May 15, 2011
Window to Wonder #3: Understanding God's Heartbreak
"And a sword will pierce your heart."

Sunday Morning: Daybreak & Refresh

Core Ideas:

• We cannot understand God's heartbreak at the Cross watching Jesus die
  1. God is God and we are not
  2. God had the power to prevent the Cross but didn't to save us
  3. God knew the people who killed Jesus better than they knew themselves and yet didn't stop them or destroy them when he could have.
  4. And there are many other ways we cannot understand and why we cannot fathom what the Cross meant in the life of God.
• But we can better understand Mary's heartbreak — we can imagine it and some have experienced it!
  1. The agony of a other losing her son
  2. The dreams of her son being the Messiah seemingly shattered and lying in pieces at her feet
  3. The compassionate concern Jesus showed her as he died
  4. The struggle to understand what he was doing and why he wasn't living up to her idea of Messiah that led up to the Cross.
  5. All these things, this grief, confusion, anger, hurt, and her heart being crushed we CAN understand. Mary is our window into the heart of God!
  6. Just as we cannot understand some things in this life, there was no way for Mary to understand her son as a crucified Messiah — it defied anything anyone anticipated, that's why they simply could not understand Jesus' predictions.
  7. But more than a crucified Messiah, that was Mary's little boy. The body she had washed as a baby, the fingers that curled around her own, the hands she had mended when he had a rough day learning from Joseph in the carpenter's shop.
• Feel the power of these quotes from Scot McKnight:

  But, the real Mary heard the thud of pounding nails and the sounds of piercing pain. Mary barely comprehended that it was for her that her son died. But she stood near the cross as an act of faithful allegiance ot her son, and the real Mary embraced the real cross — as her son writhed upon it.
  It is one thing to be a follower of Jesus, it was another to follow Jesus as his life rolled into the unknown future. Mary was that kind of follower.
  The women at the cross, including Mary, were disciples of Jesus, not spectators. Mary's presence at the cross involved more than motherly care for a son. These women stood near the cross because they were disciples.
  Mary was faithful to her son — as son and as Lord — even if it meant absorbing the humiliation of the crucifixion.
  Once Jesus was raised from the dead, Mary's faithfulness at the cross would blossom into the conviction that God's redemptive work had occurred when she, with her friends, stood with tears in their near the cross of Jesus.
  At that moment, though, the cross was a blatant act of violent death for her son.
  A cross was a brutal instrument used by brutal leaders to scare everyone into submission and to wreak vengeance on the enemies of the State.

Key Focus:

• Before these events, at the very beginning of Jesus' life, there was an ominous pair of thunderclaps in Jesus' young life that warned of impending conflict and a collision with danger and death:
1. Herod's massacre of the infants, a reminder and warning of the stakes in this dangerous Messiah game — Matthew 2:1-18
2. Simeon's joyous welcome of Jesus as Joseph and Mary steadfastly honored the law of the Lord with their child, and then the ominous warning in Simeon's final words — Luke 2:22-34

SH!FT Elements:

• MINISTER_selflessly — as Mary and Joseph give their lives to raising Jesus, something that is clearly above their pay grade!
• GIVE_sacrificially — can anything be more a sacrifice than Mary's love for her son, loving and spiritually raising him, then feeling rejected by some of his words, and then watching him humiliated, abused, and murdered?
• GO_fearless — as in every phase of her life, Mary is fearless! She is loyal to her son when she doesn't understand and she is there at the Cross while he dies!

Key SoHills Emphasis:

• Next Week is graduating senior Sunday
• Graduating University Students' last Sunday with us
• Upcoming Mission Trips
• Basic Plan
  1. Welcome - special word to our university grads and their families who are visiting
  2. Shepherd Announcement - Transforming Community contribution total, and thank you to congregation
  3. Children's Offering - VBS promo vid (<1 minute)
  4. Sending - Comedy show & Tornado relief opportunity

Key Scriptures:

• Luke 2:25-35 suggested for use in Scripture reading
• John 19:25-37 for use in sermon
• John 19:25 suggested for use in communion with drama piece by Rob and others in drama team
• John 19:33-37; Revelation 1:5-7; cf. Zechariah 12:10-11 — key underlying set of connected Scriptures that will be used in the sermon

Communion Focus:

• You Have Always Been Drawn to Wood — reworked for a multi-group drama or set of voices off stage with Rob as the teller of this story?
• Jesus was a real person, with a real mother who he left behind, and her story is a window for us into the heart of God!

Drama, Media, & Connecting Pieces:

• Pre-video: TBD
• Drama Piece: See communion devotional above

Sunday Evening: Sundown

• Title: Get Your Hands on the Wealth Eph. 3:14-21

• Speaker: Jack Walker

• Prayer & Eph. 3:14-21: Charles Howard

• Communion Devotional: Joe McKissick

• Song Leader: Glen Wallace

• Closing Shared Reading: Philippians 4:12-13