Shane Hughes 7-5-26

I typically don't love romantic comedies. I think I've told you this before. It's because they're predictable. And once you figure out the pattern, it's not a lot there. They meet, it's interesting, they fall in love.

It's heartwarming. There's a miscommunication which could easily be avoided if people just talk to one another, but it's disastrous. And then they're sad. But after they're sad, there's a chance to clear up the communication that could have happened easier, quicker if we had just talked with one another. But then there's this delighted, happy roller coaster ending as everybody lives happily ever after.

This is the pattern. It's there. I didn't make it. I just noticed it. And now I can't watch it anymore.

But it surprised me this week I remembered an old romantic comedy. It's called About Time. And it's played. Tim is in the story. It's about Tim.

He's the guy there. It's played by Dom Hall Gleason. And Mary, she's played by Rachel McAdams. And it's about falling in love. But it's also so much more.

Amen.

It surprised me. It surprised me because underneath the Falling in Love story, there's a second story that I wasn't expecting. And I want to spend just a minute talking about that second story today. And I want to warn you, fair warning, if by the end of today you think to yourselves, I want to watch About Time do it after bedtime. It is.

It's rated R, but, but, but it is that typical romantic comedy. They meet and they. They fall in love. And there's this great scene in it where, where Mary meets Tim's family. And Tim's family is.

Is funny and they're droll and they're self deprecating in the way that only imaginary British families are. But they're also connected. And that's what you see. They're connected with this. This unguarded warmth to one another.

And you realize very quickly it's not so much that Mary is getting swept off her feet by Tim, it's that she is being invited into a family that knows how to love itself. Especially Tim's dad, who is wise and witty and would love nothing better than to constantly play ping pong with his adult son in their study. And there are all the predictable plot twists, first infatuation and first mu communications. But along the way, Tim learns somehow if he can just get the moment right, if he just tries again, if he can say the joke better if he can time the compliment better. And eventually he gets so good at this that he starts to believe that.

That the goal of the relationship is to never miss. He learns that he can be perfect with practice. And this perfection leads him into a trap of missing the moment as if it were the rehearsal instead of live.

And throughout the movie, there's this syncopation to the anxiety of the perfection in the film that Timms lives with. And that's in Tim's dad and Tim's dad constantly, consistently throughout the film embodies that presence is more important than perfection. And Tim learns this from his father. And eventually he realizes all those afternoons Tim thought they were just playing ping pong turned out to have been the whole education.

And near the end, his father gives him a piece of advice. He tells him to live every day twice. Once normally rushed, a little anxious, like we all are noticing nothing, but then tried to learn to live it again. And the second time it's the exact same day because we all have the exact same days, noticing everything, noticing the texture of the air, the faces of the people he loves, the ordinary miracle of just being there. And the culmination of this story.

And this is why I love about time is not just because love is found, but that the ability to be present is discovered.

And I wonder, I wonder if practicing presence is really a pursuit that should be engaged. I wonder what we might find this morning if we actually looked for it in this ordinary Sunday communion. The way I was taught was. Was this moment in your week to confess your sins. And the way that I grew up, it was.

It was this quiet time. It was the only quiet in the service that we experienced. But it was this quiet time is this brief pause of silence in the service where I should feel mournful for what I did that week. And then I should promise God I would try harder next week to be kinder to my siblings and to pay more attention in English class and to. I'll actually read my Bible this week, God.

And don't get me wrong, confession is good. It's just that what I was doing was all the work. I was trying to manufacture the feeling instead of just showing up for the moment to walk quietly with God in the stillness of the day.

Communion is a sacrament. It's the place in our world where heaven draws near, where everything just seems a little bit more clear. Communion reaches into the past. It reaches back into the upper room. Breaking with Jesus, bread breaking, cup pouring.

Where love sat between betrayal and betrayal. And did not flinch in the Eucharist. It reaches into the future as well. Paul tells us that in this moment we are proclaiming something until Christ comes again. And so we can imagine in our hearts and our minds this place where communion is no longer necessary because we see in full.

And so every Sunday, we gather to eat and to drink this meal that has one foot in the past and one foot in the future of memory. And it is memory, and it is hope. It's folded together, and it meets us right here in the present.

But sometimes I think that communion actually does a deeper thing. I think you can be surprised on a Sunday. I think what communion can do. The potential for communion is exactly what Tim's father in the movie was trying to teach him. It teaches us to live in this particular day, this ordinary Sunday, as if we already know how good it is.

Think about what's actually happening at this table. There's nothing especially impressive about it. It's bread, it's juice. Some places it's wine. It's a plate passed hand by hand by people who are tired and distracted or worried about something that's waiting for them as soon as they step out those doors.

It is, on the surface, a small and unremarkable moment, an unremarkable week, because the invitation of this table is not to escape into some more spiritual, elevated plane of existence. In fact, it's the opposite. It's to come back down on purpose into this ordinary moment and to actually notice it. I mean, that's the whole scandal of the Incarnation playing out again after at this small table, God showing up in the plain and the physical asking us to notice, to taste bread like you've never tasted it before, to feel the person handing you the cup and realizing this is no small thing, that somebody is choosing right now to be your neighbor in the body of Christ, that we are family, learning to love itself, connected with unguarded warmth.

And so this morning, I don't want to give you a task. I don't want to tell you to try harder or to feel something or make a grand commitment to be better. Next week, I just want to invite you to do what Tim's father suggested, live in this next moment that we're about to have. Do it twice if you have to, once on autopilot. Let it pass in your mind.

It's the way you might have walked in here today on autopilot, but then once more, right now, paying attention. Notice the hands that pass you this tray. Notice the quiet.

Notice that you are loved specifically by name by a God who sat at a table like this one and said, this is my body. It is given for you.

So I want to invite you, like Ms. Suzetta does, every. Every few weeks, to take in a deep breath. Because a deep breath is a gift from God, brothers and sisters. Take in a deep breath of love.

Take in a deep breath of hope.

Take a deep breath of courage. And let us sing together.