Good Shepherd New York • 10.18.20

[Music] [Music] good morning church and welcome to good shepherd let's take a moment to center our hearts and our minds on christ this morning god has brought you here so pour out your heart let it be filled with the peace and wonder of christ this morning i'm going to lead us in this call to worship you can follow along on the screen and read whenever it's highlighted for you celebrate god's love which has been poured out into your life forgiveness encouragement support and healing are gifts of god to us reach out and care for those around you we will be people of peace and justice shout for joy sing god's praises always amen let's sing together this morning [Music] [Music] all creatures of our garden king [Music] lift up your voice [Music] to clean [Music] oh praise god [Music] thou rushing wind that odd so strong ye clouds at sail in heaven alone oh praise god hallelujah [Music] thou rising moon and praise rejoice ye lots of evening find a voice oh praise god oh praise god hallelujah [Music] hallelujah [Music] oh praise god hallelujah praise praise the father praise the son praise praise the spirit three and one o praise god o praise god [Music] and now a reading from psalm 99 the lord is king let the peoples tremble he sits enthroned upon the cherubim let the earthquake the lord is great in zion he is exalted over all the peoples let them praise your great and awesome name holy is he mighty king lover of justice you have established equity you have executed justice and righteousness in jacob extol the lord our god worship at his footstool holy is he moses and aaron were among his priests samuel was also among those who called on his name they cried to the lord and he answered them he spoke to them in the pillar of cloud they kept his decrees and the statutes that he gave them o lord our god you answered them you were a forgiving god to them but an avenger of their wrongdoings extol the lord our god and worship at his holy mountain for the lord our god is holy glory to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit as it was in the beginning is now and will be forever amen [Music] give me doubts that i [Music] [Applause] peace [Music] give me faith that i may see my neighbor as myself give me faith [Music] give me faith [Applause] my courage now my shield from now i shall fear [Music] tis so sweet to trust in jesus and to take him at his word chose to rest upon his promise [Music] oh how sweet to trust in jesus just to trust his cleansing blood [Music] jesus jesus [Music] jesus [Music] i'm so glad i learned to trust the [Music] jesus [Music] jesus jesus [Music] jesus jesus jesus jesus christ [Music] [Music] all are welcome at the table of god every man woman and child for christ brings peace to all tearing down every hostile wall so that the many may become one one heart one family one new humanity for god who is love and christ who is all and in all show no partiality and make no distinction so neither race nor class gender nor sexuality politics nor religion personality nor nationality count for us or against us the light of christ enlightens all christ the prisoner and the naked christ the hungry and the sick christ the thirsty and the stranger christ the other may god's spirit hover over our chaos our hatred and indifference descend in our hearts with love and pleasure blows out into the world to listen and to serve and set us ablaze to forgive and reconcile for we are all welcome at the table of god every man woman and child amen oh the vapor of it all [Music] it's a chasing off the wind the powers of the earth so pale and thin [Music] we will set our hearts on you again [Music] do have entered the hearts of men and we can feel it from within the beauty of evil [Music] the rising sea oh [Music] trees clap their hands here oceans they dance feel [Music] oh the mystery of it all [Music] i could never appear [Music] [Music] become a [Music] you are clap their hands through oceans they dance for you you are holy [Music] clouds made the skies for you mountains [Music] rising to sing all our songs [Music] singing [Music] [Music] the impossible and holy [Music] kings become fools for you kingdoms to ruins for you vapor finds grounds in you music finds sounds in you everything rising everything rising everything rising everything rising [Music] [Music] sunlight bring this world to life come on light rain light breath like springtime [Music] let's continue to worship with our generosity liturgy this morning godliness with contentment is great gain we bring nothing into this world and we take nothing out of it we who call jesus lord devote ourselves to resisting greed which plunges the human heart and to ruin and pierces it with many griefs we are determined to practice generosity with free hearts fixing our hope on god and not the uncertainty of wealth we desire to be rich in good deeds and willing to share all that we have laying up for ourselves treasure that will not decay but will shine in the age to come may it be true of our community amen this morning if you're by yourself know that you're not alone why don't you at this time text or email someone grace and peace if you are with friends or family or loved ones at this time why don't you say grace and peace grace and peace to you this morning and now a reading from the epistle to the romans chapter 8. i consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us for the creation waits an eager expectation for the children of god to be revealed for the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice but by the will of the one who subjected it and hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of god we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time not only so but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship the redemption of our bodies for in this hope we were saved but hope that is seen is no hope at all who hopes for what they already have but if we hope for what we do not yet have we wait for it patiently in the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness we do not know what we ought to pray for but the spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans and he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for god's people in accordance with the will of god here ends the reading thanks be to god good morning good shepherd welcome to digital church once again and my name is michael redzina i am one of the pastors here and it's my pleasure to introduce to you our guest preacher for the morning dr miroslav wolfe dr wolfe is considered widely as one of the premier theologians of our time certainly one of my favorites he was born in croatia where he experienced deep and profound violence violence that was often underwritten by and justified in christian terms it was that experience that shaped so much of his work both as a scholar and as an activist he's the henry b wright professor of theology at yale divinity school and he's also the founder and the director of the yale center for faith and culture he's written over 20 books many of them award-winning and frankly many of them i've quoted to you over the years he is the author of over a hundred academic articles and he contributes regularly to media outlets like the washington post christianity today uh krista tippitz on being npr among others and we could go on and on about dr wolf's accolades but this morning i want you to know that miroslav is not just a brilliant mind he is a beautiful soul we had a chance this past week to catch up with him in new haven and it's there that we experienced him as gracious kind humble energetic and it really is an honor to be able to introduce you to him so open your mind open your heart to miroslav dear friends i'm delighted to be able to be a guest preacher i think that's what i am for you today um i'm not sure whether that's going to be a sermon what i'm going to give you or it's going to be a lecture let's call it just talk but it's a talk about something that profoundly matters to me and something that uh day-to-day hour to hour touches our lives i'm going to talk to you about hope we're living in a very difficult times when it is i find it very hard to hope obviously everybody thinks immediately about pandemic but also we think about political racial economic cultural divisions the only bright sign i think is that the nature seems to be singing of joy when we are hit with pandemic nature seems to be thriving which is a good thing for god's creation but it's not just this year at this time that we live in you might describe it as a time of hopelessness it's rather that at the from the beginning of this millennium on maybe even earlier i'm not sure exactly when to set the beginning of this no future mood that has gripped us but that's what we are in we are in a kind of no future mode and i was recently talking to a very good friend of mine my teacher jurgen woltman who is the theologian of hope he is 96 now 94 right now and he's thinking about writing on the difference between 1968 or 60s when he wrote his book on theology of hope and today's age in order to kind of set why are we in this very gloomy mood at any rate fear and not hope is the signature of our time now the question for us is what to do in such times now if you turn your eyes to ancient teachers like stoics seneca will tell you if you will cease to fear you need to cease to hope where hope goes fear follows basically his response is stop even wanting to hope once you stop wanting to hope you will also be able to stop to fear but can we stop hoping can i not hope stop hoping for the project in which i'm involved in can i not hope that even this sermon might speak to some of you i doubt that's possible but even if i could do i want to do that i have a three-year-old daughter um i love to observe her being immersed in the in the present it's absolutely splendid thing uh no future no past just this moment in the present where she is but that's not what i want for her myself when i look at her i project her being immersed in that presence but that continuing in different fashion into the future i want to hope for her as well the advice of apostle paul for us in the time of fear in the time of how also suffering is somewhat different than seneca's radically different than senecas apostle paul writes for in hope we were saved now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what it is seen but if we hope for what we do not see we wait for it with patience now he writes that in romans 8 it's a chapter about also about suffering about distress indeed toward the end of this chapter he speaks about hardship distress persecution famine nakedness peril sword he speaks about him apostles and christians being killed all day long now this is the time when you need hope in hope apostle paul writes we are saved which means in very significant sense in hope i already possess that what i hope for in hope this future good which isn't yet already somehow is that which i cannot see it qualifies almost my entire existence it's a hard thing to sometimes grasp and i think of it well that's like when you're in love and even when the person you love is not present nonetheless that love that is there between you and that person qualifies your entire life gives it a kind of new vitality so it is i think also with hope but how do we recover how do we find in the time of suffering how do we find that kind of hope now maybe to start where place to start is to try to distinguish between hope and optimism in other words try to determine what we mean what we should mean when we speak about hope now optimism is oriented toward good future just like hope is but it's a good future that somehow grows out of the present and out of the past it is kind of a future with which to use the image an image with which present is pregnant and we know what's going to come and the question then of whether that's going to happen or not is to analyze future good will happen as we as we think is to analyze the the present time and then project it into the future when we forecast weather that's exactly what we do we know the patterns of weather we know what we can extrapolate and we know what is going to happen we know whether to smile or to frown at the weather that might be coming our way it's very different i think with hope hope is not based on circumstances hope is predicated on the reality that weather is right now bad and if i analyze all the data that is at my disposal i'm not predicting that it's going to be good hope is oriented to the future but the future that doesn't necessarily grow out of the present but future that is in fact comes to us in something radically new now paradigm of hope in the bible paradigm hope for apostle paul is abraham abraham and sarah as you will recall their story they were trying to get pregnant their abraham was supposed to have air because if abraham doesn't have air all the promises of god given to abraham cannot be fulfilled he's going to be alone and his seed is going to die instead of him being a future blessing to generations to to come and then god makes a promise and abraham believes and out of this promise grows a reality which belied the state of abraham's and sarah's bodies something new has come something new that is based on the promises of god who can make something out of nothing and what you can almost put it this way that all hope is rooted on the one hand in god who makes something out of nothing that's very beginning first lines of the book of genesis and at the very end of the god who at the end makes all things new this ability to make things new this is the source of our hope and this is hope to hope in situations that otherwise we'll cause call for hopelessness now apostle paul talks about hope as hoping in what we do not see and that brings to our attention the second feature of hope it's not that it's something new that doesn't grow out of present circumstances the object of hope in some sense is not seen yet now most people when they read this verse and hope is in what we do not see their thinking goes like this and generally your biblical commentaries will say commentators will say the same thing your thinking is is is so i have in mind an object of hope i just don't see it yet in the present there's a time lag between what's going to happen and what is now but i hope for the object that i see clearly in my mind that will become mine also in a real physical kind of sense now i've come to believe following martin luther and his commentary on romans that that's a mistaken way of thinking about the object of hope and partly it's mistaken also because this object of hope is something new that god creates now luther connects this idea that we hope in what we do not see with a statement that paul makes just a little bit further down down one verse or two verses later he says apostle paul we do not know how to pray as we ought now this is kind of a strange comment right we don't know how to pray as we ought it seems like you're crying in distress what's there to know you want this distress to be removed you want it out of it and there's that's all that there is to it and yet paul says we don't know how to pray as we ought we don't know he says how to pray according to the will of god so we are reaching for something in hope but what we are reaching we don't quite know what it is luther says that hope transfers a person into the unknown the hidden and the dark shadow so that he does not even know what he hopes for the object that is actual object of our hope is still in darkness we know that it's good but it's still in darkness which means we ought to be ready to be surprised by the fulfillment of the promise and we ought to be ready that it might not be the same as what we have actually hoped what we have actually imagined that too belongs to hope now if i have a goal i've set myself a goal and i want to achieve that goal but if i hope i have already left open what exactly will be that fulfillment now that too i want to liken to the idea of falling in love i don't know how it is with with you but it has happened actually to me that you kind of fall in love and you adrenaline fall in love with somebody with the kind of things that you that you have always found desirable in in this person that is incarnated and yet at the same time what i have discovered is that it wasn't exactly what i have imagined actually it was different that i imagined but somehow in falling in love i have recognized ah this is what i was hoping for all for all along and this idea of hoping for something that you don't quite know are surprised with but then realize wow this is exactly what is meant in a sense for me uh to give you another example t.s eliot in his four quartets has also a line which read reads i sent to my soul be still and wait without hope for hope would be hope for the wrong thing so how does one when one hopes hold the object of hope lightly so that one can be surprised with the actual fulfillment that comes you know that was the question of the throughout the story of the life of jesus if you compare what mary prays when jesus is born and hopes she has for him you will think we know she's going to be completely disappointed these are wrong hopes to have if you think what his disciples have hoped all along there comes the time of crucifixion and all these hopes die they die partly because they were wrong hopes and we know that because when jesus explains to his disciples when the kingdom is going to be in what sense he's going to be uh he his uh he for what reasons and in what sense of kingdom has he come uh he re-narrates for him for them the whole story so they have hoped rightly hoped in jesus but they were also sometimes more reluctantly than at other times ready to be surprised at something radically new after the resurrection the whole hope ends up being recast and it is this that implies certain kind of darkness of hope and readiness for a surprise now finally there is uh apostle paul says not just darkness in hope which is kind of difficult enough but there's also patience that's necessary for hope and by patience what i think what he means um something like endurance of hopes standing in the situation of unhope and hopelessness and waiting this period of waiting and enduring in this period but if we hope we wait with patience or endurance and in some ways i think hope is the thing that makes it possible for us to wait if i don't know what's going to happen if i don't have a prof promise i will grow weary we learn endurance only with the help of hope and when hope gets lost the endurance also is lost but on the other hand also it's endurance that supports hope hope that becomes robust and strong when it has been tested and tried and continues to stay alive notwithstanding difficulty of circumstances that's this idea of not controlling the future but letting the god of future control the future and therefore need for endurance need for patience fear and hope now why do we fear we fear because we think that fear will save us and sometimes of course fear does we're frightened into flight we're frightened into action but often fear makes us captive to suffering that has not yet even occurred we kind of borrow trouble every time that we fear and so salvation really can't lie in fear in a sense but our salvation lies in hope what kind of hope not in hope that insist on the future good in exactly that form in which i have imagined it but hope ready to rejoice in the kind of good that comes to us from god to say that our salvation lies in hope is actually to say that it lies in the hands of god who always creates something out of nothing and who is unconditional love god who makes alive that which is dead god of the original beginning of all things and god of the recreation of all things new all things new god of new beginnings when god makes a promise we can hope and god has made a promise irrevocable promise in the coming of jesus christ in his death and in his resurrection he is our well hope you dr wolf we appreciate your reflections on hope and we'd like to take a moment now to open our hearts to how god would connect that theme of hope to our lives right now so just a quiet contemplative moment to open our hearts to god's spirit and let god draw out what feels important to us right now would you join me in this moment of quiet god of love god of hope seer into our souls that which we need right now to face the week ahead and to look to you to bring something out of nothing we pray in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen well now that we've reflected on our text we take a moment to declare our faith and we do that today through the apostles creed the apostles creed is one of the earliest compressions of the jesus story that we have it's been handed to us we take it we receive it we engage it sometimes we doubt it sometimes we believe it but it's our tether in this sort of chaotic world where we're all looking for narratives to anchor ourselves in and this is the narrative that we're attached to so would you join me in the apostles creed we believe in god the father almighty creator of heaven and earth we believe in jesus christ his only son our lord who was conceived by the holy spirit born of the virgin mary suffered under pontius pilate was crucified died and was buried he descended to the dead on the third day he rose again he ascended into heaven receded at the right hand of god he'll come again to judge the living and the dead we believe in the holy spirit the holy catholic church the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting amen and now having declared our faith we offer our prayers these are the prayers of the people written by the people for the people for the sake of our world o great maker god our father you create and sustain every breath and every step every dawn and every dusk you reside in our inmost being and open our hearts to a faith that transcends agreement with mere ideas and beliefs will you nurture in us a radical trust that you are still with us and for us even when all the evidence seems to point to the contrary will you give us a renewed trust in your divine presence and will you care for us and our world this week oh god will you help us trust when we want to seize control when we want to choose defensiveness and blame over listening and compassion we pray that by your spirit you would break the backbone of fear in our hearts in this period of wilderness we pray that you would help us contribute to civic trust by becoming more trustworthy ourselves lord in your mercy will you hear our prayer oh source of hope son of god save us from skepticism and cynicism depression and despair gift us the kind of hope that will allow us to remain present when we want to withdraw to remain open when we'd rather shut down when we do not receive that which we desire will you help us to hold space for surprising outcomes and new creations may our hope keep us buoyant and kind in these uncertain times may our hope be more than mere optimism which ebbs and flows with the tides of circumstance oh god will you root us in the hope that has sustained the generations of spiritual mothers and spiritual fathers who have come before us who now stand beside us as a great cloud of witnesses and may our hope be unending in order to spur us forward as we keep walking through this time of uncertainty [Music] lord in your mercy will you hear our prayer o eternal spirit flame of love stir our hearts toward compassion and grace for those in our world who we do not understand for those in our world who stir up our anger help us to build more bridges and construct fewer barriers stretch our hearts toward the infinite height and depth and breadth of your inexhaustible love oh god will you help us to take the risks that love inspires may we risk patience when it seems weak may we risk kindness when it feels impractical may we risk contentment when others out succeed us may we risk quiet faithfulness when our ego strains toward recognition and may we risk sacrifice and commitment when we're tempted to hold out for better options we believe that you are the one god the god whose name is love and so today and the days that come after this day will you help us to hold fast to love knowing that when we do that we hold fast to you o lord in your mercy will you hear our prayer now that we've offered our prayers we've put our desires and our hopes out there we approach the table that we call holy communion it's the meal that jesus gave us and it's a meal which points to our solidarity not only with god but with each other and everything that god has made it's a table of connection and that's why it's called holy communion and before we come to this table of holy communion we have a moment of confession which is a way to acknowledge all the unholy communions that we forge that we're addicted to or that we find ourselves sort of stumbling back into week after week and so would you take a moment just to consider where you can take responsibility for the ways you're falling short of love whether it's for god yourself or others just a quiet moment of holy memory and trust that whatever comes to the surface of your mind is what is important and hold it there patiently and tenderly in the kindness and in the grace of god this is the beginnings of what it means to change of what it means to grow would you join me in this quiet moment of memory god as we remember the week behind us there are hundreds and hundreds of memories that are collecting together within our community and we offer you these memories as an act of repentance of an act of saying we're sorry and we desire to change and so knowing we're not alone we come to you corporately and pray this prayer friends would you join me in this corporate prayer of confession most merciful god we confess that we've sinned against you in thought word indeed by what we've done and by what we've left undone we've not loved you with our whole hearts we've not loved our neighbors as ourselves we are truly sorry and we humbly repent for the sake of your son jesus christ have mercy on us and forgive us that we would delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name amen and now friends hear the good news of the gospel of jesus christ that as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is god's love for you and as far as the east is from the west so far has god removed our transgressions from us you are loved this morning you are welcomed and embraced in jesus christ and you're forgiven amen and now as we come to this table that we call holy communion we remember our solidarity with god with each other and with our world and to do that this ancient prayer draws us out of ourselves it draws us into something bigger that sweeps us out of our egocentricism it sweeps us out of our selfishness it sweeps us out of our simple concerns for protection and self-defense it draws us into love and it does so by beginning with gratitude would you join me in this ancient prayer the lord is here his spirit is with us lift up your hearts we lift them up to the lord let us give thanks to the lord our god it's right to give thanks and praise god it is good and it's joyous and right to say thank you in the face of so much goodness we take a moment now to consider the goodness and the beauty of our lives but most of all we consider jesus christ the love that we've found there that we've experienced there and that we continue to return to again and again right now we pray by the power of your holy spirit and according to your word that these gifts of bread and wine would become to us and for us the body and blood of our lord jesus christ who on the night he was betrayed took bread and cup and blessed them on the night that jesus was betrayed he took bread and after he blessed it he said this is my body given for you do this in remembrance of me and so we welcome you risen christ we thank you for this body broken and given may we receive that generosity and that sacrificial love afresh this morning amen and as is our custom we remember that the body is broken for us also on the night jesus was betrayed he took the cup and after he blessed it he gave it to his disciples and he said this cup is the cup of a new covenant in my blood shed for the forgiveness of sins do this in remembrance of me and so we welcome you risen christ and we thank you for this cup which speaks a better word than the blood we shed than our violence than our aggression than the impatience of our egos and instead we remember that we are all the same that we are all equal in your eyes and that we come to the table equally loved and equally embraced through your grace and now friends we declare the mystery of faith christ has died christ is risen and christ will come again and these are god's holy gifts for god's holy people jesus christ is holy jesus christ is lord to the glory of god the father amen well now that we have come to this table and we have offered our prayers we receive holy communion together our practice is to take the bread and dip it in the cup and simply say thanks be to god now if you're wondering if this meal is for you our practice is an open table for any who are drawn to the love they see in christ are welcome to receive this meal and let it be your gesture of an open heart to the love of god that you see there thanks be to god well we'd like to thank you once again for tuning in to digitalchurch.nyc and good shepherd it's been such a good um week to hear from wolf to sing our songs to pray our prayers uh even though it's digital and we continue to look forward to ways that we can get together in person where it's possible with that in mind uh though we suspended our outdoor gatherings uh this weekend as we were lining up approval for our outdoor gatherings ongoing we're excited to announce that we will be hosting weekly outdoor eucharist gatherings beginning next week october 25th and going for about a month to november the 22nd before thanksgiving and we hope that the weather is good and cooper cooperates with us you can go to our website and you can look at the event and you can register get tickets you are required to get tickets in order to attend um so that we can be safe and do contact tracing if necessary as always we encourage you to wear masks and all the seating is social socially distanced we have hand sanitizer it's touchless communion everybody who's been attending has felt very safe and those gatherings have been so beautiful and so meaningful so if you haven't had a chance to come and join us for one of those gatherings we'd love to see you and also to be able to catch up a little bit as that's been one of the uh the glaring voids of this season of pandemic also if you're looking to get connected to walk through a sort of shared journey through the season you could do so by signing up for one of our groups we have book studies we have sermon discussion groups both in new york and around the country so just choose a group that's closest to you or that best fits your schedule and we'd love to hook you up with that finally we had a great apple picking trip yesterday we're so glad to those of you and grateful to those of you who are able to come out um and we do want to look ahead to another event coming up a storm king uh museum outdoor museum trip uh storm king is one of the coolest places uh in the new york area you are responsible for your own transportation uh but we have reserved tickets and the way the tickets work is they are reserved by car so we have a couple of uh four car uh tickets and i think we have a couple of uh two i'm sorry not four car four-person car tickets and two-person car tickets uh so if you want to line up a ride with someone else and reserve your tickets you can go to our website and you can reserve those as soon as possible we have a small number of tickets for those of you who want to join us on that trip now with that i'd like to invite us to receive the benediction after we sing our doxology thanks again for joining us jesus love and compassion has been poured out for you today may the holy spirit give you strength to bear forgiveness and love for all of humanity and creation may you be blessed and know that you are in god's almighty hands of love amen praise god from whom all blessings flow praise him all creatures here below praise him above the heavenly hosts praise father son and holy ghost um [Music] systems of oppression [Music] humanity a history of tragedy [Music] does it have to be the future of us [Music] make us us [Music] [Music] will the story always be the same [Music] [Music] does it have to [Music] of the be [Music] make use [Applause] make us [Music] oh to heal the pain [Music] [Music] oh [Music] thou oh overcome love shall overcome love shall overcome love shall overcome [Music] my god what have we done what have we become [Music] how can we [Music] is [Music] is you

Channel: Good Shepherd New York

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Length: 61min 54sec (3714 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020