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
May 2, 2021
Dear Friends,
Things are really starting to move in terms of our reopening! Preparations are in process for making our facilities available to our renters for indoor meetings by June. Many thanks to George Brehmer for heading up this aspect of our coming back together. Jon Close, our new Director of Music, is already busy at work getting ready for in-person worship, which will begin on June 20th. Jo Ann Holbrook is heading up efforts to have a safe sanctuary.
The most visible expression of things gradually returning to normal is the Women’s Association Rose Garden Tea. This will not be a virtual tea, but a real tea in our real rose garden! Mark Saturday afternoon, May 8th, from 2-4 as your official invitation to return in person to our beautiful campus. Accolades to Pam Klaumann for being instrumental in making this happen.
Carole hopes to have a full version of Beyond Sunday ready to be mailed in early June. To do this she needs your help in getting articles to her by May 23rd.
Take Good Care.
And Always Remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel – God WITH Us, Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR MAY 2, 2021
INTRODUCTION: A SELECTION OF READINGS ON COMPASSION
(As you read these, please try to apply them to some of the most pressing problems in our country today – racism, hate crimes against Asian Americans, poverty, and homelessness.)
Christianity taught us to care. Caring is the greatest thing, caring matters most.
--Friedrich von Hugel
Our tragedy is not that we suffer but that we waste suffering. We waste the opportunity of growing into compassion. –Mary Craig
Jesus found him. The man did not find Jesus; Jesus found him. That is the deepest truth of Christian faith; Jesus found me. Our fellowship with Him is rooted in His compassion. –William Temple
Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. –Henri Nouwen
The root of the matter is a very simple and old-fashioned thing, a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it, for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words. The thing I mean – please forgive me for mentioning it – is love, Christian love, or compassion. If you feel like this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty. –Bertrand Russell
The Son of God was seen
Most glorious, in him all his Father shone
Substantially express’d, and in his face
Divine compassion visibly appear’d.
--John Milton
Compassion is probably the only antitoxin of the soul. Where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses are relatively harmless. One would rather see the world run by men who set their hearts on toys but are accessible to pity than by men animated by lofty ideals whose dedication makes them ruthless. In the chemistry of man’s soul, almost all noble qualities – courage, honor, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc. – can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. ---Eric Hoffer
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the conditions of being human. When we look at compassion in this way, it becomes clear that something more is involved than a general kindness.
--Kathryn Spink
SUGGESTED “MINI-SERMON” BY MARTIN LUTHER KING:
“We Shall Overcome” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
tripppin2billie You Tube
SUGGESTED MUSIC: Morehouse College – We Shall Overcome
Kortland Whalum You Tube
OPENING PRAYER: Eric Milner-White, 1884-1963
Inspire us, O Lord, never to think
that we have knowledge enough to need no teaching,
wisdom enough to need no correction,
talents enough to need no grace,
goodness enough to need no progress,
humility enough to need no change of heart and mind,
devotion enough to need no inspiration,
strength sufficient enough without your Spirit.
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: Acts 15:1-12
Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers [in Antioch], ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’ And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders.
So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the believers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them.
But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.’
The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, ‘My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us.
Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.’
The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles.
SERMON: THE VISION OF INCLUSIVITY IN JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
ORIGINATES IN GOD
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
Our Scripture text for today is an excerpt from a considerably longer passage in the book of Acts which details what authors Matthew, Sheila, and Dennis Linn call “The most important meeting in the history of the church.” This meeting, which is known by church historians as “The Council at Jerusalem,” is given this much significance by the Linns, and many, many others, because not only did this Council decide to officially allow those who were not Jewish to become followers of Jesus without having to undergo circumcision or observe Jewish dietary and ritual laws, but it also established a crucial precedent for inclusivity, a principle originating, it is claimed, in no one less than God.
What I would like to do in this sermon is to locate the origins of this vision of inclusivity in the Hebrew Scriptures, take a look at the inclusivity of Jesus, take a deeper look at the “Council of Jerusalem,” and, finally, consider some of the possible implications of God’s initiative for inclusivity in our own day.
There are many texts in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Scriptures that look forward to a time when all the nations will come to a full knowledge of God. The highest concentration of texts to this effect occurs in the book of the prophet Isaiah. Significantly, this is the prophetic book with which Jesus most closely identified himself.
In Isaiah, chapter 2, we read:
“In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” (Emphasis mine.)
A direct result of this intimate knowledge of and relationship with God will be the overcoming of war:
‘. . .they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their speaks into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4)
In the eleventh chapter of Isaiah we read:
“They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9)
In Isaiah chapter forty two – quoting from one of the Suffering Servant Songs, songs with which Jesus directly identifies his own ministry, we find:
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring froth justice to the nations. He will not cry out or lift up his voice. . . A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench. . . (Isaiah 42:1-3)
Jesus quotes from and alludes to Isaiah far more than any other biblical book. Following the lead of the Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah, he personally changed the prevailing definition of Messiah from warrior king to suffering servant. Given these two significant facts, I think it’s safe to say that Jesus’ vision of the “end times” was far closer to Isaiah’s than it was to the violent warrior-king Messiah portrayed in the New Testament book of Revelation. There is very little resemblance between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus described in the book of Revelation. Many feel that the author of Revelation was so disappointed with the suffering servant that they got in the real Jesus, that he projected a hyper-violent, warrior-king Messiah in a fictional Jesus who returns to inflict God’s revenge on all God’s enemies. This is a far-cry from the “love your enemies” that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount.
. . .
Let us now expand our search for God’s inclusivity by moving from Isaiah to the Gospels themselves. From the Gospels we know that although the primary outreach of Jesus was to the house of Israel, his long-range intent was to preach God’s good news to everyone everywhere.
Among several possible examples, two will have to suffice: The ministry of Jesus on the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee, in which he feeds some four thousand people (see Mark 8:1-13), and his healing of the Roman centurion’s servant, including his praise of the centurion’s faith (see Luke 7:1-10).
But God takes the initiative for inclusivity in the ministry of Jesus in an even more surprising manner: We know that Jesus went out of his way to include in the reign of God persons normally excluded. But Jesus went even further in terms of embodying God’s own inclusivity, a further embodiment which brought down on him the wrath of the religious authorities and eventually led to his death.
According to Hans Kung in his magnum opus, On Being a Christian: “The absolutely unpardonable thing was not [Jesus’] concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed. . .not even his partisanship for the poor, humble people. The real trouble was that he got involved with moral failures, with obviously irreligious and immoral people: people morally and politically suspect, [the] many dubious, obscure, abandoned, hopeless types, on the fringe of every society. That was the real scandal. Did he really have to go so far?”
To be sure, to the moral outcasts of his day Jesus did counsel repentance, or a radical change of heart and mind. But he pushed for repentance only after he had accepted and forgiven the broken. Jesus embodies the radical position that one does not repent in order to be forgiven, but that God’s initiative in accepting and forgiving is what leads to a change of heart, mind, and behavior.
As we saw last week, Jesus himself gives us a shorthand way of describing what he’s up to: twice he quotes from the book of the prophet Hosea. Speaking for God, Jesus emphasizes: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6), which could be rendered in more colloquial English as “I’m after compassion, not religion.”
. . .
A crucial question that comes up again and again is if it is possible for God to lead God’s people into new ways of understanding and acting. I think a strong case can be made that Jesus himself would answer this question in the affirmative. After all, in the after-dinner conversation following the Last Supper, Jesus promises his disciples: “When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).
This brings us to today’s Scripture reading, “The most important meeting in the history of the church,” the Council at Jerusalem. This is a prime example of the Spirit of God leading the people of God into radically new territory.
Some two millennia after this Council, when Gentile Christians comprise the overwhelming majority of those who make up the church, it is hard for us to imagine the revolutionary nature of non-Jewish persons being invited to participate fully in a community which until the time of St. Paul had been overwhelmingly Jewish in composition. And this is the real kicker: being invited to participate fully without having to obey the Jewish ritual and purity laws.
Concerning this revolutionary move, our text mentions “no small dissension and debate” (v.2), and “after there had been much debate” (v.7). Given the fact that the earliest Christians continued to be practicing Jews, and the critical importance of the dietary and ritual laws for Jewish identity, the mention of the words “dissension” and “debate” have to be understatements of what actually took place. I suspect that what actually took place was an uproar in the life of the earliest church!
Peter settled this debate in the earliest church by appealing to the fact that the Holy Spirit had been given to Gentile Christians – Christians who were not keeping the Jewish dietary and purity laws – just as the Holy Spirit had been given to Jewish Christians who continued to keep the purity and dietary laws. Peter, in other words, was, in effect, appealing to Jesus’ teaching that God’s Holy Spirit would guide the church into new territory.
Peter is basing his counsel at the Council of Jerusalem on a profoundly disturbing – and enlightening – experience that he recently had. Peter’s disturbing and enlightening experience is described somewhat earlier in the book of Acts. I can only sum it up:
A devout Gentile – Cornelius, a Roman centurion in fact –received a vision from God directing him to call for a man named Peter. As his servants were making the journey to contact Peter, Peter himself was given a vision from God in which a large net was lowered before him containing all sorts of animals, both clean and unclean, and he was given permission to take and eat any of them.
Peter’s first response is: “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:14). God repeats this teaching vision for Peter two more times, and says to him, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10:15).
While Peter is still trying to figure out what God is trying to teach him, Cornelius’ servants arrive. We are told specifically that the Spirit then said to Peter: “Simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them” (Acts 10:19-20).
Peter goes with Cornelius’ emissaries, and arrives at Cornelius’ large home only to find it filled with Gentiles – persons whom Peter up until now has judged to be impure and unclean, persons whom Jewish ritual and purity laws forbade him to eat with. Peter is moved by God’s Spirit to share the good news of Jesus to all the Gentiles gathered in that home.
While Peter is still speaking, “the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message” (Acts 10:44). They praise the God of Israel in ecstatic speech. Peter winds up saying “They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have,” and proceeds not only to eat with them, but to baptize them in the name of Jesus (Acts 10:47-48).
That is the disturbing and enlightening experience that Peter went through not long before “The most important meeting in the history of the church,” where it was decided, largely on Peter’s authority, to follow God’s lead and practice inclusivity.
By following the lead of God’s Spirit and extending God’s own inclusivity to those previously excluded, the Council of Jerusalem established a bold precedent, a precedent which, in its outworking, has eventually led the church to push for such inclusive actions as the abolition of slavery, and parts of the church to push for women’s equality and the ordination of women.
Though there is still much “dissension and debate” going on in today’s church regarding the issue of gay marriage, I find it fascinating that the scriptural and theological precedents that finally triggered the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – hardly an organization that one would consider “liberal” -- to endorse gay marriage, were precisely the precedents that we have been looking at today:
One: Jesus’ affirmation that God’s Spirit can lead God’s people into “new” truth;
Two: God’s pronouncing “clean” what Peter had previously considered to be “unclean;”
Three: The manifestation of God’s Spirit at work in gay Christians as well as straight Christians, specifically in blessing Spirit-filled persons in both groups with the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22).
Of course the Christian church, as a whole, is a long way from having reached consensus on this issue. For that matter, it is important to acknowledge disagreement on this issue among members and friends of our own congregation.
Nevertheless, it is vitally important to see God’s taking the initiative in terms of inclusivity, an initiative which God, I strongly suspect, yearns for us to follow, an inclusivity which just might include persons traditionally left outside.
In God’s inclusivity, there simply is no they and we.
In God’s inclusivity, we are all one in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
What is the difference between these two theologies?
God requires repentance before God forgives.
God accepts and forgives a person first, precisely in order to nudge them to repentance (a change of heart, mind, and behavior).
What do you feel are some “new” directions that God’s Spirit is leading us in?
Why do you think the church in general is so reluctant to move in new directions?
In Paul and Barnabas’ impassioned speech to “The Council of Jerusalem,” their strongest argument is that “They (the Gentiles, non-Jews) have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” How does this argument cut through the age-old conflict between “us” and “them”?
What would be some indications that a person has really received the Holy Spirit?
CLOSING PRAYER: Ulrich Schaffer, Contemporary
You meet me in gentleness.
You come close.
You take my coldness
and warm me from the inside.
As my cold heart melts, Lord,
let your streams flow through me
that I may play my part
in the renewing of the earth.
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand
First –Plymouth Church of Lincoln Nebraska You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.