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 16, 2021
Dear Friends,
I’m still brimming with good feelings after the wonderful Rose Garden Tea held in person in our own Rose Garden last Saturday. The next big in person event we have to look forward to is the reopening of our sanctuary on Sunday, June 20th.
Regarding our reopening, I’d like to ask your take on moving the time of our worship service from 10 to 11. If we’re going to make this change, now is the time to do it. A number of quite elderly congregants have shared with me that they now have to spend so much time getting ready that it’s becoming harder and harder for them to make a 10am service. On the other hand, several feel strongly about keeping the service at 10 so that they still have a good long afternoon ahead of them on Sunday. Our Board of Governors will be discussing this at its meeting next Sunday, May 23rd. THEY NEED MORE INPUT FROM THE CONGREGATION. Please let Jon Close, President of the Board, and myself know your thoughts. Email would be best. Jon’s email is jclose7@yahoo.com. Mine is paulccmp@yahoo.com. For those who receive the worship service by ground mail, there isn’t time to send in a response before the Board meeting. If you feel strongly about this, please call Carole at 624-8595 and let her know what you think. She will be sure that Jon received your feedback.
Our next Congregational Meeting will be held on Sunday, May 30th. It will be like our last, via Zoom. Hopefully this will be our LAST Zoom congregational meeting! More details will be coming next week.
Finally, Elizabeth and I will be on vacation from Friday, May 21st through Saturday, May 29th. I will be emailing the Worship Service for Sunday the 23rd this Thursday.
THERE WILL NOT BE A ZOOM WORSHIP SERVICE NEXT SUNDAY. We return to Zoom worship on Sunday, May 30th.
Stay Safe, Take Good Care,
And Always Remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel, God WITH Us!
Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR MAY 16, 2021
INTRODUCTION: A SELECTION OF READINGS ON THE TOPIC OF IMAGINATION
(I chose these readings on imagination to introduce our service today because we are wrestling with the theme of human scarcity versus God’s abundance, and the only way for us to move from the one to the other is through an act of creative imagination.)
For God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals, while they slumber on their beds, then he opens their ears. –Job 33:14-16
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. –Romans 12:2
Imagination is the eye of the soul. –Joseph Joubert
There is no power on earth like imagination. . . –Laurens van der Post
The great instrument of moral good is the imagination. –Percy Bysshe Shelley
Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young. –W. Somerset Maugham
Only in imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. –Joseph Conrad
He realized in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the Sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation. –Oscar Wilde
The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. –Henry Ward Beecher
The imagination – the divinest of mental faculties – is God’s self in the soul.
--Henry Ward Beecher
SUGGESTED MUSIC: Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us With Your Love
Lamoni Heartland You Tube
OPENING PRAYER: Ted Loder, Contemporary
Loving God,
empower me
to be a bold participant,
rather than a timid saint in waiting,
in the difficult ordinariness of now;
to exercise the authority of honesty,
rather than to defer to power,
or deceive to get it;
to influence someone for justice,
rather than impress anyone for gain;
and, by grace, to find treasures
of joy, of friendship, of peace
hidden in the fields of the daily
you give me to plow.
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: Mark 6:30-44
The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.
As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’
Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.
SERMON: GOD TURNS OUR SCARCITY INTO ABUNDANCE
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally)
This is the only miracle story mentioned in all four Gospels. From this we can draw the conclusion that the memory of this particular event had special significance in the life of the earliest church.
Many biblical scholars are convinced that Luke was close to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and that he received a number of eyewitness accounts from her. In a similar way, many biblical scholars are convinced that Mark was close to Peter the apostle, and that he received quite a few eyewitness accounts from him.
Our Scripture text for today, and the story of the feeding of 4,000 Gentiles a bit further on in Mark, are considered by many to be eyewitness accounts that Peter shared with Mark. Several telling details point to this conclusion:
Mark is the only Gospel writer to include the seemingly small detail that the grass was green. This small detail enables us to date this event as having taken place in late April or early May, the only time of the year when the grass would be green in the region of the Sea of Galilee. It is also exactly the type of seemingly insignificant detail that one giving an eyewitness account would include. This detail is lacking in the accounts of this same event in Matthew, Luke, and John, who give us a more general narrative.
It is also indicative of an eyewitness account that two different types of baskets are mentioned in the Gospel of Mark: in the feeding of the 5,000, our text for today, the specifically Jewish type of basket, the narrow-necked, gradually broadening, kophinos, is mentioned. In Mark’s account of the feeding of the 4,000 Gentiles, the specifically Gentile type of basket, the hamper-like sphuris, is mentioned. As a small businessman, Peter would have known Greek, and would have been familiar with the typical household items of his Gentile neighbors.
A further significant detail pointing to an eyewitness account is Mark’s mentioning that Jesus divided the mass of people into groups of hundreds and groups of fifties. I think that this detail comes from Jesus himself by way of Peter. Earlier in Mark’s Gospel Jesus had healed a man possessed by a legion of demons, emphatically using the same word for the demons that the Romans used to describe their main fighting unit, the legion, which consisted of 5,000 men.
One hundred was the smallest unit in the Roman army which required the oversight of an officer, a centurion. I strongly suspect that in mentioning these two specific numbers, one hundred and five thousand, Jesus was intentionally contrasting the way of the world as represented by the Roman army, and the way of the kingdom of God as represented by himself.
Little details like this are important because they show us how Scripture scholars, like the good detectives they are called to be, can piece together what actually happened some two thousand years ago. They’re important because they point to the historicity of the Gospel message. They point to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who ministered to other real persons in very specific and very real ways. There is an unbridgeable difference between a faith founded upon fiction, no matter how idealistic, and a faith founded upon memories of real events shared with us by people who were actually there.
So. . . what is the significance of this story in terms of our understanding God’s nature and God’s will? It’s significance lies in its stark delineation of two different responses to human need and two different responses to human resources.
The situation is this: A large crowd, the huge majority of whom are poor, has followed Jesus to a rather desolate place on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. They have gotten so caught up in Jesus’ teaching that they have forgotten all about the time. It is now nearly dark.
The disciples, suddenly aware of the crowd, and self-consciously aware of their own poverty, suddenly realize that it is the hour of the evening meal, and assume that there is not enough food to go around. Not wanting to be blamed by the crowd for their going hungry, they take the initiative and approach Jesus, asking him to “send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat” (v.36).
Jesus surprises them by responding: “You give them something to eat.” The word “you” is emphatic in the Greek. Jesus is not making a polite request. Rather, he is giving a challenging command.
Assuming that Jesus can be trusted not to demand something which is blatantly impossible, we see in this brief exchange two very different approaches to human need.
The disciples are basically afraid. They are afraid of the human need presented in this situation, and want to be let off the hook in terms of their responsibility to respond to it.
Jesus, on the other hand, sees the hunger of the crowd as an opportunity to manifest God’s compassion and God’s abundance, two crucial components of God’s Kingdom.
It is easy to put ourselves in the place of the disciples here: when faced with a situation that embodies the enormity of human need, is our response to throw up our hands in despair, or is our response one of trusting God’s compassion and God’s abundance, one of allowing God to address the situation, one of allowing God to address the situation through us?
I have to admit that my own first response to situations of great human need is, like the disciples, one of fear. I’m fearful that I don’t have what it takes. I’m fearful that I don’t have the words or the power or the money. I’m fearful that I might be inconvenienced. I, I, I. . .
My attitude is focused on myself and what I don’t have what it takes to meet the situation. In my initial response I tend to leave God out of the equation. I tend to forget that God has promised to be present in all situations of human need. I tend to forget that, as one of our church’s core values puts it, “We are the heart and hands of Christ serving others.”
And because I forget, I am all-too-often powerless and resourceless in the face of human need. Like the disciples in today’s text, my first response to Jesus when he asks me to do something is to throw up my hands in despair and to say the equivalent of “Am I to go and buy two thousand dollars worth of bread to give them to eat?”
Equally fortunate for both Jesus’ original disciples and for us later disciples, Jesus simply doesn’t buy into our fear and our despair. He merely asks us to give what little we do have to offer, and then he takes what little we have, blesses it, and makes it more than adequate to meet the situation at hand.
What constitutes the specifically miraculous part of this event has been the subject of much debate.
Some hold that Jesus simply took the five small loaves and two small fish, gave thanks to the Father, blessed them, and set them before the people, and that God directly intervened and miraculously multiplied the loaves and fish until there was enough for everyone.
Others hold that the real miracle lay in Jesus’ ability to inspire those who had already brought food with them to share what they had brought with their neighbors.
The wisest approach, I suspect, would be not to set these two alternatives in opposition to each other, but to see them as complementing one another. Thus, Jesus asks, the disciples give what little they have, God makes their little into much, which in turn inspires those in the crowd who have brought a little food with them to share their little with others, which God blesses and makes into much.
We can be sure that God already knows, as many involved in various food ministries have pointed out, that there already exists more than enough food on this planet to comfortably feed everyone. The real problem is not the lack of food, but the lack of compassion and the lack of neighborly love which the majority of the world’s wealthy have towards the world’s poor.
One of the most fascinating commentaries on the Gospels that we have is The Gospel in Solentiname, edited by Ernesto Cardenal. Ernesto Cardenale was a Roman Catholic priest who met with a group of peasants in a poor village in Nicaragua and recorded their responses to the assigned Gospel reading at Mass. It is one of the most fascinating commentaries on the Gospels that we have because it records the responses to his teachings and actions by exactly the same group of people that Jesus hung out with the most during his own ministry: the poorest of the poor.
As anyone involved with any facet of Community Church’s ministry to those labeled as “homeless” by our society, the poorest of the poor can often be the very best biblical scholars and theologians. They, like God, know what’s going on, what’s really going on, underneath the comfortable façade of labeling nations and people as “developed” and “developing,” or “first world” and “third world.”
In the context of today’s Gospel reading, Felipe, a dirt-poor peasant living in a dirt-poor village in rural Nicaragua, comments: “I think that in our country there’s plenty, plenty of everything. In our country there’s food, there’s clothing, there’s medicine, there’s everything you can want, there’s enough. What’s wrong is that people have all that stuff not to share but to sell. And the ones that have the things want them to be scarce to earn more even though the people are starving. If you put an end to selfishness there’ll be plenty of everything.”
The problem here in our own country is that we have a “first” world and a “third” world living side-by-side. Those labeled “homeless” are simply part of the one-fifth to one fourth of our own people who are living in abject poverty.
If the portraits of Jesus given to us in the Gospels are true, Jesus even now is ready and waiting to perform “the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves,” over and over and over again until our country and our world have been transformed.
The challenge is that in terms of this specific miracle, which we could call “making an abundance of food available to all,” Jesus requires our participation. Jesus challenges us to bring what little we have, to place it at his disposal, and to trust that God will dramatically increase it.
Jesus challenges us to trade in our tight-fisted attitude of scarcity for God’s open-handed reality of abundance.
In other words, Jesus challenges us to move from being his followers mostly in name to become his followers in acts of loving service.
Jesus confronted the “powers and principalities” of his own day – the religious, political, and economic structures that created an underclass for an upper class to exploit – and Jesus expects us as his disciples living in today’s world to do the same.
We are called to “let go” of our attitude of scarcity and “let God” by joining with God to bring about a new world of abundance.
Amen.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
What is your favorite quote from the Introduction concerning imagination and why?
How can the creative use of imagination lead us out of our human emphasis on scarcity and into God’s emphasis on abundance?
Imagine being faced with a challenge similar to that of the disciples in today’s Scripture reading. Imagine Jesus saying to you, “You give them something to eat.” How would this make you feel?
What would it take for you to shed an emphasis on scarcity for God’s emphasis on abundance?
CLOSING PRAYER: Janet Morley, Contemporary
Loving God, whose name is not honored
where the needy are not served,
and the powerless are treated with contempt:
may we embrace our neighbor
with the same tenderness
that we ourselves require;
so your justice may be fulfilled in love,
through Jesus Christ. Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC: I, the Lord of Sea and Sky (Here I Am, Lord)
[with lyrics for congregations]
Chet Valley Churches You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN.