Faithfulness - 1 Corinthians 11

Three thousand years ago, the people of God were slaves in Egypt. And for generations they worked the land in brutal conditions and cried out to God for help, begging, pleading, suffering. And when the time was right, God found a man named Moses, and sent him to Pharaoh. You might know the stories - 10 times Moses asked Pharaoh to let God’s people go. And 10 times, Pharaoh hardened his heart, and refused to listen. But God did not abandon his people, and eventually they were free. It was a long process. Things got a lot worse before they got any better. God had to show his power with awesome signs and wonders. Plagues, the parting of the red sea, providing food and water for the people out of nothing. And through it all, God did not abandon his people. God was faithful. And you might remember the details - the final plague, the angel of death visiting Egypt. The people of Israel were instructed - sacrifice a lamb, take its blood and and smear it on the doorpost above your home. When the angel sees the blood, it will passover that house and death will not visit that night. The blood of the lamb kept God’s people alive. And so to celebrate, the people of Israel - thousands of years ago started a tradition called the Passover to remember when God freed the slaves with mighty acts and awesome power. And on the anniversary of that night, when the angel of death visited Egypt and passed over the homes of the people of Israel - on that night, they would eat a special meal called the Seder. Every year they would gather, and eat specific foods to remember the specifics of the story. And to remember that God would always be there for them, faithful and steady.

A thousand years later, give or take (thirteen hundred years, whatever), a man who was more than a man walked the streets of Jerusalem. On Passover night, that same night - over a thousand years later, Jesus sat down to celebrate with his friends. And when the meal was over, he looked at his friends, his disciples, and he said, “I love you so much. I’m going to give up my body for you. I’m going to give up my blood for you.” And so he took the bread from the table, and he gave it to them and said, “This is just like my body, which will be broken for you.” And then he took the cup from the table, gave thanks to God and gave it to his disciples. He slid the cup across the table and said, “This is my covenant with you. This is like my blood, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” 

Now maybe you’ve heard this story before - that night that Jesus slid the communion cup across the table, we call that the Last Supper. And we call it the Last supper, because after dinner Jesus was arrested. And h warned them that this was coming. If he’s out here talking bout his body being broken and his blood being poured out - I don’t know how you could be more blunt - he was about to die. That night Jesus was beaten and mocked, and the next day he was hung on a cross and died. When I say things got worse before they got any better - that’s what I’m talking about. God had to show his power with awesome signs and wonders - but through it all, God did not abandon his people. And again I want to remind you - God will not abandon you. If you know the rest of the story, you know that Easter came. Jesus rose - forgiveness had come. And since that night all those years ago - we have created a tradition, very similar to what the Jewish people did. Where we have specific foods to remind us what Jesus did for each of us. To remind us of the moment when Jesus looked at your life and said, “You are worth dying for.” He gave himself up, so that we could live connected to God.

As many of you know - we are in the middle of a series called “Deep Roots. Good Fruit.” And if this is your first time - you’ve come on a really special Sunday. We don’t normally start our services with the message - but this is going to sort of set the frame for the whole worship service. So far in this series we have talked about love and peace, patience and kindness, goodness - and how do we get more of those good fruits. We have seen over and over that growing our roots down deep into God’s presence causes our life to bear fruit. When you walk closer with God, all of these things - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness - all of them start to show up in your life more. And today we are going to dive into “faithfulness” - and to show you why this is so important, I want to ask you a few questions. Have you ever been betrayed in your life? Have you ever had reason to doubt the people you love? Maybe you come from a family that is often faithless - you’ve learned not to count on them, because they so often let you down. Or maybe it’s not family, it’s in the workplace - your co-workers or your neighbors.  For some of us, we got hurt when we put trust in other people - and so to protect ourselves, we learn not to trust. We don’t put our faith in things because they keep letting us down. Faith feels foolish - a good way to get hurt. Have you ever done this? Where you were counting on someone - and they let you down, so you learned not to count on them? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on me: and that’s how you kill trust, right? Or maybe they’ve never actually given you a reason to doubt - they have always been faithful, and yet you just can’t find it in yourself to trust again. Maybe you all have better relationships than I - but I’m guessing most of us in the room have at least one connection, one family member or friendship where - even though you love ‘em, you know better than to rely on them. You can’t count on them because they’re not faithful. Truth is - I think for most of us, it’s not just one person. Faithless friends are like broken glass sprinkled on the road of life, and we’ve been walking barefoot for a long time. And if that’s you - I have something incredible for you today. Because what we are going to find, as we tell God’s story this morning, is that there is someone out there - and no matter how much you have been let down by the world, He is always faithful. 

Now, a lot of us know the communion story - but there’s actually a deeper level that I’m so excited to share with you this morning. What I want to show you is that at the passover meal - when Jesus offers the disciples the bread and the wine, the way he offered it to them, in their cultural setting, what they heard was, “will you marry me?” Now I know that’s weird - but stick with me on this. To understand it I need to paint you a bit of a picture of what a normal proposal ritual in Jewish culture back in Jesus’ day looked like. And before I dive in - I want to give credit, this comes from a cultural study done by a scholar named Ray Vanderlaan. So anyways, we start out like every great romance story - boy meets girls. And in Jesus’ day, when a man wanted to marry a woman, he would go home and talk to his dad. Dad, I want to marry that girl. She’s really awesome, please please please can I marry her. So his dad would go to her dad and they would agree on a bride’s price. You give me 20 camels, a donkey and a new xbox, and then your son can ask my daughter for her hand in marriage. Some people think that it used to be a price to purchase the daughter, but that’s a misconception. The bride price is purely for the opportunity to ask the question. She could still say no. And so they agree on a bride’s price, and then they all sit down - like groom and bride and friends and family - all gathered around, and he would ask her to marry him. Can you imagine the awkwardness and the pressure of that type of proposal? Now in this time period, they didn’t have the “get down on one knee with a ring” tradition. That came way later - in Jesus’ day, they had a different ritual. What they would do, traditionally, at the meal with the whole family there -  the groom would take a cup of wine, and he would slide it across the table and he would say, “this cup is my covenant with you.” And at that moment the bride has a choice. She can slide the cup back and say, “Ew, No! You smell funny, like camels, I don’t want to marry you.” OR she could drink from the cup. Now if she drank from the covenantal wine, at that moment her name would change. She would go back home to her father’s house, and she would now be referred to as “one who was bought with a price.” After the engagement dinner, the boy and girl would go back to their parent’s house. It was not tradition for them to hang out during the engagement. And so during the engagement, the groom would designate a friend, a best man, who would serve as a messenger to the bride. If he ever wanted to say anything to her, this was just a little bit before text messaging was invented - no instagram DM’s in this day and age, so if he had a message, he would send the best man over to give it to her. The groom and the bride would not see each other until the wedding day, AND they didn’t even know when the wedding was going to be. You see, what would happen is they would go back to their homes and the groom would immediately get to work. His job was to build the house for he and his bride. Back in this time period, Jewish families lived in something called an “insula’ which was the family home, [I think we have a picture of that] and they added on to it, one family at a time. You didn’t have a separate house, you would just build like an addition to your dad’s house for you to live in. The groom’s job is to go home and start building his mansion, the aramaic word for “mansion” can kind of be translated like “apartment” or “addition” to the family insula. And he would work on it all day, day after day for weeks until it was done. The groom would leave the bride to build them a home in his Father’s house. But here’s the thing, in this culture, the groom’s father was the one who had the privilege of deciding when the insula was done. The Father was the inspector, he was the quality control. I figure, if I was the groom, I just want to throw up four walls, slap a roof on it and then rush back to go get his bride. But the father has to approve. No, no, no, son - make the living room bigger, where are you going to put the grill for fourth of July? Come on, you call that a fireplace? Build it better! (Okay, so they probably didn’t celebrate the fourth of July, but you get the idea - right?) So the son would build the mansion, and then try to get dad’s approval, is it ready for the bride? Meanwhile, the bride is at the family home, just waiting for her groom. Waiting for her prince charming to show up and bring her to her new life in her brand new home. She doesn’t know the day or the hour when the groom will arrive. (Can you imagine trying to do wedding planning without knowing the day it’s supposed to happen? You’re just over here on the phone with the florist? Okay, so you want 10 dozen hydrangeas and 3 dozen roses dropped off, and what’s the date of delivery? (pause) Uh, yeah - about that. I don’t know when he’ll be back. (just doesn’t work!)). But then finally the wedding day arrives, and the son rallies up his groomsmen. I finished the house, my dad has approved, let’s go get my bride. And they would blow these horns called “shofars” and the party begins and the bride and the groom reunite, their marriage begins, and they run down the aisle and begin their life together - it’s a beautiful picture, right?

Now rewind it back to Jesus. Remember passover night, Jesus and his disciples are celebrating and remembering Israel’s freedom from slavery in Egypt. They are remembering how God was faithful. Now, traditionally there are four cups of wine that get drunk during the passover meal. Each cup represents part of the story. The third cup is called the cup of salvation. It’s the cup that represents the blood of the lamb that was smeared over the doors of the Israelites on the night of the tenth plague. The third cup - the cup of salvation, the cup of the lamb, that’s the one Jesus takes, slides across the table and says, “this is my covenant with you.” And what the disciples would have seen, from their personal life experience outside of knowing Jesus, what they hear is “will you marry me?” These poor guys are probably sitting there going, “heh? Jesus we love you man, but we don’t like, love you, love you.” But then they drink from the cup - figure, “I don’t know where he’s going with this - but we’ve followed him this far, might as well see this through to the end.” But the story is not over. Jesus tells the disciples, “Okay. I’m leaving. You won’t get to see me during this engagement. I’m going home to my Father’s house, because in my Father’s house there are many mansions. ANd I need to prepare a place for you. But while you are waiting, I’m going to send you my best man - the Holy Spirit will communicate messages between you and me. And while you are waiting for the wedding day, you will be called “the one who is bought with a price” and even I don’t know the day or the hour - only my Father knows when I can come and get you. And when God says the house is finished, I’m coming with all my angels and they’re going to blow their shofars and we’ll have the marriage supper of the lamb.” [pause]. 

That’s pretty awesome, right? One of the things I love about being a Christian is that - even if you’ve never heard that story before, it’s a pretty cool story. The story of Jesus, and what he actually did all those years ago, is amazing and beautiful even the first time you hear it. But if you’ve been a follower of Jesus for a long time, as we grow in our faith, we start to see intricacies and details, how everything, every single puzzle piece pulls together to create this story of redemption that God is telling. It’s an analogy, obviously - Jesus doesn’t actually want to marry you. But without the history, most of us completely miss it. We completely miss the fact that when Jesus gave us the tradition of communion, he uses the most intimate relationship to describe our connection. As we struggle with faithfulness, Jesus comes to us in the middle of that and says, “I will be faithful to you, like a husband to the bride he loves.”

Now, here’s why this matters - most of us, in our lives, we have experienced broken trust. People have hurt us, and when we get hurt - our natural reaction is to build defenses in our lives. We put up walls to protect ourselves. For some of you - you have a little knee high picket fence, you’re not too defensive, because you haven’t been burned too much. Maybe you’ve been fortunate in faithfulness. But I know there are some of you here this morning - you have been hurt so many times, by so many people, that you have built an iron vault of defense. Walls 50 feet high and ten feet thick of pure concrete and steel, to protect your battered and broken heart. When we put our faith in the wrong thing, the world teaches us to self-protect. We look at a story like Jesus, sliding a communion cup across to us saying “trust me” - and we think, “sure, it’s cute how all the pieces come together - but what does that have to do with me? I’m not coming out from behind my defensive perimeter, because every time I do - I get hurt again.” But what I want you to realize this morning is that in the darkness of a faithless world, the faithFULness of God shines even brighter. For every time that someone in your life has let you down, there is a God in heaven who loves you ten times more than that. 

That’s one of the most powerful things about the practice of communion - is that it is specifically designed to remind us how faithful God is. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul puts it like this, [put v.23-26 on the screen]. Now here’s what I want you to see with that. In the midst of betrayal, Jesus chooses to be faithful. This is who God is - even when the world fails, and hurts us, and betrays us - still God is faithful. Faithfulness starts from God. Actually, in this moment - when Paul is writing to them about communion - he is specifically dealing with the issue of people letting you down. If we back up just a couple verse, verse 20, [read v.20-22]. You see what’s going on here - is that the church would gather to worship. And they were getting ready to share communion - which they called the “Lord’s Supper”. And the rich people in the community, didn’t have to work that day - so they get to the house church early. But the poor people, had to put in a couple hours at work, they arrive much later. And what was happening was that the communion, the breaking bread and sharing wine - it was all gone by the time the poorer people showed up. And Paul is really mad at them. He says, “you don’t really care about the Lord’s supper. Some of you are getting drunk, and others go hungry. What am I supposed to say to you?” And what we see in this is that there is a connection between God’s faithfulness to us, and our faithfulness to each other. Paul is saying, “Look, if God is going to be faithful to you… then you’ve got to be faithful to each other!” 

Because, faithfulness…and this is sort of my main point today, faithfulness overflows. When we are full of God pouring faithfulness into our lives, then that faithfulness overflows from our life into the lives of the people around us. I’m sure you’ve heard this before - if you are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you, making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why did you spill the coffee? Because that’s what was in your cup. If you had tea in your cup, you would have spilled tea. If you had water, you would have spilled water. The point is that whatever is inside the cup, is what will spill out. When life comes along and shakes you (which is going to happen), whatever is inside of you will come out. It’s so easy to fake it in life until we get a little rattled. So we have to ask ourselves “What’s in my cup?” When life gets bumpy, what spills out? Love, joy, peace, patience? Or is it anger, bitterness, harsh words? Do you let the faithless world fill your cup and make you just a little less reliable, just a little more faithless yourself? Or do you let the faithful God of creation pour into you, filling you up so that you are so full of faithFULness that it overflows from you into the people around you. You spill whatever is in your cup, so make sure you’re filling it up with the right stuff.

So I have two challenges to help you grow this week. First, I want you to remember the faithfulness of God. Going back to what Paul said to the people in that church in Corinth, he says when you take communion, “do this remember me.” There’s a lot that goes into communion, but the most important thing is remembering how faithful God is. God never stopped being faithful. God never stopped being loving - but we tend to forget. We lose trust and so we put practices in our life to remind us that God is good, that God is faithful. Later in the service, we’re going to give you an opportunity to take communion - and when you pick up this piece of bread, I want you to remember the time Jesus had his body broken for you. When you take this cup, I want you to remember that Jesus had his blood poured out for you. And the reason it is SO important to remember how faithful God is, is because we have TERRIBLE memories for what is good. It’s a plague of the human mind that we can remember with crystal clarity every embarrassing and terrible thing that ever happened to us going all the way back to the third grade - but when it comes to the good, the loving, the faithful moments - we suddenly have the memory of a goldfish! I challenge you to remember the faithfulness of God, and that means you’re going to have to remind yourself. Over and over - hold it in front of your memory. We comb the scriptures and find story after story of God being faithful - not always in the way we expect, not always on the timeline we want - but always, always faithful. You can keep a journal of your own life - with story after story of how God has gotten you through everything up until today. Remember the faithfulness of God.

My second challenge to you this week is to let God’s faithfulness overflow from you to the people around you. Be a faithful person. Matthew chapter 5, verse 37 says, “let your yes be yes, and let your no be no.” Be honest and reliable, because your God is honest and reliable. Sometimes people hear that and come back at me, “you don’t understand, I have been hurt. People have been unfaithful. People have been terrible to me.” And with all the compassion in my heart, I come back to those folks and say, “why would you want that as your role model?” If you have felt the effects of faithlessness - let that motivate you to something better. Be faithful to others, because God is faithful to you. Mother Theresa once put it like this, “If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people maybe jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today maybe forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” Your role model is not the unfaithfulness of a broken world. It is the faithfulness of the God who loves you.