Jesus’ Reunion Commission

Message Transcription

I was sitting there thinking, what an incredible honor to be able to preach with the giftedness of Eddie and Adam leading us and all the other people that came. But there are moments I remember the first time I think a cappella came here and sang one time, and I remember the first time, God just put this on my heart. There are times I'm sitting there appreciating the giftedness. I mean, oh my goodness, I could never do that. But what I celebrate is the giver of the gift. Because Jesus gave you that gift. Jesus gave you that gift. Jesus gave you the heart. And I think, like, Milton ought to be up here preaching. Charles ought to be up here preach. Jesus gave that gift and he inspired it. He is a lot like we celebrate. We get to come and gather. Do you ever just stop and say, let's not take this for granted, especially after COVID and all that? Like we get to come and gather and celebrate. The one who is raised from the dead is going to fix this broken word. We get to celebrate that and we get to do it together. So let's praise God for the giver of the gifts. That's what I want to do. I also want to say this as we begin how in the world we all know this, we all feel it. How do you say thank you? To a body of believers who has given you life in every possible way.

How do you do it? Tim and Becky. How do you do it? How do we do that? How do we say that to a church? I love you guys so much. And what an incredible joy it is to be able to come back and and serve and share and love. And then you got my baby coming back, right? She used to be you know, she came here. She's three years old, running around down at sea. And now you are bringing her back to apprentice here in campus ministry and to serve. And, you know, one more generation of bear arms gets to infect this church. And we're so excited about that. Thank you. Thank you for being a church that has given birth to life after life after life of the opportunity to experience Jesus. And we're going to talk about that today. We want to say thank you on behalf of all of us that are here for the reunion. But I want to begin just by reading the text we're going to be looking at today. It's in Luke 24. And and I think about it as when we're talking about our experience of reunion here, there is no greater reunion than the one you just sung about. Eddie no greater reunion. I know it was only a few days, but he didn't just move away. He wasn't just kind of distant. He was dead and his disciples were missing, experiencing the presence of their Lord.

And in the greatest reunion that's ever happened in human history, he didn't stay dead. He's raised from the dead. And I want to read the encounter of that moment, because maybe there'll be something as Jesus works with his followers in the first great reunion, it might help us to process our own. So let's read this. This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus coming in. Luke, chapter 24, starting in verse 36. While they were talking about this, the other resurrection appearances. Jesus himself stood among them, the apostles, and said to them, Peace be with you. They were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. And he said to them, Why are you frightened and why the doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet. See that it is I myself. Touch me and see. A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while in their joy, they were disbelieving and still wondering. He said to them, Have you anything here to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate it in their presence. And then he said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be preached in his name to all nations. Beginning in Jerusalem, you are witnesses. Of these things. This is the gospel of our Lord. Let's pray. Father. God, I praise the psalmist did so many years ago made the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. I think I prepared me a little bit to experience what we've been doing this past weekend, especially from the standpoint that I don't come from. I come to this celebration, this reunion, from the standpoint of someone who served in ministry here. But most of the folks that have come here are coming as students or former students. And and so I had a bit of a of an experience that kind of took me to that place. It was just a couple of months ago and and I just finished preaching a certain town and the other place in Texas, another school, College Station, Church A&M, Church Christ. And so we just finished and and we've only been there about six months and we walked out in the lobby.

And I've you've had those moments when you're sitting you're talking to one person and you can tell there's somebody right here who wants to talk to you. And I made a commitment a long time ago as a minister, I'm not going to be that guy that's looking over somebody's head. You know what I'm talking about? It's like they're talking to you, but you're not there. So I'm like totally focused on this person, but like somebody here and they're not going away. I'm like, okay. So I finished talking. I look over and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that's Dan. Dan was one of the guys. He was student leader when I was a freshman when I came into my college ministry at Virginia Tech. And so I went there. Dan was there and there was Karen, his wife, and they got married, you know, coming right out of our campus ministry, you know, all the same kind of stories that happens here. And man, we did Bible studies together. We went on mission trips together. We went to Florida together like dear friend haven't seen in years. And here's the thing. I had no idea he was going to be there. And he told me, he said on the way to church, we were talking and his son and daughter in law go to our church. And they said, Yeah, we got a new preacher who's been here a little while. And they said, Well, who is it? And they said, Dean Barron.

He's like, Deborah. I'm like, We're all friends. And so he did not know until on the way to church that he was going to see an old college buddy. I did not know until I walked into the lobby. We were going to have a reunion in that moment. And reunions are sweet, even if it's just a conversation in the lobby or if it's a day or if it's a weekend. It's incredibly sweet because we see people we haven't seen. We love people. But it also reminds us of the best of who we've been sometimes, right? It's a sweet experience, but that's not really where I want to start. So that's why the tech starts in this reunion. Can we be honest and just say something about this? We had our 50 year reunion of the Aggies for Christ just a few months ago, and and I experienced this here, too. So you come and you're excited and you're celebrating, but if you're honest with yourself, there's a little part of your heart that aches to. In a reunion. Isn't there a little struggle? Sometimes there's a little wrestling, sometimes in your heart at reunion, and it could be for any number of things. Sometimes it is. I call it the disease of comparison. You know this at any reunion, you'll show up and there's this tendency to like compare. And so, you know, I talk like I see people I haven't seen in a while.

I'm like, okay, I gained a lot of weight, but I gained less than they did. Lost a lot of hair, but I got a little more than they did. I can't help. I'm just being honest. Can I be vulnerable? Right. It comes out. Or compare ourselves with ourselves back then. Right. And and so I'm sitting here talking to Dan. I'm looking at his son, and I see Dan the way that I remember him, but didn't look like he did when I saw him before this comparison came. Sometimes we show up in a reunion moment and it's any reunion moment in our life, there is disappointment. If the people that aren't there, right? There are people that couldn't, for one reason or another, be here and be part of the experience, sometimes from circumstances of our lives, sometimes because they're not here anymore. And we feel that, don't we? But I think the biggest thing that I struggle with when I come to reunion moment, people that I've talked to a lot before in their reunion moments is self judgment. Because you ever have these times when you come in to a celebration some years later and you're celebrating all this man and then something creeps in, I think it's the enemy creeping in. Our mind will say, here's the dreams I had, here's the goals that I had. This is all the stuff I thought I was going to accomplish by this period of time in my life.

And there is that voice of criticism and struggle and all of that, and it'll creep in. Can we just be honest? We celebrate reunion moments, but sometimes it's difficult. And that's one of the reasons why I love in this greatest reunion moment in all of salvation history. I love that Jesus starts by giving them space to struggle and doubt. It starts on Resurrection Sunday without they're seeing him present and they struggle and they're frightened. They think it's a ghost. Have you ever seen a ghost before? Is that where are you going to go? Here. But they can't grasp it. They struggle in this moment because and I don't know if this happens to you. Sometimes we struggle in moments like this when things are good. I mean, like this is the best possible thing that could happen and it could be difficult for us when we come into new situations. Sometimes it's hard in this moment, and I love the fact that Jesus acknowledges and gives them space to struggle with the doubt. I added in here something you said, Barbee. I wrote it down on Friday night. She's she said something. I thought, man, this just fits right with this first movement of of what we're talking about, she said. What I realize after one person after another gives their testimony, she said, We all have the same story.

We all have the same story here in campus ministry. And to some degree, we all have the same story in life, but we all have the same story. And she said, we come from different places. Sometimes when we showed up, we were already Christian, sometimes we weren't. But all of us came into these doors scared and uncertain. Would I be accepted? Do I belong here? All of us walked into those doors, scared and uncertain, and somebody drew us in. Right. And I was sitting here thinking about this, knowing that we're going to this message, this passage on Sunday morning. Barbie, we all started that way. Like on Resurrection Sunday, they came into those doors scared and uncertain and afraid. And isn't it marvelous that our Lord Jesus gave them space to be scared, gave them space to struggle and to wrestle. He has conversation with them. He slows down and eats with them. Like I'd be posting it on every social media. I'd be on the news tomorrow, like all over the place. He sits down and chills and eats. He's just eating fish, hanging out. Why? Because we all started that way. We all started to get afraid. And here's the thing. You might not be identifying with that as a student experience. Walk into a student center, but we all have times and places in our life when we're going into something new and it's even good.

But there's a part of us that's scared. I found this is true in life stage transition transitions. Right? Got several friends that are just now retiring in our church or our members of our church. They're retiring and they're excited. They work really hard to get to a place where they can retire. And yet it's a little scary because they knew what they were doing on Monday at 8:00. And all of a sudden they're getting up. They don't know where the new. Right. Deal with. And you do too. We deal with ministry to the next generation. And you go talk to a student when they graduate. And it's awesome and it's exciting. And yet if they're honest and they're often not, but if they're honest, there's something scary because they knew what they did for the last four years. Or five or six. And all of a sudden they're stepping into something uncertain a new job, a new situation, a new relationship. Anything new? You're stepping into something new. And here's something I learned from a great spiritual leader that gave a wisdom a long time ago. Listen, this is really important. Even good change needs to be grieved. Do you know that? I didn't I didn't know that when I first came here, by the way. And sometimes I repented to this to you before. Sometimes I made changes so fast. Poor Rob Cary. Thank God for you. You're a patient. And I didn't know I was doing it.

You know, sometimes good change needs to be grieved and honored. You know who taught me this was somebody that we all know and love here, or a lot of us do that have been here for a while. Jeff Cary, one of my dearest friends in life, he told me a story and I've shared it with with our new church. If we ever do something fairly significantly new or insignificantly new, some I learned from Jeff, you know, I purchased I think it's oddly right. And so he's been there for over ten years and they were going, are you ready for this? They were going to change their carpet. Now, I know no church ever that you know of ever argues about changing anything at all, names, anything like that. Nobody struggles with that updating or. No, no. So but he just this is wisdom. He said, here's the thing. We're not going to just kind of do it and then you're going to show up and have new carpet one day. We're going to acknowledge it on Sunday morning. And he talked about this and this was beautiful. This is what he did. He started out by saying, look, it's carpet, right? It's carpet fabric. But this is brilliant. He said some of you. You were married. Standing on this carpet. Some of you grieved the loss and honored the life of loved ones standing on this carpet.

Some of you were baptized coming up and walking on this carpet. So yeah, it's carpet, but it's not just carpet. How brilliant is this? He said. So what we're going to do when we're done with church is we're going to tear this up together. We're going to rip up the carpet and we've got magic markers all over the place, and you're going to write scriptures and prayers on the floor before we put the new carpet down. It's that brilliant. You know what? They did not hear a single complaint about the new carpet. Because they took time, like Jesus did, to honor what has been before they go to what is new. Isn't our Lord brilliant. He gives a space to struggle and to doubt and degree. And then when he does move them, let's notice a couple of things he does. There's so much in this passage, but a couple of things that he does. The first thing he does, please don't miss this. And I know this sounds old school, but it's so important. He tells them a story. It's all he does. He tells them a story. In fact, this is so important to Luke. You'll hear it here. You'll hear it in the passage right before it, and you'll hear it throughout his telling of the Gospel, both here and in the Book of Acts. Luke, Volume two. One of the things that you will hear Luke tell you as a gospel writer is there is no faith in resurrection and new life without hearing the story.

And so what it says here in this passage and verse 44, he says, look, this is what I told you. They're struggling, they're doubting. But he tells his disciples, I told you while I was still with you, everything that must be, must be fulfilled, that's written about me. And this is really important. This is technical language, the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms, which is shorthand for the writings. In other words, he just mentioned the three divisions of the Old Testament as we know it, that Jewish culture, Jewish people called it. So when he talks about Moses and the prophets, he's not talking about the people. He's talking about the Bible. And so Jesus is sitting there eating with them in their presence on Resurrection Sunday. But he says, You know what you need in order to come to full faith. I got to tell you the story and I'm going to open the Bible and I'm going to give you a scripture. Isn't that amazing on Resurrection Sunday? By the way, we shouldn't be surprised at this. If you've read the story that goes before the story of the walk to Omaha. My favorite, favorite story in scripture, of course, I say that every week, whatever I'm preaching on, but this is like one that keeps coming up. So there's two people in there walking away from Jerusalem in the Book of Luke.

That's not a good place to go. The mission was in Jerusalem. Jesus said, his face like granite. It says to go to Jerusalem. So you're walking away. There narrator's already hinting that we're going the wrong way here and they don't believe anything that's going on. Now, listen, there are two facts that they have that should help them believe the resurrection. There are two facts they're experiencing in the story. Number one, they have the testimony of the women and some of the men who said, we went to the tomb and it was empty. And the women even got a testimony not just from human beings, but from an angel that said he's alive. That's pretty powerful. If an angel told you something, that might be powerful testimony to pay attention to it. Right. So they have one fact that could help them believe in the resurrection. They have the testimony of humans and supernatural beings. There's one other thing that sometimes whenever I would talk about this with college students, I'd say, what information do they have that will help them to believe in the resurrection? And they'll talk about everything, about the most obvious thing. They'll miss that. What's the most obvious thing they're missing in this story that gives them evidence of resurrection? Does anybody know? You can talk to me. Jesus is there. Like he's standing there. He's right there walking with him.

And it says they were kept with from recognize them. They didn't hear me. They didn't believe the resurrection when the resurrected Christ was standing next to them. Now, please don't miss this. This is really important. By the way, somebody told me before their child told me, I love what Dean preaches, but why is he scream at me? I just I'm not trying to scream. I'm excited. I love I love the gospel. So I'm not mad. Little ones. I'm not mad. I'm happy. Look, this is what it says. 27, listen to this. What does he do to people are struggling to believe even when he's physically there, verse 27, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, not the people. It's the Bible. Jesus explained to them what was said in the Scriptures concerning themselves. There is no faith. No, not yet. Don't go to that. There is no faith in Jesus without. Go back to the last line. There is no faith in Jesus without the story of God. He tells them a story from beginning to end. Can you imagine that sermon, by the way? Wouldn't you love it if Luke had written that down there? He tells about creation and he tells the Exodus story, all of Scripture. He tells it. By the way, Luke wants us to get this message so much that he tells a parable. He includes when Jesus tells a parable, you remember this Lazarus rich man, they die.

The rich man is still thinks he can order the poor man around. So he says, okay, I know I'm baked literally. So can you can you send Lazarus back to tell my brothers that this is really true? Does anybody remember what Jesus said that Abraham tells him? They would not believe it even if someone came back from the dead. You know how they will believe it, he said. Just listen to what's written in Moses. They got Moses in the prophets. If they don't believe because of this, they're not going to believe even if someone is raised from the dead, by the way. That wasn't theory. We see it happen in the end of the book. There are people that are there and there's a dead man alive. But it takes the gospel story. So I know this sounds like, oh, you're waiting for some great insight at the reunion. Here's what I loved again and again and again. We heard story after story of how the Gospel of Jesus is what brings people to faith. I love you guys so much. I love the people that have led me. But it is the story of the resurrected Christ that we just sung that gets people to faith. We've got to tell them the story. Don't ever apologize for being deep Bible people. On Resurrection Sunday. It took him taking them all the way through the gospel story of Jesus to come and believe.

And, you know, that was true for me as a student, I suspect for you as a student. And I saw it as a minister. I remember I first showed up at Virginia Tech and after the Lord brought me back to him the first time in my life. And I remember, I know it's the most boring thing in the world, but I tell people a major part of my testimony is when somebody gave me a Bible I could read. Now I'm not picking on well, you can read whatever Bible you want to read. I'm just saying the Bible I grew up reading I could it sounded like Shakespeare and I didn't understand it. And somebody gave me a Bible that I could read and I kid you not. I was talking with a friend of mine back at our church saying he had the same experience as a college student. I skipped class to read the Bible. Now I skipped class for other things too that were not wholly good, but I actually skipped class. I remember skipping class. I was reading the Bible. And I remember hearing the Gospel of Jesus and reading it and hearing people teach it in a little back room. And the thing we call a devotional and a campus ministry, and they actually asked questions and didn't just give answers. They gave us a Bible and questions and the Holy Spirit of God. And my heart was on fire.

Just like the disciples when Jesus opened up Scripture to them. And then it was so faith confirming to me and I bet you ask any campus minister, this is the truth here, Randi. You just inspired me. You were talking you were talking about it, too. I remember we came and they gave me the opportunity to teach Bible at LCU. And I remember thinking I was going to be most excited about teaching the ministry majors. I want to teach ministry. I want to teach campus ministry and all that. But of course, you know it's LCA and they want to give you some adjunct classes. So they stuck me with freshman Bible. I'm like, I do not want to do this because these people don't want to be here. I hate talking to like a captive audience and you know, I just want people that chose to come. That's what I love about campus ministry in a state school, because they choose to come and they don't have demerits for not going to chapel. And so I thought, you know, this is not what I want to do. Right? But here's what I learned very quickly within a year. First of all, the ministry majors think they know it all. And so they missed it sometimes. But I loved it. I would call my baseball players in the back row. So you remember some of my basketball players, folks that would come.

And their only reason they came to also is they got a scholarship there. The last thing I want to do is sit in a Bible class and I saw it happen. Sam. Fall in love with Jesus. I will just have him write a paper at the beginning of the semester and a paper at the end, and it was like, Who is Jesus to you the beginning and who's Jesus at the end? I would all get the Jesus, my best friend papers. Those are the ministry folks. I'm like, Okay, just wait till God rocks your world. Then we'll see how deep that goes. And and then like, I don't care about Jesus, I don't care about church. I'll never forget it. I can still remember where she was sitting. This young lady wrote all this stuff the beginning, you know, Jesus, nowhere near hate church, all that kind of stuff. And at the end she wrote this. She said, I tried not to listen. Tried not to pay attention. But Jesus got under my skin. Don't ever run away. Look, we used to memorize. We used to memory verses. Back in the day we memorized Rome. 1017 Faith comes from what? Hearing the Word of Christ, even when he's standing there, he still had to tell the story. Don't ever stop being a preach the word. We would see Jesus Church and don't ever in ministry make it about anything other than telling the story of Jesus and you.

Please do it differently. Please do it a thousand different ways. Don't ever stop giving the gospel to people. That's what changes lives. It's incredible to me. Last thing I recognize about Jesus is, yes, he tells the story, but there is no resurrection without a body. And this is something I know this sounds so. Oh, really? Oh, wow. That's profound. I'm telling you, this is what Luke emphasizes. He wants you to know this. It is really, really important, as Luke is telling the story, to let you know it was a physical body and not an idea. It's really trendy to say, like Jesus idea goes on and you know, again, I'm not picking on any other religion, but this isn't Buddhism. Buddhism, and I've heard quoted from some of their scholars, like the idea is more important than the man. Okay, that's cool. But that ain't Jesus. The man is more important than any idea or philosophy or ethic or anything like that. It's about the guy and it's about him coming back in a real physical body. How do we know that? Luke tells you the details. He doesn't have a lot of scroll, right? He doesn't have a whole lot of scroll. Some people think that that the Book of Acts ends because he ran out of scroll in that place like. So the details they do include is really important. What does he include? It says Jesus says they're struggling and what is he telling them to do? Touch me.

And see. Look at me. Touch me and see. Feel my hands and feet. Then what does he do? Of all the things to include, he sat down and eat, ate a piece of broiled fish. Luke, what? Couldn't he give us? Something else and that tell us about what the sky looked like. Or, you know, the earthquakes. No. He ate a piece of broiled fish. Why? I can't help thinking that maybe because these same people saw those same hands take fish and feed a bunch of hungry people, and they're like, Hold on, there's a scar in it. But it's those same hands. It's really him. It's really a body. And one of the things that all of the writers of scripture tell us, it's not an idea. We're not floating away to heaven. One day he's fixing everything. The body matters, the world matters. What you do in this place matters because Jesus resurrected in a body He God so loved the world. We're not floating away to heaven one day. You understand that, right? We're going to be with God. But Heaven's coming here. Go read it. New Heavens, New Earth. Colossians one. Jesus Came. The Gospel is that God is reconciling the cosmos to Himself in Christ. It's not about you and Jesus under a tree. It's not about a couple of us. He's changing the world.

And he says, I'm going to show that by embodying in my physical body all of the hopes and all of the dreams of the stories you've read growing up in the Bible and in Israel. There's never. Then resurrection ever without a body. And I think it's so important for us to recognize that in this time, because we're at a reunion and it's so tempting at a reunion to spend all of our time just celebrating things that have already happened. And it would have been really easy on Resurrection Day for Jesus to come back and tell all the stories of all the stuff they'd done before. Wouldn't that be great? Hey, remember when I walked on water and remember when we raised that woman for the dead? And we spent all of our time talking about the great stuff Jesus did and the three years He was here. But Jesus doesn't leave them with nostalgia. He leaves them with a commission. We know the Great Commission better from Matthew, but Luke has one too. And he says, Here's the thing repentance. Don't just think I'm sorry and it's one step and you're done. Repentance is a directional term. God is going this way and repentance turning around. I'm going this way. Repentance is turning around. Repentance is going to be proclaimed. You can go back God's direction. How many stories have we heard? We were running away from God done it many times in my life.

Here is the offer from Jesus. No matter where you are, where you've been, and what's happened to you, you can always turn around. Repentance is going to be proclaimed and forgiveness don't make it a stained glass word. It was an economic word. It meant if you were deep in debt, you got released. So anything that is burdening you down from experiencing life gets to be let go. And this is what he says. Listen to me. Look at the tallies. As I say, this repentance and forgiveness is going to be to proclaim to whom. All nations. So Jesus says, Man, isn't it great that we have this wonderful reunion, but you don't get to sit around on Reunion Sunday and just wax nostalgic. You are conditioned to get up and keep embodying the story because hear me. It always needs a body. Resurrection. Faith always needs an embodying of the story we tell. People have to look at it and touch it and see it. That's the commission. Jesus ends that little commission by saying, You are witnesses of this. You've seen it. We've heard story after story. We've heard testimony after testimony. Our lives have been changed by this Jesus. He says, Great, now go tell people. Go live it out in the body of Christ. Why? Because resurrection always takes a body. And by the way, I don't say this to you all as, oh, wow, we got to get up and do this because we've never done it before.

I end by giving this to you because I know you know this because you've been doing it for 75 years at least, and more because one of the things we can also say, there's no resurrection with a body without a body, but there's no campus ministry without a body either. There is no campus ministry for 75 years outside of Texas Tech without a body of Christ that's embodying the story even as we proclaim it down there. There is no ministerial body. I remember when I first started in campus ministry, it was really trendy to do para church ministries and I'm not picking on it. It's a great thing that's cool, but I never want to do anything but church based campus ministry. Why? Because resurrection always has to have a body living it out. And I could give a thousand examples of this, but I'll give this as an example of how the Gospel of Christ has been embodied in this church to this very moment in our family. We moved down to Texas the first time. And by the way, it's hard to move when you've been somewhere a long time. I love where we've been called to go. It is a mission field, but I love where we're called to go. But we live for 15 years in Nashville. Luke is a little hard. Melanie It's a little hard. It's hard.

It's wonderful. God's going to do great things, but it's hard to make that transition. And the people that connect with you early on are the ones that make all the difference. And I'll never forget we came down here. Christine was three when we moved and we were out playing at the playground. I've never told I've told these two different stories before to other people, but I've never put them together until God was working on me as I was thinking through this message. So we came down, we went to the playground and I went to sit down. There was those little things. We rocked back and forth. So I was going to sit down next to Christine. She was in this little car and I sat down and she screamed. Sat down next to her. She said, You're sitting on mRNA. Maseno was her Bible class teacher back in Virginia. And you know what happens when you're a little kid and you're scared? What do you do? You work with an imaginary friend. And I love this because I went back and when we had a reunion in in Virginia, I told the story of who is it that God uses to comfort our daughter when she moves halfway across the country? But her Bible class teacher, when she was three years old, was her imaginary friend in that amazing. But here's what it hit me. You know, on Resurrection Sunday, they didn't need a ghost.

They needed a body. And for our daughter to make a transition to this place. She didn't need an imaginary friend. She needed one with a body. Now on where Kay Evans is. God gave us, Malik. I love you. Even last night, she was like, I don't know what what I did to get so in the heart of your daughter. She came here and adopted our little girl as her granddaughter from the moment we came in the door. She has the most beautiful handwriting. And don't downplay this. Still beautiful. I saw your I saw your sticker. Your nametag. Still beautiful. And she would write her letters every week. I meant to bring it. I'm sorry, but you get the idea. We still have them. We still have the letters that she wrote week in and week out in this place. We ate at your table. And when she moved from here, which was hard. The Tennessee. Who should get letters from Mama Kay. And we came in on Friday night and we sat down in the student center in the back row. And the first thing I did is she jabbing the arm. And she said, There's Mama K. Resurrection always needs a body. And you've been doing it for 75 years. And I'm just telling you, as someone who has had the honor to preach and to teach and to share scripture of discipleship, we cannot do it without a body of a Christ embodying the story we preach.

Can't do it without you. And so the commission is let's enjoy a reunion, even if you didn't come here for the reunion. Every Sunday morning is a celebration of this reunion of the resurrected Christ. Enjoy it, but don't sit back with nostalgia. Because this reunion is not just a celebration. It is a commission to go and live in body and tell the story that you celebrate telling for the last 75 years, in whatever days you have left, because it doesn't matter. You're still doing it. Mama kay. And we will do it until Jesus comes to call us home. Father. God, we give you praise for the resurrected Jesus Christ. Father. You did it. You fix the world in this man. You started it back then. You called it the first fruits. It's just the beginning. You aren't done. Please forgive us for as the church of the resurrected Christ wringing our hands when the world gets crazy. Forgive us, Father. God. You resurrected Jesus and you are going to resurrect this broken world. So, Father, I thank you for doing that, and I thank you for giving us patience when we struggle. And I beg you to empower us by the same Holy Spirit that animated those disciples early on, animated us for the last 75 years and more in this church to live out this gospel story. Even now, as you're calling us into the future and the glorious.