I want to introduce a friend of mine, you all know him, Mr. Scott McConnell.
We are actually going to extend the Say What series by one week because, very unfortunately,
if you'll be praying for her, Pastor Jen, her aunt, passed away last week, and so they
had services yesterday, and so she was actually going to launch a new service, a new series
today called Topographical, which we'll actually end up launching next week.
Like I said, we're kind of excited about it.
It's a cool little concept that Pastor Jen came up with, and so she was going to launch
that today, but since she needed to go home, family comes first in these situations, and
so she's going to go do that.
I didn't want to kind of steal the thunder and go, well, just give me your notes and
I'll kick that off for you instead, and so we're going to kick that off next week.
Scott was kind enough to say, hey, I actually have a sermon that I think would fit really
well with this Say What concept if you want to tack on one week, and so I said, absolutely,
if you guys will welcome Scott McConnell to preach for us today.
Hey, Greg, did you set my water back up there?
Thank you.
Good morning.
So this morning, welcome to our friends on camera, those of you who are watching us live
or a little bit later, and good morning and hi to my mom.
A little bit about me.
I kind of might help you understand some things of what I do.
In 2015, I had a spinal cord injury, and that affects my blood pressure quite a bit, so
I stayed tilted back in my chair pretty far while I'm speaking so that I don't get light
headed.
I also have a very hard time staying warm, so I stay pretty bundled up, and I also take
lots of sips of water because I tend to get dry mouth, so I'll just mention that so that
you can be aware of that as I'm sharing with you.
This morning is a say what Sunday, and where we're going to end up, I tell you where we're
going to land.
Where we're going to land is talking about communion and the unity that we find through
it with Christ and also with each other as a local church, as a group of people right
here together.
Communion is a sign of our love for each other and our connection with each other.
So that's where we're headed.
First, I would love to hear what are some of those favorite verses, stories, or characters?
You can just shout one out if you'd like to share it.
Peter.
Peter, okay.
And why do you connect with Peter?
Why do you like him?
I like him because he falls down a lot, but his perseverance and his passion is there.
All right, so Robyn shared Peter messes up a lot, but he gets back up, he shows perseverance.
That's a great one.
Any others from this side?
Proverbs 31 woman.
Oh, Proverbs 31 woman, yes.
Gives some awesome virtues and some awesome examples of what womanhood can look like and
for all of us.
I'll do one more.
Jeremiah 29 and 11, can you remind us?
Yes all the good stuff.
I'm going to quote some scripture today and that's what it's going to sound like.
So that's great.
So Jeremiah 29 and 11.
I'd like to look at, we're going to look at John today, mainly a main passage from John.
And John is one of those books that we get some of our favorite Bible verses from.
Some of the most popular.
John 1, 1.
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
Beautiful passage.
John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.
John 13, I give you a new command.
Love one another as I have loved you.
And John 6, eat my flesh and drink my blood.
Say what?
Yes, you can't be a part of me.
It's not just a suggestion, it's a command in John 6.
And so as I was thinking of this say what series, I was like, that's a good one.
Because when you like read, you know, one of those Bible tracks, you know, you probably
don't see that one in there.
And when you're sharing your favorite Bible verses, you probably don't mention that one.
Now sometimes we can ask the question.
What was what was the original meaning of this?
Or does Jewish culture help us understand this better?
Or maybe there's something in the Greek that makes this clear for us.
This is not one of those passages.
The reason we can be sure of that is because the people that are there, it shares with
us what they were thinking.
And their response was, say what?
They were offended by it.
They were upset by it.
But at the end, a lot of them left and no longer follow Jesus because these words were
so offensive and so strange to them.
How could he say that?
How could he say those words?
So I'm going to read a little bit more of that passage now.
Talk a little bit more about it and then we'll go from there.
John 6 53 through 58.
And let's stand up as is our tradition.
Or as Pastor Greg throws in, maybe it's feel like it's especially for me.
It makes me feel special as you are able or however it is you're most comfortable.
This is my standing.
The chair goes up.
The chair goes down.
Verse 53.
This is from the NIV.
Jesus said to them, very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise them up
at the last day.
For my flesh is real blood food and my blood is real drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.
Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds
on me will live because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Our ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.
And then I'll share with you verse 66.
From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
You may be seated.
Or de-elevate your chair, which is most appropriate to you.
These words, first I want to throw in a couple of caveats.
Jesus used a lot of sarcasm, I think.
I think Pastor Greg would agree.
He used a lot of hyperbole.
So I use that some when I'm preaching as well.
I add a little flavor, if you will.
I want to share with you before as I do that, that I take my preparation seriously.
I want you to know that I read different commentaries and do different research and different things.
So even as I share sarcasm or rephrasing or different things, even though I might incorporate
humor, I want you to know at the end of the day that I take where we're going with the
scripture very seriously.
And if you're ever confused by something I say or wonder did he really mean that, please
always feel free to come to me after and ask.
I want you to know that because I don't want people to ever leave confused or by something
that I've said or upset by it or wondering, is that really what that means?
So I'll throw that in there.
Yeah, some really, Pastor Greg sweating a little bit.
I was sharing once and I wasn't trying to be controversial, but the lead pastor was
there at the church and I was sharing at the youth group.
So I was taking even a little bit more liberty than usual.
I had to be a little edgy and add a little humor and the whole time he was looking behind
him at what people were saying and doing.
He was so nervous.
I felt for the guy.
He was squirming in his seat.
It won't be that bad.
Jesus is talking through this passage.
Chapter six starts with the beating of the thousands with the fish and loaves.
And so people are coming to him and saying, hey, this is exciting.
You're able to do miracles.
And Jesus is saying, yeah, but it's not about bread.
It's not just about that miracle.
This is more.
And they said, well, OK, if you say this is more, Moses was able to bring about manna.
Can you do that one?
And Jesus said, no, you don't understand.
This isn't about being a prophet.
This isn't about doing signs.
I am actually sent from the father.
I am the bread of life.
And so they questioned that more.
And they became upset that he said that he'd come down from heaven.
And so I think when we get to this point, there may be some hyperbole involved.
And I think sometimes, have you ever just taken what someone's saying to the farthest
possible extreme to make a point?
Like when someone says, you must think I'm dumb to say something like that.
Which I've responded before, usually did not very good results.
Yes, I think you're dumb.
And I think nothing you're saying makes any sense.
So there it is.
Not because I actually feel that way, but because I'm trying to stretch it out to say
enough.
OK, you're at the point you're trying to rebut mine with.
It's going too far.
I think there may have been a flavor of that in here.
I think Jesus reached the point where, as he's trying to explain the bread of life,
as he's trying to explain his role with the father, he gets to a point where he says,
OK, you're going to have to eat my flesh and drink my blood or you don't make it in.
Bam.
Deal with that.
And a lot of them said, OK, we're out.
And Jesus did not call them back and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
He let them go.
And then he turned to his 12 disciples and said, are you guys headed home too?
He wasn't a great recruiter sometimes.
That wasn't what he was going for.
He was looking for followers.
But he was not at the booth sitting at the latest prophet convention, handing out brochures,
trying to get people to come over to his.
Like he didn't have any swag with him.
Three bags that say I follow Jesus inside.
He liked to push the limits and say, all right, who's still going to hang with me?
And so we end up with eat my flesh and drink my blood.
Now it's easy to connect this to communion.
Because when we get to communion, we talk about the body and blood of Christ.
And what do we do with those symbols?
We use bread and we use wine or for us, juice, which we could give a great explanation for
that if you're if you're curious sometime, I won't get into it here.
I'll point you to Pastor Greg, but I'd be happy to talk to you about it, too.
You said we did talk about it.
I said, OK, yeah.
Another side step.
When I don't have as much time to prepare, which I'm so grateful that Pastor Greg gave
me, we take more side steps.
We find a few more rabbit holes, but that's OK.
So I need to keep an eye on my time today.
Pastor Greg is really about if you have a question about our church or about faith in
general, he is so good about meeting with people.
He meets with people in coffee shops.
He'll be happy to invite you to his home.
He would love to go to your home.
He said he's met with me at the church.
I'm somebody with a lot of questions.
I love to ask questions.
And this church is like no church I've been to.
We are more open and more accepting of different perspectives and different way of understanding
things than any church I've been to.
And for that reason, I fit in this church better than any church I've ever been in.
And I love that.
But that also means that it's fair to ask questions and about what our beliefs are,
about what does it mean to be in or out here at the house?
And I'll answer that shortly for you.
There's a lot more room for you to be in than there is for you to be out.
So if you have any things like that, I encourage you to ask Pastor Greg.
He's going to listen, and you're never going to get a rebuttal of why are you asking that
or you should already know that or you have to believe like us.
Have you ever heard any of those before?
If you've been in a church or you've talked to folks?
I certainly have.
And for that reason, I've been in churches where I have to keep my mouth shut a lot.
And I was okay with that at the time because I feel like that was necessary.
It wasn't my role.
It wasn't helpful to be sitting in back going, wait a minute.
But at this church, it's okay to do some of that.
And I really enjoy that.
So Jesus at the booths trying to recruit people with brochures and swag, sell the transitions
this week.
Jesus turned to the disciples and said, are you guys leaving?
And Peter replied and said, where else are we going to go?
And again, I'm adding here, but I'm guessing Peter is thinking, Lord, you say some crazy
stuff and it is really hard to follow you sometimes.
But we've been around the block.
We've looked and there's not a better alternative.
We still trust you.
We'll still follow you.
Even when everybody else is turning around because you're saying something about eating
your flesh and drinking your blood.
Because remember, communion did not exist yet.
All right.
So when Jesus is preaching here, he wasn't saying this is what communion is about.
He was talking about bread.
He was talking about a miracle that he just given.
So when I make a connection to this, to communion, I want to be clear.
One this passage isn't just him talking about communion.
We're making a connection here.
But two, this is a connection that the early church made.
After communion, after that was instituted, after that started, people looked back at
John's gospel and said, hey, wow, there's a really powerful connection here.
And so Jesus was saying in John six, and it's not an easy one to read.
We've been talking about how Jesus wasn't trying to make this one easy.
Okay.
He was throwing something out there.
And so you can read commentaries and here's some different things.
But at the end of the day, I think most are going to agree on this.
Jesus is saying you need to buy in fully.
You need to get to the point where I'm a part of your DNA.
You need to follow my teachings, even when it's hard and might not fully make sense.
Why?
Because they're coming from the father and he's doing this to show you his love.
All right.
More than just about accepting hard teachings.
It's like a test of do you really like me or not?
Say, I love you so much.
I need you to stick with me even when it's tough.
All right.
So this passage, not only about communion, this passage about following Christ, about
following him and putting belief in him to the point where he's in our body and in our
blood, but also connected closely to communion.
Now the early Romans.
So after communion was instituted, after the early church was rolling to this communion
thing and this flesh and blood thing start to make more sense.
Not to those who were watching the Christians, as you can imagine, this passage and ones
like it are pretty easy to take out of context.
So there was one early Roman writer, his name is Quinn something like a lot of Romans were
Quintus, but his name's hard to pronounce.
It's like Quintonius, Quintian, Quinceanera, one of those, one of those.
So we'll just call him Quinn.
All right.
And here were his conclusions in writing to someone else about Christianity.
They worship the heads of donkeys.
Where he got that, we cannot figure out.
They're a little too friendly with each other and that's put in more vulgar terms.
You can Google Quinn later if you'd like to.
And they were cannibals.
That's what their meetings were.
They had secret symbols.
They were lascivious people and they were cannibals.
They worshiped donkey heads.
And by the way, they followed a guy who was killed on a cross, which was a very even for
ways to be executed.
It was the worst of the worst.
It was reserved for slaves and terrorists.
If you were a Roman citizen, you weren't allowed to be killed that way.
It was against the law.
It was that bad.
So they were very confusing.
The early Christians, the Romans had a hard time understanding him.
The disciples that were standing there when Jesus said it had a hard time understanding
him.
Not easy stuff.
Now some of us may have found some parts of communion confusing before.
Depending on what tradition you come from, depending on what church you come from, maybe
if you're not coming from the church at all.
And I can't give an exhaustive explanation of it.
I don't think anybody could one sermon, but we're going to touch on a few areas.
And one of the big ones is who can take communion where?
And many of us are probably familiar with one example, not the only example, the Catholic
Church being a place where you need to be a member.
You need to have participated in catechism in order to take communion there.
Now I studied at St. Ambrose for my masters with some awesome Catholic people.
And so if you'd love to talk about Catholic communion and some of the questions, I would
love to talk to you about that.
Very interesting.
And they have some great reasons for why they do what they do.
But if you're at mass or one of their services and you're not Catholic, it can be a little
awkward.
Everyone else is going up.
You're not supposed to.
You know that.
You should know that.
Now my roommates and I went to a Catholic service.
We were not Catholic.
We were evangelical Nazarene.
If you're familiar with it to be more specific, but we were encouraged.
It was an assignment for one of our classes.
Go to a church from a different tradition.
Now there's a Catholic church within walking distance.
We lived in campus, so we went to the Catholic Church.
We knew you weren't supposed to go up if you weren't Catholic to take communion.
But my three roommates did, and I was horrified.
The first one went up and instead of doing the sign of the cross, he tried to do this
before communion, but he ended up doing something like the sign of Zorro.
It's kind of something like here, which was probably a dead tell for the priest.
They were not supposed to be there.
Now the priest would have had grounds to ask or possibly even just refuse them.
But this priest was trying to do the generous thing and just go ahead with it.
I think he probably regretted it.
Now there's two ways to receive communion.
You can either hold your hands folded out or you can put out your tongue and the priest
can put the communion on your tongue.
The first one after sign of Zorro, so now we're on the second one, put out his hands.
But then once the priest gave it to him, started walking and going back to his seat.
You can't do that.
You have to take communion at the altar when the priest gives it to you.
So the priest is trying to tell him during the sacred moment, take it, eat it, take the
communion now.
And so he eventually took it.
The last one went and he decided he was going to try to go full on.
He was going to be brave.
He was going to put out his tongue to receive communion on his tongue.
But right at the last moment, he freaked out and snatched it out of the priest's hand.
You can't do that.
You can't reach out and take the communion out of the priest's hand.
That's not something you're supposed to do.
There's symbolism for that.
There's tradition for that.
And so once again, they broke the rules.
So when they came back and sat next to me, I didn't even want to be by them.
And we were walking out and said, what are you guys doing?
You know, that was a debacle.
Now, nobody said anything to us.
No one chased us out.
But it was one example of traditions and communion being a bit confusing.
Sometimes you have been in churches, they say any baptized believer, any member of this
church, anyone who believes Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, all of those.
And then a lot of times people don't explain how to take it.
Do you walk down?
When are you supposed to take it?
Do you take it as soon as you get it?
Once you're back in your seat, then sometimes it's that awkward thing where everyone else
has already taken it.
You don't realize it.
So then you're trying to take it like as the service ends and you're hoping nobody's watching
or you've already taken it and you didn't realize you're supposed to wait.
And then you're sitting in your seat and everybody else is taking it.
You already took yours.
So I've done like the air drink before.
You know, I already took my juice, but then I'm just kind of like, you know, you know,
I'm drinking mine right now, too.
We're all doing the same thing.
I know what I'm doing.
So it can be confusing.
Now here at the house, the way we do it is I would describe it and I actually have Pastor
Greg leading communion after me, partially so that if I say anything that he's like,
whoa, whoa, whoa, he can clarify it.
But I think I've got this broad enough, Pastor Greg.
I think we're I think we're OK.
Here at the house, we practice an open communion, meaning that you're able to receive communion
whether you're a part of our church or whether you're part of another church.
And we don't give explanations of what you have to believe in order to take it.
And if I can speak on that, I think that part of the reason we do that is because it removes
barriers for people to receive something that's been an important symbol in the church for
2000 years.
So that even if you're part of a tradition, different tradition, even if you have some
different beliefs than we do, if you want to participate in communion, you're able to.
Is that fair, Pastor Greg?
OK.
Now some of our friends from other traditions.
Might see that differently.
They might even view it as too casual of an approach.
And I respect that because communion is a sacred thing.
And I think there's value and even having different approaches to communion.
But here in our church, that's how we choose to approach it.
And I think it's OK for the church to do things differently and different traditions.
Can we amen that day?
We can worship different ways.
We can take communion different ways and we can understand it different ways.
But here at the house, we choose to do it in an open way.
OK.
Now, even in that, we experience unity when we take community communion.
Community, community.
But we experience union when we do that.
Communion Jesus commanded was a sign not only of our love for him, but of our love of one
another.
You can't take communion.
I think if there's a way of correctly taking communion.
We need to be reminded of our love for one another when we take it.
Part of Jesus teaching before he gave communion was he washed feet.
And part of that symbol was servant hood.
Part of what we remember when we take communion is servant hood, is humility, is that the
Christ that we follow was willing to die for us and we're called to be willing to give
up our lives for one another.
Amen.
OK.
So that's where I want our focus on communion to be today.
That we're unified.
That when we take it, it's not only a commitment to Christ, it's a commitment to love the people
in this room.
And part of what I love is that wherever we take communion in the world, which millions
of people around the world today are taking communion, that's beautiful.
Is that we love the people around the world that we're in a room with.
Even if you're visiting, we hope that you feel Christ's love and unity wherever you
are.
And I love that even when I'm taking communion as a guest in congregations, I wasn't a part
of, I feel a sense of connection with the people in that room because of the unity that
we experience through that.
Do we as a church show that unity, that love toward each other?
I would like to share a couple examples.
Spoiler alert, they're not bad things that have happened.
They're good things.
Someone from this church has helped me move my sprinklers.
I've learned that sod is a lot of work.
We needed help with sod.
Something that small, someone was willing to come and help us move our sprinklers.
Someone is willing to come and help me move my van seats.
Tough, something that had to be done for us to be able to take our little one to an appointment
to Iowa City.
Someone else from our church rode with us to Iowa City with a screaming baby so that
we could make an MRI as good of an experience for her as it could be.
Someone else from our church drove me to Iowa City for an appointment for me and drove me
home.
You'd hope so, right?
You wouldn't want him to leave me there.
Someone else from our church drove me to Chicago for an appointment that I wasn't able to go
to myself.
Someone else from our church watched our kiddo for four hours yesterday so my wife and I
could go watch The Little Mermaid, which was fun, but it was also special for us.
We love watching our Disney movies that we grew up with in the theater together.
And then we can critique afterwards what we thought they did or didn't change and what
we feel about it.
Now as you look around our church, there's not hundreds here.
We've been here for 18 months, so almost all of those things have happened in the last
year.
That's pretty incredible.
There's some really beautiful unity in our church.
There's some deep connection in our church.
We're showing the love of Christ to one another.
And I want us to remember as we take Communion today and as we take it each week that we
are united in our love for each other each time we take it.
The Spirit gives us strength to serve and love each other every time we take Communion,
every time we're reminded of the love of Christ.
Now I love to give homework assignments.
Here's the one for this Sunday and then we're done.
It's a classic.
Ask somebody how you can pray for them this week.
Here in the room.
And has anyone ever seen an interview with Robert De Niro?
They are terrible.
Because this is how he answers questions.
I heard you did a new movie, Robert.
How was it?
How was working with the director?
Good.
And what was it like working with so and so?
Do you have any great stories that you'd like to share?
No.
Is there anything you want to tell us about this movie?
It's a good movie.
And that's about how an interview with him usually goes.
Now even if your conversation with somebody about how can I pray with you this week goes
like that, I want you to think of it as a win.
It still helps someone realize that you care, that you love them.
And so even if you ever had an awkward encounter at church, one time I went and I told someone
to come sit with me and like tried to bring them over and they're like, actually, I'm
sitting with someone else and I know someone who's coming.
I'm like, okay, don't sit with me.
I like brought, I was like, here, come here.
Come over here and sit.
I'm sitting with someone else.
Sorry.
Even if you do something awkward, something weird, it's okay.
Even if the conversation goes like this, this would be a Robert De Niro version of how can
I pray for you this week?
How can I pray for you this week?
I don't know.
Pray that work goes okay.
Okay.
Is there anything in particular I can pray for you about your work week?
No.
And then if you ask them next week and follow up, how did your week go?
It was good.
Great.
We showed love to somebody, right?
We built a connection and maybe they would even go so far as to say it was a pretty stressful
week.
And we say, Hey, I prayed for you.
All right.
Simple, basic, showing love for one another.
Are we a loving church?
Yes, we are.
Are we part of a church that serves each other?
Yes.
Can we continue to grow in our love and affection for each other?
We can't.
And I pray that communion helps us to do that.
I'll say a brief prayer and then Pastor Greg can take over.
Father, I thank you that it's okay to be confused as we're followers of you.
I thank you that it's okay for us to not know what to do at church sometimes.
I thank you that we have different traditions and that we don't all do things the same.
And I thank you that even something as confusing as eat my flesh and drink my blood can bring
us to a place of greater unity and better understanding of how much you love us and
how much you want to be a part of our lives.
I pray that you would help us to love one another deeper and I pray that you would help
us to remember that when we take communion, that's a part of it.
We're loving you and one another more deeply.
It's in Jesus name we pray.
Amen.