Worship Service for November 16, 2025
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: O Sing to the Lord a new song for He has
done marvelous things.
P: His right hand and His holy arm have
gotten Him victory.
L: Let the sea roar and all that fills it;
P: The world and those who live in it.
L: Let the floods clap their hands;
P: Let the hills sing together for joy.
L: For the Lord is coming to judge the earth.
P: He will judge the world with
righteousness, and the people with equity.
L: O sing to the Lord a new song, for He has
done marvelous things.
Opening Hymn – Come, Ye Thankful People, Come #551/797
Prayer of Confession
Father, we thank You for the
promise of a new heaven and a new earth.
We praise You for the wonders You have declared You will perform. As we wait, O Lord, we ask that You cleanse
us from all unrighteousness. Forgive us,
Lord, for the times when we doubt; when we let our hands lie idle and our
hearts focus on the wrong things.
Forgive us, Lord for the times when we have sinned, for when we have
deliberately ignored and broken Your law, or turned away from You due to
ignorance and neglect. Help us, Lord, to
overcome the evil one as we wait for Your revealing. Put within us a new spirit of commitment,
dedication, and joy. Touch us and make
us whole. (Silent prayers are
offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new
creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God to whom we have been
reconciled by Christ.
P: Thanks be to God!
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Gracious and loving
God, we lift to you our prayers and praises for all of your people. You alone are Lord over all the earth. The nations are in your hands, under your
judgment, at your mercy. For the whole
creation, and all who dwell within it, we pray.
Care for those who are ill, for those who suffer at the whim
of disease, for any whose bodies are weakened by illness, for all those who
face surgery and its recovery. As we
pray for those who are ill, we also keep in prayer those who care for
them. Give them strength Lord in their
caregiving…
We especially pray
for….
O God, we pray for the nations of the earth and for their
leaders. Come to them in the midst of
their leadership, their power, their opportunities for change. Show them the things that make for
peace. Grant those same blessings, we
pray, to the leaders of all the institutions of the world, in the realms of
business and education and service.
Grant that those who labor in those organizations that they may be just,
honorable and respectful.
Hear the inner groanings of our spirit as it reaches out to
listen to Your Spirit that dwells within us and hear our silent prayers this
morning.
Hear our prayers this day O Lord, for it is in the name of
Your Son, Jesus Christ, that we pray saying…Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, forever.
AMEN.
Hymn – We
Gather Together Hymn #559/790
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Isaiah
65:17-25
Second Scripture Reading – Luke
21:5-19
Sermon – “A Different Vision for the End Times”
At my age and at this point in my
ministry, I’m not afraid of being excommunicated or disfellowshipped (as we’ve
recently read in our Bible Study group).
So, I don’t mind giving you a glimpse of something theological that I’ve
been wrestling with for quite some time.
Even though I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, had a lot of influence
from an Evangelical point of view during my formative years, went to Seminary
and completed all necessary educational requirements and tests to become
ordained in the PCUSA as part of a Reformed Orthodoxy, my personal theology has
always drifted a bit off center.
I’ve spent my years in ministry
studying Scripture, studying other faiths, studying human beings and their
thoughts, actions, motivations…what exactly makes people tick, so to
speak. I’ve spent a lot of time in
prayer with God – sometimes fruitful, life-giving prayer and sometimes prayer
that echoes into the abyss of the great void.
I’ve known and felt God’s tangible presence and I’ve known periods of
great drought when God seem all too distant and silent.
I’ve
normally spouted the party line when it comes to Presbyterian Theology, our
interpretation of scripture, but in the background I’ve spent my life
questioning everything. And often I come
to different conclusions than the ones that have been espoused by ancient
theologians, the ones adopted as part of our great faith traditions, the ones
that make the tangible world and the world of faith more readily understood –
more black and white.
So,
you might be a little surprised that our acceptable vision of the End Times, of
God’s great Day of Judgment, and the coming a God’s Kingdom in heaven for all
the believers and God’s great jail time in hell for those who don’t believe for
all eternity is not really my vision.
My
vision for the end of the world fits more easily into the Judaic vision which
comes directly from our reading in today’s Old Testament book of Isaiah. First, let’s put this section of Isaiah into
its historical context. Two generations
of exiles have been waiting to return to Jerusalem and Judea. They have lived in exile for about 50-70
years. They have adapted to a new way of
life, they have prospered in their adopted homes. They have carried on the traditions from
their ancestors, but they have changed.
They have been influenced by their captors, by a different society that
has surrounded them, by the traditions and stories of the people who have
become family to them. And now they are
returning home, intermingling with those who have stayed behind. They are confronting ancient ways of doing
things. They are confronting friction
between what might be considered the old and the new. They are not the same people. They have all changed. The ones who stayed behind have built up
resentment against those who were exiled for having to carry-on the torch, to
bear the burden of continuing the old ways of doing things, sustaining
buildings that were crumbling in ruin with little or no resources to help
them. They were tired and less than
enthusiastic for these exiles to return, especially when they brought with them
new ideas, different ways of doing things, strange concepts that felt foreign
and against their old ways.
The
polarization between the remnant of those who were left behind and the
returning exiles became palpable, clashes were inevitable about who was in
control, belief systems, how they would govern themselves, how to worship, how
to restore and re-energize their old towns. Even their health care was called into
question with infants dying and old people left to starve.
From
the midst of this angst comes the word of God to Isaiah. God is going to do a new thing. The whole of this section recalls the very
beginning of Genesis where God’s most important action was in creation. Here God is going to create something
new. God is going to take this people
and create for them new heavens and a new earth. God is going to take their concerns and their
worries, God is going to take their strong disagreements and conflicts, God is
going to take their lack of empathy for one another and lack of energy to find
a way forward and is going to do something new.
God is going to re-create them.
When
I was a student in junior high and high school, my least favorite subject was
history. It was boring. Most of my teachers wanted us to memorize
dates and times. When did such and such
happen? One what day was the Magna Carta
signed? When did Abraham Lincoln give
his Emancipation speech? What year was
President Kennedy assassinated?
Boring!!!!!!!!! But then in 11th
grade, Mr Mitchell sat on one of our students’ desks with his feet on the chair
and told us stories. Day after day, week
after week, semester after semester, I became enthralled with history. His stories brought history to life for me
and I’ve been a student of history ever since.
Knowing
the history of Israel, reading the history of how both the Ancient Greek and
Roman civilizations grew and spread, how China’s family dynasties ruled for
thousands of years, how Russia went from a monarchy to a Communist Country, how
Europe developed and broke off into different regions and countries, how world religions
became intermixed with politics and power, how colonialism left his scars on
new lands killing off other ancient civilizations like the Incas and the Aztecs,
how it decimated Native American tribes, how Australia went from a penial
community to one of the safest places on earth, how great wars affected country
borders, economics, and they way we view one another, how earthquakes,
tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, floods, and fire all
changed landscapes and people. That has
been the history of our planet from the beginning of time.
And
after each time of conflict when neighbors have warred against neighbor, when insurrections
have changed the political landscape, when earthquakes have destroyed entire
cities, when polarized people riot in the streets for their counterparts to
hear them, God steps in and does a new thing; every single time. Wars cease and peace negotiations are made, equity
in justice is found and retribution is meted out, forgiveness is asked and people
forgive, there is reconciliation, people rebuild on the very ashes of burnt
timber, on the very shores of washed away sand, and on the rocks of split earth. For a moment, religion and politics are
disentangled, new interpretations bring restoration to broken houses. Brother reconciles with brother, families are
restore and the great banquet table is longer, less empty, with new characters
filling new chairs. From there a new way
stretches out before them. Every time. God has been in the business of re-creating
us after every calamity, after every conflict, after every storm, after every
war, after every sorrow.
This
to me is eternity – the new heavens and new earth, the heaven and hell of it
all. That we are given an opportunity to
reset, to grow, to take new roads that will one day lead to that Peaceable
Kingdom mentioned in Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation. In fact Revelation, Chapter 21 has a mirror
image of this same text in Isaiah; however, in that text there is a finality to
it. That this new heaven and new earth
are when the Peaceable Kingdom has been established and when death shall be no
more and God will dwell among us.
As
history continues to repeat itself, we are in the midst of that very cycle
spoke by God about in Isaiah; we are in that very moment today. God is doing a new thing, but it takes all of
us and our response to that re-creation to make the invisible visible, to make life
out of death, to turn the other cheek and restore the very heart of empathy and
humanity back into the character of this earth.
It’s up to us to respond in kind to God’s re-creation of new heavens and
a new earth. What will be your response
to it?
Thanks
be to God.
AMEN
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
There
are no limits to the gifts You have given us, gracious Lord. Now we return our thanks to You for these
gifts and we bring these tokens to you, asking for Your blessing on givers and
gifts. Help these gifts and givers to be
Your witnesses throughout the world. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – Now Thank We All Our God Hymn #555/788
Benediction –
As you have
been blessed, now go to be a blessing to others. Go, bringing the news of peace and hope, of
healing and love. Go and the God of
peace will always go with you. AMEN.
Postlude
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