"To be human is to be on a quest. To live is to be embarked on a kind of unconscious journey toward a destination of your dreams. As Blaise Pascal put it in his famous wager: “You have to wager. It is not up to you, you are already committed.” You can’t not bet your life on something. You can’t not be headed somewhere. We live leaning forward, bent on arriving at the place we long for."
- Smith, James K. A.. You Are What You Love

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Last week framed the series as being about discipleship.
A shift in how we view discipleship.
We are not primarily thinking things, we are lovers - made to worship, made to desire.
Your life flows from what you love not what you think.
And so we should pay attention to what we love.

Love sets our direction in life.
We are not static beings. We are all headed somewhere.
What you love is leading you somewhere

Somewhere = Telos = end, goal, final aim, ultimate objective

Last week was “What do you want?”
Today is “What telos do you want?”

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A telos is not mainly taught, it's more something that is caught.
We are fascinated by it, captivated by it.

There are many to choose from in our world.
Examples - Money, Sports, Power, Frame, Technology, Pleasure
These images capture our imaginations and pull us towards them.

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Into a world full of teloses…come’s Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God
When you read the gospels it’s all an alternative telos.
A vision of a rival kingdom and a rival king which you can aim your life toward and give your life to.

Jesus would invite people to trade their telos for his vision of the kingdom.
Repent and believe = trade your telos
You can aim at those other teloses and they’ll eat you alive. They'll never satisfy.

Only the kingdom and the king will satisfy. There is an unstoppable hunger and thirst for them.
- Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
- Psalm 42:1-2 – As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
- Isaiah 55:1 - Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
- Jesus - “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).

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Staying Power Poem
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/42166/staying-power

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What telos do you want?
We want to be captured by a vision of the kingdom and its king and cultivate our lives to grow in our love for them through the liturgies/rhythms/habits we live.
We need to have our imaginations recaptured.

John 1 - First words of Jesus - "What do you want?"
John 20 - First words of the resurrected Jesus - "Who are you looking for?"

Peter - Journey from thinking the right things about Jesus to loving who Jesus really is.

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Communion is a liturgy that shapes our hearts

1. Mark 14:25 - 24 “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. 25 “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
- Shapes us because it takes us back to that night – with tangible symbols
- Shapes us because we repeat the promise – one day the kingdom will come again in it’s fullness – it creates longing

2. “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”– 1 Cor 11:26
- Shapes us because we proclaim something - There is a Lord, there is a king – and he died for the sins of the world and defeated death and he’s coming back

3. Transforms because the elements represent his body and blood
- In Christianity we give ourselves over to a God who gave himself. Who sacrifices himself.
- He was wounded for our faithless desires , crushed for our wandering affections and upon him was the punishment for every heart of stone (Jen Pollock Michel).
- The king who calls and carries us toward this telos
- The king who is bringing this kingdom, which means it’s not ours to carry, we just get to ride the wave, to participate

4. Many Christians have…uniquely present – and if you’re not the mystical type, then perhaps you’d rather say that we are more present
- Either way, something unique happens to us when for years and decades we take the bread and the cup together.