Role Models, Part 4

 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 

February 19, 2023 

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: 

The LORD is Sovereign. 

Let the people tremble in awe. 

God is enthroned between the cherubim. 

Let the earth shake. 

The LORD is great in Zion. 

God is high above all peoples. 

Come let us worship our glorious Lord. 

 
 

*Hymn Spirit of Gentleness #2120 

 
 

Prayer of Confession: 

Though we want to walk with Moses 

and see God’s holy radiance, 

we hide in the mist of our own desires, 

unable to perceive the presence of God’s grace. 

While we want a world of justice and peace, 

we walk in clouds of selfishness, 

unable to share God’s loving-kindness. 

Though we want to follow Jesus up the mountain, 

we cower in fear, 

unable to bear the light of God. 

  

Assurance: 

In the blazing light of God’s grace, Jesus touches us to say, “Get up and do not be afraid.” In the name of Christ, all is forgiven. Amen. 

 

Scripture Reading Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21 

Concerning Almsgiving 

6 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 

2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.[a] 

Concerning Prayer 

5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.[b] 

Concerning Fasting 

16 “And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.[a] 

Concerning Treasures 

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[b] consume and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust[c] consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

 
 

Sermon Role Models, Part 4 

 

Friends, we’re now in the last week of this 4 part sermon series that I put together during these weeks right before Lent when the Revised Common Lectionary has us looking at the Sermon on the Mount. These three chapters in Matthew are Jesus’ most beloved teachings on how to live like him. Every week we’ve looked at the stories of role models in our faith who were by no means perfect, but who tried very hard to live by these virtues, and who we can now look up to. 

Our last role model is a woman by the name of Fannie Lou Hamer. Born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the youngest of twenty children born to struggling farmers. Tragedy struck Hamer’s life early, when her parents discovered some of their animals were poisoned. Though they had no way of proving it, the family knew this was no accident, but rather a hate crime. Hamer recounted later in life: “Our stock got poisoned. We knew this White man had done it. That White man did it just because we were gettin' somewhere. White people never like to see Negroes get a little success. All of this stuff is no secret in the state of Mississippi.” 

This forced Hamer’s family to relocate to Sunflower County, Mississippi, where her family worked as sharecroppers on the plantation of a wealthy White family. Hamer flourished despite odds stacked against her, and excelled in reading and spelling in her one room school house. Once the plantation owners discovered Hamer was literate, she was promoted and became the plantation’s record keeper. Arguably, Hamer’s faith upbringing created the sharp mind that carried her throughout her life, as she adored memorizing Bible stories and drawing connections between the liberation stories of Scripture and the oppression of her friends and family in modern times. By the age of thirteen Hamer had to abruptly quit schooling because her aging parents could no longer work. That same year, she was also struck by polio. Still, she picked 300 pounds of cotton a day. 

Hamer married young, to a tractor driver on the plantation named Perry. Hamer and her husband lived and worked on the plantation together for eighteen years, until an unjust law propelled Hamer toward her calling of social activism. Hamer had spent roughly a decade becoming increasingly involved in local movements for Black voting and civil rights, but her oppression stared her in the face on August 31, 1962, when she attempted to vote in a local election but was denied suffrage because she failed a literacy test, one of many traps put in place by Jim Crow laws to keep people of color from the polls. Hamer was fired from her job on the plantation, while her husband was required to stay on site until the end of the harvesting season. This put Hamer out on the streets, where she fled from one spot to another seeking safety. Hamer dodged 15 bullets from a racist drive-by shooter before leaving the county, fearing the KKK would come for her next. After she was reunited with her husband and finally felt safe returning to her hometown, Hamer visited the local courthouse and retook the literacy test, failing again. She announced to the registrar, “You’ll see me every 30 days until I pass.” 

Around this same time, Hamer and her husband started trying to have children, dreaming of a big family, only to discover that a White doctor had performed a hysterectomy on Hamer without her knowledge or consent when she underwent surgery to remove a tumor. These forced sterilizations on poor, Black women were very common as a form of “population control” in the Jim Crow south, and Hamer is credited for nicknaming these surgeries “Mississippi appendectomies.” Despite never being able to bear biological children, Hamer soldiered on and adopted four children. 

Hamer’s life remained saturated with violence and trauma—she experienced a severe beating and a sexual assault while in jail for civil disobedience, and she ultimately passed at the age of 59 due to complications from breast cancer. She lived as a walking example of how badly the world needed to change. But she also committed with every ounce of her being to changing it. Invested throughout her adult life in suffrage, political representation, and liberation for Black folx and women, Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, established the Freedom Farm Cooperative to fight food insecurity, worked with the Poor People’s Campaign, and even ran for the US Senate. A passionate and deeply relatable speaker, Hamer addressed scores of audiences to arouse interest in joining her causes. She only had a short formal education, and she spoke with a southern accent, so she faced a stigma in the world of public speaking. Nevertheless, she persisted, because she knew what she was doing. She drew inspiration from the Baptist church she grew up in, and leaned both on the confidence her faith provided her, as well as the Good News of her beliefs, that Jesus came for us all to have abundant life. In a speech arguing for the right of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to assemble and fight for equal political representation for Blacks as Whites, Hamer proclaimed: 

“All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives are threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America?” 

So, we hold this story about Fannie Lou Hamer against these teachings from Matthew 6 all advising deep personal integrity and humility: do not give to either your church or any charity with the intent of showing off. If you’re giving for attention, don’t bother. Only give for the sake of helping others. Do not pray or fast for attention either, or for public sympathy. Pray and fast quietly, because those actions are between you and God. Do not amass wealth in this world. The real treasure comes from building the Kin-dom. 

We get tested on all of these lessons constantly, but they’ll feel especially salient after this Wednesday, when we enter the season of Lent. If we give something up, we’re going to want to tell everyone all about how hard it is to live without chocolate. You know, not that I’ve ever done that. We’ll want lots of credit for going to church and trying. We’re proud of our giving, and we want others to know it. And that lesson about amassing wealth...well, let me just tell you something about living in this culture. You ever heard of a “social media influencer”? That’s a job title these days. People whose entire career is generating content on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and monetizing their page views and then raking in big bucks from sponsorship details. I’m fighting the urge to call anybody out, but I’m just going to give you this friendly, pastoral piece of advice: do yourselves a favor, and don’t Google how much money those people make.  

No matter how much you have, no matter how well you’re doing, no matter how successful or comfortable you are, there’s always going to be that person with the bigger house, the nicer car, the more lavish vacations, and the fatter wallet. We have competed with one another to live the flashiest life, and that greed comes at a tremendously steep cost to the poorest among us. Last Monday I took a road trip to NYC with two clergy colleagues from right here in Schenectady, and we participated in a meeting of the Poor People’s Campaign. The topic of the day was the crisis of White Nationalism. There’s a hot spot of that emerging now in America, but the problem itself is evergreen. It’s the same moral crisis Hamer fought against more than half a Century ago. It’s a problem older than America, older than the United Methodist Church, older, even, than Jesus. It’s the urge to hoard up as much stuff and money as we can squeeze our hands around, threatened by the idea that someone else may have more, while casually ignoring that we gained so much only by taking from others. Jesus warned us: it has to stop. Hamer warned us: it has to stop. We were warned in Manhattan last Monday: it has to stop. Are we listening? If we’re so privileged to put roofs over our heads and food on our tables, we have to help others accomplish the same. To do that is to follow Jesus. By all means, pray and fast so that you can make your heart more like his. And then roll up your sleeves to fight for the world Jesus wanted, the world Hamer imagined, and one we can bring to fruition: a world where police brutality is no more, a world where women have as much agency over their bodies as men, a world where everyone has access to an education and healthcare, and a world where the Fannie Lou Hamers among us don’t have to be tired anymore. 

Amen. 
 

*Hymn Be Still and Know #2057 

 
 

Offering  

 
 

Offertory  

*Doxology #94 

*Prayer of dedication             

 
 

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer 

 

Heavenly Father, 

bring stillness to our hearts, 

empty our minds of other things 

and direct our thoughts to those who especially need our prayers. 

 

When we reflect on how you have supported and cared for us in the past, 

we cannot fail to give you thanks. 

When we consider the way you give us courage and help for each new day, 

we are filled with a sense of gratitude and praise. 

When you lift us from the pit of doubt and despair, 

our whole being feels renewed and refreshed. 

What a comfort it is, to know the love and support you bring to us 

through your Son and by your Spirit. 

 

In our joy, let us not forget those this morning 

who know little else but sadness. 

In our sense of gratitude and praise, 

let us not forget those whose lives are filled with regrets and heartbreaks. 

In our feeling of support and guidance, 

let us not forget those who feel they 

have struggled against life’s difficulties and disappointments 

alone and uncared for. 

 

In our desire to give You praise, 

do not blur our vision of the hardship in this life. 

The despair of the homeless in our inner cities. 

The feelings of guilt by parents who cannot feed their children. 

The worries and fears of those in hospital. 

The isolation of the lonely. 

The deep sense of loss to those in bereavement. 
 

Heavenly Father, 

you are not only the God of this world, 

you are the ruler of your heavenly Kingdom. 

Strengthen us while we live out our life on this earth, 

to show the compassion and the caring of Jesus. 

Hold before us the reality of your Kingdom, 

where there is no suffering, pain or regret, 

so that we may share it with those who are without hope. 

For we ask all these things through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen. 

~ posted on the Church of Scotland’s Starters for Sunday website.  http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/ 

 

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 Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise #103 

 
 

Benediction 

 
Postlude  

 
 

Staff 

Natalie Bowerman Pastor 

Betsy Lehmann Music Director 

Joe White Custodian 

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant