Nobody wakes up in the morning hoping they’ll need forgiveness. We don’t want to be the one who messed up. We don’t want to be the one who said too much… or didn’t say enough. We don’t want to be the one who hurt someone, failed someone, disappointed someone.

So instead, we do what comes naturally. We hide. We minimize. We explain it away. We tell ourselves, it wasn’t that bad… it wasn’t really my fault… they had it coming.

Because as much as we talk about forgiveness… most of us spend our lives trying not to need it. And yet—deep down—we all know the truth. There are things we can’t undo. There are words we can’t take back. There are moments we wish we could erase but can’t.

This week, we come to the cross and hear one of the most shocking things Jesus ever said: “Father, forgive them…”

Not after everything is fixed. Not after anyone apologizes. Not after the damage is undone. Right in the middle of it.

Because forgiveness may be the one thing nobody wants…but it’s the one thing everybody needs.

Scripture: Luke 23:32-34

Rev. Becca Bruner

There’s something honest about ashes.

Ashes don’t pretend.

Ashes tell the truth.

They remind us that we are fragile. That we are finite. That no matter how carefully we curate our lives — our reputations, our accomplishments, our spiritual résumés — underneath it all, we are dust.

And yet we resist that truth. We spend so much energy avoiding it. We blame others for what’s broken in the world. We manage our image. We justify our motives. We tell ourselves that the real problem is out there somewhere.

But tonight, the ashes draw the circle smaller.

Tonight is not about someone else’s greed.

It’s about mine. It’s about yours.

Ash Wednesday invites us to stop deflecting and start confessing. To stop performing and start repenting. To look at the cross and realize it wasn’t just history — it was personal.

And yet — and this is the miracle — the cross is not only the place where our sin is exposed. It is the place where God’s love is revealed.

Tonight we come forward and hear the truth:

Scripture: Isaiah 53

Most of us are rehearsing something.

Not literally, of course. You probably didn’t wake up this morning, grab a script, and start practicing lines in the mirror. But whether we realize it or not, every day we’re practicing a story about who we are and what our lives are about.

We rehearse the story that says success comes from working harder.

And we practice those stories over and over again until they feel automatic.

But what if there’s another story we’re meant to rehearse?

This week we’re talking about “the big rest” — and how every moment of Sabbath is actually a rehearsal for the story God is inviting us into.

Scripture: Hebrews 4:1-11

Last week we talked about how Sabbath restores us spiritually — how it recenters us and reminds us who we are and whose we are. But if we’re honest, there’s another kind of exhaustion many of us carry that sleep doesn’t fix.

You can get a full night’s rest and still feel drained.

We live in the most connected era in human history… and yet loneliness is everywhere. We can message anyone instantly, stream anything we want, and order dinner without ever speaking to a person. Life has never been more convenient — but somehow relationships have never felt more complicated.

This week, we’re talking about a different kind of restoration: relational restoration. What if Sabbath isn’t just about stepping away from work… but stepping back toward people? What if rest includes rediscovering the connections we were created for?

Because the truth is, we were never meant to do life alone.

Restoration is a powerful thing. Watching something old, worn down, and corroded slowly brought back to life reminds us that damage doesn’t have to be the end of the story. With time, care, and intention, what looks beyond repair can be made whole again—sometimes even stronger and more beautiful than before. There’s something deeply hopeful about that process, because we recognize ourselves in it. We know what it’s like to carry the buildup of stress, exhaustion, anxiety, and noise from the week, and to wonder how much more we can hold.

That’s where Sabbath comes in. Sabbath is God’s invitation to stop—to step out of the grind and allow ourselves to be restored. In this series, we’ve been exploring how Sabbath restores us physically and emotionally, and in the weeks ahead we’ll look at how it restores us relationally and eternally. Today, we turn our focus to spiritual restoration: how Sabbath worship recenters us, reshapes us, and reminds us who we are and whose we are. Sabbath isn’t just about rest—it’s about renewal, about being made whole again in the presence of the One who restores.

Psalm 95

You were made for joy! Joy is part of what it means to live in Christ.  Happiness is part of what it means to abide in Christ. You and I were made to be connected with Jesus, to be united the way a tree is connected to its branches. Amidst all the highs and lows of life, we were made for Christ’s joy and life to be present in us. 

Some weeks leave us gasping. We carry too much—news that never lets up, responsibilities that don’t pause, worries that follow us into bed and greet us when we wake. We grip our schedules, our work, our obligations so tightly that we don’t notice what it’s costing us… until breathing itself feels hard. And still, we tell ourselves we can’t stop. Not now. Not yet. Somewhere deep down, we fear that if we loosen our grip, everything will fall apart.

Sabbath tells a different story. It whispers that we are not slaves to production or urgency—that we were never meant to live without rhythm, without rest, without breath. In the wilderness, God gave daily bread and a double portion before the day of rest, asking His people to trust that provision would be enough. The question lingers for us now: what if stopping isn’t failure, but faith? What if rest isn’t weakness, but remembrance—of who we are, and whose we are? Sabbath invites us to release what’s blocking our breath, to trust God’s abundance over our own striving, and to discover that when we finally stop… God is already at work.

The truth is hurry IS a sickness. Hurry hurts our health – our physical health, our emotional health, our relational health, and yes, our spiritual health. 

As the modern psychologist Carl Jung once wrote, “Hurry is not of the devil, hurry is the devil.” 

So what do we do about this devil in our midst? How do we heal ourselves of the hurry sickness that pervades our hearts and our minds and, indeed the entire developed world? 

God have given us an answer, God has given us the antidote from the very beginning. To our hurry-sick souls, God has given us the gift of the Sabbath. 

For the next six weeks, we are going to be preaching through the Biblical concept of Sabbath: where it comes from, what it is and how we do it. But the power of the Sabbath comes primarily not from simply understanding it but from doing it. 

So we’re going to do both. We will grow in our understanding of Sabbath through our messages here in worship. And, hopefully, we will experience the power of Sabbath through our practice of it, using this weekly guide in our small groups or on our own. 

The incarnation takes everything we think we know about God and stands it on its head. But it’s not just that. Beyond the miracle and the mystery of the incarnation itself, there’s another incredibly important thing we need to see here. It’s about that little word ‘with’: Emmanuel is God WITH us. The incarnation isn’t just about the mystery of God becoming human. It’s about God becoming human so that he can be WITH us.

Matthew 1:18-25

Isaiah 7:14