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
May 9, 2020
Dear Friends,
The sun is just coming out on Saturday afternoon, lighting up the roses in our garden, and reminding me that today was the day for our Women’s Association Rose Garden Tea. Sadly, that event had to be cancelled due to the virus. But the roses are still there to enjoy, and this year they’re looking more beautiful than ever. If you get the chance, please stop by to admire them. Carole’s hours are Tuesday through Friday from 9:15 through 3:45, and mine are Wednesday through Sunday from 1 through 8. If the gate by the office area appears to be locked, the operative word is appears. It just looks that way. Just remove the open lock, let yourself in, and enjoy the roses.
May 10th is Millie Daniel’s 90th birthday. Happy Birthday Millie! We are deeply blessed to have you as part of this faith community.
We are still hoping to have Bill Daniel’s Celebration of Life service on July 11th, the day that would have marked Bill & Millie’s 70th Wedding Anniversary. If churches still have not been allowed to fully reopen by then, we’ll simply wait until the time is right. We want to be able to fully celebrate the life of this amazing person.
Dolores Joblon has sent the following announcements:
“Our congregation will not be doing the men’s ihelp dinner this month.
Cat and Christian Mendelsohn have stepped in and are sponsoring the dinner for the ihelp men who are sheltering in place at another ihelp church. The Mendelsohn’s are providing the food through the services of Stationaery, a restaurant in downtown Carmel. We are especially grateful to Christian and Cat since the logistics of getting food to the men would be overwhelming for our church! Thank you again for your generosity.
If anyone is interested in participating in an hour long ihelp for men and women online forum on Zoom on Thursday, May 14th at noon, contact me at djoblon@sbcglobal,net and I will give you all the details.”
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and I would like to share the following poem with you in honor of our mothers. It is by Elizabeth Jennings, a contemporary poet.
SUDDEN REMEMBRANCE
Orphaned and elderly and yet a child,
For so I am when thoughts of you return,
Return and batter me and I’m not mild
But close to tears and scarred for these tears burn.
You tamed me when most wild,
You comforted my nightmares, came and sat
Beside my bed when sleep was far away.
You were a healing presence. More than that,
You were a joy, a treasure, could display
High spirits when the flat
Dull mood took charge of me. You always were
Busy and quick and swift to suffer too,
But only now and then did I know fear
When I could see a troubled look on you.
Tonight you feel so dear.
It is a cold wet June, the flowers are blown
In tangled throngs, the charcoal clouds hang near
The tousled tree tops. Had we ever known
So dull a June? I doubt it. How I care
For you. Where have you gone?
My faith speaks of another life and I
Find your nature a right proof of that.
A child, I’d have you crowned up in the sky,
And growing old I see your star well set.
O your death will not die.
We’ve spent the last several weeks looking at some of the most important New Testament texts concerning Jesus’ Resurrection. This Sunday we return to the Old Testament part of our relatively new sermon series on the most important texts in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. We’ll do a bit of necessary review, then plunge into the story of the Burning Bush and God’s calling of Moses.
Take Good Care, Very Good Care, and remember that Jesus means God WITH Us, Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR MAY 10, 2020
OPENING READING (T. S. Eliot, 1888-1865)
From East Coker, part of the Four Quartets
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion…
SUGGESTED MUSIC Great is thy faithfulness Dutchforward You Tube
PASTORAL PRAYER (David Adam, Contemporary)
God, I am poured out. I come to you for renewal.
God, I am weary. I come to you for refreshment.
God, I am worn. I come to you for restoration.
God, I am lost. I come to you for guidance.
God, I am troubled. I come to you for peace.
God, I am lonely. I come to you for love.
Come, Loving God,
Come revive me
Come re-shape me
Come mold me in your image.
Re-cast me in the warmth of your love. Amen.
SCRIPTURE: Exodus 3:1-15, NRSV
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord said, “I have observed 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 from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey… The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites out of Egypt.” 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; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.”
Copyright 2020: Rev. Paul Wrightman
OUR CALL IS THE SAME AS THAT OF MOSES: SAME CALL, DIFFERERENT TASKS Exodus 3:1-15 5/10/20
Before we begin, I suggest that you listen to “Blackbird” by the Beatles on You Tube. I will be referring to it in this sermon.
Let’s return to the life of Jacob for a moment to give us context for the life of Joseph which, in turn, will give us the context we need to understand the calling of Moses.
Recall the story of Jacob’s simultaneously wrestling with himself and with God, an all-night encounter which was the pivotal turning point in his life. Speaking in broad brush strokes, we can say that before this event Jacob had defined himself as being selfish, ruthless, and manipulative.
During this event Jacob finally opens up and allows God to touch him deeply, so deeply, in fact, that after this encounter Jacob is on the road to becoming a person with real maturity, depth, and wisdom.
But before we connect with today’s text, in which we find Moses challenged to “grow up,” so to speak, after his own particularly intense confrontation with God, we need to say a few words about Joseph, son of Jacob and his favorite wife, Rachel.
Even though Jacob matures considerably after his wrestling match with God, he does not mature to the extent of putting a stop to the dysfunctionality of his family in terms of playing favorites with his children.
Most of us remember from Sunday School the cycle of stories about Joseph, Jacob’s oft-proclaimed preferred child.
We recall Jacob’s singling out Joseph with an expensive coat “of many colors,” and how his brothers, enraged with jealousy, throw Joseph into a pit, then sell him as a slave to a caravan of Midianites heading for Egypt. Joseph has many adventures in Egypt, ultimately becoming second in command to Pharaoh, and eventually becoming reconciled with his brothers.
The greatest feat which Joseph accomplished was to correctly interpret Pharaoh’s dream predicting an upcoming severe famine. Under Joseph’s command excess grain was stored for seven years to prepare for the coming seven years of famine.
What our Sunday School version of Joseph neglects to mention, but the Bible itself does not flinch from speaking of, is the fact that it was Joseph himself who made slaves of the Egyptians. The first year of the famine, after taking all their money to buy back their own surplus grain, the next year he demands all their livestock. Finally, we come to the fateful verses, Genesis 47:20-21, which tragically inform us:
“So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, Joseph made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.”
Wow! How ironic that Joseph, an Israelite, sets in motion the very process of slavery against the Egyptians that will eventually overwhelm his own people, and turn them into slaves.
This is an often overlooked karmic lesson from our own Scriptures: We had better beware of the negative things we set in motion. They have a tendency to expand until their consequences overwhelm – if not we ourselves – future generations connected to us.
Let’s jump forward four hundred and thirty years. The karmic tables have turned, and now the Israelites are the slaves of the Egyptians. The Egyptians are practicing a form of genocide against the Israelites, Pharaoh having ordered all the newly born male Hebrew slaves to be thrown into the River Nile and drowned.
We know the story of how Moses’ parents place him in a floating basket, how the miniature ark is discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter, how Moses is brought up as a prince in the royal court, how he eventually discovers his Hebrew identity, kills an Egyptian taskmaster he finds brutalizing one of his own Hebrew people, and is forced to flee for his life to the land of Midian – again a touch of Biblical irony, for it was the Midianites who four hundred years earlier had sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt.
Moses is now a shepherd, tending his father-in-law’s sheep, when he has the life-changing encounter with God described in our Scripture reading. Mt. Horeb is simply another name for Mt. Sinai. It is on the slopes of this mountain that Moses is confronted by God in the form of a bush which burns but is not consumed in its burning.
Such a singular sight of course captures Moses’ attention. But it also makes a significant theological point: Moses is about to be “set on fire” by God, so to speak, and like the burning bush, Moses will not be consumed in the process. Instead, Moses will be liberated by accepting his God-given vocation, liberated to become, in turn, a liberator.
The haunting lyrics of the short Beatles’ song “Blackbird” can apply not only to the broken Moses, but to Moses’ broken people, the Hebrews. They can be heard as a profound echo of Moses’ healing and the healing of Moses’ people:
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting
For this moment to arise.”
After God gets Moses’ attention, God calls Moses by name.
In past sermons we have encountered several major principles of Biblical interpretation. We met the principle of accommodation, where God is understood to condescend to meet people where they are in terms of their own historical, cultural, and personal limitations.
We met the principle of consistency, whereby God’s loving and forgiving nature is understood to be absolutely consistent and unchanging: God’s nature does not change; it is our human understanding of God’s nature that changes.
We met the principle of development, whereby our human understanding of God’s nature tends, in spite of occasional giant steps backward, to mature and to become more profound over time.
Today I would like to look at the principle of personal application, which means that Scripture encourages us to apply to ourselves the lessons learned and the vocations embraced by all the major characters described in the Bible.
In other words, we are personally invited to become part of the on-going story that the Bible began.
So when God calls Moses by name, we are not simply to hear God calling Moses by name, and leave it at that, we are encouraged to hear God calling each of us by name, empowering us as individuals and empowering us as a church for the unique tasks for which God has singled us out.
As we proceed through the rest of today’s biblical narrative, I invite you to hear it on two levels, as addresses to Moses, and as addressed to us.
After getting Moses’ attention through the burning bush, God identifies Godself: “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
This identification is intended to take away any fear on Moses’ part, and to remind him that both he and God are standing in continuity with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel.
I take it as significant that Joseph is not mentioned in this context, presumably because of his immorality in enslaving the Egyptians some four hundred years earlier.
God proceeds to share with Moses four truly awesome facts about Godself: God tells Moses, in the context of the misery of the enslaved Hebrews,
“I have observed,
I have heard,
I know,
and I have come down.”
Using the interpretive principle of personal application, we are given permission to apply these awesome character traits of God to our own impossible situations. When we are
enslaved by our addictions,
chained to our illnesses,
caught-up in our co-dependencies,
and mired in relational hassles,
we can hear God lovingly communicating to us:
“I have seen,
I have heard,
I know, and I have come down.
All this is implicit in God’s summary statement to Moses: “I will be with you.”
The little word with is perhaps the greatest theological word in the vocabulary of Judaism and Christianity. It makes both these great faith traditions intensely personal in terms of their understanding of the relationship between God and people.
“I will be with you.”
Just as God promised to be with Moses in Moses’ vocation to take on Pharaoh, God promises to be with Community Church in our vocation to take on, among other things, the oppression of homelessness.
God promises to be with Community Church in our vocation to welcome and affirm all persons, especially persons who have been exiled to the margins in terms of social status or sexual orientation.
God promises to be with Community Church in our vocation to concentrate on the original teachings of Jesus in terms of unceasing compassion, unconditional love, and creative nonviolence.
And God promises to be with us, not just as a community, but as individuals within this community: to be with us in all our personal challenges and struggles, to be with us in all our triumphs and joys.
It is worth noting that immediately after God tells Moses that God has seen, heard, known, and come down, giving Moses the expectation that God will be the one to take on the Egyptians, God turns the table on Moses and tells him: “So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
The first words out of Moses’ mouth to this announcement are: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
It is in response to this question that God tells Moses that God will be with him.
God’s promised presence is not enough for Moses, however, and he tries to get off the hook by complaining that the Israelites will not believe that God is really with him unless he can reveal to them God’s personal name.
At this point God reveals God’s famous name to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” which, as the Jewish scholar Martin Buber contends, is really no revelation at all, but God’s definitive rejection of all attempts to use God’s name in magical ways; magical ways which were quite prevalent at that time, and, unfortunately, still are in our time.
So God – I believe almost jokingly – replies to Moses when he asks the divine name he is to reveal to the Israelites: “Tell them that “I AM” has sent me to you.
Moses must have been horrified at this joke, being well aware of the violent response the obtuse statement “I AM has sent me to you,” would have provoked in the people – he would have been laughed out of town or stoned on the spot.
So God, having made the point that God’s personal name is not to be messed with – that God will be who God will be, as some other translations have it – quickly goes on to give Moses permission to use the well-known name from the past: “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.”
Amazingly, and perhaps yet another point where we can identify with Moses, is that Moses comes up with three more excuses concerning why he is not the right person for the job. To each of these excuses God promises no magical solution, but merely offers variations on the theme that God will be with him.
Like Moses, this is the only response that God will give us to all our objections that we are not the right person or the right church for the job at hand.
And yet, when we pause to reflect on it, what an incredible promise God has given us: to be unconditionally, irrevocably with us, both as individuals and as a church.
With this reality of Emmanuel, the name of Jesus meaning – you guessed it – “God-with-Us,” we too can be healed and made whole like the blackbird in the Beatles’ song:
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.
Amen.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
It’s all-too-easy to look at people like Abraham and Moses and to consider them as larger-than-life figures whom we could never be like ourselves. How does the long-standing interpretive principle of personal application address this issue?
The Bible is honest about Joseph’s enslavement of the Egyptians. It is also honest about King Solomon’s building the Temple in Jerusalem with the forced labor of his own people. Jews and Christians rarely, if ever, hear about this brutal aspect of Joseph and Solomon. Why do you think this is so? How important do you think it is to communicate the whole truth about some of the heroes of our faith?
Please describe an experience in which you deeply felt that God actually was with you. What did you learn from this experience? How does it still impact your life today?
CLOSING PRAYER (Angela Ashwin, Contemporary)
Loving God,
through weariness and hurt,
through disaster on the news,
through headaches and depression,
I am still yours.
I do not understand,
but I believe that you are here
in the dark places of human life,
and that nothing
can take us out of your hands.
Amen.
RECOMMENDED MUSIC Take my life and let it be hymn Dutchforward You Tube
Isbaptist Toronto
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.