Fairhaven UMC

Again, good morning and happy Father’s Day to all our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, future fathers, and surrogate fathers. And as you know, today is also Trinity Sunday, a day in which we attempt to understand something that even the greatest minds of the human race have not been able to comprehend. It doesn’t stop us trying, though. As David said in Psalm 8, When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals that you care for them, yet you have made us little lower than the heavens and crowned us with glory and honor.

And even just that much can be tough to get our minds around. But before I tackle the Trinity, I did want to fill you in on the goings on at annual conference this past weekend. It was wonderful to be back Bayside and Erie again. And as it turns out, sadly for the last time, next year’s annual conference is going to move to a more central location, they said.

namely the campus of California University of PA, which might be a slightly less long drive. Some of you are going, No, I don’t think so. Anyway, so that’s gonna be next year. This is one of many ways in which the Western PA Conference is reorganizing of necessity after the realignment.

And I’ll leave it to Pastor Dylan to talk about the financials. I did not hear anything remarkable along the financial lines, though, other than there’s been a change in the company providing some of the retirement benefits, and that’s basically, that’s the biggest thing. There are a few other resolutions of interest, though. One resolution sets a policy for reaffiliation.

Now, after our realignment, Western PA Conference ended up losing about, roughly, numerically speaking, roughly half its members, pastors, churches, and districts. So the people attending this week were a bit puzzled, both lay and clergy, when a process for re-affiliation was proposed. And of course, the question immediately was, have any of the churches who have left asked to come back? And while no details could be provided at this point in time, it sounds like there have been some noises in that direction. So the resolution was passed to allow for this, following the general instructions in the Book of Discipline for organizing a new church.

And that would include having a minimum number of members and other requirements that the Book of Discipline has for new churches. And overall, I think that was a good decision. Also this week there were the usual nominations, recognitions of retirees, memorial service for clergy, and tucked away in all those details, that little resolution that allows me to serve your communion, yay. So I’m so pleased to finally be able to be a full pastor to all of you, it’s just wonderful.

I’m still not officially Methodist yet, we’re still working on that. But I think that’s going to be a small step after this one. This is one last thing. And once that’s signed off on, I’m officially official.

But still, in the meantime, the Lord’s table. I can’t wait to serve that for you. So praise God. The other big topic of discussion.

.. both formally and informally over meals, was the list of special Sundays, as they call them, that focus on the variety of ministry needs, things like Rural Life Sunday, Disability Awareness Sunday, Christian Education Sunday, so forth. These weekends usually have either special envelopes or special offering of some kind, And the list of these weekends is fairly long.

There are quite a few of them. The formal conversations during the plenary sessions centered around the need to focus on these weekends and not forget them. Because the needs are great. And the needs are great.

And the needs are great. Informally over meals, the conversations went more like this. These days, people are getting requests for money right and left. And it seems like every nonprofit I have ever spoken with in my life has been hounding me for money lately.

And not only that, but giving just once isn’t good enough anymore. They want a donation a month. all the time. And this is a reflection of the times that we’re living in.

And the problem is there’s only so much any one person can give. And if people keep on being hounded for money like this, the result is going to be donor burnout and less giving rather than more. Now, I’ve talked with all of you about giving before we’ve had sermons on giving. And most of you know that I’m a strong believer in giving the way foundations give.

That is, I make use of my little own mission statements, okay? I don’t believe in giving just because somebody has their hand out. I do, I mean, if my heart is moved and I say, okay, five bucks here, you are fine. But, I mean, in terms of..

. giving on a regular basis, I do a little bit of thought about that. I put some thinking behind it. And the question is, what needs, what do I want my money to accomplish, and what needs do I want to meet? So for my own personal mission statement, I may say, just as an example, I might say something like, I would like to give in such a way that no one in my neighborhood goes to bed hungry.

Okay. That would be my mission state, but that would be the goal. And in meeting that goal, I might talk to neighbors, I might donate to the Pittsburgh Food Bank, I might buy food to stock our food pantry out here. You get the idea.

Rather than just giving on impulse, I set goals and try to meet them. And what I like about this way of giving is first off, I can actually see the goals being met. And secondly, I can help more people with whatever money I can afford to give. Big bang, small bucks, right? So that leads me to the other thing that I wanted to share about this weekend at the conference.

I have mentioned to you all in the past how incredibly impressed I am with UMCOR. And for anyone from outside Methodism, that’s United Methodist Committee on Relief or Commission on Relief. Committee on Relief, yes. Yes.

Bishop Steiner Ball basically said the same thing at conference this year, and I was so delighted to hear her say that. And she challenged each one of us to find your mission. Those are her exact words, find your mission. And that’s kind of like that mission statement I was talking about.

So the bishop said, when we look at what Amcor is doing, find what touches your heart, and ask, how can I help provide hope and love and comfort in this situation? In other words, who are we in here? And what is God calling us to do? What has God created us to do? And this is what the bishop asked us, especially in relationship to Umcor. Now, two days before I left for Erie, Umcor sent out a flyer by email. Did you guys get this or no? Some did, some did, some didn’t. Okay.

Okay. I like this little thing. I mean, most of the time it’s like, yeah, donation stuff, you know, but not this one, okay? This announces five goals that the United Methodist Church has set for this year. And these goals were also mentioned at conference a number of times.

And from what I can tell from the research that I do for my own giving, UMCOR has absolutely nailed the greatest areas of need in our world right now. So along with our bishop, I invite you to look at these five areas of focus and choose one. Choose one that speaks to your heart. Choose one where you can identify ways of helping, either globally or locally, and not even necessarily with money.

Okay. It could be outreach. It could be neighborhood projects. It could be just about anything.

So the five areas of focus that were identified here are forced migration, food security, food security, education, health care, and peace and stability. And when they talk about peace and stability, what they mean is things like ministering in places like Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, Sudan, places where battles are being fought right now. And one personal comment on that fifth item, that peace and stability. Most of us are at least somewhat familiar with what’s happening in Gaza and Israel and Ukraine and Russia.

And this is why we pray for them every Sunday. Sudan’s not as familiar, but I have a classmate who’s currently serving in South Sudan. and he runs a Christian school there. Now, just a little bit of background.

Sudan and South Sudan are now two different countries as of 14 years ago. Sudan, the northern country, is currently in a civil war, which has then spilled over into a region known as Darfur. You guys have all heard of that because there was big trouble there a couple decades ago. And then South Sudan is down below and receiving a lot of refugees from these areas.

So… There is now peace between Sudan and Darfur, but there are refugees throughout the region living in poverty and illness, and that spills over into the categories of forced migration and food insecurity and health, which UMCOR has also identified.

See, these things are all tied together, so there’s no just one separately. And so one of the reasons the United Methodist Church is stepping into these areas right now is because so many programs that used to be run by USAID have disappeared. And I think the UMC is really courageously trying to step up and make some of the difference there. Other projects that Amcor mentions in this brochure, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the DRC, which is not as well known here in the States, the DRC has also seen civil war, violence, child labor, mass rapes, and sexual slavery.

And so for these reasons, I would like to add the DRC to our prayer list from now on. When I mention Ukraine and Russia, I’m going to mention the DRC as well. And then of course, I was very glad to hear UMCOR say on the very first page in here that we live in a time marked by the greatest forced migration crisis since World War II. Now, most of us here are not old enough to remember what Europe was like when Hitler was finally defeated.

We know how many people died under Hitler. Those numbers are well known. But do we know how many survived? It is estimated that about a quarter million people survived the camps and the ghettos at the end of the war. And all of these quarter million people had to try to find their way home.

They’d been carted off to foreign countries. They had no idea where they were, no idea where their relatives were, or even if their homes were still standing. And so it took people, some people, a decade or more to locate their families after Hitler was defeated. So when Umpcor talks about the greatest forced migration crisis as World War II, they’re not Whistling Dixie.

I became aware of this issue back when, I’m sure many of you remember that terrible, terrible photo in the news of that little Syrian boy lying face down on the beach. That was in 2015. That was 10 years ago. That was the year the migration crisis surpassed World War II.

That was the year. It’s been like this for 10 years now. Now. And for me, that photo has a personal turning point and ties in with my dad here.

My father, of blessed memory on this Father’s Day, told me once that World War II was the defining moment of his generation. Now, he wasn’t quite old enough to fight in it, but he remembers it. He remembers all the different things that they couldn’t buy and the different things that they collected to support the troops. And he said, And something in my gut, when I saw that photo, something in my gut said that that little boy’s death was the defining moment of my generation.

And so far, we haven’t done as well as dad’s generation did so far. We’ve been trying. We’ve been trying. But migration in some ways is a tougher battle to fight because it’s estimated as of May of last year, when the numbers we’re looking at is now about 120 million people who are homeless in the world because of violence or starvation or things outside their control.

And most of them, by the way, are not here. Most of them are over in Asia, Africa, Europe. But this issue is way too big to tackle. And so are all the issues in this brochure, if we try to take them on by ourselves.

But then I think, okay, well, World War II was way too big for Dad’s generation to tackle, and they tackled it anyway. And so through programs like UMCOR, we can make real progress. As the brochure says on the cover, This moment matters. This moment.

So that’s a lot to take in, and I thank you for your patience on that. I promised that I would say something about the Trinity today when we started off, this being Trinity Sunday. So let me put this aside now, and we’ll take a brief look at the Trinity. There is a passage in the book of Romans that is one of the alternate scriptures for today in the lectionary.

And as I read this, I wanted to ask you to listen to for what the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are doing. So this is, and I forgot to jot down the actual verse there, but this is from the book of Romans. Paul writes, Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God, And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

I think the main point of this passage, this writing of Paul’s, is to explain how to keep on keeping on in tough times, which is a great message in itself, and I would love to preach that another day. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Great stuff. But this is only true because God is present, and not just any God.

Our three-in-one trinity, God. Listen to Paul again. We have peace with God, there’s the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that’s the Son, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, that’s the Spirit, there’s your trinity. I think sometimes maybe the Trinity is better understood by the experience of living our faith rather than just mulling over the concept of God in our minds, which makes sense because we get to know someone by spending time with them, not by just thinking about them.

So Paul writes in the context of faith and the fact that we are saved by faith, not by anything that we do. We can’t earn salvation. We are not saved by how often we come to church, although we should still come to church. We are not saved by how much we give, although we should still give.

We are saved by faith. by trusting God, by believing God’s words. We know God is faithful. We know God doesn’t lie.

We know God never plays games with us. God never says one thing and means another. God is the word. Jesus is the Word made flesh, and the Holy Spirit brings that Word to us, making God’s Word known to us from the inside, and that’s the working of the Trinity in our lives.

So, on this Father’s Day, our relationship with our Heavenly Father is a relationship of faith and love. For those who’ll be seeing your dads later today, have a wonderful day. For those of you like myself who are missing our dads today, we give thanks to God for the men who raised us, taught us, fed us, clothed us, encouraged us, gave us dreams to aim for. By the grace of our Father God, we look forward to seeing our dads again one day in the kingdom of heaven.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Well, again, good morning. And this morning is the seventh week of the seven weeks of Easter. And since seven is the number of perfection in scripture, I feel very appropriate that we have seven weeks of Easter. And every year around this time, we also talk about Jesus’ ascension, the day that Jesus left the disciples here on earth and returned to God in heaven.

And usually we tell the story from the point of view of the disciples who were watching him ascend, which makes sense because we are disciples too, and we can relate to them. We can relate to what they were seeing, and we can relate to their surprise and their misgivings and their not wanting Jesus to leave. We can relate to all the questions that started to crowd into their minds. But what was the ascension like for Jesus? And the best way I think I can answer that question is to sort of collect up bits and pieces because God and Jesus are so far beyond us.

We can get parts of it at least. So let’s take a look at what’s happening and what we do know, and then see if maybe we can catch a glimpse of what Jesus was thinking and feeling on this day. Let me start to say at the start that for the disciples who had traveled with Jesus for three years and had lived with him and eaten and worked and ministered alongside Jesus for three years, that they’d gotten used to Jesus being there. It’s not just being one of us.

It’s not all that Jesus was. Jesus was both human and divine. His mother, of course, being human, his father being God. So Jesus is totally both.

But they were just so used to having him there. within arm’s reach, right there. And Jesus also loves his disciples very much. And toward the end of his life and toward the end of his time here on earth, Jesus was praying for them a lot and also praying for us.

And even on the night that he was crucified, Jesus was praying for us. So the first thing we can know for sure from Jesus’ point of view is that Jesus loves the disciples and loves us and is going home to God because he loves us. For the disciples who were Jewish and knew the Jewish scriptures back then, Jesus’ ascension would not have been quite so unusual for them as it is for us. They already knew about people ascending to God.

It had happened before. They could remember from their own history the prophet Elijah ascending into heaven while he was still alive and that this was witnessed by the prophet Elisha. And in Elijah’s case, he was taken into heaven in a chariot of fire. That’s where that expression comes from.

And when that happened, the mantle that he was wearing fell to the ground at Elisha’s feet, a symbolic passing of ministry from one prophet to the next. In Jesus’ case, shortly after his ascension, the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples, which was another passing on of the ministry. And the disciples would have understood this. For us today, the mantle of Jesus falls on us as well.

We as believers and followers of Jesus also receive the Holy Spirit, and Jesus has said, You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So the ministry that Jesus started is now in our hands. Our mission and our commission is to take it up and carry forward the work that Jesus started. And we can do this in his way, in his power, and in his name.

The message the disciples shared, and the one that we have to share as well, is that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, that the one who never tasted death entered into death for us, and after three days he rose again. And doing these things, Jesus conquered both sin and death. Jesus has won the victory for us, for all of us, and this is our message. The other thing we see in Acts chapter 1, which we just heard, is that the disciples leave the place of the ascension together.

They were together with Jesus when he ascended, and they were together later on in Jerusalem. They pray together, they eat together, and after the Holy Spirit comes, they go out in Jesus’ name together. They are of one body, one heart, and one mind. And It’s just one problem for us, and that is that all these events are history.

So long ago, these events are in a very real way beyond our experience. So how can we relate to what the disciples were doing and feeling being where we are in our time over 2000 years later? So let me try by approaching this from a different direction. It is biblical to talk about our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us, his people, as being like a relationship between a parent and children. In fact, Scripture uses this parallel a lot to help us understand how God feels toward us.

how much God loves us, how much God protects us and provides for us. That’s why we think of God as Father, and we call God Father. And because many of us are parents ourselves, and all of us have had parents, we can, to some extent, understand something of what Jesus is doing and feeling on Ascension Day. To give an illustration, There may have been times when we were growing up when our parents needed to go somewhere for a while and didn’t take us kids along.

They might have taken a vacation without the kids. They might have had business trips. For me, I can remember a time when my brother and I were very, very young, like preschool age, when our mother became ill and had to be in the hospital for a while. And dad had to keep working to keep the insurance and to keep the house.

So we kids were sent to live for a little while with aunts and uncles. And we were sent to live for a little while with aunts and uncles. And my brother and I at that age had no way of understanding what was going on. We were too young to understand the medical terminology that the grownups were using.

We were too young to understand why a person would need to go stay at the hospital because they were sick. All of us, all we knew is that we weren’t going to be home and that mom and dad, while we could still talk to them on the phone, they weren’t going to be with us. They couldn’t be with us, and nobody in the family was happy about having to do all these things. And of course, everybody wanted mom to be well and for things to be back to normal.

But our parents assured us that they would be home as soon as possible, and so would we. And they wanted us to know how much they loved us, and they wanted us to know that we were going to be okay, and that everything was going to be okay. In a very similar way, as the time of ascension draws near, Jesus is doing the same thing. The disciples don’t understand why Jesus has to leave.

And Jesus is assuring the disciples that they are not going to be abandoned, that Jesus will be back, first in the form of the Holy Spirit, and then finally, he will actually return physically, which he had told them about. Now, unlike with us kids, there’s one other challenge that the disciples are facing, and that is that Jesus seems to have changed somewhat physically since his resurrection. He looks different than he used to. There are a number of times in the Bible where the Bible tells us that after Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples didn’t recognize him physically, not by the way he looked.

Luke tells us in the first chapter of Acts that Jesus presented himself alive to the disciples by many convincing proofs. Well, why would he need convincing proofs if he could have just said, well, look at me, it’s me. Somehow, something had changed. And maybe this is a way of God saying to us that seeing is really not believing, and that faith, as Scripture says, comes by hearing and not by seeing.

Right? The disciples recognized Jesus through his words and his actions. And I think this tells us something important about heaven, specifically that appearances don’t mean everything. In fact, that’s kind of where we are with God right now in these days post-ascension. It’s not that Jesus doesn’t want to be here with us physically, he does.

It’s just that Jesus needs to take care of some things that he can’t do if he’s physically limited to one place. And part of what Jesus is doing right now is healing, healing the planet, healing human society, preparing a home for us who love him, a forever home. Because unlike with our mom and dad, when it comes to God, we’re not going to go back to the old house. We’re going to a new home.

And Jesus is getting that ready. In the meantime, he knows that this world can be a scary place, sometimes, sometimes a dangerous place, especially when those who love us best aren’t here with us. So Jesus gives us each other to look after each other, to create safe spaces where people can be welcomed, where people can be seen and heard and cared for. Amen.

And as Pentecost approaches next week, God will take all of us who were once strangers and create a community, create a family through the Holy Spirit. Our community of faith is to carry on the teaching of our Lord Jesus and to carry on the work that Jesus did of healing and of feeding and of welcoming. And for some reason we don’t understand. Jesus is not able to give his followers the gift of the Holy Spirit while he’s still physically here on earth.

I think that’s just one of those grown-up things that we spiritual kids are too young to understand right now. But we will understand it someday. For now, we trust our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Parent, who loves us. And we try to be patient, and being patient is not easy.

You know how frustrated kids get when they ask us why, and we tell them, well, you’ll understand when you’re older. I used to hate that. I think that’s the kind of how we feel with God sometimes, not knowing why Jesus can’t be here right now, not knowing why God doesn’t step in and put a stop to the wrong things in the world right this very minute. It’s not easy to deal with the fact that there are some things we just don’t know yet.

It is tough not having Jesus here physically. And I think it’s probably just as hard, if not harder, for Jesus being away from us. Just like kids miss their parents and parents miss their kids. Jesus knows more than we do about how soon he’ll be back.

But we can almost feel in our reading from Luke today how tough it is for Jesus to say goodbye, even for a little while. Because when we love someone, we want to be with them. And Jesus wants to be with us. So for now, through the Holy Spirit, that’s how Jesus is with us, through the Holy Spirit.

Having the Holy Spirit within us is kind of like having that ability to call home. It’s not the same as being face to face. And we know that, and Jesus knows that, but we’re not out of touch, we can still call. So Jesus’ final words as a loving parent are words of blessing.

Jesus not only blessed the disciples, it says in the scriptures, as he was ascending, he kept on blessing them, kept on speaking words of blessing, even while he was being taken up into heaven. So Jesus’ love is always with us, and we can trust that. So where does this leave us for now? What do we do while we’re waiting for Jesus to come back and take us home? Well, back in the day..

. The disciples were thinking, well, maybe it was time for them to take Israel back from the Romans. So before Jesus left, they asked him, is this the time when you’re going to restore the kingdom? Is this the time we’re finally going to get rid of these nasty Romans? And Jesus’ answer is an important one. He said, it’s not for you to know the times or the periods that Father has set by his own authority.

But… you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

That’s what we’ve been given to do until Jesus gets back, to witness to the truth that we have seen, to be faithful to the love that we have known, and to do this in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Now, what does that mean for us? Because those places are…

thousands of miles away. What does that mean for us? I once heard somebody explain it this way, somebody who lived here in Pittsburgh in contemporary terms. He said, from our point of view, from where we live right now, we are to bear witness to Jesus in the South Hills, in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, in the United States, and around the world. Makes sense.

That’ll keep us busy for a while, yes? And while we’re doing this, what is Jesus doing? We don’t know exactly what exactly he’s doing, but the Apostle Paul gives us a few hints in his letter to Ephesians. He said, Jesus is being given great power, including the power of resurrection. He says Jesus is being given authority and dominion for both this age and the next. He said that Jesus is the head of the church, that is, of all Christ followers everywhere forever.

And finally, when the time is right, Jesus will be back. And we don’t know that time as in the day or the month of the year, and we don’t know that time as in when’s the right time. We don’t know. but we can trust that God does know and the God who sends the Holy Spirit to walk with us through this life and to help us be witnesses to God’s truth and love.

In both Luke’s gospel and in the book of Acts, the focus is on the promise of the Holy Spirit to come and we are to wait for that spirit to be continued next week. Amen. Amen.

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.