Worship + Communion Sunday

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Good morning, Awakening.

How are we?

Doing well?

I just have to say I'm very proud of you guys for coming out on this California wintry blustery day.

The amount of like rain boots I saw brought my Pacific Northwest heart lots of joy.

I was like, oh, that's so cute.

That's so cute.

And I've lived here, you know, 19 years, so I'm the same way.

But I'm so glad you're at church this morning.

Hey, if it's your first time, my name is Christina, and I'm one of our pastors here.

And we're just really grateful that you were with us this morning.

You guys, about quarterly here, we do a Sunday where we just focus on communion and worship.

And we just have a bit of a longer worship set and then just lean into like a devotional that leads us to communion.

And I'm so excited, I get to be the one leading us in that today.

So I'm so happy that you're with us this morning.

And I wanna kind of dive in this morning.

We're gonna be in the in the book of John.

So if you have a Bible, if you've got your phone, whatever you like to use to read it, we're in John chapter six this morning.

So I invite you to open that up and join me in there.

So where we're at in John, we're gonna meet up with Jesus and the disciples.

And Jesus is full on in his ministry right now, okay?

In the chapters right prior to this, um, Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, and she offered, he offered her everlasting water, right?

That would quench her thirst.

And then he he heals the layman that's next to the spring, and he says, Get up your mat and walk.

He's doing miracle after miracle after miracle.

And we meet up with him in John 6.

Go ahead and join me here in verse 1.

It says, Sometime after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, that is the Sea of Tiberias, and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick.

And then Jesus went on a mountainside and sat with his disciples.

The Jewish Passover festival was near.

Okay?

So you got the picture here.

Jesus is busy, busy healing people.

People are starting to follow him because they're like, what's going on?

What's going on with this movement?

So he retreats up onto the hillside, brings his disciples with him.

And then it's really important that we recognize that the Jewish Passover festival is coming.

We're gonna come back to that in our story.

So verse five When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming towards him, he said to Philip, one of his disciples, Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?

These people are hungry.

How are we gonna feed them?

And I love this because, you know, he asked this to kind of test Philip.

It says, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

Jesus already had something in mind here.

Philip answered him.

It would take more than half a year's wages to buy enough bread for each and everyone to have one bite.

Does anyone have any Phillips in their life?

Yeah.

He goes straight to like, well, okay, let's calculate what we're gonna do to solve this problem.

That's Philip, he goes straight to it.

But then another disciple, Andrew, he has another idea.

Another of the disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up and he said, Here, here's a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fishes.

But how far will that go with so many?

Philip's like, I have a solution.

Just kidding, it's like one little kid here, right?

But he has a solution.

Now, I love this story because it appears in all four of the Gospels, okay?

This account of John just says that Jesus looked up and saw this great crowd coming from him.

But in the other three Gospels, when Jesus looks up and sees the crowd, it says he has great compassion on them because they're like sheep without a shepherd.

And so he starts to teach them.

So here's Jesus with great compassion.

Here's all these people that are hungry, okay?

We've got um Philip saying we can't feed him, we can't afford it.

We have Andrew saying, Hey, I have a little kid here, with a few loaves and fishes.

And it's interesting, John specifically says that they're barley loaves, and for us that's important to know because barley was actually the bread of the poor.

So John's letting us know who these people are that Jesus is working with.

This is a poor crowd.

This is a crowd of people that maybe they don't have food, not just because they didn't pack it, because we're the moms and the dads packing the lunches for these people, right?

But this was a poor crowd.

And so Jesus says, have the people sit down.

There was plenty of grass in this place, and so they sat down, about 5,000 men, plus women and children.

And Jesus took the loaves and he gave thanks, and he distributed to those who were seated with as much as they wanted, and he did the same with a fish.

Verse 12 says, And when they had all had enough to eat, when they all, 5,000 men, plus women, plus kids, when they had all had enough to eat, or the other three Gospels say, when they had eaten until they were satisfied.

He said to his disciples, gather the pieces that are left over, let nothing be wasted.

So they gathered them and they filled 12 baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over for those who had eaten.

Can you even imagine what it would be like to be a disciple right there?

All of a sudden, you're like, okay, great, we just fed all these people, and then each disciple, 12 baskets, 12 disciples are just like standing there with these leftovers looking at each other, like, what just happened?

Philip's like, and we didn't even have to spend a dime.

Woo! Right?

They just did this.

They're just shocked and amazed.

But before we continue with the story, let's pause and just reflect on the abundance of Jesus for a second, right?

The excess of Jesus.

He didn't just give everyone a bite, not just a taste for everyone, not just like, oh, just a little bit to hold you over till you get home for dinner.

No, no, no.

He made sure there was enough for everyone to eat as much as they wanted.

Extra, satisfied, until everyone had enough, and then there was excess.

It's like a beautiful buffet, but not of the low quality stuff, like a really good buffet, and you can kind of just like keep going back until you're full.

That's the picture we have here of Jesus' generosity towards these people.

Just hold on to that thought for now.

Back to verse 14.

And after the people saw the sign that Jesus performed, they began to say, Surely this is the prophet who has come to the world.

These people are celebrating.

They're like, Yes! Finally, our Messiah is here, right?

The new Moses has come.

He's come to free us.

He is finally here.

And verse 15 says, Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, he withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

Jesus sees the people's response.

He knows that it's Passover time.

They're remembering how Moses led the people out of slavery, led them to the promised land, and the people are thinking, look, there's new food for us here.

This is the new Messiah.

This is him.

And Jesus realizes that this crowd could quickly become a crazy crowd that would by force take him and force him to be king.

So Jesus retreats.

And verse 16 says, When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, where they got into a boat and they set a cross for the lake of Capernaum.

So Jesus feeds all of these people.

The people get very excited about who they think he is.

Jesus retreats.

The disciples get on a boat and they disappear.

Later that night we read that Jesus actually walks on the water.

You guys remember the story to get to the disciples.

It terrifies them.

He says, That's me.

He gets in the boat.

They go over to the other side of the water.

And now the next morning, the people are searching for Jesus again.

All of these people are saying, Where did he go?

We didn't see him get on the boat.

And then they find him.

And where did they find him?

They find him in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Now, this would be a very normal place for Jesus to be, especially during the Passover festival, right?

So the Jewish people, they're gathering in the synagogue to remember this festival.

To remember that Jesus that God brought them out of slavery, right?

To remember how Moses convinced Pharaoh by the plagues, by the hand of God, crossed the Red Sea, and out they went into the wilderness.

This is them remembering.

So Jesus is here in the synagogue.

And in verse 25, we pick it up again.

And it says, And when they found him, when the people found him on the other side of the lake, they came to him and they said, Rabbi, when did you get here?

And Jesus answered, Very truly I tell you, you were looking for me, not because of the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and you had your fill.

He's saying, You were hungry and you came back for more.

I fed you and now you're hungry again.

And then he says this in verse 27.

Church, pay attention here.

Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

For on him, God the Father has placed his seal of approval.

He's saying, I know you came back because you're hungry, but don't continue to work for food that's gonna spoil.

Search after and work for the eternal food that the Son of Man will give you, that I will give you, because God's seal of approval is on me.

And they responded to him in verse 28.

They said, Well, what must we do to get the works of God?

What are the works required?

And Jesus said, The work of God is this, to believe in the one that he has sent.

What is the work required?

To believe in me.

And so they asked him, What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe in you?

What will you do?

They're wanting more.

They're wanting a sign.

Yes, thank you for enjoying the irony of this, right?

And they're saying to him, Well, our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.

So what is your sign?

You say you're the son of man.

What is your sign to us?

Okay.

Let's do a quick refresher on manna.

Throw up your hand if you know what manna is.

Okay, yeah, most of you know this.

Fantastic.

So, wonderful.

What these people were referring to was their ancestors.

They're in slavery in Egypt.

Moses says, Let my people go.

You've seen this in the movie, right?

Pharaoh finally frees them.

They're out in the wilderness past the Red Sea.

The people of Israel are free from slavery.

And what do they do?

They mumble and they complain and they whine and they say, We're hungry.

They're hungry.

At least in Egypt, yeah, we were slaves, but at least we had food to eat.

And so God tells Moses, okay, here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna provide manna for you.

And six days a week, when you wake up, there's gonna be this substance on the ground.

It's gonna look like white flakes.

And then on the seventh day, you won't get any because you're supposed to take enough the day before, because that's the day of rest.

And every single morning when you see this white stuff on the ground called manna, which means what is it?

Because they didn't know what it was, you're gonna remember the faithfulness of God.

It is a visual display every single day of God's faithfulness.

He's saying that I am the God that brought you out.

It tells us in Exodus that this manna, it tasted like wafers with honey.

Ooh, anyone else want to try?

Sounds delicious.

And for 40 years it was on the ground.

Now, the Judaism belief at that point in time was that there was like the storehouse in heaven, okay?

Or a heavenly treasury of manna.

That's what these Jewish people believed.

And that um that's what would that fed the people.

And they believed that this bread from heaven would be reopened.

This treasury would be reopened by the coming Messiah.

That's what they're saying to him.

Well, show us the sign, right?

They're like, because we believe that when the new Messiah comes, the heavens are going to open and the bread is gonna fall again.

But this is what Jesus says to them in verse 32.

Jesus said to them, Very truly, I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Sir, they said, always give us this bread.

And then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Church, in this beautiful conversation between Jesus and these people, Jesus is giving them the meaning of the miracle he did the day before, right?

He's explaining why he did that.

Yes, there were thousands of hungry people.

Yes, God's heart was, Jesus' heart was filled with compassion as he looked at them.

These sheep without a shepherd, these poor people, these people with physical needs who just needed a nice big, full dinner.

He wanted to care for their physical needs, but the purpose of that miracle was not just to feed them for one time, it was a beautiful example of a greater reality.

And the timing of Jesus to do this during the Passover festival, very intentional.

Because for a second time, God had provided bread from heaven.

But this time, it was the bread of life, not a bread that's gonna disappear the next day, not something that they have to go out and collect for 40 years.

Jesus is saying, I am the bread of life, I am the sole sustenance, I am everything that you need.

And for us today in 2022, it's the same.

Church, we are the 5,000.

Humankind is the 5,000 that Jesus looks out at with great compassion, with an overwhelming heart of love and compassion, as he sees us as a sheep who need a shepherd, as he sees our spiritual hunger and our spiritual poverty.

And just like the miracle that he had done the day before, we get to receive this bread.

Not because of something we did, not because of our striving, not because of our earning, not because of how strong our faith is, not because of our good works, not because of our obedience.

No, it's just like the manna.

All the people had to do was wake up in the morning, and there it was.

And Jesus is offering that exact same thing for us, lavished upon us with abundance, with extra, with excess, with leftovers.

And church, when we receive Jesus, we can be satisfied.

Sorry, Glenn, I probably messed up the slides.

That's my bad.

But verse 27 says this do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

Food that spoils.

I want us to sit on that for a couple minutes.

To think about the food that spoils, to think about the different breads in our lives, the different breads that we're eating, the different breads that we're craving, the different breads that we're striving after.

Because I think our world promises all sorts of breads that are gonna satisfy.

Yeah?

Amen.

I want to unpack a few of them, and I just invite you to listen and see, okay, which of those breads do I maybe seek after?

First, I want to talk about the bread of money.

Anyone?

The bread of money.

We all need it.

I mean, we do.

We need some money for survival.

We all want it.

It seems like we all want more of it, and it feels like no matter how much we get, it's never quite enough.

But the bread of money, it's a food that spoils.

Recession hits, the market drops, jobs are lost, divorces happen, homes foreclose.

The bread of money is a bread that spoils.

Or how about the bread of success?

The bread of prestige.

The bread of getting somewhere in your career and getting the new title or the new office or getting on that really important team or getting the grades or getting, getting, getting.

It's a bread that also can spoil.

Or the bread of degrees, which leads us back to the bread of money.

Amen?

Any students in the house?

Yeah?

That bread of wanting to finish that degree or get that higher degree.

Nothing wrong with it, but that can become the sole bread, the focus, the bread of fame or popularity.

Y'all got teenagers in the house, and I'd like to say it's just a teenager thing.

It sure is not.

We see this all throughout life.

Or maybe that bread, it's not necessarily fame or popularity, but it's just like needing community and friends, and we put that up and we strive and we earn.

How can I find my people?

Or the bread of personal development, personal fulfillment, personal awareness.

Always striving to know ourselves more.

Or the bread of beauty and strength.

That we spend a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of energy thinking about and striving for.

But our bodies grow old and our bodies will pass away.

That's a bread that spoils.

Or maybe our bread is just really attaining for a different home, something to own, something bigger, something in a different neighborhood.

Or maybe it's the desire for a spouse and family or a different spouse, or more family, or maybe less family.

I don't know.

Or maybe it's just the bread of pleasure and enjoyment.

Y'all, I find my here, myself here more than anything.

I want to try more food, more drinks, more experiences, more travel, more concerts, more sports.

I just want to do all of life.

I want to experience all of it and jam it all in.

But all of that also spoils.

See, church, these breads, they're not bad, right?

Let's be honest.

These are the things, these are the things of our lives.

And when these breads are consumed in the right order, it's part of the abundant life, this beautiful life that Jesus gives us.

But when it's misordered, when those are the breads that are what we're solely seeking after, it's not life-giving.

It's not the bread of life.

And they will spoil and we'll need more and we'll never be satisfied.

We're hungry.

Humankind, we're hungry.

Church, we're hungry.

So we eat and we eat and we eat and we eat and we try different breads and we consume and we get full and we get fuller and we get fuller, but we're still hungry and we keep searching and we keep eating.

And I think today some of us were just eating the wrong bread.

And that's why we're so hungry.

Our lives are aching from the overindulgence and the binging and the consuming of the wrong bread.

So we find ourselves spiritually malnourished, and yet we're so hungry.

And then some of us, unfortunately, we've actually gone to the other extreme.

We've become satisfied with the food that spoils.

We've been eating it for so long that we actually think that's what we need.

We actually think it's life-giving, and it's not.

And so we've tricked ourselves into thinking like this is what's filling me.

And yet our souls are starving, and we don't even realize our hunger anymore.

It's a scary place to be.

It's very different than the people that Jesus was talking to in the synagogue, right?

In Capernaum, when they said, when Jesus said, For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Remember their response?

They said, Oh, sir, always give us this bread.

They were hungry for it.

They knew they needed it.

And Jesus said, I am the bread of life.

And whoever comes to me will never go hungry and will never be thirsty.

They will find their all in me.

Church, Jesus' invitation to them now is exactly the same as invitation to us today.

It's to lay down the breads that spoil and to come to him to acknowledge that he is the bread of life.

Okay, I want to tie this in with communion.

So, what I want to do is we're gonna fast forward one year, okay?

This was Passover.

Jesus is up in the Sea of Galilee, he's in Capernaum.

We're gonna fast forward one year, and we find Jesus in Jerusalem.

It's the next Passover, and we find Jesus with the disciples.

All 12 of them are still there.

I don't think they have their baskets anymore.

I'm guessing the leftovers are gone.

But we find them again with bread, we find them again gathering, and we see Jesus again taking the bread, breaking the bread, giving thanks over the bread and sharing it.

This is at the Last Supper.

This is the night before Jesus was to die.

So I want to read this passage to you from Luke 22, keeping in mind everything we've talked about is Jesus being the bread of life.

Take that symbolism now into this.

In verse 14, it says, And when the Hour came, Jesus and his disciples reclined at the table, and he said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.

Jesus says, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you.

Do you think of Jesus often as having desires?

As saying to people, this is what I really, really want.

It's not a way that I think of Jesus very often, to be quite honest.

I think of him as being fully God, fully human, needing and getting everything he wants.

And to me, this is a beautiful moment of vulnerability for Jesus, where we get to see the inside of his heart.

When he's sitting with his 12, he's sitting with his closest buddies, those who he's partnered in ministry with, cast out demons with, slept on the ground with, and he knows the next day he's going to the cross.

He knows what's in store, the suffering and the sacrifice.

He knows what his father has asked him to do.

And he says to them, I have eagerly desired to share this meal with you.

It's almost like he needs his community, he needs his people.

And there's something for him about taking this bread and breaking it and sharing it with them.

That's so important.

I have eagerly desired to have this meal with you.

And after taking the cup, he gave thanks and he said, Take this and divide it among you.

For I tell you, I will not eat and drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

And then he took the bread and he gave thanks and he broke it.

And he gave it to them, saying, This is my body for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

This bread, this manna, me as the bread of life, I'm offering you this beautiful symbolism for what I am giving you.

And in the same way, after the supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which I poured out for you.

As Jesus, the bread of life, getting ready to go to the cross to sacrifice his life for the forgiveness of our sins, he gives a new bread.

He gives a new manna in remembrance of God's faithfulness, in remembrance of God's love that is going to be poured out.

In the same way that the manna for 40 years on the ground was a memory, a remembrance.

Our God is faithful, our God is with us.

This bread now, He's saying, eat this bread in remembrance of what I'm doing for you, of my sacrifice for you.

Friends, as we come to the communion table today, I want to offer you an invitation to pause and to reflect on your cravings for bread, on your strivings, on your earnings, on what you're building your life around, on what bread you're desiring.

Because here's what I know about communion: Communion is all about receiving.

It is all about receiving.

In that moment, Jesus was requiring nothing from his disciples, right?

He was saying, I desire to share this with you.

He took the bread, he broke the bread, he blessed the bread, he shared the bread as a beautiful example of what he was doing on the cross the next day.

Giving his body for the forgiveness of sins.

So, friends, as we come to take communion today, I want to be so clear that our hearts are not to come as woes me.

I have failed.

I need to beat up on myself about this.

Oh my goodness, the breads, I'm off on this.

I need to fix it.

It's not the heart.

No, we take it back to that heart of Jesus, who saw the crowds coming for him, who was filled with great compassion.

That's how he sees us as we come to the communion table.

He says, I see you.

I see your weaknesses.

I see that sometimes you're a sheep that wanders around and you just need some leadership.

I see your poverty.

I see your spiritual malnourishment.

And he says, Come.

Because we know that grace is not something that's earned, right?

Grace is a gift from God.

So as we take communion today, my invitation is that you pause, that you reflect on your bread, that you spend some time with the Lord, asking for the bread of life that does not spoil.

And then you just open up to receive what God has for you today.

The compassion that He wants to lavish over you, the kindness of a heavenly father that desires to be close.

The way we're gonna do communion today is instead of it being up here where you just help yourselves, which we do sometimes is fine, but today we want to serve it to you as an example of how communion is something that we receive, just like God's grace.

So I want to invite now our communion servers to come on forward.

We're gonna have two stations right up at the beginning of each of these aisles.

And friends, we're not in a rush for this.

We have space for this.

I'm checking my watch.

Yes, we have space for this.

We have time.

And when you come forward, they will offer you bread and you'll tear it off yourself, and they'll say to you, this is the bread of Jesus broken for you.

And then there will be a goblet with juice in it.

Careful, it is grape juice, it will stain your white pants.

And you're gonna just dunk it and they're gonna say, This is the blood of Jesus shed for you.

Do it slowly.

Take a moment to pause.

You can either eat here at the tables or you can take it back to your chair.

If you're a gluten-free person, we also have a gluten-free option on these tables.

Just let them know and they'll give that to you.

And church, at awakening, at awakening church, we practice what we call an open communion table.

That means if you today want to participate in communion, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are welcome to partake with us in communion.

Will you pray with me?

Oh, Lord Jesus, I thank you for a story that I've heard countless times in my life.

But that today feels like a beautiful example of your compassion and your love.

And God, the desire you have in you to be everything that I need to fill me to fold.

Holy Spirit, will you move in this place as we take your communion?

And God, we pray that the words of the psalmist in Psalm 63, 4 through 6 will be true.

That will say these words, I will praise you as long as I live.

And in your name I will lift up my hands.

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods, and with singing lips, my mouth will praise you.

Church, we're gonna put that psalm up on the screen so you can reflect on it.

And I want to invite you to come for communion when you're ready.

We hope you were blessed by this message.

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