Slack!

Woohoo, been slack as with this blog page! Here's the communion thing as promised. I didn't actually use this on Sunday night because I felt led to speak on something else...but I'll use it eventually.
Found out that I get to preach my first sermon at the morning service in February...on John 2. The Water into Wine. Doh! I think they're setting me up with a nice controversial topic: alcohol! Should be good :)
I couldn't figure out how to link to the document...so here it is, a little long for a web page.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
Genesis 1:1-2

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1

In the beginning was God the Father, God the Son & God the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, Three in One. This sets God apart from any other religion because he isn’t bound by his own limitations. For eternity he experiences 3 persons in one, he experiences community. So when God created us in his image, he created us to have community. God said that it wasn’t good for Adam to be all alone in the garden of Eden, so God created Eve. He commanded them to fill the earth with their family, to keep growing the community that God had established here on earth.

But when Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, it wrecked God’s plan for perfect community. Since then there have been divisions between us and God and between us and each other. Genesis 3 outlines contention between men and women, the tower of Babel outlines contention in languages, there soon became contention in social classes and different races. These divisions and contentions remain in the world today.

When Jesus Christ died on the cross, he died to restore God’s perfect plan for community. He died to restore our vertical community with God and he died to restore our horizontal community with each other. In John 17:21 Jesus is praying to God before he was to be crucified. He prayed for his disciples and he prayed for all who would ever believe in him, that includes Christians today. He prayed that we would have unity just as God and Jesus have unity.

So our vertical community is restored. When we trust Jesus for our salvation we are declared right before God. Our relationship with God is restored because Jesus took away the sin barrier. Jesus died to take away the divisions between us and God.

Our horizontal community is also restored. Galatians 3:28 says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
When Jesus died, he died to take away these divisions and contentions.. Physically they still exist, but in Christ they don’t matter at all. As far as God is concerned and as far as we Christians are concerned, they are inconsequential. There are no racial divisions, we are one in Christ Jesus. There are no social class distinctions, we are one in Christ Jesus. There are no gender distinctions as far as God is concerned, we are one in Christ Jesus.

When Jesus died on the cross, he restored community, he restored unity. Individually when you trust Christ for your salvation, you have unity with God. Together, we have unity with each other because the divisions don’t matter anymore. We are family not because of common interests or hobbies. We are family not because of how hard we work at ironing out our differences. We are family all because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that’s why we celebrate communion each week. In a moment the stewards will come down and after I pray they’ll be standing in the aisles. If you’re trusted Christ for your salvation, please join us in taking a cup and a bit of biscuit and finding a quiet spot to reflect on what Christ did on the cross 2000 years ago. As you get your cup and biscuit from the stewards have a look around the church, take some time to look around and see who your family are. Thank Jesus for what he did on the cross. For restoring community both vertically and horizontally!