Like a Rocket

 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.easternparkway.org 

 
 
 
 

Order of Worship 

July 31, 2022 

10:00 a.m. 

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit. 

 

Prelude Air G. F. Handel 

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: 

O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good. 

God’s love and warm embrace last forever. 

When we cry out in distress, the Lord hears our call. 

Praise the Lord who delivers us 

from sin and death. 

Christ calls us to clothe ourselves in righteousness. 

Worship the One who wraps us with justice, 

and helps us grow in the image of our Creator. 

Love well, for your heart is where your treasure is. 

May our hearts be filled with God’s blessings, 

divine provisions that meet our true needs. 

J Wayne Pratt 

  

*Hymn Alleluia, Alleluia #162, vv. 1, 4 

              

Prayer of Confession: 

Gracious God, 

in our wanderings and selfish desires: 

we have forsaken fellowship with our families, 

our friends, and our neighbors; 

we have neglected our communion with you, 

choosing worldly pleasures and desires 

over truth, justice, and righteousness. 

In a world of plenty, 

we have hoarded our earthly blessings, 

rather than storing up our heavenly treasures. 

Free us from such bondage, 

that we may truly reveal 

the presence of Christ in our lives. Amen. 

 

Assurance: 

In faith, we call out to a loving and forgiving God, 

seeking to put aside our old life and put on Christ. 

God surely answers our prayers. 

In the name of Christ Jesus, our sins are forgiven. Amen. 
 

Scripture Reading Luke 12: 13-21 

 

The Parable of the Rich Fool 

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” 

 
 

Sermon Like a Rocket 

 

I stumbled across a conversation thread on Facebook this week. It was coming from a group of mostly millennials against capitalism. My kind of people, but don’t worry about that right now. The topic of conversation was “What would you see in someone else’s house that would have made you think they were rich when you were a kid?” I had to keep reading after that set up. The answers varied across the map. A few people wrote “a refrigerator with an ice and water dispenser in the door”. A few more people commented “an in ground pool.” One person said “a huge yard.” One person said “wall to wall carpet”. Others chipped in “central air conditioning”, “a swingset in the backyard”, and “an upstairs.” But one answer in particular made everyone commenting on this post realize how relative a concept it is to be “rich”: “a pantry filled with food.” This changed the tone of the conversation, and others quickly followed: “If my friend’s parents could buy groceries whenever they wanted, regardless of when pay day was, I knew they were rich.” “If the refrigerator had milk in it, I knew my friend was rich.” “If the lights were on, I knew my friend was rich.” 

 

What does it mean to be “rich”, anyway? What intrigued me the most about that comment thread on Facebook was that they were asking about what signified wealth to you as a child. Not, “what financial benchmark as an adult would make you think you’ve “made it’”, or “what does your dream house look like”, or, “if money was no object where would you go on vacation?” No, the question was “What would you see in someone else’s house that would have made you think they were rich when you were a kid?” The things we pick up on when we’re little stay with us forever. The things we have no control over, like where we grew up, stay with us. And the envy we’d feel looking at others’ nice things, and the anxiety we felt watching our care givers struggle...all those feelings stay with us. What did you learn as a child about wealth, materialism, resources, and generosity? Chances are, those lessons taught you more than anything you’ll absorb as an adult.  

 

Bear in mind, though, that Jesus wasn’t talking to kids in this morning’s Gospel reading. And he knew that. He wasn’t talking to impressionable children, he was talking to grown men, mostly farmers, for whom land and grain ownership were no longer far off ideas but rather real measures of financial worth and success. The best case scenario for one of those farmers would be to be like the man that Jesus makes up for this parable, the “rich fool” as the captions in my Bible call him, who has such a huge surplus of grain that he has to build a bigger barn to hoard it all. Then, Jesus says, this rich fool wants to kick back, relax, and live off that wealth in peace forever. 

 

Jesus doesn’t directly say what I’m about to—he goes right for the quotable bottom line about being rich in God rather than in goods—but does anyone else question if that “rich fool” was really going to be content with what he had amassed, and then just eat, drink, be merry, and live happily ever after? I suspect that Jesus chose to be concise, and that’s why he didn’t unpack that more. How many wealthy people do you know that really appear to be happy and content? I would argue that what makes the rich guy from this parable a “fool” is this idea he gets that he will ever have enough to be satisfied. Maybe he sees the accumulation of wealth like a train: slow, steady, and predictable, it chuffs along on schedule and gets you where you need to go. In my lived experience, the rat race to the top 1% is more like a rocket: fast and crazy, it starts out exhilarating and fun, but it blasts you higher and higher into territory that isn’t compatible with life, and eventually it blows up. And, speaking of rich fools, right now eight different American billionaires are hoping to win the capitalism space race with all their money. Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount that you’ll get a camel though the eye of a needle easier than you’ll get a rich guy into heaven. Maybe we need to amend that oft-quoted verse for a modern audience: It is easier for Amazon to deliver a package to Mars than for Jeff Bezos to enter the Kin-dom of God. 

 

Before you get the wrong idea, I’m not here to pick on our wealthy brothers and sisters. Nothing fruitful comes from judging people, and Jesus teaches us that judgment only begets more judgment. Nobody wants that. For the record, Jesus didn’t teach us that it’s a bad thing to get a job and support yourself—in fact you could argue that his biggest healing works helped folx get back on their feet so they could do just that. And our Wesleyan theology doesn’t teach that affluence is inherently sinister. John Wesley benefitted from wealthy people who supported his ministry, and their congregations, when both struggled to flourish. But Jesus has more to say in the Gospels about greed and selfishness than any other topic. Money is a tool. Earn it, spend it. It gets you what you need to get by. The evil emerges not from the money, but from us worshipping money like it’s our God. 

 

How we spend our money says a lot about the state of our morality, and in recent years our Conference finance team has taken to reminding congregations that our annual budget is a moral document. Where are we spending the most money? Like it or not, that’s where our priorities lie. What do you value most? To that end, I found this little quip about money online: 

 

A one dollar bill met a twenty dollar bill and said, "Hey, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around here much." The twenty answered, "I’ve been hanging out at the casinos, went on a cruise and did the rounds of the ship, back to the United States for awhile, went to a couple of baseball games, to the mall, that kind of stuff. How about you?" The one dollar bill said, "You know, same old stuff… church, church, church." 

 

I’m hardly a money expert, as far as spiritual gifts go. We have a few clergy people in this Conference who are geniuses with budgets, tax laws, and finance campaigns, but I’m sadly not one of them. So I don’t pretend or presume to tell you how much from your wallet should go where. I gave that up when I decided not to be a math major in college. But what I do know, after thirty-five years of loving, giving, spending, and losing on this earth, is that we come here broke, and we don’t take our wallets to heaven when we go. Your obituary someday might mention your successful business, but no one is going to write on your tombstone “Here lies so and so...he never overdrafted his checking account once, man.” Life is not money. The abundant life that Jesus died for us to have has nothing to do with money. 

 

That nervous, jealous, astonished child within you that gazed in wonder at your neighbor’s big refrigerator with an ice dispenser in the door still whispers things to you, that your grown up self hears. And the scared part of that kid, the one who watched your mom furrow her brow while paying the bills, the one who saw your dad put that box of cereal back on the store shelf because it cost too much, the one who worried you might not have enough to get by and there’s nothing you can do about it—that kid comes home with you, and that kid definitely comes to church finance team meetings. Sometimes that kid comes out as the “bean counter” who questions the nickels and dimes, or as the “let’s check again” person who looks over every account with a magnifying glass. Sometimes that kid starts asking why we don’t have what a church down the street has, and asks if more people would come here if our church looked like that one. 

 

None of these things are awful on their own, but we need to remember the bottom line that Jesus taught us: the richness in God will get us so much farther than the richness in goods. What does it mean to be rich? Does it mean having enough to pay every bill? Does it mean having a million dollar endowment? Does it mean having the offering plates overflow every week? Does it mean having the coolest toys, the fanciest sound system, the prettiest steeple, or the biggest sanctuary? Or should we build wealth in heart instead? What if our church had the greatest community outreach, the strongest response to local poverty and food insecurity, the deepest generosity, and the most steadfast discipleship to Jesus? We could have all the money in the world, and accumulate it at the steep expense of your poor neighbor, and it will still all be gone someday, and you with it. But if we grow rich in compassion and love, those things will stay forever. 

 

Amen. 

 

*Hymn What Does the Lord Require #441, vv. 1, 2, 4 

 

Offering Cuatro diferencias sobre "Guardame las vacas" Luys de Navarez 

 

Offertory  

 

*Doxology #94 

*Prayer of dedication             

  

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer 

 

Almighty God, we come to you today in confidence, for this world in which we live is your world, brought into being through your love for all your people. And as we bring all our concerns before you, we know that you are waiting to hear us and to respond to us. 

 

Lord, we pray that you will teach us all how to provide for our own lives, mindful of our own needs, yet also of the call of Christ to put our trust in him. Help us to spend our time and our money in a manner worthy of your kingdom of love. 

 

Lord, make this church a place of generosity where people work together, giving all that they are and all that they have, so that the wonderful resources of our world may be better shared. 

 

We pray today for people who wander through life, constantly seeking a purpose, a reason for living. We remember especially those who store up wealth for themselves believing that the road to happiness is through the accumulation of possessions. Help them to find in you, love, acceptance, and wholeness. 

 

We make our prayers as part of our common life of worship and service to Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen 

 

~ written by Rev Anne Paton, and posted on the Church of Scotland’s Starters for Sunday website. http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/15620/4_august_2013.pdf 

 

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. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. 

 

*Hymn Jesus, Joy of Our Desire #644 

 

Benediction 

 
Postlude I Will Sing of My Redeemer R. Prichard  

 
 

Staff 

Natalie Bowerman Pastor 

Betsy Lehmann Music Director 

Joe White Custodian 

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant