Rhythms Of Grace: Our Liturgy: Benediction- Ian Graham

Pastor Ian Graham starts our new series reverse-engineering elements of our corporate gatherings unpacking the force of blessing.

Transcript

Welcome And Why We Gather

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're here and you're new, no, we don't always turn up the heat to 100 degrees and try to sweat you out, but we are really glad you came. And I hope that if if going to church is not a normal practice for you, it's not something you do regularly, that you've somewhat felt that decision validated walking in the room. I know that's not a small thing to overcome. And so if you made the decision to be here today, that's no small decision. And we're glad you're here. We pray and we try to embody that you the welcome that you receive would be no less than the welcome that God has for you. That something in our faces and the welcome would be consistent with God's posture towards you. And if you're a super introvert, I hope you were able to just not be bothered too much and point it in the right direction. But regardless if you're new here or you're here every week, we're just grateful to be able to worship alongside you. This past summer, uh, my wife and I were able to take our kids back to our home state uh to a very sacred ritual in the state of Oklahoma. Uh, there is a stadium in the middle of Oklahoma, which is in the middle of the country, and people fly over it often, that seats 85,000 people, the University of Oklahoma's football stadium. Now, if you're not a football fan, just bear with me for a sec. I don't use sports analogies liberally. I know not everybody likes sports, and some of you are like, oh my gosh, not again. Uh but that's okay. So 85,000 people. Our kids had been to some professional baseball games, which see, you know, somewhere between 30 and 40,000. And but I knew the scale was gonna blow their mind. And we did all the lead up stuff, like we went and saw the players walk in in their suits going into the locker room. Courtney was on the dance team at the University of Oklahoma, so she was able to coordinate with the current coach, and our girls were able to meet some of the current dance team members, and they just had a day kind of immersed in this uh really pseudo-religion in the South. And then we pull up into the stadium, their minds are just completely overwhelmed, sensory overload. Why are there this many people anywhere in the world? And colors and lights, the players, when they come out, they run through a just field of smoke and pyrotechnics all under the banner of the University of Oklahoma. They bring out the Oklahoma flag, which is quite cool, and then they unfurl the giant football field-sized American flag, and like those parachutes that you play with children. There's a bunch of people holding it and they're they're flapping it to make it look like it's flowing in the wind. And then the the crowd has all of these different chants, and our kids are perceptive, they're picking up on a lot of things. There are some that are prescribed chants, you know, they hold up the one for you know the number one team in all of college football history. That can be debated, but at another time. There are a couple of other chants that are a little less official. Uh, there are a lot of people that just are randomly yelling Texas sucks, uh, which is true, but is not something I want my son saying, but he's just kind of subtly like, oh my dude, don't say that in front of your mom. If you're from Texas, we're glad you're here. But they're picking up on all of this, and part of this is something we knew going in, that they were gonna be just awash and immersed in the civil religion that is a football game in the South, especially a major college football game. But you just sort of start to take inventory of everything they're experiencing here. You got a gathering of people for singing and chanting and cheering, got a table set with concessions and libations, we've got proper attire, we've got incense and candles in the form of smoke machines and fireworks, we've got an overwhelm of the senses, we've got a game where anything is possible, ekklesia. We are at church, aren't we? Cultural commentators have noticed this about high school football in the South, major college football, like this is not just a sort of club that people are showing up to. This is a religion, a liturgy. The word that's often associated with college football is pageantry, but a word that much more aptly describes what's going on is liturgy. James K. Smith has done extensive work on what he calls cultural liturgies. And these are immersive experiences that are designed not only to capture our minds, but to capture our hearts and our imaginations. His basic premise as he talks about these cultural liturgies is that often the people that are the most short-sighted when it comes to cultural liturgies is the church itself. Marketers understand how to create an immersive experience that draws the attention over your imagination and your heart. But so often the church is trying to fill you with information and then saying, go and do something with it. Marketers understand that the business of selling is not helping people make the most informed decision. Now, how many of you, perhaps this week, bought something on impulse, if you care to be honest? Maybe the algorithm finally wore you down and you made a purchase. And you were like, why did I just buy that? Like, because I saw it so much and I wanted it, right? Is it just me? Perhaps happened to you too. But if we're honest, we are not rational creatures, especially when it comes to that which we buy. We are desiring creatures. So the challenge of marketing becomes creating a vision of the good life that involves their product. And it doesn't really matter if there's actual coherence to the vision and the product. What on earth does Sabrina Carpenter have to do with Dunkin' Donuts? I don't know. They both have crappy espresso. James K. Smith says fundamentally, we're not thinking creatures. That was so terrible. I told him the first service, too, that's why I was like, oh my gosh. I usually don't tell jokes twice, but it was so bad you deserved it. We are ultimately not thinking creatures. We are desiring creatures. And when I say creatures, we'll use that term. It's important. We're not creatures in the sense that we are beholden to our impulses, that we can't do anything other than what our instincts tell us. That's not what we mean when we talk about people as creatures. People as creatures is saying that there is a creator. And we are not the creator. We are created. And as we'll see, we're created in the image of the beauty of that creator. But James K. Smith says this about our identity as desiring creatures. He says, We're talking about ultimate loves, that to which we are fundamentally oriented, what ultimately governs our vision of the good life, what shapes and molds our being in the world. In other words, what we desire above all else. The ultimate desire that shapes and positions and makes sense of all of our penultimate desires and actions. And that word penultimate just means that which is not sufficiently ultimate, that which is just underneath the ultimate, not quite ultimate. This sort of ultimate love could also be described as that to which we ultimately pledge allegiance or to evoke language that is both religious and ancient. Our ultimate love is what we worship. And so when we gather here, what we are trying to do is create a vision of the good life. And really, create is the wrong word, to bear witness to a vision of the good life that has been given to us. And we see how that ultimate story, the story of Jesus of Nazareth, competes with a lot of penultimate stories in our culture. And we see that when people give their allegiance to penultimate stories, stories that are not sufficiently ultimate, they give their heart, their soul, their mind, and their strength. They fall into idolatrous patterns of elevating that which is not ultimate to the ultimate. And we see this throughout our culture in so many ways, especially in politics. He goes on. Even if we never really reflect on it. In fact, sometimes this subterranean, pre-reflective desire governs us most powerfully, precisely when we don't reflect on it. Now, Alkasia, as a pastor and as one who participates in the designing of the worship that we participate in here, I get to be forthright with you. I can remove the illusion that marketers have to maintain in order to sell you something. I am trying to train your longings, trying to get you to reflect on the implications of them. To train your longings towards that which is ultimate, to train my own longings towards that which is ultimate.

unknown 8:57

St.

Training Our Longings

Rhythms Of Grace Series

A Fusion Liturgy: Ancient And Charismatic

Doxology And The Power Of Blessing

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Augustine says this. He says, The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. That is our life to be trained by longing. And our training through the holy longing advances in the measure that our longings are severed from the love of this world. Now, when Augustine uses this idea of the world, we remember that in John 3.16 it says that, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. So are we in opposition to God's love for the world? No, not at all. Especially in John's gospel, the world is the place that is arrayed against the purposes of God. Which makes that statement even more astounding in John chapter 3. For God so loved the world in its arrangement, arrayed against the purposes of God, that he gave his only son in order to restore and redeem it. This is what God is up to. We're starting a new teaching series that will carry us through the Advent or to the Advent season that we're calling the rhythms of grace, the shape of our liturgy and our life together. And what I'm going to do is just reverse engineer our gathering here, starting from the end of our service, and just basically ask and hopefully address the question to some extent: why do we do the things that we do? Do you ever think about when we show up, we have, and if you're if you're here every week, you get in step with the rhythms of what we're doing. If you're new here, some of this might feel a little strange, and that's okay. Where else do you gather in a room with a bunch of people and sing together? It's not a common thing, right? So the question that that demands to be asked is why? Why do we do these things? And we occupy some of it somewhat of an interesting space. And I want to make it clear, we're trying not to be innovative here. But we do occupy an interesting space. Some of you grew up in very formal church settings. You grew up in settings where there was a lot of public reading of scripture, hymn books that you held, you didn't read from a screen, as you sang. Maybe some smells and bells, and the sermons were much shorter. Others of us come from highly informal settings. Any hint of something that's not spontaneous or can be seen as ritualized is seen as suspicious or dripping with dead religion. And we, as Ecclesia, are trying to be both a contemplative community and a charismatic community. Trying to do both the expressive, emotional, and say words that have been handed down to us by the great cloud of witnesses of Christian faith and practice. Our liturgy is a fusion of sorts. And again, we are genuinely not seeking to do anything innovative. Scott McKnight, the New Testament scholar, in describing the earliest Christian worship, says that it probably resembled something like charismatic Anglicans. Both moments of expressive exuberance, lifting hands, but also moments of say these words. One of the oldest pieces of the New Testament, as we can ascertain it, is from Philippians. Your attitude should be that as the same of Christ Jesus, who, though he was made in the image of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but yet rather emptied himself. This was an early Christian hymn that they would sing and they would proclaim together as they gathered. Every week, I, when we come to the end of our service, I get to stand at this amazing intersection point. And I wish I could share it with all of you, because it's truly so incredible. The last pieces of our service are twofold. We sing the doxology together. Praise God from Him, all blessings flow. And then I pray a prayer of blessing over you, which is just a prescribed prayer that is found in Numbers chapter six. But as we sing, I get to stand right here. And our musicians, again, not normal for a church our size to have music this good. It's not. It's not normal. Okay? You need to know that. I see some of you nodding your heads. You've been in churches our size, and you've you've heard the dear lady giving it her heart and soul. And then you all. And you sing the words of the doxology together. And I just stand at the intersection of heaven and earth right here. I get both, and I'm just like, this, this is glory. This is so beautiful. And then, as we proclaim the beauty of what God has done, I get to pronounce a word of blessing over you. The calendar in the West officially marks Sunday as the beginning of the week. But if we're honest, most of us feel like it's the end of the week. Before the dreaded Sunday scaries and then Monday itself. And in response to the opening of the story that we do here every week, the preaching of the gospel, the joy and healing at the table, we sing the words of the doxology, and then I proclaim the word that will carry us into the coming week. And that word is blessing. And it's amazing to me, and I don't know if you feel this, I experience this weekly. That words that we say every week don't lose their power or their significance. I noticed early on in the life of our community that there was something happening in this rhythmic blessing. That as I get to proclaim blessing to you, it's not just nice thoughts about God, not just nice sentiments to send you on your way. There was something palpable about that moment, about that intersection point, as we come to both the end of the week and the beginning of the week, as we've started it in worship, as we receive from the beauty of what God has done. And we endeavor to go and to be agents and ambassadors of that goodness and blessing as we walk out those doors. I notice that there was something far beyond words that were taking place there. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. I say those words in a slightly truncated version every week. And I notice that there's a force attached to them. Reading the scriptures, I saw that that's not just a nice sentiment from my vantage point. It is the heart of what God is up to. There's a strange story in Genesis chapter 27. And if you're familiar with it, you know it's strange. There's a man named Isaac, he has two sons. His sons are named Esau and Jacob, and they were born at the same time, but in that order. Esau came out of the womb first, and then Jacob gets called Jacob because he's literally grasping the heel of Esau. Isaac has come to the end of his life. He's almost completely blind, and he sort of knows that his days on the earth are numbered. And so he endeavors to give his son, his favorite son, a blessing. He has a favorite son, which super healthy family dynamics. His wife also has a family s a favorite son, and it's the other son. So we've got an interesting, complex family system that we are working with here. And Isaac determines that he's going to bless Esau, so he tells Esau, Go and hunt some game, prepare a delicious feast for me, I will eat it, and I will bless you. The only problem is Rebecca, with her other favorite son, overhears Isaac's plan. And she decides to spring into action because if any son is getting the blessing, it's not gonna be her least favorite son. He was born from her body, it's gonna be the other one, her favorite one. And so she tells Jacob her plan. I'm gonna make this for you, you're gonna take it into your father. And Jacob is very worried about all of this. He's like, We're definitely gonna get caught. Esau's really hairy, like really hairy. So Rebecca, to solve that problem, attaches some goat skin to his arms because he's like really nastily hairy. And she sends Jacob in with this beast that she's prepared. And you see that Isaac is a little uneasy. He doesn't quite believe that this is in fact Esau in the form of Jacob. He's like, Who are you? Who'd you say you were? But Jacob sneaks in, feeds his father the meal, comes time for the blessing, and then he receives it. Now, again, the Genesis storytellers are masters. So we have been given all of this backstory and all of this lead up to this climax. Jacob receives this blessing, these beautiful words from his father, and then he leaves and goes about his way. But we know, uh-oh, Esau's coming. And sure enough, Esau enters the tent. Father, I've prepared a delicious feast for you. I'm ready to receive your blessing. Instantly, Isaac knows something is wrong. Who are you? Why, I'm Esau, of course, your favorite son. Not like that loser son, the other one. Uh-oh. I've already blessed the other son. Now, if you're like me, this demands a very important question. Why? Why can't Isaac, who dispensed a blessing under false pretenses, just say, okay, Jacob, heal, you got me. I'm gonna take this blessing back that I bestowed upon you, and I'm gonna put it on the person that I intended it for the whole time. Why can't he do that? I don't know. But apparently, blessing is a force. Apparently, the account has been drained of the funds and it cannot be refreshed. And so something is happening here that is beyond our rationalizations. Blessing is a force that actually puts into motion things in this world. And this got me thinking about all kinds of things about blessing. And I'm writing a book on it, and it's gonna be published next year, and I'm very excited about that. But I tell you this because I am not an expert on blessing, especially in giving them out. I'm not. But I am an expert in receiving blessings. I often feel like the luckiest man in the world, like I really do. And so I've been looking at this, the scriptures, through the vantage point of blessing. And what you see is that when you look at the scriptures through the lens of blessing, what you find is that it's everywhere. It shows up at every moment. Because the vantage point of blessing, though it can't be boiled down to this is the only story that the Bible is telling, it can be said that looking at the Bible through the vantage point of blessing is access to the heart of God. God is intent on blessing his people. Blessing is an investment, a binding of your life with the well-being of another through the investment of words, gifts, and relationship. It's not just nice sentiments, it's it's a covenant expression of God's posture and his presence. The Hebrew word for blessed is barakah. Walter Brugeman, the Old Testament uh theologian, says that the Hebrew word for blessing barakah means the life force of creation. He goes on and he writes, to bless is to implant or indwell the force of life into another person. The entire process of blessing as a transitive verb assumes such life force, such capacity for vitality can indeed be transferred from one agent to another. In the biblical conception of this word, it's not just, hey, here's a nice idea about God. There's something that is released into the world. And today, as we've sort of walked into this idea of cultural liturgies, now we're talking about what is the shape of our liturgy. I want to give you just a little bit of insight into what's happening at the end of our gathering as we send you out with blessing. First, blessing. Actually, let's just give it all at once. Blessing is your past, your present, and your future. You were made for blessing. What chapter does the Bible begin in? Not a true question. Genesis what? One. What comes after that? Genesis 2. Where does the event called the fall that breaks the shalom of that goodness and beauty, where does that happen? Genesis. How often do we start the story in Genesis 3? You are broken. Something needs to be fixed. Yes, it's true. But that's not where the story begins. And it's important when we tell the story well that we begin the story in the beginning. In Genesis chapter 1, God, the orchestrator, joyfully narrating the world to life. And if you look closely at the successive days, you see that there are rhythms to each day. Let there be light. Let us make two lights, one to govern the day and one to govern the night. Let there be creatures that will crawl on the land that we've created. Let there be creatures that swim in the oceans. God is delightfully narrating the world into existence. And what does he say at the conclusion of each day as he steps back from the work that he has done? It was okay. It was a decent, half-hearted effort.

unknown 21:55

No.

Genesis 27: Blessing As Force

Scripture Through The Lens Of Blessing

Original Blessing Before The Fall

Gratitude Without Denial

Ephesians 1 And Abundant Blessing

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Tove. It was good. It was good. And then there was evening and there was morning the first day and the second day. Again, we have all the rhythms of poetry which would suggest that we read it as such. And probably not impose questions of science and how old the earth is onto Genesis 1. Not because those questions shouldn't be asked, but imposing questions onto a genre of poetry often doesn't do anybody any service. And all of this crescendos on the sixth day. The text tells us God blessed them. It's the first time the word blessing is used in the Bible, explicitly. God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. Who is it that receives this command to co-create, to co-cultivate, to manage, and to steward? Who is it that receives this blessing? Those made in the image of God, right? Genesis 1.26. Who is made in the image of God? Not a trick question. Look around. Wow. Image of God. Every person you ever encounter. An icon. The God who made the universe. You should never lose that wonder. The person before us, yes, they may be an interruption. They may talk too much. Image of God. We see that in attachment theory, which is a branch of neuroscience and psychology that studies the development of young children, babies and then into children, that the most important interactions a newborn receives from their caregivers is not just the milk that they need to live, the changing of diapers, bathing, etc., but is literally the mirroring of the face of the one who looks down upon them. Through those interactions, a growing baby learns psychological safety, emotional stability, trust. How many of you can remember when your parents would glow over you? And again, I know there are instances where this did not happen, and for that, there is repair that Jesus sets the lonely in families. I know. But for those of you who had parents that were there and were present, or caregivers that were present, can you remember when they would just beam over you with delight? Do you remember that? No, you don't. And so often this is the truth of what God has been up to in our lives, far preceding when we were aware God has been beaming over us, delighting in us. Even through the midst of suffering and sorrow, he has been there, his face shining upon us. Genesis 1 is not a static picture of a perfect world, but it is telling us the truth that our home was always blessing. That the scriptures are about nothing less than God stopping at nothing to be God with us. And that home that He has cultivated for us, that setting for that story to take place is the story of blessing. That long before there was original sin, there was original blessing, and that that is our home. C.S. Lewis captures this that feeling that we have, that distance we feel between our experienced reality and the way that we often long to go home. So beautifully in his book, Till We Have Faces. I share this with you often. I love it. Bear with me. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to reach the mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from, my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing? All the longing, the longing for home. For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. Blessing is your home, it is your past. The words of the doxology that precede the benediction in our gatherings, praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below, praise him above, ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. Those words are first about remembering, aren't they? They're also about recollecting, regathering the fragments. He's drawing all things under his rule and reign. Even secular culture has picked up on the power of gratitude, right? How many of you have been told by your HR departments at work to keep a gratitude journal? Right? We're concerned about your emotional well-being. Yes, stay on your email until 11 o'clock, but keep a gratitude journal, right? This is exactly right. When we praise God for the goodness of his gifts, it doesn't deny reality. It doesn't diminish the real suffering that we often experience. It doesn't silence the ache that we often feel in our hearts, that things are not as they should be. But what it does say is that in the midst of that, I'm not alone. There is a God who has given goodness to me, glimpses of that place that will be my home ultimately and finally. And we respond to his goodness to us by remembering well, blessing is your past, blessing is your present. If you give me a moment, we will address the feeling of not feeling blessed. But first, let me speak some extravagance over you. Do you know what the longest run-on sentence of the Bible is? It's an outpouring of blessing. I love that there were some whispers there. Some of you know. I'm gonna read from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of this run-on sentence from Paul. When Paul wants to describe our present reality, he just goes, he's like, punctuation, no need for it. I'm gonna pronounce blessing over you that you're gonna have to. I'm like a freestyle rapper here. I'm just going for it. And I'm gonna read it like a run-on sentence, so like the micro machine, man, buckle up. That's a way outdated reference. All right. Paul writes in Eugene Peterson's paraphrase. This is good. How blessed is God, and what a blessing he is. He's the Father of our Master Jesus Christ and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. What pleasure he took in planning this. He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved son. Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the cross. We are a free people, free of penalties and punishments, chalked up by all of our misdeeds, and not just barely free either, abundantly free. He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth. It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living. Part of the overall purpose that he is working out in everything and everyone. It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it, this message of your salvation found yourselves home free, signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit, this down payment from God is the first installment on what's coming. A reminder that will get everything God has planned for us. A praising and glorious life. Come on. Now, if I ask you, what is that about, in detail, you'd be like, I don't really know. A lot of words. But if I just ask you what's the texture of that, you'd be like, yeah, that sounds pretty good. That's acceptable. The literal translation of this passage is from Ephesians 1, verse 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ Jesus with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. This is not about the future, Ecclesia. This is reality. As God is constituted in the work of Jesus the Son. We are swimming in the abundant blessings of God. Many Christian streams that focus on the idea of blessing, and I've spent time around a lot of them, live in denial of reality or in a vain attempt to manipulate reality. If I can just believe enough that I'll be healed, or believe enough that I'll find a spouse, then I will have it. And Ecclesia, God has goodness in store for you yet, but I assure you, He's not trying to get you to elevate your faith so that he can give things to you. I assure you he's not. There's no decision here if you read here in Ephesians 1. There's no striving. Paul says that by the grace of Jesus, this is the reality that reframes and brings clarity to the reality that we encounter every day. What this tells us is that against a script of the world that tells us that we have to make a name and a place for ourselves, is that no. In Christ, we are seated at the right hand of God the Father with Jesus. Against a script that tells us that our shame accumulates and defines us, that we are known by our lowest moments. In him we have redemption through his blood, which he has lavished upon us. Against a script that tells us that the world is chaotic and random and dangerous, that he is gathering up all things. Anav Kephale Sosmai, the Greek word there, so powerful under his rule and reign. But how? If this is reality then, then we have to address how do I feel so decidedly not blessed at times? How do I feel so bereft? How do I feel so alone, abandoned, so full of shame, like everything is dangling by a thread? For those of you who have not identified your lives with Christ, I want to say this to you very plainly. It feels that way because you are trying to live out of your own self-sufficiency. These promises are given to you freely, but you do have to say yes to them. God has been working on your behalf far before you walked into this room, far before you've ever been aware. But it is an invitation. And God will accept your revoking of that invitation. If you say no, he'll say, okay, I'll keep trying. But for many of us, we don't experience this life because we've not said yes to this life. Now, there's another category of us in here. Those of us have been walking with Jesus for a while. And we've seen both mountains and valleys. The blessings of God reorient our reality as we follow Him. They point us to true north. And this often is the lifetime of spiritual formation that takes place in us. That we submit to and we walk each step by faith. And so I say none of this to patronize or to placate you, especially those of you dealing with deep pain. The scripts of our world tell us that true north is success, is comfort and ease and notoriety. But the script of the gospel tells us that blessing is not only found in the midst of suffering, it's not just that there are glimpses of God's goodness in a ravaged and wasted place, that the blessing of God actually comes through suffering. And this is a reframing of those Christian streams that would say God just wants to bless you and He wants to bless you with material things. He wants to give you all these things that will make you greater and him less. That's not what's going on here. We have to hear the words of Jesus in places like Matthew 5. Notice who he confers blessing on. And notice how this isn't a go and try to make yourself this way. Jesus just pronounces these things because this is reality in the kingdom of God. Look at Jesus' words. Matthew 5, verse 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Blessing is not the absence of pain, Ecclesia, the absence of confusion or misunderstanding. It is the very presence of God, his face shining upon us. And Jesus shows us this by actually taking up residence in our world, skin and bones, and ultimately those skin and bones given over to death and death on a cross. Jesus goes to the place of the curse in order to bring blessing to us. And he shows us that every place that feels isolated or cut off from God's presence can be a gateway to his face. He who knew no sin became sin for us. The blessed one becomes a curse for us. He takes all of our cursing upon his very shoulders. And this reframes the idea of blessing, that even when we are in acute seasons of suffering or acute seasons of suffering that would have no perceived end, God is there in the midst of it, drawing out goodness, because this is what he did on the cross. That which the enemy meant for evil, God is taken for good. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not height, not death, not persecution or famine, not sword. Jesus is in the midst of every dire and weary place, not just present and bearing witness, but transfiguring and transforming. This is what God is about. Blessing is your present, even if you are feeling decidedly not blessed here today. I'm going to invite the worship team forward as we talk about blessing as our future. Luke 24 is an intersection point between the two works of Luke that we have in the New Testament. Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke, but he also wrote the book of Acts. And the compilers of the New Testament and all their wisdom did not put those two books next to each other. So we've got Luke, then John, then we jump to Acts. Think of the last image you have of a dear loved one, somebody that you spent time with before they passed away. Maybe you were with them the day that they drew their last breaths. That's a tender place, so we pray for the Holy Spirit to come. My dear grandmother passed away in 2022. I got a call from my mom that they thought she might go home to be with Jesus soon, and being a thousand miles away could only settle for FaceTime. I've spent a lot of time in rooms with people drawing their last breaths. It's never a comfortable place to be in. It's an even strange and almost uncanny place to be when that is mediated through our technology and FaceTime. I was grateful for it, but it also just felt so distant. I talked to my grandmother. I told her I love her. She spoke with our kids who were mostly too young to even know what was going on. And then I started reading Psalm 91 over her. I picked up my Bible. She lived a long and good life. I read, Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. But to this point that I couldn't go on any longer. I couldn't finish. Our oldest daughter, Evie, saw my tears and she was aware of what was going on. She said, Dad, do you want me to read it? And she, all of eight years old, picked up where I had left off. She read, Because you've made the Lord your refuge, the most high your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you. No scourge come near your tent, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against the stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. Those who love me I will deliver. I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them, I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them with long life, I will satisfy them and show them my salvation. As my grandmother was at the intersection of death that leads to life and life everlasting, her great granddaughter read the words of the faith that ensured that truly no evil shall befall her, that she would tread on the curse in the power in the name of Christ, that she would see his salvation. The faith that she had handed down to our family exemplified in the generational blessings from this little girl, past, present, future, all colliding. I finally was able to gather myself, watching all of this unfold. And I said to her, The Lord bless you. May He keep you, may He cause His face to shine upon you, and may He give you His peace. And I said, I love you. And those last words I got to say to her on this side of eternity. In Luke 24, we have the last image the disciples see of the risen Christ. Now, if you know the fullness of the story, Jesus is not going away to leave the disciples and saying good luck to them. He's going to send his abiding presence in the form of the Spirit, that spirit which is present here among us. But Luke 24 draws out this very beautiful image, the last image that is imprinted on the minds of his disciples, that image that would draw them to the ends of the earth, proclaiming this truth. This is who Jesus is, this is what his face looks like. It says in Luke 24, verse 50, as he was departing and going up to heaven, he extended his hands and he blessed them. God had one chance to leave a lasting image in the mind of his disciples. You know what he chose? Blessing. And just as his arms were extended on the cross to redeem all that is broken and all that is lost, he extends his arms forevermore in an embrace and in a blessing to all who would receive him. Blessing is your future, Ecclesia. And when we pray, those words of the benediction each week, my prayer is that when you go from here, you will go with that image in your head, that force animating your life, but also saying, Jesus is beautiful. There is much that is broken in this world, there is much that's broken in me. But God is in the business of redeeming all things. And it is sure and it is certain because of his work in the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus. We pray, come, Holy Spirit. God, I pray you would empty this room of any any sort of empty emotiveness. God, I I know talking about my dear, beloved, beautiful grandmother, that that can bring a lot of emotions that can get wrapped up in things, Lord. Which is good, but Lord, I also just pray that you would cut through all that. God, I pray that for those who don't know themselves as insiders to this promise, Lord, that you would show them the wide door. You are the gate. You are the good shepherd. You lay down your life for the sheep, eroding all that seeks to kill, steal, and destroy, Lord. To give us life and life to the full. So, God, there are some of us in here today who have not said yes to these promises, yes to this reality. God, who are being shaped by cultural liturgies that are far, far from ultimate and far, far from the beauty of your story, Lord. So would you meet us here in power? God, for many of us, we are. We are insiders to the promise. We have said yes, and we are in Christ, and everything that is true of Jesus is true of us because of you, the radical extravagance of your promises, Jesus. So, God, would you deepen our perception of who you are? God, would you make our faces like you made Moses' face shine just by being in your presence, Lord? We see the beauty of your face and we walk out if your face is radiant, ready to give of the world, our gifts, our words, our relationships, the world that you so loved that you gave your son, Lord, that we would share in that endeavor, God. And that we would see you. God, for those of us who are operating with impoverished imaginations, when it comes to what you look like, would you show us your face? Your hands outstretched for blessing, Lord Jesus. For those of you without size expectations of what our shame says about us, would you show us your hands extended on the cross, Lord Jesus? God, we gather in your presence, Lord, because you have invited us here. We tell this story, Lord Jesus, because it is the true story of the entire world. We pray, we proclaim these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray. Amen. Ecosia, I'm gonna invite you to stand. We're gonna stand and worship.