Super Bowl Sunday.
Hi everyone! I’m so glad you are here today.
So today is a big day in the world of sports. It’s the….Super Bowl! That’s right! If you watch football, and not everyone does and that’s ok, you’re going to see a lot of people using their bodies to play the game. And before the game, they are going to warmup and make sure they are ready to play. They’ll go out on the field and jog, stretch, and make sure their body feels warm. So I figured for today’s children sermon, why don’t we do the same? Let’s warm up but instead of warming up for a football game, let’s warm up for something that also uses our body: let’s warm up for a church service.
Okay, so are you ready? So copy what I do, ok? And we’re going to do many of the actions we do at church. So here we go. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down!
Phew! That gets a little tiring, doesn’t it? It sometimes feels like all we do in church is stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. We stand up at the beginning, sit down for the readings, stand up when we hear about Jesus, sit down when we read out prayers, stand up to sign, and sit down after communion. We actually use our body a lot during worship.
And we might not know why we do all this standing. We might want to sit down the entire time. But we don’t. We stand at very specific times – at those points when we are specifically being aware that someone special is here when we worship. Who can you guess that special person is? Jesus. Right! Jesus. It’s like when a friend comes over to our house or walks into the room we are in: we stand to welcome them. We stand to thank them for being here. We stand to invite them to come closer to us, to connect with us, to be with us. So when we stand during worship, we are welcoming Jesus into this place. Because when we gather together, Jesus promises to be here. And since Jesus is here, since Jesus shows up, we stand to welcome him, to say hello, and celebrate that his love, Spirit, and peace are here, in this space.
Thank you for being here and I hope you have a blessed week
Each week, I share a reflection for all children of God. The written manuscript serves as a springboard for what I do. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship on 5th Sunday After Epiphany, 2/4/2018.