Over It – Division

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Are there any things in your life that if you're just honest, you're just over it?

Like I'm serious.

Someone's got issues.

Um there's just some stuff that we're over.

Can we be honest about this?

Like when the in-laws are staying at the house.

Anybody been over that before?

Okay, like you know what that's like, right?

Here's one that's super petty.

Come on, this is real deal petty.

Um, I have an iPhone and it's 2022, and my phone can't tell the difference between well and wheel.

Anybody else have this?

Drives me crazy.

And it always autocorrects.

I'm like, I'm smart enough to know which one to use.

Don't fix it, and it's always wrong.

Drives me crazy.

Steve Jobs wouldn't stand for any of that.

Whatever.

Um, that drives me mad.

I get driven crazy by all kinds of dumb stuff.

Like, here's a funny one.

Um, Halloween's right around the corner, and my bullies are getting to the age where costumes aren't cool anymore, and I get it.

So the other night to mess with them, I said, guys, we should I got an idea, family costume idea.

We've done family costumes for years.

I said, What if this year for Halloween, we all dressed up as babies?

And my kids were like, What?

And I'm like, onesies and diapers.

And and my son is like, What is what is wrong with you?

Anyway, so that was obviously a joke, but later I went to my phone and I checked Instagram and I had an ad for diapers.

I'm over my devices listening to me.

Anybody else over that?

Over that?

Yes, I'm I'm over ticket master fees, I'm over political ads on TV, commercials, radio, social media, everything.

I'm over political, I'm just over politics, I'm over that.

Um, here's another one.

Like, this is just this is me, this is free therapy for me, everyone.

Um, I want you to know, I tried to be the most generous person imaginable.

I'm a heavy tipper.

Like, if you're waiting tables and you get me and someone else, and we're fighting for the bill, bring the check my way if you want to give it a little bit extra.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna tip big, I'm a big tipper.

But the tipping thing's gotten out of hand, and have you had this experience that you went somewhere where you probably shouldn't tip, and they're like, I'm just gonna ask you a few questions, and they show you an iPad, and they always turn away and it looks like this.

And it's so awkward.

Like, what do you do in that moment?

And it's always at a place that makes no sense.

You're at the vet's office, you're having to put your dog down.

They're like, We're just gonna ask you a few questions.

I'm like, read the room, Sharon, not right now.

Anybody else?

We're just let's be honest, though, we're over it.

We're over it.

There's all kinds of stuff we're over, right?

But I don't want to talk about what you need to get over.

I want to talk about what God is over.

I want to talk about the stuff that God wants you to get over, not because he's tired of it, but because he loves you and because he wants the best for you.

The next two weeks, we're gonna talk about fear and we're gonna talk about shame.

Because I believe those things have this tendency of holding us back from the stuff that God has for us.

Today I want to talk about another issue that is such an interesting, challenging one.

In fact, it's probably not something that you've thought of personally, it's probably not something you pray for or pray about.

But if we can get a hold of this, I believe it'll change not just us, but it'll change our church and it'll change our city, and I think it could change the world.

Jesus, one time in John chapter 17, prayed this prayer, and it's fascinating because I think it reveals a part of the heart of God for us, and it reveals some stuff that maybe we need to get over.

John 17 · chapter mention

John 17, verse 20, Jesus said, My prayer is not for them alone.

John 17:20

I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one.

Pay attention to this word, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me.

He's like, May we become one, unified in the reason, so the world will know, so the world will stand up and take notice.

It goes on.

It says, so that they may be brought to complete unity.

There's a phrase.

If you have your message notes there, circle that.

So they may be brought to complete unity, then the world will know.

It's like when we're unified, then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them even as you have loved me.

And then I want you to pay attention to two words in this last part.

He says, I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one, I and them, and you and me.

Jesus' prayer was so beautiful and it's so simple.

And if you were to audit your prayer life, my guess is it's not something you pray for, but he prays that we would be unified, that we would be one in heart, one in mission, one in spirit, that we would become one.

But if you were to take an audit, let's just let's make it easy.

Let's not talk about the course of human history.

If you were to audit just the last three years, since 2020, would you say the world is unified right now?

No.

There's wars, there's fighting, there's there's posturing politically.

The world isn't one.

Okay, what about our country?

We're the United States of America.

Would you say that we are united as one as a country?

Some of you are laughing.

No, we are not, and everything is politicized and polarized.

Well, we're not one.

Okay, let's make it even smaller, okay?

Not our church, not Access Church, but the Church of America, Christians in America.

Would you say Christians in America are unified, that we are one in mission and heart?

I wouldn't.

And I'm not talking about churches talking negatively about other churches.

That's that's child's play.

I'm talking about the big stuff.

We we miss it as a church.

And what happens is if we're not careful, we'll buy into the lie that the whole world has bought into, that it's us versus them.

We're right, they're wrong, it's black and white, it's it's my side, your side, and we miss it all together.

And I wouldn't say that unity seems to be the common theme through the world.

In fact, I would argue it's the opposite.

It's division.

The world is divided.

What causes this?

Now let's just remember we're only talking about three years.

We're not talking about the world wars or the civil war.

We're not talking about anything like that.

We're talking about just the last three years.

Now that some of this season has kind of moved past us and we can kind of take a deep breath and look back at the last three years.

Division seems to run wild, but what causes division?

Oh, I want to write down these four things that causes division.

Number one is prolonged stress.

This is where so many of us have lived.

Think about 2020 when COVID kind of hit the scene.

We were worried for ourselves physically, we were worried about catching the virus and not really knowing the implications of it.

That's that's stressful.

It had economic impact, so we were worried about our jobs, we were worried about our finances, we were worried about our future.

We were just, we were worried.

And then we did all of that in isolation, apart from each other.

We were stressed out.

Number two, the causes of division is we hit we live in politicized cultures.

Does this sound familiar to anybody?

We do, and we're just literally a few days away from what we call the midterm elections, and that it gets stressful, and you get mail every single day, and you get texts.

Does anybody get text messages from political candidates?

And you're like, how did this happen?

And you get these, and there's radio ads and social media ads, it's everywhere.

And then I got good news and bad news.

In just a few days, the midterm elections will be over.

That's the good news.

The bad news is experts believe that this year we will see more political ads for the upcoming presidential election, which is in two years, earlier than we've ever seen it before.

So, so like immediately when that election is over, you're gonna start to get more ads, more postcards, more phone calls, you're gonna get all kinds more.

We live in a politicized culture, and what does the politicized culture say?

We're right, they're wrong, they're doing this, we believe this.

It's all about division, it's about making my case, it's about polarization.

The third thing we live in with that causes division is personal attacks.

And this is the one that breaks my heart because friends turn on each other because they share a different worldview.

Friends turn on each other because maybe didn't vote the same way or think the same way or act the same way.

And and you would think that maybe this is just like how the world tends to live.

But if I could just be honest with you, this one really hurt me personally in the year 2020.

Not even me personally, but I watched this our church.

People who love each other, people who weeks before had stood together in church and worshiped and hugged each other and high-fived each other, people who cheered for their children's baptisms, people who loved each other, turned on each other.

And there's people who left our church in 2020.

This floors me.

Not because of something I did.

I mean, if you leave our church because of me, I get it.

But like they left because they were attacked by someone that they sat three seats over from just a few weeks prior, or they were the one attacking, and they painted themselves into a corner and they attacked everyone else, and now they're like, I've alienated all of my friends.

But what else causes division?

Here's number four, pessimistic outlooks.

This one's interesting because I saw a report this week that said the rise of headlines that promote fear, stress, and anxiety have skyrocketed in the last 20 years.

Well, why is this the case?

It's because fear sells.

And when people are afraid, they'll spend money on news and they'll turn their attention to the news because they want to have some semblance of control.

So here's what's happened: the fear has shot through the roof.

All of a sudden, all the headlines are scary.

They're all pessimistic.

Rising prices in gas, not rising wages in a way that's able to keep up with the demand for the rising cost, um, uh, war on the other side of the world, fear of a recession right around the corner.

Everything is all pessimistic, it's all negative, no positive news gets shared.

And it has this way of dividing us even further.

So Jesus prayed this prayer.

God make us one.

Why does he pray this?

He understood something that you need to understand.

And here's what it is: a divided world needs a unified church.

A divided world needs a church to stand up and say, we may see some stuff differently, but at the end of the day, we're all followers of Jesus, therefore we're brothers and sisters in Christ.

Instead of fighting with each other, we fight for each other.

A way to say it is we have a common goal and a common enemy.

And because we have the common goal and the common enemy, we begin to work together.

Why?

Because we're on the same team, going the same direction, trying to follow Jesus the best way we know how.

So I want you to get this, and this is so important.

I want you to do an audit of the way you pray.

Think about the way you pray for just a moment.

Most of us pray this way.

We pray, Lord, help me, God fix this, God meet my needs, God bless me, God get me a new job, God get me a better job.

Come on, God, give me a girl, come on, God, give me a better girl.

We pray all kinds of weird stuff.

But all of our prayers, if we're just honest, can tend to be me-centric, me focused.

It's all about me and meeting my needs and keeping me happy.

And Jesus said, when you pray, if you're gonna be like him, you're starting to pray differently.

You're praying for unity, for that we'd be on the same page, that we would be one with each other.

So I want to challenge you today to pray like Jesus and to begin every time you pray to pray for unity.

Look, let me give you three reasons.

If you have your message notes, write this down.

If you don't have your message notes, still write this down.

Here's three things we need to pray, reasons we need to pray for unity.

Number one, it's because we desperately need each other.

We just do.

Like, like think about the creation narrative, Genesis 1, 2, and 3.

God creates the world, and as he creates, there's a rhythm, there's a cadence to his creation.

He creates and he says it's good.

He creates and he says it's good.

He creates and he says it's good.

There's a rhythm to his creation.

But then all of a sudden it's like the drum gets offbeat, the whole story comes to a screeching halt.

God says it's not good.

But when does God say it's not good?

It's not good for man to be alone.

And usually this is taught in regards to marriage, and I believe that that's true, but it's so much bigger and more profound than that.

We we were not intended to go through this life alone.

In my opinion, possibly greater than the pandemic that we walked through with COVID, was the endemic of doing that same thing in isolation, separated from each other.

We desperately need each other.

And so, Paul, who wrote like two-thirds of the New Testament, he uses several different beautiful metaphors and analogies for what the church is and what the church should be.

He says the church is a family.

I love that language.

He says that the church is like a brick wall and each of us are a different brick, which adds different layers of strength and capacity to the wall.

One of the analogies he uses for the church is he says the church is the body of Christ.

Think about your physical body for a moment.

You've got eyes and kidneys and hearts and lungs and toes, you've got knees and you've got temples and you've got hair and you've got ears, you've got all kinds of parts that make up a body.

We are all made up of many parts, and each part has a different function and a different role.

Look at Paul's language in Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

He says, just as our bodies have many parts, and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body.

We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

Now, this is so important.

You need to understand that the way our bodies were designed to work was it was designed to work in harmony with each other to accomplish all that the body was intended to accomplish.

When I was in high school, I was running through my house and it was all the lights were off, it must have been late at night.

And I was running through my house and I didn't know, but one of the chairs in my living room had been moved.

And as I was running, I clipped it with my foot, and I heard a little crack in my pinky toe.

And of all my toes, I've got ten toes.

It's the smallest of the ten, probably seemingly the least important of the ten.

And the toe swelled up real big and got black.

And my parents, I don't know why, they didn't take me to a doctor.

They they said, There's we have a friend who's a podiatrist, she'll look at it for you.

And a couple days later, she looked at it and she goes, Well, it's probably broken, and if it is broken, there's no real treatment for it other than to rest it and stay off of it.

So I rested it and stayed off of it, which meant because of my smallest, seemingly most insignificant toe, I couldn't run, I couldn't play sports, I had a hard time walking around for a few days over something seemingly so small.

I have a friend who was preaching up in Tennessee a few weeks ago, and he felt this sharp pain in his side and he didn't know what was going on.

He collapsed under the pain.

His appendix, seemingly an insignificant part of the body that doctors don't even necessarily have a full understanding of what its importance is, literally almost exploded.

He would have died there if they didn't catch this.

Such a seemingly insignificant thing has this way of shutting down the whole body.

Okay, think about your physical body.

What if any part of your body, you picked the part, what if any part of your body started operating at only 50% of its capacity?

What would it do to your whole body?

It would shut it down.

And a lot of people hear this kind of language and they think, oh great.

God just wants me to kind of fall in line and to be the same as everybody else.

God just wants me to do what everybody else does, and I want you to hear this if that feels like how you feel.

Unity is not uniformity.

Like your body has so many parts, and each one carries out a different, unique function.

The toe can't be a kidney, your heart can't be your foot, you're all all your different parts have different functions.

Unity is not uniformity, it means our heart and our desires are the same.

We care about what God cares about, but we celebrate the fact that God made us different.

We celebrate the fact that you've got giftings and talents that are different than mine.

I've got giftings and talents that are different than yours.

And when we use them in concert with one another, it gives us the capacity to carry out the mission that God has for our church.

You are unique and you are needed.

We need you, the church needs you, the world needs you.

Unity and uniformity are not the same.

Number two, why do we pray for unity?

Number two, because through it the world will see God's love.

I want you to get this.

God's love is on display when our hearts are unified.

And in a world that's so divided, when the church is unified, it sends such a beautiful message to the world.

Well, one of the hardest things for me ever as a pastor was in 2020.

2020 was just such a weird year.

I mean, we had all the political stuff.

We had COVID and all of those implications.

People were fighting about masks and vaccinations.

And then add to that perfect storm of everything that was happening politically and socially, there was all the racial problems that we had as a country.

And our country was so tense when George Floyd died, that situation hit the fan and exploded in a way that I've never seen in my lifetime.

And it was ugly.

And as a pastor, we spoke to it.

But let me tell you how I spoke to it.

Here's what I said.

As a follower of Jesus, we're not picking sides.

It's not Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, it's not that.

It's not black versus white.

No, what it is is we see the imprint of God on every human being who's ever walked this earth, and we choose a third option.

It's not my side or your side, it's the third option, which is that we choose the path of honoring one another.

And it was beautiful.

It was beautiful.

I would preach that message any Sunday, anywhere in the world.

It was a beautiful message, and people blew up over it.

People accuse me of critical race theorying and being a racist and peddling racist propaganda.

And I'm like, you've missed it all together.

The heart of God is that we celebrate the uniqueness in one another.

This is a safe place for you to be, regardless of your background, regardless of your color of skin, regardless, regardless of anything, you are safe here.

I said shining the spotlight on someone else and celebrating their differences and mourning with them when they mourn doesn't make the spotlight shine any less brightly on you.

So let's be people who choose the path of honor.

I loved it.

And people lost their ever-loving minds over it.

And it makes me ask this question now that it's not tense, now that we're not worried, now that we're not fighting and picketing right now, now that we can kind of breathe a little easier, it makes me wonder, did we miss it?

Is honor really the currency and the kingdom of God?

And I argue that it is.

Look at these two different verses.

The book of Romans, Paul says this he says, accept one another.

And I love those two words, one another.

If you read the New Testament, particularly from like Romans all the way to the end, you'll see that phrase one another over and over and over again.

You'll see phrases like love one another, serve one another, care for one another, meet the needs of one another, bless one another, mourn with one another.

It's like there is this theme that as followers of Jesus, our responsibility is to one another, one another.

That love one another, serve one another.

You'll see it over and over, and here he says, accept one another, then.

Just as Christ accepted you, and here's why.

The reason is to bring praise to God.

When we accept one another, when we honor the imprint of God, the uniqueness, the talent, the abilities, what's special and beautiful, when we celebrate and honor and accept one another, the world sees the love of God.

It's important.

In the book of John, Jesus himself says these words.

He says, A new command I give you, therefore pay attention to these words.

Love one another.

There it is again, love one another.

And then he makes it clear because a lot of us read this and we think, oh, well, what does that mean?

Like love, like love's a feeling.

How do I love other people?

Then he makes it more clear.

He says, as I have loved you, so you must love one another.

And that takes it from feeling to action.

Love moves from being something we just feel, let's get feeling.

That's just how I feel in a moment, to being something that has to be demonstrated.

He says, You are to love one another as I have loved you.

How did Jesus love you?

Ready for this?

He preemptively laid down his life for you.

And what's so funny is the message that a lot of Christians send to the world is not only do I not love you, I won't even lay down my opinions for you.

Zyev loved you.

So you must love one another.

And then I want you to see why.

He says, by this, by us loving one another, by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you, one more time, love one another.

A lot of people hear these kind of verses and they they dig their heels in even farther.

They're like, well, you don't know about me, and I think this, and they voted this way, and I think this, and they said this.

And here's what you need to understand disagreement is unavoidable, but division is a choice.

I want you to hear this.

The vision is a choice.

You can disagree without dishonoring.

You can disagree with someone, that's fine.

You have differences of opinions, but at the end of the day, dishonor is a choice.

Disvision is a choice.

And what if all of us just made this decision to say, no, no, no, we're gonna fight for instead of fighting against our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Number three, why do we pray for unity?

Because we can do infinitely more together.

The very first message I ever preached at the little college Bible study that became our church was from Acts chapter 2 and Acts chapter 4.

Acts 2 · chapter mention Acts 4 · chapter mention

I loved it.

Here's what's happening in the stories.

Jesus has come, born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for the sins of the world, rose again three days later.

Forty days pass, and he leaves, and he says to his disciples, I'm leaving, but I'm not leaving you alone.

He sends the Holy Spirit, and the church is birthed.

And there's this first church, we can read about it in Acts 2 and Acts 4.

And I want you to notice something about this church.

It says we can do more together, infinitely.

More together.

Look at this in Acts chapter 4.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

It says all the believers were one.

They were one in heart and mind.

Doesn't mean they all thought the exact same.

Doesn't mean they didn't share differences of opinions, but they were one in heart and mind.

No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.

A lot of people have stuff.

Some people have possessions that possess them.

There's some people that have things, but they hold on open-handedly.

There's other people who hold on tightly, not trusting that God can provide more if they'll be generous with what they have.

And it says about these people that they lived open-handedly, that they gave freely.

And I want you to see the result.

It goes on.

And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.

How incredible would it be?

If it was known about action.

Because they prayed for each other and they met each other's needs.

Yeah, people showed up and they had needs, but they didn't leave with needs.

They left needs and they left with their needs being met.

How incredible would it be if people showed up with needs and the church stepped up and said, No, you need that, I got you.

You need that I'm gonna help you.

You need that I'm there for you, I got your back.

How incredible would that be?

And beyond this, I think about the church globally, not just our church, but if the church would just do this, think of the impact we can make in the world.

There's a lot of scientific studies that show that if American Christians tithe, 10% what God commands us to do, the church, hear me this, not the government, the church could eradicate poverty, the church could end homelessness, the church could end hunger issues and the world, the church could provide clean water to the world, and it's like, what are we doing?

In 1961, a wall was built in Berlin, Germany.

You've heard of it before, it's the Berlin Wall.

Here's a picture of a section that still stands kind of in modern day, so people can kind of see it and remember history.

But this was built in 1961 over propaganda news to kind of propagate the the furtherance of communism, to kind of separate it from the rest of the world.

And this wall was detrimental, it went right through Berlin, but literally families were separated.

The the wall stood for something like 38 years, it was torn down in 1989.

No, 20, 28 years.

And this wall literally stood as a physical representation of division.

I have a piece of the actual Berlin wall here.

Imagine this.

Imagine if in our city they built a wall to separate us physically from each other.

They said if you try to cross over it, you'll be shot, you'll be penalized, you'll be thrown in prison, so you had to keep to yourself.

And this wall stood for so long.

Imagine being separated from your parents, from your loved ones, from your friends.

And this was the reality in Berlin in some of our lifetimes.

What's fascinating is in 1989 the wall came down, but before the wall came down, it was voted on and passed by whatever their Congress is that communism and all the propaganda surrounding it was illegal.

And so for over a year, between when that vote happened and the wall actually coming down, the wall still stood.

Even though it was illegal, people still were separated from each other.

What's interesting is once it was deemed illegal, someone had to do something about it.

But no one person could tear down a wall that big.

It was like 90 something miles wide by almost 12 feet tall, thick, thick concrete.

No one person could do this on their own.

But some young people wanted to do something about it.

I know we have a lot of young people at our church.

I want you to hear me say this.

You can change the world.

And some young people said we can't do all of it on our own, but we can do something.

And they got little picks, little axes, and they slowly began to chop away at it.

Did they tear the whole thing down?

No.

But they made a difference, and they started the process of the wall that was keeping people apart.

They made a difference.

They made a start in the whole thing coming down.

We can do that.

As followers of Jesus, it is our call, it is our command, it is our responsibility to tear down the walls that separate us from each other.

How do we do this?

Well, when you came in, you should have also been given a little communion cup.

If you got that, would you grab it?

If you didn't, if you'll raise your hand, we'll have ushers in the back who can bring it to you.

Just raise your hand high, we'll bring it to you.

How do we do it?

I'd like to show you one of the most profound ways we can do this.

It's by coming to the table of the Lord.

If you need one, if you'll raise your hand, there's guys over here.

Perfect.

Let me tell you what this means.

The night before Jesus was crucified, he gathered with his disciples at a table.

Now Jesus was Jesus.

That means Jesus knew that some of the people at this table would leave him, some of them would betray him.

But they're all invited to the table.

And he said, When you gather in my name, I want you to do something to remember me.

Remember my sacrifice for you, remember my blood spilled for you.

And he did what we would call the first communion.

And he took bread and he broke it, symbolizing his body, which would be broken for us.

He drank of the wine which represented his blood that would be spilled for us.

And because of that great sacrifice, we can come to the table.

And we can put aside our differences, and we can come to the table of one heart and one mind, as brothers and sisters in Christ, and we can remember what this whole thing is actually about.

So before I do this, and before we take this communion, I want to give you an opportunity.

Paul says that there's an unholy, unrighteous, unworthy way in which is to take communion.

And the way to do that is to do it, but not to be right with God.

So I'm gonna give you a moment.

All across this room, would you bow your head and close your eyes with me for just a moment?

No one's looking, no one's talking.

But if you would say, Jason, I don't know if I'm right with God.

Maybe you came today and you're just unsure.

Maybe you've wandered away from your relationship with God.

Maybe you've never made a decision to start one.

But if this is you, you don't have to raise your hand.

There's no secret moment here.

But if you know in your heart that this is you and you want to make things right with God, it's as simple as praying a prayer.

Would you pray something like this?

Say, Jesus, today I make this decision to follow you.

I invite you to be the Lord, which means to be in charge of my life.

I believe that you're the Son of God, came into this world and died on the cross for me because of your great sacrifice.

Now I believe my life can be made new.

So, Jesus, would you forgive my life and make me new?

I'll follow you for the rest of my life.

It's in your name, Jesus, I pray.

Amen.

Would you do this?

Would you take this communion cup with me?

Would you open the top layer?

And then you'll find a little wafer, represents the bread.

Jesus said, When you break the bread, remember my body broken for you.

I want you to listen to me, church.

His broken body bought our healing, healing in our physical bodies, healing in our mind.

When the stripes were whipped across his back, when the crown of thorns was piercing his head, when the nails pierced his hands and his feet, when a spear was jabbed into his side, his body broken for us buys you the freedom in your body.

Healing, peace of mind, freedom from anxiety, freedom from suicidal thoughts.

So, Jesus, we come to the table today and we say thank you for your body broken for us.

We remember, we thank you for it.

And would you break it and would you eat with me, please?

Would you open the juice?

Jesus said, When you drink the wine, remember my blood spilled for you.

When I was a kid, we sang a song that I loved.

This is what can wash away my sins.

It's nothing but the blood of Jesus, right?

It's his sacrifice on the hill we call Calvary.

The blood spilled for us.

It and it alone is the only thing able to save us from our sin.

So, Jesus, today we take this, we drink and we remember your sacrifice for us.

Thank you, Lord.

If you'll just hold on to that for me for just a moment.

A divided world needs a unified church.

A divided world.

A world that's politicized, a world that's polarized, a world that's isolated, needs the church to stand up and to be the church.

How do we do this when we disagree?

How do we do this when we think differently?

We come to the table of God.

And we remind ourselves that it is the sacrifice of Jesus, it is his love, it is his grace, it is his forgiveness, it is his sacrifice that brings us together.

And yeah, we can disagree about some stuff.

That's called being human, but we can disagree without dishonoring.

And we can choose to show the love of God in a world that's so dark by being brothers and sisters in Christ.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room?

Let me pray for you now.

So, Jesus, give us the courage to swim upstream in a world that's so polarized, so isolated, so divided.

May we be a church that fights for and prays for unity.

Jesus, we ask you to forgive us where we've stumbled in this way.

Give us the courage to be the people who are like that first church.

That we were one in heart and mind, one in spirit.

We're brothers and sisters in this thing together.

We love you, we thank you for it.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen and amen.