There is no relationship more intimate than this.
A call to worship.
Themes
A profound mystery • One-flesh • Marriage • Union with Christ • A personal and intimate union • Communion
Our union with Jesus Christ is a participation in the most personal and intimate union that has ever and will ever exist.
Scripture reading
Ephesians 5:29–32 1 Corinthians 6:15–17 John 17:20–23
This call to worship1 comes from three passages that seem too impossible to be true. So, unfortunately, we turn passages like this into metaphors… and we drain them of their meaning and their power.
In the letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he reveals a profound mystery. He wrote this: No one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church because we are members of His body. As the Scriptures say, “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery — this mystery of two people becoming one flesh — it is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. And then to the folks in Corinth, he wrote something very similar. He wrote: Do you not know that your bodies — your physical bodies — are members of Christ? For, as it is written, “…the two will become one flesh.” He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him. And Jesus Himself, on behalf of you and me, prayed the following to His Father: I do not ask for these only (speaking of only His disciples), but also for those who will believe in Me (that’s us) through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.
Prayer
God in heaven, we confess that we have a hard time believing that what You have declared to us and about us is in fact really true. Particularly, this profound mystery: that we share a one-flesh relationship with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, illustrated by our own marriages, the most intimate of all possible human relationships we can imagine. It seems, Father, that the union we have with Christ is in fact so intimate, and so intensely and profoundly personal that even our very bodies are involved. Jesus himself prayed to You for us. And His request of You is breathtakingly extravagant. He prayed that we would exist inside the unity that You two share together. There is no union more intimate — There is no union more personal — than the union You have with Your Son. And He prayed that we be incorporated into that very same relationship that the two of You have together. Our union with Jesus Christ is a participation in the most personal and intimate union that has ever and will ever exist. In the name of Jesus, who has joined Himself to us and in so doing has brought us into intimate communion with You, Amen
Inspiring resources
A call to worship creates wonderment, amazement, curiosity, yearning, captivation, provocation, hopefulness, thankfulness, affection, rapture, delight. As these mix together, the response is worship.
If this call to worship leaves you wondering or curious or provoked or hopeful, consider diving into this awesome book that inspired me.
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, May 8, 2022.