Not My Job

Not My Job

Not My Job
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service January 26, 2025
for ZOOM with Lee Vining Presbyterian Church

edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.

  John 2:1-11

 Sermons also available free on iTunes

Should the church be run like a business?  People tell me that, throughout my career in the ministry in 40 years, and they come in, you know, church has to be run like a business.  And they usually don’t know that I have a business administration degree from Grove City College with cum laude.  So they think this is news to me, God bless ‘em.

And I was wondering, you know, when I’m in a more festive mood, with is almost always, I admit it is a problem, I ask them, well, if church is run like a business, what’s its product?  I mean, what is it selling?  I mean, that’s basic business that you know your product.  What’s a product?  You know, it gives them pause because, I mean, you all think of that, I ain’t going to put you on the spot because, you know, it’s like being in the front row at a comedy club, you know.  You know you’re going to get picked on if there’s only, like, six of you.  So don’t answer out.  I’m not putting you on the spot.

But what would you say is the church’s business?  What’s the product?  What are we making?  Oh, you’re going to – you’re going to – you’re, yeah, are we making Christians.  That’s one of the A-plus answers.  I would go A-plus on Christians, disciples, yeah.  You know, others would say, you know, Laurie, others would say, well, you’re making worship services.  You know, some people say that.  Or, well, you’ve got to maintain the building, you know.  Or some people would say, you know, you’re feeding the hungry, and Matthew 25, and the thirsty, and you’re doing that stuff.  And I don’t know if you’d get agreement from everyone in a room about what the product is for the church, if it was run like a business.

And then it gets even more complicated because then you’ve got to say, okay, we’ve got a product, maybe.  You would say, well, who’s our customer?  What’s our target audience?  Who are we working for?  And I’m sure Laurie knows the answer.  It’s always God.  God’s always the correct answer in any children’s message or sermon.

Well, some people say God’s the customer.  Okay.  Other people would say, well, the people who pay the bills.  You’ve got to keep them happy.  You’ve got to keep the people happy who’re paying the bills or you don’t have a church.  They’re the customer.  Well, sure, God, but you know, oh, I’ve got to keep the money folks happy.  Some people would say that.  Some people say, well, it’s the church board.  I mean, I don’t know if anybody would say that.  Maybe one or two would say you’ve got to go with the – or maybe a couple would say the pastor has to be happy.  That’s rare, but that could happen.  I’m sure that’s happened.  You know, who are you trying to please?  Who are you working for?  Who’s the customer?  That’s a difficult one.

What if they went beyond that and said, okay, well, now, who owns the business?  You know?  Who?  Is it a nonprofit?  That’s problematic in a church, if you don’t have profits.  If you do, well, what’s the business?  What is that customer?  Who owns it?  Who is in charge of it?  I mean, the Presbyterians have gone all the way up to the Supreme Court about who owns the church.  And the Supreme Court, way back, oh, ‘70s, said, well, that PCUSA owns the church, but please make it more clear in your constitution.  So we’ve been – we struggle with that in reality of who owns the business of the business?  That’s important, too.

Well, you know, we shouldn’t be surprised that we have these questions and answers, and that we can’t get consensus and move around because even Jesus Christ had trouble, as we saw here, skipping over the dynamic of why you’re calling your mother “women,” that doesn’t sound good to us English-speaking ears that you go “woman.”  But maybe it’s better in the Aramaic, I’m hoping.  But Jesus had some troubles about his jobs and where he was doing and what he was doing it for.  And, you know, a mother, the mother, you know, you don’t want your mother coming up to where you work and saying you’re not good at your job.  I mean, that’s not good.  That’s a bad day right there.

And, you know, and I don’t know, you know, can you imagine, I don’t know if we can be Jesus, but you’ve got these world-changing powers.  You want to change the world for good.  You want to help people, you want to get love all around, forgiveness and all that, and your mom wants you to solve the lack of wine at a three-day blowout party for people you don’t know.  You know, Jesus Christ is fully human.  I can see him being a little upset about that one.  And not just, you know, hey, bring a bottle of wine.  I mean, come on, it’s a party, bring the wine, what are you?  You know, we’re talking multiple gallons of water turning to wine.  We’re talking 20 to 30, what is it, six times 20, help me out.  It’s over 100 gallons of wine.  That’s a lot of wine.  Of course, you know, Mary didn’t say, hey, go get 100 gallons.

Is that Jesus’ job?  I don’t know.  We struggle with that in the church.  We’re struggling right now about what is the church’s job.  I mean, folks will say let’s get politics out of the church, doo to doo to doo, you know, they want to say that.  And you know what, I’ve noticed over the years, I mean, I’ve been around a little bit, politics just kept getting wider and wider and wider.  You know?  It used to be you could go buy craft supplies and not worry about politics.  Now you’ve got to say, well, that one’s Republican and that one’s Democrat.  Politics are just freaking everywhere.  You know, and people wear them, you know, as part of their clothing, their politics.  It is politics, politics, politics, politics everywhere.  And it affects – and it’s not just politics.

Politics affects our lives, affects our health, affects our neighbors, affects ourselves, affects our family.  You know, we say, well, it’s just politics.  Well, no, man, it’s morality.  It’s reality.  It’s how we live.  It’s how we structure society.  It’s how we help one another.  And even now we saw right now that a bishop, you know, we don’t have bishops.  I don’t know.  Sometimes that’s good; sometimes it’s bad.  I don’t know.  But we don’t have bishops.  But that’s like, you know, up there, you know, big hat, in charge of church and stuff.  And the bishop in the church, okay, that’s kind of a big thing, bishop in the church there actually makes it a cathedral when the bishop’s in the church.  So the bishop in the cathedral saying a sermon, you know, the bishop in the cathedral in a sermon, you think that’s religious.

But some people say, oh, no, that’s politics.  They can’t say this.  They can’t say that.  They’ve got this to do.  They’ve got this to do.  They’ve got to be in this box.  They can’t be this.  And oh, my gosh, I want to tell you about how the bishop in the cathedral preaching a sermon should be.  I say get the politics out of the church.  I say get the politics out of my life.  My life belongs to Jesus Christ.  Don’t be telling me I can’t follow Jesus Christ because you don’t like the politics.  And don’t be coming into a cathedral and telling the bishop what he can say in their own pulpit.  No.

We have trouble with jobs, with what is a job.  I mean, even today we have trouble.  You know, we say we might get upset about oh, my gosh, he should have said into this.  Oh, my gosh, that’s not her job.  Oh, she shouldn’t have made the wine.  I mean, I’m sure that there were some people, well, Jesus, you know, you shouldn’t be making that much wine for drunk people.  I mean, that is a reasonable criticism.  I mean, Laurie can help me out here, but I’m thinking that’s enabling.  I mean, that’s like master-class enabling right there.  These drunk people need more wine.  I mean, the steward flat-out said they were already drunk; you know?  And why do drunk people need more wine, I don’t know.  And people could criticize that, and I don’t even think that would be political.

But what is the job of the church?  It’s something we’re going to be struggling with, I’ll tell you.  We’re going to be struggling with that.  And, you know, between ministers, and it’s especially a struggle because, you know, when you get in a ministry you can sort of say, good, the ministry will figure that out; you know.  But when it’s just y’all, you know, you’ve got to figure out what is the church.  Does the church do this?  Does the church do that?  Is that our job?  Should we have services even though none of us lives in Lee Vining and we’ve got a lot of weather?  Should we do that?  I mean, it’d be really nice to have a minister decide that.  But you don’t, so you’ve got to decide that, oh, you know.  So what do you do?

Now, let me change gears a little bit.  Palisades Fire.  Have you heard of it?  Palisades Fire.  Now, I don’t know it you know about Palisades.  Kind of a rich people place.  But, you know, they have a severe homeless problem.  They’ve got a lot of folks there that are hungry, don’t have housing, don’t have food.  But the disaster is a disaster.  I can’t imagine losing everything you own.  I can’t imagine that.  There’s been loss of life in the double digits, I think it’s up to 23 or so.  Whole neighborhoods washed out.  I mean, one of the Presbyterian execs lost her home down there, one of my friends, Wendy.  I can’t imagine that.  Everything, you look around, everything gone.

Another one of the ministers at the Palisades church, he had time to run down – you’ve got to read it.  It’s on the PCUSA website, that Palisades fire, and was in the Presbyterian newsletter last week.  But the pastor had enough time to run from the church down to the elementary school, grab his kids, because there was just cars everywhere, nothing was moving.  There’s parents trying to get their kids.  Had enough time to go down, get his kids, take them back out to the car, and flee the church.  He didn’t take anything out of his office, and the church burned to the ground.  I can’t imagine, what a tragedy.  I want to say that, that it’s awful, it’s a tragedy, it’s a horrible thing.  Suffering is real.  And that’s one of the things the Church knows.

But I do want to tell you about jobs.  When we’re talking about jobs, for at least a little while, for at least a couple weeks, there’s no hungry person in the Palisades.  There’s no one hungry.  There is no hunger because World Food Kitchen rolled in there with the food trucks.  They rolled in, and they said anyone that’s hungry, come and eat.  And we’re not checking your ID.  We’re not seeing where you’re living.  If you’re hungry, come and eat.  We’ve got food.  Come on down.  And good food, too.  And they got stores there that are open, and they’ve got brand new stuff for babies, and clothes, and if you lost something, come on in and don’t pay.  There’s no charge.  The donations are there, and they’re here for you to pick up, and God bless.

So we can do that.  It takes a fire.  It takes a disaster.  It takes a horrible thing.  Now, in Mary’s case the disaster was we ran out of wine at a social event.  Okay, a little bit of a disaster.  But the disaster that we have here that wiped out entire communities was enough to say, oh, yeah, we can feed every person and not charge them.  We can clothe the naked and not charge them.  We can do that.  So when you say to me, oh, well, we can’t do it, you know, we’ve got to run like a business, and we’ve got to have profit and loss, so we’ve got to have [indiscernible] and negative, yeah, I’d say, well, yeah, I understand that, I mean, I did get an A in accounting.  But for at least a couple weeks we did it.  We could do it.

We could stop making billionaires and now trillionaires.  We’ve got a couple people on the way to trillionaire, hoo-hoo.  We could quit making them.  And we can start making people that are fed and housed.  We can do it.  I don’t want a fire to wipe out a whole community to figure out how we can be Christians and make sure everyone’s got fed, clothing, and housing.  I’d rather not.  I’d rather we just decided, yeah, this is something we could do.  And you know, it’s not just the church’s job.  I mean, we say, well, the church ought to do that.  They should have a lot of money and social things and all this.  You know, Matthew 25, where it talks about the naked, clothing the naked and feeding the hungry and visiting the imprisoned and all the things that folks say, oh, I don’t know if we can afford all that.

It doesn’t say the church is going to be judged by that.  It doesn’t say that individuals are going to be judged by that.  We would like it to, oh, my gosh, that’d be so much easier.  You know, oh, I’ve done good.  I’m okay.  I give things.  I’m helpful.  No.  It says the nations will be judged.  The nations of the world line up and are judged.  Our Bible says, our Savior says, our gospel good news says right there in black-and-white, that the nations will be judged by how they take care of one another.  So if you take comfort like I do, well, I’m a good person, I don’t hurt anybody, I’m nice, uh-oh.  The nations are judged by that.  

Well, that’s pretty heavy, Christy.  My gosh.  No wonder they only let you in once a month.  Hey, let’s talk about the servants.  Did you notice the servants?  It’s hard.  They don’t have any speaking parts.  I mean, that is just plain unfair right there.  Because you look at the Scripture, the servants are doing all the work.  They’re going, they get ordered over here, I mean, there’s this Mary person.  Who’s she?  She’s not part of the household.  Mary has to go over here, and he goes, talk to the stranger; you know?

And here’s the thing, you know, if I’m a servant, you know, and I’m thinking this, I’m not saying it out loud because servant, you know.  But I’m thinking, you know, we’d have the wine if this guy didn’t bring all his big burly Galilean fishermen to drink all the wine.  You know, I’m thinking that was an issue.  I don’t think they planned for that.  You know, his whole entourage comes, I mean, I’m thinking, those are some wine drinkers there, buddy.  You know?  And so makes sense to talk to this guy, do what this guy says.  And they’re saying, oh, okay, I guess we’re servants.  I guess we do that.

And he goes, go fill up those big old honkin’ jars.  I mean, you know, it’s like 55-gallon drums, if you can imagine.  Not quite that big, but, you know, roll them around and fill them up with water.  I mean, who knows where that water is?  Could have been, you know, a couple blocks away; you know?  Lot of work there.  They do all that.  And they’re thinking, this guy’s nuts.  Why is he giving water?  We’re out of wine.  We should be going around and getting some wine, and now he’s having us do this busywork and then go do that.  And then they go, they bring that.  And then Jesus says, “Go take the water to the chief steward to inspect for wine.”  They go, what craziness is this?  They’re going to yell at us.  This is ridiculous.  Why are we bothering the stewards?  I don’t want to get involved.

And the guy, the steward said, you know, this is really good wine.  And, you know, the servants are going, “Crazy white people,” you know.  What?  What?  We put that in there.  It’s water.  We know.  And they go, oh, yes, it’s great wine.  And they tell one another, you know, should we say something?  Should we tell them?  No, we shouldn’t say anything.  I don’t want to say anything.  We’ll get along just fine.  And then says the disciples believe.  I think the servants just thought he was crazy, crazy folks.  But, you know, where are the servants?  You know?  You know, he says, go do whatever Christ told you to do.  Even though it’s crazy.  Even though it can’t possibly work.  Even though we know better.  Even though we know it’s going to fail terribly.  Go ahead and do it anyway.  Go ahead and do it anyway.

What if Jesus says go over to Palisades and feed all the hungry over there?  Oh, that’s not going to work.  I can’t possibly do that.  That’s ridiculous.  Go do it anyway.  That’s where we’re at.  You know, we’re not around, sitting around saying, oh, let me think about what Jesus should be doing, what the job of the church is, and where are we going, and what’s our profit and loss, and what’s our five-year plan?  What’s our objectives, you know, specific measurable attainable and time-related.  What should we do?  It’s to follow Jesus and do whatever he tells you.  That’s our job.  That’s our job.  If we do that, Jesus will be revealed, and people will believe.  Amen.

Not My Job

Lee Vining Presbyterian - January 26, 2025

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Welcome

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.

SONG  I Could Use A Little Church Right Now

TobyMac Drops ‘a Lil Church’ Official Lyric Video from tobyMac on GodTube.

Prayer of Confession:

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.

or go to https://77da2f07.churchtrac.com/give

 New Testament Readings:  John 2:1-11

 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.

Message – Not My Job  < Click for recording

Story about Presbyterian Pastor when the church burned down.

Presbytery newsletter about fires

World Central Kitchen

SONG  I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

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.

- Liturgy made with the aid of ChatGPT

Straining to Forget

Straining to Forget

Straining to Forget
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

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.

Philippians 3:4b-14

 

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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Straining to Forget