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GATHERING SONG:  "O Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer"
ANNOUNCEMENTS (Please feel free to type a brief announcement of 
    interest to our community in Nearby Chat.)

WELCOME

We are so glad you're here!  
Gathered together, we'll worship our still speaking, and surely still listening, God!
Welcome to First United Church of Christ and Conference Center, Second Life
We are an actual church with full real life standing in the Eastern Association,
Southern California Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ. 
You may see someone besides me with a tag including the words"1st UCC" and "Minister." 
Yep, ordained UCC clergy in real life.
And you may see folks with a tag that says "Guide."  
Think "Usher" in real life; they'll help you find your way around.
And of course, our "Staff" folk keep the rest of us organized and handle our special events.

As a United Church of Christ church, we mean it when we say,
"No matter who you are, 
or where you are on life's journey, 
you are welcome here."

If you would like a bulletin notecard/copy of the service, 
please click the red book on the stand near the sanctuary entrance.

If you would like to become an official member of this church, 
please let any clergy of staff member know!
There are many ways you can offer a gift to support this ministry.
You might feel called to help as a Guide greeting visitors, or as a reader of scripture,
or as a leader of a Psalter service.  You could volunteer to serve on our Board.
And, of course, you can decide to be a full voting member.
And you can support financially just as we
support the wonderful work of the UCC with prayer and financially.
If you would like to help with our expenses, there is a donation bowl at the rear of the sanctuary.
If you are thinking of a donation you would rather do in real life currency,
you are welcome to use the Donation page on our website. http://www.firstuccsl.org 
Since we are an IRS 501(c)(3) public charity, US donations are deductible.
And we thank you!

SCRIPTURE:  Mark 13:1-8

SERMON:  "Belief and Bedrock"

One of the interesting things about predictions is how absolutely certain 
the predictors are of the accuracy of their predictions.  
Here are some predictions from the past, all from people who were highly trusted individuals:
•    Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, in 1943 said, 
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
•    Popular Mechanics magazine in 1949 made this prediction: 
“Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons,
computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.”
•    There was an inventor by the name of Lee DeForest 
whose work made radio broadcasting possible.  
He claimed that “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, 
commercially and financially it is an impossibility.”
•    The Decca Recording Co. made a big mistake when they made this prediction: 
“We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”  
That was their prediction in 1962 concerning a few lads form Liverpool.  
Their band was called the Beatles.
•    “The concept is interesting and well-formed, 
but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible.” 
– A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper 
proposing reliable overnight delivery service.  Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp. 
•    “Who the h*** wants to hear actors talk?” – H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927. 
•    “I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” 
– Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With the Wind." 
•    “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.  
X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” – William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899. 
•    “It will be years – not in my time -- before a woman will become Prime Minister.”  
Margaret Thatcher, 1974. 
•    “I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock 
the religious sensibilities of anyone.” -- Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 1869.
•    “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” 
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
•    “With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, 
the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.” 
- Business Week, August 2, 1968. 
•    “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” 
– Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929. 
•    “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.  
It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” – Albert Einstein, 1932. 
•    “The bomb will never go off.  I speak as an expert in explosives. 
– Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project. 
•    “There will never be a bigger plane built.” 
– A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin-engine plane that holds ten people. 
•    “Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” 
– Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872. 
Those remind me of a favorite saying:  
Being positive is to be mistaken, but at the top of one's lungs. 
As the disciples walked out of the Temple in Jerusalem Jesus paused with his disciples, 
looked back at the Temple and predicted, 
“Do you see all these great buildings. Not one stone will be left on another.”  
To the disciples this was bedrock.  Nothing could bring down these walls.  
“Look, teacher! What massive stones!  What magnificent buildings!” they said to Jesus.  
The smallest stones in the structure weighed 2 to 3 tons. Many of them weighed 50 tons.  
The largest existing stone is 12 meters in length and 3 meters high, 
and it weighed hundreds of tons!  
The stones were so immense that neither mortar 
nor any other binding material was used between the stones.  
Their stability was attained by the great weight of the stones.  
The walls towered over Jerusalem, over 400 feet in one area. 
Inside the four walls was 45 acres of bedrock mountain shaved flat 
and during Jesus' day a quarter of a million people could fit comfortably within the structure. 
No sports structure in America today comes close.
You can then understand the disciple’s surprise.  
As they walked down the Kidron valley and up mount olive 
Peter, James and John wanted to hear more.  
Jesus' prediction that a structure so immense would be leveled seemed implausible.  
But they pressed Jesus for more information.  They wanted to know when.  
What would be the sign that this was about to take place?  
In their voices was fear, fear of the unknown, fear that their lives were about to change forever.
Jesus had not made any predictions like this one.  This was different.  
This prediction they could understand.
Forty years later Jesus' prediction came true.  
In 70 AD the Temple was destroyed by Rome.  
I have stood under the arch built to commemorate that Roman victory.  
It stands just a few hundred yards from the Coliseum in Rome.  
Clearly visible in the carvings of the victory procession is a menorah taken from the temple.  
It is an awe-inspiring sight.
I have also stood on an excavated market street below the surviving base of the temple 
and seen the stones larger than a 12-passenger van that were thrown down.
But what are we to learn from this prediction and its fulfillment?  
First, the bedrock of faith is not found in temples, 
and not even in the way we sometimes think of “church.”  
A number of years ago, leaders in a church decided to track down the congregation's dropouts.They combed through the membership list, put together a list of names, 
and sent out volunteers two-by-two to knock on doors 
and invite the absent members back to church.  
As is often the case, the volunteer visitors discovered that most of the people visited 
had found other things to do on Sunday morning.  
One person said, “I would come back to church if it didn't conflict with my tennis time.”   
Another said, “We came to church when our kids were involved.  
When they outgrew Sunday School, we stopped going.”  
Another said, “I enjoy going to church on the really big days, like Christmas, Easter, 
and the Fourth of July. Compared to those days, other services are a little bit dull.”
One response was different.  
Two volunteers named Jack and Esther went to see a man whom nobody knew.  
He lived on the end of the street, in a big house behind three overgrown pine trees.  
It took the volunteers a few minutes to find the front door.  All the curtains were drawn.  
It looked like nobody was home.  
Suddenly the door swung open, and a thin man with a shock of white hair said, 
“My name's Tarnower.  What do you want?”  
They said, “We're from the church.  We stopped by to see you.”  He invited them in.  
They explained why they had come.
In a few minutes, he was shaking a bony finger at them.  
“I'll tell you why I don't go to church anymore.  
It's because I got in the habit of reading the Sunday Times 
before I went to the worship service.”  
Esther leaned forward.  “Tell us,” she said warmly, 
“how did the newspaper keep you from coming to church?  
Did you get caught up in the sports section and lose track of time?  Or the comics?”   
Mr. Tarnower looked at her with fire in his eyes.  “No,” he said, “I read the news.  
It's an awful world out there.  There are a lot of diseases I don't understand.  
Wars break out.  Families fall apart.  Children run through the streets with handguns.  
People die prematurely.  Listen, the world is falling apart, 
and the church can't do a thing about it.”
“Well,” Jack said, “you ought to come back.  We have a nice minister, a good choir, 
and a Bible study on Wednesday nights.  You might enjoy our program.”   
“No,” Mr. Tarnower said, “I don't think so.  I get out for groceries, but that's all I want to face.  
I went to church for a while, but the world got worse.  
When my wife died, I decided to sit in here, watch everything fall apart, and wait my turn.  
I don't go to church anymore.  The church has nothing to say.”  
He has a point.  
We live in a rough and painful world that seems to grow worse each day.  
And sometimes it seems like the church is not able to cope with the world as it really is.
Second the bedrock of faith is not found in “signs.”  
The Gospel texts have lots of signs of who Jesus really is, 
but the disciples consistently fail to understand.  And we consistently fail to understand.  
We seem to need some sort of “sign.”  
Unfortunately, there are lots of people who claim to have seen a sign 
and are all too ready to share their “revelation” with us. 
I read where someone reported on a TV preacher recently talking for an hour 
about his new book that supposedly explained everything we needed to know 
about the coming of Jesus and the end of time.  
“You must have this book,” he said over and over again, 
a telephone number (not even toll-free) constantly flashing at the bottom of the screen.  
Seems that he was the only one who had prophetic insight into world events, 
and for a mere $14.95 we could have the benefit of his wisdom.  
We would not survive the coming terrors unless we had this book.
A pastor called the number and suggested to the poor operator 
that if this preacher really thought this was so vital to the survival of the planet, 
and that the end was so near, he would be giving the book away!  
I mean he won't need the money, right?  It's all coming to an end anyway.  
Who needs a bank account?  True, it costs money to print, 
but he will not have to pay for it if it goes as he says.  
The woman on the other end of the line was not amused.  
“Sorry, sir,” she said, “but I don't know much about theology,” 
to which the pastor responded, “Neither does the writer of the book you're selling.”
There is a bedrock of faith and that bedrock is faith in Christ and in his message of hope 
and salvation for those who will believe.  
Bedrock is not found in the massiveness of stone, or the walls of a sanctuary, but in belief.  
And belief is not easy.
Several years ago, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks 
did a comedy skit called the “2013 Year Old Man.”  Do you remember it?  
In the skit, Reiner interviews Brooks, who is the old gentleman.  
At one point, Reiner asks the old man, “Did you always believe in the Lord?”  
Brooks replied, “No. We had a guy in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshiped him.”
Reiner asked, “You worshiped a guy named Phil?  Why?”  
Brooks answered,  “Because he was big, and mean, 
and he could break you in two with his bare hands!”   
“Did you have prayers?”  
Brooks said, “Yes, would you like to hear one?  
O Phil, please don't be mean, and hurt us, or break us in two with your bare hands.”  
“So when did you start worshiping the Lord?”  
Brooks thought for a moment and said, “Well, one day a big thunderstorm came up, 
and a lightning bolt hit Phil.  We gathered around and saw that he was dead. 
Then we said to one another, ‘There's something bigger than Phil!’”
Yes there is something bigger than Phil!  
And there is something bigger than all the calamities of the world 
that people take as signs of God’s absence from the creation. 
Most of you remember General Alexander Haig, a military leader in the war in Vietnam 
and political leader in the Reagan administration.  
Now, General Haig was not exactly what you would call a great theologian.  
He once said something, which on the surface sounded utterly stupid, 
and he was roundly criticized by the media for saying it.  
He said, "There are worse things than a nuclear war."  
That sounds like he stuck his foot in his mouth, 
but that is exactly what we Christians believe.  What is far worse than a nuclear war?  
Not having faith and trust in God.  
Not to trust God and God's promises means that we are headed 
for a destiny even worse than a nuclear holocaust.  
But to trust and believe the promises of God means that nothing in this world, 
not even the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb or the ecological disaster of global warming 
or the insidious attack of terminal cancer 
or the suffering and humiliation of an economic recession, 
or the strife and turmoil of conflicting ideologies and even religions, 
can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  
We can believe that because our Judgment Day has already happened.  
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, 
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  
That is the promise of belief and bedrock.
And the people of God said...

MUSIC FOR PREPARING FOR COMMUNITY PRAYER:  "Let Our Faith Be Not Alone"

You are invited to type your prayers of joy and concern in Nearby Chat, 
during this song, before our community prayer time,
so that we may lift them to God as community!  
We ask you to read each shared prayer carefully. and to enter into this time with reverence.
We are actually in a conversation with God when we pray, 
and that should never be taken lightly,
but rather as we are told in Ephesians, "...  with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." (4:23)
Your energy will be added to that prayer as we surrender it into God's keeping.
If you wish, you may respond to others with "God hear our prayer" or words of your choosing.

COMMUNITY PRAYER and PASTORAL PRAYER

MOMENT of SILENCE

PASTORAL PRAYER

Belief is hard, O Lord.
The disciples struggled
and we have struggled ever since.
Perhaps it is because we feel so besieged
wars
disease
political turmoil
racial injustice
poverty
subtle but pervasive discriminations
economic uncertainty.
We need something to cling to
tangible
solid.
And then we remember
that there is a bedrock
and that bedrock is your love
as expressed in Jesus Christ.
Help us remember that
now and always.
Amen.

LORD'S PRAYER

Indwelling God,
infused throughout all existence,
we honor you with many names.
Your realm is within the human heart.
We accept life for all that it can be,
on earth as throughout all creation.
May we continue to draw sustenance from this earth,
and may we receive forgiveness equal to our own.
May we ever move from separation toward union,
to live in grace, with love in our hearts,
forever and ever.  Amen. 

BENEDICTION
I extinguish our candles; 
the light of the Spirit goes now with each of you.
Journey with that Spirit company in whatever world you sojourn.
It could not be otherwise, not really.
You journey just exactly as you were created to be
the beloved of God.
Amen.
CLOSING SONG:  "Oh, Great Love of God"