Transcribed by AI from Otter.ai. Please forgive any errors.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today is Holy Thursday and on this night we celebrate a number of stories about Jesus Christ. We celebrate the Passover Feast where Jesus got together with his disciples, and He instituted the Last Supper. We remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he went with his disciples and then off alone to pray, and he prayed the word thy will be done. Not my will. Remember the story where Judas came to Jesus with all of the guards, and he betrayed him with a kiss. And then the disciples to they betrayed him by abandoning him. Jesus is hauled off before the priests for a trial before, finally, they bring him to Pilate in the morning.
Tonight is the celebration of Jesus Christ, betrayal, and abandonment. And today in Psalm 116, we hear the words, “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me, I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.”
This passage, I think it was chosen because of that mention of the cup, I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. Of course, that reminds us of the story we talked about. And we read in our Gospel reading, where Jesus gathers the disciples together and gives them his body and his blood for the New Covenant. And where we literally would drink salvation as we drink his blood. It's a shame at this time we can't get there together and celebrate that on this Holy Thursday, the meal that Christ Himself instituted. But the cup of salvation doesn't always refer to that. When Luther wrote about Psalm 116, he wrote that the cup of salvation is God's word given to us to say that we can drink it fully and deep. Psalm 116, the bit before our passage, it talks about all the bad things that are happening around the psalmist people around him are hurting him… there's anger, there's wrath, there's pain, there's sadness.
But then he trusts in God and says, “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” Luther tells us that the world holds up a cup of wrath. We instead drink deeply of the cup of God's word, we get spiritually drunk. So that none of that wrath can affect them.
What an interesting way of talking about salvation in God's word is that we can drink it in so deeply. That the eternal life of Christ fills us so that the rest of the world can't bother. Nothing like anxiety or pain or sadness.
Now, I think that as we're gathered on Holy Thursday, the difficulties of this global pandemic, actually can bring about some good things. We can't be here in person and that's terrible sadness. And so we don't get to celebrate the physical eating and drinking of the Lord. Something. But it has pushed many pastors and many churches to do new things. I know the first week of this global pandemic, when we were still having worship services, I had to rush in two days to figure out how to stream worship. It was non stop work, downloading different files and buying equipment and getting all the things that I would need to make sure people who are at home could hear God's word. So you could drink in the grace of God as He comes to you, even through the internet to bring you His salvation. And I know a number of pastors all over the country, we're doing just the same.
We who were happy just to lead worship in person, all of a sudden, we were forced to try something new. In addition to that, you probably know that we've been participating in night prayer services, where a church every night of the week takes up a worship service to offer it to the world where we pray for all the things that are going on. We sing hymns, we offer up prayers. We take prayer requests live through our Facebook feed, things we would never have done before this global pandemic.
And you know what's amazing about this? How many people end up seeing these videos? The last worship service that we did on Sunday had over 140 views yesterday when I checked two weeks ago, our prayer vigil, the recording of it has had over 2,000 views.
Now, I don't know how that translates to how many people watched it for very long, or how many people are staying tuned in. But I know that's a few more, a few more than Sit in our pews every Sunday. What an interesting thing that this pandemic has forced on us.
And we can see it in society, new people are figuring out new ways to connect with each other. neighbors are waving to neighbors as they walk by. Sometimes I think that in some of these neighborhoods will rediscover the value of the front porch, people who sit outside in front of their houses by the street to see their neighbors walking by, instead of all of us who are hiding in the backs on our decks. Will there be a new kind of community develop in our neighborhoods because of this? There are new and interesting things coming out of the situation that we're in. So when we lift up this cup of salvation, we rejoice in God. We can figure out new ways to Turn to the Lord, all His benefits. we render to him in our devotion and response to his grace.
And so that's what we do right now. And I would like you to to think about that, as you hear God's Word in this brand new way, as you hear that the grace of Christ and Jesus is salvation for you. Think about the ways that you can reevaluate how you can be creative in your own understanding of God's Word.
Many of you are stuck at home with family or children, trying to figure out some things to do. Might be a great time to start doing family devotion. In our emails that we would send out each month, there is a link to a devotional booklet that you can get together and it's really easy. It's just a couple of responses. him from our hymnal and the the apostles creed, the Lord's prayer and morning or evening prayer. short, simple, easy to do. But it connects you to God's word in a new way.
Maybe you can think about new ways to connect with your congregation. Have you called up the people who in the congregation who live alone? reached out to your neighbors, your friends, the people in our in our book? Have you tried to connect to people and see if they have all their needs? There are a lot of ways that we can use this time to be creative. We can connect to one another, serve one another, and even more importantly, drink deeply have the cup of God's salvation delivered to you through His Holy Word. In Jesus name, amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai