Take Two and Call God in the Morning

How does being a Christian make a difference in our lives and in the lives of the world? Relationships as the basis for not just God’s justice, but for Christianity and even for the very essense of God is explored.

Take Two and Call God in the Morning
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

A message based on Matthew 18: 15-20 and Romans 13: 8-14

Recorded live with all the background hum, volume challenges and surprises that brings.

Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes

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

In and Out

Who is in, holy, pure and acceptable and who is out, banished, condemned and ignored? The more one gets to know someone the harder it is to believe one is totally good or completely evil. How can we faitnfully deal with the oceans of information that crash down upon us from newly public sources, twenty four hour news streams, and social media? Should we forgive and forget?

In and Out, a sermon by J. Christy Ramsey

A message based on Matthew 15:10-28 and Genesis 45:1-15

Recorded live with all the background hum, volume challenges and surprises that brings.

Sermons also available free on iTunes

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

Web Geek Lord's Prayer

This prayer was given at the 1998 Presbyterian General Assembly during a PresbyNet dinner. It was the only prayer quoted in the daily news reports for the Assembly that year:

Weaver of the web from creation which links all together,
you knew our personal profile before we had a URL.
You never respond with a 404.
Keep us connected to you, on-line to our hearts, 
in the net Christ cast into the world,
in whose screen-name we pray. Amen.

- Christy Ramsey

Without A Doubt

Matthew 14:22-33

Doubt is everywhere.

In 2008, the film, Doubt, with Meryl Streep as a Catholic sister, generated 5 Oscar nominations. It is a story of a faithful sister who wrestled with the poison of doubt in the church and in her heart.

More dramatically, doubt has a major supporting role in our news and infotainment enterprises both personal and corporate: Vaccines, moon landing, government cover-up, General Assembly actions, global warming, health cures, additives that poison. “Is your tap water killing you, story at 11.”

Doubt has a noble calling, some say all scientific or even all progress is based on doubt. Of testing and seeking truth in the physical world or even the spiritual realm.

Doubt can be life or death, freedom or captivity, justice or travesty. Criminal convictions must be beyond a reasonable doubt. Not just a preponderance of the evidence or the high probability of guilt, but a level of sureness that is beyond a reasonable doubt. Doubt that a glove fit, is enough to save a man from conviction of a double murder.

Doubt in our scripture is between fear and faith. Fear is backing away, resisting or fighting. Faith is trusting, going forwards, taking a leap out of the boat, a way of life. Doubt is the “maybe” between the “no” of fear and the “yes” of faith. The word is rooted in betweeness. It is based on “two”. Dual, double, doubt. Contradiction, pulled between two things, two things that cannot be together are held together by confusion. Doubt is in the terms “jumbo shrimp”, “square circle”, or “short sermon”.

Our scripture is doubt full. Is it Jesus or a ghost? Can’t be both living and dead, friend and fiend. Then the whole walking on water, it is either water or walking, not both. I doubt it.
In our scientific world, when faced with doubt, we want to banish it with knowledge. To decide one way or the other, to cut to the truth. From the Garden of Eden on, we experiment to find what is true.
In computer world, we have a test for unsureness, an if-then test. If X then Do Y. Peter programmer tries this: IF you are The Lord, THEN have ME walk on water. Prove it to me, make my truth, eliminate my doubt, perform my test, make me a miracle.

Don’t get distracted at this step. This isn’t about walking on water, fear of the storm, keeping your eyes on Jesus, faith giving you supernatural powers. Those are good sermons but for another day.
Miracles are distracting. Let’s not be distracted here. Did you know the Gospel of John has no miracles? Every mighty work that is miracle in the other gospels, is called a “sign”. They are only there to reveal God. I like that. Signs, not miracles.

Ever been to a national park? Around here there may be towering mountains of the toughest granite in the world, soaring into the heavens, evidence of mile high glacier…stunning. And down at our level, next to the parking spaces, is a sign. Maybe 4ft x 4ft. People stand before the valley, lake, and mountain and take pictures of the sign.

I think we do the same thing with miracles. We are like a tourist marveling over the font choice, the prose, the information, the quality of the metal, discussing the meaning and importance of the sign in our lives. We get into arguments about what the sign really means. We get mad at each other over various sign reading and split off, because that reading of the sign isn’t keeping with the historic understandings of the sign. We tell people that other signs are no good, not to be trusted, come and look at our sign which it is SO much better and a true experience.

What difference does the sign make to the mountain? With None of the Above quickly growing as a religious choice, now 1 in 3 among the youngest adults, but growing throughout our culture according to the Pew Research Center: Christianity has declined about 8% while unaffiliated grew  by almost 7% between 2007 and 20014. Yet the questions were about denominations and organized churches, not spiritual interest or practice. This is promised in a future study. I wonder how many people are telling us to get out of the way with our signs, they want to go directly to the mountain?

Moving the miracle out of the way, looking at what the sign is directing us to, we pick up Peter in the midst of sinking, where he says “Lord, Save Me!” Note there is no “IF you are The Lord, THEN save me” there is not “IF you are The Lord, THEN put me back in the boat, or on the land and I will then be able to fully resolve the truth of the matter of your Saviorness.” No, Peter moves from sinking to saving - from being of two minds to a single heart. Lord, Save Me.

Jesus knows this change, he calls Peter “LittleFaith” it is one word in the Greek, like we would say, “Goofball” which is not the same as saying “spherical object with a irregular shape.” It is not about the faith, but a nickname gently mocking his being between fear and faith: Silly Peter, Why did you doubt? Why were you of two minds? Why are you testing instead of trusting?

I can walk on water sometimes. We all do in Ohio we call it “ice skating”. Maybe you can too. But this scripture is about doing triple axles on a lake, it isn’t about getting out of the boat in faith, it isn’t about keeping your eyes on Jesus and not minding the storms of life. We are not looking for superpowers for the next Marvel action film. Don’t fill your spiritual photo album with pictures of the sign and miss the mountain. It is about moving out of the in between of faith and fear we live so much of life in, the doubt zone. The maybeness that paralyzes and keeps us from taking a stand against the wind, keeps us from staying in the boat with our fellow disciples, keeps us arguing over signs instead of going to the mountain top where our dreams and God’s dreams for us meet. The maybeness the IF-THENs experiments and tentative, conditional allegiance that we set up which keep us from being saved by Jesus.

You know there is another computer command. In addition to IF THEN there is a statement called an unconditional branch statement. It always moves program execution to the destination, it is GOTO. Put away the IF this THEN Jesus. GOTO Jesus. Trust unconditionally the path that starts with the first step of faith: “Lord Save Me.”

Matthew 14:22-33

²²Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. ²⁵And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. ²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. ²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” ²⁸Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Weed Gardens

Where do you plant yourself in the garden of humanity? Why are there weeds in our life? Christy examines the problem of evil in Southwest seating, weed wackers, in ourselves and those we love.

Click on the title below for the recorded version, or see the end for the iTunes link.

Some quotes people remember:

• Were there weeds in the Garden of Eden?
• Have you ever mistaken Nurture for Neglect?
• On Southwest Airlines you don’t get a seat assignment… you get a starting position.
• God loves you and doesn’t want to kill you!

Weed Garden
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

A message based on Matthew 13:24-30 with a bit of the creation story from Genesis 3

Most gardens have weeds. Were there weeds in the Garden of Eden? Some would say, no, because God said the plants were “good”:

The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:12

And we know weeds are not good. But I think there were weeds in the Garden of Eden.

Before we talk too much about weeds here or there, how can we tell something is a weed? I grew up in Akron, Ohio, a city boy. If there was something green, we just paved it over, no questions asked.

God thought it would be funny to have me pastor a small church in a farming Indiana. Some farmers in the first church I served tried to wash the city off of me. Like sin it clings tightly. One of the farmers was pretty quick to educate me when I mistakenly called some poor lost plant a weed. He bristled up like farmers do when you insult their children. Weed is a slur to someone who loves plants like a farmer does. I was told that a weed was just a plant where you didn’t want it.

Jesus tells a parable. Now a parable doesn’t make sense all by itself. If it did it would be a story, not a parable. Now the crazy beings with a bunch of slaves, maybe eager to point out the master mistakes or maybe making sure they weren’t blamed for the weeds.

There are weeds in the fields YOU planted. Don’t you love folks that point out that your efforts less than perfect? Especially, when they had nothing to do with the project. Then these folks gleefully volunteer to fix it for you. We can do it better, we can make it right! Let us be the master! Did you catch the crazy? These folks doesn’t understand the whole master / slave concept. The master did the work and the slaves find fault.

The master pretty bluntly tells the slaves they aren’t qualified to fix the field, they weren’t even trusted to plant it! For they would take the wheat out with weeds and so passes on their offer to redo what he has done. Tells them to just leave the weeds alone.

Do you believe that there are a couple churches that passed on having the benefit of my ministry? One was a rural church I visited in the Midwest. Lovely people. I was done before I started. I proved the wise saying It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” (Maurice Switzer) This little country church had a parking lot. I know parking lots. I’m from the city. This church had weeds growing in their parking lot as high as my knees. Perfectly good parking spaces for cars full of weeds up to here! It looked awful. I said something stupid, about the obvious improvements needed that a city parking lot boy could bring to these folks. Turns out that as practical folk they had taken part of the parking lot and planted sweet corn. “Yep, those spaces weren’t doing anything so we planted some sweet corn.” They are farmers; they see bare ground, that’s opportunity. They were growing sweet corn in their parking lot. What I thought was neglect was actually nurture. What I thought was waste, was something good, part of God’s plan. Those plants were supposed to be there, so they weren’t weeds they were food.

Some folks have a green thumb…I have a pointed finger. If you want something pointed out to you, I’m the one. I’ve made money pointing out stuff. I even point out to God where he did not live up to his potential and even offer to fix it for him. It is good that God hasn’t let me loose, I would probably end up proudly show off parking spaces I cleared where God had some sweet corn growing.

I am SO much more eager to be a weeder than a gardener. I got a weed whacker once. It was in the eighties. I was so happy got a weed whacker. I opened the box and was immediately banned from using it. Like the master in our parable, my wife knows how I work. She has some roses and she emphatically told me that those roses did NOT need weed whacking. She knew I would whack those roses right off. I would be sorry, but she knew. She told me I could whack weeds over there, she didn’t care about those plants.

When you hear that next up on the news talk show is a Christian what do you think the focus is going to be? Going to be about nurturing the good, feeding the hungry, visiting the imprisoned, tending the sick, sheltering the homeless? Is going to about grace, forgiveness, love? Watering Wheat or Whacking Weeds? Most times, going to be weed whacking. That is what we do We love our weed whackers. Sometimes at General Assembly you can’t hear people talk over the racket of the whackers. I think we would raze 100 churches to the ground than to plant 1.

Ever see Bruce Almighty? Jim Carey becomes God, right there I’m having fun. He plays Bruce the man with the pointiest finger ever. Everything is wrong. Every day is Festivus, he airs his grievances long and loud. Traffic is wrong, his job is wrong, his girlfriend is wrong, the weather is wrong. He blames God for it all. God gets tired of it, so puts him in charge and goes on vacation. And he proceeds to make life easy for himself, a new car appears, traffic parts before him like the Red Sea, his career is blessed, his enemies are destroyed, he makes all his dreams come true. Then he decides to pay attention to those prayers he’s been getting. God forward them all to him. He is lazy so he just grants them all. YES to all prayers. Craziness ensures. One of them was that everyone who prayed to win the lottery, won! There were 3.6 million winners and the payoff was a buck sixty! There were riots in the streets!

Bruce Almighty is a modern day parable that shows we don’t do so well in directing out how the world should work, or more specifically we don’t so well in figuring out how God should work in the world.

Anyone fly Southwest? I love the luggage thing. No charge! I’m flying more now that my children are 2,500 miles apart. You know, they get along so much better now. We just had separate rooms going up, now I find out they need their own time zones.  I fly Southwest, which is unique because you pick your seat when you’re one the plane. So it isn’t just front/back, aisle/window. You don’t get a seat on the plane, you get a starting time. You’re never first. You get to pick not only if you sit next to an aisle or a window, but if you sit next to the large man or small child? Or if you are going to be creepy and sit by the young woman? Or scared to sit by the tattooed Mohawk man? On Southewest you get to plant yourself in a garden of humanity.

Once I was looking for sympathy from my wife by complaining about a crying child on the flight…she uprooted my plan by saying, “I never complain about a child on a flight, remember nobody would trade with us so we could sit with Robert?” Robert solve that one. He is the master of relationships. He turned to his mother and said in a quavering voice, “Mom….I’m going to be sick.” Oh yeah. Everyone wanted to trade. Yes, we were those parents once. Once, we didn’t belong on that plane. We were people that were where others didn’t want us to be, a nasty weed in the flying garden of humanity. Could have been plucked out but we are flew together, weeds and wheat, coughers and criers, beautiful and scarred to Akron.

People have interpret this parable in different ways, and God bless them. Some people look at this scripture and say, “Thank Goodness all those bad people are going to get burned; Burning people, Yay God!” That doesn’t really do it for me. Other people take comfort by realizing it is not their job to root out all the evil in the world. Kinda takes the pressure off. Some people need to hear that, and if that helps them do good and be better and sleep at night, God bless them. He does.  

I get a personal and profound meanings out of this parable. The profound message is an ontological one. (A seminary word meaning: a study of the nature of being, what is reality) For me this parable addresses a profound questions that Christians get and have: Why does God allow evil in the world? The answer is here: God allows evil in the world because he loves us. God does not accept collateral damage. God is unwilling to declare war on humanity. I don’t know about you, but if God started whacking out the weeds, I don’t know if I would be in the ground or in the bin.

Now, don’t be like I am sometimes when I’m cranky. When a proud atheist traps you with “If God is all good and all powerful…why doesn’t he allow evil in the world.” Do NOT say “Because God loves you and doesn’t want to KILL you.”

God will not destroy evil because it is entwined with good. You know that. You know evil. Real evil, not just we don’t understand everything yet sadness, but real, death dealing, gut wrenching, senseless evil. Yet you found some good. A reunion at a funeral, aid in disaster, sacrifice in war, sharing in need, rescue in disaster, sweet corn in a parking lot, a laughing baby in a packed airplane. Good runs like a vein of living gold in cruel hard dead rock.

There is the personal. It is a relief. For we know that God is going to let us grow hopefully producing grain, goodness, grace, love for God. We don’t have to worry about getting wacked out of the ground when we don’t bear fruit, when we get in the way, when we are in a place God doesn’t want us to be. There is none of God will get you if you don’t watch out or God punishes you for that or God willed this disaster on you or them. God lets both grow, me and the good people.

We can’t tell what is wheat and what is weed. God calls it. He is the gardener, it is his call what a weed is. If you aren’t where God wants you to be, doing what God wants you to do, you’re a weed in God’s garden. Remember the Garden of Eden where everything was good? At least that is how it was started, but there was Adam and Eve or went where they weren’t supposed to go and did what they weren’t supposed to do.  Adam and Eve, You and Me are the weeds in God’s garden.

Not only were there weeds in the Garden of Eden. We are the weeds. We all are the spiritual descendants of the original weeds in the Garden of Eden. So rather than pointing out the weeds to God and spinning up our weed whackers, we need to know that we are weeds, all of us, but God gives us every change to be wheat, to produce goodness. He is waiting, the patient Gardener for us weeds to become wheat.

I dreamt death came the other night
And Heaven’s gate swung wide.
An angel with a halo bright
Ushered me inside.

And there! To my astonishment
Stood folks I’d judged and labeled
As “quite unfit”, “of little worth”,
And “spiritually disabled”.

Indignant words rose to my lips
But never were set free,
For every face showed stunned surprise
— Not one expected me!

-Attributed to several authors

 

Recorded live at South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on July 20.2014
with all the background hum, volume challenges and surprises that brings. Printed edition revised.

Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes

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