Please note we had some computer issues during worship. Thank you for your patience with us.
Today is a new day to gather together as a family of faith around Word and Sacrament.
We gather as God's people around the Bible readings, preaching and teaching of God's Word. We gather around the Sacrament known as a specific way God shows God's love and grace. Martin Luther liked Baptism and Holy Communion as our two sacraments in the Lutheran Church. This is because Jesus told us to "do" these two very things.
At the end of Matthew's Gospel, chapter 28, Jesus says "Go and baptize." In each of the 4 Gospels Jesus breaks bread at the Last Supper and invites us "Do this to remember me!" When we remember Jesus we remember grace, hope, faith and love. When we remember Jesus we are moving closer to having a heart like Jesus. This has been our theme in the Summer Sermon Series on the book by Max Lucado Just Like Jesus. Today it is about having an Enduring Heart! Max asks us to reflect on all the things we have started out to do but have not completed. Whether it's an exercise class or a book, we are all so often not completing the task, dream, goal, or job.
Max lifts up for us that Jesus kept the singular goal in mind to take Him to the Cross and to die for us only to rise again. This is Good News friends. Jesus says: “I am Living Bread that came down from Heaven, whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”
And we, as God's people gathered for worship today, say "Amen!"
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Introduction
Wisdom prepares a feast, sets her table, and invites all to come and eat her bread and drink her wine. The first chapter of John’s gospel owes much to the biblical tradition that imagined Wisdom as existing before anything was created and having a role in the work of creation. Christ, the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24), today invites us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. John’s gospel includes no account of the institution of the Lord’s supper, but here we can't help hearing Jesus’ words as an invitation to the meal of bread and wine we share.
