This Sunday Don't Forget To Look Up

I know the floor of every church I have ever attended. I grew up in a denomination with a weekly, hour long communion service. It was a quiet reflective time influenced by the Quakers. And, so, as a child, that meant a lot of looking at the floor.

I know the embedded green stone in the tiles of my grandparents church, the chipped and cracked tile at another, the flecks of color in the carpet at the church of my teens. I know the plain cool cement floor of summer camp and the stylized cement floor of my current church.

I have spent a lot of time looking at my feet on a Sunday.

I was probably supposed to have my eyes closed as I lowered my head in humility to seriously and soberly take lot of the ways I had fallen short that week. But my intimate knowledge of the floor design would tell you otherwise. 

I was taught that Sundays were a time for reflection and contemplation, for repentance and receiving God's forgiveness of my sin, a time to pray, sing, and then visit with other people from our church. Sunday mornings were a time to seriously consider the great sacrifice made by Jesus, on my behalf. 

And Sundays ARE about these things. Repentance and receiving forgiveness are a vital part of life with Jesus. They are a natural response to any experience of God. We see this in the words of Isaiah, “ ‘Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.’ ” (Isaiah 6:5)

But confession and reflection are not the only thing.

The past several years, God has been teaching me to be a whole-gospel person. To not just get caught looking down and getting stuck at the cross but to look up and receive new life.

Jesus is not just a story to be reflected upon but a living person to be encountered and touched.

Jesus is alive and present on Sunday mornings, and all the time. He is walking among your congregation, ministering by His Holy Spirit. He is sitting beside you. He has come near and you are no longer alone.

The whole-gospel-story invites us into new life with Jesus, made possible by His great sacrifice. Hope, joy, and celebration are now apart of our life with God and sometimes, I think I miss that.

He is the new life you and I are looking for. He is the Living Water and He has come near to offer it to us.

Quite honestly, when I first realized that the gospel was more than just the cross, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what it might even mean. How would it make a difference in my own life? And if you are reading this thinking, “So what?” I understand.

We live in world of hopelessness and limited imagination and we have been de-formed by it. You and I need to encounter Jesus in order to be transformed to see what a big difference the gospel actually makes.

For thousands of years people have been captivated by Jesus and been compelled to give up their very lives. It is my guess these people knew the whole-gospel.

It isn’t a secret club from which we have been excluded. Something unattainable. It starts in confession and forgiveness and it continues by looking up.

You and I are invited to encounter the same Jesus of Nazareth.

As I have begun to look up and embrace the whole-gospel story, I find myself finally understanding these words by Bruck Cockburn, “Let me be a little of your breath/Moving over the face of the deep—/I want to be a particle of your light/Flowing over the hills of morning.”

Encountering Jesus will change you. You will be invited into God’s great work in the world and less concerned about other things. You must be prepared to never be the same. But it is so much better.

This Sunday I want to encourage you to look up and encounter Jesus. Come and confess, receive forgiveness, and then step into the new life He is offering you, a new relationship with a God who is present and close. He is inviting you to know Him in real time and join His redemptive work in the world.

This Sunday, and every day, may you encounter Jesus - the God who is with you now and may you be forever changed by having seen the face of God.