Hello Union Church Presbyterians,
Worship this Sunday, June 6 will be in-person and streamed on YouTube to view at home. We will share prayers, songs, and reflections. We will be celebrating Communion this Sunday. Please have a cracker/bread of your choice and juice/beverage on hand to join in this sacrament.
HOW TO VIEW ON YOUTUBE: YouTube broadcast will begin at 10:25 am.
For ALL devices: https://www.youtube.com/user/NewburghPresby
VIRTUAL FELLOWSHIP on ZOOM at 11:30 am
For computers: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2536635871
For smartphones and tablets, download and install the Zoom app.
If prompted: Click “JOIN Meeting” and enter:
Meeting ID: 253 663 5871 Passcode: NO Passcode required
ORDER OF WORSHIP
Union Church, Newburgh NY
June 6, 2021 10:30 am
SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
WELCOME
We are glad that you are joining us today and hope you feel God’s blessings. If you do not have a church home, we sincerely invite you to be a part of the Union Church fellowship.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
BARN SALE: Sat. Oct 2. Accepting items June through August, first and third Mondays and Wednesdays from 9-11 am. NO CLOTHING. NO large furniture. Volunteers needed.
Contact Jeff Bousche (845) 913-8434 for more information.
FOOD PANTRY: OPEN Mon. June 7 and Wed. June 9 from 9:30-11:30 am. Serving LOTS of people! If you would like to help, contact Kathy or Debby.
CLOTHES CLOSET: The tables and clothing racks have been set up in the classroom upstairs in Fellowship Hall. Thanks Jeff, Jim, Bob, Dave, and Paul! Clothes, bedding, and other home goods will be moved upstairs and we expect to open for business next distribution, Mon. June 7 and Wed. June 9.
SCHEDULE:
Barn Sale Meeting – Wed, June 9 at 11:30 am in Fellowship Hall
Worship & Music Meeting – Thus, June 10 at 7 pm on Zoom
Session Meeting – Sun, June 13 at 11:30 am in Fellowship Hall
VIRTUAL Fellowship Time: Begins after worship on Zoom. Questions? Call Pastor John at (914) 474-0722.
ORDER OF WORSHIP
PRELUDE Pavane by Faure Played by Dr. Margaret Small
CALL TO WORSHIP Adapted from Psalm 30 Leader: Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! PEOPLE: If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? Leader: But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. PEOPLE: I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; Leader: my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. PEOPLE: O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. ALL: It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.
INVOCATION
Most Holy Father, your gracious gift in Christ moves us to gather in worship. Stir our hearts once again with your Spirit, that we may find renewed energy to sing your praises and do your work, for our own needs and those of others. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
CALL TO CONFESSION
In our struggles with family, work, play, and life in general, we often forget the most important things in our lives, dear Lord. Let us come before you in confession.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
O God, hear our confession, for we still dwell in darkness. We are afflicted by our own inadequacy, and when perplexed, we despair that there may be no hope. When difficulties strike us, we feel forsaken. But we know that Christ resides like a treasure within us. Transform our whole beings to live in that truth.
(A moment for silent personal confession)
ASSURANCE OF FORGIVENESS
Children of God, as we are all your children, we thank you our heavenly parent for your continuing care and forgiveness, in the name of Jesus, we are forgiven. Amen.
GLORIA PATRI Traditional, Second Century
APOSTLES CREED
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy catholic Church, the communion of the saints,
the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
PASSING OF THE PEACE
HYMN OF PRAISE For the Beauty of the Earth
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
Gracious God, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from your mouth. Make us hungry for this heavenly food, that it may nourish us today in the ways of eternal life, through Jesus Christ, the bread of heaven. Amen.
SCRIPTURES
OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 3:8-15 Libby Szymanowicz
EPISTLE 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 John Redman, CRE
GOSPEL Mark 3:20-35 Libby Szymanowicz
SERMON “WHAT? Is He Crazy?” John Redman, CRE
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE & THE LORD’S PRAYER
Beloved Lord, in this season of spring and new beginnings, we accept your invitation to be ever mindful of the needs of others, offering our prayers on behalf of your community in the church and the world. Fill us with your strength to resist the seductions of our foolish lives and the tempter's vain delights, that we may walk in faith and truth, rejoicing in you with an upright heart. We ask for prayers and considerations Lord, for
And Lord we pray for those in our own hearts whose names you already know, for their own healing and comfort, in your name and that of our redeemer Jesus Christ, who taught to pray, saying:
Our Father, 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 debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
COMMUNION HYMN Break Thou the Bread of Life Acapeldridge
HOLY COMMUNION
Invitation to the Table
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Words of Institution
Prayer after Communion
OFFERTORY ANTHEM Take My Life and Let it Be
OFFERING OF TITHES AND GIFTS
Let us all consider what we have been blessed with and how we can best share it with those in greater need, even as we gift our church for its greater work to the Glory of God and the undying love of Jesus.
PRAYER OF THANKS
DOXOLOGY Played by Dr. Kris Rizzotto
BENEDICTION
POSTLUDE Pentecost Postlude: Fugue in F J. S. Bach
INVITATION TO COFFEE HOUR
SERMON TEXT WHAT? Is He Crazy?
In the whirlwind pace of Mark’s opening chapters, we experience Jesus in baptism, he heals a number of afflictions, and preaches to crowds so dense he has to move out into the lake in a boat. He selects the rest of his twelve disciples, These disciples all seem to be quite eager to go along with him, including Judas Iscariot the last one chosen, who will betray him.
Then we have Jesus returning home. Here the crowd is so dense and so demanding he can’t grab any food. And when the family hears about all this, the crowds are yelling, “He’s gone mad!” Well, if you are being hounded by a mob, pushing and shoving to get near you, how might you react? And top it off, we have some Pharisees from Jerusalem crying out, “He has Beelzebul in him!” Now Beelzebul is the chief demon to Satan, and these teachers claim that it’s this power of Satan by way of Beelzebul that Jesus can drive out these demons and evil spirits.
Je sus’ response employs some wonderfully circular logic, asking how can Satan drive out Satan? Or if a family divides itself and fights among factions, how can it survive? And, Jesus alludes, you can’t rob a strong man’s house until you have tied him up. The you can plunder his house. Now just what is that supposed to mean? It might well be a play on words about Beelzebul being the strong master of this house, but Jesus can overcome him. It may be the setup for what Jesus says next: “you can be forgiven for sin and evil sayings, but if you say evil tings against the holy spirit, you are in big trouble, buster.”
And then Jesus’ mother and his brothers arrive on the scene. This is an interesting encounter, but don’t mistake it for a similar encounter with Jesus’ family a couple of chapters from now, when Jesus is once again confronted by his family and another crowd in Nazareth. In that case, Jesus will proclaim that no prophet is ever respected in his hometown. It seems that the residents of such a humble place as Nazareth could not envision anyone of consequence ever coming from there.
But back to our reading for today, because here comes the family, Jesus’ mother and brothers, and presumably then sisters, but they specifically are never named as the brothers are. Hey ladies, it’s not my doing, that’s just how they did it then.
So, the family is outside and sending a message into the house for Jesus, who seems to be much calmer than when this passage began. When he is told his mother and brothers and sisters are outside, he replies, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” then surveying the crowd around him, he says “Look! Here are my mother and my brothers!”
That’s pretty obvious now, isn’t it? And he goes on to say, “Whoever does what God wants him to do is my brother, my sister, my mother.” So of course, we are all God’s children and his family, that’s not so difficult to understand, is it?
And in his epistle to the church in Corinth, Paul re-emphasizes the spiritual approach, the power of the spirit to build us up, to hold us together, even though we are fragile physical vessels. In a previous chapter of this letter, Paul refers to us as clay vessels, fragile always about to shatter. But the fire of the Holy Spirit strengthens us to become vessels of faith.
And here Paul once again speaks about our physical beings so subject to time and failure, but ironically our spiritual cores are being strengthened day by day and in Paul’s words “this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”
As Paul approaches his conclusion of this passage, he again calls on one of his recurring themes, the finite timeliness of what we can see, and the infinite eternity of what we cannot see.
As he closes, Paul says, “this flimsy tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The Greek word for this building from God is “oikodrome.” We know that ‘drome’ is the base word for a structure or a building, but oikodrome is an elliptical construction itself since it literally means “faith structure,” or “God’s building.” But it’s not a structure where God lives, it’s a structure that God creates for us, for our eternal spirits to inhabit, as opposed to that flimsy tent of our earthly lives.
And how better could the vulnerability of our earthly lives be emphasized than by today’s reading from Genesis? First, God has to ask Adam where he’s hiding. Hmm, doesn’t God already know everything, including Adam’s hiding place? And doesn’t he already know what’s up in the Garden? An atheist friend of mine likes to taunt me with arguments like, “If God is all powerful, can he create a rock so big and so dense that it’s too heavy for him to lift?”
But Adam is quick to throw Eve under the bus, not just saying she gave me the fruit, but prefacing that by saying “the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit.” Mmm Hmm. And then when questioned, of course Eve says that the serpent tricked her, the very first equivalent of “the devil made me do it!” And there we go with that devil talk, right from the beginning, just as the crowd around Jesus is saying the “devil is making him do this! It’s how he’s able to heal these demons, from the demons he has inside him already!”
But Jesus won’t be deterred by this crowd or the shills that the Jerusalem Temple have sent to accuse him. And he states with authority that you can be forgiven for your sins and whatever blasphemies but blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, that’s another story, and forgiveness is off the table.
And just then, subject gets changed, and the family shows up, and Jesus, ever the one to show our universal lot in life, says, “whomever looks on me and believes, that is my brother or sister or mother, in short that is my family.”
The Lakota, those first Americans we call the Sioux Indians, have a phrase that is the base of their entire spiritual framework. It is “MotakQueEsin,” which means ‘we are all related,’ or ‘we are all of one family.’
So my family members in faith, I bring you these thoughts and words today in the Love of the Father, the Grace of the Son, and the Healing Power of the Holy Spirit. “MotakQueEsin.” AMEN
Blessings!
John Redman, CRE
Mobile: (914) 474-0722
Union Church
44 Balmville Rd, Newburgh NY 12550
Phone: (845) 562-0954 Fax: (845) 562-0955
Comments