Make The Moment Matter

Well, good morning, church. How many of you love Jesus today? It's one of my favorite Emanuel traditions. This is a kickoff, the message moment, just expressing our love to the Lord, and happy Palm Sunday. We're beginning Holy Week today. Love that we get to celebrate not only the death, the resurrection of Jesus, but his whole life, his impact 2,000 years ago and his impact today in each of our lives. Hey, if you have kids in our kids' ministry, you're gonna have these guides available in English and in Espanol. And what this is is a highlight guide to the different moments of Holy Week so that we can look at them together as a family. If you don't have a hard copy that you can get at the desk upstairs, we do have it digitally. You can scan that QR code in front of you, and it's available in English and in Espanol. Everyone say, en Espanol. There you go, you guys got a good accent. That's pretty great. I love the fact that we get to celebrate Jesus throughout this week, and I love the fact that today is a meaningful moment. I bring greetings from one of our Kingdom Builders team leads, my wife, Analia.

She is in Valencia, Spain, and they are coming back tomorrow. They had an incredible women's event that they were able to host, and they were expecting about 60 women. They had over 100 that showed up, which is huge numbers for Europe, so thank you, Jesus, for that. And Analia is, I've said that I've often compared her to a hummingbird, because she's just hard to keep track of. She's got energy for days and joy and laughter, loud laughter, and you know when she's around. I usually will use the AirTag to kind of track her keys, or the Find My on her phone, or I'll just listen for her laughter, right? And she's also the Queen of FOMO, and she wishes she could be here right now with you. She wants to be everywhere, all at once. But she sends her greetings and has sent all kinds of pictures of the event and pictures of the amazing food, a huge paella that they've been eating, and all kinds of seafood right on the Mediterranean coast, incredible. I'm kind of jealous, not gonna lie. I'm gonna confess that to you guys. I love the opportunity to travel. I love the opportunity to go and do mission trips, and I also love the opportunity to vacation.

One of my leaders here, one of my bosses was Pastor Dwight back in the 2000s. He was the lead pastor for a bit, and he used to always ask, he'd always say when he'd come up, he'd say, how are you doing? When's your next vacation? And that was like, it's like a life principle that he taught, and I haven't always been the best at getting that thing on the calendar. It can be a staycation. I mean, you can make it a fasting and prayer vacation so you don't have to spend any food, and then you also spend time with the Lord, right? But you can, whatever it is, that time of rest, replenishment of relationships, put it on the calendar, and you get to triple enjoy it, because you enjoy it in the anticipation building up to it. You enjoy it when you actually experience it, and then you enjoy it when you remember it, right? And so this is something that it's a discipline and a value that we're working on together as a family, and I just wanted to say, I just wanted to do a quick survey. How many of you guys, when you vacation, you're like, just throw me on a beach and flip me about halfway through the day, just like a patty, right? And you're like, I just wanna forget

what day of the week it is, right? And that's your ideal vacation, right? Okay, how many of you, you're like, we gotta cram as many experiences in as we can, and sleep is overrated, and we'll get to sleep in heaven. Let's see, where are you guys at? Running on fumes, yeah? I've got moments where I've done each of those. Let me tell you about last year, though. Last year was a big year for the Grams household. We had big, significant dates. We celebrated our 25th anniversary. Thank you, God. God's faithfulness and my wife's patience were able to make that happen, and then we also had big birthday dates, and I'm gonna tell you my wife's age just because she will tell you proudly, and she's like, I earned my age, right? And so, she turned 50 last year, and so that was a big day. You guys, I feel like you really wanna clap today. That's just, you're an easy crowd to preach to, and then my son turned 21, and my daughter turned 18, so yes, give it up for them as well. So, you know, if you do the math, that's like, that's a lot of, I didn't have a, I mean, I had a birthday too, but I'm just kind of like a footnote in the family. But we had, we had a lot of stuff to celebrate. And so we're like, okay, this is going to be an expensive year. We've been saving up miles.

I got to do the Minnesota brag, right? Hey, I got it on sale and I use miles to pay for this, right? And so we did miles and we did points and we did all the things. And Christmas 2024, we, I, we gave each of the kids like a sleep mask and they're like, what is this? And I'm like, oh, you're going to need it. Cause we're going on a family vacation. Right. And, and then we, we had this, this you know, this plan that we started to develop and I did it. I'm the travel dad, like classic travel dad. Right. Now I'm not like five hours early at the airport, but I'm the guy that knows where the passports are at, knows where, you know, we're going to be staying and you know, and then my, and my family just kind of tag along and they're like, do your thing. Just bring us along. And I did a share note getting ready for, cause I was, this was just part of the anticipation and I've got a little screen share thing that I wanted to do with you guys. This is my share note for our epic family vacation. We went to incredible, don't try to read it. You're going to get dizzy. And we hit up some bucket list spots that were like dream destinations ever since Zoe was seven. She did a Paris themed birthday. And and so we made it to Paris and we did a road trip and we did, we hit up a bunch of different spots. We did like, I was like, Oh, we're going to go to this beach. We're going to eat at this place. We're going to go to, okay, we got points for this spot. You know?

And so I traveled that. I do, I do need to confess at one point. I changed the, the, the share note rights. I gave them view only privileges because they, they were trying to tell me what we were going to do that. We can't have that happen. They needed to just accept this as the plan and we're going to have fun. You understand? We're going to have fun. And so we we did this and it was such an amazing experience to just spend time together, discover new places, have an adventure. And and, and you know, every day we'd be like, okay, top three things from yesterday. And inevitably each of us would mention the time of the car. We drove over 3000 miles in a 10 day span and and we just, we were like, okay, no time to breathe. Keep on running. And, but we made some incredible memories and and I love that we can look back and enjoy that. But you know, I've often wondered, what if Jesus did a share note for Holy Week? What would that have looked like? Because Holy Week is more than just Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. There's a lot that happened. If you read and I actually did you a favor and I, I added all the information in the Emmanuel MN app so you can go ahead and pull that up. You got it all. You don't have to memorize it as we're going through it, but let me give you a quick highlight reel for Holy Week highlights, Palm Sunday. Yesterday that Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey's fulfilling Zachariah nine, nine crowds. The crowds shout Hosanna and then they declare him king.

Blessed is the one that comes in the name of the Lord. And then we got Holy Monday because it's again, it's Holy Week. The whole week has important events happening. This day Jesus comes in and he curses a fig tree and it dries up because it had no fruit. Then he cleanses the temple and he confronts corrupt and empty worship that's happening. He's like, this space is reserved for non-Jews to be able to connect with God. You guys are turning it into a shopping mall. This can't happen. And he, and he flips tables and, and he confronts him. Then he goes back to Bethany and then on Tuesday, Holy Tuesday, he comes back into Jerusalem. He teaches at the temple. There's all of it, discourse, end times, and it's about eternity and it's about wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, and these are the things that are going to happen, but there is an eternity even beyond the end times. Then he confronts the religious leaders and their hypocrisy. And then he says, hold up, watch this. And there's a little old widow that comes and gives her offering at the temple. But Jesus is, he's so present. He's able to even notice that gesture. And he says, I know her story. I know the sacrifice she's making. She has done right now in her act of worship. And all these people that have given from their surplus, that's all on Holy Tuesday. Holy Wednesday, also known as Spy Wednesday, because of Judas, this is the day that he actually has that transactional moment, 30 pieces of silver, and I'll give you the intel on how I'm going to betray the teacher, my Lord. and actually not his Lord, right? He ended up betraying him. Holy Wednesday was dinner with friends at Bethany. That could be on your calendar right now,

like dinner with friends at this place and add the location to it. Then there's this woman that anoints Jesus in preparation for burial. Then Judas agrees to betray Jesus and the religious leaders finalize their plot. Then we go to Holy Thursday or Monday Thursday. It's not a word that we use too often. It means commandment or mandate. It's I command you to love one another, to wash each other's feet, the same way I'm doing it, to serve each other. That's the day that they have the last supper. He introduces communion as a practice to remember, to look ahead. He washes the disciples' feet. He prays in Gethsemane. He is arrested on Thursday. Then Friday, he stands, and good Friday, he stands in trial before Pilate and Herod. He's beaten, mocked, crucified. Darkness comes over the land. We have Jesus' final words on the cross, and then the temple curtain is split top to bottom. God initiates the opening of an access point to the holiness of his presence. He's the one that initiates from the top to the bottom. But that's good Friday. We still have Holy Saturday or Silent Saturday, as it's known.

Jesus' body lays in the tomb. The tomb is sealed and guarded. The disciples grieve and wait in uncertainty and fear. And then we get to, drum roll please, Resurrection Sunday, because Sunday's always on the way, and Jesus raises from the dead. He is alive forevermore. What a week. That's a lot to pack into a week. Had you or I been the Messiah, we would have probably hid in a bunker up until we were absolutely needed. Like, who's got time to go out for dinner with friends or go to the temple to teach or go to notice the widow or all those things? But Jesus knew how to keep the big picture in mind without missing the moment. He knew how to see the bigger purpose of God and still be fully present in each day. What an incredible example for us. One day, he flipped tables of corruption and injustice. And another day, he sat at tables. Two days, actually, sat at tables with friends. One day, he called out religious hypocrisy. And then another day, he stooped down, put a towel around his waist and washed the feet of the disciples, including Judah's feet. Served selflessly. One day, he heard the crowd shouting hosanna

and declaring him king. And then one day in that same week, he heard the crowds yelling, crucify him. One day, he admired the widow's sacrificial giving. And on another day that week, he sacrificially gave his own life. One day, he prayed for his disciples. He broke bread, shared the cup. And on another day that week, he said, Lord, if at all possible, pass this cup. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine. One day, he was mocked, stripped, beaten, killed, buried. But on another day that holy week, he was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit to live forevermore, amen. What a week, what an incredible journey. And there's so much packed into this. And I just wanna emphasize the fact that not, there was the cross, there was the empty tomb, there was the resurrection, but each of these moments were holy in a very unique way. And I wanna look at one story that stands out as I was reading and preparing and praying about today and this moment with you, Mark 14. Let's look for Mark 14. How many of you guys got your Bibles? Let's see, show your physical Bibles if you got them there. Digital Bibles count as well. And then you can also read the notes on your Emmanuel MN app.

I'm gonna read through the whole text that we've got, Mark 14, one through nine. And then we're gonna unpack it and see what God has to say to us today. Mark 14, verse one, it was now two days before Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The leading priests and teachers of religious law were still looking for an opportunity to capture Jesus secretly and kill him, but not during the Passover celebration, they agreed, or the people may riot. Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy. There's a whole story in that phrase. You don't previously have a chronic disease unless you're healed from it. But Jesus is in the home of this man named Simon. He previously had had leprosy while he was eating. A woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nart. She broke open the jar and poured the perfume over his head. Some of those at the table were indignant. Why waste such perfume? Why waste such expensive perfume? They asked. It could have been sold for a year's wages and the money given to the poor. So they scolded her harshly. But Jesus replied, leave her alone. Why criticize her for doing such a good thing to me? You will always have the poor among you and you can help them whenever you want to. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could and has anointed my body for burial ahead of time. I tell you the truth. Whenever the good news is preached throughout the world, this woman's deed will be remembered and discussed. Title of today's message is make the moment matter. Make the moment matter. We're going to look at some of the life lessons from this holy moment from the text that we just read. This was an important moment throughout Holy Week and it's a moment where Jesus models something for us as well. The first thing that he teaches us through this text is that we need to live connected to your people. Live connected to your people, not self-absorbed. Some of us can be so attached and

connected to ourselves that we lose sight of the people that are around us. You might say, well, what do you mean your people? Does that mean like my family? Yeah, maybe. Your people are the people that God has put in your path. The people that God has put in your life that are on the same orbit as you are. The people that God has brought into your story so that you can encourage, so that you can walk with them, so that you can be a friend to so that you can be light and salt if they don't know the hope of Jesus. Might be a co-worker, might be a friend from school, it might be a neighbor, it might be someone that you know that you overlap with at the gym a lot. It might be any of those people. It's not a matter of if I have people, it's a matter of knowing and who are my people and that's a good question to ask the Lord. Who are the people that you've put in my path? I love that Jesus modeled this because remember he's eating at the house of Simon who had previously had leprosy. So this man, and we know his name and probably the original audience from Mark would have recognized the name as well, had been impacted by Jesus' healing power. And Jesus didn't just do a drive-by healing and then just say he's gone. He actually continued to show up in Simon's life. It wasn't just about that moment of praying for him and helping him to overcome. He actually took time to slow down and have a meal with him and visit with him. Stay connected to your people and then we will be freed from this attitude of being self-absorbed. It says in Philippians 2, 4 and 5, this is super clear. Don't look out only for your own interest, but take an interest in others too. What a great phrase. Take an interest in others too. Be curious. Listen. Ask questions. You need to learn how to listen more, talk less, right? Show an interest in others. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. He's our example. He's our model. He knew how to slow down and be fully present for the people that he was with. If I knew I was getting crucified this Friday, I don't know if I'd be able to be fully present as we're eating a meal together. I'd be kind of stressed out, but Jesus had this capacity to keep the bigger picture in mind, the mission in mind, and still be fully present. How many of you know someone that's a good listener in your life? Amen. Are they not a gift from God? Amen. And then I'm not going to say, point at someone that's a bad listener and then just say, don't do that. But we also know that they still have the potential of becoming a gift from God. They're not there yet. Let's be the people that take an interest in others. I think that's one of the greatest things that we can do for the people that are in our life

is listen, be curious, show an interest in their story and their journey. It's not about what you can tell them or teach them or coach them on. It's about listening too. Slowing down. Love this phrase. This is almost too good to be a verse in the Bible. Let's read it together. It's amazing. Pull out your highlighters. Galatians 6.3, if you think you are too important to help someone, you're only fooling yourself. Watch this. You are not that important. It's in the Bible. Look it up. It's amazing. It's a little sobering, you know, like, hey, here's a little verse for you. Praying for you and I thought this was a good verse for your day, right? None of us are that important that we can't slow down and be present for others. None of us are that important. If Jesus, during Holy Week, knew how to slow down, how much more should we be present, connected to people on our journey? The question is not if we have people in our journey, it's who are the people that God has placed?

And you heard about the invites to Easter. What if we didn't think about Easter as saying, oh, sweet, we got an 8.30. That means I can go to church earlier and then I can RSVP at that great brunch that I keep, how many of you guys are getting like blasted with promos on Easter brunch, right? Come here, do this. And they got all these amazing menus. And what if it's not about what we're gonna have for brunch on Easter? What if it's about inviting someone to sit with us in one of the services? What if it's about saying, hey, I love for you to celebrate Easter together with me and I'll save you a spot. Which of these times works best for you? What if it's about sharing a post that you'll see on our church socials? What if it's about texting someone, it's about praying for someone? There's gonna be an openness to being invited like never in the rest of the year. There's just an openness and it's like appropriate to invite people to church for Easter. And if we are too caught up with ourselves and we're already savoring that brunch meal and we're losing sight of the people around us and we might be on the wrong channel, all of us have people that we can think about,

that we can pray for, that we can consider, that we can help as they're on the journey. Lesson number two, life lessons from a holy moment. Live each day with purpose, not with excuses. Live each day with purpose, not with excuses. Make the most of every moment. And I love the texts that we have. We're familiar with some of these, Psalm 118, 24. This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. There is no single day wasted in your life. Every single day has purpose. Every day has destiny for us to step into. Every day has opportunity. And if we approach every day with that awareness, it's gonna fill us with joy, with excitement. Yes, there will be challenges. There will be disappointments. There will be things to mourn. There'll be things to wrestle with. But there will be a sense of an overarching purpose that God is working and weaving through our story. Psalm 90, verse 12, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Now when this woman comes in, she breaks the salivator, the jar of perfume. And once you break it, it's not, you can't put the lid back on. Like it's a one-time. These are mainly used for weddings,

for brides to use on their wedding day and wedding night. But she breaks, she's like, this is the most meaningful, valuable thing that I have. And I can't think of something greater to do a bigger purpose for the most important thing I have in my life than to come and offer it to Jesus. And so she does this, and what happens? You got all the disciples and right away, they're like, oh, how much do you think that's worth? Oh, it's expensive perfume. Yeah, I can't, it's kind of strong. I don't really like it. It's kind of, you know, I prefer more floral scents than this. This has got too much citric in it. And they're mumbling and complaining. And they're like, oh, I lost my appetite. You know, please leave. You know, it's just, and then, and they start criticizing, mumbling, criticizing first. And then they start rebuking her. And I love Jesus' approach. He first says, leave her alone. Why criticize her for doing such a good thing? Who can determine? And if our actions are a waste or if they're good, the audience are one. God is the ultimate one to say, this is not a waste. What you are doing is worthwhile. There is purpose in what you're doing.

Others might not notice it, but if he calls it good, then it's worthwhile. Amen. And then he says, he goes on to say, she has done what she could. What a great phrase. We spend so much time thinking about what we can't do that we become inactive or passive or procrastinators. She didn't do that. She said, this is what I can do and I'm gonna do it. She has done what she could do. Proactivity, faith, hope and action. And then he shifts the focus. And he says, you will always have the poor among you. So what did they say? The Gospel of Matthew says it was actually the disciples that were saying this. They were like, oh, she should have done something more noble, something more useful, something more practical. Like, you know, we could have sold this, a full year's wages. You know how many poor people we could have fed with that? They got a lot of opinions about what could be done, but are they actually doing anything for the poor? And that's what Jesus is calling them out on. He says, you will always have the poor and you can help them whenever you want. There will always be need. There's always opportunity.

Stop looking at what you can criticize in other's action as you validate your inaction or you make excuses for your inaction. What can you do? And he shifts this. And then he says, you won't always have me. They should have known better. He's been announcing that he's gonna die, that he's gonna be, you know, that he's gonna be betrayed, that he's gonna, that the religious leaders are gonna take his life. They should have known this, but somehow they missed the point. And this woman had the lucid faith to be able to recognize this is a holy moment. I'm gonna offer the best thing that I've got to Jesus. He deserves my best. And then he confronts him and he says, you know, you've gotta stop making excuses, stop pointing, stop criticizing. You know, when we get so caught up in criticism, it's really hard to keep the good news in sight. And it's really hard for a critical tone and critical life and critical voice to have an appealing communication of the good news. When we are all about what we are against, we miss an opportunity to share what we are for. And in this day and age, you know, while everyone's managing the moment and they're having opinions and they're speaking,

they wanna make their thoughts known about commenting on what's going on, what's happening. They're missing the moment, the sacred moment that was right in front of them. This woman made the moment matter. Third lesson that we have from this holy moment, live for impact, not for recognition. We know whose house it was, Simon, but we don't know the name of the woman. And there's, just to be clear, there's a lot of stories that are similar throughout the scriptures. There's one story where a woman came in and she cried and she wiped Jesus' feet with her hair. There's another story where we have Jesus, in fact, the day before Palm Sunday, they're at the house of Lazarus and Mary comes and breaks a perfume and does something similar. But the timing in the Gospel of John is different and it's a different home, there's distinction. So it's not a unique, like, one-off event. This kind of thing happens often in Jesus' ministry. But in this particular story, even though Jesus says her story, what she did will be discussed, it'll be talked about anytime the good news is shared. And that's what we're doing today. Her name is unknown. We don't know who it was.

Good friend of mine pointed out a short story from the book of Ecclesiastes. It's brilliant. I just wanna share it with you guys. Three verses, and it says so much. So Solomon writes, he says in Ecclesiastes 9, 13 through 15, here's another bit of wisdom that has impressed me as I have watched the way our world works. There was a small town with only a few people and a great king came with his army and besieged it. A poor, wise man knew how to save the town and so it was rescued. But afterward, no one thought to thank him. Can you be that poor wise man in the story? Are you okay with anonymity? Are you okay living without recognition? This is especially hard in our day and age, in our culture that promotes virtue signaling, and it promotes public statements, and it promotes image and reputation management. But can we be okay with living for impact without needing the recognition? Something to wrestle with. Virtue signaling says, I want people to know where I stand on this item and this issue and everything that you wanna throw at me. Jesus invites us to live in such a way that people know who we are and who we are becoming, not by our words, not by our posts, not by our statements, but by our fruit, by our actions.

Doing good is better than being associated with good. And I think too often we fall in the trap of making a statement about an issue, and we forget that we actually have to act beyond that. We make a post and we feel like, oh, I did my duty, I did my job, or we wanna do something good and we wanna make sure that it's publicized. But this woman not only gave the most precious thing she had, she is remembered for her action, not for her name. Live for impact, not for recognition. Final thing that we learn from this story, live to worship Him, not to serve yourself. Live to worship Him, not to serve yourself. What if we redirected the energy that we waste on judging and criticizing? We put our heart into worshiping God and giving Him our best. And when I'm talking about worship, I'm saying more than just singing. Singing is a big part of worship, but faithful living is the greatest experience of worship. It's being in, when we're unseen, when we're not recognized, when we're unknown, walking in integrity, walking in obedience, walking in faithfulness, that's the greatest worship that we can offer the Lord. Romans 12, one and two says, and so do your brothers and sisters.

I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Another version says, this is a reasonable way to worship Him. It's the most logical way to worship Him, is to offer all of who we are to Him. Live in a way that we are surrendering our lives to Him, day in and day out, not just for a few minutes at the top of the service on a Sunday morning. Not just in your commute on the way to work where you put some worship music on the background as you're multitasking in your mind. It's about our actions. It's about our steps that we take. It's about our reactions. Live to worship Him, not to serve yourself. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Worship is to offer God our obedience. I think of that woman stepping in, and just with humility, giving the best that she could to Jesus. I think of the waste, and the story is not that perfume that was poured out.

The waste is the proximity to Jesus without realizing that was a holy opportunity. The disciples were actually wasting their opportunity to worship the Lord. And today, I wanna take a moment to reflect on this. We're gonna sing in just a bit, but as I said, worship is so much more than singing. Worship is about saying, God, I want you to be at the center of my focus. I want you to be the one that brings everything else into perspective. I wanna build my life on you. I wanna build my relationships on you. I wanna build my home, my marriage, my family, my parenthood, my grandparenthood. I wanna build my projects, my dreams, everything centered around you. I don't want you to be an accessory, or an appendix to how I do life. I want you to be at the center, Jesus. And if we're able to live in such a way connected to others, not self-absorbed, living for impact, not for recognition, living in such a way that we are worshiping Him and not serving ourselves, we'll be able to make every moment that God has gifted to us holy and dedicated to Him. Amen. I want you to stand to your feet with me today as we take a moment, and before we begin to sing and we live each day with purpose, not with excuses, we're going to sing in a moment. Here's one of the challenges, sometimes we just kind of lock into the lyrics of someone else's inspired prayer and song, which is great because it gives us, it's like the training wheels for worship.

But if that's where it ends, then we haven't even scratched the surface. What if today we open up our hearts and our lives to Him and we say, God, the most precious thing that I have, whatever it is, the best that I have, I want to offer to you, God. I want to offer my life, my dreams, my future, my challenges, all of who I am. Would you do that? Could you just close your eyes for a moment? If you're comfortable doing so, just raise your hands towards heaven and just say, God, here I am. You know me. You know me more than I know myself, Lord. And I just want to present all of who I am to you. I don't want to live distracted. I don't want to miss the moment. I don't want to just go into autopilot with traditions. And I want to make a current, genuine, heartfelt life of worship for you. Just like that woman poured out her perfume, God, I want to pour out my soul for you today. Lord, I want to build my life on you. I want to ask you to be at the center of who I am, of how I live. We honor you, Lord. We worship you. We love you.