Good Shepherd New York • 9.19.21

[Music] [Music] good morning church please join me in this call to worship welcome to worship we come seeking healing and hope you have come to the right place god awaits you even though we have not always lived in love god loves forgives and awaits you praise be to the patient steadfast love of god amen [Music] i find it hard to believe someone like you gave this love in my heart [Music] i tried but could not refuse you gave me no time to choose [Music] bright [Music] i wanna tell you right now i'm not afraid to say how you put this love in my heart [Music] there are some times when i doubt that you always find me out you put this love in my heart [Music] loneliness [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is released me from all that's in my best and i know i can believe you when you say i'll never be forsaken is [Music] there's so much more i could say if i could just find a way you put this love in my heart [Music] is [Music] is [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] i've had many tears and sorrows i've had questions for tomorrow 11 times i didn't know right from wrong [Music] but in every situation god gave blessed consolation that my trials only come to make me strong and i've been in a lot of places and i've seen so many faces there's been times i felt so alone but in that lonely hour that pressure's lonely i would jesus let me know i was his [Music] i've learned the trust in god all through it all through it all [Music] i thank god for the mountains i thank god for the valleys and i thank him for storms he brought me through oh cause if i never had a problem i wouldn't know that he could solve them i wouldn't know what faith in his work can do that's why i say [Music] through [Applause] is [Music] to depend upon [Music] and i've learned to depend upon [Music] a reading from psalm 125 those who trust in the lord are like mount zion which cannot be moved but abides forever as the mountains surround jerusalem so the lord surrounds his people from this time on and forevermore for the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous so that the righteous might not stretch out their hands to do wrong do good o lord to those who are good and to those who are upright in their hearts but those who turn aside to their own crooked ways the lord will lead away with evildoers peace be upon israel hear what the spirit is saying to the church [Music] why should i feel discouraged and why should the shadows come [Music] and why should my heart be lonely and long for heaven [Music] [Music] [Music] and i know he watches over me [Music] his eye is all the sparrow and i know he watches me and i say because is [Music] [Music] [Music] and i know he watches over me [Music] and i know you are just me [Music] and i say because i'm happy and i sing because is [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Music] and i know he watches over me and i know [Music] he watches me [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 no 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 our indifference descend in our hearts with love and pleasure blows out into the world to listen and serve and set us ablaze to forgive and reconcile for all are welcome at the table of god every man woman and child [Music] [Music] my [Music] i really want to see i really wanna know you i really wanna go with you i really wanna show you love but it won't take long [Music] i really wanna see really wanna see i really wanna go really wanna show you hmm i really wanna see i really wanna be with you i'll say my sweetheart [Music] join me in our generosity prayer godliness with contentment is great gain we bring nothing into this world we take nothing out of it we who call jesus lord devote ourselves to resisting greed which plunges the human heart into 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 willing to share all that we have laying up for ourselves treasure that will not decay but will shine in the age to come amen at this time we offer grace and peace to one another whether from far apart or in your home grace and peace to you [Music] good morning once again welcome to good shepherd new york my name is michael redzina and i'm one of the pastors here this morning i'd like to read our gospel text before i offer my reflection and if you are at home with friends or maybe family members we invite you to stand in honor of the gospel reading our gospel is from the gospel according to mark chapter 9 verses 30 through 37. then they went on from there and passed through galilee he did not want anyone to know it for he was teaching his disciples saying to them the son of man is to be betrayed into human hands and they will kill him and in three days after being killed he will rise again but they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him then they came to capernaum and when he was in the house he asked them what were you arguing about on the way but they were silent for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest he sat down called the twelve and he said to them whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all then he took a little child and he put it among them and taking it in his arms he said to them whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me this is the gospel of our lord praise to you lord jesus christ this gospel reading today is very similar to the gospel reading we had last week and there are very similar themes because what's happening in the story of mark is that jesus is pivoting toward his journey to jerusalem although here he goes back to capernaum essentially where the discipleship journey started he has made it very clear to his disciples that he will be rejected that he will be betrayed and that he will be killed peter has already we saw last week rejected and stood against jesus and his embrace of this destiny and yet jesus rebuked peter and said you're not on the side of god with this opinion you're on the side of the satan of the empires of that unjust concentration of power and ego and so here we have jesus with a little bit of a different mood he's not really wanting to be around crowds he's not wanting to be known or seen he's definitely trying to go under the radar and as they make this journey back to the place where the discipleship journey began the town of peter's home he hears them arguing and this debate this arguing is apparently something he's not privy to and so he asks them what were you arguing about on the way here and they sheepishly tell him that they were arguing about who was the greatest you know this city in which many of us live new york is the kind of city and the kind of culture that breeds a desire to be a need to be great i mean think about the great song new york new york every time that my family and i come back to the city after a trip even if we've gone just to new jersey for the day we usually turn on frank sinatra's new york new york start spreading the news i'm leaving the day i want to be a part of it even in the narrative there's of the song there's this bigger thing that we are swept up into when we live and when we come to new york my family just celebrated our 10-year anniversary here in this great city and we love it here and yet we acknowledge that part of what drew us here and part of the challenge of living here is this larger narrative this larger stream of values and the way it bends us toward a desire for greatness frank sinatra says if i can make it here i can make it anywhere top of the heat and so that's already in this city and it's the narrative it's the invitation of this city come here attempt to be great and if you can be great here well then you're truly great right you can be great anywhere and i think that's in all of us at some level we who live here in this city and this was the subject matter essentially of the disciples it was their debate it was their arguing they're arguing their debate reflected the internal monologue that many of us live with on a weekly basis questions about our own greatness questions about our own standing where do we stand within our vocation where do we stand within our industry where do we stand within our friends circles there's an intrinsic competitiveness when it comes to doing life in this city well it's not all bad competition isn't necessarily bad a desire to be really good at what you do is not bad what jesus is putting his finger on here is a primal motive a motive that runs against the grain of who god is at god's core a motive that runs against the grain of god's dream for humanity in this world for our good for our flourishing and so he tells the disciples upon their timid confession that they need an object lesson essentially he brings a little child in front of them and he tells them if you want to be first you must be last and servant of all that's answer one to this question who is the greatest and then answer two is he takes this child and says whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me jesus sees among his disciples a profane aggression a profane uh sort of toxic attempt to be wonderful to be great to stand out and jesus sees this as profane because it's inconsistent with the holy love of god to be great to be trying to one up to be in constant competition and comparison with other people and an addiction or sort of a a infatuation with where you stand well this all undermines love it undermines the basic disposition that jesus models in his life that's one of the things i feel so drawn to in jesus is his basic disposition he has this spirit about him the same kind of spirit that you might see in a child how might we use this image of the child to think about our own life right now and contrast it with our own goals our ambitions our energy our disposition i think for most of us we think to be great we have to sort of be assertive and aggressive and even at times cutthroat the disciples also were carried away with this great narrative you know in in the greco-roman world patronage was a big deal which meant there were these figures who are patrons they had a lot of honor and to be a client of the patron was to sort of be a benefactor of that honor you improved your status if you were a client and then you could also have clients that were below you and so this patronage system from the top down worked in a way that distributed honor based on the concentration and exclusivity of status and it's not much different today it's just that we play by different rules there are still power players and status holders in our society and our city even within our own communities and sometimes by being affiliated with someone one of the reasons that we name drop it's one of the reasons that we like to talk about our pedigree if it's something worth boasting about it's because we are bolstering our sense of place our status our sense of greatness and jesus is saying at the center of that is a profane aggression it's an aggression that requires rejection jesus has already said and he's come to terms with his own uh inevitable facing of that aggression and rejection he sees it in the scribes he sees it in the pharisees he sees it in the herodians so basically the religious and political leaders of his time he sees this exclusive aggression at work and he basically says to his disciples he's been trying to admit to them that he's not going to try to overcome that aggression with even more that he's not going to overcome that exclusion by excluding them but rather he's going to take this holy disposition this pure love in his heart that's open and that's vulnerable no matter what and that speaks the truth no matter what and he's going to walk in integrity with that into the city of jerusalem in the face of these aggressive and exclusive leaders and he's simply going to absorb their exclusive aggression and he's not going to fight it he's not going to play beat fire with fire he's going to sit there he's going to face it he's going to name it and he will absorb it and his disciples just don't get it and frankly we have a hard time i think of knowing what it means to get that but he brings them the child because in the child you don't have exclusive aggression per se instead in the child you have this holy reception there is a basic receptivity in childhood that we often unlearn there's a basic receptivity in childhood an openness to learn an openness to grow that we often graduate from and move on to other things when i come home from work i often greet my youngest daughter gemma and she receives me with just wide open arms with absolutely zero inhibition and i love seeing her face light up and i love feeling her squeeze around my neck and my shoulders and it's a reminder to me of that basic holy receptivity of children until they unlearn it over time and they start getting schooled and formed in our subtle and not so subtle ways of exclusive aggression jesus puts the child in their midst and says if you receive some a child like this you receive me if you receive those who are who are like me you don't just receive me you receive god because that's what god's like god has this holy receptivity god enters our world he enters the fray of competition and aggression and exclusion and yet god remains open to us god remains including of us god is able to hold space for inclusion in an exclusive world and it's that willingness to be open it's that willingness to be receptive to be soft at the core to be vulnerable that is the essence of love and it's the essence of the dream of god which jesus called the kingdom of god and so he says whoever welcomes such a one as this welcomes me my question for you is this week very practical a how are you welcoming children in your life some of you have children some of you don't have children and we can be very concrete here and just take jesus at face value and say how are we welcoming children now in the ancient world you know children were at the very very low end of the totem pole today we often give children much more privilege and status and respect and i think that's a good thing but in jesus time they were at the low end of honor in society and so you would never stop what you were doing or allow yourself to be interrupted because of a child a child always waited more of a mid-century idea uh only on steroids and so children were to be seen not heard in that respect and yet jesus is saying right here this is where the kingdom of god is the lowly and status the people with no honor if you can be receptive to them then you get me then you get god right now i wonder if you have that receptivity are you able to be receptive to people without honor in our city are you be able to re be receptive to people without power and status in our city are you able to look out for those within your circles whether it's at work or it's in your family or it's in your friend's circles or maybe even in this church are you able to look out and find people who might feel on the edge who might feel like they're on the outside who in some odd hierarchy however they imagine it feel like they're on the low end or perhaps you have a sense of your own status have a sense of your own place and you would count yourself as toward the top as winning as successful what does it look like for you to embrace jesus way here a holy receptivity not just to god and to christ but christ says to angle that receptivity down and out is to re-angle that receptivity up there's no such thing as openness here without openness out there james st james reminds us of that in his epistle that if we say that we have faith but we don't have works then our faith is dead the prophets often railed against the people of god because they sang songs and they made sacrifices and offerings and yet they didn't love mercy and they didn't do justice and so i admonish you and i encourage you my dear brothers and sisters to take on the disposition to take on the spirit of jesus in this text the one who receives the child the one who becomes like the slave who becomes like the servant and doesn't find himself or herself jockey and constantly for position and status over power over may we wherever we are in life at the top toward the top or toward the bottom learn what it means to embrace this holy disposition of receptivity amen and now having reflected on our gospel text we take a moment to confess our faith this is the apostle's creed it's a creed rooted in our baptism and it's a very ancient creed it's the earliest compression of jesus story that we have by the earliest church and so in a sign an act of solidarity with that tradition we say this crete together would you join me 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 and is seated at the right hand of god he will 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 friends having confessed our faith we offer our prayers these are the prayers of the people please join us in the prayers of the people in peace we pray to you lord god for all people in their daily life and work for our families friends and neighbors and for those who are alone for this community the nation and the world for all who work for justice freedom and peace for the just and proper use of your creation for the victims of hunger fear injustice and oppression for all who are in danger sorrow or any kind of trouble for those who minister to the sick to the friendless and the needy lord in your mercy hear our prayer [Music] for the peace and unity of the church of god for all who proclaim the gospel and all who seek the truth for all who serve god in his church for the reverends michael redzina reverend christine lee mother anna reverend dean de la schmidt bishop ed gunger and all who are ministers for the unique needs and concerns of this congregation we pray for your grace upon those who are on the path to baptism for sherry joshua carey and todd may they know your love to be present in their lives lord in your mercy hear our prayer we thank you lord for the blessings of this life we exalt you o god our king and we praise your name forever and ever we pray for all who have died that they may have a place in your eternal kingdom we pray especially today for our sister joanne and for any other person who comes to our heart and our mind in this moment lord let your loving kindness be upon each one of them lord in your mercy hear our prayer and now having prayed our prayers we make space for confession i simply invite you into an act of holy memory and to remember the week behind you things done or left undone ways in which we've fallen short of love just a quiet moment to remember the week behind us and now remember that we're not alone and we pray this confession together most merciful god we confess that we've sinned against you in thought word and deed by what we've done and by what we've left undone we've not loved you with our whole heart 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 having made our confession i offer the good news of the gospel as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is god's love toward you you are forgiven in jesus christ amen and now having confessed our sins we come to this table that we call eucharist the great thanksgiving and we begin with this ancient prayer of gratitude would you join me in this 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 is right to give thanks and praise god you are good and beautiful and true and holy and you give all good gifts we thank you for the good gifts of our life and especially for the gift of jesus christ your son our lord who came into the world to save us from sin and death who died on the cross in love for the world who faced and experienced rejection betrayal and crucifixion so that we might know the way of suffering love who is resurrected from the dead so that we can live in hope of new life now and resurrection in the world to come we pray now that by the power of your holy spirit and according to your word that these gifts of bread and cup 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 jesus was betrayed he took bread and after he blessed it he gave it to his disciples 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 amen likewise jesus 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 we welcome you risen christ we thank you for this cup which points us to forgiveness may it be true of us amen and now we declare the mystery of faith great is 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 and now friends we invite you to receive holy communion taking the bread and dipping it in the cup thanks be to god thank you so much for joining us once again digitalchurch.nyc good shepherd new york uh we hope that you can perhaps put some of this teaching into practice and this worship and this these themes of worship into practice this week our dear friends and partners in the bronx the south bronx a house on beekman are in need when the storm ida passed through their basements were flooded and so many of their materials were destroyed or damaged well they've put a shopping list and amazon list together of the supplies needed to replace what was lost and i think this is an amazing opportunity to center the children and to have that holy receptivity to their needs a house on beekman works with children from birth all the way up through high school helping them with various programs that enrich that nourish and that teach them and so we want to do as a community what we can this website that's on the screen right now is the site that you can go to in order to give and find out uh how you can purchase specific supplies for our partners a house on beekman we hope you'll go there that you'll you know buy as much as you can for them and we want to send them off with a new chapter on this other side of the storm there are so many ways that you can get connected in the life of our community we hope that you'll go to our website good shepherd new york.com to check out more information about groups if you want to facilitate one we really need facilitators at this point so that we can offer as many groups as possible those will begin in october we'd love to do training in september so reach out to us if you'd like to facilitate so that we can begin getting those listings out as soon as possible today we began a baptism class if you're interested in exploring baptism or maybe you couldn't make it this week that's okay you can still register on our website you can reach out to one of our pastors kate gunger and you can be in the loop for the remaining five sessions there'll be an opportunity to be baptized at the beginning first sunday of november on the week of all saints day and so we're really thrilled to be able to offer that opportunity also in october we're starting wednesday nights again here in the chapel meeting every week we're starting sunday school classes beginning with a book discussion led by two of our members of our elder board jamie tan and kendi redzina and we look to be offering more classes bible studies contemplative studies as well and so there's going to be a lot of opportunities to connect if you don't have our e-newsletter or not signed up for our e-newsletter you can do that at our website we starting this week are launching a weekly newsletter that will have dates and links and everything that you need to be connected including things like our apple picking trip coming up in october or service opportunities to serve the hungry here in chelsea but there are lots of ways to express your faith to volunteer to be connected and we want you to be able to find that information out now we invite you to receive this benediction feel the love of god growing within your heart go into god's world planting seeds of love mercy joy and peace in all that you say and do be at peace and serve god amen praise god from whom all blessings flow [Music] praise god all creatures hip below praise god above ye heavenly hope praise father's son and holy ghost all man [Music] amen [Music] amen amen [Music] i'm gonna let it shine on this [Music] i'm gonna let it [Music] i'm gonna let it let it shine yes sir everywhere i go i'm gonna let it shine [Music] everywhere i go [Music] i'm gonna let it shine let it shine let it shine to show my love hey come on is [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] even when i see my neighbor coming [Music] let it shine let it shine let it shine

Channel: Good Shepherd New York

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Length: 48min 45sec (2925 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021