I Am: The True Vine

Hi family. Glad you're here. Thank you for joining us online. If you're part of our digital family this morning, we're glad that you've chosen to be a part of what's going on here.  We need to have a little family meeting before we get rolling and I'm not even going to sit down for this one and I just want to say this on the front end. Don't email me good or bad. I won't read it and I won't reply to it. Okay. Just want you to know that. So, we've been given this mask mandate and I have three things that I want to say about it to make sure that we're moving forward as a family. Number one, this is not religious persecution. This is not religious persecution. Here may say that if it was religious persecution, then they're also religiously persecuting, grocery stores and restaurants and schools and concerts and sporting events and professional athletes. This not religious persecution. This is a group of people who are not medical experts, trying to figure out the best way to navigate something that we don't really understand. And that has gotta be such an impossible position for them. I pray for our civil government leaders all the way from city, all the way to the national so much more now than I ever have before. Cause gosh, that's gotta be so hard. The change in what we're…do masks work, do they not work? And this is what the virus is. No, this is what the virus is like. There's so much data changing and we're experiencing the scientific method in real time. Um, it's not linear it's this is true. And if this is true, then we think this is true. Oh, we figured out that this isn't true. That makes this not true. So we got to go back here and now this is true. And then it makes this true, but then this isn't true. So we got to like, this is the process that we're in and it's really, really hard. It's this is really, really hard. I pray, pray, pray for our governmental leaders.

Second thing that I want to say, it's really important that if we're going to call ourselves followers of Jesus, that we don't fight like the devil for the things of God. Here's the thing  -- you're free to have whatever opinion you want, like that your opinion is your opinion. Like you can, you can have whatever, like nobody's trying to convince you otherwise, that's your opinion.  However, in the last 48 hours I have called weak, I have been called a coward. I've been called a liberal, which I was like, I don't know why that one is a slam, but okay. I'm not giving away anything about my political position. I'm just saying, calling somebody a liberal isn't necessarily a negative thing. People have been like, there's just a tremendous amount of vitriol in what people are saying. And, and in 1Peter 3:15 says, “always be ready to give an account for the hope that you have, but do so with gentleness and respect” -- like gentleness and kindness. These are fruits of the spirit. Like this is part of the evidence that the spirits working in your life. We don't get to fight like the devil for the things of God. I posted a picture yesterday, my wife and I took our kids to the museum of nature and science. It was great. And I posted a picture of myself and then one of my family, all in masks. And that was like, Oh my word, unbelievable. On my own, like, if you want to have an opinion on your Facebook for a profile, please feel free. But if you disagree with mine, just scroll on. Like, you don't have to say nothing. You don't have to say anything. Like the general rule is it's only helpful if it's helpful, right? It's only helpful if it's helpful. And so I'm like, whatever we do, whatever kind of discourse we're engaging in. And by the way, we're going to have lots more discourse on this. This isn't over, right? We're gonna have lots more opportunity for discourse. Can we do it with gentleness and kindness in a way that actually represents our God well? Because what we're doing is giving God a black eye and some of my Christian brothers and sisters are not acting very much like Jesus in their conversations. And that's wrong. 

Third thing that I want to say about this, and then we'll tie it down. Is this, there's all kinds of debate about whether or not masks work. And, and even if you were to take a, if I was to bring up here a panel of medical professionals and we were to interview them and they were able to have the freedom to be honest, without recompense, you would find a mixture of opinions about that, right? Here's the deal -- at this point today, where we're at in the state of Colorado, it's a law to wear a mask indoors unless you have a medical exemption. And if you do then wonderful, we're not trying to demand people wear masks. That's not it. However, to choose not to wear a mask out of rebellion or to try to make a statement is against the law. It's not about whether or not it works. It's like wearing a seat belt. I remember when the seatbelt law came into effect – man, there was a push back and all the examples of people who had gotten in wrecks and were saved because they were thrown from a vehicle and had been, would have been killed if they'd had a, but all that stuff went on. Like I get it. I hear you. That's a real thing. But right now, um, it's the law for us to wear a mask. I wear in a mask except for a here, because I have an exemption. While I'm speaking, I don't have to wear a mask. Um, but as soon as I get off the stage, I'll have a mask on. And I know that some of you guys are like, well, then that means I want to go into the ministry. And, um, here's what I'll say. The flip side is a little bit, probably not worth it. It's not worth the 30 minutes you don't have to wear a mask. Um, but that being said, I just want us to, I just want us to understand that it's the conversation around the mask mandate for the next couple of weeks or a month or whatever it is like we're going to know in a couple of weeks, whether or not the mask actually helped anything, right. We're going to know in a couple of weeks, then we'll be able to make decisions based on real data. But until then, I hope that what we understand is that our job, as followers of Jesus, is to represent him first, not our constitutional rights and whether or not the executive order is constitutional or legal or ethical or anything like that. That's all going to be sorted out because we live in a country that has political discourse. And I love that. But until then, my role is to be a law abiding citizen and to uphold the law. So I want to just offer that to us as a way to say, like, let's represent Jesus, don't you don't, you don't have to change your mind about wearing a mask. I'm not trying to force anybody to wear mask. What I'm saying is, um, let's, let's represent Jesus first and not just our own opinions. What that does for us then is to say that we're going to walk with Jesus and take on the responsibility of walking with Jesus, not just the benefits. We live in a world that loves privilege without responsibility, but you don't get the privilege of walking with Jesus without taking on the responsibility of it as well. And if that means that we need to represent him by laying our own opinions down for a couple of weeks about masks, then we can do that. We can do that.

Okay. So I'm gonna jump into this series. We're going to tie it down today with I am the true vine. And we've been talking about how John, is using these I am statements that are claims made by other gods in the Roman Pantheon, the specific seven I am statements. He's making these claims as a way to describe the nature of Jesus and to pit Jesus against these other gods that John is facing. Now, John has at least seven churches that he's pastoring, right? We know that there are seven churches of Revelation and there's probably others that he's pastoring as well. But he's trying to convey who Jesus is in a way that will make sense to his audience. Okay? So here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the passage today first, John15 -- very famous passage, a passage that we've actually talked about here already, since I've been here. And so we're going to take a different angle on it. What I love about the Bible is -- Rabbi Hillel says that every passage has 70 faces. What that means is it's like holding a diamond and you look at one facet of it and you go, Oh my gosh, that is the most beautiful thing. And then you just turn it a little bit and you see another facet and go, it's a whole new stone. Oh my word. That's the way the Bible works is -- when you read it, like the Holy spirit is so faithful because it's dripping with the presence of God to use it right where we live, right where we need it, right where we're at today. And so, I'm going to take it and we're going to look at it from a little bit different perspective. Then we're going to talk about the god that we're tackling. And then we're going to draw down and make some applications.

So that's where we're headed for the morning. 1 John 15, you'll recognize it right away. If you don't know it already, it says this -- I am the true vine (this is Jesus talking) and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, -- now I've talked about this before, but it's good review. The word “takes away” is the Greek word airo. It’s taken from the Greek root airos, it's used 101 times in the new Testament. One time for every Dalmatian. That's how you remember that. In all of the times that it's used, it can mean take away, but it's almost exclusively translated to lift up. And the question is, which one makes more sense here? They, the ESV translates it “take away” largely because, the original English version had it translated “to cut off “which the word airo never means that-- it never means that. And so to try to keep in step with the translation work, that's already been done. What they did was to move it, not to lift up, but to takes away. And it's not a good use of that passage. And it says --and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 

So, let me explain to you what's going on here so that you can understand why I'm taking such a strong stance on this. Let me show you a picture. This is a grape vine, and it looks very much like what you would have seen. Thank yo -- that what you would have seen in the first century. This is really significant because what you're seeing here is in the ancient world, they didn't have the wires that you tie up. Like if you drive by a vineyard today, what you'll see is great vines that have the branches all tied up on the wires and they're strung up. And there's a reason for that. In the ancient world, they would just let the stump. And that wood part is not the vine. That wood part that's the stump. They would just let that grow up out of the ground. And then the, the vine would grow out like this and fall. And sometimes the grapes as they begin to grow, it put so much weight on it that it would pull down and the fruit would touch the ground. And that's not good. So let me show you another, another picture. This is actually, if you look closely, you can see a couple of wires there that this one is actually tied to. That's the way that they do it, today. I was in a Turkey with a buddy of mine and we were doing a scouting trip for a study tour, and we were lost -- like really legit lost in the middle of Cappadocia, which is nowhere -- it was like South Dakota, right? Like it was the only reason you'd drive through South Dakota is to get to the other side, right.  Except for Mount Rushmore, which is cool. But I'm like, it's like the Badlands of South Dakota. It's like the, nothing, just, just not pretty in these rolling hills and valleys. When we come up over this one hill and we looked down and in the valley, there is a vineyard and the guy who's, the vine dresser is there. So I was like, oh my goodness, I'm gonna go talk to him. So I go down and I look at this bush and there's actually a bush with -- it's just like in the ancient times, the way they did it, one of the bushes has a branch that's sticking up with a stick, propping it up. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is too good. This is too good. Like, this is why the Lord allowed us to get lost, not so that we would die in Turkey, but so that I can have a conversation with his vine dresser, which is good to know. So, I started talking with this vine dresser and through the, through our guide who was a translator and I asked him, I said, why is this lifted up? And he said, well, the fruit started to grow on it and it got too heavy, started to touch the ground. And I said, interesting. I said, would you ever cut it off? And so the trend there, our guide says this to him and Turkish. And he goes, and then he says something that triggers back and our guy goes, I think he said, that would be stupid. And then he made this statement, as long as there's life in the vine, you would never cut it off. You would only lift it up. And I was like, oh good, that'll preach.

But, I want to go back and look at the other part. The second part of that verse, every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may be more fruitful. I want to, I want to take a look at that. So let's do that picture back up that second picture, if you'll notice, so the vines coming up out of the stump and off of that stump or off of the vine comes the branches. The branches hold two things --the branches hold the group, the bunches of grapes and the leaves, and the leaves are important because they help with photosynthesis – they help the plant make food, but there's this balance where you have a whole bunch of branches that have a bunch of leaves, but no fruit. Jesus's desire in the metaphor is not that we produce leaves it's that we produce fruit. And what happens on a vine is if you don't treat that, then the leaves themselves trying to sustain their own life on the vine take nutrients from the grapes and it winds up helping the grapes be less fruitful. So what they do is they go in and they look at these branches, these vines, and these branches, and they decide which branches have leaves, but no fruit. And what they do is, they trim those leaves so that the fruit is there and the fruit can get the maximum nutrient from the stump through the vine. Here's the thing, leaves are pretty, they're beautiful. They're not bad, they're not wrong. And at some level they're necessary, but if you have too much of them, they take the fruit away. And I would suggest that we have a lot of leaves in our life that maybe God is asking us to let go of. Maybe the amount of time that we watch TV -- we make sure we get that in, but we don't have time to spend time in God's word. Or, we want to take a promotion at work so that we can make more money, but we don't get to spend any more time with our kids. Or there's a myriad of other things. They're not wrong. They're not wrong things. They're just things that don't produce fruit. And Jesus’ desire is to produce fruit, but he wants to produce that fruit through your life. And so it's really important that he prunes us, which means that we have to let go of those things -- as we become more like Jesus, we have to let go of some of those things. And that's the tension that we will live in until the day we die. However, there's a reason why that happens. And I want to keep reading and figure that out.

So let's keep going --  “already you are clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit, by itself, abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I'm the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he, it is that bears much fruit -- I love this Yoda translation of the Bible. He, it is, yes. You might want to tackle that one. I believe there's a market for that. I think you could sell the Yoda translation of the Bible. I think you could sell it -- he, it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. By the way, this is talking about the gathering of branches, but these are the branches that are withered. The reason that they're withered is because they’ve fallen off the vine. And if you go through a grape vineyard, you'll see at the bottom of these there's branches that are laying, that they've just died and fallen off. Those are going to be gathered. But as long as it's connected to the vine at all, we lift it up. We don't cut it off. Okay? 

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. So, God is glorified by the fact that you and I bear much fruit. Here's what the fruit looks like -- As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. Because this is God's heart. God's heart is that we have the fullness of joy. Joy that is deep. That doesn't mean that circumstances are always easy, but we have joy that is deep. And if we stay connected to the vine and we abide in the commandments of Christ and in his love, then we can start to experience deep joy. Here's his commandment -- This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. So when we bear fruit, what does that look like? It looks like us loving one another. And if we don't get that right, then none of the rest of this matters. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You're my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another. That's Jesus's goal -- that when we produce fruit, that fruit looks like us loving one another. It doesn't look like us trying to point fingers and show everybody where they're wrong. It doesn't look like that. That doesn't look like Jesus. It doesn't look like being connected to the vine.  What looks like being connected to the vine is when we love one another, the way Jesus loves us. And that means there's going to be a lot of self-sacrifice, and we're going to do things that we don't want to do necessarily because we want to represent Jesus before we represent ourselves. And we want to enter into discourse conversations with kindness, gentleness and respect, because these are things that are true of the Holy Spirit working in us.

Now, I want to leave that conversation for just a minute, and then we're going to come back around to it, but want to talk about Dionysius This is the God that we're talking about. He was called the true vine. Dionysius is the god of wine and theater. I say that like a thespian -- theater, um, thespian is an actor, I don't know, Dionysius is the god of wine, theater and sexual immorality. Consequently, he is the God of all kinds of pleasure and indulgence. And that also makes him very popular. Because if you want to experience joy in your life, you go to the god that gives you all kinds of sensual indulgences. That's what, that's what goes on with Dionysius. Now this is a picture of Dionysius. Dionysius was the -- his story, his myth is very complex. And the reason is because he was very popular, as you could imagine. And so a lot of people added things to Dionysius because whatever Dionysius was involved in, he brought a lot of, kind of just indulgence and hedonism to it, just a lot of self-serving stuff. He brought to it. The story of Dionysius begins with the fact that he was born in the Tamalas River Valley in Asia minor, which is in Turkey. The reason why that matters is because there's a really important city to you and I in the Tamalas Valley, which, by the way, is believed to be the birthplace of wine. But, there's a really important city there called Sardis. Sardis is one of the seven churches of Revelation, and John is the pastor to Sardis. So John is a pastor to the area where this myth originated. He was a son of Zeus with a mistress. And if that sounds familiar, it should. It happens a lot. His wife was really upset and that happens a lot as well. And so Zeus, anyway, through a series of events, one thing led to another, and Zeus takes Dionysius and lets him be raised on a grape vine in the Tamalas Valley. When he gets to a certain age, he's taken off the grapevine and he's taken up the mountain to an older couple who raised him and they're childless, and they raise him as their own. And he is believed to be the one who gave man the ability to make wine. Now, there's this really interesting story about, Dionysius that there was a wedding feast down in the Valley and this terrible thing happened. They ran out of wine at the wedding feast. And so, the people of the village sent for Dionysius and I'll show you another picture -- here's another picture of Dionysius. The story is that he comes down the mountain, riding on a donkey and he goes to the wedding feast and he turns water into wine. Does this sound vaguely familiar at all? And there's not any particular spiritual application to that, except for the fact that we need to wrestle with who is the gospel writer that gives us that story? Does Matthew give us that story? No. Does Mark? No, he does not. Does Luke? No. John -- John is the one that gives us the story about Jesus turning water into wine. Why? Because that story is familiar to his people. That's a story that speaks into their context. Okay? So that's actually really significant. Now let me show you some more pictures. There's a city called Pergamum that we will also go to when we go to Turkey, another one of the seven churches of Revelation. This is a sketch of the Acropolis of Pergamum and the central attraction there is this massive theater that's in the middle 88 rows of theater, seats like a ridiculous, like 55,000 people or something like that. No amplification equipment. It is incredible how well you can hear in that space. It is incredible how well you can hear. Now, at the bottom of the theater -- as you might imagine, because Dionysius is the God of the theater -- is a temple. And that temple is the temple to Dionysius. There was a festival that happened at the temple once a year, one to 2 million people come to Pergamum for the Dionysian festival, because Pergamum is what's called neochorus to the worship of Dionysius. What that means is -- think like world's capital, that's the world capital of Dionysian worship, okay. People would start at the temple and they would make their way down that covered Colonnade, which is called the sacred way -- the via sacra -- it's the way that they would walk. And they would walk as they're walking in this parade, they would walk by 20 to temples, to different gods. Let me show you another picture. This is the, the via sacra today. This is what it looks like today. And standing on the steps of the Dionysian temple, you can look down and people would walk down this, and there's so much going on. If, if you think about the celebration to Dionysius, it has all things indulgent involved in it. In fact, it was so central to the Roman world that there was actually a Roman ordinance that said that a young lady couldn't get married until she had participated in a Dionysian festival. Like it was that bankrupt. It was that messed up and all these are going on all around there.

Now, what I want to throw that picture back up here for just a second. What I want to talk about is not that part. I want to talk about the parade that goes on that, that rectangle thing, there was an altar and on that altar was these big piles of raw meat. And you would eat that raw meat. Um, and I like a rare steak, but this isn’t even hurt real bad. Like you put a bandaid on this, it'll be back out there grazing.  This is raw meat and you would eat this raw meat and the blood would run down and it would run down onto the, uh, in the troughs and different things. And you had this processional. And so, you eat this raw meat -- and, and what they believed was that when you ate the meat, that you were eating the flesh of the god and in doing so, you were ingesting the presence of the god into your life. Now here's the thing. If you want to have a god in your life, which kind of god do you want. Probably want a god. That's all about indulgence and pleasure and everything, non-boundary, right? You want a God that lets you be free to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it. And this is exactly what Dionysius this was like. Now, if you keep going down there, they found, the archeologist found this really interesting thing. There were these three storied, um, storefronts. They didn't really know what to do with these for a while. As they excavated them, what they uncovered was that at the bottom level, there was these 50 gallon vats that they analyzed the resin that was in the bottom of, and they found that it was wine -- like these 50 gallon drums of wine, which you know, that you don't store wine in a 50 gallon barrel. But the, the truth is, if one to 2 million people are gonna show up and do this processional, you probably need 50 gallon barrels to hold all the wine that they're going to consume. And so at the third story -- they would get their wine at the first level -- they would come up to the third story and that was there was these tricliniums – they are three-sided tables -- and you reclined at the table. Laying on the table is more of this meat. And so you would go there and you would lay down on your left side, you would eat with your right hand. And you would talk about, um, taking in the presence of the god. So you're eating his flesh and the wine is his blood because Dionysius is the god of wine. And so you're eating his flesh and you're drinking his blood. And then that leaves the question. What's the second floor for? Well, I know a lot of you guys are sitting there thinking, man, if I ate that much raw meat, I'd be sick. 

Welcome to the second floor. It's called vomitorium. And it's used to evacuate. When you get ill from eating the food like that -- then you would go back up and continue the party. This is how we celebrate Dionysius. We eat his flesh and we drink his blood, which by the way, we're told that Jesus said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part of me. But did Matthew say it? No. Did Mark say it? No. Did Luke say it? No. John was the one that gives us that information and it's one of the things I love about context. So one of the things I love about understanding the context -- he's like, you can understand why John not only makes the phrases that he uses, but he tells the stories that he tells, because these are speaking to the people in his context that are really trying to deal with this stuff. And I think about this, you know, like this is absolutely ridiculous. How in the world could anybody be involved in this? Right. But are we so far removed from that? Like if you were to go to an average college campus on a Friday night, what would you experience on Greek row? Katie Perry, the great philosopher, Katie Perry – she said every Friday night, right? Is, are we really so far removed? And I know that for many of us as adults we’re like, I'm so glad I grew out of all that stuff. Like did we? Cause I feel like by and large we're, we're generally pretty indulgent in America, like just in general. And we don't even consider whether or not we should be. It's just part of the culture that we're in. And so we have to wrestle with all of that, right? Like trying to figure out what we do with this god of indulgence is really, really significant. Now I was taught growing up in the church and I don't think that this is accurate. I was taught that the world is pain and God is all happiness. That there is no joy in the world. And that there's only joy in Jesus. That's what I was taught growing up in the church. I don't agree with that statement at this point in my life. I think there's joy in Christ. And I think that there's joy in the world. It's just that the joy in the world is really shallow because it's grounded in self-indulgence it's a, remember we go back to when we talked about the good life and the abundant life. The difference between the good life and the abundant life -- it's grounded in a self-indulgent shallowness that will never give us what we ultimately need in this world. Now, in Christ, he says, I want you to have joy and have that to its fullest. I want you to have the fullest, the deep kind of joy, but that joy isn't rooted in self-indulgence that joy is actually rooted in sacrificially loving one another well. That's what that joy is rooted in. That's what that whole passage in John 15. So it's so brilliant that he uses this. I am the vine statement as a way to open this discourse that I'm, the Dionysius says he's the vine, but his is shallow. I'm the vine and if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you're going to have the fullest joy possible. And so for a lot of us, we're like, man, Jesus, following Jesus is hard. So many rules, no fun, but actually it's rooted in a joy that is deep. It's rooted in a joy that it doesn't get shaken when circumstances are difficult, it's rooted in a joy that has substance. Self-indulgent joy is not rooted in any substance; it's rooted in self-indulgence, which by its very nature -- and by the way, not to preach about this, like we know this is true -- we know it's true that there's a deeper joy than the party on Friday. Then we know that every time we wake up on Saturday morning and go, I am never going to do that again. And then, you know, by Monday morning, somehow is the greatest time you ever had, like, I don't know how the story changes, but that like, there's this like that's all there is that, that is all there is? No. Jesus wants us to have deep joy. And that leads me into my implications for this morning. I have three of them have three implications for this morning.

Implication number one is this there are two joys that battle for our loyalty; one is shallow the other is deep. And I would just invite you to consider then what joy are interested in? One that is shallow or one that is deep?

Implication number two is we must remain loyal to the joy that focuses on others rather than the joy that focuses on self. A joy that's rooted in following Christ is a joy that doesn't change. Regardless of circumstances.

Number three, we've been confronting many of the gods in our culture throughout this series. If we continue to wage war on the idolatry of our lives, it will not be easy, but it will be good. And what I would suggest is this, what I would suggest is that there'll be a whole lot of people that will tell you that it's silly that you're taking it so serious. Uh, it's happened to me this morning already. There are people who will tell you that you're silly for taking it so serious. They'll be like, man, just, just relax, man, this is way easier, man. I don't know why they always say man at the end of every sentence, but apparently they do whoever they are. This is like, they're going to invite you to compromise. But what I will say is while it's not easy and it won't even necessarily make sense to the world, what I can tell you is it will be good and it will be worth it.

And I wonder if maybe as we move into our time of communion, if we eat his flesh and drink his blood as a way of bringing his presence into our understanding into our selves, if we ought not to consider what it really means, this picture of self-sacrifice, what does it really mean to Communion together? Like what are we really saying? If we want the presence of this Jesus more in our life, are we trying to get the privileges without the responsibilities? Or are we willing to walk as Jesus walked, which is about loving one another and bearing fruit and not constantly trying to wage war or chase indulgence or all the things, not that -- that doesn't represent our God. Well, um, I want us to think about that this morning for just a few minutes as we move into our communion time.

We are living in unprecedented times and for a lot of us, it feels like we're being pressed and crushed and like everything that brought us security's been up ended and, and it's just crazy. It's just crazy. I would say this in the pressing and in the crushing, I just want you to know Jesus didn't change and are called to follow him. Still looks the same. So as we think about that, let's remember his body, which was given for us. On the night, Jesus was betrayed. He took bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body, which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me. Let's remember him this morning. And then after the dinner he took a cup and he said, this cup, this is my blood which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. Let's remember him.

Let's pray. Lord this morning I just want to say thank you for the fact that you're promised presence is always there and that we can tie into that as a source of strength. God help us in these crazy sets of circumstances that we find ourselves, help us to love one another well. Help us to represent you before we represent our own opinions or politics or all the fears that we have, that we would represent you. Thank you God, for all that you are and all that you give us each day, in your name.