Christ Our Anchor is an Anglican mission in Nashville, Tennessee, focused on restoring relationships with God and neighbor through worship and work.

Join us Wednesday evenings in East Nashville at 530 for a time of fellowship, followed by evening prayer at 630.

Everyone is welcome.

You can learn more about providing paid work for the glory of God’s kingdom by visiting us at ChristOurAnchor.org.

A reading from the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 6, verses 19 through the end.

I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.

For, as ye have yielded your members' servants to uncleanliness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members' servants to righteousness unto holiness.

For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.

What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death.

But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Here endeth the reading.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to St.

Mark, chapter 8, verses 1 through 9.

In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat.

And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way, for divers of them came from far.

And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?

And he asked them, How many loaves have ye?

And they said, Seven.

And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground.

And he took the seven loaves and gave thanks and break, and gave to his disciples to set before them.

And they did set them before the people, and they had a few small fishes, and he blessed and commanded them to set them also before them.

So they did eat and were filled.

And they took up the broken meat that was left seven baskets.

And they had eaten were about four thousand, and he sent them away.

Here endeth the reading.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.

Well, first off, I would like to thank everyone for being here.

We are all part of something new and exciting and something that’s going to be a huge benefit to Christ’s kingdom here in Nashville.

It’s especially important that we meet here in the early days to form this community of mentors so that as people start arriving to be apprenticed and to find community, that they find a community that already exists that can wrap itself around them.

Now, obviously, this basement is a little shabby.

The rent’s good, but also it provides a lot of opportunity.

We’re intentionally trying to make it not too nice in here to start with so that we have lots of projects.

That pile of wood over there could have been moved weeks ago, but that’s a great job for someone to do.

And our hope is that as people come, they can work here on Wednesdays at the beginning here in this basement, see real progress.

And each week as they come back, be proud to see the work they have done and to see how they are able to serve the kingdom.

And that from there, we can build and build and build.

It all makes me think about today’s gospel reading.

You know, there’s a lot going on.

We got a lot of sevens, the perfect, like complete number.

And we also have huge allusions to Holy Communion, the breaking of bread, blessing it, breaking it, being fed to the people, and them being perfectly fed and completely fed and no one leaving hungry.

Oftentimes, I think it’s easy to read Holy Scripture and think about ourselves, right?

We place ourselves as the character in the middle of the story.

And then that is true.

We are part of the story and it was written for all of us and it contains all things necessary for our salvation.

But I think it’s also sometimes important to step back and place ourselves outside of the story as one who has already received the story and to look at it from a different perspective.

And that’s what I want to think about today.

All of us in this room have received the perfect bread from Christ’s holy table.

We have been fed.

We are no longer hungry.

We are surrounded by community that loves us and encourages us and stretches us to deeper and deeper relationship with God and higher and higher levels of holiness.

But this is not common for most people.

It’s easy to take this perfect bread and put it in our basket and eat it along our journey.

But I think what we got to remember here is that this perfect bread was passed to all 4,000 men and numerous more women and children.

They shared the perfect bread.

They did not take it with them for their own journey.

And so I think that’s what we’re doing here at Christ Our Anchor.

There’s many other places you could be on a Wednesday night.

You could be at a Bible study, learning new spiritual disciplines.

You could be listening to an NT Wright podcast, going deeper and deeper into the theology of Paul.

You could be doing many, many, many different things.

And on face value, this doesn’t seem very beneficial.

Sitting in a stinky, damp basement in East Nashville, waiting for people to show up.

But I would say in so many ways, this is more important than those Bible studies, more important than those books on spiritual disciplines.

It’s here at Christ Our Anchor where we are actually going to get to live our faith and share our faith.

It’s one thing to study deeper and deeper patterns in the Bible.

It’s another thing to figure out how to live those patterns in our actual lives.

It’s one thing to learn, but an even another thing to teach, because in teaching, we understand more and more and more.

So, as we begin our journey here together at Christ Our Anchor, I pray that you will I pray that you find more to join us, both mentors and apprentices, and that we dedicate ourselves to this ministry, even when it seems silly, even when there’s only two or three of us gathered, because we got to remember that He gave them the perfect bread, and they did eat, and they were filled, and they had extra leftover.

Let this be a place of extra.

Let this be a place where the perfect bread is shared.

Let us go forth as we say every Sunday, in the name of the Lord, in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.