Latest / Vine Worship at Kingwood Methodist / Beyond the Bread: Communion as Our Life’s Purpose | Cabe Matthews
Transcript
- 0:19Hello, family, and welcome to Kingwood Methodist. In John 4.23,
- 0:24Jesus states that a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers
- 0:29will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of
- 0:33worshipers the Father seeks.
- 0:35As we gather at church and open God's Word, we are not just coming together
- 0:39for the sake of gathering, but also to learn the truth of God and how we can
- 0:44grow to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.
- 0:49As we continually surrender our lives to the Word of God by the power of the
- 0:54Holy Spirit, we become the type of worshipers our Heavenly Father seeks. Let's dive in together.
- 1:10Once again, good morning, Vine family. If I don't intervene,
- 1:16I feel like this would just like carry on through lunchtime.
- 1:19Which is great. I love the, I love, this is music to my ears here.
- 1:23So this is the moment in our service where we release children to go to children's church.
- 1:28If you're between kindergarten and second grade, I see Miss Whitney back there
- 1:31and she is ready to go and take you back to go be a part of that.
- 1:37As we're kind of working that out, figuring that out, the rest of us,
- 1:41let's bow our heads and pray.
- 1:43Gracious and merciful God, pour out your Holy Spirit on us. God,
- 1:47that as we open up your scriptures, God, we ask that you would encounter us,
- 1:52that you would meet us right where we are at.
- 1:57God, as we open up your scriptures, we ask that you would open us up,
- 2:01open us up to hear, to receive, to be moved by, to be transformed in just whatever
- 2:07ways you would have for us this morning.
- 2:10God, we ask this in the name of your son, Jesus, and in the power of your spirit.
- 2:15Amen. So we are kind of between sermon series here at Kingwood Methodist Church.
- 2:20We just finished an eight-week series looking at different marks of discipleship,
- 2:26eight different marks of discipleship, and we're going to start a new thing next week.
- 2:31So today we kind of have an interlude. We kind of had a week off.
- 2:36And so we're taking advantage of this opportunity to kind of lean into a particular topic.
- 2:43And hey, it happens to be World Communion Sunday.
- 2:48And even though in my more cynical moments, I might call that a made-up holiday.
- 2:52It is, I mean, in my less cynical moments, I'd acknowledge, they sort of all are, right?
- 2:58Some of them all are. Somebody made them up. But 1936, we started doing the
- 3:03first Sunday of October as World Communion Sunday.
- 3:05And I love communion and I love the world. And so this is great.
- 3:09Let's just let's embrace it.
- 3:11So so I'm excited to kind of to kind of focus on on what is going on here.
- 3:16Really, in a way, though, what we're going to focus on is not what goes on right here.
- 3:22But what it's sort of pointing to.
- 3:26We're going to kind of look beyond this table to sort of what it is,
- 3:31what it's really kind of gesturing toward, what this means, what we're supposed
- 3:35to be up to here in this moment.
- 3:38Because in a really real way, what I want to say is the purpose of life,
- 3:48the purpose, the meaning, the significance of human existence is wrapped up in communion.
- 3:57The reason why you're here, not just the reason why you're here,
- 4:00but the reason why you're here has to do with communion.
- 4:04And again, not a bit of bread and a little bit of grape juice.
- 4:11The reason why we're here has to do communion. By that, I mean communion with,
- 4:15mainly with, especially with God, and also communion with one another.
- 4:21Communion is related to the word community. It's related to the word communal.
- 4:27It's related to the word common, commonality, as in we have a lot in common.
- 4:34Communion, it's about relationship.
- 4:37Communion, it's about connection, but it's a good bit more than relationship.
- 4:44It's a good bit deeper than connection.
- 4:47It suggests a kind of depth, a kind of intimacy of connection and of relationship
- 4:54that's just a little bit more than what we normally,
- 4:58maybe a lot bit more than what we normally mean by those words.
- 5:03So we want to, we're here as human people.
- 5:07We exist for communion with God, for connection at a deep level with the living God.
- 5:16And that's not just, that is why we're here in a big picture way.
- 5:21That's why we exist as human creatures.
- 5:22But it's also why we're here in this room this morning or joining online. Hi.
- 5:27This is why we're here to connect.
- 5:32We're here to relate to.
- 5:36We're here to experience communion with the living God in the first place,
- 5:41but also with one another, our brothers and sisters in Christ, right?
- 5:45This is what we're about.
- 5:50And this is why we gather around a table with where we'll all in a little bit
- 5:57eat a bit of bread and a bit of grape juice from this table.
- 6:01Because when it comes to relationships, when it comes to investing in relationships,
- 6:05when it comes to building relationships or deepening relationships,
- 6:08we tend to do that as human beings.
- 6:12We tend to do that around food.
- 6:16Somebody's ready for lunch man,
- 6:20But it's true, right? We do this around food. When I, the day I met my wife, we hit it off.
- 6:28There was a spark. There was a connection. I'm getting a, I'm getting a kind
- 6:31of a like, maybe a little too reluctant.
- 6:36But like, but there was enough of a connection there to where she was,
- 6:41she and I went out to dinner right that night.
- 6:43And, and the rest is history. And probably I can't think of any exceptions.
- 6:48There's, there might be a few exceptions to this. but probably every time that
- 6:52we ever hung out after that until our wedding day, which was some years later, we probably had a meal.
- 6:59If not every time, it probably wasn't every time, but there might've been a
- 7:02few exceptions, but almost every time, I'm sure almost every time we hung out
- 7:06between then and the day we got married a few years later,
- 7:10there was at least one meal that we shared together. This is something that we do, right?
- 7:14And then when we got married, Guess what? There was food.
- 7:19We had a food truck. We had a cake. It was delicious and it was not good for you. It was awesome.
- 7:25It was great. And then you know what? Like when we celebrate big moments,
- 7:30we celebrate big markers, whether it's a wedding anniversary or a birthday.
- 7:35When we found out that our first child was going to be a little girl,
- 7:39I put on a pink shirt and we went out to dinner, right? That's what we do, right?
- 7:43We celebrate. We build relationships.
- 7:47We experience communion, community around food and around shared food from child's
- 7:54birthdays to getting together with in-laws, to getting together with my family,
- 7:58to getting together with good friends.
- 8:00We do this. We do this around food.
- 8:03And this is just a basic, this is a human thing that we do. And so it makes
- 8:08sense for us as humans when we gather to experience communion with our God and with each other.
- 8:16We do it around a table with, yes, a bit of food on it.
- 8:21With that all kind of in the background, let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Corinthians.
- 8:27We're going to be in 1 Corinthians 11 today. If you've got a Bible, you've got a Bible app.
- 8:32You can join me over there. 1 Corinthians 11. I'm going to start in verse 20,
- 8:35but before I actually start, I'm just going to give you a little bit of background
- 8:39so you have a little bit of time to frantically flip over there.
- 8:421 Corinthians is a letter. It's a letter written by a man named Paul to a group
- 8:48of Christians, to a church, that he started in the city of Corinth,
- 8:55in the Greek city of Corinth.
- 8:57And he wrote this just shy of 2000 years ago.
- 9:00This is within the first generation or so after Jesus died and rose again,
- 9:06ascended into heaven, left his Holy Spirit.
- 9:07So this is very, very early Christianity. This is very, very early church.
- 9:13And so this is what Paul, he's writing to encourage them.
- 9:18But in the case of 1 Corinthians, these, he's mostly writing to challenge them,
- 9:22to correct them, to call them something more, and at times it feels like to angrily yell at them.
- 9:291 Corinthians is not Paul's angriest letter. That would be probably Galatians,
- 9:33but it's closer to that tone than it is to Paul's friendliest letter.
- 9:38So with that in mind, we're going to hear Paul yell at them a little bit.
- 9:43So 1 Corinthians 11, starting in verse 20, it goes like this.
- 9:47He says, So then when you come together, it is not the Lord's supper you eat.
- 9:53For when you're eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers.
- 9:57As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk.
- 10:02Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God
- 10:06by humiliating those who have nothing?
- 10:08What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you?
- 10:11Certainly not in this matter. Did I capture the vitriol there?
- 10:15Did I get it okay? Did I do that? Do you feel a little yelled at?
- 10:19I want you to get your money's worth here. This is good.
- 10:23So this is what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians. So there are some strange things
- 10:28going on in the church in Corinth.
- 10:31I almost called it 1 Corinthians, but that's not right. There's some strange
- 10:34things happening in the church in Corinth in Paul's day, which we're gonna talk about in just a minute.
- 10:38But first, just let's set the stage a little bit. Let's imagine what these early
- 10:42Christian gatherings would have been like.
- 10:44They didn't gather in a room with 100 plus people.
- 10:47They didn't gather in big groups.
- 10:53They tended to gather more in spaces that would have felt more like to us like
- 10:57living rooms. They gathered in personal homes.
- 11:00And then when they gathered, they gathered around not just a bit of bread and a bit of grape juice,
- 11:07but they gathered around a full meal, a full a full complete meal like that
- 11:14included at some point in a special moment that would have been highlighted
- 11:19sharing a bit of bread and a bit of,
- 11:23fermented grape juice. So this is one kind of picture of what it looked like.
- 11:28A New Testament, British Methodist New Testament scholar, C.K.
- 11:33Barrett, who was kind of active and kind of at the peak of his career,
- 11:36maybe a generation or two ago, he preached a sermon once on, I think, this passage.
- 11:41And he describes kind of the background like this.
- 11:45Again, this is from a sermon delivered in a church setting in England.
- 11:50He says, this is what the Lord's Supper was like in Corinth,
- 11:53and in many places where Christianity began.
- 11:55We are having a simple sort of service today, but even so, we shall not be doing
- 12:00what I should really like to do.
- 12:02I should like to have been able to say, on July 25th, we shall meet,
- 12:06not at 10.30, but at 12.30, and we shall have the Sunday roast beef and the
- 12:12Yorkshire pudding on the premises.
- 12:14That's the most British that I've said in at least a week. I don't know.
- 12:19And we shall talk together about our joys and our problems as Christians and
- 12:23our church members, and how we say our prayers and how we can possibly pay for the roof.
- 12:27Then a dozen people will give us bits of Christian truth, and we will pray together.
- 12:32Then I or some better person will say, do you remember what Jesus did?
- 12:36We'll do it in remembrance of him. A remembrance that means faith and loyalty
- 12:41and service and obedience.
- 12:44So what they would do is they would gather around.
- 12:48I don't think they had the Sunday roast beef and the Yorkshire pudding in Corinth 2,000 years ago.
- 12:54So I don't know exactly what they would have had, but I'll tell you,
- 12:57if we were going to do it, we would probably have smoked brisket and banana
- 13:01pudding would be my guess.
- 13:03Chocolate pudding would be okay. I could go along with that.
- 13:06But so they gathered together for a full meal. But what happened when this church
- 13:14gathered, they did something really odd.
- 13:17They did something that sort of subverted the whole purpose.
- 13:21The whole meaning behind the whole thing.
- 13:23Remember, the point is communion. The point is connection. The point is deepening
- 13:27relationship with God and with each other.
- 13:30But in Corinth, what seems to have been taking place is some of the folks who
- 13:37could get there a little early, which would generally have been the more well-to-do
- 13:40folks in the community, of which there would have been at least a few, apparently.
- 13:45They got there early, and they basically ate up all the food and drank up all the wine.
- 13:51So then later on that Sunday, late afternoon, evening, when the folks got off
- 13:57work who didn't quite have the same level of leisure when they got there,
- 14:01there was nothing left to eat.
- 14:03So on the scale of like communion to complete perversion of communion,
- 14:09where does this land? Right.
- 14:12Right. So like this is this is not a good look. This is this is kind of doing
- 14:16violence to the whole purpose of the thing. It's offensive.
- 14:20Can you imagine like showing up for dinner at somebody's house?
- 14:24They invited you over and like, oh gosh, we just finished dinner.
- 14:27Let me see if I have any leftovers for you. You know, like, oh gosh,
- 14:30we have, we had some spaghetti last night.
- 14:31Maybe you can, you know, like, can you imagine, right? That would be,
- 14:34that would be like, would that feel like we're deepening the relationship here?
- 14:38Would this feel like a good, a good, would this feel like a good vibe here for
- 14:42dinner and for, you know, wouldn't feel particularly honoring,
- 14:45would it? Wouldn't So this is what's going on in Corinth.
- 14:49What they're doing is just doing violence to the whole idea of what they're
- 14:53supposed to be doing, which is connecting with Jesus, with the Lord,
- 14:57with God, and with one another.
- 14:59And there's something about, Paul seems really strongly, I mean,
- 15:03really strongly, you could hear it, to believe that there's something about
- 15:07when we do violence to that connection to each other, we're really doing violence
- 15:12to our connection to God, too.
- 15:13So where does he go from here? He just yelled at them for doing this thing that
- 15:17is kind of ridiculous. Pardon me, I kind of think they deserve to be yelled at.
- 15:22So Paul goes from there. Where does he take it from that? Am I going to praise you? Shall I praise you?
- 15:27I certainly not in this matter, he says. Where does he go from there?
- 15:30How is he going to correct this? How is he going to bring this back home?
- 15:33How is he going to try to reroute them back in their purpose and what this is
- 15:36all supposed to be about?
- 15:38That's the context where he launches into this, which is maybe some words that
- 15:42you've heard similar versions of before.
- 15:44He says this, he says, for I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.
- 15:49The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread.
- 15:53And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.
- 15:59Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper,
- 16:04he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
- 16:07Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.
- 16:12So you have these people gathering together. and in Paul's reading of the situation,
- 16:18they aren't sharing the Lord's Supper. They're not sharing the Lord's Supper.
- 16:22They're sharing their own private suppers is the way he puts it.
- 16:26And he says, when you gather together, you're not eating the Lord's Supper.
- 16:30You're doing your own thing.
- 16:32You aren't interested in what God's interested in. You're not interested in
- 16:36communion with God or with each other.
- 16:39You're interested in doing your own thing. You're interested in filling your
- 16:43own belly. You're interested in satisfying your own desire.
- 16:46You're interested in the thing that you want, not the thing that God wants,
- 16:50not the thing that God drew you here together for.
- 16:54So how he corrects that is by rerouting that in the Lord's Supper.
- 16:58And in the fact that we're supposed to do this in remembrance of Jesus.
- 17:03That this meal represents Jesus giving something to us.
- 17:09And so when we make it all about taking what we think is ours or what we want.
- 17:15We're sort of missing the whole spirit of the thing, aren't we?
- 17:20So Paul says, you're not gathering for the Lord's Supper when you gather for
- 17:25worship and you behave in that kind of way.
- 17:27You're gathering for your own private suppers.
- 17:30And then he tries to reroute it in Jesus and what Jesus is about and what Jesus gave.
- 17:35And then where does he go? Where does he go from there? One more,
- 17:39just three more verses here.
- 17:41He says, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup,
- 17:45you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
- 17:50So then whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy
- 17:54manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and the blood of the Lord.
- 18:00I'm just going to skip down a little bit to verse 33.
- 18:03He says, so then my brothers and sisters, when you gather to eat,
- 18:06you should all eat together.
- 18:10There's something about communion right
- 18:13that obviously I mean like it seems like obviously we're
- 18:16calling it communion the thing is about communion
- 18:19it's about community it's about how holding things in common there's something
- 18:24about communion that just doesn't work when we when we make it about us there's
- 18:27something about really communion is like let's just zoom out and talk about
- 18:31all worship something about worship that just doesn't work when we do it for
- 18:35ourselves when we do it and we make it about us,
- 18:37when we do it and we allow these different little distractions to come into it.
- 18:44Paul has, in the case of the Corinthians, Paul has kind of three things,
- 18:48at least, that he points out that he's accusing them of.
- 18:53If I can use that heavy-handed language. His language is pretty heavy-handed,
- 18:56so I feel okay being a little heavy-handed here.
- 18:58He says, when they gather together, they're not doing the Lord's Supper,
- 19:01they're doing their own private stuff. They're doing their own thing.
- 19:04And when they're doing that, when they engage in worship in a way that's self-serving,
- 19:08when they engage in worship in a way that says, hey, look at me,
- 19:10when they engage in worship that divides the body.
- 19:14When they gather for worship in a way that does violence to communion within
- 19:20the church, they're doing three things. Paul says they're despising the church.
- 19:27He says they're shaming the poor. I think if not the poor, we'd be shaming whoever
- 19:32it is that we're, we're dividing or excluding or whatever.
- 19:37We're despising the church. We're shaming the poor. And we are,
- 19:40and this one's the, my least favorite one.
- 19:43We're guilty of Christ's blood. When we make worship about us,
- 19:46we're guilty of Christ's.
- 19:50Right? I mean, at some level, of course, we have to be honest,
- 19:53we all are, right? We're all guilty of Christ's blood, right? That's just the truth.
- 19:57Like, that happened because of us, because of who we are, and because of our
- 20:01shortcomings as human beings, and Jesus did that. But the thing is, Jesus did that.
- 20:07Jesus did that. He paid that price to buy something.
- 20:11What did he buy with that? He bought communion. He bought community.
- 20:17He bought deep connection. He bought the possibility for relationship with you.
- 20:20So when you violate that communion, when you violate those relationships in
- 20:25the church, you're violating that relationship with God, which means you're,
- 20:28I mean, it's as if Christ's death means nothing to you is what Paul's saying.
- 20:33Strong words, but Paul at least seems to think this is pretty serious.
- 20:38So if you don't like this message, you can just take it up with him.
- 20:42So, okay, just to kind of bring this a little bit, I mean, only a little bit
- 20:47more contemporary, and then we'll kind of bring it all the way to the present day.
- 20:51Going back about 100 plus years ago, do you know how churches funded their ministry
- 20:57budgets a century plus ago?
- 21:00This like fascinates me. I heard like a rumor about this, but then I finally
- 21:05like looked it up the other day this week and just like it blows my mind.
- 21:09It just feels like Paul would have his hair on fire if you heard on this.
- 21:13Like he wouldn't be light, like it would just be on fire. I don't know how,
- 21:16but his hair would just be on fire.
- 21:18So the way that churches funded their ministry budgets and like kept the lights
- 21:23on or whatever 100 plus years ago is by a practice that was called pew rentals,
- 21:27which is just exactly what it sounds like.
- 21:29Pews as in the benches that people sit on in sanctuaries. Have you heard about this?
- 21:33And rentals as in you pay a monthly fee to be able to sit in one of the good ones, right?
- 21:37So what you'd have is basically you would pay more for the for the more visible like good seats.
- 21:44You know, I got to confess to you, part of me finds this appealing.
- 21:47I would love to, like, have people sitting here every week and just,
- 21:51like, I feel like we set up these chairs just to give people permission to sit
- 21:55on the third row. You know what I'm saying?
- 21:56So, like, so part of me thinks, like, maybe if we charge y'all money for them,
- 22:00maybe we'd have, like, a different—but no, of course we're not going to do that.
- 22:03But, like, but the idea was, like, you could stand in the back of one of these
- 22:06sanctuaries and you could look and you could just—you could see the socioeconomic
- 22:11makeup of the congregation played out right in front of you.
- 22:14Right? You can see, okay, they're sitting there. So they probably are connected
- 22:18with the mayor and his family or something.
- 22:21They're sitting there. So they're probably, you know, they're doing okay.
- 22:24They're not the wealthiest, but they're doing okay.
- 22:25And they're sitting there. So they, you know, they're, they're always,
- 22:28they're always free seats in the back.
- 22:30And you didn't want to be one of the families that had to sit in the,
- 22:33you know what I mean? Like, isn't that just bonkers? Like, especially in light of this passage, right?
- 22:38Doing violence to the church community by just dividing. And of course,
- 22:42of course, I mean, And we could bring up other examples of this, right?
- 22:47Where like where the church was literally divided and people sat based on race
- 22:51or by gender or by all kinds of other different.
- 22:54I mean, there's other sorts of examples of this kind of dynamic,
- 22:56but it kind of just has led me to wonder.
- 23:01It has led me to wonder to what
- 23:04extent we do that today that kind of thing what are
- 23:07the things that we're doing what are the ways that we as a
- 23:11church here or the ways that we as a capital c church or whatever how are we
- 23:16dividing the body on sunday mornings and so i just want to invite us all to
- 23:23wrestle with that and to worry a little bit about that because i gotta be honest
- 23:27with you i'm a little worried about it myself. How do we divide the church?
- 23:32How are you, I mean, is there something you might wear on a Sunday morning that
- 23:37might be a distraction or might cause some division?
- 23:39Is there some way that you might behave or not behave that might cause some
- 23:44kind of distraction or sense of division?
- 23:46Like, who are you willing to talk to and not talk to?
- 23:51Who are you willing, who do you want to sit next to? Who do you want to definitely not sit next to?
- 23:56You know what I'm saying? Like, is there any of that going on here or something
- 24:02else that might divide us in a different way?
- 24:05Something else that might provide a barrier between us and communion,
- 24:10communion again with God, communion with each other, which is again,
- 24:14the whole reason why we're here and the whole reason why we're here.
- 24:17I want to paint a quick picture of just one time where I experienced something
- 24:23of that sort of communion.
- 24:27That I think Paul is talking about here in the context of a worship service.
- 24:31It wasn't in a traditional sanctuary.
- 24:35It was in a chapel, in a prison. I know a lot of folks here at KMC are really
- 24:41actively involved in Kairos prison ministries.
- 24:43And so probably a lot of you are familiar with it, but I have a really just
- 24:47strong, I've never been a part of a Kairos weekend myself, but I've been a part
- 24:51of the youth version, which is, it goes under a different name and it's in,
- 24:55you know, like youth facilities.
- 24:56But anyway, so these are just weekend retreats for incarcerated,
- 25:01in this case it was men, but they do them in women's prisons as well,
- 25:05where they just sort of show and tell these men or women about Jesus and his love for a long weekend.
- 25:14And just shower them with grace, and they eat really good food,
- 25:17which they really appreciate, and they just get loved on, really, for a long weekend.
- 25:24And I had an opportunity to go to a closing ceremony, a closing worship service
- 25:29for one of these several years ago.
- 25:31And it was just really moving. It was really, it was really profound.
- 25:36Because I remember at one point we were singing worship songs.
- 25:40At one point we, it was sort of cheesy, but like we put our arms around each
- 25:46other's shoulders and we were just all kind of locked together.
- 25:48All these men, grown men in this room.
- 25:51And we're white and black and Hispanic and we're all different socioeconomic backgrounds.
- 25:59And there's probably one or more murderers in the room.
- 26:02I really don't know. you know there's former drug
- 26:05dealers all kinds of different people right here but we
- 26:08all know we're sinners saved by grace we
- 26:11all know that Jesus loves us and
- 26:14we were just singing together and we were singing kind of an older song to me
- 26:19like we were singing we are one in the spirit we are one in the Lord you guys
- 26:25know that song we are one in the spirit we are we're just swaying and we're singing this song.
- 26:33And of course, some of you, if you know the song, you know that that's,
- 26:36and they'll know we're Christians by our love.
- 26:39They'll know we're Christians by our love. And so I just want us to,
- 26:45I just want us to think about how we're coming off.
- 26:52Do they know we're Christians by our love? Or do they know we're Christians
- 26:56by something else that we probably shouldn't be known by?
- 26:59What are the things, what are the ways that we divide?
- 27:03Sometimes I know the church gets divided by worship style or by language,
- 27:09and that maybe has some practical necessity, good, bad, or indifferent.
- 27:15I mean, we're also divided by other kind of more complicated things, right?
- 27:19Race, economics, culture, politics.
- 27:25And I guess, I guess I just want us to wrestle with that a little bit.
- 27:32I want us to just worry about that a little bit and just wonder how,
- 27:36how Jesus might call us to be
- 27:38more faithful, how Jesus might call us to be more fully one in the spirit,
- 27:45more really one in the Lord, how we can be the church in such a way that when
- 27:50they look at us, they know we're Christians by our love. By our heads, pray with me.
- 27:57Gracious and merciful God, pour out your spirit on us.
- 28:01God, help us to be a church that isn't about our own personal suppers,
- 28:08isn't about our thing and what we want,
- 28:14and what we like and our preference and our opinion.
- 28:20I'd help us to be a people who struggle our way toward getting over as many
- 28:25of those things as we possibly can so that we can be about you and about what
- 28:29you want and about your opinions.
- 28:33God, forgive us, forgive us where we fail at this. As I know we do,
- 28:37I'm sure we do in ways that I don't even know or realize.
- 28:41I'm sure I do in ways that I don't even know and realize.
- 28:44But God, I guess just help us to be a church, help us to be a church where people
- 28:48can come, whatever people can come.
- 28:51And if they're, at least if they're open to it, at least if their hearts are
- 28:56open to you, God, that they would be able to find and to encounter real communion,
- 29:00real communion with you.
- 29:02And communion with the church family that genuinely accepts them and loves them.
- 29:08Head, pour out your spirit on us. Help us to be your church, truly.
- 29:13Help them to know that we're Christians by our love.
- 29:17In the name of your son, Jesus, and the power of your spirit, I pray. Amen.