Last Sunday one of our family’s favorite songs was our recessional: “We Will Feast in the House of Zion.” This song, with its verses full of the realities of life as a people called to follow the Suffering Servant and its chorus painting such a beautiful picture of the coming Kingdom, is an apt telling of the arc of this world – beginning and ending with glory, with glory always throughout. We have been made by God and we are going to God, and as Paul reminded us in our New Testament reading from Ephesians, “But now [now!] in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
We have been brought near, near to the one in whose presence there is fullness of joy. In the shadow of death our God is with us; he prepares a table before us. Indeed, as he did for his sheep on the side of the mountain in our Gospel reading from Mark, our Lord continues to make us sit down on the green grass that he might feed us. Jesus, we are told, endured the cross for the joy set before him. You and I also can endure, by the grace of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit, when we keep our eyes fixed on the joy set before us—even the wedding feast of the Lamb in the new heavens and the new earth! Can you imagine? Every sheep of the Great Shepherd, none forgotten or overlooked, with our resurrected feet under the table of the Lord, the Firstborn from the dead. We can say with Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
But as Julian, our Honest Abe, pointed out the other day, how do we know God is with us? You can’t see him, I can’t see him, maybe he’s on the other side of the galaxy! This surely is a truth that is hard to hold onto on our own. But we are not alone! When we come together in worship, we are brought into fellowship not only with one another but with all the church on earth and all the company of heaven, into the very presence of our Father. And there he feeds us, every Sunday morning (or afternoon, as in our case) by his Word and the body and blood of Jesus, and in this feast, we are reminded and pointed towards the coming Feast.
Next Wednesday evening will be the potluck and instructed Eucharist. Come to learn more of how we are gathered into the presence of the Lord in our service; come learn how we can better usher one another into his presence! As Paul said to the Ephesians (and to us!), “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” Our liturgy, the way we prepare for, receive, and respond to our Lord giving himself to us in the Word and Sacrament, is a beautiful tool for the building up of the Church, a real gift. Avail yourself more fully of it by coming to learn more of what it all means, to ask your questions and hear answers to the questions you wouldn’t think to ask. Come to feast with your brothers and sisters as we will one day feast in full joy and peace!
Hannah
Scripture Reflections
On Sunday, Justin+ preached a beautiful sermon from Ephesians 1. (If you weren’t at church, I encourage you to go the website to listen to it!) He began with verses 9-10, where Paul speaks of God’s plan to unite all things in Jesus Christ, and noted that this uniting, or gathering of all of the heavens and all of the earth into the very life of God, begins with Jesus gathering all of our weakness and sin into himself. Because Jesus gathered us, including our brokenness, into himself, we are given the fullness of God’s life.
The fact that we are given the life and joy of God because Jesus gathered up human sin and brokenness into his own life is an especially important reminder this week. After all, this past weekend we saw a profound picture of human sin and brokenness when a man attempted to assassinate former President Trump.
It is striking that Cain’s murder of Abel is the first sin recorded after Adam and Eve sought to claim the right to determine good and evil for themselves. Murder is a capstone sin, a final product of our sinful heart, because it is an attempt to destroy someone God created and loves—it is war against God himself. According to Jesus, it is in the same family of sins as hatred and judgmental malice, and according to James, it flows from our covetousness and dissatisfaction with our station in life. In other words, the seeds that give birth to murder are in all of us—hatred, a critical spirit, and covetousness. Even though those seeds won’t grow to full fruit in the vast majority of people, they still need to be rooted out, because they are evil. What happened this last weekend (regardless of what you think about the former President or American politics) was an example of humanity’s wickedness and rebellion against God.
And yet, Jesus was willing to bring the full scope of human wickedness into himself (including this act!), so that we would be united to God in him. The malice and evil that is rampant in our world (and in our hearts!) was gathered up into Jesus’ very heart, where it was carried in love and suffering, so that we might be able to participate in the joy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s love for each other.
As you see the darkness of the world, remember (each time you are confronted with evil, whether in your own heart or in someone else) that “this too Christ carries.” There is no evil that he does not willingly gather into his heart, because he longs for us to possess the life of God in joy.
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
On Sunday evening, I was humming the tune to “No Place Better (Psalm 84)” as I sat down to read to Julian, our seven year old. As I was getting his story up on my kindle, he made the comment, “It would be really hard to want to be with God more than all the other things, more than silver and gold.” It’s true, isn’t it? One commentator says of Psalm 131, which speaks of this pursuit, that it is one of the shortest Psalms to read but the longest to live into:
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.
Like a weaned child—a child who has received good things from his mother, and has grown to desire the presence of his mother more than anything he may receive from her. The phrase, “calmed and quieted,” echoes our Lord’s words to the wind and the waves, the storm on the sea that threatened the lives of his friends. He calmed the wind, he quieted the sea with just his word. But we’ve also recently read through the book of Jonah in evening prayers, and in that story the wind and the waves, the storm that threatens the lives of the sailors, is quieted and calmed only when Jonah has been thrown into the deep. When the scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign in Matthew 12, presumably to prove his authority to cast out demons comes from God and not from Satan, Jesus replies, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Our Lord threw himself into the storm of God’s wrath to save us, and he desires to enter into our hearts—even throw himself into the places of death that reside in each of us in order to bring his resurrection life yet more fully in you and in me. He is able to calm and quiet the wind and the waves; he is able to calm and quiet our souls.
Hannah