God and King

How To Escape Slavery

In this recorded sermon, from 1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15 I talk about how putting anyone or anything but God on the throne as your king leads to slavery.

God and King mp3

Elders Assemble! My Top 5 Pittsburgh Presbyterian General Assembly Events

220th Presbyterian General Assembly Logo

Walk, Run, Soar to these General Assembly events!

The 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA comes to Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence Convection Center beginning Saturday, June 30th. 

Most of the news before the assembly are the issues that the commissioners decide while the special events that happen when the Presbyterian tribe gathers are overlooked.

There is a list of events available, but here are the ones I want to make sure I attend and recommend all visitors enjoy with me:

1. Opening Worship Saturday, June 30th, 1:30 PM

Our outgoing modeator, Cindy Bolbach, will be preaching before over four thousand Presbyterians including over 300 choir members. There will be new songs and old hymns brought to life by a jazz group, an organ, piano, bagpiper, bell ringers and a brass quintet. Liturgical dancers and a procession of church servants and Presbytery banners from across the county is a anthem of praise for the eyes. Communion is shared bringing together Presbyterians from all over the map geographically and theologically. A glorious time at the assembly.

 2. Moderator’s Election Saturday, June 30th, 7:00 PM

Presbyterians do not run for election. We have four standing for election this year: the Rev. Robert Austell Jr. of Charlotte Presbytery; the Rev. Randy Branson of Palo Duro Presbytery; the Rev. Sue Krummel of Great Rivers Presbytery; and the Rev. Neal Presa of Elizabeth Presbytery. It isn’t the race that attracts me, after all they don’t run, but the standing, hearing why these folks are ready to give up two years to travel and represent the Presbyterian Church (USA) to the church and the world.

Those attending in person and via the live stream, can hear the hopes and visions of not only these teaching elders, formerly known as Ministers of Word and Sacrament, but also the folks that nominate them, the vice moderator candidates and their nominators. Candidates will respond to commissioners questions and to the responses of other candidates in a swirl of humor, passion, vision, memories and dreams that always makes me go deeper and wider in my own faith and understanding.

3. General Assembly Breakfast Monday, July 2 7:00 am

A sleeper event, (meaning rookies miss this because of the early hour) this breakfast has outstanding guests speaking from the heart directly to the commissioners and advisory delegates. This year we are joined in morning prayers with thoughts from Brian D. McLaren author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. While the continental breakfast is free to commissioners as a group meal, it is $22 for the rest of us. BUT! There is no charge for those coming to the presentation only. This is what people will be talking about through the week, miss some sleep instead of this presentation.  

4. Mr. Rogers’ Tribute Concert Tuesday, July 3 3:30 PM

Often a group will commission a special event for General Assembly. This year Presbyterian Media Mission welcomes Presbyterians to their home base with an open house and free concert featuring Bill Carter performing the music of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood at the nearby Pittsburgh Children’s Museum. The concert is at 4 PM and will last for about 45 minutes.  Admission is free, but a suggested donation of $5 would be appreciated.  The Pittsburgh Children’s Museum is located at 10 Childrens Way, Allegheny Center.  Tours of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood Museum items will be available after the concert.

 5. Witherspoon Dance  Tuesday, July 3,  8:00 pm–1:00 am

Compared with the GA breakfast ticket costing $22, the $20 price for a 5 hour dance is a bargain! The Omni William Penn Ballroom four blocks from the convention center at 530 William Penn Place is the site for the Witherspoon Dance. No sermons, no resolutions, no overtures, just folks gathering together connecting around dancing to loud music and a little food, while sharing adult beverages and conversation. Even if you don’t stay until 1 AM, you will find someone you know or should know at this event.

Hope to see you at the General Assembly. I’ll be at the Presbyterian Media Mission booth in the Exhibit Hall, tweeting @christyramsey, taking texts and calls at 330-PROVERB (776-8372) and resting my weary head at Candlewood Suites near the airport.

Have To Marriages

Folks don’t have to get married. I asked couples, why do you want to get married. Our bride and groom were ready with an answer, about commitment, friendship, and facing a future together.Rose Petals after Wedding

Wasn’t always this way…years ago, folks would look at me dumbfounded that I would not know why. It should be obvious

• they were out of school…so they married
• she was pregnant…so they married
• he needed to stay in the country so marriage
• they were of a certain age and they wanted to live together, or love together…marriage!

Marriage was so expected, that until about 10 years ago, if you lived together long enough, you were automatically married by common law…it was the common way of life.

Now it is uncommon. I believe that automatic, have to, common-law marriage is losing ground. Folks fighting this trend can be found trying to stake out privilege and punishment on the basis of marital status. But when marriage privilage is a reduced to getting a discounted rate at the nataorium, the nobility of the idea that everyone should be married is coming to an end.

We can groan and moan, but lets not. It is a sunny shining day indoors, and we can rise above the weather, as our bride and groom are rising above the common and by making a commitment.

The “have to” automatic marriage is about current situations, age, graduation, horomones, parents, pregnancy…and a lot of those marriages do fine, even well. But the best of marriages the intentional ones which are being revealed even as the automatic ones recede into history.

Love is about doing what you don’t have to do for the others.

Love is not light heartedness and light headnesses, not about beauty, perfumes, romance, respectability, or even religion.

According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, love isn’t an emotion but a lifestyle choice. To be kind, forgiving, ready to excuse, humble…it is a choice not out of external circumstance or internal feeling but of being in the world connected and commited with another.

Our couple have chosen to gather everyone, they didn’t have to, the Lord names that they didn’t have to,  within a congregation they joined and attended for years that they didn’t have to, legally bind themselves together, they didn’t have to, to say that they will be together as long as they both shall live…which they don’t have to. They choose. They chose to be married when they didn’t have to.

Now you two, turn and look around

You are marrying each other, but these are your family and friends, and brothers and sisters in faith, mothers and fathers in Christ who agree with your lifestyle choice, who stand with you today and throughout your life. Cheering you on the course you have chosen of committed caring in casual cold world. They will lend you their warmth and remind you of your choice to love in marriage on those cold rainy days for the soul.

There was a book at couples cottage at a getaway resort. Couples wrote how it was their honeymoon, New Years or Valentine Romantic holiday or their getaway before their wedding or their first child. One even had a fourth anniversary… but there was odd one… celebrating the end of a year of marriage counseling… they were joyful they had chosen to continue to love. That one, seemed the most loving to me. 

Weddings are no longer automatic. They probably never should have been. Marriage is choosing to love as Paul tells us, you have chosen well. I tell you that God blesses your choice with love that no one can separate.

The Naked Truth About Leaving Messages

“What’s the best way get in touch with Allan?” The owner of the business was asking in person the same question one of his employees asked me by phone yesterday. I guessed what had happened. The employee is infamous for leaving the generic message: “Hi. Call me back. Thanks.”

Cell phone address books and caller-id have almost made the “call me back” message extinct. The redundancy of this “call me” voice message is witnessed even by this old-school employee still fighting to preserve it in the wild: by not including the phone number to call back. (Even the caller knew it was on caller-id!)

I might have rolled my eyes, but since I did recommend Allan, I called him myself. When I got his voice mail; I left this message: “Hi! This is Christy. Sam wants to give you money. He has work for you. If you want money call him at…” and I held out my phone towards my visitor to repeat his cell number. Twice.

After I put my phone away, Sam asked “So you think he will…” and then looked at his pocket. It was Allan calling him. I waved good bye as he walked out discussing problems to solve and money to make.

I thought about the messages the church sign leaves for the world. Usually we offer messages they already know, our caller ID label, “GOODYEAR HEIGHTS PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH”. Often we leave a judgement, “CH CH WHAT’S MISSING? U R”.  Sometimes, we post a chore: “WORSHIP 9 AM”. Rarely do we leave a message that we have good news that will profit them: “THIS IS WHERE GOD IS LOVE”

Determining the gospel and life of a congregation from a signboard message is as difficult as gauging the profit potential of a generic voice message. Yet it is somewhere between depressing and tragic if folks miss the opportunity of a life of meaning and purpose because churches don’t leave a message that we have something useful and worthy of a response. After the first Easter, Jesus was revealed as the Lord not by proclaimations, puns, or pressure but by offering how to fix a basic and urgent need: filling empty fishing nets for some hungry workers.

Hope Easter leaves you a good message…one that profits you when you respond.

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.

- John 21:1-7

Bible quotation from The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, 1995
by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Update on Friday, April 6, 2012 at 10:05AM by Christy Ramsey

I changed the names in the story to “Sam” and “Allan” 

Enrichment

Some rights reserved by Patricia van CasterenThe apes at the Cleveland zoo get newspapers at meal times. I thought that was odd. Do the younger ones friend each other on Apebook?

I was confused by how interested the primates were in getting deep into the morning edition until I realized that lunch was wrapped in the newspaper tubes. They had to tear the paper apart to get their meal. 

The reason for their frustration was explained by one of the attendants. When the zookeepers hide the food they provide for the animals it isn’t teasing them. According the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo website they are providing them with enrichment which addresses “an animal’s social, psychological and physical needs.” It just looks like teasing. I can’t wait to tell my grown children that all those years I was enriching their lives not teasing them. Well, maybe I can wait.

Teasing isn’t a major focus in the Bible, but tempting (sometimes tranlsated “testing”) might be thought of as extreme teasing. Do you feel teased/tempted/tested by God? Mother Teresa of Calcutta who spent her life working with the poor, said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”

When life gets a little stress-filled, I mean “enriched”, I sometimes think of when I visited a hosptial bound member during a hectic week. We reflected that she would love to be out running around with too much to do…while I would love to just spend the day in bed.

I hope you experience today as enriched by God.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

- 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 

Bible quotation from The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.