Fishers of People, Part 1
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
February 6, 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 Michelle Torigian
Great is the grace and glory of God.
We give thanks with hearts of joy.
Great is the strength and mercy of our creator.
We give thanks with hearts of hope.
Great is the courage and hope of our Lord.
We give thanks with hearts of faith.
Great is the mercy and compassion of the Holy One.
We give thanks with hearts of love.
*Hymn Holy God, We Praise Thy Name (v 1, 2) #79
Prayer of Confession:
Too often, we have clung to thoughts that we are too sinful
for you. Too often, we have fused our shameful pasts with a closed future. From
these beliefs, we condemn ourselves to an outlook without hope. “Go away from
me!” we exclaim like Peter. “I am way too lost,” we think like Isaiah. But you
have something different in mind. You see us as so much more. You see our
divine image, and our creator-bestowed gifts. Save us from our negative
self-talk, that we may embrace your calling for our lives. Amen.
Assurance
The
grace of God has molded us throughout our lives and will continue to do so
until our final breath. God’s grace is never in vain. Even as God embraces our
past, God moves us into the future— a future filled with hope, and the
fulfillment of dreams.
Anthem
Scripture Reading Luke 5: 1-11
Jesus Calls the First Disciples
5 Once while Jesus[a] was standing beside the lake of
Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he
saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of
them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one
of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way
from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When
he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and
let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered,
“Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say
so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done
this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7 So
they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they
came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But
when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from
me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all
who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and
so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.
Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching
people.” 11 When they had brought their boats to
shore, they left everything and followed him.
Sermon Fishers of People,
Part 1
Good morning,
friends.
For the next
four Sundays, I’m trying a new sermon series from the pulpit. I think we’ll all
get a lot out of it.
The Gospel
stories we hear for the next four Sundays are all of the early days of Jesus’
earthly ministry—in today’s story, he calls his first three disciples. As we’ll
see in these stories, and as many of us know well of Jesus, he never chose to
build his ministry by taken the well-traveled road and playing it safe. Nor
does he allow us to engage in ministry by maintaining the status quo. Jesus showed
this world that meaningful change, change that builds the Kin-dom of God,
change that restores this world to the image God created it in and called “good”,
only comes from taking huge risks.
At the same
time as we journey through Jesus’ emerging ministry, in our contemporary
culture we observe Black History Month. We celebrate diversity on our society
and in our Church, we honor the sacred worth of our BIPOC siblings, and, most
importantly, and the biggest reason why I’m interweaving Black History Month
into our worship time, we remember that, just like Jesus taught us, the world
never changed after mild-mannered people sat on the sidelines and passively did
as they were told. Our world has taken huge steps toward equality and justice
only because of the extraordinary bravery and faith of people who defied the
rules, and we will continue wiping out the social sin of racism by fighting
against the systems that maintain it.
During Black
History Month, especially as we inch closer to the season of Lent, it’s very
important for white Christians like me and many people in this room to take
this time to reflect on the many evils of white supremacy, and think about what
we can do to atone for those sins and deconstruct the injustices we still see.
One of those many, many injustices has to do with how a lot of us learned
history growing up. White voices have dominated the stories of our people. We
learn about President George Washington, but not African American agricultural
scientist George Washington Carver. When we do allow the voices of our
forefathers and -mothers of color to come into the conversation, we still tell
them from a perspective that’s comfortable for white ears. We read Dr. King’s beautiful,
iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, but not the challenging words from “Letter from
a Birmingham Jail”. We learn about Rosa Parks, but we focus on her seat on the
bus rather than her heroism in protesting an unjust law. Most of all, we’ve
only learned about the most famous of our BIPOC siblings, and allowed the
stories of those who may not have made the front page of the paper to fade into
the background. For these next four weeks, I’m going to lift up from here
stories of our friends of color who we didn’t learn a ton about in school, and
whose lives and legacies have a whole lot to teach us about the revolutionary
risk-taking of a disciple of Christ.
Today’s story comes
from right here in upstate New York. Isabella Baumfree was born in or around
the year 1797 to parents James and Elizabeth Baumfree in Swartekill, New York,
roughly 100 miles north of New York City. She was one of ten children born to
enslaved parents, and like many children born in slavery, she never knew her
exact birthday. She spent the earliest years of her life on the estate of a
wealthy family until, at the age of nine, she was sold alongside a flock of
sheep for $100. She was sold repeatedly for the next several years, moving from
one master to the next in Upstate New York, with each man claiming to own her
being crueler than the last. In her later years, she bravely shared the
terrible stories of beatings and assaults. But despite the odds, she survived. As
a child she spoke only Dutch, and went by the nickname Belle. As she aged she
picked up English, but continued to pronounce her words with a Dutch accent for
the rest of her life.
At the age of
eighteen, Isabella fell in love. Her beloved’s name was Robert, a man enslaved
by a neighboring farmer. Robert’s master forbade his relationship with
Isabella, because if they had children together he wouldn’t own them. Isabella
and Robert visited in secret, until they were discovered and Robert was beaten.
Isabella never saw him again, and the tragedy of her first love stayed with
her.
In 1826, a
year before slavery was finally abolished in New York State, Isabella escaped
to freedom with her infant daughter. She had to make the heartbreaking decision
to leave her other four children behind, fearing that they couldn’t all make it
out. Years later, when she described her escape, Isabella quipped, “I did not
run off, for I thought that wicked. But I walked off, believing that to be alright.”
She found sanctuary in the town of New Paltz, under the care of Isaac and Maria
Van Wagenen, who offered her last enslaver $20 in exchange for not coming after
her. Some time later, Isabella received the terrible news that her 5 year old
son had been illegally sold across state lines, to a plantation owner in Alabama.
The Van Wagenens supported Isabella in taking those who sold her son to court, and,
though the case dragged on for years, the Van Wagenens stayed by her side until
she finally regained custody of her son and became one of the first black women
in history to sue a white man and win.
With the help
of several white abolitionists, Isabella gained
more and more ground under her feet, eventually finding work as a maid and
being able to support herself. While working for a family of faith she became
Christian, and ultimately found her faith home in the Methodist tradition. Shortly
after finding her identity in Christ, Isabella experienced a life-changing moment
of calling, and decided it was time for her to leave her comfortable job and
travel as far as she could to speak her truth, fighting against the evils of
slavery. Since she found her soul’s identity as a traveling voice of candor, she officially changed her name, and for the
rest of her life became known as she is to this day—as Sojourner Truth.
For the rest of her life, Truth found solidarity and support among Christians
who sought to abolish slavery. Though she quit her job as a maid and left home
with only a few possessions in a pillow case, Truth never went without. She
devoted all of her time to the causes of abolition, women’s rights, voting
rights, and prison reform. She delivered thousands of speeches, and, though so
often marginalized as a woman of color, discovered that there are many more
people out there striving for righteousness than creating evil, and righteousness
wins out every time. She delivered her most well-known speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?”
in 1851. Unfortunately, this speech has been regularly misquoted because of a
publicist who wanted her to sound stereotypically southern and uneducated. In
her authentic words, she proclaimed,
“I can't read, but
I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin.
Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up
again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and
she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and
love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came
forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the
woman who bore him. Man, where was your part?”
She had the fortune of fighting for equality alongside Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Frederick Douglass, who spoke at
her funeral in 1883. In his eulogy Douglass said of Truth: “Venerable for age, distinguished
for insight into human nature, remarkable for independence and courageous
self-assertion, devoted to the welfare of her race, she has been for the last
forty years an object of respect and admiration for social reformers everywhere.”
In this morning’s Gospel story, we hear about the beginnings of Jesus
encouraging ordinary people, just like us, to take enormous leaps of faith like
Truth did. He calls his first three disciples, Simon Peter, James, and John, all
professional fishers. And he dares all three men to quit their jobs. He gives
them a tip, after an exhausting night of catching nothing, that leads to the biggest
catch of their lives, and then tells them to abandon their supplies and come
with him.
Could any of us be so faithful or bold? I’d love to say so, especially
because I’m saying it from the pulpit. I’d love to say that if Jesus told me
today, “quit your job, Natalie, and I’ll teach you how to do this vague thing
that makes no sense” I’d be all over that. But I’d want to know what it means
to fish for people. I’d want to know exactly what we’ll be doing, exactly where
we’re going, and I’d like to know there will be health insurance and a 401(k)
when we get there. I don’t know if I could do what they did, and what Truth did—I
don’t know if I could leave it all behind and proclaim the word of God for all,
no matter where it took me.
It takes enormous bravery to leave the beaten path, to dive into the
unpredictable life of a disciple. And we can’t all do it the same. But we learn
how to find Jesus, nonetheless, from our friend Sojourner Truth, who taught us
that even if the Sojourning part is impractical, the Truth part is critical. We
can’t get there on our own, but with the help of others who love Jesus and want
a just world we, like Truth, can connect with our inner boldness, find our
voices, and speak out against the evils of this world until all the world hears
us.
May it be so.
Amen.
*Hymn Come,
Share the Lord
#2269
Led by
the Front Porch Rockers
Offertory
*Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
Time of Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!
- Langston Hughes
Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven,
hallowed be 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, and the Power, and the
Glory forever, Amen.
The Lord’s Supper
Through this table of bread and cup, we look toward the
future with hope. We are reminded that our past lies behind us, that the grace
of God has overcome our fears and our indiscretions. Through Christ’s great
love, we are no longer afraid of the future. Through Christ’s gracious meal, we
are provided a second chance.
Jesus loved his disciples through their imperfections.
Knowing they would desert him and betray him, he still shared the bread and the
cup. “Remember me,” said Jesus the Christ, upon his blessings of cup and
bread.
We recall the words and blessings of Jesus each time we
unite at his table. We remember the gifts of Jesus the Christ each time we wake
to a new day and step into his renewed future.
May the Spirit of God bless the great table of Christ. May
the Spirit of God help us recognize God’s grace in the breaking of the bread
and in the pouring of the cup. May the Spirit of God encourage us to embrace
our divine callings, as we all work to create God’s realm here on earth.
*Hymn Day Is Dying in the
West #687
Benediction
Postlude
_____________________________________________
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown
Nursery
Attendant
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