Many Stars
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
June 11, 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:
Rejoice in the Sacred.
We praise our Creator with the lyre; we make melody for the Holy with the harp.
Sing a new song today; play it on guitar with a loud voice.
Because the word of the Holy is good, and the Divine is faithful.
Our Shepherd delights when we find justice and righteousness; we reflect the love of God.
Our Mothering God created all that we see, and set us to live in abundance.
Our Gardener helps what is good thrive, and prunes back what poisons us.
We belong to God, and it’s worth celebrating.
*Hymn Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee #89
Prayer of Confession:
God of the ages: you watch over us from far enough away to see the big picture, and close enough to see the finest details. You know us inside and out–our desires, our dreams, and our motives. Help us to use our inner, persistent righteousness to turn those dreams and desires into justice. Forgive us when our self-centeredness mutates righteousness into self-righteousness, justice into privilege, and the Kingdom of God into a members-only club. Amen.
Assurance:
Hear the Good News: God steps in to restore us to goodness, and to separate us from our greed and cruelty as far as the East is from the West. Soak in that redemption and love today. Amen.
Scripture Reading Genesis 12: 1-9
The Call of Abram
12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”[a]
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak[b] of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.
Sermon Many Stars
Friends, I got curious, and decided today, instead of preaching on the lectionary-appointed Gospel passage, to see what the lectionary suggested from the Hebrew scriptures. And, of all places, I ended up here this week, in Genesis 12. In this passage we’re hearing the first words about a few hugely important characters. First up is a guy named Abram, the great-great-great (and a few more) grandson of Noah. This is the story of the people who survived the Great Flood, the people that God decided were righteous enough to be entrusted with repopulating the Earth. There’s not much important to know about Abram at the beginning of this story. He’s an old dude married to a woman named Sarai, and of all his family he’s close with his nephew, Lot. Also of note: Abram and Sarai suffered from infertility and didn’t have kids, and at this point you’d assume they’ve long since made peace with not having them, since Abram is 75.
But, for reasons that make sense to no one but God, like so many things in life, God identifies Abram as someone special, someone called to a big journey, and someone who will be a pivotal patriarch in the story of the Hebrew people. Later on in his narrative, God even anoints Abram with a longer version of his name to make his Abraham, the Father of the People. But, we’re not quite there yet.
We’re at the moment of, for what we know, is God’s very first conversation with Abram. Or, at least the first important one. And God doesn’t start off slow, God just goes right for it. After all, this is the same deity who initiated a relationship with Noah by saying “yeah, you’re gonna need to head over to Home Depot, buy out the entire lumber department, and build a huge boat with disturbingly specific dimensions, and then start rounding up all the animals, when you’re done…well, let’s just say I’m leaving the bathtub running.” So God’s first command to Noah is to take his wife and very chummy nephew Lot and leave town. Just get up and go. Abram’s gonna get a whole country to himself. And he’s going to have an absolute ton of kids. As many as the stars in the sky. Once we actually get to that point in the narrative, Sarai, by then Sarah, names their first child together Isaac, meaning laughter. Because when God tells two childless AARP members that they’re going to relocate, take over a foreign country, and have a fleet of kids, they laugh until they break a hip. But, God’s also not wrong.
There’s three major lessons that we learn from this point in the story:
Obedience to the Divine is a serious spiritual discipline. Despite what Abram and Sarai name their kid, obedience to the Holy is no laughing matter. God has the greatest things in store for us when we say yes, but then the Sacred takes us on the craziest rides. I should know, I used to live in Chicago and I wanted to be a math teacher.
The Holy will bring all kids of people into our lives that we never thought would be there. Maybe that we didn’t want to have there. We need to welcome them in.
Wherever we end up on this spiritual journey, no matter how far we roam from the last place that felt familiar or normal, God can make it a home to us nevertheless if we lay down a touchstone and hold some reverence for God, right there.
Let’s look at each of those points one at a time. First: obedience. Blech. I don’t like that word. Saying that word from this box with a microphone feels distasteful at best, and authoritarian at worst. It conjures up old timey sermons preached by some guy wearing a powdered wig, shaking his finger and doing all he can to scare y’all straight, lest the last thread of the spider web that suspended you over doom breaks, and you fall right into H-E-double hockey sticks. Sidenote, if you want to know exactly what I had in mind when I came up with that, go read “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards.
I promise, there’s another way to think of this concept of obeying the Divine. More to the point, obedience to the Creator shouldn’t be a head thing at all, something you intellectualize. It’s a heart thing, something you feel and respond to by instinct. This isn’t like obeying a boss at work, obeying law enforcement, or even obeying a parent. This is much deeper. This is about knowing the Holy well enough to trust the whispers within you that say “This is it, go for it.” That was the force I obeyed back in college, that whisper on a gut level that told me, “if you were supposed to be a math major, you’d actually like these classes. Go ahead, try something else.” In that moment, I knew God was holding me. No matter what happened, it would be for the best. Now I’m here. God does good things. What would you try if you trusted those instincts more?
Now, the next point, about all the people God brings into your life. It happens at all times, in all ways, guys. I made a connection this week with a woman my age who lives in California and practices the Baha’i faith. In a ton of ways we couldn’t be more different, but she’s going to be on my podcast in a few weeks. God brought her into my life. I asked a handful of my colleagues if this sentiment tracks at all with them, this idea that God fills up your life with new relationships like a night sky filling up with stars. And yeah, it tracked. I heard stories about a mission trip to Zimbabwe, about a chance encounter with a local shopkeeper, about a childhood bully who is now a friend, about an old boyfriend who reconnected years later to become a wonderful life partner, and even about a dog a couple had to surrender to an animal shelter for a little while that they found in need of a home years later. The world is full of these people, and even animals. They’re like tiny, twinkling stars. Some come and then go. Some stay for a while. And some become entire constellations in our lives. Trust when the Divine says you’ll never be alone. Because you won’t.
And the last point, about the wisdom of building an altar to the Holy wherever you are. Abram left the only home he ever knew in this morning’s story, and never went back. He managed, and even dared, to create small things that would remind him of who he really is wherever he went. That’s what an altar was for him. It tapped into his core identity, and made it okay to move and start over. It’s similar advice, but on a smaller scale, to what the prophet Jeremiah gave the Israelites they dwelled in exile in Babylon. He told them:
“4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
There’s an old, trite expression, “when God closes a door, God opens a window.” Not great theology, and to be clear, it’s not in the Bible. But then there’s another phrase that spun off from the first: “when the door closes and the window isn’t open yet, praise God in the hallway.” This is about how we stay true, both to God and to ourselves, when life sticks us in these in between places. Like between a diagnosis and a cure. Between “we need to talk” and whatever comes out of your partner’s mouth. Between a layoff and the next big break. Between a huge grief and the next moment you feel like you can breathe again. When you’re not where you were, you’re not where you will be, and all you can do is wait. You always have some ability to ground yourself in something more important, in something everlasting, in something that never lets you go. If you can carve out a corner for God in that place, your spirit will find rest.
Amen.
*Hymn Lead Me, Lord #473, sung twice
Offering
Offertory
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Bless, O God, all creation.
The sun that rises every morning
and clouds that bring us rain
and the moon in the dark night sky.
Bless us that we may be a blessing
to all we meet.
Heal us, O God, from all
that ails us—illness, dis-ease,
despair, hunger, thirst, all.
Heal us and all creation.
Bless the leaders of nations
fill them with wisdom.
Bless the leaders of cities
and towns that all
can work in unity
for the wellbeing
of everyone, all
creation.
Help us, O God to be
your disciples. To listen
with open ears and heal
with open hearts.
Help us, O God to be
your disciples.
Amen.
~ written by Terri and posted on A Place for Prayer. http://revgalprayerpals.blogspot.ca
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 God of the Ages #698
Benediction
Postlude
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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