Community.

Today we are talking about community, about what it looks like for us to follow Jesus together. We're going to read the story of the parable of the Good Samaritan. So if you have your Bibles, Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 25, it says this:

On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? he replied. How do you read it? He answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. And Jesus told him, go, do likewise.

Luke 10:25-37

Let's pray again today. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word that is alive and active. We thank you for the ways that your Holy Spirit continues to speak to us through the text. God, right now, I thank you for the gift that we get to come and gather together today. I thank you for the gift that we get to sing, worship, and give you glory and praise, and to fix our eyes on you. And I thank you that as we do that, you continue to form us into your likeness.

God, I pray now that as we look to your word, would you speak directly and pierce through our hearts. I know that each of us, we come in here from different places today, and you know our stories, you know what we're carrying, and you want to speak to us. So Lord, we open our hearts up to you. We open our ears. I want to invite all of you, in your own ways right now, would you say, Holy Spirit, I welcome you to come and speak. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here. Would you speak through this text today? In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Lost in Minneapolis

Okay, so it's 2013. It's fall. I'm 18. I moved to Minneapolis for college. This is the olden days, so there was no smartphone. Only the fancy people had GPSs. I had a paper map and I had my car full of friends, new friends I had met that night, but they were going to be my best friends forever. I don't think I know any of their names anymore. But sometimes it works out.

A tradition on our campus was that the first weekend you would go play Capture the Flag in Minneapolis at the Sculpture Garden. I was one of the cool freshmen because I had a car. Everyone's packed in, we're ready to go. I was excited to meet these friends, but I wasn't quite ready to let them watch me fail yet, to be vulnerable and let them in. So instead of admitting that I didn't know how to parallel park well, because I had gotten my license six months before, I pull up and I'm like, yeah guys, I'll drop you. No worries. I'll go find parking and come back.

And she never returned that night to that spot. I didn't come back, because I could not park the car.

So there I was. I dropped all my new friends, they're having the time of their life, and I'm circling downtown Minneapolis at 11 o'clock at night on a Saturday. I don't know what good neighborhoods are. Some of you from Minneapolis are laughing at this, because it's a confusing city to drive in. So what I do is I call my friend, I call my connection, I call my big brother Nathan, who's on campus. At this point I'm probably already sobbing, and I'm like, I don't know where I am. I'm lost. All I see is, it wasn't US Bank Stadium yet, it was the Metrodome or whatever. So I'm like, I see the stadium. That's all I see. And he's trying to give me directions over the phone.

During that time my phone dies. Because if you know me, I never have my phone charged. Josh says yes and amen, because I borrow his chargers daily. You'll see me on Sundays coming in, I'm like, let me plug in my computer quick.

So my phone dies. Now I have this paper map that has directions from my campus to where I was going, but it can't help me now. So I do what any good church girl does. I rolled down my windows because it's hot, and I start screaming, crying, and praying to the Lord. Help me, help me.

Eventually I had this thought in my head where I was like, okay, here's what's going to happen. Everything's closed. The only thing open are bars. And I'm like, all right, we have no choice. We've got to do this. We need somebody to help us. So I take some deep breaths and I prayed and I was like, God, give me a sign. Give me a light.

And I look, and right as I get off the next exit, there's one light on at this bar. It was open. And I'm like, here we go.

So I march into this bar. I quick wipe the tears from my face and I go up to the bartender. And again, I'm 18, so this is a very bad situation. I'm like, hi, I'm lost. My phone is dead. And he pauses and he looks at me. He goes, ma'am, do you want to go in the bathroom and wash your face for a minute?

And then it hit me. Josh, if you have that photo, if you can throw it on the screen. Earlier in the night we thought it'd be a good idea to all paint cat whiskers on our face for Capture the Flag. So as you can imagine, after crying, my face is gray and covered. And then someone else was like, you know what would be funny? Someone should write meow on their forehead. And I'm like, pick me, pick me.

So there I was, dressed, ready for Capture the Flag, meow on my forehead, my face completely streaked, walking into a bar at 18 years old going, help me, someone help me.

Now, when we talk about the Good Samaritan, the man who fell on the side of the road and needed help, my story was a little different. But this was a moment when I found myself needing help, needing humans to come and help me. So my version of the Good Samaritan was the kind bartender who said, go wash your face, honey. And then he gave me a phone charger, some lemonade and breadsticks to eat at the bar. He said, I know where your campus is. We have a delivery driver headed that way, because they also delivered pizza. So I followed safely in my car behind him. And my brother and all his friends were out on campus walking the streets looking for me, because they knew I was out wandering. And then they took me to get Chinese food at 1 a.m. in the city, and it was a great night.

I share that story because we have a hard time today knowing what it looks like to rely on human connection, to rely on community.

There was a study that I saw someone post about today, and I looked into it, and I was like, that's crazy, I'm preaching about this. They did a study that showed the top two uses for AI right now are for therapy advice and for connection, people looking for relational connection through AI.

We have come to a point where we don't know what it looks like to even drive somewhere without a GPS or a smartphone. When I tell that story it's like, what do you mean? People don't believe I went to college without a smartphone. I did, until my junior year, and it changed my life. But we are so used to relying on anything other than human connection to heal us, to support us.

We were created for human connection. We were created for relationship. And I believe we have an invitation right here, right now, to lean deeper into what it looks like for us to be in relationship with people, where we rely on that human connection.

Jesus tells the story in scripture of this man, and he starts by asking about eternal life. What does it look like for me to inherit eternal life? And he responds by saying, love God and love neighbor. I think that's important for us to notice today. When we think about eternal life, we want it because it's eternal life with Jesus. And the good news is that we have access to the relationship with him today. Jesus gave us a community to follow him and practice his ways together.

We all know this, that we are more connected digitally than we've ever been, yet isolation and loneliness continue to increase. It's a fascinating thing that people continue to say, why do we know this, yet we don't lean into human connection?

Because, as most of us have experienced, human connection is hard. It's easier for us to go to ChatGPT and ask for quick advice than it is to pick up the phone and call a friend, because we don't know if our friend is going to pick up. We don't know if they're going to be in the mood to talk. So we go to these other places and these other sources.

I want to name, as I talk about some of this today, specifically with AI, that it's always good for us to know that not everything in life is inherently good or inherently evil. But we always have to question, as followers of Jesus, how do we steward everything in front of us? How do we see ourselves as saying we are a part of the kingdom? Some of these things might be tools for us to use, but they're also things for us to rule and reign over, and not to let rule and reign over us.

So whether we're talking about a GPS or ChatGPT or whatever it is, none of these things are bad. It's not saying we should all call people for directions and never use a GPS again. That's not the point. But it's saying that we as followers of Jesus have to recognize that the things we do, they do something to us. There was a world where when we stopped calling people and asking them, how do I get to your house, and writing down the step-by-step directions, we lost a form of human connection. It doesn't mean we don't rely on Google Maps and Apple Maps and whatever your thing is. It means that we have to be more intentional about how we stay connected to other humans if we're going to outsource some of these other things.

Another study I was reading recently talked about how right now the big fear is that obesity is killing us. But what we don't realize is that killing us at an even faster rate is isolation. There's a study that was done specifically for men over a 70-year span of time at Harvard, and they researched all of these men and their health, and those who stayed connected in close relationships were healthier and stronger and living longer than those who were not.

Community is required

There are so many factors that go into this, but what I want us to see today, and what I want to start with, is this idea that community is required for the Christian life. Togetherness, belonging, community, deep relationship with people who see you, people who know you. It is required. It is not optional.

We see this from the beginning of time. In Genesis 1, in the creation story, there's something crucial here where God, when he's speaking, he doesn't say, let me make. He says, let us make man in our image. He uses this plural, pointing already to the Trinity, that God was always working and moving and creating in community of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit.

Then we see in the creation narrative in Genesis chapter two, when it gets into more details, where God creates everything and he says, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good. And then it comes to Adam, the first man he creates, and he says, it is not good for him to be alone.

God always existed in the context of community, Father, Son, and Spirit, created from the context of community. We are made in the image of a communal God. We were called into relationship with him. It's not good for us to be alone. And this isn't only referring to marriage. This is period. No one should ever be alone, because we were not created for that.

We see that Paul in the New Testament expands on this in 1 Corinthians 12, when he talks about the body. I want to read a chunk of it. 1 Corinthians 12, verse 20, it says:

As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you. The head cannot say to the feet, I do not need you.

1 Corinthians 12:20-21

We need each other. We cannot look and go back and forth and say, I don't need you, I don't need you, I don't need you. If we truly believe that we are a part of a body made in the image of God, to bear his image, that means we need each other.

Community is risky

Where I want to go next is, why is it so hard for us to live into this? Because I recognize that even today, for many of us, it isn't easy showing up in a space like this. It's not easy to show up. Some of you came by yourself. Some of you came with people you know. It's not easy to put yourself in a room with other humans.

For all of us, we probably came with some expectation today, whether spoken or named or not, of, I came to connect, I came to connect with God, I came to connect with other people. But every time we step into any space, you're risking that someone might not say hi to you. You're risking, and I already received grace from someone whose name I forgot twice, you're risking that someone's not going to remember your name. You're risking rejection. You're risking all of these different things every time you step into the room and engage with other humans.

Community requires risk. Stepping into it is a scary thing, and we often stay away from it because of the hurt and because of the harm that has happened.

During the week I spend my days as a therapist, sitting with people through some horrific pain. One of the things we talk about often is, if you've ever had your heart broken or experienced hurt from a friend, people will often say, my heart physically hurts. And the reality is, yes, because psychologically the same thing is triggered in our brain for physical pain when we face rejection and hurt from people. That same thing is triggered within us. So when we are rejected by people, when we're hurt by people, we do experience physical responses and physical pain, where it's like, this hurts. And all of this is real. It's not imaginary. It's not just, oh, forgive that friend and move on. It'll be hard.

Relationship is risky because we risk getting hurt by people. We risk the rejection, we risk the pain. And I'm sure all of us have some stories, even as I say this today, of experiencing that.

This is one of the main reasons that we resist community, and why we would rather outsource to other things. We don't want to ask directions, we're going to look it up. We don't want to ask friends for restaurant recommendations. I don't know why that sounds so small, but one of my favorite things on social media is when someone posts, does anyone have a food recommendation, because they're asking people they might know. But we want to Google it. Or we don't want to ask friends for advice on a situation, we want to go to AI or wherever. It's because our brains so don't want to take those risks again. It's been there, done that, I'm not going back. So I'm going to look for everything else.

One of the other things, if we look into why rejection is so hard on us and why it feels so risky to step into relationships, is the shock of it. It's the unexpectedness of it. I want to talk about this today because when we experience that type of pain, it's typically because our body and our brains are in shock. Our bodies and our brains go into survival mode and we start to shut down and we want to isolate even more.

I want to share this because I want us to be cautious and aware in our lives. We are going to experience pain and rejection and hurt in relationship with people. And the more that we can learn that this, although it can be hard and hurtful and painful, is a part of the process of growing and forming, and community and relationship to Jesus, the less shock it's going to become and the more we're going to be prepared to go, okay, now how do I move forward through this? We're not going to get stuck in, I cannot believe that person did that to me. We're going to have better responses, to say, okay, this is a part of relationship, that sometimes we're going to collide, that sometimes hurt is going to happen. So now how do I move forward in healing and forgiveness, and not let bitterness take root, and not go into survival mode, and not shut down?

Hurt by people, healed by people

I want to go back to the story of the man. It says as he's going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, he fell into the hands of robbers, stripped him of his clothes, beat him, went away, leaving him half dead. So he was hurt by people. The trauma he endured and went through happened by people. And then it says a priest and a Levite walked by him. He was now rejected and dismissed by who? People. People hurt him. People rejected him. People left him on the side of the road for dead.

I'm going to be honest today. When I was first reading through this passage and feeling like this is where we were supposed to land for talking about community, I'm like, this doesn't make sense. I've preached on this passage so many times and it's normally about loving the stranger, and loving those at a distance, and all of that. And I think it is. This isn't changing the context of the story. But I felt the Lord giving this fresh perspective, that this is an example of how we need to lean into love as a community.

We talked about a couple weeks ago the bystander effect, that typically if one of us right now were to fall and have something happen in the middle of this room, most of us would freeze. The more people that you're around, the less likely you're going to respond. Now you're in a situation where it's like, that shouldn't be applying here, because the priest walks by and the Levite walks by, but they're like, we can't go near that person. We can't touch them. They had all of these religious reasons why. The Levites, they're like, we can't touch someone that's bloody, someone that's messy, then we're going to have to go through all these rituals and we're not in a space where we can do that. So they kept on walking by. And this man was left there.

What we see next is so beautiful. He was hurt by people, rejected by people, and now he's about to see healing come through people. He's about to be received by someone, and welcomed in by someone, and protected by someone.

We are hurt in relationship and we heal in relationship. For many of us, we stop in the hurt in relationship and we decide to go into survival mode and to shut down. And we miss the reward of community by risking letting people in again.

We have to risk letting people in again. We have to risk being hurt again. We have to risk learning from that. We have to risk needing to truly practice patience and kindness and forgiveness together.

1 Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter, says, if I speak in the tongue of men and angels, but I have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. That is such a message for us as people who claim to follow Jesus. If we're here today and we say, I'm following Jesus, we need to know scriptures. We need to study. We need to speak, our words are powerful. But if we don't know how to love people, starting in this room with each other, it's nothing. Because again, God didn't scream from heaven down to earth saying, I love you. He sent Jesus to show us and to demonstrate that love. And now we get to experience this through community.

It's in relationship that we have to be patient. When it says love is patient and love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it's not proud, it does not dishonor others, it's not self-seeking, it's not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrong, love does not delight in evil, it rejoices in truth. This is the type of love that we are called to experience and to give and to live into as a community.

Community is rewarding

This is the reward that we get to receive, and that's the next thing I want to talk about. Community is rewarding. Having people that you can call is rewarding. As silly as that night was when I look back at 18, coming back to knowing my brother's going to be there, and he had his friends who weren't my friends yet, but they're like, our friend's sister needs help, we're there, we're out in the streets looking. There's a reward to knowing there are people who are fighting for you, who are looking for you, who are there to help you when you get lost.

Community is one of the greatest gifts that we have, but it takes a whole lot of intentionality for us to experience it. And it doesn't come pain-free or risk-free.

Again, I go back to noticing that the Good Samaritan started by saying, what can I do to inherit eternal life? So it starts with looking for this reward. And Jesus says, love God, love others. The reward that we're looking for is first found in Jesus. It's first found in Jesus.

One of the things that I see happen the most in community is when we look to relationships to do things for us that only Jesus can do. This happens in marriages, when you look for your spouse to fulfill you. It happens if you're a parent and you're looking for your kids to become your identity and your source of worth. It happens in friendships, when we're looking for our friends to be the ones who validate us or encourage us.

It has to start with Jesus. Our love for Jesus and the way that he loves us is the source. If we're going to be a thriving, healthy church that has healthy communities, it's going to be all of us intentionally being sustained and receiving the love of Jesus first, and from that place, loving one another.

I want to read a somewhat long passage from 1 John chapter four, because I feel like it ties in to Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan so well. So if you have your Bibles again, 1 John chapter four, and it's in this section and it's literally titled, loving one another. It says, dear friends, let us continue to love one another, but test the spirits. Oh, I read the wrong [inaudible] already. Okay.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:7-12

Are we catching this today? As we love one another, his love is made complete in us. It starts with his love, and then our love for each other, and then we have this reward of this completeness and how we love each other and experience this.

Verse 13 says:

We know that we live in him and he is in us, because he has given us his Spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God. He has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

1 John 4:13-21

So again, going back to this idea of us following Jesus in community, it's required. It was never optional for Jesus. When he came here and he called his disciples to follow him, he came and he led and ministered in community. He sent the 72 out two by two. He did that in community. He didn't send them out alone.

We are called into relationship with Jesus in community together, to then be sent out in community, to continue to see his kingdom come. It has to start with this place of love. Love comes from God. That's where it starts. And we get to receive that. This is the gift that Jesus was and is, that we get to receive him in that relationship. We get to be cleansed of our sins and receive that forgiveness. From that experience of being like, I've been forgiven, we get to go and forgive others. But we're never going to experience that completeness and that reward if we're looking for each other to fulfill things that only Jesus can.

It has to start with Jesus. When I think of his mission to go and continue to make disciples, we need each other to do that. And we need the Holy Spirit to continue to empower us and equip us to do that, because it's not easy to forgive people. It's not easy to let go of offense. And we are going to hurt each other.

I keep saying that again because the shock sometimes is the worst part of it. People in this room will offend you. You might show up for a community group at New Culture Church and there might be someone who says something that you're like, I didn't like that. The point is not to avoid conflict. The point is not to avoid ever being hurt by one another. The point, as we continue to practice being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what he did, is that we continue to grow in forgiveness toward one another. That it's like, three years from now, you're like, those people were so rude, I learned to let go of offense so fast. Not really. We hope we're not rude to one another. But accidents happen. Even if we're not intentional, it's going to happen.

If we can get over the shock that people are going to hurt us, that's step one. But then we have to also remember that it's through relationship that people are going to help us find healing in Jesus. And guess what? He's inviting us to be like the Good Samaritan and to go and bring that healing to other people.

Sometimes I think it's easier for us to have grace and forgiveness for the stranger than it is for the people so close to us. We know that because relationships are hard and it's painful. And this isn't a, don't have boundaries. Sometimes all of those things are necessary. But it's for us to say, what does it look like for us to lean closer into living out what Jesus meant by loving your neighbor and laying your life down for them?

So quick plug again before I wrap us up, for our community groups starting this Tuesday. If you are not signed up, sign up for a community group. Lean into community. Lean into, we have our forum groups. We have our communities that meet weekly on Tuesday nights, where we are spread out into different people's homes across the city and we're gathered around a shared meal. We're in scripture together. They're not perfect. It's not a room full of perfect people. But we're saying, can we be people committed to practicing the ways of Jesus and creating his culture? That's what we're after.

Our forum groups, if you want someone that you are partnered with to follow Jesus in a deeper way, if you're newer to faith, we have people who want to pour into you. This is just committing to someone, whether it's texting once a week and checking in, you get to decide all that. But this is the way for us to practice the ways of Jesus together, because we were not created to be alone. It's not good for us to be alone. And no matter how many times we're hurt by people, I believe that Jesus wants to use people to bring healing and hope and freedom in our lives.

He came close

I'm going to invite the worship team to come up as we get ready to close today.

The story of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus telling this story, is so significant, because he's telling the story of something that he's going to do for his people. There's this man laying on the side of the road, and he's physically hurt, and he's bruised, and he's broken. I've been around people enough to know that today, even if you're not physically hurt, there are probably emotional, spiritual wounds that exist that nobody else sees. And this man, he laid there as the priest saw him and passed by, and the Levite saw him and passed by, and then the Good Samaritan comes, and he represents what Jesus did for us.

Jesus not only saw us in our brokenness, but he left heaven to come down to earth and he came close.

One of the most significant things about this story is that the Samaritan came close to the wounds, to the infections, to the potential risk of disease. And what's also significant is that at this time, Jews and Samaritans did not get along. Samaritans were essentially mixed blood, and so it was, stay away from these people. It was risky for the Samaritan to come close to this man in this moment. But he saw someone hurting and he was willing to risk to go. He gets close, he sees the wounds, and it points to the oil and the wine. We know that oil was something that was healing. The wine was cleansing.

Jesus heals us. He cleanses us time and time again, and he comes close to do it. As gross as our wounds may be, as unattractive as they may look, as dangerous as it might be, he comes close. And the Samaritan is modeling that when he comes close. Cultural barriers were crossed. Social norms were crossed.

What I love too is it says in scripture, the next day he took out the silver coins, he gave them to the innkeeper, and he said, look after him. He said, when I return, if there's anything else needed, I'll reimburse you.

Loving people the way Jesus calls us to love, and risking things for community, costs us something. Are we willing to count the cost of what it looks like to love people the way that Jesus loved us? Are we willing to put ourselves in positions where we're saying, okay, this is all I have now, but if there's more required, I'm going to keep coming back, because I want to see full healing?

In the same way, this man, some of us are in those places where we have to lay there and trust that people are going to come and care for us. I don't know where you fall today. You might be in this place where there's a stirring in you of, okay, I have been the person staying on the other side of the road, because I don't know about all that. And maybe you've been hurt by people, so you're like, I'm not going to go near that. There's an invitation today to say, will you come close to Jesus? Will you let him heal those things in your heart so that you can love from a place of being loved?

And for some of you today, you're like this man where you're laying on the side of the road, and you're like, I have been beaten up so many times. I have been rejected. I'm laying here hurt right now, and my eyes can see just enough to see people passing me by, and I feel the physical pain of rejection and the hurt and the scars, and I don't know if I have the energy to get up and to let people in again.

I sense there's an invitation that Jesus is saying, will you let me come close and heal you? And will you risk, will you risk being vulnerable and showing your scars to community, because it's through those people that I want to heal you? It's not ignoring the pain of the past or what's happened, but it's saying that there is more.

We're not going to be able to show up for each other as a community if we're not first filled with the love of Jesus. Without the love of Jesus, when I'm waking up and I'm feeling insecure and I'm feeling lonely and I'm feeling all these things, and I go and sit down with someone, I'm going to be so easily offended. I'm going to be so upset when someone's like, you didn't ask me about this one thing that I wanted you to ask me about. It goes on and on and on.

But when we start with Jesus as our source, and we receive the fullness of his love and his healing, and we know that we are so precious to him, and he sees us as worth crossing over to that other side, he sees us as worth risking all social barriers, cultural barriers, norms, everything in between, and saying, yeah, I didn't just risk it, but I gave my life for you. My body, it was broken. My blood, it was poured out. I healed you. I cleansed you. When we receive that love and we come from that place, it's going to be easier to try again, and to try again.

But expectations are everything, and we cannot expect people to fulfill us. We also can't expect that people are always ready to receive our love. This week I decided, I need to be a little more risky socially. I think I had talked a couple weeks ago of, what does it look like for us to be more intentional about making eye contact with strangers and saying hello? I've gotten rejected so much lately. I had a thing for work this week, and there are a lot of people I've never met, but we kind of work together. And I'm like, I'm going to go out of my way, I'm going to say hello and introduce myself. There was one person I tried three times, because maybe they didn't hear me, and they walked right past me. I'm like, okay, bye. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine.

It's risky. Those things happen. I'm going to be honest, at other times in my life I would have cried. They quite literally walked past me and ignored me twice. But this, I kind of laughed. I was like, okay, I guess I'll try again on Monday and see if they want to say hi then.

But I do think sometimes, for some of us, we don't even know how to receive people saying hi to us, or asking us our name, or wanting to know us beyond a surface level, because we are so not reliant on human connection anymore. And can I say, as a church, as followers of Jesus, we need to go first and say, we were created for this. We crave it and we're looking for it in all these other places, and it's only going to come from relationship with Jesus and then relationship with the body that he gave us.

But this is a proactive thing. It's going to cost us something, but there's a reward for the risk that we take.

Closing prayer

I'm going to invite you to stand today, and we're going to close in a time of worship, and the team is going to lead us.

I sense today, before we can get to what Jesus is saying, and he's saying, go and do likewise, before we can be like, go love the stranger, or even as much as I'm like, sign up for communities, and you should, and sign up for forum groups, you should, before we can be like, go find your people and people are going to change everything for you, we first need to receive the love of Jesus.

I feel like for some of us today there's even deep healing that needs to take place, of hurt that's been caused by people, of pain that's been caused by people, of people who have rejected you. And I feel like Jesus sees us all today and he's like, hey, I didn't just cross the road from you, but I left heaven and I came down to earth. I didn't just pour a little bit of the oil and the wine, but I gave you my life, because you're worth it.

I sense we all need that reminder today that we are so loved by God. And we crave that deep connection because it's what we were created for.

Would you close your eyes for a moment? I want to invite you, this might be new for you, but to say, Holy Spirit, would you speak to me? Would you show me areas of my heart where I'm still holding hurt from people, where I'm still feeling wounded by people, maybe even scars that you feel have been ripped open? If there's any places where you feel like you're that man on the side of the road and you're like, I am exhausted of people looking past me, would you invite the Holy Spirit to come and show you the way that he sees you, that he cleanses you, that he cares for you?

I also pray for those of us who are feeling those wounds, I pray in the name of Jesus, would you bring people to come alongside us and to carry us to healing? We thank you, Lord, for the power of human connection. I pray even over our community groups, that they would be a source. God, I pray for our college ministry group, that it would be a source of healing and connection for people.

Lord, would you continue to show us the healing that you want to bring, and the ways that you're inviting us to be a source of healing, the ways that you're inviting us to risk again, the ways that you're inviting us to cross over to the other side, to come close to people, to get our hands a little messy, to carry people. When it says, on his own animal he took and he carried this man. Would you help us to live so surrendered to community and committed to community, knowing that we crave it because we were created for it and we need it?

Holy Spirit, for these next few moments, would you speak? Would you bring healing? Would you give us hope for the way that you want to continue to heal us in community? And would you show us even specific ways that you want us to create those spaces where people can find closeness with you again, Jesus?

I'm going to invite you, would you spend time talking to Jesus, praying, surrendering, inviting that healing in, as the team leads us.

This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

God, today we thank you for the relationship that we have in Jesus, for the freedom that we have in Jesus, for the healing. God, we thank you that we were not rejected, but that you continue to see us and to welcome us in and to receive us with love and joy and delight. I thank you, God, that when you see us, you see joy and you see delight, because you created us in the palm of your hand and in your image.

God, I pray today that we would all move from this space with not just head knowledge, but Lord, that you would transform our hearts into knowing how deeply loved we are by you. And God, would that love multiply as we go into our workplaces, our classrooms tomorrow, our homes? Would that love be multiplied, that you are our rescuer, that you are our redeemer, that you receive us?

So God, today we say thank you as we receive your love. Would you even just verbally say, God, I receive your love. I receive your love. And we thank you, Jesus. We thank you, Jesus. It's in your name that we pray. Amen.