Skip to main content

Introduction to Worship for 11/13/2016

By

Isaiah 65:17-25

This is the last week in “Ordinary Time,” the part of the church year where we are not celebrating particular times or seasons in the life of the church.  Next week we will celebrate the Reign of Christ, and then the week after that we will start the church year with Advent.  This is the time of year that we are beginning to dream of a world made new, to consider the promises of God and to remind ourselves of our hopes for the One who is to come. Our scripture this week is one of the texts that looks forward to the time when the world will be healed, and imagines what that day might look like.

Scholars believe the book of Isaiah was composed at different times by different authors, and generally divide the book into three sections: First, Second, and Third Isaiah. These verses are from Third Isaiah, written a couple generations after the people had returned from Babylonian Exile. The fresh energy is long gone, and in its place are the many hardships and deepening discouragement of a destroyed dream that Jerusalem would again be what it once was. Into this context of failed dreams, an uncertain future, the prophet Isaiah enters the chaos of their world with the astounding assertion that now is the time to rejoice in what God is doing. “Be glad and rejoice,” sings the prophet, with words of God’s promise. Let go of that old sad song about what once was and rejoice in the present day ways in which God’s justice, healing, and peace are being made known. There is no denial of the struggle, the weeping, cries of distress, lives lost too early, homelessness, economic injustice, and turmoil with which they live. But, rather than let this chaos become the basis for despair and hopelessness, the prophet attests that it is precisely in this chaos that God is able to create a new world of wholeness and peace, inviting our participation. The time for rejoicing is now.

Family activity (can be adapted to families of all ages)

  • Reflect on your own life and/ or the life of your community. What “former things” do you imagine might need to be forgotten, or let go so that the possibility of God’s new heaven and new Earth might emerge in your life, in your community, in the world?
  • How might letting go of old dreams open you and your community to the experience of joy? 
  • How have you experienced the surprising and unexpected peace and wholeness of God about which the prophet speaks?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction to Worship for 1/22/2017

By
Matthew 4:12-23 This week we are excited to have guest preacher Rick Ufford-Chase with us.  Rick is the co-director of Stony Point Center (with his wife Kitty) and is the PC(USA) Associate for Interfaith Relations, a former moderator of the denomination, and an activist and justice worker, as well as a friend of the congregation. Rick has recently curated and co-written a book called “Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions in a Time of Empire”, which was the focus of our book study this fall at UPC. The title of his sermon is “Faithful Resistance: Not for the Faint of Heart”. So it’s fair to ask: what are we resisting, and why are we talking about it in church? We are resisting… the culture that is built on consumption and destruction; the vision of the world that puts white Christians at the center; our own tendencies to the call to love, the practices that lead us away from Jesus’ radical vision of God’s reign on earth, a “kingdom of love.” Rick will be with us the whole wee...
Post a Comment
Read more

Introduction to Worship for 9/24/2017

By
Bless the Water: This week our creation theme is Water. As an introduction to the theme, we will be looking at the beginning of the second creation story in Genesis. Genesis 2:4b–14 In the first story (Genesis 1:1––2:3), water is there from the beginning, and creation is an act of separating everything else from the waters, and then bringing life to the land—after light and darkness and planets and the sun and moon are brought forth.      In the second story, the land has already been created, and there is a stream that waters all of the land. God creates the human from the land, and we can’t grasp the pun in English, but adam (human or man) is made from adamah (humus or earth). We’re probably most familiar with verses 8 & 9 in this text, when God creates a garden and puts adam into the garden with the green and growing things, including the tree of life and the tree of good and evil. But then the author describes the four rivers that surround the garden, a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Introduction to Worship for 1/8/2017

By
Matthew 3:13-17 All four gospels feature the baptism of Jesus, suggesting that Jesus’ baptism seems more critical to any telling of Jesus’ ministry than does a story about his birth. (There are many interesting differences between the different gospel accounts, but the fact that it is in all four is like a big sign pointing to the baptism saying “this is important!”) What made the baptism of Jesus so important? Over the centuries, Christian scholars have filled many pages arguing about just that question. Does it suggest Jesus was impure, and that he needed to “repent” and be cleansed? After all, “repent” was certainly the word John the baptizer used when calling people to baptism. This leads us to the word repent – metanoia in the Greek – and a very common Christian misconception of repentance. Rather than meaning “feeling sorry for doing bad things,” or regret, or confession, metanoia means “go beyond the mind” or “go into the larger mind.” Scholar Cynthia Bourgeault writes tha...
Post a Comment
Read more