30-05 - 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

May 31, 2020

Dear Friends,

What challenging times we are living through right now! Not only are we struggling to make it through COVID 19, the brutal killing of yet another unarmed black man in Minneapolis, George Floyd, has unleashed a flood of anger and violence throughout the country. I really resonated with the message that Nike put out on video regarding the rampant racism in the United States. Remember that their motto is “Just Do It!” Here’s the text of the video:

For once,

Don’t Do It

Don’t pretend there’s

not a problem in America.

Don’t turn your back on racism.

Don’t accept innocent

lives being taken from us.

Don’t make any more excuses.

Don’t think this doesn’t affect you.

Don’t sit back and be silent.

Don’t think you can’t be part of the change.

Let’s all be part of the change.

I would like to offer this prayer as part of a real Christian response to the challenge of racism. But we need always to remember that prayers for justice and peace need to be accompanied by actually working for justice and peace.

O God, who has made all races

to dwell upon the earth as one family:

Break down the barriers of fear

and suspicion that divide us.

Build bridges of love and justice which lead us

to greet one another as brothers and sisters

and to embrace one another in reconciling fellowship.

Gathering us hand to hand,

lead us to join with you

to make this earth fair

and life a blessing to ALL.

Amen.

On our home front, our Board of Governors recently held its second meeting by conference call. At that meeting Richard Gray, Pam Klaumann, and JoAnn Holbrook volunteered to draft a proposal for Community Church’s gradual reopening. The sense I got was that the operative word here is GRADUAL. We won’t be rushing into anything, but we are making concrete plans to be able to worship together again in another month or so. I will keep you up to date on all developments in this introductory part of our weekly worship service.

Remember that Jesus is Emmanuel, God WITH Us! Paul

WORSHIP SERVICE FOR MAY 31, 2020

INTRODUCTORY READING (Karl Rahner, S.J., Contemporary)

…it is not the case that each of us as an individual thinks “God” in an active process and that in this way the word “God” enters into the realm of our existence for the first time. Rather, we hear and receive the word “God.” It comes to us in the history of language in which we are caught whether we want to be or not, which poses questions to us as individuals without itself being at our disposal. The history of language which is given to us, and in which the word “God” occurs as a question to us, is in this way an image and likeness of what it announces. We should not think that, because the phonetic sound of the word “God” is always dependent on us, therefore the word “God” is also our creation. Rather it creates us because it makes us human beings.

RECOMMENDED MUSIC “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” SE Samonte You Tube

OPENING PRAYER (Henry Sloane Coffin, 1877-1954)

Almighty and ever living God,

You are beyond the grasp of our highest thought,

But within the reach of our frailest trust;

Come in the beauty of the morning’s light and

Reveal Yourself to us.

Enrich us out of the heritage of seers and scholars and saints

Into whose faith and labors we have entered.

And quicken us to new insights for our time;

That we may be possessors of the truth of many

Yesterdays, partakers of your thoughts for today,

And creators with you of a better tomorrow.

Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING Exodus 20:7

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.

THE REAL MEANING OF REVERING GOD’S NAME Exodus 20:77 5/31/20

(Please note that the point of the numerous underlinings is simply to indicate where I would place emphasis if I were able to deliver this sermon orally.)

The commandment, or life-giving word from God, that we are looking at today, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God,” has been whittled-down and watered-down in popular usage to the point where it has become simply a law against cursing.

While cursing, or using foul-mouthed street language, is certainly not something that the Bible condones, it is far from the original meaning of this commandment, which is about arrogant human attempts to manipulate God by manipulating God’s name.

Let’s unpack this.

In the ancient world of Israel’s neighbors, it was assumed that if you knew the name of a God, you were automatically plugged into the power that that God possessed.

Not surprisingly, the priestly castes in Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia claimed to know many secret names of the gods whom they were in charge of, secret names which enabled them to manipulate, even coerce the various gods to do their bidding. Needless to say, this gave the priests a vast amount of power. Only they had access to the secret names of the gods, only they were allowed to use these secret names, so one had better approach them with deference, and in many cases, with a financial offering for services rendered.

This process was decisively abolished by the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.

God definitively reveals Godself to Moses in the encounter by the burning bush, and the context of that revelation is all-important. Before God shares God’s proper name, as it were, with him, God tells Moses: “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)

Only after revealing the historical context in which the divine power is operative, does God go on to reveal to Moses God’s name, the four sacred letters, YHWH, which English and German transcribe as “YAHWEH,” and which is almost always translated in an abstract, metaphysical way as “I AM WHO I AM.”

Jewish Biblical scholar, philosopher, and theologian Martin Buber will have none of this and argues persuasively that God did not reveal Godself as some metaphysical abstraction to Moses, but much more concretely and personally as “I am with you,” or, in expanded form, as “I was with you, I am with you, and I shall always be with you.”

God’s name, “Yahweh,” “I am with you,” according to the Hebrew Scriptures as a whole, is never,

ever to be separated from the historical context in which God made Godself known: namely, the exodus experience , which has always been, and will always continue to be, paradigmatic, absolutely foundational for the Jewish people, and should be for Christians as well.

Thus, when God gives the Ten Commandments, the ten life-giving words, to Moses on Mt. Sinai, God’s first word is not a commandment, or instruction, but a reminder of God’s name, and how that name is to be understood: “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)

Unlike the gods of Israel’s neighbors, who have secret names known only by the priests, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses instructs Moses to reveal God’s name to the people as a whole.

God’s proper name, Yahweh, occurs nearly seven thousand times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and it is always to be understood in the context of the primordial experience of liberation from slavery in Egypt.

Thus, whenever an observant Jewish person hears the proper name of God – which, incidentally, is considered to be so holy that it is never directly pronounced, but covered by a circumlocution such as “the Lord your God” – they immediately add in their hearts and minds the defining phrase “Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Thus, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses is first and foremost a God of liberation, a God, ultimately, who wants to see all human beings freed from all forms of oppression.

Many of us who are followers of Jesus believe that God’s name, “I am with you,” has become flesh-and-blood in Jesus of Nazareth, one of whose names is Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.”

Jesus simply mirrors the God of Exodus when – inaugurating his public ministry at the synagogue in Nazareth – he proclaims: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

Returning now to the third commandment, the third life-giving word from God, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God,” we see at once that its meaning is much, much bigger, incredibly more radical, than our watered-down, domesticated reading of God asking us not to cuss or curse.

Since God’s name is synonymous with liberation, and the biblical meaning of liberation is ultimately synonymous with justice, the scope for misusing God’s name is exponentially expanded.

As persons striving to align our lives with the teachings of the Ten Commandments, every time we use God’s name in anger against another person;

Every time we use God’s name to manipulate someone into complying with what we want;

Every time we use God’s name to claim that God is on our side;

Every time we use God’s name to bless one of our wars;

Every time we do any of these things we are not only misusing, but abusing the name of God, violating the third commandment.

But the scope of this commandment is even bigger than this.

If we claim to be followers of the way, the way of Judaism or the way of Christianity, every time we act in a way that does not correspond to the deepest teachings about God in the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures, we are, to use the King James Version, “taking God’s name in vain.”

Thus, for practicing Jews and Christians, every time we act without compassion, every time we act without justice, indeed, every time we act out of fear rather than love, every time we act out of selfishness rather than generosity, every time we act out of anxiety rather than trust, every time we do these things we are reflecting a false image of God, and thus tarnishing the name of the God whom we claim to worship and to follow.

Many powerful examples of the vital connection between living-out justice and honoring the name of god come from the Hasidic tradition within Judaism.

The Hasids were and are mystics, mystics caught up in a passionate and ecstatic relationship with God. Significantly, it was the very closeness of their relationship with God that inspired them to embody God’s justice in very concrete ways. One of many possible examples:

Rabbi Yitzhak from Berdichev (a town in Poland) declared all the matzah made in the town factory to be unsuitable for Passover use. “Do you not see the young girls who work for pennies, forced to bake from dawn to dusk – never mind the lonely dark miles to and from home – so that you can feast while they go hungry?

Not kosher! Better not to celebrate Passover this year, and turn God into the supporter of the very slavery he came to abolish, than to eat this unholy bread. First, let us celebrate God’s justice; then we can celebrate God’s Passover.” (Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Open the Gates of Justice, amended.)

One of the biggest challenges with getting ourselves back in touch with the original meaning of the Ten Commandments, God’s ten life-giving words, is that their original meaning is so much bigger than we’re used to. They’re so big that we can get hopelessly discouraged, throw up our hands in despair, and simply give up even trying.

This is where the Jewish emphasis on life-giving words rather than legal commandments can be especially helpful.

Given our brokenness as human beings, commandments can only be broken.

Life-giving words, on the other hand, are meant to be grown into, not all at once, but one small step at a time.

The spiritual discipline most conducive to helping us gradually grow into a fuller and deeper honoring of God’s name, into a fuller and deeper living-out of our relationship with the God who is always with us, is the discipline of the examen, or, as our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters call it, “the examination of conscience.”

Dennis and Matthew Linn, prime movers in the healing prayer and retreat movements, offer a simple yet profound version of this discipline. They suggest that every night, before going to sleep, we ask ourselves two questions:

One: “Where today did I have the deepest sense of connection with God, others, and myself?

Two: “Where today did I have the least sense of connection?”

Honestly answering these two questions leads, on the one hand, to prayers of gratefulness for our times of connection, and, on the other hand, to ask for and to receive forgiveness for those times when we broke our connection with God, with others, and with our deepest selves.

Many Christians from many denominations have reported that asking and answering these two simple questions on a daily basis over the long haul has made God much more real for them, has moved them with a strong sense of desire to become more like this God whom they are getting to know, and has given them the power to actually live-out in their daily lives those famous words from the prophet Micah:

“What does God require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

AMEN.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Was there anything surprising to you about this approach to the third commandment?

Does God being opposed to oppression in all its forms shed any light on the current political turmoil in our own country today?

Try doing the Examination of Conscience several times this week. What did you learn?

CLOSING PRAYER (Ralph Ahlberg, Contemporary)

God of the past,

help us to let go of the things that hold us in bondage:

anger and resentment,

lingering doubt and disappointment,

guilt and failure,

and even the dusty laurels of some long gone success.

Help us to entrust our past to you

so that we are free to greet you.

God of the present,

let us be alive to the opportunities of each moment

and alert to the opportunities of this particular time

in our own lives and in the life of our nation.

Help us to be awake so that we may savor

the fullness of life as it unfolds right now.

God of the future,

give us a vision of hope that we may see beyond

the worries and discouragement and problems of today.

Help us to stretch our imaginations

so that we may be open to the changes

that your future makes possible.

In the shadow of your everlasting presence we pray.

Amen.

SUGGESTED MUSIC Leaning on the Everlasting Arms David Crowder Band You Tube

BENEDICTION

Patiently and persistently, God loves.

Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.

Now and forever, God loves.

AMEN.