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
August 23, 2020
Dear Friends,
As I’m writing this, I’m wondering if the church will soon be receiving an evacuation warning, if not order. Things have gotten pretty close to home, with several families connected to CCMP already making plans to stay somewhere else until the situation improves. I’m sure you’re already keeping everyone affected by the River Fire and the Carmel Fire in your prayers (as well as everyone else in the state who is in danger).
It really puts things in a different perspective to have to think about what one would save if one had to make a quick exit!
Sadly, Heidi’s planned altar flowers for this week did not survive being blanketed in ashes from the surrounding fires. She hopes that next week will fare better.
Immediately after sending you this worship service, I’ll be forwarding detailed instructions from George Brehmer as to voting directions for our upcoming virtual congregational meeting.
I’ll also be forwarding Pam Klaumann’s autobiography to you. It’s inspiring to read these life stories of people connected to our church. I hope that you will consider writing one yourself!
This week’s sermon is something of a review in that it reconsiders some of the biblical texts that we’ve recently considered. But it pushes the discussion further in the direction of Jesus.
Please stay safe and remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel – God WITH Us. Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR AUGUST 23, 2020
INTRODUCTORY READING Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875-1926
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
SUGGESTED MUSIC Praise to the Living God Eamon Younis You Tube
OPENING PRAYER F. C. Happold, Contemporary
O Christ,
Serene and tranquil light,
Shine into the depth of my being,
Come, and draw me to yourself.
Free me from the chatter of my mind,
And draw me through and beyond
All words and symbols,
Into the silence,
That I may discover You,
The unspoken Word,
The pure Light,
Piercing and transforming the darkness.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE READINGS (All selections from the NRSV translation)
Genesis 3:8
They [Adam & Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze…
Genesis 18:1-2
The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground.
Genesis 32:26
Then [God] said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’
Exodus 3:11-12a
But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ He said, ‘I will be with you…’
Job 19:25-26
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my flesh has been destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God.
Daniel 3:24-25
Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up quickly. He said to his counsellors, ‘Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?’ They answered the king, ‘True, O king.’ He replied, ‘But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the fourth has the appearance of a god.’
John 8:58
Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’
John 14:9b
‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’ (Jesus speaking)
SERMON: JESUS IN DISGUISE?
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlinings simply indicate what I would emphasize if delivered orally)
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., writes: “The first time I heard the word mystery I did not understand what it meant. As an avid reader of mystery stories, I had the idea that something is a mystery only because its solution has not yet been found.
But mystery [with a small ‘m’] is different from mystery [with a capital ‘M’]. By its very nature mystery [with a capital ‘M’] cannot be solved. . .it can only be lived.”
Dr. Remen continues: “We have not been raised to cultivate a sense of mystery. We may even see the unknown as an insult to our competence, a personal failing. Seen in this way, the unknown becomes a challenge to action. But mystery does not require action. Mystery requires our attention. Mystery requires that we listen and become open. When we meet with the unknown in this way, we can be touched by a wisdom that can transform our lives.”
One of the great mysteries of the biblical tradition is how God, who is portrayed as the creator of the universe, can at the same time be pictured in highly anthropomorphic terms much like any other human being.
The Bible never answers the question “How can God be in two different places at the same time?” It simply assumes that God’s presence is everywhere.
With the coming of quantum physics in the twentieth century, and its concept of entanglement, or relationship at a distance, which has been experimentally verified, we now know that quantum particles which were connected at their creation will always be connected, no matter how great the distance or the time that lies between them from our point of view.
Even though relationship at a distance has been experimentally verified, its reality still lies solidly in the realm of paradox, or mystery: it is something that we may know, but also something that we cannot fully comprehend.
Making a connection at a distance from nuclear physics to God, we can say that God being in two places at the same time, or even God as creator being in all places at the same time, is something that we may know, but also something that we cannot fully comprehend. It remains in the realm of paradox or mystery.
One of the great mysteries of the biblical tradition is how God, the creator of the universe, desires to be with the human beings that God has created.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are several examples of God appearing to people in audible and/or visible form.
In the third chapter of Genesis, we are told that “The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze…” (Genesis 3:8).
In Genesis 38 we are told that “The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. . .” (Genesis 18:1-2a).
In Genesis 32 we find God appearing to Jacob, this time in the shape-shifting form of angel/human/God, and wrestling with Jacob from depth of night till break of day. Jacob, surprisingly, seems to get the better of this mysterious being, who says to him, “Let me go, for the day is breaking” (Genesis 32:26a). Jacob boldly replies: “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26b).
Scripture strongly encourages us to believe in the paradigmatic nature of the God-human relationships that we see unfolding in the biblical narrative. In other words, Jacob’s boldness with God serves as an example for us: If he can be so bold with God as to say “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” so can we. We can say to God, in the midst of serious illness, for example, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” and rest assured that, like Jacob, we too will receive a blessing.
In the third chapter of Exodus we encounter the most important of God’s appearances in the Hebrew Scriptures. God appears to Moses in the flames of a bush that is burning yet not consumed. God identifies Godself as the God of Moses’ ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
God goes on to tell Moses, concerning the violent enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt, that God as witnessed, has heard, knows well, and has come down.
After God has appointed him as leader of the upcoming liberation from Egypt, Moses complains “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ (Exodus 3:11). Notice God’s first response to Moses. God simply says “I will be with you…” (Exodus 3:12a)
But Moses is still not satisfied, and presses God further for a proper name. All he receives is a paradox and a mystery: “I am who I am,” sometimes translated as “I will be who I will be.” (Exodus 3:14).
I think one of the things going on here is that God flatly tells Moses that God is, and will remain, incomprehensible in terms of God’s absolute nature. But God has given Moses an unparalleled promise: “I will be with you.” And God’s promise to Moses is unconditional: “I will be with you.”
Putting Jacob’s experience of God together with Moses’ experience of God, and applying the principle that our experience of God can be like theirs, we can make the affirmation that God is unconditionally with us to bless us.
In our Scripture text from the book of Job, Job makes what on the surface appears to be a nonsense statement. Feeling that he is critically near death because of the disasters that God has allowed to befall him, Job nevertheless makes one of the greatest affirmations of faith in the entire Bible.
Caught-up in a vision of God’s withness that transcends even death, Job breaks forth into a song of celebration:
“For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my flesh has been destoyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:25-26)
Who is this Redeemer?
We are not told.
At this point the person of the Redeemer remains a mystery, as it does in the book of Daniel in the story of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar casting three Jewish young men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Adednego, into the fiery furnace:
“Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet
in amazement and asked his advisers, ‘Weren’t
there three men that we tied up and threw into
the fire?’ They replied, ‘Certainly, your majesty.’
He said, ‘Look! I see four men walking around in
the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth
looks like a son of the gods.’” (Daniel 3:24-25)
One of the questions that we need to ask ourselves here is: Could it be that God is so into being with people that God did not hesitate to make Godself concretely available, as it were, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Job, and to Daniel’s three friends?
These many examples of God’s concrete presence, God’s dense withness with people in the Hebrew Scriptures (and elsewhere – but that’s the topic for another sermon) help us to see God’s presence in Jesus in a whole new light.
Rather than as something and someone unique to the Christian tradition, when seen in the context of God’s many concrete manifestations of Godself in the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s presence in Jesus can be seen as the continuation of God’s earlier and on-going commitment to be with us in a tangible way.
God’s presence in Jesus should come as no surprise, because God has already appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Job, and to Daniel’s three friends.
In this scenario God’s real presence in Jesus is on a continuum with God’s real presence to Adam and Eve in the garden, to Abraham under the trees of Mamre, in the wrestling match with Jacob, in the burning bush with Moses, in Job’s vision of a Redeemer whom he will see bodily after death, and in the fourth person with Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace.
For me, nothing could be more mysterious in the sense of having to be something lived rather than something solved, in the sense that it demands perpetual openness rather than premature closure, than the description of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
Nothing could be more mysterious than the story of God appearing to Abraham in the form of three weary travelers; or the picture of God in a serious wrestling-match with one of God’s more wily and conniving servants, namely Jacob, staging defeat, and provoking a boldness which leads to blessing.
Nothing could be more mysterious than God’s unconditionally promising to be with Moses, hinting that God’s real name resides in the promise “I will be with you,” much more than in the riddle “I will be who I will be;” or Job’s vision of a Redeemer on the other side of death.
Nothing could be more mysterious than a party of three suddenly becoming a party of four in the fiery furnace, and this fourth being described as “looking like a son of the gods.”
Finally, nothing could be more mysterious than the person of Jesus, who said “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), and who said to his disciples “Whoever has seen me has seen the father” (John 14:9).
Perhaps it is wiser to see our relationship with Jesus as something to be lived, to be dwelled in, rather than as something one has to believe, and then try to capture in a multitude of doctrines.
To conclude as we began, Rachel Naomi Remen continues her reflection on mystery by saying “Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen mystery comfort people when nothing else offers hope. I have seen mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable.
A sense of mystery can take us beyond disappointment and judgment to a place of expectancy. It opens in us an attitude of listening and respect. If everyone has in them the dimension of the unknown, possibility is present at all times. . .
Mystery requires that we relinquish an endless search for answers and become willing to not understand. . . An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question.
After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.”
We can all be thankful that we’re in such good company here at Community Church.
AMEN
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
What images come to mind when you think of God in terms of mystery?
Describe some of the personal mysteries/paradoxes in your own relationship with God.
What are some of the questions that you need to live into?
CLOSING PRAYER Ann Weems, Contemporary
In the godforsaken quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls
of those who weep,
and of those who weep with those who weep.
If you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting the stars back in their skies
one by one.
Amen.
RECOMMENDED MUSIC Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)
Hillsong United lyrics You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN
BIO PAM KLAUMANN
Pam Klaumann was born in Merced, Ca. The family moved to Carmel in 1957 when her Dad became the manager of Borden Diary. Home milk delivery was popular back then. Her Mom worked outside the home as a bookkeeper and later at a doctor’s office.
Pam is the third of 6 children. She has 3 brothers and 2 sisters. She attended Carmel schools and grew up in Mission Fields. Lots of fun memories riding bikes and playing in the Carmel River.
Pam attended MPC majoring in recreation and activities; hoping to become a cruise ship activity director.
While working at the Carmel Youth Center as the assistant Director, she organized the “Christmas Capers”, a holiday show for the community. She needed a “Santa” so asked Clyde R. Klaumann.
Needless to say, Pam chose Santa over the cruise ship, they were married within 6 months. The union has lasted 53 years to date. They have two grown children: Tammi Lyon (Dave) with one daughter, Hannah (17).
Clyde W. Klaumann (Melanie) with 3 children; Eda Mae (5), Blythe (3) and Linus (11 months)
Pam worked at the River School Library for 20 years. She has been a member of Community Church since 1973. Pam helped start Givingtree Benefit Shop and plan events for the Women’s Association, including the Harvest Fair and Rose Tea.
Now with Covid-19 limitations, no travel to Kauai or direct tending to Grandchildren. Pam is still involved with Mission Trail Lions Club and spending special time with her Mom (96) currently at Carmel Hills Care Center. She visits through the window every day, especially now that her Dad passed in June.
Other pastimes include knitting, jigsaw puzzles, reading and of course jam making.
Although Pam is slowing down, she knows GOD isn’t finished with her yet.