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
March 28, 2021
Dear Friends,
Today marks the beginning of Holy Week. May God be with you in an especially close way throughout these days.
Many thanks to Heidi Quandt and her delivery team for the beautiful Easter flowers which will be delivered today. Heidi sent me some pictures of the flowers which I’m forwarding to you as this year’s virtual altar. This marks the second Easter that we won’t be together in the sanctuary, but the day of our reopening is approaching.
The GivingTree Benefit Shop is now accepting donations! Beginning on Thursday, April 1st the shop will be open on Thursday, Friday, and now Saturday from 1-4. Many thanks to Pam Klaumann, the volunteers at GivingTree, and to our Women’s Association for their time, creativity, and dedication.
Stay Safe, Take Care, and Always Remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel – God WITH Us! Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR March 28, 2021
INTRODUCTORY READING: A MEDLEY OF READINGS ON DEATH
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. –Jesus in John 14:2-3
The death of someone we love is always shattering. To love is to carry another within oneself, to keep a special place in one’s heart for him or her. This spiritual space is nourished by a physical presence; death, then, tears out a part of our own heart. Those who deny the suffering of death have never truly loved; they live in a spiritual illusion. To celebrate death, then, is not to deny this laceration and the grief it involves, it is to give space to live it, to speak about it, and even to sing of it. It is to give mutual support, looking the reality in the face and placing all in the Heart of God in deep trust. –Jean Vanier
Walking with God. . .means walking through death. It means living with death behind one rather than ahead of one. –John S. Dunne
People who believe that death is part of God’s purpose, one of the forms of his caring, can take their time over life. There being a message of beginning or deepening in every ending, their sufferings are worth working through with considerable care. They are not going to miss or lose anything that matters. And there is never any reason for ceasing to love, even for loving less, since every moment, every experience, brings God with it and the possibility of deeper communion with life. –J. Neville Ward
It was not physical life and physical death of which Jesus was thinking. He meant that, for the man who fully accepted Him, there is no such thing as death. Death had lost its finality. The man who enters into fellowship with Jesus has entered into a fellowship which is independent of time. The man who accepts Jesus has entered into a relationship with God which neither time nor eternity can sever. Such a man goes, not from life to death, but from life to life. Death is only the introduction to the nearer presence of God. –William Barclay
SUGGESTED MUSIC: WERE YOU THERE // feat. Andrea Thomas -- #VIRGIL
4PM Media You Tube
OPENING PRAYER: Vincent Ashwin, Contemporary
Lord, what would we have done?
Would we have fallen asleep and then run away terrified,
like the disciples in Gethsemane?
Thank you that you forgive us for our weakness,
when we opt out and run away from conflict and cost.
Lord, what would we have done?
Would we have shouted ‘Hosanna’ on one day,
and ‘Crucify’ on another?
Forgive us when we fail you because it is easier to follow the crowd.
Lord, what would we have done?
Would we have been harsh and judgmental,
like many of the religious leaders of the day?
Forgive us when we are quick to condemn, or hide behind legalism.
Lord, what would we have done?
Would we have been like the soldiers, hard and callous,
just doing their job?
Forgive us when we act blindly and unthinkingly,
without considering the effect our behavior has on others.
Lord, what would we have done?
Would we have slunk away, ashamed of the horror of Calvary?
We thank you that you forgive us when we let you down,
and that your love is stronger than all the evil we could throw at you.
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: Luke 23:32-43
Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’
SERMON: JESUS REVEALS TO US WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
The essential thing to note concerning Palm Sunday is that Jesus made the pivotal decision to enter Jerusalem on a humble donkey rather than a mighty war-horse. In doing so he was declaring in the most public way possible that he understood his own identity in terms of being a nonviolent servant and not the warrior-king that he knew just about everyone, including his own disciples, was hoping for.
Typically, I preach on the meaning of Jesus’ death on Palm Sunday, because this is the only Sunday before Good Friday, which is, along with Christmas and Easter, one of the three most important days in the church year.
This year, however, rather than reflecting on the death of Jesus, I want to take a close look at one of the most significant things that Jesus ever said. That Jesus said this from the cross, as he himself was dying, in response to someone else’s need, powerfully illustrates his identification with the role of suffering servant.
One of the two persons crucified next to Jesus asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. Jesus replies, not just with abstract hope but with emphatic assurance: “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
First off, we need to note that it is a revolutionary, and not the traditional “thief,” or as the NRSV translation has it, a generic “criminal,” who is crucified next to Jesus – yet another example of how many Bible translators insist on “protecting” us from the harsh political realities mirrored in Scripture!
But before focusing on this conversation between Jesus and the revolutionary, I would like to look at some of the ways in which many Christian memorial services often distort the actual teaching of Jesus himself.
Many of us have witnessed the following scenario: A truly wonderful Christian person has died, and after a moving eulogy, the minister says to those assembled: “If you want to see your loved one again, you had better accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, like your loved one did.” The minister then proceeds to offer an altar call, at which many present come forward – coerced and manipulated by the minister into doing this.
Besides the fact that manipulation and coercion are never acceptable in Christian ministry, the minister who plays on people’s grief to get them into heaven is also practicing bad theology.
Twice in Scripture on two different occasions Jesus is asked point-blank “What do I have to do to inherit eternal life?” Instead of responding to this question with a list of the things that one has to believe about himself to get into heaven, Jesus responds on both occasions: “Love God and love your neighbor.”
And to cite just one of many possible texts in opposition to the judging God who sends people to hell if they do not believe the right stuff about him, what about Jesus’ own words in the Gospel of John when he states, referring to his coming crucifixion: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 10:32). This text makes it sound like everyone is covered by the reality of what happened in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Moving on, many memorial services that take place in mainstream Christianity, in churches much like ours – while not manipulative – leave people quite confused as to where their loved one has actually gone. This is because the single most popular Scripture text used at mainstream Protestant and Catholic memorial services is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, which reads:
“But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.
And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, RSV).
I don’t know about you, but I find much more confusion than comfort in these words from St. Paul. With all his talk about the dead being asleep, and Jesus’ Second Coming, he gives us the impression that death is a deep sleep until Jesus comes again.
When Paul wrote these words, he expected Jesus to come back any day. Nearly two thousand years have passed, and we are still waiting. If the dead are indeed asleep until Jesus returns, they are, indeed, in a frozen sleep of long and indefinite duration. Where is the hope and comfort in that?
This is merely one of many possible examples of how a great deal of mischief and misunderstanding take place when Christians focus more on the teachings of Paul than on the teachings of Jesus.
St. Paul said some great things; he said some terrible things; and he said quite a few confusing things. This popular funeral text falls, I think, into the category of the confusing.
Some people argue that since Paul’s letters were written before the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, we should give them priority. But they are forgetting the strength of the oral tradition in Jesus’ day, an oral tradition that ensured that the words spoken by a prophet were remembered accurately well beyond the thousandth retelling, an oral tradition that argues for the authenticity of many of the things that Jesus is reported to have said.
Add to this the fact that one of the chief criteria that biblical scholars use to determine the authenticity of any given teaching of Jesus is its uniqueness –the fact that no one else had said anything like what Jesus is saying – and we come up with a very high degree of probability that Jesus actually did say to the revolutionary crucified next to him, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
This statement stands out as uniquely Jesus’ own.
The Jewish understanding of life after death immediately before and during the time of Jesus rejected the notion of an individual’s receiving God’s gift of eternal life. Rather, the Jewish tradition of Jesus’ day taught that at the end of time, the Jewish community as a whole would receive the gift of life after death. Jesus saying to a particular individual, “Today you will be with me in paradise” would have stood out in stark contrast to what his contemporaries were saying.
Affirming that Jesus actually said these words, let’s take a close look at what he meant when he said them.
First, “Truly, I tell you,” is emphatic. It’s like Jesus saying, “Listen up, what I’m about to say to you is really important.” I like to think that Jesus, knowing that his words would be overheard and passed on by the faithful women disciples present at his crucifixion, uses the occasion of his own death to share with humankind the most astounding teaching about death ever uttered by anyone.
Second, according to Jesus, death is not a state of being frozen in deep sleep until he returns. Jesus does not say to the person asking to be remembered, “When I come back you will rise from the death to be with me.” Rather, he uses the traditional Jewish division of time into three main categories: “Forty days” meaning a long time, “seven days” meaning a moderate amount of time, and “today” meaning a short amount of time, from one to three days. Thus, by using the word “today,” Jesus is emphasizing the fact that death itself is a bridge to eternal life.
Continuing to look closely at this sentence, the word “you” in Jewish understanding always referred to the human being considered as a whole: body, mind, soul, spirit.
Unlike the Greeks, who maintained that at death the human spirit was freed from the encumbrance of being attached to a body, the Jewish tradition held that the entire human being – very much including the body – would be raised “at the last day.”
Jesus corrected the traditional understanding of timing, but held on to the Jewish understanding of the human person as embodied spirit. In other words, one did not have to wait until the “last day” to experience eternal life; eternal life, for Jesus, began today, at the moment of one’s death. And the being who today experienced eternal life was not a disembodied spirit, but a fully restored human being, complete with a fully restored human body.
This corresponds nicely with the many accounts of near-death experiences in which a person encounters departed loved ones: if their bodies were paralyzed in this world, their bodies were fully restored in the next; if their bodies were bowed down with age and illness in this dimension, their bodies appear at their physical prime in the next.
Moving on to the next crucial word in this profound statement from the lips of the dying Jesus, we come to the simple preposition “with.” Prepositions are words that connect, and of all prepositions, the word “with” is the most connective, the most relational. In using this relational preposition, Jesus is emphasizing the relational nature of the life that comes after this life. The United Church of Canada does a good job of capturing the relationality of what Jesus is saying here when it ends its affirmation of faith with the words: “In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.”
Finally, lest the person to whom he is speaking fear that in spite of all these reassurances, they will ultimately wind up in what the Old Testament calls “Sheol,” a non-relational, in-between world, more shadow than light, Jesus chooses to describe the place where they are going as “paradise.” “Paradise” is a borrowed word from Persia which designates the special garden where the king walks with his friends.
In other words, Jesus is saying to the person being crucified next to him, and who asks to be remembered by him, that when he dies he does not have to worry about waking up in Sheol or the netherworld, but will find himself with Jesus, not just in any old garden, but in the best of all gardens, the garden of the king.
“Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
This one sentence from the mouth of Jesus is, I think, the most meaningful, the most consoling statement about life after death ever spoken on this planet.
This teaching is emphatic, one of only six times in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus uses the phrase “Truly, I tell you. . .” to introduce a teaching of ultimate importance and truth.
One of the many amazing things about this text is that Jesus said it not on Easter Sunday, but on Good Friday. Jesus already knew that death would not be the end of him, or anyone else. Death was actually the beginning of a whole new stage of life.
Thanks be to God who, speaking to us through Jesus, shares with us some very good news, some very good news indeed.
Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR RELECTION
Recall the worst funeral or memorial service that you have attended. What made it so bad?
Recall the best funeral or memorial service that you have attended. What made it so good?
Which of the introductory readings on death is your favorite and why?
CLOSING PRAYER: William Penn, 1644-1718
We give back to you, O God, those whom you gave to us.
You did not lose them when you gave them to us,
and we do not lose them by their return to you.
Your Son has taught us that life is eternal and love cannot die.
So death is only a horizon, and a horizon is only the limit of our sight.
Open our eyes to see more clearly, and draw us closer to you,
so that we may know we are nearer to our loved ones, who are with you.
You have told us that you are preparing a place for us,
That where you are we may be always, dear Lord of life and death.
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: When I Survey the Wondrous Cross – Fernando Ortega
Francis H You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.