Sermon Tone Analysis

Have you ever lost focus on a project, and everything got messed up?

It seems that every week, I struggle with my focus during sermons.

Maggie and I had a heart to heart a few weeks ago, trying to understand the pressures that each other face.

And I told Maggie that many times writing sermons is like wrestling with Satan until it is done.

I sit down to prepare and write the sermon, and I am accosted by so many distractions, distractions from inside me.

Distractions from outside of me.

And I lose focus, and then the sermon takes longer and is more difficult to write.

I think about Peter, sitting on the boat.

You might remember the story.

He and the rest of the disciples were sailing to the other side of the lake after the feeding of the 5 thousand.

Jesus had stayed behind for crowd control and for some private praying.

He then walks on the water out to the boat.

All the disciples are scared out of their mind.

Jesus says: “take courage!

It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

Peter, the brave man that he is says: If it is really you, tell me to come to you on the water.

And Jesus says: come.

Peter gets down out of the boat.

Remember, the boat is in the middle of the lake.

It is windy, so the waves are pretty big.

But, Peter gets out of the boat and starts walking towards Jesus.

Then he looks around, and sees the wind, becomes afraid, and starts to sink.

Jesus catches him and says: you of little faith, why did you doubt?

Peter lost focus and started to sink.

That is me.

That is you.

It is human to take our eyes off of Jesus, even in the middle of a worship service centered around Jesus.

And if we take our eyes off of Jesus here, we will definitely take our eyes off of him during the week.

Our goal in the worship service is to realign our focus, so that we can keep it during the week.

Paul is urging the Corinthians to change the way that they worship.

Last week, we talked about the attitude of worship: humility, unity, service, and focus.

This week, we will dive into the focus of worship.

Let’s read the whole passage:

We are going to focus on the middle section today, verses 23-26.

The Focus of Worship.

Will you pray with me?

Let’s talk about the focus of Worship, put in a word: Jesus, but you pay me to be more long-winded than that.

1. Focus on Jesus: his life

This passage is an explanation of the Lord’s Supper, communion, Eucharist, whatever you want to call it.

If you are interested in why there are different names, we can talk.

For the early church, the Lord’s Supper was the culmination of their service.

They would sing, they would listen to teaching about the Bible and Jesus.

Then they would take the Lord’s Supper as a commitment to live for Jesus until they met again, committing to apply the truths they had just heard to their lives.

It was a way of snapping their focus back to Jesus, as we always need.

The formula, or ritual, is very specifically worded to point to several things.

First, there is a focus on Jesus’ life.

We believe in a literal person who lived 2000 years ago.

This man’s birth was witnessed by his mom and his dad, by shepherds, by wise men from the east.

Everyone in the small town Nazareth knew him growing up.

When he became an adult, people from all over Judea, Samaria, and Galilee knew who he was.

The fact that Jesus lived 2000 years ago is not contested.

The fact that Jesus was a great, moral teacher also is not contested.

Other religions point to Jesus as a great teacher, someone who should be studied.

For us, knowing that Jesus literally lived, and that he lived a specific way.

Our focus should be on imitating how he lived.

His life was about dying so that other’s might live.

He left the glories of heaven to live among us.

When he became an adult, he left a great occupation as a carpenter to become a homeless man, wandering the countryside.

Why did he do this?

So that he could help the world out their shameful existence, into the hope of a relationship with the creator of the universe.

As he wandered the countryside, he was met by crowds, and he looked on them with compassion.

His compassion drove him to help them physically, with their diseases and sicknesses.

But, his compassion also drove him to help them spiritually, by teaching about the kingdom of God.

His compassion reached out both physically and spiritually, not one or the other.

His continual dying to self in order to help others culminated on the night before he died.

Right before they had the last supper together, which our Lord’s supper commemorates, he washed his disciples’ feet.

He did the role of a servant, even though he was the master, showing that his followers were to have the attitude of a servant.

Even up until his betrayal by Judas, he was teaching and caring for his disciples spiritually.

When he was hanging on the cross, he was caring for those around him, begging God to forgive those who were hurting him.

Asking John to take care of his mother.

Jesus’ life majored on giving to others, meeting physical and spiritual needs.

When we come together to worship, we have a focus on his life.

2. Focus on Jesus: his death

Next, our focus is Jesus’ death.

Jesus takes the bread,

The disciples are floored at what he says.

Jesus is following the normal outline for a Passover meal at this time.

The meal is opened by giving thanks to God:

“Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Creator of the produce of the earth.”

Then the person officiating over the Passover lifts up the bread and says:

“This is the bread of affliction that our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt.”

Important to note, no one in the Passover meal ever thought that the piece of bread was literally the bread from the Passover in Egypt.

The wording was used to draw the participant into remember all that Israel went through in their redemption, so that they would picture themselves in the past, as slaves, as needing rescued by God, remembering their salvation.

But, Jesus does not say: this is the bread of affliction, but he said:

The disciples had to have been in shock at this radical change from tradition.

It was seared into their minds, being passed down from generation to generation to us.

Jesus urged his disciples to celebrate this meal in remembrance of him, just as the Passover was in remembrance of what God did for the Israelites, rescuing them out of Egypt.

The breaking of the bread symbolized Jesus’ death.

As he took the unleavened loaf, breaking it, it graphically symbolized his body being torn apart.

We know how he died, but in our sanitized society, we don’t always allow ourselves to remember as we take Communion.

As we crunch down on our crackers, we don’t always picture Jesus’ body being broken.

We don’t hear the slash of the whip across his back, his skin torn apart to the bone.

We don’t see the crown of thorns drilling into his scull.

We don’t picture the nails being driven into Jesus hands and feet.

As his arms were stretched across, we don’t hear and feel the bones popping out of their sockets.

After he breathed his last agonizing breath, we don’t experience the tearing of the flesh as the spear was stabbed into his side.

Amazingly, no bones were broken in his body.

But his body was torn apart, just as he tore the bread apart.

When we come together to worship, our focus is on his death, because his death is the reason we are here.

He died the death we should have died.