COMMUNITY CHURCH OF THE MONTEREY PENINSULA
P. O. BOX 222811
CARMEL CA 93922
(831) 624-8595
Rev. Paul Wrightman, Pastor
Independent and United Church of Christ
April 11, 2021
Dear Friends,
Please keep Pam Klaumann in your prayers. Pam was admitted to CHOMP on Friday with memory issues and is now undergoing extensive testing. We don’t know much yet. The tests have eliminated many of the worst possibilities. Let’s pray that they’re soon able to find the cause and that the healing process will be simple and straightforward.
Good news! Many of us have been trying to contact Lois Varner and Judy Peiken over this past year but to no avail. Lois has now contacted us and she and Judy are safe and well and living in their “old” home, the one before Park Lane. They have been through several sets of phones that didn’t work out. Lois and Judy found the restrictions at Park Lane during the pandemic too much to bear, and are delighted to be back at home in Seaside. Lois and Judy would love to hear from their friends at CCMP. Their address is 1519 Costa St., Seaside, CA 93955. Lois’ cell phone number is (831) 277-9598. Their land line is (831) 884-5014.
You should be receiving a brief special edition of Beyond Sunday sometime this week. Check it out to read about our new Music Director, the date of our Rose Garden Tea, and our proposed date for reopening the sanctuary.
Stay safe, take care, and always remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel – God WITH Us!
Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR APRIL 11, 2021
INTRODUCTORY READING: St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380
My perfect Lord sang,
“Less likely is God to condemn my hand’s action
than condemn any
soul.”
How could that be possible,
my heart thought?
And the Christ, knowing all minds, replied,
“Forgiveness is the foundation of God’s
being.”
SUGGESTED MUSIC: AMAZING GRACE (Lyrics) – SUSAN BOYLE You Tube
OPENING PRAYER: Michael Leunig, Contemporary
God help us to find our confession;
The truth within us which is hidden from our mind;
The beauty or the ugliness we see elsewhere
But never in ourselves;
The stowaway which has been smuggled
Into the dark side of the heart,
Which puts the heart off balance and causes it pain,
Which wearies and confuses us,
Which tips us in false directions and inclines us to destruction.
God help us to find our confession.
Help us across the boundary of our understanding.
Lead us into the darkness that we may find what lies concealed;
That we may confess it toward the light;
That we may carry our truth in the center of our heart;
And bring harmony into our life and our world.
Amen.
LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE: John 21:15-17
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’
SERMON: BEGINNING AGAIN
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
Today’s sermon deals with the challenging topic of forgiveness. Jesus gives us a model for receiving and giving forgiveness in his encounter with Peter on the lakeshore after his resurrection.
I’ve used the following illustration before, but good sermon illustrations are few in number whereas bad ones are unlimited. Roger Barrier writes:
“When I left for college, my mother – who had always done my laundry – made a canvas duffel bag for me. ‘Put your dirty clothes in this every night,’ she said. ‘At the end of the week, wash them at the laundromat.’ Seven days later, I took my dirty clothes to the laundromat. To save time, I threw the [entire] duffel bag in the washer, put in some laundry powder, inserted the proper change, and turned on the machine.
Moments later, a loud thump, thump, thump, thump echoed through the laundromat. A pretty coed approached me with a grin. ‘I watched you load your washer. I think the clothes would get cleaner if you took them out of the bag.’”
Our author concludes by turning this event into a valuable life lesson: “One day, when my relationship with God was hurting, I remembered my laundry episode. I realized the way I confessed sins – ‘Dear God, please forgive me for all the sins I’ve committed today’ – was about as effective as my first attempt at washing clothes. Each sin needs individual attention.” (Roger Barrier, Listening to the Voice of God)
I really like this illustration because it captures the way so many of us – myself very much included – treat spiritual growth and our relationship with God. Often we treat both as realities we can take rather lightly and put on the “back burner” until the “time is right.”
This usually means that we simply put God off until the broken areas in our lives become so destructive to ourselves and to others that we become desperate and finally cry out to God for help.
And God will help us no matter how late in the game we ask. But – to use a medical metaphor now – what would have probably been a relatively minor procedure and brief recuperation time have become by the time we finally act a very major procedure requiring a lengthy healing process.
The moral of the story: It’s best not to toss our areas of brokenness into one giant laundry bag and toss the whole thing into the washer. That is a good way to never have clean clothes – or a clean conscience. No, better to face each area of brokenness in our lives as we become aware of it, and bring each to the risen Jesus for healing.
If we allow these areas of brokenness in our lives to accumulate, before long we’ll be feeling hopeless and overwhelmed. We need to look at receiving and giving forgiveness as a crucial dimension of our personal wellness routine.
As many of us can affirm from our own experience, it’s just as hard – or harder – to receive forgiveness as it is to offer forgiveness. It’s well documented that refusing to admit that we have deeply hurt another person and asking for and receiving their forgiveness is just as hugely detrimental to our health as is hanging on to our anger and resentment and refusing to forgive someone who has injured us.
In today’s Scripture reading, Jesus knows that Peter desperately needs to know that he is, indeed, forgiven for the three times that he denied knowing Jesus during Jesus’ trial.
If Jesus had simply approached Peter and said “Don’t worry, everything is OK,” that would have been way too general, way too casual, for the healing power of forgiveness to meet Peter’s broken spirit in any kind of in-depth way. No, specific acts of brokenness – in more traditional language, specific “sins” – need to be faced and healed in very specific ways.
Our Scripture text is a window to our seeing how Jesus masterfully effects forgiveness and healing in Peter. And seeing how Jesus heals Peter can help us to see how Jesus would like to heal us.
The Gospel of John makes a big deal about identifying Jesus as the “Good Shepherd,” and pointing out how a good shepherd knows the names of all his sheep. In other words, he knows who they are as individuals, not just as generic “sheep,” or in Jesus’ case, not just as “people” in general. The first time that Jesus meets Peter in the Gospel of John he says to him, “You are Simon son of John” (John 1:42).
In today’s reading, we see that just as Peter betrayed Jesus three times, three times Jesus refers to Peter as “Simon son of John.” In other words, Jesus knows Peter, and knows him deeply. When someone knows us like this, it is a sign of their care and their love.
By repeating his name three times, Jesus is reminding Peter of the depth of their relationship, a relationship which has been seriously strained, but not definitively broken, because of Peter’s three betrayals.
Before Jesus’ trial, Peter had bragged that he loved Jesus more than all the other disciples and would gladly lay down his own life for Jesus. This tendency to brag and to put himself first is definitely one of the areas of brokenness in Peter. Peter needs to face this area of brokenness in himself and to accept Jesus’ forgiveness.
So Jesus begins his conversation with Peter by asking the highly ironic question: Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? Notice how Peter replies simply, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Face to face with Jesus, Peter no longer has to brag more than these, but is content with simply loving.
Peter’s three betrayals seriously impacted Peter’s life and spirit, so Jesus offers some serious forgiveness. He communicates the depth of his forgiveness by asking Peter essentially the same question two more times: Simon son of John, do you love me?
The third time that Jesus asks this question Peter fully reclaims his love of Jesus and Jesus’ own knowledge of that love: Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.
We can see in this text the masterful way that Jesus is coaching Peter through the process of making a true confession. Peter needs to be able to make a true confession not to satisfy some desire on God’s part to “get even.” Peter needs to be able to make a true confession for his inner spirit to be healed, and for him to be able to get on with his life in a life-affirming rather than a self-destructive way.
This is why each time that Peter tells Jesus he loves him, Jesus responds not with some vague, abstract words to the effect that “all is well,” but by giving Peter the very specific assignment of caring for the “sheep,” which means loving the other disciples as he loves Jesus.
There is a spiritual principle here that applies to our lives as well to Peter’s: When Jesus forgives us, he commissions us at the same time. It’s like Jesus is saying: “You’re forgiven. Now go and show God’s love to someone else.”
James Hewitt writes: “My six-year-old son used one of those super adhesive glues on an airplane he was building. In less than three minutes, his right index finger was bonded to a shiny blue wing of his DC-10. He tried to free it. He tugged it, pulled it, waved it frantically; but he couldn’t budge his finger free. Soon, we located a solvent that did the job and ended our little crisis.”
Hewitt continues: “Last night I remembered that scene when I visited a new family in our neighborhood. The father of the family introduced his children: ‘This is Pete. He’s the clumsy one of the lot. That’s Kathy coming in with mud on her shoes. She’s the sloppy one. As always, Mike’s last. He’ll be late for his own funeral, I promise you.’”
Hewett concludes: “The dad did a thorough job of gluing his children to their faults and mistakes. People do it to us and to those we love all the time. They remind us of our failures, our errors, [our areas of brokenness], and they won’t let us live them down. Like my son trying frantically to free his finger from the plane, there are people who try, sometimes desperately, to free themselves from their past. They would love a chance to begin again.” (James Hewitt, Illustrations Unlimited)
A chance to begin again was exactly what Jesus was offering when he taught his disciples, in what we know as “The Lord’s Prayer,” “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Almost as if to add a postscript, immediately after this prayer Jesus adds the words: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).
This addition to the Lord’s Prayer seems to be conditional. Why did Jesus make our being forgiven contingent on our forgiving others?
Why? --Because Jesus knew that in order for us to really be open to receive God’s forgiveness, we first have to open ourselves by forgiving others.
Jesus is teaching us a spiritual law here. This law is just as binding in the spiritual realm as the law of gravity is binding in the physical realm. The spiritual law that Jesus wants to teach us is this: In order for us to be open to receive God’s forgiveness, we first have to forgive those in need of forgiveness from us.
The point of this reciprocity is not that God will arbitrarily refuse to forgive us if we don’t forgive others. According to God’s own self-revelation, God can’t refuse to forgive because forgiveness is at the very heart of God’s job description!
The point of this reciprocity is that without it we put up a wall from our side which effectively keeps God’s forgiveness on the outside of our lives. Using a metaphor from Star Trek, refusing to forgive another is like putting up a deflector shield which effectively keeps God’s forgiveness from ever reaching us.
God’s forgiveness is always available, always raining down, as it were, but we can choose to run inside the fortress of our own hard hearts and refuse to let it enter. In other words, we can actually wall ourselves off from God’s forgiveness by refusing to forgive others.
So when Jesus says at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses,” this is not a threat. It is simply a statement of a spiritual law, a reminder of the way that things work – or don’t work – in the realm of the spirit.
We should note here that the Greek work for “will” can also mean “can.” I think a better translation would be: “For if you forgive others. . .your heavenly Father can also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither can your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Forgiveness, in other words, is a two way street. It originates in God, but for it to actually find a home in our heart, our heart must make room for God’s forgiveness – and the only way to do this is for us to forgive others.
Our refusing to forgive others clutters up our hearts like one of those rental storage units stuffed to the bursting point with junk. In a heart filled with unforgiveness, anger, and resentment, there is simply no room for God to move in, for God to maneuver in.
Young children often express this dynamic of reciprocity humorously and well. A four-year-old was praying one night, having been listening at church: “And forgive us our trashbaskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.”
An anonymous author put it this way: “He that doth not forgive burns the bridge over which he himself must pass.”
Considering the close connection between being unwilling to forgive and holding on to one’s anger, Frederick Buechner writes: “Of the seven deadly sins, anger is probably the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back – in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.
The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
AMEN
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
Is it harder for you to give or to receive forgiveness? Why do you think this is so?
What are some of the obstacles in the way of your forgiving others?
Put yourself in Peter’s place. What feelings was he experiencing in this encounter with Jesus?
Describe a time in your life when you really “blew it” and deeply needed forgiveness. What different elements came together to lead to your healing? (This question is for your private use only – you will not be called on to share.)
What do you make of St. Catherine of Siena’s revelatory insight that “Forgiveness is the foundation of God’s being?”
What have you personally learned about forgiveness during the course of your life that you would like to share?
CLOSING PRAYER: Angela Ashwin, Contemporary
How could I ever imagine
that I would cope without praying?
How could I keep going
unless I knew
that I could return my heart to you
and soak my darkness in your light?
Pour your mercy into my madness
and your Spirit into my will,
and make me know
in my heart as well as my head
that only in you
am I found, forgiven, and free.
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: Great is thy faithfulness
Islington Baptist Church You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.