House, Home, and Future: Sermon Notes for the Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost

Sermon Notes For Sunday, November 16th, 2025, 23rd Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 33C

Readings:  Isaiah 65:17-25; Isaiah 12 (as Canticle); 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

These notes were prepared for a lay reader who was flying solo on Sunday, Nov 23rd.  MP+

Perhaps you’ve been fortunate in that you haven’t had to move house in a long time, because it’s a real pain!

If you’ve moved house, you know all the steps that you need to take:

1. Finding a new place
2. Hiring movers
3. Pruning your belongings and maybe a garage sale
4. Changing your mailing address for all your accounts and bills, and letting your friends and family know
5. Packing
6. Moving day
7. Unpacking and wondering which box that thing you really really need is in, OR, unpacking a box and wondering why on earth you packed that useless thing and never got rid of it.

Father Michael, who moved many times in his military and clergy career, can attest to the fact that MOVING IS A PAIN IN THE YOU KNOW WHAT

Now imagine what it would be like if you had to leave your house and all your possessions with just ten minutes notice.  Perhaps it’s some natural disaster that is forcing you out of your home, or maybe it’s an invading army or some horrible event in history when you and people like you are being driven out by another group, which today we call ethnic cleansing.

Recent history is full of people who have been driven out of their homes by terrible events, from the LA and northern Canada wildfires to millions in Gaza, Ukraine, the Sundan, and other countries who are forced from their homes, maybe never to see them again.

Now imagine the pain, grief, and bewilderment that you would experience if you were suddenly driven from your home and from everything that you counted on to live your life.

Today’s first reading from Isaiah 65 speaks to a people who have known what it’s like to be driven out of their homes.  The prophet Isaiah is offering words of comfort from God to the people of Israel who have survived the invasion and destruction of Israel by Babylone.  The survivors were dragged away in captivity (see Psalm 137) and lived as slaves and exiles for many years.

Now the survivors have been allowed to return, and Isaiah gives them God’s promise that they are home to stay:  “They [the surviving Israelites] shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat” (Isa 65.21).  This one promise is part of a larger promise that God will nuture, protect, and love God’s people, because loving, caring for, and creating are things that God loves to do.

The reading from isaiah begins with God saying that “I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth” that will be a “joy” and a “delight” to God’s people.    This promise of a wonderful new creation that gives joy and delight reminds us of the story of creation in Genesis 1-2, where all that God makes is good and brings delight and pleasure to those who enjoy it (see Gen 2.9).

This promise of good things given by a nurturing, creating, and loving God is important to hold on to in times when the world seems to be full of trouble, danger, and breakdown.   In our gospel today from Luke, Jesus warns his disciples that bad things may happen - wars, disasters, false messages, etc - but says almost that these kinds of things are almost normal, that they are the stuff of everydray life.    Things will be difficult for God’s people, and Jesus says that these times call for “endurance”, which means having the strength and the resolve to make it through challenges.

As Christians we know that if times are hard and frightening, that’s not the end of the story.   Our stories as people don’t end with a terrible health challenge at the end of our lives, and our stories as a society don’t end in times of war and disaster.   God’s promise is to be with us in the good times and bad, and to always have the last word.   The last books of the Old Testament (Malachi) and the New Testament (Revelation) both point to a day of new creation, or to use a better word, “a re-creation”, when God will make all things new.    That re-creation can happen when our own lives are dark and seem hopeless, and when the news seems bleak and horrible.   God delights in creating and God wants to care for and nurture is, and God promises to finally bring good, new things out of bad, old things.

As we think of God's determination to make all things new, and about our call to align with that Kingdom purpose, we are called to think of the many who are unhoused or precariously housed, who are refugees who are living in plastic tents, and those who dream of being secure in their own home.  We are called to think about how we who enjoy resources are called to provide warmth, shelter, and security to those who do not enjoy these things.  This vision doubtless calls for social, political, and religious goals to be agreed upon and aligned.

As we move towards Christmas, we have the promise of a wonderful new creation in the form of a baby whose birth is a miracle and whose life’s work will be to create new life out of sin and death, and whol will trample down all the things that blight and darken our lives.