Stop the Shouting

How to Stop the Shouting

Stop the Shouting
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church parking lot on August 16, 2020
edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions; all errors are mine. 

Matthew 15:21-28

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Looking for the way to make the shouting people go away…

Would someone please stop the shouting.  That’s what the disciples want.  They want the shouting to stop.

   

I want to tell you how to stop the shouting.  And I want to show you ways that do not work, as well, for they are all here in our Scripture.  2020 among many things is a year of shouting, and a year of people wanting other people to go away and quit shouting.

 

We have lots of shouting.  We have lots of people shouting for crumbs of compassion to come off the tables of their master.  And we have lots of people telling them to go away.  We don’t want to hear your shouting.  And they do it by curfew.  They do it by tear gas.  They do it by appealing to any authority they can:  Please, for the love of God, stop this shouting.  And the shouting doesn’t stop.  No matter how many appeals we say, no matter what we say, no matter what we do, the shouting goes on, it seems.

 

A woman of a different race says her demon daughter matters.  And Jesus says, “Oh, no.  You’re not going to trick me there.  All children matter.  Not just yours.  All children.  That’s what I’m here for.”  And then the reading ends, and everybody goes home happy.  

 

That doesn’t happen.  It doesn’t happen in our Scripture, and it certainly doesn’t happen in our country.  Shouting “Go home,” saying “All children matter,” does not stop the shouting.  It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now, even if you say it is the love of Christ that makes me tell you all children matter.  Go home.  Stop shouting.

 

How can we stop the shouting?  That is what we ask Jesus to do for us.  Strangely, we can look at the Internet.  I know that’s strange.  The Internet is more often a pooling of our ignorance.  But there is a site called Quora.  I don’t know what you spend your time on.  I’m not going to take a survey.  You can tell me in private later, maybe with confession with Pastor Chad, if you need to.  But I go to Quora to find out what people are asking and find out how people are responding.  

 

Here is how the Quora website/email subscription works: somebody asks a question.  Other people give answers.  And then here’s the key part.   The answers get voted up or down.  So the answer that makes most sense to most people bubbles up to the top.

 

And I was looking at this Scripture and looking at Quora, and there was a letter asking: “Who do I see, how do I get compensation for what happened?”  And he told a story.  He’s there at home, his home, you know, paid for, mortgage, you know, taxes paid, lawn cut, you know, everything you want in a good neighborhood and a good neighbor.  And over the hill comes this riotous noise, this thumping and banging and booming.  And up comes a helicopter, and it drops a bucket, boom, into his pool, scoops up a whole bunch of water, without a by your leave or if you please, and flies away with it.  And he says:  “Who do I see about getting paid for that water?”

 

Well, the answer, if you’re wondering, and you probably know from being in Nevada where wildfires are everywhere, those helicopters can get water anywhere they can, anytime they want, whenever they need it becausethe letter writer didn’t mention thissomething was on fire.  Maybe the entire landscape.  Maybe the entire mountain was on fire, and that helicopter was trying to save homes and lives.  Other people’s homes, not his own.  

 

BUT All water matters.  Why are you taking my water?  All waters matter.  He didn’t mention that other homes were threatened by fire and that water could make a difference between life and death, between having a home and being homeless.  No.  All water matters.

 

I was on the firefighting force in Ottawa, Ohio.  We didn’t have wildfires, thank goodness.  We just had structures, and pretty contained.  But I tell you, I am certainly thankful and glad that never, when we were going to a fire, did we find counter-protesters telling us to shut off our sirens, they were bothering them; quit the shouting; and, by the way, all waters matter.  Why don’t you top off my pool?  

 

We were going to a fire.  We’re trying to save property and lives.  People kind of understood that.

I remember growing up in Akron, Ohio, and looking down the main street of Akron, Ohio, which is called Market Street.  And I remember when a fire truck siren went, as far as you could see, and you could see a mile in each direction, every car and vehicle got off the road, let that fire truck through.  

 

In Ohio, at least when I was a firefighter back then, fire trucks had absolutely no special privileges.  They were not allowed to violate any traffic.  ALL TRAFFIC MATTERED. Fire engines did not have the right of way.  All they could do was to ask.  Said excuse me, there’s a fire.  Could you get out of the way for a minute?  And back then, people knew that even though they had the right to that road, even though all cars mattered: they saw that somebody needed that road more than them.  Someone needed help, and they got out of the way.

 

How do we stop the shouting?  Now, all allegories fail.  The children and the dogs and the puppies and all that, that doesn’t exactly match up one-to-one.  And there’s a whole lot written about that.  And neither does my firefighting thing.  That doesn’t match up one-to-one with reality.  If it was, it would be reality.  But I’m telling you to go a little bit further with this.

 

The way you stop the shouting, if you will, the way you stop the fire engine sirens, is not by telling them that all homes matter.  Turn that off.  It is not by saying you’re bothering me, shut off that siren, I have rights.  The way to stop the fire sirens, the way to stop the shouting is to put out the fire. 

  

I’m telling you, as long as that fire was going, there were sirens.  If we couldn’t get it the fire out, we called in more and more people, more and more sirens, until the fire was out.  We didn’t shout and say, oh, all homes matter.  We didn’t say turn off the sirens, we can’t keep bothering people.  We put out the fire.

 

What about now?  What’s the allegory here?  What’s it doing here?  Because the disciples tried to say shut up.  They tried the curfew.  They tried the tear gas.  They tried the appeal to authority.  They tried to get the people in to haul them out and take them away, send them away, put them back, get them out of here, clear the plaza.  

 

It didn’t work.  Sound familiar?  And then Jesus himself, and for the love of Jesus, it says that he said he is here for all the children of God, not just a demon daughter.  I mean, why do we care? We had nothing to do with her demon daughter.  We didn’t possess them.  We didn’t send the demon on them.  We didn’t sic the demon on her.  We didn’t tell her to live in the demon place.  We didn’t do any of that.  We’re here for all the good children of God. You know, people who look like us and demon free.

 

Even when it’s said by Jesus himself, it is not enough.  I don’t know why then we think it makes a difference if we correct people with a lie saying all matters in theory when it is not true in reality. It didn’t work for JESUS, why do we think it will make a difference for us? 

 

What makes a difference?  What stops a fire of fear?  It is faith.  It is faith.  

 

The Faith I’m talking about, the faith that Jesus sees is not found listed in “The Book of Confessions,”  Al. We are not talking about “The Book of Covenant,” for all the Lutherans here.  Not even “The Sinner’s Prayer.”  I’m not talking about the “Five Fundamentals of Faith.”  Because this woman knew nothing of those.  Yet still Jesus said, “You have faith.”  And what was that faith?  The faith was there is a relationship with all people.  With children and dogs that you call them, and those inside and outside, all are at the table.  There’s relationship.

 

And Jesus saw that.  Oh, woman.  When you can see past my disciples sending you away, when you can see past me even telling you that I’m not here for you, when you can see past the divides of gender and divides of race and the divides of culture and the divides of country, and you can see past all that and say we are all related at the table of the master, that is faith that goes to the heart of the Triune God that is based, is essence of relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, twirling and dancing, and relationship in Eternity.  You have faith that that relationship will go through everyone on the world, including you.  And that is what’ll bring healing.  That is what will put out the fire.  And when the fire is out, the sirens stop, and not until then.

 

Louis C.K. has made some very poor choices in his life.  I’m not holding him up as a moral example or exemplar for you and your relationships with others in every aspect.  But there is something I really like that he said to his children.  I don’t know if you have been a parent – I think most of you have been children.  You know how children like to make sure they get their fair share, whether it’s desserts or ice cream or cereal or, oh my gosh, the fights over the backseat, who had the middle line and the hump and back and forth.  I don’t know, flick your lights you are listening to yourself.  Is there anybody here that has children that looked at other to check out who had more?  Is anyone asleep?  Do we need an amen?  We’ve got a couple of hands up.

 

Louis C.K. had it up to here when they started comparing the amount of cereal in their bowls.  He said, and this is what he said to them, and the rule in his house: 

 

The only time, the only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl
is to make sure they have enough.  

 

The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough.  You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as they do.

 

Put out the fire and stop the shouting.  There’s no other way to live out the faith that we’re all in this together.  Amen.

Stop the Shouting