First Presbyterian Church
November 7, 2021
10:00 AM
Order of Worship
CALL
TO WORSHIP
How
does Jesus’ resurrection benefit us?
He
has overcome death and His resurrection is the pledge to our glorious resurrection.
So
then we are raised up to new life in Him.
And
we will join Jesus in the righteousness He has obtained for us.
Let
us worship the Living God.
*Hymn
of Praise: “Break Thou The Bread of Life”
1.
Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me, as thou didst break the loaves
beside the sea; beyond the sacred page I seek thee, Lord; my spirit pants for
thee, O Living Word!
2.
Bless thou the truth, dear Lord, to me, to me, as thou didst bless the bread by
Galilee; then shall all bondage cease, all fetters fall; and I shall find my
peace, my all in all.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)
God of mercy, in Jesus you modeled power through vulnerability,
and victory through sacrifice. But we live in a world that celebrates abundance
and might. God of grace, in Christ we find unhesitating welcome as siblings —
all children of One loving parent. But, if we’re honest with ourselves, there
are members of our human family we would rather avoid. God of love, reshape us
that we might be brave enough to show strength by sharing power, encourage us
that we might admit to ourselves our reluctance to acknowledge those across the
ocean, over the border, or just around the corner as our family. And reorient
us to the trailblazing example of Jesus, whose gift to us was sacrifice and
whose gracious embrace knows no bounds. Amen.
*SILENT PRAYERS
OF CONFESSION
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
Siblings in Christ, Our savior abandoned
the company of angels for this marvelous and messy world, and in his sacrifice
we find a fresh start for our relationship with God and with one another. May
we live into this new day; in Jesus Christ, we are all forgiven. Amen.
*THE GLORIA
PATRI
Glory be to the
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.
INVITATION: “Dear Lord, I
need You, please come into my life today.
Amen”
LESSON:
1 Corinthians 15: 42-58
42So it is with the
resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is
imperishable. 43It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44It is sown a
physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body,
there is also a spiritual body. 45Thus it is written, “The
first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving
spirit. 46But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the
physical, and then the spiritual. 47The first man was from the
earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48As was
the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven,
so are those who are of heaven. 49Just as we have borne the
image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of
heaven. 50What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this:
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable
inherit the imperishable.
51Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we
will all be changed, 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised
imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For this perishable
body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on
immortality. 54When this perishable body puts on
imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that
is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 55“Where,
O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” 56The
sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But
thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling
in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in
vain.
SERMON: “Resurrection: Jesus Versus
Halloween” Rev. Peter Hofstra
As we
pack up after Halloween, as we gather today to partake of the Lord’s Supper,
the body of Christ broken for us, his blood spilled for our redemption,
consider how these two intersect. That
point of intersection is around the resurrection of the body. We believe, in Jesus, in the resurrection of
the body. But consider how much of the
horror genre finds its fear in the question of what happens to a person after
they die. It makes for popular media,
books to movies to television, but why is that?
What is it about these popular images that speak to the deeper fears
that horror can tap into?
Because
that is what good horror is. It taps
into something that we fear. Orson
Welles, remember him? Known for Citizen
Kane more than anything else, but he is also responsible for the radio show
“War of the Worlds” which, while identified at the beginning as a fictional
radio show, went on to terrorize the US when it was broadcast in the 1938. That kind of horror was from a specific place
and time, in the lead up to the Second World War. The horror that surrounds popular ideas of
what happens to us after we die, that continues to be integral to what scares
us.
What is
it about ghosts? The spectral image of
those who have died, some kind of spirit left over here on the earth when the
body had passed on? First, consider
these most powerful words of Paul, “When this perishable body puts on
imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that
is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in
victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your
sting?””
What is
a ghost? Somebody left behind? Somebody stained with evil, cursed to walk
the earth? Sounds like Jacob Marley. Somebody with unfinished business? Sounds like Patrick Swayze’s character in
“Ghost”. Our popular imagination
conceives of them as vengeful spirits, as spiritual creatures with unfinished
business, or sometimes as a ‘spiritual impression’ of a terrible happening from
the past.
This is
the perishable body that has been destroyed and there is nothing to replace
it. Paul asks, “Where, O death, is your
sting?” In the popular imagination, it
really sounds to me that the sting of death lives on in the creature of a
ghost. What does that say about us? I think it is a fundamental lack of belief in
what Paul is triumphant about here. The
perishable body puts on the imperishable body, mortal puts on immortality,
death is swallowed up in victory. Not
simply to have faith in Jesus, but to grasp what that means from this life into
the next, to understand that Jesus died, descended into hell according to the
creed, and came back triumphant.
To
believe in ghosts, does that tap into something in our human consciousness,
even as people of faith, that we do not have the assurance of the victory Jesus
brings over death?
There
is a whole other set of creatures that humans morph into after death, depending
on virus or curse or whatever. They are
generally referred to as the ‘undead’ because we do not have a category between
life and death otherwise. These are
things like zombies and vampires and the like.
In general, they are humans who have died (usually killed), who return
as predators upon their fellow human beings.
Dracula
is probably the quintessential ‘undead’ creature, but we have the night, the
dawn, and the day of the living dead, the walking dead-all in the zombie genre,
as well as dozens of other examples.
What usually happens is that the humans have to band together in a
desperate attempt to overcome these destroyers of humanity.
What is
that? What is that tapping into in the
human psyche and imagination? The notion
of evil and greed and destruction following the sinful human being after death
itself? The historic character known to
us as Vladimir Dracula was a bloodthirsty character, from a very bloodthirsty
time and place in human history.
Is
there a conviction behind these images of hopelessness? That’s where we will end up? Is this all, is there nothing more? Consider what Paul tells us, 42So
it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is
raised is imperishable. 43It is sown in dishonor, it is raised
in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44It
is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical
body, there is also a spiritual body. 45Thus it is written,
“The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a
life-giving spirit.”
The
last Adam, that is Jesus. Perishable to
imperishable, we talked about that in relation to ghosts, sown in dishonor,
raised in glory. Born into sin, dying in
sin, raised in the glory of eternal life.
What was weak is raised into power.
Physical body to spiritual body.
Adam was a living being, Jesus is a life-giving spirit. In the popular media, the living being
becomes the epitome of evil as an unliving being. Hope is lost.
There is a denial of the hope that comes to us in Jesus as the
life-giving spirit. Paul leads into this
passage about the resurrection of the dead by establishing this contrast of
what came before and what comes after.
Again,
the gateway to this transition is Jesus.
Jesus was born perishable, and he perished, but was raised
imperishable. Such is the living example
of our transition, in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the forgiveness of
our sins, in the promise of new life.
This is the hope of the gospel.
And
while there is a lot of the good humans triumphing over the evil undead, it is
certainly not an absolute.
But it is
not all so completely depressing in a lack of faith and a lack of hope. Because I truly believe that love conquers
all. And that sentiment is in the
popular imagination as well. But when
Christians claim that love conquers all, we are working from 1 John 4, where John
develops the idea that God is love. That
is the ultimate power beyond the universe.
The
notion of love has been twisted to triumph found in romantic love. Love is considered to be greater than death,
another Biblical truth found in the Song of Songs-which is, in itself, a
tribute to romantic love, but in the power of God.
Rather,
ghosts, vampires, and zombies, they have all been portrayed as transcending the
boundary of death to reestablish their romantic connections to the humans ‘left
behind’. It is usually a tragic story,
or one that ends in a very ugly way. But
not always. Yet it ends at
humanity. It becomes a contradiction in
terms, a love that lives forever in creatures that are not living. Or, love restores the monster to their former
humanity.
There
is a human desire to find victory, to find our happily ever after. But it denies the transition, the
transformation that comes in the resurrection of the dead in Jesus. Again, consider Paul, “But it is not the
spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47The
first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from
heaven. 48As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the
dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49Just
as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of
the man of heaven. 50What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is
this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the
perishable inherit the imperishable.”
Born of
dust and to dust shall we return, that is the earthly, the creation cycle. But in Christ, there is more than simply an
earthly cycle to our lives. From people
of dust, we transform into people of heaven, as Jesus did. It is in that nature, that imperishable
nature, that we shall then inherit the kingdom of God, that the love of God for
us, a love that is SO strong that God gave God’s only beloved Son so that we
might not perish, but have everlasting life, such is the true nature of love
that overcomes death.
The
preoccupation with humans as monsters after they die, it actively denies these
first two. It denies the faith we have
in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. It
denies the hope we have that in Jesus, we will know the love of God and enter
into God’s kingdom. But humanity still
has a desperate need for redemption. So
the perfection of love in our God is taken, down-sized, and stuffed into the
model of romantic love overcoming all, even death, as human and ghost or human
and vampire or human and zombie come together.
But it
just isn’t so. That’s not how any of
this works. Paul gives us the most
succinct explanation of what happens at the resurrection of the dead. It is not a curse, it is the blessing. It is not being left behind, it is the
fulfillment of God’s promises made to us, carried out for us by Jesus.
I will
admit, Halloween is fun. As a species,
we like to scare ourselves. There is
something about the fear of losing something that makes it more precious to us,
especially our lives. But there comes a
time to put away the Halloween decorations.
There comes a time to return to the reality of Jesus who loves us and
will transform us when we enter our eternal home. There comes a time to fact check the reality
of who we are and what we believe. There
comes a time to return to the sure and certain knowledge of the love of God, of
the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf.
In a
few moments, we are going to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. It is a physical reminder of Jesus’ death on
the cross that was NOT the end in itself, but the new beginning. For it was in death that resurrection
followed. It was in the resurrection of
Jesus that life returned to us, from the physical body to the spiritual
body. In the resurrection that we shall follow
Jesus through, our bodies of dust will become bodies of heaven. We are not ghosts or zombies or vampires or
anything else that goes bump in the night.
If Halloween has any place in our faith, it is to remind us that the
popular tropes of the world in consideration of death and resurrection are NOT
the promise we have received.
Faith
is not misplaced, hope is not denied, love is not misguided in the promises we
have in Jesus, the promises we remember in the sharing of the bread and the
sharing of the cup. This is so precious
to us that is makes sense in a world of sin that there would be so many ways in
which it is denied, made fun of, diverted, and kept from our full and undivided
attention.
What is
the call? Christ has died so that death
has no victory over us. Christ has risen
so that the heavenly body, the imperishable body will replace the body of dust,
the perishable body. Christ will come
again, and in that day, we will all be gathered unto him for eternity. Amen.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and
earth, And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the
Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He
descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth
at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to
judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the
communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and
life everlasting. Amen.
PASSING OF THE
PEACE
THE OFFERING OF
OUR TITHES & GIFTS
God has told us what is good; and what does the Lord require? To do justice,
love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. In gratitude, humility, and
sacrifice, let us return to God a portion of God’s gifts to us
*DOXOLOGY
Praise God, from
whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him
above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*PRAYER OF
DEDICATION
Holy God, thank you for entrusting us to
participate in your worldwide circle of caring. May the offering of the time,
talent and treasure that you have sewn in us bring you joy and bring our
neighbors comfort and hope. Show us how to use these gifts entrusted to us for
your glory and your dreams. Amen.
INVITATION
All
are welcome at God's table - at Christ's table - at this table.
People from near and far. Neighbors and strangers. Young and old. Rich and
poor. In whatever way you know the Christ, know you are invited to eat and
drink with him... and with us. Alleluia!
God
be with you.
And
also with you.
Lift
up your hearts.
We
lift them up to God.
Let
us give thanks to God, our God.
It
is right to give God thanks and praise.
We do say thank you, loving
God. We thank you for creating the heavens and the earth. We thank you for
being the source of all life and all creation - for sharing with us the tiniest
seed and the grandest stars... for creating us - with our tears and our
laughter, with our joy and our sorrow, with our curiosity and our thinking...
with our life. We thank you for Jesus, the Christ - for all that he learned from
you and in you, for all that he taught, for all that he shared with the
disciples, and all that he shares with us. Thank you, loving God!
Therefore, we praise you,
wonderful God, joining our voices to sing out the glory of your name!
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of Power, God of Might.
Heaven and Earth are full of your Glory!
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest!
Hosanna in the highest!
THANKSGIVING
We rejoice that, through Eve and Adam and all of their
children, You entered into relationship with us. We rejoice that, through Sarah
and Abraham and all of their children, You entered into covenant with us. But we also remember that the covenant and
relationship with You has been broken, many times by our ancestors - and by us.
Each
time the covenant was broken, You invited us back! Through prophets and pastors
and wise ones, You invited us back! And still we broke faith with You. But, at
the right time, You sent Jesus to live with us.
Given
life by the Holy Spirit, given life by the decision and action of your favored
one, Mary, He came to share our life - to bring us back to each other and to
our covenant with you! At the Jordan River Your Spirit came upon him, calling
Him to tell the world the good news of your love. He healed people who were
sick and fed people who were hungry. He cried with those who mourned and danced
with those who celebrated. He looked for people who were lost and alone... and
helped them to understand that they were welcome at your table! He lived out
the fullness of your grace. We saw his holy love.
INSTITUTION
On the night before he was put to death, Jesus gathered with
his friends for a special meal. He took bread and gave thanks to you, O Lord.
He broke the bread and offered it to those gathered around him, saying,
"Take this and eat; this is my body which is given for you, do this in
remembrance of me."
Taking a cup, he once again gave thanks to you, and shared
the cup with those gathered, saying: "This is the cup of the new covenant
in my blood. Drink from this, all of you. This is poured out for you and for
many, for the forgiveness of sins."
After the meal, Jesus was arrested. His disciples and friends
ran away. He was beaten for what people thought he had said. He stood
trial... and was put to death on a cross. He gave all of himself to your
people, O God. His life and his death. Then you raised him from that death,
holy God - that he might be one with you, now and forevermore!
As
we remember his death, proclaim his resurrection, and look for His coming
again, we offer to you, O God, this bread and this cup. Send your Holy Spirit
upon us and upon these gifts, so that everyone who eats and drinks at this
table might be one in Christ's body... your holy people.
Through
Christ, with Christ and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory
is yours, God most holy, now and forever more!
LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father, 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 debts, as we forgive our
debtors. Lead us not into temptation but
deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory
forever. Amen.
Jesus Christ, the
bread of life. Jesus Christ, the true vine. The gifts of God, for the people of
God. Thanks be to God! Come, for the table is prepared and our cup is
overflowing.
SHARING THE BREAD AND THE CUP
*CLOSING HYMN #513 “Let Us
Break Bread Together”
1. Let us break
bread together on our knees; Let us break bread together on our knees. When I
fall on my knees, With my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me.
2. Let us drink
wine together on our knees; Let us drink wine together on our knees. When I
fall on my knees, With my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me.
3. Let us praise
God together on our knees; Let us praise God together on our knees. When I fall
on my knees, With my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me.
*BENEDICTION
*THREE FOLD AMEN
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