Burnt Pancakes
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
October 8, 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:
Welcome to God’s house, a place of faith.
From our homes, we come seeking God’s word.
Here you will find nourishment and hope.
May we learn lessons of courage and peace.
Here you will find rest from your struggles
Lord, prepare our hearts to receive your words that we may leave this holy house of faith and return to our homes, encouraged and challenged to be your people. AMEN.
*Hymn Gather Us In #2236
Prayer of Confession:
We keep slamming into walls, O merciful God, when we are left to our own devices. Throughout our faith history, your Son offered words of healing and hope to people who dwelled in darkness. In the brilliant light of his love, people grew and flourished. But now, Lord, we find that this world dominates our lives. We are troubled, angry, and fearful. We want to see your presence in the world, but we spend far too much time looking for the “big picture” rather than seeing the myriad of ways in which your love and healing power is shown. Forgive us when we grow impatient with you and with the course of things in our lives. Heal our wounds and put us back on pathways of peace and service. Enable us to speak your words of hope in this darkened world. We ask this in Jesus’ name. AMEN.
Assurance:
Hear the words of hope! Though the days seem to darken quickly, the brilliant light of your love and presence will always be a guide and comfort to us. This is the Good News of Jesus Christ. AMEN.
Scripture Reading Matthew 21: 33-46
The Parable of the Wicked Tenants
33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. 37 Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;[a]
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
43 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”[b]
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
Sermon Burnt Pancakes
Today I have a story for you. It’s about a woman named Araminta Ross.
Born into slavery in Maryland in the early 1820s, she, like many enslaved people, never knew her birthday, or even which exact year she was born. Her death certificate lists 1815 as her birth year, while her tombstone lists 1820. Araminta, herself, told people she was born in 1825, but one historian believed she may have been born closer to 1822, based on supporting documentation. Knowing so little about your birth, and being raised in the company of brutal enslavers, may make a less determined woman question her sense of self, but Araminta grew up knowing, if nothing else, that she was loved. Her parents affectionately called her “Minty”. Minty’s parents, Rit and Ben, worked for two neighboring plantations, her mother as a cook and her father in timber. By the time she was 6, Minty’s father was sold to another enslaver far away. As she aged, three of her eight siblings were also sold to other plantations. When an interested enslaver came after Minty’s youngest brother, Moses, her mother Rit enlisted the help of both other enslaved people and a few free folx to hide him. When keeping Moses hidden proved impossible, the plantation owner approached the slave quarters to take Moses away. Rit answered the door and announced that the first man that came into her house would get his head split open. The enslavers gave up on selling Moses, and Minty learned that it might be incredibly difficult to stand up to enslavers, and they may have an enormous advantage, but she was not powerless, especially if she had help.
Minty was frequently rented out to other neighboring plantations in her youth–once to be the nanny for a baby, another time to clean muskrat traps. She carried permanent scars from whippings, and nearly died from disease in tending to the muskrat traps. When she was thirteen, an outraged enslaver lifted a huge weight that he intended to throw at the person standing next to Minty. Instead, it hit her directly in the head. Miraculously, she survived that head trauma, but suffered neurologically for the rest of her life with vivid dreams, hallucinations, epilepsy, and narcolepsy. Coupled with her mother Rit’s strong Methodist faith, Minty became devoutly religious, and, though she knew she had a major and permanent brain injury, she attributed many of her visions and dreams to God.
Around the year 1844, big things changed in Minty’s life. She married a freed Black man named John, and took his last name, Tubman. Around that time, she began going by her mother’s full first name, Harriet, the name history has known her as. Despite his best efforts, and the heartbreak it caused him, John couldn’t free Harriet from enslavement, and any children they had would become the property of her enslavers. A few years later, the master of the plantation passed, and Harriet entered a time when she would almost certainly be sold to alleviate debt. Of this time in her life, she later said, “There was two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”
A few months later, Harriet made her first escape attempt. She left with two of her brothers, but when they got cold feet and turned back, her attempt failed, and she was caught. Shortly after, she decided to go alone. She sang the first verse of a spiritual when she ran away, as a signal to a friend and fellow enslaved person that she was leaving, something she’d eventually do often to communicate inconspicuously with enslaved people. Though it was a dangerous trip, she made it to freedom in Pennsylvania with the help of the Underground Railroad.
The next year, in 1850, the stakes increased dramatically for anyone hoping to escape slavery, or help others get out. Congress passed the Fugitive Slaves Act, which compelled law enforcement to return runaway enslaved people to their masters, even if they made it to states that outlawed slavery. This meant that into order to truly make it to safety, an enslaved person couldn’t just cross the Mason Dixon Line, they had to make it to Canada. Nonetheless, Harriet wasn’t content to count her blessings in Philadelphia. She was determined to get as many of her family and friends as she could to freedom, and, over time, she became the head, and most successful engineer, of the Underground Railroad.
Over the course of the next thirteen years, Harriet escorted dozens of enslaved people to freedom, narrowly escaping death and capture many times over. She went by the nickname Moses, and invoked his story to remind her and others of her calling. Leaning upon her deep faith, she sang spirituals from off in the distance to alert enslaved people of her presence, and to signal that they should follow her. Since singing on plantations was very common, this method allowed Harriet to hide in plain sight. At one point there was a $40,000 bounty on Harriet’s head, but she managed to succeed without ever losing a passenger.
Harriet settled in Auburn, NY, and relocated her parents there. She became an outspoken abolitionist. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet lent her hand to the cause of formerly enslaved people who joined the Union Army seeking freedom. She convinced a Union General to free all of those people in exchange for their military service, a move that wasn’t supported by many, not even President Lincoln. Harriet harshly criticized Lincoln, declaring that he was far too slow to abolish slavery. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Tubman still criticized that move as too little, too late. She then set her sights on raiding Confederate territory, and led assaults on several huge plantations in the South, setting fire to the farms while nearby steamboats whistled, signaling to enslaved people there that they were being liberated. More than 750 enslaved people escaped because of Harriet’s help with the raids.
Harriet spent her twilight years in Auburn, fighting for women’s suffrage after the Confederacy surrendered. She lived in relative poverty, having been paid very little for her rescue efforts and military service. What little money she ever had she gave away to family and friends in need. She remarried in 1869, to a farmer named Nelson Davis, and they adopted a daughter named Gertie. She became a colleague of Susan B Anthony, and actively served her local AME Church. She passed in 1913.
Harriet’s life story is so inspirational that that alone is enough justification to lift her up in this sermon. But, more than that, I lift up Harriet because this morning’s Gospel reading is a rather busy parable. A landowner leased his vineyard to tenants. He sent enslaved people to collect his profits, and the tenants killed them. He even sent his son, who was also killed. There’s so, so, so many lessons you could derive from this parable, and the easiest, and most popular, conclusion to draw is that the landowner’s son is a kind of Christ figure who foreshadows Jesus’ own death at the hands of bad people. While I don’t discount that, I want to point you all to something much bigger going on in that parable. The characters in that story are a really, really rich guy, the people he enslaved, people he allowed to live on his land in exchange for pay, and his son. I’m going to argue that that wealthy landowner is not the good guy in that parable, and he’s not someone we should look at as a God like figure. He represents, and enacts, slavery and corporate greed, and many people die trying to make him more money. The tenants are far from good themselves, as they participate in all that bad, and they’re the killers in the story. So much evil happens when we decide that money is the ultimate good and people are disposable. We haven’t seen a good guy show up by the end of that parable, we’ve only heard Jesus hint that good is coming in the form of people who bear good fruit. Who those good people are going to be remains unclear, and unwritten. Could those good people be us? Could we believe that human life and lovingkindness are the greatest goods, and stand up to anyone else who says otherwise? Could we protect our vulnerable neighbors from the greedy landlords and capitalists who want to exploit them? Can we lean on our faith, like Harriet, and let it teach us what the true right thing is? Sometimes the first several people that approach a situation, like the landowner and tenants in that parable, and like your first couple of pancakes that get burned and tossed out, leaving more room on the plate for the good ones.
Let’s be the good ones in this story.
Amen.
*Hymn El Shaddai #123
Offering
Offertory
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Lord, we come here today in fellowship with one another setting aside this time solely for you. To offer you praise and worship, to hear you speak to us, and to leave here shaped a little bit more into the likeness of Jesus Christ. So we come humbly and quietly before you.
O God, we thank you for those times this week where we smiled and laughed, those times of friendship enjoyed, of meals shared, those times when we appreciated the beauty of nature, when we felt a peace in our hearts, when we paused to be grateful for the life you have given us. For all of these, and so much more, we know that we are blessed.
In difficulty and struggle, for the times when we have been less than our best, we give you thanks that you do not turn away from us and that we are never alone. The Bible tells us that when we confess our sins, you are gracious and just to forgive us, and help us start anew. And so, we pause in silence to personally confess our sins to you now.
Lord, we lift to you our church. We want to be used by you to make a difference in the lives of others. The need for hope, acceptance, love and compassion is great, and you are the answer to those needs. Help us to show others the way to you through our programs, through our ministries, and most of all through our lives and example.
We lift to you our country and its leaders. And we pray now for change. We pray that egos and power plays will be set aside, and that wisdom, vision and collaboration will prevail.
Lord, for those who are sick, suffering, lonely, misguided, or just in need of your presence, we ask that you would touch them with your healing, with your guidance, with your peace. You have those on our prayer list, but hear us now as people in this congregation lift out loud the names of those for whom we ask your blessing.
Lord, for the confidence and joy and hope we have because we walk daily with you, we give you thanks and praise in the name of your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. And all the people of God said…Amen.
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 Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise #103
Benediction
Postlude
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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