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
December 20, 2020
Dear Friends,
The closer it gets to Christmas Eve, the more I mourn not being able to have our usual – and very special – Christmas Eve service in person in the church. A news outlet that I was reading recently stated that we are in a war with Covid-19. That war metaphor helped me to re-frame our current situation as somewhat similar to being in London during World War II, having to hunker down in an air raid shelter. Not exactly an “ideal” place to be, but necessary for staying alive.
If we can all just make it through the next few months we will really have something to celebrate when we CAN get back together in person! With some real light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the vaccines that are now rolling out, now is not the time to lose patience and to start doing foolish things.
I have some very good news to report concerning a number of persons whom we’re holding in our prayers. Carole’s back surgery went extremely well and she is without pain for the first time in many, many months. Terry Alexander’s case of the virus turned out to be very light and she is out of danger now. Lyn Rosen did not come down with Covid-19 even though she was exposed to it. Elizabeth Blanchard had a very successful surgery this past Wednesday to remove a tumor and is recuperating at home. We have a lot to be thankful for!
The GivingTree Benefit Shop had a fine few weeks while it was open. Unfortunately, due to the severity of the virus on the Peninsula right now, they are closing until things markedly improve. Amazingly, the Shop was able to make a significant donation to the church as well as send checks to several 501C groups that they support every year at this time.
We will be having a Zoom Christmas Eve service at our regular time of 7:00 on Thursday evening. How we will miss not having live music and an assortment of Scripture readers this year! For the emailed/written version of this service, I will follow our usual format of Scripture readings followed by carols. The carols will be You Tube suggestions, and will be well worth listening to at home. Our Zoom service will have to be highly simplified and bare-bones this year. But for those of us who are able to “tune in” at least we will be able to see and hear each other.
One good thing about the limitations we’re facing this year is that they will push us to really appreciate our live Christmas Eve service next year! Hopefully, we won’t have to miss another live Easter service. If we’re not allowed back in church by then, we will have a memorable outside service.
Stay Safe, Take Good Care,
and Always Remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel, God WITH Us, Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR DECEMBER 20, 2020
INTRODUCTORY READINGS
Christ could be born
A thousand times in Galilee –
But all in vain
Until he is born in me.
--Angelus Silesius
“Be born in us today.”
--Phillips Brooks
in “O Little Town of Bethlehem”
The Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord:
` Who for His immense love’s sake was
made that which we are, in order that
He might perfect us to be what He is.
--St. Irenaeus
Prayer then is the interiorizing of the
Incarnation. The Word is to become
enfleshed in me. Bethlehem is here.
So Christmas Day is to become all days,
and the adoration of Emmanuel, God
with us, must be a daily and continuous
event.
--Kenneth Leech
LIGHTING OF THE FOURTH ADVENT CANDLE: JOY
Soon we shall celebrate the birth of Jesus.
We worship God with joy in our hearts
as we are reminded of the words the angel said
on that first Christmas Day:
“Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy
which will come to all people.”
We light this candle to proclaim the coming
of the light of God into the world.
With the coming of this light there is joy,
joy that is ours not only at Christmas but always.
Prayer:
O Holy One, as Christmas draws near,
there is a sense of excitement in the air.
We can feel a sense of joy in our lives
And see it in those around us.
Still, for some of us this is a sad time
because of unhappy things
that have happened in our lives.
Help us to have the joy
that does not depend on earthly happiness
but on you.
Help us to be filled with your joy
so that we may share it with the world. Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: O Little Town of Bethlehem SE Samonte You Tube
OPENING PRAYER David Blanchflower, Contemporary
Holy Child of Bethlehem,
whose parents found no room in the inn;
we pray for all who are homeless.
Holy Child of Bethlehem,
born in a stable;
we pray for all who are living in poverty.
Holy Child of Bethlehem,
rejected stranger;
we pray for all who are lost, alone,
all who cry for loved ones.
Holy Child of Bethlehem,
whom Herod sought to kill;
we pray for those in danger,
all who are persecuted.
Holy Child of Bethlehem,
yourself a refugee in Egypt;
we pray for all who are far from home.
Holy Child of Bethlehem,
in you the Eternal was pleased to dwell;
helps us, we pray, to see the divine image
in people everywhere.
In your name we offer this prayer.
Amen.
LORD’S PRAYER
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 trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING: John 1:1-10, 12, 14, 16, 18
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and that life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God,
whose name was John.
He came as a witness to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He himself was not the light,
but he came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone,
was coming into the world.
He was in the world,
and the world came into being through him;
yet the world did not know him.
But to all who received him,
who believed in his name,
he gave power to become children of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.
From his fullness we have all received,
grace upon grace.
No one has ever seen God.
It is God the only Son,
who is close to the Father’s heart,
who has made him known.
SERMON: THE CHRISTMAS ANNOUNCEMENT
ACCORDING TO JOHN’S GOSPEL
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
Several years ago I took part in a series of “creative worship” seminars sponsored by the Penn West Conference of the United Church of Christ. It was question and answer time at a worship workshop.
I had been speaking on the theme of worship most of the morning to a group of people gathered in a church fellowship hall in a suburban neighborhood. Dressed in sweatshirts and jeans, they had given up a Saturday of golf and gardening to sip coffee and listen politely as I progressed through discussions of various views of the Lord’s Supper, the art of the children’s sermon, the development of the lectionary, the meaning of Baptism, and other assorted topics about worship.
Now, the lecturing done, I gulped down a little coffee of my own and asked if there were any questions. A hand shot into the air. It belonged to a fiftyish man who was, judging by the way his hand waved, eager to speak.
“There’s one thing about the worship service at my own local church which really gripes me,” he complained. To me, it’s like fingernails being scraped against a blackboard.”
“What’s that?” I asked cautiously. I fully expected him to say something about gender inclusive language, new-fangled hymns, politics in the pulpit, or lengthy sermons, or tithing. But it was not one of these issues which caused his aggravation.
“The announcements,” he declared. “I just hate it when the mood of worship is spoiled with all those dull announcements.”
Heads bobbed in vigorous agreement all around the room. The announcements were out of favor in that corner of Pennsylvania, no question about it. I knew what the man meant, of course.
You’re soaring above the pews on Sunday, your wings catching the strong breeze of the Spirit carrying you from the choir’s moving rendition of “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” and then, thud. . .
“We need food for the food pantry and warm clothes for the homeless. . .”
Like Icarus striving for the sun, you find your wax wings suddenly melting, and you plummet back to the world of good works and committee meetings.
I understood what the guy meant. The announcements do seem like a bag of peanuts at a concert, an ungainly moment of the mundane wedging its way into an hour of inspiration.
What I tried to say to the questioner was that I understood how he felt and that, yes, if everyone would just read their bulletin, the announcements wouldn’t even have to be made, but that, after all, the details of the church’s on-going life were important, and five minutes of them couldn’t hurt, and so on.
In short, I blew it!
What I should have said is that, properly understood, the announcements are one of those places where the rubber of the church’s theology meets the road of everyday life.
Indeed, it just may be that by moving seamlessly from “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” to “You can leave your rinsed and crushed cans and plastic bottles in the containers outside the front entrance” – by punctuating its soaring praise with the commas of the earthly details of its common life – the church is expressing in its worship one of its most basic convictions about the character of God: “The word became flesh and lived among us.” (John 1:14)
That affirmation about the eternal word becoming flesh comes from the poem which opens the Gospel of John.
The poem begins with violins and soaring phrases: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . .” (John 1:1)
With these ethereal phrases at the beginning of John’s Gospel, it’s no wonder that the church selected as a symbol for John the high-flying eagle.
If John’s poem had ended after the first line, the noble Greek philosophers could have voiced their admiring approval. They, too, wanted to mount up with eagle’s wings, the leave the earth behind, and to ascend into the celestial heights to be with God and God’s word.
But John’s poem does not end with the first line. The eagle suddenly dives toward the ground. The violins give way to the blunt thud of a bass drum. Heaven crashes to earth. The closing notes of the hymn fade, and it is time for the first startling announcement in Christian history: “The word became flesh and lived among us.”
It is here that John and the Greeks part company. The very idea that the ultimate meeting between humanity and the word of God would come – not when we ascended to the airy pinnacle – but when the Word descended to the fleshy depths was, to quote New Testament scholar Raymond Brown: “unthinkable.”
John’s poem, Brown says, does not claim “that the word entered into flesh or abided in flesh, but that the word became flesh.”
Therefore, instead of supplying the liberation from the material world that the Greek mind yearned for, the word of God was an inextricably bound to human history.
The conviction that God refused to float in sublime isolation above time and space, but became, in Jesus, flesh and blood, sweat and earth, is the teaching of the Christian notion of incarnation. What it means, among other things, is that we do not escape the mundane to encounter the living God.
Indeed, the announcements in worship become symbolic of the Christian truth that it is in the “fleshy” details of life, the working and the serving, the upkeep of the grounds, the community projects and the committee meetings, the volunteering at our benefit shop, the being born, the marrying, and the dying, which are the arenas for our encounter with God-become-flesh in Jesus.
When the announcements about food pantries, homeless shelters, meals-to-be-served, Bible studies, and twelve step meetings begin, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” does not end; the church is simply affirming that these are some of the places where that joy is to be found. “The word became flesh and lived among us.”
The church has always known that affirming the incarnation was like carrying around a lighted stick of dynamite.
On the one hand, it is capable of blasting away virtually everyone who prefers less fleshy brands of religion. However many inward turns the spiritual path may take, for the Christian the path eventually leads out to the world of flesh where we are called to meet Jesus in human community.
On the other hand, the reality of the incarnation blows up the naïve notion that humankind is quite capable of “saving” itself. To use John’s language, darkness was everywhere. In Jesus, God entered creation, became flesh, and all the darkness in the world cannot overcome that saving act.
The incarnation means that – appearances to the contrary – all human life and history is infused with holiness. But this does not mean that life is a lark or that we are called to sing as a hymn the words of the song “Everything is beautiful in its own way.”
Anyone who has seen the torture chambers of the Nazi regime, any surgeon who has removed a malignant tumor, and reformer who has tried to clean up government, knows that everything is not beautiful in its own way.
To affirm the reality of the incarnation does not imply that life is rosy, or that people always do the right thing, or even the best they can. It does not mean that people do not waste their lives, get hurt, or hurt other people. It does not mean that there is no hardship, no drudgery, no evil, no tragedy.
What the incarnation does mean is that there is no corner of experience so hidden that God’s grace cannot find it. There is no soil so sterile that the seed of wonder cannot grow in it. There is no moment so dark that it can extinguish the light of God.
Christians celebrate the God who enters the life of creation in order to identify with it and in order to redeem it.
When Christians say, “The Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth,” they do not mean that God is everything, but that God is in everything.
In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard told about seeing a mockingbird dive straight down off the roof of a high building. The mockingbird, wings held tightly against its body, descending at thirty-two feet per second toward the earth, spread its wings at the last possible second, and floated onto the ground.
Dillard said she spotted this amazing display just as she rounded a corner. No one else was there to witness it.
She connected this event to the old philosophical question about the tree falling in the forest. If no one were there to hear it, goes the conundrum, would it really make a sound?
“The answer must be,” Dillard writes, “that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them.”
She adds, “The least we can do is try to be there.”
Because in Jesus God’s word became flesh, truth and grace are at work in every place, whether or not we sense them. What we can do, is to try to be there when grace and truth show up.
If we wonder where that might be, one good place to begin is by listening to the announcements.
Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR RELECTION
What one word or phrase stands out most for you in today’s Scripture reading from John? Why?
How has Jesus “shown up” for you this week?
What gives you the most joy?
CLOSING PRAYER Angela Ashwin, Contemporary
Jesus, Son of God,
now that we have heard the angels sing,
may we not lose our sense of the joy of heaven;
now that we have been with the shepherds to Bethlehem,
make us witnesses
of the wonder of the love we have seen.
Fill us with the quiet joy of Mary,
so that we, too,
may keep all these things
and ponder them in our hearts.
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: It Came upon the Midnight Clear (with lyrics)
Montrose Baptist Church You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.