Oh, Say, Can You See?

 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 3, 2022 

10:00 a.m. 

*You are invited to rise in body or 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:  

God calls us to worship today. We are here! 

All are invited– the sick, the well, the believer, and the doubter. We are here! 

Wash us, O God! May we be cleansed by your holy love. We are here! AMEN. 

Kate Minnis 

*Hymn Gather Us In #2236 Led by the Front Porch Rockers 

              

Prayer of Confession: 

God of Grace and Glory, 

We confess that we lose sight of our identities, finding our worth in our status, 

our demographic, or even our location. 

Forgive us of our idolatry 

Forgive us for placing our worldly identities above your love for us. 

Forgive us for when we get distracted by elaborate rituals, 

holding ourselves superior, simply due to our place of birth. 

You, O God, are the source of our identity. 

You, O God, call us to love our neighbor. 

You, O God, challenge us to learn from one another. 

You, O God, tell us to be different! 

May we swim in your healing waters, 

resting in the fullness of being children of God. 

Amen. 

  

Assurance: 

Hear the Good News: God hears our prayers, cradles our steps to keep us from stumbling, and makes the sun rise anew every morning, filled with all new opportunities to embrace love and life. In the name of Jesus, we are forgiven, loved, and free. 

 
 

Scripture Reading Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20 

The Mission of the Seventy-Two 

10 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’[b] 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’[c] 

16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” 

The Return of the Seventy-Two 

17 The seventy-two[a] returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 Indeed, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” 

 

Sermon Oh, Say, Can You See? 

 

We’re going to get to this morning’s scripture reading in a few minutes, but before we get there y’all get to receive a history lesson this morning, in honor of Independence Day. 

On September 3, 1814, two lawyers by the name of Francis Scott Key and John Stuart Skinner boarded the HMS Minden, setting sail from Baltimore and flying a truce flag, two years into the War of 1812. President James Madison had approved Key and Skinner’s peace mission to seek the release of American prisoners of war, one of whom was Key’s friend, a physician who the British army had accused of aiding in the capture of British soldiers, and who had been apprehended from Key’s home. On September 7, Key and Skinner boarded a British ship, the HMS Tonnant, and negotiated with a major general and an admiral of the British army for the release of the prisoners. The two British officials were at first very reluctant to consider that proposal, but softened when Key and Skinner showed them letters from British soldiers, wounded in battle, who testified that they were healed by Key’s friend. These negotiations happened over dinner, while the two British officials solidified their plans to attack Baltimore. Because Key and Skinner had overheard the battle plans, the British officials held them captive until the battle ended. 

From a window inside a British battleship, Key had nothing to do but watch while the enemy army attacked Baltimore. Exploding bombs lit up the night sky above him, launched on battleships to his right and left. Fort McHenry was the central point of battle, and directly in front of him. Key’s eyes lingered on the very large American flag that flew over Fort McHenry, which in that time had fifteen stripes and only fifteen stars. By the following morning, after American forces had sent the British into retreat, and Key and Skinner were released, that same flag was beat up for having flown over a war zone, but not destroyed. The next day, Key sat down and captured his memory of that night in a four stanza poem that he titled “Defense of Fort M’Henry”. 

The poem left Key’s hands, and took on a life of its own. After seeing it published in The Analectic Magazine, Key handed his words to his brother-in-law, who tried fitting it to different tunes before he realized it went well over “The Anacreontic Song”, which, somewhat ironically, first became popular in England. Though the song, soon nicknamed “The Star Spangled Banner” had four full verses, only the first became popular, and the remaining three have rarely been sung. While the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” grew in favor at civic events after its penning, by the time of Key’s death in 1843 it had no official status. In fact, discussions of turning this song into the National Anthem didn’t even begin until fifty years after Key’s passing, when the Governor of South Dakota requested it be played at Army posts. 

By 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered “The Star Spangled Banner” to be sung at all military occasions, and in 1918 the Star Spangled Banner was sung for the very first time at a sporting event, during the World Series. That same year, a congressman from Maryland initiated a petition to make “The Star Spangled Banner” the National Anthem, a cause which the Veterans of Foreign Wars joined him on. Surprisingly, though, as I did all this research this week, President Herbert Hoover didn’t finally declare this song the National Anthem until March 4, 1931. If you think about it, the oldest people you know lived at a time when there was no official National Anthem.  

Before this song was officially adopted as our National Anthem, several other tunes were considered, including “America the Beautiful” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”. “The Star Spangled Banner” was not an obvious choice and was adapted amid a fair amount of controversy. The tune is unquestionably difficult to sing, the lyrics are peppered with violence, and then there’s the rarely heard third verse, which contains these words: 

No refuge could save 

The hireling and slave 

From the terror of flight 

Or the gloom of the grave 

We think Key was referring to enslaved Americans that the British army recruited amid promises of freedom and a chance to fight their enslavers on the battlefield. Key himself was long gone by the time these lyrics became controversial and sparked congressional debate. To this day, some justifiably question if this song is racist, and an inappropriate choice for National Anthem. 

However you feel when you hear our National Anthem—whether you’re filled with pride, whether you kneel in protest, whether you strain to reach those high notes, or maybe all of the above—our National Anthem is unique around the globe for one interesting quality: it both begins and ends with a question. 

Oh, say, can you see? 

Oh, say, does that star spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? 

Because of musical phrasing we say both of those lines as if they’re declarative statements, but they’re questions. Does our flag wave over a free land and a home of bravery? And if it does, do we see it that way? 

Our country is as complicated a place in 2022 as it was in 1814. In the last two weeks the Supreme Court has made our jaws drop, first by loosening gun restrictions, then by overturning abortion rights, and then by minimizing the oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency. Is that freedom? Is that bravery? The debate goes on. 

As the Supreme Court hints at revisiting the cases that codified marriage equality, access to birth control, and desegregation of schools, are we free? Are we brave? In a country where a white man has an average life expectancy of 80 and a black trans woman has an average life expectancy of 30, are we free? Are we brave? 

Perhaps the more precise question is, are we bringing the Kin-dom near? This is what Jesus teaches us to ask in this morning’s lectionary-appointed Gospel reading. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, and we go out into the world to love and serve like sheep surrounded by wolves. Jesus compassionately teaches us that we go out with nothing, and we come home with nothing. You might hear that and think “Yeah, that’s nice Jesus, but you know I’m not going anywhere without my wallet and phone, right?” And you might. You might go out with some resources and privilege that help you get by more than another. But ultimately, no matter how self-sufficient any of us is, we can’t thrive in selfishness. We only survive by love and hospitality. By friendship. By others opening their doors for us, feeding us at their table, and giving us shelter under their roof. We thrive, as individuals, families, communities, churches, and nations, when we show one another the peace of Jesus. How are we doing with that? Do our words and actions bear the peace of Christ? Does our congregation gift the peace of Jesus to this community? Does our country reflect the peace of Jesus in its laws, customs, and culture? 

If the answer to any of those questions was “maybe” or “only sometimes” or “kind of” or just plain “no”, the good news is Jesus also gave us help in moving on from those mistakes and fixing them. We may be in a place in this country from which we will have to leave, close the door, and wipe the dust from our shoes. We may be stirring up dirt as a Church, as a society, and even as individuals that we don’t want mucking up our future. And that’s ok. Jesus loves to grant clean slates. But the moving on part, we have to do that first. That’s on us. 

While we sit on a boat, feeling captive to our circumstances, what do we see glimmering out the window that still gives us hope? Don’t lose sight of that. Keep that as your focal point, and keep moving toward it. Our hope may be beat up and war torn after everything we’ve put it through, but it’s still here, and so are we, which means it’s time to get to work, that others may see that hope, too. 

Amen. 

 

*Hymn Wash, O God, Your Sons and Daughters #605 

 
 

Offering  

Offertory  

 

*Doxology                                                                                             #94 

*Prayer of dedication             

  

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer 

 

Gracious God of love, 
we are grateful that you have revealed yourself to us, 
each of us loved by you as children, 
each of us precious in your sight, 
each of us a reflection of you, 
each of us bound together by love, 
which is in fact your presence among us. 

 

We come to you, O God, 
weary and carrying heavy burdens. 
Some of us bear the yoke of illness; 
some of us bear the yoke of loss and grief; 
some of us bear the yoke of caring for those who cannot care for themselves; 
some of us bear the yoke of unemployment or underemployment; 
some of us bear the yoke of hunger; 
some of us bear the yoke of homelessness; 
some of us bear the yoke of oppression or marginalization; 
some of us bear the yoke of violence; 
some of us bear the yoke of anger; 
some of us bear the yoke of depression; 
some of us bear the yoke of addiction. 

 

From these and from so many other yokes, dear God, 
we pray for rest; 
we pray healing; 
we pray for release; 
we pray for wholeness. 

 

On this holiday weekend, 
we recognize that our nation also bears many burdens: 
we don’t trust our leaders; 
we cannot find ways to work together for the common good; 
we allow the least among us to suffer and languish; 
we lose our children to endless conflicts and wars; 
we fixate on what divides us 
rather than on what brings us together as one people. 

 

Remind us this weekend of our calling. 
Remind us of our common creed 
that all people are created equal. 
Inspire us to ensure that all of your children 
enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
Help us to be profoundly grateful for our freedom and security, 
to never take these gifts for granted, 
and to use them for the betterment of all. 

 

God of all life, 
may peace and justice fill our land 
and, indeed, the whole world. 
We pray this morning for the escalating tension and violence. 

 

Gracious God, 
grant us the yoke of Christ, 
binding us together, 
tethered by your love, 
guided by your presence, 
bringing your kingdom into this world. 
It is for this kingdom that we now pray, 
using the words Jesus taught us. 

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be they 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  

 

~ written by John W. Vest, and posted on John Vest. http://johnvest.com/ 
 

The Lord’s Supper 

 
 

*Hymn The God of Abraham Praise #116 

 

Benediction 

 
Postlude  

 

Staff 

Natalie Bowerman Pastor 

Betsy Lehmann Music Director 

Joe White Custodian 

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant