Immanuel's Way

Not everyone has had the same experience of Jesus. For some, following him has been the most life-giving thing that ever happened. For others, what was done in his name left real wounds that are still there. And a lot of us have spent years trying to figure out the difference between the Jesus we find in the gospels and the version of Jesus that keeps showing up in the news.  

This Sunday we are going back to the beginning. Before Christianity was a religion, before there were denominations or doctrines or debates about who is in and who is out, there was a way. The earliest followers of Jesus did not call themselves Christians. They called themselves followers of the Way. A way of living so specific, so compelling, so unlike anything the world had handed them, that it needed its own name.  

We are going to spend some time with the words Jesus spoke on the last night of his life to a room full of frightened, confused people who did not know what was coming. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." We are going to ask what those words actually meant in that room, to those people, in the language they were spoken in before they were pulled out of context and turned into something else entirely.