Helpers to read 1) responses in Call to Worship, 2) Prayer of Confession
Call to Worship
Christy and an unmuted person on Zoom will alternate reading.
Christy: On the third day, a wedding in Cana ran headlong into scarcity. Person: We gather in the midst of our own needs, longing for God’s abundant grace.
Christy: Mary said to Jesus, “They have no wine,” trusting in His compassionate care. Person: We, too, bring our requests, believing our Lord hears and provides.
Christy: Jesus spoke with authority, guiding servants to fill jars with water. Person: We open our hearts to His leading, that we might obey and be transformed.
Christy: The disciples witnessed His first sign and believed. Person: Strengthen our faith, O Lord, that we may follow You boldly.
Christy: As water turned to wine, God’s glory was revealed. Person: Reveal Your glory among us, Holy One, and make our worship a celebration of Your grace.
Christy: Come, let us worship the One who takes our emptiness and fills us with new life. Person: We praise You, O Christ, the true source of joy and wonder! Amen.
Person –God of grace and truth, in the beginning, You spoke light into the darkness, yet we confess we often close our eyes to Your light. You have made all things through the Word, but we have taken Your gifts for granted, failing to honor You as Creator.
You came to dwell among us, full of grace and truth, yet we confess our reluctance to receive You. We turn away from the life You offer, clinging to the darkness of selfishness, pride, and fear. Though You call us to bear witness to Your light, we shrink from testifying, afraid of rejection or discomfort.
Forgive us, Lord. Open our hearts to Your transforming Word. Let Your light shine through us, so that we may reflect Your glory and live as children of God, redeemed by Your grace upon grace. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon:
Hear the Good News: Our God, who transformed simple water into the finest wine, also transforms us by grace. In Jesus Christ, our doubts and hesitations are forgiven, and our hearts are set free to serve with joyful obedience. Trust in the promise of His mercy, and walk forward in faith, assured that you are forgiven and loved. Thanks be to God!
Prayers & Praises
The Lord’s Prayer (together while on mute)
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 debts,as we forgive our debtors.And lead us not into temptation,but deliver us from evil.For thine is the kingdom,and the power, and the glory,forever. Amen.
Offering – Doxology For phone giving, use the QR code.
2On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ 4And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ 5His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ 6Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. 9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Benediction: May the God who turned water into wine fill your life with hope and promise, transforming every ordinary moment into a testimony of divine grace. As you go forth, trust in Christ’s power to bring abundance where you see only lack and let the joy of His miraculous love flow freely through you. Go in peace, blessed by the One who delights in meeting our needs and exceeding our expectations. Amen.
Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service December 29, 2024 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson City edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.
Akron, Ohio, my hometown, has a Main Street that follows the river. It was a river, and then it was a canal, and then it was road. Then came a flood, and then became a river again because you’ll have that. Goes through – Main Street goes through the lowest part of town because that’s where the river was. That’s where commerce was. That’s where the canal was. And so Main Street goes right like this all the way through town, and it’s the lowest part of town. Over here we have Goodyear Heights. And it’s high. It goes right up. It’s like in the middle of the valley. Goodyear Heights is over here. That’s where the factories are. That’s where the rubber was made, the smokestacks, the work crews, all are up here. And it’s high. It is high up. And in the space of about a mile or two, 10 blocks, you can see it. It goes down to Main Street, and then it goes up to the outside.
The outside is West Hill. West Hill’s on the other side of Main Street. Market connects the two. You could, up at West Hill, you can see, and see the whole town. West Hill was where all the rich people lived, the factory owners, the management, because, you know, smoke was all over there, and in the valley it didn’t get up to West Hill. So that’s where West Hill was.
Now, my family, my grandma, grandpa, and my brother, my uncle, good people, they were the factory people. They lived over here on the East Side, on Goodyear Heights. And over here is where we moved on up, you know, like that song, “Movin’ On Up” to the West Side. So we moved over here. So we were constantly going from the West Hill down the valley on Market. [Indiscernible] to go visit the family and connect up in church and all that. And so we did that a lot. At one time, I don’t know, late ‘60s probably, we were just at the crest of West Hill where we could see the entire traffic of Akron. We could see Main Street going along the canal. We could see Market Street. And Market, busy, busy throughfare.
And I remember one day we were at the crest of the hill, looking down, and we stopped. We pulled over to the side of the road. And I looked, and all through Market Street, 10, 20 blocks, down to Main Street and back up, traffic was frozen. Everything was moved up to the side of the road and stopped. I thought, well, that’s odd. But then I looked, and I saw the flashing lights of a fire engine coming down Market Street. And everybody had stopped and got out of the way and made way for those flashing lights.
Fast-forward 30 years, and some of you here know what that’s like. You know, you turn around, suddenly it’s 30 years later? Thirty years later I’m driving those flashing lights on the fire engine, faking it till I make it because no one else would get in the seat, so I did. I’m driving. And I’m learning about flashing lights and about fire department.
They tell me, you know, you’re not allowed to go through red lights in a fire truck in Ohio. It’s against the law. You know you don’t have the right of way in Ohio with the flashing lights and sirens. All that is, is a request for the right of way. All that light and shining big red truck is just saying, please, please let us go by. It’s just please, it’s just a request. And we are responsible as firefighters to be driving with due regard as opposed to the rest of the people that have reasonable care. They just have to be reasonable. We’ve got to have due regard.
And so they don’t have to get out of the way. They can just go on with their life. They can ignore the light. You know, that light says someone’s in trouble. Someone needs help now. Could you move out of the way? Could you stop just a moment thinking of yourself and of where you’re going and what you need to do? Can you stop, give way, so somebody else could get the help they need? It’s just an ask.
And I was new guy there, even though I was older than most of those guys. Oh, that was not – they were very kind to me, you know. But, yeah, on the training events, you know, where they did training, they assigned me the role of “guy who died.” And so they would put me out in a field, and they’d come rescue me so I could just, you know, relax, kind of chillin’.
So, but, you know, I try to measure my questions. You’ve been in a new job, you don’t ask every question the first day. I mean, that’s just annoying. You know, you just try to get what you need to get through the day. But there was this one thing, right here in the firehouse garage, right back here, you know, seven feet up, or eight, I don’t know, right here. There was, you know, one of those old metal box light switches like you’ve got in a garage. It was rusty. You remember those things? The conduit came down, it wasn’t pretty. And it was a switch, and there was this old, yellow, brown, moldy paper curled up over it, and you could just make out it said this, in big block letters: “DO NOT USE.” Don’t you want to? Don’t you want to?
So I asked one of the old guys, I said, “Hey, what is that? Roger, Roger, what’s with that switch?” He goes, “Oh, that switch. That switch turns every traffic light in town red.” I go, oh. “But we don’t use that anymore.” Yeah, yeah, I saw the sign, yeah. He goes, “Yeah, the right turn on red, nobody stops anymore.” No one follows the lights. They just keep moving. Christ the light of the world came into the world. And what does light do? Light shows you there’s other people beside yourself. Light can show you, reveal that there’s more people than just you here. And sometimes, yes, sometimes those people need help that you don’t need, but they need.
You know, when I think back at that time in Akron, that really impressed me, to see all the traffic in the city stopped because some stranger somewhere was in trouble, and everyone agreed that that traffic mattered. Not all traffic mattered. That traffic mattered because they needed help. And because they were in trouble, and because they were hurting, we could step by and allow them to get the help they need.
I had a hard time with the sermon today because you know I’m going to be political. You know what the difference between political is for – political is other people. When it affects me, that’s morality. That’s important. When it affects other people, well, that’s politics. I don’t have to worry about that. Don’t talk or bother me about it. I only want to talk about me, me, me. That’s morality. That’s right and wrong. Did you know that fire trucks and fire engines and fire departments used to be politics? Fire insurance the politics in that.
Because you see, back in the day, I know it’s hard to imagine, but see if you can wrap your heads around this concept, that lifesaving care of the fire department was dependent on insurance companies. I know, who would have thought such a thing? If you did not have insurance, your house burned down. You could die. Your possessions were gone. If you didn’t have any a fire insurance mark. Such a thing shouldn’t exist. If you go to some old fire departments, maybe even here in Carson, you can see what they called fire insurance marks, a metal plaque.
What they were, they were these big metal plates, usually some kind of star shape, was fastened on the front of the house displaying which insurance company the fire department covered for this house. And if you didn’t pay your money, you didn’t get signed up during open enrollment, had a pre-existing conditions, you can’t pay the fire department at the fire. They’ll come for the fire, would put out your neighbor’s fire that had insurance, but you just burned down. You could be out there crying, offering to pay. No. No, you didn’t buy the insurance. You just burned down. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. That’s fair. That’s law. That’s the rules. That’s the way it is. Back then there’s no other way to imagine.
Luckily, we thought that was silly. We thought that was immoral. We thought people that were in trouble, people that were going to go bankrupt, people that were facing financial ruin from fire’s destruction, we think, no, that will not be dependent on whether or not they paid their insurance premium. They’re our neighbors everybody here needs to be safe, regardless, so their house doesn’t burning down from a neighbors fire, or if they’re not safe, at least there’s help on the way. And we’re not going to check the insurance rolls and get preauthorized approval before we put wet stuff on the red stuff. No matter who you were, no matter what your morals were, no matter where you were in the country.
When I was on the fire department, if you were in trouble, we came, and we did all we could to save your life and your property. We came with those lights that showed that there’s other people in the world that need help, that there’s other traffic that mattered. Those lights that showed that there are some people hurting.
Can you please just get out of the way and let us help them?
I don’t know what’s coming up. No one knows what’s coming up. But I’m going to say there’s going to be a lot of fights over light. Over light. We’re not the light. We’re not Jesus Christ. We’re not the light of the world. We bear witness to the light. We say Lord Jesus Christ comes to bring light to the world. Everyone. We’re not going to keep things in the dark because that’s not what our Christ says. Our Christ is the light of the world, not the dark of the world.
So when people said, we’re not going to report maternity deaths anymore, we’re not going to report them, we’re going to put them under the dark, we’re going to [indiscernible] light of the world. We want to know about those people. We want to know if they need help. We want to turn on the light and go to them if they need it with sirens blazing, no matter who they are, [indiscernible] been, what the color of their skin is, what their nationality is, how much their income is, what their employment status. Turn on the lights. Christ is the light of the world, and we don’t abide by keeping people in the dark.
I’ve only been in the ministry for 40 years. I can remember, I remember when there was a school shooting, everything stopped. We had special church services, and we had special prayers, and we knew the names, and we said the names, and we prayed for the people. We even wrote, in one church I had, to the people that were there. And I also remember that a church I was in, when someone stood up a couple years later to pray for the latest school shooting, and the leader says we can’t pray for that. That happens all the time. It’s not special. The number one killer of children in America, our country, is gun violence. Number one. If anyone from a foreign country or any other force came and killed our children like guns are, we would stop it the next day. But it’s in the dark.
Did you know it’s illegal for Congress to spend money to study gun violence as a health issue? It’s not allowed. Keep that stuff in the dark. We’re not people of the dark. We’re people of the light. And we say the light comes to everyone of the world, not just some people in the world. It comes to all. It’s right there in John. We read it today. We believe it. We’re the ones that are going to come out and say, oh, no. We follow the light of the world. You’re not going to cover up all these things in the dark. We’re here to tell you. And if someone needs help, we’re at least going to get out of the way. And we might even be on that truck with lights and sirens. Get out of our way. We’re helping people that need help. And no, we’re not checking their insurance cards. That’s what it means when the light of the world comes into the world.
Now, it’s not without controversy and upsets and changing this back to the way things were, you know, and that’s it. That’s the only thing that can happen. Not even from other Christians. Have you heard about Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps? They’ve kind of not been around as much. But it used to be a big thing. They’d go to funerals and protest and curse people at funerals of veterans, and veterans coming home. They go to churches and demonstrate. They go everywhere and demonstrate and make things about how terrible and awful the people were who were trying to go to a funeral or trying to have a service.
They went to Chicago to the Trinity UCC Church, who are unashamedly Christian and magnificently black [indiscernible], that’s their motto up there. Trinity UCC Church, a great history. And Dr. Morris was there, and Moss was there, and comes to church. I don’t know if he walked the labyrinth before church, or maybe they gave him a key, I don’t know. Could happen. But he was there early, and they were there, Westboro Baptist Church, cursing people going to church, calling them horrible awful names. Imagine, if you will, coming to church, coming to the official church, and it’s kids, it’s old ladies and good people and maybe some people that are hurting. Who knows?
People come to church when they’re hurting, sure. And they get cursed at. They get damned. They get yelled at on the way. And Dr. Moss, like a lot of good pastors do in big churches, went to the choir because that’s where you go because you know the choir, they’re kind of the zealous of the church. If you had a choir, you would know this. Don’t be messin’ with the choir. You know. These are the shock troops of the church. And he went to the choir, and they had a hundred people in the choir, robed choir, hundred people. They rocked and rolled it.
And he told them there’s people out there cursing our people coming into church. They’re cursing the small children, the little children. They’re yelling at the old ladies. They’re making things – they’re going through hell, and they need protection. They need help. I want you to go out there. I want you to robe up. And I want you to go out there, and I want you to sing so loud that they cannot hear those curses. I want you to sing so loud that they come in to praises and not to curses. I want you to sing “This Little Light of Mine.”
This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine,
I’m gonna to let it shine,
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
And they sang that song and overwhelmed the chants, and people coming to church were protected. People that were vulnerable were shielded from the hate and from the awfulness that was there. And they didn’t just do it and ignore the people that were saying the curses and the things. They offered to pray for them. And when they were turned down, you don’t get in the way of the choir. When they were turned down, the choir went ahead and prayed for them anyway, right there out in front, so it was in the midst of the cursing and the damnations and the awfulness and the racial things was prayer and praise. That’s light. That’s light.
When someone’s hurting, when someone’s vulnerable, when someone’s being attacked, the people of the light are there. It could be a choir singing “This Little Light of Mine.” It could be people on the fire truck with lights and sirens. It could be people in the courtroom saying we want to know how the health of our mothers are doing and whether what we’re doing is killing them. We want to know what’s going on in our schools and our children and are they safe, and what’s going on with that? Why do they die so much, and no other nation has this trouble? Don’t sweep it under the rug. Shine the little light on it. We’re going to be light shiners. We’re going to be looking for those that are in the dark and bring them into the light and say we are here to help you.
You don’t have to. You don’t have to give out the right of way. But man, it’s great when we can look out for one another and refuse to accept a city that’s on fire because someone didn’t pay their insurance, because someone didn’t have the right placard up. We said no, we’re not going to let you lose everything and die because you didn’t pay the insurance premium. You know, that’s one step away from “A nice little house you got here. Too bad if anything would happen to it.” Little protection money over there.
Friends, we can be different. John says the world is different because Jesus Christ came into the world. The light came into the world, and darkness fled. Let us be the little light. Let us be the light that helps those that are in the dark and are hurting. Amen.
Think of things worthy of praise: Be an Encouraging Christian Christy argues the Light of the World is Green not Red.
Green Light Christians a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey Click the title above for a mp3 recording
Audio from South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on April 17, 2016, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.
Why do we need green lights on the traffic signals? If they were important we would call them “go lights.” But we call them Stoplights.
If you take away the green light at the bottom, what difference does it make? I mean if there wasn’t a traffic light, you’d just go anyway; right? It’s like an automatic green. Why do we have those things? Oh, my goodness.
I think I need to turn to an outside expert to explain why we have traffic signals.
In the movie “Starman”, the alien Starman comes and learns about humanity. He drives up to a yellow light and he just floors it. His terrified passengers yells: “I thought you knew what you were doing. You told me you watched me. You told me you knew how to drive by watching.” The Starman responds, “Oh, I watched you. I learned everything: red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.”
That’s not true, in case any of you are out there thinking, oh, that’s what the preacher said. No, yellow means stop. If you’re ever in Latrobe, Pennsylvania you can get a ticket for not stopping at a yellow light. Friends have told me this. You’re supposed to stop at yellow.
What is the good of a green light, yellow light, red light? Red is stop; yellow is caution, warning, slow down, look out, maybe stop. You’re in the danger zone. Green means go, but we go anyway. You know, there’s people like that. Especially Christian people are like that, aren’t there? There are red light Christians. There are yellow light Christians. There are green light Christians.
H.L. Mencken said “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone somewhere is happy.” Red light Christians. Now, we don’t have to go – we don’t have to go to current things, Christians who say stop, stop, stop. We can go back in time. Christians are always being stopped. Christians – those Puritans, they tried to stamp out Christmas. Tried not to let that happen. There was a fine if you didn’t go to work on December 25th, or if you were caught celebrating at all. In America, in New England, Christmas was banned as un-Christian, pagan, terrible, awful thing. Stop. Stop it.
Women wearing pants in church. I remember that. Oh, that was a huge, huge eternal hellfire issue. Jesus wore a dress but I don’t know if that had anything to do stopping the pants. Christians are always telling you, stop, stop, this has got to stop. I mean, now we’re at, I think we’re – I think the holiday that we’ve got our sights on is Halloween now. We’re trying to stomp that out. I’m not sure. Sooner or later we’re going to have a Halloween season in the church. In a couple of generations, the church will be decorated in orange and black for the Halloween season. And it’ll be okay.
Stop doesn’t always work. And I’m not sure that’s the best witness into what Jesus wants to us doing, to be stoplights. But if you listen to some people, they will tell you how you shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t do that. No dancing. No smoking. No gambling. Not in Nevada. Never hear that in Nevada. But no, no, stop, stop. You know, being just Red Light Christians doesn’t work.
I know a little about red lights. When I was a volunteer firefighter, we sort of had a love/hate relationship with the red lights. We’d love them for other people, but we weren’t too fond of them ourselves. You know, when you’re driving a couple-ton truck full of water, as the truck drivers reminded me constantly, water just doesn’t stop instantly. It keeps going even if the truck stops. So you just can’t slam on the brake, Christy. This isn’t a car. Oh, they got after me. I had a remedial fire engine driving I had to go to.
When I started at the fire station, and you know when you start a job, am I the only one, when you start something, you don’t ask every question right away? Do you say, well, I’ll ask about this today, and I’ll ask about that tomorrow, and then, you know, you sort of ration them out; you know? And after about a month I asked them a question had been bugging me since day one.
Right on the inside of the old fire station, about this high up, very inconvenient, there was this old-timey light switch, the flip kind on a metal box light switch, right there. But it was way up here. And it had this old yellow paper over it. And the paper, in black magic marker it was written, “Do not use.” Why is that switch up there? Why is there a paper over it saying “Do not use?” What in the world?
Well, after a while I got up courage and asked one of the old-timers. And I said, “Hey, what’s that switch up there? The one that has the paper over it saying ‘Do not use’?” He explained: “Oh, that switch. Huh. That turns all the lights in town red.” Maybe they ought to lock that up or something, but no. Oh? There’s more! He continues: “Yeah, we don’t use that anymore. We used to, and then they had that right-on-red law. And now it doesn’t stop traffic, so we don’t use it anymore.” Even turning every light in the town red doesn’t stop people. Red lights don’t always work, and even when they do, they don’t work for long.
Well, what about those yellow lights? You know that we’re – you know that we’re kind of, sort of, you know, saying no, but we’re saying we’re not going to be mean about the no? We’re going to be kind of nice about the no? How about the yellow? Yellow light Christians, how about them folks? You know those folks. You know, they’re, you know, what’s the biggest yellow light in our history and our life? Well, I think it’s the “don’t ask, don’t tell,” that one. That’s kind of a yellow light. It’s wrong, but just don’t talk about it. As long as you don’t talk about it, it’s okay, but not really, you know, it’s kind of the – that, that didn’t work real well. That did not work well. People were tortured, actually tortured so that they would tell and get kicked out of the army without benefits, without any status at all. Yellow Lights are ignored too often to really work.
And, you know, all the folks that say not yet, too soon, too much a hurry, we’ve got take this slow. You know, the oppressed people, the people that are suffering, the people that are under the thumb, they never say that. They never say, oh, it’s too soon. Yeah, I can wait another lifetime, another generation, another decade. The yellow lights, whoa, wait, wait, wait, don’t do that yet. It’s too much; you know? Doesn’t work for folks waiting to go into equality or yearning for relief.
What about the slippery slope argument? If we allow this, well, then, this terrible thing would happen. You don’t want this terrible thing, do you? Well, then you’re against this reasonable request.
You know the slippery slope now? You know what the one is now? They’re going to check your birth certificate before you go in the restroom. And you thought you were mad at TSA delays at the airport. You know, what about now? “Please allow an extra hour before going to the restroom so we can check your birth certificates. There’ll be a line.” Who has that job? Is that a big problem? They said, well, you know, it’s to keep the women safe.
Well, no women ever said that, I don’t think. Women are not safe anywhere. I’m sorry to break it to you. It’s not a bunch of assaults in a public restroom that’s a problem. Safety for women is everywhere. It’s even in their own homes. I am totally for safety of women. I am totally for safety of everyone. I don’t care what gender you are assigned, could be, was, will, whatever is your identity. I am for your safety, and that bathroom birth certificates are not safety for anyone. Safety is for everyone, everywhere, all the time. I want safety in all the rooms and outside not just one little restroom for one gender. That’s ridiculous.
But that’s yellow lights; isn’t it? The slippery slope? If we allow restroom freedom, terrible things will happen: women will be assaulted everywhere. Got news for you. Already happening. Let’s work on that problem and not on this little false yellow light thing here.
There was a religious professor in Grove City College, very conservative college. I went there. I get props for that. But he somehow slipped in. I think he might have been a sleeper agent for the liberals and any day he was going to be activated. But he was there, and he was talking about slippery slope. And he says, yeah, that’s why I’m against curbside trash pickup. Once you allow them to take garbage off your curb, next they’re going to be into the yard and taking the bicycles. Next they’ll be up to the porch and taking the patio furniture and throwing it away. Finally, they’ll be wheeling out your appliances and putting them in the trash truck. You don’t want the government stealing your appliances, do you? Well, then you’re against curbside trash pickup. That Professor is no longer there. Made too much sense. Yellow lights do not put Christians in the best light.
But, you know, some of them are good. Red lights, red lights. Yellow lights, some of them are good. I’m okay with – I’m okay with some things. You know, stop the violence. Yeah, big red light on that. Stop, stop fighting. Stop hurting people. Stop discrimination. Stop a lot of things. I’ve got a big red light on those. And, you know, yellow lights are good, too. My wife, is a physical therapist. And most of her stuff I – she’s going to correct me later. But most of her stuff is get people up and walking. It’s a huge change in your quality of life, if you can get out of bed and go places you need to go, even in the house. And she says, you know, fear of falling, that’s very handy. You really need that to learn how to walk and how to move around. You need the fear of falling. That’s a big yellow light. Whoo, watch out. That’s not safe. Grab onto a bar. Use your walker. Do whatever you need to do. Do not fall. Big yellow lights. I’m good with yellow lights. Some of the yellow lights.
But back to why do we have green lights? You know, I was worried about this. This was bothering me. And again, Bette Lynn gave me the answer. She goes, “Well, if you didn’t have the green light, you wouldn’t know if the traffic light was broken or not.” Well, you know what you do at a broken traffic light. Let’s see how well – what do you do if the traffic light’s broken, like a power outage?
CONGREGATION: Stop.
PASTOR RAMSEY: Four-way stop, thank you. No, it’s not go as fast as you can and beat the other people, as some people think. It’s a four-way stop. So if we didn’t have the green lights, everything would be a four-way stop. No one would know, is that signal working or not? Is the other people seeing red or not? I don’t know. But a green light, a green light says, I got you. It’s okay. I’m on it. I’m on the job. I got you. I got the others on red. Come right on in there. Yeah, you’re good. Encouraging. If there’s anything worthy of praise, if there’s anything good, think about these things: big green light. It is not necessary. You should go on your own. But, boy, does it help to go when you have a green light smiling at you.
If you don’t see a green light, you just might stop because you don’t know if it’s okay to go or not. You might think that traffic light is broken. And you know, the same is about Christianity. If all the people hear are red lights and yellow lights. If the Christian message is only about stop, don’t do this, don’t do that, the culture is terrible. If preachers are yellow lights: we’ve got to watch out, things are going to get terrible. People are going to think Christianity’s broken. Because they never see a green light from us.
Yet we do have green lights. We just don’t tell anybody. We’re full of green lights: baptism, big green light. Weddings and marriages are big green light; go and coming. And then funerals, even funerals, green lights. It’s not that bad. It’s not over. It’s not a stop for us. The message of funerals should be a big green light, that death is not a stop. And even the littler celebrations. Not just hatch, match, and dispatch, which is the ones we’re good at, but also all the little events. We need to celebrate membership where we say yes to seekers joining Christ’s church. Folks need to see our signal that we believe in you, we accept your promises. Commissioning to missionary work and mission trips. Ordination and installation of officers, yes. Go, go and lead. Do that thing. Choir recruitment, yeah, you can come up and sing. We’re all for you, yeah. Big green light. You’re supposed to sing. You’re supposed to lead. Go. Do it. Encouragement.
We do that, but we don’t tell anybody. We think the most important things are the red and the yellow lights. We preach only about the cautions and the don’ts and the stops. I will tell you, and as our scripture says in Psalm 23, the most important things are saying I am with you. I go with you to the darkest valley, the most enemies. I have a table for you. I’ve got a place for you. Don’t worry. Green light. I got you. Come on.
You know, we do not call Jesus Christ is God Stop Us. A Divine Red Light. We do not say that Jesus Christ is God Warn Us. A Holy Yellow light. What do we say? We say Emmanuel, God With Us. God Go With Us. Green light. That is our identity. We’re here so that you can be blessed to be a blessing. We’re here so that you can be forgiven to forgive. We’re here that you can go through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil. God’s got you. Big green light.
Two more stories. So back to the firefighters. You never see anybody more serious about something than a dedicated volunteer. I mean, an employee can be dedicated. But a volunteer has to be really dedicated. They are not getting paid, so they’d better have another good reason to be there. Everyone has to take a test in Ohio to be a volunteer firefighter. I accidentally became a volunteer firefighter and had to take the test. Look at this body. Not the fabulous fit specimen of the firefighting caste.
They said, “Okay, okay, okay, Rev, come on. We’ve got to take this test.” It’s called the Firefighter Agility Test. What they want to know is that you’re not going to screw them up on a fire run. That’s what they want to know. So you’ve got to climb up a ladder – and climb down – without freaking out. You’ve got to be able to be blindfolded and crawl around in a maze without freaking out. You’ve got to be able to carry this dummy, without falling and having to be rescued yourself. These are things they want to know before you can do before they go through fire with you.
And so John Love, one of my great mentors, was reading off the official Ohio regulations for these tests, da da da da da da da. Very serious guy. Da da da da da. He’s a funeral director. They lean toward serious. Da da da da da. He’s reading them all out. And at the very end he says: “And in all these tests, we are not allowed to physically assist you. But we are allowed to cheer.” And what? He said “cheer” in his serious funeral director/firefighter captain voice.
And that’s what they did. They weren’t allowed to help me, but they were allowed to cheer. “C’mon, Preacher, you can do it, you can get up there. Oh, you’ve got this, you’ve got this. Only a little more, Go Rev Go!” They were there all the way through. Got me through it. We aren’t allowed to help you, but we’re allowed to cheer.
Another guy, big mentor in my life, Jerry Gordon, great, great Christian, great, wonderful guy. He and I split up the Salvation Army for the county, doing that together, great guy, helped each other out. He was the one that was the mentor for my daughter in confirmation, helped her and led her through making a public decision for Christ. A real special bond. Great guy. And he wanted our small church to do Relay for Life. And when they do Relay for Life in small towns, really, it is a serious business. None of this 12-hour jazz. It was all weekend, buddy. And everybody’s going to be out, every team is going to have someone on that track all night long, buddy. We’re going to do it right.
So I thought, yeah, he’s a little ambitious, you know. So I said, “Hey, Jerry, Jerry, I’m with you. Jerry, put me down for an hour on the track, your worst hour. Whatever you can’t get, put me down, I’ll be there for you, buddy.” He goes, “Really?” Because, again, you know my physique is an issue for endurance tests. And I said, “Yeah, really, really. I want to do this. You’re going to have trouble. I know you’re going to have trouble with this getting enough people in the night, and whatever hour you need, I’ll be there, I’ll do an hour. I can do an hour.” And he, “All right, all right. You sure?” “Yeah, I’m sure.”
I got, like, 3:00 a.m., buddy, 3:00 to 4:00 a.m., walking around the high school track, 3:00 to 4:00 a.m., walking around doing this, you know. Da da da da da, da. Oh, it is dark, dark, dark. And I’m tired. So I get out there, and Jerry’s there. I go out there, lap one. Out from behind the scoreboard, Jerry Gordon, “Go Christy, go Christy, go Christy, yay, yay, go Christy.” I jump a little and smile, Okay. I’m kind of sleepy, walking around.
Next lap, behind the food stand, out pops Jerry “Good job, go, way to go, way to run. Yeah, you’re the man, you’re the man.” Every lap he’s jumping out from somewhere different and yelling at me. One time he came out of the Porta-Potty. I am still kind of freaked out about that. You know, Jerry could have slept. He could have taken the hour off. He could have done that, I would have gone around the track anyway. He wasn’t allowed to help, but he was allowed to cheer and that kept me from stopping.
I hope you do that. I hope there’s people in your life like Jerry Gordon and John Love that, even if they can’t help you, and I hope they help you, but I hope they’re always cheering you on, saying, “Way to go. Good job. You’re doing well.” You guys are doing well as a people and as a congregation. And I hope people keep telling you that all the time. I hope they don’t say, “Oh, haven’t you got a minister yet? Well, tsk, tsk, tsk.”
You know, I hope that people are saying you are doing great with mission trips. You’re doing great with worship. You’re doing great with Bread & Broth. You’re doing great with all these programs that you keep going without a minister. You are doing great with welcoming and worship and music and outreach, doing all – so you’re doing a seminar the end of this month and opening it up to the community. Something that even Presbytery take notice of, and that’s not easy to do, to get Presbytery to take notice of you in a good way. Yeah, they’re even sending money down to you for that. So good on you.
And I want to encourage you. And I want you, when you think of things, when you think of how the church is going, when you think about how your life is going, I want you to think about the scripture. Is there anything, anything, anything worthy of praise? Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure. Anything worthy of praise. All the good things.
Think about these things. Be green light Christians. Know that you can go and tell other people they can go so they don’t think the church is broken. So they don’t stop everywhere, saying, well, I don’t know, is it good or not? I don’t know. It could be red or yellow, I don’t know. But you say green, yeah, you’re welcome here. Yeah, you belong here. Yeah, we’re glad you’re here. Yeah, you’re okay. Yes, we love you just the way you are. And yes, use any bathroom you want. Not a problem here.
I want to leave you with a Presbyterian minister from Latrobe – Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Fred Rogers did his ministry in Pittsburgh, as Mister Rogers in “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,”. I was blessed to be in his home church as interim for 18 months. Got to meet the neighborhood. You know, all the characters in the neighborhood were from his family, his extended family. And Daniel the Tiger used to come up and talk to me about the sermon. And it was so neat because they kind of look like the puppets. It was so neat. And so many good stories about Fred Rogers, how wonderful and caring and loving he was.
I want to leave you with this video. Go ahead and do what Mr. Rogers tells you, for 10 seconds and the rest of your life. And that’ll be the end of the sermon.
Edited from a transcript by eDigitalTranscriptions
[Fred Rogers Acceptance Speech for Lifetime Achievement Award– 1997] Thank you. Thank you. Oh it’s a beautiful night in this neighborhood. So many people have helped me to come here to this night. Some of you are here, some are far away and some are even in Heaven. All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, 10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are, those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life. 10 seconds of silence. I’ll watch the time.
[10 Sec Pause]
[Mister Rogers] Source: LYBIO.net Whomever you’ve been thinking about, how pleased they must be to know the difference you feel they’ve made. You know they’re kind of people television does well to offer our world. Special thanks to my family and friends, and to my co-workers in Public Broadcasting, Family Communications, and this Academy for encouraging me, allowing me, all these years to be your neighbor. May God be with you. Thank you very much.
Fire, 
