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

What Does It Mean?

What Does It Mean

What Does It Mean
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service May 8,2022
at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CA

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

 Acts 2:1-21

 

Sermons also available free on iTunes

Right about below the middle there, you see that, all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” That’s Acts 2:12. For many years I had that as my license plate, ACTS212. And people, you know, what does this mean, amazed and perplexed. And people would come up to me, and they would point at my license plate, and they would say, “What does this mean?” And I said, “Exactly.” Yeah, they didn’t laugh either. But I enjoyed it. It was fun for me. It was self-referential. They’d look at that, were confused and perplexed, and they said, “What does this mean?” And I said, “You’re absolutely right. You got it. What does this mean?”

What a great attitude to go through life. I mean we have here a wonderful, amazing occurrence where everything is turned upside down. Have any of you had anything like this in the last two years? You know, where you thought you knew what was going on, but now things are closed, things are changed, you can wear a mask, you can’t wear a mask, you’d better wear a mask, get a vaccine, not a vaccine, oh, my gosh, spinning all around. You’ve got to bleach down everything. Oh, no, it’s breathing.

Oh, my gosh, everything’s messed up. The government’s going to give you money to not go to work. Well, that used to be bad. I heard that was bad earlier. That was a bad thing. No, everybody’s going to – oh, okay. I don’t understand. We’re going to give you loans, but you don’t have to pay them back. Well, that’s not really a loan, is it? I don’t think. Everything’s turned upside down. Everything’s crazy. Just like here.

And you know, you look at all these residents of Mesopotamia and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, and you just say, oh, my gosh, I’m glad I didn’t have to read scripture today. That’s one of the worst scriptures to – you don’t like someone in your church, and you’re a pastor, you say, “Hey, would you like to do the scripture for Pentecost?” “Oh, why, thank you, that’s quite the honor.” Oh, yeah, quite the honor. Then they get to the Acts, and they go, “Oh.”

The strange thing besides the strange words here, if we were in the crowd, if we were reading the scripture when it originally was written, we would say, hold on there. Those people have been gone for centuries, for generations. In here, they said there are people here where nations haven’t existed for generations, for hundreds of years. How could there be people from nations that aren’t around anymore? Peoples that have been exterminated, that have been extinct, wiped out. They’re in the list. Amazing things. And it’s not just because of that, but because everybody hears in their own language.

Now, you may think, well, you know, the Pentecostal church, I know what that is, that’s where everybody gets up, and they start speaking the heavenly language no one can understand but angels. Well, sure. But that’s not this. This is the opposite of that. It’s not about the teaching. The only tongues that we talk about are tongues of fire, not tongues in your mouth. The miracle here is the miracle of listening, of understanding, that everybody, no matter where they’re from, no matter what time they’re from, no matter what country they’re from, whether they’re Jews or not Jews, everybody hears in their own native language the almighty powers of God.

It’s a reversal of Babel. Remember Babel back in Genesis, a great story back there, in that when people got together and said we’re going to make a name for ourselves, we’re going to build up this great big tower all the way to heaven. And then when we get up to heaven we’re going to knock the gods off the throne, and then we’ll be gods up there. You know, it was kind of like a coup. And God looked down and said, “No, we’re not. You guys have gotten too big. We’re going to divide your language so you can’t speak to one another, can’t understand one another.” And so all the nations of the world were divided.

And here at Pentecost, all the nations of the world are united, all hearing about God’s deeds of power. What do you do when things are crazy? What do you do when things don’t make sense? You can be like people in the scriptures. The first one says they’re amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? You can be amazed. Have you heard about “Amazing Grace”? Anybody heard about “Amazing Grace”? I’m checking to see if you’re still awake. No one’s awake. A couple. All right. Pretty good for the Bishop crowd. I often have to calm these people down. They’re like crazy up in the aisle shouting. I don’t know, did your sister tell you? They’re wild. They’re wild here.

All right. So anyhow, so are you amazed by grace? You see the grace, and you’re just, oh, thank you, Lord, that’s amazing. I’m just taken aback and taken along. I’m so glad to be here among you. That’s one way to go. You can look back and say, you know, I didn’t know that every pastor in every church could become a televangelist in a week. I would never have bet that. If you had told me in March of 2020 by next month every church, every pastor is either going to be on TV, on the computer screen, or there’s not going to be a service, I would say “That’s amazing. You’re crazy.” But it happened. Even little Bishop got a little Zoom, zooming around. Who would have thought?

There’s a church, I’m not going to say, well, Virginia City. There’s a church. They are very old up there. Anybody been to Virginia City? Oh, yeah, yeah. Everything’s old up there; isn’t it. Yeah. Now, the church is really old, and they’re very proud of being old. Okay, fine. They’ve got some beautiful stained glass windows. You want to see some colorful stained glass windows, you go to Virginia City. Pastels, they’re like 10 feet high, and they’re beautiful, and they love them.

So I go up there, and I say, okay, there’s a big old screen up here that they use in worship. That wasn’t there before. Putting things up on the screen in Virginia City. They’re still thinking, they’ve still got the gaslights in the wall in case it turns out this electricity thing was a fad. You know, they’re thinking it may stay here, it may not. But they have a big screen up, and they’re using PowerPoint. And I said, wow, well, at least we got the stained – and the stained glass window’s about – it’s got to be 20 feet in the back of the balcony, has this huge black curtain over it, and it’s shut. They put a curtain over the stained glass windows.

How many people have seen curtains over stained glass windows at church? I had not. I have been to many churches. I said, “Oh, I see you put a curtain over the stained glass.” And they said “Yeah, it was making a glare on the screen.” I was amazed and perplexed. Obviously, this was God’s working because nobody voted for that when I was there, and I was there for like 18 months when they were between pastors. What do you do when you see amazing things happen? You can be amazed and perplexed, and come in and ask, like I did, “What’s going on with the stained glass? What’s going on with you? What are you doing here?” You could be like that. Or you can be like, has anyone read YouTube comments? Anybody look in the comments section of any video? You have? Don’t do that. Where’s your parents? What is going on in YouTube comments? You’ve been – we’re talking later.

That reminds me when the teenagers would come up and talk to me after church was out. They would tell me about this movie. And, you know, and the movie was hmm, you know. So I would say,

“Do you think that movie would be appropriate for me to see?” And they would think, and they would say, “Well, I don’t know, Pastor, it’s a little sexy and has some violence.” Not at all getting the irony of it, but that’s all right.

So you can be like those YouTube commenters, and any commenters, and people that – and you know these people – always got something negative to say. And they were right there at Pentecost, weren’t they. “Oh, they’re just drunk. They’re just drunk. God’s not doing anything. There’s nothing special going on here other than they’re drunk.” And what would that be today? Well, maybe drunk. But you know what I think it would be today? “Oh, that’s just fake news. That’s fake news. That didn’t happen. I got it from QAnon there was no Pentecost. All those people with the tongues of flame, paid actors. Those tongues of flame, papier-mâché. I’m telling you, I heard it on the news channel.” Yeah. It’s absolutely true, not true. People can do that about what God is doing in the world. Their reactions can go beyond amazed and perplexed into confusion, into denial, into saying, oh, it’s all drunk, it’s all made up, it’s all fake news.

What did we go through this time? During the pandemic we had Black Lives Matter. That was amazing, to see that come up and to see the people witness to what they are putting up with and the death that they were suffering. And you heard people that were amazed and perplexed saying, “That went on with black people? I can’t believe that happened.” But there’s a video. And then you had people say, “Oh, my gosh, that’s fake news, that’s made up. They’re all drunk.” We had that, too, didn’t we.

And what about the MeToo movement? Something about not working all day and not going out all day got these things going somehow. The MeToo movement where women actually tried to tell men what they put up with every day. All the comments they get. All the little aggressions they get. All the things they’ve got to put up with. All the little lists they’ve got to do to stay safe that men don’t even think about. The MeToo movement. And what happened? Some were amazed and perplexed, saying, “What does this mean?” And others say, “Nah, they’re making too much out of all this, it’s politically correct.” You know what’s another word for politically correct? Compassionate. Compassion. Oh, you’re just being politically correct. They can just switch that around, say you’re just being compassionate to people that aren’t like you.

So what’s the solution? Well, Peter has it. Peter doesn’t come off too well in Luke. I don’t know if you know this. But I’ll tell you now, Luke was buddies with Paul. Paul and Peter, not the best of friends. Peter was more let’s everybody be Jews, plus Paul was we’re not doing any more of that Jew stuff. And they kind of got into this. And Luke was writing Acts, and he was on Paul’s camp. But in this one time Peter seems to get it, according to Luke Acts. And he says, “They’re not drunk. It’s only 9:00 o’clock in the morning.” I know some people that that wouldn’t stop. But you do? Anybody? That seemed to be persuasive back then. It’s only 9:00 o’clock in the morning. They’re not drunk.

But this is what God is doing. God has done this. God has given voice to the people that have been silent. God has given voice that we can hear the people that we exterminated. God has given voice to the people that are no longer part of this community or even of the world. God has given voice to them. And it’s what God has said all along, that the daughters and sons will prophesize, the old and young would do it. It’s all about God. You know you’ve heard about both-and-ism, bothism. You know, it goes, well, we do both sides. Well, there’s the other side. Well, you know, some say this and some say that. What’s the answer to all that both-and? Even if the other side is just crazy, divorced from any kind of reality, we’ve got to have both sides.

And what does that leave? Well, that’s he said/she said. Well, that’s two things going together, and you don’t know which one to go. I’ll tell you how to fix it. You fix it like Peter did. You don’t do both sides, you do God’s side. That’s what Peter said. Peter didn’t pick a side. He says, “I’m on the side of God.” This is what God is doing in the work. So you look at Black Lives Matter. You look at the MeToo movement. You look at any kind of movement or thing. You don’t say, well, some people say this, some people say that. You go and say, “What does God say? What does God want us to do? What is God speaking to us?”

You don’t have to pick a side. You already did by coming here. You picked God’s side. Do you think God wants people to be treated differently based upon the color of their skin? Based upon their heritage or their race? You think God wants that? No. You think God wants women to be harassed, to be afraid, to have to watch out for themselves all the time, to be taking choice between harassment and career advancement, or harassment and their own lives? Is that something God would want? No.

Pentecost is about the gift of the spirit, the gift of the spirit that allows us to listen to voices that have long been silenced, by society, by the world, by culture, by the church. And we can either be amazed and perplexed and saying, “What does this mean? What is God saying to us here?” Or we could say, “Fake news, they’re all drunk, continue on as normal.”

Some of the wonderful things in the church have opened up. People have got the experience of being homebound. Every church member in America got a little taste of what it’s like, of not being able to go to church on Sunday, of what it’s like to be homebound. I hope that we’re amazed and confused by that, and we say, what does this mean going forward? What can we do to help all the people that can’t come to church because of physical limitations, by distance, by employment.

Or maybe they just don’t like to be hugged. Oh, my gosh, I don’t like to be hugged. I endure being hugged. I’ve got issues. I pay someone to listen to it twice a month so you don’t have to. But what a wonderful thing it was to go to church and know I’m not being hugged. I don’t like to be hugged by people I don’t feel trust and safe and know for, I don’t know, 20, 30 years. We all got a taste of that. I hope we don’t forget. I hope we’re able to say, what does it mean to be a person that can’t be touched or can’t get a hug from a stranger, but still wants to come to church? What is it like to be a person that can’t leave their home? What is it like to be a person that through no fault of their own loses their job?

And I hope we don’t go back to saying, oh, that’s just fake news. They’re all drunk. We can just go on with what we’re doing. I hope we don’t waste these two years where we had a tremendous spiritual opportunity to be with people that we don’t see, that we ignore, that we’ve exterminated, that we have sidelined. We all had that experience during the pandemic. We had most of our, well, we had some of our privileges taken away.

That’s what it’s like, to be in a Pentecost moment, when everything is turned around, and of all the choices you have, I beg you, choose to say, what does this mean? What is God telling us here? What does this mean for the Church and for our lives? How can we listen to the people we’ve ignored, that we’ve thrown out, that we’ve taken out, not just from countries and racial groups in the Bible, but from the MeToo movement, from women, from people of color, from the unemployed, from homebound. From mothers. Do you know how difficult, most of you may know how difficult it is to be a mother and have a job? And how it’s not an issue at all to be a father and have a job?

One of the things that came out from that is that jobs are a lot more flexible now. People aren’t doing what they used to be doing. You’ve got to be here from this hour to this hour. You’ve got to move here. You’ve got to take this job here. You can only work here. Now everybody has a little higher expectations. Why do I have to be in the office every day? Why can’t I have flexible hours? I’ve got parents. I’ve got kids I’ve got to take care of. And we can do that. We’ve proved it. I hope we don’t waste that.

I think God was telling us many things during the pandemic. Well, maybe one of the things was, hey, take a look at the way you’re living. And people got away from the rat race, from working every day, from grinding out a living. And they looked around, and they said, you know, it’s not right that we’re treated this way. And we need to tell other people that. I hope we listen because listening is what Pentecost is about. Amen.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Here is a video of the version of this sermon given at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Reno, Nevada in May 2022.

What Does It Mean

Straining to Forget

Straining to Forget

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

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

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

 

Sermons also available free on iTunes

“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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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Straining to Forget

Christmas Parking

 Making Room for Christmas People

Christmas Parking
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

Audio from worship at 9:30 AM Worship Service November 7,2021
at Christ Presbyterian Church in Gardnerville, Nevada

I am wearing a mask so the deep breathing is not a sign of illness
but a sign of caring for others.

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

Luke 3:1-6

 

Sermons also available free on iTunes

Well, it’s infrastructure week in the Lectionary. That was a joke. Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, mountains made low, valleys filled up, crooked made straight. Infrastructure; right? And just like real-life infrastructure, you’ve got problems. I mean, we might say it’s bad, but it’s not that bad. We’ve got problems. They say it’s too expensive. We don’t like it when things are disrupted. We’ve got detours and construction. Who’s all this for? Who needs a roundabout? I love them. Some people hate them. Infrastructure week.

In Carson City they’ve got a couple million dollars to continue their complete street program. I don’t know if you know about this. Maybe some of you are old enough to remember. Probably not. But back before there were automobiles, the streets were for everyone. Did you know that? It was for walking, and horses and carriages, and vendors and carts, and everybody would use a street. But when the cars came along, there’s a whole campaign talking about, you know, jaywalkers. “Jay” was a slang and derogatory term for somebody that didn’t know how city lives lived. And soon the streets went back just for cars. You’d better get out of their way. You know, pedestrians, pedestrians were getting killed in New York City, and their solution was

“Get out of the way.” Streets are just for cars.

Some of that’s changed over the years. You know, that Complete Streets program, that is to actually make streets for everyone again. There are going to be walking paths, bicycle paths, you know, actual bicycle lanes that are more than a paint and a prayer. Yeah, it’s all bicycle lanes are; you know? They’re just a, [indiscernible], oh, Lord, don’t keep the car [indiscernible]. Actual curbs and things. For people to walk, crosswalks and those curb cuts with the annoying bumps for, you know, the blind and the hard sighted. Maybe little beeps with the crosswalk so people can hear if they can’t see. Actual signs to stop the cars. Crosswalks where pedestrians have the right of way. Maybe flashing lights so they could actually stop traffic to walk across. Prepare the way of the Lord where all flesh will see salvation.

It’s been a huge change in our lives. The thoughts about what streets are for, from just adding more and more lanes so more and more cars could get where they’re going faster and faster, which just brings more cars, more traffic, more jams, more problems. Infrastructure week.

How about that handicap parking? You probably remember when that came up. Remember handicap parking when it first started? It was a request, a polite thing. Please, please keep this for handicapped folks. You know? And then, you know, everybody was parking there. So they got these handicap placards in license plates and things; you know? And then people still parked there. So then now you look at it, they have humungous fines, and they’ll tow your car. And we finally were able to make way for handicapped folks to park.

Have you been to Home Depot? Have you seen there’s vet parking there? There is. There’s special parking for vets. Some places there’s stork parking for people that are expecting a child and maybe aren’t walking or running as well as they’re supposed to. You’ve got a 10-pounder coming on the way, every step counts, buddy. You know.

What would be Christmas parking? Have you thought about that? What would be a sign for Christmas parking? I kind of get it on the front. And it’s actually, this is a legit sign that says “Handicap ramp ahead,” in case you were wondering. But I kind of thought that, you know, in the mountains and the valleys and making them accessible, I kind of thought that might be the sign for Christmas parking. You know? We’re making mountains low, raising up valleys, making a crooked way straight.

Who would Christmas parking be for? We hear that the good news, it’s not for the able-bodied young white male, but for those who dwell in deep darkness, for those with sadness. Imagine if we had Christmas parking for those that were facing the mountains in the way, or those that were in the valleys, even the pits of despair. What if we made the way straight for them, or flat for them? Even though it wasn’t our mountain. Even though we weren’t in a valley. What would it be like? Too often I see people fix the problems that are out there, the people that are in the deep dip bits of valleys, and people that are facing mountains of problems and challenges, and just say, “Well, they’re not there.” Or “They should know better.”

You ever been – it’s not quite yet, but later on in the winter, you ever been driving around town, and then you see a car parked, and it’s got like a foot of snow on the roof? Have you ever seen that? There’s no snow anywhere in town, but the car has a foot of snow. You know, first of all you think, you know, you could brush that off. That’d be a good idea. But, you know, you have a foot of snow, but there’s no snow anywhere else. And I’m thinking people would say, “Well, that’s just fake snow because I didn’t experience, I don’t have any problem with snow. That’s just fake snow. That’s weather crisis actors. Can’t have problems. I don’t have problems. They don’t have problems.”

Well, I try to think, oh, my gosh, someone had a lot of snow where they’re at. They probably had a hard time getting down here. What would it be like if we had Christmas parking for all flesh? You know, that’s what it says. It says all flesh will see salvation. Not the deserving, thank God. Not the ones who work for it. All flesh. And you see how you prepare for this. John went out, and he didn’t say, let me affirm your [ware] and give you thanks and gratefulness for the life you’ve been living. John went out and said, “I’m preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Oh, my gosh. Would he be in trouble today. Because we all know that if you dare to suggest that there is something wrong with the life that we live, we’re very angry. We want it banned. We want it out of here. You are teaching hatred to our children. You can’t possibly say anything we have done in our lives is wrong. We’ve done nothing wrong. That was all in the past, John. Don’t you dare come out here and say we have anything to repent for. You see what happens if you don’t repent. You can’t get forgiveness. It’s repentance for forgiveness, according to John. It’s only then that the mountains can be made low, the valleys raised up, the crooked paths made straight. And only then is there Christmas parking for all salvation, for all flesh. Wow, huh?

What are some of the mountains and valleys that are in the way of Christ coming? Have you ever thought about here we are, 2021, you think you’re tired of the pandemic and the mask. How about tired of waiting for Jesus? I mean, every year we throw a big party, and every year he doesn’t show up. We spend a whole month getting ready for him. Preparation, advent, he’s coming, he’s coming, and nothing. Why doesn’t he come? Why doesn’t Jesus come? Well, are there still mountains? Are there still valleys? Are there still crooked paths? Yeah. Yeah, there still is. I think Jesus might be saying, why haven’t they got that ready for me?

I mean, when Rachel came to visit, you know, oh, my gosh, every piece of furniture in the living room and most in the other rooms were put out to the garage. We had the carpets scrubbed and clean. We’re getting ready for the advent of the girlfriend. We were ready. I hope. I think. My adult daughter Rachel was whispering tips to me over the first weekend. God bless, you know how well that goes over when your kid tells you how you should, you know.

But, you know, just like those John the Baptist, I do have some things to repent for, some things I do need forgiveness. And it’s not their fault they call that up. What are some mountains that we have? How about the mountain of student debt? Let’s just pick that one. No one here has got student debt. Maybe? Anybody? No? All right. I went to college in 1977. Now it’s 2021. What percentage increase in college has happened since I went to college? Anybody got a guess how much more it is now than then?

A percentage, let’s go percentage increase.

ATTENDEE: Probably three times.

REV. CHRISTY: Three times, 300%, would be 300%, yeah, yeah. Now, strangely enough, the minimum wage nationwide has gone about 300% up. Nevada, 400% up since then. California, 500% since then. Okay. So those are that. College, thanks for answering, Jim. College has gone up 1,424.23%. 1,424.23%. Now, I don’t think that all that expense is an additional 40 years of history. I don’t think you can put that in there. So if it was 20,000 back then, it’d be $304,846.53 now. That’s from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a mountain. That’s a mountain. And then the minimum wage, I think it’s a valley. People are in the pit. Do you know that the minimum wage – how many, anybody, Jim, you want another one? How much was the first minimum wage? That was going to ruin business, destroy the economy? Anybody remember? What?

ATTENDEE: I think it was $5, wasn’t it?

REV. CHRISTY: No, no, it was 25 cents, 25 cents an hour. That was going to ruin the country.

ATTENDEE: That’s what I got for babysitting.

REV. CHRISTY: Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, back in Roosevelt, FDR? No? No, okay. So 25 cents an hour. No, that 25 cents is a little bit different now. And since then it’s only – since ‘77 it’s only gone up – it’s gone up. It’s gone up three, 400% depending on the state you were, 500. But that’s a valley. Can’t afford college. Can’t afford a house. My kids don’t have a house. They don’t plan on having a house. They don’t see how. They’re hard workers. They’re good people. My daughter’s a teacher. My son works for BMW. That’s a valley. That’s a pit. We mostly didn’t avoid it.

How about the valley of medical debt? Some of you might relate to that. How about that? Do you know we’re the only industrial civilized nation in the world, you know, we’re the greatest in the world. We’re the only ones you can go bankrupt with a major illness. My friend Eric, they don’t know how he’s going to pay his hospital bill. The longer he lives, the more he’s going to wish he didn’t, I think. That’s a pit. That’s a valley. That’s a dark place.

And on the other hand there’s a mountain. You know, you look at the pit of how much medical debt comes, you know, you don’t have – people don’t understand there’s no medical debt in any other country. Nobody has a GoFundMe in Canada to pay for their cancer treatment. Why can’t we figure that out? We’re great. We’re rich. We’re smart. We’ve got great hospitals, doctors, medicines. We could figure it out. We could move that mountain. Maybe one is because – we could raise that valley. Excuse me.

The mountain I’m thinking about is the mountain of profits from drugs. Have you been following the drug crisis? That’s a mountain. Raising the price of insulin through the roof. And how about all the Oxycontin and the painkiller and the drugs? Millions and billions of dollars. Get people hooked legally by prescription. That’s obscene. And why is it okay and accepted that the seniors get on buses and drive to Canada – before pandemic – to buy their drugs? Why is that okay? Why do we think, oh, that’s a great idea, great thing to do?

The world is dying of pandemics. And we’ve got drugs to fight it. Oh, but the patents. We can’t let other countries make it for their people. We’ve got patents. Just because the government paid for the research doesn’t mean the companies shouldn’t have their dollar. And so now we’re wearing masks. And we’re going to continue to wear masks because there’s going to be all sorts of craziness going on all over the world because they’re not going to get vaccinated, and it’s going to mutate, and we’re going to go through the Greek alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet, all the alphabets. That’s a pit. That’s a valley. And according to our scripture, Christ is saying, when you going to get that fixed? It’s infrastructure week, friends. Fix up the road so I can come.

Aren’t you glad this is my last sermon here? Whew. But you know what? We’ve done mountains. I don’t want to tell you that we can’t do stuff as a people, as a nation. We can do stuff. We set our mind to it, we can do it. How many people have polio? That used to be horrible. That used to take down a President. That used to be lifelong affliction. You used to never recover, used to be in an iron lung, which is now, you know, a ventilator. But back then you had a big old tank that you lived in. You were struggling to breathe. Finally they closed swimming pools, drained pools. They didn’t know what to do.

The vaccine came out, and every child in America sent dimes to the White House to get rid of polio. Chipping away that horrible, horrible, horrible disease. The vaccine was mandated, and people were glad to get it. And polio’s gone. People don’t have to be stumbling on the road because they have polio. That road is made straight. We can do that.

Remember drunk driving? Remember that? There used to not be any laws against drunk driving. It was pretty recent. Used to be able to get sober by driving, by just saying, “I’m good to drive,” and then you’re good. And you drive. Wasn’t any laws against driving drunk. It was accepted. I credit mostly MADD, you know, Mothers Against Drunk Driving? They banded together, said enough. There’s too many people dying. Enough of this. And they started shadowing politicians and judges and made it impossible for them to ignore that great deep pit of drunk drivers killing their loved ones, their children. Whatever you think about laws or enforcement or all that, it’s gone way down. Maybe it’ll be gone sometime. And I dare say that it’s no longer socially acceptable to drink and drive.

What about smoking? Remember smoking? Remember smoking in public places and restaurants and theaters? In planes? I remember being on a plane, I couldn’t see the plane. I couldn’t see who was sitting in the plane. It was just a big cloud in the back. My dad went to a restaurant, he was pretty sensitive to the smells of cigarettes, asked for the nonsmoking table. And so here it was. It was like all these tables were smoking, and then there was one right here that was nonsmoking, and they sat him here. And he goes, what was that? I want the table downwind of the nonsmoking table. Remember that?

I remember going with some people to a theater, to a movie, and we went in, they go, where do you want to sit? And he looked around and says, where’s the nonsmoking section? I was so thrown by that because by then there was nonsmoking in our state for theaters. We got rid of that. Whatever you think about laws and government and all that, we moved that mountain. The servers and workers that were in that space eight, 12, 10 hours a day, whatever, they don’t have to breathe that smoke anymore. Oh, yeah, people talk about their rights and freedoms and all that. Just like they talk about how upsetting it is to have a detour when there’s a perfectly good street there they tore up for some improvements. Infrastructure week is not without cost, not without inconvenience, not without actual problems in trying to get things better for most people.

Remember the seniors buying dog food, in the store anyhow? The cashier says, “Oh, what’s the name of your dog?” And they couldn’t tell her because the dog food was for them. I think that story helped make Social Security a little bit more secure. Used to be okay. Hey, don’t have money, you know, you’re old, I guess you just die somewhere. But we moved that mountain. Whatever you think about, is it adequate, did they [indiscernible], we worked on that, made room for folks.

So we can do that. It’s painful. It’s difficult. It’s controversial. It requires this inconvenience and problems as we have to go around detours as the infrastructure’s being upgraded. But you know what comes, you know, if we can move those mountains, if we can fill in those pits, if we can make the paths straight, it will be Christmas parking for all flesh to see salvation. And Christ will come. Finally. You moved everything out. You got everything ready for me. I’ll come in.

Advent is getting ready for Jesus to come. Friends, we’ve got a lot to do. Let’s hope he comes. Stays. Maybe even buys us dinner. You know. Because we’ve made the path straight for all flesh to see salvation. We’ve taken down mountains so all people can live without crushing debt, medical or college. We’ve raised up the valleys and the pits so people aren’t killed again when the medical bills come. When they look at their paycheck, realize, oh, I have to get the third job.

Thank you all for all that you’ve done. Thank you for being a witness that there’s a different way of living in the world by being here today, and by living your life as you are. By doing things that don’t profit you personally as much as they help others. For all that I’m very thankful, and I am blessed to know you, and know that you’re down here doing good work in Gardnerville and the world. So friends, keep moving them mountains, keep filling them valleys, keep straightening those paths. And we will welcome all flesh to salvation and make Christmas parking available for all. Amen.

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Christmas Parking

Going Out of Business

 Greater Service Springs from Lesser Certainity

Going Out of Business
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

Audio from worship at 9:30 AM Worship Service November 7,2021
at Christ Presbyterian Church in Gardnerville, Nevada

I am wearing a mask so the deep breathing is not a sign of illness
but a sign of caring for others.

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

 John 18:33-37

 

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I’m wearing a thousand-dollar suit, standing on the accelerator of a quarter-million-dollar ride weighing 20 tons, trying to beat death in a race. Oh, and I can’t see a thing. The fog is so dense it’s like being in the middle of a white night. I remember this as a time I considered what business do I have being a firefighter?

Now, we may not know about kings, maybe Burger King or Carole King. But we do know about business. I think it’s helpful to look at this scripture, not about examination of how Jesus is and is not a king, but about what is Jesus’s business. We know about business. Everywhere from “That’s none of your business,” or “That’s my business,” to “The church has no business addressing anything of controversy or importance, or in contemporary thought and talk,” be it race, economics, schooling, dress codes. It’s not the church’s business. Is it?

Jesus seems to be trying to redefine what it means to be king. He both says “No, I’m not,” and “Yes, I am,” or “Not in that way.” This is a very helpful thing for us to consider in the time of pandemic. Because of all the times when we do not know where we’re going and what’s going next, in redefining what it is to be church, what it is to be Christian, now is the time. Is what is church? What is church business? We might have had a clue before the pandemic. We might have been able to say, well, the church business is to have a worship service on Sunday. The church business is to support a pastor to give comfort and challenge to the people. That’s church business.

But you all know that when the pandemic hit, you guys stopped having church services. You had to redefine what church was. You used email to connect with one another. And in a kind of a really nice spiritual technical meld, you said – Carl was saying could you all get together in your own homes and read this email, pray these prayers, sing these hymns, consider the sermon separately together in your own homes. And for a long time that was church business.

Business is difficult for us to take over as a church. If you ever heard that the church has to be run with the business, you might be thinking, well, that is just limited to generally accepted accounting principles, or that’s just limited to filling out the forms and obeying zoning laws and doing everything that a business needs to do to survive. It’s about being a good fiduciary responsibility and making sure that the money is accounted for and that the accounting is done right and that the offering is changed and that the bills are paid and the forms are filled out. Right before service I filled out another form.

So the church like a business we’d know about. But what kind of business are we in? That is a more helpful thought than what kind of king is Jesus. More and more church has been run like a business where we try to figure out exactly what our objective is, specific measurable, attainable, relevant, time-related objectives. And then we figure out the cost risk benefitting analysis. Maybe we have brainstorms. We look for expertise. We gather up data. We solve problems just like a business.

Well, that doesn’t work when everything’s changing so fast. That doesn’t work when what did happen last week, last month, last year is not guaranteed and almost certainly guaranteed not to be the same as next year. And all that process focuses on us and our expertise and our knowledge. So many churches fall into this business trap of getting the expert in. The first automatic response of any church that is looking for a minister is to say we need a pastor to bring in new people. They don’t really mean new people. They mean the same people as there are now, just 20 years younger, or 40 years younger. If you could just get us, but 40 years younger, in fact you can make us 40 years younger, that’d be okay because then nothing would have to change.

But that’s not a good way to go forward. Sure, it’s problem-solving. It’s objective. It’s brainstorming. It’s expertise-driven. It’s what everything that they teach you in business school, everything that they teach you as a way to be successful in the United States of America, salute business. But it doesn’t really serve us before or even especially during the pandemic.

Susan Beaumont wrote a really good book that is very good and somewhere here. But anyhow, ah, oh, that’s the synod executive. I brought her to help me with props. I love this. “How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going.” How to lead when you don’t know where you’re going. You know, and I’m back in that fire truck, and my wife didn’t know about this till today, so don’t tell her, but I’m in that fire truck, I cannot see where I’m going. I literally cannot see. The fog in Ohio is so thick you can almost taste it. It is right there. And I’m in a 20-ton fire truck, standing on the accelerator, racing death to the accident scene.

Because you know you get an hour from accident to hospital. You get one hour. That’s the golden hour. If you want someone to live, you’ve got to get them to the hospital in an hour. That’s just the way it is. Well, you say one hour, okay. Where we lived, the hospital was 40 minutes away. So we had 20 minutes to get there and get them in an ambulance. Twenty minutes. Not an hour. How do you go race and beat death when you can’t see where you’re going? Go faster. You get a bigger fire truck. Get more training. None of these help if you can’t see where you’re going. You don’t know what’s coming up in the road.

I remember asking John Love, strangely enough, front seat of the fire engine, Presbyterian minister and the funeral director. We showed up on an accident scene, and people just about had a heart attack. “I’m not that bad. They’re coming for me.” No, no, we’re not here for that. What do you do when you can’t see where you’re going? Going faster doesn’t help. Having more equipment doesn’t help. Having more training doesn’t help. Susan Beaumont says that, you know, maybe we’ve got to get out of this decision-making kind of mindset, where we look to ourselves for solutions to the problems. Where we define the problems by what we are and what we see and the things we see. Where we have meetings.

Have you ever noticed we have meetings that it’s like, you ever been to California, going down here? And there’s that little building, you know, and you have to drive through, and they’re checking for produce? You’ve seen that little building. And I’m thinking what in the world? They’ve never stopped us. I don’t know, maybe because of our skin color? I don’t know what’s going on. But and you just drive on through. And I’m thinking, well, that was ridiculous. That has nothing to do with where I’m going, what I’m doing, and my purpose. And I kind of think sometimes that’s like prayers before and after meetings. You know, people, come on, we’ve got to do a prayer, and then we can get through to California and do what we’re going to do.

What if we didn’t do that? What if the doing what we’re going to do was a little tiny bit at the beginning and the end of a meeting? And maybe the meeting wasn’t a meeting to decide, but a meeting, as Susan puts out, to discern God’s will, to listen to the spirit instead of the experts. To approach our time together with openness instead of advocacy, with looking for community instead of champions of a cause. That we approached it with expectation instead of expertise. That we sought completeness, wholeness, instead of the optimal solution to a set problem. What if we counted, not clock ticks, but heartbeats? That’s for all your poetry folks here, but what about the nuts-and-bolts people here? How does this work?

It’s hard to do because we keep slipping into decision-making. And decision-making is needed and useful, but it’s not a be-all and end-all, especially if the church, especially if we don’t know what’s going on. How does this discernment work? Well, it’s taking time. It’s stillness. It’s listening. It’s deciding not to decide. It’s changing meetings into retreats. You know, what’s the purpose of the retreat? What’s the outcomes of the retreat? What’s the measurable products of a retreat? Susan says that in her things, one of the things she does, she has meetings where they covenant together that they will not make decisions during the meeting. Instead they’re there to listen to the spirit and be attentive and be prayerful. It sounds crazy just because we’re not used to it.

One of the exercises I really like, and this may be concrete enough for you to decide, think about what she’s talking about and what others are talking about, and looking toward discernment as a way to figure out what to do as a church in these uncertain times as opposed to decisions and looking to the business model. And she calls it “shedding.” And shedding is a lot of things. It’s when you put your expertise aside. And what she invites everyone to do, and maybe it’s a requirement, I don’t know how she rolls, but what she says is that whatever the issue, problem, challenge is before the group, she invites everyone to write down what they’re absolutely certain of, what they absolutely know, their core understanding of the problem, to write that down on a piece of paper, their answer.

And then she invites them to fold it and place it in the offering plate. And she puts the basket there in front of the table and says, “Here are our certainties. And we’re going to leave them there in the basket during our time together. Now, they’re still there. They’re not erased or lost or negated. But they’re just going to be set aside here. We’re going to keep them safe right here. We’re all going to watch them. And at the end of our time together, you’re welcome to pick them back up. You know, it’s nothing wrong or evil. But just for this time together we’re going to set aside our certainties that we advocate and believe and try to make happen. We’re going to set them aside and listen to what God is saying, what spirit is moving among us.” Weird. Kind of feels like Pilate must have felt talking to Jesus. What are you talking about, Jesus? Are you a king or not? Why are you being so difficult? It’s a simple question. Why can’t you decide?

You’re in a great time of change where you’ve got to decide what to do. I hope you decide not to decide. I hope you decide to discern what to do. To put aside what you think has to happen. Oh, we’ve got to have a great preacher, a great minister. Got to have Christy. Right, mm-hmm. Yeah. Put it in there. Put those aside. You know? We’ve got to have someone here to get the youth back. We’ve got to have someone back here to establish Sunday School. We’ve got to have someone, I don’t know, I’m just saying these things out. I don’t know whatever certainty you have about what you need and what needs to happen. We’ve got to get back to that garage because that overhead crane is totally underused. Got to get that gone. I read that every time I come here. So put those aside.

And then, you know, when you put your certainties aside, and your biases aside, and you expertise aside, when you put those all in, there’s room for the spirit. And that’s kind of the kingship Christ was talking about. I think. I think that was a business he was about. I can’t decide. I’m hoping more light will emerge. But it’s important to be open to that. And as long as we decide that we’re going to decide, you know, your problems and ratios and data and brainstorming and cost benefit analysis and all the great tools of business, we’re looking to ourselves and our expertise instead of to God and spirits moving.

Well, how does that work out in the world? What’s an example? I belong to a service club up the road. And as many clubs, they were disrupted by the pandemic. I mean, this is a club that was like the nightmare of germ spreading. I mean, we had – it was in the rules. You got fined. You had to shake hands with everybody in the room. You had to. We had to go around and sit together. We had to – we were singing together. We were in the same room together. We couldn’t do any of that. We had board meetings. We couldn’t have board meetings where we discussed what to do and how to do it. Couldn’t do it. We had some folks that they couldn’t come – no one could come in person. Some people couldn’t do technology, and what are we going to do?

Well, I’ll tell you what this club did. Three people, three very competent, three very successful, three very expertise business people did it all. We wound up meeting at the park. They set up the park. They bought all the food. Charged the club. It was all ready for it. The first one, me being an idiot, I brought food. And they go, oh, we don’t need that. We bought it all. Oh, okay. And so slowly over the 18 months these three people did all the work of the club. They got a debit card because it was easier to bill to the club if you had a debit card. You didn’t have to go through all the reimbursement from the treasurer. And the treasurer wasn’t coming out of her house because she was immunocompromised. And so she couldn’t even make the meetings, and she didn’t have tech to be in person. They got their names on all the accounts.

I used to do the emails. I did emails out for our big fundraiser, our big thing. I did a couple, 300 emails. And so I was asking about is it time to send another email, goes no, no, we took the list, and we had our office staff do it. It’s all done. And they did a great job, those three. It was done efficiently, purposefully, and perfectly.

And then the new president came, long-time member of the club. And at the board meeting he said, “You know, we never authorized you all to do this. We never said it was okay to have a debit card. We never said it was all right to change the names on all the accounts to you three people. We never said that you could take over this. We never said you could do that.” And he got angry. How dare they go against the perfect business plan? How dare they say there was something wrong with the perfect complete work that they did? It’s successful. They kept the club going. They made money. They kept dues. So they all quit and took half the club with them. Because they saved us.

The new president, what do you think happened? The new president resigned, groveled back, asked them to come back saying, oh, it’s a big misunderstanding, let’s have a meeting, go through all that. Well, maybe some of that happened. But what happened with me, you know, he talked to me, and he said, “You know what they didn’t get, what they didn’t understand? This is a service club. We’re not a business. We’re not here to do things efficiently and purposefully and make everything exactly the way it should. We’re not here to hire people to do service and work, but they had their office staff doing all the work. We’re here for this person to do emails, for that person to bring the food, for this person to contact the businesses, for this person to do that.

“And together we do good. And we become better people. And we make relationship with other people because all of us, no one’s doing it all. Everybody’s doing their part and doing a little part. And sure, it’s not perfect. It’s not the stellar achievement of a for-profit organization with a dedicated staff. But that’s not what we’re here for. We’re a service club so people, all the people can give service and do good for the community and for each other. That’s what they forgot. We don’t hire it done, even though it could be done even better. We do it for our souls and for our community, as well as for the people we help.”

Now, there’s a club that decided not to be excellent, that decided not to solve all their problems in the best possible way, according to the business model. There’s a club that made a conscious choice, a costly choice. If we’re going to be a service club, everyone’s going to be having opportunity to do service, a good average whatever. We’re going to do this together. We’re going to go forward together. We’re going to learn. We’re going to make mistakes. But we’re going to get better. We’re going to help each other and ourselves.

I think that’s what church should be. Not about perfection, not about what we think is tradition or what we have pride in or what we remember from the past, where we seek to have the people look to the community. But a group of people getting together, stumbling at times, but lifting one another up, saying we’re here for goodness and for God. We’re here to get better, to do good, and to be better.

And that’s what I think Pilate missed, too, about how Jesus reigned, not with ordering of things to do, but with the changing of hearts and souls and minds. And that is church business. Amen.

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Going Out of Business