Well, It’s Blursday, the Upteenth of Meh…Again

How to be faithful when days blur into weeks and months.

Well, It’s Blursday, the Upteenth of Meh…Again
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from an empty sanctuary and full zoom on a laptop at St. John’s Presbyterian in Reno, Nevada lot on August 23, 2020. Originally given at Lee Vining/Bishop Zoom on July 19

Genesis 28:10-19a

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 Looking for the way to be faithful in the world without gathering with the saints

Two sisters were terrors at home, school, neighborhood, everywhere but church. There they were angels because that was God’s house. Well, with the school and church building closed and the parents were stuck with them day after day without any away time or church angel hours. 

So they do what parents do when they are at their wits end, they called the pastor and asked her to do put the fear of God in them. So the pastor said, “Let me talk to the oldest.” 

The parent handed the phone to the oldest and the pastor quizzed her, “WHERE IS GOD?” and the oldest said, “At God’s house!” The pastor continued, “Ok, No body is at God’s house, where is God?” The child didn’t know the answer but knew she was in big trouble. She froze. 

 

Her sister asked, “What’s wrong?”

 

The oldest pushed mute and answered her: “The Pastor Can’t Find God! She Thinks We Stole Him!

 

Where is God is the question of 2020. Since March we have been spread abroad from west to east to north and south. To homes, laptops, phones, tablets, zoom, YouTube, Facebook. And we wonder, “Where is God when God’s House is Closed?” 

 

James Goff had a cartoon in April where the devil is bragging that he closed every church. God is next to him saying, I opened a church in every home.

 

The wave of blogs virtual worship guides and the stream of emails with requests for rulings about what was real worship or real communion flooded the web, twitter, emails and Facebook posts. 

 

Christians of a certain age will hear the lament in the question from “On The Willows” from Godspell. Psalm 137:4 How can we sing the Lord’s Song in a foreign land? 

Rev. Joey Lee, the Executive Presbyter of San (Hos say) says if we complain about lockdown…try being a refugee.

 

We catch up with the heel grabber Jacob who has just started being a refugee on his way toward Haran. He is fleeing his sheltering home and family support because it is not safe to stay there. From favorite son to refugee. In the desert he found a place to stay overnight. There he found God standing beside him tell him that God is with him and will keep him wherever he goes. Jacob’s named the place, Bethel, the house of God. He fled his house and found himself in the house of God. 

 

For Christians, the answer to the pastor’s question is not a place, but a person. God acts to make sure we know he is not housebound to a place by Jesus or rather Immanuel, God with Us. Where is God when God’s house is closed? As Jacob found out, God is standing beside us. God is Immanuel, God is with us. 

 

God is not housebound. Jacob may leave home, but God’s house goes with him. Psalm 139 has a similar promise most often heard at funerals and memorials. The leaving is magnified in verse: 

Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. 

 

God found Jacob in the desert, but this isn’t a story about Jacob’s ladder to heaven it is about God setting his ladder to heaven wherever we are. God is the subject.

Jacob did everything he could to grab his piece of heaven, to secure his place and future. His artful deal swindled his brother out his birthright for a bowl of stew. He tricked his blind father to steal the blessing that was due his brother Esau. He was a heel grabber from birth. 

Yet there is a reckoning. Today we find him in the desert. Without family, fortune or future; that birthright and blessing cut off by the fear of that is brother would be angry and vengeful. His scheming for all left him with nothing. 

Yet it isn’t just us who finds him, but God. Who gives him the blessing not of his father for his family, but to be a blessing to all the families of earth. God who replaces his birthright with the promise of the birth of offspring like the dust of the earth. God, who builds Bethel, the house of God around the homeless refugee not artful deals of grasping Jacob.

The church is stripped of all of the things we planned, prepared and schemed for over the decades: 

 

• We have been exiled from our beautiful buildings even our favorite pew…
• Eye contact is replaced with far away stares.
• Handshakes and hugs are replaced with  video smiles and distant waves.
• In person, even smiles are masked away And in person means double arms length, too far to hug.
• Like a modern day Babel, our chorus is fractured solos, we sing together alone; our unison responses jumbled syllables scrambled by the tech tubes that connect our eyes but not our voices.
• We can no longer receive communion from a neighbors hand but only take it from our own.
• We are in the desert, alone, in exile from all we have gathered and grabbed, stripped of our birthright and blessing.

Sir Winston Churchill is credited with first saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” He said it in the mid-1940s as we were approaching the end of World War ll.

 

Jacob doesn’t waste his crisis. He recognized that he is a guest of God’s house wherever he is. Not by his own cunning, but by God’s care. That ladder is not a way to heaven as it is an affirmation of that God’s work is going on, even here. Angels are moving cares up to heaven and messages are coming down us. The supply chain is secure delivering even in the desert even though zoom.

 

And he vows to return to this place where God’s house is. Rev. Joey Lee, also says that when the quarantine hit changes that we been working on for years where made in a weekend. Our tech friendly expansive ministry is reuniting the ex-pats, the homebound, the young, the physically and socially distant, the ones who can’t hear but now can turn up the volume, the ones who can’t walk but now have church delivered, the one who work or play on Sunday morning, let’s not forget this place where God came beside those alone and away from the home. A ladder delivering grace and inviting a connection to God from wherever you are.

 

Virginia City Presbyterian that still has gas light fixtures because they are not convinced electricity might be a fad, hung a video screen in their sanctuary after a unanimous approval from the session so folks weren’t required to touch and pass hymnals and paper. What a faithful response to exile. When I heard that, I asked my echo what the ski conditions in hell were. 

 

I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future. Ralph Abernathy

 

The quarantine is a forced demonstration that God’s house is not built of our traditions, our schemes and empire building but where people stop to rest and find God beside them. Setting up a ladder to heaven where faith climbs and blessing descends.

 

We can keep the faithful attitude of how God is present where we are instead of trying to jam God into where we were. We can all be like my mother-in-law Kathryn who lives in the desert of Sedona on House Rock Road. We can set up our house rock and say remember, God is here. God is with us where ever we stop and look for God. 

 

“He’s Always There”

 

The Lord leads us on

with tender care,

lifting our

burdens to bear

He blesses us

as we pass on,

to what awaits

eternal dawn

Tho we so often

may not see,

He’s always there

and will always be…

 

J. Paul Horgan   “The Poem Painter”

7/17/20   c.

Well, It’s Blursday, the Upteenth of Meh…Again

One Day or Day One

One Day or Day One? Christy thinks resolutions and being resolute. Read on to learn how to be make any day a New Year’s Day

One Day or Day One?
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
click the title above for a mp3 recording 

Preached at South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on January 3, 2016

Based on Genesis 1:1-5

Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes

You don’t have to raise your hand or anything.  These are kind of rhetorical questions.  Have you ever been in a situation where everyone was laughing at you?  Have you ever been in one of those places?  Have you ever been in a place where everyone was laughing at you, and you didn’t know why?  I think that’s even worse.  Why is everybody laughing?  What have I done wrong?

This happened to a Hebrew student that my friend Donna has in her sermon, and I’m stealing this story right straight from her.  And I told her I would soon as I heard it.  She said that the Hebrew class was translating Genesis.  It’s a great thing to do when you’re in Hebrew class, translate Genesis.  One, it’s useful.  Two, you’ve got the answers right there.   And this poor guy’s reading through, and he – and he gets to Verse 5.  Verse 5, which we have a good translation, talk about the first day, evening, morning for the first day.  In Hebrew, the word is “yom echad”, “yom”, “day”, and “echad” “one”.

And that’s how you – that’s when we talk in English, you know, we – order is very important in English.  We go one word, and it makes a difference where things are in sentence – subject, verb, object.  And it’s one of the great inventions of English.  But other languages, they don’t have that.  They go by the different forms of the word, and what the word looks like, and the endings, and the accents, all these change whether it’s a subject, an object, a verb.

This Hebrew student had – really hadn’t got into his head yet.  And so he was saying “[ya heshad]” one day.  And the professor went, “How would you translate ‘yom echad’?”  And everybody else was going holding their breath.  He says, “One, one day.”  And he knew that was right.  One day.  “What, that is incorrect.  Class, how do we translate ‘yom echad’?”  And the whole class yells out, “Day one.”  There’s a huge difference in English, whether you say “one day” or “day one.”

And Genesis, day one.  Did you know the books in the Bible are often named by the first word there?  They weren’t really that creative.  They would just be terrible at getting clicks on the Internet.  Could not write a headline.  Just take the first word, put it up there on top, that’s what it was.  The first word in Genesis is that is “b’reishit,” beginning, beginnings.  Beginning God, first two words.  Day one.

Did you see all that was chaos?  Did you see there was stuff there before Genesis?  It’s not like Big Bang out of nothing.  It was something was there.  There was – there was, like, a murky kind of watery kind of mix-up mess mash of a chaos kind of thing.  And it was – it was a – and then God came, and God said “Let there be light.”  And the light was separated from darkness.  The all from all the greatness came the light and the dark, and there was day, there was morning, and there was evening.  There was evening, and there’s morning, day one.  From a murky, yucky, messy mess to day and night, light and dark.  The beginning.

Any of you been teenagers?  You know, if you ask teenagers, they swear they’re the first teenagers that ever existed, and no one has ever felt this way in the history of the Earth.  And their feelings are unique and powerful and strong.  I know you know this.  I’ve had some.  I’ve been one.  I tell you, I had a particularly challenging one.  Turned out great.  Whew, we made it through.

One day was particularly difficult.  It was about 9:00 a.m.  It was early.  It was 8:39.  It wasn’t halfway through the morning.  And she was back there just, you know how – you know how you cry talk?  Do you know how to cry talk?  You know how they do that is that you don’t talk, and you don’t cry, but you kind of put them together, and you kind of go “It’s the worst day ever.”  You know, I’m crying, but I have something to say, but I want you to know I’m crying.  And so she was inconsolable because, again, teenagers, the only feeling, first one discovered feelings, you’re no – you have no idea what it’s like to be me.  Oh.  So going on and on.

And I finally said to her, I finally got a say, I said, “Rachel, Rachel, when does a day start?”  “Wha-what?”  I go, “When does a day start?  When does the day start?  Is it midnight, you know, when the clock changes, and counter changes midnight?  Is that it?  Or is it – is it dawn?  Is it the dawn of a new day?  Is that it?  Is it when you get up, which is not dawn?  Is it, you know, in the Bible they start the day at sundown.  So, you know, the seventh day is Friday night because that’s the beginning of Saturday.  They start it at sundown.  So, you know, when does the day start?”

And I told her, “You know, Rachel, the day starts whenever you want it to.  And I’m telling you right now, right now, right here, we’re starting a new day.  That old day that was ruined and awful and irredeemable and the worst day ever, that’s over.  Gone.  You and me, we’re starting a new day right now, and it’s going to be a good one.  It’s going to be good because it can’t be worse than yesterday.  That was the worst day ever.  So we’re starting a new one, got to be better than yesterday.”  [Indiscernible] thank Lord that worked for her.  And she [sniffles], “Okay.  Okay, Dad.  New day today.”  She went out and took it on.  Difference between day one and one day.

Did you see all the news reports about how many killings there were?  “Oh, Christy, it’s Christmas.  Don’t.  The decorations are still up, and you’re going to talk about mass killing.”  I have a cute story at the end, so just hold on.  Did you see all the killings in 2015, the more than one a day?  Remember when those were surprising?  Remember when they were unique?  Remember when we heard, “Uh, now is not the time for talking about violence.  Now is not the time for….”  And it turned out it was never the time because we keep having those violence.  We keep having the killings.  And then we moved into our thoughts and prayers are with the victims.  You know, one day, some day, one day, not today, one day we’ll get around to doing something about the violence.  One day.  Not today.  One day.

Now, the numbers, you – have you seen what they’ve done to the numbers, too.  It’s over 330 shootings.  But, you know, shootings, shootings, ah, shootings, that’ll just spoil your day.  Maybe we should only count murders.  Some people only count murders.  And you know you really can’t count the perpetrator, you know, the shooter.  I mean, if they die, you know, it doesn’t really count to God; does it?  Is every life sacred to God?  No, we’ll throw that out.

And then they take – they take it even further down.  And they say, well, what if it’s gang violence?  You know?  Gang violence, you’ve got to expect that.  And then they go, what about, you know, domestic violence?  You know, you’re going to have that stuff.  Happens, you know.  What about, oh, you know, robberies and [doe de do].  They take it on down, take it on [indiscernible] down.  And one, the list got down to one, one.  Now, because certain a number of people have [indiscernible] they could actually die, [doe te to].  Ah, one day we’ll do something about that.  Just the way things are.  Just life in America.  We have violence everywhere.  We have violence in everything.

Football, so American.  You know?  Committee meetings interrupted by violence.  Thank you for the giggle.  Can you believe in football they’re saying, “How much brain damage is okay?”  What?  Well, we’re going [well] helmets because it hurts our brains.  How about not doing stuff that hurts your brains?  How about that?  No.  It’s all right.  Well, someday we’ll get around to stopping the violence in our society.  Some day.  Not today.  Today is not the day.  Who’s God?  God is beginnings.  God is not one day, but day one.

Have you heard about the killings of the Christians?  Have you heard about that?  Have you heard about that?  There’s tension between Muslims and Christians?  Have you heard about that?  Do we just accept that as just okay, that’s the way it is?  They’ve got their scriptures; we’ve got our scriptures.  We’re going to fight, going to kill.  That’s just the way things are.  We just got to accept the world like that, and we got to protect ourselves.  Have you heard about it?

Have you heard about what happened in Egypt?  This was a few years ago.  But there was an incident.  There was violence.  There was trouble.  And the Christians there, they’re Coptic Christians.  They go way back.  Way back.  All the way back to Jesus.  They’re Coptic Christians.  They even have a different calendar than we do.  That’s how far back they go.  And there was – there was a problem with that about conversions and violence and all that.  And the Muslim majority in Egypt said no, this stops now.  And they are – they [indiscernible] we all live together, or we all die together.  We are together in Egypt.  We are one.

And the Christians had their Christmas Eve service that year.  And around the little tiny church with a little bit about Christians were hundreds, were thousands of Muslims.  They stood outside the church, and they said, “We are your human shield.  If anybody is going to do violence to you, they’re going to go through us first.  This will not stand.  This is not who we are.  We do not solve our differences with violence.  We are with you Christians.”  And so the celebration of God coming in body to Earth was greeted by the protection of the body of Muslims.  Day one.

And I’m not saying you begin some, it’s all peaches and rainbows and unicorns and ice cream and this showering confetti throwing.  There’s problems.  We know that from Genesis.  Did the problems end with Genesis?  No, we can really make an argument things all began with Genesis, and problems have come on since.  But it’s a beginning.  It’s a start.  And God is the God of beginnings and of starts and of day ones.

New Year’s resolutions.  How you guys do with those?  Yeah, oh, that good?  This one’s already – you already have said your opinion, [indiscernible].  And we have not talked earlier.  We rarely talk.  You can – you can tell by the service.

How you doing with the resolutions?  What do you do?  Do you guys make resolutions?  A rhetorical question, but you can nod and shake [indiscernible].  A little bit?  My most successful New Year’s resolution is that one year I resolved to wait.  And so every time I was like at the post office or the airport or on hold with the [indiscernible], I’d go, I’d get [indiscernible].  Oh, wait a minute, that was my resolution.  I’m doing pretty well.  I got my resolution going.  All right.  I don’t know if that’s a good way to do it.  [Indiscernible].

I was looking up resolutions, and I found some quotes around the idea of that some people don’t make resolutions, not because they’ll break them, which is one way to go, but they don’t make New Year’s resolutions because they believe that every day is a good day to resolve to do good and to be better.  Every day is a good day to start a New Year’s resolution.  Every day is a good day to resolve to do good and to be better.  When does the New Year start?  It can start today.  And it can start again tomorrow, if you need it.

Ah, geez.  Killings on Christmas, the sanctuary [indiscernible].  What are you going to do?  I’m going down, back down the hill this afternoon.  You guys [indiscernible] you guys can’t catch me.  Ha.

I want to tell you about Bob and Sharon.  And I have permission to talk about my daughter, and I have permission to talk about Bob and Sharon.  So, now, Bob was a good-looking guy.  He was ever better looking 41 years ago.  And he was there working at a gas station, back when they had gas stations with people working there.  Some of you remember that.  Well, back in the day when – when they – when they [gain] that, I think it – I think it was a Wednesday, the day that we keep talking.

But Bob, Bob came out, and Bob, Bob was a single guy.  And he saw Sharon, Sharon.  Now, Sharon had a little boy.  I don’t know the situation there.  Didn’t ask.  Didn’t want to know.  He’s telling the story.  Go, Bob.  Bob was saying, you know, I caught my eye.  She was pretty cute.  She had a little boy.  I know she lived around the neighborhood.  We got to talking, you know.  And I said, boy, that – I really kind of like her, you know.  So he didn’t know who she is.

So she goes, he goes home, and he – and her – his sister’s there with her friend.  And he goes, boy, you know, a Sharon came into the station, I don’t know her last name.  She’s got, you know, she’s a blonde, she’s Italian, she’s got a little – got a little boy, and she lives around here.  And her sister’s friend said, “Sharon, with the little boy, single, lives here, I know who that is.  I know her.  Would you like to meet her?  Would you – I could set you up.  Ooh, ooh, I could set you up with a date.  I could do that.”  And then Bob said, “Well, yeah, I’d, uh, yeah, I think I’d like that, yeah.  Yeah, yeah.”  “All right.  Well, oh, don’t worry about it.  I’ll set it up.”

And so it was set up.  Friday night, you know, Bob’s all slicked up, you know.  He’s got his car all clean.  He’s coming on up.  And he goes up, and he goes, yeah, this is Sharon.  All right, comes up, bup ba da ba da.  Yeah, knock on the door, the door opens to a woman he’s never seen before.  It was the wrong Sharon.  There was two blond Sharons with a child that lived in a block apart.  They had the same house number, but a block off.  He did not know this at the time.  He didn’t know what to do, but he’s a good guy.  Bob is a really good guy.

And he goes, well.  He braced himself and went out on a date.  It was, they both agree, this details, they do go back and forth, but they both agree, worst date ever.  It was horrendous.  In fact, it wasn’t so much a bad day as a good hostage situation, that kind of the scale.  They were both hostage to the date.  And Bob swears that Sharon never let go of the door handle.  It was like it was an ejection seat, an escape hatch.  She was ready to pull and go anytime.  The date hostage situation was over, resolved, as if you will, and she pulled that [right] and bolted for the door.  Well, you know, some days you win, some days you lose, you know.

About a week later, Sharon says she forgot where Bob worked.  Maybe.  She swears this.  She pulls in.  Bob sees her.  What is he going to do?  Because remember back there they actually went out, for you younger people, back then people actually went out and helped people with the gas, actually put the gas in the car.  I know, amazing.  But he’d go – he had to go out there.  So he goes out there.

And here’s something about Bob.  Bob says, you know, “Nothing could be that bad that we couldn’t – we cannot be that bad together.  Let’s go out again.”  And like my daughter, you’ve already had the worst date, so this has got to be better.  And it wasn’t a blind date because they knew each other.  And it wasn’t a surprise date, which is worse than a blind date, the surprise date.  And they had a great time.  They had a wonderful time.  And they met after – then they got to know each other.  They met after work for coffee.  They were inseparable.  They got engaged.  They got married.  They had children.  They have 41 years of life together.

Great love story.  One day, I had a bad date.  But I decided that, instead, I’ll have day one of a love of my life.  Today is one day.  But it can be day one.

 Amen. 

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Transcipt differs from the recording with some exclaimations and sound effects edited out.

Top photo credit: andrechinn / CC BY

Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommend for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions.

Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Joseph Wept So Loudly

Wept

As part of #Adventus I am posting videos as a reflection a scriptual theme this month. You are welcome to join me here and follow the #Adventus tag on Twiiter.

December 6th -  ”wept so loudly”  Genesis 45:2

And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.

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The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

God Has Brought Laughter

Laughter

As part of #Adventus I am posting videos as a reflection a scriptual theme this month. You are welcome to join me here and follow the #Adventus tag on Twiiter.

December 5th - “God has brought laughter”  Genesis 21:6

Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”

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The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The God Who Sees

Sees

As part of #Adventus I am posting videos as a reflection a scriptual theme this month. You are welcome to join me here and follow the #Adventus tag on Twiiter.

December 4th - “The God who sees”  Genesis 16:13

So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”

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The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.