Our worship series, Reaching in Love, continues this Sunday with reflection on what it means to witness to “the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1.8: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Palestine in the time of Jesus
We’ve been using Michael Franti’s “Say Hey, I Love You” throughout our worship series. “Say Hey” describes traveling the world and falling in love:
This one goes out to you and yours – Worldwide!
I say hey I’ll be gone today
But I’ll be back all around the way
It seems like everywhere I go
The more I see
The less I know
But I know one thing
That I love you
Where are some of the places you have visited for vacation or for work or for school or for service & mission? Who are the people you have fallen in love with in those places? How might these experiences inform your understanding of Jesus’ call in Acts 1.8 to witness to the “ends of the earth?”
For those of you in Kitchen Tables that include Searching the Scriptures in preparation for worship on Sunday, what other questions or concerns or ideas emerged in your conversation?
In the After Worship Kitchen Tables, these ideas resonated with us:
– That every little bit helps because there is always someone who is less fortunate.
– “We” are also the ends of the earth.
– Service looks different in all communities and when broken down still addresses going to the ends of the earth and being a witness.
“Messianic Secret” Inspired by John 2:1-11 14″x18″ Acrylic on canvas
The Wedding at Cana is my favorite text because there is a lot of humor in it. There’s humor in a mother approaching her son and telling him to do something without ever actually telling him to do it. There’s his pouty resistance to his mother’s non-demand while she completely ignores him and paints him in a corner. There is humor in a raucous wedding reception where the people are so “lit” that the wine has run out. And, for me, it’s particularly humorous that there’s this huge, beautiful secret of which only a few people are aware.
Those people include Jesus’ mother and the select servants who help him pull off the miracle that inaugurates his ministry. Servants are normally meant to be inconspicuous, so I wanted to focus on the servant who goes to the chief steward with a cup full of what, as far as he’s concerned, is water.
If Jesus—whose ministry has not started, so there haven’t been any wonders associated with him yet—tells you to fill jars with water and draw from the jar to give to the chief steward, what is going through your mind at that moment? I invite the viewer to focus on this servant and all his curiosity and expectation, and think of a time when you were surprised by something God did. What actions preceded the miracle? Did it make sense? What did you know, and what was hidden from you? What “secrets” might God be keeping from you now as God works clandestinely on your behalf?
One Comment
bettyloumoli
In the After Worship Kitchen Tables, these ideas resonated with us:
– That every little bit helps because there is always someone who is less fortunate.
– “We” are also the ends of the earth.
– Service looks different in all communities and when broken down still addresses going to the ends of the earth and being a witness.