Overflow

 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

April 30, 2023

Fourth Sunday of Easter

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, our shepherd, we don’t need a thing.

You bed us down in lush meadows, you find us quiet pools to drink from.

True to your word, you let us catch our breath and send us in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through a dark valley, we’re not afraid when you walk by our side.

Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes us feel secure.

You serve us a six course meal right in front of our enemies.

You revive our drooping heads and our cups overflow.

Your beauty and love chase after us every day, and we’re always home in the house of God.

*Hymn Great Is Thy Faithfulness #140

Prayer of Confession:

Patient God, you know how easy it is for us to stray. We wander off so easily. Forgive us, we pray. Heal our brokenness and our fears. Remind us again that you lead us in gentle paths and by quiet waters – when the paths are stony and the waves tumultuous, help us to remember your protection and your care. Help us to extend that same love and care to others, for we ask this in Jesus’ Name. AMEN. 

Assurance:

Just when we think we can go no further, Jesus the Good Shepherd calls to us, bringing us safely into the fold of Grace and Mercy. Rejoice! You are loved completely and forgiven!

Scripture Reading John 10: 1-10

Jesus the Good Shepherd

10 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

7 So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me[a] are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Sermon Overflow

In the spring of 2020, at the height of confusion, distress, and existential dread caused by the pandemic, I started writing a daily devotional. I included a pretty big diversity of content–poems, music, mini sermons, visual art, and, occasionally, a fresh take on familiar Bible passages. One day in May, I decided to take another look at Psalm 23, and share it with the two churches I was serving at the time. Inspired by a clergy friend of mine who regularly rewrites Psalms in his own words as a spiritual discipline, I rewrote Psalm 23 like this:

A modern retake on Psalm 23:

God takes care of me, so I have everything I need.

God makes me take a break even when I don’t want to.

God shows me what it means to slow down.

God recharges my empty battery.

God keeps me on the good path because God is good.

Even during the longest, bleakest quarantine I don’t fear the world falling apart because God is with me.

God’s hand of direction, and assuring voice make me feel better.

God gives me those biscuits from Red Lobster, with spaghetti and chocolate cake, in front of people who bully me.

God chooses me, strengthens me, commissions me.

Surely gentle, all-consuming, Justice-seeking love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will always have a room in God’s house.

If we went around this room and asked every person here if you have a favorite scripture verse, and if so, what is it, I’m sure we’ll get a variety of answers. Yet, I predict I’d hear “Psalm 23” more than once. Long enough to feed you but short enough to memorize, grim and real in its handling of death and suffering but serene in all of its imagery, and ending on the note that God always provides, it’s not hard to understand why we love Psalm 23 so much. It’s been set to poetry, music, art, you name it. If I recite just a few opening words, you can tell me exactly what I’m quoting, and these words are so recognizable that people from a diversity of faith backgrounds recognize them. I use Psalm 23 the most heavily at funerals and memorial services, it strikes just the right tone for those. It touches this space between life and death, not just the looming reality over our heads, “the valley of the shadow of death”, but also the green pastures, still waters, and full tables that God leads us to in transitional spaces when we’re burnt out, overwhelmed, conflicted, grieved, waiting for resolution, and in need of respite. I rarely use the King James Version of the Bible for anything, but I always use it to recite Psalm 23 at funerals. The familiarity is like a warm sweater.

Long ago, I learned the tremendous value of reading different interpretations and translations of ultra familiar scripture passages. Many of us have heard Psalm 23 sooo many times that we don’t listen to the meaning of the words, we start going through the familiar motions. That’s not a bad place for your mind to be, and can even be quite healing at a time of loss. But on a Sunday morning in the middle of the Easter season, like this one, I’ve invited you to hear a few other takes on Psalm 23. You heard mine, and you also heard Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Psalm 23 that he used for The Message, which is a paraphrase of the Bible using modern language and idioms. I used it this morning for the call to worship. I don’t use The Message very often, either, but there are a wealth of translations of the Bible, and each one teaches us something. It can be very educational, and eye opening, to hear the same essential meaning of the Psalm presented in someone else’s voice.

And that brings me to what I wanted to focus on this morning: when your spiritual tank is running low, what fills it back up again? Do you think about your spiritual tank? Do you know that part of yourself well enough to know when you need help? John Wesley, the founder of what became the Methodist movement, focused on the importance of spiritual disciplines like scripture reading, prayer, and fasting, and taught the preachers he trained to hold one another accountable. He taught them the first question they should ask is “How is it with your spirit?” A question like that sounds like it might fight right into your typical conversation in the 1700s. But can you imagine asking someone that now? It’s intimate, and deep, and radical.

I’m very aware of my “spiritual tank”, and not because I’m a pastor. Some clergy are quite bad at staying spiritually healthy, and get burnt out by it. But I’ve been an avid journaler since grade school, and in addition to that I do meditative prayer now, and those two practices keep me rather self aware. When my spiritual tank is getting close to “E” I feel deeply sad and disheartened, and nothing makes me feel hopeful. That’s why one of my spiritual accountability questions (that I now use on my podcast) is “What excites you?” I’ve found that thinking hard about that, and following that energy, connects me to Jesus and starts to fill me back up again. And my cup flows over, and I’m enthusiastic to tell others all about what Jesus just gave me.

What excites you right now? What gets your attention, gets your energy up, and is so undeniably appealing to you that once you get going you get in flow and do great things? For me, that’s a few things: my podcast, my music, writing, to name a few. Does something do that for you?

Jesus taught us in this morning’s scripture reading that he only comes to us through a narrow gate, but that lots of corrupting influences will sneak into our lives through other paths. When things with your spirit aren’t great, you become much more vulnerable to bad influences because they make you feel better. Only you know what those “wolves” are in your life. For my dad, that wolf is this one angry guy on the radio who complains about the cost of gas. That angry radio guy becomes an idol. For me, that wolf is doom scrolling on social media. Some of you are older than me, and you might not know what I mean by “doom-scrolling”, but when you’re on a site like Facebook, and you start seeing a steady stream of depressing news stories, demoralizing op-ed pieces, and snarky status updates from your sarcastic friends, and instead of turning off that negativity and doing something else you keep scrolling…that’s what I mean. “Fasting” in my life doesn’t mean food, it means putting my phone on ice for a few days. For some of my friends, the wolf is something more quickly destructive, like drug or alcohol abuse, gambling, binge shopping, or other indicators of a big problem. To be clear, if one of those wolves is in your life, spiritual disciplines alone won’t get them out, you need more help. The Good News that Jesus tells us this morning is he knows how vulnerable we are, and he’s here to help.

So, how is it with your spirit today? How close to your gate are the wolves? On the continuum from “green pastures” to “the valley of the shadow of death”, where are you? How can I help you? How can your church family help you? What will fill you, and push you so far to the green pasture that your cup finally overflows? Do you have spiritual disciplines? Do you keep up with practices that help you? If not, this is a perfectly good time to find one.

I’m going to recommend to you the one I started this message with: exploring the scriptures by taking a familiar passage and rewriting it in your own words. I get the very most out of doing that with a Psalm, and if you’ve never done this, start there. It can feel a little strange at first, but once you get started, I think you’ll quickly discover how much you and God have to say to one another.

Until we meet again, may God give you those biscuits from Red Lobster, with spaghetti and chocolate cake, in front of people who bully you.

Amen.

*Hymn The King of Love My Shepherd Is #138, vv. 1, 2, 6

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

You, Lord, are the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.

Thank you, that you know me and call me by name.

Thank you that you would search and search

just for one missing sheep out of a hundred—

even it were me—

and not rest until it was back in the fold.

And thank you, too, for the great words of the psalms,

which comfort, challenge and inspire us.

We shall not want, Lord, for we are yours,

and you have given us what we need.

You have give us all we need.

Thank you for green pastures.

Thank you for quiet waters.

Thank you for refreshing my soul.

Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear.

You, Lord, are my shepherd.

You have called me by name.

And you have searched, until you have found me.

Enfold us in your love. Amen.

— written by Brian Draper, and posted on the Monthly Prayers page of the Christian Aid website. 

*Hymn God Be with You Till We Meet Again #672

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant