Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "Pay Attention" | Sunday Service | April 6, 2025

Transcript

"Pay Attention" | Sunday Service | April 6, 2025 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give a message this morning called pay attention.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've been here before, you know that I often do this, but it really, really, really works this morning.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted you to turn to your neighbor.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to tell him, pay attention.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then look at the one that you just ignored, the other neighbor, and say, pay attention.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: To get us to this place, I wanna I wanna go to a passage from John's gospel.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is the 12th chapter.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So hear now the reading of God's word.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Six days before Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Lazarus and his sisters hosted a dinner for him.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who joined him at the table.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then Mary took an extraordinary amount, almost three-quarters of a pound, a very expensive perfume made of pure nard.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: She anointed Jesus' feet with it, then wiped his feet dry with her hair.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Gross, but okay.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: The house was filled with the aroma of the perfume, and Judas Iscariot, uh-oh.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: One of his disciples, the one who was about to betray him, complained, This perfume was worth a year's wages.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't it sold in the money given to the poor?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: He said this not, though, because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: He carried the money bag and would take what was in it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: He has a brand.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus said, Leave her alone.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: This perfume was to be used in preparation for my burial.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how she has used it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You will always have the poor among you, but you won't always have me.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet and it's a light into our path.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: We ask that it would speak to us and it would speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth, oh God.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone, oh God.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: You are our rock, you are our redeemer.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: We love you because you first loved us.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: We pray this in your holy name.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: When someone notices us, it means everything.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: When someone notices us, it means everything.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to picture for me for a second, with me for a second.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: A situation you've probably found yourself in on either side of it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's picture that you're at a gathering.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can I show you the best AI could give me of this?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I asked for a diverse group, it gave me not that.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: But uh imagine you're at a gathering.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you're at church, you're and uh this happens when you're kind of gathering around, you're waiting for church to start, and you're drinking coffee or whatever, maybe you're at a party with a different kind of beverage, right?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you're all kind of gathered around.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've seen, you've been in these situations.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you like to show up late to whatever this thing is so that you don't have this experience.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens, right?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: We start to talk with each other and we start to clump around, right?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: You get this clump of people and you've got this clump of people, and you've got this clump of people.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then over the course of time, if this is an extended experience, you might go from group to group to group, or some of you were like, What time can I leave from here?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be here, right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of this experience.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've all been in a some sort of situation like this, and we've also been in a similar situation or a change in this situation in which some person walks in and just feels very alone.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Again, an AI image, but can can you just get over the fact that like every dude in that picture looks exactly the same?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's you know, the computers are only so good, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: But you've been in this situation where like you felt maybe you've been the one to feel this way.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been the one to feel alone.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: You walk into a place you don't know any of the people, and you're like, right, yes.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where's that?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is anyone gonna come talk to me?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or you might be the other person and you happen to be involved, you might have have you know friends and that sort of thing, connections.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so you're in one of those clumps, right?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you see that person going in, but you're like wondering to yourself, is someone gonna maybe somebody else could go talk to them?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know them, it'd be awkward, I'd have to introduce myself.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: You you get with me if everybody's been in this situation anymore.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that this is such a hard situation is because it is incredibly isolating.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like immediately isolating.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: The second you go in, you're like, what?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: What I think is fascinating too is that this is true of both introverts and extroverts, I think.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if this happens to you and you're an introvert, you might not love the spotlight, but you do like to be accepted, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's something that's that's needed there.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And also if you're an extrovert, like you start having these uh external questions like, am I too much for them?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And did I say something?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is applicable to both groups of people.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's an incredibly and immediately isolating situation, which is why that when you feel noticed, it means the world.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It means everything when you feel noticed.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's this is uh like a common fact of being a social creature, is that when somebody notices you, you're like you finally feel like you're maybe inside the circle.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want to show you this morning where I think this story is often interpreted differently than I think it might need to be.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: What happens in the story?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a basic overview of a plot.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you've not heard this story before, here you go again.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is with many people gathered around, they're eating, and a woman named Mary comes in and she pours out an expensive perfume onto Jesus' feet and on his body, I'm sure, and she wipes it off with her hair, and she's honoring him in this moment.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the very first criticism of her happens.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that we always get criticized, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the person gets the first criticism that happens is Judas, who, you know, he has his own problems.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like Judas is about to betray Jesus, and you know that he knows us.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's focusing on the money here.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus then stops him.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, don't, don't, I don't care about how expensive it is.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually says uh sentence about the poor, we're gonna get to in a second.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care how expensive it is.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I actually just think that she's seen me.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting because he's Jesus.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you would think people are very aware of the existence and the visibility of Jesus.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: But if you pay attention to any of the times I've talked about the gospels in the past where you've read this yourself, you know that it's often the case that the people who are with Jesus actually see him the least.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: They like just don't know.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: The disciples, the 12 that he gathered around them, the ones he was like, hey, come be my friends, come be my buds, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Come follow me, give up everything in your life, come follow me, and then they do, and then it takes them time after time after time for them to finally figure out who he is.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's interesting to me.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mary seems to know.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: She notices in a way that nobody else does.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really interesting.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mary has been through a couple things with Jesus, and I want to show you some of those this morning just to show you where uh where she has seen the work of the Lord before.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to this story, though, sometimes it's confusing.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's confusing because this is Mary of Bethany.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Say Bethany.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Mary of Bethany, but there are all other Marys in the scripture, and it can be a little confusing because it was a very popular name, right?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it would be, I don't know, what would be our equivalent now?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Grace?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at the first human I saw was Grace.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mary is Mary of Bethany.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: We have Mary Magdalene also.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably heard of her before.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's a uh a follower of Jesus, she follows along with the disciples, but that is not this Mary.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Important to distinguish there.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Also, Mary, the mother of Jesus, you've for sure heard of her.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, not the same Mary.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: They are all involved and around during uh his life and in his death, but this is not the same Mary.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Important.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go to Luke 10 here, and if you have a Bible, you can turn to it, it'll also be on the screen.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is Luke 10, verse 38 to 42.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is a uh a relatively famous story about Martha and Mary.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: While Jesus and his disciples were traveling, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: She had a sister named Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his message.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: By contrast, Martha was preoccupied with getting everything ready for their meal.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Martha came to him and said, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to prepare the table all by myself?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Tell her to help me.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord answered, Martha, Martha, you're worried and distracted by many things.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Only one thing is necessary.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Mary has chosen the better part.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It won't be taken away from her.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Mary sat at Jesus' feet.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: She's listening to his teaching, and Martha is the distracted one, and Mary is the focused one.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: She is the one paying attention.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want to show you another passage.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is a little bit longer in John 11.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: This happens to be the chapter before we just talked about, uh, which will be interesting if you haven't heard this story before.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is John 11, 32.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: When Mary arrived where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying also, he was deeply disturbed and troubled.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: He asked, Where have you laid him?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Talking about Lazarus, her brother.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: They replied, Lord, come and see.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus began to cry.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Often the translations say, Jesus wept, the shortest scripture in all of the Bible.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to win some sort of uh Bible award, you could do this.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: John 11, 35, Jesus wept.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus began to cry.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Jews said, See how much he loved him.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: But some of them said he healed the eyes of the man born blind.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't he have kept Lazarus from dying?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a good point, my friends.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was deeply disturbed again, and when he came to the tomb, it was a cave, and a stone covered the entrance.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Remove the stone.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Martha, the sister of the dead man, Martha, Mary, Lazarus, said, Lord, the smell will be awful.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Again, agreed.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: He had been, he's been dead four days.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus replied, Didn't I tell you that if you believe, you will see God's glory?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So they removed the stone.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they're, you know, holding their nose at this point.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus looked up and said, Father, thank you for hearing me.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know you always hear me.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I say this for the benefit of the crowd standing here, so that they will believe that you sent me.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I love this like inside baseball of Jesus and God having this conversation.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Having said this, Jesus shouted with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't loud enough.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lazarus, come out.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: The dead man came out.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: His feet were bound and his hands tied, and his face was covered with a cloth.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said to them, Untie him and let him go.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mary and Martha.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Martha is busy.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Mary is listening to Jesus.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: She is listening to everything.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus even corrects Martha to say, Hey, all those preparations that you're doing, it's not important.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Mary has paid attention to the most important part, which is being at my feet, listening to my teachings.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is the one thing needful, he says.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then Lazarus, their brother, has died.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Been dead how many days?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Four days.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Probably smells pretty bad.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're upset.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself is upset.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's why he weeps.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gets there and he says, Don't you believe that like things can happen when you're God, right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you believe that God can raise people from the dead?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you believe that?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then they said, Ah, I'm not so sure.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna smell pretty bad, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Hey, Father, thank you for listening to me.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I actually know that you listen to me, but I'm just saying that so that they hear it because they're not really getting it yet.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, Lazarus come out, and then something that we haven't seen very much in this world, a dead man, four days, gets up and walks out.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Mary and Jesus have been through some stuff together.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mary is aware.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Mary knows who Jesus is and what Jesus can do.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's so important.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mary is grounded in that.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what he can do and who he is.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: She is then set up, prepared, to see things that no one else sees.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even the 12 that have been falling around, they don't get it.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he's about to die, and she's like, we need to prepare him for burial.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, what are you talking about?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's not even arrested at this point.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, no, no, no, no.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: See, I I know him.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've been paying attention to him.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it true that the things that are most common to us in our lives, the things that we see every day, are the hardest to experience.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you know that I have two children.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, every time somebody in the family or a friend sees them when they haven't seen them for a while, what's the first thing they say?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Man, they have grown up.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: They have, wow, look at how long their red hair is.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look how much older they look.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: They say all these things that, and you know what?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because I see them every day, I never see it.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: God bless Apple Photos, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can go back and look at years ago and I'm like, I don't even remember that child because I spend time with this child every day.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's remarkable.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's possible that you have a friend in your life who is overly anxious and you don't see it.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't know it.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've been following along with them, you've been friends with them, and they're hiding it behind a mask, they're hiding it behind a laugh, they're hiding it behind all of a smile, but but you don't see it even though you are with them every day.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's particularly true if you don't know the person at all.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: How many times if we pass by somebody and been like, I had no idea they were going through that when you find it out later, because you really just don't know them at all.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Mary knows them.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you need a moment just to wake you up.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You need somebody to say, man, your girls look really tall.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, they really are.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: You need somebody to say, hey, hey, I don't know if you've had this conversation with your buddy, but like, man, you you should go talk to him.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's going through it right now, and I don't feel like I don't feel like you maybe know that.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need that catalyst.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most famous uh examples of this, I I love it, and it's in a film that's really hard to watch.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: We are not gonna watch a clip of it this morning, but it's called Schindler's List.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in Schindler's List, it's it's directed by Steven Spielberg, who directed a lot of the famous movies that you maybe grew up watching or hearing about.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing about Schindler's List is it tells the story of a guy whose last name is Schindler, who is a Nazi.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he is in Nazi Germany, and he is a businessman.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And at the beginning of the Nazi movement, the business was pretty good.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he was making good money off the work of the Nazis.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this story is told all by Steven Spielberg, all in black and white.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: All of it in black and white.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this really famous scene where Schindler is up on the uh up on a hill and he's on a on uh a horseback, and they're actually um getting rid of the ghetto and Krakow.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by getting rid of, they're not just shipping people off to a concentration camp, although that was a part of it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: They are literally killing people in the streets.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Steven Spielberg does not hold back.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: You see this uh acted out on the screen, it's really, really hard to watch.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: The camera doesn't fly away when the gun goes off.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: You see the person drop to the ground.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we're not watching it this morning.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in black and white, and because it's absolute chaos, you see it here and here.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that when things are chaotic in your life, you start to become numb to all of them?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what's happening here.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much going on, it's really hard to figure out where to focus your eyes.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this big, wide uh shot.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then coming down the road is this little girl.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think she was six or seven when they filmed this.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And she is the only thing in the entire film that's in color, and she's wearing a red coat.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's as if Schindler it catches his eye.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, it would catch your eye too if you lived in a black and white world, and then all of a sudden there was somebody with a red coat.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: But she's in this red coat, and he sees her walking down, but that doesn't end the story because later on she actually goes and she hides uh away from the Nazis who are coming out and pulling out people out of their houses and that sort of thing.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually she gets caught, and the next time Schindler sees her is her dead body still in the red coat.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's at that moment that Schindler decides that he has to do something to save the Jewish people.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so he creates a list of people that he hires and advocates for them to try to save them from the destruction of Nazi Germany.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something deep that happens there.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's some sort of change, transformation that happens in his life just by noticing her, just by seeing her, just by, hear me out, paying attention.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the deepest truths are revealed to us when we see what others miss.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: If there's someone in your life who's struggling and you see it, you see something deeper than any of their other friends see.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in the same thing, if you are stepping back unaware, you don't see any of it at all.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's interesting about the story in Mary and Jesus is there's a turning point here.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: They have the thing, she pours out the perfume, she cleans it off.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of preachers will focus on the extravagance of that and how expensive that is and what a waste that was, or okay, well, and that's how we're supposed to, we're supposed to love extravagantly.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that's that's fine, it's fine.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then, but Judas, that's really focusing on the same thing.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Judas is focusing on, you know what I'm saying?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's focusing on the money.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's all he cares about, is the money.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's focusing on the extravagance and the wealth.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's all he cares about.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now he says he cares about the poor.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows better.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus ain't ever care, or Judas ain't ever cared about the poor in his life.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's just saying it here because he's like, man, I could have sold that.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Next time he sells something, it'll be Jesus himself.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a turning point.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is verse 7.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Leave her alone.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: This perfume was to be used in preparation for my burial.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how she's used it.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the hard verse I warned you about earlier.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: You will verse 8, sorry.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: You will always have the poor among you, but you won't always have me.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people criticize Jesus for this.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, Bo, you're supposed to be for the poor.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of your like vibe, you know?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to, you're supposed to be paying attention to those people.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be lifting up the lonely.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: How many times, or the lowly?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: How many times do we sing that?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, you'll always have the poor among you, but you won't always have me.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's stopping everybody else's criticism of Mary in this moment, and he's saying, hey, there's something deeper happening here that you've got to focus on right now, because he knows that his death is coming.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Mary is the only other person who sees it too.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Hey, it's time to prepare our Lord.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a shift that happens because Jesus recognizes that.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Mary gives attention and a love to something like, man.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us miss.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them missed.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't help but think that when you notice somebody, not only does it is it a good feeling, does it warm your heart, that they feel like, okay, I'm accepted and loved, whatever, and not only is it that, but I have this, I have this sinking feeling that when you notice somebody and you notice something happening in their life, something that they haven't said out loud, something that nobody else in the room is understanding, somebody at nothing else, nobody else is vibing with that, but you see it, when you see it, there's a transformation that happens because it opens up a conversation that couldn't have happened otherwise.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just think back to the friend I mentioned.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's somebody in your life who's going through it right now and you don't know it because they put a smile on their face.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way that you're gonna be able to see something that will start a transformational conversation that might get them into mental health counseling, might get them to see a pastor, or it might get them into a place where they might start growing again instead of feeling like they're just spiraling like we all do in April, right before finals, right?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and when you get to that, the only thing that's going to do that for you is for you to know them, to see them, to have been through it with them, to walk through and see what they've been doing, because that's what Mary and Jesus' relationship was.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only way.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, my friends, what if we just opened our eyes?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: What if we just opened our eyes to what God is trying to show us in those around us who need us?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Man, they need us.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: What if that was our challenge this week?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just to see the pain someone else is going through.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is easy often to point to the lonely person who's outside the clumps.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk about it here all the time.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like break up that clump, go welcome that person, go talk to them, introduce them, tell them your name.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: That part's true too.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: That part is probably true in your classes right now, even though it's April and you've been in them since January.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are people in your classes, your courses right now who don't feel seen.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just looking for you to be the one to say, I see you, I notice you, I'm paying attention.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Man, what a feeling.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I say one other thing, too.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of people in your life, grown-ups, if you will, adults, professors who are burnt out.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't know it because they just give the lecture.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I bet you if you were to walk in, say something's something's off.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I wonder if I could, I wonder if I could reach out, talk to that person, that professor, maybe see, what hear what's going on in their life.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's my challenge to you.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that Mary does is she pays attention.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's been through it with Jesus, she sees it, and she is unwilling to just let it go.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: She pays attention.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we all need to pay attention.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: We all need to see somebody, something in our life that needs our attention, our energy, our time.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let me encourage you this week to have open eyes.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: See those people in your life who need that.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Take them to lunch.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Magical things happen over lunch.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Coffee.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many Starbuckses on this campus.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Take them to coffee.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hear me out.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Buy their coffee.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It won't kill you.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Buy their coffee.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And just say, hey, I just want to hear about your life.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to hear about your story.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have an opportunity this morning to come to the table.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: What I love about the communion table, the reason we do it every week here, is that it's a place where Jesus notices us.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean that just in like some cheesy pastoral transition to the communion thing.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, Jesus notices us.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: He notices our sin.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: He notices our depth and our need of grace.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, hey, hey, I'm not only going to give it to you on the cross and resurrected, I'm going to give it to you at the communion table.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy to me that he sat with the disciples.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're eating a meal.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: They were actually eating the Passover meal.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you were here on Wednesday night, we talked about Passover.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: They were eating the Passover meal.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: They were eating bread.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were drinking wine.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: They were eating lamb.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like sitting around with all these people who had never noticed him.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't really get him.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't understand.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Hey, my friends, this is my body.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's broken for you.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine being at the table?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling seen.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling understood.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling saved.