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 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 15, 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:

Praise be to God, who has brought us here this day.

Praise and thanks to God for all the blessings we have received.

What joy we have in God’s presence!

What peace is brought to us in God’s house!

This is truly the day that the Lord has made!

Let us rejoice and be glad in it! AMEN.

*Hymn                          Grace Alone                      #2162

Prayer of Confession:

God of infinite forgiveness, we implore you this day to forgive those many times in which we have turned our backs on you by turning away from the needs of the voiceless, the hopeless, the helpless. We let ourselves get distracted by schedules and activities which drain us of energy and enthusiasm. Light a fire under us, O God, that we may again feel the exciting challenge of being your people. Heal our wounds of indifference and apathy; bring us together in harmony and joy to serve you and your creation with peace, justice, and hope. It is in the name of your Son Jesus Christ, that we offer this prayer. AMEN.

Assurance:

Feel the powerful warmth of God’s love for you! God is with you, healing and restoring your lives and bringing you peace. This is the good news from our persistent and patient God. AMEN.

Scripture Reading Exodus 32: 1-14

The Golden Calf

32 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took these from them, formed them in a mold,[a] and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” 6 They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel.

7 The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”

11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” 14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Sermon                                 Gold

Friends, today’s text is one of my favorites to preach on from the Old Testament, so it’s a treat that it came up in the lectionary this week. It’s a story where several essential biblical characters–including God–are at a crossroads, and their next decision could make or break the Hebrew people.

At this point in the narrative, Moses has been called out of hiding in the wilderness by a burning bush, who turned out to be God incognito. He commanded Pharaoh to let his people go, it rained frogs, the Nile turned into blood, and an angel of death wiped out the firstborns. Pharaoh’s army chased the Hebrews as far as the Red Sea, where Moses and company crossed safely and the Egyptian army perished. There was a whole lot of big drama at the start of that story, the kind that plays out great in a movie starring Charleton Heston. It was much easier when the great Exodus began to believe that a real Holy power ordained this, and brought it about for the good of the Hebrew people.

But a whole lotta time has passed since then. The Hebrews have been wandering aimlessly through dessert, getting sand stuck in their shoes, scorching in the hot sun, and never quite believing that the Manna will still show up tomorrow morning. This journey no longer feels like a Charleton Heston masterpiece, it now feels like a disheveled Tom Hanks yelling at a volleyball named Wilson. The Hebrew people don’t want to do this anymore, and many of them have protested for quite some time that they’d have been better off as enslaved people in Egypt, where at least the food, clothing, and shelter were consistent.

The Hebrews had some measure of comfort when Moses was at least present to complain to. But for the last forty days and forty nights–or an eternity, which is what that really means–Moses has been on Mount Sinai. The Hebrews don’t know why, and have no idea if Moses will ever come back. And they have a point. It’s not like one of them can just whip out their iPhone and call him, and given their surroundings, the most reasonable guess at this point is that Moses succumbed to dehydration weeks ago. Now they have to survive. What will they do?

All Moses did to ensure the safety of the Hebrews before he left for Mount Sinai was put his brother Aaron in charge. Aaron is, and will always be, the second banana in this narrative. He’s the Vivian Vance to Moses’ Lucille Ball. He’s only all that interesting is Moses is standing next to him. He only got on this crazy train in the first place because Moses had a stuttering problem and needed someone to talk for him. Moses is the chosen one, the one drawn from the water by Pharaoh’s daughter, raised in the palace, and called to save the people. Aaron just reads his notes.

But this is Aaron’s big moment. He’s in charge, he knows what decisions Moses would make, but Moses ain’t here. And the people are looking to him for salvation. Finally, he’s not just reciting a speech written by someone else, he’s calling the shots. What will he do?

Well, what he does is pretty horrendous in the eyes of the Divine, who is keeping an eye on the Hebrews from up on Mount Sinai. Aaron melts down all the gold jewelry and makes a calf out of it, naming it the new god of the Hebrew people, the one who saved them from Egypt. This is a welcome sight to the Hebrews, who are much more comfortable with polytheism, and now finally have something they can see and touch as evidence that they’ll be ok. God had been dictating the Law to Moses, which he had been writing down–the first ever person to download information from the cloud onto a tablet! But now that God sees the Hebrews having a golden calf fiesta, God’s ready to toss them all out and start over with new people. 

Seeing what we’re capable of, I think I might understand some of God’s frustration.

What will the Sacred do? And now, what will Moses do to bring everyone back into right relationship? As usual, it’s ultimately all riding on him.

Moses’ first move is to high tail it back down the mountain and confront his nincompoop brother. If you keep reading, Moses tells him an ancient version of “Dude, you have ONE JOB.” Aaron responds by denying fault–everyone’s jewelry just floated into a fire, and then this cute little cow statue came out! It’s like when you put a quarter in the machine at the museum and it makes one of those wax molds for you! We don’t get Moses’ response, but his next move is to grind the golden calf into powder, mix it into water, and make everyone drink it. So we gotta assume Moses is pretty ticked. Worse, when he came down the mountain and saw his brother leading the Hebrews in the golden calf conga, he threw the tablets the Ten Commandments were chiseled on, and broke them. Now Moses is in huge trouble, too.

How did everyone get here?

The answer is the same way we might.

As much as we want to think of ourselves as mature, capable, wise adults, the truth is that at any given moment we’re an inch away from our best and worst selves. Our best self, our higher nature, wants to maintain trust in the Holy, stay steadfast to morals and virtues, and take the high road. If you know any old school psychology and have read Freud’s theory of the Id, Ego, and the Super Ego, this higher nature is our Super Ego. But our lowest nature is so much more instinctual. It’s our Id. It’s the first impulses we have to survive. It wants food, shelter, and safety right now. It can make us look and feel childish.

So, if we’re talking about what we think and do when we’re being childish, I’m going to direct your attention to the picture I put on the covers of your bulletins–Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales. People in my generation spent our earliest childhood days watching him dive into a pool filled with gold coins and then swim laps in them, and he looked awesome doing it. He made us believe that was the ultimate fantasy, a sign that you made it and your life was perfect, even though five seconds of rational thought would tell you that a pool filled with gold coins would be as hard as concrete, and you absolutely couldn’t swim in it, let alone dive in. But our lower nature, our Id, doesn’t listen to logic, only desire.

Not all of you grew up watching DuckTales, so this image won’t mean anything to you. You’ll have to think of another. What’s your “swimming pool full of gold coins” fantasy? Something as ridiculous as that image, or the idea of attributing your entire salvation to a golden calf statue. What “thing” would make you think you were saved, you’ve made it, you’re now impervious to harm? For one person, it might be a big house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. For another, it might be a brand new Ferrari. For someone else, it might be a million dollars suddenly falling into your bank account. For another, it might be the perfect job offer. Or a full scholarship to study at a great school. For someone else, it might be waking up tomorrow and suddenly being Taylor Swift-level famous. Or suddenly becoming the President of the United States, or the reigning monarch of a foreign land, or the CEO of a hugely powerful company. For another, it might be a bunch of hot guys or girls all showing interest in you. For somebody else, this fantasy will take them somewhere darker, like to an endless supply of drugs and alcohol. And for someone else, having lived a harder, darker life, they don’t have time for this fantasy, they’d know they made it if they had a hot meal sitting in front of them.

The thing is, that’s all idolatry. It’s putting way too much importance on something that can only provide temporary satisfaction, and that absolutely can’t save you. We have these fantasies as churches, too–a bus full of a hundred people parking outside, joining us for worship, and everyone wanting to join, or some Jeff Bezos level donor putting a bazillion dollars in the offering plate. As much as we will think and theorize otherwise, those things won’t save a church. It’s not fantasy that saves anything. It’s not big windfalls, or sudden miracles. It’s work. It’s dedication not only to the Divine, but to the way we need to live if we truly follow the Holy. It’s loving and taking care of one another that saves us. And it’s being there for your neighbor that tides us over every time we think we’re stuck staring at the mountain waiting for Moses to come back. The truth is we always had the power, at those crossroads of life, to make the right choices. Now we just have to make them.

Amen.

*Hymn                     Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy                    #340

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

God, we come into Your presence

   with praise and thanksgiving for Your faithful love.

Your love never fails—not even we turn away from You:

   when we ignore Your invitation,

   or desert You for gods of our own making.

Even then You do not abandon us,

   but reach out—again and again—

   inviting us back into relationship once more.

As You welcome us, so You welcome our prayers.

We bring them to You with confidence,

   knowing that You will hear and answer.

We pray for the world You created, and the people who share it with us:

   - for countries caught up in war or violent conflict,

    - for regions of the world struggling with increased cases of COVID-19,

   - for those whose homes and lives are threatened by natural disaster;

For these and all the other areas in our world

   where there is need and despair,

Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for our country and for its people:

   - for our government leaders, federal and local,

   - for our judicial system, police forces and military,

   - for our cities, towns, and rural communities,

   - for employers and employees, for young and old,

For all who are part of this great country,

Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for our local community—the people of this city/town,

   - for those who are unemployed,

   - for those in prison,

   - for those who are hungry,

   - for those who are alone and afraid,

For all our neighbours, both known and unknown to us,

Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for this congregation—our brothers and sisters in Christ,

   - for those who are ill. or whose loved ones are ill,

   - for those who are anxious about the future,

   - for those struggling with their faith,

   - for those who minister among us,

For all Your people in this place,

Lord, hear our prayer.

Pour out Your Spirit on us!

Fix our hearts and minds on what is true and honourable and right.

Give us the joy and peace that comes from knowing and doing Your will.

Keep us faithful to the call we have received in Christ Jesus, our Lord,

   extending Your loving invitation to the world around us.

In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

~ Christine Longhurst, re:Worship

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                           Great Is Thy Faithfulness                         #140

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant