August 15, 2021 ~ Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost ~ Sermon & Zoom Worship Recording

Zoom Recording ~

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/7ru-qKa4WbP_ggEg5KgjwjQxDB0ykXjWvN6EPHOPEVUv3xRgeSEMo4R3UcH2eYkF.U1OFnfU_UvBdTjCW

                                                                                                08/15/21—Highland—Meute

“Your Lord Jesus” Summer Series: “Absorbing Christ and His Way”

Psalm 34: 9-14; Proverbs 9: 1-6; John 6: 51-58

Pearl: Absorb Christ in order to serve Christ.

Function: To motivate listeners to seek methods and to find time to be alone with the Lord in order to absorb his Spirit, to live in his Way, and to serve from that Way of Christ.

We continue this week in this sixth chapter of John in which Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples about “eating his flesh and drinking his blood” because he was the bread that came down from heaven referring to himself as the “bread of life.”

1. Speaking of food Readers Digest presented in this month’s issue the favorite desserts from each state in America. Since we live in a Tri-State area I will summarize.
   1. Maryland—Apparently Marylanders have been battling over what is the favorite. One side favors the thick, chocolate Berger cookies, brought to Baltimore from Germany in 1835. Others prefer the thin, crisp Otterbein cookies which came from the motherland in 1881. Which one is it?
   1. Pennsylvania—Shoofly Pie. There are two versions: dry-bottom (which is baked fully) and wet-bottom (which is baked until it is just set, to give it a gooier, more syrupy texture). These are both created by the Pennsylvania Dutch.
   1. Delaware—Strawberry Pretzel Salad. No lettuce or anything green included. The tri-color salad has three layers: a crust of crushed pretzels mixed with butter and sugar, a middle layer of cream cheese and Cool Whip (and more sugar), and a top layer of strawberry Jell-O that usually has real strawberries, Delaware’s state fruit.
      1. Now that I have you all smacking your lips together imagining these delicacies, try to imagine the same desire for the presence of Christ your Lord.
2. You and I have a constant, repeating invitation to be with our Lord Jesus. Jesus talked about himself as food because his followers would need to absorb him and his Spirit as often and as consistently as we ingest daily food.
   1. We do not appreciate how important this is. This is why the church down through the ages has established the routine of the “daily offices—Morning Prayer, Mid-day Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Prayer at the Close of the Day.” These are set times of prayer to seek the presence of the Lord repeatedly through a given day.
   1. More than we realize, we need “daily communion” with our Lord.
      1. We receive an “Invitation to Communion” when we celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper but that formal invitation is really symbolic of something that we constantly need.

Last week I introduced Peter Scazzero’s book entitled Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation. Our Elders will be reading and discussing this book together over the next several months.

To go deeper into the heart of your Lord Jesus, you absorb his Spirit into your spirit.

1. Just as we absorb energy and fuel from food, you and I absorb the presence of Christ and we absorb his Way.
2. How do we do this?
   1. Fundamentally, to do this, you have to seek your Lord.
      1. Thankfully our Lord is always ready to welcome you. The invitation is a constant in our lives. The door is always open to the Lord.
      1. Richard Rohr, an author I love and commend to you writes, “We’re already in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.”
      1. God is always present with us because God desires to relate with us. But God does not intrude upon us or in any way impose upon us. God constantly waits for us to seek communion.
   1. This brings us into the realm of spiritual disciplines or spiritual practices. There are many such paths to the Lord.
      1. There are the most popular and most commonly practiced ones: bible study, prayer, worship, and so on.
      1. Among the least used and most needed spiritual practices today are silence and listening before God.
         1. The reason I am commending silence is to try to experience God not only through the mind, the way we usually try to do, but to also experience God through feelings and even physically.
            1. Hence, Jesus commended himself as bread, as food. He wants his followers to experience God.
            1. The challenge is to find ways to be with God not only with the mind but also the body and the spirit and the emotions.
            1. A way into this is regularly getting some time for silence and listening. This comes from slowing down to “be” with the Lord.
         1. Scazzero writes that you have to be with the Lord before you can do for the Lord.
            1. Disciples of the Lord Jesus are more genuine as we are filled with the Lord Jesus and this comes from daily absorption.

Find ways to seek Jesus and to be with him so that you can absorb his Spirit and his Way.

This is an exciting opportunity to dwell more in the mystical dimensions of your being in order to find your Lord and Savior. Your Lord is ready to meet with you daily as often as you need and desire and can handle.

1. A pastor wrote about a time when he worked as a support person for a group of developmentally challenged men who all had their own apartments. He helped them run errands, fill prescriptions, make dinner, and so on. In his first week of work he walked a client home and stood in his doorway as he entered. The client invited him in for a Coke. He wrote:
   1. “I declined, and he invited me again. I said no, and he repeated himself. After four invitations he took offense. “Come in!” he shouted. “I’ve got more pop than you can handle!” I backed away, unnerved. He never invited me again. We did not become friends. Years later I regret having rejected his hospitality, unhinged as it might have been” (Matt Fitzgerald, CC, 8/11/09).
   1. He further wrote, “I hear it echoed in Jesus’ insistence that we eat his flesh and drink his blood. He says it over and over, seven times in these seven verses, and though Christ may have more blood than I can handle, more flesh than I can imagine, he will never stop issuing the invitation. He will give it again and again our whole lives long” (Ibid.).
2. You have to “be” before you can “do.” How will you seek the Lord daily as his follower?
   1. Daily communion is needed. I am talking about daily and intentionally being present with the Lord.
      1. Roman Catholics can receive the Eucharist every day if they want to.
      1. I am aware that my former Medical Doctor was a devout catholic. He went to mass every single day early in the morning. I believe he received the Eucharist every day as his spiritual practice and very physical way to “be” with the Lord.
      1. Whatever way you prefer, find time every day to “be” with the Lord.
   1. My spiritual director always asks me about my time with God. As I think about it this is the basis of our times together. She is helping me to think of how I am being present with the Lord.
      1. She asks me how I am hearing from the Lord. Her question goes more to method not so much to content.
      1. That is the key question!
      1. How are we seeking the Lord? Are we dwelling in God’s presence?

In order to absorb the Lord and His Way you have to “be” with God. You have to seek him.

Try a new way of seeking God. Try silent listening in a place which will help you to be alone, silent, and attentive.

1. Too often we go directly to action and busily create “to do” lists and we can become weary and run down from harried running around.
   1. But if we spend time daily “being with God,” the living in and doing out of God’s Way will flow more easily, freely, and joyfully.
   1. We will find that our tanks are not empty but are daily being refilled.
2. Before you can “do” the work of the Lord, you must “be” with the Lord.
3. Before the people of God can do the work of the people of God, you must be the people of God.
   1. And there is much important work to do for the kingdom! Our best work for the kingdom of God will come from being immersed in the presence of Christ.
   1. Alva Tinoco Ruiz wrote about how infants aggressively seek to be fed by their mothers: “This is the kind of relationship that Jesus want us to have with him. He wants us to seek him like a hungry baby seeks her mama’s breast…Every time we come with open and humble hearts before Jesus, believing that he is our Lord and Savior, we are eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood…When we eat from the flesh and drink from the blood of the Son of Man, when we abide in him, we are naturally moved to love God and our neighbors in words and deeds” (CC, 7/18/17).

They say “you are what you eat.”

Seek time daily to “be” with your Lord Jesus so that you can absorb him into your being and so that you can serve according to his Way.