Arrow

 Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church 

 
 

 

 A warm welcome to each worshiper 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 

January 15, 2023 

10:00 a.m. 

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit. 

  

Prelude Adagio Johann Sebastian Bach 

 
 

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: 

Listen up, everyone! 

God has given us work to do. 

God has called each of us 

before we were even born. 

It was God who named us. 

It is God who claims us. 

The light of God’s love shines in us. 

Let’s shine God’s love into all the world!  

Laura Jaquith Bartlett 

  

*Hymn Child of Blessing, Child of Promise #611 

  

Prayer of Confession: 

Faithful God, 

you call us to be your followers, 

but we are more comfortable 

Going our own way; 

you call us to be your servants, 

but we worry that we lack the skills 

to do your work; 

you put a new song of praise in our mouths, 

but we stumble on unfamiliar words; 

you show us the work to be tackled, 

but we turn away defiant, 

insisting we have more important things to do. 

Put your song on our lips and in our hearts, 

and remind us of the joy that awaits us 

when we put our trust in you. 

Guide us into the light 

of your unwavering, never-ending, 

and grace-filled love. Amen. 

  

Assurance: 

God is faithful and ever-present. 

The God who knew us before our birth 

loves us still and strengthens us, 

that we will one day be blameless. 

Through the gift of Jesus Christ, 

God offers forgiveness, grace, and mercy. 

Enter into the light! 

 
 

Scripture Reading Isaiah 49:1-7 

The Servant’s Mission 

49 Listen to me, O coastlands; 
    pay attention, you peoples from far away! 
The Lord called me before I was born; 
    while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. 
2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword; 
    in the shadow of his hand he hid me; 
he made me a polished arrow; 
    in his quiver he hid me away. 
3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, 
    Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” 
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain; 
    I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; 
yet surely my cause is with the Lord 
    and my reward with my God.” 

5 And now the Lord says, 
    who formed me in the womb to be his servant, 
to bring Jacob back to him, 
    and that Israel might be gathered to him, 
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, 
    and my God has become my strength— 
6 he says, 
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant 
    to raise up the tribes of Jacob 
    and to restore the survivors of Israel; 
I will give you as a light to the nations, 
    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” 

7 Thus says the Lord, 
    the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, 
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, 
    the slave of rulers, 
“Kings shall see and stand up; 
    princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, 
because of the Lord, who is faithful, 
    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” 

 
 

Sermon Arrow 

On January 15, 1929, God loaded an arrow in a quiver in Atlanta, Georgia, and hid that arrow there until it was ready to be nocked and loosed. BTW, you’re going to be hearing some archery words this morning, which I only know because I’m a fan of Game of Thrones.  

Anyway, very similarly to how Isaiah describes himself in this morning’s scripture reading, this arrow, installed in a quiver in Georgia, had a very sharp mouth, filled with words that would pierce hardened souls and impale broken systems, in due time. In the beginning, though, he was just a little African American boy growing up in the South in the Jim Crow era. He wasn’t born with the name we came to know him as—he and his father were both Michael King, but his dad legally changed both of their names to Martin Luther King after having a religious awakening upon studying the life of Martin Luther. Another arrow, from another quiver, loosed at a totally different time and place, but by the same archer. That arrow reached the heart of a Baptist minister, who used its inspiration to continue sharpening his son.  

Any of you who have raised or cared for a child know that the work of readying them to leave the quiver and launch into the world is very delicate. At the age of six, King began attending an all Black elementary school, while the neighbor boy he played with every day attended the all white school. When King asked his friend why they went to different schools even though they lived right next to each other, the other boy called him a slur and told King they couldn’t be friends anymore. King went home and told his parents that he hated all white people. They had a gentle conversation with him about the history of segregation and slavery, and told him that they knew why he was hurting, but that he also needed to love all of God’s people. This arrow reached the target of his heart, and no matter what he experienced from then on, King centered Jesus’ love ethic in his feelings and actions. 

As he grew, King learned that a well-shot arrow cuts away the bad things. Still as a child, King went on a drive with his father, and they got pulled over by a white police man. When the officer called his dad “boy”, King Sr. Pointed to his son and corrected the cop: “That’s a boy. I’m a man.” 

Gaining sharpness still, King experienced a slew of what he later described as “racial humiliations”, but thrived nonetheless because his family loved him so much. He pursued music lessons, discovered his love of both journalism and public speaking, and attended the only high school in his area that admitted African Americans. In 1944, as a high school junior, King won an oratorical contest when he addressed his audience and proclaimed “Black America still wears chains. The finest Negro is at the mercy of the meanest white man.” On the bus ride home, the driver forced King to stand, and he described that moment as the angriest he had felt in his life. He was no longer a child, but a young man with a shrewd awareness of the brokenness of the world, and a clear vision of what he needed to do about it. He was ready for God to take him out of the quiver and fire him into the world. 

Graduating from high school at the age of fifteen, King first attended Morehouse College, an historically black institution, and then decided to study for the ministry, like his father, at Crozer Theological Seminary. Sidenote—Crozer eventually merged with Colgate Rochester Divinity School and became Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, where I went! While in seminary King felt deeply moved by the social gospel, as articulated by theologian Walter Rauschenbusch—look him up!--and began committing to ministries that would address social injustices. Still not done absorbing knowledge like a sponge, King moved on to Boston University, earning his doctoral degree in systematic theology. As he completed his education and received his first call to pastor a church, he kept in touch with his mentor Howard Thurman—one of my greatest sources of inspiration—who taught him everything he knew about leading nonviolent protest movements. Many different stones went into sharpening the tip of this arrow. It’s worth us remembering, as we recount Dr. King’s history, that none of his family, friends, professors, mentors, neighbors, or bullies knew he would become so famous and influential. They treated him like he was just an ordinary guy named Martin. As we go about our lives, treating people in the manner that feels right in our eyes at the time, understand that our actions are stones, sharpening arrows. Each of us is an arrow in God’s quiver, that God will launch when the Holy decides we are ready. Our behavior creates what God shoots into the world. How are we treating our neighbors? If you found out someone near you was going to lead a Civil Rights movement in the future, would that change anything to you? Because it shouldn’t. We should be acting in love, no matter what. 

This brings us to Isaiah, the prophet who speaks to the people of Southern Israel in this morning’s scripture passage. Isaiah addresses a people, his people, who had just come back to their homeland from exile, who had just survived war, and tells them that God made him an arrow, waiting in the Divine quiver, sharpened and ready to launch at just the right time. This was his time to launch, and he will have hit his target if the Judahites turn their hearts back to God. 

It was no small order. God nocked Isaiah with a target barely within sight, and miles away, and loosed him, knowing this arrow would only hit the target if released at the perfect angle, with no wind. The slightest breeze would have Isaiah stuck in a tree somewhere instead of the bullseye, and the path was littered with obstacles. Is this the image we should have in mind from now on, when we hear the words “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight?” 

If Isaiah was headed to a tiny, far off bullseye, then God shot King in the direction of a target the size of a grain of rice a hundred miles away. The arrow that was King’s influence is still whizzing through the air, approaching that mark. Those who felt that target threatened their privilege may have felt they eliminated the arrow upon King’s assassination in 1968. The Good News is that the arrow barrels forward despite his life being cut tragically short. It’s sobering for me, as a clergy gal, to stand here and reflect that King was only three years older than I am now when he died. But in that time on earth he led numerous nonviolent protests, marches, and boycotts, spent days upon days in jail for civil disobedience, reached millions of people with his speeches, and made immense gains against racism, segregation, classism, and housing discrimination. Today when the Poor People’s Campaign protests wealth hoarding, or when the NAACP meets in a neighborhood church, or when young people gather behind a hashtag like “Black Lives Matter” or “Occupy Wall Street” and start making noise, look up. That arrow is shooting forward, inching closer to that target. Will it hit that mark in our lifetime? Or will our grandchildren know an unjust world and still see that arrow nowhere near the bullseye? That’s up to us. 

We may be inclined to think that God only holds great, famous, larger than life people as arrows in that quiver—the Isaiahs, the Kings, the Gandhis, the Harriet Tubmans and Malala Yousafzais. But that’s not true. All of us are arrows in the Divine quiver, all waiting to launch in our appointed time, when God eyes a target off in the distance and thinks we just may be the one to hit it.  

Can you feel it? What is God aiming you toward? What’s missing in the world that’s painfully obvious to you? What wrong do you want to make right? Who do you want to reach? What badness, what evil, do you want to nick on your way to your mark, and cut away? 

It’s worth listening to God, and taking it to your prayer life. Because I have a feeling God is holding you up right now, getting ready to nock, draw, and loose. 

Fire away. 

Amen. 

 
 

*Hymn Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song #544 

 
 

Offering  

 
 

Offertory In the Bleak Midwinter Gustav Holst  

*Doxology #94 

*Prayer of dedication             

  

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer 

 

IT IS GIVEN to only a few people, O God, to rise above the crowds and become symbols of hope and passion to all of us. We thank you for these persons, from Moses and Christ to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and for the way they remind us of your care and grace for all the little ones of the earth. We praise you today, on Dr. King’s birthday, for the qualities that shaped his life: for a strong sense of justice, that regarded all souls as having importance in your eyes; for an unshakeable belief in love and gentleness, that would not permit him to turn to violence in order to achieve his dreams; for a commitment to sacrifice, that led him forward without regard for his own safety; and for an ultimate trust in you, that you would never abandon those who stand up for truth and righteousness in the world. We mourn what the world did to him—the pain and the degradation, and finally the death. But we celebrate the dream for which he stood, of a society where the lion and the lamb would lie down together, and the children of all races and backgrounds would mingle together in sweetness and harmony of spirit. Help us to be as committed to that dream as he was, to care as much about the poor and disenfranchised as he did, to be prepared to pay the price that he paid to insure its ultimate success. Teach us to love all men and women as our brothers and sisters, and to care as much about their welfare as we care about our own. And grant that we shall always have heroes whom we admire for their moral clarity, their unremitting courage, and their passion for righteousness, that your name and your way may be honored in all the world. Through Christ our Savior. Amen. 

 

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 Here I Am, Lord #593 

 
 

Benediction 

 
Postlude Open Our Eyes Traditional Irish 

 
 
 

Staff 

Natalie Bowerman Pastor 

Betsy Lehmann Music Director 

Joe White Custodian 

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant