Freeing Jesus, Part 2: Teacher
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
March 5, 2023
10:00 a.m.
*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.
Prelude Sarabande Elisabeth de la Guerre
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:
Come, all who need help!
Our help comes from God,
the one who made heaven and earth.
Come, all who desire blessing!
Our blessing comes from God,
the God of Abraham, the God of the ages.
Come, all who long for salvation!
Our salvation comes from Jesus Christ,
the one sent by God to save the world.
*Hymn Christ Is the World’s Light #188, v 1, 2, 4
Prayer of Confession:
God of salvation,
you shower our lives and our world with love,
yet we too often turn away from your blessing.
It is just so easy to complain!
There are little annoyances each day,
but they pile up into a mountainous burden
that becomes a curse on our lives.
Free us from our unwise choices, O God.
When we are distracted and confused,
redirect our attention to the abundant opportunities
to experience your love.
During this Lenten journey, focus our hearts on you,
that we may choose the blessing of salvation
offered us each day through Jesus Christ,
in whom we pray. Amen.
Assurance:
God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn it, but that the world might be saved through him. Through the saving love of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven and blessed!
Scripture Reading John 3: 1-17
Nicodemus Visits Jesus
3 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus[a] by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”[b] 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You[c] must be born from above.’[d] 8 The wind[e] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you[f] do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.[g] 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.[h]
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Sermon Freeing Jesus, Part 2: Teacher
Friends, we’re in part 2 of this sermon series I’ve put together for the Lenten season utilizing a book by Diana Butler Bass titled Freeing Jesus. Every week of this, we’re exploring a different way that people of faith experience the person Jesus, and today we’re talking about Jesus as teacher.
Another ultra familiar name for Jesus, “teacher” is the name that Jesus is called most frequently throughout the Gospels. He’s called “teacher” directly, as well as “rabbi” and “rabbouni”, words that acknowledge him as a spiritual teacher, as well as “master”, in the sense of a school master. The disciples, for all their faults, and for all the times they totally failed to identify who Jesus was to them and to the world, never held back in naming Jesus as their teacher. Teaching was how Jesus spent the biggest share of his time, with healing coming in second.
But the most important thing we need to understand about Jesus as teacher is that, like every other facet of his identity that we will explore in this sermon series, Jesus subverts our expectations of what it means to teach, and what it means to learn. And that, like all of his ministry, meant breaking down our walls.
The first wall that Jesus broke down was our arbitrary boundaries around acceptable places to teach. Defying the Pharisees’ comfort in all spiritual learning happening in synagogues, Jesus believed teaching could happen wherever the people were: on a mountain side, in the middle of the sea, on a boat, on the shore, in the town square, by a well, in a tree, in the middle of the night, outside a tomb, in a cemetery, and, most of all, at your house. Jesus broke down our next wall, our boundaries around who is good enough to access special spiritual wisdom. Jesus’ answer: everybody. But the judgy folks get to learn last.
Learning evolves over our lifetimes, and Jesus led with a goal of moving us from old-but-immature learners to wise-but-childlike learners. To understand this, just think about how drastically school changed for you between your first day of Kindergarten, and your last day of high school if you went, or college if you attended. In your earliest days of school, there was little emphasis on any formal education, and heavy emphasis on social and emotional development. Your ABCs and 123s would come in time, but first you needed to learn how to use your words for good, how to gauge how you and others feel and how to respond, and how to make friends. The primary importance of that last point is why we started this series with Jesus as friend, not Jesus as teacher. So, in preschool or kindergarten, and in your earliest days of Sunday School, if you had it, you spent your time sitting in a circle, reading stories, pushing a ball around, and learning manners.
But then, you surely noticed changes started. When I was in first grade, we sat at tables and wrote letters and colored, always put together in groups of four. We were always learning, but never alone. It’s a good model. By second grade, we sat in desks for the first time, all facing the front of the classroom. Since we had learned interdependence, we were ready for independence. And by this stage, we were learning raw facts by rote memorization—two plus two is four, I before e except after c, the first letters of the Great Lakes spell the word HOMES. Sunday School was similar at this age. And, to be honest, most adults in this room will quickly acknowledge that rote memorization of facts helps with a lot of things but gets in the way of deeper learning and understanding. In third grade, I was tasked with memorizing the Ten Commandments. I totally did it. I strongly suspect, though, that my teacher didn’t know them by heart, because she was checking me against the Bible. I knew all the words of those verses, I impressed my teachers and friends, and I got a candy bar. But I had little notion of what I was actually saying. “There are no other Gods before me”--wait, there are others?--and “thou shall not kill”--but why would I do that?--and “do not take the Lord’s name in vain”--”but what am I supposed to say when I stub my little toe on the corner of the couch, the greatest pain known to humanity? And of course “thou shall not commit adultery”, followed by a room of awkward squirming, and no explanations of what that sentence meant for ten more years. I have to question now if that was a worthwhile undertaking, because now that I’m a minister with a master’s degree in theology I no longer have the Ten Commandments memorized, but I know exactly where to find them, what they meant to the population hearing them, and nuances of how they apply to our world today. Those are much more helpful skills. Similarly, I went through a phase in college where I thought it would be really cool to memorize the names and order of all the books of the Bible, and then I thought it would be even cooler to be able to rattle them off backwards. I didn’t get out much. I can’t do that anymore, and I’m missing nothing from my spiritual life because of it. Sometimes the wiser lesson is this: don’t memorize it if you can look it up, just know where to look it up.
But my point is that, in time, we all eventually reach a point where being able to ask why is more important than being able to answer what. This is the place that Jesus took us to in his teaching. And this is where he leads Nicodemus in this morning’s scripture reading.
Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a respected leader in his synagogue. In fact, the evangelist John goes a step further and heavily implies that if a faction of Jesus’ community is getting ready to turn on him, Nicodemus will be at the front of the mob. Nicodemus adores rote memorization of laws, verses, rules, and facts, and has smugly believed that put him above others. But now, he’s having his doubts, and John tells us he visits Jesus “by night”--so, perhaps literally at 2am, but also figuratively in the shadows, having not seen “the light” yet. He asks Jesus a question that he expects will have a short, straight-forward answer that he can put in his pocket and take home. Clearly he doesn’t know Jesus that well yet. Jesus is asked a grand total of 183 question in the Gospels, and he only answers 3 of them. He turns around and poses another 307 questions. Jesus doesn’t want you to know anywhere near as much as he compels you to seek. So when Nicodemus asks for proof that Jesus really is someone important in his life, Jesus gives him a riddle instead: no one can know God without being born again. This makes Nicodemus panic “b-b-b-b-b-but how can you crawl back in your mom’s womb and come out a second time?”
The words in Greek for “again” and “above” are similar enough to break Nicodemus’ brain even more than Jesus did by answering a question with a riddle. Jesus explains that what Nicodemus needs is to let the Holy thoroughly imbue his life, rather than putting a fence around God and restricting the Sacred to a crib sheet of facts. Sure, you’ve read lots of books about God. You can write about God. You can speak with authority. But do you really feel God all around you? Is God so encompassing you like ocean that you can swim wherever the Creator leads? Once you feel like that, then you’re getting somewhere. And, like the loving teacher he always was, and is, and will be, Jesus leaves Nicodemus with words of comfort: God loves you, and acts to save, never to condemn. Every once in a while, a great teacher has to deprogram you of lessons you got elsewhere, and replace them.
Jesus delights in being our most trusted teacher. Not just someone who stands at the front of a classroom, detached, rattling off the times tables, but the kind who invited all his friends to sit with him in the grass and listen to him. What is he telling you? What do you need to hear? What do you want to ask? What is he asking you? True spiritual learning starts at the end of our comfort zones, and at the end of our certainties. Let Jesus, as a teacher, guide you through the unknown.
Amen.
*Hymn God, Whose Love Is Reigning O’er Us #100
Offering
Offertory The King of Love My Shepherd Is David N. Johnson, arr.
Chancel Choir
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Lord,
we face this Lenten journey
not sure if we are ready
or if it would just be easier to stay in our safety and comfort zone.
Help us to take the risk of looking within
and looking beyond ourselves to the joy that awaits us.
Give us hearts of courage and strength for the tasks which lie ahead.
Be with each one of us
as we move from the winter of discouragement to the spring of hope.
Cleanse our spirits and make us truly ready to be your disciples.
For we ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
— written by Nancy Townley, in the Abingdon Worship Annual. Posted on the Cokesbury website. http://www.cokesbury.com/
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.
The Lord’s Supper
Lift your hearts to God your maker.
Lift your hearts unto the Lord!
Let us thank God! Let us praise God:
God of mercy, love and power!
Let us gather at the table
Hearts uplifted, hands outstretched
This, the table of thanksgiving
Cup of blessing, bread of life
In good time God sent a Savior
God’s own son, a gift for all.
For our sake he bore our burdens
Listen, sinner, to the call!
Let us gather at the table
Hearts repentant, sins confessed
This, the table of forgiveness
Cup of blessing, bread of life
We remember the last supper
Jesus shared with dearest friends
Knowing they’d deny, betray him
Still, he gave this holy gift
We remember bread that’s broken
We remember cup outpoured
Christ has died but Christ is risen
Christ will come to us again!
On these gifts, pour out Your Spirit
Make these gifts become for us
Body, blood of Christ who loves us
By his life, we are redeemed.
By Your Spirit we’re united,
In this meal we are made one
God, we thank You! God, we praise You!
Cup of blessing, bread of life
Text: Rev. Beth Quick, 2014.
*Hymn Faith Is Patience in the Night #2211
Benediction
Congregational Response: #672, v. 1
Postlude Let Us Break Bread Together John Carter, arr.
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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