Christ Church Sermon, All For Love: I’ve Been Redeemed, February 22 2026

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Thank you for listening.

Be still and know the good news. God has

not forsaken nor forgotten us, but

redeems us. Why should we be afraid?

God is in our midst, forgiving,

restoring, sending.

Thanks be to God.

This morning we have two scripture

lessons. The first one comes from

Jeremiah

Jeremiah 31:31

31:31.

The days are coming, declares the Lord,

when I will make a new covenant with the

people of Israel and with the people of

Judea.

Our second scripture lesson comes from

Luke

22 19 to 20. And he took bread, gave

thanks, and broke it, and gave it to

them, saying, "This is my body given for

you. Do this in remembrance of me." In

the same way, after the supper, he took

the cup, saying, "This is the cup of the

new covenant in my blood, which is

poured out for you."

>> The word of God for the people of God.

>> Thanks be to God.

>> Thank you, Chris.

>> Last week, Pastor Chris, lots of Chrises

around here all of a sudden. Last week,

Pastor Chris started this all for love

sermon series with a powerful

examination of the cross and how that

cross is the ultimate example of love.

But before Jesus was crucified on the

cross, he had important ministry to do.

He had a lot of changes to make about

how things were working. And one of

those things he came to change was the

covenant that was in existence at the

time between God and God's people. A

covenant is a biblical word for promise.

And the promise that God had made with

his people prior to Jesus coming was

essentially that Israel would be God's

chosen people if they followed all of

the laws that God gave them. There are

two really important things to note

about this old preJesus covenant.

First, the old covenant was conditional.

And that means that the Israelites would

only remain God's chosen people and

therefore receive all of the blessings

and the benefits of that relationship

if they obeyed God's laws at all times.

And this this was of course impossible,

right? The Israelites were human after

all. So it was inevitable that they were

going to fail and they did many times

over. True to the old covenant, God gave

them consequences for those failures and

then took them back again. But it was an

endless cycle that could never be

broken.

The second thing to know about the old

covenant is that it was with Israel and

only with Israel. That meant that only

the Israelites could potentially find

favor with God. They were the only ones

who could be God's chosen people.

Everyone else had no such promise, no

hope of that relationship. In other

words, if you were not an Israelite, you

were out of luck.

This was the covenant that was in place

for about 1,500 years. And I imagine

that there was a real sense of

hopelessness that kind of was pervasive

during that time. After all, only

certain people ever received this

covenant from God. And even those people

who were part of the covenant had no

hope of being able to fulfill what was

being asked of them. They're part of

that promise.

All however was not lost. Roughly in the

middle of this 1500year period came a

spark of hope in the form of a prophecy

from Isaiah.

The prophecy said this. But now, and let

me stop right there for just a second.

Out of all of the roughly 728,000

words in the New uh International

Version, that translation of the Bible,

but now or but God are my absolute

favorite words. When they show up, they

are our written cue that God is about to

do amazing things that will undoubtedly

completely mess up the status quo. Pay

attention every time you hear but now or

but God because good things are coming.

Back to the prophecy in Isaiah which

said this, "But now this is what the

Lord says."

Do not fear for I have redeemed you. I

have called you by name and you are

mine.

Redeemed or redemption. It's one of the

most powerful things we can experience.

Redemption means eternal freedom from

our sins and atonement of all that we

have ever done wrong. With this

prophecy, there is now hope because of

the promise of redemption.

What's more, though, being redeemed by

God is personal. As we heard in that

verse, I have summoned you by name.

You are mine.

God wants to be in relationship with

every person individually and is

promising redemption for every person

individually.

And then in Jeremiah, which is

chronologically after Isaiah, we read

about the new covenant. And in the

scripture that happens right after where

Chris left off in Jeremiah, it says

this. This is the covenant I will make

with the people of Israel after that

time, declares the Lord. I will put my

law in their minds and write it on their

hearts. I will be their God and they

will be my people. For I will forgive

their wickedness and I will remember

their sins no more.

Out with the old covenant and in with

the new covenant. So what's the

difference?

First, the new covenant is based on

grace. The old one was about conditions

and consequences for sin. And this new

one promises that wickedness will be

forgiven and sins forgotten.

Excuse me. We are still going to mess

up. We are human. But God's grace and

God's mercy are now there to cover us.

There's nothing that we can do that can

separate us from God anymore. And to

further drive that home, this new

covenant is not going to be written on

stone tablets that can be destroyed, but

it's going to be written on our minds

and in our hearts in places that no

person can touch and that no one can

ever take it away from us.

Secondly, second thing about this new

covenant is it is for everyone.

And your first response to that might

be, well, wait a minute, we've heard

that scripture already today. in that

scripture says, "This is the covenant I

will make with the people of Israel, and

we are not the people of Israel." And

you would be right.

However, stay with me for just a second

because the best part of this new

covenant is not what fulfills it, but

who fulfills it. And that is Jesus.

When Jesus sat down at the table with

his disciples at the last se supper, the

meal starts off as a Passover meal,

something the Jewish people did and

still do annually to remind them of the

Israelites escape from slavery and God's

passing over of the homes of the

Israelites,

sparing their firstborn children from a

plague.

But now,

but now

Jesus was about to turn that meal into

something so much more.

When he offered them the bread, he gave

thanks for it. He broke it and he said

those powerful words that we hear at

least once a month here at the church.

This is my body given for you.

And then he took the cup and he said to

them, "This cup is the new covenant.

It's the new covenant in my blood which

is poured out for you. The new living

translation says that same verse this

way. This cup is the new covenant

between God and his people. An agreement

confirmed with my blood is poured out as

a sacrifice for you.

That bread and that cup represent the

body and the blood of Jesus Christ who

made it clear when he served them that

they are he is the new covenant, the new

promise. His life and death are the

fulfillment of the prophecies from

Isaiah and Jeremiah. Because of Jesus,

our sins are all forgiven.

Even before Jesus sat down at that last

supper with his disciples, he was

modeling this new covenant and other

meals. Much of Jesus's ministry involved

food. Perhaps Jesus was an early

Methodist.

Thank you for giving a moment to cough

while you giggle. The Gospel of Luke,

where we read from today, has at least

11 references to Jesus either being at a

meal, going to a meal, or leaving a

meal, where he stops to model a new way

of ministry or to offer healing or

minister to a person or to a group of

people.

When we compare how and with whom Jesus

dined to how and with whom people dined

before Jesus came, we can see that Jesus

was teaching us a powerful lesson by

acknowledging who we eat with.

Before Jesus, the hierarchies of the day

dictated that who shared dictated who

shared a meal together. A person did not

fratonize, let alone sit down and break

bread with someone who is not of their

same political, social, or religious

standing. It was not done. And if you

did it, if you associated with the wrong

people and invited the wrong people to

your house to eat, it could permanently

damage your reputation and your honor in

that society.

But God

But God changed all of that when he sent

Jesus as the fulfillment of the new

covenant.

In those 11 meals I mentioned, the ones

that Jesus shared with people in the

Gospel of Luke, these are just some of

the people that Jesus dined with at

those meals or around those meals.

Tax collectors, including that wee

little man, Zakius,

a sinful woman who anointed Jesus's feet

with perfume while he ate, and a man

with leprosy

whom Jesus healed at a Sabbath meal.

Jesus threw out the notion that a shared

meal was about how you showed who you

knew and made it about how we show love

to everyone.

Hear it again. That new covenant was for

everyone. Everyone was welcome at the

table where Jesus broke the bread and

poured the cup.

When you have more than you need, build

a longer table, not a taller fence.

If you have heard that statement before,

you might think that having more than

you need means having more money, more

possessions, a larger house. But now,

but now, hear it with ears of faith in

light of Jesus's sacrifice.

When Jesus died for us, he gave us all

we need. With Jesus, we have everything

we need. We don't need the stuff, the

things of this world. We just need

Jesus. And when we truly realize that,

it will become clear that the longer

table that we are called to build as

Christians is the communion table.

We're not called to build a fence to

keep people away from that table.

Instead, we are called to build one that

guarantees that there is room for every

single person around it. Every wicked

thing any of us has ever done has been

forgiven. Every sin any of us has ever

done has been forgotten.

We are all of us redeemed through that

bread and through that cup. And every

person deserves a spot at the table.

Jesus came to redeem all of us.

So the question is, how does that

redemption change us?

When we know the joy of being redeemed,

we should want to share that joy with

others. We should want to do whatever it

takes to spread the good news of

redemption so that we help to fill that

table. In other words, we can't stop at

just building the table. We need to live

lives of invitation, modeling the love

and the grace that was shown to us

through Jesus Christ so that all will

know that they too are welcome.

Katie Davis grew up in Tennessee.

She was raised in the church and always

taught that there was this big world out

there with a lot of need right outside

her doors.

When Katie was 15, she told her parents

she wanted to go overseas to do mission

work. And during her senior year in high

school, she did just that. She served

for a short term as a kindergarten

teacher at an orphanage in Uganda.

She says that she immediately felt at

home in the African country. She knew

God was calling her to live and to work

in that part of the world. After she

returned back home, she begged her

father to let her return to Uganda

instead of going to college. He agreed a

little bit.

He said he would let her go, but only if

she agreed to go for just nine months

and that she would come back and go to

college after that time.

Katie agreed and she returned to Uganda.

She served again at that Ugandan

orphanage and while she was there, she

started a nonprofit that sponsored

children in Uganda so that they could go

to school.

At the end of that nine months, Katie

returned home to Tennessee. She kept her

promise to go to college. She returned

to live her earthly father's dream for

her.

But God

But God, Katie's heavenly father, would

not let go of her heart or of her

dreams.

Katie made it one semester before she

dropped out and moved permanently to

Uganda. She had fallen in love with the

people, the culture, and the land. And

she could not live, in her words, with

her body in one country and her soul in

another.

Y'all, she was 19 years old.

But redemption had changed her.

By the time Katie had turned 21, her

nonprofit had also started a feeding

ministry for 1,200 children. And it and

it taught classes where local women

could learn a trade. And by that time,

Katie herself, by the time she was 21,

had adopted 13 orphan Ugandan girls. I

don't know about you all, but I only got

four and I'm 49. And I don't know how

she did it, running an organization with

all those kids, but she did it. And she

parents them still today.

And today, in addition to the ministries

I've already listed, her nonprofit also

now has a primary school. It has a

chapel. It has extensive scholarship and

community outreach programs and a nurs's

clinic.

Every time Every time someone asked

Katie where she got the strength to do

everything she did at such a young age,

she always answered the same way.

She said it was about God changing her

dreams into his dreams and then giving

her the ability to live them. Redemption

gave her strength.

Redemption changed her.

Craig Greselle is a pastor and an author

and he wrote a devotion one time about

the words do this that we heard in Luke

Luke 22:19

22:19. This is my body given for you. Do

this in remembrance of me.

Gishelle acknowledged that all biblical

scholars basically believe that as

scripture states, the sacrament of

communion is a way that we remember

Jesus's sacrifice for us. It's the way

we remember we are redeemed.

But then Gishelle goes on to say that

some theologians believe that do this

those two little words are also about

how we should live.

What if in the breaking of the bread and

in the pouring of the cup, Jesus is

inviting us to be broken for him and to

pour out our lives to him, letting his

will and his dreams for our lives take

precedence over our own and over

everything else?

What if being redeemed is not just

something that we acknowledge with our

hearts, but is instead something that

changes our lives?

Or as Greselle put it, "What if we had

the courage, the audacity,

the faith to pray, God, break me."

For most of us, our temptation in our

faith is to play it safe, to not risk

things that take us out of our spiritual

comfort zone, even for the sake of the

kingdom of God. But hear this. Hear

this. When we play it safe, seats are

left empty at God's table.

Katie Davis refused to play it safe.

Instead, she allowed herself to be

broken.

The knowledge of her redemption made God

the priority over everything else in her

life, including comfort, including

stability, including her parents'

wishes, which as a teenager is a pretty

big thing.

She let that redemption change her. And

because she let God break her, there are

thousands more people who sit around the

table of God every day.

The new covenant ensures that everyone

has a place at the table of God.

Remember that scripture from the NLT

translation that I read earlier? Jesus,

the new covenant, came for God and for

his people.

All people.

In the face of what has happened in the

last 36 hours around the world, I think

it is especially important to note that

there is no qualification or distinction

that gets you in. That was the old

covenant,

not under the new covenant.

There is no presupposition of

nationality, of political stance or

agreement on issues.

Africans,

Iranians,

Israelis,

Americans,

Republicans,

Democrats, those who support the events

in Iran and those who do not.

If Jesus can sit at a table and share

his last meal, the new covenant, his

body and blood, with Peter, who would

deny any knowledge of Jesus after having

spent three years doing daily ministry

with the man, and with Judas, who would

betray him with a kiss and turn him over

to die. If Jesus can sit at the table

and share his last meal, his body and

blood, with those two people,

why can't we sit at a table

with people that we disagree with, even

passionately?

Every person has a place at God's table.

When we accept the redemption that Jesus

came to give us, it should change our

lives.

It should break us so that our dreams

fall away and God's dreams take their

place. It should make us want to do

whatever it is that God is calling us to

do so that everyone knows here it one

more time. Every person knows that they

have a place at the table of Jesus

Christ.

We cannot accomplish this on our own. We

can't do it with our strength.

But God

can do anything through us when we pray,

"God, break me." And then we allow God

to do just that.

Let us pray.

God, break us.

Free us from the things that keep us

trapped

in the things of this world.

Free us from thinking that when we

accumulate more that we are doing better

and instead break us. Break our dreams.

Help us to pour our lives out to you so

that we are living sacrifices for you.

So that we are doing what it is you are

calling us to do. And we have the faith

and the strength to be able to live into

that calling knowing that we have gifts.

We have gifts that will bring other

people to your table. And that is what

it's all about.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.