God's Toy Box, Part 3: Play Doh

 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

March 3, 2024

Third Sunday in Lent

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:

The heavens are telling the glory of God.

The firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

And night to night declares knowledge.

The hands of God shape us, and we can trust them.

The heart of God shapes us, and we can trust it. Amen.

*Hymn                         Have Thine Own Way, Lord                        #382

Prayer of Confession:

Everlasting God, at one time our faith was molded perfectly for you, and our Church reflected it. But over time, we allowed hands other than yours to poke the dough and leave their impressions behind. Our love, our generosity, and our senses of justice all became misshapen, and we no longer recognize your work. Forgive us. Help us get the other hands out of the clay, and encourage us toward trust in you once again, while you mold our houses of worship, and our own hearts, back in your image.

Assurance:

Hear the Good News: our clay is very malleable. Even though we’ve been warped, we’re soft enough to be molded back. Amen.

Scripture Reading John 2: 13-22

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Sermon                            God’s Toy Box, Part 3: Play Doh

Friends, we’re in part 3 now of this sermon series I put together for the season of Lent, based on the book Toy Box Leadership by Ron Hunter Jr and Michael E Waddell. In the book itself, Hunter and Waddell examine how different classic toys taught us lessons that we can apply to a successful business. From now until Easter, we’re looking at what those toys illuminate about our faith, about our Church, and about God.

I invite you to spend this whole sermon playing with the play doh you got on your way in. Go ahead, you’re not too old to play! Try to make the perfect shape with it.

Like most of the toys we’re gonna look at in this series, today’s has an off beat, unexpected origin story. In 1933, Cleo and Noah McVicker, co owners of a cleaning company called Kutol, launched a product that they thought would be essential to a good home life: an inexpensive clay made from simple ingredients that you could rub on your walls to clean soot off of the wallpaper. Back when people were heating their homes all winter long with wood stoves, and most homes had wallpaper, the accumulation of soot that you could end up breathing in was a substantial enough risk that the clay seemed like a great idea. But things changed quickly around World War 2 when wallpaper manufacturers started making their product with vinyl instead of paper, so soot didn’t stick to it, and people began heating their homes with coal instead of wood. By the early 1950s, the Kutol company was owned by Joe McVicker, and he spent his days breathing into a paper bag to cope with the fact that clay that could take the soot off of your wallpaper was now the most useless product on the market, and his company was going under.

That is, until his sister in law called him in December of 1954. Her name was Kay, and she was a teacher. She bought a bunch of his wallpaper cleaning clay, because no one else was using it, and gave it to her students. They were going to form the clay into Christmas ornaments, let them harden overnight, paint them the next day, and then hang them on their Christmas trees. Kay told Joe that the kids loved playing with the clay, and that the texture was perfect–soft but not sticky, and malleable but strong enough to maintain its integrity even after many hours of play. Maybe the product was great, and Joe was just using it wrong, and selling it to the wrong people. Kay pitched him on her idea: get out of the cleaning product business, sell this stuff as a toy for kids, and give it a catchy name. Joe took the detergents out of the clay and made it nontoxic, and renamed it per Kay’s suggestion: play doh. And the rest is history.

Switching gears for a moment, let’s take a look at this morning’s scripture reading–John chapter 2, the infamous story of Jesus cleansing the Temple. He didn’t need clay to take the soot off the wallpaper, his temper was enough to do all the work. This story is all about what you allow to mold you. Nothing the Temple money changers did was, in itself, wrong. They were following the letter of the Law. They provided a service, a necessary one, and set a price for it. But when you allow someone or something to mold your clay, it’s a very slippery slope what your clay turns into. This was the Passover festival. People were sojourning in droves to the Temple, their ultimate faith destination. For the poorest visitors, this was a once in a lifetime trip. For those coming the furthest, they could bring nothing but the most basic of necessities with them, what they needed to survive the trip. If they were very lucky, maybe they had some livestock to carry cargo. If they weren’t, they came as far as they could by foot. They had foreign currency from many lands, and little to no local family or friends. Many couldn’t speak the local language, and might not understand local cultural nuances. They were totally vulnerable. They were bright yellow tubs of play doh, fresh from the store. And the money changers were the plastic tools with which you can cut and flatten. Need doves to sacrifice? Got ‘em. Need local currency to buy the doves? Got ‘em. Need a souvenir “I <3 Jerusalem” shirt to commemorate your trip? Got ‘em. While we’re at it, let’s set up a vending machine in the lobby with snacks and sodas, people are going to be so hungry and thirsty, and then we can get some corporate underwriting to pay for everything. Are we charging a fair exchange rate? Are those doves being sold at market value? Eh, who’s gonna notice?

While everyone else carried on with business as usual (literally), Jesus saw a bunch of visitors to the Creator’s House, and they looked like what happens when you let a bunch of unruly 2 year olds play with fresh play doh: they were ripped up, mashed together, covered in fingerprints, polluted with contaminants, and smushed into the carpet. The only way to restore that play doh was for him to cleanse everyone. No more consumerism, and no more exploitation in the Temple or anywhere. We treat one another with justice, fairness, and hospitality, and we treat visitors from other lands like next door neighbors. And if Jesus has to get that point across by flipping over tables, dumping out money, freeing doves, and chasing people around with a whip, so be it. Jesus means business.

The money changers were cans of play doh, too. But they left theirs out way too long, and they became all hard and crumbly. Their clay could no longer be molded and shaped, they were no longer open to the influence of someone like Jesus. That’s the kind of play doh we usually just toss out. But so is the play doh that your toddler smushed into the carpet. If salt loses it’s saltiness, how can it be saved? Jesus’ restorative grace is the only thing that can save that kind of play doh. And it saves us, too.

What shapes your doh? Yes, the obvious answer in a church might be “Jesus”, and I’m glad if that’s true for you. But it’s not just going to be him in this life. Your doh has been shaped since before you were born, knit in your mother’s womb in the words of the Psalmist, by the Creator’s hands, as well as by many others. Y’all have spent enough time with me that you know who some of my most powerful influences were. My parents. My Grandma G. My sisters. Sean. Eventually my kids. And powerful clergy mentors that touched and shaped and squeezed until my faith started to look like it does now. Who shaped you in the past? Who shapes you now? What influences do you wish shaped you, that you want to seek out? What molds have squeezed your doh, that you need to stop spending time with? 

My shaping wasn’t all positive. I knew untrustworthy people that did things to my doh that will never come out. I suspect that’s true for a lot of you, too. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, I’m me because of what my clay has been through. You need to love your clay, because God does. We need to love one another’s clay. We need to take care of one another’s clay. Our hands leave all kinds of fingerprints on one another’s doh. Look at the doh in your hands. It’s shaped by how you’ve chosen to handle it. Do we protect one another from harm, from those who would cut and smush and leave us out to dry? Do we help one another sit in the yellow tub with the lid on for a Sabbath every week so we can rest and not get dried and worn out? 

Do we appreciate the diversity of the clays around us? One thing we can’t avoid talking about is what happens when any doh creator inevitably starts mixing the colors together. Because none of us go through this life being only one thing, or only being influenced by only one kind of person. In fact, while God knits us together in our mother’s womb, God gives us identities like race, gender, and sexuality. When we live in this world we pick up culture, and family, and home. And you know that once you mix your colors together, you’re never getting them apart. We need to love one another’s doh just as it is, because it’s beautiful. What shape is the doh in your hand? Because the perfect shape is you.

Now, what about that hardened doh that I likened the money changers to before? Callous and rough, they don’t bend with the Spirit anymore, and they crush others. Well, turns out, there’s totally a mom hack for restoring dried out play doh, and it’s as simple as putting some warm water on it and allowing it to absorb the moisture. The money changers in this morning’s story were in such rough shape that Jesus needed to dump buckets and buckets of tough love on their doh. But it’s enough. I was reminded of a wise quote this week that I’ve actually used from the pulpit before, from a 19th Century Persian mystic who is remembered by the spiritual name Baha’u’llah, who bemoaned the injustices of the world, but maintained that “a touch of moisture sufficeth to dissolve the hardened clay out of which this perverse generation is molded.”

We’ve all faced some corruption to our doh in the form of injustices, both ones that harmed us, and ones we inflicted upon others. We’ve been harmed by money changers, and we’ve been money changers. We’ve let capitalism and consumerism have way too much power over our lives and faith. We’ve been cruel and taken advantage when we should have been loving, kind, faithful, and merciful. And we’ve hardened the doh around us with our behavior. But whenever we need it, Jesus shows up with a wet paper towel, and makes us whole again. 

Amen.

*Hymn                              Sing Alleluia to the Lord                         #2258

                                     Led by the Front Porch Rockers

 

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Truth be told, Jesus,

There are lots of tables that need overturning

   in our lives;

Beneath the veneer of respectability

   the tidy rows and neat regulations

      hide dark addictions and angry judgements

         hungry greeds and heartless rejections

We know the pain—and so do those around us—

   of keeping up the facade;

What a relief it would be to have it all

   upset, smashed, scattered, destroyed

So, perhaps, Jesus, today you could pay us a visit

   and help us to radically rearrange

      the furniture of our lives

Amen.

~ written by John van de Laar, and posted on Sacredise.  

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.

The Lord’s Supper

*Hymn                        Open My Eyes, That I May See                      #454

Benediction

Benediction Response  God Be With You Till We Meet Again    #672 v 1

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant