God's Toy Box, Part 4: Mr. Potato Head
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 10, 2024
Fourth 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 goodness of God beckons.
God invites us to show the world our good face.
The grace of God redeems.
God invites us to show the world our merciful face.
The love of God welcomes.
God invites us to show the world our authentic face.
*Hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling #384
Prayer of Confession:
Creator God, every morning when we’re picking out an outfit for the day, we pick a face to go with it. A smart face for school. An ambitious face for work. A happy face for friends. A loving face for our partner. A grumpy face for people we don’t like. A pious face for church. We’re so concerned about how we look to other people that we lose sight of what really matters: how you see us. Forgive us for all those moments when we mask our authentic selves to fit in with others, and restore us to the Imago Dei within us all.
Assurance:
Hear the Good News: God loves us for us. We can drop the masks and stop pretending to be someone better, or more worthy of love. We’re perfectly worthy of love just the way we are. Amen.
Scripture Reading John 3: 1-21
Nicodemus Visits Jesus
3 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus[a] by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”[b] 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You[c] must be born from above.’[d] 8 The wind[e] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you[f] do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.[g] 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.[h]
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”[i]
Sermon God’s Toy Box, Part 4: Mr. Potato Head
Friends, we’re now in the 4th week of this sermon series that I put together based on the book Toy Box Leadership by Ron Hunter Jr and Michael E Waddell. In the book, Hunter and Waddell examine how the toys we played with when we were kids taught us lessons that translate well to the business world. Those lessons translate well to the world of faith, worship, and spirituality, so we’re going to be looking at what these toys teach us about our relationship with God.
The star of today’s sermon, Mr. Potato Head, goes back to the late 1940s, when a man named George Lerner took the phrase “playing with your food” a bit too literally. He started toying with face pieces that could be moved around, changed out, and placed wherever you wanted them. His idea only supplied the accessories, and required you to provide your own produce. He sold the idea to Hasbro, and they started giving the face pieces away as prizes in cereal boxes to get kids excited. In 1952, Mr. Potato Head had the honor of being the very first toy to be advertised on TV, and things got even better for him the very next year, when he got married. By the end of the 1950s Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head had two children, Brother Spud and Sister Yam, and Hasbro began manufacturing the plastic potatoes that have come in every Mr. Potato Head set since.
The most important bit of research I do while writing every one of these toy sermons is putting the toy in front of my kids and playing with it with them. I used to love Mr. Potato Head when I was very small, but that was so long ago that all I remember now is the warm feeling, not what I actually did while I was playing. Side note: this is true for people we knew a long time ago, too. As Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
This week, when I was suffering from writer’s block, I took this tub of spuds to Xander and said, “Hey buddy, can you do me a big favor? Can you play potatoes with me?” And he said, “Yeah, sure.” He showed me how much what you see on your potato’s face informs the message they’re getting out there. This is consistent with psychological research, which has long held that we get a lot more from one another’s facial and body language than we get from one another’s spoken words. If you flip over your happy potato’s smile, he’s now sad. If you swap out the eyes, he can easily go from goofy to flirty to angry. We had a few special edition potato pieces in this box, which allowed us to create the sinister Darth Tater. But we quickly realized there was a problem: there aren’t enough feet. Some of our potatoes have mobility and agency in the vegetable world, and some are nothing but pushovers. Is it possible that power was distributed this way among the elites of the synagogue in Jesus’ day? According to our evangelists, the answer is yes. As Xander and I kept playing, we discovered a second problem: there’s too many hats! Xander began piling the hats on his potato, which he thought was very silly. Do we ever have that problem in congregational life, where we feel like a few of us are wearing way too many hats? That there’s a lot of responsibilities that need to be taken on, and not enough people (or potatoes) to take them? Xander showed me that, because the pegs on the accessories are all the same size, you can create Picasso potatoes where his feet are on his head and his nose is in his ear and his eyes are on his back. You can also cover your potato with all eyes, or all ears, or all mouths, which serves as a great reminder of Paul’s teachings about spiritual gifts. If “the body” (or “the potato”) had nothing but ears, it couldn’t function. We need everything in this bin. The last time I preached on this book, back in 2018, I asked then 2 year old Lily to show me how she plays potatoes, and she made a duplicitous 2 faced potato.
One of the biggest lessons we learn from Mr. Potato Head is that we choose what we put on our face, and we choose a face for every occasion. We pick what the mouth should be doing, what the eyes should be doing, even what the hands should be doing. People quickly decide who we are, what we’re like, and whether they trust us, based on what they see. The biggest drawback of our ability to choose our face is the pressure we give one another to pick the face we expect, not necessarily the face that feels right. A friend of mine named David Hayward, who is better known by the pen name “Naked Pastor”, drew a cartoon a while ago that hit impossibly close to home. A pastor faces the congregation, and proclaims from the pulpit, “I want you all to feel free to get really vulnerable with each other.” When the pastor looks into the congregation, everyone in the pews is wearing a yellow smiley face mask.
So often, when we assemble a face for the situation we’re going to walk into, rather than expressing what we sincerely feel, we mask. Did any of you feel pressured to mask at church growing up? There sure were times I felt that way. What face do you bring here with you on Sundays? How much do you perform for other people? Sometimes we have to mask, or fake it til we make it, to survive in this life. No judgment from me. By the same token, as siblings in Christ, we owe one another the chance to be honest. And if there’s anyone we need to show our real, unmasked potato, it’s God.
That is the threshold of understanding that Nicodemus was getting ready to cross in this morning’s scripture passage. John tells us Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, which in any of the other three Gospels would likely mean “between the hours of 7pm and 7am”, but in Johannine Gnostic Symbol Speak means “before he had seen the light, and knew.” Nicodemus, by day, was among the synagogue elite, or what the other three evangelists would call a Pharisee. When he dressed his potato every morning, he put on his Pharisee Face: pious, stoic, flawless. The mask was getting too heavy for Nicodemus. To his credit, he knew that. Further to his credit, he nabbed one of the pairs of potato feet from the bin, so he could walk to Jesus. He had 2 hats, the Pharisee one, and one safely hidden under it, of someone who’d like to know more about Jesus even though the Official Opinion of the synagogue elite was that Jesus was No Good. Nicodemus also saw something in Jesus that Hunter and Waddell described at length in the book: Jesus wears a face of sincerity and empathy at all times. He’s never faking it, he deeply cares. When you look at his eyes you don’t see them looking away from you, or nervously darting around. He looks right at you and maintains eye contact, and tells you he’s listening, and you can trust him. Nicodemus had seen a lot of shifty eyes. He’d never seen honest eyes.
All that said, Nicodemus was still very reluctant to lower the mask when he met with Jesus. He approached him alone, with no witnesses, and under the guide of getting a little more information about a few things Jesus said, you know, just to make sure he’s teaching the right stuff. Cuz that’s Nicodemus’ job. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. Jesus was willing to play along, and taught Nicodemus anyway because he could see an opening. He taught him that he needed to seek an identity in the Divine, or what some translations describe as “being born again.” He told Nicodemus that, despite priding himself on knowledge of all The Rules, he didn’t know very much that would actually help him. He told Nicodemus that he could worship anywhere he wanted, as long as it was in Spirit and Truth–we can find God anywhere, as long as we’re being vulnerable, and really looking for the Holy, not someone else’s contaminated image of the Holy.
This story, of course, is also home to the oft quoted John 3: 16. The Revised Common Lectionary appointed Nicodemus as this morning’s Gospel story, but they only wanted me to use a few verses before 3: 16, 3: 16, and then one verse after. I don’t like doing that, knowing how many times y’all have likely heard John 3: 16 with no context. When you hear it from me, I want you to hear the entire conversation. One of my college professors jokingly taught me that to evangelize in this country, I only need two things: a poster board with “John 3:16” written on it in big black letters, and endzone tickets. I’m glad the verse is so loved, but without context, and when recited to you with an agenda, it feels like this liberating, transforming verse is coming from the mouth of Darth Tater. Jesus wanted Nicodemus to understand that his judgmental understandings of God, faith, and Temple were hurting him and putting the wrong face on the whole potato. Nicodemus didn’t need a bunch of rules and a membership in the Snob Patrol. He needed love. He needed to see love, feel it for others, and spread it around. If he understood that, he could drop everything else, and the mask would fall off of him like the albatross it was.
The only thing God needs any of us to know or understand in this life is love. We can so easily share it when we feel it. But we only love on a Jesus level if we love one another’s real selves with our own real self. Which accessories do you pull off and stash in your storage compartment before you come in here? How do you change your face to “look the part”? Which accessories would you grab from the proverbial potato bin if you were certain we’d all love you for wearing them? I hope you show that side of yourself to your church family. But until you think you can, follow Nicodemus’ example, and let Jesus see your real self first.
Amen.
*Hymn Just As I Am, Without One Plea #357, v 1, 3, 5
Offering
Offertory
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
God of Abram and Nicodemus,
God of all of us who think we are
too old or too poor or too small or too weak or too busy,
God of all of us daunted by the sheer wonder
of the plan you lay out before us:
we come to you now, aware of all you have done for us,
and yet still struggling with our doubts.
Birth us all anew, O God;
hear us and help us on our journey.
God of Abram and Nicodemus, we pray for this world
where so many wander homeless
not by choice, but out of necessity,
where so many are looking
for milk and honey or a great Name to rescue them.
We pray for all the people in this world, especially . . .
We pray for the women and men who lay down their lives
for the safety of brothers and sisters and neighbors . . .
We pray for those who lead us . . .
Birth us all anew, O God;
hear us and help us on our journey.
[Silence]
God of Abram and Nicodemus,
we pray for all those who long for a new beginning:
those who are imprisoned,
those who are estranged,
those who have left loved ones behind,
and those who are ill or infirm, especially . . .
Give them all new life by the power of your Spirit.
Help us to see how we can be present with them
as your hands and feet.
Birth us all anew, O God;
hear us and help us on our journey.
[Silence]
God of Abram and Nicodemus,
we pray for your holy Church . . .
Give us the courage to leave everything behind and follow you.
Give us the faith to act on what we do not understand.
Bless us to be a blessing to everyone in your Name.
Birth us all anew, O God;
hear us and help us on our journey.
[Silence]
Birth us all anew, O God.
Hear us and help us on our journey.
Help us to grow up again,
to accept not only earthly things but heavenly things,
to lift up your Son and be lifted up ourselves,
to let your Spirit move us beyond our understanding.
God of Abram and Nicodemus and all of us,
hear us and help us
even as surely as the Spirit blows among us,
all for the sake of your dear Son,
who taught us when we pray to say:
Our Father, who art in heaven . . .
~ posted on the Brummhart Publishing website. http://www.brummhartpublishing.com/
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 Jesus Loves Me #191
Benediction
Benediction Response God Be With You Till We Meet Again #672 v 1
Postlude
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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