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
February 21, 2021
Dear Friends,
Please pray for Elizabeth Blanchard, who suddenly and unexpectedly lost her daughter Eileen this past week, and for Jerry’s loss as well. It was an apparent heart attack. Also, please keep Eileen’s husband, Dennis, in your prayers. Eileen wrote last April: “So true that God takes care of us. We pray daily and remember the Scripture in Peter where he says to “cast your burdens on Him for He cares for you.” Those whom God loves (which includes everyone!) never see each other for the last time.
I’m sure everyone is aware by now that next Sunday, February, we will be holding our Quarterly Church Family Gathering via Zoom. We’ll begin at 2:15, with fifteen minutes for socializing before we get down to business. If you would like a link for this meeting, please email Jane Heider at janeheider@hotmail.com. If you have previously requested a Zoom link from me, I’ve already forwarded that request to Jane. Hope to see and hear you at our family gathering!
Stay Safe, Take Care, and Always Remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel –
God with Us! Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR FEBRUARY 21, 2021
INTRODUCTORY READING (Francis of Assisi, 1182-1226)
No one lives outside the walls
of this sacred place, existence.
You joined our community at birth.
With your Father being who He is,
what do the world’s scales know of your precious value?
The priest and the prostitute –
they weigh the same before the Son.
But who can bear that truth and freedom?
SUGGESTED MUSIC: For the healing of the nations Hymn – St. Paul’s Cathedral
yes You Tube
OPENING PRAYER Edna Hong, Contemporary
Jesus,
you wasted no time agonizing over
the great wound of pain and suffering in creation,
or in asking who dealt this wound.
You simply accepted it as the mystery of existence
and then devoted your life to healing it.
The crowd read in your eyes God’s love
for them in their miserable condition
and flocked to you. The crowd laid bare
its painful, suffering wound,
and you touched the wound with your hand,
your most personal human hand –
and healed it.
No gospel of suffering in the Gospels, then –
just you – God’s Yes to a suffering world.
No illumination of pain and suffering in the Gospels –
just you, God’s I Am Love,
radiantly and utterly illuminated.
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 READING: John 9:1-38, NRSV (Abridged slightly)
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.
When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.’ Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some were saying ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’
He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’ They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.’
Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’ He said, ‘He is a prophet.’
The Pharisees did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called his parents and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind?’ How then does he now see? His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ His parents said this because they were afraid of the Pharisees; for they had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, ‘Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.’ He answered, ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’
Then they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’
The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’
They answered him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drove him out.
Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him.
SERMON: JESUS BREAKS THE RULES FOR US
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
Some people say that because the Gospels were written some two thousand years ago, they cannot possibly be relevant for us today. John, the writer of today’s Scripture text, would heartily disagree! He purposefully constructs his recollections of some of the great conversations of Jesus in such a way that they invite his readers to become part of the story themselves. He does this because he believes that Jesus and his message transcend both time and place, and that Jesus is eternally present – and relevant – to all people in all places and all times. The question that John would ask each of us today is precisely “How does this story impact YOUR life in your specific time and place?
This reading from the Gospel of John is one of the prime examples of what theologians and biblical scholars call narrative theology. Narrative theology celebrates the insights about God and the insights about our relationship with God that come forth as an essential part of telling a story. Our text this morning is filled with such insights which arise as the result of John telling the real-life story of Jesus healing a man who had been blind from birth.
The story is told in such a way that we, the listeners or readers, are able to overhear the Good News. The story encourages us to become active bystanders, as it were, empathizing with the man born blind, and moving with him through the various stages of drawing closer to Jesus.
Since this biblical story is told in such a way that it encourages its listeners to become part of the story, the story offers its own approach in terms of a sermon: to enable its hearers/readers to overhear the Good News of Jesus by moving into the story, as it were, and experiencing for oneself what it was like to have been there.
So. . .imagine yourself as one of Jesus’ original disciples. Jesus has just finished one confrontation with the hostile leaders of the religious establishment of his time, a confrontation in which Jesus is portrayed as making the breath-taking claim, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), a portrayal in which he not only asserted that he predated Abraham, but in which he claimed the divine name, “I Am,” and applied it to himself.
Immediately following this showdown, Jesus is pictured as walking along with his disciples and coming upon “a man blind from birth” (8:1).
His disciples ask him a question which was standard-issue at that time and place: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (8:2) This question reflects the assumption of that day that illness was a punishment from God for sinning.
If one could not find fault with the one who was ill, then the illness was blamed on the sin of his or her parents. This reflects the fact that the typical Jewish person of Jesus’ day continued to hold on to the outdated teaching of the book of Exodus that: “. . .I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the sin of their parents, to the third and fourth generation. . .” (Exodus 20:5)
I say “outdated teaching” because this teaching was amended, or corrected by the prophet Ezekiel, who repeats as a mantra throughout his prophetic preaching and writing that one is responsible only for one’s own sins, not those of anyone else. (Ezekiel 3:20-21; 18:24; 33:14)
Here we have a good example of a practice which continues to work mischief among many Christians today: they hang onto a lesser teaching – because it’s in the Bible – such as “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” which makes it impossible to embrace a greater teaching such as the teaching of Jesus “But I say to you, do not resist evil with evil, resist evil with good.” (Matthew 5:38-39)
The important point here is that Jesus uses this occasion of coming upon a man blind from birth, and the question of whether his blindness is his own fault or the fault of his parents, to once again correct a basic misunderstanding about God.
Jesus states categorically: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. . .” (3a) In other words, God does not keep score.
Many of us have problems with the second part of this verse, which reads in most English translations to the effect that “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (3b) This makes it sound like God created this guy blind on purpose so that God could have the pleasure of healing him. The original Greek does not carry with it such a strong causal relationship.
I like the way that Eugene Peterson, in his contemporary rendering of the Bible, puts verse 3: “Jesus said, you’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.”
One of the creative juxtapositions that we find in the Gospels is the counterpoint between Jesus’ revolutionary new theology and the way that he limits himself to using the standard-operating-procedure of his own time and place. Thus, in order to heal the man he makes mud out of his own spit, which he then applies to the man’s eyes. This was simply what healers did back then. Often, of course, with no result at all.
Our text emphasizes the difference between Jesus and other healers in v.32, when it tells us “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.”
We watch Jesus apply the healing-mud to the blind man’s eyes, and then request from him an act of faith and obedience: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” (v.7) The blind man does this and comes back seeing.
Immediately questions begin to fly. The wording of verse 8 in this regard is significant. We are told that “the neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar. . .” The implication is that they had already categorized this guy as a beggar, and did not want to have to bother with seeing him in a new way.
A question we need to ask ourselves in our more self-critical moments is “How open am I to seeing the change and growth taking place in the other people in my life? – Am I so caught up in past ways of seeing that I cannot even see positive change when it happens?”
Our text paints the picture of a rowdy group of neighbors and busy-bodies arguing about the guy’s identity.
As soon as the man who has been given sight mentions the fact that it was “the man called Jesus” (v.11) who healed him, they drag him to the Pharisees to get their opinion on the matter.
One gets the distinct impression that the crowd that has gathered is looking for some theological entertainment, that they enjoy these skirmishes between the up-start Jesus and the know-it-all Pharisees, and that they hope to provoke another confrontation. Given the fact that Jesus did this healing on the Sabbath, and that in doing so he was breaking three of the Sabbath commandments, they were guaranteed a good show.
When we read the Gospels, Jesus comes across as going out of his way to break many of the Sabbath commandments, which he considered to be based on human tradition, and not on God’s will, which was that “The Sabbath was made for human good, not the good of the Sabbath in itself.” (Matthew 12:1-12; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-9)
The three Sabbath commandments that Jesus broke when he healed the man born blind were – One: Violating the law of not working on the Sabbath, since making clay was considered to be “work.” Two: Violating the law of not healing on the Sabbath, since healing was considered to be “work.” Three: Violating the specific injunction – “As to spittle, it is not lawful on the Sabbath as to put it even so much as upon the eyelids.”
We see here in the Gospel of John the breath-taking way in which Jesus simply acts as if commandments which are contrary to human good simply did not exist.
Another question for us to ask ourselves today is: “Are there commandments which the church imposes on people which are really contrary to human flourishing and God’s will?” In other words, has the church in our day, just like many of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, come up with its own set of rules and regulations in order to control peoples’ lives and their supposed access to the means of salvation?
So the crowd drags the healed guy to the Pharisees, who duly begin a long process of interrogation, a process of interrogation which involves even the guy’s parents, who deftly refuse to incriminate themselves: “Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” (v.21)
The Pharisees then get deadly serious, using the law court phrase “Give glory to God” (v.24), meaning “Speak the truth in God’s presence,” and being the equivalent in our day of swearing to speak the truth by placing our right hand on the Bible.
At this point the healed man makes one of the most significant statements that we find in all of Scripture: “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (v.25)
This statement is significant because it establishes the precedent that it is one’s own personal experience of God that matters, and not what someone else tells you that you are required to say. God respects the insights – and the limitations – that our own experience of God gives us. We are not required by God to be at a place where we are not.
This is largely what we mean here at Community Church with our core value that “Wherever you are on your life journey, you are welcome here.”
The Pharisees keep pushing the guy who was healed, and when he continues to honor his own experience of Jesus, they finally drive him out (v.35), with its undertone of excommunication. He can no longer consider himself to be one of the sons of Israel.
It is precisely here that Jesus does one of those magnificent interventions that he has come to be known for. Jesus had left the scene right after the healing. When he learns that the Pharisees had driven out the person whom he had healed, what does Jesus do? –He goes and finds the person! He goes and finds the person – giving him a deeper experience and a deeper understanding of who he really is.
In the case of the man born blind who has now received his sight, he comes to know Jesus as the “Son of Man” (v.35), a mysterious, open-ended phrase from the book of Daniel that is Jesus’ favorite self-description because it allows him to fill it with his own content.
The content that Jesus gives this phrase in the Gospel of John is that in him God’s presence dwells fully, that to know Jesus is to know God.
I believe that this action on Jesus’ part – taking the initiative to find this person – is paradigmatic. In other words, this is not something that is limited to this person in this time and place, but is an action which Jesus does for all people in all times and all places.
It’s called God’s grace, and is free and available to everyone.
Have we been driven out of our true experience and identity by hostile family members or by a hostile church?
--It is precisely in this context of loss that Jesus will come and meet us and lead us into a deeper relationship with God.
Have we been driven out of our health by serious illness?
--It is precisely in this context of loss that Jesus will come and meet us and lead us
into a deeper relationship with God.
Does the extent of evil in this world drive us out of a settled belief in God and force us to question whether God even exists?
--It is precisely in this context of loss that Jesus will come and meet us and lead us into a deeper relationship with God.
I’d like to bring this sermon to a close by looking at our introductory reading by Francis of Assisi, who writes, based on his own experience of Jesus, “No one lives outside the walls of this sacred place, existence.”
The man who was blind from birth, while despised by many because he or his parents must have been big-time sinners to have warranted this big-time handicap, was, in reality, a person who was loved by God because of the mere fact of his existence.
Even though the religious leaders of the day claimed that he “lived outside the walls,” Jesus reveals, to the contrary, that he is very much included in God’s family.
And just as Jesus walked with the man born blind, Jesus will walk with us
through our illnesses,
and our rejections,
and even our questions.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What is your take on the relationship between sin and illness?
2. Do you have a bedrock experience of God which has proved to be foundational for your on-going relationship with God? Please describe.
CONCLUDING PRAYER (Avery Brooke, Contemporary)
Loving God,
you are the source of health and healing,
the spirit of calm,
and the central peace of the universe.
We ask that you would fill us
with such an awareness of your presence within
that we may have complete confidence in you.
In all pain and weariness and anxiety
may we rest in your protecting care;
may we know ourselves to be encircled by your loving power
so that we may allow you to give us health and strength and peace,
through Jesus Christ, our brother and friend,
the embodiment of your love.
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC Now Thank We All Our God Martijn de Groot You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.