I threw my sermon manuscript out the window this morning. Below is the transcript of my sermon. Our modern worship service gathered for the first time in 18 and what I had prepared, I guess I’ll save for a rainy day.

It's so good to see you all. It's been a while, six months shy of two years. Since we last gathered in the space, the last time we were all in this room together, which I until this past week, turned into my personal recording studio was March 5 2020.

Let that sink in for a moment, I'm gonna do an abbreviated sermon, I've got a whole thing here, the church will post it on the website, or somewhere if you really want to read it. But the heaviness of this past year, 18 months, almost two years, and the heaviness of what is ahead of us as we try to navigate coming out of a pandemic, I think has gotten lost. As we begin to gather again, as we begin to, whether it's going to restaurants and bars, or college football games or church on Sunday morning, all of those can be a communal religious experience. They all have their own liturgy that go along with them.

But I don't want us to miss that we're not quite there yet. We've made a lot of progress. And we still have some work to go.

Which is exactly what Jesus was talking about. Jesus asked, Peter asked the disciples, who do you say that I am after the crowds and said that Jesus was a reincarnation of John the Baptist or the prophet Elijah or any of the other prophets of the Hebrew Bible?

And Peter responded by saying you are the Messiah, not an incorrect answer for Peter to say, as Peter is he's usually right. He's just doesn't have the entire answer. The Messiah that Peter expected, wasn't a kicking Messiah, someone that was going to come into town and throw off the chains in the pains of occupation that Israel had experienced for most of its existence, whether it was while they were in Egypt, under while they were enslaved, or during the exiles are now under Roman occupation. That is what the Messiah Peter is talking about is supposed to do. But then Jesus says, hang on, this messianic secret is not ready for the masses. Hold on, Peter, I haven't even told you what I'm all about. All you've seen me do is walk on water healed the blind, heal those who had been assaulted by demons. And then so Jesus goes into this whole thing about what it means to follow Him, you have to take up your cross, you have to deny oneself, in order to follow Him, will deny oneself.

We've been doing that for the past 18 months, some of us better than others. And I'm reminded on the 20 year anniversary of 9/11, about how well so many of us so many of you denied yourselves for the sake of someone else in the aftermath of that tragedy, but attack and the way we've denied ourselves coming, going into a pandemic. You stayed home. You were very, very patient with me and pastor Jeff, and the church as we navigated how do we do church? online, it was this thing we always talked about that maybe we should figure out how to do online church, but we'll get to that one day. It was forced upon us and we had to figure it out in less than 48 hours and we're still figuring it out.

We stayed home all of us. We ate stuff that was in the back of the pantry. members of the congregation helped us La Cocina helped us by allowing us to send them

Hey, I've got this random assortment of orzo, tomato paste, soy sauce, and canned mushroom soup. What can I have for dinner? Oh, just do this, this, this, and this, we've helped one another.

To deny one's self as Jesus instructs us is to put ourselves second, plain and simple, it's to put ourselves second for the sake of the gospel for the sake of the two commands that Jesus will give His disciples. Those are to love God, first and foremost, and to love our neighbors.

But what happens when we don't do that quite well.

Because it will happen, we did a great job at the beginning of the pandemic, I remember going to Costco at the very beginning, like when it was like, Alright, something's about to hit the fan, like, maybe I should stop stock up on what we call mommy and daddy juice, like, we're gonna be locked in the house with two kids for a while, we need to have provisions.

So I went to Costco, over in Crystal City, Pentagon City, which is, you know, if you want to know where hell on earth is, it's Costco and Pentagon City any time of the day, really. But you add in the mix of a pandemic, and I said to Allison, I was as I was leaving the house, you know, where all the paperwork is if I don't make it back.

But as I got there, it was the most pleasant experience I've ever had in a mass distribution center. People were acting as neighbors in Northern Virginia, inside the beltway. That doesn't happen. We don't do that. We don't allow people to take parking spaces from us, we cut them off, we give them the bird, and then we don't look back. That's how we operate. And yet at the beginning of this pandemic, we said, You know what, we're going to do things a little different.

And so for the church, that difference is what we have been called to do our entire existence. Peter, the guy who always got it wrong, the point to shoot aim disciple is the rock upon which the church has been built. Christ has built his church upon the one who never got it right, who is constantly being rebuked. And so for us, to follow him, for us to take up our cross. And to follow him is to know that Christ is still going to be at work. Christ is still at work during this pandemic, Christ is still at work as we try to figure out how to get out of this thing when our neighbors don't want to act as our neighbors when loving one another has been set aside for the sake of my own comfort, all of that stuff that we did 18 months ago, 16 months ago, 14 months ago. That's the stuff the church has been called to do since the very beginning.

And we haven't always got it right.

But what Jesus told his disciples was not to get it right 100% of the time. It was just follow. Follow my example. Because guess what, when you do get it wrong, Peter, when I am on my way to the cross, and you deny me three times, Peter, I'm still going to do amazing things through you. So the good news for us is that while we may not always get it, right, Christ is going to work through us, whether we like it or not. Christ is going to get it right. When we choose to look the other way. And praise be to God, but it's not up to us.