Jesus and John Wayne
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 13, 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:
What joy we feel when we are called together to celebrate God’s love.
God’s love flows through our lives!
This is what it means to be the body of Christ!
This is what it means to be faithful witnesses to God.
Let us rejoice on this day!
Lord, we thank you for the blessings you pour on us. AMEN.
*Hymn This Is a Day of New Beginnings #383, v 1 and 4
Prayer of Confession:
God of infinite mercy and love, we come before you this day, knowing that we have not always been faithful to what you would have us do. We have too often turned our backs on those in need, choosing not to hear their cries. Forgive us, O Lord. We know that you do not want us to behave in this way. Your love and mercy, so generously showered over us, should be a beacon to guide our own actions. We make no excuses, for none would suffice. We ask your forgiveness and blessing, turning us again around and placing us on the path of compassion and peace. This prayer we offer in Jesus’ name. AMEN.
Assurance:
God’s love is greater than our understanding and our comprehension. That love is continually given to each and every one of us each day. Rejoice! God’s forgiving love is poured out for you now and always. AMEN.
Scripture Reading Galatians 3: 28
28 There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Sermon Jesus and John Wayne
Friends, we’re now in week 4 of Stump the Preacher 2023, sermons requested by you, and then researched by me. This morning’s topic was suggested by our friend Diana, still in Florida but always in our hearts. She found an article about the disturbing rise, and sharpening teeth, of a movement that can be called white Christian nationalism. You might not know everything about what that is, but if you’ve watched the news, there’s a good chance you’ve heard at least a few of those words strung together before. The rise of white Christian nationalism came into particular focus in 2016, after Donald Trump was elected President. Now, trust me, I know how the air in the room chills when someone says his name. This isn’t at all a sermon about him, or whether or not you voted for him in 2016 or will in 2024, when he plans to run for President again. Trump merely put a bright spotlight on a phenomenon that has been coming together for a very long time.
I’ve done quite a bit of recent reading on this phenomenon. I just finished re-reading two excellent books on this subject: White Evangelical Racism by Dr. Anthea Butler, and one after which I titled this sermon: Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Du Mez traces the line of white Chritian nationalism all the way back to the 1800s, prior to the boom of the industrial revolution in the United States. This was a new country, where people lived in farming communities. Christianity was a majority religion, and the first wave of immigrants to our baby country came from Northern and Western Europe, where Protestantism was dominant. In a country that had just fought two wars against England, and on the expanding frontier where building relationships with others meant survival, Christianity was largely embraced as a center of morality, and a peace-keeping faith.
But people struggle to abide by peace, even when they have Jesus as a guide. And a lot happened in a very short amount of time. The industrial revolution kicked into high gear. People moved away from their rural towns, and the families on their old farms, and into cities pursuing factory jobs. Wages were low, benefits were non existent, working conditions were very dangerous, and life was very rough. The face of immigration to the US began to shift, and now the majority of immigrants were coming from Eastern and Southern European countries where Catholicism and Judaism were much more prominent. Though this country was founded by immigrants, it was also founded by people with very short memory spans, who viewed these second-wave immigrants as outsiders, as a clash to the established culture, and as people who might steal your job. Spikes of nationalism began popping up.
It’s important for us to understand what that word, “nationalism”, means. The Oxford dictionary defines “nationalism” as “identification with one’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.” This is very different from “patriotism”, a devotion to one’s country. It’s a great thing to love America, to be proud to be American, and to think America is a great country. Our problems, historically, have always begun when we’ve started gatekeeping who is allowed to call themselves American, and when we’ve decided that supporting Americans means harming others.
That kind of gatekeeping is what white Protestants did in the face of second-wave immigration, and to every generation of immigrants who have come to our shores since. Deep nationalism gave rise to an ever simmering, even deeper racism, reaching a breaking point during the Civil War, when several of our Protestant denominations, including the Methodist Church, broke in half over the fight about whether or not it is ethical to own a person. It took 90 years, but the Methodist Episcopal Church (own predecessors) finally came back together with the Methodist Episcopal Church South. But some of those schisms remained, and you see deep ramifications of them today–the American Baptist Churches parted ways with the Southern Baptist Convention, and these days, there’s a rather huge gulf between those two traditions. The American Baptist Churches ordain women, lean much more progressive, reject racism, and have gained huge ground in LGBTQIA inclusion. The Southern Baptist Convention, on the other hand, just doubled down on their rejection of women preachers, do not affirm LGBTQIA identities, and have been justifiably criticized for their failure to protect people of color.
Along the way, the nationalism and racism gave way to the war machine, especially after World War Two, and even more so during the Cold War. A sinister part of human nature involves how much it can energize us to all band together over a shared enemy, and for a long time in this country that was communists. Eventually, politicians started figuring out that they’d gain a big voter base if they made their Christian faith public, especially after evangelical mega-preacher Billy Graham became a prominent figure. Factions of people becoming increasingly anxious about the Red Scare and securing our borders flocked to organizations like Focus on the Family and the Moral Majority, which did a lot to comfort scared people, but had a significant political agenda. Fast forward just a few more decades, to the September 11th terrorist attacks, deeply traumatized people flocked to their faith and their patriotism, very appropriately, as sources of comfort. But quickly Muslims and the Middle East in general became identified as a new national threat, our country entered two wars, and racist, anti-immigrant, pro-war sentiments started boiling over.
Now, that’s a lot of history I just gave you, and don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize any of that, we’re not having a quiz later. Out of all of that, there’s a huge theme that people of faith would do well to pay attention to, and that theme is fear. Fearful people want to feel safe. That’s good, and natural. But fearful people can also make snap judgments because they’re seeking safety, and those snap judgments can cause a lot of problems. Fearful people naturally want to divide their world into categories of good and bad, so they feel like they have some order and control again. But those categories make divisions. And we have a very divided country now. Republicans and Democrats. Native born and immigrant, Christian and non Christian, gun owner and non gun owner, White and non white, rich and poor, straight and gay, women and men, rural and urban, liberal and conservative, pro big government and pro small government. People who are very fearful, more than anything, will start looking for a hero. The type of person who will make all the scary stuff go away. In her book, Du Mez named a long-time national enchantment with John Wayne, which is why she titled her book that. This myth of the strong, tough, rich, good white man who will show up from out of the open frontier on his horse with a gun in his holster, ready to have a duel at dawn with whatever bad guy is the antagonist of our lives right now.
I’m a little young for that particular fascination. John Wayne was already dead when I was born. In my lifetime, I’ve seen anxious, white Christians band around several people that they lifted up as heroes: President Reagan, when I was really little, then Presidents Bush, senior and junior. They’ve flocked to the voices of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, and Tucker Carlson. They’ve even lifted up people like actor Chuck Norris, singers Kid Rock and Jason Aldean, and pillow salesman Mike Lindell. But in recent years, no one has captured the cultural zeitgeist, and spoken so clearly and boomingly to the concerns of anxious Americans like Trump. And 81% of white, conservative Christians voted for him in 2016, seeing him as a solution to all the problems.
So, here we are in the present day. Our next Presidential election doesn’t happen for over a year, but we’re already hearing plenty about it, and that’s only going to intensify. We have a wall at our Southern border growing one brick at a time, and many who believe that finishing it will keep out criminals and protect jobs. With mass shootings happening, statistically, every single day in America, and 6 million people being out of work, you can hardly blame folks who are fearful of crime and who want to know their employment is safe. Roe v Wade is gone, anti gay and anti trans legislation is popping up all over, and people are oppressed, terrified, starving, and looking for hope.
Sincerely, where politics are concerned, I hope you vote for whomever you deem most worthy of office, no matter who that person is. I hope you do all you can to protect yourself and those you love. But I also hope that you lean away from division, prejudice, and hate. Many folx along the way have wanted to politicize Jesus and make his goals line up with theirs. But the truth is that Jesus’ cause was one of non-violence, healing love, radical inclusion, and justice, and you’ll hardly find all of that in any one politician, no matter how much you admire them. Know what the voice of fear sounds like in your neighbor, and disarm their fear with love. And know that those who understood the love ethic of Jesus, like Paul did, understood that the Christian thing to do for one another is to erase divisions, lift up the disempowered, and revolutionize the world in love.
Amen.
*Hymn All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name #154, v 1 and 6
Offering
Offertory
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Ever living and ever loving God,
We praise you for your loving presence with us.
Come, Holy Spirit,
take and transform our societies—
that broken people find healing;
that lonely people find love;
that bitter people find peace;
that fearful people find hope.
Come, Holy Spirit,
take our world’s leaders and governments and bring renewal—
that communication can be open;
that relationships between hostile people and hostile nations will evaporate;
that a hunger for justice addresses the hunger for food felt by so many.
Come, Holy Spirit,
fill your church—
that our worship will be ever more pleasing to you;
that prayers will change our minds
instead of trying to get you to change yours;
that our lives will make a real difference to real people in the real world.
Come, Holy Spirit,
fill our lives with your presence—
so that more and more every day,
all that we do and say and hope
will be an act of worship to you and an expression of love to others,
to the glory of your name. Amen.
— from the Baptist Union of Great Britain website. http://www.baptist.org.uk/
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 Blest Be the Tie That Binds #557, v 1 and 4
Benediction
Postlude
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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