She Gets It
CENTRAL TEXT: John 17:1-11
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
John 17:6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
PRAYER/SCRIPTURE READING/CONFESSION OF FAITH: Jeremiah 31:31-34
LEADER: Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
The Word of the Lord
ALL: Thanks be to God
Celebration of the Lord's Supper
CONFESSION OF SIN:
LEADER: Let us confess our sin to the Lord.
ALL: What do we have that we did not receive? All things are from Your Hand. Yet, in our minds too often, we make ourselves the masters of our fate, the captain of our souls. When we become our center, others become an inconvenience, a hindrance, or even an enemy. Forgive us. Help us to see it, to loathe it, and to long again for your Goodness to rise up in us and shine out through us.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON: Ephesians 1:7-10
LEADER: In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
ALL: Thanks be to God.
BENEDICTION: Numbers 6:24-26
LEADER: May the Lord Bless you and Keep you; May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.
ALL: Amen
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
- Did you have a teacher, or a scout leader, or an older relative who really “got” you–who understood you like few did, maybe better than you understood yourself? Tell that story briefly. How did you first know? How did it matter to you?
- Is Jesus’s definition of eternal life new to you? How is it a better one than mere life extension? Refresh your memory from the sermon: is this knowing the true God a future or present reality? What effects could that knowing have on a life–name several?
- A modern take on Jesus is that he was a wise and courageous teacher, to be admired and pitied for what befell him. How does this text challenge that conventional point of view? What are its implications for life if the text’s portrayal of him is more accurate than the modern one?
- Is obedience hard or easy? Is submission to the will of God always in the same frame of mind and heart?
- The Christian church in its history has been through two major splits and countless smaller ones. Does Jesus’s prayer that his church be one strike you a failed prayer, or as a prescient and therefore timeless prayer of ongoing hope and possibility?
- If you are of Momma Church, you are one of the Father’s gifts to the Son, in whom you have a share if he washes you (John 13:15). Sit with those dual truths. How, if true, do they offer a response to what most angers or frightens you right now–about yourself, others, or the world as it is?
QUOTES:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. “The peace of the wild things,” - Wendell Berry
BOOKS / DOCS
“The Church is your Mom,” Tish Harrison Warren
Devoted to the Church, Sinclair Ferguson
Contesting the Body of Christ, Myles Werntz
Church: A Guide to the People of God, Brad East
C.S. Lewis and the Church, eds. Judith and Brendan Wolfe
The Church and its Vocation, Michael W. Goheen
“What is Church?” Jason Micheli
Life Together, Dietrich Bønhoeffer (tl;dr: start here)
Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas
From Isolation to Community, Myles Werntz