Rejected at the Church Door (Mark 2:13-21)

February 21, 2016 - 2nd Sunday of Lent

We passed out rocks on Ash Wednesday as a Lenten discipline. If you’d like to join us in this practice, come up and get a rock right now or at any time during the sermon.  You are invited. 

            My rock reminds me of the ways I neglect my faith.  I hold it and think of things that draw me away from Jesus. 

            I also hold my rock and remember that the Holy Spirit is with me.  I hope you’ll take a rock and carry it everywhere from now until Easter Sunday.  Be aware distractions and ask God to remove them.  Be aware also of the presence of God.

            This morning we will see another way this rock can serve a reminder in our lives as Jesus’ disciples. 

            Think of one or two people you do not want to see at church and write the names down.  Everyone turn those names in and we’ll make a master list and give it to our ushers.   They will man the door.  If anyone on your list shows up, they will put up a stop sign.  The “unwanted’s” will be rejected at the church door. But be careful.  You may be on someone else’s list.  The ushers may have to escort you out.  Or me; I may be able finish this morning.

            Anyone have Coach K on your list?  We live in Chapel Hill. We’ve got to keep the unacceptable people out. 

How about someone in a disreputable occupation?  We’ll ban bookies, telemarketers, and sensationalist fraudulent faith healers.  Who should we stop at the door?

 On a more serious note, has someone hurt you or taken advantage of you.  They betrayed you or gossiped behind your back.  Maybe the damage is lasting damage.  Could you stand and sing songs of praise alongside one who has caused so much pain and fear? 

What is someone is neck-deep in pornography?  It’s hard to imagine that person in church.  He doesn’t belong. 

When the Pharisees saw Jesus at Levi’s party, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners” (2:16)?  Jesus is a holy man, but he parties with the unclean, the unrighteous.  Why? 

In the early 1960’s Will Campbell made his way from his humble beginnings in poor, rural Mississippi to Yale Divinity School.  He became an aggressive civil rights activist and ended up back in the south where his Christian faith was tested when he saw white Christians reject black people at the doors of their churches. 

Newspaper editor P.D. East agreed with Campbell’s politics of racial equality but rejected his faith.  He dared Campbell to succinctly express the Christian message.  “We’re all rebellious losers,” Campbell said, “But God loves us anyway. 

P.D. East was unmoved.  Episcopalian priest Jonathan Daniels was a friend to both men and a fellow civil rights activist.  He murdered in broad daylight by Thomas Coleman, a Southern sheriff.  To East, this was evidence that there is no God.  Relentlessly he attacked Campbell’s definition of faith.

Was Jonathan Daniels a rebellious loser?  He asked.

Everyone is a sinner, including Jonathan Daniels.  So yes, he has rebelled.

Fine.  East continued his assault.  Is Thomas Coleman a rebellious loser?

The murderer?  O yes. Yes that murdering sheriff is a loser (Campbell thought of other words I won’t say).

Then, the unbeliever, editor P.D. East, nailed the Baptist minister Will Campbell to the wall.  Who does God love more, the murdered Jonathan Daniel who died fighting for equal rights, or his murderer, the sheriff, Thomas Coleman whose job is to uphold justice but is perpetuating injustice?  Who does God love more?

Will Campbell wanted to hate Thomas Coleman, but in the midst of that hot emotion a light went on inside his heart.  God’s grace isn’t grace at all until it extends to all sinners include the worst among us. 

Will Campbell, civil rights activist resigned from the national council of churches and moved to rural Tennessee where he bought a farm.  He became an apostle to rednecks.  He knew many who were fighting for civil rights.  He never let go of his believe in racial equality.  It is a Gospel imperative to work for justice in the name of love.  But he did not know anyone who was trying to penetrate the hearts of people in the Klu Klux Klan with the love of Jesus. 

He knew how evil the Klan was.  But he also knew the people in the Klan were sinners far from the love of God, as lost as people could be.[i]

Who do we want to reject at the church door?  Klansmen?  Members of ISIS?  Sex offenders?  The Pharisees asked, “Why does Jesus eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

The Pharisees were keepers of Israel’s law, the experts on the scriptures.  Their diligence was a gift to the community until that diligence led them to care more about upholding rules than helping people find their way to God.  When social mores mattered more than people, then the Pharisees went too far. 

A few years ago I met a Korean woman, an academic.  She was headed to North Korea officially as a visiting scholar there to train North Korean scientists.  But, she told me, her real purpose was to sneak Bibles into the country.  If she got caught it could mean years in prison, totally cut off from family and friends. 

She went for the same reason some people sign up to be prison chaplains.  She went because the North Koreans are from the love of God.  Some Pastors do not serve in churches or as hospital chaplains or in campus ministry.  They sign up to do their ministry inside of prisons.  Their congregations are full of felons.  Why serve there?  These individuals are far from the love of God.  They do this for the same reason Will Campbell was a missionary to the racists he spent so much of his life fighting.  Those racists are far from the love of God. 

Tax collectors were Jews who became rich working for the Romans collecting tolls.  The Romans had a fixed amount people were to pay.  The tax collector could force people to pay higher amounts and pocket the difference.  The people of Israel were broken under the oppression of Roman occupiers and their own fellow countrymen, added to their pain by working for the oppressors. 

Indeed, why would Jesus have table fellowship with them and with people who worked in unclean and unsavory professions?  Those tax collectors like Levi, and sinners like Mary Magdalene, needed God.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician,” Jesus said, “but those who are sick do.  I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The Pharisees are already upset about who Jesus is with.  Now, they don’t like what he’s doing.  The disciples of John the Baptist are going without meals as a spiritual discipline.  They’re fasting.  The disciples of the Pharisees are fasting.  Everyone fasting.  Jesus, why aren’t your disciples fasting?

Why are you eating with those people, Jesus?

Why are you eating at all, Jesus?

Jesus welcomes the peoples rejected at the door.  He is the Savior and His arrival is the onset of the new age.  His arrival means the Kingdom of God is here. 

There is time to fast, but not when we are in Jesus’ presence bodily.  We don’t fast in the Kingdom of God.  We don’t wear our funeral clothes on Easter Sunday.  The coming of Jesus is a signal that God offers life to – to the worst of sinners  including us.

To appreciate it, we have to love the tax collectors we’d rather keep away.  We each have our lists, those people we want to reject at the door.  When we hold on to those lists, we are old wineskins, stretched out, cracking, inflexible, not ready for the new, expanding truth of God.

New wine was still fermenting.  It expands.  That’s why the skins to hold is have to be flexible.  When we come to Christ, we are filled and stretched.  We don’t know what he’s going to do in our lives.  We don’t know the tax collectors and sinners he’s going to call us to love.  Never mind that we are as sinful and lost as those we think we can judge.  Stiff old wine skins cannot enjoy the Kingdom of God. 

To enjoy the kingdom and live it up at Jesus’ dinner party, we move from rejection, to welcome.  We open the closed doors of our hearts.  We throw away our gavels of judgment and open our arms for embrace.  We can only do this by the power of the love the Holy Spirit puts in us.  But when we are Spirit-filled, there is no limit to how much we can forgive, how greatly we can love, and how magnanimously we can welcome people we used to despise.  Hate in us is melted by the warmth of Jesus’ grace and it becomes love because of Him. 

Now you have your list – those people you’d prefer go somewhere else.  That is your prayer list for the next 6 weeks.  Pray for God to do wonderful things in the lives of the names on the list.  I know.  This is a list of people who are not nice.  Hold them up before God.

And start a new list.  This is one is of people you’re going to invite to church.  It is an invitation to drink the new wine Jesus gives. 

The rock that reminds us of obstacle to faith and reminds us that the Holy Spirit is with us also reminds us to pray for those people we just don’t like.  It is hard to do this, impossible without God’s help.  But the Holy Spirit gives that help.  Hold onto your rock, pray for clarity, appeal to the present Spirit, and Pray God will bless the people on your list and that they may find their way to the party Jesus is throwing.

AMEN 

---

[i] P. Yancey (1997).  What’s So Amazing about Grace? Zondervan Publishing House (Grand Rapids), p.141-145.

“Welcome the Madness” (Acts 17:1-15; 1 Thess. 1:1-10)

Sunday, August 23, 2015

    

           I was discussing our church with my dad.  He is a committed Christian, a deacon of many years in his church, a veteran Bible study leader, and someone whose theology is very practical.  As we talked and I described where I believe God wants us to focus, I admitted I was having trouble bringing my ideas together. 

When I told him we’d be looking Paul’s Thessalonian letters, he said without hesitation, “How a ‘Prescription for Life’?”  Brilliant!  Thanks Dad.

          Pharmacist and students in the pharmacy school worship in our church family.  Among us are doctors who write prescriptions for patients.  And every one of us has been to the doctor and had a medication prescribed. 

Over the next seven weeks, we will hear ideas, actions, and life-orientations prescribed from God’s word.  The purpose of this Biblical medicine is spiritual fitness.  We want to be healthy in our faith.  We want our witness to the Gospel to be robust.  When we say, “Jesus is Lord, his coming signals the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, and people can have life in his name,” we want to know what we mean.  We want to know the implications of living out such statements.  We need to understand what it means to follow Jesus.

The first prescription in this program is an assigned reading.  Read 1^st Thessalonians, 2^nd Thessalonians, and Acts chapter 17.  This prescription has unlimited refills.  You cannot take this too much. 

In 1^st Thessalonians 1, the three authors, Paul, Silvanus (called Silas in the book of Acts), and Timothy, express their profound thanks for the church in Thessalonica.  Specifically, they write, “We always give thanks to God … remembering … your work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:3).  If you are familiar with 1^st Corinthians 13, often referred to as the Love Chapter, you recognize the ending - faith, hope, and love.  These virtues, absolutely necessary for a disciple of Jesus, are highlighted in 1^st Corinthians 13 and also here in 1^st Thessalonians 1.  The church in Thessalonica was marked by these virtues and by actions that were fueled by their faith, their hope, and their love.

The New Testament is full of letters written by Paul in association with Silas and Timothy.  These are the earliest New Testament documents with 1^st Thessalonians being the first New Testament book written, sometime between 10-20 years after the resurrection. 

The book of Acts tells the narrative of the early church.  When you follow the prescription and read 1^st & 2^nd Thessalonians and read Acts 17, you will see the story told in different ways.  Luke, the author of Acts and one of Paul’s travel companions, had an audience in mind when he wrote and he highlighted certain elements in the story to appeal specifically to his readers.  These matters aren’t emphasized the same way in 1^st Thessalonians because there, Paul, Silas, and Timothy write in a different style to people in a different situation.

In Acts, Luke takes the account of the growth of the Gospel in Thessalonica to promote the way of Christ to his readers.  We, a 21^st century congregation, read 1^st Thessalonians and Acts to enlarge our understanding of the faith.  The way of Christ is the way of holiness. 

With that extremely short introduction, we turn to Acts 17.  and as we do, keep in mind those values in 1^st Thessalonians 1:3 – faith, hope, and love.

After Paul and Silas^[a] had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. ² And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three sabbath days argued with them from the scriptures, ³ explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah^[b]to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This is the Messiah,^[c] Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.” ⁴ Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. ⁵ But the Jews became jealous, and with the help of some ruffians in the marketplaces they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar. While they were searching for Paul and Silas to bring them out to the assembly, they attacked Jason’s house. ⁶ When they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some believers^[d] before the city authorities,^[e] shouting, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also,⁷ and Jason has entertained them as guests. They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus.” ⁸ The people and the city officials were disturbed when they heard this, ⁹ and after they had taken bail from Jason and the others, they let them go.

¹⁰ That very night the believers^[f] sent Paul and Silas off to Beroea; and when they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue. ¹¹ These Jews were more receptive than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so. 

          Take note of Jason.  The church was obviously small – small enough to assemble in one person’s home.  In first century Thessalonica, the houses were smaller than what we see today.  It was not a large community.

          However, by the time Paul riled people to the point they would lay hands on him with harmful intentions, the church probably did have 20-30 people or maybe more.  Jason was wealthy enough that he had a home large enough to accommodate such a group.  Imagine your home with 20-30 guests who come every week.  He had financial means.

          Another indicator of this is the way it ended for Jason.  The synagogue leaders and the street toughs they brought together were able to manhandle Jason, drag him from his home, and convince city officials to formally arrest him. These opponents from the synagogue were savvy enough to work the crowd and the political system.  But Jason was just as resourceful. 

          Whether he was supported by someone wealthy or on his own he could work the system, he managed to get bail, pay it, and be freed from incarceration.  The last we see of him, he is free after being roughed up.  We know the church in his house grew and thrived because of what we read in 1^st Thessalonians. 

          These Thessalonian Christians, probably led by their host, Jason, were minorities.  Thessalonica was a pagan city whose residents either did not understand or acted openly hostile toward Monotheism.  The synagogue was monotheistic but opposed to those who saw Jesus as the Messiah.  The church, and by association, Jason was in a precarious position.  And they flourished.  How?

          This is the second prescription.  They and he welcomed the madness.  They knew that after Paul left, after Jason was bailed out jail, after everything cooled, the tensions with their neighbors would simmer with the potential to boil over again.  They knew this and yet they did not throw in the towel on Christianity.  Instead they lived the faith so vibrantly, Paul and his colleagues held the Thessalonians up as the model of a true church.

          First Thessalonians 1:6-9:

You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, ⁷ so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. ⁸ For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. ⁹ For the people of those regions^[b] report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God.

        As we read 1^st and 2^nd Thessalonians and Acts, we invite the craziness, the pain, the confusion, and the truly lost people in the world to come in among us.  We open our arms because the Holy Spirit has filled us with grace.  We open our hearts because we know what a mess each of us were before Christ came into our lives.  We open our lives because that is what Jason and the Thessalonians did in welcoming Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

          The chairwoman of our board of elders, Patricia, is not going to be arrested for her commitment to God in the life of HillSong.  Our Sunday school teachers will not have their property vandalized because they teach the Bible here.  I am not going to have my words censored.  Persecution today doesn’t look like that, at least not in the United States.  It does in other places, but not here, not in Chapel Hill.  Opposition to the Gospel does not come in the forms that it did in 1^st century Thessalonica.

          But it does come.  The same enemy who riled up those street toughs to give Jason the heavy-handed treatment is lurking all around us.  The devil doesn’t want to see our church proclaim the Kingdom of God any more than he wanted to see Jason’ home be the base for the Christian witness in the city of Thessalonica.  Our enemy will try any number of strategies to get us off the track Christ has laid for us. 

          Knowing this, knowing that people lost in sin are in chaos, we enter the mess and we do so willingly.  We embrace the madness because we have faith in our Lord.  As verse 9 says, we serve a “living and true God,” as opposed to the empty ideologies and philosophies espoused by people in our era of history.  We have that faith.

          We also have hope.  Verse 10, Jesus is resurrected and has already rescued us from the wrath to come.  The end of the age will be a time when everyone who has ever lived has to face up to the eternal consequences of rebelling against God and living in sin.  However, the risen Lord calls all who are his to join him as sons and daughters of God in the resurrection. 

          We have faith, we have hope, and we can welcome those who are burdened with the madness of a life without God because we have love.  We know it was love that sent Jesus to the cross to die for our sins.  That love beats in our hearts.  That’s why as a church we are ready to be a safe harbor for lost people, a place of welcome, comfort, and peace for those whose lives are chaos.

          So this it then, this is our prescription for life? 

We are to take 2 doses of Thessalonians, one portion of Acts, and we are to embrace people whose lives are falling apart? 

Well, … yes.  This is a partial description of the disciple life.  We’ll add to it next week. 

Until then, you have the doctor’s orders, and this comes from the Great Physician.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.

AMEN

Life Together (1 Corinthians 11)

Sunday, August 26, 2012

            Are you excited about the return of students to campus?  Amped up about the start of football?  We are excited with you because we’re all in this together.

            Are you hurting from the recent death of someone you dearly loved?  We are here to hold your hold your hand and patiently walk alongside you as you begin to navigate your way through life with that person now gone. 

Maybe the questions are not for you but for the one a few rows back.  He’s afraid his job will be canceled.  He doesn’t know what he’ll do.  We – his church -wait anxiously with him, praying, encouraging, and staying with him no matter happens.  We’re all in this together. 

Maybe the questions are not for him or you, maybe not for the freshman away from home for the first time, maybe not for the divorcee who a year later cannot make sense of it; maybe the questions are for me, the nervous parent of a Kindergartner about to ride the school bus for the first time.  We’re all in this together – the family, the body of Christ.

            By “this” I mean life.  We live life together.  Too many people are lonely, disconnected from others who can share burdens and walk in faith with them.  The explosive popularity of Facebook shows just how desperate for connection people are.  I know many unchurched people would think church is the last place to go for a solution to the loneliness they feel.  Though they are adrift, they would never look to church as a safe landing spot and a place of welcome and home.  Why?  Church has become a caricature and an institution.  This cannot be.

Church is not somewhere to go on Sundays and somewhere to leave behind if the music didn’t include my favorite songs or the preaching wasn’t very good.  Church is not the building where I had my wedding.  Church is not the voice from some unforeseen place sending forth moral edicts that chasten some public acts, commend others, and condemn others.  Church is family – the family of people who put complete trust in God and give themselves fully to following Jesus through all arenas of life.  We are in this – this life – together.

            Heather last week introduced the idea of the church as a sacrament or a sign, a visual depiction of the unseen eternal spiritual reality of the Kingdom of God.  The church is the sign of intimate union with God and the unity of humankind.  Church is where we meet Jesus and get into friendships – lifelong friendships – with others who love Jesus and follow him.  The church is the instrument by which the Holy Spirit will bring about this intimacy and unity. 

            But as we turn to 1 Corinthians 11, we see that while the church has a high calling, the church doesn’t always answer that call well. 

Imagine the day of worship in the Corinthian church.  It’s happened on Sunday evening.  There was singing, preaching, and like today, the Lord’s Supper, along with a full meal just like today.  Only that meal wasn’t served after the worship but during.  Unlike today in that worship service, not everyone came at the same time.  Wealthier church members had their servants prepare food and wine for both the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and also for the feast.  When the wealthy were ready, they came to church and got started.  They weren’t “in it together,” with everybody, but only with other wealthy people.

            The more impoverished church members rose at sunrise and were quickly on the job: cutting and laying stone; digging ditches and building roads and bridges; working endlessly in the kitchen of some wealthy person; sweating in the fields, harvesting crops that were owned by someone else.  They would only get a small percentage of the sale at the market.  The day consisted of exhaustion, bloodied hands and feet, sweat, and indignities for the poor.

            By the time they cleaned up and came to church, the feast was consumed.  They were lucky if enough bread and wine remained so they could take the Lord’s Supper before and join in the final hymn.  These poor church members would have scoffed at the “we’re all in this together” mantra.  The rich controlled the church like they controlled everything else in life.  The community was divided and in the Corinthian Church, the divisions were painful and hostile.  Is our church a place where people find backbiting, fighting, pettiness, bickering and division?  If it is, we’ll never be that “we’re in this together” place that so many unchurched people all around us desperately need us to be.

Paul wrote in 1^st Corinthians 1, “I appeal to you brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you” (v.10).  Then in chapter 11, he acknowledges that his appeal to unity has fallen on deaf ears.  “When you come together as a church, I hear there are divisions among you” (v.18).  Paul wrote to reinforce the unity of God’s church, but in writing He finds he has to address again the very problem he hoped to cut off. 

            Paul was the pre-eminent church planter in the first century Greek-speaking world.  A former Pharisee, highly educated, passionately driven by his love for and gratitude to Jesus, Paul wanted the church to be the institution by which human beings came to know God and came to salvation and a life of following Jesus.  Christianity is not a solitary endeavor.  Christianity is personal, yes, but never private.  It’s never “me and God.”  Christianity is God among us in Jesus Christ.  Part of Jesus’ claim on our lives is seen in the way we love, forgive, and walk with each other.  We are God’s church when we are a community of grace.

            In Corinth, some members had their own suppers and they are in plenty, while others were literally going hungry.  Their poverty was rubbed in their faces.  Paul says this brazenly elitist approach to worship brought contempt on the church of God. 

            Here, we bring the food to the kitchen, then sit and have the worship service.  No one knows who brought which dish.  No one knows if you brought seven plates of food or zero plates.  Everyone is invited to the meal. 

 

We’re all in this together.  All of us are sinners who mess up big-time, and by Jesus, all of us are forgiven.  In the bread and the cup on Jesus’ table we know that nothing comes between us as people because Jesus has suffered for our sins and removed our sins.  In Him we are new creations. 

We aren’t the same as the Corinthians Church, but we share the same call, to be a sign of the Kingdom and to be a place all can come to meet Jesus and receive the grace of God.  We exist to draw people to God.  Are we doing that or are we a broken community?

The question we face is, are we doing anything in the way we live as a community of Christ-followers to bring division the way the Corinthians did?  We might not corporately sin as they did, but do we sin in other ways?  Does our sin bring contempt on the Kingdom of God?

            When sin runs along, unchecked, Paul shows where it leads.  Verse 32, “When we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”  The problem – inequalities in worship – leads to contempt brought on the church.

Unchecked this sin, ironically perpetuated in the practice of the Lord’s Supper, leads to discipline from God.  Punishment.  He’s not happy with us and we feel the heat of His anger. 

What does the church do when community is overcome by infighting, jealousy, greed, and meanness of spirit?  The solution is ridiculously simple but immeasurably important when we consider how brutal life can be.  People come to church broken.  They need healing and love here, not an environment that tramples them more.  Paul says in verse 33, “So then my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.”

            Thus Paul gives us two metaphors.  In one, we live life on our own, seek our own advancement at the cost of those around us (even at the cost of our friends in Church), and in this we have an unpleasant date with God’s discipline.  In the other, where we wait for each other, we have “Life Together” – a true community built on Jesus. 

The first metaphor is contempt for the church.  Self-seeking neglect of neighbor, prejudice and elitism, and lack of compassion and welcome and concern bring contempt on God’s church. 

The second metaphor is the picture of waiting, patiently, for everyone to catch up and be together.  When we consider the weakest among us – and at some point each one of us will without planning to step right into that role of weakest – we are waiting for each other. 

“Contempt” v. “wait for one another.”  In one, the church fails and is judged.  In the other, the church shows what God’s kingdom is like.

            Which metaphor is lived out in the HillSong family? Are we a sign of intimacy with God and unity with God and human beings?  Do hurting people find comfort here?  Do seekers meet God?  Are the lonely loved?  Do lonely people come and find they are no longer lonely?  What about those with a strong sense of God’s call.  Here are they equipped to follow God, and to they find people that will come with them as they follow God.  Are we living life together?

            I don’t know. 

Are we waiting for one another?  Are we upholding the weakest, receiving grace, sharing generously, and making sure that everyone realizes his or her potential and realizes that he or she has a seat and belongs here among us?  Are we living out life for our own appetites or for the glory of God and for the sake of love of God’s children?

            In Galatians 6:2, Paul writes, “Bear one another’s burdens.”  Help each other.  Eating the bread and drinking the cup, we are reminded that our greatest burden is sin.  Sin drags us down to death, but Jesus lifts it off us.  And He does this in the church, through the church, and with the church.  Jesus will accomplish His goals of salvation in spite of the churches that are places of division and contempt.  We would rather be a church in His service, working toward His ends. 

At this table, we come together, sinners, people from far and wide.  We come in our wounding.  We come in our confusion.  We come as people in desperate need.  All of us come that way and we can because Jesus invites us.  We have a place because He sets it for us. 

As the time for taking Communion comes, let a few images come to mind.  First, think about what you need most from Jesus – hope, forgiveness, comfort.  Think about your greatest need that only Jesus can meet.  Next, consider that you are surrounded by people who need Him as desperately as you do. 

Finally, as you chew the bread and drink the cup, ask Jesus to show you your role in filling the needs of the people around you.  Begin by thinking of your need, continue remembering that you are forgiven in Christ and that you are surrounded by needy people.  And finally pray for God to help you meet the needs of the friends around you. 

If we all do that, all our needs will be met by God working through the church.  We will truly have life together.

AMEN