Help, Thanks, Wow

 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

May 21, 2023

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Al Tabari Thanksgiving Service

10:00a.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.

*Hymn What a Friend We Have in Jesus #526

Prayer:

Our God of mercy, grace, and love, permit us to approach thee with grateful hearts, and at this moment to give praise and thanks to thee for this life we have enjoyed, the fellowship of our fellows, the many homes from which we have come, and this great land in which we live. We do give thanks.

Thy goodness, Lord of plenty, has been delivered by the richness of the fields, the plenteousness of the streams, the very air has been refreshing, and life itself has been enriched by association with lovely souls and spirits. For which we give thanks.

God of grace, forgive us our many sins; correct us in our errors, and fail not to accord to us thy love in the midst of thy needful chastisements of us. May we be agents of thine to bring forth the brotherhood and sisterhood, such as desired. Fill us with thy Spirit that we may more worthily serve thy purposes in the earth. When this body ceases its work, draw us closer to thee in peace. We always pray with thanksgiving in our hearts, in the name of Jesus, the Christ. Amen.

Scripture Reading Psalm 100

All Lands Summoned to Praise God

A Psalm of thanksgiving.

1 

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.

2 

    Serve the Lord with gladness;
    come into his presence with singing.

3 

Know that the Lord is God.
    It is he who made us, and we are his;[a]
    we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

4 

Enter his gates with thanksgiving
    and his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him; bless his name.

5 

For the Lord is good;
    his steadfast love endures forever
    and his faithfulness to all generations.

*Hymn Faith of Our Fathers #710

The Litany of Praise with Thanksgiving

Illustrious Commandress:

O Lord, open thou our lips; and our mouths shall show forth thy praise.

Daughters:

Sing praises unto the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings.

IC: 

Praise the Lord with the harp; sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.

D:

Praise ye the Lord; praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in the firmament of his power.

IC:

Praise him for his mighty acts; praise him according to his excellent greatness.

D:

Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord, praise ye the Lord.

IC:

Let everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

D:

Offer unto God thanksgiving and pay thy vows unto the Most High.

Unison: 

They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

IC:

First Lieutenant Commandress, what are the basic principles of the Daughters of Isis?

First Lieutenant Commandress:

Devotion to kindred and friends.

IC:

Second Lieutenant Commandress, how does our obligation lead us?

SLC: 

To do good and endeavor to promote the happiness of mankind.

IC:

High Priestess, from what passage of the scripture do we derive our faith?

High Priestess:

From 1 Corinthians, 13th chapter, 1st verse: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”

*Hymn My Faith Looks up to Thee #452

Sermon Help, Thanks, Wow

In 2012, prolific author and social justice activist Anne Lamott published a relatively short, but reverend and wise book, titled Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. In this book Lamott made the case that, though there are certainly infinite different types of prayers that we can lift up to the Divine, there are three that are the most important, and that get us through this life: prayers asking for assistance, healing, mercy, and guidance; prayers lifting up all that God has done for us all; and prayers where we simply sit back and behold the world with wonder and awe.

By a long shot, the easiest prayers for us to pull to mind, and the ones I hear the most frequently, and prayers asking for help. And that’s perfectly natural. I love that we trust God so much. We also show our trust in one another when we share these prayers with the congregation, because when we share our prayers out loud, we allow our friends and neighbors to help us, too, even if only in the form of lifting another voice in prayer. I’m telling you from a place of both belief and experience, every one of our voices matter. I’ve also long maintained that every one of our prayers matter. Nothing is too big, too much, too grievous, too burdensome, too profane, or too angry for God. God can lift it. So we ask for help with the biggest, big things–God, there’s a war in Ukraine. God, one out of every five children in this country lives under the poverty line. God, we’re still not completely done with this pandemic. God, our country has a deep love affair with guns that it won’t quit.

I also maintain that nothing is small or trivial to God. Everything matters. So we lift up our medium to high prayers asking for help–Lord, my cousin’s having surgery, my parents are traveling, I’m sick, my brother’s looking for work, my sister’s leaving a bad relationship, my son’s having a hard time. Then we lift up the prayers for help that only feel important to us. God wants to hear them. If you bring the little things to God, too, then our Creator must rest in your every breath. Lord, have mercy, my husband ate the last corndog and my four year old is not happy. Fount of love, receive the four paws and the wiggly white nose of our pet bunny, who lived nine long years and passed in her sleep over the weekend.

But Lamott pushes us, and into the direction of this morning’s psalm. “I need help” is the sentence that our survival instincts tell us to blurt out first. The things that aren’t going great require the most immediate attention, and push the hardest on our coping skills. Of course those prayers come out first. It’s much harder to lift up prayers of thanks. To recognize where God has intervened and give praise. To acknowledge answered prayers for help. To take stock of all that God has given us. But those prayers of thanks are so, so important. They lift up your heart. That prayer of thanks might give you the dopamine boost you need to deal with your struggles today. They help your community. When you say thanks, everyone around you hears one more time that God is good, that God comes through, that God loves us. So the psalmist urges us, Enter God’s courts with thanksgiving. Be thankful that we’re here, we’re alive. Be thankful for our ancestors who loved God so we could too. Be thankful that God took care of them. These prayers of thanks may, naturally, come at the other side of that prior prayer for help–we’re grateful for the surgery that had a good outcome, for the cancer that went into remission, for the traveling family member who’s home now, for the successful job interview, for humanitarians aiding war victims, for legislation that addresses poverty and violence, and even for the Hannaford coupon that enables the purchase of another box of corn dogs.

But we can also give thanks just because. We can lift up our prayers of gratitude even for those things which have not been tapped by our stress buttons. I can thank God that I have woken up every morning with a roof over my head. We can thank God–and Al Tabari, for the refreshments we’ll enjoy after this service. We can thank God for the illnesses we’ve avoided, for the blessing of this body, this life. We can thank God for good friends, family however we make it, and brightness wherever it shines. And we need to. Thankfulness isn’t just what we owe God, it’s what we owe ourselves as a spiritual discipline. Without thankfulness, we just aren’t complete.

The last kind of prayer that Lamott advised us to turn to often is, in my opinion, the hardest and most counterintuitive to come up with: the prayer of “wow”. The prayer that has no connection at all to anything we’ve asked for. The prayer that might not directly relate to us at all. The prayer where we simply look around, marvel at all that is, has been, and will be, and admire how beautiful it all is, and how loving God must be that this is all so. Thankfully, as with the prayers of gratitude, the psalmists left many scripts of “wow” prayers that we can freely borrow from when we struggle to generate our own. It’s ok, the psalmists did all that work for a reason. We’re not copycats, we’re honoring the people who struggled with all of this before we did. They literally wrote the book on this “how to get through this life while loving God” stuff.

Psalm 100 is a great place to look for “wow” prayers: Wow, God is worth cheering and singing for. Wow, God gave us voices and the ability to make music with them! Wow, 7 billion souls on this planet and God created every single one of them. Wow, God is so full of love.

Nature is another great place to look for inspiration for those wow prayers. Behold every color that exists splashing the sky at sunrise and sunset, like the Holy is just up there coloring with the big box of crayons. Be amazed by the deep oceans that feed and cover our earth, and that house so many animals that scientists can’t even name them all. Be overwhelmed by the trees that make our oxygen, and provide shelter for even more of our furry and feathered friends. Consider the mountains that touch the sky, the caves that touch the deep, the flowers that tell you spring is here.

Moving on from nature, look at the human body, this meat suit your mother’s womb spun together in only nine months, that breathes and talks and moves and carries. Look at our children, these beautiful reminders that life keeps starting over and over and over again, these little ones who have our future in their chubby fingers, along with a handful of cheetos. Wonder at the existence of love. A big concept, but think about it. In a world as complicated as this one, in a life so filled with conflict, among humans so prone to the most devastating acts of hatred and terror, how amazing is it that there is any love at all? And yet there is so, so, so much of it. Enough to fill twelve years of marriage, and a lifetime more. Be in awe of our Church, both this one and the greater institution, that, despite our many flaws we care so much, we serve so many, and we love God so steadfastly. Be in awe of every world religion, and all the brave souls who want to understand the Sacred. There is undeniably a whole lotta bad, but God really did make us for good.

Y’all can come up with so many more prayers. Things you need help with so personal that I wouldn’t be able to even guess it. Provisions from a generous God that none of us knows about. And amazement that can’t be captured by words. Do you feel how big God is when we think of all these prayers, and especially these three big categories? Do you feel how capable we are, when we think of all we’ve been to God and one another, and how much work lies ahead? Name your own prayers, your own help, thanks, wow. Then put your hands where your words were, that others may be moved to say help, thanks, wow, too.

Amen.

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Holy God, we come before you in prayer,

lifting to you the joys and concerns,

the hopes and dreams of our lives. 

May we also be open to your voice in our lives

that we may see with new eyes, and hear with new ears,

the direction you will have us to go.

Bless, we pray, this gathering of your people

that we may grow and flourish in your love and grace

for the purpose to which you have called us.

Hear our prayers for those whose lives have touched us—

those who are in pain, those who are ill, those who grieve. 

May we touch their lives not only through our prayers,

but through our lives and actions as well.

Guide us, bless us, uplift us, and hold us,

for we are your children called to our purpose in your world. 

Hear our prayers, those spoken and those hidden in our hearts,

we pray in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. 

~ posted on Life in Liturgy, from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). https://lifeinliturgy.wordpress.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.

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant