Do You Need Probable Cause to Enter God's House?

 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

August 27, 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:

Come on in and find some rest!

We need that rest, for we are weary!

Come on in and discover peace!

We need peace, for our spirits are weighed down by troubles.

You have come to the right place! Our Lord is here, waiting for you.

Thanks be to God, who brings us rest and peace. AMEN.

*Hymn              O God, Our Help in Ages Past          #117

Prayer of Confession:

Merciful and loving God, we are so grateful for your redeeming love for each one of us. We confess that there have been times of doubt in our spirits. We confess that when the times of difficulties are upon us, we don’t always believe that you will take our burdens. We feel we have to always be in control, trying to demand the desired outcome. Help us to place our trust in you. Remind us that you surround us continually with your care, you never just let us go to drift aimlessly about. Open our hearts and spirits again to your healing powers. For we pray these things in the name of Jesus, the one who will take our burdens and give us peace. AMEN.

Assurance:

Hear the good news, dear friends! Jesus releases us from our burdens. Place your whole trust in his love. AMEN.

Scripture Reading Exodus 1: 8-2: 10

The Israelites Are Oppressed

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude 14 and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews[a] you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

Birth and Youth of Moses

2 Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. 4 His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses,[b] “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Sermon                                 Do You Need Probable Cause to Enter God’s House?

Friends, we’re now in the sixth week of Stump the Preacher 2023, sermons requested by you and then researched and delivered by me. This morning’s topic came at the request of my husband Sean, after we watched one of the funniest news blooper segments we’ve ever seen. Just in case you don’t know, Sean works at Channel 10 in Albany, and worked at two different stations in Rochester before that, so he has a good 13 years of experience working in TV news, and takes his job quite seriously. One of the deepest frustrations that can befall a person who works in News is when someone makes a mistake, because the vast majority of what you see on the air is live, and can’t be helped once it’s out there. Now, Sean will go to great lengths to explain to you that if a mistake happens in a show he’s directing, it’s NOT FUNNY. But if a mistake happens in someone else’s show, it’s HILARIOUS. Feel free to connect the uncharitable dots and accuse my dear husband of schadenfreude, because you’d be right. But then do a youtube search for news bloopers the next time you’re having a bad day, because I promise you’ll feel better.

So in this news segment, coming out of a city somewhere in Florida, there was breaking news involving a man hunt for a criminal, whose last name was “Goad”. The situation itself was quite serious, but the awkward chuckles from me and Sean started when the anchor kept mispronouncing the perpetrator’s name as “God”. So the segment sounded like this:

“Local police suspect that God has fled to his house, which they believe in located here on this map, at the end of main street. Neighbors have reported noise complaints coming from God’s house, and law enforcement fear God may be armed and dangerous. Without probable cause, police cannot enter the house and search. Local authorities ask that if you have any information on God that you call the number at the bottom of your screen.”

Now there’s actually a whole bunch of theological questions you could pull out of that, but Sean turned and asked me, “Do you need probable cause to enter God’s house?” Then the light bulb turned on in his head and he said, “Oh, you have to preach on that now. No, seriously, just go with it.”

So here you have it: Do you need probable cause to enter God’s house? Or, to unpack that just a little, where is God’s house? Is it a physical place, or more of a state of mind? And if you are in God’s dwelling, how do you get in?

Now, the more direct part of me is inclined to suggest that God’s home is in heaven, and we all go straight there when we pass from this mortal coil. But the deeper part of me will argue that the Creator dwells within us, we all carry the Imago Dei. Some of us let it show more than others. On those days when you show the Imago Dei to another, you become the port through which others may enter God’s presence, and the closest thing to a “house” that God has here–your good heart.

The upside gown nature of Christian faith teaches us that, unlike in our society, where we keep all the power clutched tightly at the top, and you have to be deemed worthy of that space, Jesus found the greatest solidarity with the people on the streets, and some of our most compelling Bible protagonists are people who hardly ever found themselves where they were by official channels. So we turn to the very early chapters of Moses’ story this morning, and meet people who entered into what Celtic Christians might call a “thin space” between heaven and earth, a place where they were closer to the heart of God than they’d ever been. 

First, Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives. Several generations of Hebrews have been born and raised in Egypt because Joseph’s family settled there to survive a famine and reunite. Now the Hebrew population is growing so fast that there are more Hebrews than Egyptians, and the greedy and racist Pharaoh fears losing power so he first resorts to enslaving the Hebrews, and when that doesn’t curb the population, he resorts to genocide–Shiphrah and Puah, delivering all the Hebrew babies, are to kill all the boys. No Hebrew boys means no Hebrew men who could form an army and attack, and it also means no male partners for the women, so no Hebrew babies in the next generation. But men as evil as Pharaoh have a ton of blindspots. Among Pharaoh’s is that he doesn’t realize that the Hebrew women are as capable of rebellion as the men. Shiphrah and Puah receive their orders to kill the boys they deliver, say “no thanks”, and go back to delivering babies. When Pharaoh confronts them for disobeying orders, they rely on another of Pharaoh’s blindspots, his racism. They reply “Uh, well, you know, these Hebrew women that you’ve kept as slaves, they’re not like these delicate, feminine Egyptian women. They just squeeze out their own babies, throw them on their backs, and go back to work. So we don’t get there for the delivery.” Uncomfortable as it is for a largely white congregation to face, white slave owners here in America bought into similar racist nonsense about enslaved Black women, believing that white ladies are refined, feminine, and delicate, and Black women are like machines that can’t feel pain. These tropes, to this day, hinder women of color from living safe and healthy lives, and maternal mortality rate in the US to be much higher for Black women than for women of all other races. What I’m telling you is this: in a world full of Pharaohs, be a Shiphrah or a Puah. Even though, on the surface, what they’re doing is lying, and a grave offense in their society, they saved a whole generation of Hebrew boys, who saw life, and therefore God, in them.

One way you come face to face with God is by subverting the status quo, and thereby bringing about justice. We see that in Shiphrah and Puah. Another way you come face to face with the Divine is by receiving mercy, like all the babies Shiphrah and Puah delivered. That also happens to mean that we frequently enter “God’s house” completely by chance. Do we appreciate it when we do, when someone else shows us mercy? Let this be an important reminder that we should.

The next such moment, where we see mere mortals touching a love that God imparts, happens when we meet the guy that the next four books of the Bible center around–Moses. Someday he’ll grow up to save and deliver his people, teach them the Law of God, and bring them to the Promised Land, but only if he lives that long. After Shiphrah and Puah defied orders, Pharaoh began instructing birth workers to throw Hebrew boys in the Nile. In another reality, there would have been no Moses, but his mother protected him, and we may guess that means she made the tremendously risky decision to deliver with no help. She hid him for three months, another heroic feat when you consider just how LOUD babies are. But by the time Moses is three months old, his mother realizes that there’s no way she can hide him forever, so she places him in the Nile, where he otherwise would have been tossed at birth, but protects him with a basket, and sends her daughter Miriam to keep watch and see what happens. And of all the people who could have been taking a bath in the river right at that moment, the one who happened to be there was Pharaoh’s daughter. She finds this baby, and has to make a choice fast. There’s no denying he’s Hebrew, and she quickly comes to that conclusion. Her dad wants these babies killed. She’s been raised to believe baby Moses is her enemy. Will she kill Moses? Or abandon him and likely cause him to die that way? Will she look the other way and let the homeless baby in the river be someone else’s problem? No. She adopts him. And, because of Miriam’s shrewdness, Pharaoh hires Moses’ mother to be his nurse, so Moses gets the best possible upbringing: life as the Pharaoh’s adopted son, heir to the throne, with all the luxuries of palace life, with his mom being with him all the time in the early years.

So, do you need probable cause to enter God’s house? Maybe, in the sense that you need to believe you know what awaits you in these thin spaces in order to be motivated enough to approach them. But, as it turns out, even at our worst, all of us have the opportunity to approach the heart of the Holy if we love like Jesus when the moment calls for it. When we are among the oppressed, like Shiphrah and Puah, we need to use subversive power rather than appealing to the ones in charge. Or, when we’re in peril, like Moses’ mother, in every moment of courage, God is within us leading us on. When we ourselves feel small and helpless, like Moses’ sister Miriam, our intelligence and quick thinking remind us that there’s nothing wrong with being childlike, it’s precisely the kind of faith Jesus asked for. And when we, like pharaoh’s daughter, find ourselves in a position where we have the privilege and power, every time we use those advantages as resources to help someone else and interrupt the cycle of harm, we enter the thin space, and the world sees God in us.

I’m not sure that you need probable cause to enter God’s house, as much as you need the actions of another to help you in. May we be the one who helps someone else across that threshold.

Amen.

*Hymn                       Take My Life and Let It Be                               #399

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

People of God, as we come to prayer

let us remember that we do not

have to twist the arm of a reluctant God

to seek good things for this world,

nor find ways to persuade a distant God

to come near and listen to us.

Let us remember that as we pray

we kneel alongside Jesus Christ,

in the presence of God,

with the help of the Spirit.

So let us bring to mind now

those people who are in need of our prayers:

those who are ill, or anxious;

those who are lonely or sad;

those who are despairing or defeated;

those who are hungry or homeless;

those whose relationships are breaking apart;

those who are bullied or abused;

those who cannot find work;

and those who are over-worked.

In silence now, let us make our own specific prayers

for those on our hearts and minds today.

(silence)

In the presence of God,

alongside Jesus Christ,

with help from the Spirit

may we go into this week

to live out our prayers through our lives.

Amen.

~ written by Ann Siddall, Stillpoint Spirituality Centre and Faith community. http://www.stillpointsa.org.au/prayer/prayers-and-liturgies/

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, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

*Hymn                      The Church’s One Foundation                        #545

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant