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
June 7, 2020
Dear Friends,
What a difference a week can make! I can’t remember a time like this in our country since the 60’s. It’s fascinating that we’re currently caught up in considering the Ten Commandments in our sermon series on the most important texts in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. Few places in Scripture reveal to us God’s own passion for justice and equality more than these texts.
As your Pastor, I would be at fault if I didn’t attempt to connect today’s text to what is going on in our nation right now. While the Bible makes it clear that God expects all God’s followers to seek to become more and more like God in terms of their own values and living out of those values, it does not attempt to tell us how to go about doing this. It simply assumes that all disciples of the true God will seriously seek to apply God’s vision and values to the unique circumstances of their own lives. I see my job as one of trying to make clear what God expects of us. It is ALL of our jobs to rise to the challenge of embodying – living out – God’s vision of justice and equality in the particularities of each of our lives. The current situation could well be the greatest opportunity in our lifetimes to set some things right that have needed to be set right for a very long time.
From Cindi and Millie Daniel: “”I am so honored as well as delighted and amazed at the creative quilt squares all of you have made as tributes to my Dad, family, and our Church. Thank you so much for the thoughtfulness of those who assisted others in insuring that everyone was included in the quilt.”
From Dolores Joblon: “We will again be providing a dinner on Wednesday June 10 to the IHelp men who are sheltering in place at a church here on the Monterey Peninsula. A donor who doesn’t want to be identified has generously supplied funds to have Jeffrey’s Restaurant in Carmel Valley provide them with a hearty meal. Thank you for your help in this time of need.”
This week the Board will be talking about when and how to reopen our church. Just like the various states, I’ve learned that different denominations and different churches have very different ideas as to the “when.” First Presbyterian, Monterey, has set a tentative date of September 6th. The Roman Catholic Diocese is reopening this coming week. And the Episcopal Diocese has such a rigorous reopening plan that one wonders if any Episcopal churches will be allowed to reopen for those over 60 until a vaccine or successful treatment is developed. I suspect that CCMP will fall somewhere in the “middle” of this. And I know that our plan, researched and proposed by JoAnn Holbrook, Pam Klaumann, and Richard Gray, will see to it that we stay safe.
It’s exciting to have another poem by Dodie Barkley Scardina addressing God:
TO YOU
Ah, the vast currents of electricity
between us –
anticipation – a strange pulse!
Unknowingness –
Wondering dreams?
A surging, mystical urge to blend,
like the purest streams on Earth,
Pooling, then moving, pooling again,
then moving towards the grandest
of the ocean’s depths –
to YOU!
Finally, please keep Jacklyn Finley and Chuck Scardina in your prayers. Jacklyn fell down and broke a wrist and knee cap. She is currently at Westland House, and making good progress getting well. Chuck is struggling a lot with the challenges of just getting around and not having many good days.
And remember that Jesus is Emmanuel, God WITH us! Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR JUNE 7, 2020
INTRODUCTORY READING (D. M. Lewis, Contemporary)
The Harrowing of Hell
Love asks to penetrate
The hot dark place,
The place of pain,
From which the sons of light
Hide their modest faces.
Love is allowed.
And oh! what gnashing of teeth
Among the demons
Who thought it was their own!
SUGGESTED MUSIC For the Healing of the Nations Hymn Jon Linton You Tube
(This is instrumental, with lyrics. Try singing (or saying) the words to the music and you will turn this into a prayer.)
OPENING PRAYER (Cecil Kerr, Contemporary)
Lord Jesus Christ, you are the way of justice and peace.
Come into the brokenness of our lives and our land
with your healing love.
Help us to be willing to come before you in true repentance,
and to offer one another real forgiveness.
By the fire of your Holy Spirit, melt our hard hearts
and consume the pride and prejudice which separate us.
Fill us, O Lord, with your perfect love which casts out all fear
and bind us together in that unity
which you share with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE: Exodus 20:8-11, NRSV
Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
Copyright 2020: Rev. Paul Wrightman
WHEN REST IS MORE THAN REST Exodus 20:8-11 6/7/20
(Please note that the many underlinings are my attempt to show what I would emphasize if delivering orally.)
We continue our sermon series on the most important texts in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. We are currently in that part of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, which Christians know as the Ten Commandments and our Jewish brothers and sisters known as ten all-important life-giving words, or teachings, from God.
We have seen how these “commandments” – far from being arbitrary and legalistic limitations on human freedom – are actually some of the greatest safeguards concerning human life and human freedom that have ever been given on this planet.
The word “Sabbath” in Hebrew literally means “to cease working.” Thus, the most obvious meaning of the fourth commandment is that human beings are instructed by God to not work on one day out of each week. Many have remarked that of all the commandments, this fourth word, “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy,” is the least practiced in our culture.
Each of the commandments contains within itself a future trajectory. Let us grant that God really did reveal something above and beyond the normal range of human cognition to Moses on Mt. Sinai in that fateful encounter some thirty-three hundred years ago. If this is indeed the case, then it’s not going too far to extrapolate from this and to say that way back then God already suspected how easy it would be for many people to make an idol out of work, to put work first in their lives instead of God, instead of their relationships with others, instead of even their relationship with self.
God, surmising this, gave us the instruction to set aside one day a week as a day of rest, the word “rest” actually being much closer in meaning to our word “play,” than it is to “rest” in the sense of cessation of activity. Indeed, it would not be going too far to say that God, knowing our propensity to idolize work, instructed us to take a day off to play and pray in the hope of helping us to keep our lives in balance.
There’s a story making the rounds that I think nicely captures the idolatry – and absurdity – when work becomes everything, when work becomes an end-in-itself:
In a quiet Mexican fishing village in Baja California, an American on vacation was watching a local fisherman unload his morning catch.
The American, a professor at a prestigious graduate school of business, couldn’t resist giving the Mexican fisherman a little bit of free advice.
“Hey!” he began. “Why are you finishing so early?”
“Since I have caught enough fish, senor,” replied the genial Mexican, “Enough to feed my family and a little extra to sell. Now I will take some lunch with my wife and, after a little siesta in the afternoon, I will play with my children. Then, after dinner, I will go to the cantina, drink a little tequila and play some guitar with my friends. It is enough for me, senor.”
“Listen to me, my friend,” said the business professor.
“If you stay out at sea until late afternoon, you will easily catch twice as many fish. You can sell the extra, save up the money, and in six months you’ll be able to buy a bigger and better boat and hire some crew. If you follow this business plan, in six or seven years you will be the owner of a large fishing fleet. Just imagine that! Then you could move your head office to Mexico City, or even to Palo Alto.
After three or four years there, you float your company on the stock market, giving yourself, as CEO, a generous salary package with substantial share options. In a few more years – listen to this! – you initiate a company share buy-back scheme, which will make you a multimillionaire! Guaranteed! I’m a well-known professor at the number one rated business school in the world; I know these things.”
The Mexican fisherman listened thoughtfully at what the animated American had to say. When the professor had finished, the Mexican asked him, “But, senior professor, what will I do with so many millions of dollars?”
The American responded: “Amigo! With all that dough, you can retire. Yeah! Retire for life. You can buy a little villa in a picturesque fishing village like this one, and purchase a boat for going fishing in the morning. You can have lunch with your wife every day, and a siesta afterwards with nothing to bother you. In the afternoon you can spend quality time with your kids, and after dinner in the evening, play guitar with your friends in the cantina, drinking tequila. Yeah, with all that money, my friend, you can retire and take it easy.”
“But, senior professor, I do all that already. But, senor professor, I do all that already.”
I found this story in a collection of teaching stories by Ajahn Brahm, Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?, pp. 193-194.
Just to make sure we get the point, in the tradition of Aesop’s Fables, Brahm tacks on this moral at the end: “Why do we believe that we have to work so hard and get rich first, before we can find contentment?”
I suspect that God was thinking very much along these lines when sharing with us this fourth life-giving word: “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.”
But there’s more, much more.
In studying ancient law codes, scholars are quick to note that while several of the commandments are at least partially echoed in the legal statutes of other cultures, this fourth word about observing a Sabbath day, a day of rest, or better, a day of play and pray, is without parallel.
In other words, the commandment about the Sabbath is unique to the Hebrews.
And all we need to do to figure out why this teaching was unique to the Hebrews is to remember the historical context in which this teaching was given.
We are told at the beginning of the biblical book of Exodus that the Hebrews had been enslaved by the Egyptians for many generations. One of the most dramatic scenes in the entire Bible occurs when God encounters Moses at the burning bush and says to him: “I have seen the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.” (Exodus 3:7-8a)
Unlike the gods of all the other nations, who specialized in multiple forms of slavery, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses is bound and determined to create a truly free people.
But how does one take a bunch of recently freed slaves and shape them, form them, into a community where freedom and equality are not the exception but the rule?
God does this by revealing to this people ten life-giving words, which if actually followed, would result in a radically different kind of society, the kind of society where respect for life and truth and the well-being of all were lived out on a day-to-day basis.
Note what comes after the summary statement “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” God goes on to include a shockingly diverse and inclusive collection of people and beings to whom and for whom this fourth life-giving word is addressed: “You shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”
One of the wonderful things about the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses is that God meets the people where they’re actually at, not where God would like them to be.
And where they’re actually at is having slaves of their own, in spite of having recently been freed from slavery themselves. God, knowing that ordering the people to give up their slaves immediately would be asking too much too fast, and would probably result in an even deeper attachment to slavery, God, knowing that, does something very subtle:
God commands that on one day out of seven, everyone: free, slaves, resident aliens, even livestock, will take a break from work together. In this teaching on the Sabbath, where all are equal for at least one day a week, God is planting a seed, a seed which God hopes will eventually grow into a movement which will overturn the ownership of one human being by another.
God is also planting a seed which God hopes will gradually grow into a movement where resident aliens are treated as equals.
Throughout the Hebrew Scripture God keeps reminding the people that they were once slaves in Egypt, the strong implication being since they themselves were once slaves, they will want to do everything in their power to keep from re-enslaving themselves, or enslaving others.
Another way of putting this would be to say that they are never, ever to act as Pharaoh towards anyone or anything.
And here is where the rubber meets the road in terms of the current situation in our own country. The Bible itself is absolutely clear that enslaving others is antithetical to God. “Enslaving” is consistently understood in a broad way to include anything that keeps another person down, treats another as a second-class citizen, is critical or mocking of someone else because they are “different.” And God shows the same concern for resident aliens (read “immigrants”) that he does for slaves! A consistent refrain through the entire Old Testament is the injunction to welcome the stranger. Jesus makes God’s concern for those who are different his own, and makes welcoming the stranger one of the main criteria on which God will judge whether or not one is welcomed into God’s kingdom.
God’s concern for slaves and strangers is not secondary to the message of the Bible, but central. And what God incarnates in Godself, God expects God’s followers to embody in themselves. According to this clear biblical standard, many American Christians have been woefully lacking and stand in danger of God’s judgment.
One of the great opportunities of this critical time in the life of our nation is that Christians – ALL Christians – now have the opportunity to stand up for those who have been assigned unequal rights and opportunities because they fall into one of the two broad categories of “slave” or “stranger.” This standing with and standing up for is always to be done nonviolently. The Bible is unequivocal on that point. But it is just as unequivocal that ALL followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus are expected (commanded!) to actually DO this. In other words, working for justice and peace is not a recommendation on God’s part, but a requirement. Of course different people in different life circumstances will fulfill this requirement in different ways, but fulfill it they must. It is not optional.
The social unrest in our country right now gives Christians of all stripes the chance to tear down walls between people and build bridges instead. It gives us the opportunity as citizens to campaign for and to support candidates whose values support God’s own values as revealed in the Bible and taught by Jesus. What a wonderful chance for Christians to develop a shared emphasis on justice and peace issues and to deeply touch our wounded culture for good.
Specifically, concerning this fourth life-giving word regarding the Sabbath, we need to rephrase, saying that since we were once slaves, we will want to do everything in our power to keep from re-enslaving ourselves or enslaving others.
According to God’s deepest will for us, we are never, ever to act as Pharaoh toward anyone or anything.
Amen.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
How do you keep the Sabbath day holy?
Similar to a question from last week: Why is the historical context of the Ten Commandments so important, and how does this historical context impact their meaning?
How can you expand your own tradition of keeping the Sabbath holy?
CLOSING PRAYER (Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB, Contemporary)
Spirit of Justice,
Break open our hearts.
Break them wide open.
Let anger pour through
Like strong storms,
Cleansing us of complacency.
Let courage pour through
Like spring storms,
Flooding out fear.
Let zeal pour through
Like blazing summer sun,
Filling us with passion.
Spirit of Justice, grant me
Anger at what is,
Courage to do what must be done,
Passion to break down the walls of
Injustice
And build a land
Flowing with milk and honey
For God’s beloved.
God’s special love.
God’s poor ones.
Spirit of Justice,
Break open our hearts.
Amen.
RECOMMENDED MUSIC Civil Rights Music Video “We Shall Overcome” by Pete Seeger You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN