newness is what god wants

November 16, 2025 • Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 65:17-18
Rev. Gerald C. Liu, PhD,
COTV Minister-in-Residence, Guest Preacher

[You can view the full worship video recording at: https://youtu.be/2AwiAVs1JH0]

THANK YOU:
Thank you QuiShaun, Jorge, Katie, John Kleinig, John Flake, and all the Village People dedicated to making worship flourish this morning. It’s good to be back with you. I give God thanks for you.

Will you pray with me?
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. - (Isaiah 65:17 - 18)

God promises the faithful of Israel that their painful past will be transformed, that a renewed world—full of blessing, joy, and delight—will take its place. “Jerusalem will become a joy and its people a delight,” Isaiah prophesies.

Yet I visited East Jerusalem last April as part of a Lenten delegation led by Sabeel, a Palestinian Liberation Theology organization committed to nonviolent resistance. They organized a trip primarily for students from Candler School of Theology (I joined as a friend of a faculty member who was helping to organize it). And we were all guided to learn about Palestinian life in the West Bank. What I witnessed – the daily realities of occupation, displacement, and systemic inequality—bore little resemblance to Isaiah’s vision. I witnessed first hand the plight and apartheid of Palestinian refugees and residents in places that have familiar names to us, Ramallah, Jericho, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. Nothing in Isaiah 65:17-18 appeared in what I saw. And today, a brief look at credible reporting makes clear that this promised joy remains painfully distant.

According to the United Nations, more attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) were recorded in October 2025 than in any month since 2006.

From October 7, 2023 to November 13, 2025, at least 1,017 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers. Among them were 221 children. Keep in mind East Jerusalem is about 62 miles from Gaza, 7 lengths of Manhattan away. So in addition to the 70,000 Gazan casualties, there have been another 1,000 in 3 the West Bank nowhere near the brutality there. Countless more have been displaced, and homes, hospitals, and schools have been demolished. Gazans were drenched with torrential rains this weekend due to living under ramshackle tarps as a result of the war.

Given these realities, I want to shift our hearing of Isaiah. Rather than receiving the text only through the lens of its intended promises for the Israelites, we need to hold those promises alongside the atrocities currently unfolding in the West Bank – carried out by people historically identified as the chosen of God. We must place those promises in honest tension with the suffering unfolding in the very land Isaiah names. I want to believe Isaiah’s prophecy. But in this moment it feels more faithful to read it canonically across the Bible, within the larger sweep of Scripture, rather than in isolation.

Nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible does the phrase “new heavens and a new earth” appear except in Genesis 1–2. In other words, the only other moment when Hebrew Scripture speaks of newness on a cosmic and planetary scale is at the very beginning—God’s first creative act.

Likewise, nowhere else in the New Testament does this language appear except in Revelation 21, where the “new Jerusalem” is described as a place where “the glory and honor of the nations” are welcomed in – not the possession of one people or one promised land. In other words, God’s final act of new creation is not for a single nation, but for all peoples.

So while the Bible is not laid out like a chronology and it's not a single story from beginning to end. The newness of God begins and concludes the scriptures we have inherited and that God calls us to follow.

Today, Church of the Village will advocate for trans justice in a march beginning at 1pm in Union Square Park and culminating here at this sanctuary. Everyone here and even those absent from this sanctuary are warmly welcome to join in.

The march is a step toward the newness of God in light of transgressions against trans people from recent memory.

November 20th is Trans Day of Remembrance. Bahari Thomas, Director of Public Education at Advocates for Trans Equality, writes, “As we observe Trans Day of Remembrance, we continue to do the work of advocacy and demand an end to violence against our community. Right-wing extremists are endangering our democracy and our very right to exist. Trans people—especially Black trans women—continue to bear the brunt of discriminatory policies, political scapegoating, and violence. These forces are interconnected 6 and deadly. Trans people deserve more than remembrance; we deserve the chance to live full, joyful, and self-determined lives.”

Regretfully, this year alone, 58 known trans persons have died since November 2024 according to the 2025 Trans Remembrance Report put together by the Advocates for Trans Equality [A4TE]. Twenty seven were lost to violence, twenty-one to suicide, and 8 to natural causes.

Thomas goes on to say that the 2025 Trans Remembrance Report “is not just a record of loss—it is a call to action. Every name represents a life that mattered. They were artists, dancers, writers, computer scientists, students, parents, friends, and much more. The work to end anti-trans violence begins with honoring the truth: that trans people deserve to be seen in their full humanity and live long, safe, and authentic lives.”

Whether any of us deserves a long life, only God knows. But I trust that most—if not all—of us can affirm Thomas’s insistence that trans people deserve to be seen in their full humanity and to live fully and authentically. And yet, what is deserved is far too often denied in violent and dehumanizing ways.

In our gospel passage from Luke this morning, Jesus prepares his disciples for the terror and upheaval soon to unfold—both in the shadow of his crucifixion and in the coming destruction of Jerusalem, roughly thirty years after the resurrection, the fall of Jerusalem which will happen in 70 AD/CE. He tells them plainly, “They will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.”

We can only imagine the dangers the disciples faced in first century Palestine, yet Jesus’s words also echo toward the fear and vulnerability surrounding trans lives today – fear of rejection, fear of violence, fear that one’s very humanity will not be honored.

Jesus continues, “This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

Jesus is not telling the disciples to toughen up. He is not offering empty reassurances or pretending that everything will turn out fine. He refuses to sugarcoat the danger that lies ahead. Jesus is also not telling us to toughen up either. But he does promise that God’s presence, God’s own words and wisdom, and God’s saving power will not abandon the disciples or us – even in the face of rejection, betrayal, or death, even when that rejection, betrayal, and death comes from those who govern, religious leaders, parents and siblings, relatives and friends. If the disciples and if we endure in faith, our souls will be gained. Those are the words of Jesus, not mine.

Faithful endurance today does not mean we can resurrect the 58 known trans lives lost this year. It does not mean the church can eliminate anti-trans violence with a single plan, protest, or statement. But it does mean that this church—Church of the Village—will step onto the street this afternoon and bear witness that trans people are fully human and loved by God, given the gift of self determination, no matter what. We will march propelled by the reassurance that God gives us no reason to be afraid. We walk because renewal and redemption—God’s enacted and promised newness—are how the story began in Genesis, it’s the substance of Isaiah’s prophecy, and the destiny toward which all creation moves in Revelation.

And I recognize that we’re not all trans. Not all of us will join the march this afternoon. We may not identify with the struggle for trans liberation. And even if we do, some of us may be carrying other concerns that feel more urgent in this moment, that indeed, are more urgent. That makes complete sense. And whoever you are, you’re welcome here and we’ll do our best to love you as ourselves and in the name of God. The newness God desires for creation speaks to all of us in any circumstance and through any need, great and small, pressing, ongoing, and latent.

As an example, Katie Reimer shared with me about how transformative her recent trip to Bogotá, Colombia was – where she directed an ecumenical choir made up of conservative and progressive voices alike, joining Roman Catholic and Methodist communities led by LGBTQIA+ people in worship. That is a glimpse of God’s newness: people singing together who wouldn’t expect to be harmonizing in their discovery of God’s unifying, but not uniform love.

And I know that some hard conversations were recently had with Bishop Bickerton about the future of Church of the Village. Let me ask, What fearlessness and what newness is God calling the leaders of COTV to believe and to enact in light of that consultation? To put it another way, how will we show him what Jesus can do in us?

Maybe God has revealed I need to be appointed your pastor.

But jokes aside – and beyond our particular communities and this particular congregation – how can we commit ourselves to the newness God desires for the world?

Endurance in faith is not simply “holding on.” As Isaiah and Luke remind us, endurance also is not just going through vague motions toward an invisible hope. It requires testimony. It means saying something God given, voicing what is made explicit by the Spirit in our lives in the name of God. It means saying the name Jesus. It means speaking aloud how God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are moving in our lives—and why that movement matters for everyone we meet, not just us and our concerns.

So with all of our diversity in mind, let me preview our discussion questions today:
What new creation, what new heaven and new earth, is God calling you to see – and to help bring forth?

How does the newness of God’s promises shape your love of God and neighbor, and even your concrete witness to the gospel today?

Amen.

Copyright (c) 2025 - Gerald C. Liu
All rights reserved.