The Throne Room

 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

November 5, 2023

10:00 a.m.

All Saints’ Sunday

*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:

Give thanks to God, for God is good.

God’s love endures forever!

God has come to God’s people with blessings and hope.

Praise God for the many ways God touches our lives. AMEN.

*Hymn                          You Who Are Thirsty                     #2132

Prayer of Confession:

Beloved God, who was known to our mothers and fathers, and even to our spiritual forebears, have mercy on us. We do not always love as you would have us love. We do not always do as you would have us do. In our stubbornness, we turn from you when we should turn toward you. Hold us, dear One –comfort us when we mourn the passing of friends and family, and help us to know that they are rejoicing in your presence. We praise you for the grace you shower on us, constantly forgiving our errors, especially the ones that we don’t share with anyone but you.

Assurance:

Friends, hear the good news! Though thousands upon thousands of our ancestors did not follow God’s ways perfectly, we have hope in the one who did! Jesus, a man of a particular people in a particular time, taught through his words and deeds that God has already forgiven us. Thus, we and all who have come before us are rightly known as saints – the holy ones of God! Thanks be to God for God’s mercy, grace, and love! Amen! 

Scripture Reading Revelation 7: 9-17

The Multitude from Every Nation

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!”

11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 

For this reason they are before the throne of God
    and worship him day and night within his temple,
    and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

16 

They will hunger no more and thirst no more;
    the sun will not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat,

17 

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Sermon                                 The Throne Room

What really happens when we die? Does anyone have the real answer to that question?

Countless world religions, including ours, have popped up to answer that question. Philosophers have pontificated, scientists have researched, poets have searched for words, artists have drawn from their hearts, TV shows and movies have delivered some iconic footage of dramatic final moments, people walking toward white lights, ghost stories, and even stories told from heaven. 

But the answer I have for you this morning is still an unsatisfying one: I don’t know.

Doctors, morticians, crime scene detectives, and archaeologists can give you their expert knowledge of what happens to our bodies once they stop working. Though they can tell you nothing about what happens to your soul or your spirit after you pass, it’s not for a lack of seeking answers.

In fact, back in 1901 Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts, developed an hypothesis that the human soul has a measurable weight that you lose at your time of death when your soul leaves your body. He gained patient and family consent and set out to test this hypothesis at a local nursing home while observing the last moments of life for six patients who were expected to pass within days. As each person was about to pass, MacDougall moved their bodies onto a scale, and weighed them before and then immediately after their time of death. Unfortunately for Dr. MacDougall, nothing could be determined from this experiment, as the results were all over the place. Two patients lost weight when they died but then gained it back within hours, and one lost weight at death and then continued to lose weight over the next few hours. But one person lost 21 grams when he died, and because of this MacDougall managed to popularize a theory that humans have a soul that weighs 21 grams.

I believe rather strongly that humans, indeed, have a soul that goes on to eternal life, I’ve been with too many people at the time of their passing to believe that nothing awaited them on the other side.

Where do our loved ones go? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? I’ve only ever believed humans go to The Good Place, but my college roommate, a devout Roman Catholic, insisted that her belief in purgatory was a hopeful one, one that assured her there’s justice in the world. And every time she called her mom when she didn’t feel like it she told me she was shaving a few years off of her purgatory sentence. 

Maybe that’s true.

I’ve shared my imagination of Heaven with you all before, and sincerely, feel free to imagine that pearly gates or clouds or fields full of your favorite flower await you, with Jesus welcoming you in. I had no firm mental image of heaven until my beloved Grandma G passed away, back when I was 16. But as my family left the hospital and drove back home, all I could think about was what Grandma was doing, and I have to believe I knew her and loved her fiercely enough that my soul could feel her desires in those moments. When she got to Heaven, she made a beeline for her mom. And that’s when I realized that Heaven is like a giant amusement park, and when you get there Jesus welcomes you and hands you a park map. Of course there’s roller coasters, it’s not Heaven without roller coasters. There’s also bottomless ice cream and chocolate chip cookies the size of your face. But Jesus will tell me exactly where to find Grandma G, and she’ll be sitting in her favorite chair, which I’m convinced she demanded Jesus build for her on her first day in Heaven. I’ll find my Grandpa F playing golf while surrounded by model trains, and my Grandma F cuddling with the twin babies she miscarried when she was 19. She never forgot them, and she lived to be 90. I’ll have relatives awaiting me that I’ll meet for the very first time, and answers to all my burning questions. And every night in Heaven there’s a totally lit concert with King David and John Lennon.

But according to the author of Revelation, Heaven will be more like a throne room, with Jesus sitting on the throne, and all people in history who have ever passed sitting all around him. According to that same author, we’ll instantly know who every person is. There will be no strangers, and I find that very beautiful. 

This is one of my favorite weekends to preach because it’s so emotional for me, but one of the hardest for the same reason. Today a friend of mine from college, named Kurt, who passed at 29, would have turned 43. Tomorrow would have been Grandma G’s 112th birthday. What even is this life, and what does it all mean? Why do some of us get so many more years on this mortal coil than others? And who are you after you pass, and the years roll on and turn into decades and centuries, and everyone who knew you washes away like sandcastles built by the shore?

It’s been an especially tough All Saints weekend this year. On Friday afternoon my sister’s husband Chris texted me the chilling words “my mom died.” It was a freak accident that happened while she was doing yard work. Chris’s stepdad found her, called 911, and started CPR, but it was too late, she was already gone. Her name was Lee, and she was 69. Lee’s surviving family is in shock. What do they do now? What comes next? Those pages aren’t in the manual.

I can’t help but wonder, after a weekend like the one I had, what the meaning of any of this is. We walk around on this earth like there’s some guarantee that we’ll live to be 80 or so years old, but that’s not true at all. You could be like my Grandma G and exceed that by a decade and die in your sleep in your warm hospital bed. Or, like Lee, your time could come on a Friday afternoon while mowing your own lawn. Is there a reason for our pain, a purpose for our tears? If our lives could end at any time, and so abruptly, then what do they mean? What are they worth?

I don’t presume to have answers to deep and painful questions like those, but I do know this truth that I keep coming back to: we’re only here for a short time. Even the 90 years Grandma G lived were a blink to an eternal God. We don’t take anything with us when we go, so the money, the cool stuff, the houses and cars, our education, even the jobs we worked, all of that stays here on earth and has only so much meaning, and quickly fades when we do. But love is different. It makes us human, it connects us, it’s what matters. It’s the only real thing we leave behind, and it’s what our friends and family get to keep. 

If Heaven really is an amusement park with a map, I don’t know which attraction Lee picked first, or who she looked for on the celestial roller coaster. But I know that her husband, her two children, and her two grandchildren were everything to her. She gave them all of her heart, and though I’m sure she wanted many more years with all of them, she couldn’t have given more love than she did. That will carry them. Her face is one of billions in the Throne Room now.

There’s people who are very, very close to my heart on this day, and you’ve heard their names this morning. You have names on your hearts, too, of the first faces you’ll see in the Throne Room. People who meant the world to you, who did all they could with the time they had in this world, and are now in Heaven. If we all shared all the names and stories we carry around with us, we could be here all day. This is what it means to be part of the Communion of Saints, this mystical idea we lift up this weekend. Whether we’re here, or in Heaven, we’re connected forever. Jesus provides the bridge between Heaven and earth, and our love is the two way traffic.

Use your days here wisely, because you have no idea how many there will be. Don’t waste them in judgment, bitterness, anger, prejudice, and hatred. Someday people will share stories about you, and you don’t want that stuff to be your legacy. Spend your days strengthening the two way highway between Heaven and earth by seeking love and justice, and you’ll live forever in the memories of those who knew you that way.

Amen.

*Hymn                   I Sing a Song for the Saints of God                     #712

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Living God, in whom there is no shadow or change,

we thank you for the gift of life eternal,

and for all those who, having served you well,

now rest from their labours.

We thank you for all the saints remembered and forgotten,

for those dear souls most precious to us.  

Today we give thanks for those who during the last twelve months

have died and entered into glory.

Dorothy Thompson 12/20/22

Gretchen Griffin 2/22/23

Alma Wiley 4/26/23

 Betty Jacob 5/2/23*

Pat Macdonald 6/2/23*

Delores Benson 6/30/23

Howard Braungart 7/25/23

We bless you for their life and love,

and rejoice for them “all is well,

and all manner of things will be well.”

God of Jesus and our God, 

mindful of all those choice souls who have gone on ahead of us,

teach us, and each twenty-first century disciple of every race and place,

to follow their example to the best of our ability:

      to feed the poor in body or spirit,

      to support and comfort the mourners and the repentant,

      to encourage the meek and stand with them in crises,

      to affirm those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

      to cherish and learn from the merciful,    

      to be humbled by, and stand with, the peacemakers.

Let us clearly recognise what it means

to be called the children of God,

and to know we are to be your saints

neither by our own inclination nor

in our own strength

      but simply by the call

      and the healing holiness

      of Christ Jesus our Saviour. Amen!

~ written by Bruce Prewer, and posted on Bruce Prewer’s Home Page. http://www.bruceprewer.com/DocA/61SAINTS.htm

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.

The Lord’s Supper

*Hymn                             For All the Saints                         #711 v 1, 2, 4

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant