14-06 - Community Church of the Monterey Peninsula

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 14, 2020

Dear Friends,

Many in our Christian family have been asking when the church will reopen for worship. Our Board of Governors has appointed a task force consisting of JoAnn Holbrook, Dr. Richard Gray, and Pam Klaumann to draft a detailed reopening plan. This will be presented to the Board on June 21st for approval. Current developments in California, including some churches that allowed memorial services and then found that they had provided the environment for a bunch of new COVID-19 cases, argue against moving forward too quickly. As soon as the Board comes up with a definite plan they will communicate that plan to you by letter. This means that we should have a proposed reopening date to look forward to by the end of this month.

Pam Klaumann’s father, William Baldwin, departed for the life-after-death stage of the adventure of life on Thursday evening, June 11th. He was 96 years old. He was deeply loved and will be deeply missed. With Bill’s passing, Linda Lyon also lost an uncle, and Bev Pugh a brother-in-law.

Lois Varner & Judy Peiken need a helping hand. They are living at Park Lane and have been living under lockdown since the middle of March. No visitors allowed. Meals brought to their room. One of the hardest challenges for them has been on-going care for their two dogs. They have been able to temporarily foster one dog, but are in need of someone to temporarily foster the other. Brandy is 12 years old, 35 pounds, very gentle, and pretty much just eats and sleeps. And needs to be walked daily. Lois & Judy are looking for someone to take Brandy in until the lockdown is lifted at Park Lane. If you can help or need more information, please call Lois at 277-9598.

We continue our sermon series on the most important texts in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. We are in that part of the Old Testament which Christians know as the Ten Commandments. We have been considering each commandment in order. Today’s commandment was supposed to be “Honor your father and mother.” But because next Sunday is Father’s Day, I’ve decided to save this commandment for then. This week we’ll look at “You shall not kill.”

I pray that everyone connected with Community Church is able to stay safe and happy.

Remember that Jesus is Emmanuel – God WITH us, Paul

WORSHIP SERVICE FOR JUNE 14, 2020

INTRODUCTORY READING (From Mishkan T’Filah, the prayer book of Reformed Judaism)

YOU HAVE CALLED US to peace, for You are Peace.

Grant us the vision to realize these aims:

Where there are ignorance and superstition,

let there be enlightenment and knowledge.

Where there are prejudice and hatred,

let there be acceptance and love.

Where there are fear and suspicion,

let there be confidence and trust.

Where there are tyranny and oppression,

let there be freedom and justice.

Where there are poverty and disease,

let there be prosperity and health.

Where there are strife and discord,

let there be harmony and peace.

Amen.

SUGGESTED MUSIC Prayer of St. Francis (With Lyrics by Sebastian Temple) Annie Isbilir Youtube

OPENING PRAYER (Pax Christi USA)

Come Spirit of God, grant us

The power to be gentle,

The strength to be forgiving,

The patience to be understanding,

The endurance to accept the consequences

Of holding on to what is right.

Come Spirit of God, help us to put our trust in

The power of good to overcome evil,

The power of love to overcome hatred.

Come Spirit of God, enlighten us

With the vision to see and the faith to believe in

A world free from violence,

A new world where fear will no longer lead us

To commit injustices,

Nor selfishness cause us to bring suffering to others.

Come Spirit of wisdom and love,

Source of all good, teach us your truth

And guide our actions in your way of peace.

Amen.

SCRIPTURE: Exodus 20:13

You shall not kill.

SERMON

GOD’S VISION FOR PEACE WAS WAY AHEAD OF MOSES’ TIME –

AND CONTINUES TO BE WAY AHEAD OF OUR TIME

(The underlinings are simply to indicate where I would emphasize a word if delivered orally.)

Unlike many of our contemporaries, who see the Ten Commandments as limitations on our freedom, our Jewish brothers and sisters who practice their faith see them as the invaluable gift of ten life-giving words from God whose intent is to teach us how to live, how to live abundantly.

I, personally, am fully persuaded that Moses was one of a very, very small group of persons who we might designate as religious “giants,” or religious “geniuses” – persons who in their encounter with God received revelation that was not merely addressed to them as individuals, but revelation which God intended to flow through them to shape the life of a people, and then, through that people, to transform humanity as a whole.

Already we have seen how the Ten Commandments are uncannily up to date: They are as relevant for life today as they were when they were given some three thousand three hundred years ago.

Another uncanny aspect of the commandments is that they contained dimensions of transformation which were way ahead of their time and which had to be grown into.

For example, the seventh word, “You shall not commit adultery,” which we will be looking at in two weeks, should not exist as a distinct commandment at all. Given the fact that at the time the commandments were given, wives were considered to be the property of their husbands, there was no need for a commandment having to do with adultery. Property was already covered by the eighth word, “You shall not steal.”

The intent of the commandment concerning adultery was specifically to affirm and protect the marriage relationship as the master-metaphor for the relationship between God and human beings.

It took about five centuries for the relational implications of the seventh word concerning marriage to be seen and affirmed by some of the great prophets of Israel: Hosea and Isaiah in particular.

It looks very much as if God revealed these ten commandments, these ten life-giving words, knowing that they were way ahead of their time and that the Hebrew people would take centuries, indeed, millennia, to grow into them.

This is very much the case with the commandment we are focusing on today, “You shall not kill.”

First of all, a comment on translation, or, more accurately, mistranslation.

Several years ago, when we looked at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we saw how it very much looked like there was a sustained attempt on the part of contemporary translators of the Bible into English, to water-down the challenge of Jesus’ teachings by consistently choosing the more “spiritual” alternative. Thus, whereas contemporary Spanish, French, German, and Italian translations regularly use the word justice, meaning restorative justice for those whom society has ripped-off, the huge majority of current English translations use the word “righteousness,” which tends to spirit-away any concrete demands that Jesus may be making of us.

A variation on this theme of spiriting-away any uncomfortable challenges by getting rid of them in the process of translation, can be seen in the translation of today’s commandment, which almost all contemporary English translations render as “You shall not murder,” instead of the more accurate, more inclusive, and infinitely more demanding “You shall not “kill.” (Somewhat surprisingly, the King James Version of 1611 gets it right: “Thou shalt not kill.”

How do we know that the correct word is “kill,” and not “murder?” --We know from the context in which the word occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures. Since the Hebrew word used in this commandment is used to describe all sorts of kinds of killing, accidental, intentional, even legal, the range of the word is broad, meaning “to kill ,”and not narrow, meaning “to murder.”

Here, too, I suspect something of a cover-up. Given our all-too-human propensity to kill, given our endless wars, and the endless rationalizing of our wars in the name of God, the original meaning of the sixth commandment, “You shall not kill,” is just too much, too big, and too universal for us.

We can live with “You shall not murder,” because most of us are not murderers. But “You shall not kill” implicates all of us because it implicates the killing practiced by all governments, very much including our own.

We mentioned how the seventh commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” was actually way ahead of its time, and how it took five hundred years for the prophets to pick up on its relational implications.

The same dynamic was and is at work in this sixth commandment, “You shall not kill.”

We have the ironic situation of God revealing God’s deepest will to Moses, “You shall not kill,” while at the same time the very people to whom God gave this commandment continued to believe that it was this same God who told them to go to war and who fought on their side.

Here again we are pushed to ask the question “Does God follow God’s own commandments?”

Does God follow God’s own commandments?

Many of us would answer this question with a resounding “Yes!”

But if God does follow God’s own commandments, and a major commandment for God is “You shall not kill,” this can only mean that all those times in the Old Testament when God is portrayed as invoking and even participating in warfare are nothing more than human beings projecting their own violence onto God.

To repeat: If the most profound parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, such as the Ten Commandments and the Suffering Servant Songs in the book of the prophet Isaiah reveal God to be nonviolent, and this understanding of God as nonviolent is endorsed by Jesus, this can only mean that all the violence attributed to God in the Bible is not God’s violence, but human violence dressed up as God’s.

If the Ten Commandments give us a glimpse into the deepest heart and will of God, then they are way ahead of where the Hebrew people were at the time they were given. Indeed, they are way ahead of where the majority of Christians are in the world today.

Kings like David and Solomon may have sincerely believed that they were fighting God’s wars, but, in reality, they were simply projecting their own will-to-power, their own addiction to violence, onto God, using God’s name and God’s will to justify the wars that they were already bound and determined to fight. God’s deepest will regarding war had already been revealed in the Ten Commandments: “You shall not kill.” Period.

The proclivity of contemporary English-language translators to water-down the original meaning of commandments which they deem to be too difficult and too challenging, wreaks havoc on the original teachings of Jesus.

Thus, in the Sermon on the Mount, which in many ways is Jesus’ own personal commentary on the Ten Commandments, when Jesus expands on the meaning of the sixth commandment, linking it to anger (Matthew 5:22), and expanding it to cover one’s enemies as well as one’s neighbors (Matthew 5:43-48), almost all contemporary English translations mistranslate and have Jesus say, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’”

The correct translation is: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not kill, and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’” (Matthew 5:21)

The use of the word “murder” instead of “kill” pretty much takes the sting out of Jesus’ command to love our enemies. Since war is never defined in terms of murder, but always in terms of lawful killing, translating Jesus as taking on murder in its limited sense and not killing in general, seems to provide scriptural justification for being able to “love” one’s enemy while at the same time killing one’s enemy.

Since we have defined murder out of war, when we kill someone in warfare it is no longer murder, and we can still consider ourselves to be good Christians.

Today the overwhelming consensus of Biblical scholars and systematic theologians is that just as Jesus proclaimed God’s unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness, so also Jesus commanded his followers to live out unconditional nonviolence and love of enemy. And this unconditional nonviolence and love of enemy was exactly what the early church unequivocally practiced.

This all changed when the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great allegedly became a Christian, and set the stage for Christianity to become the state religion, complete with the state trappings of “God-inspired” wars and crusades.

Ever since the time of Constantine, Christianity has largely been a religion of empire, blessing conquest, crusade, and the genocide of millions of native peoples as “God’s will.”

All this in spite of the fact that “God’s will” as endorsed by empire was often exactly the opposite of God’s will as revealed by Jesus.

At this point I have to get personal.

Even though I believe that God meant the commandment “You shall not kill,” to be binding, and even though I believe that Jesus really meant it when he commanded us to love our enemies, I also believe that there have been two wars in recent times where fighting was necessary, even though a necessary evil. I’m talking about the Second World War and Korea.

I find the example of the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be paradigmatic for me here. Bonhoeffer was convinced that Jesus taught the way of nonviolence. But Bonhoeffer became convinced that nonviolence was incapable of stopping Hitler. Faced with an impossible situation, Bonhoeffer chose to take part in an assassination plot to kill Hitler.

For advocating violence against Hitler, Bonhoeffer acknowledged that he was, indeed, breaking God’s law, and for that he asked God’s forgiveness.

If we are to regain our integrity as Christians concerning God’s commandment against killing, I think it is far more honest to acknowledge the unconditional nature of God’s law, like Bonhoeffer, and ask God’s forgiveness when we are faced with an impossible situation and cannot keep God’s law.

Who are we kidding when we blatantly change the wording of God’s law supposedly making it possible for God to bless our recent wars, which no Christian attempting to follow the actual teachings of Jesus should have supported, much less championed?

In the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus links outward violence with an inner attitude of anger. Jesus is telling us, in other words, that violence has its roots in anger, and that if we are to really deal with our violence, we need to deal with our anger first. (See Matthew 5:21-22)

Later in the same sermon, Jesus advocates not resisting evil with evil. (See Matthew 5:38-42)

May God bless our efforts to grow in our understanding and practice of the Ten Commandments – God’s ten life-giving words, which, if anything, are even more relevant and challenging today than they were thirty three centuries ago.

May God bless our efforts to work with restorative justice and nonviolence for peace.

Amen.

REFLECTION ACTIVITY

Make a list of the situations in which you tend to be angry, hostile, and defensive. Then, for each negative reaction, come up with a creative, peace-making response which would parallel Jesus’ admonition to walk a second mile with a perceived enemy.

CLOSING PRAYER (Robin Green, Contemporary)

Giver of Life,

we wait with you

to bear your hope

to earth’s darkest places.

We wait with you at the places

where darkness is deeper than the deepest pain:

Where love is denied:

let love break through.

Where justice is destroyed:

let it be reborn.

Where hope is crucified:

let faith persist.

Where peace is no more:

let the cry for peace

and work for peace live on.

Where truth is denied:

let the struggle for truth continue.

Where laughter has dried up:

let the music play on.

Where fear paralyses:

let forgiveness break through.

Amen.

RECOMMENDED MUSIC Let There Be Peace on Earth – Sing Along

Moon Mullen You Tube

BENEDICTION

Patiently and persistently, God loves.

Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.

Now and forever, God loves.

Amen.