Barns

Barns

Barns
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service July 10, 2022
at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CA

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

 Luke 12:13-21 

 

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If greed is your politics, this is a political sermon. I hope it’s not a political sermon, and that greed is not your politics. Because you may think from the beginning that the sermon is about or the scripture’s about Jesus said I’m not going to be a divider or an arbitrator. I’m not going to be your financial counselor or your family intervention specialist. I’m not, just like with Martha and Mary the last time I preached about telling the other sibling to do what I want, well, I’m not going to tell you and your brother how to get along with money. But later on Jesus says to everybody, he really knew what that was about. It wasn’t about fairness or judicial process or financial planning or any of that stuff. It was about greed. And he tells the story about a man with the land that produces very well, and what does he do about it.

Now, some people will hide their greed, not so much in dividing their inheritance among their brothers, but they will say this. Have you ever heard this? Have you said it? Don’t raise your hand if you did because it’s a bad thing. If you said “The church needs to run like a business.” You ever hear that? “We have to run the church like a business.” Or “We have to run the country like a business.” That is usually a cover-up for greed. Because what is the business, then, if you say the church, or the country, or the nonprofit, or the family has to run like a business? Who’s the customer? What’s the product? Who do you serve? Well, yeah, if you’re running a government like a business, well, then you have the product of governmental services and graft and corruption and all that. And you give it to the highest bidder, the one who will pay you the most, and the rest of you forget about it. You know, hey, if you want some government services, how about giving some money? You know, this is a business. I’m not in it for my health.

The same thing with the church. Running a church like a business, that usually means I’ve given a lot of money to this church, and I’m not getting a lot back. You’ve got to run like a business, you know, take care of your paying customers. That’s not with the church is about. The church is one of the only institutions that exist primarily for those outside the institution. And that’s not very business-y.

12 Step has this tradition, as well. 12 Step’s tradition, you probably wonder in a 12 Step group, any of the recovery groups, you may say to yourself, hey, what’s a recovery group for? Well, it’s for those folks that go, those poor folks that go to the recovery group to recover. That’s their purpose, their meaning, and their mission. I mean, they’re the paying customers; right? No. It says right in every recovery group the tradition is that their number one purpose is for those that are still suffering. That’s not very business-y. It’s for the other people, not the customers.

It’s not so much the problem with money or with riches. You say, oh, well, he’s just all against the riches. He’s all about terrible awful things. But no, it’s not about that. It’s about who does that serve? Who is it for? The little zing right at the end, you know, man, those things you have prepared, who will they be for? You know, that is a good question to ask before you die. All these things that I have prepared, who are they for? Who is my life for? Who are my riches for? What am I here for?

Warren Buffett, who we talk about, has a philosophy. He’s one of the world’s, I don’t know what number he is, he’s like eighth or something. He’s getting up to $100 billion. He says his money is not his. And he tells other billionaires and millionaires, the money is not theirs, it’s just entrusted to us while we’re here. He knows, and he thinks about the next generations, about what’s going on with the money.

And running things like a business doesn’t work for the government. The government does things that no one wants to do, that no one can find a profit in, that no one can find enough people to do it. And there’s all sorts of things that only the government could do. The interstate highway system is an absolute loser in terms of building projects and things. To have an interstate highway system that goes from coast to coast, up and down, north and south, maintained, is a government job no nonprofit business would ever take on because there’s no money in it. You can’t have enough tolls to keep backing the money. They keep trying to do that, and they keep failing. But, you know, once we got the interstate highway system, boy, trucking really took off. Shipping really turned out. Amazon would not be possible without the interstate highway system. And the government does that.

Ever heard of the Internet? Nobody wanted to do the Internet. It was ridiculous. Nobody wanted to do that. There was no money in there. I remember in 1990 they were saying, what’s the good of the Internet? Who’s going to look at this stuff? But the government saw something in it and put it in there. AT&T wouldn’t do it. There wasn’t any money in it. They had plenty of money in the telephone and in their leased lines. They’ve got plenty of money. And they had no interest in getting the Internet to everybody. Who wants that? There’s no money there.

The government did it, called Arpanet, and set it up and made the protocols and promoted it and did that. When I started using the Internet, imagine if you will how old I am. When I started using the Internet, you were not allowed to talk about money. You were not allowed to talk about products. You were not allowed to talk about prices or anything. It was like community radio. You couldn’t make money on the Internet because it belonged to the government.

ATTENDEE: So un-American.

REV. RAMSEY: I know. But then the government says, okay, we got it going. You see how great it is? We got it done. Go for it. And gave it over to private industry. But the private industry, the government as a business would not have done that because it was a big money loser to make it. Ever heard of Hoover Dam? Nobody wanted to do that project. Way too much money. The government did it and electrified the nation along with other projects. Rural electrification, no one wants to run electric line to little towns and little farms and everywhere. The government, in rural electrification and co-ops, they made electricity go out through the entire country.

The same thing we’re trying to do with telecommunications today, to go out through the entire country. There’s no money in it. There’s no profit in it. Who’s the customer? They can’t pay. If all the government had to do – Obama said this and got into so much trouble because he didn’t know what he was doing. Obama says, if I just had to make widgets or an app, that would be easy because I would just have to worry about satisfying my customer about whether they would buy the app or not. But when I make a widget or an app, I’m in the government, I have to worry about everybody. I have to worry about the poor people who can’t afford the widget and the app. What are they going to do? I have to worry about unintended consequences about the environment, about our society, about economics, about the next generations. I have to worry about a lot more than selling the widget at the store.

And I just can’t go bankrupt and walk away. It’s a lot harder to be good government than it is to be business because it’s not all about greed. It’s about asking the question, who is this for? Is it for the paying customers? The one that has the money? Or is it for everyone, for the next generation, for the greater good, for the culture, for all that. Look at what he said in that scripture. Back to scripture. I knew you never thought I’d get there. But look at all the scriptures he said, “What am I going to do?” How many times does he say “I” and “my”? What am I going to do? What am I going to do with all this? What am I going to do? Say to myself – he even talks to himself. He talks.

The only other person he talks to is himself. He says to Saul – now, I don’t know about economics and farming business back in Jesus’ time. But I’m thinking there’s a couple people working that land. I’m thinking maybe one or two. I’m thinking there were some people selling the stuff. I’m thinking there were some people keeping track of the ledgers and all that. I’m thinking there were some people driving the wagons to market. I’m thinking there’s a lot of people. How about those people? How about the people that built the barns, or tore them down and built bigger ones? What about them? What did they do? He didn’t say anything about them. You know, you fool. The things you have prepared, who would they come from us?

Now, if your politics are about greed, you’re going to say this is a politician story. But I want to tell you that the idea of what do we do with our wealth is very biblical. About person-wise and with society. What do we do with our wealth? Do we build bigger and bigger barns so that less and less people can have more and more? There’s all sorts of statistics. But the one I like is pretty close. It would be nice if it was exact. But it’s really close to 50% of the world’s wealth, 50% of the world’s wealth. You got a barn. 50% of the barn go to 1% of the people. All right? 50% of the world’s wealth goes to 1% of the people. Well, they earned it. Or I don’t know, whatever you want to say. But I don’t know. Is that the way we want it? Is that the way we want to do that?

Wonder how the other side, there’s another 51%. Did you know that? 1% of the world’s wealth. 1% of the world’s wealth. Remember that 1% of the people had 50% of the wealth. If you look at the other end, the 1% of the wealth pretty much goes to 50% of the world. So 50% of the world’s population is dividing up 1% of the wealth. while 1% of the people is putting in a big barn of 50%. Is that the way we want it? Is that the way Jesus wants it? Is that showing that we’re not into greed, that we’re thinking about that?

There’s a wonderful quote. And remember why did that guy build bigger barns? It was for security. Wasn’t it? He says, “What am I to do?” And he says at the end, goes “Whoa, I’m set now. I can eat, drink, and be merry. I’ve got all I want. That’s my security.” And what he feared was the loss of security.

But let’s take a look at the video. 

 Stored Locally: extrachristy.com/storage/video/Wealth_Inequality_in_America.mp4

There’s a chart I saw recently that I can’t get out of my head. A Harvard business professor and economist asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth was distributed within the United States. This is what they said they thought it was. Dividing the country into five rough groups at the top, bottom, and middle three 20% groups, they asked people how they thought the wealth in this country was divided.

Then he asked them what they thought was the ideal distribution. And 92%, that’s at least nine out of 10 of them, said it should be more like this. In other words, more equitable than they think it is. Now, that fact is telling, admittedly, the notion that most Americans know that the system is already skewed unfairly. But what’s most interesting to me is the reality compared to our perception. The ideal is as far removed from our perception of reality as the actual distribution is from what we think exists in this country. So ignore the ideal for a moment. Here’s what we think it is again.

And here is the actual distribution. Shockingly skewed. Not only do the bottom 20% and the next 20%, the bottom 40% of Americans barely have any of the wealth. I mean, it’s hard to even see them on the chart. But the top 1% has more of the country’s wealth than nine out of 10 Americans believe the entire top 20% should have. Mind-blowing.

But let’s look at it another way because I found this chart kind of difficult to wrap my head around. Instead, let’s reduce the 311 million Americans to just a representative 100 people. Make it simple. Here they are. Teachers, coaches, firefighters, construction workers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, some investment bankers, a CEO, maybe a celebrity. Now let’s line them up according to their wealth, poorest people on the left, wealthiest on the right, just a steady row of folks, based on their net worth. We’ll color code them like we did before, based on which 20% quintile they fall into. Now, let’s reduce the total wealth of the United States, which was roughly $54 trillion in 2009, to this symbolic pile of cash. And let’s distribute it among our 100 Americans. Well, here’s socialism, all the wealth of the country distributed equally.

We all know that won’t work. We need to encourage people to work, and work hard to achieve that good old American dream, keep our country moving forward. So here’s that ideal we asked everyone about. Something like this curve. This isn’t too bad. We’ve got some incentive, as the wealthiest folks are now about 10 to 20 times better off than the poorest Americans. But hey, even the poor folks aren’t actually poor since the poverty line stayed almost entirely off the chart. We have a super healthy middle-class with a smooth transition into wealth. And yes, Republicans and Democrats alike chose this curve. Nine out of 10 people, 90%, said this was a nice ideal distribution of America’s wealth.

But let’s move on. This is what people think America’s wealth distribution actually looks like. Not as equitable, clearly. But for me, even this still looks pretty great. Yes, the poorest 20 to 30% are starting to suffer quite a lot compared to the ideal. And the middle-class is certainly struggling more than they were, while the rich and wealthy are making roughly 100 times that of the poorest Americans and about 10 times that of the still-healthy middle-class.

Sadly, this isn’t even close to the reality. Here is the actual distribution of wealth in America. The poorest Americans don’t even register. They’re down to pocket change. And the middle-class is barely distinguishable from the poor. In fact, even the rich, between the top 10 and 20 percentile are worse off. Only the top 10% are better off. And how much better off? So much better off that the top 2 to 5% are actually off the chart at this scale. And the top 1%, this guy, well, his stack of money stretches 10 times higher than we can show. Here’s his stack of cash restacked, all by itself. This is the top 1% we’ve been hearing so much about. So much green in his pockets that I have to give him a whole new column of his own because he won’t fit on my chart.

1% of America has 40% of all the nation’s wealth. The bottom 80%, eight out of every 10 people, or 80 out of these hundred, only has 7% between them. This has only gotten worse in the last 20 to 30 years. While the richest 1% take home almost a quarter of the national income today, in 1976, they took home only 9%. Meaning their share of income has nearly tripled in the last 30 years. The top 1% own half the country’s stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The bottom 50% of Americans own only 0.5% of these investments. Which means they aren’t investing. They’re just scraping by.

I’m sure many of these wealthy people have worked very hard for their money. But do you really believe that the CEO is working 380 times harder than his average employee? Not his lowest paid employee. Not the janitor. But the average earner in his company. The average worker needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO makes in one hour.

We certainly don’t have to go all the way to socialism to find something that is fair for hard-working Americans. We don’t even have to achieve what most of us consider might be ideal. All we need to do is wake up and realize that the reality in this country is not at all what we think it is.

All right. That was, like, 10 years ago. And it’s worse now, if you can imagine. Now, is that political? Well, if your politics is greed, yeah. Yeah, it’s political. So what are we going to do? Remember that our guy in the scripture was about security, and worried about security, and he built bigger barns for security and said, “Eat, drink, and be merry.” I used to, when I was more annoying than I am now, I know it’s hard to imagine, but I used to go around and say, you know, “Eat, drink, and be merry” is in the Bible. It’s right there in the Bible. I’d tell everybody that, and they go, oh, yeah, really? I go, yeah. The next verse it says, “And then God said ‘You fool.’” Right after. So you’ve got to kind of read more than one verse in the Bible. That’d be good.

All right. But Ernst Bloch says this. In fact, he’s back early in the 1900s. “The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security. It’s the loss of the capability, capacity to imagine that things could be different.” The most tragic form of loss is not what that guy felt in the story of Jesus, that loss of security. It’s a loss of the capability, the capacity to imagine that things could be different. Do we have that? Are we tragic, more tragic than the person in our story that had everything and then died the next day. We could even be more – it’s not Bible, but I think that’s true. We can imagine things.

How could things be different? Well, on an individual level, certainly, we can spread the wealth around. We can do things that are not concentrated. Maybe, just maybe, oh, my gosh, it’s so easy to order from Amazon, but maybe we don’t want Jeff Bezos to have traveling to Mars money when other people don’t have traveling to the grocery store money. Maybe we don’t want to buy everything on Amazon. Maybe. Maybe could do other things, too, about choosing where we spend our money, choosing who.

Maybe we tip more. You know? Tip used to be To Insure Promptitude. Did you know that’s what it stood for? To Insure Promptitude. I think that was a reverse engineer. I don’t think it started that. And it came out, well, it came out with Prohibition, and the bars quit selling drinks, and they figured out they weren’t making money, so they cut the wages of the workers, and the workers didn’t have any money, so they had to say everybody throw some money to the worker because we’re not paying them anymore.

But now I think tips are To Insure Poverty. Because if you’re working for tips, you’re going to be in poverty. So we were at a conference. All the big, big thinkers of the Presbyterian Church had a conference for training. And, you know, we were at a conference center, and they said, “Shall we leave something for the housekeeping staff when we check out?” And the person says, “Well, you know, the tip is included in your registration fee. And we do put on a gratuity. But I want to tell you, none of these people are making too much money. So if you want to leave something, go ahead.” Maybe you want to do that.

But how about some more specific examples, Christy? Well, there’s Warren Buffett. Have you heard of Warren Buffett? I talked about him earlier. That man is, even though he’s having so much trouble giving away his money, you know how much money Warren Buffett has given away in his lifetime? What do you think? What would be a lot of money to give away, if you were really rich? What do you think? How much?

ATTENDEE: One million.

REV. RAMSEY: One million. Do we have any – it’s higher. Anybody?

ATTENDEE: 10 million.

REV. RAMSEY: 10 million. Higher still.

ATTENDEE: 50 million.

REV. RAMSEY: 50 million. That’d be a lot.

ATTENDEE: Billion.

REV. RAMSEY: Million, yeah. He’s given 42 billion with a “b” dollars away in his lifetime. The man still has almost 100 million, can’t stop making money, poor guy. In fact, Warren Buffett has so much money that he’s hired Bill Gates, who’s a billionaire on his own, to spend his money. He actually gives money to Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to go ahead and spend it for him on things like Third World health and all that.

In fact, Warren Buffett is behind something called the Giving Pledge. And what that is, he invites millionaires and billionaires to pledge, it’s not a legal contract or anything like that, but they have a letter, and it’s all public and all that, you can look it up, GivingPledge.org. And these people pledge to give away half of their fortune during their lifetime or when they die. At least half. He’s getting a handful of billionaires and millionaires to sign up, you can look it up on the website, and they have a little letter about what they’re doing and how they’re giving away their money. So maybe…

But Christy, you say. We’re not billionaires. We’re not millionaires. We’re barely scraping by. Come on. What else can we do? Well, there’s a guy and his wife in Akron, Ohio – Akron, Ohio, where they shoot black people with 60 bullets if they run away from the police, my hometown – Duane and Lisa. Duane and Lisa just had a heart for ministry and decided they needed to do something for race relations and poor relations. And so they took their family of four – hello – and bought a house in the poorest, awful-est, most neglected neighborhood in Akron, Summit Lake. Summit Lake, during the 2008 when everything fell apart, money and all that, you could buy a house in Summit Lake for one dollar. They had one dollar houses at Summit Lake because no one wanted to live at Summit Lake. One dollar.

Well, I don’t know what he paid, but he got a pretty good deal. But that was later on. It was early, around 1998. He moved his family there and started working in the community. He started out with the bike shop and brought the neighborhood kids in, got some donated bikes, and says, hey, you work enough hours on fixing these bikes and learn how to use the bikes and being a good person, you can take the bike home with you. And he’s still doing this now, 25 years later.

But also it’s moved into, it’s higher, what they call reentry ministry, in that they take the people, and in fact they’ve got a little building, it’s called The Front Porch. It’s a café. It’s a coffee shop. It’s a rehabilitation center. It’s within walking distance of the jail. And a lot of folks come right out of the jail, they don’t have a job, they don’t have prospects, they don’t have anything, and go to The Front Porch. And The Front Porch finds them a job, gives them a job, puts them to work, does something. They have a recovery meeting on Sunday.

And that is his retirement. I mean, that’s what Duane and Lisa did with their money. They made The Front Porch. And they got the foundation, they got employees, and they’ve got things, they got the 501(c)(3) in about 10 years. But they started out the ministry, and they moved to the worst neighborhood in Akron. And, oh, they’re a couple good white people. And lived there, and gained the trust of the community, and worked with community, and bought a ministry. That’s a barn heat bill.

What about something a little closer to home? We’re not all from Akron, Ohio, Christy. Although everybody could be, should be, and it’s a sad thing you are not. But we have Carson City. 10 years. I’m in my 10th year at Computer Corps. Computer Corps is run by Ron Norton. Ron Norton is an amazing guy with great talents, former Army drill instructor, among other things. So he’s got a little of that sprinkled in there. And what he did when it was time for him to retire, he took his retirement, and he, if you will, founded Computer Corps. He got donations, and he got a house, and he started making computers available to senior citizens. Because back then seniors didn’t know about the mouse and graphics and back there 25 years ago. He started out with that.

He started refurbishing computers. He started saying, hey, give me your old computers. He got old computers, taught people how to refurbish them, and then sell them at a cheap rate to people that don’t have computers. Twenty-five years later, he’s got four different locations. He’s got over 1,000 computers a month coming in. They’re refurbished, and they’re sent out, and they’re sold, and people are rehabilitated. People, again, are coming out, even before, instead of jail, they get to go to community service at Computer Corps. He feeds them six hot meals a week, daily lunches. Has a food pantry runs there, rehabilitation things.

And I said, “Ron,” you know, the man’s getting old. I mean, I’m old. He, yeah, really there. And I said, “Ron, you know, what are you going to do? And how long are you going to do this?” You know, he’s there, six, seven days a week because on Sundays he’s up there rolling supplies in. I said, “Ron, Ron, what are you going to do?” And he goes, “Well, this is my retirement. I took all my retirement money, and that’s what you see around here. I got nowhere to go. This is what I’m retired from. This is what I’ve got to do.” He lives at the original house, along with other people in various modes of employee, volunteer, rehabilitation. And that’s how he built his barn, and how he invests, and how he answered the question: When you’re gone, whose would this be?

Maybe that’s all you need to do, you know, to overcome our propensity to greed and security and material things is to ask yourself, all these things I have prepared, if my life was gone today, whose would they be? What have I done for others? How am I rich toward God, as the commentators that wrote the Bible put in at the end. Those are good questions. Then you get yourself in the place where God calls you a fool. Never, never a good thing.

So what can you do? You can refinance. You can say I’m not like the billionaires and the millionaires. Anybody can do this. I mean, right now I’m in Valley Bishop, and I don’t want to say I’m a saint or nothing. I’m not. In fact, this is what I do because I’m not a saint. I’m here in Valley Bishop, and my church home is an Episcopal Church in Carson City, and I’m rarely there. In fact, it’s getting so they have to pay me to be there. They have to hire me for a Sunday. And I go, well, I got that Sunday, great. But every Sunday my tithe is there, my contribution is there.

And you can think about that. One of the cures, if you will, treatments for greed is to start percentage giving. It doesn’t have to be 10%. Doesn’t have to be a tithe. I haven’t done the math yet. I really need to do that. But if you can commit yourself to a certain percentage of your income going to other people, the church is fine, nonprofits, whatever, any of that would help your greed and your barn building. Just by thinking about percentage giving to something that will go on beyond you. You can reinvest. And like Warren Buffett says, and he should know, he’s got more money than most of us, than about everybody but seven people in the world, you could say, “This isn’t my money. I’m just holding on to it while I’m here.” And move it to other people. So you can set up automatic giving. You’ve got to watch out. There’s some dangers in that and some things.

And also, if you notice, that was in Episcopal Church, and I’m a little embarrassed because I am giving money to the Episcopal Church when I’m Presbyterian. So I also give money to the Presbyterian Church PC(USA) Mission. I have a missionary I support. And that’s not because I’m wonderful. It’s because I’m horrible. If I didn’t set that up automatically, I wouldn’t do it. And I didn’t do it. And I would go to the Episcopal Church, and I would look at Betty Lynn, I’d go, we haven’t been there in two months, and we owe this. Oh, my gosh, I’m not writing that check. Ow. So we do that.

So you can reinvest your money. And pledge to yourself, like even – you don’t have to be a billionaire. You can pledge to yourself. Pledge. It is not a legally binding contract. Oh, there it is again. You can say to yourself, you can even write yourself a little letter, don’t have a website, but you can say I’m going to give this much away. Doesn’t have to be 50% like the billionaires. But can it be 2%? Can it be 1%? The important thing is that it’s going to be regular, it’s going to be a percentage, and you’re going to commit. You know, if last year you gave to something $1000, maybe you’re going to go by percentage, and that turns out to be $800. I think that’s a better gift. Not just if you’re in the mood, just saying I’m committed, and I’m going to do that. Reinvest.

You can also rebuild. I didn’t say rebuild, but at Computer Corps they rebuild. And what they do, they take chances on all sorts of people. When I showed up there, imagine, if you will, I showed up there, minister without a church, coming to Nevada without a job. That is very suspect. Why were you kicked out of the church? Who hates you? What have you done? I mean, that is an obvious question. And they gave me a chance. And after a year I got the key to the place. I tried to not take it; but no, I still have it.

But rebuild. And they just don’t rebuild computers. They take people there who have never had a job, that have never been outside their home, and they take them in, and they show them how to work a time clock, and they show them how to show up and how to leave, they give them a lunch, and they show them how to clock out for lunch and clock in for lunch. And there’s a lot of people don’t know how to do these things. And then when they leave, they’ve got one line on their résumé. And they’ve got a reference from Ron. And so many people have gone through there. And our best volunteers we lose because they go out and get somebody to pay them for what we train them to do.

So you can refurbish. You can invest in other people. Invest in other people that don’t really – maybe not worth the investment. And we’ve had some bad things. That happens. You can also, oh, it’s kind of like reentry, as well, in that you let people back in to life, figure out how they to get back into life. That’s what they do at, I didn’t say it, Southside Ministries in Akron. They figure out how to get people back into things. Maybe you’re in recovery. Maybe you support someone in recovery. Maybe you host a recovery group at the church or somewhere. But maybe we can figure out how to get people back on their feet again, and what could be done to help people instead of blame them.

There’s a little program up in Carson City called Circles. And what the Circles does is not so much giving money to the poor people, but they have the poor people and the people that are struggling, the people that almost have the first and last month’s rent, almost, to come and to – they have dinner, and they have training, and they asked them, what do you need to do to get a job? One time they said, “Everybody wants us to know PowerPoint. We don’t know how to do that.” Or “We don’t have a computer.” So we had a class in PowerPoint. Everybody learned how to use PowerPoint, and they can have another thing on their resume. Reentry.

Where are you putting the stuff of your life? What barns are you building? When you leave, the things you have prepared, who will they be? Think about that, and God and Jesus will not call you a fool. You will not be a fool. You will be blessed. Amen.

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Barns

Choices

Choices

Choices
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

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 

 

Sermons also available free on iTunes

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

Straining to Forget

Straining to Forget

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

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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

 

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“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

Jesus Wept

 

Weeping over the Whys of life

Jesus Wept
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Click the title above for a mp3 recording 

Audio from Valley Presbyterian Church, on March 8, 2020
edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions; all errors are mine. 

John 11:1-45

Sermons also available free on iTunes

Speaking to a congregation after a pastor candidate decided not to come and meet them.

I don’t know about you, but I always want to know why. I’m nosy that way. And **** in her email – Leigh didn’t tell you. In her email said “personal concerns,” “personal reasons,” something with “personal” in it. And that’s kind of code. The first part is “It’s not about you, it’s about me.” Which is good. So it’s not about you. That’s good. Second part of the code is “Don’t ask.” So the whole “why” thing is kind of shut down for a while. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll talk again in another 30 years, and we can look back and figure out what happened. I don’t know.

But the why. “Why” about ministers, there’s a lot of that. You know, I don’t know about other professions. I don’t know, maybe getting this wherever you work, social service, or working with people on all sorts of things. But even in retail, I guess I get a little. But, boy, when I was a minister, I got a lot of whys. You know? Why are you doing it that way? What kind of minister are you? Why aren’t you doing this? Why haven’t you been here? How come you did not visit there? I was in the hospital; why didn’t visit me. Oh, my god.

I guess I was pretty defensive. And always drawn to this verse in the story, “Jesus Wept”, because it was actually my first sermon was on this verse in the story because I think I knew what was coming Kind of prophetic. Yeah, people are going to be out there criticizing your ministry no matter what you do. Even Jesus got trouble. You know, he had the disciples kerfuffle there was the discussion about to go or not to go, he’s sleeping, he’s not sleeping. But the two sisters just really, really get me. And I emphasize that in the reading because the sisters ask the exact same question. And I don’t think that’s just a cut-and-paste error because they didn’t have that back then, they didn’t just copy the question from one sister to another without updating it.

But they asked the exact same question. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Maybe not a question. More an accusation. And he had two totally different answers, responses to them. Not so much an answer. I mean, Martha comes out, and I guess maybe they’re alone together? Maybe ran out.

I’m thinking disciples, they’re always hanging around, I don’t know if they’re there. But not a crowd, anyway. Socially distant. They had this little theological discussion about Christ and the last days and the dead coming up and, you know, Christ is Lord, and do you believe this, and the faith statement. All in all a very, good seminary quiz answer about what you do when somebody has a crisis of faith.

That’s fine. You know, maybe that’s okay for you. You know, maybe that is a ministry to you. And I’m thinking it was a ministry to Martha, to hear about the faith statement and what we believe and the greatness that everything will even out in the great beyond, and by and by everything will make sense. God works all things for good, and we’ll all be together in heaven. Maybe that’s okay for you, and maybe even I need that sometimes. But in all the big and little griefs of the life, you know, everywhere from losing a pastor candidate to losing a brother, the idea that, well, you know, God’s going to fix it in the end. Doesn’t help right here and now. At least for me.

Then Mary comes out, and we know Mary has a whole crowd with her. The crowd came to comfort Mary. Did you catch that? They didn’t come to comfort Martha, I guess. Martha’s not the easiest person to warm up to, if you’ve been following her in the scriptures. Maybe there was other times she was really gracious and wonderful and had a lot of friends over. But this time they came to comfort to Mary. Maybe that’s an editing error. But still, they all following Mary out. They didn’t follow Martha out.

So there’s a crowd there. Same question. Lord? Is it a question? I think it’s an accusation. I think it’s a statement. Inside the accusation, the criticism, there’s faith wrapped up in there. It’s like faith wrapped in an accusation and given to him, you know, you can’t really say, well, don’t say that. Well, no, because inside the disappointment, there’s hope: “And if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Well, we already know his answer; right? I mean, we had the answer, and it worked for Martha; right? You talk about, yeah, I am the Lord. I bring up all the dead in the end of the time, and all the raising. You believe I’m the Lord and zippy, zowie, you got it done. I got it. I got this. I know this. But it says that Jesus saw her weeping. He saw the crowd. And he began to weep.

Now, that awkward word there, he began to be weeping or whatever that is, that’s a signal. Greek it’s called the aorist tense. They have this little annoying verb tense in Greek that we don’t have in English because we don’t have time to fool around with that stuff. Literally because aorist doesn’t have any time. The aorist verb, it just happened. You know? It’s like when a dish breaks and you ask the kids. They respond: “I don’t know, it just happened.” There’s no time associated with it. There’s no past, present, or future, and there’s no beginning and end. It just happens that in the great time-space continuum there was weeping.

He began to weep. And the crowd, you would think, might have said, what a crappy minister. He should have words of faith and assurance. He should have wonderful things to say, wonderful words of love. He should tell them about the coming raising of the dead, you know, like Martha, which they did not hear. You would think they’d be upset with him for weeping, of all things. Certainly he will never be the President if he cries in public.

But they said, “See how much He loved them.” See how much He loved them.

I know it’s hard for you to believe, but when I was in the ministry, a lot of people couldn’t believe I was a minister. I know it’s hard to believe. In fact, some of them would come up and say, “You don’t act like a minister.” And sometimes that was a compliment, and sometimes it was an accusation. It was kind of hard to tell sometimes where on the spectrum the comment was supposed to land. But “You don’t act like a minister” I got quite a bit. And I also have a book I’m writing, and I know it’ll be published someday, it’s called “Reverend Righteous Snappy Answer to Stupid Religious Questions.” I sure Mad Magazine will come back to publish it.

One of SRQ Stupid Religious Questions is this one: “You don’t act like a minister.” And my response is that is because I’m not acting. I am a minister. Deal with it. This is what a minister looks like. And, you know, I’m sure that women ministers get it more than than I do. Of course, the Christy thing didn’t help at all. But that’s what’s going on here.

You know, when someone dies, or when hopes die – I was really hoping for (the candidate) to come here. I was so excited. I want to know why. Why didn’t that happen? As if, if I knew, it’d be okay. But in reality, if I knew why, I’d still be upset. I’d still be disappointed. Even if she had the absolute most greatest reason in all the world. Maybe she’s engaged to be married, and her husband-to-be doesn’t want to move. That would be probably the best. I don’t know. So I would still be upset.

So why do I want to know why? It’s not going to help me. It’s just going to lead to more questions and problems and upsetness and why do I want to know why? It’s the first temptation; isn’t it? In the Garden of Eden, God said, “Don’t go to that tree. Stay away from that tree.” What do we do? “Why?” And then the snake picks up on that. And the snake says: “Psst. You’ll know why if you eat out of the tree. You’ll be like God. You’ll know good and evil. You’ll know all the whys. Go ahead, eat up there.” Oh, my gosh. That sounds great to us. We want to know why. We eat up. And then the troubles begin. Why?

1995. This is kind of a retrospect of my life, but that’s okay. You’re stuck with me. Ha. 1995 I decided to quit understanding computers. I remember the day. Up to then, from 1976 to 1995, I understood computers. I can understand why things work. I could take them out. I was getting into assembly language. Oh, my gosh. I knew it all. I knew those guys.

And when Win95 came out, especially on this day, when it changed the clock by itself without me, even though I set it the night before, I was so proud. The computer set daylight savings time, so I was an hour off even though I reset the clock. I realized I would never understand computers again. I wouldn’t know why. And I decided to focus on how. How, without knowing why, how can I work with them? How can I get them to do as I do? How can I help other people to get to do with them what I do? How do I live with computers that I do not understand?

And that’s where we’re at. We don’t like to be there. And Jesus, even in the why question about why did Lazarus die, why did – he wasn’t too much on the why. But even in that thing he talked, he talked about not why, but who? The why looks back; doesn’t it? Looks back to the past about things were going and lived back there and cause and effect and all that, and you get all wound up in craziness. And like I said, it doesn’t help here and now. The question is, who is God, and who are we in response to that? How are we going to live then?

The second encounter, with that accusation, that faithful accusation of, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. What kind of God is it that lets someone die? The God that weeps. The God that began to weep, and we don’t know if the weeping ever ends. A God that is always emotionally with us in our sorrow and grief and sadness.

When folks say, “Where was God when this terrible thing happened?,” that God was there feeling every bit of the pain and sadness and hurt and fear and crying along with us. And if we’re good, like the crowd back then, we’ll say, “See how much God loves us.” Not that he fixes stuff, not that he explains things to us, not that he makes all things right in the great by and by. But he loves us enough to weep with us at the sorrows and the unfairness and the evil and the tragedies and the challenges of this life.

So faith, the life of faith, the life of the church, the life of a minister, is not so much about finding out why, or explaining whys. You can’t do it. Hey, I can’t do it. For a 20-year-old computer I can’t tell you why it does things. People ask me that all the time. And I just say “Microsoft.” And that usually is enough. But the question is, for the faithful, work and life today is, given that we have a God who loves us so much to weep along with our tears, how do we live? What do we do? How are we with other people? How do we find to live? And that is a future thing, not a past thing with why why why, but how how how. And it all springs from who in the middle. Who are we as a people, who do we worship as God, will tell us how we live.

We live as a people that are compassionate. We live as a people that seek justice. We live as a people that gets angry when things aren’t the way they should. We live as a people that try to fix wrong. We live as a people that try to give sight to the blind, to free the oppressed, that deliver release to the captives. We’re those kind of people. We’re not saying, well, why are they blind? Why are they captive? Why are they oppressed? Why does God love all that? That’s only important if it figures us how to fix it. How to be faithful in a place we don’t know all the whys and the causes. And yeah, sometimes is weeping with those that weep.

Everytime you hear “politically correct” — consider subsituting “compassionate”

Disturbing trend in our country today. And I find it all summed up in the politically correct, which is used to dismiss any kind of concern or compassion for those that are not like us, or doesn’t experience what we experience. Oh, well, their concerns, that’s just being politically correct. You know, every time you hear that you can substitute the word “compassion,” and it works. Oh, that’s just being compassionate. We are the compassionate ones. Because we follow God, who is compassionate, who has passion with us, who is God with us in our sorrow and heartache. We are those kind of people.

You ever heard of imposter syndrome? Ever hear of that? Yeah, where you think you don’t deserve where you are, what you do, and how you are? And you think everybody’s going to find out one day I’m a fraud? It’s like that dream that you have where you think you’re in school, and you don’t have any of your homework done; and by the way, you’re naked, too. Agh. You know, that kind of dream. Everybody’s had that. Yeah, that one. That fraud, that imposter syndrome, I had that a lot, you know, as a minister because, well, the constant “You don’t act like a minister” didn’t help.

But I had a lot of that as a minister, and I realized how imperfect I was. I mean, I was my worst critic, still am, about how I’m not doing everything that’s right and good and should. And I was talking to my counselor about that. And I was talking about there’s at least two women that admit that I was a major part of why they became a minister. I got one on video, so I brought receipts.

A little deeper than the video clip, we talked a little bit about why I was a good model for entering ministry. Both pointed out to me privately that it wasn’t because I was perfect that they became a minister. Because both of them said, and this is slightly disturbing, both of them said – and these are different states, you know, different churches. Both of them said, “Well, I looked up, and I saw Christy. And I thought, well, if he could be a minister, I could be a minister.” You already felt that. You’re there now. Well, if he could do it, I guess I can do it. I think I may be good. I don’t know.

And she pointed out to me, you know, did you notice that it wasn’t your perfection that brought those women into ministry and to hear the call of God. It wasn’t how perfect you were or your mastery of things, but it was exactly your imperfections, your sincerity and honesty about your limitations and how you didn’t have all the answers, that let them hear the call of God. Wow, earned their money that week, huh, yeah, the big one. Here’s what one says.

And she went on – the second Sunday we were there was 9/11 in her church. And she asked me – I didn’t know who she was. Week 2, I didn’t know anybody. She comes up, she goes, “Are you going to speak about 9/11 in the children’s message?” I go, “Yeah, I’m going to talk to the kids about it.” “I’m not having my kids in church, then.” Off she goes. I go, well, hello to you. You know.

And we went from that, over the year, the 18 months I was there as interim, that a year from then her and I led a remembrance service with communion and multimedia for the community that night for 9/11. And then she went on from that to go to seminary, become a minister, get a church, and become the editor of Presbyterians Today, the PC(USA) magazine. And here’s what she said as I left that church.

“On a more personal level, I find that you bring an honest vitality to the faith that I haven’t experienced before. You make it something to live rather than something to ponder from the pew. More importantly, you managed to do it without overwhelming earnestness, sappy sentimentality, or condescending judgment. Your approach feels fresh, straightforward, and comfortable. I will miss that.”

And I really treasure that, obviously. Something to live, and not something to ponder from the pew. Something to figure out how to be faithful instead of struggling with the whys and the wherefores. That’s faith. That’s what we’re called to do.

Amen.

Jesus Wept