Fairhaven UMC

All right, so today is the fifth week of the Easter season, as well as being Aldersgate Sunday, and our scriptures are still talking about the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection, both for the early church and for us today. The scripture readings we just heard today are from the book of Acts and the Gospel of John. And both of them sort of take a step back into the days before the resurrection. And we’ll talk about those readings.

But we also have for the fifth Sunday of Easter, a third reading. In fact, every Sunday we have three readings of which we only do two. In this case, I thought the third reading also applies if it goes well with the other three. And here’s from the book of Revelation.

And I wanted to include that into the mix. And here’s why. There have been times, we’re speaking of history, in American history, and in world history as well, when people have just all of a sudden gotten really fascinated with the book of Revelation. And I can remember the last time it happened here in the States.

My brother and I were both in college at the time, and people were talking about revelation literally everywhere. I mean, I remember people debating it over the lunch table at work. I can remember my brother and his then girlfriend, now ex-wife. having a banner across the top of their living room wall, showing the events in the book of Revelation in the order in which they were supposed to happen and showing just how close to the end we really are.

We’re in one of those times again now when people are… talking about Revelation.

I’ve been hearing it wherever I go, and I see people pulling out those lists again and checking off what’s happened so far. So when our list of readings offers me a chance to talk about Revelation, I wasn’t going to pass it up. One of the things I learned about Revelation in seminary is that this book was not meant to be a timeline for the end of the age. It does describe some of the events of the end of the age to some extent, but not in any particular order and certainly not on a timeline.

The book of Revelation is first and foremost a letter to It’s a letter that was written to the churches of the first century after Jesus’ resurrection. It’s written to give direction and comfort and encouragement during difficult times. When John wrote the book of Revelation, he was writing a letter to the churches who were under persecution. from the Roman Empire, and who were also experiencing false prophets internally, that is, people coming into the churches and teaching things that Jesus never taught, and sometimes they were teaching the opposite of what Jesus taught.

So seeing a combination of external pressures and internal pressures in the churches, John wrote the book of Revelation to give some words of correction, first off, which we see in the first few chapters, and then comfort and encouragement to the people of God with the knowledge that God was still with them, God was still in control, and God’s word is still true. So. So, having all said all of this as background, I want to start off today’s sermon by reading that passage from Revelation, and then we’ll tap into the other two readings. This is Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 6.

It’s close to the end of the book, and in this short passage, we actually do hear about the beginning of the end of the age, but it’s not what people expect. Here we go. John writes, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more. Mourning and crying will be no more, for the first things have passed away. As the one who was seated on the throne said, See, I am making all things new. Also he said, Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.

He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. That’s the end of the age, as described in the book of Revelation.

There are no fiery pits, no beasts, no huge battles, no horsemen of the apocalypse. All those things, they all happen before we get there. When Jesus actually returns, the scene is a peaceful one. It’s beautiful.

There’s a new heaven and a new earth. Not that the old earth is completely destroyed, but it is renewed. The earth we know is not suddenly going to become something completely unfamiliar. And we’re not going to leave it and fly up somewhere in the sky and float around on clouds or any of that kind of thing.

The earth we knew will be remade. the pollution will be gone. All the forests and the oceans will be restored. All the extinct animals brought back to life.

Not sure about the dinosaurs, but anyway, most of the animals will be brought back to life. The point is that God will make all things new. And the holy city, the New Jerusalem, is where God’s people will live. The city contains people from all over the world, every nation, every continent.

And this is why the reading from Acts today is so important. And we’re going to go there in just a moment. But staying in Revelation for just one more moment, the holy city of Jerusalem is described as a bride adorned for her husband, and Jesus is the husband. Amen.

The end of history as we know it and as we live it is going to be a royal wedding. The voice from heaven says, The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people’s. And this was God’s plan from the very beginning, for God and people to live together in love.

That’s what Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are about. God creating the earth and creating a people to live in a loving relationship with God. It’s the whole story from the beginning of the book to the end. Two things therefore we can take as true from this passage.

Number one, if a person doesn’t like God very much, they’re not going to like eternity very much because God will be a part of everything in eternity. And number two, if someone doesn’t like people from other countries or other races, they’re not going to like eternity very much because God is making plans for all the people of the earth to be there. This is what eternity is going to look like, all of us together. No more tears, no more death, no more pain.

Now, speaking as a member of the partnership here, we have already seen a great deal of pain this year. In just the past five months, we have had people who have lost loved ones, have loved ones who are seriously ill. We’ve had people whose jobs are in jeopardy. and we bring these people to God in prayer, and we pray the best, we pray for blessings, but we also know that in this world before Jesus returns, that there are some illnesses that won’t be healed quite yet, and there are some tears that can’t be avoided, because we’re still living in the old world.

But there is a new world coming, right here in the same location, with oceans and trees and cities and animals and people. We will not be sitting around on clouds with harps. And in this new earth, there’ll be no more death, no more pain, and no more tears. That’s the good news of the book of Revelation.

So if you happen to be overhearing people talking about Revelation, like I said, I’ve been hearing this a lot lately, tell them about this new earth. Tell them what God says in Revelation, that the real end of the age, we can trust God and trust Jesus, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. Amen. So having said all of this, one of the next questions frequently asked is, well, who’s going to be there and who’s not? How do people qualify to live in this new world and how can we avoid missing it? And that’s what our other two scriptures are about today.

So the reading from John, we go back to the night before Jesus was arrested, to the night when he washed the disciples’ feet, Jesus is about to leave this earth, but not quite the way the disciples are thinking. And He says to them, I’m only with you for a little while longer, and where I’m going, you can’t come. So where is Jesus right now? Today? Jesus is right now seated at the right hand of the Father, according to Scripture. He is still alive.

Now, does God’s throne room have a physical location? Beats me. We don’t know. The important thing, though, is that Jesus will be back, and when he comes back, the earth will be set right, the earth will be healed, and so will we. In the meantime, in our reading from John, Jesus leaves us with one commandment, just one: Love one another as I have loved you.

But none of us can love the way Jesus loves, and that’s why the cross was necessary, to make up the difference, to make us whole, and to make us like Jesus. A Christian’s ability to love others is taken to a whole new level by a relationship with God, and our call to love others is still as much in effect today as it was in the Gospel of John. Our ability to love others is related to our love for God and vice versa, and our love for God and others bears witness to the world of the truth of what Jesus taught. Pardon me.

So who’s going to be included in this kingdom of God? Our reading from Acts answers that question. Acts tells the story of the first major disagreement in the early church. Peter had gone to visit a Roman centurion, and he ended up baptizing the whole family and eating with them, actually staying with them for a few days, And this was totally against what faithful Jewish people were taught to do. And the first Christians, of course, were all Jewish.

They had been raised with the Torah, the law of Moses, and the law said, among other things, that number one, all believers, and this, of course, is all male believers, had to be circumcised and this was a mark of the covenant between God and God’s people. And number two, circumcised believers were not to eat with uncircumcised people. And this comes from the laws of purity. There were quite a few foods listed in the Old Testament that Jewish people were not allowed to eat.

And they couldn’t risk the possibility of being served some of those foods if they ate in a non-Jewish household. But what happened over the years was that, as often happens when people are separated from each other, is that separate became unequal. And Jewish people believed that their way was better, they were the ones obeying God’s law, They were the ones who were separate and clean, and many of them forgot that God’s plan from the very beginning was that all the people of the earth would be blessed by and get to know God through the Jewish people. That was their calling from God.

And once Jesus was resurrected and returned to God’s side, the wall between Jew and Gentile came down. And Peter describes what happened. He said while he was staying in Joppa by the seaside, Sea of Galilee, no sorry, not Galilee, Mediterranean Sea, gorgeous, and he saw a vision, a large sheet coming down from heaven with all the kinds of animals on it, many of them on God’s list of things not to eat. And Peter heard a voice from heaven saying, Get up, kill and eat.

But Peter said, No way, Lord, I’ve never eaten anything unclean. And the voice from heaven answered, What God has made clean, you must not call profane. And this happened three times. Three, the number of completion, the number of the Trinity.

And immediately after the third time, three men arrived at Peter’s door. They were Gentiles, servants of the Roman centurion, and the centurion was a God-fearer, and he had seen a vision of an angel telling him to send to Joppa for Simon, who is called Peter. He will tell you and your household how to be saved. And Peter, inspired by the vision he had just seen, went with those servants to the house of Cornelius, the Roman centurion.

Peter shared with the whole household, including servants and friends of the family. They divided the whole neighborhood into the house, basically. And while Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit filled every person listening, and they began to speak in tongues. And Peter asked his companions who’d come with him, If God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed, how can we withhold baptism? And so Cornelius’ whole household and all their friends were baptized, and Peter and his companions stayed with Cornelius for a few days, including having meals together.

And that’s the story that they brought back to the believers in Jerusalem. Scripture says the early church, the first believers, understood what God was doing and praised God. They did not let the old ways, their old traditions and their former divisions, get in the way of what God was doing. And the psalm we read a few moments ago calls on all people everywhere to praise God.

Verses 1 through 11, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young and men and women alike, old and young together, praise the name of the Lord. Every nation, every people, no exceptions. The song of praise becomes a prophecy of what happens in Acts chapter 11. Amen.

And what happened in Acts 11 still happens today. Anyone, anywhere who believes in God and trusts in Jesus and has received the Holy Spirit is our brother or our sister in Christ, no exceptions. And I believe that this is one of the greatest blessings that God has given us. That’s each other.

Believers in Jesus can be found around the globe, in Africa and Asia, Europe and Australia, South America, North America. The more people we meet, the more places we know, the bigger our God gets, at least that’s how it feels. We know from stories and hopefully from experience that God has placed our brothers and sisters in faith everywhere around the world. We share not just humanity, but we also share God’s Holy Spirit.

And in God, we are one. um All these people from every time and place will be with us when the words of revelation come true. Jesus said to His disciples on His last night with them, Love one another as I have loved you. When we do this, we begin to catch a glimpse of the future that Revelation describes, a new heaven and a new earth, where God lives with us all and wipes away every tear from every eye.

This is God’s promise. This is the world that is coming. Amen.

Pray with me, please. Lord Jesus, please come and speak through me. Come and touch our minds and our hearts today with your love and your truth. In Jesus’ name, amen.

I was just thinking as Flo was reading that passage from Revelation, that’s the text that is used for the very, very end of Handel’s Messiah. And I could hear the song going in the background. It’s just, I’m not preaching on that one today, but I just had to mention that’s beautiful, beautiful. Anyway, before I get started today, this being the fourth day of May, I do have to say to all the Star Wars fans out there, May the fourth be with you.

Turning to our scriptures for the third week of Easter. One of the great joys of parenting is watching kids grow up and begin to make plans for their lives. As the kids grow up, they start to think about getting their own place. And it can be so much fun to help them imagine and decorate and maybe even help with the down payment on the first house.

So cool to watch them putting together a home for the next generation. Yeah. And in a way, that’s what’s happening in our scriptures for this week, particularly in the psalm and in the Gospel reading from John. In the psalm, David is helping his son Solomon make plans for God’s temple.

that will be built as a house for God’s worship and for God’s people. And in the Gospel from John, we see God and Jesus working together with the disciples to lay the foundation for our spiritual house, the beginnings of the Christian church. So each reading is a story in itself, but each one contains those wonderful plans for the future for God’s people. So let’s take a look and we’ll start with Psalm 30.

Now, first off, in terms of time when these things were written, Psalm 30 and the Gospel of John were written almost a thousand years apart, almost exactly. Psalm 30 was written in Jerusalem in the south of Israel around 970 BC. John chapter 21 takes place in Galilee in the north of Israel around the year 30 AD. And just as for kind of a little reference, a thousand years ago from today, our forefathers and foremothers lived without electricity all the time.

and without motors of any kind and without modern medicine. So things can change a lot in a thousand years. One of the great things about our faith is that it is so remarkably consistent throughout all time. People may change, people may mess up sometimes, but God knows what God is doing, and God is the same yesterday and today and forever.

The similarity and the connectedness between these two readings, separated as they are by 10 centuries, is one of the great things that gives us a real sense of permanence to our faith and to the Scriptures. So starting with Psalm 30. Psalm 30 is a psalm of thanksgiving and praise. It focuses on God’s promises of good things in the future.

And David is sharing his praise as he writes this, his thanksgiving and his joy. And David has walked with God all his life. Now that doesn’t mean that David was without sin, far from it. He was human like all the rest of us, but he had loved God all his life.

And as we know, the book of Psalms was basically the hymnal of the ancient Israel. These Psalms were meant to be sung. But like most great songs, even just reading the words can capture your thoughts and feelings that went into that song. And the note at the top of this psalm, David says that he wrote it for the dedication of the temple.

But the temple hadn’t been built yet. And the book of Chronicles gives us the back story. King David had wanted to build a great house of worship for the Lord, but God said no. God said David was a man of blood.

In other words, he had caused many human deaths, which was true. Scripture doesn’t say exactly which deaths God was referring to, but it’s not. Was he talking about David’s military conquests? Possibly. I mean, Scripture is generally against violence, but it’s not 100% anti-war.

Or was God talking about David killing Goliath? I tend to think that one’s not it, because in that particular battle, David was defending and protecting the armies of Israel. But, Or was God talking about Bathsheba and her husband Uriah who David had killed? I think that’s probably part of it. But the bottom line was in one way or another, David had arranged for hundreds of people to depart this earth and move on to the next life. He was a man of blood.

On the other hand, God also knows how very much David loves God. There are places in Scripture where David is called a man after God’s own heart, a man whose will and whose life were dedicated to God. God’s relationship with David shows how very forgiving God can be. and how very much God wanted David and wants all of us as well to be in relationship with God.

So at the end of the conversation, God promises David in the Old Testament that his son Solomon will be the one to build a temple for God’s great name and for the people to worship in. And David is overjoyed at this message. So before David died, he appointed Solomon as his successor because he had many sons and David made all the preparations necessary for this great project. This temple, this house of God would be the crowning achievement of Solomon’s life.

And so like any loving parent, David starts to make provisions for this great house. He orders timbers and cut stones from the nations around them. He collects up gold and silver for the plates and the cups and the candlesticks in the temple. And he collects up embroidered fabrics and perfumes.

He has technical designs drawn up. And I’m sure that as all these plans went forward, he was telling Solomon about every detail, sharing this with his son, and telling Solomon what he would need to do to complete the project. And David thought of everything, even the music for the grand opening. David wrote a song for the congregation to sing on that great day, and Psalm 30 is it.

How cool is that? I find it interesting that this song of praise, Psalm 30, is not like other songs of praise that we typically hear for heroes or for great leaders or for great events. The song does praise God, but not for giving victory to Israel’s army or for solving all of Israel’s problems. The psalm does say that God has not allowed enemies to rejoice over them in victory, but mostly the song praises God for getting God’s people out of the way of their enemies, for healing, for rescuing God’s people out of Sheol, which is not hell, by the way. Sheol was thought back then to be a place where the soul went when the person died, sort of like a holding area until the judgment day.

The song thanks God for resurrection and also for God’s help. And David sings, weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. And how many times and places have we heard those words? And how many times have we prayed them? So here in this great public celebration, this first worship service in the newly built temple, the song that David wrote for this event is remarkably personal. It’s remarkable.

David is not focused on Israel being God’s nation, but rather encourages each person present, each worshiper, each one of the thousands in the temple, to sing about how God has been there for him or for her personally. and also to sing about confidence for the future, confidence not in the worshiper but in God. This is what a godly nation looks like in worship: personal, humble, thankful, and confident, not in ourselves but in God’s goodness and God’s care. So that’s the future that David was building towards.

And then as we turn to our reading from the Gospel of John, a thousand years later, we’re still dealing with the same God. Just at this point in time, God is present in the flesh, as well as in the Spirit, because Jesus is there. After Jesus’ resurrection, and after the disciples met with the risen Jesus during the week of Easter, the disciples seemed kind of uncertain as to what to do next. Jesus had told them to meet him in Galilee, that’s back in the book of Matthew he said that, but exactly where and when is not clearly defined.

Jesus just says, Meet me in Galilee. So in the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us that over 500 disciples saw Jesus in Galilee after the resurrection. But that meeting hasn’t happened yet. It seems at first just the inner circle was told to go to Galilee and wait ahead of Jesus.

So some of the disciples got there before the others, and with nothing else to do, they fell back on their habit of fishing. They went out fishing, but the fish weren’t biting that night. And in the morning, Jesus made himself known by doing again what he had done before, letting them know where to let the nets down to catch the fish. It’s interesting that this fishing advice is what told the disciples it was Jesus.

There are a number of times after the resurrection that the disciples don’t recognize Jesus by sight. And why this happens is not clear. Scripture doesn’t address the question, and theologians actually don’t talk about it much. So after doing some research, I think the best answer I was able to find was not from a theologian, but from a scientist who said that a body that passes from life into death, into life again, would go through a number of chemical changes, processes that we don’t usually see because we don’t usually see dead people, and these processes would change a person’s cell structure in some way.

And of course this is guesswork, but to me it makes sense. A resurrected body would probably not look the same as the body did before someone died. At any rate, from now on, Jesus will be recognized not by how he looks, but by who he is. In which case the Apostle Paul was right when he said that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, as opposed to by seeing.

E Meanwhile, the disciples were pulling the net with all the fish on shore. While Peter has once again jumped out of the boat and is swimming to Jesus, Jesus already has a fire going on the shore and is already grilling some fish. Now, where these fish came from, we don’t know. They added some more from the net, but there were some already frying.

So, at any rate, there’s a fish fry in the works, and as the disciples gather, they share the joy once again of eating with Jesus, having fish, they had some bread on the side, and their joy is even greater because the fellowship has been restored, and those terrible events in Jerusalem are now behind them, and they’re once more together with Jesus. See, Jesus has plans and the Father has plans. God the Father has plans. This is not just a reunion.

God is going to build a house. And God’s son Jesus is going to be like Solomon, the one for whom the house is being designed. And just like the parts of the temple came together in ancient Israel, the parts of the church now come together to be the bride of Christ. And God the Father, like any loving parent, is preparing a place for Jesus and his bride.

That’s us in a forever home. But there’s still a lot of details that need to be pulled together. And the first is to heal the pain of the betrayals that happened the night that Jesus was arrested. All the disciples had run away that night, except for Peter, who followed at a distance and then swore three times that he’d never met Jesus.

Jesus. So when breakfast is over, Jesus goes about setting things right, and he starts with Peter. And Jesus asks Peter, do you love me? And Peter says, yes, Lord, you know I love you. And Jesus says, feed my lambs.

Now, Jesus is taking something that might have ended the church before it started and turns it into the very foundation of the church, forgiveness and a caring outreach for others. And Jesus asks again, same answer, same assignment, feed my lambs. And I notice at this point what Jesus does not say. He does not tell Peter, go kill the Romans, or go take down the Sadducees, or go kick all the non-Jews out of Israel.

Feed my lambs, he says, both with food and with spiritual food. And this is what Peter is called to do as the foundation of the church is being laid. Oh. And then Jesus asks a third time, do you love me? And his words cut to Peter’s heart.

He says, you know all things, Lord, you know I love you. Feed my lambs. And then Jesus tells Peter that Peter will suffer for God’s word, he will one day find that he’s no longer a free man, he will be bound and made a prisoner and will be martyred for the faith. And Peter raises no objections.

And Jesus says, Follow me. because Jesus has already been there. Jesus has already passed through death. He and he is now alive to tell the tale.

And this is the hope, and this is the new home that is being built, a life that cannot be taken away. So what does this say for all of us? God has gone ahead of us just like David did with Solomon, preparing the temple, preparing the future, and Jesus has gone before us, giving his life so that we can live, and then preparing a place for us, a forever home, that we can’t even begin to imagine right now. And the reason for all of this is love. God’s love for us, Jesus’ love in giving his life for us, and our love for God, following as we are able in the footsteps of David and Peter.

The greatest thing we can do in this life and in the next is to receive God’s love and to love God back. Love is the material out of which our forever home is built, the home that God is building for us and for all who love God. As David says, Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Amen.