Four Julys

 Great Things Happen When We Listen to the “Other”

Four Julys
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from worship at St. Paul’s Lutheran Family Church Carson City, NV on July 4,2021

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

Mark 6:1-13

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A video version is at the end of the text

On this July 4th, I would like to talk to you about four Julys. The first July is July 1775. No, not ‘76. 1775. Did you know our Continental Congress was meeting in July of 1775? Well, 12 of the 13. Even back then, Georgia had trouble with their elections.

And that Continental Congress back there in July 2nd of 1775, or July 6th, made a declaration, but not a declaration of independence, an “Olive Branch Declaration,” as it’s called, in which they sent to King George, as loyal colonists, a request for his help, for his righting of wrongs, for justice, for restoration, to let them be a part of their own governing, to release some of the most terrible bans and injustices.

And they wrote these as colonists, and they said they were colonists, and they tried to get King George and the Britons to embrace their great heritage of justice and fair dealing, and asked for fairness and for doing the right thing. They pointed out the excesses and promised that they would, you know, abide by law and order, you know, if they had law and order. If the Crown would come and do right by them, they would do right by them. They pledged their allegiance and their fealty to the monarch and to King George.

Now, remember this was after, not just the Tea Party. That was almost a decade ago. But it was after shots were fired. It was after Lexington and Concord. It was after Bunker Hill. There’s been shots fired. There’s been riots. There’s been violence. There’s been trouble in the street. There’s been disruption of commerce, the absolute worst thing that could ever happen. You know, Bottom Lines Matter.

And after all that, in this July of 1775, they asked the powers and structures and principalities and monarchs to do the right thing, and called on them to deliver justice, to lift the burdens and the laws and the suppression, to let them vote for their own representatives and laws and not have them imposed upon them. All very reasonable requests, done in a reasonable way, in the most gracious way, especially when you remember there was rioting going on.

Well, what happened? Nothing. King George reportedly, and I believe this, didn’t even read that Olive Branch Declaration. Instead he condemned the violence, condemned them for forming a political party, for raising an army and navy. That might have been a little bit too far. He had nothing to say to these people because of their violence. Who do they think they are, going against the monarchy, taking up arms against the King’s soldiers who are there to preserve law and order, protect and serve. Not a very good July.

Second July I want to talk about is the one that you’ll probably be talking about today and over this weekend. Of course July 1776, the next year. Now, rightfully so, you might be reading the Declaration of Independence and looking at all the inalienable rights, and that’s a great thing. And there’s quite a list of grievances there. But in those things, it doesn’t say please fix them. It just says here’s what he did. And most important part of this is, well, the rights are important. The grievances are important. But the beginning and the end of that is the most important thing because at the beginning they don’t talk about being colonists anymore. And at the end they don’t say that they are 12 colonies of the United States. Georgia’s finally got there. They’re all there. Maybe we could blame Georgia on independence, I’m not sure.

But on the last part they say, “We, the United States of America.” Now, none of that’s been done. We’ve got a war to fight before that. And it’s not so sure we’re going to win. But they declared they were not colonists. They were the United States of America, where all white, landholding men are free and had rights. That wasn’t true. But it’s what they believed and what they were going to live and what they pledged their honor and their lives to in that very different summer of 1776.

We asked. We tried. We petitioned. We had examples. We had lawsuits. We had rights. But you wouldn’t listen. So we’re going to stop talking to you and start living right in the way we want to be. And if you have trouble with that, that’s okay. We’re ready to back up what we believe with our lives, our property, and our sacred honor.

Now, the third July’s a little shaky. I didn’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but the Bible’s not really good on timestamps. I don’t know when this incident happened. But go along with me. Let’s say it happened in July, somewhere around AD 33. I don’t even know the year. But I figure I’ve got about an 8% chance of being right saying it’s July. I’m going to take it. And in that July of AD 33, here comes Jesus.

Now, you may have missed the subtleness of our scripture. And God bless the gospel writers and the translators and the Church and everyone else down the age who cleaned the things up. Did you notice the place where it turned? Well, I mean, first they say Jesus is wonderful. Where did he get all this knowledge? It’s wonderful words. Look at this. He’s a power, and he’s doing it all, you know, like what you all say after I preach here, you know, that kind of stuff. And you notice the turn, and what turns a crowd against him?

Eugene Peterson in “The Message,” not really a translation, more like a commentary, running commentary on the Bible, he takes this scripture and reformats it and says, “Who does he think he is?” And everybody turned and said, that’s right, Jesus says it’s supposed to be like that. That’s not his place. That’s not the way he should be. Did you catch that weird thing? You know for us, you know, we’re looking 2,000 years down the road, and we think, what is that “Son of Mary” stuff?

Now, remember this “Son of Mary” phrase, this was before Mary is the woman with the most statues in the world. And I got this straight from a 1980s Trivial Pursuit game, so I know it’s right. Before the veneration of Mary, before the blue everywhere, before rosaries and all that, you’ve got to remember this is first generation. This is Jesus pre-resurrection, before everybody. That “Son of Mary” was no compliment. Remember what we’re dealing with. We’re in a patriarchal society. Oh, my gosh, the definition of patriarchal, where all that matters is who your dad is, who your father is, what your lineage is. So it’s not “Son of Joseph,” it’s “Son of Mary.” You know, he doesn’t have a father. We don’t know who that father is.

Now, my wife, God bless her, she told me I couldn’t say the “B” word that they were calling him in church. I check out things with her. I said, “Can I say this in church?” And she usually says no. And I checked out with her, and she said, “No, you can’t say that.” So they were calling him a “mustard.” So you’ve got to catch that in there. It just slides it over. But they’re saying, “You mustard. Who are you to lecture us about how to live? Who are you to tell us what we’re doing is wrong? Who are you?” And you know what, I get that same thing in church. Who are these people telling us what pronouns to use? Who are these people telling us about racism? Who are these people? They don’t belong here.

Oh, yes, friends and neighbors, there’s still honor/shame culture, alive and well in America today. You know honor and shame. Somebody gets honored, that means someone else has got reduced honor. You know how that is? Like you know when Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world – there’s a list of rich people. He’s at the top. You know, I’m looking forward when he goes out into space because you know what that means. Jeff Bezos goes out in space, every one of us moves one notch up on the wealthy list because he’s not on Earth anymore. He’s going to make us all rich, finally. Finally, a little trickle down from orbit.

That’s how honor and shame works. Everybody’s got a place on the list, and don’t you move. And that mustard son of Mary, he has no right to tell us anything. After all we’ve done for them, they dare to lecture us on critical race theory. How dare they? Don’t they know their place? That’s right. Right here we see Jesus is uppity and doesn’t know his place. What happens to this on this July? Jesus takes it pretty well. He’s astonished by it. Nothing much changed. Maybe we got used to it over the years and decades and millennia. And he could do not mighty power there.

See, just like King George, who doesn’t want to listen to those colonists, the people in Jesus’s time didn’t want to listen to that person who didn’t know their place. So what happened? Well, just like in 1776, Jesus says, okay, I gave it a good shot. I tried. I tried to tell them. And he says, we’re going to go ahead and live the way that we think we should live. We’re going to go out two by two, proclaim God’s good news, release to the captains, recovery of site to the blind, freedom. We’re going to bring out the downtrodden. We’re going to bring down the overbearing.

We’re not going to do this for profit or greed or capitalism. We’re going to do this together and rely on the good natures of others. And if they don’t want to be with us, we’re going to shake the dust off. And that was a curse. That wasn’t just, you know, personal hygiene. It wasn’t some sort of six feet, stay your social distance kind of thing back then. It was, all right, you’re on your own, and to “H” with you. I didn’t ask my wife if I could say that.

And in both those cases, 1776 and in this case, where Jesus went off alone, think about what great things happened. When people stopped worrying about being in their place and whether or not it’s appropriate and cramming that down our throats. I heard that one, too. It says we’re going to live the right way. And if you want to get onboard, you can, but we’re going to do great things. We’re going to be a great nation. We’re going to be a light of democracy and freedom. People are going to want to come here from all over. It’s hard to keep that up. But we’ve done okay so far. And it’s only if we go back to keeping people in their place that we’ll lose it. And we won’t be able to do great things like we have.

Now I’m into the fourth July. Have you been keeping track? I know there’s at least one. The fourth July. July 2021. You all have a choice. Just like they did back in that July in Nazareth, back like they did, those colonists in 1775 and 1776. And you keep hoping and asking and waiting. I mean, now is not the time. You’re too much in a rush. People aren’t ready for that yet. Can’t be that way, 1775 and the folks at Nazareth. And we won’t be able to do great works.

If we go back to saying we’ve got to get back to the way it should be, where everybody needs to be where they were in 1950, where everyone knew without a doubt which drinking fountain was theirs, you know, the good old days for white males, and not listen to anyone else. Because, you know, they’re rioting. They’re rebellious. There’s been shots fired. They have nothing to say to us. It’s not their place. They’re ungrateful for all that we have done for them. We do that, I’ll guarantee you we won’t have a great country, and we won’t have a great faith.

I hope all of you go forth this July 4th, remembering those four Julys. And that you would choose to follow Jesus, two by two, whatever you can do, wherever you can, not for personal profit or gain, and seek not to restore society and shut people back in their places, but seek to heal the sick, to lift up the downtrodden, to help people to cast out demons.

Perplexing. What are the demons today? What keeps people from living full and productive and happy lives? What keeps people from life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Homelessness, not having enough housing. We’ve got enough, we just don’t distribute it right. Hunger. We’ve got enough food. We just don’t give it up. Not be able to choose their representative, and taxation without representation, a common theme.

We were founded on that people choose their legislators, and not in the monarchy the legislators choose their people. Go out and fight them demons. For the answer is not to return to where everyone knew their place, and no one was uppity; but to follow that uppity savior, that mustard son of God, who shows us a new way of life, a new way of living. And we can be great as Christians and as a country. Amen.

Four Julys

Stop the Shouting

How to Stop the Shouting

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

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

Matthew 15:21-28

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

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

   

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Stop the Shouting