COMMUNITY CHURCH OF THE MONTEREY PENINSULA
P. O. BOX 222811
CARMEL CA 93922
(831) 624-8595
www.ccmp.org
Rev. Paul Wrightman, Pastor
Independent and United Church of Christ
April 19, 2020
Dear Friends,
I’m writing with the two contradictory feelings of deep sadness and deep joy both equally present. I just found out from Cindi Daniel that her father Bill died this afternoon (Saturday) at 1:20. I’m sad because Bill has been such an important part of my life for the past ten years and a vital part of the life of our church for the past forty-five. But I’m also experiencing an abiding joy because I know that Bill was ready to move on and I know that he had quite a welcoming committee in heaven!
Just a few days ago, Bill had a dream in which his mother visited him, usually a strong indication that a person is already moving toward the next dimension of life. It’s frustrating being under shelter-in-place orders right now, but when we’re allowed to gather again we will be having a humdinger of a Celebration-of-Life service for Bill! Please send cards to Millie and Cindi at P.O. Box 7103, Carmel, CA 93921.
We are currently in that part of the church year known as “The Easter Season.” Before we go back to the Old Testament part of our sermon series on the most important texts in the Bible, we need to look at a few more “most important” texts connected with this season of Resurrection. This week we’ll take a look at what happened on the first Easter evening, next week at Thomas, and the following week at Peter’s restoration by Jesus.
As most of you probably suspected already, the Rose Garden Tea, scheduled for May 9th, has had to be postponed. Hopefully, we will be able to reschedule for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in August. The rose garden is particularly beautiful this year. If you happen to be driving by the church, please stop by to smell the roses! To make sure that the garden gate is open, please come when Carole or I are in: Carole from 9:15 – 3:30 Monday through Thursday, and me from 1 through 8 Wednesday through Sunday.
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR APRIL 19, 2020
OPENING READING (Molly Fumia, Contemporary)
To be joyful in the universe is a brave and reckless act. The courage for joy springs not from the certainty of human experience, but the surprise. Our astonishment at being loved, our bold willingness to love in return – the wonders promise the possibility of joyfulness, no matter how often and how harshly love seems to be lost.
Therefore, despite the world’s sorrows, we give thanks for our loves, for our joys and for the continued courage to be happily surprised.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: O God, Our Help in Ages Past SE Samonte You Tube
PASTORAL PRAYER (Edwina Gateley, Contemporary)
Into Your Hands, O God,
This solitude,
Into Your Hands, O God,
This emptiness.
Into Your hands, O God,
This loneliness,
Into Your Hands –
This all.
Into Your Hands, O God,
This grief,
Into Your Hands
This sleeping fear.
Into Your Hands, O God –
What is left,
What is left
Of me. Amen.
SCRIPTURE: Luke 24, 36-43, NRSV
While they were talking about this (Jesus meeting up with the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus), Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.
Copyright 2020: Rev. Paul Wrightman
FEAR IS GOOD-FOR-NOTHING Luke 24:36-43 4/19/20
One day a bus driver was driving along his usual route when a big hulk of a man got on. He was six feet eight inches tall, built like a wrestler, and his arms hung to the ground. He glared at the driver and told him, “Big John Doesn’t pay!” Then he sat at the back of the bus.
The driver was five feet three inches tall, thin, and very meek, so he didn’t argue with Big John.
But he wasn’t happy.
The next day the same thing happened, and the next. The bus driver began to lose sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him. Finally, he could stand it no longer.
He signed up for bodybuilding, karate, judo, and self-esteem classes.
By the end of the summer, the bus driver had become stronger and more confident. So when Big John entered the bus and again declared, “Big John doesn’t pay!” the driver finally confronted him.
He stood up, glared at Big John, and bellowed, “AND WHY NOT?”
With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, “Big John have bus pass.”
Worry has been defined as “a small trickle of fear that meanders through the mind until it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” (Anonymous)
Our anxious bus driver fits this description of worry perfectly. Feeling intimidated by Big John, his whole life becomes defined by how he can stand his ground.
And when the big moment of standing his ground finally arrives, he realizes that he has wasted months of his life preparing for an eventuality that existed only in his own mind – nowhere else.
Jesus teaches that fear and worry are antithetical to a trusting relationship with God.
How can we trust God when we are constantly hedging our bets and coming up with alternative plans just in case God doesn’t follow through or take good enough care of us?
A major section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount – the one featuring the birds of the air and the lilies of the field (Matthew 7:25-33) – is devoted to challenging the awful power of worry.
Jesus begins it by commanding his followers not to indulge in worry:
I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”
Throughout the Gospels Jesus contrasts a life of worry – which is basically self-centered, with a life of trust – which is God-centered.
We can find a kind of ironic comfort in the fact that Jesus’ original disciples found it no easier to trust God than we do.
They are constantly freaking out and having to have Jesus bail them out of the latest terrible situation in which they find themselves.
True to form, they do this even after Jesus’ Resurrection, God’s ultimate statement to them and to the entire world that God is a God of forgiveness, not revenge, a God of love, not fear, a God of life, not death.
Raising Jesus – and in this awesome act also raising everything that Jesus stood for – is God’s ultimate statement that God can be trusted.
According to Luke, numerous women and Peter had already seen Jesus by Easter evening. The women report Jesus’ Resurrection to the male disciples, who immediately write off their testimony as hysterical nonsense (see Luke 24:11).
On the first Easter evening Jesus appears to his male disciples, minus Thomas.
But the sight of Jesus, instead of sparking joy and celebration, triggers revulsion and terror and scary thoughts of ghosts.
Seeing their raw fear, Jesus asks one of his most incisive questions:
Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? (Luke 24:38)
He asks this question not only to his original disciples, but to all the disciples who seek to follow him throughout the ages, including you and me:
Why are we so frightened? Why are we so filled with doubts?
We need to note here that when Jesus talks about doubt, he talks about it in two distinct, almost contradictory, ways:
In the first way Jesus sees doubt as the positive reality of asking questions, questions about injustice and inequality, lack of compassion, rampant selfishness, and the meaning of suffering.
Doubt in this first sense leads to further knowledge and brings one closer to truth.
In the second way Jesus sees doubt as a destructive reality that questions God’s trustworthiness even after God has made it perfectly clear that God is absolutely trustworthy.
In our Scripture reading for today, Jesus is referring to doubt in this second, destructive sense.
After all, he is standing there right in front of his disciples.
Still letting their fear call the shots, when they see Jesus they don’t see Jesus but their fear, which takes the form of thinking they’re seeing a ghost.
Choosing fear over trust when there is more than enough evidence to choose trust over fear is what Jesus is challenging in today’s text.
Fortunately for the original disciples, and fortunately for us, Jesus is infinitely patient, and continues to offer more evidence – inviting them to touch him and then taking a piece of fish and eating it – until they – and we – finally get it:
Jesus and his message are alive and well and impervious to death – his, and by implication, ours.
One of the most moving affirmations of God’s presence occurs at the end of chapter 40 of the book of the prophet Isaiah.
Chapter 40 is the beginning of that part of Isaiah that Jesus personally identified with most strongly.
I still remember this text being quoted by Olympic runner Eric Liddell in the movie Chariots of Fire:
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God?”
Have you not known, have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the Lord
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
(Isaiah 40:27-31)
In Isaiah 40, we are told that by waiting on the Lord we will mount up with wings like eagles. Eagles are majestic birds with remarkable vision. Scientists believe that their vision may be eight times sharper than that of humans.
But most of all, eagles are built for flying.
They have incredible speed, able to fly at sixty and eighty and even one hundred miles an hour.
They can do rolls and loops like an airplane doing tricks.
Their wingspan expands to nearly eight feet.
But eagles do not fly like sparrows or robins.
Most birds fly through the air by flapping their wings, but eagles cannot flap for very long. They’re built for soaring, and thus they can go much further on little energy.
God created our planet with invisible columns of hot air called thermals rising up from the surface of the earth. Eagles find these thermals, fly into the invisible currents, stretch out their wings, and are lifted higher and higher into the sky as though ascending on an elevator.
They may rise as high as fourteen thousand feet, so high they cannot be seen with the naked human eye from earth. When they reach those heights, they emerge from the updraft, wings still spread, and they soar this way and that, downwards and sideways, traveling for miles with very little exertion of strength and energy.
Isaiah seems to be telling us that God is invisible, but like the invisible uplifting thermal currents of this planet, God is present.
When we search God out, claim God’s promises, and trust in God, spreading out our wings of faith, we are caught up to a higher plane.
We mount up with wings like eagles.
We can run and not grow weary.
We can walk and not faint.
The strength we need for joyful, daring living comes not from flapping our wings like sparrows in distress, but from trusting in God and abiding in Jesus Christ.
Two opposing realities cannot occupy the same space.
Love and hate, truth and lies, faith and fear, trust and doubt, cannot occupy the same space. For one to thrive, the other must be addressed.
Let us consider fear.
Fear is the enemy of faith.
Fear prompted Adam to hide in the garden, provoked Peter to deny Jesus, and incited the male disciples to stand there in unbelief as the resurrected Jesus stood before them, just as he had promised he would.
Fear prompts people to discriminate, embrace intolerance, hide in segregated communities, and discard the fact that we are all, without exception, created in the imago dei, the image of God.
Fear builds walls, silences truth, quenches love, and misleads people into living in the desert of life without ever stepping into the promised land.
When we know who we are in Christ, when we understand what we have, a spirit of power, love, and sound mind, then we can challenge fear and unbelief and declare the following:
For every Pharaoh there will be a Moses,
For every Goliath there will be a David,
For every pandemic there will be a cure.
For every evil that rises up against us there is a mightier God who rises up for us!
Jesus says something pretty amazing in today’s Scripture lesson: He says TOUCH ME.
Right in the midst of their fear and destructive doubt, Jesus invites the disciples to touch him.
In a world full of suffering, injustice, natural disasters, bigotry, discord, war, hatred, and fear, there exists GOOD news: we can still touch God!
We can touch God with our trust in God and our love toward our neighbors.
We can touch God by welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, clothing those in need, giving shelter to those lacking shelter, and being light in the midst of darkness.
We can touch God by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly.
We can touch God by abiding in the person and teachings of Jesus.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus challenges his disciples:
Abide in me as I abide in you.
Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself
unless it abides in the vine,
neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit,
because apart from me you can do nothing.
(John 15:4-5)
In his book A Turtle on a Fencepost, Allan Emery tells of accompanying Ken Hansen to visit a hospitalized employee.
The patient lay very still, his eyes conveying anguish. His operation had taken eight hours and the only thing certain about his recovery was that it would be long.
“Alex,” Ken said quietly, “You know I have had a number of serious operations. I know the pain of trying to talk. I think I know what questions you’re asking.
There are two verses I want to give you – Genesis 42:36 and Romans 8:28. We have the option of these two attitudes.”
Hansen turned to the passages, read them, prayed, and left.
The young man, Alec Balc, took the message to heart. He experienced a full recovery.
Every day we choose one of these two attitudes amid life’s difficulties –
to be beat-up, or to be up-beat.
We can choose to say with Jacob in Genesis 42:36 – All these things are against me.
Or we can say with St. Paul in Romans 8:28 – All these things are working together for good to those who love the Lord…
The choice is one that Jesus refuses to make for us, because that would take away our free will.
But Jesus is praying for each and every one of us, that we will refuse to let our lives be defined by fear, and choose to let our lives be defined by nothing less than God, nothing less than God’s goodness, compassion, and love.
AMEN.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
What are you afraid of?
How has your faith counterbalanced your fear?
What steps do you still need to take to grow more trusting toward God?
CLOSING PRAYER (Edwina Gateley, Contemporary)
Be silent.
Be still.
Alone,
Empty
Before your God
Say nothing
Ask nothing
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God
Look upon you.
That is all.
God knows,
Understands,
Loves you with
An enormous love.
God only wants to
Look upon you
With Love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.
Let your God –
Love you. Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC What a Friend We Have in Jesus with lyrics stc channel
You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally God loves.
Now and forever God loves. AMEN.