Revelation, Part 1: The Rapture

 Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

 A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.

As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.

 

 

 

943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org

Order of Worship

September 10, 2023

10:00 a.m.

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.

 

Prelude

Greeting and Announcements

Mission Statement:

We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

Call to Worship:

Welcome to this community of faith.

We come seeking hope and courage for the future.

Here you will find peace, hope, love and joy.

We come weighed down by difficulties in our lives.

Here you will find Jesus who will take your burdens on himself.

Lord, we come to you this day in need of your mercy and love.

*Hymn              Welcome      

Prayer of Confession:

Forgiving and loving God, our hearts are filled today with pain and concern for the future of humankind. Words of anger assail our airways — we cannot escape from the threats being thrown about. In our fear, we cry “Where are you, O Lord?” We wander around in the darkness of the spirit, seeking light and hope. Forgive us when we forget that you are always with us, through times of peace and times of war. Heal our souls. Help us to reach out to others with the assurance of your love and presence, for we ask this in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

Assurance:

God hears our prayers and our cries. God leads us out of the darkness of the past into the bright promise of today. We are called to stand strong and confident in God’s Love. Rejoice, dear friends, for that love which began before creation flows in and through you this day! AMEN.

Scripture Reading Revelation 21: 1-8

The New Heaven and the New Earth

21 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. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home[a] of God is among mortals.
He will dwell[b] with them;
they will be his peoples,[c]
and God himself will be with them and be their God;[d]

4 

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for[e] the first things have passed away.”

5 And 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.” 6 Then 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. 7 Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless,[f] the polluted, the murderers, the sexually immoral,[g] the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Sermon                                 Revelation, Part 1: The Rapture

Friends, we’re now in week 8 of Stump the Preacher 2023, sermons requested by you and then researched by me. Today’s sermon topic was another TikTok suggestion from a clergyperson, and I’m breaking it in half because it covers soooo much ground: the book of Revelation. The person who requested this one specifically asked about a more progressive take on the book of Revelation than many of us heard growing up.

To honor that request, and because the book of Revelation is quite long, I’m having us look at two central themes in the text: this week, we’re looking at the theme of the rapture, and next week, we’re looking at this idea of the Beast.

Before we dive in, we should talk about what the book of Revelation actually is. It sits mysteriously at the very end of our Bible canon, placed there in the 4th Century by Church forefathers who wanted us to conclude the Good Book on a very specific note. But it’s not exactly a well-known or oft-read text amongst Christians, especially among mainline Protestants, like us. Like most of the Bible, Revelation sits cloaked in mystery, and that issue gets even worse if we don’t want to read it because it intimidates us. What I hope to convey to you in the next two weeks is that this book was written to comfort the afflicted, and kept to afflict the comfortable. So if this book still intimidates any of us, then maybe it’s because Jesus is calling us to look at our choices in this world, and how they affect our neighbor.

The full title of Revelation is “The Revelation to John”. More conservative readers of this text may make a case that the John in question, the author of this book, was the same John who was a disciple of Jesus, and also the author of the Gospel of John and the epistles 1, 2, and 3 John. I certainly can’t conclusively disprove that theory, so it is possible that John, son of Zebedee, was darn busy writing in the days immediately following the death and resurrection of Jesus. But the more likely situation is that John the disciple, John the author of the Gospel, John the author of 1, 2, and 3 John, and John the author of Revelation are all different people. In fact, it’s even possible that not a single one of those men were actually named John. Authors in antiquity frequently put their writing under a respected name, or a pseudonym, rather than their own name. 

What’s crucial for us to understand about this book is that it was written not to scare us, but rather to illuminate that which was obscured from us before, hence the title. Though there are many educated guesses about when Revelation was penned, I’m going to present to you the theory I was taught in college, that revelation was written toward the very end of the First Century CE, possibly between 95-96 CE, when Domitian was the Emperor of Rome. 

Not everything I’m about to say will feel relevant to all of you, but it might if you’re closer to me in age and were exposed to the Christian popular culture that I was. Humans have speculated about if and when the world might end for as long as we have existed. Many theories have been pitched, and so far none of them have come to fruition. But in 1995 the very first installment of the Left Behind series hit bookstores. Left Behind was the brainchild of Christian author Jerry B. Jenkins and Baptist evangelical megachurch preacher Tim Lehaye, and was published by Tyndale, a major Christian publishing house that puts a whole lotta Bibles on bookstore shelves. In 2000, the first Left Behind film came out, starring Kirk Cameron. Obviously, Left Behind was a product of the entertainment industry, and it followed a plotline with made up characters and events. But the books and the movies were extremely successful, and the huge sociopolitical impact they had was entirely intentional, especially on the part of co-author Tim LeHaye who had had decades of conservative political activism under his belt before the Left Behind series even started. Coupled with the Y2K hysteria that a lot of us were getting tangled into at the time, if you were a Christian in the ‘90s there was a strong message out there that might have been outside of your immediate circle but that wasn’t hovering far away: we’re living in the End Times. The end of the world is coming. And with it will come the rapture, where Jesus will come back, and those who have been faithful to a very conservative interpretation of Christianity and who came state the day and time that they were Born Again will go up to heaven…and then the rest of us are going to swim in lava and chaos on earth until it blows up.

If you follow me at all on Facebook, you may know that an old friend of mine and Sean’s, Steve, asked me about all of this recently, and this sermon, as well as next week’s, is partly for him. He had a lot of questions, but the core of them was: is any of this true? And if it is, then who gets raptured, and who gets left behind? What does the Bible teach, what does our faith teach…and then what do we all believe?

First, let’s consider this text, which absolutely speculates on what might happen when the world ends, but for a very specific reason. The author lived under Roman Emperor Domitian, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians and forced them to either convert to worshiping him, or die. The author, and his readers, needed comfort. Some day the fighting, the struggles, the pain, and the fear would all be over and done. Staying true to your faith will bring you to Jesus whenever you leave this earth–which could be tomorrow if Domitian kills you next–and the ones that will suffer at the end of everything will be liars, murderers, and idolaters. In other words, the people persecuting Christians. Revelation was something you could look at for courage and hope when the outlook around you was grim at best. And importantly, the author was much less focused on the literal details of a rapture than we might think looking at this text 2,000 years after its writing. He was more concerned with revealing the truth everyone needed to hear: it gets better.

Though United Methodists have never been big on harping about the End Times, John Wesley did have a belief system about all this, and it was based on these verses. He was little concerned that a rapture would happen in his lifetime, so he didn’t emphasize the getting left behind piece. But he professed that those faithful to Jesus would enter heaven all at once, and those less faithful would perish. He also taught that after this earth reaches its expiration date, God would make something all new, and wonderful, in its place, and he called this the New Creation.

Are we approaching earth’s expiration date? I’d like to say no, and point out all the end of the world conspiracy theories I’ve already survived–Jesus didn’t come back on May 21, 2011, like Harold Camping thought he would. Would’ve been cool, because Sean and I got married that day, but Jesus didn’t come to the wedding and turn the water into wine, alas. The world didn’t end when the Mayan calendar ran out in 2012. All the computers in the world didn’t crash on January 1, 2000 and cause an international doomsday. The world didn’t end after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or after Hurricane Katrina, though many thought one or both of those events would be enough to bring Jesus back. And even though we humans can’t seem to stop shooting, beating, warring, hoarding, starving, diseasing, abusing, torturing, and imprisoning one another, there’s still 7 billion of us sitting on a rotating globe. But the wars and pestilence that Jesus said would happen are surely here, and when Revelation tells us that we’ll burn in lakes of fire when it all goes down, and we look at what what pollution and climate change have done to the earth, for all I know, the rapture won’t start because Jesus comes back, but because we won’t stop lighting matches and one day the earth will run out of water to put out the fires.

But I’m not a literalist about any of that. I think what matters is as long as we’re here we owe it to our neighbors and the earth to make life-sustaining choices. And whatever goes down in the future, God will always be holding us.

Amen.

*Hymn                                     Bind Us Together                             #2226

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Loving God, even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she places her young near Your altar. You are attentive to all you have made.

God, who listens to every living thing,
Help us listen as you do.

Loving God, help us provide refuge to every animal and plant with whom we live. Help us be attentive to all you have made.

God, in whom all creation subsists,
Help us listen as you do.

Loving God, when Jesus cried out and gave up his Spirit, the earth shook and the rocks split. You are known by the whole of creation that listens to you.

God, to whom all creation responds,
Help us respond to you.

Loving God, help us hear and know you just as the earth and rocks do. Help us to learn from the way in which we see creation recognize your glorious beauty.

God, to whom all creation responds,
Help us respond to you.

Loving God, you are present in your creation and seek to heal her wounds. You can be found walking in the garden. Open our eyes to see you, the gardener.

God, who is present with your creation,
Help us be present too.

Loving God, we often abandon your creation and cause its wounds. Help us to follow in your footsteps and learn to walk in the garden like you.

God, who is present with your creation,
Help us be present too.

Loving God, who hears every voice, knows each cry of injustice, and is attentive to the suffering of the earth: teach us to listen. Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may listen to the world you have created and not close ourselves off from it. Reveal to us the ways in which we have failed to hear your voice in how we treat the earth.

God, who listens to every living thing,
Help us listen as you do. Amen.
— Intercessory Prayers for Creation, from Season of Creation: A Celebration Guide for Episcopal Parishes

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, 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, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

*Hymn                      I Have Decided to Follow Jesus                    #2129

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant