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
September 13, 2020
Dear Friends,
How much more can we take? The stress of the virus, the economy, the election, and now the fires! Toward the end of the sermon I quote from the prophet Habakkuk, who recites the litany of disasters he’s personally living through and then then has the pluck to state “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” Notice that little word “will.” Repeated twice. This moves joy from the realm of feelings to the realm of choice. One decides to radiate joy in spite of everything and God takes it from there. I’m not very good at this myself, but the darkness of our own time is pushing me to learn some new responses – like choosing joy when my own feelings are so down. C. S. Lewis says that when we least feel like praying, that’s precisely the time we need to pray the most. I see a corollary here with joy – precisely when we’re feeling the least joyful is the time to consciously choose joy.
Heidi is busy growing more flowers, and hopes to have enough for another virtual vase next week.
Under separate attachment you will receive the biography of Jeanne Brehmer. Please consider sharing the highlights of your life story with the rest of the congregation.
Our Zoom Bible Study is going quite well. Much to my surprise, we had one of the best sessions we’ve ever had this past Wednesday evening via Zoom.
Our Zoom worship service is launching tomorrow, Sunday, September 13th, from 1:00 – 2:00. If you would like to give this a try, just let me know and I will send you a link next Sunday, the 20th. You can email me at paulccmp@yahoo.com.
And always remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel – God WITH Us – in bad times as well as good. Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR SEPTEMBER 13, 2020
INTRODUCTORY READING/PRAYER Richard Foster, Contemporary
I am, O God, a jumbled mass of motives. One moment I am adoring you, and the next I am shaking my fist at you. I vacillate between mounting hope, and deepening despair. I am full of faith, and full of doubt. I want the best for others, and am jealous when they get it. Even so, God, I will not run from your presence. Nor will I pretend to be what I am not. Thank you for accepting me with all my contradictions. Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC You’re Gonna Be Okay (Lyric Video)
Brian & Jenn Johnson You Tube
OPENING PRAYER George Appleton, 1902-1993
Give me a candle of the Spirit, O God, as I go down into the deeps of my being. Show me the hidden things, the creatures of my dreams, the storehouse of forgotten memories and hurts. Take me down to the spring of my life and tell me my nature and my name. Give me freedom to grow, so that I may become that self, the seed of which you planted in me at my making. Out of the deeps I cry to you, O God. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING Job 42:1-6, NRSV
Then Job answered the Lord:
‘I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
“Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?”
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
“Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you declare to me.”
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.’
Alternative translation of verse 6:
‘Therefore I will stand my ground
and not repent in dust and ashes.’
SERMON: STANDING ONE’S GROUND AGAINST FALSE UNDERSTANDINGS OF GOD
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlinings simply indicate what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
We continue our sermon series on the most important texts in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. Today our text comprises the beginning of the last chapter of the book of Job. But before we can begin to comprehend this morning’s Scripture reading, we need to understand a few things.
We American Christians, thanks to the pervasive influence of evangelicalism in this country, tend to read all Scripture literally. For example, whenever the Bible tells a story, we tend to take that story as history. And if that story involves a named person, we assume that that person must have existed, and that that person must have actually gone through the events of the story exactly as described.
Thus, when we read the book of Job, we get all upset at the many misfortunes that God allowed to happen to Job, when the character “Job” was never intended to be a “real” person to begin with. Rather, he was constructed by his author to be a literary personage with whom all who read his story are encouraged to identify, and hopefully to take the same bold stance toward God that he did.
Remember that at the beginning of the book of Job we’re presented with a God who enlists the services of Satan to make life as miserable for Job as possible. If we insist on taking the book literally, as history, as something that God actually did to
Job, we set ourselves up for all sorts of unnecessary problems, such as “How can God possibly be in league with the devil?” and “How can God possibly be so violent and just downright mean?”
The Jewish tradition, which I believe tends to understand the Hebrew Scriptures better than Christians tend to, has divided what we Christians call the “Old Testament,” into three distinct sections: Torah (which Christians refer to as “law”),
Prophets, and Writings.
Generally speaking, Torah and prophets do contain a lot of history.
The section called “writings,” which includes the poetry of the Psalms, the wise sayings contained in the book of Proverbs, and the book of Job, are considered to be literature. They are seen as inspired literature, to be sure, but following the rules of literature in general, are not regarded as about things that really happened or people who really lived.
Another name that Jewish and Christian Biblical scholars give to the section of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the “Writings” is “Wisdom Literature.” As this descriptive name implies, “Wisdom Literature” is literature which seeks to convey wisdom, what we in the Western tradition would call philosophic or poetic knowledge, or the life-transforming meaning that sometimes meets us in a great work of fiction.
We’ve all been caught up in novels, novels like The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Les Miserables, or more recently, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or Henderson the Rain King, that we felt captured the big picture of life’s meaning in a way that a work of non-fiction simply could not.
What I – in company with many Jewish and Christian Biblical scholars – am suggesting is that we look at the book of Job not as a book of history detailing all the horrible things that God allowed to happen to Job through Satan, but as a book of theological fiction describing the sea-change – the shifting of theological paradigms – that was taking place when this book was written.
Remember that the reigning paradigm that the book of Job challenges is the supposed “fact” that God directly punishes human evil and sin by directly punishing the perpetrator, and/or the perpetrator’s family.
According to this theological paradigm – one which is still very much alive today – Job must have done some very heavy-duty sinning to warrant such heavy-duty punishment from God.
This is the position taken by Job’s friends, who go on chapter after chapter challenging Job to confess and set things straight with God.
For chapter after chapter Job refuses to confess. He maintains his essential innocence, admitting that he’s not perfect, but holding that the wrongs he’s done certainly do not warrant God’s allowing Satan to kill all his children, destroy all his possessions, and despoil his health.
Job is a breath-takingly important work of theological literature because it captures in words the voice of God’s loyal minority, God’s loyal opposition, as it were, who held that God is not a God of punishment, but a God of restoration, that God is not a God of death, but a God of life.
And if we acknowledge that the book of Job is just as inspired as the historical and prophetic books which we find in the Hebrew Scriptures, we have to take seriously the fact that at the end of this book God comes right out and says that the theology of Job’s friends is wrong, and that Job has been right in maintaining his innocence and refusing to confess or repent.
Job is the beginning of the collapse of the “old” theological paradigm that God is into catching-us-out at our sins and administering the appropriate punishment. The suffering servant songs of the prophet Isaiah and the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah totally finish-off this old paradigm. Sadly, though, the majority of Christians in the U.S.A. choose to stick with the punishment theology of Job’s friends.
So, what does all this have to do with how we read the book of Job?
First, it points us in the direction of not reading Job as a book of history, but as a book of theological literature, literature which does nothing less than free us from the primitive notion that God is a God of retribution and violence.
Second, it teaches us not to be afraid of being bold with God, just as Job was.
Third, Job teaches us to be selective in our repentance, meaning that, like Job, we refuse to take on guilt which does not belong to us.
Repentance has been classically defined as the complete turn-around in mind and heart that brings us back to God. This definition still holds. Repentance will never become an obsolete theological concept – at least not until the Kingdom of God has become fully present on earth. Repentance, or “turning,” as the Jewish thinker Martin Buber puts it, is the movement that brings us back to God.
But what if we have never significantly strayed from God to begin with?
This is the situation described in the book of Job.
The entire book of Job has made it clear that Job has no need to repent. Indeed, if Job had repented, he would have been insulting God by giving in to the bad theology of his friends.
What to do, then, with today’s text, where, at the very end of the book of Job, its summation, we’re told in no uncertain terms that Job did just this – repented.
We are told by a huge majority of translations that Job says to God “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
What strange words to put in Job’s mouth, when Job’s “character” up to this point has consistently rejected unwarranted repentance.
Is this an example of the Bible’s contradicting itself?
It doesn’t have to be. This is why I have provided an alternative translation of verse six accepted by a minority, but a strong minority, of Biblical scholars.
Since Biblical Hebrew was originally written only using consonants, allowing the reader to fill-in the vowels, and, thus, the correct meaning , it is possible in a very few cases to come up with an alternative translation which could be the correct translation.
Some believe that Job chapter 42, verse 6, is one of these very few cases.
By inserting different vowels in different places, it is possible to light upon the alternative translation: “Therefore I will stand my ground and not repent in dust and ashes.” In other words, “I will not repent, because repentance for me would be totally inappropriate.”
This rendering, at least for me, has the virtue of allowing Job – not to mention God! – to remain consistent, and of not having him cave in to the bad theology of his friends at the last minute, and go through the motions of repentance, when they don’t apply to him.
The traditional translation of this verse along the lines of “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes,” has Job affirming – at the very end – the bad theology of his friends, the very theology that God repudiates in the verses which follow.
My hunch is that the traditional, conventional, and old-paradigm translation of this verse has been maintained in most Jewish and Christian translations because the translators themselves are simply not ready to receive Job’s new paradigm!
And I suspect that many of those who are Jewish and many of those who are Christian are too afraid of God to take the risk of running with Job and daring to be bold with God, saying, shockingly: “Therefore I will stand my ground and not repent in dust and ashes.”
After all, this is the same Job who earlier had the guts to say to God “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15), and eventually to receive God’s blessing for taking such an outrageous stand.
Why does God bless such an outrageous stance? --Because God is in the midst of the process of inspiring at least a few of the biblical authors, authors like the author of the book of Job, to begin to understand God in a new way, as a God who can be approached, as a God who is into inspiring hope in people, and not into slaying them.
What does this way of looking at Job have to do with our own spirituality, our own way of being-with-God?
Using the principle that what applies to a Biblical character applies to us as well – looking at Job in this way – gives us permission to be bold with God in much the same way that Job is bold with God.
We can say, along with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”
We can say to God, along with Jacob, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
We can say to God, along with the prophet Habakkuk, and in the company of many prophets and psalmists: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will be joyful in God my Savior” (Habakkuk 3:17-18).
Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
Many Scripture scholars and theologians consider the author of the book of Job to be one of the greatest religious geniuses who ever lived, precisely because this author was so attuned to a radically new understanding of God developing at the time, and was able to powerfully communicate this new paradigm through an unforgettable story. How does learning about the content of Job impact your own understanding of God? How might this improve your relationship with God?
Whether or not you agree with the alternative translation of verse 6, how does Job’s boldness with God strike you? Is Job’s boldness something you resonate with or something that scares you?
Do you see any contemporary paradigm-shifts in theology underway or on the horizon? What are they?
CLOSING PRAYER Pat Corrick Hinton
I carry the sorrows
of my years
within me.
Often,
not even loved ones
know.
Some burdens
have gotten lighter
with time.
Others
Weigh heavier still.
I give my secret pain
to you, God.
Help me!
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC Who I’m Meant to Be – Lyric Video
Anthem Lights You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.
An Interview
with
Jeanne Brehmer
Born in Effingham, a small town in South Central Illinois, Jeanne lived on the first floor of Mrs. Wormsey’s great big house and loved it and Mrs. Wormsey. Her church, school and hospital, where she arrived in 1936, were nearby. Riding her bike to the railroad tracks was a special joy. She is still haunted by the fire which swept away the hospital and took 74 lives in 1949.
Jeanne’s Dad was born in Mississippi, earned a civil engineering degree at Mississippi State and caught 12 passes in a football loss to Alabama in 1927. He served in the Navy in WW II where he helped in the construction of an airfield in the Aleutian Islands and remained in the Navy Reserve until he retired.
Her Mom was a concert pianist who led a band in high school. During her Dad’s WW II absence, she played the piano while Jeanne tap danced at half-time at high school basketball games. The family was Methodist and their home was next to the manse. The minister was very distressed. He believed dancing was sinful.
Jeanne and her Mom joined her Dad at Camp Parks, California near Oakland where he was stationed until the end of the war in 1945. While there, she was lucky to take lessons from Shirley Temple’s dance teacher and perform in many recitals. The family lived in a Quonset hut with blankets for interior walls.
They moved to the Illinois capitol, Springfield, where Jeanne attended Springfield High School. She danced in Summer productions. While dancing in Brigadoon, the pianist left out a series of notes. Jeanne still feels the panic when she and her partner became stranded on opposite sides of the floor. A bug had flown into the pianist’s mouth.
Jeanne, having been selected by Patricia Stevens, owner of Patricia Stevens Finishing School in Chicago, was crowned by the Governor as Miss Midwest and given a trip to Hollywood in 1954. She and her Mom enjoyed meeting Cary Grant and Grace Kelley on the set of To Catch a Thief followed by dinner at one of Hollywood’s finest restaurants where they were joined by Samuel Goldwyn and his wife. Being advised to “get her out of here”, rather than pursuing a Hollywood career, Jeanne opted to fly home and attend college.
Following her freshman year at MacMurray College for Women, Jeanne transferred to the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana, joined Pi Beta Phi sorority and was crowned Dolphin Queen, Dream Girl of Pi Kappa Alpha and Miss Illinois by the Illinois Press Photographers Association. Jeanne opted to drop pursuit of an AB degree for an MRS.
Jeanne and her husband set up housekeeping in Chicago where he was a medical student. She modeled for Patricia Stevens Modeling Agency and was secretary to the Director of Advertising and Public Relations for Borg Warner. She rode a thirty-minute Elevated ride to and from work. The pushy crowd made it a bit scary at first.
Modeling for television and style shows presented a dilemma. She was asked to lose weight because the camera added pounds. On the other hand, as a style show model, she was offered a job if she gained weight. About at that time she was hired for an Orange Crush commercial and told to lose weight. Her dilemma was resolved when after the Orange Crush commercial she became pregnant with her first child, Vicky, now a retired psychiatric nurse in Los Osos.
After her husband’s Internship in Akron, Ohio where Vicky was born, Jeanne’s young family was off to Kincheloe, Air Force Base near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. She became Treasurer of the Medical Wives’s Association. During the two Air Force years, Jennifer, Jeanne’s second child, now in charge of technology at the Sheriff’s Office, was born.
Seeking a warmer climate, Jeanne and her brood landed in San Louis Obispo. California where her third child, blonde, curly haired Billy was born. While there, she and her husband went their separate ways. Jeanne went back to college to learn short hand and accounting. Then she and the children settled on the Monterey Peninsula. It was a scary time. For comfort, sometimes all the kids climbed into bed with Jeanne.
In 1975 Jeanne took a job in the Monterey City Clerk’s Office where she honed her Minute taking skills leading to her selection as City Clerk for the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1980. There she met her husband, George (married at CCMP by Pastor Jim Brown --- daughter Jennifer fainted --- no kiss for the bride; 37 years and on-going) and became Stepmom to Dan and Marti, took the lead in preserving old City documents and changed election night from a sparsely attended, drab affair into a grand gala.
Election night 1986 found a City Hall jammed with excited Carmelites, colorful décor, the press core, TV cameras and Carmel’s most famous resident, Clint Eastwood. It was the start of two unforgettable years. Thereafter, Jeanne’s election night parties were definitely the place to be.
Since retiring at the end of 2000, Jeanne has served the CHOMP Auxiliary as Events Chair Person and Board Secretary and made many more lasting friends. She and George visited Effingham, the place of her birth. She so anticipated seeing the beloved places once more. To her deep sadness, her school was gone, her church was gone, Mrs.Wormsey’s big house was gone, all swept away by progress, and, of course, Mrs.Wormsey was gone. To her joy, she discovered the largest cross in the United States. It stands 198 feet high in Effingham.
By: George Brehmer. (By the way, I slipped in the comment about Dad catching 12 passes against Alabama.)