Rhythms Of Grace: Our Liturgy: Table- Ian Graham

Pastor Ian Graham continues our series reverse engineering an Ecclesia gathering to explore the implications of our liturgical practices. This week, we look at the way the table functions at the center of Jesus’ ministry to us.

Transcript

SNAP Cuts And Urgent Need

SPEAKER_00 0:00

How are we doing? Well, if you've been paying attention to the news, you have seen that the federal SNAP benefits are have expired as of yesterday. And through our partnership with the Princeton Mobile Food Pantry, we serve a lot of families that rely on those benefits in addition to the help that they receive from the food pantry. And so on Wednesday I had a conversation with Liliana, who is our contact at the food pantry. And one of the most important questions you can ask when trying to help, as Christians a lot, we have good motivations in helping, but we also always want to impose our way of helping. One of the best questions you can ask is, what do you need? And so I asked her that question. She was like, listen, the thing that we need right now most urgently is money. As a 501c3 and as a food pantry, they have purchasing power that we do not have. Even if you shop at Costco, buying in bulk, they can still do it better. And so we met with our elders on Wednesday night and just praying about how we could participate with what God is up to and meeting the needs of his people here as our neighbors here in Princeton. And our elders, we sort of kind of came to the conclusion we're gonna give$5,000 as a church, which is like for us, like it's kind of kind of amazing. So it feels like a drop in the bucket, but also as a young church, we've never been able to write a check that big, so kind of cool. But also what we decided was everything that is given today, uh we're just gonna take our collective offering and give it to the pantry uh as a way of just supporting them, uh, hopefully, uh in their work. So uh just gonna invite you. There's a QR code back there. Uh I know like sometimes when it comes to like things that are material and things that we feel like we're doing, like there's more of a motivation to give. I'm my prayer is that we as a people are always kind of feeling like all right, our response to what God is doing and what he's up to is to give out of the uh the the wealth of what he's given. But uh it's so beautiful to see uh our our invitation to participate with what God is up to. So I'm gonna pray over those offerings that we give every week, and then uh we'll move on to some other things. Jesus, God, remind us of your heart. Lord, Isaiah says that the high and lofty one dwells with the poor and with the lowly. And uh Isaiah 1 reminds us that though we can pray all the right prayers and sing all the right songs, Lord, if we are trampling on the poor, if we are ignoring those in our midst, God, then we are singing songs that you don't want to hear. And so would you, through the power of your spirit, God, not through our efforts, not through our our guilt even, God, would you make us into a people who reflect your character and the the realities of your kingdom? Would you conform us to the image of your son? And would you make us a people that see, God, that giving is a joyful invitation. So God, may we express the abundance of your kingdom by the way that we partner with uh people that are just trying to help people make ends meet here in Princeton and beyond. And would you help us? We ask these things in your name, in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Well, it's good to see you all. If you are new here, I want to extend a very hearty welcome. Uh, I also want to say welcome to those of you who are here every week. It's good to see you. And we are in a teaching series where we are unpacking the things that we do on Sunday morning. Have you ever asked yourself the question, why do we do that? And why do we do it every week? Well, if you haven't asked the question, then we're asking it for you. You're welcome. And if you have, I hope that you find some answers here. Now, incidentally, we will be talking about our reality of meeting Jesus at the table as we each week we come to this table, which has bread and grape juice on it. We celebrate communion, the Eucharist, the Lord's table, depending on your church background, if you have one, you have different names for it. What are we doing when we come to this table? What are we up to? What is God doing in the midst of it? We've been reverse engineering our series. So last week we started the series, but we started at the end of our gathering. So, the end of our gathering, we pronounce a blessing over you. And you can go back and listen to that teaching about why we do that, why we say the same words every week to send you out of here. And so, as we're stepping backwards through the general order and rhythms of our gathering, today we're talking about communion. And as we focus on communion, I want to bring us to one of our values as a church as Ecclesia. We have always said here that we meet Jesus at the table. The origin story of Ecclesia is basically a dinner table. Us and another family meeting on Friday nights and just kind of dreaming of what a people could look like here in Princeton and Central Jersey. And then, as we started to actually try to start the church, we started inviting people to what we call dinner parties. And I remember one of those very distinctly. We had this couple show up, and it became very clear that they did not know that they've been invited to something that had like a church texture to it. And so we're like so glad you're here, like so happy. And they're like, Yeah, yeah, like thanks for having us. And again, you're not you're trying not to be a salesperson, but you're also you have a point that you're trying to get to. So we we have the gathering in our home, and then eventually we're like, okay, we're gonna talk about the church. And they're like, the what? Like the church, that's why we're all here. They're like, is that why we're all here? Because we we were previously unaware of that reality, but but apparently that's why we're all here. And so then, as a speaker, in a small setting, when you know people are like, oh my gosh, like they're feeling a little anxious, then I'm feeling anxious, and I just start talking like a billion miles an hour, and just trying to get this thing over with because their awkwardness is now rubbing off on me, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, I want to crawl into a hole. And I they probably want to crawl in the hole with me. But through these dinner gatherings, something that began to resemble what we do here began to emerge. But we've always said as a people that we meet Jesus at the table. And when we say that, we're certainly talking about this table, right? But it's not just the table here in the arts councils. We come together to celebrate the Lord's table. We meet Jesus at the table when we share a meal with our neighbors who don't know Jesus. Have you ever just invited the people that live around you over for dinner? And again, not with the point of trying to tell them all about Jesus, but just sharing life with them. Have you ever just sat down to a meal with somebody from church here? Like we meet Jesus at the table when we gather together as a people. We meet Jesus at a table when we set a table of blessing in the wilderness to feed those who don't have enough to eat, as we're talking about today. We meet Jesus at the table when we experience the joy at the face of another. When you experience the joy of flavors, when you say, Thanks, God, you invented salt and spice and sweet. God, you are the origin, the author of every good and perfect gift. We meet Jesus at the table. Today, what I want to do is go to the place that gives us our insight into the earliest Christians' practice of what we call communion. That's found in 1 Corinthians, specifically 10 and 11. And I want to use that as a backdrop to then look at the ministry of Jesus. If you pay attention to Jesus' life, you see that he spends an inordinate amount of time at meals. And this tells us something very profound. We we miss this, we we easily dismiss Jesus' brilliance at the actual art of living. Jesus is not just showing us what God is like, he's showing us what it means to be human. And in Jesus' expression of what it means to be human, he sits down to a bunch of meals. This is good news to us, yes? Yes. But I want to turn over to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, as we look at the earliest Christians. Now, here's the good news for us today. In all of our struggles and confusion and perplexity and travails about things like practicing communion, the reason that we have any insight, any knowledge into what the earliest Christians were up to in practicing communion is because they were bad at it. And this is true of so many things that form the heart of our faith. The reason that we have so many instructions about what it means to live together across diverse perspectives and ethnic backgrounds and cultural assumptions and stories, the reason that we have those instructions is because the earliest Christians were really bad at it. But their malpractice does not undermine that it is God's very heart that we would be this kind of people, this new humanity. And so we receive these instructions with grace. We acknowledge that our half-hearted expressions are still nonetheless used by God. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, beginning in verse 17. Paul writes, now, in the following instructions, I do not commend you, which is, I don't know, it's just a funny statement. And especially because he's going to repeat himself. Therefore, I do not commend you. Because when you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse. Another scathing endorsement. All right, verse 18. For to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you proceeds to eat your own supper. One goes hungry, and another becomes drunk. What? Do you not have households to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you. Again, Paul just making very clear that he does not commend these people for their practice. For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you. At the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup also after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again. I want to also scroll back to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, where Paul just very succinctly captures what's happening at the table. He says, 1 Corinthians 10, verses 16 and 17, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. One of the themes that defines the book of Corinthians, the letter to the Corinthian church, is division. The people are dividing over which leader they follow. The people are dividing into the social hierarchies that defined their life pre-knowing Christ. And Paul writes to challenge the divisions that are easily emerging in the church. Biblical scholars have been able to construct a pretty vibrant picture of the Corinthian church because of some of the records they have found through archaeological digs and some of the writings that they have there. And one of the things that it seems that is evident from places like Paul's writing is that the church was made up of a wide spectrum of rich and poor, certainly some Jews and some Gentiles, and these were cultural lines that were not often traversed. Roman society was diverse in the whole of the empire, but was often defined by groups that were quite homogenous. But the church becomes a perplexity to the broader Roman Empire. Why, in the Christian gatherings, are rich and poor sharing the same table? This is interesting. They're gathering together. This was counterfactual to the people observing the earliest Christian practices. And so one of the things that it seems is happening is sort of different than our gatherings as a church. When we gather here, we have some bread and some grape juice. You take a piece of bread, you dip it in the cup. For the earliest Christians, their practice of church was not just a little morsel, his body broken for you, his blood shed for you, but was a whole meal. And there have been churches that have said, we are going to try to be like the earliest churches, we're going to have dinner church. They would have a whole meal, which some scholars have begun to call a love feast. They would worship the Lord, and they would hear a word, a sermon, or uh writings like this we have in the letter to the Corinthians. And so their gatherings were slightly different in structure than ours. They would also meet in a home, usually the home of a wealthy individual, because of size demands. The wealthier individuals had larger domiciles where they could seat a larger number of people. And so the earliest Christians gathering in the homes of these wealthy people, but you also had poorer people that were showing up and entering the homes of these wealthy folks. And though our calendar is still loosely kind of structured where culturally Sunday morning is at least somewhat reserved for church. That's becoming less and less so, right? For these people, this was not a cultural norm. And so they would still go about their day, and especially the peasants, the lower classes, would have to wake up before dawn, go work the entire daylight hours until it was dark, and then after that they would go and gather for church. Now, as is much the same in our culture, those with more means did not have to work as much. And so they would start the gathering before the lower classes were off work. And this is what it seems to be what Paul is getting at here in 1 Corinthians 11. He's saying, hey, when some of the people show up, all the food is already gone. Some of you are a little tipsy, and you've been feasting long before the poorer folks in your body were able to even show up to the gathering. This should not be so. You are undermining the very heart of the gospel because you are reinforcing and reiterating the cultural norms that are already present throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus is in the business by the power of his spirit in creating a new humanity, in upending the social hierarchies that we so easily subscribe to. And Jesus is saying, your gathering should not be like the middle school lunch table, where you have to try to figure out where you can sit and where there's a space for you. The story of the kingdom is that there's a space for everyone at the table. And Paul says to them, in this practice, I do not commend you. And Paul is focusing on the unity by the power of the Spirit that comes to its fullest expression in the incarnate realities of the Spirit. When we come to this table in our gathering, we are taking these promises that we have spoken, the goodness of God that we have proclaimed over you, the things that Jesus has done in his life, his death, his resurrection, and in some way they're taking on some material substance. That God, through his power, is showing us what the goodness of the Lord tastes like in the land of the living. That these promises aren't just ideas, they are reality. The Corinthians really are a modern church in so many ways. They have so many overlaps with the American church. And one of the ways that they overlap with our cultural assumptions is their penchant for defaulting towards individualism. Paul will drive home again and again throughout Corinthians that their sharing in the body of Christ unites them as one people. A point that he will continue to drive in. If you're familiar with the structure of Corinthians, Paul will write these words about the Eucharist, about communion in 1 Corinthians 11. He will immediately then go into a discussion of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12, the gifts that are manifested in the body of Christ by the power of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient, love is kind. That the operating system of the body of Christ, the very heartbeat itself, is the love of God. That which unites us. 1 Corinthians 14, Paul will then pick up on his discussion on gifts and the disparate, yet united pieces of the body that all have Christ as their head. This is what Paul's up to. He's saying, Yes, you are many, yes, you are diverse, yet you are all united by Jesus. He is our head. Paul will say elsewhere in Galatians chapter 3, he says, as many of you were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek. There is no longer slave or free, no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Paul is saying that Jesus breaks down the cultural divides that are present among us. He doesn't erase our cultural backgrounds, he doesn't erase our ethnicity. That's not what Paul is saying. But all of it is subsumed, put under the Lordship of Jesus, rightly ordered. And it's then that they're transfigured into the beauty of what they were always meant to be: an expression of the image of God. The table is a sharing. Paul uses the word a koinonia, an intimate fellowship with Jesus. And it weaves us together by the power of the Spirit into life together as Christ's body. So that a different way. The greatest commandment, as Jesus expresses it, first there's a vertical orientation. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, right? But this is not just an idea. This is not just a vague reality. Because Jesus says it one in the same breath, the second commandment is like it. There's a horizontal orientation. Love your neighbor as yourself. We express our love for God by the way that we love one another. Jesus tells us this in John. By your love for one another, the world will know you're my disciples. And so it's always twofold. And this is embodied in a most powerful way at the table. Okay, so that's a little bit of a background on what we're doing. We've got a little time here. This is good. Alright, so what do I have for you? I worked in restaurants for a long time. Restaurants will teach you a lot about human nature. They will teach you how to work hard. They will teach you how to fail. The first time I ever tried to open a bottle of wine was at a table side with a bottle opener. It did not go well. I somehow broke the bottle of wine. I also, I I was I my job at this corporate restaurant, I was called an enhancer. An enhancer. It was a very, very fancy name for a food runner. So I like, and part of the, you know, you like you start off, you're trying to figure out how to do the job well, but then once you kind of get that down, you're like, all right, now let's make an art of it. So part of being an artist as a food runner was trying to see how many bowls and plates you could stack on your arms. I I've got somewhat long arms. Like I'm pretty good at that. We didn't use trays. Trays, trays are for, I don't know, not us. Long arms stacking bowls, it's like Jenga, and then you gotta unpack them. One time I had a lot of bowls in my hand. I had a bowl stacked on plates. I got to the table, the bowl of hot pasta immediately tipped over onto one of our guests. There are no words. My manager comes over. He's like, I'm sorry, that guy's an idiot. I will pay your dry cleaning bill out of his tips. I will uh also comp your meal for now until eternity, and I'm just over there hanging my head in shame. So restaurants teach you a lot. But today we've got a little bit of a menu for you, a little bit of uh some fare for you to explore. Because what ultimately, when we come to the table, this is about Jesus and what he's expressed at the table. And if you read closely in Luke's gospel especially, you see that Jesus is always, always about to about to feast. He is up to things at meals that are teaching us about the realities of the kingdom of God. And so we'll kind of just let leave it to you to pick what sounds appetizing, what sounds good to you. So we have a menu here. We'll just go from there and call one out.

unknown 21:49

Karen.

Forgiveness, Honor, And True Worship

Luke 15: The Running Father

Feast Over Shame

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Karen. Now, for those of you who aren't online, Karen is like an archetype of somebody who is very much often about themselves, very much about the rules, is always on the verge of calling the cops on somebody. This is Karen, right? Maybe, maybe a little bit insulated, but also she's always looking at what everybody else is up to and always ready if there's any hijinks that are taking place. She's gonna alert the authorities, all right? So let's go. Let's go find Karen. All right. Uh Craig, can you scroll through these? We got we got a picture of what's gonna unfold here, too. If you just scroll through those paintings, we'll we'll find the right one. Not that one, not that one, not that one, not that one. Now, next, next. Keep going. Yeah, that one. Alright. This is by a Bulgarian icon artist named Julia Stankova. And we'll turn over to Luke chapter 7. Jesus has been invited to a meal by a Pharisee. This man is named Simon. And he invites Jesus to a meal. I never know what the Pharisees are up to, what their motivations are in inviting Jesus to meals. But Luke writes this When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. Again, Jesus is a pragmatist. He says, The Pharisee, they may not think I have the best motivations, but he's invited me to a nice meal. I'll be there. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house. So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself in his most caren voice, If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is. And she is a sinner. Jesus answered him. Simon, I have something to tell you. When Jesus answers you, when he first names you, he says, I have something to tell you, you should buckle up. Tell me, teacher? Okay, he's here for it. Two people owed money to a certain money lender. One owed him 500 denari, and the other 50. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now, which of them will love him more? Simon replied, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven. You've judged correctly, Jesus said. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman from the time I entered has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. Then Jesus said to her, Your sins are forgiven. The other guests began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins? Jesus said to the woman, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Can you just enter into this scene for a moment, Ecclesia? Jesus is at the table of somebody who maybe is suspicious of him. In walks a woman. We don't know how she got in. We don't know what her story is. But she has some sort of a pass, and Simon so readily calls it out. This woman is a sinner, dismissing her, not even talking to her. Jesus plays along for a minute. He's like, okay, you want to play? Fine. Simon. I'm going to tell you a story. And he puts together the puzzle in his mind, but he doesn't realize what Jesus is up to. This woman who has seen something of Jesus brings her best, this alabaster jar of perfume, and she opens it on the feet of Jesus. The beauty of this picture as she's wiping her tears and the perfume in with her hair, she gives the best of what she has. She comes to the table, falling at Jesus' feet. And Jesus uses all of this to clarify this is the reality of the kingdom, that God has come to seek and save that which is lost. He is inviting the whole world to the feast. And this woman recognizes rightly where Simon misses it. And each week when we come to this table, we bring some semblance of our best. We bring our recollections, we bring the memory of what God has saved us from. And we fall down in worship. Say thank you. We worship the Lord for what he has done. We see Jesus rightly in worship. We see him rightly often through tears. And we see Jesus expressing the reality of the kingdom that it's often those that culture and society so easily pushes to the margins that have been invited to the very center. We meet Jesus at the table. That's good news. Alright, let's go back to the menu. What do we got? What's next? Brisket will heal the world. This is the best one. Luke 15. We have there a succession of stories. A lost sheep, a lost coin, and then finally a lost son. You see, as quickly as I can summarize that story, there's a father, as Jesus begins the story, who had two sons. And the younger son said to his father, Father, give me my share of the inheritance, which is a subtle way of saying, Father, I wish you were dead. And the father, against all cultural expectations, gives the son his inheritance. And the son makes off with his newly found riches to a far-off place. And he squanders it on reckless living on himself. And just at the moment where he spends his last penny, there's a famine in the land. And he finds himself as a young Jewish boy serving Gentiles by tending the pigs. Just shame upon shame. But he has the thought I know I've blown it with my father, but there's still a way for me to not have to live under my father's authority and to make things somewhat right and to live off of my father's land. And so he says, I will go back to my father, I will say, Father, I'm not worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired hands. And that's the important clause there. The son's designs on his return to the father's house still is about the son trying to make his own way. He's still ordering his father around. Give me my share of the inheritance. Make me like one of your hired hands. Now, when the son says, make me like one of your hired hands, he's not secretly hoping that the father will say, Hey, you want to be my son again? That's not what's happening. The son's demand to be made like one of the hired hands is actually a way of him saying, I don't want to be a part of your family estate anymore. That's not what I'm interested in. What I'm going to try to do is pay back, pay some of my own way, so that I can still live off the abundance of your house. He says, How many of my father's hired hands still have food to eat, a place to sleep? This is what he's endeavoring to do. This is his plan as he returns home. It would have been culturally expected that this father, who has been deeply shamed, Publicly by this younger son. For him, if the son ever were to return, for him to wait inside the house and make the son request to enter the house as any servant would have to do. But this father's been up to something quite different. Every single day since this son made his way, this father has been looking down the road on the off chance that his son might return. And on this day, his hope would be rewarded. The father, as it became his custom scanning the horizon, he sees something. He's like, that's familiar. I've seen that walk since it learned how to do it. I know what it looks like. He knows that it's his son. Here's the younger son making his way back. A crowd is starting to accumulate because not only has this younger son shamed his father, this is a collective society. He shamed the very town itself. And they're starting to gather and say, hey, hey, buddy, you're not welcome here anymore. This is not your place. You have squandered not just your father's wealth, but our collective wealth. And he's walking through the crowd, making his way. And as he looks up, he sees something quite astonishing and quite stunning. He sees his father. But what his father is doing is even more astonishing. Because in this culture, old men did not run. A man's wisdom, a man's status was expressed by the way that he moved. Have you ever seen somebody that walks and you're like, that person knows who they are? They're comfortable. I admire those people. It was not common for an older man to run. It would be culturally shameful. They have to hike up their robes. They had the long flowing robes exposing the top of their legs, which again, culturally not acceptable. But this old man, frail and fragile though he may be, has hiked up his robes. He is running towards his son. And as the son takes one last glance up, he's nearly bowled over by the father's embrace. You see, the father didn't wait inside the house. The father ran to the son. And then the son starts his speech. Father, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. It's not an ellipsis, it's a period. He doesn't do the second part, not because he's interrupted by the father. He doesn't do the second part because something has fundamentally changed in him seeing the father clearly for the first time. What changed? The father ran. Everything has now changed. But the father doesn't leave him there in suspense. He calls to the servants get a robe, the best one, and put it on his shoulders. The best robe belongs to the Father. Put a ring on his finger, which is a signifier of authority in the Father's house. This is my son again. Put shoes on his feet. You see, servants aren't given shoes by the Father, but sons are. Everything the Father does expresses there was never a moment where you were not my son, and that is true, then it is true now. The grace of the Father undoes the expectations of the Son. Does that for the Son, it does that for us. And then the best part, this crowd that is gathered, crowd that was motivated by shame and accusation. The Father says, get the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a party. Now, I'm from Oklahoma. I know that brisket takes, it's a it's a 12 to 15 hour process. So this is probably not the way that they prepared this fattened calf. I understand that. We're merging timelines here a little bit. They probably made some mistakes. But we see the beauty of Jesus that at the restoration of one wayward sinner, the whole world of famine is invited to a feast. Brisket will heal the world. What time we got? Alright. You guys want one more? Okay, fine, fine, fine. Okay. Okay, one more.

unknown 34:19

Not all wedding food is mediocre. Casper.

Culture Transformed, Nations Healed

Communion As Foretaste Of Future

Invitation To The Table And Prayer

SPEAKER_00 34:22

I heard not all wedding food is mediocre at first. That's a good one to end on. Alright, let's do it. We'll do Casper later. You should watch Casper, the friendly ghost. Alright. Now, have you ever been to a wedding that literally had a smorgasbord, if I can even say that word? Of every food that you could possibly imagine, but none of it was very good. Sorry, Jersey wit wedding venues. No, no, I'm sorry. No, I didn't mean that. I've been to weddings with great food, and if I've done your wedding, the food was probably great. Uh let's see, let's scroll to our painting here. Uh no, keep going, keep going. It's the uh the one with the lamb in the middle. Yeah, that one. All right. This is an altar piece by the Van Eyck brothers from the 15th century. All right, the end. If you turn to the end of the story, you get a sense of where the story was going all along. Revelation 19, verse 6. Hallelujah. For the Lord God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come. And his bride has made herself ready. To her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, Write this Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true words of God, I hear that, Amen. Thank you. Okay, time for a little honesty. Have you ever been given a picture of heaven that if you're honest, sounds horribly, horribly boring. Anybody? Eternal church service? Anybody? If it's just me, it's okay. The idea that God is going to, in the end, invite us to a never-ending church service oftentimes has its roots, not in the biblical text itself, but in our illusions about flying away to some other place, removed from the realities of this world. But Jesus is the author of this world. He's the beginning of all things, and he's the Omega. He has always been about restoring that which was lost. When God made the world, he said it was good. The story begins in a garden and it ends in a city, which is but a collection of gardens, is it not? And for us, so many times the image of heaven that we are given is this kind of removed. We're not even sure if there's other people around, we're not even sure what we're up to all day, but if we're honest, it sounds kind of impoverished. If you read the end of Revelation, what you find is something quite different. You find a new Jerusalem. You find the stunning promises, and we should never pass over these. He will wipe every tear from our eye. I mean, just stop on that picture for just a moment. I mean, when was the last time somebody touched your face? And the psalmist says that God carries our tears in a bottle. In some way, Jesus wiping the tears from our eyes is gathering all the tears, all of the disappointments, into his nail-scarred hands. It says also that death will be no more. That which threatens us, the curse which threatens to erode us and undo us, is broken forever. This is good news. But it also says that the kings of the earth will bring their treasures into the new Jerusalem. It has all the expression of worship and offering. That the cultures of the world, in the ways that they somehow express the goodness of God's kingdom, that that will be a building block and a stepping stone in the New Jerusalem, that it will last. And what this tells us is that that meal that expresses who your family is and where they come from, those flavors, that impulse to make things, to create, is not somehow misplaced in the world that is to come. But it is our invitation as those made in the image of God. Culture is God's idea. If you go back to Genesis 2, you have trees that are pleasing to the eye, you have trees that are good for food, but you also have these random details. Why does the text tell us there's bedelium and onyx and gold? Because God made a good world and he has made us as partners to explore and to steward and to cultivate that good world. That is the call and the beginning, and that will maintain and sustain itself as the call in the end. The kings of the earth will bring their treasures into the new Jerusalem, all gathered around the tree of life, which is given for the healing of the nations. The nations, in whatever way the Bible conceives of them, don't cease to exist in the New Jerusalem, but they are transfigured. No longer is it about coercion or seeking prominence or dominance. Jesus is the center. He is healing the nations which are divided. He is transfiguring our cultural offerings into the beauty of his kingdom. There will be feasting, there will be exploration, there will be so much goodness that we have not even begun to conceive of. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has begun to imagine what God has prepared for those who love him. Sounds like good news. It doesn't sound boring. We get a picture of this at the table. And friends, I I often will, you'll see me, I'll just kind of make my way back here when you guys are receiving communion. Because I get a picture of what God is up to in the world by watching us meet Jesus at the table. Our lives together, the people that are in this room, we're defined by what Jesus has done. There's no reason we would be in a room together where it's not for Jesus, right? It's amazing. It's a miracle. And I see a picture of the healing of the nations. I see a picture of the image of God and what he is expressing in the world just by watching us take communion. And it is what Jesus is up to. We meet him here at the table. And this is a picture of the future that will be forever, infinitely so. This is good news. Not all wedding food is mediocre. I'm going to invite the worship team forward. Every week we come to this place. And we invite the presence of the Holy Spirit. You see, this isn't magic. This isn't, you know, nothing, nothing happening here without the presence of God. Bringing us to the reality of what Jesus has done, and not just for the world, but for us. It's not just that God loves the world, he loves you. And so we pray for the Holy Spirit to come. We pray for him to comfort those who need comfort. For them to hear the words that Jesus offers to the dear woman. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. I see you. We meet Jesus at the table for the Holy Spirit to allow God to confront that which needs to be confronted in us. First and foremost, often those are lies. They don't originate in us. Jesus says there's an accuser who seeks to kill, steal, and destroy. And Jesus wants to undermine and completely destroy that voice. Whether it be the voice of the accuser or our own unreliable internal narrator, Jesus is saying, My promises are for you, my words are better. He confronts that which is broken within us. Not with harshness, not with distance, but with himself. We meet Jesus at the table to express the reality of the kingdom of God. I want to pray for the Holy Spirit to come, and then we will respond and worship. We pray, come, Holy Spirit. God, all of this is about your body, your blood. God, as we receive from this table of physical things, we remember that you gave your physical body, the fullness of God. Fully, amen. To redeem and to restore us, God. God, you took the worst of what we can fashion. When the curse drives us to make culture of cursing, God. You give trees of life, trees that are good for food, trees that are beautiful to the eye, Lord, and we forge out of them trees of destruction and execution, God. And yet you take that willingly upon your own shoulders, Jesus. Taking the worst that we can do and turning it into a blessing, God, that will be for all the world and will be for the redemption of all things, Jesus. So God, help us here in this place to see ourselves in light of this story. To see that it is the true story of the entire world, to see that we have been called, we have been given an invitation to the marriage supper of the land, to be a part of the true humanity, Jesus, from every tongue, every tribe, every nation. God, we receive the beauty of your grace here in this place. Lord, would you meet us here in power? Lord, would you speak to dear sons and daughters? We pray these things in your name, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. We're gonna come to the table to meet Jesus as he meets us here.