What an epic weekend at Journey. Looking back it’s pretty clear that it was indeed the Lord’s leading that brought us into this JESUS CREED series.
The weekends have been amazing! I don’t throw that word around because it’s so overused. But in this case… amazing!
During this season we are taking communion every week. I knew that would be a fantastic move for us, but I had no idea it would be as cool as it has been. There have been some powerful moments. A couple of ladies came up to me after a service. One grew up going to church and taking the bread and wine every week, never experiencing anything other than chewing and swallowing. But something happened this weekend! She approached the table and began to weep. She’d done something LIKE this a thousand times before. But God was drawing near, filling her and she could only weep. She had to find someone to pray about this so made her way to our prayer team. This is why you got to be present with others! 
MESSAGE: This week we looked at Mark’s unique story of the Jesus Creed (Mark 12:28-34). Mark presents it as a sincere guy, a guy who has been at this religion thing for a long time, a recognized expert in the Bible, who from the depth of his being just had to ask this one in whom he saw that IT, “what’s this all about”.
One of the insights that struck me in the course of the week was the question: “What commandment is the foremost of all?” It dawned on me is that they asked the question this way because that is the context in which they were immersed. The answer to life the center of it all of course had to be a “commandment”. The remarkable thing about Jesus response is that while giving them a commandment, from the Torah (some of the factions present didn’t consider the non-Mosaic parts of the Bible as authoritative as the first 5 books) he took them beyond to what was underneath ALL the commandments. It’s significant to note that in our context we would probably ask the question differently. We would probably say – o.k. Jesus, what’s this all about? What is the core of this? Even though I know religion I’m lost. Jesus points us to relationship.
Of course the center of the message for this week is “ONE”. We keyed in on the fact that only in Mark’s version of the story is Jesus recorded as actually saying the Shema part the “hear O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is ONE!”
IT’S EVERYWHERE – What I really am stoked about is how pervasive this is becoming in our community. It’s on our lips. It’s in our houses. It’s at our work. It’s in our small groups. May God integrate the Jesus Shema into the very fabric of our lives!
