Your Limit

 

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

 A warm welcome to each worshipper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.

 

As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.

 

943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkwayumc.com

                                    Welcome to Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

January 30, 2022

10:00 a.m.

*You are invited to stand in body or in spirit

 

Prelude                 

 

Greeting and Announcements

 

Mission Statement:

We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

 

Call to Worship

By Joanne Carlson Brown

 

Come! Hear the call of God:
“Speak of me to my people.”
But we are just ordinary folks.
Who will listen?
“I will give you the words.
I will always be with you as you speak
my words of truth and justice and love.”
We gather here to worship God,
to praise God for Divine loving presence,
and to be strengthened for the calling
The Holy has given us.

 

 

*Hymn                   God of Love and God of Power                      #578

 

Prayer of Confession:

God, who shapes the course of history, it is so hard to be a prophet. We’re just ordinary folks. What do you expect us to do? Who will listen to us anyway? Even if they do, they’ll only get mad. You’d do better to find someone else—someone older, someone younger, someone more articulate, someone with more courage, someone with more faith. But still we hear our call and your promise. Forgive our feet of clay—when we try and evade your call, when we make excuses, when we doubt your presence, when we reject your prophets, when we reject ourselves. In the opportunities and challenges in our lives, help us see that you are there, and help us respond in faith, hope, and love.

Assurance

God is our rock and our fortress. In God we find our hope and our strength. We are always surrounded by God’s forgiving love, a love that has known us from birth and will never leave us.

Anthem

Scripture Reading         Jeremiah 1: 4-10

Jeremiah’s Call and Commission

⁴ Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,

⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

⁶ Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” ⁷ But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.
⁸ Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the Lord.”

⁹ Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,

“Now I have put my words in your mouth.
¹⁰ See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”

Sermon                                  Your Limit

 

This week I was thinking about fear.

 

Us humans are capable of the most amazing things, and I have seen it over and over in my ministry. And despite our many doubts, we know we have great potential. But sometimes an irrational fear can hold us back for no reason.

 

I read some celebrity trivia this week. Mohammed Ali, Michael Jackson, Johnny Cash, and John Madden were all terrified of flying. Imagine how that would hold you back if your job as an entertainer required you to travel long distances quickly. Gustave Eiffel, principle architect of the famous Eiffel tower in Paris, was afraid of heights—after he finished his masterpiece, he could hardly look up to admire its beauty. Oh the ironies of life. Marilyn Monroe and Sir Lawrence Olivier feared public speaking. Can you imagine being a performer who fears performing? Even legendary comedian Lucille Ball felt a lot of anxiety performing in front of cameras, and she had to work around it throughout her career. Carmen Elektra is reportedly afraid of water, which really makes you wonder how she handled being on Baywatch. Megan Fox and Keanu Reeves have trouble with roles that require night filming, because they’re afraid of the dark, and Billy Bob Thornton can’t have any antique furniture on set because it scares him.

 

Our human capacity to generate anxiety and problems where there needn’t be any is truly remarkable. Literally as I wrote that sentence, my youngest threw a tantrum because the TV wasn’t tuned to his favorite show (Ultraman), and my oldest wanted to make a thorough inventory of every Star Wars DVD he didn’t have. Parenting is wonderful.

 

Though I try to stay cool as a cucumber in my life, I have a few deep seated ministry fears that I may never get over. I’m terrified of candles, and I’m always surrounded by them. I’m particularly afraid I’m going to catch a bell sleeve on one and start something awful. I’m afraid when I walk down those steps after I say the benediction that I’ll trip over my robe and fall on my face in front of everyone. I really hate mice, and every church I’ve ever served has at least one resident rodent hiding somewhere. And, more than anything, I’m petrified that when I am officiating something formal, like communion, or a baptism, or a wedding or a funeral, that I will call you the wrong name. Now you know exactly how to get me on April Fools’ Day. Have fun.

 

In this morning’s lectionary-appointed Hebrew Bible reading, we hear God call Jeremiah to become a prophet. Jeremiah has many good reasons to be fearful and harbor doubts in the face of this Holy charge. He’s the son of a priest. He was raised his whole life to be a priest, and if he follows this path God will place him on, he will venture far from the life his family expects of him and rarely is ever see them again. Prophets notoriously faced peril. His job would be to deliver the words of God to the people, even if, and especially if, the people had no interest in hearing those words. This morning’s lectionary-appointed Gospel reading tells us that when Jesus attempted to do just that, deliver the word of God, in the synagogue he grew up in, surrounded by his closest friends and kin, they chased him out of town. If Jeremiah accepted his call, he’d live that kind of life, one where he was welcome nowhere, and constantly fleeing from the wrath of those who heard prophecies they didn’t want. This would be a lonely life, a dangerous life, a stressful life, and likely a short life. Yet none of those reasons weighed on Jeremiah’s heart as he struggled to say yes to God. He had just one very specific hold up: God, you can’t send me, I’m only a boy.

 

Many of you have heard different pieces of this over the last 2 years that we have been blessed to spend together, but I, like our friend Jeremiah, got into the ministry very young, and with no expectation that I would ever do this particular work. At least Jeremiah expected he’d grow up to be a priest, and serve God. I, of course, wanted to bring glory to God no matter what I did for a living, but I never imagined God being my boss. I had not only a very specific plan for my life and career when I was younger, but also a very limited imagination of my personality. The thought of becoming a minister never crossed my mind until my junior year of college, before that it was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t “the type of person” who would be a minister. When I imagined a life in the ministry I imagined Elle Woods in the moving Legally Blonde telling her parents she wanted to go to law school, and hearing her dad respond that law school is for people who are “boring, and ugly, and serious.” No offense to my colleagues, but the ministry is no more glamorous in the popular imagination, and looks like an especially unattractive profession for a young woman. Especially because I had decided by my freshman year of high school that I would go into a profession that is very socially acceptable for young women: I was going to be a teacher. And I had strong reasoning behind that plan. It was a solid goal. I worked as a tutor in high school, I loved it, and I was really good at it. My passion was math. I was a huge nerd. I was on my school’s math team. I adored working with numbers, formulas, and calculations. Math was predictable, and logical. My reason-oriented, academic, dorkasaurus brain couldn’t imagine anything better than spending my life analyzing numbers, and teaching kids how to do the same. I was passionate about it, I was talented at it, I could find a job doing it, and the world unquestionably needs math teachers, so if that wasn’t the makings of a calling, teenage Natalie couldn’t imagine what was.

 

Like Jeremiah, I made the mistake of putting limits on myself. More importantly, and also like Jeremiah, I put limits on God. I only imagined one future God could have in store for me, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the notion that my passions, interests, and talents could ever change from what they were when I was fifteen. I came to the University of Rochester fully prepared to major in math, stay for a one year master’s program in education, and stand in front of a high school math class by September 1, 2010. I decided on the calendar and everything, so God was going to have to just follow my plan rather than the other way around. Turns out that was a good idea, but not a God idea. God had a completely different plan for my life, and began changing my mind and heart in order to prepare me for it. I took third and fourth semester calculus, the kind of stuff I had been dying to sink my teeth into and found it…boring. Unstimulating. Uninspiring. The idea of taking 4 years of classes I suddenly hated was unbearable.

 

I gave myself permission to do something that we all must do sometimes if we want to actually follow God: I set my plan aside, and tried to tolerate the uncertainty. I now had no answers, no plans, and tuition paying parents to answer to. But I waited for direction from God. God told me to risk a semester away from math, and to try taking a course about the history of religion in America.

 

I loved it, and the next semester I took both philosophy of religion and introduction to the New Testament. A semester later, I declared a major in religion. A few months after that, God had me looking at seminary applications.

 

Despite God’s call on my heart, I still hesitated. “Oh, Lord God,” said 21 year old Natalie, “truly I will not know how to preach, for I am only a sarcastic college student.”

 

Every person in this room has a calling. Somewhere out there, God wants you to do something you are uniquely qualified to do. You have right within yourself everything you need to do what God is calling you to. And if, along the way, you find that you’re missing something, God will provide. Like the old hymn says, our job is to trust and obey.

 

But every one of us has the fears of Jeremiah percolating within us. It’s human nature. We want to follow the infinite potential of the Divine, but we live in a finite world, and we really struggle to imagine that a calling God places upon us, however important, will be able to transcend the limits of this world after a certain point.

 

Where is that point for you?

 

Where is that point for this church?

 

Where is the limit that we have imagined upon God? The line we don’t think God can cross?

 

What does that timid inner child say when God asks you to step out into the unknown?

 

35 year old Natalie still has a limit on God. Even though I know better. Even though I’ve been serving in the ministry for a decade now. I still look at the challenges before me like a mountain. I still see a deeply broken world, and a Church that may not be equipped to face it. I still see institutionalized racism, homophobia, and colonialism, and don’t know if I can keep bringing my gifts to the table. And I still look in the mirror and see a young woman in an institution dominated by old men. And we’ve come a long way, but guys, there’s still a whole lot of people out there that think that if there’s a lady in this pulpit it’s only because the Conference ran out of dudes. And on my most trying days I say, “Oh, Lord God, truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a sleep deprived mom.”

 

Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’re saying “Oh Lord God, truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only one struggling person. For I am only good at what I do. For I am only a Grandma. For I am only a retiree. For I am only a few months sober. For I am only as strong as my morning coffee. For we are only a small, suburban church.”

 

We have to get that word “only” out of our vocabularies. That’s the first of many lessons we can learn from Jeremiah. We’re not “only” anything. And God knows our potentials so much better than we do. God needs people just like us, in a world just like this one, to speak truth and justice. To teach love and kindness. To show compassion and tenderheartedness. To welcome the stranger, to visit the sick and imprisoned, the feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked. God wants us to build a different world. And if God can help me handle my fear of mice, than God can help you face whatever obstacles you see in front of you today.

 

Amen.

 

     

*Hymn                                 Gather Us In                                      #2236

                              Led by the Front Porch Rockers

 

Offertory          

*Doxology

*Prayer of Dedication

 

Time of Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

 

Your love is patient;
we give you thanks for all those who have been patient with us
and have taught and cared for us;
and we pray for the patience to love others
as you have loved us.

 

Your love is kind;
give us the courage to be kind to others
and to serve those with patience
who are so often unkind, rude, difficult to love, or our enemies.
They are your children and our sisters and brothers
and they were made in your image.

 

Your love is not pompous;
give us insight to speak the truth in love
and for the sake of your kingdom
and not out of a need to appear clever or right
and in all our relationships
give us the wisdom to listen far more than we speak.

 

Your love does not seek its own interests;
we thank you and pray for those who serve the poor and those in need,
who give tirelessly of themselves and who have much to do
and little time for themselves.

 

Your love is not quick-tempered;
we pray for those who are angry
and for the violent and their victims;
for children who fear, elders who are abused,
and people trapped in relationships that injure and harm.

 

Your love bears all things;
we remember before you those with heavy burdens,
many cares, much stress, and too little comfort and help.
Open our eyes to those around us and their needs
and give us the wisdom to offer help
without any prying or sense of superiority.

 

Your love never fails;
even death does not trespass on the breadth and depth of your love.
We thank you for those we have loved in this life
and who now dwell in the peace and joy of your presence
and let your comfort settle on those who are bereaved
or who are lonely this day.
In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen

 

Posted on The Presbyterian Church in Canada website, http://presbyterian.ca. Reposted: https://re-worship.blogspot.com/2016/01/prayer-for-others-your-love.html.

 

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed by 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 have trespassed against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

 

 

*Hymn                       Morning Glory, Starlit Sky                         #194

 

Benediction

Postlude            

_____________________________________________

Staff

Natalie Bowerman               Pastor

Betsy Lehmann                     Music Director

Joe White                               Custodian

Cassandra Brown                 Nursery Attendant