration, a sign and a wonder that there is a different way available to us. Don't lose the wonder of that. I want to offer a couple of observations about the kind of community that God is up to. I'm going to scale down from the macro and the sort of the broader streams that are that are converging here into a little bit of the micro. I want to focus on community as an expression of friendship. I'm going to put up a slide here that just kind of has the five observations, points, maxims, proverbs, whatever you want to call them, as we explore today. First of all, friendship is the brick and mortar of the kingdom of God. We've already discussed how Jesus reveals the reality of his resurrected reign through friendship, through sitting down to meals with his friends. We're going to go to a place where Jesus also unveils his glory, moving on from Mark 9 to John chapter 17. And in John 17, Jesus has been imparting some of his final pre-crucifixion words to his disciples. It's interesting, Jesus in the last moments of his life doesn't anxiously try to make up and take care of all the things that he's left undone. He spends time with his friends. And this section is a literary unit in John, begins in John chapter 13, where Jesus washes his disciples' feet. And it goes through John chapter 17, where Jesus prays on behalf of not just the disciples that are present there, but all who would believe in their message. And we are the fruit of that faithful transmission of what Jesus has done and what he's up to. In John 17, verse 13, Jesus says, I am coming to you now, but I say these things to you while I'm still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy in them. Now, if you know the timeline of events that are transpiring here in John, John 17, the last words that Jesus imparts to his disciples before he goes to the cross, this is a solemn and sombre assembly. And yet Jesus, in the midst of the gravity of that which awaits him, is still focused on the joy of the kingdom that is available to everybody because Jesus undertakes the cross for the joy which is set before him. And so, yes, Jesus understands, and we see, we'll see in just a couple minutes in Matthew that Jesus is undone by the gravity of that which he is about to undertake. That he experiences both the gravity of the, that he's going to bear the sin of the world, but he also experiences the joy and the fruit of that which his work will accomplish. And Jesus is imparting. As I'm coming to you, in going away from you, this paradox of Jesus going away, going to the grave, and yet coming to them anew in the power of his resurrection and the sending of his spirit. As I'm coming to you, there's a fullness of joy that is available to you. Do you ever stop to think how joyful our God must be? Have you ever seen a video of pandas just being pandas? That's just happening. Every once in a while we catch it on video, and you're like, wow, God must be, he must be up to something. Dallas Willard says this. He said, we should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life and that he's full of joy. Undoubtedly, he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul, exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness. God is joyful. C.S. Lewis calls this the serious business of heaven. And we have to get serious about the business of God's joy. It's that joy that Jesus is infusing into the very fabric of our lives together. There's a joy when we gather here. And somehow our lives can be marked by the seriousness of this joy while taking seriously the call to be holy, as he is holy. Lewis talks about friendship, and I think he captures it well in his book, The Four Loves. C.S. Lewis says this. He says, in friendship, we think we've chosen our peers. In reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, present company excluded, I'm sure. The accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting, any of these chances might have kept us apart. But for a Christian, there are strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, can truly say to every group of Christian friends, You have not chosen one another, but I've chosen you for one another. The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste. Sorry to diminish you here. It's a reward for finding one another out. It's the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others. You know, one of the most powerful moments in the scriptures is one that we easily miss. When Jesus first encounters Peter, before they're the kind of friends that Jesus invites him up to go on a hike up a mountain and to reveal his glory, early on in the gospel stories, Jesus approaches Peter and he says, Come, come with me, and I'll make you a fisher of men. Peter previously was a fisherman, living out his daily life. And Jesus approaches him one day on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and says, Come with me. And this moment is so beautiful because though Peter doesn't understand the significance, he follows, but Jesus knows the significance of what he's asking of Peter. And Jesus also knows this is one of my guys. This is one of my friends. And again, we short we shortchange Jesus so often. Jesus came to earth and showed the way that God delights in each one of us by his friendships with his disciples. Jesus delighted in Peter. In all his obstinacy and all the ways that he gets it wrong, this is one of Jesus's guys. And what what God is trying to do is nothing short of that, infusing that into our lives together, that kind of relatedness, that kind of friendship. Friendship is the brick and mortar of the kingdom of God. Now, these friendships have certain qualities to them. I want to just introduce a phrase, mission critical friendship. Let's look in John 17, and then we'll unpack what that means. Beginning in verse 14: I have given them your word, and the world has hated them. For they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. There's a fine line here between turning something into a utility and sharing a purpose together that I want to just try to thread a little bit. We easily commodify people into what they can do for us. Jesus gives us a shared vision and mission to go proclaiming the gospel, to be a different sort of people, to be a sign and a wonder. When we understand the mission of God to a place and a people, we can invest deeply and pray. Friends, this church is the overflow of friendship. Rich and Sarah, right here. We would meet around the table on Friday nights. And I have to say, Rich, it was so much a part of your and it's such a gift that you have of just saying, you should do this, your encouragement, and just saying, we can do this together. And it wasn't about what we were going to undertake and build together, but it was about Rich noticing something in me that I would not have seen in myself. And I was saying, what would it look like if we were to start an expression of the kingdom of God here in this place? And the the answer to that question, look around. It's a miracle. And I'm still shocked anybody shows up. But that means that it's Jesus, not about what we're doing. And so it's like this beautiful thing that's been undertaken and happening. And it comes out of the source of our friendship together. You know, I I have uh recently been spending my Saturdays on the football field, and I I think it has been established I am the worst defensive coordinator in the history of the world. Uh I'm helping coach an 8-U football team, and we give up a touchdown every time the other team touches the ball. I mean, we've we've made like four tackles all year. I think we're averaging losing like 40 to we've we've scored one touchdown. It's like two and a half, something like that. I don't even know. And so I get up on Saturday and I'm like, oh man, this is gonna be rough. But the mission is clear to help these kids overcome their fear, to be bigger than they thought they were when the game started, to encourage them to call something out in them, and to maybe, hopefully, someday make a tackle. And it's that mission that brings us together. And even when we're down or getting our brakes beaten off and all sorts of other metaphors you could use, they're saying we're gonna keep showing up for one another. And oftentimes, that's the life of following Jesus together. We have this shared mission. It's not abundantly clear how our small impact on the world is having any broader impact, but we say we are in this together, we are in this for one another. And there are so many things that have happened throughout the history of the faith in Jesus that have been undertaken by a small group of friends. Do you know who the Clapham sect are? Clapham sect were a group of friends in a neighborhood in London who saw the ills of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in the UK and the UK's participation in it and said, this is not the way of the kingdom of God. And said to themselves, not only are we going to pray against this, but we can position ourselves socially, we can put ourselves in positions of power, we can use our influence, philanthropy, we can use storytelling. Again, it's not just about politics, it's about telling a more beautiful story. And we can change the direction of an entire nation. And they did so. People like William Wilberforce, people like Zachary Macaulay, people like Hannah Moore, who is a playwright, Granville Sharp, who has a Greek grammar rule named after him. If you're in seminary, you'll learn that. John John Venn, Henry Venn. John Venn, I think, is the grandfather of the inventor of the Venn diagram, which is a pretty cool. But these people, I think we have some Wilberforce students there. Hey guys. My kids go to a school named after Wilberforce. So again, you see the seeds of this, the fruit of this all over. But these people through their life together saw that Christians were not living out their faith because of this, the presence of this manifest evil. And they changed direction. You could talk about people like the Inklings, Tolkien, Lewis. You could talk about Princeton Seminary. If you go to Princeton Seminary for us, we just benefit from our proximity to the seminary. Scholars like Makin, Gresham, Warfield. You could talk about Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson were good friends because of their shared mission. God uses the smallest seeds of friendship to bring about the greatest sequoias in his kingdom. It's an amazing thing. It doesn't mean we have to aggrandise everything, but it also means that there are so many things that are possible beyond our small capacities. When Jesus is present where two or more are gathered. And we say, we want to live for you, we want to be obedient to you. So we expect and we receive his call to friendship. Brick and mortar of the kingdom. Alright. Third one, covenant, not consumerism. Jesus says, My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one. Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Vr Dostoevsky famously said that love, love in dreams is a harsh and bitter thing compared to love in reality. The same is true of community. Right? Like if we all, like, if I asked you, like, do you want good friends? Do you want to be in community? Of course, you'd say yes. But if I asked you the subsequent question, have you been wounded by good friends? Have you been wounded in community? Of course, we'd all be like, Yeah. And so we see that community, friendship is not this ideal, and it's certainly not a place where people placate to our desires and our preferences. It is a two-way street that often is fraught and hard with misunderstanding and disappointment and feelings of isolation. But our call to be a covenant people says that we, in service to Jesus and his kingdom, are not primarily seeking our good, our preferences, but we are seeking to live as Jesus lived, to have the same mind of Christ Jesus, as Paul says in Philippians chapter 2. Not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought. But taking the posture of a servant, being like him. Jesus calls us to live out covenant faithfulness to one another. And we see the wider arc of covenant faithfulness in the scriptural story. It doesn't mean you're always loving people when they're at their best. It doesn't mean it's always easy. It doesn't mean you get to set a timeline on their grief or their pain. It means that you show up. Galatians 6 says it this way: carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Let us not become weary in doing good. For the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. So often our participation in community that is sort of culturally dictated says, as long as it's serving you, as long as it's protecting your peace, as long as it's for you. And the way of Jesus completely subverts that. Give, not out of the well of your own reserves, but out of the endless well of the love of God that has been given to you, lavished upon you in the words of 1 John. We sign up for covenant, not for consumerism. This isn't about what we can get out of it. But what you'll find is that you get a lot out of it. I want to scroll to another place where Jesus is towards the end of the timeline of his life in Matthew chapter 26. It says, Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, it's verse 36. And he said to them, Sit here while I go over there and pray. He took Peter and And the two sons of Zebedee, incidentally, Peter, James, and John, the same people that were present on the Mount of Transfiguration, Mount Tabor, are now invited to be with Jesus in the garden. Jesus began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little further, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour? Again, do you hear the disappointment in Jesus' voice? So, all this talk about friendship and community, I want to acknowledge one glaring caveat. That being lonely in church can be the loneliest place in the world. And as we're talking, you know, Alfredo beautifully and so skillfully has outlined these communities. Like, the one promise I stop short of making is that you'll meet your best friends in the world and you'll find people that you never knew were so awesome. It's like that's a marketing ploy. Because I've sat across from people who've just said, you know, I just feel so lonely. And I have no defensiveness to offer that. I have no retort. It's like, well, you know, maybe you should try. It's like, no, what a painful reality that so many of us experience in the life of the church. We perceive, as Lewis calls, there's some inner ring that we're not a part of it. We've been longing and aching for friendships, and they just haven't materialized. And so I don't have some grand solution for you if you've walked in here dragging that sort of loneliness, but I do want to just say two things. First of all, there is a gospel truth that holds true, that you are not unseen by the creator of the universe, that he loves you, that he has numbered every hair on your head, that as, as we sang, feet close the lilies in such splendor and glamour, how much more does he love you? You are more precious to him than these things. The first person to name God in the story of the scriptures is a woman who perceives of herself outside of the scriptural story, a slave woman named Hagar. And in her encounter with God, she says, You are Jehovah Ra'a, literally the God who sees. And so I can say confidently that God sees you, but I can also say that as people, we have to experience the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. That it can't just be conceptual, yes, God loves me, yes, God sees me. We have to see God's face reflected in the face of another. This is the other side of community that God has called us to. And so I don't have some grand solution for you, but what I do have is a prayer and a longing that joins with you that I pray that you will find these kinds of friendships that inform your life in the kingdom in such a way that you see that God has been good to you, and that record of his goodness is not just about events, but it's about people that God has placed in your life. And I encourage you, Ecclesia, to be the kind of people who look like the God who sees. Doesn't mean you have to become a deep friend of everybody in here, but it does mean that you're on the lookout. You're sensitive to the Holy Spirit, you're listening. And just paying attention. Learning people's names. What a gift. Let's be a people who are different. Who don't consign ourselves to our defaults, but say your name matters to God, so it matters to me. And listen. I think we'll be surprised at what under what takes place among us. Ironically, when Jesus invites the disciples into the garden to pray with him, he's unveiling his glory just like he did on the Mount of Transfiguration. It's the glory of a suffering Savior. He's saying, come, come watch how deeply God loves you. Come come watch what he is going through in order to reconcile all things. We easily see the glory on the mountain, but the glory in the garden is no less stunning. And yet the disciples miss it. Because it doesn't have the flesh or they're full from a meal. Last community is the soil of transfiguration. Jesus says in John 17, verse 24, Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am. Just pay attention to these words. This is Jesus' desire for all of us. I want those you have given me to be with me where I am. He doesn't say, God, please reconcile, save these people, and put them somewhere else so I don't have to deal with them. I want them to be right there with me. The glory, I want them to see my glory. I want to unveil. I want to transform them by them seeing who I am. The glory you've given me because you love me before the creation of the world. The revelation of Jesus and the incarnate Son is the revelation of Father, Son, and Spirit to a community. So we are transfigured, our glory unveiled in relationship with one another. We're sanctified by the truth. We put down our petty idolatries, the skewed one-way mirror that we so easily default to seeing the world through. The one-way being what is in it for me? God shatters that mirror. And then it becomes a two-way street, and you look in people's face and you see, wow, people are wondrous. They are glorious. And C.S. Lewis says, if you were to extrapolate that glory that God is so subtly yet so surely transforming people into, if you were to extrapolate that over the timeline of eternity, you would be tempted to bow down and worship your neighbor because God is going to transform them into something that is so radiant, so glorious that we can't even begin to conceive of it. And we get signs and we get glimpses of that right now as we serve one another. God calls things out in us that we would not have imparted to ourselves. God draws us out with courage, with faithfulness, with kindness. Peter says, speak as those speaking the very words of God. And that may seem like a heavy burden, but I tell you, if you encourage people, if you speak the words of Scripture over them, you say, hey, this is what I see in you. Those words literally create worlds in their life. I'm the product of it standing before you because people called things out in me throughout the course of my life. God has been faithful to me in that way. And so you will find that your life is transfigured. You will find that the life of your neighbor is transfigured. I was talking to some people after church, after the first service, and I just hear stories of what people are up to and caring for one another here at Ecclesia. And I'm just endlessly moved. I'm like, I can't believe people do that kind of stuff for each other. And in a way, I can because that's what Jesus is up to in our midst. We become who we were meant to be as a sign, a first glimpse of the glory that we will fully inhabit and we are fully transformed by the grace of God. I'm gonna invite the worship team forward. Ekosia. Jesus has invited you into fellowship. His resurrection, declaring once and for all, that not only has God overcome your sin, not only has he paid your debt, but that he is drawn near by the giving of his spirit. And that we, as a collection of people inhabited by the Spirit of God, are called to manifest this friendship, this goodness, this reconciliation, this sign and this wonder as a sign of what will be when the kingdom comes in full. Jesus suffered outside the city alone to tell you the truth, that you are not alone. He has paid for your sins by his precious blood. God is drawing near to you. And my heart and my prayer is that you will see the beauty and the world-shaking ramifications of that, but also that you will see people drawing near to you. And that you will draw near to others. You will risk the vulnerability that comes with being known. And that you will see the goodness of the Lord in the face of another. Because of what Jesus is embarking and what he is enlisting in us. Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to come as we respond. Holy Spirit, God, in a subject so tender, such as our relationships with one another, Lord, would you come? God, I first want to pray for those who, when I talk about the kingdom friendships, God, the brick and mortar, God, the building blocks, and for those of us for whom so many people come to mind. Lord, may there be so much rejoicing in your spirit here in this place. God, may our silent prayers be filled with blessings, God, with thank yous, Lord. Even with insight for those people, God, would you just fill this room with names, with recollections, God, with just awe at what we have been invited to be a part of. God, for those for whom that loneliness speaks so loudly, what Dorothy Day calls the long loneliness, Lord. God, I first pray that you would fill it with your presence, Lord. In a way that in seasons of grief or seasons of disappointment, only you and your presence, God, as Lewis talks about Christ, not something that resembles him, can fill, can heal, can salve, Lord, would you be here in this place? But I also pray, Lord, that we would see the goodness of your hand, God, of your face in the land of the living. God, that you would mark us as a people by our friendships. And that out of those friendships, we would declare to the world that we are your disciples, Lord Jesus. So, God, I pray for an overflow, Lord. An opening of the floodgates of heaven, not for material blessings or riches, God, but for relationships, Jesus. Would you pour out your presence here in this place, God? Would you tend to the wounds of those who have been wounded in community and remind us that though we are often wounded in community, it's only in community that we are healed, Jesus. God, make us a constellation of your grace and your mercy, Lord. Shining like stars in the words of Paul the Apostle. We pray these things in your name, in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We pray. Amen. Ecosia, while we're here today, I'm going to invite you to stand and continue to attend to the presence of God here with you. We're going to respond in singing, and in a few moments, we'll come to the table together. Let's worship the Lord together.