Jeff Bjorgan

Spiritual Formation Pastor

Today is communion Sunday. Once a month we take a small “meal” together. We set aside time to take the cup and the bread that Jesus told us to take as a way to remember the significance of his death. Salvation! Life re-defined! A new way of connecting with God!

I was reading a reflection by Eugene Peterson on the tale of two cups, the cups that Jesus spoke of on the night he was betrayed. The first cup was offered by Jesus to his disciples at the last supper. Jesus said to take and remember, and we do our best to honor his command even to this day.

The second cup is one that Jesus held in his hands while praying in Gethsemane. This was the cup of God’s will, God’s will to rescue the world through the death of his son. Jesus was in agony over this cup. What he had urged his disciples to do earlier, he was now personally wrestling with: would he take and drink from the cup himself?

A cup, Peterson states, “holds a liquid that is drunk. The peculiar property of the cup is that we hold it with our hands, put it to our lips, tip it into our mouths, and swallow the contents. It requires a coordinated, willing spirit, accepting and receiving.”

We are forever grateful that Jesus to the cup and drank “a sacrificial death in which Jesus freely takes sin and evil into himself, absorbs it in his soul and makes salvation out of it…” He chose to let the contents, God’s redemptive plan, course through his veins.

There is something about Jesus’ willingness to take this second cup that is directly related to us taking the cup that he offered his disciples and still offers us today. We too are faced with a choice: by participating in this meal today, will we take something that is not of us (suffering, salvation, redemption) and allow it to become part of us, part of our everyday living, sharing in Christ’s story?

Take, drink, eat, remember. These are verbs not just of ritual, but of the decision to jump into the ways of Jesus with both feet.

Jeff Bjorgan

Spiritual Formation Pastor

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich

2 Corinthians 8:9

It is the season of Lent, that time of year where we remind ourselves of how rich we are because of the poverty of Christ.  The key words of the Corinthians passage above are poverty and rich. Lent deals intimately with both concepts. Lent gives us the opportunity to walk in poverty, to give up something as an expression of our solidarity with Christ. As we walk through the days of Lent, walking alongside Jesus (and he walking alongside us), we walk in the mandate of Philippians 2:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing…

Philippians 2:5-7a

And so, like Christ, we give up something. In our case we fast from food, or from time-consuming activities of little consequence; we resist indulgence, we attempt to live simply, we pursue modest living. These activities become reminders of the miracle and mystery of the Passion –God, dying a criminal’s death on a cross for us. In what ways can you “walk in poverty” in the weeks leading up to Easter?

Practicing poverty is not an easy thing to do when we live in one of the most powerful and wealthy societies on the planet. Lent, then, also serves to awaken us to how rich we are -not because of our material well-being, but because of the richness we have in salvation: lives transformed because of the power of the cross. Since we have great wealth in this good news, this gospel, we in turn give to others out of our abundance.  During Lent we give out of our material wealth, but we also give out of the abundance of our hearts, out of the excess of our time, and out of the skills that we’ve been blessed with.  Over the next month, in what ways will you be walking in the richness of Christ?

How are you practicing Lent? As a Christian community let’s walk together during this important time of the Christian calendar. Lent began on February 17 (Ash Wednesday) and continues through to Easter Sunday.

Jeff Bjorgan

Spiritual Formation Pastor

In your mailbox you will find a new edition of our connecting points brochure. I encourage you to look through it and discover all the different ways people are connecting at Emmanuel church. Our desire is to have every person at Emmanuel connected to others in community, whether that is through a home group, a Bible study program, a book club, or a network of friends. A connecting point is any environment, large or small, that enables people to become more like Jesus while journeying alongside others.

We believe that the Christian walk is a relational walk. It’s very difficult to work out one’s faith on a deserted Island.  We grow as Christians through our relationship with God and our relationship with others.

In his brilliant little book, In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen wrote about the importance of allowing community to inform our spiritual walk.  He writes,

“I have found over and over again how hard it is to be truly faithful to Jesus when I am alone. I need my brothers or sisters to pray with me, to speak with me about the spiritual task at hand, and to challenge me to stay pure in mind, heart, and body.”

One of my tasks I have been given as the spiritual formation pastor is to help people find Jesus within Christian community. If you are interested in being part of a connecting point, please don’t hesitate in getting in touch with me. Also, if you are interested in starting a new connecting point, whether that involves opening your home for a study or working through a creative idea that helps build community in some new way, I would love to chat with you.

Again, take the time to investigate all that we are doing in small groups. Besides the brochure, we will continually update the website small group calendar as to when the groups take place, and we’ll be providing updates of the different groups in the bulletin over the next few weeks.