Well That Escalated Quickly!

 

Sunday, July 12, 2020

 

Hello friend! My name is Natalie Bowerman! Effective July 1, I’m the new pastor at the Eastern Parkway UMC! It’s such a joy to be part of your church community. I put this together for you to give you a non-internet worship experience in this time of social distancing. This is all new for me, in coming weeks I’ll be playing with new ideas for how to make this as nice as can be for you. If you have any requests, or want to contact me for any reason, drop me a line! You can email me at pastornatalie4@gmail.com, and you can reach me by phone at (585) 355-7444. Shalom!

 

Psalm 119: 105-112

¹⁰⁵Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

¹⁰⁶I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to observe your righteous ordinances.

¹⁰⁷I am severely afflicted; give me life, O Lord, according to your word.

¹⁰⁸Accept my offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your ordinances.

¹⁰⁹I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.

¹¹⁰The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts.

¹¹¹Your decrees are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart.

¹¹²I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.

 

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love with all my soul.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

 

Genesis 25: 19-34

¹⁹These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham was the father of Isaac, ²⁰and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban the Aramean. ²¹Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. ²²The children struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. ²³And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” ²⁴When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. ²⁵The first came out red, all his body like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau. ²⁶Afterward his brother came out, with his hand gripping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them. ²⁷When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. ²⁸Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

²⁹Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. ³⁰Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished!” (Therefore he was called Edom.) ³¹Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” ³²Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” ³³Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. ³⁴Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

 

Matthew 13: 1-9

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. ²Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹Let anyone with ears listen!”

 

A Message from Pastor Natalie

Today’s readings are some odd stories about familiar characters. First up we have our Hebrew Bible reading in Genesis, and twin brothers Jacob and Esau. Esau was delivered first, but Genesis tells us that Esau was born with Jacob holding onto his foot. And from that moment on, Jacob was one step behind Esau, constantly looking to take one particular thing he had: his birthright as the first-born son. It only made matters worse that their parents played favorites: Dad Isaac preferred Esau, and Mom Rebecca preferred Jacob.

Tensions kept building between the brothers until the moment of this story. Esau has been out working in the field, and Jacob is preparing lunch. Esau comes back to the house famished. He sees Jacob’s lunch. He tells Jacob he must have some of that lunch meat right now. Jacob realizes that this moment, bizarre as the circumstances seem, is his moment. He finally has something over Esau. So he tells Esau, “Sure, I’ll give you some lunch…if you give me your birthright.”

A few initial thoughts: those of us ladies married to men have told one another for generations that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Turns out the stomach is also the route of access to a man’s birthright. Jacob must be quite the cook, and that must have been some lunch.

All joking aside, sometimes we have something only by circumstance, and we give it away quickly because it was never really ours. Sometimes we lack something only by circumstance, and we aggressively pursue it. Sometimes all we need to tell if either the first or the second is true for us is a break, and a nourishing meal.

While we chew on that, we have this parable from Matthew. Jesus appeals to any of us who have any farming or gardening experience and compares blooming into your God-anointed purpose in this life to a flower blooming from a seed. The best plants take the most time and work to bloom.

That’s certainly been true for my life. When I was very young, I planted a seed in shallow soil, saw a plant immediately come up, and felt so great about it. I was convinced that I would spend my life producing such beautiful flowers the same way I made that one. I had a passion for something most people don’t like very much: math. I was technical, and great with numbers. I had straight As in most subjects, but especially math. I was a tutor, and I loved helping my classmates with their math homework. This quick blooming flower turned into a full on career plan: I would study math at the University of Rochester, get a master’s in secondary education there, and become a high school math teacher. It was an airtight 5 year plan. So airtight, in fact, that it left no room at all for the breath of the Holy Spirit blowing through my life.

One semester into college I dropped my math major like a rock. My As turned into Cs. Math, once a class I looked forward to every day, was now the bane of my existence. I needed to plant a different seed, in different soil.

God started guiding my planting, and when I had let go of my own agenda, I found myself taking Philosophy of Religion, then Intro to the New Testament, and then the History of Religion in America. And then, as a second semester junior, I took up a whole major in a program I didn’t even know the U of R offered when I applied—religion. I eventually found my way to seminary, pursued ordination in the UMC, relocated a few times, and over the course of many years this Chicago girl found herself preaching in Schenectady.

My future in math was the seed planted in shallow soil. It scorched in the sun, and died. I gave it up like Esau gave up his birthright so I could be nourished by the many blessings of Jesus, and his true plan for my life. Along the way I’ve had some other plans that turned into poorly planted seeds, that got eaten by birds and choked by thorns, and that didn’t have a chance. I had to let them go, because they were never mine. But Jesus was always mine, and he never let me go.

Let’s plant together, Eastern Parkway. Let’s love one another, pick up our seeds, and go gardening. We all have different flowers to bring to the field. It will be rich in diversity. Not all of our flowers will bloom in the same season, and as one of our plants fades away, it will be time for another to bloom. When we feel like we’ve given all we’ve got to our plant for a while, we’ll go sit down for a no-strings-attached nourishing meal. Then we’ll pick up our spades and get back to work.

Let’s make our garden grow, Eastern Parkway. Let’s extend deep roots of love, justice, kindness, and inclusion into the earth. Let’s spread like dandelions out far beyond this community, so that you see out seeds floating in the wind, reaching people who had never seen Christ’s love like this before.

Amen.

 

Just for Fun

Friends, Pastor Natalie is a musician. While I was working on this week’s sermon, I thought about this song called “Make Our Garden Grow” from the musical adaptation of Candide, written by Leonard Bernstein. Here’s the lyrics:

 

You've been a fool and so have I
But come I'll be your wife
And let us try before we die
To make some sense of life
We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

I thought the world was sugar cake
For so our master said
But now I'll teach my hands to bake
Our loaf of daily bread
We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

Let dreamers dream what worlds they please
Those edens can't be found
The sweetest flowers
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground
We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

 

Benediction

Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in, from this time on and forever more. And in all places, all times, and all ways, the people of God say Amen.