Ownership is a story, do tell.
Mine
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Audio from worship at Christ Presbyterian Church, Gardnerville, NV on September 5,2021
I am wearing a mask so the deep breathing is not a sign of illness but a sign of healthy precaution.
edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.
Sermons also available free on iTunes
James is a strange book. Martin Luther famously called it “an epistle of straw.” He was not a fan. Now, he was okay with having it in the Bible, but he was not okay with James going against Paul’s doctrine of grace through faith. James seems to be pretty much works, that your deeds are supposed to match your faith. Now, people harmonize this and say, well, James is about after you have faith. It’s about fruits, not about seeds and growing. It’s about what you do after you come to the faith, not before. But I don’t know. James seems pretty angry to me.
I mean, maybe it’s just directness, but still, murder? We got murder in the Bible? Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on with whoever he was writing to. But to accuse them of murder, that seems a little extreme. Let’s hope he wasn’t being literal. Yeah, we may want to look at other translations on that. You want something you do not have, so you commit murder. Disputes and conflicts comes from being wrong-minded.
What about a contemporary English version? Yeah, a little better. When peacemakers plant seeds of peace, they harvest justice. Okay. But still we’ve got the killing. And that whole asking thing, you ask for it and you don’t get, I don’t understand it. But in the contemporary version it talks about when you cannot get what you want, you won’t get it by fighting and arguing. You should pray for it. Yet even when you pray, your prayers are not answered because you pray just for selfish reasons. Well, that makes more sense to me. A selfish prayer goes unanswered. Or, you know, “no” is an answer. I keep telling that to my kids growing up, you know, “no” is an answer. Doesn’t mean I didn’t answer you. It’s just no.
But there’s another Bible, it’s not a translation, like they didn’t decode it word from the Greek to English. Eugene Peterson, “The Message.” It’s kind of when the pastor reads a Bible, kind of. And when I get into trouble a lot of times I say, well, how in the world am I going to work on this? I go to good old Eugene Peterson, and I say, “Eugene, throw me a bone. Help me out here.” And he talks this way.
“You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God, and enjoy its results, only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor. Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way and fight for it deep inside yourself. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it.” And later, “You are spoiled children, each wanting your own way.”
We can look at those later, as homework. It’s always good to figure out, read more than one version of the Bible because, you know, nobody owns the Bible text. You know, I’m old enough to remember the big fight over the King James version. I had one guy witness to me that the RSV was published by a publishing house that was outright owned by Hell. You know, Hell with Satan and devils and all that. They’re actually the parent company of the RSV publishing house, which is United Council of Churches. He told me their home office was Texas, which makes a lot of sense to me, but still. I said, “Nah, I don’t think Satan’s in the publishing business.”
So it’s always good not to say who owns the Bible text because even if you can say, well, you have to go back to the Greek or Hebrew, well, even then, you know, there’s the footnotes and the various readings and which one you put up, which one you don’t. So it’s good to take more than one and not just say give the ownership of the Bible text and your faith to just one authority, even if it’s Gene Peterson.
I want to talk about ownership about this. There’s a really excellent book that came out earlier this year, “Mine.” There’s a lot of YouTubes and lectures by these guys. These guys are actually professors. So you can catch a lot of that stuff on YouTube without even buying the book. They give little pieces of it through there. And their main focus is that ownership is not set. It’s a story that we tell each other.
And there’s competing stories about how we decide who gets what when. We have stories that we tell each other, and they have six that they put down, pretty much variations on the theme. But they have six stories that we tell. You ever heard “finders keepers, losers weepers”? That’s one of them. And in the Scriptures, it talks about, you know, you want things that aren’t yours. You’re willing to do violence for them. You’re asking for the wrong thing, selfishness. All this reminds me of ownership.
Now, you may say “I’m not interested in that. You know, that’s ridiculous.” Well, if you’re not paying attention to the stories of ownership that other people are pushing on us and are telling us what is owned and what is not owned and what is theirs, they’re going to write the story so that it benefits them, so that they can have ownership at our expense. We need to pay attention to this. More and more is being owned by less and less because they’re better at telling the stories, of getting the laws written, of getting over public opinion.
Forty percent of the wealth in America is owned by 1% of the people. Is that a good story? Is that what we want the happy ending to be? And it’s getting more and more. States like South Dakota leading the way, Nevada’s not too far behind, to make sure that the rich stay rich. They don’t have to even – they can protect their wealth in South Dakota and Nevada so that even law judgments against them, much less family claims or ex-spouses or children or even legal judgments cannot touch their wealth because of the stories of ownership that South Dakota’s bringing up, and Nevada in defense or jealousy, I don’t know what, is catching up with and making sure that the wealthy stay wealthy.
Well. That sounds political. Well, let’s talk about something we can probably relate to not political. Has anyone been on an airline? This is the part where you wake up and raise your hand. Has anyone been on the airline? No, no one?
PARTICIPANT: Not recently.
REVEREND RAMSEY: I mean within your life.
PARTICIPANT: Yes.
PARTICIPANT: No.
REVEREND RAMSEY: All right. Yeah, your entire life. Not yesterday.
PARTICIPANT: Yes.
REVEREND RAMSEY: Okay. So what’s your position on reclining? Huh? So what, reclining or tray table? Do you recline?
PARTICIPANT: Yes.
REVEREND RAMSEY: Yes. You’re a recliner. How many recliners have we got here? All right. All right. How many, oh, no, I’ve got the tray table, you’d better not recline on me? How many? No one?
PARTICIPANT: No.
REVEREND RAMSEY: Both. You want both. I like an honest man.
JIM WHITE: All the time.
REVEREND RAMSEY: Yeah. Okay, all right. Usually it varies half and half. Sometimes 60/40. It depends on the audience. If you get the – I have really good stuff here I can’t find. All right, here we go. The tall and tech-y versus the small and sleepy. That’s going to sell, yeah, that’s great. Whether they want the legroom and laptop or whether they want to recline and rest. Looks like we’re a recline and rest kind of people here. Maybe so. Maybe a little bit slower. I mean, there’s been outbreaks on airlines that they had to shut down the flight and make an emergency landing to get the people out over reclining.
And, you know, they have these little knee defenders. They’ve got these little clamps that you can put on your tray table so it stops the other person from reclining. You can actually buy these on the Internet. And so that just escalates everything. And people have gotten injured. People have gotten thrown off.
And, you know, well, whose is it? I mean, the author says that the theory of the recliner is that attachment. And he says, “I own something because it’s attached to something I own. There’s something that I have, and then this is attached to it.” And that’s that little button, the little button that reclines. I mean, that’s definitely on your seat. You’ve got the button. You’ve got the right to use it. So attachment. You can recline. All right. That’s one story of ownership. Things that are attached to me, things that are near me, belong to me. We tell that story all the time.
Ah, but there’s other stories. The story of possession, that if I am there, and I am occupying it, it’s mine. First come, first serve. Ever hear of that? I was there first. And so how does every airplane flight start? Keep your seats in the full upright and locked position. Right? That’s off to the races. We’re starting the thing right here. And so the possession at the beginning of the flight is the knee people, the leg people, the laptop tray people. They are the ones. They’ve got it. The flight starts. It’s theirs.
Somebody leans back, you’re taking away what I already have. I’ve already established it. I sat here. It’s me. It’s mine. And that is a huge principle in American and world law. If you make use of something long enough, it’s yours. Possession. So that’s why we have a fight between the recliners and the legroomers. Who’s right? Anybody want to vote? No one wants to vote. Looks like we’re a reclining kind of congregation. Is that right? Anybody, does anybody want to speak for the legroom people? No tall people here. Okay.
PARTICIPANT: Been short all my life.
REVEREND RAMSEY: What?
JIM WHITE: I’ve been short all my life.
REVEREND RAMSEY: Oh, have been short. So you’re cool. You’re cool with the leg. Yeah, all right, yeah. Now, you see what we’re doing here, we’re fighting among ourselves over a sliver, a wedge of space in an airline thing. And we can do that, and we can make stories that say you’re not allowed to recline. It’s my space. I am allowed to recline. I have a button. You know, I’m allowed to. And we can argue about that, and arguments get there. We can escalate and put little clamps on there. We can curse each other out. People have offered cash for not reclining, and threats. And those don’t work, by the way. They’ve studied this. People don’t go for the cash offer.
But is that what we’re talking about here? Where is the problem? The problem, if you want to look at it another way, is that airline is selling that space twice. Right? That airline is selling, renting that space to the recliner and also saying also it’s for your legroom. So there’s two people they’re trying to put in one space. And you say, oh, they’re not doing that. They’re not that bad. Well, I tell you, it used to be there was 35 inches between seats. There used to be 35. But there’s no rule saying there has to be, so over the years it’s now down to 28 inches in some airplanes – 28, from 35 to 28. And you say, well, that’s bad, but what’s the deal?
Every one inch, every inch they reduce, the airline gets to put six more seats in the airline. Now, you figure in, what, three, four, 500 bucks a seat per flight per three a day on an airplane, times six. And if you make it, most airlines, if you make coach absolutely hellish, you can ask for more money and get up to first-class, where they actually have legroom, actually have decent seating. So there’s a little more money, too. Now, you say, what about Southwest? All hail. Oh, they’ve got their hand out, 20 bucks and you get to pick a good seat. Get to be in the front of the line. Where you can get an exit row seat maybe. Or a seat up in the front of the plane.
So by telling a story of recliner versus laptop table or legroom, and say let you all fight over there, you know, the airline could solve this. They could say no reclining, or you have to ask for reclining, or they can make a rule. But then they would have to enforce it. And then it would be focused on them and not focused on the passengers. They just rather said, hey, just everybody play nice, you know. See how the story of ownership matters even in the smallest things.
Now, I have a solution. There is another way. So let’s tell another story. Has anyone ever watched “America’s Deadliest Catch,” about fishing in Alaska? I got one nod. They have a reality show that show these people going out and get crab, or maybe halibut, in Alaska. And they’re out there in the horrific weather, trying to go fishing, and laying out traps, and trying to get them back before anyone else can.
You see, as the fishing became better, and more people came to the fishing, and more and more boats came out, it became more and more intensely competitive to get fish. And so they went out there in all kinds of weather, trying to get enough fish in their catch, and other people were doing that. So it didn’t matter what the weather was. If you were allowed to go out, you went out. And so for a while it was more dangerous to fish, be a fisher person in Alaska, than it was to be on a foot patrol in Afghanistan or Iran, 2004/2005. It was the most deadliest job, even more than serving in the military in a war zone.
Well, that’s just capitalism. I mean, first come, first serve. That’s another story. First one to get the fish, that’s yours. And so you’d better be first. If somebody else is going out in hellish weather, you’d better get out there, too, because they’re going to get all the fish, and you’re not going to get any. What to do? Well, couldn’t do nothing.
The state of Alaska said. “Enough of this. We’re embarrassed by this pillage, not to mention the deaths and the overfishing.” And they said, “We’ll just – I know what we’ll do. We’ll just limit the catch. We’ll just limit it, how much they can get, to protect the overfishing and the craziness.” So they just limited the catch. And they said, “You can’t go out before this date, and we can only catch this much. And then it stops.” There you go. Problem solved.
Only problem was that just compressed the craziness because it turned out that there were so many people out there fishing, so many in competition, it was like a derby, a death derby. And they went from, in 2004, it was only three days, from the beginning, and you’d better be out there right at the starting gun, go, boom, to the time they got the amount of fish that they were allowed to get before they start overfishing. Three days. It was a hellish three days.
You try to get all your fish for the year in those three days, and guess what? You got the fish. Let’s say you were successful. You got the fish. You brought them in. So has everybody else. The entire year’s catch came into port in the market in the same day, or three days. Guess what happened to prices? They plummeted because there’s so much. And then the rest of the year is nothing. Well, what to do?
So Alaska said, “Well, we’ll try again.” They said, “Okay, we’re going to sell shares. And every boat that was out last year, whatever you caught last year, you get this much this year. So Jim, you did a thousand last year, you get a thousand this year. Betty Lynn, you did 500, you get 500 this year.” And so on and so forth until they divvied up the entire catch. Now you can go out any time you want and catch as much as you want up to that limit. So if the weather’s bad, no worries. Wait. You can’t get any more. You can’t get any – you can’t get any more if you go out in a storm. Wait for the better weather. And they were able to do this.
And so because it stretched out, and because the problem wasn’t so intense, instead of three-day season in 2004, they went to 2006 of three months. That leveled out the prices. If the prices were too low, guess what, you stay in port. You don’t go. You go later. It doesn’t matter. The fish will still be there. Your portion of the fish will still be there. And from the worst, deadliest job in America in the early 2000s, by 2014 and 2015 there was no death in the fishing industry in Alaska. The fish were preserved.
And guess what? When they had time, they had time to fish, they were able to take the immature crabs, a few other crabs, the other fish, they were able to sort that and put it back in the ocean. It was better for all, the whole ecosystem. And what it took was a change in the story of ownership in a way that stopped the selfishness. That stops getting everything they can. And you can say murder results because if you take someone out on a boat in terrible, awful weather, and they die, who’s to blame? Wasn’t necessary. We have an example right here.
Now, the reality show took a nosedive because they had to edit out all the boring parts. It’s pretty boring to go fishing now. You didn’t get swept overboard in the storm, and you weren’t out there on the icy, icy decks. You didn’t have to be.
Eugene Peterson said, “You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.” That’s how it works. Friends, we’ve got lots of challenges. I mean, this fire is, you know, a crisis right now. But it doesn’t really take a look at how we maintain and preserve our planet and our forest and climate change. How are we going to take care of that?
Are we going to keep everybody taking whatever they want, spew whatever they want in the atmosphere? First come, first pollute? Or are we going to take the time and trouble to do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other, including those grandchildren that are coming, great grandchildren that are coming along. What kind of world are we going to leave them? What claims do they have on us and on our planet?
Are we going to do the hard work, like they did up in Alaska? Slowly other fisheries are moving, and they didn’t do this in Alaska, they copied Norway. It’s slowly becoming the norm among fishers. There’s downsides to it. I mean, no system’s perfect. But there’s a lot of win-win-win in this, of getting along, of sharing, of considering others, of considering the Earth and the ocean and the planet.
Oh. How do you fix that reclining seat and tray table thing? Well, threats don’t work. Mechanical devices don’t work. If you throw yourself back hard enough, you just pop those clamps. How do I know? I read about it. I didn’t do it. So none of that stuff works. Threats, cajoling, offering money, none of that works. What worked, and this is almost an aside in one of the interviews of the book’s author, the only thing that works is, back when you could, was if you bought a round of drinks for the people around you. Or snacks. You didn’t have to buy drinks. You go, hey, you know, you gave out beverage coupons. Hey, everybody, beverage coupons. Why? Because no one wants to be a jerk in a community.
If you can create community in that airline, and the easiest way to do that is pass out liquor coupons apparently, you’ve only got a little bit of time. Then people got along, didn’t recline their seats, and asked for permission each way, and got along. So even in that little tiny, tiny, tiny example, example from the Scriptures talking about going with other people, being community, not being selfish, getting along with one another, doing the hard work of community, works, for a better life for everyone.
So James may not tell us how to get to Heaven. I mean, he barely talks about Christ. But, you know, he tells us how to avoid hell on Earth. And for that, I’m thankful. Amen.