Oh My God

 Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church 

Service of Worship 

May 29, 2022 

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor 

 

Let us pray: 

God of the church, your apostles were persecuted for the sake of the gospel. Such suffering continues today in the face of human cruelty and intolerance. We pray for all who are persecuted for the sake of their faith and political beliefs. Strengthen the work of organizations such as Amnesty International that seek to disclose and put an end to these great injustices. 

Christ is risen! 
Christ is risen indeed! 

God of righteousness, empower us weak-willed human beings to be faithful to the promises made in affirming our baptisms: to reject Satan and all his empty promises. Help us to discern your will from our own selfish desires. 

Christ is risen! 
Christ is risen indeed! 

God of justice, your Son began his ministry proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God, in which the blind are given sight and the oppressed released from bondage. Give us grace to enact the vision of that kingdom, by living lives of service that are dedicated to justice. 

Christ is risen! 
Christ is risen indeed! 

God of the weak, be with those who suffer and their friends and families who keep vigil with them. We remember_____ in our prayers. 

Christ is risen! 
Christ is risen indeed! 

God of all people, it is both a gift and a responsibility to have Christ dwelling in us. Let us be truly grateful and willing to live as one with the Lord. 

Christ is risen! 
Christ is risen indeed! 

Hear our prayers, Heavenly Father, considering all things spoken and unspoken. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. 

From the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada’s “Lift Up Your Hearts” archive. http://www.worship.ca/. 

 

Acts 16: 16-34 

16:16 One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 
 
16:17 While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." 
 
16:18 She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out that very hour. 
 
16:19 But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 
 
16:20 When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews 
 
16:21 and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe." 
 
16:22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. 
 
16:23 After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. 
 
16:24 Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. 
 
16:25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 
 
16:26 Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. 
 
16:27 When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. 
 
16:28 But Paul shouted in a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." 
 
16:29 The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 
 
16:30 Then he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" 
 
16:31 They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." 
 
16:32 They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 
 
16:33 At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. 
 
16:34 He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God. 

 

A Message 

“Oh My God” 

 

I didn’t know if I could preach today. Despite my very strong call to preaching. I just didn’t know if I could do it. 

I thought the worst headline I’d ever read was “18-year-old white supremacist opens fire at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.” I still deeply grieved that shooting. As of my writing this, it was still less than two weeks ago. But then I open my news feed and read “18-year-old opens fire at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.” 

God. That’s all I have left to say. Not for lack of thoughts or feelings. But because all the spirit has been punched out of me, and as I lay on the ground gasping for air, all I can muster is a single-syllable invocation of the Divine. God. 

The trauma of this world is so thick. It’s a lasting, systemic trauma. Research suggests that when you experience a situation of heightened stress, your brain releases cortisol and adrenaline, which kick you into gear, the idea being that those chemicals will enable you to do what you must to confront the disaster. Those chemicals stick around for a while after your brain releases them, circulating through your bloodstream, keeping you in a very disquieting state of alertness and hypervigilance. We know this. When you have a bad day at work, and you punch out at 5 and come home, and you’re in a funk for the rest of the night, you can’t enjoy your dinner, you’re a grouch to your partner and kids, and you can hardly sleep that night, it’s because of those stress chemicals, lingering. They help for a moment, but they hurt for much longer than that. Psychophysiological researchers believe those chemicals hang around much longer than we may think—six weeks. A month and a half after one bad day. It takes some serious time to decompress from stress and move on. If you don’t get that time, because there have already been 213 mass shootings in the United States since January 1st, you’re constantly circulating those stress hormones through your body. They eat away at you. They cause headaches, muscle pain, depression, anxiety, and further research suggests, chronic physical health ailments. 

Twenty-one people walked into Robb Elementary School on May 24, and never came home. The United States has an astounding problem with guns. We own more guns per capita than any other country (120.5 per 100 citizens), and firearm deaths killed 1.5 million Americans between 1968 and 2017, which is more than the number of US soldiers who have died in every war America has fought in since the American Revolution, combined. And as you heard by the year, that’s an old statistic. These numbers are chilling. And we all want change: 91% of Americans support at least some very rudimentary gun legislation. Can you think of anything else 91% of Americans agree on? We want change, and we badly need it. We’re in constant crisis, and our hearts are literally and spiritually breaking. 

As I told you just last week, so I will tell you again: like Mr. Rodgers told us years ago, we can look for the helpers, and rather than sinking into despair, focus on actions that are creating meaningful change. As with last week, I can tell you that the Schenectady Clergy Against Hate, of which I am a proud member, has been very busy. This Sunday, the 29th, from 4-6pm, just outside of the City Hall Building on Jay Street, we are holding a vigil and open forum about ending gun violence. Please consider this your invitation, we’d be pleased to see you there. The following Friday we’ve organized a phone-athon to contact our elected representatives and demand gun legislation. I’ll be there raising Cain. We are neither helpless nor hopeless, we need to reach deep within ourselves and summon that ferocious Mama Bear anger and proclaim that we will never again allow a mom to put her baby on a school bus and never see him come back home. We can’t give up, we cannot accept that this is the way our world is, and we cannot prattle off our “thoughts and prayers” and think they are enough. Faith is always the first step, but faith without works is dead. And we are not dead, we are alive in Christ. 

The next place to turn, after prayer and community action, is scripture. We can reassure our hearts and replace that surging cortisol and adrenaline with some God-gifted oxytocin. I take you to this week’s lectionary-appointed reading from Acts, which is a real doozy from beginning to end. This one just doesn’t let up for a second, meaning it’s perfect for what we need right now. Paul and Silas, the heroes of this story, are us. 

The reading starts with Paul, Silas, and their compatriots smelling out a scam in the neighborhood—a young woman who claims to be a fortune teller, and who makes a whole lotta money by saying so. Sounds like a First Century Miss Cleo. But not to forget a very important context detail: Luke tells us she is enslaved. Maybe she clings to this scam because she believes it might bring her power where she feels powerless. We might not want to admit it, but we can relate. 

So can her neighbors. When Paul and Silas take action to shut Miss Cleo down, her enslavers lash out at the loss of their cash cow, and demand public outrage in the marketplace. “These guys are against what makes our country great!” I paraphrase. I’d like to call these enslavers NRA reps who sit in the pockets of politicians, but I’m trying not to make this sermon too controversial, so I simply invite you to make that connection yourself, if you please. 

Paul and Silas are stripped and beaten in public before they’re chained up in jail. Then, as now, doing the right thing, and taking real action, is extraordinarily unpopular, and dangerous. It’s no wonder we hesitate to do more than think and pray. But God saves Paul and Silas from their prison doom. When the prison guard considers taking his life because his prisoners have escaped—really, this story NEVER lets up—instead Paul convinces him to believe in Jesus and come into the light. 

Wow. Take heart, first and foremost, that this perilous world in which we find ourselves enveloped may feel foreign to us, but there is nothing new to God, and our ancestors in the faith have been there, fought the fight, and emerged as warriors. Those who value profits over human life have infiltrated every society since the dawn of time, as have the mobs of people they manipulate. And those who want things to be better and just have found themselves isolated and chained. 

But God wins every time. And that, all by itself, is enough. In such a time as this, it has to be. 

The title of this sermon “Oh My God”, was inspired by a song by contemporary Christian group Jars of Clay. I encourage you to look it up, you can find it on YouTube. It’s seven minutes long, and filled with pain. But so prophetic. As they both crescendo and accelerando to the end of this song, Jars of Clay proclaims: 

Sometimes I can not forgive, and these days mercy cuts so deep, 
If the world was how it should be, maybe I could get some sleep. 
While I lay, I'd dream we're better, scales were gone and faces lighter, 
When we wake we hate our brother, we still move to hurt each other, 
Sometimes I can close my eyes, and all the fear that keeps me silent, 
Falls below my heavy breathing, what makes me so badly bent? 
We all have a chance to murder, we all feel the need for wonder. 
We still want to be reminded that the pain is worth the plunder. 
Sometimes when I lose my grip, I wonder what to make of heaven, 
All the times I thought to reach up, all the times I had to give up. 
Babies underneath their beds, in hospitals that cannot treat them. 
All the wounds that money causes, all the comforts of cathedrals, 
All the cries of thirsty children, this is our inheritance, 
All the rage of watching mothers, this is our greatest offense 
Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God. 

Don’t become numb to the violence. Don’t become complacent in our gun epidemic, and in our even more dangerous epidemics of white supremacy and rage. Don’t sit idly by while another angry, young white man yells into an echo chamber and hears back that violence is the answer to his pain. And while we lift up our thoughts and prayers, once again, let us think with the mind of a man who shuts down a popular but unjust scam, and pray with the heart of a man who knows Jesus more than himself. And with Jesus’ help, let’s use our thoughts and prayers as the spark that lights the fire of policy and change. 

Amen. 

 

I invite you to receive this benediction: 

Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in, from this time on and forevermore. And as all of God’s people, we say together: Amen.