Choices

Choices

Choices
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service June 12,2022
at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CA

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

 Luke 10:38-42 

 

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You know, it occurs to me that everybody is pro-choice, as long as it’s their choice. Everybody agree with me? I’m pro my choice all the time. It’s those other people with their choices that’s a problem, not me. We’ve got problems with being pro-choice. And I’m not talking about the political thing, although I could because if politicians can say “thoughts and prayers,” I can say “laws and policies.” It’s only fair. Stay in your lane, politicians. Go do some laws and policies, leave the thoughts and prayers to the professionals.

No, we have trouble with the pro-choice movement, not of our own choices, but of others’ choices. And today’s Juneteenth, and we’ll be talking about that in a little bit. And that’s a lot about choices. We look at all the choices that are coming up before us. Well, maybe. Folks will use the Lord, lies, and law to make their choices the choices for everyone. Lies, the Lord, and law. Look what Martha did. She comes right out, now, does she go to Mary saying, Mary, Sister Mary, how about giving me a hand? Give Mary the choice. No, she goes to the Lord and says, “Jesus, you make her do what I want.”

You know that’s the best kind of sermons, best kind of religion. What is that? The kind that make other people do what we want. I mean, it’s the next best thing to being God, if we can get Jesus on our side to make other people do what we want. And more and more people are saying that. You know, they want to take away choices of other people and say there’s only one way to heaven, and that’s my way. That’s a narrow road, and I’m at the head of the line. The rest of you, get back there in single file. We have so much trouble with choice now. And when people make choices, no, we don’t choose his choice, we like our own. We’re have trouble with other people’s choices. Huge issues and troubles with some choices and some with not.

Do you know there’s people that – all the kids have left, mostly. I think there’s one back there sleeping. But you know, the big thing now is supposedly drag queens are a threat to our children. Suppose that. Well, I want to tell you, I don’t know, I haven’t done a particular scientific study, but I am pretty sure that, comparatively, men in dresses are a lot safer for children than men in camo. Why don’t we outlaw dressing in camouflage and carrying guns instead of outlawing high heels and sparkly nice dresses? How many drag queens have gone into a school and killed children? And I’m saying zero.

You know, we’re only talking about the old trans- and not all drag queens are transsexual, but we’re only talking about 0.6 of the population. 0.6, and we’re all bent out of shape. What do we care what somebody else wears? I’ll tell you why. We don’t know how to treat them. I mean, should we oppress them? I mean, they look like a woman. They should be oppressed, then; right? Well, but they’re a man. We’re just all confused, us men, us white lorded-over men. I mean, that’s the real problem. We don’t know whether or not to oppress them. So we go ahead and do it anyway. Choices. You can’t choose to dress that way. Can’t choose. I’m old enough to remember the big deal about long hair on men. Can’t tell whether it’s a boy or a girl. I go, why is that so important to you? What are you planning? What does that mean? I don’t know. It’s a little strange. Choices.

Now, there’s a lot of folks that will tell you about this scripture. It is a little confusing scripture. Jesus is kind of cryptic here. He’s talking about debtors’ choice and best part. What does that mean? You know, some people will tell you it is about a commentary on the traditional role of women in the home. Some people will tell you that. And there’s other people that will tell you that it’s putting down, and this is big-time, this is like Calvin and Mr. Eckhart, those are big thinkers in the church, they don’t like this because they think that somehow that Jesus is putting down service.

And that is the official word for service right there in scripture, the old deacon word, you know, that one, the one we get deacon for for service, that’s right there. And some people, it’s like Calvin and commentators and Mr. Eckhart, who was a big thinker, says we don’t like that. He sounds like he’s putting down service and lifting up study, and we don’t like that. Some people say that. Some people will tell you that it is about a distraction. Oh, my, that’s a great sermon on this scripture about distraction, you know, about – because it says in there distraction is actually the Greek word for concerned about many things, a lot of things.

And I tell you, last night at Bishop – you know I wander around Bishop at night, lock up your children, warn your neighbors. But I’m at, you know, you’ve got a lot of crosswalks and signals on that main street there, you know. And so I’m standing there, being like a good California people, obeying crosswalks and pedestrians and things and all that. And across from me are eight people, eight people, various ages. And every one of them to a person is [mimicking smartphone use] waiting on the crosswalk; you know?

So okay, so the crosswalk changes, the little trucking guy comes up, and they’re all [mimicking smartphone use]. And I go, I mean, they pushed the button. So anyhow, so I start walking across. And finally one of them looks up from their phone and goes, oh. You know, by then it’s the countdown, you know, the race clock, is that what that is? And they all – and so none of them cross the street. You know, they go, oh, that’s our bad. And they [mimicking smartphone use]. Back to the phone.

Well, we got a little distracted from the sermon. You see what I did there? The distraction. Ooh. Ah, and then so you can choose to find many sermons on this scripture if you want. So, and I will not take away your choice. That’s so many meta jokes in this sermon. Yeah, okay. So, but today, I choose, and it will not be taken away from me, to talk about choice here. Because that’s what Jesus says. Says Mary has made a choice, and I’m not going to take it away from her. And he also points out that Martha made a choice, as well. And he’s not going to take away from Martha. This suggests to me that the important thing in this scripture is about people’s choices, and that Jesus, not in the narrow political way, is pro choice. There’s more than one way to serve or to be with Jesus. And he preserves our choices.

So if we’re about what Jesus is about, we’re about enabling people to make choices. And that is a danger in our country, where some people don’t want to hear about other people’s choices. Have you heard about the election? Elections are great. Elections have consequences. So, yeah, we heard all about that. But when election doesn’t go to our boy, oh, it doesn’t count. It’s fake. Got to be recounted till we get the right word, the right one, till we get my own choice. We’re okay with votes and choices as long as it all agrees with us. But if somehow it agrees with someone else, oh, my gosh, it shouldn’t be allowed, it’s fraud, oh, my gosh. How disgusting. How anti-Christian. Choice shall be not taken away from them.

And then today is June 19th, a most extreme part of not having choices, taking away choice from people. Slavery. June 19th, 1865, the end-ish of the Civil War. Back then they didn’t have Twitter and Internet and all that. So when a war was over it took a while for people to get the word. But two years before this, President Lincoln said all the people in the places that aren’t listening to me anymore, your slaves are free. What? Does that help anything? I don’t know, you know. But it was there, the Emancipation Proclamation. All those states in a rebellion against the United States, the slaves are here forever free. But Lee was defeated in April of 1865. That was kind of the end of the Civil War, the war between the states. And that was supposed to be the end of slavery because, you know, they’re gone now.

But Texas didn’t get the word, didn’t want the word, and wasn’t listening. And it took the troops to go down there and to go to Texas and tell them, hey, we’ve got the Army here, and we say there’s no more slavery. That was on June 19th, 1865. And last year President Joe Biden made that a federal holiday. Today is a federal holiday with proclamations and all that for Juneteenth. They put together the June and the 19th. A second day of freedom, when folks of African ancestry, our Black Americans got their freedom. Kinda sorta. At least got a promise of it. June 19th, 1865.

And if you think about it, the opposite of having free choice, free will in determining what’s going on with your life and where you’re going and how you’re going to be, the opposite of that is slavery. Slavery doesn’t have choice. Slavery is different. Slavery says I make all the choices for you. You have to do what I say, what I want, what I want done. That’s the opposite of choice. That’s anti-choice.

Now, some people say this scripture’s about hospitality, and we kind of think of hospitality as, you know, tea and cookies and all the – I don’t know if we’ve got anything today, but coffee, those kind of things. But hospitality really is making somebody else’s choices your own. So it’s kind of like reverse slavery; isn’t it? Not as bad or extreme, I don’t want to equate the two, but I want to say it’s a different mindset where you’re concerned about what the other people chose, and you want to go with them. And so that’s kind of like being a servant, and that’s kind of what Jesus is saying. The one who wants to be first among all must be servant of all. That’s what Jesus was saying. So it’s sort of anti-slavery, pro-choice, and not only just pro-choice of everybody gets their own, but I am going to honor other people’s choice, and I’m going to listen to them, and I’ve got a choice.

Last night, you know, don’t you just love me giving you my itinerary of Bishop? I know you enjoy that. So I go to Giggle Springs. It’s a ritual there. I think I should have a little cart or something because my dear wife likes to have milk with her evening pills. And she doesn’t have to, but it makes her happier. So, and a cashier says, “Is that all you want?” And I go, “I don’t want this at all.” I go, “This is for my wife. You know, happy wife, happy life.” And she goes, “Oh, yeah.” And I get my milk, and I go home. It’s not about hospitality. It’s not about my choice, my desires, but about paying attention to other people’s desires and choices and making them happen if you can.

What did Jesus want, do you think, when he came to the house? I wonder what Jesus wanted. I wonder if Martha or Mary asked Jesus, saying, “Hi, thanks for coming. Why did you come? What can we do? What can we do for you?” What would Jesus say? Jesus say, “Well, I would like a nice meal.” Maybe. He’s been known, everywhere you go in Luke, Jesus is going to a meal, having a meal, or just left a meal. One of those three. Everywhere you go, he’s on the way, eating. So maybe. But you think maybe he said, well, I came to talk to you. I came to talk to you about faith and life. And maybe that’s what – so maybe Mary was honoring Jesus’s choices. What would the world look like if we actually honored and listened to one another, choices. We have a video. It might work. Can we do the video?

Listen, or arrange yourself as you will. This is from the movie “St. Vincent.”

Our Mr. Eckhart said that if the only prayer you ever said was thank you, that would be enough. Maybe he’s a student of the mystics there, Mr. Eckhart. You see what went on there. How many choices were in that room? There was a lot of choices. And still they were able to say a prayer, and said that does not excuse you from saying a prayer, and they said a prayer.

All right. So that’s what it might look like if we honored one another’s choices, and we honored one another’s ways to God. And we honor one another instead of trying to regulate the other person, to regulate the other, to put him in this special dress code, or to be restroom police. Who in the world wants that job? You know what you do? Oh, I’ve got a tip for you. You know what you do if you’re in a restroom and you think someone’s using the wrong restroom? You know what you do? Do you know? Anybody? Anybody? You know? I’ll tell you. Nothing. You do nothing. They know where they’re supposed to be. That’s the answer. Their choice shall not be taken away from them.

I love certain people, I won’t say who they are, but certain people say, “Well, we can’t have that because women will get assaulted.” I go, yeah, you care about women getting assaulted. You know they get beat up everywhere, including their own home. They don’t have to go to a special little room to get beat up. They get beat up everywhere. Why don’t you do something about that? Ohh. Ohh. Those people are so clueless. They might get beat up.

Where the heck were we? Okay. So, choices. Anything you can do to expand people’s choices, to honor the choices, and to be hospitable in the most truest radical sense of the word, to figure out what is your choice, what is your need, what are you doing, and then listen and consider them, the better off we’ll be and the more like Christ would be. Now, you know, you’re going to say, well, everyone. Well, all the time. Not everything. Not everything. Well, that then is just – that’s just always true, but that’s just more choices. Not everything’s going to be that. We’re going to have to keep working and listening and working and listening to each other. We’ve got to quit thinking that we’re the only ones that know what to do. And that includes me.

I have a tech camp this week for the first time in two years. I get to have 11 middle-schoolers for an afternoon. Anyone a teacher here? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, they’re home resting, that’s where they are. Yeah, they’ll be back in September. But oh, my gosh, you know, the middle schoolers are really big on fair. Anybody a parent, anybody hear their kids talk about fairness? Did you hear about this? Yeah, maybe once or twice? It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s the worst thing in the world. Oh. We put a stop to that. Christy had enough of that.

And I tell the story now, this is from Louis C.K. Talk about bad choices. Louis, he’s got some bad choices in his history. And I tell them a story that Louis C.K., he got fed up with cereal bowls. The kids got down to the, I think the gram of how much cereal each of them got. I mean, I think they may have had electron microscopes to look into that. And they would look over and see if the other one’s got a little bit more of the sugary pop or whatever, and then yell, and fair, and you know, oh, my gosh. And he said it finally stopped. He goes, okay, from now on the only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough.

And I tell my kids, the only time you talk to me about fair is if you don’t think the other person has enough. And they think I’m kidding. And so they try me on it because they’re kids. That’s what they do. And they come up, and they say, “It’s not fair.” I go, “Oh, thank you so much for bringing that up. How much of your stuff do you want to give to him to equal it out? Because you are talking that they don’t have enough because remember the rule. If you say it’s fair, it’s about another person not having enough, or that you have too much, and you want to share. Is that true?” “No, it’s okay, I’m good, I’m good. All right.” Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing if we went around yelling it’s not fair, but it was about the other person? It was about their choices and their ways of doing things?

My daughter’s a teacher. Hope so. I mean, she’s between jobs right now. I hope she’s a teacher soon again. But, oh, I forgot what I was going to say. I was so upset about that previous, I forgot about that. Oh, I know, I know. What do you call people in jail? Do you call them criminals? Do you call them bad people? You know what she calls them? She calls them “people that made poor choices.” Why is so-and-so in jail? People that made poor choices. That’s what they are. And you guys make choices every day, and some people make – adults make poor choices, and they go to jail, and that’s what happens. And she got a note, a tearful note, or a call or something, that said thank you so much for that, from a parent. “My child’s father’s in prison. And we’ve been so ashamed, and he never knew what to say, and I never know what to say to him. And now we have something to say. He made a poor choice, and we hope he chooses better in the future.”

So, yeah, there are poor choices. There are choices that aren’t good, yeah. But it doesn’t mean we take it away and that we know best for everyone else. I hope that we can look at one another’s choices and make sure there’s enough for everyone, and together we can get together and pray and say “Thank you, God. Thank you for all this.”

Amen.

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Choices

Neighbor Lives Matter

The extra white Christy is challenged by Black Lives Matter and other four word phrases

Neighbor Lives Matter
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Click the title above for a mp3 recording 

Audio from Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church on August 2016, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. 

Luke 10:25-37

Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes

Who is my neighbor?  Four words.  Four words.  Who is my neighbor?  But I think you got a little hint of what was really going on when you heard the introduction to the question:, desiring to justify himself, you got a little hint that there might be a hidden word in there. What do you think that hidden word is?  The lawyer’s trying to justify himself.  I think there might be a hidden word in there: NOT, who’s NOT my neighbor?

I think he’s looking not to expand the list but to cut the list down.  What’s the absolute minimum neighborness I need to get into heaven, Jesus?  I think there’s a little hidden word in there to justify himself.  Who is my neighbor?  Psst…I mean…who’s not my neighbor? <wink> I mean, surely there’s a lot of not-neighbors.  There’s a lot of far away people.  You could get the list edited down to just a few, right?  I mean, if he thought the neighbor list was huge, he could have asked for the the few that didn’t make the list…that would be the shorter list.  But he’s hoping the neighbor list has fewer names.

What is a neighbor, anyway?  The word is absolutely unambiguous.  It is very, very old word for “nearby”.  It’s a location kind of thing, how close you are to somewhere.  And it goes back to ancient Greek about the neighborliness is location.  Somebody nearby.  Well, that’s been changing over the centuries a little bit.  You’ve got Jesus at stake here.  But more recently, in the classic Lend-Lease Act, way back before World War II, FDR talked about neighborliness, that Great Britain was our neighbor. A neighbor who had a house fire and needed to borrow our garden hose.  By garden hose he meant aircraft carriers and destroyers and armaments and war things.  But still, he appealed to the country of understanding Great Britain as our neighbor that needed some help, needed us to lend them something as a neighbor would do, and then we’ll get it back later.

Neighborness is some kind of a cultural affinity, perhaps because we speak the same language we’re neighbors.  Maybe we’re neighbors because of other things like religion or because we have the same values, or maybe we’re neighbors because of our nation that we live in.  Maybe that is kind of the nearness, not just location, but nearness of heart, nearness of values, nearness of outlook, nearness of history, nearness of heritage, nearness of ideology, nearness of nationalism, that kind of near thing.  Maybe.

There’s a principle of law that actually is the Neighbour Principle.  It’s actually in the English common law has been brought over here.  Good old Lord Atkin.  There was a huge big case, Donoghue v Stevenson, I think it is, but Lord Atkins decided in 1932 the Neighbour Principle

Lord Atkin sort of summed it up his idea of a neighborliness. He made his decision based on a new idea of what it meant to be a neighbor– this was not a concept in law before.  He came up with the neighbor principle in law that said: that you are required, the person,

the actor or non-actor, is required to consider reasonably other people who might be affected by their action or by their inaction in any particular matter. 

See that switch there, kind of change of perspective of what makes a neighbor.  Instead of the qualifications of the other, instead of the qualifications of the other, let me see, let me go through my list and see if you’re my neighbor.  Are you this?  Are you that?  Are you this?  Are you that?  Are you this close?  Are you that close?  Lord Atkin sort of changed it, turned it upside down and said, neighborliness is NOT about the other person at all, but about YOU.  It’s on you, in your head, to think about other people, to go and to think about neighbor as somebody else.  What is a neighbor in your head?  You have to say how can I be a neighbor to someone else, NOT how they are a neighbor to me. It is flipped. How am I a neighbor to others?

Now, it’s a good thing that we have this concept because that Samaritan, I don’t know if you know Samaritans.  As for me…some of my best friends are Samaritans.  Back in Jesus’ time, most good people were prejudiced against them. Samaritans were the worst.  They were – I bet they were considered to be worse than the hated Romans.  If you wanted to say who do you hate the most, eh, Samaritans would be number one, very much.  Survey would say Samaritan! DING! right there at the top of the list.

Samaritans were heretics.  They were half-breeds.  They were traitors.  They were collaborators.  They were filthy.  They didn’t know how to worship God right.  Take everything you could hate about a person or a group add it up and:  Boom, Samaritans.  In any shape or stretch of the imagination, they are not neighbor.  If you were a Jew back in Jesus’s time, and especially if you’re a lawyer back in Jesus’s time, especially if you’re a good observant righteous Jewish lawyer back in Jesus’s time, Samaritan is not a neighbor in any way, shape, or form.

But Jesus tells a story.  And you know Jesus, he doesn’t just answer the the question, does he?  He doesn’t answer the question who is my neighbor.  You see what he asked at the end?  He flipped it around, like Lord Atkin.  He flipped it around.  He didn’t say how who qualified in the story to be a neighbor to you.  He said, “Who acted as a neighbor to the person that fell among robbers?”  Whoa.  The lawyer didn’t bargain for that.  See, the lawyer wanted a short list.  You know, just maybe the neighborhood, you know, just a few people.

Jesus did make a short list! He took that list down to one, the lawyer.  Not about other people, but about the lawyer himself.  There’s only one person you’ve got to worry about being a neighbor or not, lawyer.  It’s you.  Are you a neighbor?  That’s all you got – that’s it.  You’re done.  You’re done with the list of qualifications and understandings.  All you’ve got to ask is, are you acting as neighbor?  And you’re done.  Four words.  He just had to mess it up.  Switched it around.  Who was a neighbor to the one who fell among the thieves?

Now, you’re going to get upset.  Stick with me.  What if we had a question to ask Jesus today, who would come up – what would they ask Jesus today?  Would they ask the neighbor question?  Maybe.  I think who would ask those four word question today would be “Black Lives Matter”.  Now, were you too upset to notice that was only three words?  Right, I’m not going to ask for a show of hands.  But just like that other question, there’s an extra word there.  Word that we hear that’s not spoken.

And the thing that makes “Black Lives Matter” so upsetting is that all of us do not hear that same unspoken word.  That even makes it more upsetting.  Some of us, some of us hear exclusion.  We hear ONLY Black Lives Matter.  And we get upset because of the unspoken word that excludes.  But that word is not heard by others it is only in your head.  Other folks hear a different unspoken word, a focus, Black Lives Matters TOO.  Black Lives Matter ALSO.  Talking about focus, but not exclusion.  Whoa, what would Jesus do?  I don’t know.  And I’m not Jesus.  Good thing.  He’d only last three years in the ministry.  He’s a failure by the world’s measure.

But I was a firefighter for a couple of years.  I think we had a motto, a slogan, a rallying cry. Something like “Preserving Life and Property,” I think was on our motto on our side of our trucks.  But, you know, I think you could argue that we acted and we lived out, we trained and we moved, and we did everything in our power to live out the unpublished motto that Burning Houses Matter.  Burning homes matter.  That’s what we focused on, buddy boy.  If there was a house burning, that got our attention.  We got out of bed.  We got up from the dinner table.  We left our family, and we went a running to that burning house.

I was in the Volunteer Fire Department.  You had – four minutes to get to the station and get on a truck or you were walking to the fire.  Those trucks were gone in four minutes.  So the alarm went off, you better be running.  You’d better be in your car.  You’d better totally focus on getting there NOW because in four minutes everybody’s going to be gone, and you’re going to be walking to that fire.  We dropped everything because burning homes matter.

Now, Christy, don’t all homes matter?  Don’t we all pay taxes?  You burnist! Everybody’s home is just as valuable in their heart as a burning home!!  Why do you hate other homes?  Why do you pass them by?  How come you don’t come up to their house with lights and sirens and dance around with ladders and fountains of water? Why do you do all that for just burning homes?  Don’t you like the other houses you just speed on by? Do you hate them?  No.  It’s Focus.  Not exclusion.

Chainsawsuit by kris straub (c) 2016

FDR got it right, and the Samaritan got it right.  Lord Atkin got it right.  Who’s your neighbor?  Who needs you?  Who needs a neighbor?  That’s is who youryour neighbor.  Whoever needs you.  That’s who it is.  That’s who matters.  Have you studied the great philosopher of our time, Louis C.K.?  You can buy tickets to a comedy show and see him, but he’s really a philosopher.  A lot of philosophers are comedians today, and I understand it pays better than a Ph.D.

But he has something that I am just gave to my TechCampers at ComputerCorps two week TechCamp for young teens and I said this to the kids, because, you know, children, can get pretty competative between one another. Louis C.K. told his kids

the only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough.  You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if they have more than you. 

The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough.  And guess what.  If they don’t, you give them some of yours.  What a world that would be, if we didn’t think about how we measured up to other people, didn’t worry about how much we were getting what we needed, about what we were doing, but instead if we thought about how am I fulfilling what other people need from me, how am I being a neighbor, measuring ourselves instead of others.

Now, if you want a graduate course in this understanding, I recommend Love Wins Ministry.  Hugh Hollowell is great at very gently and nicely just pricking our big balloon ego right in the spot.  And he’s a religious guy, and he knows how to do it.  2010, one of his blog entries was about a frequently asked question: should I give money to panhandlers?  That is a big issue, I know, for Christians.  And you can argue about it, say, “Oh, I always do.”  “Oh, I never do.”

And so Hugh talks about that. 

“You know, I understand, maybe you’re in a hurry.  You’re late for an appointment.  You don’t have time.  And you had to go, you had to go.  Maybe all you can do is that look at that other person, acknowledge their presence, and move on.”

Hugh says that the thing to do in that situation is whatever the most relational thing you can do.  Whatever it is, it’s the most relational that you can do.  Because Hugh works with the homeless, and he says the opposite of homeless is community.  And he works on homelessness by making relationships.

Now, he says – he gives you an out.

“If you’re busy, if you’ve got too much to do, if you don’t have time, if you’ve got an appointment, look at the other person, acknowledge their presence, and then later on pray for them.”  And then Hugh, he goes, “And then pray for yourself.  Pray for your lifestyle that has allowed you to get so busy that you don’t have time to show love and mercy to another human.”

Did I warn you?  Ouch.  It’s not that other person that is needy.  You’re needy, too.  “But Hugh, should I give money to a panhandler?  What if they use it wrong?”

“Well, if you can’t give money, if you can’t give any gift without giving it as a gift, without severing the ties to it and letting that person do what [indiscernible], if you can’t give money without feeling that way, then don’t give money.  You can buy a bunch of waters and put them in a cooler in your back and hand them out.  You know, 24 waters and hand them out to the [indiscernible].  You can buy a gross of socks, couple dozen socks and hand them out to the homeless people.  You can do that if you don’t want to give money.  But if you don’t want to give money”

– here it comes.  Oh, Hugh.

“If you don’t want to give money because of how they would treat it, consider for yourself why you’re more concerned about your relationship with money than your relationship with another human.” 

[Whistles]  Who is my neighbor?  Not about what they’re doing, how they are, what checklists they get on.  But am I being a neighbor?

Gee, Christy, all you had to do was preach, and you come and bring the whole congregation down.  Ugh.  Well, then, let’s tell a Mister Rogers story, huh?  Yeah, go out with a Mister Rogers story.

Mister Rogers, a Presbyterian pastor, member of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh, I had the privilege of being the pastor of the Latrobe Presbyterian Church where his family worshiped, where he grew up in Latrobe.  Great, great, great family.  Rich, oh, my gosh.  So much money.  Oh, and thank you Jesus, they loved to help out Latrobe Presbyterian Church, even though he moved to Pittsburgh decades before I arrived for a brief ministry.  He has passed away.  There are stories going around.  Some of them are true, a couple are not.  He’s never shot anybody, never was in the military – got to watch those things internet memes.

But if Fred Rogers met you he always knew your kid’s name.  He always asked when you saw him.  I never met him.  But people would talk about him around me.  And they would just get misty-eyed.  They’d talk about even when he was a kid, and the chauffeur was giving him a ride to school every day, he’d pick up his friends and have them go along with them in the limo.  He was quite the man.

One of the stories about Mister Rogers was that they sent a limo for him, you know, a really nice limo.  Mister Rogers wouldn’t ride in the back, sat upfront with the driver.  And they went to an executive house for a meeting, and he found out the driver was supposed to stay outside with the car while they were in the house, having their meeting.  And he made them bring the limo driver in with them.

And on the way home he was sitting in the front seat.  Probably a long day for Mister Rogers.  And they were talking.  And the limo driver says, “Oh, yeah, I live right over there.”  And he says, “You do?  You do?”  And the driver continues, “Yeah, my kids are big fans.”  “They are?  Oh, could we go visit?  It be all right if I went and visit with them?”  Well, yeah.  And so the limo driver took Mister Rogers to his own home.  And they sat, and he met the family, and he played the piano, and they sang neighborhood songs, and THEN he went back to his hotel.

That song, you know, in “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” he says, “Since we’re all here anyway, won’t you be a neighbor?”  Since we’re here anyway, won’t you be a neighbor.  There’s only – it’s a really simple answer, turns out, to who is my neighbor.  If you look at it the way Mister Rogers did, Lord Atkins did, if you look at it the way even Hugh Hollowell did, it’s a really simple thing because you only have to answer for one person.  And Louis C.K. would remind you that, too.  Who is my neighbor?  And you twist that around, saying who am I a neighbor to, and work on your own neighborness, instead of how other people should be neighbors.  What a wonderful world that would be.

Amen.

These are the 25 names that are included in the above image:

Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Jordan Davis, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Emmett Till, Amadou Diallo, Kimani Gray, Jonathan Ferrell, Renisha McBride, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Myra Thompson, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Daniel Simmons, Clementa Pinckney, Sharona Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Laquan McDonald, Cameron Tillman and Tanisha Anderson.

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