Straining to Forget
Straining to Forget
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Audio from worship at the 9:30 AM Worship Service April 3,2022
at Lee Vining Presbyterian Church, Lee Vining,CA
and given that same day at 11 AM at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop, California
Both Services were via ZOOM™
edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.
Sermons also available free on iTunes
“Morning, Swimmers. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on a bit. Then eventually one of them looks over to the other and says, “Why did that oldster call us ‘swimmers’?” And the other fish said, “Don’t worry about that. What the heck is water?” (From the 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College by David Foster Wallace.)
We don’t think of society that we swim in all our lives. It’s invisible to us. Even though it’s all around, supporting us, hemming us in, up and down and all around. And Paul doesn’t think about society when he talks about his position in life. Paul’s terms are remote and romanticized. Pharisee? What’s the educational requirements of the Pharisee? Who is a Pharisee? What is a Pharisee? We might think we know, but we don’t. A medical procedure done on the eighth day? What does that matter? And what is the Benjamin tribe? Why does that make a difference? You know, you want to know, what does Paul sound like today? Well, I thought about it. And here’s my intro letter to the Presbyterians.
If anybody has confidence in being a preacher, it’s me. I was assigned male at birth and, bonus, identify as male. I’m a cisgender person, a heterosexual in a heteronormative culture. I can say who I love in any state, and I can hold hands with my beloved in public. I can tell a grade schooler in Florida that Betty Lynn is my wife, and I love her. And my marriage is just marriage, not straight marriage. And it’s recognized by hospitals, courts, insurance, and yes, the all-important wedding RSVP.
I’m a citizen from birth of the United States of America, of the Cleveland Browns people; a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant born of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. I’m not in danger of exile from the only country I’ve known because I was brought here as a child. Nor am I told sharply to “Speak American” when I use my native language, even though it is more native to this land by 15,000 years than the King’s English brought here by colonizers.
As to the law, I am a proud 48-year holder of a driver’s license and an insurance card. I hold the same country’s passport for the last 40 years. I’ve never been a refugee, an alien, or a migrant. I have a health insurance plan group number and have added recently a vaccine card with, yes, four shots recorded. My papers are so legit, I don’t need to show them when I use a check or credit card. As to zeal, ha-ha, I am a high school, Presbyterian College, and Presbyterian Seminary graduate, first-time passer of all five Presbyterian ordination examinations, an ordained Presbyterian pastor licensed to wed in four states and bury in all 50, recently elected by my Presbytery to Stated Clerk.
My religious holidays are federal holidays, and work and school closings and seasonal greetings follow my religious calendar. 93% of Americans celebrate my religion’s Christmas with me. How many times did you remember to wish others a Ramadan Mubarak this week? As to righteousness under the law, no felonies, not even a misdemeanor. A clear background check and a credit score above 750. Graduate of the Sheriff’s Academy. Not so much me, but thanks to my whiteness, I can drive at night. I can sit on a porch. I can jog any road, stand on a corner, and barbecue at a park without vigilantes or police involvement and a criminal record.
This is just normal for me. Maybe it’s normal for you. It’s a sea I live unaware that there is water all around me, holding me up. What is this water? This is just normal life. Maybe it’s normal for you. Maybe you rebel at cisgender, heteronormative, indigenous colonizers, the war on Ramadan, dismissing them as politically correct because that’s how normal works. You see, the way normal works is anything that isn’t white male-centered Christian with the big “C,” following heterosexual gender roles, is special, is identity politics, PC, not normal. This is the way we keep people in their place. We tell people what is normal as another way of saying, “Know your place. There’s no place for people like you in ‘normal.’”
Do you know there’s others in this world? For them, what I think of normal life for me, just a given, is seen by them, by the majority of the world, as a life of privilege. Sure, I work. But in that 50-yard dash to the finish line I started about 10 yards away from the finish. Others have to do a half marathon to do that 50 yards, or get to run with their shoes tied. Or, if they’re playing beach volleyball before 2012, they have to compete in bikinis, not shorts. Some have to run the race with their shoes tied or even chained because that’s the way the world is. That’s normal. What water? We’re just swimming here.
Now, many have said that Paul’s Letters Introduction is a rhetorical device, that being with Christ and the gospel is of so much greater value than the others. It is only as if the other’s trash. Do you know it’s a privilege to toss privilege in the trash? Only those with privilege can toss it. If you don’t have privilege, you are reminded often that you don’t have privilege to toss away. Only white folks can say they don’t see race. Society doesn’t give non-whites that option ever to forget. Yet even then, as we look at the whole Bible and the scriptural witness, Paul is not forgetting his normal privilege. His Roman citizenship comes in handy when he gets cross-wise with the local authorities. He claims it when he gets a chance, is using it to advance a gospel and help himself and others from punishment and even death. I guess if you’ve got it, privilege, flaunt it for the gospel.
Back in Acts 16 we see Paul in prison for freeing a woman from the owners that were exploiting her labor and her talents for their own benefit and profits. Christians getting in trouble for calling out folks getting rich by oppressing others. That’s in the Bible. They are accused of these Jews were causing an uproar against the customs that are illegal for us as Romans to follow. Law and order. We’re supposed to oppress these people and make money. It’s all in the law. It’s okay. In fact, it’s required. Acts 16.
And that wasn’t the only time he was arrested and used his Roman citizenship to spare himself. Ephesians, Philemon, Colossians, and Philippians are traditionally, this book itself is traditionally written during his arrest time, recorded in Acts 21 through 28. And there Paul is, again, upset and normal, being accused of bringing in Greeks. That’s right. Smuggling them foreigners, those illegals. Those people not like us that don’t belong here should go back where they belong. It’s almost as if he believes what he said in Galatians 3:28. Neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. Neither male nor female? Paul. Yikes. You’d better stay out of Florida, buddy, with that gender fluid talk.
No doubt many of you are firing up the emails to explain to me how it’s spiritual and only for Christians, or anything else to smooth and dilute the message. But remember, if you think this message is smooth and diluted and not upsetting, remember Paul was beaten in prison and finally killed about it. The oppressors and the powerful and the empire knew that he wasn’t just talking about thoughts and prayers. I guarantee you, if Christianity doesn’t get you in trouble with the American Empire, the economic exploiters, and the gender norm police, consider you might be doing it wrong.
Gee, Christy. Just because you’re not in town, and safely away up there at Carson City, doesn’t mean you can make us feel bad about being white people. Geez. How in the world can we do this? How in the world can we be like Paul? I don’t want to go to prison.
You know, we have changed the normal; haven’t we? I mean, right now I’m sitting in Carson City, preaching to you in Lee Vining. And in about an hour I’m going to be sitting here still, but preaching down in Valley Bishop, if all goes well and the technical winds hold. We have changed.
I don’t know if ever you’ve been to Virginia City Sanctuary. I recommend if you ever are, stop in. J.P. will probably give you a tour. He lives across the street. But I was up there visiting. And I looked at their beautiful two-story, maybe story-and-a-half stained glass windows. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Well, I looked where it used to be. Because they have a thick black drape, at least 20 feet long, covering the stained glass window. My goodness. Jesus would roll over in his grave if he was in the grave.
And I talked to him about that. And I said, “Hey, the stained glass, you put a great big curtain over it, I see.” And he said, “Yeah, it was making a glare on the screen.” That is a miracle, friends and neighbors. That is such a change from the way we used to swim. Nothing would change. But they said, “You know, we need the screen. We need to include people that can’t be here anymore.” I’m glad to see you’re continuing it on, even though, “You don’t have to.” And I hope other churches figure out that this is a new normal, a new way of including people that can’t be included.
I know a recovery group that used to meet in the church, you know, classic meet in the church every week. And, well, the pandemic, the church closed, so they had to get on Zoom. And you know what they found out? Their attendance doubled. They got more newcomers in six months than they did in six years in a physical location. Turns out people are more comfortable seeking help and being real and vulnerable when they don’t have to go into a church and be in person. Something for us to think about. Is our goal to change people’s lives, to offer help for the hurting? Or is our goal to fill up a physical presence and keep it in a room?
Privilege isn’t a horrible thing. Everything I said I’m sinfully proud of. And I’m sure everything Paul said wasn’t bad things. They were good things. But they’re not the only thing. And they’re not the only way to be in the world. And what’s normal for me is not normal for others. For others it’s privilege.
And when those other people say they would like the things that I take for granted, when my daughter wants to have the picture of her partner on her desk at school without being called to the principal’s office and a parents’ meeting, I take that for granted. She has to fight for it. When some people say I just want to see the people in church, I want to hear the sermon, but they’re sick or disabled or traveling, or just too much time and energy for an aged body to put out every Sunday, I take it for granted. I go to church. Why doesn’t everybody else? When my friend is at his girlfriend’s house and steps out on the porch and then goes back in the house, only to get the police called upon him and to get arrested because, you see, he’s black, and she’s white, and he must have broken in. I can go out on my porch all the time. It’s normal for me. Perhaps it’s a privilege for others.
You know, Paul doesn’t say he gave up privilege. He doesn’t say that it was all in the trash and was over and done, he snapped his fingers, and suddenly he’s a wonderful person and just opened everybody and Jew to Jew and Greek to Greek and all that good stuff. But no. He said he strives. He talks about how he hasn’t attained it yet. He talked about his struggle in Philippians about how he hasn’t attained it, how he keeps on trying to get there, and he knows that the future promises something, that he is worthwhile, struggling with all this stuff and society in this life. And so too with us. I know it is with me.
I was at a Presbytery down in Las Vegas, and we walked to a restaurant for a lunch with one of the people seeking to become part of our Presbytery. And one of the women had to go back to the meeting for another meeting, and she left and walked back alone. You know, I didn’t think anything of it. But the other people at the table were [gasp], “She’s walking alone? That’s not a good idea.” I guess women can’t walk places I can walk. It’s normal for me to walk through the city. It’s not something that over half our population can do without thinking.
Paul also said something in Corinthians 9:22: “To the Jew I became as a Jew. To those under the law I became as one under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law. To the weak I became as the weak. I’ve become all things to all people so that by any means I might save some.”
Friends, how’s the water? Take a look around to see how you’re swimming and ask those that you pass by and those that you seek out what it’s like for them to be in that fish bowl. Amen.
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