EPISODE 5A SERIES BY SPIRIT OF INVITATION

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NRSV)

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the

one hope of your calling,

one Lord, one faith,

one baptism,

one God and Father of all,

who is above all and through all and in all.

Ephesians 4:4-6 (NRSV)

The Triune God - who dwells in the deepest form of relationship -  offers unity. God reaches out from this deep communion to draw others in to Himself, as the very source of love.

He reaches out within relationship, as a loving parent, and He loves us with an undying love.

The Triune God - who dwells in the deepest form of relationship -  offers unity. God reaches out from this deep communion to draw others in to Himself, as the very source of love.

He reaches out within relationship, as a loving parent, and He loves us with an undying love.

This same reaching out, out of authentic deep relationship is what invitation is all about. We reach out to family, friends, even strangers sometimes. In everyday settings and out of natural conversations.

We like to live these fragmented lives, don't we?

I know that I talk like this sometimes, and I think like this all the time.

  “In my professional life” . . .

and,

“in my prayer life” . . .

As though my life is a set of puzzle pieces that can I can easily detach, separate, pack away

 Wouldn't it be nice to be one? To be whole? To be united?

 Wouldn't it be nice to be one? To be whole? To be united?

This conviction is at the very heart of the Gospel - Jesus confronts people face to face, and he invites us to follow him with our whole selves.

Because wherever you go, there you are.

Jesus doesn’t want part-time admirers, he wants disciples and followers. He doesn’t want our spiritual lives, or our family lives, or our cultural lives - he just wants our lives. He wants us to let the supposedly watertight compartments of our lives leak—no, flood—each other.

Because the same person who shows up on Sunday morning is also there at the dinner table on Friday night and at the water cooler on Monday morning.

Because wherever we go, there we are.

We're invited into the very unity of God. There, we find peace and love and justice

in a place of wholeness and cohesiveness. We meet Jesus face to face as a whole

person.

 Hear: the Lord your God is one, and he’s inviting us to be one too.

Is your life fragmented? Have you felt God pulling the different parts together?

What’s the centre of your life? Is there something at the core, around which everything else  could be ordered?

And if all of this is true, then we’re called to engage with the people around us as whole people too.

Spirit of Invitation, Invited, the Spirit of Invitation Logo, and the Diocesan Logo copyrighted by The Incorporated Synod

of the Diocese of Toronto, 2014. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,

copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United

States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For more information, visit www.spiritofinvitation.com or send us an email at info@spiritofinvitation.com

Spirit of Invitation gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Diocese of Toronto through

the Our Faith Our Hope program.

Invited is a series of short films that seek to explore what it means to engage in genuine, Christian invitation. We begin with the conviction that invitation is at the very heart of the Gospel – that Jesus invites each one of us to come and follow him, and being an invitational people is at the very core of our identity as Christians. From there, we offer thoughts, images and dreams – and we hope that you’ll join the conversation.  

One explores the place of invitation within the midst of our often fragmented lives. Real invitation takes place when we realize that we’ve received an invitation to live a life of radical unity, joined together in the unity of God. What would invitation look like if we begin from this place of unity and cohesion, and engage with those around us as whole people too?