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
June 6, 2021
Dear Friends,
Only two more Sundays until we’re back in our sanctuary!
The Board of Governors promises adequate ventilation and hand sanitizer, but asks you to wear a mask and to continue practicing social distancing (pews will be pre-marked with masking tape to indicate adequate spacing, but couples and families should feel free to sit closer together), and to not come to church if you feel ill.
The congregation voted last Sunday to move our gathering time from 10am to 11am as a three month “experiment.” This is because a dozen parishioners came forward and shared the fact that making it to church by 10am is now literally impossible for them, as it takes four hours or more for them to get ready to go anywhere. They don’t want to have to get up at 6am to make 10 am worship – 7am is much more doable.
Some in the congregation are sad to see this change, as it severely impacts their Sunday afternoons. As this three month “trial” comes to an end, we will discuss the pros and cons of keeping the service at 11 or moving it back to 10, or perhaps 10:30.
The time of these emailed and/or printed worship services is drawing to an end. I would like to continue it, but simply don’t have the time to retype the oral version of the sermon (double spaced with 16 point type) into the written version that you see here. However, anyone who would like to receive an email or written version of the sermon can just ask and I will be happy to email or send them a hard copy. Please let me know.
There will be a few changes to our Order of Worship as we return to the sanctuary. One of the most positive aspects of the Zoom worship service over the past year has been a time for discussing the sermon. This discussion time will be continued right after the Benediction for those who would like to participate. Since I will be leading the discussion right after the Benediction, I will no longer be able to greet people on their way out. I don’t want to give up this time of connecting, so I will greet people as they arrive for worship.
Since singing is still considered to be one of the more dangerous activities that people can engage in, we will not have a choir until the pandemic is definitively over. Our new Music Director, Jon Close, will be improvising on the piano and playing instrumental versions of familiar hymns. He will also occasionally invite a singer or small group of singers to add to our experience of worship. They will be positioned way back from members of the congregation.
Stay Safe, Take Good Care,
and Always Remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel – God WITH Us,
Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR JUNE 6, 2021
INTRODUCTION: A SELECTION OF THOUGHTS ON THE THEME OF FAITH
Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done. –C.S. Lewis
Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, from practice more than speculation. --Joseph Addison
Faith in Christ was not primarily a matter of doctrinal or intellectual belief, but a way of life, a following, an allegiance. –Edward Wilson
Religious faith does not consist in supposing that there is a God. It consists in personal trust in God rising to personal fellowship with God. –William Temple
To have faith is to meet the world with the conviction that in spite of all its ambiguities and its downright evils, there can be discerned in it the reality of love and a ground of hope. –John Macquarrie
SUGGESTED MUSIC: Sweet Hour of Prayer (Silo Sessions)
Sounds Like Reign
(First Three Verses; fourth is bad theology) You Tube
OPENING PRAYER: Angela Ashwin, Contemporary
Loving God,
when I feel threatened
or believe myself to be a failure,
give me courage to enter my still center,
the place of buried treasure
and sunshine
and solitude,
where you are, Lord,
and where it no longer matters
who approves of me
or how successful I am
because you are there,
and, in your presence,
I rediscover the confidence
to be me.
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: Matthew 8: 23-26
When he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves. But he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm.
SERMON: THE ONLY EFFECTIVE AND LASTING ANTIDOTE TO FEAR
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
If you’re troubled by fear acutely or chronically, this sermon focuses on Jesus’ antidote to fear. Jesus has some very specific things to say concerning how to overcome fear, which hopefully will translate into a very practical sermon.
Jesus was well-aware of the high level of worry, fear, and absence of trust present in his disciples. He called his disciples – including ourselves – to do something about their – and our – lack of faith.
As usual, Jesus immediately recognizes the root cause of fear and worry, namely lack of faith or trust.
Our Scripture text for today tells us that Jesus and his disciples were out on the Sea of Galilee when a vicious storm threatened to swamp their boat. Jesus, asleep when the storm broke, remains asleep. The disciples, fearing for their lives, can contain their fear no longer, wake Jesus up, and plead Lord, save us! We are perishing!
Jesus wakes up, confronts his disciples with the question Why are you afraid, you of little faith?, then gets up and orders the howling wind and the raging sea to calm down.
A well-established spiritual law – a law recognized by all the major faith traditions on our planet – is that one cannot fight negative realities like worry and fear directly, or straight on. They maintain that the only way to overcome fear and worry is to counter them with their corresponding positive antidotes.
Jesus tells us himself in today’s text that the opposite of fear is faith, or trust. Contained in his question to the disciples, Why are you afraid, you of little faith?, is the implied answer to his own question: fear would not be able to gain a foothold in an environment of robust faith, or trust.
So the real question we’re facing this morning is the question of how to grow in faith and trust. But how does one actually do this – grow in trust and faith – when one is caught up in a violent storm and actually fears for one’s life?
The best place to begin to answer this question is to acknowledge that being caught up in a raging storm is definitely not the best context in which to commence growing in trust and faith. No, in order to pass this test of faith that Jesus was throwing at them, the disciples would have had to first make an in-depth commitment as to what or whom to place their faith and trust in.
If the disciples had been more settled in their faith – so settled that the storm caused them no more anxiety than it did Jesus – they would have passed this test with flying colors. And here it’s good to remember that Jesus is not out to embarrass his disciples, but to educate them in the opposing ways of fear and faith.
C.S. Lewis in his classic Mere Christianity defines faith as “The art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” Although I would expand this definition to include one’s heart as well as one’s reason, I really like Lewis’ emphasis on holding on in spite of your changing moods.
Let’s apply this insight to the disciples in today’s Scripture reading. We know from what has come before this story in Matthew’s Gospel, that the disciples have already heard Jesus’ breathtaking Sermon on the Mount, and have already witnessed Jesus healing a leper, Jesus healing the centurion’s servant, and Jesus healing numerous people at Peter’s house in Capernaum.
The disciples, then, already knew that Jesus possessed extraordinary power to heal. It’s easy for us to say, with the wisdom of hindsight, that the disciples should have been able to extrapolate from Jesus’ ability to heal the sick to Jesus’ ability to calm the forces of nature.
But the disciples are caught off guard. They find themselves in a terrifying storm, immediately forget what they already know, totally freak out, and scream at him: Lord, save us! We are perishing!
Jesus, master teacher that he is, uses this occasion of the disciples’ forgetting to further their education by asking his famous question: Why are you afraid, you of little faith? The whole point of this question is to remind them of what they already know, although s yet only in a very preliminary way: JESUS IS FULLY IN CHARGE OF ANY AND EVERY SITUATION THAT LIFE HAS TO THROW AT ONE.
Thomas Lane Butts writes:
“Several years ago there was a well-known television circus show that developed a Bengal tiger act. Like the rest of the show, it was done ‘live’ before a large audience. One evening, the tiger trainer went into the cage with several tigers to do a routine performance. The door was locked behind him. The spotlights highlighted the cage, the television cameras moved in close, and the audience watched in suspense as the trainer skillfully put the tigers through their paces.
“In the middle of the performance, the worst possible fate befell the act: The lights went out! For [way too many] long, dark seconds the trainer was locked in with the tigers. In the darkness, they could see him, but he could not see them.
“But he survived, and when the lights came on, he calmly finished the performance. In an interview afterward, he was asked how he felt knowing that the tigers could see him but that he could not see them. He first admitted the chilling fear of the situation, but pointed out that the tigers did not know that he could not see them. He said, ‘I just kept cracking my whip and talking to them until the lights came on.’”
This story, I think, fleshes out C.S. Lewis’ definition of faith as: “The art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” What did the tiger trainer do? He held on to his prior knowledge of tiger behavior in spite of his fear.
This gives us a first insight into how we can call on our faith to overcome our fear: We need to hold on to our faith in spite of our fear. The sharer of this story, Thomas Lane Butts, makes the following observation: “This experience gives us a vivid parable of human life. At some point in our lives, all of us face the terrifying task of fighting tigers in the dark.”
The first thing we can do in facing our own terrifying tigers is to hold on to our faith in spite of our fear.
Henri Nouwen brilliantly summarizes this first movement of holding on and introduces us to the second movement of letting go.
Not long before his death, Henri Nouwen wrote a book called Sabbatical Journeys. In this book, he writes about some friends of his who were trapeze artists, called the Flying Roudellas. They told Nouwen there’s a special relationship between the flyer and catcher on the trapeze. The flyer is the one that lets go, and the catcher is the one that catches.
As the flyer swings high above the crowd on the trapeze, the moment comes when he must let go. He arcs out into the air. His job is to remain as still as possible and wait for the strong hands of the catcher to pluck him from the air.
One of the Flying Roudellas told Nouwen, “The flyer must never try to catch the catcher.” The flyer, in other words, must wait in absolute trust. The catcher will him, but he must wait.
To summarize thus far: For faith to become an effective antidote to fear in our lives, the first thing we must do is to hold on to our faith in spite of our fear. The second thing we must do is to make the choice to let go of our fear.
There’s a third element in growing our faith, and it’s nicely captured in the Native American tradition of the vision quest. The first citizens of this continent had a unique practice of training young braves. On the night of a boy’s thirteenth birthday, after learning hunting, scouting, and fishing skills, he was put to one final test.
He was placed in a dense forest to spend the entire night alone. Until then, he had never been away from the security of the family and the tribe. But on this night, he was blindfolded and taken several miles away. When he took off the blindfold, he was in the middle of thick woods, and he was justifiably terrified. Every time a twig snapped he visualized a wild animal ready to pounce.
After what seemed like an eternity, the first rays of sunlight entered the interior of the forest. Looking around, the boy saw flowers and the outline of a path. Then to his utter astonishment, he beheld the figure of a man standing just a few feet away, armed with bow and arrow. It was his father. He had been there all night long.
Let’s go back to Henri Nouwen’s trapeze illustration for a moment. For a flyer to be caught there has to be a catcher, a catcher who really knows his or her stuff, and is totally trustworthy as a catcher. This is the role of the father in our Native American illustration.
We can now add a third step to our investigation of how to grow our faith to overcome our fear: Find a totally trustworthy person to be our “catcher.” Other biblical words for “catcher” would be “savior,” “redeemer,” “friend.”
This brings us to our final illustration. It’s not easy to find a totally trustworthy person to be our “catcher.” Many would say that only one such person has ever walked the face of this earth. Tim Hansel, in his book Holy Sweat talks about his own experience in finding such a person. He writes:
“At first, I saw God as my observer, my judge, keeping track of the things I did wrong, so as to know whether I merited heaven or hell when I die.
“But later on, when I met Christ, it seemed as though life were rather like a bike ride, but it was a tandem bike, and I noticed that Christ was in the back helping me pedal.
“I don’t know just when it was that he suggested we change places, but life has not been the same since. When I had control, I knew the way. It was rather boring, but predictable. . . It was the shortest distance between two points.
“But when he took the lead, he knew delightful long cuts, up mountains and through rocky places at breakneck speeds, it was all I could do to hang on! Even though it looked like madness, he said, ‘Pedal!’
“I worried and was anxious and asked, ‘Where are you taking me?’ He laughed and didn’t answer, and I started to learn to trust. I forgot my boring life and entered into the adventure. And when I’d say, ‘I’m scared,’ he’d lean back and touch my hand.
“He took me to people with gifts that I needed, gifts of healing, acceptance and joy. They gave me gifts to take on my journey, my Lord’s and mine. And we were off again. He said, ‘Give the gifts away; they’re extra baggage, too much weight.’ So I did, to the people we met, and I found that in giving I received, and still our burden was light.
“I did not trust him, at first, in control of my life. I thought he’d wreck it, but he knows bike secrets, knows how to make it bend to the sharp corners, knows how to jump to clear high rocks, knows how to fly to shorten scary passages.
“I am learning to shut up and pedal in the strangest places, and I’m beginning to enjoy the view and the cool breeze on my face with my delightful constant companion, Jesus Christ. And when I’m sure I just can’t do any more, he just smiles and says ‘Pedal.’”
To summarize, Jesus’ question to his disciples – which includes us just as much as the originals – pushes us to ask ourselves how we can grow our faith to overcome our fear.
We have seen that there are four steps that we can take which will move us solidly in this direction:
The first step is to hold on to our faith in spite of our fear.
The second step is to choose to let go of our fear.
Echoing Nouwen’s trapeze illustration, the third step is to find a totally trustworthy person to be our catcher.
The fourth step is to invite Jesus to be our catcher, and get ready to roll!
If we actually take these four steps, our worries and fears will gradually be swallowed up in faith and trust, and we will be able to affirm with George MacDonald when he writes about God totally accepting and loving him in spite of all his imperfections: “Thou art my refuge, because Thou art my home. Thou art my refuge, because Thou art my home.”
Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
When you were a kid, where did you go to hide when there was a bad storm?
What do you think Jesus was trying to teach the disciples – including yourself – by sleeping through the storm? By rebuking it?
Think of a scary experience in your own life that parallels the scary experience of the disciples in today’s Scripture reading. How did you get through it?
Which of the four steps to overcome fear is the hardest for you?
To hold on to our faith in spite of our fear?
To choose to let go of our fear?
To find a totally trustworthy person to be our “catcher.”
To invite Jesus to be our “catcher.”
What is your favorite quote on faith from the Introduction, and why?
CLOSING PRAYER: Janet Morley, Contemporary
Spirit of comfort and longing,
enfold my fear,
unclothe me of my pride,
unweave my thoughts,
uncomplicated my heart,
and give me surrender:
that I may tell my wounds,
lay down my work,
and wait to follow you.
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: Vision Choir – What a friend we have in Jesus
Aufnahmeservice Rau You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves. AMEN