The Value of Love (Serving A New Meal)

The Value of Love (Luke 15/Psalm114)

The Lord’s Table (Serving Up A New Meal!) 

Retelling of the story…

• Not for the sake of memory or ritual
• Making it our story. Why?
• Our prevalent sense of individualism, segregation, loss of identity and hopelessness is proof that we have not entered the story.
• Community, if you will, is a bit of a “portal” through which we enter the story.
• Just a people have identified their “song”…we need to identity our story. [ Alex Haley’s Roots 1976]; [Story of White female students at Woolworth’s Lunch counters]

The Value of Love…rests in…

• Author of Love (God Almighty)
• Purpose of Love (Unity)
• Revelation of Love (The Author of Love loves us…this frees us!!) 
• Receipt of Love (Accepting this as truth)
• Sharing of Love (Offering it to others who are equally undeserving)

“Love responded to us so that we could respond to love!”

2 Corinthians 4:4New International Version (NIV)

4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Beauty of Passover:

• Not exactly like the exodus…Pharaoh’s heart needed changing. Our enemies heart never changed…our’s did!!
• Our table causes us to examine God’s faithfulness…Past/Present/Future (Steve)
• Sacraments offer: Reminder/Presence/Power from God; Identify/Worship/Promise
• Luke 24 When Jesus broke bread, the eyes of the disciples were opened.

➣Our focus is not merely on what Christ did, but on the resultant state.

Moral of Luke 15 story:

Son vs. Servant Son: got a ring and sandals (authority and sonship). He serves out of appreciation of the gift. Servants: Tries to earn it because they won’t receive the fact that God loves them and offers them a real meal.