Kingdom Readiness (Ashtabula)

Welcome & Announcements

(Liturgist leads the welcome and announcements for the week.)

Pastoral Welcome

Thank you, Deborah. And a warm welcome once again to each of you. It is a true gift to be gathered as the body of Christ this morning. Let us now take a deep breath, set aside the cares of the week, and turn our hearts toward God."

And now, I would like to invite our acolyte, Jeff, to come forward and bring in the Light of Christ as our prelude begins.

Prelude

(The Light of Christ is brought in by the Acolyte during the Prelude)

Call to Worship

Leader: The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth.

People: From the rising of the sun to its setting, our God calls us to gather.

Leader: "Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving," says the Lord, "and call on me in the day of trouble."

People: We come not with empty hands, but with grateful hearts.

Leader: Those who walk blamelessly will see the salvation of God.

All: Let us worship the God of justice and grace.

Opening Hymn “How Firm a Foundation” UMH#529

Opening Prayer

Leader: Lord of all creation, we thank you for the gift of this day and for your invitation to worship. You ask not for burnt offerings, but for hearts full of gratitude. We offer you our thanks for your unending grace, for your constant presence, and for the promise of your coming kingdom. Consecrate this hour, we pray. May the music, the prayers, and the preaching be pleasing to you. More than that, consecrate us. Make us a people whose entire lives are an offering of thanksgiving, lived out in service and love. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Old Testament Reading “Isaiah 1:10-20”

Isaiah 1:10–20 NIV

Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah! “The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations— I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Special Music “Lord of the Dance” Jeff and Kelly Shellhammer

New Testament Reading “Luke 12:32-40”

Luke 12:32–40 NIV

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Sermon: Dressed for Action: The Real Work of Worship

Let us pray. Holy Spirit, come now. As we turn to these challenging words from Isaiah and these comforting words from Luke, give us ears to hear what you are saying to your church today, and the courage to respond. Amen.

Have you ever had this experience? You come to church, you sing the hymns, you listen to the prayers, you hear the sermon. And then you get in the car to go home, maybe you turn on the radio or start talking about your plans for lunch, and by the time you pull into your driveway, you realize you can’t quite remember what the hymns were about, or the main point of the sermon.

I think we’ve all been there. We show up. We go through the motions. We do what’s expected of us as faithful church-goers. And deep down, we assume that our showing up, our participation in the ritual, is what God wants from us.

But this morning, our scripture readings challenge that assumption head-on. The prophet Isaiah asks a tough, uncomfortable question that gets right to the heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. In our passage from Isaiah, God delivers a shocking message to his people—a people who thought they were doing everything right. They were showing up for worship. They were making the sacrifices. They were celebrating the holy days.

And God’s response is, essentially, “Stop. I’ve had enough.”

It creates a central, crucial question for us to wrestle with today: If just showing up isn’t enough, what does a life of true discipleship actually look like?

(The Problem: Worship God Rejects)

Listen to these jarring words from the first chapter of Isaiah. God says to the people:

“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?… I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats... Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile... I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates... Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.”

These are some of the most shocking words in the Bible. Imagine it. The very things God commanded his people to do as signs of their faithfulness—the offerings, the festivals, the prayers—God now says He can't stand them. Why? What went so terribly wrong?

The reason is found in one devastating phrase: “Your hands are full of blood.”

The problem wasn't their worship style. The problem was a complete failure of discipleship. Their lives were disconnected from their praise. It’s a temptation as old as humanity. It is so much easier to control a religion than to be in a relationship. A religion has rules you can follow, boxes you can check. It can be contained to one hour on a Sunday morning. A relationship, however, is messy. It demands your whole life. It calls you to change. The people of Isaiah’s day had settled for a comfortable religion that made them feel good about themselves, but it had no connection to God's heart.

When Isaiah calls them "rulers of Sodom," he's not necessarily talking about what first comes to our modern minds. The prophet Ezekiel later clarifies the primary sin of Sodom. He says, "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy."

Their hands were bloody from the violence of indifference. Their hands were stained by a system where they benefited while the poor, the widow, and the orphan were crushed. They had chosen empty religion over a life of following God's heart for justice.

And Isaiah holds a mirror up to us today. He asks us: How can we claim to worship a Savior who was homeless, and then walk past a person in need? How can we sing of God's amazing grace, and then participate in systems that demean others? Isaiah’s message is that worship that doesn't change how we live from Monday to Saturday is not true discipleship. It is an empty ritual God rejects.

This is a heavy word. It's meant to be. It's meant to stop us in our tracks and force us to ask, "Is my worship real? Do my hands, my feet, and my wallet reflect the songs that I sing?" It can leave us feeling hopeless, thinking, "How can I ever get it right?" But right after this fiery judgment, Isaiah offers a path forward. And centuries later, Jesus shows us that this path begins not with our striving, but with God's grace.

(The Gift: The Foundation of Discipleship)

Let’s turn to the Gospel of Luke. After a long teaching about worry and anxiety, Jesus gives his disciples some of the most comforting words in all of Scripture. He says:

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

This single verse is the hinge on which our entire understanding of discipleship swings. It directly addresses the root cause of the injustice Isaiah condemned: Fear. What is it that makes us clench our fists? It is fear. Fear of not having enough money to pay the bills. Fear that our children or grandchildren won't be okay. Fear of getting older, of losing our health, of being irrelevant. Fear of an uncertain future. That is the fear that drives us to hoard our resources and build bigger barns while our neighbor has nothing.

And the antidote to that fear is a gift. This gift is the starting point of all true discipleship. Notice, Jesus doesn’t say, "Work hard, little flock, and one day you might earn the kingdom." No. He says it is God's "good pleasure" to give it to you. We don't follow Jesus to earn God's love; we follow Jesus because we have already been overwhelmed by it.

This is the heart of the Gospel. And Jesus gives this stunning picture of what this grace looks like. He tells a story about a master who returns home late at night. And when he finds his servants waiting faithfully, he doesn't just pat them on the back. The scripture says the master will put on an apron, have the servants sit down at the table, and he will come and serve them a meal.

Can you picture it? The God of the universe, the one we are waiting for, meets us not with a list of our failings, but with a towel over his arm, ready to serve us. This is the radical, world-altering grace that dissolves our fear and frees us for a life of discipleship. It makes us ready.

(The Response: The Practice of Discipleship)

So what does it mean to be ready for God? What does this life of discipleship look like?

Jesus says we are to be "dressed for action" with our "lamps lit." Now, when we hear "dressed for action," some of us might think, "Pastor, my most active days are behind me." But this readiness Jesus speaks of is a readiness of the heart, not just the body. It’s a posture of calm, confident preparedness for whatever way God can use us, right where we are.

And what are the practices of this discipleship? Here is where it all comes together. The life of a ready disciple looks exactly like the life Isaiah commanded his people to live.

Being a "ready" disciple means we “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

The journey of discipleship is proven by our mercy. Sometimes that feels big and overwhelming. But often, it's the ministry we can do from our own homes. For one person, being "dressed for action" means becoming a warrior in prayer, lifting up the names of the sick and the grieving from their favorite armchair each morning. For someone else, it's picking up the phone to call a member who is lonely and just needs to hear a friendly voice. It's writing a card of encouragement. It's using the wisdom gained over a lifetime to guide a younger person. It's the faithful, prayerful generosity that supports the missions of this church so that others can go and do the physical work.

All of this—the prayer, the call, the card, the gift—is the holy work of discipleship. It is seeking justice and defending the vulnerable with the tools God has given you right now. When Jesus tells us to "sell our possessions," he's inviting us into the discipleship practice of re-orienting our relationship with our stuff. He's reminding us that our true security isn't in what we own, but in who owns us. He says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." This is the slow, steady work of discipleship: allowing God's grace to re-orient our hearts, one decision at a time, as we invest in the things God cares about.

(Conclusion)

We began today with Isaiah's hard truth: God is not impressed by worship that is disconnected from a life of justice. But we discovered in Luke the incredible, freeing gift of the kingdom—a gift that dissolves our fear and makes a new way of life possible.

The life of discipleship is a bridge between the two. The authentic worship God desires is the natural fruit of faithful discipleship. Our acts of justice and mercy—these are our truest hymns of praise. Our hands, our hearts, and our prayers engaged in the work of caring for the vulnerable are the most beautiful offerings we can bring.

That is discipleship. That is Kingdom Readiness.

Amen.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus taught his disciples, 'Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.' Our offering is a tangible sign of where we place our hearts and our trust. It is an act of faith, a response to the God who has already given us the kingdom. Let us now worship God with our tithes and offerings.

(The ushers will now come forward to receive our morning offering. The congregation stands to sing the Doxology as the offering is brought forward.)

Offertory & Doxology

Prayer of Dedication

Let us pray. Gracious God, who has given us everything, we return to you these tithes and offerings as a sign of our trust and a symbol of our lives. Bless these gifts, that they may do the work of your kingdom—seeking justice, showing mercy, and sharing your love. Amen.

Anthem “Lord, Listen to Your Children” Jeff and Kelly Shellhammer

Morning Prayer

And now, let us continue in a spirit of prayer as we lift up the joys and concerns of our church and our world in our Morning Prayer.

Let us pray. Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, we come before you as your children, grateful for the gift of life and for the beauty of this day. We thank you for this church, for the saints who have gone before us and built this house of worship, and for the community we share here today.

Lord, we confess that we have not always lived as your ready servants. We have allowed fear to guide our decisions. We have turned away from the needs of the oppressed. We have offered you our songs, but have withheld our hands. Forgive us, we pray. Wash us and make us clean, that we might truly be your people.

We pray now for the needs of the world. For places torn by war, we pray for peace. For those who are hungry, we pray for daily bread. For leaders of nations, we pray for wisdom and compassion.

We pray for our own community. For our neighbors, our schools, and our local leaders. We lift up to you those who are sick or recovering, those who are grieving, and those who feel lonely or afraid. (A brief pause for silent prayer). Be their comfort, their strength, and their hope.

Make us your agents of grace in this world, O God. Equip us to do the work of your kingdom, to live lives of justice and mercy, so that your love might be known through us.

And now, with the confidence of children who know they are loved, we pray together the prayer our Savior taught us.

The Lord’s Prayer

All: 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 trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

And now, let us stand together and raise our voices in our closing hymn, preparing to go forth from this place with God's blessing.

Closing Hymn “Take Time to Be Holy” UMH#395

Benediction

Go now, and do not be afraid, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Go, dressed for action and with your lamps lit, ready to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, now and forever. Amen.

Postlude

(The Acolyte carries the Light of Christ out during the Postlude)