ExtraChristy - Podcast

Testify Testifya sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service February 16, 2025at St Peter’s Episcopal Churchedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. John 8:12-19 Sermons also available free on iTunes My pastor growing up, Dr. Paul Bauer, said “Sermonettes are for Christianettes.” That was probably his only joke in 20 years, but it was a good one. Good morning, Episcopalians. They’ve got me tied to this mic today, so you’re welcome. So today I’ve got scriptures, I love the scriptures you give me there. Define the relationship of Jesus Christ and God the Father without straying from Episcopalian beliefs or violating your Presbyterian doctrine, and do it in 10 minutes. Thanks. We’ll pass on that. I mean, there have been wars fought over this, and over a single Greek letter. We’ll pass on that. What we won’t pass on is the opportunity the scripture gives us to talk about testimony. Testimony. We need more testimony in this world. We don’t need more arguing. We don’t need more fact-checking. We don’t need more gotcha. We don’t need any snarky answers to people’s sincerely held beliefs. What we could use is testimony. Did you hear it in Jesus’s saying, “You don’t know where I came from or where I’m going?” If you know where you came from, if you know where you are going, you have a testimony. You have something to say. And I don’t know if any of you have been preachers, weekly preachers for 40 years. But I’ll tell you a secret. When you’re preaching every Sunday, everything that happens is sermon-fodder. You know, everything goes in the old chipper and comes out, I tell you. And so I was thinking about testimony and what does it mean to – and where is the good testimony and where things are. And would you believe it, in my inbox comes testimony from the Episcopalians. Woo-hah. And about 20 other denominations, including Presbyterian, about sanctuary. Now, you all know how hard it is to keep quiet in a sanctuary. You know how hard it is to keep me quiet in the sanctuary before service. Well, I’ll tell you, you Episcopalians work even harder on sanctuary. For over a quarter of the century, sanctuary has been kept in churches, synagogues, religious gathering places around the country, saying, hey, arrest people somewhere else than in church, at services, on a Sunday. But no longer. No longer. And that’s what the Episcopalians testified. Listen to this. Sean Rowe, presiding bishop. In the Kingdom of God as we understand it, immigrants and refugees are not at the edges, fearful and alone. Their struggles reveal the heart of God. We cannot worship freely if some of us live in fear. Sean Rowe, Episcopal bishop, presiding bishop. Even Jesus himself identifies as “stranger.” We must proclaim, particularly in this time, that we are all welcome in the places of worship, that all have – that all are welcome in places of worship. This seems a basic human right, one that we are called by God to serve. In the first week of the current administration I see he arrested over 4,500 people, including 1,000 people in a Sunday immigration enforcement blitz. At least one of these – this is from the court case that your church joined with the church I serve, and 21 other churches in testimony. And at least one of these enforcement actions occurred at a church in Georgia during the worship service. According to news coverage, an usher standing at the church entrance saw a group of ICE agents outside, locked the door. The agent said that they were there to arrest Wilson Velasquez, who had traveled to the United States from Honduras with his wife and three children in 2022. Immediately after crossing the border, they turned themselves in to U.S. authorities, requested asylum. They were given a court date, released after federal agents put a GPS tracking monitor on Velasquez’s ankle. After settling in suburban life, the family joined the Pentecostal Church, where they worshipped several times a week and helped with the music. They were listening to the pastor’s sermon when ICE agents arrived to arrest Velasquez. Although Velasquez had attended all his required check-ins at the Atlanta ICE office and had a court date scheduled to present his asylum case to a judge, ICE agents arrested him, explaining that they were simply looking for people with ankle bracelets. The pastor, Luis Ortiz, tried to reassure his congregation. But he said he could see the fear and tears in their faces. And if you’re upset that people are talking in sanctuary, imagine how upset you’d be if someone came in and arrested someone during the sermon. That should be an announcement every Sunday morning. But we’re not saying you’re bad, or you’re awful, or you vote for this person, or it’s all your fault or blame. We’re saying where we have been, where we came from, and where we are going, we know that, so we have a testimony. And here’s the Episcopal Church’s testimony. And God bless you all. This is in the filing of the United States court system. Because you all know where you’ve been, and you all know where you’re going, and you have a testimony. Plaintiff, the Episcopal Church. Recognizing the Bible’s repeated calls for God’s people to embrace the foreigner as a way of extending the work that is the heart of God in every time and place, the Episcopal Church, champions and advocates for humane policies toward migrants. And many dioceses, parish, and Episcopal networks provide resources, support, and care for asylum seekers, undocumented immigrants, refugees, and other migrant communities. Testimony. Testimony. If you don’t know where you’ve been and don’t know where you’re going, you don’t have a testimony. But Christians know where we’ve been. We read the scriptures every Sunday. Hopefully more than every Sunday. We live by them. And we know where we’re going. We’re going to the Kingdom of God, and we’re living in the Kingdom of God right here. We are not living in Empire. We do not serve the Empire. We serve the Kingdom of God. We know where we’ve been. We know where we’re going. We know what our passport says. Our passport says “Kingdom of God.” Not Empire. And so we have a testimony. You don’t have to argue with someone because they’re just not listening. They’re just waiting for their turn to argue with you and go back and forth. We need to have conversations. We need to find common ground. We need to go forward. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But that’s not going to come from arguing. It’s going to come from testimony based on where we come from and where we want to go. Brian, you got that slide up there for me? Here’s a testimony. Here’s a sign that doesn’t say “Vote for this” or “I voted that” or “Don’t blame me, I voted for the other one.” This is what I believe. In this house we believe love is love. Testimony. Black Lives Matter. And if you’re racist, Black Lives Matter Too, because I have to say that or otherwise you’d think that we do a Breast Cancer Awareness or Fundraiser, we’re saying no other cancer matters. Black Lives Matter Too. Science is real. Women’s rights are fundamental. Women’s rights are human rights. No person is illegal. Disability rights are human rights. Healthcare for all. Kindness is everything. That just says what you believe. That’s a testimony based on where you’ve come from and where you’re going. It attacks no one. It should upset no one. It goes, oh, thanks for sharing what you believe. Now, I know you a little better. Some of those things I believe. Maybe we could figure out how to make that a little more true in the greater world. It’s testimony. I brought a prop. My wife made this for me. And I think I’m going to be wearing it more and more. This might be a daily driver. Some people are against rainbows. But this shows where I believe. And I think I’m going to be wearing this shirt. I almost wore it to preach in. You’re welcome. This should threaten no one. This just gives a testimony to what I believe. It’s perfectly okay if you pee next to me. Now, if you want to bring a gun in, I might have an issue with that. But you all can pee next to me. So if you’re upset, you can say, well, at least he didn’t wear the T-shirt the whole time. So I come to thank you. Presbyterian Church is in the pleading, too. Eighty pages, great reading, along with Episcopalians, the spot on the Mennonites. We can almost – we’ve got a couple atheists in there. All testifying. In 1993, America decided that sanctuary was a place not just to keep quiet for a few minutes before worship, but a place where humans that are fearful could come and worship God, and hear the good eternal truth in the gospel without fear of being arrested and hauled off because it’s easy to get them there. Over a quarter of a century ago. I don’t remember changing, that we thought as long as you’re quiet you can arrest people in our services. Testimony. I believe sanctuary is a place where everyone can come and worship without fear of persecution, without fear of that. And you know, folks, I have some privileged folks in my life. And when I start talking about that, they go, oh, you’re talking politics. Oh, you’re just talking – we don’t talk politics. Wilson is now not with his family. He’s taken away from his children and his wife. And I would challenge that person to go and explain to their children that their father is not with them anymore, that he’s in prison, it’s just politics, and they shouldn’t really care that much. Our faith is a lot more than what is comfortable for us and for the people that we can see. Our faith is a faith of the entire world. We believe that Jesus Christ came, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. It’s not a scripture, but that world means cosmos, means everything, all the relationships, and all the people in it, and the plants and the animals, and the people that come and go. That’s what God came for, not just to make my life comfortable. And those I can see not suffering because that’s upsetting. It’s for everyone. So I come here as a wandering Presbyterian to thank the leadership of the Episcopal Church in saying where they come from and where they’re going, and testifying to all that would hear, and many that don’t want to, that this is who we are. This is who we love. And this is where we’re going. And we’re telling everyone. Testify. Amen.

Not My Job Not My Joba sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service January 26, 2025for ZOOM with Lee Vining Presbyterian Churchedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. John 2:1-11 Sermons also available free on iTunes Should the church be run like a business? People tell me that, throughout my career in the ministry in 40 years, and they come in, you know, church has to be run like a business. And they usually don’t know that I have a business administration degree from Grove City College with cum laude. So they think this is news to me, God bless ‘em. And I was wondering, you know, when I’m in a more festive mood, with is almost always, I admit it is a problem, I ask them, well, if church is run like a business, what’s its product? I mean, what is it selling? I mean, that’s basic business that you know your product. What’s a product? You know, it gives them pause because, I mean, you all think of that, I ain’t going to put you on the spot because, you know, it’s like being in the front row at a comedy club, you know. You know you’re going to get picked on if there’s only, like, six of you. So don’t answer out. I’m not putting you on the spot. But what would you say is the church’s business? What’s the product? What are we making? Oh, you’re going to – you’re going to – you’re, yeah, are we making Christians. That’s one of the A-plus answers. I would go A-plus on Christians, disciples, yeah. You know, others would say, you know, Laurie, others would say, well, you’re making worship services. You know, some people say that. Or, well, you’ve got to maintain the building, you know. Or some people would say, you know, you’re feeding the hungry, and Matthew 25, and the thirsty, and you’re doing that stuff. And I don’t know if you’d get agreement from everyone in a room about what the product is for the church, if it was run like a business. And then it gets even more complicated because then you’ve got to say, okay, we’ve got a product, maybe. You would say, well, who’s our customer? What’s our target audience? Who are we working for? And I’m sure Laurie knows the answer. It’s always God. God’s always the correct answer in any children’s message or sermon. Well, some people say God’s the customer. Okay. Other people would say, well, the people who pay the bills. You’ve got to keep them happy. You’ve got to keep the people happy who’re paying the bills or you don’t have a church. They’re the customer. Well, sure, God, but you know, oh, I’ve got to keep the money folks happy. Some people would say that. Some people say, well, it’s the church board. I mean, I don’t know if anybody would say that. Maybe one or two would say you’ve got to go with the – or maybe a couple would say the pastor has to be happy. That’s rare, but that could happen. I’m sure that’s happened. You know, who are you trying to please? Who are you working for? Who’s the customer? That’s a difficult one. What if they went beyond that and said, okay, well, now, who owns the business? You know? Who? Is it a nonprofit? That’s problematic in a church, if you don’t have profits. If you do, well, what’s the business? What is that customer? Who owns it? Who is in charge of it? I mean, the Presbyterians have gone all the way up to the Supreme Court about who owns the church. And the Supreme Court, way back, oh, ‘70s, said, well, that PCUSA owns the church, but please make it more clear in your constitution. So we’ve been – we struggle with that in reality of who owns the business of the business? That’s important, too. Well, you know, we shouldn’t be surprised that we have these questions and answers, and that we can’t get consensus and move around because even Jesus Christ had trouble, as we saw here, skipping over the dynamic of why you’re calling your mother “women,” that doesn’t sound good to us English-speaking ears that you go “woman.” But maybe it’s better in the Aramaic, I’m hoping. But Jesus had some troubles about his jobs and where he was doing and what he was doing it for. And, you know, a mother, the mother, you know, you don’t want your mother coming up to where you work and saying you’re not good at your job. I mean, that’s not good. That’s a bad day right there. And, you know, and I don’t know, you know, can you imagine, I don’t know if we can be Jesus, but you’ve got these world-changing powers. You want to change the world for good. You want to help people, you want to get love all around, forgiveness and all that, and your mom wants you to solve the lack of wine at a three-day blowout party for people you don’t know. You know, Jesus Christ is fully human. I can see him being a little upset about that one. And not just, you know, hey, bring a bottle of wine. I mean, come on, it’s a party, bring the wine, what are you? You know, we’re talking multiple gallons of water turning to wine. We’re talking 20 to 30, what is it, six times 20, help me out. It’s over 100 gallons of wine. That’s a lot of wine. Of course, you know, Mary didn’t say, hey, go get 100 gallons. Is that Jesus’ job? I don’t know. We struggle with that in the church. We’re struggling right now about what is the church’s job. I mean, folks will say let’s get politics out of the church, doo to doo to doo, you know, they want to say that. And you know what, I’ve noticed over the years, I mean, I’ve been around a little bit, politics just kept getting wider and wider and wider. You know? It used to be you could go buy craft supplies and not worry about politics. Now you’ve got to say, well, that one’s Republican and that one’s Democrat. Politics are just freaking everywhere. You know, and people wear them, you know, as part of their clothing, their politics. It is politics, politics, politics, politics everywhere. And it affects – and it’s not just politics. Politics affects our lives, affects our health, affects our neighbors, affects ourselves, affects our family. You know, we say, well, it’s just politics. Well, no, man, it’s morality. It’s reality. It’s how we live. It’s how we structure society. It’s how we help one another. And even now we saw right now that a bishop, you know, we don’t have bishops. I don’t know. Sometimes that’s good; sometimes it’s bad. I don’t know. But we don’t have bishops. But that’s like, you know, up there, you know, big hat, in charge of church and stuff. And the bishop in the church, okay, that’s kind of a big thing, bishop in the church there actually makes it a cathedral when the bishop’s in the church. So the bishop in the cathedral saying a sermon, you know, the bishop in the cathedral in a sermon, you think that’s religious. But some people say, oh, no, that’s politics. They can’t say this. They can’t say that. They’ve got this to do. They’ve got this to do. They’ve got to be in this box. They can’t be this. And oh, my gosh, I want to tell you about how the bishop in the cathedral preaching a sermon should be. I say get the politics out of the church. I say get the politics out of my life. My life belongs to Jesus Christ. Don’t be telling me I can’t follow Jesus Christ because you don’t like the politics. And don’t be coming into a cathedral and telling the bishop what he can say in their own pulpit. No. We have trouble with jobs, with what is a job. I mean, even today we have trouble. You know, we say we might get upset about oh, my gosh, he should have said into this. Oh, my gosh, that’s not her job. Oh, she shouldn’t have made the wine. I mean, I’m sure that there were some people, well, Jesus, you know, you shouldn’t be making that much wine for drunk people. I mean, that is a reasonable criticism. I mean, Laurie can help me out here, but I’m thinking that’s enabling. I mean, that’s like master-class enabling right there. These drunk people need more wine. I mean, the steward flat-out said they were already drunk; you know? And why do drunk people need more wine, I don’t know. And people could criticize that, and I don’t even think that would be political. But what is the job of the church? It’s something we’re going to be struggling with, I’ll tell you. We’re going to be struggling with that. And, you know, between ministers, and it’s especially a struggle because, you know, when you get in a ministry you can sort of say, good, the ministry will figure that out; you know. But when it’s just y’all, you know, you’ve got to figure out what is the church. Does the church do this? Does the church do that? Is that our job? Should we have services even though none of us lives in Lee Vining and we’ve got a lot of weather? Should we do that? I mean, it’d be really nice to have a minister decide that. But you don’t, so you’ve got to decide that, oh, you know. So what do you do? Now, let me change gears a little bit. Palisades Fire. Have you heard of it? Palisades Fire. Now, I don’t know it you know about Palisades. Kind of a rich people place. But, you know, they have a severe homeless problem. They’ve got a lot of folks there that are hungry, don’t have housing, don’t have food. But the disaster is a disaster. I can’t imagine losing everything you own. I can’t imagine that. There’s been loss of life in the double digits, I think it’s up to 23 or so. Whole neighborhoods washed out. I mean, one of the Presbyterian execs lost her home down there, one of my friends, Wendy. I can’t imagine that. Everything, you look around, everything gone. Another one of the ministers at the Palisades church, he had time to run down – you’ve got to read it. It’s on the PCUSA website, that Palisades fire, and was in the Presbyterian newsletter last week. But the pastor had enough time to run from the church down to the elementary school, grab his kids, because there was just cars everywhere, nothing was moving. There’s parents trying to get their kids. Had enough time to go down, get his kids, take them back out to the car, and flee the church. He didn’t take anything out of his office, and the church burned to the ground. I can’t imagine, what a tragedy. I want to say that, that it’s awful, it’s a tragedy, it’s a horrible thing. Suffering is real. And that’s one of the things the Church knows. But I do want to tell you about jobs. When we’re talking about jobs, for at least a little while, for at least a couple weeks, there’s no hungry person in the Palisades. There’s no one hungry. There is no hunger because World Food Kitchen rolled in there with the food trucks. They rolled in, and they said anyone that’s hungry, come and eat. And we’re not checking your ID. We’re not seeing where you’re living. If you’re hungry, come and eat. We’ve got food. Come on down. And good food, too. And they got stores there that are open, and they’ve got brand new stuff for babies, and clothes, and if you lost something, come on in and don’t pay. There’s no charge. The donations are there, and they’re here for you to pick up, and God bless. So we can do that. It takes a fire. It takes a disaster. It takes a horrible thing. Now, in Mary’s case the disaster was we ran out of wine at a social event. Okay, a little bit of a disaster. But the disaster that we have here that wiped out entire communities was enough to say, oh, yeah, we can feed every person and not charge them. We can clothe the naked and not charge them. We can do that. So when you say to me, oh, well, we can’t do it, you know, we’ve got to run like a business, and we’ve got to have profit and loss, so we’ve got to have [indiscernible] and negative, yeah, I’d say, well, yeah, I understand that, I mean, I did get an A in accounting. But for at least a couple weeks we did it. We could do it. We could stop making billionaires and now trillionaires. We’ve got a couple people on the way to trillionaire, hoo-hoo. We could quit making them. And we can start making people that are fed and housed. We can do it. I don’t want a fire to wipe out a whole community to figure out how we can be Christians and make sure everyone’s got fed, clothing, and housing. I’d rather not. I’d rather we just decided, yeah, this is something we could do. And you know, it’s not just the church’s job. I mean, we say, well, the church ought to do that. They should have a lot of money and social things and all this. You know, Matthew 25, where it talks about the naked, clothing the naked and feeding the hungry and visiting the imprisoned and all the things that folks say, oh, I don’t know if we can afford all that. It doesn’t say the church is going to be judged by that. It doesn’t say that individuals are going to be judged by that. We would like it to, oh, my gosh, that’d be so much easier. You know, oh, I’ve done good. I’m okay. I give things. I’m helpful. No. It says the nations will be judged. The nations of the world line up and are judged. Our Bible says, our Savior says, our gospel good news says right there in black-and-white, that the nations will be judged by how they take care of one another. So if you take comfort like I do, well, I’m a good person, I don’t hurt anybody, I’m nice, uh-oh. The nations are judged by that. Well, that’s pretty heavy, Christy. My gosh. No wonder they only let you in once a month. Hey, let’s talk about the servants. Did you notice the servants? It’s hard. They don’t have any speaking parts. I mean, that is just plain unfair right there. Because you look at the Scripture, the servants are doing all the work. They’re going, they get ordered over here, I mean, there’s this Mary person. Who’s she? She’s not part of the household. Mary has to go over here, and he goes, talk to the stranger; you know? And here’s the thing, you know, if I’m a servant, you know, and I’m thinking this, I’m not saying it out loud because servant, you know. But I’m thinking, you know, we’d have the wine if this guy didn’t bring all his big burly Galilean fishermen to drink all the wine. You know, I’m thinking that was an issue. I don’t think they planned for that. You know, his whole entourage comes, I mean, I’m thinking, those are some wine drinkers there, buddy. You know? And so makes sense to talk to this guy, do what this guy says. And they’re saying, oh, okay, I guess we’re servants. I guess we do that. And he goes, go fill up those big old honkin’ jars. I mean, you know, it’s like 55-gallon drums, if you can imagine. Not quite that big, but, you know, roll them around and fill them up with water. I mean, who knows where that water is? Could have been, you know, a couple blocks away; you know? Lot of work there. They do all that. And they’re thinking, this guy’s nuts. Why is he giving water? We’re out of wine. We should be going around and getting some wine, and now he’s having us do this busywork and then go do that. And then they go, they bring that. And then Jesus says, “Go take the water to the chief steward to inspect for wine.” They go, what craziness is this? They’re going to yell at us. This is ridiculous. Why are we bothering the stewards? I don’t want to get involved. And the guy, the steward said, you know, this is really good wine. And, you know, the servants are going, “Crazy white people,” you know. What? What? We put that in there. It’s water. We know. And they go, oh, yes, it’s great wine. And they tell one another, you know, should we say something? Should we tell them? No, we shouldn’t say anything. I don’t want to say anything. We’ll get along just fine. And then says the disciples believe. I think the servants just thought he was crazy, crazy folks. But, you know, where are the servants? You know? You know, he says, go do whatever Christ told you to do. Even though it’s crazy. Even though it can’t possibly work. Even though we know better. Even though we know it’s going to fail terribly. Go ahead and do it anyway. Go ahead and do it anyway. What if Jesus says go over to Palisades and feed all the hungry over there? Oh, that’s not going to work. I can’t possibly do that. That’s ridiculous. Go do it anyway. That’s where we’re at. You know, we’re not around, sitting around saying, oh, let me think about what Jesus should be doing, what the job of the church is, and where are we going, and what’s our profit and loss, and what’s our five-year plan? What’s our objectives, you know, specific measurable attainable and time-related. What should we do? It’s to follow Jesus and do whatever he tells you. That’s our job. That’s our job. If we do that, Jesus will be revealed, and people will believe. Amen.

This Little Light of Mine This Little Light of Minea sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service December 29, 2024at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson Cityedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. John 1:1-18 Sermons also available free on iTunes Akron, Ohio, my hometown, has a Main Street that follows the river. It was a river, and then it was a canal, and then it was road. Then came a flood, and then became a river again because you’ll have that. Goes through – Main Street goes through the lowest part of town because that’s where the river was. That’s where commerce was. That’s where the canal was. And so Main Street goes right like this all the way through town, and it’s the lowest part of town. Over here we have Goodyear Heights. And it’s high. It goes right up. It’s like in the middle of the valley. Goodyear Heights is over here. That’s where the factories are. That’s where the rubber was made, the smokestacks, the work crews, all are up here. And it’s high. It is high up. And in the space of about a mile or two, 10 blocks, you can see it. It goes down to Main Street, and then it goes up to the outside. The outside is West Hill. West Hill’s on the other side of Main Street. Market connects the two. You could, up at West Hill, you can see, and see the whole town. West Hill was where all the rich people lived, the factory owners, the management, because, you know, smoke was all over there, and in the valley it didn’t get up to West Hill. So that’s where West Hill was. Now, my family, my grandma, grandpa, and my brother, my uncle, good people, they were the factory people. They lived over here on the East Side, on Goodyear Heights. And over here is where we moved on up, you know, like that song, “Movin’ On Up” to the West Side. So we moved over here. So we were constantly going from the West Hill down the valley on Market. [Indiscernible] to go visit the family and connect up in church and all that. And so we did that a lot. At one time, I don’t know, late ‘60s probably, we were just at the crest of West Hill where we could see the entire traffic of Akron. We could see Main Street going along the canal. We could see Market Street. And Market, busy, busy throughfare. And I remember one day we were at the crest of the hill, looking down, and we stopped. We pulled over to the side of the road. And I looked, and all through Market Street, 10, 20 blocks, down to Main Street and back up, traffic was frozen. Everything was moved up to the side of the road and stopped. I thought, well, that’s odd. But then I looked, and I saw the flashing lights of a fire engine coming down Market Street. And everybody had stopped and got out of the way and made way for those flashing lights. Fast-forward 30 years, and some of you here know what that’s like. You know, you turn around, suddenly it’s 30 years later? Thirty years later I’m driving those flashing lights on the fire engine, faking it till I make it because no one else would get in the seat, so I did. I’m driving. And I’m learning about flashing lights and about fire department. They tell me, you know, you’re not allowed to go through red lights in a fire truck in Ohio. It’s against the law. You know you don’t have the right of way in Ohio with the flashing lights and sirens. All that is, is a request for the right of way. All that light and shining big red truck is just saying, please, please let us go by. It’s just please, it’s just a request. And we are responsible as firefighters to be driving with due regard as opposed to the rest of the people that have reasonable care. They just have to be reasonable. We’ve got to have due regard. And so they don’t have to get out of the way. They can just go on with their life. They can ignore the light. You know, that light says someone’s in trouble. Someone needs help now. Could you move out of the way? Could you stop just a moment thinking of yourself and of where you’re going and what you need to do? Can you stop, give way, so somebody else could get the help they need? It’s just an ask. And I was new guy there, even though I was older than most of those guys. Oh, that was not – they were very kind to me, you know. But, yeah, on the training events, you know, where they did training, they assigned me the role of “guy who died.” And so they would put me out in a field, and they’d come rescue me so I could just, you know, relax, kind of chillin’. So, but, you know, I try to measure my questions. You’ve been in a new job, you don’t ask every question the first day. I mean, that’s just annoying. You know, you just try to get what you need to get through the day. But there was this one thing, right here in the firehouse garage, right back here, you know, seven feet up, or eight, I don’t know, right here. There was, you know, one of those old metal box light switches like you’ve got in a garage. It was rusty. You remember those things? The conduit came down, it wasn’t pretty. And it was a switch, and there was this old, yellow, brown, moldy paper curled up over it, and you could just make out it said this, in big block letters: “DO NOT USE.” Don’t you want to? Don’t you want to? So I asked one of the old guys, I said, “Hey, what is that? Roger, Roger, what’s with that switch?” He goes, “Oh, that switch. That switch turns every traffic light in town red.” I go, oh. “But we don’t use that anymore.” Yeah, yeah, I saw the sign, yeah. He goes, “Yeah, the right turn on red, nobody stops anymore.” No one follows the lights. They just keep moving. Christ the light of the world came into the world. And what does light do? Light shows you there’s other people beside yourself. Light can show you, reveal that there’s more people than just you here. And sometimes, yes, sometimes those people need help that you don’t need, but they need. You know, when I think back at that time in Akron, that really impressed me, to see all the traffic in the city stopped because some stranger somewhere was in trouble, and everyone agreed that that traffic mattered. Not all traffic mattered. That traffic mattered because they needed help. And because they were in trouble, and because they were hurting, we could step by and allow them to get the help they need. I had a hard time with the sermon today because you know I’m going to be political. You know what the difference between political is for – political is other people. When it affects me, that’s morality. That’s important. When it affects other people, well, that’s politics. I don’t have to worry about that. Don’t talk or bother me about it. I only want to talk about me, me, me. That’s morality. That’s right and wrong. Did you know that fire trucks and fire engines and fire departments used to be politics? Fire insurance the politics in that. Because you see, back in the day, I know it’s hard to imagine, but see if you can wrap your heads around this concept, that lifesaving care of the fire department was dependent on insurance companies. I know, who would have thought such a thing? If you did not have insurance, your house burned down. You could die. Your possessions were gone. If you didn’t have any a fire insurance mark. Such a thing shouldn’t exist. If you go to some old fire departments, maybe even here in Carson, you can see what they called fire insurance marks, a metal plaque. What they were, they were these big metal plates, usually some kind of star shape, was fastened on the front of the house displaying which insurance company the fire department covered for this house. And if you didn’t pay your money, you didn’t get signed up during open enrollment, had a pre-existing conditions, you can’t pay the fire department at the fire. They’ll come for the fire, would put out your neighbor’s fire that had insurance, but you just burned down. You could be out there crying, offering to pay. No. No, you didn’t buy the insurance. You just burned down. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. That’s fair. That’s law. That’s the rules. That’s the way it is. Back then there’s no other way to imagine. Luckily, we thought that was silly. We thought that was immoral. We thought people that were in trouble, people that were going to go bankrupt, people that were facing financial ruin from fire’s destruction, we think, no, that will not be dependent on whether or not they paid their insurance premium. They’re our neighbors everybody here needs to be safe, regardless, so their house doesn’t burning down from a neighbors fire, or if they’re not safe, at least there’s help on the way. And we’re not going to check the insurance rolls and get preauthorized approval before we put wet stuff on the red stuff. No matter who you were, no matter what your morals were, no matter where you were in the country. When I was on the fire department, if you were in trouble, we came, and we did all we could to save your life and your property. We came with those lights that showed that there’s other people in the world that need help, that there’s other traffic that mattered. Those lights that showed that there are some people hurting. Can you please just get out of the way and let us help them? I don’t know what’s coming up. No one knows what’s coming up. But I’m going to say there’s going to be a lot of fights over light. Over light. We’re not the light. We’re not Jesus Christ. We’re not the light of the world. We bear witness to the light. We say Lord Jesus Christ comes to bring light to the world. Everyone. We’re not going to keep things in the dark because that’s not what our Christ says. Our Christ is the light of the world, not the dark of the world. So when people said, we’re not going to report maternity deaths anymore, we’re not going to report them, we’re going to put them under the dark, we’re going to [indiscernible] light of the world. We want to know about those people. We want to know if they need help. We want to turn on the light and go to them if they need it with sirens blazing, no matter who they are, [indiscernible] been, what the color of their skin is, what their nationality is, how much their income is, what their employment status. Turn on the lights. Christ is the light of the world, and we don’t abide by keeping people in the dark. I’ve only been in the ministry for 40 years. I can remember, I remember when there was a school shooting, everything stopped. We had special church services, and we had special prayers, and we knew the names, and we said the names, and we prayed for the people. We even wrote, in one church I had, to the people that were there. And I also remember that a church I was in, when someone stood up a couple years later to pray for the latest school shooting, and the leader says we can’t pray for that. That happens all the time. It’s not special. The number one killer of children in America, our country, is gun violence. Number one. If anyone from a foreign country or any other force came and killed our children like guns are, we would stop it the next day. But it’s in the dark. Did you know it’s illegal for Congress to spend money to study gun violence as a health issue? It’s not allowed. Keep that stuff in the dark. We’re not people of the dark. We’re people of the light. And we say the light comes to everyone of the world, not just some people in the world. It comes to all. It’s right there in John. We read it today. We believe it. We’re the ones that are going to come out and say, oh, no. We follow the light of the world. You’re not going to cover up all these things in the dark. We’re here to tell you. And if someone needs help, we’re at least going to get out of the way. And we might even be on that truck with lights and sirens. Get out of our way. We’re helping people that need help. And no, we’re not checking their insurance cards. That’s what it means when the light of the world comes into the world. Now, it’s not without controversy and upsets and changing this back to the way things were, you know, and that’s it. That’s the only thing that can happen. Not even from other Christians. Have you heard about Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps? They’ve kind of not been around as much. But it used to be a big thing. They’d go to funerals and protest and curse people at funerals of veterans, and veterans coming home. They go to churches and demonstrate. They go everywhere and demonstrate and make things about how terrible and awful the people were who were trying to go to a funeral or trying to have a service. They went to Chicago to the Trinity UCC Church, who are unashamedly Christian and magnificently black [indiscernible], that’s their motto up there. Trinity UCC Church, a great history. And Dr. Morris was there, and Moss was there, and comes to church. I don’t know if he walked the labyrinth before church, or maybe they gave him a key, I don’t know. Could happen. But he was there early, and they were there, Westboro Baptist Church, cursing people going to church, calling them horrible awful names. Imagine, if you will, coming to church, coming to the official church, and it’s kids, it’s old ladies and good people and maybe some people that are hurting. Who knows? People come to church when they’re hurting, sure. And they get cursed at. They get damned. They get yelled at on the way. And Dr. Moss, like a lot of good pastors do in big churches, went to the choir because that’s where you go because you know the choir, they’re kind of the zealous of the church. If you had a choir, you would know this. Don’t be messin’ with the choir. You know. These are the shock troops of the church. And he went to the choir, and they had a hundred people in the choir, robed choir, hundred people. They rocked and rolled it. And he told them there’s people out there cursing our people coming into church. They’re cursing the small children, the little children. They’re yelling at the old ladies. They’re making things – they’re going through hell, and they need protection. They need help. I want you to go out there. I want you to robe up. And I want you to go out there, and I want you to sing so loud that they cannot hear those curses. I want you to sing so loud that they come in to praises and not to curses. I want you to sing “This Little Light of Mine.” This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna to let it shine, Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. And they sang that song and overwhelmed the chants, and people coming to church were protected. People that were vulnerable were shielded from the hate and from the awfulness that was there. And they didn’t just do it and ignore the people that were saying the curses and the things. They offered to pray for them. And when they were turned down, you don’t get in the way of the choir. When they were turned down, the choir went ahead and prayed for them anyway, right there out in front, so it was in the midst of the cursing and the damnations and the awfulness and the racial things was prayer and praise. That’s light. That’s light. When someone’s hurting, when someone’s vulnerable, when someone’s being attacked, the people of the light are there. It could be a choir singing “This Little Light of Mine.” It could be people on the fire truck with lights and sirens. It could be people in the courtroom saying we want to know how the health of our mothers are doing and whether what we’re doing is killing them. We want to know what’s going on in our schools and our children and are they safe, and what’s going on with that? Why do they die so much, and no other nation has this trouble? Don’t sweep it under the rug. Shine the little light on it. We’re going to be light shiners. We’re going to be looking for those that are in the dark and bring them into the light and say we are here to help you. You don’t have to. You don’t have to give out the right of way. But man, it’s great when we can look out for one another and refuse to accept a city that’s on fire because someone didn’t pay their insurance, because someone didn’t have the right placard up. We said no, we’re not going to let you lose everything and die because you didn’t pay the insurance premium. You know, that’s one step away from “A nice little house you got here. Too bad if anything would happen to it.” Little protection money over there. Friends, we can be different. John says the world is different because Jesus Christ came into the world. The light came into the world, and darkness fled. Let us be the little light. Let us be the light that helps those that are in the dark and are hurting. Amen.

Crosses and Thorns Crosses and Thornsa sermon homily by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service September 15, 2024at St. Peters Episcopal Church at Carson City, Nevadaedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Mark 8:27-38 Sermons also available free on iTunes This is a homily, not a sermon. Father Mike was very emphatic on that fact. You may not know the difference. Michael was concerned that I did not, that somehow, three years of seminary, that didn’t come up. But for the rest of you, let me see how I can explain this. A sermon would be a segment on “60 Minutes.” You know? And a homily would be a Public Service Announcement. The more you know. For those of you under 50, thanks for coming. A sermon would be a YouTube video by MrBeast, and a homily would be a TikTok video. I worked all night on that. Okay. Another thing that people get confused is between thorns and crosses. Now, thorns we find in 1 Corinthians 12, and of course crosses that we bear are here in Mark 8. People get those confused. They think a thorn is a cross, and that’s not true. Now, a thorn in the side of Paul is something annoying. It could be a physical malady, some kind of sickness, some kind of chronic thing. Or it could be a person, you know who you are, don’t look around. Could be that, too. But something that annoys you, that puts you off, that reminds you that you are not in control of everything, and basically you’re not God, and that there’s other things going on than you. For those that aren’t God people here, it’s not – the world does not revolve around you. That’s a thorn. Something annoying, something painful, something that puts you off – you, you, you, you, you – that tries to remind you you’re not all that. That’s a thorn. A cross, totally different. Have you ever seen those ads that say whatever, and then it goes “Serious inquiries only”? That’s what cross says. Cross is serious inquiries only. It’s not about suffering. It’s not about pain. It’s not about discomfort. This is not that idea of the cross. That is not what Christianity, Jesus Christ is about healing, reconciliation. It’s about making the world better, about redeeming creation on God. It is not about the pain and the suffering and hard. That’s a thorn. If you see what I mean, if you go with the cross and the pain, you’re still about you, you, you, my pain, my upset, oh, oh, oh. That’s not a cross. And also notice that the cross is something you pick up. It’s not something that picks up you. Something that you choose. It’s a vocation, a choice, something that you want, you’ve decided to do. There’s going to be troubles, there’s going to be suffering, it’s going to be long term, sure. But it’s not a thorn. It’s not something that’s done to you. It’s something you do for others. And there’s a test. If it’s about you and yourself, it’s a thorn. If it’s about others and creation, the community, and the kingdom of God, then it’s a cross. Elizabeth Johnson said it this way: Jesus speaks of losing our lives for his sake and for the sake of the gospel. Taking up a cross means being willing to suffer the consequences of following Jesus faithfully, whatever those consequences might be. It means putting Jesus’s priorities and purposes ahead of our own comfort or security. It means being willing to lose our lives by spending them for others using our time, resources, gifts, and energy so that others may experience God’s love made known in Jesus Christ. Elizabeth Johnson. Hamilton City, California. Jose has a thorn. Every time it rained, being fire chief, he got out, out of his bed, and went out to the levee because it was a hundred years old, and every rain threatened to undermine it and flood the town. And he was out there stacking the sandbags, hoping that this wouldn’t be the time that the levee failed. That’s a thorn. That’s a pain. That’s annoyance. That’s interruption to your life. That’s a reminder that you are not in control. Thorn, thorn, thorn, thorn, thorn, all the way down. Jose decided to stop the flooding. He got the Army Corps of Engineers out there. He got the project done, how to restore the wetlands, how to make a floodplain so that it could flood without destroying the town. He had all this done. It only took him 25 years. Hundreds of tamales to raise money to hire the experts that they needed to get the environment. It only took him multiple cross-country trips on the red-eye there and back to save a hotel room night, to lobby it, to go every year to try to get and do the budget. It only took him 25 years of working so closely with others, he actually married the one that was working on it. And I don’t know, I think their time together might have been reduced. 25 years. He was asked, other people come and say – because it was finally done. Finally, after 25 years, it was done. The floodplain was restored. The wetlands were there. The river was tamed again, and the levee was gone from a hundred years ago, and the town was protected. And from all over people came and said, “Jose, how did you do it?” And he goes, “Are you sure? Are you sure you want to know? Because I tell you, 25 years ago, if someone had told me what it would take to get this done, I don’t know if I would do it.” That’s cross. That’s vocation. That’s giving yourself, your time, your life for others, for the restoration of creation, for building community and healing. That’s taking up the cross. Throwing another sandbag on the riverbank is a thorn. But now, when the rains come, Jose and the rest of town can turn over and go back to sleep. That’s what happens when you bear a cross. Now, this suffering isn’t suffering for pain or for heartache or anything like that. It’s suffering of the consequences of restoring creation, of giving yourself and your life for others. September 11th was about a year or two after Mr. Rogers did his final show of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He didn’t have a farewell tour, a closing finale or anything. It’s just another day, and he didn’t want to upset the children. And he just left it, and lights were turned off, and the set torn down and delivered to the Children’s Museum in Pittsburgh. But then came 9/11, and the country was at a loss. And Mister Rogers came back to TV with a PSA. Even in the aftermath of 9/11, Mister Rogers maintained his fidelity to his principles that drove him: Love your neighbor and love yourself. Here’s the inspiring words of Mister Rogers after September 11th: “No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we are all called to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighborhood and to yourself.

Retaining Sin Retaining Sina sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service April 7, 2024at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson City, Nevadaedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Acts 4:32-35 ⟡ 1 John 1:1-2:2 ⟡ John 20:19-31 Sermons also available free on iTunes Welcome to Mirror Easter. Last week, who was here last week? No one. Okay, a couple people. All right. So last week, the varsity team was up front, and the spectators were in the pew. All right. So this week, the spectators are up front leading the service. You all coming here on the second Sunday of Easter? You’re the varsity team. You show up the second Sunday of Easter where the substitute for the substitute is leading the service. Ah, commitment. Thank you very much. That’s right, Christy has risen. Is that blasphemy? I don’t know. He’s not here. And we’re all surprised, just like, you know, the other guy. Okay. I know every one of you read the scripture before you came to church today. You’re probably waiting for a doubting Thomas sermon. Those are great. I love those. Not having a church for a while, I’m always preaching second Sunday of Easter. In fact, I looked at the prayer book earlier. My marks from last year were still there. Second Sunday of Easter. And if you want to look at that sermon, Cathedrals and Measles, on the website ExtraChristy.com, go look at that great sermon, Doubting Thomas. Woo boy, good. Not today. This is a varsity group here. We’re going to get a varsity sermon. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take that little bitty crazy scripture that’s in the gospel. That you probably just went over, because I don’t want to think about it, but we’re going to think about it. You know the one? The one with your namesake, the Saint Peter one? If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. What in the world does that mean? Is there some kind of ginormous ATM? Can we log in on our web and say, I would like to deposit some sins, and I’d like to withdraw some sins? What in the world are they talking about? Now some people say, well that means that, you know, if you’ve been gluttonous or wrath – oh, let’s read them off, I have my list here. Sermon notes: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth. So some people say that if you have any of those, you can get them forgiven. But why in the world would we want to retain them? Okay, maybe gluttony. Rest. What is this? This is a strange scripture on a strange Sunday. Bizarro Mirror Easter Sunday, where the varsity people are in the pews, and the spectators are upfront. It only makes sense if you know that it is plural. That’s right, it’s not singular sense, not just you and me, itty bitty, 10 Commandments, four spiritual laws, kind of individual, you and me, God, we’re here, checklist, I got whatever I want. It is plural. If you all – I used to translate Greek, you all. I got in trouble in seminary all the time, and I argued with them. But if you all retain the sins, they are retained. And if you all forgive the sins, they’re forgiven. Okay, so it’s a community thing. So we get along and get together like Presbyterians and have a committee and vote whether or not someone sinned? I don’t know. That doesn’t sound right, either. But I want to tell you something, this is John. This is the Gospel of John. We even got a little bit of 1 John over there. And for John, that list of sins, not sin, not at all. Sin is not individual moral failings. It is not characteristics. It is not individual behavior. That is not sin. Sin is when you don’t do what God wants you to do. And that’s your whole life. That’s not just in moments of temptation in front of that cookie drawer. Or special magazine. Or website. I guess I should update. But for John, sin is corporate and communal. J.B. Phillips back in 1953 had a book that was really important when I was growing up called “Your God is Too Small,” and every now and then people rediscover it, and it blows their mind. But I want to tell you that it’s not just your God is too small, your sin is too small. We’re not talking about little bitty sins. This is the varsity group. We can handle it. We’re not talking about individual sins on individual Sundays and individual days. We’re talking about great corporate. And, you know, this makes more sense for 1 John. Did you listen to 1 John? Was anybody else upset? You are all sinners? What kind of scripture is that for church? You are all sinners. And you say, “Well, no, I’m not,” and it comes right back. And if you say you’re not, you’re a liar. Oh, I’m a sinner and a liar? How come we didn’t all get up and leave? Were you listening? I’ll make it more homely. You’re racist. And if you say you’re not racist, you’re a liar. Now we’re getting some of the feeling back. I’m not racist. I don’t say the N-word. I have not fired anyone on the basis of their race or creed or color. I don’t have any slaves. I’m not racist. We’re back to that, are we? Back to the individual understanding of sin. Back to the me and God and nobody else. When it’s plural, when it’s corporate, when it’s John, and when things aren’t right in the world, that is the sin, not what any individual may do. I had a good childhood and upbringing. Middle-class life. We didn’t want for anything. Had a big house. Even got air conditioning when it came in. That was a big deal. My parents both had college educations and good jobs. Their parents were able to work in Akron, Ohio, in the rubber companies and got good pay and good money so that they could send their kids to college so that I could have a better life. Well, what’s that about racism, Christy? My grandpa, Christy Ramsey, had to join the Ku Klux Klan to get a job at Goodyear. Because only the Klan members worked in the rubber company. You see the difference between I’m a racist and racism? I’m a benefit of that. I’m benefiting of racism. That got my family out of the West Virginia hollows and into colleges and nice middle-class home in the Highland Square area of Akron. See the difference? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t benefit from racism. John knew that. Now you do. What are we to do? What are we to do? We’ve got to quit thinking that sin is something we do in private. It’s just between me and God or go in a box and confess it, and we’re good to go. Because sin is communal, sins in society. Let’s talk about my parents again. My parents both went to college. Books cost 10 bucks for their semester. Ten dollars. They went to a state school, a university school. Remember back then when the governments actually paid for higher education, actually supported higher education? It’s flipped now. Now the individuals have to pay and not the corporate. And now because it’s an individual choice they have to compete for students and get those out-of-state tuition bucks in there, so they have to put the rock climbing walls and have the sous chef and the other chefs in the back and raise their tuition so they compete against the market pressures on that because the government says we don’t have the money for higher education. And yet people say, “I paid for my college education. Why don’t those young people pay their loans?” You didn’t pay for it. The state paid for it. The government paid for it. Our taxes paid for it. But that has changed and flipped around. Eighteen year olds, we do not allow them to choose to have an adult beverage because their minds just aren’t ready for it. They can’t handle that kind of responsibility of getting a beer. But we let them sign up for a $100,000 debt that’s going to haunt them the rest of their lives. I’d rather risk a beer on them. You hear the sin? In my tradition, every Sunday we say forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Gets really quiet. About half the congregation drops off at that point. Come back for the next one. Corporate sin. That’s not God’s will. John would say, there’s sin right there. We got racism, we got sin. But that savior guy we follow. Remember him? Came back from the dead last week. Big news. Remember? You know, you know he was born in a homeless shelter. There was no room for him. There was no inn. There was no place for him. Public camping was outlawed back then. He was born homeless. It wasn’t too much longer he had to be a political refugee, fleeing across borders against a government that wanted to kill him. Have you read that in the paper lately? Have you seen it on the web? Got to update my notes. They’re sin. That is the sin. And we’ve got a choice. Now you can see the choice. Before it made no sense. But now you see, yeah, we have a choice whether we’re going to fund public education or put our kids into generations of debt. We have a choice. We can retrain that. Or we, what, forgive debt? It’s our choice. Okay? You’re forgiven. That’s the way it’s going to be. It’s up to you, Christians. You can have homeless, or you can house people. What kind of society have we constructed just in my lifetime? That we have revised the tax code and the way we reward people for the work. And that it used to be when they grew up, if you were making a million dollars, every dollar you made at that top end was 90 cents to the government, 90% to the government, we had, oh that’s wrong, take it on down. Now we’ve got millionaires that can go to outer space, while we got millions that don’t have space to live for the night. If you forgive the sins of any, or if you retain them, they will be retained. So when you look around, and you say why does God do this? Why does God do this? Jesus told us. Second Sunday of Easter, varsity team was there, but not everybody. Wasn’t a packed church. He said, you know, it’s up to you. You’ve got a choice. You can retain sins, or you can forgive them. Now, some people listened to him. Some people decided that we ought to try this. You know, Jesus. We heard about it today. People sold their houses, brought their money and gave it to those that need. 100% capital gains taxed? Agh! Right there in the Bible. Right there in the Bible. But I already paid the taxes on the house. If we read a little bit more in the scriptures, we’d find out that that impressed the community so much the community grew and grew. People looked at them and said, wow, those Christians have got something going on there. Look at how they take care of each other. Look at how much they love each other. Look at how much there’s no one in need among them. What kind of craziness is this? It’s Christianity. That’s what it is. You know, when it was time to get us straightened around, God didn’t send us down the checklist. He didn’t send us down the Ten Commandments and saying “Don’t do these things and you’re cool.” He doesn’t send down and say that these are the seven deadly sins, don’t do them and you’re good with me. He didn’t even send down four spiritual laws. He didn’t send down the sinner’s prayer. None of that stuff. Zero paperwork, obviously. I’m afraid God is not a Presbyterian or there would have been more paperwork involved. He sent a person. He sent a person to show us how to live, how we should live with one another. Did you know that Jesus healed people with preexisting conditions? How un-American! I hate to even ask if they were employed, and if it was an employer’s plan or not. He healed people that didn’t deserve healing. He healed the Roman servant, the occupier. Because guess what? It’s not God’s will that anyone suffers from lack of health care. And that’s up to us. We can retain that sin in our society, or we can get rid of it. Other countries have. Are we worse than other countries? I think we’re better than everybody because I was born here so obviously we’re best. Why can’t we get this done? You know, we’ve just got used to children dying in massacres by guns. By mass shootings. Remember when we used to be all upset, and we prayed at church, and we stopped church, and we had special prayers and services. And now it’s just another one. Because we decided to retain that sin and not get rid of it. Again, other countries have. Other countries had one, one mass shooting and said, that’s it, everybody brings in your gun. They go, well, yeah, of course, you know, because why? Because guns don’t die, children do. And they brought them all in, turned them all in. Said no, we’re not going to retain that sin. We’re going to forgive it. We can do it. Or we can pray, oh, please, mental health people, not be mental healthy, little individual sins on individual people who, why doesn’t it stop? Unh-unh. That’s not for this varsity group. We can take on the big game. We can say we’re going to get rid of sin. We’re going to make it safe to go to the mall, go to school, without being in a fortress. It’s our choice. Jesus said that. He came back from the dead to tell us that. We should listen. That wasn’t an easy trip. I think it was something important he had to tell us. Oh yeah, I forgot about the sin thing. I’ve got to go back. And he comes back, and he tells us, and what do we do? Um, I had lustful thoughts. I had an extra cookie. I murdered. Okay, that one. Don’t murder people. That’s a bad thing. But maybe not make it so easy to murder people. He came as a person, and people kept wanting lists from him, and rules. And he kept showing them how to live, over and over again. Remember that woman caught in adultery? That’s in John, too. I’ll go over there. Remember they brought her. This woman was caught in adultery. Okay, time out, time out. Caught in adultery? Where’s the other person? I don’t know. I don’t want to get graphic. Family show. But it should be two people. So there’s a woman caught in adultery, and with some reason the other person’s gone. Don’t know what happened there. But here it is. Let’s stone her. Let the one without sin throw the first stone. What does that mean about our punishment system, our penal code? What does that mean about cash bail? Why do we have cash bail? Only rich people get to get out of jail. Poor people, you go right in jail, and we’ll get around to you someday. It doesn’t have to be that way. Some states have abandoned cash bail. And guess what? Everything’s fine. Most people show up, same as much as cash bail. But think of this, not in terms of politics, but in terms of retaining sin and forgiving sin. And another good thing about this, you know with the individual sin you can feel bad about yourself and be all upset and say, “Oh, oh, I’m just a weak person. I’m not a good person. I’m a sinful person. I’ve done these sins.” But if you’re understanding sin as like understanding that, if you’re a fish, you’re wet. To say we’re without sin is like a fish saying, what’s water? I’m not wet. It’s all around us. At one time it is comforting, and the other time it’s also challenging. And we’re just the people to meet that challenge. Imagine, if you would, if people would look to us and say, “Look at those Christians, how they take care of people. Look how they’re doing nights off the streets. Look how they’re doing that.” Why can’t we be more like that as a society and say no. No one sleeps outside. No. And I’m not telling just pass the law saying it’s against the law to sleep outside. And it’s fair because, you know what, rich and poor are both banned from sleeping under the bridge. Fairness, American style. What do we do? Acts gave us a taste. Acts gave us a taste of what it meant to care and love one another. Imagine people giving up their homes to make sure everybody had enough to eat and a place to sleep and a place to live. Imagine that. It can be that way. We’re so wrapped up in the sin, we can’t even see it. Like that fish in the water doesn’t realize they’re wet. Like me, who doesn’t understand that my privileges come from racism going back generations, when only white people were allowed to have good jobs. But we don’t have to stay that way. We can’t give up. Jesus Christ offers us a way out. We celebrate that in communion. We say that the difference of sin, the way to get out of sin is to live a different way of life. To live in community. To live in love. Christ upon the cross. He looks down. He sees his mother Mary, and he sees who’s going to be destitute, and he sees the beloved disciples. And he said, “Behold your mother. Mother, behold your son.” What does that say about how we take care of the poor and elderly in our country? It says we take care of them like they’re our own because they are. Way back in the Old Testament, in Leviticus 19:33, it’s a scripture. Look it up. It’s actually in the Bible, and it says you shall treat the foreigner in your soil as if they were native-born. Right there in scriptures, 19:33. If you don’t like a little rule thing, and you want a story, read Ruth. “Your people shall be my people. Where you go, I will go.” What does that say about immigration and refugees? It says a lot about what you believe are the privileges and rights of the native-born. There are responsibilities, not just rights. Jesus comes to tell us how we live. And only by living in love, only living in community can we ever hope to get out of the sin that we all swim in, that’s been forced down to us by the institutions and the generations and the choices of others throughout time and space that’s made our society the way we are. They have chosen to retain sin instead of to let them go. But we don’t have to do that. We can be different. There is a TV series, “Fargo.” I beg you do not watch it. It is terribly awful, violent. Don’t do that. I love it. And this, I’m going to spoil the ending for you. Because I would love if this was a spoiler for our society, too. We have the killer, the one that has been pursuing her all the whole series, the one that kills and maims without remorse or hesitation, with efficiency so cold it will give you nightmares, who comes into her house to kill her. And she invites him to dinner. MAN: But the food was not food. WOMAN: What was it? MAN: It was sin. The sins of the rich. Greed, envy, disgust. They were bitter, the sins. But he ate them all. For he was starving. From then on, a man does not sleep or grow old. He cannot die. He has no dreams. All that is left is sin. WOMAN: It feels like that, I know, what they do to us. Make us swallow like it’s our fault. But you want to know the cure? You’ve got to eat something made with love and joy.

Surprise Judge Surprise Judgea sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio and text from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service November 26, 2023at St Peter’s Episcopal Churchedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. John 8:12-19 Sermons also available free on iTunes Surprise. This is a surprise scripture. Most everybody in the scripture was surprised except the king. They were all going, “What? What’s going on here?” Remember that, that’s a surprise. Today is Christ the King Sunday, difficult place for us. One, we’re not fond of kings in the United States. Two, we’re not fond of having politics in the church, and you can’t get much more political than talking about a king. You get in trouble with that. We don’t like King Jesus. We’d rather just move right on to Advent, you know, maybe a Thanksgiving Sunday, even stewardship, Christy. But not king. And when we do, we’d like to make it our own personal Jesus king. You know, I have a king. King is Jesus. That’s not how kings work. Kings have a whole nation. That’s the whole point of being king. It’s no fun being king of one person. It’s not a thing. But we like it that way. We like to have a personal Jesus, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. My lord, my savior, personal, all about me, me, me, I, I, I. We like to make Jesus about ourselves. And Christ the King is when we get the surprise. It’s not about me, me, me and Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Now, I did not come this year to the Thanksgiving dinner at the Episcopal church, and I’m pretty confident it didn’t go the way we’re going to look in the video. But here’s a way that people like to make their Jesus their own personal Jesus. It’s from “Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby.” We all like to make Jesus in our own image, and you can choose your own Jesus if you’re an American. But surprise. It’s not what the scripture’s about. Surprise. Now, some of you think, and I’m trying not to look at anybody, again, some of you think the surprise is that the right get to go to heaven, and the left go to hell. Well, that’s not the way we planned it out. We always thought the left were the heavenly people, and the right, you know, we’re not too sure about them. You know. But calm down. Just remember, Jesus was looking at the people. So the people on the left were on the right, and the people – so, yeah. Take a little comfort in that. But that’s not the surprise I was talking about. Not a surprise. Everyone there is surprised that Jesus led them out and said, called them out and said, you know, you helped me when I needed help. And they all said, “What?” Or that you didn’t help me when I did. And they said, “What? How is that possible?” You know, when Jesus tells a story, and it’s just more a story than a prophecy, I think; could be, I think. And you look for the weird part, the part that you stumble over, the part that surprises you. Because that’s what God’s doing. Why is everybody surprised? Because it’s not your own personal Jesus. What’s the first part of the scripture? He called the nations together. And all the way through it, you can’t see it in the scripture, it’s in the plural. You nation. You group of people. You did not provide for the sick and the sad, the sick and the imprisoned. You did not provide for the hungry and the thirsty. You did not provide for the naked and the impoverished. As a nation, as a people. No wonder everyone’s surprised. Because they thought their own personal Jesus, their own King Jesus and them were on good terms. I go to church. I do my things. I try to help out. I went to fish. I went, dropped off a turkey at a Salvation Army Turkey Drop. I haven’t really impoverished anybody this week. You know, I’m good. Me and Jesus, me and my own king, we’re good, one on one. Not looking around at everybody else. Surprise. He’s not just your king. He’s the king of everybody. He’s the king of nations. We’re on the hook for it all. I was told the first time that universal healthcare was brought up in our nation in the presidential elections – anybody know? ATTENDEE: The ‘20s? 1916. I could be wrong, 1912. FDR. You know him, a crazy guy, taking care of people. Haven’t got it done. We got it done for people over 65. Why is it moral for people over 65 to get government universal healthcare over here, but the people under 65, oh, no, no, no, no, can’t have that. That’d be politics. That’d be ruining the whole nation. Well, what happened with the 65? You know, what if we just took out “65 and older” and went all the way down? Got rid of the health insurance company. Oh, no, Christy, not the health insurance companies. I love mine, said no one ever. Oh, Christy, that’s politics. You’re talking politics. You’re talking politics. Well, yes. If your politics are that sick people should suffer and die without healthcare, well, I guess I’m talking politics. If one of the planks on your platform for your political party is that sick people shouldn’t get care unless they can pay for it, and they should just suffer depending on how much money they have, well, if that’s your politics, yeah, I’m talking politics. But I’m telling you you’re talking religion. I’m not stepping into your arena. You’re in my house. I’ve got us a king that says the sick are taken care of, end of story, period. So when you tell me the sick are not taken care of, they don’t have insurance – oh, it’s a preexisting condition. Every condition is preexisting unless you develop it in the waiting room. My king says the sick are taken care of. My king says the hungry are fed. And not just me and mine. The king of y’all. I’ve got news for you. Surprise. The king is of y’all. It’s a plural. It’s not just me, well, if you want to, you and the church can go and do this and help out the people. Well, yeah. But that doesn’t let everybody off the hook. The nations get gathered together, not the church people. They don’t have the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and divide them up. Unh-unh. The nations. Everyone. You’re supposed to do all this. And that’s why everyone is surprised. They say, what? You really meant that thing about love one another? You really meant that thing about everyone’s our neighbor? That was a real thing? I thought it was just, you know, me and my actual neighbor next door to me on my street, who I’m pretty sure is named Kit. No. It’s the whole nation. It’s everybody. It’s a community. So I’m not telling you to be political. I’m telling you to be religious. When someone says, oh, that’s politics, your politics don’t trump my religion, man. I’ve got it right here in the scripture. The nations are judged by Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not judged by the nation-state. Oh, no, Jesus, you can’t go there. That’s a no-go zone for you. No. No. Be so much nicer to have our own personal Jesus, talk about king and allegiance, maybe even throw in a little controversy about flags in the sanctuary, you know, your traditional Christ the King Sunday. But no. Surprise. Surprise. It’s about all of us, not just one of us. Amen.

You Rock You Rocka sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service August 27, 2023 at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson City, Nevadaedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Matthew 16:13-20 Sermons also available free on iTunes Peter, Peter, Peter. What a shaky guy to build a church on. I mean, this guy, we know about him; right? He’s either way up there or way down here. I mean, Jesus calls him “Satan.” That’s not good. Why does he pick him? And we know he’s not his favorite. You know, there is the beloved disciple. Not Peter. And now this sermon is banned in Florida. Check. So Peter gets into trouble over and over again. He denies Jesus. He’s telling Jesus he’s doing it wrong. Later on he tells him not to do things. He’s got the Satan thing going on. And just two chapters ago, now, I don’t know how that is in real-time because, you know, they didn’t really have the timeline and all this real-time clock stuff. But two chapters ago he did the whole, you know, falling in the lake kind of thing. You know, Jesus out there in the lake. It’s a great scene, wonderful time, very, very holy, storm, Jesus. Oh, things are great. And what’s Peter do? Horn in on the action. Hey, I’m coming. I’m getting me some of this. Out in the lake he goes, and of course, boop, down he goes. You know. Well, you know, I’m thinking it doesn’t really say. This is not Bible. This is Christy. So, you know, you may want to move to the darkened corners of the church for a nap. But I wonder how those disciples felt about him? You know? You have this person, right, this person who is absolutely wrong but very sure of it. And you know that kind of people. You know, the less they know, the surer they are, like that makes up for ignorance. I don’t know. And if you don’t have that friend, it’s you. So, you know, think about that. So, and I can’t imagine the disciples are happy with Peter. He’s always mouthing off, getting in trouble, showing off, showboating, like he’s the best; you know. And they’re fishermen, you know, they’re not, you know, some kind of – really I’m thinking they’re a little rough-and-ready kind of guys, I’m thinking. And I’m thinking, you know, they’re out there in the storm, trying to stay in the boat. And some guy says, “Oh, I’m going to get out of the boat and go walk to Jesus.” “Peter, we’re barely keeping alive. Stay in your seat. Get down. You’re rocking the boat.” “Guys and Dolls” reference, thank you for those who picked it up. And he goes out there and sinks like…A rock. A rock. I’m thinking that’s where he started getting the name Rock. I’m thinking it wasn’t Jesus at all. It was those fun-loving guys, the disciples. Can you imagine that, Mr. Showboat sinking away? Hey, how you doing today, Rock? Ha ha. You okay? Steady there. Watch out, there’s a puddle, ha ha ha. Rock guy, huh, get a load of him. And down he goes. Hey, remember this? You know. I’m thinking they gave it to him. And in front of Jesus, behind his back, I don’t know, it don’t matter because Jesus seems to know all the stuff, no matter what goes on. So I’m thinking that Jesus knew about that. And Jesus took that slam, that label, that putdown, and said, yeah, you’re the rock. And on this rock I’m going to build my church. Isn’t that just like Jesus? Not to argue, but to transform? To take what we thought was so bad, so awful about ourselves, our biggest failure, our greatest shame, our imperfections, everything we thought we did wrong, our lack of faith, and said, “Yeah, on that is I’m building my church.” Boy, do we need that message today. I mean, everybody’s telling us who we are. They think they know. I mean, our own school system is joining a suit in social media because of all the negative information and labels and bullying that’s coming in over Facebook and TikTok and all the other things that are out there that our kids have to deal with that we didn’t have to that tells them they’re not good enough, they’re ugly, or not pretty enough, or they’re not as good as they are, or they have to take that picture next. Even among school systems in the city is suing for, and rightly so. And if it isn’t social media and the kids and the things, it’s the advertisers have got our numbers down. They’re tracking your web browser. They’re watching what you watch. They’re slicing and dicing you and putting in ads to make sure that you are the most susceptible to what they’re trying to sell. In fact, they’re selling you to others, saying would you like some Episcopalians interested in some fine wines? I’m just guessing. They would put the church roll out. It’s out there. And it’s not just this. You know, politics is coming. Oh, my gosh, do they want to tell you who they are, who you are, and what you should believe, and how it is, and what you should be outraged about, and who you should be angry with, and how this thing’s world should be viewed. We need this Jesus today that says what you think is the worst is something God can use to build the best. And no other than the contemporary philosopher, Taylor Swift, says – yeah, that’s who I read. So deal with it. That’s okay. Yeah, you’re not getting any Jeff books of the saints up here. That’s coming, so brace yourselves. Okay. Taylor Swift says an excellent speech in her concert. And one of the – the firm quote in there is she tells her fans, a lot of these young women who are told how to be and how to look and how to feel and how to act. Taylor Swift says: “You are not somebody else’s opinion of you.” You are not somebody else’s opinion of you. Boy, good old Simon needed to hear that when they were all calling him the Rock. Good old Taylor Swift. Who are you? Who are you? I’ve come to the conclusion not everybody loves and memorizes movies as well as I do, and we’re working on that. But until then, there’s a movie called “Secondhand Lions.” Robert Duvall we’re going to see in a minute. And somebody – and he’s having a bad day. And somebody asks him, “Who do you think you are, old man?” Oh, don’t do that to Robert, even on a good day. “Who do you think you are, old man?” And this is Hub McCann’s answer. “That’s who I am.” I remember having a spirited discussion with one of the patriarchs of the church about what picture should you put in an obituary? The dashing young soldier going off to war 40 years ago? Or the weathered, seasoned, bald man the last time we saw him? Who are you? My father-in-law was Bruce Speegle. Bruce Speegle was the district engineer for PennDOT. They have hills there. They say mountains, but I will not insult you by saying they were mountains. But they have ups and downs. And the ups and downs, back in the day, came up with the idea, have you seen those runaway truck ramps, you know, where they have the little thing, and the big old gravel, and the pickup – the pickup. The semi is supposed to steer off there when they don’t have brakes and go into the gravel, and the gravel is supposed – this was controversial. This wasn’t going to work. Now, Bruce was a district engineer. Wasn’t a truck driver. Didn’t drive a semi. And Bruce put one in. And oh, the things they talked about. Now, Bruce was a man of few words. On my wedding day, I spent the whole day with him, and he had plenty of opportunities to tell me what’s what and who’s for and whatever. And had every reason to because at that point this guy, most unlikely to be a minister, was going to seminary. He might have had some words. But we had the rehearsal, and was doing like an hour to get the wedding done, rehearsal, and up and down. We had a family dinner, a lunch, very nice lunch, family lunch. We’re all sitting at the table, meeting everybody. And we went to the hotel, we changed for the wedding, all in the same room. We had the wedding, of course. And he was there. And then afterwards we had a reception into the evening. That whole time Bruce said two words to me: “Have fun.” That was Bruce. Back to the runaway truck ramp. It wasn’t going to work. Boondoggle. Waste of time. Not say safe, ba da da, all that stuff. Bruce got it built, invited the press to a demonstration. Got the truck at the top of the hill. Got the brakes disabled. And when it was coming down the hill, Bruce was in the passenger seat. To this day, my mother-in-law is still angry. That’s who Bruce was. He didn’t have to say anything. He was in that truck. Down they went. And of course it worked. Bruce was an engineer. He did the math. He didn’t have to talk. That’s who he was. There’s a movie out called “Barbie.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it. As I understand it, I’ve been told I must go see it by my daughter, who’s in her 30s. I don’t know when she became my parent, but okay. In it I understand Barbie wonders what she was made for. The ideals of – they play with the ideas of Barbie as perfection and success and rich and happy all the time. And suddenly she’s not. I’d like to close with the song from the movie, from Billy Eilish, and close with the lyrics to “What Was I Made For?” And I hope you consider that, as well.

Abides Abidesa sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service January 15, 2023at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson City, Nevadaedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. John 1:29-42 Sermons also available free on iTunes Well, it’s 4:00 o’clock somewhere. Why is that in the gospel reading? Why is it important for John to tell us that it was about 4:00 o’clock, it was at 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon? What? What? Why do we care, John? Now, John is – it’s a strange thing for John because John is, can we say it, he’s chronologically challenged. He’s not a time guy. I mean, we’ve got Matthew, we’ve got Mark, and we’ve got Luke. And they say things happened this way. And then we got John said, oh, it went all over here, craziness. All over here. Crazy. I mean, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, one year, they’re done. Jesus done. Over here John, three years. This guy’s not about the timekeeping. You know, Fitbit, all that kind of – nothing. Why does he say 4:00 o’clock? Now, you might say, well, you know, he’s about light and dark and coming into the light, you know, and going out of the dark, and there’s light, and the times of day are emblematic of the lightness and darkness of the day. Well, what’s 4:00 o’clock? What crazy time zone is there kind of light and dark change at 4:00 o’clock? Not even the craziest daylight savings get us there. And so I look at this, and I’m reading, okay, they’ve got the spirit, and they go and get Caiaphas and all. And he goes, it was about 4:00 o’clock. What? Why does he say that? Another thing that is going to be John is that he uses a word called ”μένω” (men-o). It is used about 40 times, and over half the times of in the New Testament that it’s used, half the time is in the gospels of John and the letters of John. He loves that word. And the word is in here three times in this scripture. And it’s translated different ways. It is “remained” when the holy spirit descends like a dove. And then it comes also in kind of a throwaway line in that when Jesus asks a question, you know, “What do you seek?” you know, why don’t they say answer that question? You know, like oh, we seek the four spiritual laws. Or we think the theological ramifications of the Eucharist, you know. Why don’t they say that? They’ll say no, they say, “Rabbi, where you stay?” Men-o. That word is a big word for John. It’s one at the feeding of the 5,000. Feeding of the 5,000, there’s no food, suddenly there’s a bunch of food, everybody eats, everybody’s happy, it’s, you know, like Thanksgiving. They’re all full. And Jesus brings the crowd down, you know, really sucks the energy out of the room when he says, “Yeah, that’s good food, but get the food that men-o, that endures, that stays, that remains, that abides.” John also likes that word when he talks about how to come to faith, how to be in faith. It’s faith about abiding. And remember it goes, “He who abides with me, I abide in them.” Same word. I abide in them. And John also says wherever the spirit abides, that’s where you can come to faith. It’s a big word. A big word in John. Abiding. Staying. Now, that one word, that one concept has several different meanings in our culture. So several different meanings in our culture. And one of them was demonstrated in the classic film which please don’t watch on my recommendation, there’s a lot of cursing in it, is The Big Lebowski. So let’s take a look. “The Dude abides.” Now, Sam Elliot character there, only named “The Stranger,” tells him “Take care. I know you will.” And Jeff Bridges’ character, Lebowski, The Dude, says “The Dude abides.” Now, what does he mean by that? Abides had several different readings, not only in our scriptures, but also in today. It could be you abide by the law. It could be obey. I obey. I abide by that law. I abide by that. And it could also mean usually in the negative sense that the things you put up with or not, you know. Oh, I just can’t abide by someone who is constantly sniffling instead of using a tissue. I just cannot abide by that. There’s that kind of abide. There’s also – doesn’t that bother everyone? Am I the only one? No? That bothers everyone; doesn’t it? Okay. So, yeah, abide is also, in a more positive sense, an abiding memory; you know? We talk about the memories of childhood, vacations at the lake, continued to abide with him throughout his life. So there’s that kind of abiding. And there’s also the kind of abiding where it’s a staying, it’s an enduring. He abided by her throughout her illness. Where do you abide? Where do you stay? Where do you live? Where do you keep your soul? The abiding. Several different kinds of abiding. Remember that 4:00 o’clock thing I was talking about earlier, you thought I forgot about? What about that? That’s really the place they talk about abiding with Jesus, and right before they start bringing in other people to him. Peter, yay, Peter. We like Peter here. So abiding, it was 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. What’s 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon in your life that abides? What time abides with you? I’ll tell you a time for me: 2:30 p.m. 2:30 in the afternoon. July 12th, 1980, I got married. I remember Dr. Paul F. Bauer. I was okay until he turned to me and said, “We just have to wait for the chimes, then we’re going in.” The chimes were at 2:30. That’s when I started abiding as a husband. And when I took the vows, Bette Lynn said “obey,” ha ha ha ha. So, but we took vows for each other and cherished one another, and that was the beginning of abiding together as husband and wife. And that was about 2:30 in the afternoon. 10:10 in the morning. Not just the way people set clocks that look pretty, but 10:10. That’s when my daughter Rachel was born. I remember looking at the clock. That’s when I became a parent. And that was – she’s less than 40. But that was a moment that abides. That abides with me. So I’m thinking that when John includes the 4:00 o’clock thing, it was when the disciple says, yeah, I remember the day that Jesus says “Come and abide with me. Come and see where I am abiding. What are you seeking? You’re seeking to abide with me.” It was 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. I remember it was yesterday. What does it mean to abide altogether? There’s definitely staying, and definitely enduring, and definitely some kind of toleration and putting up with, a little bit of obeying, not in terms of I have a command, but to get along with you I’m going to abide. And boy, has that been a challenge in the last few years, to abide with our relatives. Oh, my gosh, and friends. It’s been – and Facebook, oh, my gosh. Who can abide by Facebook anymore? It’s so difficult. When I left, tried to leave the ministry for a few years to go work on computers, I was sucked back into a church, and my boss, the pastor there, John, was – not his real name – John went through a very traumatic divorce. There was actually violence against him, and he was staying in my basement for a while. It was a mess. And one of the times I got a call from the Christian educator at the church on Friday night. In case you’re wondering, that’s not accepted practice in the Presbyterian circles. We don’t usually call at Friday night about something in the church. And she called up and said, “John’s been arrested.” Oh? And that’s also something that doesn’t happen in Presbyterian circles much, the pastor’s been arrested. And she says, “I can’t go there. I don’t want,” you know, because of the divorce, she didn’t want to go down there and the soon-to-be-ex-wife go crazy about the other woman, whatever she was thinking. And I said all right. So I go on down. And I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t hang out with people that got arrested. I don’t know. Went to the little police office in our little town. And they wouldn’t let me in the door. But I said, “Hey, I’m looking for John. He just got arrested. I don’t know where he is.” He goes, oh, yeah, yeah. And he went in, and he brought out the court order that he violated. He was supposed to stay, I don’t know, 50 feet away from her and all those things that he’s supposed to do. He was definitely less than 50 feet away her. He was definitely on the porch saying, “Why can’t I see my kids? Why are you keeping my kids from me?” And that was definitely within 50 feet. He definitely did that wrong. And they called him, they hauled him off And the police officer was arguing with me about the 50 feet and that he did something wrong, and he should have been arrested. And I wasn’t there for that, you know. I said, “John’s my friend, and John does stupid things. Here’s one of them. This was stupid. He definitely violated that, and definitely you should have arrested him. He was in the wrong. But even though he does stupid things and violates court orders, he’s still my friend. And I’m here trying to figure out how to help my friend. How can I help my friend?” So the cop put the arrest report away, and he said, “He’ll be down at the detention center, and his arraignment is about in an hour. He’ll probably get out, and he’s going to need a ride.” I go, “Thanks.” So went down there, and they decided they could maybe trust the local Presbyterian pastor to behave. So they did let him go, and I picked him up. That’s abiding. I mean, he was wrong. The cop was right. You know. He shouldn’t have done that. But he’s my friend. And we put up with each other. We abide. Some people think Christianity is, you know, when I made a decision for Christ, when I said the four spiritual laws, or when I confessed my sins, or when I came up to the altar, the Presbyterians were having a little fight about whether or not we can come up to the communion table. We don’t have altars, a big stink in the [indiscernible]. So people say this, you know, that made me a Christian. Okay. If you think that, that’s fine. But it’s like a wedding, a marriage, the difference there. A wedding takes part in a specific time and place and location, and it starts and stops. And the wedding is over, but the marriage endures. The marriage abides. And there’s a lot of, you know, I will abide by that, or I will endure that. I will go with you through that. I will cherish you in sickness and in health. That’s all about abiding. And the gospel writers and the epistles writers often talk about the relationship with Christ and the Church, which is us, the Church, is like a marriage in that we abide with one another, that we put up with one another, that we stick through with one another no matter what. “The Dude abides” I think means I get through it the best I can with the help of my friends. And isn’t that the faith? Isn’t that what God calls us to do? What are you seeking? I’m seeking to abide with you. Amen.

Finish Finisha sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service October 9, 2022via Zoom at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CAedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Sermons also available free on iTunes I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Fight, finish, and I’m going to go with fidelity because I can’t remember unless they all start with the same letter. So fight, faith, and fidelity. Those three things is what Paul lifted up. Or whoever wrote 2 Timothy. If you want to start an argument with anybody, just go up and say, “As Paul says in 2 Timothy.” Oh, my gosh, they all yell at you. Paul didn’t write 2 Timothy. That was somebody else, and the letter uses a totally different vocabulary I had one guy in seminary that said, “Well, you see, Paul had that shipwreck. And when he had a shipwreck, he hit his head. And when he hit his head, his whole vocabulary changed. And so that’s why 2 Timothy doesn’t match up with the rest of the letters.” I thought it was a stretch, but whatever. Whatever this was, this was somebody trying to say, or Paul saying, what Paul was like on the very last days, month of life. He had lost the first appeal. He had already been there. And it looks like where he’s sitting now he’s going to go off to be killed by empire for going against the king, going against – meddling with politics. Oh, my gosh. And so at this time he sort of looks back over his life, according to this author of 2 Timothy, and he says these three things. Instead of being upset or angry or depressed or giving up or regrets, instead he says three things: Fight, fidelity, finish. Now, you can say the good fight is that he did it according to the rules, that he had the umpire with him all the way, the officials said he was okay, he counted the mats, he didn’t cheat and all that. I don’t think so. I think the good fight is something worth fighting for. Something that is worth fighting for is a good fight. John Lewis, a politician and a great leader of our country, talked about getting in, not fighting, he talked about getting in good trouble. He talked about good trouble, to get in good trouble. You could always tell John Lewis because when everybody else was out marching ready to get beaten up, bloodied, and tear-gassed, and they were in their work clothes for getting beaten up, bloodied, and tear-gassed, John Lewis was the guy in the suit. He came, he was serious. And John Lewis was saying that if you see unfairness, if you see injustice, if you see someone being oppressed, you have a moral obligation to speak up, to walk, to shout, to call attention, to shout, to sit down, to demonstrate, all the things you can do to make that right, in fact, to get in good trouble. Good trouble. Trouble that is worthwhile for getting into. John Lewis, at the end, he had a book come out. And it kind of reminds me of 2 Timothy, you know, because it was a collection of his thoughts and essays. He’s supposed to have been involved, I don’t know much involved it was, at the very end of his life. And the last book came out, it said: “Carry On.” Carry on. And his idea was that he would have a book, the last book of his life, to pass the torch to the next people, maybe some sitting here, to work for the good of the people, good of the country. Carry on. Fight the good fight. Stand up, speak out, get in the way. Get in trouble. Good trouble. I think that’s what Paul got in. He got in some good trouble. I also want to talk about keeping the faith. Now, keeping the faith could be also, could be that you preserved, that you persevered through all your life, that you didn’t renounce Jesus, that you kept the faith. And, you know, kind of a personal inside yourself, all to yourself. But I like to think it’s more like fidelity, you know, kept the faith as – kept it the way it should be, preserved it. Kept it unadulterated. Kept it from being watered down. Kept it from being distracted. Boy, do we have a trouble with that now. I mean, we’ve gotten rid of radios. Does anyone still listen to radio? One person. I have a weekly radio show, so I’m looking bad at all of you because I have the weekly radio. But remember you used to tune the radio? And you would tune it, and it’d go . And then you get, you just, you almost get it, and you tune it just in, and you can hear the message, you can hear the voice, you can hear the music and hear the program. But on either side was a lot of static. And they called that, when you just get it just right, and you just had the music, you just had the tones, you just had the sound, you just had the program, you just had the broadcast, and none of that other stuff, they called that “high fidelity,” that you could hear things with fidelity, only the message and nothing else. No other distractions. No other things that obliterated or changed the music. Boy, do we have trouble with fidelity today with our faith. Horrible, awful trouble, so much static. I call it “white noise.” Have you heard the white noise? All lives matter . Just drowns out the suffering of the people of color, drowns out the suffering of indigenous people, drowns that all out with white noise. All lives matter . You will not replace us. Welcome the stranger. Love the stranger. Welcome the stranger. Help the captives. Welcome people to come in and goes, oh, we’ve got to have borders. Close the borders. Secure the borders. You don’t have a country. White noise. Covering it up and all. It’s so hard to keep the faith, to have fidelity to the faith, to tune into faith and tune out everything else. I like to say the word “blasphemy.” You know what I hear? I come down through Minden from Carson City, and what’s up in Minden? They have a Save America rally. Now, you all may not be old enough, some of you, but I remember when they had a Save America rally, they were talking about the Savior Jesus Christ. Anybody remember Savior Jesus Christ, supposed to save America, save the world? He was the Savior. That’s fidelity. That’s keeping the faith. Saying something else, someone else going to save America? White noise. White noise. Paul here says I didn’t let that white noise drown out the message. I kept it high-fidelity. I kept the faith. That’s one of the things that we are called to do, to keep the faith, no matter what happens, no matter what we go to. Good trouble. Good trouble. What does that mean, taking those two together, high-fidelity to faith and getting into good trouble? Maybe it’s throwing out the whole idea that we don’t elect a President, we elect people who elect the President. What’s that about? I’m against that. What is it about where the leaders choose their voters? What in the world’s that about? And we’ve got to change the districts all around so I get the voters that I want to stay in power. The people in power get to choose who’s going to vote for them to keep them in power. It’s supposed to be the other way. The people are supposed to choose who’s the people in power. The people in power aren’t supposed to choose who’s voting for them. That’s just wrong. Now, you can tell me, Christy, and you probably will, “Christy, you’re getting into politics. Oh, my gosh. Awful, terrible, awful.” Well, I follow the God that is the God and the Ruler of the Universe. And it’s not the entire Universe except the, you know, little parts of United States where we’re arguing about this issue, so God, you stay out of that part. The rest of the universe, cool. But this part right here, no. You’re not supposed to be there. Unh-unh. That’s white noise. That’s not getting into good trouble. People say, “Oh, Christy, that’s just being politically correct. You’re just being politically correct.” You know, we had a good word for politically correct. It’s called compassion. It’s called empathy. It’s called looking at other people as ourselves, that feel what they feel, to understand what they’re going through, to be with them in their struggles and their oppression. That’s not politically correct. We had a good word, that’s compassion. And what are they advocating when they say no politically correct? What do they want? They want political corruption? I would much rather be correct than corrupt. So when someone says, oh, that’s just politically correct, oh, you’re for the corruption. You like politically corrupt. I would rather be correct. If that doesn’t work, you talk to them about empathy. Don’t have to go inventing new words. I thought that was a horrible awful thing to do, to vet new words and change things. We had a perfectly good word called “compassion.” What does this look like? What does it look like when we don’t go with empire? What does this look like if we were kind of like Paul was in that he went up against empire probably preaching like this, in Valley and Lee Vining, got in trouble. But what does Paul – what does it look like when we go up against empire and say all that stuff that you value, that you structure society, that you’re saying how people should live, that there should be slavery, that there should be oppression, that there should be winners and losers, that there should be huge wealth inequality, that we should worship the emperor to save the empire, instead of God to save the world. What does that look like? We’ve got a video. And we’ll probably see what it looks like. And this is the last part about finishing the race. What does it mean to finish the race? It’s not winning the race. It’s finishing the race. Now, that is some good trouble. He went against the officials and the crowd and finished the race. He said that his dad came up and said to him, you don’t have to do this. You can quit. And he said, “Get me to Lane 5.” That was his lane. And he finished the race. 65,000 people, the entire crowd, got up and gave him a standing ovation. That was finishing the race. Wasn’t winning the race. And he says in later interviews, “I’d rather have the gold medal.” You’ve got to really admire his honesty. But that’s what it looks like when we don’t go for the gold when our only motivation, our only thing is to win like the empire tells us to win, like the capitalism system tells us to win, that the one who dies with the most money, and we’ve got to keep trying to make sure that the rich gets even richer, and more and more goes up to the even tippy-top 1%. And everybody else gets crumbs. Winning at all costs. Going for the gold instead of going for community and support and helping one another so that we can all finish the race, instead of one or two winning the race. John Lewis, Paul, Derek Redmon, all show us what it is like to not get into empire, to live the life of faith, to be faithful. Which is to fight good fights for good things. Get into good trouble when there’s something that needs to be called out, to be fixed, to be changed, for other people so that they can get into the race and finish the race. What it means to be fidelity to the faith when all the other noise attempts to drown it out, to still hit those clear tones and broadcast the gospel message of love your enemies. Do not kick them out. Help those that need help. Later on I think if we remember we’re going to talk about in Presbyterian churches we say forgiveness of debts. But some people would tell us that forgiving debts of student loans was some kind of horrible awful thing. No one complained about forgiving the PPP loans, but that was different, I’m told. But every Sunday we are radicals. Every Sunday we get into good trouble. Every Sunday we say forgive us our debts as we forgive our debts. Because, well, that’s spiritual debts. Well, no, no. Forgive us our debts. That’s a very subversive thing. Our people come from a place where honor and debts and money and thrift were very important, the Scottish people. And they chose to say forgive us the absolute worst thing, being in debt, as we forgive the absolute worst thing with others. That was some strong words that we prayed. Don’t let them be drowned out. Don’t let it be confused about who – we’re looking to save America – who we think the savior of the world is. Don’t let that be drowned out. Get in some trouble over it. That’s a good thing to get in trouble over. Stand up for those that are suffering. Call out for people that are suffering injustice or being put down. Stay tuned in to the message and the faith of Jesus Christ. And you will finish the race. You may not win it, may not want it. But you will finish it. And God will keep you. And it’s not something that’s just one day. John Lewis says it’s not just – freedom isn’t just a place where we stop. It’s just not one day or one hour, or it’s not an election or presidential term. Freedom is a lifelong pursuit. It’s a race that we’re all looking to finish together. Amen. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Defensive Weapons Defensive Weaponsa sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service September 18, 2022via Zoom at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CAedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Luke 21:5-19 Sermons also available free on iTunes Take a look at that cover of the bulletin. And I can see you on Zoom, whether you do it or not. There’s a beautiful temple with some beautiful stones. The key thing is, that does not exist. That was not even in the mind of a human. That was made by a computer. I told a computer to paint me a beautiful temple. And that’s what it did. So this is an imaginary temple that’s beautiful that’s on the front of our cover, that never existed. What is our beautiful temple? What one would we point out to Jesus, or Jesus would see us honoring and say, look at the beautiful things, by the special gifts dedicated to God. What is your beautiful temple? We have the computers one. What would yours be? Would it be your home? Could it be your home? Do you have a wonderful home, perhaps passed down through the family? Would it be family and grandchildren? Would it be your marriage? Would it be those that you love, some that are here and some that have gone on? What would be your beautiful temple, your place of honor and respect and safety and admiration? Would it be your country? It could be your country. For some it’s the alma mater, at least the football team of the college they went to. Or maybe it’s a church. Could it be a church? Some people live for the church. Does it help you to realize that when Luke is writing this, finishing up writing it, and when the people are reading it for the very first time, fresh off the parchment, does it help you to realize that at that time the temple was already destroyed? When people first read Luke, the temple was already destroyed. Stones were already disaster, and it’s already a ruin. So for them, for the first readers, and actually for Luke as he writes it, this is not – they would not experience this as a prediction of things to come, but rather as an explanation of things that just happened of the recent past. What beautiful things have you lost? What do we idealize in the past that we wish were there, that we thought was there, that we thought was eternal and withstand the test of time, and we could put our hopes and our faith and our safety in, but is now gone? Like it would be for the people first hearing this scripture? If we can figure out what that is, we can figure out how the original hearers, the first readers, the intended audience would take this. That’s one part of it. The next part of it talks about all the attacks on Christians. Or it doesn’t talk about attacks on Christians. It talks about how terrible things would come, and folks that have just experienced the destruction of the temple would certainly recognize this and certainly identify with it. But I want you to think about the phrasing that’s used. And maybe it’s not true to the test. But it certainly spoke to me very profoundly because it talks about attacks on people because of Christ’s name. Now, what if it wasn’t the attacks on people bearing Christ’s name, and they got attacked because of it? What if we read it another way? What if we thought that people were using Christ’s name to attack others? What if because of Christ’s name, there was attacks taking place? That is easily read in the way, if you look through the scriptures, it says there’s attacks because of Christ’s name. Well, who’s attacking whom? Is it the Christ name people attacking those without Christ’s name? Or is it others attacking those that had Christ’s name? We always assume the latter, that we’re the persecuted and the martyrs, the ones under attack. And people love to flock to this when a store says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and their beautiful temple is threatened with destruction. But what if it wasn’t that? What if the attacks were because of Christ’s name? Here’s a little clip. If technology likes us, we will be showing a little clip from the 2003 film called “Saved.” I hope it works well. Let’s see what we can do here. The gospel is not a weapon. Or this is not a weapon. I wish they would have said the Bible’s not a weapon, or the gospel. That’s from “Saved” in 2003. It seems kind of prophetic to me for today. I mean, who is suffering from the Christians? Who’s being attacked by the Christians? I think I can find more examples of that than I can find examples of the horrible awful trauma imposed upon us by seeing “Happy Holidays” at some places. Is it the immigrants? Do immigrants because of the CHINOs – I call them CHINOs, you know, Christians In Name Only. The immigrants got bussed up to Martha’s Vineyard, political pawns, with lies, and were registered in homeless shelters throughout the nation. And they had appointments in Texas and Washington D.C. and Georgia for Monday morning and were shipped up to Martha’s Vineyard for Saturday. By Christians. You know, immigrants, like Jesus. Is it white people or brown people? Brown people like Jesus. Is it people that have nice homes or the homeless that are swept off the streets like, you know, homeless, like Jesus, didn’t have a place to be born? Is it Christians that get attacked, or non-Americans? You know, like Jesus. Pretty scary. But scary for different ways. I mean, I’m a martyr. That’s my spiritual gift. You know martyrdom is a spiritual gift? I think it’s a one-time use thing. I don’t know. But I, you know, I’ll suffer. And I kind of know about that and kind of being a pastor and a church leader and, you know, I kind of understand a little bit about suffering for your faith and heard about stories and inspirations and all that, and I understand that. But suffering because of your faith and then having other people use the faith so other people suffer. I don’t want to face that. I don’t like that. That’s worse to me than the other option, that folks are being attacked because of Christians. I’m going to try to share the screen now. Put your – how’s that? Do you see a quote up there? Yeah. This is Jamie Raskin. He’s Jewish and identifies as a Humanist, as well. This is from 2006. “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.” That should give us pause as Christians. You know, Jamie’s a Jew, and according to Jews or according to their tradition, they’re religious in the following of their faith. They are required, they are required by their religion to prioritize the life of the mother over the life of the fetus, of the unborn child, of the developing embryo, whatever names you choose. They are required that when the choice comes down to it, that they must prioritize the health and life of the mother. That’s against the law. They can go to jail now for practicing their religion. From Christians. I mean, for 50 years it was fine. I mean, we had a – I read Roe v. Wade back when it was passed in the ‘80s, studied it, came to terms with it as a way the nation can go forward, accommodating all religions and not just imposing one understanding, a very narrow understanding, a biblical understanding of life on everybody else because freedom of religion is not the freedom of other people to practice my religion. That’s not freedom of religion. When folks got so upset about this issue or that, and the Christians came after me and talked to me about, oh, my gosh, it’s against God’s will, that gay marriage, for example. And I’d tell them, you know, it’s okay if you do not participate in gay marriage. You can still keep your own marriage. You know you’re allowed to do that. But somehow freedom of religion has changed to freedom for other people to practice my religion. And that’s not good. And people are attacked because of Jesus’s name. But it’s not the Jesus’s name people. It’s the people with Jesus’s name that are attacking. Did you know that insurance companies now are allowed, according to a recent court case, not to cover preventative medicine for HIV because the company does not approve of homosexuality? And said, well, that helps the homosexuals not die from doing things I don’t believe in, so I don’t want to pay for the not dying medicine. I want to let them die because they don’t believe the way I do. That is very troubling to me as a minister, and I’m going to trouble you with it because I’m troubled. I see that as an attack in Jesus’s name, on folks that are vulnerable. And I don’t like it, and I’m going to preach against it. But I don’t want to leave you with that. I try not to be all terrible awful, even though I’m three hours away, if you got in the bar, really mad, got in the car, start down, it’d be three hours before you got here. But there are other good things in this scripture that you might have missed, as well. But let me point them out. There’s hope in this scripture, and endurance in this scripture, and even advice in this scripture. It’s so good that the disturbing parts kind of uncover it. One of the advices there that is really good to me – remember I say my spiritual gift is martyrdom, and I always go looking for opportunities to practice my spiritual gift, which means I’m always on the defensive, always looking for someone attacking me, so I can be a martyr, so I can be defensive. And I’m not going to get into it. I pay someone to listen to me twice a month so you don’t have to listen. But what it talks about there is it talks about defense. Do not prepare a defense in advance. Oh, my gosh, is that a hard one for me. I’m always preparing a defense in advance. I’m ready for all your objections to the sermon. Sometime last week I was ready in my head because I prepare a defense in advance. And God said don’t do that. Don’t prepare a defense in advance. Wow. Instead, it says I will give you words and wisdom. And it’s important those are both because wisdom, we think of wisdom as pithy sayings. We think of wisdom as little bon mots, little tiny little things to say that, oh, my gosh, I need to put that up on a poster and put it as my desktop background or something. But that’s not wisdom in the Bible. Wisdom in the Bible is so much more than words. Wisdom is a way of being in the world. Wisdom is a way of being open to others, to God, and of course to the possibility that I might actually be wrong. Wisdom is listening to others. Wisdom is taking advice. Wisdom is listening to God, to the situation, and finding a way through it all, that mess. Wisdom is openness. Defense, on the other hand, if you’re being defensive, you’re going to shut down, shut out, build the gates around, build up the walls, reinforce your own beliefs, take away all the other advice, put down anybody else because you’re defending. And God said don’t do that. Consider that defense is the opposite of wisdom. If you’re preparing your defense, you’re going away from wisdom. If you don’t allow other people in, if you do not see other folks living their lives, if you do not allow other people their pronouns, even though you don’t understand it, what’s the big deal? If you go in defensive about that, go, well, I’m not doing that, you’re going away from wisdom. Wisdom is openness. Wisdom is learning. Wisdom is listening to God. And wisdom is paying attention to others. Wisdom is paying attention to what God is doing in the world. Wisdom is listening to other people’s stories and their faith and their understanding. That’s wisdom, wisdom, wisdom. It’s a way of being in the world. And it’s not being defensive. If you know it all, you’re not going to learn anything. I think the difference could be in the phrase of “that’s different.” Have you ever been told when you were talking to someone or arguing with someone, let’s be honest, and you said, well, what about this, you know, the what-abouters? And you say, “Well, that’s different.” Well, now, the thing between defense and wisdom is how that is used in the conversation. Is it that’s different, period, end of sentence, go away, you bother me, gates are shut, the walls are up, I’m defensive, you’re not going to get in here because, you know what, that’s different. So that stops everything. Okay, that’s defense. But you know it could also be the beginning of wisdom. That same phrase with different ways of saying it could be the beginning of wisdom because you can say it with curiosity instead of condemnation. You can say it as, not as a curse, but as an invitation. You could say, well, that’s different. I never thought of that before. Let’s talk about that. I didn’t consider that point of view. There, there’s wisdom. So when someone says to you, “Well, that’s different,” you can say, “Thanks for noticing,” and continue the conversation about the differences we have in our faith, our life, our experience and where we go and how we live together. “That’s different.” “Well, thanks for noticing.” Let’s talk about that. Because as we talk and we learn, that is the beginning of wisdom. And Jesus, in the scripture it says here that – and Jesus prompts us, is that how you will endure? And if we’re thinking the way I’m thinking, that you endure the attacks of Christians, or as I call them, CHINOs, which are not a comfy, cotton-based pant, but rather Christians In Name Only, what are you going to do? You can be defensive, and I want to be defensive. I mean, I’ve got a scripture and a commentary for every scripture they got, buddy boy. They come at me with some abortion scripture, I’m going to show them Numbers 5 because right there looks like a prescription for abortion according to God, right there in Numbers 5. Oh, you never read Numbers 5? I read the whole Bible. Go ahead. Try me. I can do that all day long. But that’s not wise. What’s wise is to be open to other things and to live our lives according to respect, admiration, and to get along with other people, to realize that our freedom of religion does not mean everybody else has to follow our religion. That’s not what this America is for, not what the country’s for, not what Jesus desires for us. Jesus does not desire us to attack others in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus I’m passing this law, so you all have to be Christian. No, no. I reject that. I hope you do, too. Because the more that we are defensive about our faith, the more we’re going to retreat from wisdom. Wisdom is what’s going on? What is God doing in the world? Where is God working in my life and in the lives of others? What could be the best for all the people, not just my people? That’s very difficult to do, especially for me when my spiritual gift is martyrdom, and I want to stop everybody from attacking me, and anyone who doesn’t live like me must be attacking me. But no. Jesus says no. So I hope you consider flipping this scripture around and not look so much at checking off, oh, my gosh, here comes another attack against Christians, checkmark, checkmark. Because you can do that. You can be defensive. Don’t do that. You’re going to reduce your wisdom. Instead, flip it around and watch how we, Christians, in Christ’s name, attack others. How we turn families against one another in Jesus’s name. And how we prepare defenses when we should be preparing to listen and to be open to the wisdom of others. Friends, you will endure. There is good news in this scripture today. It’s not just all about calamities and disasters. And remember that even then, if you remember that the temple was already destroyed when they were reading this, it wasn’t so much about let’s know the future and have a peek at what God’s doing in the future, and we can tell, and we have extra special knowledge that no one else does; but rather it was let’s try to understand where we are here and now and what we’re suffering here and now, and what our challenges are here and now, that we could be open to what God is doing in the world here and now with one another. Not gather our battlements around our beautiful temple and wonderful gifts and stones, but realizing that God is not there, and that it’s already gone, but what is left is not to be defensive, to be wise and listen to others and see God’s work in the world and know that we will endure if we follow God instead of our own defenses. Thanks. Amen. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Believe Believea sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service August 14, 2022at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CAedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Luke 16:19-31 Sermons also available free on iTunes I want to talk to you about truth. And why we can’t believe it. Why we have so much trouble with it. Now, again, I must warn you in these times that if you think truth and lie is political, you get another political sermon today. Hopefully it’s not as long. But if you think that truth is a good thing for Christians to consider when we follow the guy, the savior, the son of God that calls himself, what?, the way, the truth, and the life, well, then this is a faithful sermon. I mean, after all, truth is Jesus’s middle name. We should be able to talk about that as Christians. What is going on in this scripture? Is this the weirdest scripture ever? Is it true? Ooh. That’s a tough one. If you’re saying, Christy, is it true, is this a transcript of a conversation between heaven and hell and between Abraham and the rich man who has no name, and Lazarus, who doesn’t say a word in the whole darn story, is that true? Is it a transcript? Did Fox News have a reporter there transcribing everything? Was it on a podcast? Was it captured by a secret recording device? Is there video? If there’s video, didn’t happen. If you say all that about being true, well, I don’t know. If you’re saying, Christy, is this a roadmap to heaven and hell? Is this a way to figure out how we could go with heaven and hell? Can we measure the actual chasm? How deep is it? How wide? Can we sing about it deep and wide or what? Is it true that way? I’m not so sure. And maybe even step back further, and you say, Christy, Christy, is this all about heaven is a place where those who have a lot get tormented, the rich get tormented, and those that have suffered get comfortable, so it’s okey-doke, the great wealth inequality and divide today, because after all it’ll get all sorted out in the afterlife? Is that what this scripture’s about? Now, most preachers will tell you that the whole thing is on the last one, that even if someone would rise from the dead, they would not believe them. Jesus is kind of predicting what would happen when he comes back from the dead and people don’t believe him. But I don’t know if Jesus was really thinking about that when he told the story. What is true in this story? Strangely, I think what is true is the last line, that people don’t believe based on evidence, based on what they see and what they know. They do it the other way around. We don’t take a whole bunch of little evidence and then come up with the truth. We don’t do that as a people, as a species, as human beings. We don’t do that. We’re not like a whole bunch of scientific instruments and measurements and rulers and spectrographs and that we figure out what is true. We’re not like the James Webb Telescope where we look out, we take those photons and assemble them into galaxy and the truth of the universe. We don’t do that. There is a book called Noise that just came out, and it’s by a really big thinker named Daniel Kahneman. Here’s what he said on Science Friday in July. We have the wrong idea about where beliefs come from, our own or those of others. We think we believe in whatever we believe because we have evidence for it. Because we have reasons for believing. Reasons. When you ask people, why do you believe that, they are not going to stay dumb. They’re going to speak. They’re going to give you reasons that they are convinced explain their beliefs. But actually the correct way to think about this is to reverse it. People believe in reasons because they believe in the conclusion. The conclusion comes first for us humans. And the belief in the conclusion in many cases is largely determined by social factors. You believe that people you love and trust believe, and you find reasons to believe it. And they tell you your reasons for believing that, and you accept the reasons. For this larger social phenomenon it is not an error of reasoning because reasoning isn’t involved until after you’ve made your decision and conclusion. And that, by the way, is true to your beliefs and my beliefs. Your beliefs and my beliefs reflect what we’ve been socialized. It reflects the company we keep. It reflects our belief in certain ways of reaching conclusion, like a belief in the scientific method. Other people just have different beliefs because they’ve been socialized differently. And because they have different beliefs, they accept different kinds of evidence. And the evidence that we think is overwhelming just doesn’t convince them of anything. And it’s only gotten worse. With social media and streaming services, you know, when I grew up there were three networks. Four if you counted UHF, but who watches news on that? There were three networks and the paper, the newspaper. That was it. That’s all you got. But now you can fine-tune your reality down to the very last demographic got point. If you want to see only Trump news all the time, just switch on this channel. Or you get this Facebook feed. And Facebook tracks how long you watch things, and they’ll show you more like that. YouTube’s even worse, that the more you watch stuff, the more of that kind of stuff you get. So suddenly you’re in a very tight little bubble of social news and information that you are not exposed to anything else. And of course when you’re clicking on it, you’re clicking on stuff that interests you that already support your conclusions and what you think. And we’re just never going to get to the truth. So in Twitter, I don’t know if anybody has Twitter. But on TweetDeck, if you click on an article that said, an article, whatever you wanted to call it. It’s terrible awful. You click on it and say I want to retweet this. I want to pass it on. Twitter will stop you now and say, uh, do you want to read that first, before you send it out to everybody? How do I know that? Oops. We come to a conclusion, and then we find reasons. So you say to yourself, you see, so how can people believe the Big Lie? It’s obvious to me that the election was fair. I mean, they’ve had 60 court cases, and we’ll go after our reasons one after another. But it doesn’t matter because we went from conclusions to reasons, not reasons to conclusions. And the other people do the same way. Of course it was stolen because there was boat parades and Trump is the greatest ever and he told us that it was stolen. They have all these reasons, too. But it doesn’t really matter because they started, just like us, with the conclusions, and then went for the reasons afterwards. What can you do if our whole life, our whole belief system, the way we live, the way we look at the world, the way we vote, the way we talk to another, is conclusion first, reasoning to support it after? What is there to do? There’s a great movie, the video’s coming out. There’s a great movie called “Secondhand Lions” from 2003. I highly recommend it. It got a little punchy in places, but not so bad compared to today. And one of those things is there’s a mystery of the two men and where the heck they come from. They were gone for 40 years. They supposedly have a lot of money, like buried treasure money. And where they’ve been 40 years, supposedly they were in Africa and had these wild adventures. And they were telling them to their great-nephew Walter. And Walter confronts Hub about those stories in our clip today. WALTER: Those stories about Africa, about you. They’re true, aren’t they. HUB: Doesn’t matter. WALTER: It does, too. Around my mom, all I hear is lies. I don’t know what to believe. HUB: If you want to believe in something, then believe in it. Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it. There’s a long speech I can give, and it sounds like you need to hear a piece of it. Sometimes things that may or may not be true are the things that man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. They find courage and virtue in everything. The power and money, money and power mean nothing. The good always triumphs over evil. I want you to remember this. Love, true love never dies. Remember that, boy. Remember that. Doesn’t matter if it is true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in. Got that? WALTER: That was a good speech. HUB: Think so? Thanks. Doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. You can still believe in it. Do we agree on that? If we choose what we believe, and then find reasons to come to that? Why do we believe? We can say, well, we’ve been socialized to believe the Bible and the scriptures and the Savior and the stories and Sunday school and all that stuff. But you know, that’s what our friend the author says. But you know he doesn’t go far enough because it’s not just what we believe and what we experience and what we figured out, what we socialized. I don’t think so. I don’t think it gives enough thought to it, too. Because, you know, what we believe is partly what we talk about is what the received canon is, what the received faith is that goes, not just what we know, certainly hopefully not just the faith is based only on what we’ve experienced, but it’s through the history of the church and thousands of years, and experiences that go all the way back to those that actually knew Jesus and those that were with him and around him and around the witnesses that wrote the gospels. And it comes back through us through thousands of years. So it’s not just what we experience, but what the church has experienced, the people have experienced. You know, it’s like having blue checkmarks on Twitter, you know, these are verified sources that we believe in. But I think he’s right in that we don’t believe things because we actually found Noah’s Ark and its preserved wood, and we did carbon dating, and we found all sorts of animal food, and all sorts of different debris from animals, and so we know that was Noah’s Ark, and so we know it – no, we don’t do that. That part’s true. We believe what we believe because of what we see in the lives of other people, not just social things, but how we see other people live out their lives. There was a woman named Terry. Terry came to the church I served. Terry did not believe in God. She was right out front saying she did not believe in God. But oh my gosh, she was there every Sunday. So she was there every Sunday with her partner, who was a big God believer. And she came, and she listened. For years she listened to me yell at her. I mean preach, like I do. And she finally came in to be baptized – she was in her fifties – and accepted Jesus Christ, not because it was proven to her, but because she saw the difference in the life of her partner and the friends and the church. And she saw what it meant to others, people, what it prompted other – her partner was a great deacon, leader of the deacons, just always helping people everywhere, all the time. And she was baptized, became a member, elected to Session, served on Session. And then when I left that church she was my reference. And it wasn’t because I proved Christianity to her by the four spiritual laws or anything else that led from reasoning to conclusion. It was because she had the conclusion, you know, this Christian thing seems to be working out pretty good for these people. They’re pretty good people that are around here. And she went that way. You know Jesus doesn’t really give an entire theological course. The systematic theology of Jesus is not a thing in the Bible. He doesn’t say one after another, how does the trinity work. He doesn’t say how does salvation work. He doesn’t even say what effectual calling is, and we get tested on that in seminary, and there’s nothing from Jesus on it. He doesn’t say anything. What does he do? He tells stories about people and their lives and how they live and how they treated other people. And he says this is the way that people treat one another. This is the way the kingdom is. This is the way people work out. He healed people. He healed the sick. He didn’t say “Give me your testimony, and also you’re going to have to be baptized. You’re going to have to do” – no, he healed the sick, whoever was brought to him. He healed the Roman servant, the Roman, the occupier, the military, the colonizer, the one that beat down and will eventually kill him. He healed the servants. Are we going to say “friend”? That’s another sermon. There’s no faith there. But he was showing them how we live in the kingdom. So you’ve got some friends, one way or the other. I don’t know which way they are. We are not going to take a survey. I will be checking your cars for bumper stickers later and taking notes. But you’re not going to change one way or the other by arguing them with proof and conclusions. I mean, just look at the things going on. They go down to Mar-a-Lago and do an FBI raid. And there’s all, “Oh, a raid, it’s terrible, it’s awful, what the heck are you doing there? There’s nothing there.” And they go, “Well, okay, there were boxes of classified secrets.” Oh, yeah. “Oh, it was obviously planted. It’s not really that important.” Evidence doesn’t matter because we’ve already come to a conclusion, and we’re just looking for reasons to support it. So what Hub tells us, and what Jesus tells us, and what I’m telling you, is that choose straight up what you’re going to believe. And then go around the world making that happen, making reasons for other people to believe that what you write is true. If you believe all people are basically good, what are you going to be looking for? You’ve going to be looking at evidence that all people are basically good. That’s a pretty good way to spend your life. If you believe that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything, that is what you’re going to work on. You’re going to work on being honorable, being courageous, being virtuous. And you’re going to be looking for that in other people, and pointing that out, and lifting that up, and celebrating that. If you believe that money and power, power and money mean nothing, you go live your life that way. And you go look for reasons why money and power, power and money mean nothing. If you believe good always triumphs over evil. I always like the saying “Good always triumphs over evil at the end. And if good hasn’t triumphed yet, it’s not the end.” You’ve got to be looking to do that, looking for reasons to believe that, to celebrate that, to promote that, to pass it along. The same thing with true love. True love never dies. And there are problems in the scripture. We could go on and on. I know you like long sermons, but what’s going on in that scripture. But, you know, even if you hear the sermon about oh, my gosh, he’s ordering Lazarus around even though Lazarus is dead and kind of not his servant anymore because, you know, dead. You know, and he doesn’t even treat him, he won’t even go himself, he doesn’t even ask himself, oh, Abraham, forgive me for being such a big jerk. That would be a whole different sermon there, if he did that. But it’s a story, and Jesus was telling us that people don’t come to faith by people telling them and arguing with them about how they’re wrong and how they should live different. It comes from us living different, from us choosing what we believe and living that way, of getting our conclusion and then making the reasons in world and in their lives to support that conclusion. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, if we were the proof that faith and courage and virtue were the most important, that power and money mean nothing, and that true love is forever, never ends. Wouldn’t that be great if that was our conclusion, and we spent our life coming up with reasons why that’s true? Much better than arguing with other people about how that should be because, even if someone comes back from the dead, they’re not going to believe it. But they will not believe it. But we can live it, and we can pass it on by our lives. Amen.

Barns Barnsa sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service July 10, 2022at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CAedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Luke 12:13-21 Sermons also available free on iTunes If greed is your politics, this is a political sermon. I hope it’s not a political sermon, and that greed is not your politics. Because you may think from the beginning that the sermon is about or the scripture’s about Jesus said I’m not going to be a divider or an arbitrator. I’m not going to be your financial counselor or your family intervention specialist. I’m not, just like with Martha and Mary the last time I preached about telling the other sibling to do what I want, well, I’m not going to tell you and your brother how to get along with money. But later on Jesus says to everybody, he really knew what that was about. It wasn’t about fairness or judicial process or financial planning or any of that stuff. It was about greed. And he tells the story about a man with the land that produces very well, and what does he do about it. Now, some people will hide their greed, not so much in dividing their inheritance among their brothers, but they will say this. Have you ever heard this? Have you said it? Don’t raise your hand if you did because it’s a bad thing. If you said “The church needs to run like a business.” You ever hear that? “We have to run the church like a business.” Or “We have to run the country like a business.” That is usually a cover-up for greed. Because what is the business, then, if you say the church, or the country, or the nonprofit, or the family has to run like a business? Who’s the customer? What’s the product? Who do you serve? Well, yeah, if you’re running a government like a business, well, then you have the product of governmental services and graft and corruption and all that. And you give it to the highest bidder, the one who will pay you the most, and the rest of you forget about it. You know, hey, if you want some government services, how about giving some money? You know, this is a business. I’m not in it for my health. The same thing with the church. Running a church like a business, that usually means I’ve given a lot of money to this church, and I’m not getting a lot back. You’ve got to run like a business, you know, take care of your paying customers. That’s not with the church is about. The church is one of the only institutions that exist primarily for those outside the institution. And that’s not very business-y. 12 Step has this tradition, as well. 12 Step’s tradition, you probably wonder in a 12 Step group, any of the recovery groups, you may say to yourself, hey, what’s a recovery group for? Well, it’s for those folks that go, those poor folks that go to the recovery group to recover. That’s their purpose, their meaning, and their mission. I mean, they’re the paying customers; right? No. It says right in every recovery group the tradition is that their number one purpose is for those that are still suffering. That’s not very business-y. It’s for the other people, not the customers. It’s not so much the problem with money or with riches. You say, oh, well, he’s just all against the riches. He’s all about terrible awful things. But no, it’s not about that. It’s about who does that serve? Who is it for? The little zing right at the end, you know, man, those things you have prepared, who will they be for? You know, that is a good question to ask before you die. All these things that I have prepared, who are they for? Who is my life for? Who are my riches for? What am I here for? Warren Buffett, who we talk about, has a philosophy. He’s one of the world’s, I don’t know what number he is, he’s like eighth or something. He’s getting up to $100 billion. He says his money is not his. And he tells other billionaires and millionaires, the money is not theirs, it’s just entrusted to us while we’re here. He knows, and he thinks about the next generations, about what’s going on with the money. And running things like a business doesn’t work for the government. The government does things that no one wants to do, that no one can find a profit in, that no one can find enough people to do it. And there’s all sorts of things that only the government could do. The interstate highway system is an absolute loser in terms of building projects and things. To have an interstate highway system that goes from coast to coast, up and down, north and south, maintained, is a government job no nonprofit business would ever take on because there’s no money in it. You can’t have enough tolls to keep backing the money. They keep trying to do that, and they keep failing. But, you know, once we got the interstate highway system, boy, trucking really took off. Shipping really turned out. Amazon would not be possible without the interstate highway system. And the government does that. Ever heard of the Internet? Nobody wanted to do the Internet. It was ridiculous. Nobody wanted to do that. There was no money in there. I remember in 1990 they were saying, what’s the good of the Internet? Who’s going to look at this stuff? But the government saw something in it and put it in there. AT&T wouldn’t do it. There wasn’t any money in it. They had plenty of money in the telephone and in their leased lines. They’ve got plenty of money. And they had no interest in getting the Internet to everybody. Who wants that? There’s no money there. The government did it, called Arpanet, and set it up and made the protocols and promoted it and did that. When I started using the Internet, imagine if you will how old I am. When I started using the Internet, you were not allowed to talk about money. You were not allowed to talk about products. You were not allowed to talk about prices or anything. It was like community radio. You couldn’t make money on the Internet because it belonged to the government. ATTENDEE: So un-American. REV. RAMSEY: I know. But then the government says, okay, we got it going. You see how great it is? We got it done. Go for it. And gave it over to private industry. But the private industry, the government as a business would not have done that because it was a big money loser to make it. Ever heard of Hoover Dam? Nobody wanted to do that project. Way too much money. The government did it and electrified the nation along with other projects. Rural electrification, no one wants to run electric line to little towns and little farms and everywhere. The government, in rural electrification and co-ops, they made electricity go out through the entire country. The same thing we’re trying to do with telecommunications today, to go out through the entire country. There’s no money in it. There’s no profit in it. Who’s the customer? They can’t pay. If all the government had to do – Obama said this and got into so much trouble because he didn’t know what he was doing. Obama says, if I just had to make widgets or an app, that would be easy because I would just have to worry about satisfying my customer about whether they would buy the app or not. But when I make a widget or an app, I’m in the government, I have to worry about everybody. I have to worry about the poor people who can’t afford the widget and the app. What are they going to do? I have to worry about unintended consequences about the environment, about our society, about economics, about the next generations. I have to worry about a lot more than selling the widget at the store. And I just can’t go bankrupt and walk away. It’s a lot harder to be good government than it is to be business because it’s not all about greed. It’s about asking the question, who is this for? Is it for the paying customers? The one that has the money? Or is it for everyone, for the next generation, for the greater good, for the culture, for all that. Look at what he said in that scripture. Back to scripture. I knew you never thought I’d get there. But look at all the scriptures he said, “What am I going to do?” How many times does he say “I” and “my”? What am I going to do? What am I going to do with all this? What am I going to do? Say to myself – he even talks to himself. He talks. The only other person he talks to is himself. He says to Saul – now, I don’t know about economics and farming business back in Jesus’ time. But I’m thinking there’s a couple people working that land. I’m thinking maybe one or two. I’m thinking there were some people selling the stuff. I’m thinking there were some people keeping track of the ledgers and all that. I’m thinking there were some people driving the wagons to market. I’m thinking there’s a lot of people. How about those people? How about the people that built the barns, or tore them down and built bigger ones? What about them? What did they do? He didn’t say anything about them. You know, you fool. The things you have prepared, who would they come from us? Now, if your politics are about greed, you’re going to say this is a politician story. But I want to tell you that the idea of what do we do with our wealth is very biblical. About person-wise and with society. What do we do with our wealth? Do we build bigger and bigger barns so that less and less people can have more and more? There’s all sorts of statistics. But the one I like is pretty close. It would be nice if it was exact. But it’s really close to 50% of the world’s wealth, 50% of the world’s wealth. You got a barn. 50% of the barn go to 1% of the people. All right? 50% of the world’s wealth goes to 1% of the people. Well, they earned it. Or I don’t know, whatever you want to say. But I don’t know. Is that the way we want it? Is that the way we want to do that? Wonder how the other side, there’s another 51%. Did you know that? 1% of the world’s wealth. 1% of the world’s wealth. Remember that 1% of the people had 50% of the wealth. If you look at the other end, the 1% of the wealth pretty much goes to 50% of the world. So 50% of the world’s population is dividing up 1% of the wealth. while 1% of the people is putting in a big barn of 50%. Is that the way we want it? Is that the way Jesus wants it? Is that showing that we’re not into greed, that we’re thinking about that? There’s a wonderful quote. And remember why did that guy build bigger barns? It was for security. Wasn’t it? He says, “What am I to do?” And he says at the end, goes “Whoa, I’m set now. I can eat, drink, and be merry. I’ve got all I want. That’s my security.” And what he feared was the loss of security. But let’s take a look at the video. Stored Locally: extrachristy.com/storage/video/Wealth_Inequality_in_America.mp4 There’s a chart I saw recently that I can’t get out of my head. A Harvard business professor and economist asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth was distributed within the United States. This is what they said they thought it was. Dividing the country into five rough groups at the top, bottom, and middle three 20% groups, they asked people how they thought the wealth in this country was divided. Then he asked them what they thought was the ideal distribution. And 92%, that’s at least nine out of 10 of them, said it should be more like this. In other words, more equitable than they think it is. Now, that fact is telling, admittedly, the notion that most Americans know that the system is already skewed unfairly. But what’s most interesting to me is the reality compared to our perception. The ideal is as far removed from our perception of reality as the actual distribution is from what we think exists in this country. So ignore the ideal for a moment. Here’s what we think it is again. And here is the actual distribution. Shockingly skewed. Not only do the bottom 20% and the next 20%, the bottom 40% of Americans barely have any of the wealth. I mean, it’s hard to even see them on the chart. But the top 1% has more of the country’s wealth than nine out of 10 Americans believe the entire top 20% should have. Mind-blowing. But let’s look at it another way because I found this chart kind of difficult to wrap my head around. Instead, let’s reduce the 311 million Americans to just a representative 100 people. Make it simple. Here they are. Teachers, coaches, firefighters, construction workers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, some investment bankers, a CEO, maybe a celebrity. Now let’s line them up according to their wealth, poorest people on the left, wealthiest on the right, just a steady row of folks, based on their net worth. We’ll color code them like we did before, based on which 20% quintile they fall into. Now, let’s reduce the total wealth of the United States, which was roughly $54 trillion in 2009, to this symbolic pile of cash. And let’s distribute it among our 100 Americans. Well, here’s socialism, all the wealth of the country distributed equally. We all know that won’t work. We need to encourage people to work, and work hard to achieve that good old American dream, keep our country moving forward. So here’s that ideal we asked everyone about. Something like this curve. This isn’t too bad. We’ve got some incentive, as the wealthiest folks are now about 10 to 20 times better off than the poorest Americans. But hey, even the poor folks aren’t actually poor since the poverty line stayed almost entirely off the chart. We have a super healthy middle-class with a smooth transition into wealth. And yes, Republicans and Democrats alike chose this curve. Nine out of 10 people, 90%, said this was a nice ideal distribution of America’s wealth. But let’s move on. This is what people think America’s wealth distribution actually looks like. Not as equitable, clearly. But for me, even this still looks pretty great. Yes, the poorest 20 to 30% are starting to suffer quite a lot compared to the ideal. And the middle-class is certainly struggling more than they were, while the rich and wealthy are making roughly 100 times that of the poorest Americans and about 10 times that of the still-healthy middle-class. Sadly, this isn’t even close to the reality. Here is the actual distribution of wealth in America. The poorest Americans don’t even register. They’re down to pocket change. And the middle-class is barely distinguishable from the poor. In fact, even the rich, between the top 10 and 20 percentile are worse off. Only the top 10% are better off. And how much better off? So much better off that the top 2 to 5% are actually off the chart at this scale. And the top 1%, this guy, well, his stack of money stretches 10 times higher than we can show. Here’s his stack of cash restacked, all by itself. This is the top 1% we’ve been hearing so much about. So much green in his pockets that I have to give him a whole new column of his own because he won’t fit on my chart. 1% of America has 40% of all the nation’s wealth. The bottom 80%, eight out of every 10 people, or 80 out of these hundred, only has 7% between them. This has only gotten worse in the last 20 to 30 years. While the richest 1% take home almost a quarter of the national income today, in 1976, they took home only 9%. Meaning their share of income has nearly tripled in the last 30 years. The top 1% own half the country’s stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The bottom 50% of Americans own only 0.5% of these investments. Which means they aren’t investing. They’re just scraping by. I’m sure many of these wealthy people have worked very hard for their money. But do you really believe that the CEO is working 380 times harder than his average employee? Not his lowest paid employee. Not the janitor. But the average earner in his company. The average worker needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO makes in one hour. We certainly don’t have to go all the way to socialism to find something that is fair for hard-working Americans. We don’t even have to achieve what most of us consider might be ideal. All we need to do is wake up and realize that the reality in this country is not at all what we think it is. All right. That was, like, 10 years ago. And it’s worse now, if you can imagine. Now, is that political? Well, if your politics is greed, yeah. Yeah, it’s political. So what are we going to do? Remember that our guy in the scripture was about security, and worried about security, and he built bigger barns for security and said, “Eat, drink, and be merry.” I used to, when I was more annoying than I am now, I know it’s hard to imagine, but I used to go around and say, you know, “Eat, drink, and be merry” is in the Bible. It’s right there in the Bible. I’d tell everybody that, and they go, oh, yeah, really? I go, yeah. The next verse it says, “And then God said ‘You fool.’” Right after. So you’ve got to kind of read more than one verse in the Bible. That’d be good. All right. But Ernst Bloch says this. In fact, he’s back early in the 1900s. “The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security. It’s the loss of the capability, capacity to imagine that things could be different.” The most tragic form of loss is not what that guy felt in the story of Jesus, that loss of security. It’s a loss of the capability, the capacity to imagine that things could be different. Do we have that? Are we tragic, more tragic than the person in our story that had everything and then died the next day. We could even be more – it’s not Bible, but I think that’s true. We can imagine things. How could things be different? Well, on an individual level, certainly, we can spread the wealth around. We can do things that are not concentrated. Maybe, just maybe, oh, my gosh, it’s so easy to order from Amazon, but maybe we don’t want Jeff Bezos to have traveling to Mars money when other people don’t have traveling to the grocery store money. Maybe we don’t want to buy everything on Amazon. Maybe. Maybe could do other things, too, about choosing where we spend our money, choosing who. Maybe we tip more. You know? Tip used to be To Insure Promptitude. Did you know that’s what it stood for? To Insure Promptitude. I think that was a reverse engineer. I don’t think it started that. And it came out, well, it came out with Prohibition, and the bars quit selling drinks, and they figured out they weren’t making money, so they cut the wages of the workers, and the workers didn’t have any money, so they had to say everybody throw some money to the worker because we’re not paying them anymore. But now I think tips are To Insure Poverty. Because if you’re working for tips, you’re going to be in poverty. So we were at a conference. All the big, big thinkers of the Presbyterian Church had a conference for training. And, you know, we were at a conference center, and they said, “Shall we leave something for the housekeeping staff when we check out?” And the person says, “Well, you know, the tip is included in your registration fee. And we do put on a gratuity. But I want to tell you, none of these people are making too much money. So if you want to leave something, go ahead.” Maybe you want to do that. But how about some more specific examples, Christy? Well, there’s Warren Buffett. Have you heard of Warren Buffett? I talked about him earlier. That man is, even though he’s having so much trouble giving away his money, you know how much money Warren Buffett has given away in his lifetime? What do you think? What would be a lot of money to give away, if you were really rich? What do you think? How much? ATTENDEE: One million. REV. RAMSEY: One million. Do we have any – it’s higher. Anybody? ATTENDEE: 10 million. REV. RAMSEY: 10 million. Higher still. ATTENDEE: 50 million. REV. RAMSEY: 50 million. That’d be a lot. ATTENDEE: Billion. REV. RAMSEY: Million, yeah. He’s given 42 billion with a “b” dollars away in his lifetime. The man still has almost 100 million, can’t stop making money, poor guy. In fact, Warren Buffett has so much money that he’s hired Bill Gates, who’s a billionaire on his own, to spend his money. He actually gives money to Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to go ahead and spend it for him on things like Third World health and all that. In fact, Warren Buffett is behind something called the Giving Pledge. And what that is, he invites millionaires and billionaires to pledge, it’s not a legal contract or anything like that, but they have a letter, and it’s all public and all that, you can look it up, GivingPledge.org. And these people pledge to give away half of their fortune during their lifetime or when they die. At least half. He’s getting a handful of billionaires and millionaires to sign up, you can look it up on the website, and they have a little letter about what they’re doing and how they’re giving away their money. So maybe… But Christy, you say. We’re not billionaires. We’re not millionaires. We’re barely scraping by. Come on. What else can we do? Well, there’s a guy and his wife in Akron, Ohio – Akron, Ohio, where they shoot black people with 60 bullets if they run away from the police, my hometown – Duane and Lisa. Duane and Lisa just had a heart for ministry and decided they needed to do something for race relations and poor relations. And so they took their family of four – hello – and bought a house in the poorest, awful-est, most neglected neighborhood in Akron, Summit Lake. Summit Lake, during the 2008 when everything fell apart, money and all that, you could buy a house in Summit Lake for one dollar. They had one dollar houses at Summit Lake because no one wanted to live at Summit Lake. One dollar. Well, I don’t know what he paid, but he got a pretty good deal. But that was later on. It was early, around 1998. He moved his family there and started working in the community. He started out with the bike shop and brought the neighborhood kids in, got some donated bikes, and says, hey, you work enough hours on fixing these bikes and learn how to use the bikes and being a good person, you can take the bike home with you. And he’s still doing this now, 25 years later. But also it’s moved into, it’s higher, what they call reentry ministry, in that they take the people, and in fact they’ve got a little building, it’s called The Front Porch. It’s a café. It’s a coffee shop. It’s a rehabilitation center. It’s within walking distance of the jail. And a lot of folks come right out of the jail, they don’t have a job, they don’t have prospects, they don’t have anything, and go to The Front Porch. And The Front Porch finds them a job, gives them a job, puts them to work, does something. They have a recovery meeting on Sunday. And that is his retirement. I mean, that’s what Duane and Lisa did with their money. They made The Front Porch. And they got the foundation, they got employees, and they’ve got things, they got the 501(c)(3) in about 10 years. But they started out the ministry, and they moved to the worst neighborhood in Akron. And, oh, they’re a couple good white people. And lived there, and gained the trust of the community, and worked with community, and bought a ministry. That’s a barn heat bill. What about something a little closer to home? We’re not all from Akron, Ohio, Christy. Although everybody could be, should be, and it’s a sad thing you are not. But we have Carson City. 10 years. I’m in my 10th year at Computer Corps. Computer Corps is run by Ron Norton. Ron Norton is an amazing guy with great talents, former Army drill instructor, among other things. So he’s got a little of that sprinkled in there. And what he did when it was time for him to retire, he took his retirement, and he, if you will, founded Computer Corps. He got donations, and he got a house, and he started making computers available to senior citizens. Because back then seniors didn’t know about the mouse and graphics and back there 25 years ago. He started out with that. He started refurbishing computers. He started saying, hey, give me your old computers. He got old computers, taught people how to refurbish them, and then sell them at a cheap rate to people that don’t have computers. Twenty-five years later, he’s got four different locations. He’s got over 1,000 computers a month coming in. They’re refurbished, and they’re sent out, and they’re sold, and people are rehabilitated. People, again, are coming out, even before, instead of jail, they get to go to community service at Computer Corps. He feeds them six hot meals a week, daily lunches. Has a food pantry runs there, rehabilitation things. And I said, “Ron,” you know, the man’s getting old. I mean, I’m old. He, yeah, really there. And I said, “Ron, you know, what are you going to do? And how long are you going to do this?” You know, he’s there, six, seven days a week because on Sundays he’s up there rolling supplies in. I said, “Ron, Ron, what are you going to do?” And he goes, “Well, this is my retirement. I took all my retirement money, and that’s what you see around here. I got nowhere to go. This is what I’m retired from. This is what I’ve got to do.” He lives at the original house, along with other people in various modes of employee, volunteer, rehabilitation. And that’s how he built his barn, and how he invests, and how he answered the question: When you’re gone, whose would this be? Maybe that’s all you need to do, you know, to overcome our propensity to greed and security and material things is to ask yourself, all these things I have prepared, if my life was gone today, whose would they be? What have I done for others? How am I rich toward God, as the commentators that wrote the Bible put in at the end. Those are good questions. Then you get yourself in the place where God calls you a fool. Never, never a good thing. So what can you do? You can refinance. You can say I’m not like the billionaires and the millionaires. Anybody can do this. I mean, right now I’m in Valley Bishop, and I don’t want to say I’m a saint or nothing. I’m not. In fact, this is what I do because I’m not a saint. I’m here in Valley Bishop, and my church home is an Episcopal Church in Carson City, and I’m rarely there. In fact, it’s getting so they have to pay me to be there. They have to hire me for a Sunday. And I go, well, I got that Sunday, great. But every Sunday my tithe is there, my contribution is there. And you can think about that. One of the cures, if you will, treatments for greed is to start percentage giving. It doesn’t have to be 10%. Doesn’t have to be a tithe. I haven’t done the math yet. I really need to do that. But if you can commit yourself to a certain percentage of your income going to other people, the church is fine, nonprofits, whatever, any of that would help your greed and your barn building. Just by thinking about percentage giving to something that will go on beyond you. You can reinvest. And like Warren Buffett says, and he should know, he’s got more money than most of us, than about everybody but seven people in the world, you could say, “This isn’t my money. I’m just holding on to it while I’m here.” And move it to other people. So you can set up automatic giving. You’ve got to watch out. There’s some dangers in that and some things. And also, if you notice, that was in Episcopal Church, and I’m a little embarrassed because I am giving money to the Episcopal Church when I’m Presbyterian. So I also give money to the Presbyterian Church PC(USA) Mission. I have a missionary I support. And that’s not because I’m wonderful. It’s because I’m horrible. If I didn’t set that up automatically, I wouldn’t do it. And I didn’t do it. And I would go to the Episcopal Church, and I would look at Betty Lynn, I’d go, we haven’t been there in two months, and we owe this. Oh, my gosh, I’m not writing that check. Ow. So we do that. So you can reinvest your money. And pledge to yourself, like even – you don’t have to be a billionaire. You can pledge to yourself. Pledge. It is not a legally binding contract. Oh, there it is again. You can say to yourself, you can even write yourself a little letter, don’t have a website, but you can say I’m going to give this much away. Doesn’t have to be 50% like the billionaires. But can it be 2%? Can it be 1%? The important thing is that it’s going to be regular, it’s going to be a percentage, and you’re going to commit. You know, if last year you gave to something $1000, maybe you’re going to go by percentage, and that turns out to be $800. I think that’s a better gift. Not just if you’re in the mood, just saying I’m committed, and I’m going to do that. Reinvest. You can also rebuild. I didn’t say rebuild, but at Computer Corps they rebuild. And what they do, they take chances on all sorts of people. When I showed up there, imagine, if you will, I showed up there, minister without a church, coming to Nevada without a job. That is very suspect. Why were you kicked out of the church? Who hates you? What have you done? I mean, that is an obvious question. And they gave me a chance. And after a year I got the key to the place. I tried to not take it; but no, I still have it. But rebuild. And they just don’t rebuild computers. They take people there who have never had a job, that have never been outside their home, and they take them in, and they show them how to work a time clock, and they show them how to show up and how to leave, they give them a lunch, and they show them how to clock out for lunch and clock in for lunch. And there’s a lot of people don’t know how to do these things. And then when they leave, they’ve got one line on their résumé. And they’ve got a reference from Ron. And so many people have gone through there. And our best volunteers we lose because they go out and get somebody to pay them for what we train them to do. So you can refurbish. You can invest in other people. Invest in other people that don’t really – maybe not worth the investment. And we’ve had some bad things. That happens. You can also, oh, it’s kind of like reentry, as well, in that you let people back in to life, figure out how they to get back into life. That’s what they do at, I didn’t say it, Southside Ministries in Akron. They figure out how to get people back into things. Maybe you’re in recovery. Maybe you support someone in recovery. Maybe you host a recovery group at the church or somewhere. But maybe we can figure out how to get people back on their feet again, and what could be done to help people instead of blame them. There’s a little program up in Carson City called Circles. And what the Circles does is not so much giving money to the poor people, but they have the poor people and the people that are struggling, the people that almost have the first and last month’s rent, almost, to come and to – they have dinner, and they have training, and they asked them, what do you need to do to get a job? One time they said, “Everybody wants us to know PowerPoint. We don’t know how to do that.” Or “We don’t have a computer.” So we had a class in PowerPoint. Everybody learned how to use PowerPoint, and they can have another thing on their resume. Reentry. Where are you putting the stuff of your life? What barns are you building? When you leave, the things you have prepared, who will they be? Think about that, and God and Jesus will not call you a fool. You will not be a fool. You will be blessed. Amen.

Choices Choicesa sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service June 12,2022at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CAedited 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.

What Does It Mean What Does It Meana sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service May 8,2022at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CAedited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Acts 2:1-21 Sermons also available free on iTunes (Text to come!) BONUS! The recording ran pass the sermon. Here are some edited excerpts from the service.

Straining to Forget Straining to Forgeta sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at the 9:30 AM Worship Service April 3,2022at Lee Vining Presbyterian Church, Lee Vining,CAand given that same day at 11 AM at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop, CaliforniaBoth 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.

Making Room for Christmas People Christmas Parkinga 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, NevadaI am wearing a mask so the deep breathing is not a sign of illnessbut 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.

Greater Service Springs from Lesser Certainity Going Out of Businessa 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, NevadaI am wearing a mask so the deep breathing is not a sign of illnessbut a sign of caring for others.edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. John 18:33-37 Sermons also available free on iTunes 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.

How Hearts Get Hard and Why In God’s Name It Matters Hardness of Hearta sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at 10 AM Worship Service October 3, 2021at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson City.I am wearing a mask so the deep breathing is not a sign of illnessbut a sign of caring for others.edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Mark 10:2-16 Sermons also available free on iTunes I want to talk to you about hardness of heart. Hardness of heart. Now, forget what you know about being hard-hearted because that is probably society’s definition of what hard-hearted is: someone that is not kind, not generous, not compassionate. Kindness, generosity, and compassion are all good things. But in the Bible, the lack of them is not what makes one hard-hearted. To find out the Bible’s meaning of hard-hearted, we have to go back to the Hebrew Scriptures. There’s a lot of hard-heartedness going along in the Hebrew Scriptures. The most common place where there’s hard-heartedness is the story of – anyone? Anyone? Bueller? No? Nothing? Anybody on Zoom chat? The Exodus story with Pharaoh. That Pharaoh guy was always getting his heart hardened. Right? And every time there was a plague; Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. And it wasn’t because he wasn’t kind or generous or compassionate or understanding. Hard-hearted in the Bible means you can’t see what God is doing in the world. This comes from not caring why things are happening only how. And Pharaoh lived for the how, never the why. Remember the first plagues that came up, the frogs, the Nile turning to blood-red, all these things? Pharaoh was focused on how. Because he turned to his magicians, and his magicians did the same thing. Oh, well, that’s not anything special. My magicians can do that, as well. I know how you did it. I know the secret. I know the trick. I know the magic. And he completely missed why God was doing it. For that he was called “hard-hearted.” Hard-hearted is when we don’t see what God is doing in the world and instead focus on how we are in the world. Don’t we do that a lot? In the beginning of our Greek scripture reading we hear more about how. In fact, all through this chapter it’s about the hows presented to Jesus, and Jesus going, why is God doing this in the world? The Pharisees come up and say is it lawful – how – for a man to divorce his wife? And Jesus asks them, what does the law say? And they answer with a how. Well, you give her a certificate of divorce, you go to a notary public, you get it stamped, you do all the things and that. And Jesus calls that “hard-hearted.” Not because of the lack of compassion or kindness, the meanness of divorce, but because, as he goes on to explain, it’s not what God intends. You see, Jesus isn’t here giving some moral rules for divorce. He isn’t here outlawing divorce. He isn’t tell you how to live your life. He isn’t telling you a bunch of reasons. We don’t have to go back and break out the scarlet letter “A” and put it on people so we know not to marry them. He’s telling us the why. And I know you all are a little titillated, maybe, about that word “adultery.” Can we say that in church? Have the children left? But you know, adultery is not just what we usually think of it in culture. Adultery means to water down; right? If you have adulterated milk, that means someone put some water in it or some other things, watered it down. If a food or anything else is adulterated, it means it’s not the way it should be. If you think about that, the why of the adultery, instead of the scandlous how, it’s obvious today whoever does these things isn’t living the way God wants us to live. Every time in this chapter, and it’s three stories in one chapter, but we’ve only have two this week because as Father Jeff says, the lectionary elf says oh, no, only two, only two. Every story, one, marriage and how a man owns a wife. That’s the way it was back then. Then there was children, another thing that a man would own. Leads up to, with the author of Mark, the story that we’ll hear next week about the rich young ruler although you have combined different gospel accounts to get the complete description. The story is about a man with great possessions that comes to Jesus with a how question. How do I inherit eternal life? How do I do it? And Jesus looks at him and loves him and answers with why are you living your life? Give away all that you have to the poor, and follow me. And the answer to the how do I get this eternal life, Jesus tasks the rich young ruler, examine why you are living. Why are you living? Are you living to serve others? Are you living to help others? It’s the why question you should be looking at, not the how. Do we do that today? You know, we really, really are encouraged to ask the how questions and stop there. Now, I’m not going – the how people, need them in my life. I need them. I love them. That’s what I need, some people to tell me how to do stuff. But we can’t stop there. We’ve got to examine the why are we doing even what we know how to do. I quote Hélder Câmara, Archbishop in Brazil. A famous quote about how and why. When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a communist. When I focus on how we’re going to feed the poor, well, that’s good. That’s safe. That’s acceptable. But when I ask why are there hungry people, why are there poor people, oh, now you’ve gone from preaching to meddling. You’re being a communist if you ask the why questions. I love signs. I’m a big sign guy. Have you see the signs of the pandemic? I love reading them and considering them. The ones about masks. I know how you voted in the last election, just by the sign on your door. You know that? How did that happen? But can you see those? And some say “Due to government mandate, because of the Governor and the CDC, you’ve got to wear a mask.” I don’t know about you, and we can take a survey later about how you feel about the Governor, but I’m pretty darn sure the Governor did not kill 700,000 Americans. I’m going to go out on a limb and say he didn’t do that. So that sign on the door saying the Governor makes us wear a mask, I’m saying, you know, that’s a how. That’s a how. How do we get masks on? We had the Governor say that. But have you seen others? Not many. Maybe I’m not going to the right places. It’s just occurred to me that, that maybe I need to go different places. But some say something like, “Due to the pandemic, you have to wear a mask.” Or a couple I’ve seen, “To protect you and others, you have to wear a mask.” Now, there’s someone that gets the why, and not just the how. It’s been a bad year for the hows. Awful year. I’ve gone over and over about how are we going to meet as a Presbytery. That’s like my one job is to have a Presbytery meeting. I have a job. My job is to have a Presbytery meeting. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got to do. Oh, my lord has it been hard to get a Presbytery meeting. I’m halfway through my term. I’ve had 28 minutes of Presbytery meeting in a year and a half. And that was only to have a meeting so we could pass a by-law change so we didn’t have to have meetings. It’s been a bad year for the how people. But you know what? It’s going to be even harder coming back because I’m telling you, at least half of the people, maybe more, stop at the how. For them, church is all about the hows. How do we do worship? How do we do coffee hour? How do we do fellowship? How do we do communion? And that’s all they know, and that’s where they stop. And when you take away those hows, you’ve taken away their church. When you take away the how, you’ve taken away their faith and their identity, and they don’t have anything left. And they say, what? The ritual phase? I didn’t sign up for this. This is not how it’s done. And I’m not picking on you church folk. It’s throughout the churches, all the churches. It’s also through the clubs. I’m a member of a social club, service club. We lost half our members. Half our members are gone. Our president was in tears our last meeting. Why? Because we’re not doing how it’s supposed to be done. And for some people that’s all their membership means, how we do things. That’s not how we do things. They forget the why. Or they never got to the why. We’re not there to meet together, shake hands, tell jokes, have our masks off, talk to one another, give hugs, all these things that people object to we can’t do anymore. We’re there, and we say this, “To serve the community, one child at a time.” (see Why Kiwanis.) That’s why we’re meeting. That’s why we have a club. It’s not to meet together. It’s not to have lunch together. It’s not to talk together. It’s not to handshake together. It’s not to have fun together. It’s not to joke together. It’s to serve the community, one child at a time. That hasn’t changed. Pandemic does not stop the whys. Crisis does not change the why. Challenges does not change – oh, it wipes out the hows. And if that’s all you’ve got, you’re going to lose your faith, the how-to faith. But why God faith goes on. You look throughout Scriptures through this lens, where we continue to come to God with how do we do something. And those are important, and those are good and helpful. But it is deadly if we stop there. We’ve got to continue on and say why are we doing things. Even Job, which is a huge sermon in all itself and story. Our little sermon from Job, our little Scripture from Job. How do you live? But Job, when everything went a terrible way, worse than the pandemic, and it gets worse for Job, he knows why he’s there. Shall we take the good from God, but not the evil? Why are we there? To serve. To be in a relationship with God, in good times and in bad. That’s why I’m here. That has not changed, even though everything else has. Friends, as difficult as this last 18 months have been, it’s been so difficult, you’ve even got Presbyterians up preaching to you. Oh, my God. Lord almighty. When will it end, Lord? Even though the hows are broke away and changed and discarded, I’m telling you this is an excellent opportunity to remember the whys. Why are we here as a church? Because the hows have gone away. The things we used to do, the rituals we used to fund, the calendar, the cut-and-paste events. All gone. And we’re like Job, scratching ourselves with Zoom mics, hoping the itch would go away. Shall we take the good from God, and abandon him when things aren’t so good? We will if we only focus on how we are supposed to live and how things are supposed to be and how others are supposed to be and that darn governor mandate. But if we focus on we’re here to help one another, to keep each other safe from pandemic, from death; we’re here to keep the hospitals less than full so that when people have a heart attack or a stroke there’s actually a hospital bed for them and not filled up with some COVID person from the pandemic. I don’t know about you, but it’s a lot easier for me to wear a mask for that reason than because the Governor told me so. So I’m telling you, you want a way out, don’t be asking Jesus the how questions. Always look for the why, why questions. The how will lead you to a hardness of heart where you will not see God’s work in the world. You totally miss it. But looking at the why and the intentions of God will lead you to a blessed, contented, and maybe even, yes, the answer to the rich young ruler’s question: eternal life. Amen.

We can search for miracle as well as we can find malice in others Hanlon’s Razora sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at Christ Presbyterian Church, Gardnerville, NV on August 1,2021edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Ephesians 4:1-16 Sermons also available free on iTunes One difference between a community and a cult is just that – difference. A community embraces it. A cult outlaws it. Both are organized around a common goal and beliefs. But community is harder than a cult because everyone is not like you and me. More specifically, it’s harder because not everybody is me. If it was me, everything would be fine. But it doesn’t work that way in community. Only in cults. You’re saying, why is he talking about community? Because that’s what our scripture’s about. You may think that it’s about spiritual gifts. This is one of those spiritual gifts inventory passages. You know, the one we all love to like. It’s just like, you know, it’s an Amazon Wish List, and we just got a gift card. You know, we’re going through it saying, oh, what can I get? Oh, boy. But I want to caution you, at least for today, do not pretend that this is Christmas Eve, and the verses are gaily wrapped packages for us to shake and figure out what we got. Because that’s not what the scripture is about. In fact, all the spiritual gift list is not to talk to us about how wonderful it is to have gifts, although that’s pretty good. It is about community. It is about differences, about how people that are different, in different ways, are blessed together to build up the body, even though they are different. You get that? It is about embracing differences. And look how subtly it has changed. Instead of saying, oh, them, they’re not like us, they’re different; instead of saying people are different, and we’ve got to put up with them, it says what? People have different gifts. People that are different are gifts, not burdens. Not something to be fixed. Not something to be convinced. Not something to come in line with the one true opinion – which is mine, by the way. They are gifts. What if we went along with that? It goes, “Oh, what a gift that is.” You know, it’s kind of like in the South. I don’t know, anybody from the South? They have that saying, “Oh, bless her heart.” That means I don’t really approve of what you’re doing or saying, but bless you anyway. Now, you can go through what that means. But I’m going to take it to mean you’re a gift. Your specialness, uniqueness, problematic behavior I’m taking as a blessing; I’m taking as a gift. Now, one of my main errors is I forget to explain my title. So let’s get that done. Hanlon’s Razor is by Robert Hanlon. Did I get the name right? ATTENDEE: Hanlon. Hanlon, yes, thanks. I wrote it down for all of us. Yeah, Robert Hanlon is a computer programmer. And he sent in this to a joke book, kind of distilling what has been floating around in literature and quotes for centuries. And he says that “Do not attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Don’t think someone is evil and out to get you when it could be they’re just stupid, and not even thinking about themselves or you or anybody. Now, Bob, come on. That’s pretty harsh. You know. Stupid? Really, Bob? You know, Bob must be one of those cultural elites, you know, went to college, thinks they know everything. Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve just cut myself with Hanlon’s Razor because I’m assuming malice in what he says. Well, I’m still not happy with the stupid. So since I’m the one true measure of all things for like 20 minutes, I would like to say a different one. Let’s call it Ramsey’s Razor. That’s great. You saw that coming. Ramsey’s Razor. And I’m going to say do not attribute to malice what can be explained by miracle. Do not attribute to malice, to evil in the world, to somebody out to get you, what could be a miracle. When you say “miracle,” what do you mean? Some supernatural intervention in the orderly course of nature? Well, yeah, those are showy, and that’s good. But that’s not just all the miracles. For me, miracle is that what we talked about in the gospel, a sign. A work that points to Jesus Christ and to God. And you look at it, and you say, “I see God there.” You know, like you look at my face, and you see Jesus. Right there. A miracle. You think God when you see this. And you see Jesus struggling in the gospel because he straight-off calls him out. He calls him out. He says, “You’re just here because you’ve got the loaves, and you were fed with bread.” And he’s talking about the feeding of the 5,000. He’s talking about the miracle. And boy, do we go on about that. You know, oh, he just had five loaves and two fish, and then they came up, and they had baskets over, and let’s do the calculation, take an inventory, and how many was that? And it was just men, so it was probably more like 10,000. You know, okay, that’s an okay miracle. But, you know, I’m pretty sure a competent caterer could do that, and definitely a magician could pull that off. There’d be a little prep work, but it’s doable. Far as a miracle goes, I don’t know. But I tell you, how about this? If, I’m saying if. So no emails to the stated clerk; okay? I’m saying “if” right here. So if, what if this is? You remember the story? It’s supposed to be a sign of God for the miracle. A child comes up. Maybe a girl. A child comes up and says, “Well, I got my lunch. I could share that.” And a disciple says, “Well, what’s that among so many?” And so Jesus accepted that gift, and he brought her out in front of the crowd, and he broke it. Remember? He broke it. He held it up, and he blessed it. He took it from, let’s say a little girl, and shared it out. And people say, well, it was a miracle because of the baskets. The baskets were magic baskets. They never filled. Well, you know, back then there wasn’t any fast foods, or wasn’t any restaurants on the turnpike. There wasn’t any of that stuff. People, if they were going out for the day, you’d better believe they had food. They were packing a lunch. But you know, when you’re in a crowd, and all sorts of people around, maybe you don’t want to get out your food when there’s a bunch of hungry people around you. Maybe you don’t want to do that. But, you know, they saw the little girl, and they go, well, you know, the little girl shared stuff. She shared all she had. I’m not going to be shamed up by a little girl. I got stuff. Hey, you want something? It’s like that Nevada Day Parade. Have you ever tried to be sober throughout a Nevada Day Parade? You’ve got to pretty much be militant about it. “Hey, I got something. Try some of this.” You know? So that little girl, and Jesus’s acceptance of her gift, changed that crowd of strangers into a crowd of friends and family, sitting down for a meal. And where they had scarcity, when they had nothing, they had plenty because they had it with them all along. You know, it’s like that famous church building – have you ever heard of the church building fundraising capital campaign? The campaign person comes up and says, “I’ve got good news. We have all the money we need for this capital campaign.” And everybody goes, “Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.” And then he says, “Yeah, it’s right in your wallets.” Not so much hallelujah there. And I tell you that my version of the transformation of that crowd from strangers that will let the other persons go hungry, to a family and friends and a community that shares their bread with one another until there’s enough and more left over, I’m telling you that’s a miracle. That shows me God and the way God wants us in the world, much more than how much bread is in that basket in the leftovers. That’s the gospel. And we look out at the crowd, and they said, oh, that person’s going to take my bread. That person’s going to steal my lunch. That person is going to grab my wine if I bring it out. Malice. But Jesus was able to turn that into miracle. Be okay if I share my stuff. Everyone else will share. It’ll be a miracle. I’ll be a sign of God’s working among us. It’d be a taste of heaven, if I assume miracle instead of malice. My brother doesn’t call me for decades. He just doesn’t call. And I thought it was, you know, because of that incident 25 years ago, you know, back when we were kids. Or it was because he doesn’t care about me, or because he’s mad at me, or because I’m too preachy, or because of his wife. Malice. None of that’s true. I mean, I didn’t check it out, just put it in my head. We’ve been pretty much meeting on Zoom for an hour every week during the pandemic. You know, we go back and forth. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not so good; you know? But there’s no malice there. Miracle. I was talking to him, and both of my brothers come on the Zoom most of the time. And he says, you know, “We’ve got to keep this up because, if we don’t, I don’t talk to Tim for a year.” It’s not malice. It’s just that we’re not looking for the miracle. Twice I was in a big church. How do you know it’s a big church? Because the pastor’s office has a private bathroom. I’m telling you, as I got older, that got better and better, I’ll tell you. And one time I was in a church, and I’d go around the church, doing I don’t know, whatever I was doing. And behind me followed the custodian. The custodian followed me. You know, he just giggled. I could hear him chortling back there. And I go, “What are you doing?” He goes, “Oh, no, don’t mind me. I’m fine.” I walk more and hear him giggling. What’s he doing? What is up with that guy? You know? Couldn’t figure it out. And I go, why is he following me? Does he think I’m stealing stuff? What is he doing? You know? I go, “What are you doing?” I finally said. He goes, “Well, Pastor, when you walk around with your coffee, you spill little drops on the carpet. And it’s a lot easier just to wipe them up as soon as they come off.” Malice or miracle? You know, where there’s confirmation bias, you probably heard about this, this is what runs YouTube and Facebook and our magazine subscriptions in olden times, you know, and our television news selection now in that we want to hear things we already know. We want to confirm our beliefs of what we already suspect and believe and understand. And so Facebook and YouTube have really fired up on that. And if you keep watching YouTube, they say, oh, you like that? Here’s a little bit more. Oh, you like that? Here’s even more. And if you like that, here’s even more and more. And you just keep rolling down into a rabbit hole of our own biases and prejudice. And then there’s also availability bias or availability heuristic. Which means the information that is most recently available, that it’s easy for us to get, is the one we go by. Basically, it’s the lazy principle. You know, it’s a lot easier to read a tweet than a book. It’s a lot easier to go with a hot take from a TV host over a few 30-second sound bytes than it is to listen to a lecture on an expert. It’s a lot easier to watch someone on TikTok or YouTube, or someone at your breakfast table tell you about the latest medical news, about this or that, than to actually go to your doctor and actually talk to someone who actually studied medicine. That’s harder to do. Availability. We look for the easy stuff. And too often, the stuff that is apparent, that is out there, that is ready for us to consume is the stuff that is designed to make us upset, to fire us up, to say the both/and, either/or, the other side, oh, gets upset, we’re going to suck you in to watch and click. Malice, not miracle. And the malice people will tell you that the different ones are out to get us. And they’ll have little snippets or little snaps, little tweets to tell you about the different ones that are out to get you. Where in our scripture today we find the different ones are out to bless us. Ramsey’s Razors don’t attribute to malice what God says could be a miracle. Do you know how hard it must be with someone with the gift of prophecy? That person’s got to be hard to put up with. Or an evangelist? Can you imagine being with someone that’s an evangelist? But in our scripture it says those are gifts. Those are miracles. That’s what makes community. If we look at what we have in our community as gifts instead as obstacles to fix, we can find the miracles. We want to fill up the voids in our life, the emptiness, the unknowns, the questions. And we can do that. We can do that with faith. We can believe that God is there, God is working. We can do that. And we can do that with fear, and so often we do. The scary unknown, the monsters in the dark, the scariness of what is coming next. We can fill that up with fear. And I’m not telling you either one. Sometimes it is fearful. Sometimes it is faithful, and it might be good for us to practice more on the faithful thing. I’m not telling you not to do that. But I’m telling you, what if we could keep that empty space open? Keep it available for God’s work and miracle? Fill it up, not with faith, not with fear, but just keep it open and say God will show us the way. We’ll be faithful, and God will be there. You don’t have to fill it up with fear, or even with faith. Ever hear that story about is a glass half full or half empty? That’s a trick question because I believe there’s no way to tell from a static picture whether the glass is half full or half empty. You’ve got to know which way you’re going. Because if you’re filling up the glass, it’s half full. If you’re draining the glass, it’s half empty. It’s on the way to being empty, or it’s on the way for being filled. There’s no way to say right in the middle, is that half full or half empty? It’s only with the direction. Maybe that’s hard to understand. Let’s talk about church. Is the church half full or half empty? Well, if you’re thinking the church is going to grow, more people are going to come, you’re going to say oh, my gosh, the church is half full. We’d better get some more chairs. If you’re thinking the other way, oh, my gosh, the church is half empty. We’d better get rid of the chairs. Or what if we could say it’s neither half full or half empty? There’s room for others. There’s room for others. There’s room for people to come. Did you know that church planner says if your church is more than 80% filled, new people won’t come because they say there’s no room for me here. They don’t see it as half full or half empty. They look at it, is there room for me? And I tell you, if we fill things up with malice, there’s no room for a miracle. But if we somehow are able to keep the things we don’t know, the future we cannot see, and say to ourselves that with God we can go forward in there, if we can keep that place open, well, then, there’s room for God to do marvelous things. There’s room for God for a miracle to create community. There’s room for God to say, those people, they’re different. Praise God. It’s a blessing, not a curse. Amen.

A Fourth of July sermon about four Julys when us includes or excludes the other who don’t know their place.

God does call us to a Nomad not Normal life. Normal or Nomada sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Carson City, NV on June 6.2021edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. 1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20 Mark 3:20-35 Sermons also available free on iTunes Video versions (both masked and unbasked) are at the end of the text We have all felt like Samuel. No, I’m not talking about being called old by the people, although we may have been there, too. I’m talking about Samuel going crazy. This is crazy Samuel time. When you know what is right. When you know what happens, and what will happen, and how the world is arranged, and you tell the people that. In no uncertain terms, you tell them the reality of having a king, for example. The high taxes. The forced labor. All the stuff. And the people, they don’t argue. They don’t have a conversation, much less the compromise or consensus. They just say, to all your wonderful reasons of how the world works, they say no. No. No. All the stuff you said, all the great reasons you gave, we say no. We want a king. We want to be like other nations. Did you hear it? We want to be normal. Who can say hallelujah to being normal? I haven’t heard more consensus around an idea ever. I want to be normal. All praise to the God normal, where everything is normal. I want to talk to you about normal, that that isn’t normal. And they’re proud of that. I can tell you for sure you are not normal. And I just have to say one day, one morning, my first Nevada Day parade. First, we have the governor riding atop a military half-track, going down Main Street. I go, what? That’s not normal, the governor in a military half-track going down the main street. That’s a little odd. Then next, a few floats later, we have a convertible with sex workers telling us to come on down to the brothel for the Nevada Day Special. Okay, that’s not normal for this Ohio boy. And then, to finish up the parade, we have the synchronized shooting rifles drill team. Okay. We really don’t think that’s normal in Ohio or anywhere I’ve been. We shoot guns together in a parade. Not something we do. And we talk about going into a pharmacy or a grocery store, and there are slot machines, and a whole room full of them. Now, people have told me all my life that the way I eat is a gamble, but here we have the slot machines to prove it. Normal. People wanting to be normal. We want to be like the other nations. You know, they have a king that goes out before them and fights their battles and does the things that other nations do. We want to be normal. And I’m here to tell you that the Bible is against normal. Well, that’s not totally true. I mean, the Bible is sort of split. The people and God come down differently because God is against normal. The people, they’re all for it. And you could say the whole story of the Bible could be, look at the lens between God saying don’t be normal and the people saying, yeah, we really want to be normal. And that’s all story of salvation. The abnormal love and grace of God calling normal people into abnormal community. And it’s not just the Hebrew Scriptures. Our reading from the Gospel, we have the family of Jesus saying why can’t that kid just be normal? Why can’t he get a normal job? Why is he fooling around with demons? And you see that it says “restrained.” The family didn’t come to talk to him. The family didn’t come to be with him in his meeting. The family didn’t come to dinner. They were outside. They were there to restrain him. Was this some kind of early intervention? To try to convince him to change his ways? To get him out of that cult he was starting? They wanted him to be normal. Does that ever happen today? I think if you go to any Pride event, you don’t even have to go to the parade. You can just go to the people that came to watch the parade. And they will tell you about their family, wanting them to just be normal. Not be who they are, but be normal. Not be with who they love, but be normal. Study just came out in Canada that one out of 10 gay people up in Canada have been forced into some kind of conversion therapy. One out of 10 in 2021. To be normal. Do we worship normal? Normally, in a typical year, 300 children die of ‘flu. Every year, year in, year out, 300 children. 600 parents. Let me see if I get my math. Hundreds, thousands of grandparents lose a child. Normal. Oh, it’s normal. But this year, with us wearing masks, keeping distance, washing our hands, zero children died of the ‘flu. Zero. That is not normal. When you tell me, you want to go back to normal, I’ve got to say, hold on now. Have you thought about what normal was? Children dying? You want to go back to normal? You know, with normal, for people of color, every time they get a traffic stop, to be in a life-or-death situation, to be somehow an unwilling participant in a murder edition of Simon Says, that if you don’t do what I say as quickly as I said in the right quickly way, your life is in danger. That was normal. It was normal for us white people to deny, ignore, explain away, and say, oh, they must’ve done something wrong. Oh, if they only did things quickly, or did follow instructions, or did this. It was just normal for people to get killed, people of color to get killed over a traffic stop, over a minor violation, over a misdemeanor. Is that normal we want? How about women? This is the only year, year and a half, in the recent history of our country where women were not constantly told to smile. They’re so much prettier when they smile. Where men would tell women how they should feel, how they should look, how they should act. Heck fire, you didn’t even have to wear makeup if you didn’t want to. It used to be normal to tell people how to live and how to smile and how they should be in the world. And now we can put the mask on. They don’t know if we’re grimacing or whatever. Do you want to get back to that normal? What about us religious folks? Yeah, maybe you’re not a person of color. Maybe you’re not a woman. Maybe you don’t have children young and susceptible to the ‘flu. We’re all in church. We know what normal is at church. Want to get back to the normal. Do we? I mean, with normal, that if you are not able-bodied and could not sit quietly without interruption for an hour – hour and a half if Christy’s preaching – you weren’t allowed to be in church. You couldn’t be there. You couldn’t be a part of the community. Oh yeah, we had homebound ministry. God bless everybody for doing all that. But you couldn’t be with the people. Couldn’t be with the Zoom. And you know Zoom’s in the Bible. You all know that; right? I’m telling you. You know what they call the Internet? The cloud; right? You’ve heard that. Cloud? The Internet? What’s it say in the Bible? Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, (Hebrews 12:1) Zoom, we’re talking about you. And if you weren’t in town, if you were visiting out of town, if you moved out of town, you were cut off from community. If you couldn’t get it together, and you couldn’t be in the exact same time, the exact same place, you couldn’t experience worship. And I’ll go further. Even if you weren’t disabled visibly, some people couldn’t come to church because of social anxiety. They didn’t like to be touched and hugged and nattered at. Maybe there was somebody that they weren’t comfortable being around with, they didn’t feel safe with. They had a divorce, and the other person got custody of the church. You know how that goes. But with Zoom online, they could come and could worship together. I don’t like to be hugged. I’ve got things, and I pay people to listen to. You don’t have to. But I don’t like to be hugged. I’ve got arthritis. I don’t wear a badge. I don’t have one of those wonderful placards that people are wearing now. But handshakes hurt me a lot of times. You know how terrible that is for a pastor, to not be able to handshake people? Not without a grimace? There’s other people that have more problems than I do that don’t want to be hugged, for one good reason or bad or whatever, and so they don’t come to church. With Zoom, they can come and be like everyone else. Don’t be normal. Examine the normal. Sure, it’s great. I mean, this year has been four times the planning, twice the effort, for one half of the results. It is so much easier to copy and paste, whether it’s church services or our life, to just replicate from one to another, change the dates, couple things, and off we go. It’s so much easier, and that’s why people love the normal. But that doesn’t leave much room for God. If you embrace the normal, and only the normal, God says you have rejected me. And you know what normal starts with? “No.” You can’t have normal without “no.” No, you can’t have your own feelings. You’ve got to smile all the time, women. No, you can’t be with who you love. No, you can’t be gay. You just decide to be gay. Stop being gay. No, you can’t be it. No, you can’t be a non—hugger and be in our church. No, you can’t be disabled and fully participate in worship. No. Normal starts with no. What do you do? What can we do? Well, you know, God reminds us in Samuel, you know, his preference. He says, hey, remember the normal I took you out of? Remember the normal called slavery, and Egypt? Remember that normal? Oh, yes, another day of being a slave. Well, same day as the last. Another day of backbreaking work with no hope and no help. Okay, normal. And God says no, no more normal. I want you to be a nomad. That’s a difference of being normal; right? And that’s what we’ve been the last year and a half. We’ve been nomads. We don’t know where we are or where were going. We’re saying, do we have masks? Do we not have masks? Is there contact? Is there not contact? Do we fog the place or not fog the place? Do we have to stay away? How many vaccines do we have? Do we have vaccines? Is it going to disappear? Is it not? Nomads. We don’t know where we are. We don’t know where were going. We don’t know what’s next. We kept planning for things, and we had to cancel them. Where does the virus come from? Where is it going? What’s going on? Nomads. And when we’re not in our normal place, God has room to act. God has room to do wonderful things, just in the church. The church has made more changes and accommodations and advancements in the first month of the pandemic than we did in 20, 30 years. Thirty years we’ve been talking about there’s a whole world outside these walls we could bring in if we just used the technology. Oh, no, that’s not normal. I remember – have you ever seen Father Jeff, he’s really into it. He’s very competent. But the day they closed church and said he had to go online, in Ohio we call it “deer in the headlights.” You know, where the eyes get really big. And he says, “What am I going to do?” And I go, “I’ll be there. I’ll be there Tuesday. We’ll figure this out. We can get it done.” So I come in, and he’s just, “What am I going to do? It’s not normal to not have church, but have church.” And I asked him a couple of questions. I said, “Well, do you want to talk and preach to a camera? Because we could do it that way. Or do you want to talk and preach to people on a screen that you can see?” And he says, “Oh, I want to see the people. I have to see the people.” “All right. We’ll get you hooked up.” It wasn’t normal. But it was a way during a crisis for the people of God to come together. And we were gathered from all over. People from all different places and times of the congregation were gathered together, and we could be together as much as we could, as cyber nomads, surfing the storms of the pandemic. You thought that was hard. It was. You did well. Some churches aren’t coming back. I have a church that right now they’re discussing whether to close or not. But you did well. But good news. Don’t rush back to normal. Don’t rush back to normal. Because for so many people, normal wasn’t working. Normal didn’t let them talk to God. And if you are honest and introspective, perhaps normal wasn’t working for you. So don’t be too concerned if everybody around you doesn’t look at the world the way you do. That’s a little upsetting right now. Like Samuel, you’re going to say, “I have great reasons. I have the facts. I have the list. I have all the YouTube videos that you can watch and know that I am correct.” But God says, don’t take it personal. We’re struggling with whether or not to go with me and be a nomad into this new world, or whether to return to Egypt and slavery and patriarchy and monarchy for the false god of normal. Friends, be nomads. Follow God. Be with God in whatever crazy place you are. Don’t try to shut down and shut out others by saying no to them, “No, that’s not normal.” Instead say, “Come along with us. We’re nomads on a journey together.” Amen. Unmasked and Unrobed Masked Version with Robe

How We Count People and Sin One of the Twelvea sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from worship at St Paul’s Lutheran Family, Carson City, NV on April 11.2021 John 20:19-31 Sermons also available free on iTunes One of the twelve. Did you catch that? There’s a lot going on in the scripture. But in the 24th verse, the first line of the second paragraph of the reading, we read this: “One of the twelve.” I caught my breath when I read that this year because I realized there wasn’t twelve. Judas was gone. Eleven. Thomas is not there. He’s absent. Ten. What about that young man that ran away in Mark? Nine. How about that rough old fisherman that denied Jesus three times? Eight. “One of the twelve.” How do you count in a fearful time? How many people are here today? In my day job, I’m the clerk of the Presbytery of Nevada. All the Presbyterian churches in Nevada, a couple lost souls in California we took pity on and a couple others, report to me how many people came to worship last year on average. And they were calling me and say, “What are we going to put down? What’s the right answer? We haven’t met since March. Our average is zero in worship.” What do we put down? Does Zoom count? How about if there’s two in the little boxes? What if there’s just a strange picture of Wonder Woman every week? Is that really a person? And YouTube views. Does that have to be on Sunday? Or what if we took the whole count? And then there’s Facebook. And then sometimes people do all three at once. I don’t know how they do it, but they do it. How are we going to count how many are a part of us in a fearful time? If Jesus, and I’ve asked him, came in and could tell me the number, what would he say? What would he say here? What would he say there? How many are in the room? Scriptures, the author of John seems to think all of them were there. “One of the twelve.” Gallup has something to say. If you know George Gallup and his organization, he’s gone, but the organization goes on. Have you seen the study that just came out? For the first time in the history of this nation church membership is below 50%. The most common membership of church, United States is “none” for the first time ever. Well, we’ve been seeing it coming. It’s been sliding on down. And it’s not just those avocado-eating, toast-eating young people. Even the greatest generations, their percentage has gone down. Every age group, boomers, you name it, everyone, church membership has gone down. We’re at 47%. 1999, not so long ago, we were at 70%. “No religion” is getting a boost. They’ve gone from 8% up to 21%. Others are kind of in that fuzzy crazy thing of, yeah, I’m with you, but I’m never there kind of thing; you know? I don’t know, you know, you don’t have to worry. I’m not a Lutheran. But in Presbyterian church, half of people who claim they’re Presbyterian aren’t. We have no record of them. One out of two Presbyterians aren’t Presbyterian. So there’s those people. Now, you may tell me, Christy, no one joins anything anymore. The Book of the Month Club is way far away. People aren’t joiners. They don’t sign up for things. They don’t go to clubs. I mean, look at the Grange. You know, that used to be great. Not so much anymore. Look at the Masons. Look at all the fraternal and lodges, Odd Fellows, the Moose, all those things are all having trouble. And I said, well, okay, maybe. But are you a member of Amazon Prime? That seems to be doing pretty well. Have you heard about this thing called Facebook? I think they’ve got more members than there are people in the world, sharing their lives, encouraging or discouraging one another, making connections, building up, tearing down. Sounds like something we used to do. Heck fire, even Best Buy is rolling out a membership plan. I don’t know exactly what that would mean, but I’m signing up. And political parties? I don’t know about you, but it seems like a lot more people are joining up political parties. And youth sports. Is there any youth that isn’t a member of two, three organizations? My goodness. So I don’t think we can just say, well, no one’s joining nothing. I don’t think so. So how do we count? You know, this Sunday we skipped over – did you notice there’s two Sundays in the scripture? It’s really unfair for a preacher to have two Sundays in one Sunday’s reading. I mean, you should separate them out because we forget about that first Sunday, and we look at the second Sunday. You know, the one about the proof and the doubt and the goriness that if we weren’t used to it would be rated “M” on the graphic novel; you know? There’s going to be some hand in the side. Ugh. We skip over that. We talk about the proof and the denial and the doubt and the faith and all this other stuff. There are plenty of sermons on that. I got a couple on the Internet, if you’re really desperate. But I want to talk about the first Sunday after Easter. You know, today. Where the Bible says one of the twelve wasn’t there. Well, then there wasn’t twelve there, was there, Bible. Bible knows that. Bible knows that Judas is gone. Bible knows that Peter’s not out in the open. Bible knows that one of the disciples ran away. Yet the Bible still says twelve. What happened that first Sunday with the twelve? Jesus came back, and the sermon went something like this. You might recognize it. There was peace. Peace. There was ritual actions. There was joy. And there was a message. Did you catch it? It closed the service, sermon at the end, classic structure. Jesus said, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Of all the things to say the Sunday after Easter. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Of all the things Jesus could tell them, coming back from hell, rising from the dead, triumphant over the worst the empire could give him, he says about forgiving sins of any, but also warns them about retaining sins of any. Now, immediately, what did we do as a church? We immediately took this little scripture, and we made a huge big patriarchal power structure, hierarchical, ecclesiastical, with all sorts of penance and potions and indulgences and wherefore and courts and censors and discipline and all this. I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind this first Sunday after Easter. He didn’t think that we were going to make some kind of religious industrial complex out of forgiving and sinning and forgiving and penance and rules and what you have to do to get back right. And look who was there that first Sunday? Look who was not? A denier, deserter, doubter, and all of them despairing. And to this group he says “peace.” There’s no peace, Jesus. Rome is after us. The Jewish, our own people are after us. We’re hiding here. But you see, peace isn’t the peace we think of, absence of war, safety from conflict. Peace is much, much more than that. Peace is everything is where it should be. Everything is in its place. Everything is fitting. Everything is cozy. Everything is the way that God wants it to be. Peace, peace. The twelve are here because God’s peace is here, and all is where it should be. Peace. But if you think of peace as the way God wants the world to be, where everything is fitting, where everybody has what they need to live, where everything is cozy, if you will, then you can understand sin. Sin is not some morality play, some purity test, some list of morals or do’s and don’ts. It isn’t about a dress code. It isn’t about a date code. It isn’t about what you pledge to do or not do on a certain time and place. Sin is not doing God’s will. If you are not conforming, if you’re going against what God wants you to do, that is sin. Which is the opposite of peace. Peace is what God wants the world to be like, what relationships should be. Sin is when we don’t do that, when we rebel. When we don’t do what God wants. When we do things for selfish things. When we don’t have our place in society and with people. And you could think of that first Sunday. You think this is a tough worship service? Mass? Social distancings? No coffee? No hugs? Imagine those people back then. That was a bad Sunday. Jesus dead. Doors locked. Fear of the authorities. Peace. To this he says “peace.” To them he says the world. Let’s not talk sin. Let’s talk about it. If you forgive the way the world is not like what God wants, if you can forgive the way people are not the way God wants them to be, well, then they are forgiven. And I think there were some uncomfortable looks around the room. Was a denier there? Did people kind of look to the side? Say that guy, that guy we have to forgive? God wants peace between me and that guy who couldn’t even say he was with us the time we needed him? Was there a couple people? You know there was. That looked at that empty chair where Judas always sat, you know, that’s where he was. He was just there last week. One of the twelve. That guy. I hate him. You tell me to forgive him? Our things will still be broken. Or the guy who ran away, not named, in Mark. Was he there? Was the guy who locked the door, oh, we’ve got to. You never know, things are coming to get us. You know who this is. Conspiracy theory guy. He’s everywhere. Even back then. We’ve got to make up with him? What about Thomas? Thomas. He didn’t even show up. We haven’t seen that guy. He’s given up. I hear he went back to work. Him? If you forgive, that’s a lot more tough than some kind of purity test or some kind of moral law, to hear Jesus say you get right with the folks that aren’t the way God wants them to be. And that will fix things. And then there’s judgment. He warns those folks because he knew. He could read a room. He looked around, and it’s, oh, geez, I’m going to come back next week. You guys got some homework. If you don’t do this, if you retain, if you keep this up, if you keep acting like this, the way God wants the world to be will continue to be broken. The world will continue to be in sin, meaning not the way God wants it to be. If you want to save the world, you can’t keep going after the folks and the things that don’t measure up to God, God’s will. How do you get rid of sin? We might say repent. We might say get on the right course. We might say penance, depending on our tradition. We might say confession. We might say a lot of things. But the Bible today says the way to get rid of sin is to forgive. To forgive. And are forgiven. And if you don’t forgive, if you retain, if you’re still mad at Peter, you’re still mad at Peter for not having the guts to stand up and support you, if you’re still mad at Thomas for not showing up on Sunday like he’s supposed to, if you’re still mad at Judas, well, then, guess what? Sin’s going to continue. The world’s not going to be the way God wants it to be. And there will be no peace. And I’ll be here next week and see how you’re doing. Somebody was listening. Somebody took it to heart. Somebody went out to Thomas. You know, they didn’t say Thomas, oh, you really missed something, Thomas. Shame on you for not showing up. Thomas, we have seen the Lord. We have seen what God wants for the world. We have seen Jesus. Here’s our faith. I know you don’t have any. Here’s some. And even though he was a jerk about it, and don’t raise a hand, but how many people you talk to are jerks about things now? Yeah, they’re out in force. Even though he was a jerk about it and says, well, I ain’t calling you a liar, but you’re lying. Unless I see it, it didn’t happen. You still invite that guy to church? They did. They listened to Jesus. And the next week the doors were shut. They weren’t locked. At least they didn’t say they locked. They were just shut. Progress, not perfection. You know, Jesus answered him, asked him, have you believed because you’ve seen me? I wonder what Thomas would say? Because you know what, he didn’t actually, we don’t have actually that he didn’t actually poke Jesus like he said he had to. He didn’t actually slide his hand in there. At least it’s not in the Bible that he did that. I’m wondering if Thomas said, well, not because I saw you. I’m here because of these guys. Even after me being a jerk and abandoning them, they came and got me. And I didn’t see you. I didn’t poke you. I didn’t look at your wounds before I came to church. I’m glad you’re here. But the reason I’m here, the reason I’m being faithful is because of these people around me that told me I didn’t have to be perfect, that they forgave me when I abandoned them. That they forgave me for being a jerk and not believing them. And that’s what healed me. Nothing that I did. But the love and forgiveness that the other people have shown to me, that’s what got rid of it. You know, if they didn’t go after Thomas and tell him and invite him, if they retained his behavior that God didn’t want, I wonder if the Bible would say eleven instead of twelve. Friends, we’ve got some work to do. Going to be a tremendous adjustment as we come to something else other. Already, you’ve already done that, I applaud you. Are we retaining sins or forgiving them? Are we forgiving that things aren’t the way God wants them to be and pronouncing peace? Everyone has a place, and you fit in here somehow. We’re going to make it work. Or are we going to retain the brokenness and the way things God doesn’t want to be? Seems like it’s up to us which way we go, whether we have peace, where everyone is forgiven and loved, or we don’t have peace, where everybody is separated and not counted. There’s a poem by Ruth Etchells, found it on Facebook. You know, that membership thing. The Ballad of the Judas Tree by Ruth Etchells In Hell there grew a Judas Tree Where Judas hanged and died Because he could not bear to see Hs master crucified Our Lord descended into Hell And found his Judas there For ever hanging on the tree Grown from his own despair So Jesus cut his Judas down And took him in his arms ‘It was for this I came’ he said ‘And not to do you harm My Father gave me twelve good men And all of them I kept Though one betrayed and one denied Some fled and others slept In three days’ time I must return To make the others glad But first I had to come to Hell And share the death you had My tree will grow in place of yours Its roots lie here as well There is no final victory Without this soul from Hell ‘ So when we all condemn him As of every traitor worst Remember that of all his men Our Lord forgave him first. From the Church of Scotland website for Easter Day The audio and transcript are from the Saturday version. Here is a YouTube of the Sunday Service

For the Sake of the Gospel, for the good news to be good news, for Christianity to be a blessing and not a curse Paul tells us that and lives out a freedom and privilege that is not for him and his but for others, the wage slave, society’s outcasts, a Jews a religious minority-immigrants kicked out of Rome, the disabled. Losers by society standards that Paul calls us and shows us to use our power, our privilege, our birthrights to include. We are blessed so that others can win those blessings as well.

Bring what is valuable about the past into a new future Bringing Forward What’s Behinda sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church parking lot on August 30, 2020edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions; all errors are mine. Matthew 16:21-28 Sermons also available free on iTunes What do you go back for?

How to Stop the Shouting Stop the Shoutinga sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church parking lot on August 16, 2020edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions; all errors are mine. Matthew 15:21-28 Sermons also available free on iTunes Looking for the way to make the shouting people go away… Would someone please stop the shouting. That’s what the disciples want. They want the shouting to stop. I want to tell you how to stop the shouting. And I want to show you ways that do not work, as well, for they are all here in our Scripture. 2020 among many things is a year of shouting, and a year of people wanting other people to go away and quit shouting. We have lots of shouting. We have lots of people shouting for crumbs of compassion to come off the tables of their master. And we have lots of people telling them to go away. We don’t want to hear your shouting. And they do it by curfew. They do it by tear gas. They do it by appealing to any authority they can: Please, for the love of God, stop this shouting. And the shouting doesn’t stop. No matter how many appeals we say, no matter what we say, no matter what we do, the shouting goes on, it seems. A woman of a different race says her demon daughter matters. And Jesus says, “Oh, no. You’re not going to trick me there. All children matter. Not just yours. All children. That’s what I’m here for.” And then the reading ends, and everybody goes home happy. That doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen in our Scripture, and it certainly doesn’t happen in our country. Shouting “Go home,” saying “All children matter,” does not stop the shouting. It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now, even if you say it is the love of Christ that makes me tell you all children matter. Go home. Stop shouting. How can we stop the shouting? That is what we ask Jesus to do for us. Strangely, we can look at the Internet. I know that’s strange. The Internet is more often a pooling of our ignorance. But there is a site called Quora. I don’t know what you spend your time on. I’m not going to take a survey. You can tell me in private later, maybe with confession with Pastor Chad, if you need to. But I go to Quora to find out what people are asking and find out how people are responding. Here is how the Quora website/email subscription works: somebody asks a question. Other people give answers. And then here’s the key part. The answers get voted up or down. So the answer that makes most sense to most people bubbles up to the top. And I was looking at this Scripture and looking at Quora, and there was a letter asking: “Who do I see, how do I get compensation for what happened?” And he told a story. He’s there at home, his home, you know, paid for, mortgage, you know, taxes paid, lawn cut, you know, everything you want in a good neighborhood and a good neighbor. And over the hill comes this riotous noise, this thumping and banging and booming. And up comes a helicopter, and it drops a bucket, boom, into his pool, scoops up a whole bunch of water, without a by your leave or if you please, and flies away with it. And he says: “Who do I see about getting paid for that water?” Well, the answer, if you’re wondering, and you probably know from being in Nevada where wildfires are everywhere, those helicopters can get water anywhere they can, anytime they want, whenever they need it becausethe letter writer didn’t mention thissomething was on fire. Maybe the entire landscape. Maybe the entire mountain was on fire, and that helicopter was trying to save homes and lives. Other people’s homes, not his own. BUT All water matters. Why are you taking my water? All waters matter. He didn’t mention that other homes were threatened by fire and that water could make a difference between life and death, between having a home and being homeless. No. All water matters. I was on the firefighting force in Ottawa, Ohio. We didn’t have wildfires, thank goodness. We just had structures, and pretty contained. But I tell you, I am certainly thankful and glad that never, when we were going to a fire, did we find counter-protesters telling us to shut off our sirens, they were bothering them; quit the shouting; and, by the way, all waters matter. Why don’t you top off my pool? We were going to a fire. We’re trying to save property and lives. People kind of understood that. I remember growing up in Akron, Ohio, and looking down the main street of Akron, Ohio, which is called Market Street. And I remember when a fire truck siren went, as far as you could see, and you could see a mile in each direction, every car and vehicle got off the road, let that fire truck through. In Ohio, at least when I was a firefighter back then, fire trucks had absolutely no special privileges. They were not allowed to violate any traffic. ALL TRAFFIC MATTERED. Fire engines did not have the right of way. All they could do was to ask. Said excuse me, there’s a fire. Could you get out of the way for a minute? And back then, people knew that even though they had the right to that road, even though all cars mattered: they saw that somebody needed that road more than them. Someone needed help, and they got out of the way. How do we stop the shouting? Now, all allegories fail. The children and the dogs and the puppies and all that, that doesn’t exactly match up one-to-one. And there’s a whole lot written about that. And neither does my firefighting thing. That doesn’t match up one-to-one with reality. If it was, it would be reality. But I’m telling you to go a little bit further with this. The way you stop the shouting, if you will, the way you stop the fire engine sirens, is not by telling them that all homes matter. Turn that off. It is not by saying you’re bothering me, shut off that siren, I have rights. The way to stop the fire sirens, the way to stop the shouting is to put out the fire. I’m telling you, as long as that fire was going, there were sirens. If we couldn’t get it the fire out, we called in more and more people, more and more sirens, until the fire was out. We didn’t shout and say, oh, all homes matter. We didn’t say turn off the sirens, we can’t keep bothering people. We put out the fire. What about now? What’s the allegory here? What’s it doing here? Because the disciples tried to say shut up. They tried the curfew. They tried the tear gas. They tried the appeal to authority. They tried to get the people in to haul them out and take them away, send them away, put them back, get them out of here, clear the plaza. It didn’t work. Sound familiar? And then Jesus himself, and for the love of Jesus, it says that he said he is here for all the children of God, not just a demon daughter. I mean, why do we care? We had nothing to do with her demon daughter. We didn’t possess them. We didn’t send the demon on them. We didn’t sic the demon on her. We didn’t tell her to live in the demon place. We didn’t do any of that. We’re here for all the good children of God. You know, people who look like us and demon free. Even when it’s said by Jesus himself, it is not enough. I don’t know why then we think it makes a difference if we correct people with a lie saying all matters in theory when it is not true in reality. It didn’t work for JESUS, why do we think it will make a difference for us? What makes a difference? What stops a fire of fear? It is faith. It is faith. The Faith I’m talking about, the faith that Jesus sees is not found listed in “The Book of Confessions,” Al. We are not talking about “The Book of Covenant,” for all the Lutherans here. Not even “The Sinner’s Prayer.” I’m not talking about the “Five Fundamentals of Faith.” Because this woman knew nothing of those. Yet still Jesus said, “You have faith.” And what was that faith? The faith was there is a relationship with all people. With children and dogs that you call them, and those inside and outside, all are at the table. There’s relationship. And Jesus saw that. Oh, woman. When you can see past my disciples sending you away, when you can see past me even telling you that I’m not here for you, when you can see past the divides of gender and divides of race and the divides of culture and the divides of country, and you can see past all that and say we are all related at the table of the master, that is faith that goes to the heart of the Triune God that is based, is essence of relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, twirling and dancing, and relationship in Eternity. You have faith that that relationship will go through everyone on the world, including you. And that is what’ll bring healing. That is what will put out the fire. And when the fire is out, the sirens stop, and not until then. Louis C.K. has made some very poor choices in his life. I’m not holding him up as a moral example or exemplar for you and your relationships with others in every aspect. But there is something I really like that he said to his children. I don’t know if you have been a parent – I think most of you have been children. You know how children like to make sure they get their fair share, whether it’s desserts or ice cream or cereal or, oh my gosh, the fights over the backseat, who had the middle line and the hump and back and forth. I don’t know, flick your lights you are listening to yourself. Is there anybody here that has children that looked at other to check out who had more? Is anyone asleep? Do we need an amen? We’ve got a couple of hands up. Louis C.K. had it up to here when they started comparing the amount of cereal in their bowls. He said, and this is what he said to them, and the rule in his house: The only time, the only time you look in your neighbor’s bowlis to make sure they have enough. The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as they do. Put out the fire and stop the shouting. There’s no other way to live out the faith that we’re all in this together. Amen.

How to be faithful when days blur into weeks and months. Well, It’s Blursday, the Upteenth of Meh…Againa sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING Audio from an empty sanctuary and full zoom on a laptop at St. John’s Presbyterian in Reno, Nevada lot on August 23, 2020. Originally given at Lee Vining/Bishop Zoom on July 19 Genesis 28:10-19a Sermons also available free on iTunes Looking for the way to be faithful in the world without gathering with the saints Two sisters were terrors at home, school, neighborhood, everywhere but church. There they were angels because that was God’s house. Well, with the school and church building closed and the parents were stuck with them day after day without any away time or church angel hours. So they do what parents do when they are at their wits end, they called the pastor and asked her to do put the fear of God in them. So the pastor said, “Let me talk to the oldest.” The parent handed the phone to the oldest and the pastor quizzed her, “WHERE IS GOD?” and the oldest said, “At God’s house!” The pastor continued, “Ok, No body is at God’s house, where is God?” The child didn’t know the answer but knew she was in big trouble. She froze. Her sister asked, “What’s wrong?” The oldest pushed mute and answered her: “The Pastor Can’t Find God! She Thinks We Stole Him! Where is God is the question of 2020. Since March we have been spread abroad from west to east to north and south. To homes, laptops, phones, tablets, zoom, YouTube, Facebook. And we wonder, “Where is God when God’s House is Closed?” James Goff had a cartoon in April where the devil is bragging that he closed every church. God is next to him saying, I opened a church in every home. The wave of blogs virtual worship guides and the stream of emails with requests for rulings about what was real worship or real communion flooded the web, twitter, emails and Facebook posts. Christians of a certain age will hear the lament in the question from “On The Willows” from Godspell. Psalm 137:4 How can we sing the Lord’s Song in a foreign land? Rev. Joey Lee, the Executive Presbyter of San (Hos say) says if we complain about lockdown…try being a refugee. We catch up with the heel grabber Jacob who has just started being a refugee on his way toward Haran. He is fleeing his sheltering home and family support because it is not safe to stay there. From favorite son to refugee. In the desert he found a place to stay overnight. There he found God standing beside him tell him that God is with him and will keep him wherever he goes. Jacob’s named the place, Bethel, the house of God. He fled his house and found himself in the house of God. For Christians, the answer to the pastor’s question is not a place, but a person. God acts to make sure we know he is not housebound to a place by Jesus or rather Immanuel, God with Us. Where is God when God’s house is closed? As Jacob found out, God is standing beside us. God is Immanuel, God is with us. God is not housebound. Jacob may leave home, but God’s house goes with him. Psalm 139 has a similar promise most often heard at funerals and memorials. The leaving is magnified in verse: Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. God found Jacob in the desert, but this isn’t a story about Jacob’s ladder to heaven it is about God setting his ladder to heaven wherever we are. God is the subject. Jacob did everything he could to grab his piece of heaven, to secure his place and future. His artful deal swindled his brother out his birthright for a bowl of stew. He tricked his blind father to steal the blessing that was due his brother Esau. He was a heel grabber from birth. Yet there is a reckoning. Today we find him in the desert. Without family, fortune or future; that birthright and blessing cut off by the fear of that is brother would be angry and vengeful. His scheming for all left him with nothing. Yet it isn’t just us who finds him, but God. Who gives him the blessing not of his father for his family, but to be a blessing to all the families of earth. God who replaces his birthright with the promise of the birth of offspring like the dust of the earth. God, who builds Bethel, the house of God around the homeless refugee not artful deals of grasping Jacob. The church is stripped of all of the things we planned, prepared and schemed for over the decades: We have been exiled from our beautiful buildings even our favorite pew… Eye contact is replaced with far away stares. Handshakes and hugs are replaced with video smiles and distant waves. In person, even smiles are masked away And in person means double arms length, too far to hug. Like a modern day Babel, our chorus is fractured solos, we sing together alone; our unison responses jumbled syllables scrambled by the tech tubes that connect our eyes but not our voices. We can no longer receive communion from a neighbors hand but only take it from our own. We are in the desert, alone, in exile from all we have gathered and grabbed, stripped of our birthright and blessing. Sir Winston Churchill is credited with first saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” He said it in the mid-1940s as we were approaching the end of World War ll. Jacob doesn’t waste his crisis. He recognized that he is a guest of God’s house wherever he is. Not by his own cunning, but by God’s care. That ladder is not a way to heaven as it is an affirmation of that God’s work is going on, even here. Angels are moving cares up to heaven and messages are coming down us. The supply chain is secure delivering even in the desert even though zoom. And he vows to return to this place where God’s house is. Rev. Joey Lee, also says that when the quarantine hit changes that we been working on for years where made in a weekend. Our tech friendly expansive ministry is reuniting the ex-pats, the homebound, the young, the physically and socially distant, the ones who can’t hear but now can turn up the volume, the ones who can’t walk but now have church delivered, the one who work or play on Sunday morning, let’s not forget this place where God came beside those alone and away from the home. A ladder delivering grace and inviting a connection to God from wherever you are. Virginia City Presbyterian that still has gas light fixtures because they are not convinced electricity might be a fad, hung a video screen in their sanctuary after a unanimous approval from the session so folks weren’t required to touch and pass hymnals and paper. What a faithful response to exile. When I heard that, I asked my echo what the ski conditions in hell were. I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future. Ralph Abernathy The quarantine is a forced demonstration that God’s house is not built of our traditions, our schemes and empire building but where people stop to rest and find God beside them. Setting up a ladder to heaven where faith climbs and blessing descends. We can keep the faithful attitude of how God is present where we are instead of trying to jam God into where we were. We can all be like my mother-in-law Kathryn who lives in the desert of Sedona on House Rock Road. We can set up our house rock and say remember, God is here. God is with us where ever we stop and look for God. “He’s Always There” The Lord leads us on with tender care, lifting our burdens to bear He blesses us as we pass on, to what awaits eternal dawn Tho we so often may not see, He’s always there and will always be… J. Paul Horgan “The Poem Painter” 7/17/20 c.

Weeping with the whys of life with Jesus.

Image by Shift and Sheriff from Pixabay What if the hated worthless one could save your life? Dying in A Ditcha sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church, on July 28, 2019edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions; all errors are mine. Luke 10:25-37 Sermons also available free on iTunes Ditch the name “Good Samaritan”. It’s not in the Bible. It’s just something we call it, and we’re wrong. It is not the story of the Good Samaritan, at least for today. It is the story of Ditch Man. That makes it our story, because that is where Jesus needs us to be to hear the Gospel. We need to be in the ditch beside the man who asks the question. Did you notice the switch in the question between the beginning and end of the story? The first question was from the man: “Who is my neighbor?” Then Jesus says a man, about as generic as the Bible gets, so you can put yourself in his place. You, questioner, you are walking, and this happens to you. Not really talking about the qualities of a neighbor…but of you the questioner. The question at the end of the story posed by Jesus was who was a neighbor to the man. You see the switch? From the labeling of others to the personal relationship. We love to do the opposite. Oh, we love to do that. We love to take what is personal to us and put it out there as a generic label of other things and other people so we could say neighbor yes/no and judge others or even ourselves by external actions and appearances…never pausing to consider what it means to our soul and spirit when someone unexpected is a neighbor to us. Now, in technical terms, if you go to seminary, you learn that this is where you cross from preaching to meddling. Preaching to meddling. Meddling is about getting into my soul and spirit instead of Preaching about morality for other people, how they should act, so I can judge them. The question isn’t find generic neighbor and put a sticker on them. It is about who do you accept as your neighbor. Not the other’s behavior but your own bias. YIKES Meddling alert! You see, us Christians especially, us wonderful, fairly well off, First World Christians, we love to take these Bible stories of personal transformation and spiritual challenge and make it into some kind of morality play. We do it all the time. We say this is the way you should act. Here’s the rules for nice people in nice places. This is what we do best. We want to make, measure and mark Good Samaritans. That’s not what Jesus wants for us. Jesus is telling us about everyman and everywoman in the ditch. And that’s where we need to be, in a ditch. Stay in the ditch where Jesus puts us. Can you imagine? You’re having a bad day. You are going from Jerusalem to Jericho, not an easy trip, lot of low hills, lot of desert, not a good time, not a good trip. And it is the way to say, if you want to say “bad neighborhood,” you wouldn’t say “infested.” You wouldn’t say “Baltimore.” You wouldn’t say that. You would say as bad as “Jericho Road”. When folks heard on the road to Jericho, people were bracing themselves – that is a tough road. And ditch man gets robbed, beaten up and left for dead. And people walk by, and they go, yeah, that’s how it happens. I could get in trouble for helping the foreigners, they’re bad hombres, should have come in the country the right way. I wouldn’t do that, he’s on his own. You know it’s a bad part of the country, it happens, should have stay in their own country. Just when the audience knows this is the low point, Jesus kicks it up a notch, “And then the Samaritan comes.” And everybody gasps, “Of all the things, I thought we were at the worst part of the story passed us. But now that Samaritan comes.” The Samaritan was a half-breed. He was a half-breed traitor. He was a half-breed traitorous blasphemer. Wrong Race, Wrong Religion, Wrong Region. He didn’t do anything right. A collaborator with the enemy, probably a drug mule. They were they did worship all wrong, knelt when they should stand. Horrible sub-humans! You did not set foot in Samaria. You went around Samaria. If you touched Samarian sand, you made sure to take it off your feet because it was the original “S”-hole country. So get in the ditch. Imagine you’re in the ditch. You’ve been beaten up. You’re dying. You’re robbed. You’re naked. And your worst enemy comes down the road. What do you do? Maybe you crawl a little bit further down in the ditch, saying, “Oh, I don’t want THAT GUY to see me like this. He’s probably going to kick me again.” How can your day get worse than to have all this happen to you, and then be dependent, not on the help of strangers, that might be okay, but on the help of your worst enemy? The person you don’t want to be around, that doesn’t want to be around you. You totally agree on that, and that’s all you agree on. Your worst enemy. I don’t know, for some of you, maybe they’re wearing a MAGA hat. Some of you, maybe they have an Antifa shirt on, huh? Maybe they don’t speak English…maybe it is your EX! Whatever riles you up, that’s what they are. And they’re coming down the road, and you’re lying in the ditch. I can almost imagine the Good Samaritan coming over to help. The guy dying, he goes, “No, no, get away. I’m okay. I’m all right. I’ll be fine. It’s just a flesh wound.” Who comes to help changes how much I help I’ll accept. The one you hated helps you. That is a bigger soul struggle than a sermon on the five steps to being a good neighbor. Can you let someone that you hate help you? Can you see the hated other, the thing, the enemy, the traitor, the one we don’t need, the one that should go back where they came from. If you can talk, worship, clothe, salute right like us: Go back to your own place, help them not me. What are you doing here in decent people land? That one. Someone you need for your very life. Someone you need the help of right now. Can you be in that ditch of decision? You see, Jesus wants us in the ditch so that we are faced with that question. Soon as you jump out that ditch and start walking along, whether you’re the priest or the Levite, the religious person or the Good Samaritan, soon as you get out of the ditch, you’re out of the story that Jesus wants you in. Jesus wants you in that ditch. Jesus wants you in that ditch and seeing your hated enemy coming by. And he wants you right there. And he wants you to answer the question, who do I allow to be neighbor? Who do I recognize as my neighbor? Well, he didn’t used to be my neighbor, but I might reconsider now. It’s not just giving a dollar on the street to the guy who needs the help. It’s not giving a gold coin in the Salvation Army kettle at Christmastime. It’s not even going up and down mountain roads and picking up tourists that just can’t believe that the road is closed, like my daughter, God bless her. She was the one got picked up, not the truck. You see the other, the foreign one, the hated one is necessary for your survival. Not tolerated. Not put up with. Not diversity. But someone I need for my very survival. Now, I don’t want to tell you you shouldn’t help the poor. Or that you shouldn’t be a neighbor. Spoiler alert, yeah, you should. But we’re bigger. We’re better. We’re further than that. I mean, that’s Mr. Rogers, a Presbyterian minister, by the way. But I expect more of you, just like Jesus does. He expects you to be in the ditch and to consider who your neighbor is from the ditch, not the safety and superiority of the road. Who do I discount? Overlook? Discard? See as worthless? See as a drag on society? See as a pain in my side? See as someone I don’t need, someone I’d be better off without? Who can I see from the ditch that is necessary for my life to continue? Two out of five Fortune 500 companies, 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded either by immigrants or children of immigrants. If we had banned them, if we went to zero immigration level, as some would like, we would still be an okay country, I suppose. But 45 percent of our Fortune 500 companies would not be there. Almost half would be gone. 3.2 million immigrants run their own business here and employ vastly disproportionate amounts of people. We would be okay…but not great. Are they the enemy? Are they the foreigner? Are they an invader? Should they go back where they came from? Or do we need them to get us out of the ditch? Jesus wants to know. Now, Jesus leaves us with a question. I ain’t going to tell you about how to be a good neighbor or look over there a neighbor acting person. He asked me the question of the ditch to me inside of me. Who is a neighbor to the guy in the ditch? And you can just hear the teeth clenched response. “I suppose it was the Samaritan.” He got it. No more questions wanting to justify himself as neighbor labeling pro. Can you hear his muttering? “Jesus, I’m never going to ask him another question. I could have quit when I was ahead, he said I had eternal life! But no, I just had to go on to justify myself. I don’t know who makes you clench your teeth when if you have to admit you are related to them and NEED THEM TO LIVE. That’s your neighbor, thank you Jesus. So I got installed in the first church I served for a time in a small, small town. Well, I guess compared to Truckee it wasn’t small. It was an average size town. It had one, one, count them, one hotel. One. The Rosedale. One hotel. That was it. You either stayed there, or you just kept driving. There was no bed and breakfast. There was no Airbnb. There was nothing like that. It was Rosedale or on the road you go for at least another hour. Well, a couple came up from – God bless them, Alice and Tom Derson, they drove hundreds of miles to come to my installation – from my home church where I grew up. They didn’t tell me they were coming. They just wanted to surprise me. They came and stayed at the Rosedale Motel. Just as they were checking into the only itty-bitty hotel in this itty-bitty town, far away from where they live, comes roaring up two dozen motorcycles. It was thunder on the plain. This amazingly clean-cut motorcycle gang gets off their bikes, come swarming in the hotel, and buys up every room there. And they all had guns. Every. One. Of. them. This was before open carry was a fashion statement. Well Alice came to my installation with barely opened eyes. She did not get one wink of sleep because she was surrounded by armed motorcycle gang. Trapped. There was nowhere to go. She was frightened for their lives. Any minute they were going to start carousing and break down their door. What could she do far from home and unarmed? She stayed up all night, and her husband with her. They checked out the next morning, bleary-eyed. Nothing had happened. The bikers were gone. She looks at the clerk and asks, “What was that motorcycle gang that was here last night?” And the hotel clerk says, “Who, them? Those were the Association of Motorcycle Police. They were on their way to the conference in South Bend.” Telling me this, Alice looked me in the eye and testified, “Last night I was the safest I have ever been in my entire life, and I spent my whole night in terror and fear.” That’s some ditch talking there. The people that you hate, don’t want you in the ditch, the people that don’t belong here, the people that you KNOW are against you, guess what, you need to see them as neighbor, your eternal sould needs to see them as neighbor. Not just they’re allowed to be here, if they behave and are grateful. It isn’t about how good you are at labeling them, You need them to live. We need them to live. Don’t stay hidden in your hotel room in terror. Helps all around, you’re the safest you’ve ever been. Amen. Rosedale Motel, Rochester, Indiana

Image by ian kelsall from Pixabay Leting Go of Sin and Personal Proof Cathedrals and Measlesa sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from Spanish Springs Presbyterian Church, on May 5, 2019edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions; all errors are mine. John 20-19-31 Sermons also available free on iTunes Here’s something you didn’t know. Thomas is the patron saint of Internet trolls. It’s true. It’s true. I just elected him today. He is the first Internet troll. Does anybody know what a troll is? That’s the one that comes from the outside and throws hand grenades into conversations. “Oh, I don’t believe it. “ BOOM! “It never happened.” BLAM! “Prove it to me.” POW!You see, I hate to go against Jesus, but I think I’m just going against the gospel writer, John. This story is not about doubt. For me, anyway, this is not doubt. Because doubt and faith are friends. Doubt and faith, they go out for and dance. You’ve been to that dance. You know the dance? “Well, I don’t know, but…” Doubt:I don’t know and Faith:But I’ll try it anyway. That is doubt and faith, dancing. That’s not what we have here. If we had actual sincere doubt here, Thomas would be respectful. Thomas would be asking questions. He would say, “Are you sure? How did you know it was Jesus? What was he wearing? Did he have a nametag?” He might have done that. That is doubt. “You sure it wasn’t a celebrity impersonator?” I don’t know, maybe they had them back then. You know, doubtful questions. “Are you sure? How do you know?” You know, that kind of stuff. That is doubt. “I know, but maybe.” No, no, no, no. Not our friend Thomas. Thomas wanted proof. He was a proofer. He was a proofer. There just wasn’t any Internet around to get his conspiracy theories off the ground. “I want proof.” The proof was all about him: me, mine. Nothing about the room full of eyewitnesses. Now, remember we’re talking about the Gospel John. Don’t be throwing in those other Gospels. That’s synoptic. They’ve just got one eye they all see through. Don’t be looking at them. Look at John. John’s got another eye. In John, those disciples weren’t just the top 12. “Well, there’s only 11, Christy, because, you know, Judas went on to….” Yeah, no, not – that’s the other one gospels. For John, the disciples was a group of people – men, women, just a crowd, the gang, the posse. Those people. You’ve got the disciples of Jesus testifying. Who here is going to say, “Oh they’re not very trustworthy. I don’t believe them.” But Thomas does! Eyewitnesses that are his friends, his colleagues. The people he has lived and travelled with for years. His workmates. They’re saying, “Thomas, we were here. This happened.” And Thomas says, “No, it didn’t. I know better. It didn’t happen until it is proven to me.” Global warming? It’s snowing outside. It’s snowing where I live so you know nothing. Right? Internet troll, all the way. Proof. Unless I see it. Unless I thrust my hand in the – anybody else get grossed out by that every year? Eww, Thomas. Proofer. Me. Mine. It’s got to be right here with me. I’ve got the thing. Nobody else matters. There is no other proof except my proof, my thing, what I believe, what I see. All you other guys, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Imagine saying that to the disciples of Jesus. No wonder he’s the patron saint of Internet trolls. Man earned it. We do Proofing. A woman says she’s abused. And men usually say about the abuser, “Well he’s always been good to me. I never saw it. I can’t believe it. I am the proof it didn’t happen to you.” There’s Thomas all among us. It’s not the doubt that’s a problem in our society today, it’s the proofers. The proofers like Thomas. Proofers are everywhere. Hasn’t always been that way. Every hear of the Notre Dame Cathedral, been in the news, with the big fire? 182 years to build. 182 years to build. We get upset when the road is closed for a weekend. “What are they doing? I have places to be.” 182 years. It took so long to build that, that we don’t know who started it. Of the original team, the first architect, the historians say, “We’re not really sure who started it. We do know the second generation that worked on it.” There were generations that were building it. And, you know, I’m sure there were people that just went for the paycheck; you know? That just went for the bucket of meal or whatever they got back then. And, you know, and they just cut the wood or they laid the stone or they quarried the stone or whatever they’re going to do. And that was just it, and they went home. They didn’t care. But you know, there were at least some people that were building a cathedral they would never see. They were building a church, a place for God, that they would never walk in, that they would never see, that no one could ever prove to them that would actually exist. They gave their lives for something they would never see. That’s the opposite of proofer. That’s some faith there. That’s some faith. They might have had some doubts. They should. There was a lot of politics stirring up the pot and boiling over at times during a 182-year project. But you know what? They showed up for work anyway, doing that dance of faith and doubt. Because faith and doubt say, I know, but okay. I know it’s hard to believe, but okay. Where proofers, proofers will say, “But I know.” Instead faith saying “I don’t know but,”. Proofers say “But I know, and nobody can tell me different. Let me explain to you why your eyewitness experience is wrong. Because I know. I’m the proofer.” Faith Says: “It isn’t all and only about me…there is more to the world than my in my world view. Others have truth.” So what am I going to do if you’re not into cathedral building? I’m not going to talk you into that. That’s probably okay. Let’s talk measles. Measles. Now, you may think measles are an inconvenient rash. Just a little thing, a couple days away from school or work, a childhood disease, an annoyance, a bump in the road. But I want to tell you, as recently as 1980, 2.6 million people died every year from measles. 2.6 million people died. And that’s not counting the people that were blind or people that lost some portion of their sight every year from measles. That is like, now, Nevada in 2010 was about 2.6 million people. So that’s like Nevada disappearing every year, everyone in Nevada. It’s not just some little inconvenient rash. Deadly, deadly killer. But there were some people that saw beyond that, and saw that if they gave their lifetimes, if they gave decades to vaccination, to education, to preparing the world, they can wipe out that wiping-out disease, the death and blindness in the world. And over decades they worked at it, and they tried, and they worked, and they trekked, and they vaccinated, and they educated, and they funded. In 2000, measles was declared gone in the United States of America. But it’s back. It’s back. Because people didn’t see it. They didn’t have proof. “Sure, everybody else says this, but I know better.” It’s not just cathedrals that take decades to build. It’s society. It’s health. It’s prosperity. It can’t be done in a tweet. And it can’t be done if we don’t trust one another; if we decide that what we know and what we experience is the only measure, and we throw away everything else. What are we building that we hope 200 years from now will benefit society? What are we building that 200 years from now will glorify God? That’s a tough question. See, John’s a tough gospel. He’s not like those other guys, the three that see through single-eye peephole, Sunday school story kind of people. He’s kind of deep. I told you one thing about John that you need to know from the Scripture. One thing that he doesn’t do the 12. He doesn’t have the 12 disciples. He has disciples. He has a group. He has a posse. He has a crowd. Another thing about John, he doesn’t do the seven – not the 12, not the seven. What seven? The seven deadly sins. Not in John. For John, sin is not about morality. Sin is not something you do. Sin is theological, not behavioral. Sin is not seeing God in Jesus Christ. That’s sin. And everything else is postscript. If you cannot see God’s work in Jesus Christ, you’re in sin. And if you can, you’re not in sin. Now, now we can understand that crazy bit. Remember the crazy bit we skipped over because we were all about Thomas and doubting and stuff like that? If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. Okay, we’re cool on that one. But if you retain the sin of any, they are retained. What the heck is that? Is there some kind of spiritual bank somewhere where you deposit sin and withdraw grace? Are there some ledgers somewhere where people keep track, who is the CEO? What’s the stock offering? When’s the IPO? When’s this crazy financial spreadsheet of sins coming and going and people saying yes and no on this. But if you think, if you know, that Jesus is talking to a community and not to a person – not to a bishop, not to a Pope, not to a church official, but to the actual community here – and if you know that sin is not behavioral, but theological for John, I don’t think he would be so happy with the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Say it with me. What is sin? Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. Yes, I got a scholarship for memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Thank you very much. Hallelujah, praise the Lord. We’ll have a reading later. But if you think the law of God is what expresses God’s purpose – and in the Westminster Shorter Catechism God’s purpose is expressed in the 10 Commandments. But if you think that the law of God is what expresses God’s purpose, because it should, then the pinnacle of that, what expresses God’s purpose for humanity is not the law, but Jesus Christ. So any want of transgression unto or conformity unto God revealed in Jesus Christ would be for John, I argue, is what sin is. And now it makes sense. Community. If you can fix, forgive; if you as a community can fix your blindness and cannot do the sin, which means you can see God in Jesus Christ; if you can live and believe and know that as a community, then guess what? God is there with you. If you deny God is there with you, if you deny God is with you, if you say that you need proof, then God is not with you. That makes a lot more sense than a spiritual bank accounting and ledgers of sins coming and going. And you’re saying to me, probably, “Christy, I’m glad it’s been four years since you’ve been here. We’ve already had a sermon and a half.” Do you got any proof on this? Hah. See? Proof. I don’t know about proof, but I’ve got some faith for you. Did you read that little part, there’s two times Jesus comes to the room. Two times. And I think it’s important what they say about each time. The first time he comes to the room, what do they say about the room and the conditions of the room? The doors were locked. And? For fear of the Jews. Now, that’s just plain racism there because Jews didn’t kill Jesus. The Empire killed Jesus. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Those were Romans. That was Empire. That was power. We’re not fear of the Jews, we’re fear of Empire because that’s what killed Jesus. Doors were locked for fear of the Jews. And you know what? I don’t know, but I think Thomas was the scariest. I think Thomas was down in his basement, trying to get that WiFi signal working, even though he was 2,000 years too soon, trying to get on his conspiracy websites and proofers chats downstairs in the basement. Again, patron saint of the trolls. He was all alone, as trolls live. The second time was the door locked? No, the door was shut. It was not locked. It was shut. Was there any fear? Maybe. But it didn’t get into the gospel. The door was shut. Not locked, not fearful. I’m telling you right there because I want to believe – and I don’t have proof, but I believe – that they were beginning to forgive the sins, like Jesus gave them permission to do. They were beginning to see that God was in Jesus Christ. They were beginning to be that community that Jesus Christ called them to be. They were beginning to be what Jesus told them to be. Don’t stay in sin. Don’t refuse to see God working in Jesus Christ. Do not refuse to see that God is with us. Don’t lock out the world.And you know what? Don’t lock out those annoying people like Thomas, who’s telling you what you saw, what you witness, what you experience isn’t true. Even him, let him in because, if you keep him out, he’s going to stay out. If you retain the sin of any, the sin will be retained. But if you forgive and restore and fix, God will be with you. And sure enough, he showed up. Don’t wait for proof in the basement of your house trolling on the Internet. Don’t look for proof. Look for God with us. God in Jesus Christ. Fix it where you don’t see it, and do not retain the sin of not seeing God at work in the world. Do not retain the sin of not seeing God at work in other people. Yes, even Internet trolls. Even people we don’t think should be with us. Don’t say, “But I know.” But be honest and say, “I don’t know, but I believe.” I believe the church. I believe the disciples. I believe the Bible. I believe the community. I believe the woman, then who said Jesus is risen and now who say they’ve been crucified. I believe those who went before me in the faith and those that will follow after me, decades and hundreds of years in the future. And I will be building that cathedral, that society. I will be part of that. Dr. Elton Trueblood, a Quaker, said a man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he would never sit. Don’t wait for proof. Build up God’s kingdom and faith. Plant that tree, build that cathedral, believe that woman. Amen.

By Visitor7 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link What are we to do in life…and in firefighting. Catch Me When I Falla sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Micah 6:1-8 &Matthew 5:1-12 Sermons also available free on iTunes I don’t know if you remember the first time you heard the Beatitudes, especially if you heard them from Luke, because Luke doesn’t mince words. He just straight out says, “Blessed are the poor.” Doesn’t even add that “in spirit.” Straight out poor. Have you ever, first time you heard that, did you say what is this guy talking about? These people are not blessed. I know blessed. I seek blessing. I know what it is. It is carefree, not woe-foe. And woe-foe is what all these are: persecution, insult, mourning of all things. Blessed? Not blessed. Jesus, something’s wrong there, either with our translation or maybe even with what I’m understanding blessed is about. I know about mourning, and I know about crisis. I know about persecution. I know about insults. I know about trouble. And not because I’ve served the church as a pastor. Not this church. This church is wonderful, I know. But because I served as a firefighter. And we did fires, and we did heavy rescue, which means auto accidents. We had 224, 55 both ways, one lane each way, and they didn’t really do 55 out in the country. I know some mourning. I know some grief. I know some trouble. We were on the fire department after a meeting. It’s a volunteer fire department, and that’s an important underline there. Volunteer, which means when that alarm went, we dropped everything and ran to the fire station to get in there. You had five minutes to get on that truck fully geared because that truck was rolling in five. When I started, I missed several runs and went to an empty – because I was not quick. God bless them, they offered, they were trying to help me, they said, “Rev, here’s what we’ll do.” Now, did I mention the church was next door to the fire house? I still missed the runs. They said, “Rev, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll get out all this hose out of the back of the fire truck. We don’t hardly ever need it. We’ll put your desk right here in the truck, and your chair, and your computer. And then you’ll be right here, and the alarm will go off, and then you’ll be in the truck.” Well, from then on, I made those runs. And we were talking to the guys, a new guy, about the volunteers and how we go, and go run, and there’ll be training, and it’ll be great, and oh, yeah, you need a partner. And he said, “You know what you should do, you should go on the run with us.” “I can?” “Yeah. Yeah, just come along, you should come, you’ll see, and then you’ll see, it’ll be great, and then you can do training and all that.” So we’re talking. And suddenly the room fills with beeps. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Our pagers off. It’s a run. We’re starting to move. It’s like that poor prospect, he’s the only one stationary. He’s in an eye of a hurricane. Things are flying all around, we’re getting ready, we’re going. We’re listening as we’re running. Then in comes an EMT on our squad. He comes in, and he just yells one word. “Code.” Well, now it’s like that hurricane went over an erupting volcano because now that means someone is trying to die. We do not allow dying people after the alarm goes. That is not allowed. We gather up – we went from very fast to no time at all. So instead of six people fully dressed in the cab ready to go, it’s going to be three people, the first three that threw their stuff in the truck, and we’re going to be on the move, and we’re going to be rolling as we’re getting in the truck. And that poor new guy, seeing all this, he says, “Should I go? Should I go? Can I go? Can I go?” And he just got grabbed and thrown in the truck with the gear. And he’s down on the floor, we’re all there, we’re rolling out, and I made that truck, God bless it. So I’m in there. He’s in there. He’s on the floor. And he’s, like, actually looking up at me. And he’s saying, “What do I do?” That’s what Micah says. “What do I do? What does the Lord require of me? What do I do?” And Micah has an answer, says God tells you three things. And the way I learned it: Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. That is what you do. What, Christy? No sexual purity code? No things about righteousness? No spiritual laws? No things, credos that you have to say and believe these four things in the correct way? No way to understand the ordination and unbroken line from the line? Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God. Those three things. Now, we’ve got to talk about them, of course, because I got time. Do justice. Now, justice has been perverted. Justice has been watered down. Justice has been changed into generic, been secularized, and I’m here to tell you I’m not talking about that justice. I’m not talking about those criminals must pay. I’m not talking about throw them away in the jail and lock them up and throw away the key. I’m not talking about us being the number one country in locking up our people. I’m not talking about that kind of justice. I’m not talking about making them hurt, making them pay. I’m not talking about they’re going to have to suffer as much as I suffered. That’s not justice. That’s not Bible. That’s something else. In Bible, justice means everybody has what they need to live. You know a just society when everybody has what they need to live. That’s justice. Do justice. Make sure everyone has what they need to live. Do justice. And that’s what we were about in that fire department. You know, when that EMT, he didn’t have to come in and say a lot of words. He didn’t have to say this is a really good person, a friend of mine, has lived a good and moral and upstanding life and has kids that depend upon him and has, through [indiscernible], quit smoking years ago. You know? None of this [indiscernible]. So we have to go and make sure that person has what they need to live. No. All he had to say, someone needs us to live. Code. That’s our code. Someone needs us to live. That’s done. That’s it. No more questions. We are going to make sure they live. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on emergency services, but emergency service, you’ve got something called the “golden hour.” You’ve got one hour between whenever you had a problem – the heart attack, car accident, whatever your problem is – you’ve got one hour from there to get into definitive care. That means a hospital. You’ve got one hour. After an hour, your chances of recovery and survival go way down. So in Ottawa, Ohio, God bless us, we had one hour. But there’s a thing. The hospital’s a half hour away. So we’ve got a half hour. Everybody else got an hour. We got a half hour. But we’re okay with that, really. So we are – whatever it takes. Because, you know, they could die without the fire department. And we’re sad like normal people. Oh, that’s sad. You know, I didn’t know. It was sad. They died. That’s happened. But you didn’t call us. Or they could actually die after we got them to the hospital. We’d like a couple hours, maybe a day or two. That’d be okay. We’re sad. We’re still sad. But we say, you know, we did what we could. But you do not die during that hour, half hour that we have you. Whatever it takes to live, you’re going to get it because that’s us. Justice. Whatever it takes for you to live, we’re here to make sure you’ve got it. So I made a visit of one of my church members. And I only come up here once every six months, so you’re going to get, like, three sermons. So I only come up. So I made a visit to one of my church members. She was trapped inside of her car that got hit by a semi on the highway. It was a rather unique pastoral call. And she was trapped in there, and we were going to have to cut her car, cut her out. So for some odd reason, they thought I should be in charge of this call because I was the most senior, the first one there. I learned my lesson. I made them trucks, buddy. So they said, what are we going to do? We’ve got to cut her out. Got to cut her out. It’s going to take 20 minutes to cut her out. We’re there working on it. And he said, “We’re going to have to call a copter. We have to call it. Call the copter.” “You want me to call them?” “Do it, call it.” So they call it. That’s a $7,000 decision, then. And you really don’t have time to plan and say, you know – now. You’ve got to decide now. $7,000. In comes the helicopter. Only question is, what do you need to live? You’re getting that. And you know what? I did not know she was a member of my church until she was on that helicopter. And they turn to me, go, “Boy, that’s really strange. We’ve got a member of your church.” What? Because my job, my sole job there, besides making very difficult decisions, was to hold the door so when they cut it off, it didn’t fall on the leg that wasn’t hurt. We try not to make it worse when we save people. And I was, like, totally focused on her leg. I was, like, holding that door: the leg, the leg, the leg, the leg. I didn’t know who she was until off she went, and it was somebody else’s, and we got her there. Extreme example, but all our questions was what does this person need to live? What has to be done? Do we have to call in a backhoe? Do we have to wake up somebody? Do we have to do that? Let’s do that now, get it. No one dies on our watch. No one dies on our call. Do justice. What do you do? What do you need to live? You’re going to get it, no question, because we’re a just society. We’re the fire department. No one dies. You get what you need to live. The second one is loving kindness. And it always is translated different. Sometimes it’s show mercy. It’s all sorts of things because we don’t have a good word for “hesed” in our English language, because it is God’s love to people, and that’s just a lot of things to figure out. What is God’s love to – it’s just overwhelming. It is what is unmerited, undeserved, no reason you should expect it. You get all the love you need. And here you go. Guess what. It’s about the fire department floor. You know, Bob called me Friday to preach, and I said, “I’m going to go talk about the fire department. I like doing that. I’m going to do – you called me Friday night, buddy.” So we’re down there, and the fire department started out in most towns as an insurance company in that it was insurance, fire insurance. And they were really good with the fire insurance. You bought the insurance, and they took a little placard – and you can see these. Carson has some in the museum. They took a little placard – the Historical Society goes, oh, yeah. You take a little placard and put it on your house saying, “Protected by Company No. 14 Insurance Company.” And that means that, when you’re caught fire, you know, they come in, “Oh, yeah, that’s us.” You know? But if they come and say, “Oh, too bad for you. Oh, wait a minute, your neighbor’s got it. Well, you’re good, but I want to make sure they don’t burn down.” And this would literally burn down, but the neighbors would get it. And there are stories of people coming out, trying to pay up their premium as their house is burning. Such capitalism. You know, oh, my goodness, supply and demand. Imagine what you could charge for a premium, while the house was burning, for fire insurance. Oh, that was a lovely system. But we rejected it. We said, no, we’re going socialist. We’re going socialist. I’m sorry. We’re going to love you all, no matter what you did, paid your premium or not. Gosh darn it, we’re going to put out your fire. You don’t deserve your fire put out, but we’re going to put it out anyway because that’s the kind of people we are: loving kindness, undeserved love that takes care of you when you’re in trouble. I need some loving now. I need water. My house is on fire. I need help. Well, you didn’t pay up, so no. No. That’s not the fire department. That’s certainly not God. And that’s certainly not the way God wants us to be. Love kindness. Put out the fire. Don’t be asking if they deserve it, or if they paid their premium, or if they’re in our club, or if they’re here according to the rules that we put in this year or that year. Don’t ask them the questions. You see they need some love. They need some help. Love them anyway. I’m going to take care of you. Yeah. The last one’s a two-parter, sneaks it in there. Did you notice? The walk and humbly. Both of those things are tough. I know about humbleness. I don’t know if you know about this. But I was the Grand Marshal of the Humble Parade three years running. Humbleness is hard because humbleness, I think for me, is admitting to the possibility that in some universe maybe parallel to ours, I might be wrong. It’s very difficult for me, very difficult. Usually right about now – my wife’s not here, but usually my wife is shouting “hallelujah” right here. But it’s the humbleness, and I think that, you know, I might be wrong about that. I might not have all the answers. I might not be able to stand up all by myself all the time perfectly well. I just might need some help sometimes now and then. Humble. And part of that humbleness is walking with God. You know, did you see that’s walking “with”? It’s not walking ahead. Do you have people in this church – I’m not looking at anybody, you know. Do you have people in this church that get out in front of God? You know, God is here and there. You’re way over there saying, “C’mon, God, you’re supposed to be over here. Hurry up, God.” You know that saying, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread?” I think that fear may be the actual kind of fear in the Bible, the kind of the holiness, awesomeness, respectful kind of fear of God. So angels are saying, you know, I’m just going to wait on God with that; you know? You go ahead and run up there, fool. But I’m going to walk with God on this. My son Robert – I can tell family stories, too. So my son Robert is different than my daughter Rachel. And they just – they had little meetings and decided, oh, I’ll be this way, you’ll be that. Okay, I’ll do this. I’ll like that; you’ll hate it. Okay. So Rachel would never hold your hand, from birth. You know, usually little kids will hold your hand till they learn they’re not supposed to, and they go, “No, I’m going to walk by myself, I’m can do it all myself, I’m a big girl.” You know. Rachel was like that from birth, could not hold your hand. Oh, that child. So we have Robert. Robert, reach out for holding your hand. Even through grade school – is Carter still holding hands? ATTENDEE: He does sometimes. Sometimes. But my Robert went all through grade school. And he didn’t hold your hand. He wanted to touch your hand, just palm the palm, like this. And he says, “I like it when I can touch your hand because I can feel your speed, and I can walk with you.” If you’re in front of God or behind God, you’re not walking with God. You’re not feeling. You’re not holding hands with God. So you know we’re annoyed by those people that are way in front of God, going where even God doesn’t want to go yet. But don’t be thinking that the people that are just back here standing where God has already left is any good. You know, the people that say, “I am taking a stand for God.” That’s almost never a good thing, you know, because it’s a walking thing. It’s a walking thing. You’re moving. If you’re standing with God, you’re supposed to be walking with him. The world’s not perfect yet. I hate to tell you this. Even in Lake Tahoe, which is pretty close to heaven. Still not perfect. God is still walking. So if you’re taking a stand, God might be walking away from you. Reach out your hand for God. Be humble, saying, you know, God, I need a hand. And that brings me on back to that scene in the cab of that poor prospective volunteer, on the floor of the cab, lots of noise, then he’s screaming, grown men trying to get dressed in a small area. Not the most hospitable kind of place. He’s yelling at me, “What do I do? What do I do?” And I looked at him, and I said, “Catch me when I fall.” Because when you’re up on one leg, putting on your turnout, and there’s this humongous fire truck and a crazy man’s driving there as fast as he can because remember, no one dies after that alarm goes. And he’s taking the corners just about up on two wheels. Chances of falling over are pretty much close to 100 percent. And sure enough, we’re whipping around a corner, and I’m on one leg, and I’m starting to go over, and I say, “Now.” Two hands come up, push me back up straight. And I say, “Good job.” Humbleness, that someday we might fall, and we’re going to need someone to catch us when we’re going over. Now, right about now you’re thinking, gee, Christy, those are great stories, and I love to stand here all day listening to you talk. But what about those Beatitudes you just read, and you were talking about craziness? Are we just going to leave them there? No. Because it turns out that when ministers have a hard time with the scriptures as presented, they go back to the original language and try to find another word. Pro tip. Always good. So you look at it, and you say, well, what else does “blessed” mean, makarios? What else could it be? And you look, and you say, oh, here’s one. Happy are those that mourn. Happy are those that are persecuted. Happy are those – that is not helping. I know happy better than I know blessed, and that’s not happy. But if you look a little bit closer, you can see it can also mean happy and blessed are in the aura in the region, and it’s like you’re going to be taken care of. You’re going to be all right. Things are going to be set right. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be all right. I sold computers also with a guy, Jeff Elliott, and he was a much better salesman than me, hit his quota every month. And he would be constantly on the phone with people, and he’d say at least a dozen times on every phone call, “You’re okay. You’re okay. Yeah, yeah, you’re all right. You’re all right, you’re okay. You’re okay. Yeah, yeah, you’re okay. You’re okay, okay, okay.” And I knew they weren’t. I knew, no, we really screwed that up royal. That’s not happening. And, “Oh, yeah, okay. You’re okay. Yeah, we got it. You’re all right. You’re okay. Yeah, okay, good, good.” And he’d hang it up. And then he would work to make it okay. He would just be on fire to make that okay because he already told them a dozen times. And I think that’s the Beatitudes saying, hey, it’s okay if you mourn. It’s okay if you’re persecuted. It’s going to be okay because we’ve got this community that I’m bringing together, that I’m working on, that I want you to be a part of, that’s going to catch you when you fall. I’m working on this community that’s going to do justice, going to make sure that everybody has what they need to live. I’m working on this community that’s going to be loving kindness, you know, like God, that’s just going to love you whether you deserve it or not and is going to be there when you need them because they love you. Even though they don’t know you, they just love you, and they’re going to be walking with you humbly, and we know that we need, not only God, but we need each other because we’re all humble. We’re not absolutely convinced we have all the answers, and we need each other to find out the truth. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Friends, be okay. Catch all the people when they fall. Do justice. Love kindness. And walk humbly with God. Amen.

How to get alongside of the “nones” of religion and join them in humanity’s search for God. Searching for Sundaya sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Reno, Nevada in July 2017, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Acts 17:22-31 Sermons also available free on iTunes Corn. So much corn. You cannot imagine how much corn there is in Indiana. You think you can? There’s more. There is so much corn there. I’m talking corn that grows up 10 feet tall. This is before GPSes. You’d need a periscope to try to drive because you cannot see anything but corn. And they think that’s normal in Indiana. I brought two children into the world. Well, I didn’t. I stood around and watched my poor wife scream, curse at me when she brought the kids in the world in Indiana. But they came into corn country. I’m telling you, there was corn squash. There was corn chowder. There was corn soup. Oh, yeah. There was corn casserole. Corn, corn, corn. In fact, in a small town you did not have to worry about locking your car doors anytime except August because, if you did not lock your car doors and roll up your windows, you would come back, and your back seat would be full of corn. It’s everywhere. And then once it was harvest, those little husks, the little husks which we call the “tumbleweeds of the Midwest,” they just blow everywhere. There’ll be corn husks there. You’d sweep it off your porch. Oh, corn, corn, corn. Well, things came to a head, and we moved to Ottawa. A little less corn. Still a lot there. Lot of corn. And then I got the call. I got the call from my college roommate saying, “Let me pay you twice as much to work half as hard and get every weekend off.” And I said, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. I hear you, Lord.” I’m going to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where there’s no corn. Very little corn. Lot of coal, not much corn. So I took those poor, poor children from the small town rural environment with all they knew, all they grew up, and I brought them to the semi big city of Greensburg. And, yes, they had a bus service. I’m telling you, metropolis. And I thought they were doing okay. Little bumps and bruises along the way, you know, because now they’re in the big city. We went there right at the beginning of school. And I thought they’re being all right. I think they’ll be okay. I think I was kind of excited. And my daughter Rachel, God bless my daughter Rachel, she says what she thinks very loudly. I don’t know where she gets it. Her mom is the most demure and quiet person you would want to meet. It’s a mystery. Well, on one of these occasions when she said what she thought, because everybody needs to know it right now and at full volume, it happened with this. Richard? This happened. I don’t know if you can see it. But come autumn, she looked at the neighbors, and they had corn husks on their porch, tied up as decorations. She was freaked out on this. She asked them, “Why do you put trash on your porch?” And then they told her that, well, “We bought it for decoration.” She goes, “You paid for this?” She was totally freaked that there was husks on the porch. Trash, trash on your porch, and you think it’s pretty. What is wrong with these people? What has my dad done to me to bring me here? What do you do? What do you do when someone values trash? What do you do when someone posts on your Facebook page, with a big thumbs up, trash? What do you do when you go to Thanksgiving dinner with a Trump supporter? What do you do when you go to that with a lover of Hillary? What do you do? Richard. You’ve got some choices. You can laugh, either out loud or the eye roll, very popular with the young people. You can laugh out loud at them. They don’t know what they’re doing. They know nothing. Ha ha, so funny, trash on the porch, and they pay for it, ha ha ha. Oh. Or you can yell. You can yell, either right at your screen or at them. You can yell and be angry and call them names. You big snowflake. You racist. You, oh. You are just whatever. You can yell. You could leave. You can leave. I’m in groups, and I call up people, and I say, “Hey, we haven’t seen you.” You know, support groups where people get help, real help. And they said, “I can’t come anymore because, you know, I thought I knew her, and she voted for – how could she do that? I can’t come back.” “I’ll never go to Thanksgiving dinner as long as Uncle Art’s there. I just can’t stand his diatribes.” You can leave. You can yell. You can laugh. Those are all options. This guy’s the problem. Public Enemy No. 1, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. Maybe our next President, the way things are going, who knows. He’s out there running for office. He doesn’t say that, but he is. But he has come to this great discovery. Have you seen it? Did you see it? Do you read the craziness that I read on Facebook and Twitter that talked about how Facebook wants to be the church? Did you see that? He didn’t say that; but, you know, that gets you clicking on the old Facebook things, which is, again, back to him. But he had what he called the First Annual Community Facebook Summit. He’s trying to make Facebook into a big community. He says that he’s a little disappointed. He likes meaningful communities. He had a big summit. He wants everybody joined up in community. In fact, he changed the whole mission statement of Facebook, give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That is Facebook’s mission: Bring the world closer together. And he points out – and he did this on the month that they got – how many people log into Facebook on a month? Not here, but throughout the world. How many people do you think? Go ahead, you can sing out. This isn’t a Presbyterian church…. What? Five million? That’s a lot. A billion? They’ve passed two billion. Two billion people a month. That’s not just people, you know, just had an account last year or something like that, or signed in to look at baby pictures. Two billion people a month sign into Facebook. And Mark is upset because only one out of 20 is involved in a meaningful community. One out of 20. That’s still 100 million people. That’s still a lot of people, Mark. And so he’s about trying to build community. And he takes a look at the church as a way to go about building community. He says a church does four things. And this is Mark, not me, so don’t be grading on a curve because this isn’t the seminary answers. Four things, not the great signs of the church, we Presbyterians that are slumming it here at the Lutherans: inspire, motivate, give safety, and support. Inspire, motivate, help each other in times of crisis, and support each other in just the regular times. That’s what he’s trying to do. I think that’s pretty good. Inspire. Give them something, there’s something better out there, something better you can do. You can be better. You can do better. Motivate. Come on. Let’s do it. We’re all getting together this Sunday. We’re going to go do this. Let’s go. Come on, you know you want to. And then safety. In times of crisis, how many times have you reached out to a church person, and they were there? I hope at least once or twice. I hope you didn’t have that many crises. You know? I hope so. And support in other times. I remember when we moved to that Greensburg place it was so strange because, all the time in my adult life, when I moved to a new community, I was like, put right in a slot. You know? I had friends. I had a social life. I had connections. I had people telling me – I had, at one church, I had a hair appointment. I swear that he goes, “Well, I told her you were coming in to get your haircut because the pastor always goes to this one.” So it was easy. It was kind of creepy, but it was easy. And then I went to Greensburg, and no one – I couldn’t even get the water company to return my call, you know. And my son – my son, great guy, great guy. He barely talks. Don’t know why. Me and Rachel, and then him coming along, there wasn’t any oxygen left. He got in a horrendous bicycle accident, horrendous. It seems that in Pennsylvania they have something that they don’t have in Indiana. It’s called, uh, hills, that’s it. And he discovered hills on his bicycle and had a terrible breakup. Oh, it was pretty – it’s a whole ‘nother sermon. We won’t go there. Come at 1:00. I’m going to guest preach, too. I’m just double hitting it today. But I got in the helicopter with him, say, “I’m going.” He’s in the helicopter; I’m going with him. So I got the helicopter ride. And my poor wife – to Pittsburgh, which was 30 miles away. Because from the fire department, somebody goes on the helicopter, they usually don’t come back. And I was, like, freaking major and trying not to let my wife see it. And my wife, I just left her. And she goes, “I don’t know how to get to Pittsburgh. I don’t know where the hospital is. What am I going to do?” So she called our pastor, who found a church member to say, “I’ll take you. You just follow me. I’ll get you there.” Support in times of crisis. Help in crisis. That was huge help. We support each other, too, don’t we? We support – I tell the kids, when they’re doing things, they want to do a presentation, they’re all nervous and some, and they want to talk about their mission trip or Sunday school, their project or whatever. They’ve got Girl Scout cookies. Whatever project it is, you’ll never find a more supportive community. Don’t worry about it. Get out there and just do your best, they’ll love you. Because that’s what we do. We support each other, even when we are not in crisis. This guy caught it, Zuckerberg. We don’t know if he’s a big church person. Don’t think so. What does Paul do? What does Paul do when he goes to this place? Richard, got it? What does Paul do? I’ll get to that in a minute. Don’t freak. What does Paul do when he goes to this place that is very strange? This is like God Central. Every god that was any god would have – it was like, you know, a Walmart has that place, everybody goes to Walmart. You’ve got to be at Walmart. If you’re going to be anybody, you’ve got to go to Bentonville, Arkansas and have a little office there and be a – it’s like Athens in God times. Any god is going to be at Athens, going to be hanging out there. And there he is. It’s like gods everywhere. Everywhere you look, there’s a statue, a shrine, a temple, something to gods all over, from all over the place. I’m telling you, what is it like? It would be like Paul was a community organizer in Trump Tower. With a press badge. Okay? It’s like that. That is how out of place Paul is there. The good Jew who’s now a Christian. And it’s a crazy hard place to be. What does he do? Now, he could go around and say, “You paid money for this trash? We throw away this stuff where I’m from.” No. He connected with them. He says, you know, “I went around your city, looked at your stuff.” How respectful. “I see you are a religious people.” Isn’t that great? Great opening. “I see you’re a religious person.” We’re together on that. And I even read some things. I read an unknown god. Can you sound that out, you Greek speakers in the congregation out there? Maybe we got one, I don’t know. Ag-nos-tic. That’s agnostic god. Agnostic god, unknown god. Ever hear of the Agnostics? Ever heard of them? Don’t know? Maybe god. Maybe not. Don’t know. Spiritual, not religious. You know, spiritual not religious, that’s like saying I like water, but I can’t stand the plumbing. It’s kind of helpful to have the plumbing with the water, but okay. Go ahead, Richard, go on. There. You’d better know about the Agnostics. Now, you look at religion in America, and I want to tell you right now, I’d like to declare an update on the war on Christmas. Failure, big failure. Not doing well at all. Because as we know, Christmas has surrounded Thanksgiving. It’s about ready to give up. And it’s on the march toward Halloween; you know. Christmas is winning; all right? We’ve got 71 percent; Nevadans, 66. Come on. Seventy-one percent Christian. Now, 6 percent is the other faith. You know, you go on – I don’t know if anybody’s hair’s on fire about all the Muslims everywhere, and the Hindus, and the Buddhists and the – oh, terrible. That’s 6 percent. If you want to get your hair on fire, 23 percent, I think it’s up to like 27 percent in Nevada, are “nones.” Here’s where our hair should be on fire. Twenty-three percent have that unknown god in their front yard. Richard, go ahead and go on next. And you say, oh, what’s the big deal? We’re winning, 71 percent. Winning. And you look up here, and this is another chart. Oh, when Pastor Christy came he had charts, diagrams, all sorts of wonderful things. Greek. I tell you, Scott, he really did his homework because he only preaches once a year. Anyhow, look up here. All Christians down. Going to the right is bad. I don’t know if I’m swiping right or left, but going to the right is bad. We’re going down 7.8 percent over the last seven years, 2007—2014. We’re down 7.8, all Christians. All Christians. All Christians. But look. Look at our friends. Well, you got all non-Christians, 1.2. Oh, hair on fire. But anyhow, look at all unaffiliated. That’s the nones. That’s the unknown. That’s the agnostics. Unaffiliated, nothing in particular, number one choice. They’ve grown 6.7. So the 6.7, 1.2, adds up to about seven. We’re losing ground. And we’re losing it, not to the Muslims. We’re losing it to the nones. We’re losing it to the people that Paul met in Athens. We’re losing it to the agnostics, to the unknown gods. So we should figure out how we are going to talk to the nones, to the unknowns. And Paul’s speech before the assembly of the nones – and, oh, and, yes – should give us some examples. Go ahead, Rich. We’re going to be hanging on this for a while. What does he do? What does he do, the community organizer with the press pass in Trump Tower? He tells them that he studied what was important to them. Have we done that? Have we gone around, living their life – I used to think the malls were the new temples, but those have kind of fallen apart. I’ve got to really think that the hospitals are our new temples, you know, and the doctors are the high priests and, you know, ooh, do-do-do, doctor tell me he fix me up, you know. And have you seen the new hospitals? They’re awful nice. You know? But have you seen the idols? Have you seen what people worship? Have you seen where they put their face? To an unknown god. I’ve seen you’re very devoted – to your phone. I’ve seen you’re very religious – about keeping your phone online and charged up. Can we do that? Can we say something to him about what’s good about the nones? What we have in common? And look how Paul goes on. Paul says, you know, we’re all here groping for God. It’s right there. Groping. Searching. Searching for Sunday. Something spiritual. Something more to motivate us, to inspire us, something that binds us together because we want to help someone. We’re usually good. Humanity is pretty good about helping, and we have to give a chance if we have something in common. He says, “We’re all in this together.” He doesn’t say, “Your stuff’s trash, my stuff is beautiful.” He says, you know, we’re all in this together. We’re all looking for God. There was three qualifications to be a god in Athens, three qualifications. One, God had to have a house, a shrine, a temple, something where they can hang out. I tell you, I don’t know what was going on in the Mideast, but there was a housing shortage for God. You couldn’t get anywhere without houses of the holy. They were always building them everywhere. And if you remember, Abraham tried to build a house for God. And even in the New Testament, good old Peter tried to make little houses for Abraham and the Transfiguration and for Jesus and for Isaiah, Elijah. Houses for the holy, number one. Number two, you had to have a prophet, an advocate, a speaker, someone that can tell you, introduce you to the god, a host, someone to tell you about that god. And, number three, you had to do something good for Athens. Oh, come on now. We’re not going to have you come into our town unless, you know, we get a little taste, a little something-something that you can benefit us from. And that unknown god altar was probably someone that something good happened in the city, and they didn’t know who to credit. So they just put up the, oh, whatever god. See, what Paul does with that, Paul uses their own philosophers and poets, quotes their own things. We are all offspring of God. He quotes their sacred texts back to them and says we’re all in this together. We’re all looking for God. And your own poet says that we’re all God’s offspring. You see, God made us. We don’t make God. Whew. God made us. We don’t make God. Like Abraham. You know, Abraham says, “Let me make you a house, God.” And God turns around and goes, “No, I’m going to make you a house. You’ve got this all wrong, Abraham. I don’t need you. You need me. You’ve got this all wrong, Abraham. You’re not going to make me a house to live in. I’m going to make you a house, a dynasty. I’m going to make you a family. I’m going to make you a tribe. I’m going to make you renowned throughout all the world. I make you. You don’t make me.” Paul flips it. He says, “I’m not here telling you that there’s another God, another house. Come and see mine. Mine’s the best. Let me introduce you to my god. I’m here to say I’m with you. I’m a searcher. I’m a seeker. I’m a knower. But I know where to go.” Evangelist named Klein says evangelism is simply one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread. So if we can get off of this us/them, they’re horrible; turn off that phone, get off my lawn, which is the new get off my lawn; if we can get away from that and say “I see you’re very devoted to your friends. You want to stay connected. Even when you’re with real-live people you want to stay connected with, to your friends in high school, to your friends in grade school and your college friends and your friends from your move and all these on your Facebook, and you want to text them and let them know about you. I see you’re very connected, and you’re very interested in other people. I can see that in you.” Isn’t that so much better than saying, “Get off the phone and talk to the person in front of you?” I think Paul would have done the first. “I see that you’re very interested in the lives and hopes and challenges of others. That’s good. I’ve got a place that does that at least every week.” Can we do that? Can we be like Paul in that crazy place? This is a dinner. And maybe you’re trying to figure out, well, how does that be? How does that work? How does that work? Well, you see that there’s chefs, and there’s guests. And the chefs are there, and the guests are there, and they’re working together. And I don’t know how many of you have thrown a dinner party. I have this barbecue, outside barbecue. I was talking to someone last week, and she was talking about, oh, I’ve got all the church people, of all things, I’ve got all the church people coming up, and that pastor’s wife won’t tell me how many people are coming. I’m going crazy. I need information. I need how many coming. Do I have enough food? And now there’s a kids’ program. What am I going to do with the kids? I don’t know what to do with the kids. And I’ve got food and the chairs, and the house is not clean, and we’ve got this broken down… It is crazy being a host and trying to take care of everybody. Where if you’re a guest, what do you do? You have to please – you have to RSVP. That’d be nice. You know, you can ask, “Will there be a gluten-free option?” You can ask that. I mean, that’s iffy. I don’t know. Why don’t you just bring it yourself? Why not? Bring something – gluten-free, vegetarian often, whatever you need. Bring that along. And then you’re done. You’re a guest. You’re there to see what’s going on and to enjoy the experience and to see what the host has planned for you and enjoy the company of others. Such a different head. I think so much time in the church is wasted about us planning the dinner party and being the host, like we’re in charge. Presbyterians, we know we’re not in charge. We’ve got that whole predestination thing going. You can’t upset us because it’s all in God’s plan. You know what the Presbyterian said when he fell down the stairs? He said, “Oh, thank God that’s over.” I mean, what are you going to do? You’re not in charge. Presbyterians, our absolutely fundamentally bedrock thing, convinced that we are totally unnecessary to God. And we will fight you to the death on that one, that God doesn’t need us at all. And that is a proper attitude to have when we’re doing church in that we’re not trying to tell other people how to work and how to act and where to sit. We’re not making the seating assignments. We don’t have the little place cards saying you go here; you go there; and you “um” supporters, you’re out here in the kitchen, and shut up, will you? That’s not us. We’re not the host. We’re a guest. We’re groping for God same as you. Same as you. And God doesn’t live in anything we make. God is not limited to the stuff that, in our imaginations, that we come up to. We’re all guests. Next one. And this guy again. Christy, I hate when you yell like that because I can’t get any sleep in during the sermon. Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg wants everybody in the community. He wants half of Facebook in the community, and he’s got one out of 20. He wants to get one out of two. And he had this big summit because he’s figured out how to do it. And you’re going to be shocked. You’re going to be amazed. You’re going to be – you’re going to say, “What a revelation. The man’s a prophet.” He has figured out – and this is a lot of metrics, a lot of deep data-type stuff. He’s figured out that people don’t join meaningful communities. People, oh, sure, they’ll join, come see the funny kitten pictures, you know, yeah, everybody joins that. But meaningful communities for support, meaningful communities for responsibility and accountability, people do not join them. They don’t volunteer to join. Mark Zuckerberg has found that people join meaningful communities when they’re invited by friends. Oh. Have we ever heard that in church before? It’s not “Build Facebook and they would come.” No. People come to a meaningful community when they’re invited by friends. And that was his whole thing. You guys have got to invite people in order to have a meaningful community. And you know what he says about Facebook is right what we’ve been saying in church. People don’t join meaningful communities unless they’re invited by a friend. So guess what. You want more people in a meaningful community, and you want them to join you? You know, don’t tell them what to do. Tell them what you’ve done and say, I’m with you. I’m groping with God, too. I’ve found a community that helps me with that, helps me be a better me. I’ve found a community that will inspire me to be the best person that I can be. I’ve found a community that will motivate me, that will come up to me and tell me, here’s something you do. Here’s an opportunity for service. Here’s something we’re doing this Saturday. Can you come and help us feed? Can you come help us pack? Can you come and help us with this mission? Motivate us. I found a community that will help me when I need help. I found a community that supports me in prayers and in material support and in time. I found all this. Why don’t you come with me to this meaningful community? Go ahead, Richard, go to the last one. All right. So your challenge, your homework is to see beauty where you used to see trash. Huh? Yeah? Try to appreciate when they bought the trash and put it in a bundle and put it on their porch intentionally. See the beauty where other people see trash, where you, you used to see trash. Where you used to be “us” and “them.” Find something common that you have. Find something you can get behind, that you can admire, that you can affirm. “I see you are very religious. I see you are very connected. I see.” My daughter keeps up with her high school friends, her college friends, her friends from farm country. I don’t. I admire that. Can you do that, too? Because we’re all groping for God. We’re all searching for Sunday. We’re all guests at God’s banquet. God bless you in your search for Sunday. Go out and find someone to search with you. Amen.

Rev. Sue Washburn writing in Presbyterians Today Sept/Oct 2016 p. 4 When the world goes dark, the faithful testify with their lives to the light of the world Soul Opportunitya sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on November 13, 2016, text below edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Luke 21:5-19 Sermons also available free on iTunes Sometimes, a doorbell just doesn’t work. Like when you get the pounding on your door at three in the morning, saying, “Get out of your house now. The fire is coming. We can’t promise to save your house, but we can save you if you leave with us right now.” And so you go. Will you come home? Will your home be all right as you left it? Will it be damaged? Will it be destroyed? Will there just be a patch of ground there? Doorbells don’t work on terrible, awful, no-good days. Maybe you had one of them. Where is she? She’s supposed to be home by now. She’s never late. She always calls. What happened to her? Should I call the police? Should I call the hospital? You’re waiting. You’re not going to go to sleep. Where is she? Is she having too much fun? Or is she in an accident? Is she hurt, or worse? Did someone take her? Will she come home again? Are you worrying too much, or not enough? Terrible, awful, no-good things, the things that might happen, the things that might have already happened, the things that are going to happen. The terrible, awful, no-good days. It seemed real special relationship. He really loved you. He wanted a special picture. So you took a private picture with your phone and sent it just to him. Now it’s all over Facebook. Now everyone at school has commented, either on what type of slut you are, how easy you are, how terrible you are; or some kind of rating system about your very body, whether you’re a four or six or seven. And then there’s other folks that go on and say all sorts of horrible, awful things they want to do to you because of that picture that you only sent to that one special one. What are you going to do? And what if your parents found out? Everybody at school already knows. You’re going to have to move. You can’t go back to school. What do you do when terrible, awful things surround you. Your phone is your life. Your whole life is in there. You can’t imagine somebody has an app to find their phone. It’s never out of your hand. If you were to lose your phone, really it’d be like you lost track of your hand. Everything is there. You talk to your friends. You connect to your friends. You make plans about what’s going on. You find out what other people are doing. That phone is you. And you get up, and you look at it, and you and every other black freshman at Penn State have been invited to a lynching. A daily lynching. Are you coming, or are you not? Your phone wants to lynch you and everyone in your class who’s black. Who’s in this? Who did this? Who thinks this is funny? Are they going to kill me? Are they going to drag me out and kill me and everyone that’s black? Or are they just going to beat me up? I can’t even trust my phone, much less people. Terrible, awful rumors of war. Times of trouble. What do Christians do? What have you tried? What has been tried on you? Oh, it’s nothing. Oh, you’re being too sensitive. Are you sure it happened that way? Don’t have such a thin skin. Oh, it’s not as bad as that. What about someone who can’t go home? The person who said, well, you know, yeah, he hits me sometimes. But he doesn’t really mean it, and he always says he’s sorry. I mean, he doesn’t really, you know, really hurt me. Except that one, well, that couple times. But then he was really nice after. But then he started hitting my child. I can’t do that. I can’t go home. I’m not safe. My child’s not safe. I can’t let my child – risk my child. I’ve got to – what am I going to do? Where am I going to live? What’s going to become of me? Is he going to find me? Is he going to find my child? Aw, give him a chance. Aw, you’re being oversensitive. You know, there are some things you did wrong, too, you know. You shouldn’t be talking about him that way. You should be more Christian. That’s the next step, isn’t it, that religious thing of dismissing and gaslighting, you know, telling you your reality isn’t true, what you experience is not real. Gaslight, you know, when you get all, say, wait a minute, is that really true? Did I really get beat up? Did I really get threatened to be killed? Did I really worry about my daughter? Did I really get shamed on Facebook? The next thing, you know, the Christian stuff, it comes out, well – you’ve got to do your clutch your hands and say: “Well, you know it’s God’s will.” And there’s just a teeny, teeny, as appealing as that is to Presbyterians, is teeny, teeny bit step to go from that to saying that God is the author of evil and not of good. And I read from Genesis to Revelation that God created the world, and God created and looked at it and said it was good. God said it was good. Not you. Telling somebody that’s hurting, someone that’s grieving, someone that fears for their life, someone that wonders if their parents are going to be deported, someone that’s crying, someone that wonders if they have to go back in the closet, someone that wonders and says, “Oh, my God, I got married, and now they know I’m gay.” To tell them, oh, it’s God’s will. Well, you ought to give them a chance. Well, you got too upset. Well, well. That helps you. That doesn’t help them. And that’s all right. We all need that. We all need what we need. But be aware that when you talk about those kind of things, that they really should be behaving better, oh, they really should give them a chance, oh, this on that, you know, you really should look on the bright side of the death. That’s helping us. That’s not helping them. Be aware of that. Well, gee, Christy, what do we do? It’s in our Scripture. Sometimes it isn’t the first time when people are upset. You know, this lectionary was chosen years ago to come up today, way back 50 years ago, whatever the lectionary is, come up today, the Sunday after the election. Whoo, wars and catastrophe and terror and awful. Last week I looked at it, and I said, well, whoever wins, half the people are going to be, you know, happy; half are going to be unhappy; and half didn’t vote. Three halves. But it’s emotion, not math. You know, it’s going to be a difficult Sunday, and what do I have to tell the people? Well, it’s in the Scripture. Jesus tells us in the Scripture. Testify. You know, he’s kind of like me. When my children or the youth group or anybody that – the campers, and you know this, they say “Do I have to?” What do I tell them? You get to. You don’t have to do this. You get to do this. And so all these horrible, awful things are happening, and you say, “Jesus, give us a word. What do we do? Do we be fearful? Do we be scared? Do we fear? Do we fly? Do we get out of here? Do we run? Do we fight? What do we do, Jesus? Do we fear? Do we fight? Or do we flee?” And Jesus says, “Good news. You get to testify.” You have an opportunity, as the New RSV says, you’ve got an opportunity to testify ‘cause there is no time better to shine a light, when things are dark. You have an opportunity to shine, church. You have an opportunity to shine, Christian. You have an opportunity to testify. And you know it says, “Don’t worry about the words.” That’s okay because it even though you that testify is about talking, is about words…It’s not about words. That form of the verb “testify” in the Greek is not about words. It’s not about talking. It’s not about what am I going to say? It’s going to be what about what you do. Testify means an action, a thing, an example that testifies to what you believe and how you stand. So don’t worry about the words. Oh, I need that zinger for that guy at work. Oh, geez, oh, wait till I get to him. I’ve got this great one. Oh, yeah. It’s not about what we’re about. You have an opportunity to do what you believe in. I can’t go back home. She took a restraining order out on me. Can you believe it? She’s the one that hits me. She’s the one that threw the dishes at me. And I’ve got a restraining order against me because, you know, she’s a woman and I’m a man. I don’t know what to say but I know what I will do. I invite him to stay with me. I testify that we got a whole lower floor for him. It’s got a bathroom. It’s got a couch. Got cable. We even have WiFi. Come on in. You sort it out, you figure it out, you stay there as long as you want. Testify. I believe that homeless people should have a home. Testify. I’m volunteering at that warming shelter. I’m going to make sure that’s always staffed. Testify. I’m going to go and work at that med clinic because there’s going to be some people that don’t have insurance that’s going to need some help. Testify. I’m going to go to bed and broth. I’m going to give them food, and I’m going to serve it up because hungry people need to be fed. Testify. I’m going to talk to the kids about how the Internet is freaking forever, and don’t put anything anywhere if you don’t want it posted right up there on the bulletin board at Lake Tahoe Church. If you don’t want it up there, don’t put it online ‘cause I know someone that’ll put it up there, just to show you. Anybody can get it. We had a youth group. We had a dating seminar. And, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a dating seminar with young people. Good times. One of the things you find out is the boys have no clue. I hate to be sexist, but it’s true. The boys have no clue. Zero clue. So they need to hear some testimony. That’s where they need to be. And, you know, girls don’t need to be taught much. They know what’s going on, pretty much. The boys are clueless. What is the greatest fun thing to do, you start a list by asking: “Okay, boys, what do you do to protect yourself on a date? How do you stay safe when you’re on a date?” And the boys will just look at you with the biggest, glassiest blank stare you’ve ever seen. They have no clue what you’re talking about. The board stays empty. And Then you say, “All right, well, let’s ask the girls. Girls, what are you doing safe?” Then they start to testify, to instruct. You’ve gotta have a friend. You’ve gotta have your phone. You make sure you have a plan. You make sure you have money. And the on down the list. And then I said, “Boys? You see what it’s like for girls? Why are they so scared? Because the way you’re acting.” That stops. You stop. Locker room talk is gone forever. When you’re around, you don’t allow that. Not because, oh, they’re my woman, and I’ve got a sister. No because they are related or connected to you a man, but because they’re human, and we don’t talk about other humans that way. Testify. And you don’t act that way. You don’t scare women. You don’t take advantage of women. Testify. Lynching’s not funny if you’re the one being lynched. Persecution’s not funny if you’re the one being persecuted. Oh, I’ve had trouble. I tell you, friends and neighbors, it may feel the same, but it’s not. Losing privilege is not the same as facing persecution. Let me say that again. Losing privilege is not the same as facing persecution. Testify. Use your privilege to help those that don’t have any. Speak up for those that can’t speak up. You look at my Face- you look at my Twitter feed now, and you’ll see a picture from 2010 of me and two Muslim women, a mother and daughter that was with us in our church in the hijab. And I’m standing in front of the church sign, the big, massive church sign that the good folks brought there. And I had said “Ramadan Kareem” blessed month to our Muslim neighbors. Because they were getting beat up. Their places were getting burned. Their people were getting threats. And I said no. I stood up, and I took a picture of them with it, and it was in the paper. And even my brother in Japan read about it in his local news. Why is that so rare? Why is that news? Testify. Me and my friends already got a plan. They start making a Muslim registry, I’m signing up. I’m going to get other people to sign up. We’re all going to sign up. You come for them, you come for me. Testify. Testify. I care who you vote for. I’m nosy that way. But I care more about how you live. No matter who you vote for, if you did vote, we’re not just this election. Election day isn’t just the day that defines who we are as a people, as a Christian, as a church. Nothing is done in one day. You have this argument and that argument. Let’s go on. Here’s where we are. What are we going to do? We’re going to testify. We’re going to say we value every human here. We value every human not here. We’re going to work for what we believe. We’re not going to be afraid. We’re not going to fight. We’re not going to flee. We’re not going to gaslight people and say, oh, it’s not so bad to be you. Oh, no, no, no, it’s okay. You’re just too thick-skinned. Quick, quiet, could you quiet down? Your protest is bothering me. Hey, friends. Protest is supposed to be bothering some. That’s the whole point of a protest. Take note. Gee, Christy. You finally come back, and then you give us such a downer sermon. No wonder we didn’t get you as pastor, because it’s like down, down, down here. So what I did, I asked my friends for help. And this is what you can do, too. And I hope you’re a friend. I hope you’re a friend to all the folks that are in trouble, all the folks that are scared, all the folks that are upset, all the folks that are worried. I hope you’re a friend. I asked my friend, Sue Washburn. Sue Washburn met me on the Sunday after September 11, 2001. I had just started at Delmont Presbyterian Church as interim pastor there. And sure enough, I reflected, well, that’s strange. Why [indiscernible] – I got called back to church after being out five years. I go, well, that’s odd how did I ended up back in a church on September 1st. And then 11 days later, on 9/11, they needed a pastor. Boom. Terrorist attack. And Sue came up to me and goes, says, are you going to talk to the kids about September 11th, about terrorists? And I said, “Well, hello to you. I’m Christy. And, yeah, I’m going to talk to the kids about their freedoms.” “Okay, I’m not bringing my kids here.” And she took the kids out of church. Okay, Sue. So, but then she got to know me. And a year later, on the anniversary of September 11th, we put together a community communion service and invited the whole community in as in remembrance of that day. And for healing it, we did that. And she went on from that service to go to seminary and become a pastor. And now she’s a pastor at a church in Pennsylvania and also the editor of Presbyterians Today. So I take complete and total credit for all that she has done and accomplished. But I asked Sue to help me out here. This is from her editorial a couple months ago in the Presbyterians Today. Sue, there, is very creative, as I told you. And she’s got bubbles there for the sermon. Has absolutely to do with the quote. So if you’re trying to match them up, you know, just stop, it’s okay, they don’t go together. We look at the gaping holes between us and feel overwhelmed… Jesus’ life show us that reconciliation starts small, as a baby born in an empire - Rev. Sue Washburn Presbyterians Today Sept/Oct 2016 p. 4 But Sue is a very creative person. And she doesn’t perhaps look like what you think a pastor might look like. I don’t know what you think a pastor might look like, but maybe it’s not Sue. So Sue in times will tell people she is a pastor, and people would pretty much unload on her and say, “Well, I’m a Christian, but I don’t go to church.” And she usually hears about some kind of fight, or they change the hymnal, or they had an 8:00 o’clock service start up again. Who knows? Something. So Sue would say, just look at them with their – she is angelic face, completely blank, and just says, “I’m a ice skater.” And they don’t – people are nice. They, okay, I guess we’re talking about ice skating now. And then they said, oh, are you a figure skater, or competitive? They say something. And then she says, “Oh, I don’t skate. I never go on the ice. I never practice. I never – I don’t even have ice skates.” But I’m an ice skater. It’s not just one day. And it’s not about what we say. It’s what we do, what we testify by doing with our lives. And reconciliation, Sue says, is like that. It’s every day. We go to church to hear about how we can be better and how we can be reconciled to the world, whether it’s what color to paint the church, what time to have service, whether it’s to reconcile about whether or not we’re going to do same gender weddings in the church. Sometimes it’s little; sometimes it’s big. And we practice that in the world through the week, and we come back the next week, and we try to get better at living our life and being a better figure skater. We look at the gaping holes between us and feel overwhelmed. Jesus’s life shows that reconciliation starts small, as a baby born in an empire. Jesus shows us that everyday choices matter. Each time we choose to eat with someone who no one will eat with, each time we touch someone who no one wants to touch, each time we talk with someone who no one wants to hear, we can make the hole that keeps us apart a little smaller. Aren’t you glad I invited Sue? Isn’t she great? You’re great, too. No matter who you vote for, or whether you voted or not, you’re all great. And you have an opportunity to be greater, to be a light to those in darkness, to be a help and a heal to the hurting. To give shelter to the homeless. To give food to the hungry. To give hope to the hopeless. To give safety to those under persecution. That is what the church is about. No matter which way you went on last Tuesday. That’s what we’re about. So if someone says, “Oh, they shouldn’t be doing that,” when someone says, “Oh, you shouldn’t be doing that,” or “They shouldn’t be complaining or that,” don’t take the easy way out. Don’t flee from it by saying, “Well, it’s God’s will. We all got to get along.” Don’t fight by saying, “Well, you know that electoral college, we got more of a popular vote.” Don’t fight. You want to. I know you do. I do. Don’t flee. Don’t flee. Just because the Canada website for immigration crashed on election night. Stay here. Stay here. If you must move, please move to a swing state. You know who I’m talking to. Don’t fight. Don’t fear. Don’t flee. Testify. Testify. So when people look at Lake Tahoe Community Church, they’ll say, “Those people live their faith. Say what you want about their politics, but those people are God’s hand, God’s will on Earth.” Amen? Post differs from the recording with some repeats and speaking errors edited out. Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommended for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions. Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Christy asks us to consider if people can really change. Got Any Change?a sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church on October 2016, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Acts 9:1-20 Sermons also available free on iTunes Can a person change? George Wallace, four term governor of Alabama. His first run was in 1963. He started off his campaign by standing on the exact spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office for the Confederate States of America. They have a star in Alabama, and you can stand there. And he stood right there and said in 1963, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” He was elected governor and pursued those policies, as he promised, of segregation, against the civil rights, the poster child of those who would stop any kind of rights for African Americans, for the blacks in the country. Twenty years later, in 1983, George Wallace again became governor of Alabama. But this time, 1983, he would gain 90 percent of the black vote in Alabama. Can a person change? Well, in 1972, while running for President – the most successful third-party candidate in recent history. No third party candidate has done as well as George Wallace. In 1972, during the race for the President, he was shot five times in an assassination attempt. One of those shots severed his spine and left him partially paralyzed. His son, George Wallace, Jr., said that his father had two lives, one before the assassination and one after. George Wallace, Jr., in his book, George Wallace, The Man You Never Knew By The Man Who Knew Him Best,” George Wallace, Jr. said that, lying there on the pavement, shot, paralyzed, close to death, was a Damascus Road experience for his father, a conversion. George Wallace, in the years and decades that followed between the shooting and his final term as governor, sought out civil rights leaders like Rep. John Lewis, said he was wrong, and asked for his forgiveness. George Wallace went to black churches, apologized, said he was wrong, and asked for their forgiveness. George Wallace, after getting 90 percent of the black vote in his last term of government, appointed blacks throughout his administration and to his cabinet. The first one to do so, starting a practice in diversity that continues today, starting with the example that George Wallace set. Can a person change? Saul, on the road to Damascus, not for a vacation, not for a guest preaching gig, nor any happy or good reasons. Saul was on the road to Damascus with letters, with writs of arrest to drag back the Christians to Jerusalem where they could be tried and, if all went well, stoned to death. Saul, not Paul yet, Saul on the road to Damascus, struck down. Something happened. You can read all sorts of theories. They’re making a diverting hour, if you want to do that. But something big happened to Saul on the road to Damascus. He was struck down. He was left blinded. He heard the Lord and had to be led by the hand away. Can a person change? Well, Saul went from being letters of death and destruction for Christians to writing letters of hope and encouragement. He went from tearing down the church to building it up. He went from trying to wipe it out to being the best evangelist in the history of the Christian church. He wrote most of the New Testament. What we think of as normal and orthodox and the way to do things goes to Saul, now Paul. Can a person change? You may say, “Well, I guess so, Christy. But I really don’t want to be shot or blinded. Is that what you’re telling me here? We should be going out that way? Is there any other option? Could I have Option C, please? Something not, you know, a near death experience? Is there something a little bit less that I could do?” But, you know, there’s another guy in the scripture today. He is kind of the hero of the story, and he doesn’t get near enough credit: Ananias. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an Ananias position. It is not a comfortable position. Ananias is just, far as I know, he’s minding his own business. He’s not on the road to Damascus. He’s not making speeches about segregation. He’s not running for governor. He’s not a public person. He’s not just trying to get through the day. And the Lord comes to him. Now, Ananias does something right, and this is something I always try to tell people when we talk about when an angel comes, or God, or Jesus comes. You know, you want to watch what you say. You know. Because it’s kind of a big thing. And Ananias gets it right, just like good old Hymn 525 in the Presbyterian Hymnal. “Here I am, Lord.” When God calls you, the only thing you can say, the best thing to say is, “Here I am, Lord.” Boom. I’m here. Present and accounted for. You know, don’t say “What?” Or “Who are you?” Or “Why are you bothering me?” None of that. Those are all bad answers. The best answer is, “Here I am, Lord.” So a strong start for Ananias. Strong start. We like that. But then it goes, gets bad really quick because, when the Lord tells you to do something – and, you know, especially the Risen Lord, you know, the glory, everything there; you know? And don’t correct the Lord. If you want to, don’t do it. Resist the impulse of trying to tell the Lord how he got things wrong. He got off easy on this one. Pretty much just repeat it. But he was saying, “Hey, Lord Risen, Ruler of the Universe, Lord of All Creation, Savior of Humanity. You probably don’t know this, but that guy Saul, he’s coming after us. He’s a nasty guy.” Ananias doesn’t think he changed. There’s no reason to think that he changed. And the Lord pretty much just repeats to him, “I’ve chosen him.” And doesn’t even give the – Ananias goes, hey, he’s a different kind of guy yet. Because, see, I don’t think he was. I mean, he just got the – all Paul got was a zap in the eye and, you know, why do you persecute me, you know, he just sort of got convicted, if you will, just God saying “You’re doing it wrong” kind of thing. We don’t know if he changed. And neither does Ananias. You ever been in Ananias’s situation? Thinking that you should be doing something, but you don’t want to? It’s risky? Ever been in an Ananias kind of situation, where you’re in an opportunity to help someone, that you can say you can help someone, but you don’t know, not only do they not deserve it, but it might work out of costing you a lot. Have you ever been in an Ananias situation where you had to trust that someone will change? Not that they had changed, not the whole believing thing, but they will change. Ananias goes to Saul, the persecutor, the one that was trying to drag his friends and himself away from their homes and their family, to take them to religious trial that was just nothing but a show, so that they have an excuse to torture and kill them? Ananias went there and healed that person and blessed that person, and prayed that the Holy Spirit comes onto that person. Ever been in an Ananias situation? Is change possible? I submit to you that change is possible when we allow it. I submit to you that other people can change when we allow it, when we make the place available in our hearts and in our spaces and in our minds to allow other people to change. What if John Lewis said to George Wallace, “Forget you, man. Forget you. All the harm you’ve done? Selma? You were governor during that. How dare you come in here and say that? Sure, now you want this. Forget you, man.” What if the black voters of Alabama said to George Wallace, “Oh, no, oh, no, you’ve been governor twice before. Ha ha ha. You’re going to – fool me twice, no. No way, man. We’re not voting for you. We don’t believe you.” George Wallace would never have changed. He never would have appointed African Americans throughout his administration and on his cabinets. He never would have had that last term as governor to change Alabama. What if Ananias never went to Saul? That would have been a reasonable thing to do, a logical thing to do, a safe thing to do, a smart thing to do. He had no guarantees. He’s going to do all this. All right. He had letters of death in his – with him for Ananias. And Ananias went. So you’re healed. Holy Spirit comes upon you. You can change. I submit to you that that’s when Saul changed to Paul. I submit to you that’s when the ministry began. I submit to you, that’s when he got the Holy Spirit, not on the road when he gets zapped down and blinded. That wasn’t the Holy Spirit. I think the Holy Spirit was the healing and the blessing. And you know what? That was Ananias. That wasn’t Saul. That was the Holy Spirit working through Ananias to change Saul. Can people change? If we let them. Can people change? If we encourage them. Can people change? If we allow it. You probably heard of this guy called Gandhi. He’s a very, very popular guy to quote in sermons. He’s so popular, he even gets quoted in things he didn’t say. You know you’ve made it when people are doing all the work for you. You may have heard the quote of Gandhi that said, you know, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” That’s great. “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” attributed to Gandhi. You could find that right on the Internet, you know. It’s all over. But he never said that. He never wrote it. Now, he might have, but they didn’t have Twitter back then. You know, that would have been a great tweet, Gandhi. But no. He went – he might have said that, if that were bumper stickers then or Twitter was a thing at that time. But what he did say was something more profound. How about that? More profound than Twitter. He did say, “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As one changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him. This is a divine mystery supreme, a wonderful thing it is, and a source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” We are but a mirror of the world. The world is in us, and we are in the world. You know, Gandhi wasn’t a Christian. Well, he claimed to be a Christian. He claimed to be a Hindu. He claimed to be a Muslim. He claimed to be everything. That’s the kind of guy he was. But the world in a person and the person in the world sounds to me like the incarnation, sounds to me what Jesus Christ was and is – the world made flesh. The savior of the world in a person. Because of the way he lived, because of the way he lived and died and rose again, because of that person, the world changed. Because of who he was, the world changed. The world was redeemed by that person. Gandhi knew that. We’re not just fish in the ocean, moved by the currents out of control. We also affect the ocean as we move ourselves. Ananias changed the world by changing himself. Which allowed Saul to change to Paul. Which allowed the New Testament to be written. Which allowed the great news of Jesus Christ to spread throughout the civilized world. Have you ever been an Ananias? Have you ever had an opportunity to help someone change? Have you ever had an opportunity to believe in someone’s change? Have you ever had an opportunity to act as if someone was actually better than they were? You see, if you want other people to change, if you want the world to change, Jesus Christ shows us. Gandhi knows. Gandhi knows this. Wallace lived it out. We see it in the conversion of Saul to Paul. If you want the world to change, if you want others to change, Gandhi tells us you do not have to wait to see what they do. You do not have to wait on them to change. You can change how you react to them, how you talk to them, how you bless them, how you heal them, how you ask for the Holy Spirit to be with them. You don’t have to wait on the others. The question, then, is not can other people change, which is what we often think of it. But the question is, how can I change so the world will change? How can I be a blessing? How can I act as if the world was a better place and thereby make it a better place? We believe this. We believe in the incarnation. We did not have special crazy supernatural bolts of lightning from the heaven. We didn’t have worlds moving around. We didn’t have thunderclaps. We didn’t have all sorts of supernatural events. We had a person who changed the world by being that change, incarnate. God’s will lived. We believe that a person can change the world. And we believe that we have the ministry of that person within us, as well; that we can be people that live and believe and act and treat others so that they are free to change, so that together we can change the world. Can people change? If we do. Michael Jackson had several songs, several number one songs, great career as a musician. There’s a song that was number one, the first song he did not write. He did not write the song “Man in the Mirror.” It was written by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett. But it may have been his favorite. It was definitely his most spiritual. He even got a church choir to help him sing it and present it. And I couldn’t help but think of that when I read about Gandhi saying, “We but mirror the world.” Here are some lines from “Man in the Mirror” by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett: “I see the kids in the street with not enough to eat. Who am I to be blind, pretending not to see their needs? I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways. And no message could have been any clearer, if you want to make the world a better place. Take a look at yourself, and then make a change.” Performed by Philosopher and prophet Michael Jackson. The world can change. People can change, if you do. Amen. Post differs from the recording with some repeats and speaking errors edited out. Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommended for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions. Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The extra white Christy is challenged by Black Lives Matter and other four word phrases Neighbor Lives Mattera sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church on August 2016, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Luke 10:25-37 Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes Who is my neighbor? Four words. Four words. Who is my neighbor? But I think you got a little hint of what was really going on when you heard the introduction to the question:, desiring to justify himself, you got a little hint that there might be a hidden word in there. What do you think that hidden word is? The lawyer’s trying to justify himself. I think there might be a hidden word in there: NOT, who’s NOT my neighbor? I think he’s looking not to expand the list but to cut the list down. What’s the absolute minimum neighborness I need to get into heaven, Jesus? I think there’s a little hidden word in there to justify himself. Who is my neighbor? Psst…I mean…who’s not my neighbor? I mean, surely there’s a lot of not-neighbors. There’s a lot of far away people. You could get the list edited down to just a few, right? I mean, if he thought the neighbor list was huge, he could have asked for the the few that didn’t make the list…that would be the shorter list. But he’s hoping the neighbor list has fewer names. What is a neighbor, anyway? The word is absolutely unambiguous. It is very, very old word for “nearby”. It’s a location kind of thing, how close you are to somewhere. And it goes back to ancient Greek about the neighborliness is location. Somebody nearby. Well, that’s been changing over the centuries a little bit. You’ve got Jesus at stake here. But more recently, in the classic Lend-Lease Act, way back before World War II, FDR talked about neighborliness, that Great Britain was our neighbor. A neighbor who had a house fire and needed to borrow our garden hose. By garden hose he meant aircraft carriers and destroyers and armaments and war things. But still, he appealed to the country of understanding Great Britain as our neighbor that needed some help, needed us to lend them something as a neighbor would do, and then we’ll get it back later. Neighborness is some kind of a cultural affinity, perhaps because we speak the same language we’re neighbors. Maybe we’re neighbors because of other things like religion or because we have the same values, or maybe we’re neighbors because of our nation that we live in. Maybe that is kind of the nearness, not just location, but nearness of heart, nearness of values, nearness of outlook, nearness of history, nearness of heritage, nearness of ideology, nearness of nationalism, that kind of near thing. Maybe. There’s a principle of law that actually is the Neighbour Principle. It’s actually in the English common law has been brought over here. Good old Lord Atkin. There was a huge big case, Donoghue v Stevenson, I think it is, but Lord Atkins decided in 1932 the Neighbour Principle Lord Atkin sort of summed it up his idea of a neighborliness. He made his decision based on a new idea of what it meant to be a neighbor– this was not a concept in law before. He came up with the neighbor principle in law that said: that you are required, the person, the actor or non-actor, is required to consider reasonably other people who might be affected by their action or by their inaction in any particular matter. See that switch there, kind of change of perspective of what makes a neighbor. Instead of the qualifications of the other, instead of the qualifications of the other, let me see, let me go through my list and see if you’re my neighbor. Are you this? Are you that? Are you this? Are you that? Are you this close? Are you that close? Lord Atkin sort of changed it, turned it upside down and said, neighborliness is NOT about the other person at all, but about YOU. It’s on you, in your head, to think about other people, to go and to think about neighbor as somebody else. What is a neighbor in your head? You have to say how can I be a neighbor to someone else, NOT how they are a neighbor to me. It is flipped. How am I a neighbor to others? Now, it’s a good thing that we have this concept because that Samaritan, I don’t know if you know Samaritans. As for me…some of my best friends are Samaritans. Back in Jesus’ time, most good people were prejudiced against them. Samaritans were the worst. They were – I bet they were considered to be worse than the hated Romans. If you wanted to say who do you hate the most, eh, Samaritans would be number one, very much. Survey would say Samaritan! DING! right there at the top of the list. Samaritans were heretics. They were half-breeds. They were traitors. They were collaborators. They were filthy. They didn’t know how to worship God right. Take everything you could hate about a person or a group add it up and: Boom, Samaritans. In any shape or stretch of the imagination, they are not neighbor. If you were a Jew back in Jesus’s time, and especially if you’re a lawyer back in Jesus’s time, especially if you’re a good observant righteous Jewish lawyer back in Jesus’s time, Samaritan is not a neighbor in any way, shape, or form. But Jesus tells a story. And you know Jesus, he doesn’t just answer the the question, does he? He doesn’t answer the question who is my neighbor. You see what he asked at the end? He flipped it around, like Lord Atkin. He flipped it around. He didn’t say how who qualified in the story to be a neighbor to you. He said, “Who acted as a neighbor to the person that fell among robbers?” Whoa. The lawyer didn’t bargain for that. See, the lawyer wanted a short list. You know, just maybe the neighborhood, you know, just a few people. Jesus did make a short list! He took that list down to one, the lawyer. Not about other people, but about the lawyer himself. There’s only one person you’ve got to worry about being a neighbor or not, lawyer. It’s you. Are you a neighbor? That’s all you got – that’s it. You’re done. You’re done with the list of qualifications and understandings. All you’ve got to ask is, are you acting as neighbor? And you’re done. Four words. He just had to mess it up. Switched it around. Who was a neighbor to the one who fell among the thieves? Now, you’re going to get upset. Stick with me. What if we had a question to ask Jesus today, who would come up – what would they ask Jesus today? Would they ask the neighbor question? Maybe. I think who would ask those four word question today would be “Black Lives Matter”. Now, were you too upset to notice that was only three words? Right, I’m not going to ask for a show of hands. But just like that other question, there’s an extra word there. Word that we hear that’s not spoken. And the thing that makes “Black Lives Matter” so upsetting is that all of us do not hear that same unspoken word. That even makes it more upsetting. Some of us, some of us hear exclusion. We hear ONLY Black Lives Matter. And we get upset because of the unspoken word that excludes. But that word is not heard by others it is only in your head. Other folks hear a different unspoken word, a focus, Black Lives Matters TOO. Black Lives Matter ALSO. Talking about focus, but not exclusion. Whoa, what would Jesus do? I don’t know. And I’m not Jesus. Good thing. He’d only last three years in the ministry. He’s a failure by the world’s measure. But I was a firefighter for a couple of years. I think we had a motto, a slogan, a rallying cry. Something like “Preserving Life and Property,” I think was on our motto on our side of our trucks. But, you know, I think you could argue that we acted and we lived out, we trained and we moved, and we did everything in our power to live out the unpublished motto that Burning Houses Matter. Burning homes matter. That’s what we focused on, buddy boy. If there was a house burning, that got our attention. We got out of bed. We got up from the dinner table. We left our family, and we went a running to that burning house. I was in the Volunteer Fire Department. You had – four minutes to get to the station and get on a truck or you were walking to the fire. Those trucks were gone in four minutes. So the alarm went off, you better be running. You’d better be in your car. You’d better totally focus on getting there NOW because in four minutes everybody’s going to be gone, and you’re going to be walking to that fire. We dropped everything because burning homes matter. Now, Christy, don’t all homes matter? Don’t we all pay taxes? You burnist! Everybody’s home is just as valuable in their heart as a burning home!! Why do you hate other homes? Why do you pass them by? How come you don’t come up to their house with lights and sirens and dance around with ladders and fountains of water? Why do you do all that for just burning homes? Don’t you like the other houses you just speed on by? Do you hate them? No. It’s Focus. Not exclusion. FDR got it right, and the Samaritan got it right. Lord Atkin got it right. Who’s your neighbor? Who needs you? Who needs a neighbor? That’s is who youryour neighbor. Whoever needs you. That’s who it is. That’s who matters. Have you studied the great philosopher of our time, Louis C.K.? You can buy tickets to a comedy show and see him, but he’s really a philosopher. A lot of philosophers are comedians today, and I understand it pays better than a Ph.D. But he has something that I am just gave to my TechCampers at ComputerCorps two week TechCamp for young teens and I said this to the kids, because, you know, children, can get pretty competative between one another. Louis C.K. told his kids the only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if they have more than you. The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough. And guess what. If they don’t, you give them some of yours. What a world that would be, if we didn’t think about how we measured up to other people, didn’t worry about how much we were getting what we needed, about what we were doing, but instead if we thought about how am I fulfilling what other people need from me, how am I being a neighbor, measuring ourselves instead of others. Now, if you want a graduate course in this understanding, I recommend Love Wins Ministry. Hugh Hollowell is great at very gently and nicely just pricking our big balloon ego right in the spot. And he’s a religious guy, and he knows how to do it. 2010, one of his blog entries was about a frequently asked question: should I give money to panhandlers? That is a big issue, I know, for Christians. And you can argue about it, say, “Oh, I always do.” “Oh, I never do.” And so Hugh talks about that. “You know, I understand, maybe you’re in a hurry. You’re late for an appointment. You don’t have time. And you had to go, you had to go. Maybe all you can do is that look at that other person, acknowledge their presence, and move on.” Hugh says that the thing to do in that situation is whatever the most relational thing you can do. Whatever it is, it’s the most relational that you can do. Because Hugh works with the homeless, and he says the opposite of homeless is community. And he works on homelessness by making relationships. Now, he says – he gives you an out. “If you’re busy, if you’ve got too much to do, if you don’t have time, if you’ve got an appointment, look at the other person, acknowledge their presence, and then later on pray for them.” And then Hugh, he goes, “And then pray for yourself. Pray for your lifestyle that has allowed you to get so busy that you don’t have time to show love and mercy to another human.” Did I warn you? Ouch. It’s not that other person that is needy. You’re needy, too. “But Hugh, should I give money to a panhandler? What if they use it wrong?” “Well, if you can’t give money, if you can’t give any gift without giving it as a gift, without severing the ties to it and letting that person do what [indiscernible], if you can’t give money without feeling that way, then don’t give money. You can buy a bunch of waters and put them in a cooler in your back and hand them out. You know, 24 waters and hand them out to the [indiscernible]. You can buy a gross of socks, couple dozen socks and hand them out to the homeless people. You can do that if you don’t want to give money. But if you don’t want to give money” – here it comes. Oh, Hugh. “If you don’t want to give money because of how they would treat it, consider for yourself why you’re more concerned about your relationship with money than your relationship with another human.” [Whistles] Who is my neighbor? Not about what they’re doing, how they are, what checklists they get on. But am I being a neighbor? Gee, Christy, all you had to do was preach, and you come and bring the whole congregation down. Ugh. Well, then, let’s tell a Mister Rogers story, huh? Yeah, go out with a Mister Rogers story. Mister Rogers, a Presbyterian pastor, member of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh, I had the privilege of being the pastor of the Latrobe Presbyterian Church where his family worshiped, where he grew up in Latrobe. Great, great, great family. Rich, oh, my gosh. So much money. Oh, and thank you Jesus, they loved to help out Latrobe Presbyterian Church, even though he moved to Pittsburgh decades before I arrived for a brief ministry. He has passed away. There are stories going around. Some of them are true, a couple are not. He’s never shot anybody, never was in the military – got to watch those things internet memes. But if Fred Rogers met you he always knew your kid’s name. He always asked when you saw him. I never met him. But people would talk about him around me. And they would just get misty-eyed. They’d talk about even when he was a kid, and the chauffeur was giving him a ride to school every day, he’d pick up his friends and have them go along with them in the limo. He was quite the man. One of the stories about Mister Rogers was that they sent a limo for him, you know, a really nice limo. Mister Rogers wouldn’t ride in the back, sat upfront with the driver. And they went to an executive house for a meeting, and he found out the driver was supposed to stay outside with the car while they were in the house, having their meeting. And he made them bring the limo driver in with them. And on the way home he was sitting in the front seat. Probably a long day for Mister Rogers. And they were talking. And the limo driver says, “Oh, yeah, I live right over there.” And he says, “You do? You do?” And the driver continues, “Yeah, my kids are big fans.” “They are? Oh, could we go visit? It be all right if I went and visit with them?” Well, yeah. And so the limo driver took Mister Rogers to his own home. And they sat, and he met the family, and he played the piano, and they sang neighborhood songs, and THEN he went back to his hotel. That song, you know, in “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” he says, “Since we’re all here anyway, won’t you be a neighbor?” Since we’re here anyway, won’t you be a neighbor. There’s only – it’s a really simple answer, turns out, to who is my neighbor. If you look at it the way Mister Rogers did, Lord Atkins did, if you look at it the way even Hugh Hollowell did, it’s a really simple thing because you only have to answer for one person. And Louis C.K. would remind you that, too. Who is my neighbor? And you twist that around, saying who am I a neighbor to, and work on your own neighborness, instead of how other people should be neighbors. What a wonderful world that would be. Amen. These are the 25 names that are included in the above image: Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Jordan Davis, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Emmett Till, Amadou Diallo, Kimani Gray, Jonathan Ferrell, Renisha McBride, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Myra Thompson, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Daniel Simmons, Clementa Pinckney, Sharona Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Laquan McDonald, Cameron Tillman and Tanisha Anderson. Post differs from the recording with some repeats and speaking errors edited out. Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommended for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions. Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Think of things worthy of praise: Be an Encouraging Christian Christy argues the Light of the World is Green not Red. Green Light Christiansa sermon by Rev. J. Christy RamseyClick the title above for a mp3 recording Audio from South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on April 17, 2016, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. Philippians 4:8-9 Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes Why do we need green lights on the traffic signals? If they were important we would call them “go lights.” But we call them Stoplights. If you take away the green light at the bottom, what difference does it make? I mean if there wasn’t a traffic light, you’d just go anyway; right? It’s like an automatic green. Why do we have those things? Oh, my goodness. I think I need to turn to an outside expert to explain why we have traffic signals. In the movie “Starman”, the alien Starman comes and learns about humanity. He drives up to a yellow light and he just floors it. His terrified passengers yells: “I thought you knew what you were doing. You told me you watched me. You told me you knew how to drive by watching.” The Starman responds, “Oh, I watched you. I learned everything: red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.” That’s not true, in case any of you are out there thinking, oh, that’s what the preacher said. No, yellow means stop. If you’re ever in Latrobe, Pennsylvania you can get a ticket for not stopping at a yellow light. Friends have told me this. You’re supposed to stop at yellow. What is the good of a green light, yellow light, red light? Red is stop; yellow is caution, warning, slow down, look out, maybe stop. You’re in the danger zone. Green means go, but we go anyway. You know, there’s people like that. Especially Christian people are like that, aren’t there? There are red light Christians. There are yellow light Christians. There are green light Christians. H.L. Mencken said “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone somewhere is happy.” Red light Christians. Now, we don’t have to go – we don’t have to go to current things, Christians who say stop, stop, stop. We can go back in time. Christians are always being stopped. Christians – those Puritans, they tried to stamp out Christmas. Tried not to let that happen. There was a fine if you didn’t go to work on December 25th, or if you were caught celebrating at all. In America, in New England, Christmas was banned as un-Christian, pagan, terrible, awful thing. Stop. Stop it. Women wearing pants in church. I remember that. Oh, that was a huge, huge eternal hellfire issue. Jesus wore a dress but I don’t know if that had anything to do stopping the pants. Christians are always telling you, stop, stop, this has got to stop. I mean, now we’re at, I think we’re – I think the holiday that we’ve got our sights on is Halloween now. We’re trying to stomp that out. I’m not sure. Sooner or later we’re going to have a Halloween season in the church. In a couple of generations, the church will be decorated in orange and black for the Halloween season. And it’ll be okay. Stop doesn’t always work. And I’m not sure that’s the best witness into what Jesus wants to us doing, to be stoplights. But if you listen to some people, they will tell you how you shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t do that. No dancing. No smoking. No gambling. Not in Nevada. Never hear that in Nevada. But no, no, stop, stop. You know, being just Red Light Christians doesn’t work. I know a little about red lights. When I was a volunteer firefighter, we sort of had a love/hate relationship with the red lights. We’d love them for other people, but we weren’t too fond of them ourselves. You know, when you’re driving a couple-ton truck full of water, as the truck drivers reminded me constantly, water just doesn’t stop instantly. It keeps going even if the truck stops. So you just can’t slam on the brake, Christy. This isn’t a car. Oh, they got after me. I had a remedial fire engine driving I had to go to. When I started at the fire station, and you know when you start a job, am I the only one, when you start something, you don’t ask every question right away? Do you say, well, I’ll ask about this today, and I’ll ask about that tomorrow, and then, you know, you sort of ration them out; you know? And after about a month I asked them a question had been bugging me since day one. Right on the inside of the old fire station, about this high up, very inconvenient, there was this old-timey light switch, the flip kind on a metal box light switch, right there. But it was way up here. And it had this old yellow paper over it. And the paper, in black magic marker it was written, “Do not use.” Why is that switch up there? Why is there a paper over it saying “Do not use?” What in the world? Well, after a while I got up courage and asked one of the old-timers. And I said, “Hey, what’s that switch up there? The one that has the paper over it saying ‘Do not use’?” He explained: “Oh, that switch. Huh. That turns all the lights in town red.” Maybe they ought to lock that up or something, but no. Oh? There’s more! He continues: “Yeah, we don’t use that anymore. We used to, and then they had that right-on-red law. And now it doesn’t stop traffic, so we don’t use it anymore.” Even turning every light in the town red doesn’t stop people. Red lights don’t always work, and even when they do, they don’t work for long. Well, what about those yellow lights? You know that we’re – you know that we’re kind of, sort of, you know, saying no, but we’re saying we’re not going to be mean about the no? We’re going to be kind of nice about the no? How about the yellow? Yellow light Christians, how about them folks? You know those folks. You know, they’re, you know, what’s the biggest yellow light in our history and our life? Well, I think it’s the “don’t ask, don’t tell,” that one. That’s kind of a yellow light. It’s wrong, but just don’t talk about it. As long as you don’t talk about it, it’s okay, but not really, you know, it’s kind of the – that, that didn’t work real well. That did not work well. People were tortured, actually tortured so that they would tell and get kicked out of the army without benefits, without any status at all. Yellow Lights are ignored too often to really work. And, you know, all the folks that say not yet, too soon, too much a hurry, we’ve got take this slow. You know, the oppressed people, the people that are suffering, the people that are under the thumb, they never say that. They never say, oh, it’s too soon. Yeah, I can wait another lifetime, another generation, another decade. The yellow lights, whoa, wait, wait, wait, don’t do that yet. It’s too much; you know? Doesn’t work for folks waiting to go into equality or yearning for relief. What about the slippery slope argument? If we allow this, well, then, this terrible thing would happen. You don’t want this terrible thing, do you? Well, then you’re against this reasonable request. You know the slippery slope now? You know what the one is now? They’re going to check your birth certificate before you go in the restroom. And you thought you were mad at TSA delays at the airport. You know, what about now? “Please allow an extra hour before going to the restroom so we can check your birth certificates. There’ll be a line.” Who has that job? Is that a big problem? They said, well, you know, it’s to keep the women safe. Well, no women ever said that, I don’t think. Women are not safe anywhere. I’m sorry to break it to you. It’s not a bunch of assaults in a public restroom that’s a problem. Safety for women is everywhere. It’s even in their own homes. I am totally for safety of women. I am totally for safety of everyone. I don’t care what gender you are assigned, could be, was, will, whatever is your identity. I am for your safety, and that bathroom birth certificates are not safety for anyone. Safety is for everyone, everywhere, all the time. I want safety in all the rooms and outside not just one little restroom for one gender. That’s ridiculous. But that’s yellow lights; isn’t it? The slippery slope? If we allow restroom freedom, terrible things will happen: women will be assaulted everywhere. Got news for you. Already happening. Let’s work on that problem and not on this little false yellow light thing here. There was a religious professor in Grove City College, very conservative college. I went there. I get props for that. But he somehow slipped in. I think he might have been a sleeper agent for the liberals and any day he was going to be activated. But he was there, and he was talking about slippery slope. And he says, yeah, that’s why I’m against curbside trash pickup. Once you allow them to take garbage off your curb, next they’re going to be into the yard and taking the bicycles. Next they’ll be up to the porch and taking the patio furniture and throwing it away. Finally, they’ll be wheeling out your appliances and putting them in the trash truck. You don’t want the government stealing your appliances, do you? Well, then you’re against curbside trash pickup. That Professor is no longer there. Made too much sense. Yellow lights do not put Christians in the best light. But, you know, some of them are good. Red lights, red lights. Yellow lights, some of them are good. I’m okay with – I’m okay with some things. You know, stop the violence. Yeah, big red light on that. Stop, stop fighting. Stop hurting people. Stop discrimination. Stop a lot of things. I’ve got a big red light on those. And, you know, yellow lights are good, too. My wife, is a physical therapist. And most of her stuff I – she’s going to correct me later. But most of her stuff is get people up and walking. It’s a huge change in your quality of life, if you can get out of bed and go places you need to go, even in the house. And she says, you know, fear of falling, that’s very handy. You really need that to learn how to walk and how to move around. You need the fear of falling. That’s a big yellow light. Whoo, watch out. That’s not safe. Grab onto a bar. Use your walker. Do whatever you need to do. Do not fall. Big yellow lights. I’m good with yellow lights. Some of the yellow lights. But back to why do we have green lights? You know, I was worried about this. This was bothering me. And again, Bette Lynn gave me the answer. She goes, “Well, if you didn’t have the green light, you wouldn’t know if the traffic light was broken or not.” Well, you know what you do at a broken traffic light. Let’s see how well – what do you do if the traffic light’s broken, like a power outage? CONGREGATION: Stop. PASTOR RAMSEY: Four-way stop, thank you. No, it’s not go as fast as you can and beat the other people, as some people think. It’s a four-way stop. So if we didn’t have the green lights, everything would be a four-way stop. No one would know, is that signal working or not? Is the other people seeing red or not? I don’t know. But a green light, a green light says, I got you. It’s okay. I’m on it. I’m on the job. I got you. I got the others on red. Come right on in there. Yeah, you’re good. Encouraging. If there’s anything worthy of praise, if there’s anything good, think about these things: big green light. It is not necessary. You should go on your own. But, boy, does it help to go when you have a green light smiling at you. If you don’t see a green light, you just might stop because you don’t know if it’s okay to go or not. You might think that traffic light is broken. And you know, the same is about Christianity. If all the people hear are red lights and yellow lights. If the Christian message is only about stop, don’t do this, don’t do that, the culture is terrible. If preachers are yellow lights: we’ve got to watch out, things are going to get terrible. People are going to think Christianity’s broken. Because they never see a green light from us. Yet we do have green lights. We just don’t tell anybody. We’re full of green lights: baptism, big green light. Weddings and marriages are big green light; go and coming. And then funerals, even funerals, green lights. It’s not that bad. It’s not over. It’s not a stop for us. The message of funerals should be a big green light, that death is not a stop. And even the littler celebrations. Not just hatch, match, and dispatch, which is the ones we’re good at, but also all the little events. We need to celebrate membership where we say yes to seekers joining Christ’s church. Folks need to see our signal that we believe in you, we accept your promises. Commissioning to missionary work and mission trips. Ordination and installation of officers, yes. Go, go and lead. Do that thing. Choir recruitment, yeah, you can come up and sing. We’re all for you, yeah. Big green light. You’re supposed to sing. You’re supposed to lead. Go. Do it. Encouragement. We do that, but we don’t tell anybody. We think the most important things are the red and the yellow lights. We preach only about the cautions and the don’ts and the stops. I will tell you, and as our scripture says in Psalm 23, the most important things are saying I am with you. I go with you to the darkest valley, the most enemies. I have a table for you. I’ve got a place for you. Don’t worry. Green light. I got you. Come on. You know, we do not call Jesus Christ is God Stop Us. A Divine Red Light. We do not say that Jesus Christ is God Warn Us. A Holy Yellow light. What do we say? We say Emmanuel, God With Us. God Go With Us. Green light. That is our identity. We’re here so that you can be blessed to be a blessing. We’re here so that you can be forgiven to forgive. We’re here that you can go through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil. God’s got you. Big green light. Two more stories. So back to the firefighters. You never see anybody more serious about something than a dedicated volunteer. I mean, an employee can be dedicated. But a volunteer has to be really dedicated. They are not getting paid, so they’d better have another good reason to be there. Everyone has to take a test in Ohio to be a volunteer firefighter. I accidentally became a volunteer firefighter and had to take the test. Look at this body. Not the fabulous fit specimen of the firefighting caste. They said, “Okay, okay, okay, Rev, come on. We’ve got to take this test.” It’s called the Firefighter Agility Test. What they want to know is that you’re not going to screw them up on a fire run. That’s what they want to know. So you’ve got to climb up a ladder – and climb down – without freaking out. You’ve got to be able to be blindfolded and crawl around in a maze without freaking out. You’ve got to be able to carry this dummy, without falling and having to be rescued yourself. These are things they want to know before you can do before they go through fire with you. And so John Love, one of my great mentors, was reading off the official Ohio regulations for these tests, da da da da da da da. Very serious guy. Da da da da da. He’s a funeral director. They lean toward serious. Da da da da da. He’s reading them all out. And at the very end he says: “And in all these tests, we are not allowed to physically assist you. But we are allowed to cheer.” And what? He said “cheer” in his serious funeral director/firefighter captain voice. And that’s what they did. They weren’t allowed to help me, but they were allowed to cheer. “C’mon, Preacher, you can do it, you can get up there. Oh, you’ve got this, you’ve got this. Only a little more, Go Rev Go!” They were there all the way through. Got me through it. We aren’t allowed to help you, but we’re allowed to cheer. Another guy, big mentor in my life, Jerry Gordon, great, great Christian, great, wonderful guy. He and I split up the Salvation Army for the county, doing that together, great guy, helped each other out. He was the one that was the mentor for my daughter in confirmation, helped her and led her through making a public decision for Christ. A real special bond. Great guy. And he wanted our small church to do Relay for Life. And when they do Relay for Life in small towns, really, it is a serious business. None of this 12-hour jazz. It was all weekend, buddy. And everybody’s going to be out, every team is going to have someone on that track all night long, buddy. We’re going to do it right. So I thought, yeah, he’s a little ambitious, you know. So I said, “Hey, Jerry, Jerry, I’m with you. Jerry, put me down for an hour on the track, your worst hour. Whatever you can’t get, put me down, I’ll be there for you, buddy.” He goes, “Really?” Because, again, you know my physique is an issue for endurance tests. And I said, “Yeah, really, really. I want to do this. You’re going to have trouble. I know you’re going to have trouble with this getting enough people in the night, and whatever hour you need, I’ll be there, I’ll do an hour. I can do an hour.” And he, “All right, all right. You sure?” “Yeah, I’m sure.” I got, like, 3:00 a.m., buddy, 3:00 to 4:00 a.m., walking around the high school track, 3:00 to 4:00 a.m., walking around doing this, you know. Da da da da da, da. Oh, it is dark, dark, dark. And I’m tired. So I get out there, and Jerry’s there. I go out there, lap one. Out from behind the scoreboard, Jerry Gordon, “Go Christy, go Christy, go Christy, yay, yay, go Christy.” I jump a little and smile, Okay. I’m kind of sleepy, walking around. Next lap, behind the food stand, out pops Jerry “Good job, go, way to go, way to run. Yeah, you’re the man, you’re the man.” Every lap he’s jumping out from somewhere different and yelling at me. One time he came out of the Porta-Potty. I am still kind of freaked out about that. You know, Jerry could have slept. He could have taken the hour off. He could have done that, I would have gone around the track anyway. He wasn’t allowed to help, but he was allowed to cheer and that kept me from stopping. I hope you do that. I hope there’s people in your life like Jerry Gordon and John Love that, even if they can’t help you, and I hope they help you, but I hope they’re always cheering you on, saying, “Way to go. Good job. You’re doing well.” You guys are doing well as a people and as a congregation. And I hope people keep telling you that all the time. I hope they don’t say, “Oh, haven’t you got a minister yet? Well, tsk, tsk, tsk.” You know, I hope that people are saying you are doing great with mission trips. You’re doing great with worship. You’re doing great with Bread & Broth. You’re doing great with all these programs that you keep going without a minister. You are doing great with welcoming and worship and music and outreach, doing all – so you’re doing a seminar the end of this month and opening it up to the community. Something that even Presbytery take notice of, and that’s not easy to do, to get Presbytery to take notice of you in a good way. Yeah, they’re even sending money down to you for that. So good on you. And I want to encourage you. And I want you, when you think of things, when you think of how the church is going, when you think about how your life is going, I want you to think about the scripture. Is there anything, anything, anything worthy of praise? Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure. Anything worthy of praise. All the good things. Think about these things. Be green light Christians. Know that you can go and tell other people they can go so they don’t think the church is broken. So they don’t stop everywhere, saying, well, I don’t know, is it good or not? I don’t know. It could be red or yellow, I don’t know. But you say green, yeah, you’re welcome here. Yeah, you belong here. Yeah, we’re glad you’re here. Yeah, you’re okay. Yes, we love you just the way you are. And yes, use any bathroom you want. Not a problem here. I want to leave you with a Presbyterian minister from Latrobe – Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Fred Rogers did his ministry in Pittsburgh, as Mister Rogers in “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,”. I was blessed to be in his home church as interim for 18 months. Got to meet the neighborhood. You know, all the characters in the neighborhood were from his family, his extended family. And Daniel the Tiger used to come up and talk to me about the sermon. And it was so neat because they kind of look like the puppets. It was so neat. And so many good stories about Fred Rogers, how wonderful and caring and loving he was. I want to leave you with this video. Go ahead and do what Mr. Rogers tells you, for 10 seconds and the rest of your life. And that’ll be the end of the sermon. Edited from a transcript by eDigitalTranscriptions [Fred Rogers Acceptance Speech for Lifetime Achievement Award– 1997] Thank you. Thank you. Oh it’s a beautiful night in this neighborhood. So many people have helped me to come here to this night. Some of you are here, some are far away and some are even in Heaven. All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, 10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are, those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life. 10 seconds of silence. I’ll watch the time. [10 Sec Pause] [Mister Rogers] Source: LYBIO.net Whomever you’ve been thinking about, how pleased they must be to know the difference you feel they’ve made. You know they’re kind of people television does well to offer our world. Special thanks to my family and friends, and to my co-workers in Public Broadcasting, Family Communications, and this Academy for encouraging me, allowing me, all these years to be your neighbor. May God be with you. Thank you very much. “speech transcript from lybio.net .” Transcipt differs from the recording with some exclaimations removed and some patter while I checked my notes edited out. Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommend for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions. Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Photo by Steve Bidmead • Bedfordshire/England How to Forgive Christy helps us forgive with practical practices for forgiving: doing what Christ has done for us. How to Forgivea sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramseyclick the title above for an mp3 recording Audio from South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on February 21, 2016Text version is from September 14, 2008 at Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church in Akron, Ohio Matthew 18:21-35 Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes You’ll have to forgive Peter. Peter’s proposal was actually quite generous; most teachers allowed two or three times forgiveness. Peter went all the way to seven. Jesus, sarcastically responded, seventy-seven times, other versions have seventy times seven. It wasn’t a literal number, he was joking to make a point, a number so ridiculously high to show one shouldn’t be keeping track of forgiveness. Forgiveness does not do math. Love doesn’t keep score. Jesus points this out in the numbers he uses in the story. It is hard to compare money value from Biblical times. Ten Thousand Talents. Now a talent was the amount a man could carry, so imagine ten thousand men loaded up all the gold they could carry. Way over a million dollars, how could a servant pay that back? Our Bible footnote says a single talent was equal to 15 years’ wages. He couldn’t work off 150,000 years’ worth of labor, that was the point. It was unpayable, so his promise to pay it back was either laughable or insulting, depending on your mood. A hundred denarii would be a 100 days labor, for a denarius was one day manual labor. In terms of weight a talent was 93 pounds while the denarius went the other way, it was 1/93rd of a pound. So debt he was owed was a pound compared to 930,000 pounds, or 465 tons that he was forgiven. It is a mind boggling difference in amount. Jesus was pointing out that we are forgiven so we may forgive. Sometimes when someone is complaining about someone, I think, imagine, God has to put up with that person twenty-four hours a day! Not only that but God has to put up with everyone I put up with, plus one other, God has to put up with me. If God lets all those people and I go on living without smiting them and me…I guess I shouldn’t have higher standards than God. Now, I also don’t want to suggest that forgiving is forgetting. Jesus doesn’t have the king in the story give the slave another several million dollars to hold for him. If anything, the forgiven servant is held to a high standard than others, with the master expecting him to be more merciful because he was forgiven. Frederic Luskin, Ph.D. has nine steps to forgiveness a couple of them are worth mentioning here. (You can find this and more learningtoforgive.com Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation or condoning of their action. Give up expecting things from other people, or your life , that they do not choose to give you. Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge. The website of the Fetzer Institute has practices of forgiveness written by By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat that are helpful for Christians seeking to forgive. Here are a couple: Another Point of View Think of a situation in your life where you would like to be forgiven or would like to forgive. Write or record a short description of the situation from your perspective. Now imagine that you are the other person in the situation from that person’s perspective. How are the two stories different? Just Like Me Resentments, disagreements, and estrangements hurt all parties because they reinforce feelings of separation. Often we can’t forgive someone until we can see the situation from their point of view. A good practice to encourage this kind of perspective shift is “Just Like Me.” Whenever you find yourself making an assessment of another person, whether you are saying something critical or something complimentary, right after you think or say it, add the statement “just like me.” For example, “My partner is so stubborn, just like me.” “My friend holds too many grudges, just like me.” This activity can help you see that we are all imperfect and make mistakes. When we shift our focus and judgment from others to ourselves we will find that to which we most object to others is the same things we hate in ourselves. The difference is that we can do something about the way we act and relate. We can change ourselves. Practice Meeting People for the First Time Hugh Prather, author of many books of spiritual reflections, considers the steps necessary for forgiveness in Morning Notes: 365 Meditations to Wake You Up. He concludes that “a judgmental feeling about another person is based on the same belief as my fear of making mistakes: I think what someone once did is more important than how the person is now.” Practice meeting people as they are right now, as if you were meeting them for the first time. If their past actions dominate your perceptions, this will be difficult. God’s very name is I AM WHO I AM or I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE. God is centered not so much in who you were, but who you are called to be. We once were strangers, but now we are the friend of God. We once were sinners and now we are children of God. God meets us again for the first time every moment of our lives as we grow in understanding, love and forgiveness. Better than we were yesterday, not as good as we will be tomorrow. Most of us have heard of an intervention where a person is surrounded by friends and family and told of the pain and grief he has caused in each person’s life. This is an effective way to get through the fog of denial and the web of lies than keep folks from entering rehabilitation treatment for drugs or alcohol abuse. There is another way Remind People of Their Good Qualities and Deeds In The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, Jack Kornfield describes an African forgiveness ritual: “In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy, is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.” Who and Whose You Are There was a Presbytery executive now retired who ended most of his conversations with the phrase, “Remember who you are and whose you are”. Christians can add to the story told to the person. Now just the story to remember who they are at their best, but the Christian story the love of Christ and story of redemption of God’s people from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane from Creation to Revelation. We are commanded to forgive and we can forgive when we remember who we are and whose we are. When we acknowledge how God forgave us, when we write a forgiving end to the stories of hurt and pain we tell and live, when we see ourselves in others and turn to working on changing ourselves instead of others, and when we value the present reality and future possibilities over past failures. This is what God does for us, and what we need to do to others. Transcipt differs from the recording with some exclaimations removed and some patter while I checked my notes edited out. Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommend for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions. Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Photo by Kevin Christopher Burke on Flickr.comPointers and Retrievers Christy takes salvation up a notch, from John 3:16 to 17 moving from me and mine to the world. Pointers and Retrieversa sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramseyclick the title above for a mp3 recording Preached at South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on February 14, 2016 Based on John 3:16-17 Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes The church has left the building. Have you heard about this program? They had it down in Carson City. Have you ever heard of this? It’s a program, and I really can’t – I couldn’t find it, where it started. It might have been the guys’ seminar. I don’t know. But it’s a thing where churches cancel their Sunday service to go do Sunday service. It’s a strange thing. They give up their worship time, their worship hour. They have all the people come. And they go out, and they do service projects. One church packed thousands of ready-to-go disaster food relief packets so that they could immediately be shipped and give a family sustenance for three days. And they put it all together and packaged it all up, and that’s what they did on Sunday morning. Other one went up and cleaned up a place. Some places fixed up some houses that needed repair. Just all sorts of projects that they go out, and they cancel service to give service. They go out from their building. The church leaves a building and goes out and bes the church in the world. That is a huge sacrifice. And I’m not just talking about listening to the choir and drinking the fine coffee and desserts afterwards. Not that kind of sacrifice. There’s more of a sacrifice. It’s not just leading the preaching and the teaching and the singing and the praying. It’s the offering. There’s, like, two people here at least that were doing that math already. Wait a minute, they didn’t get an offering on Sunday? That is a big thing. Because the offering doesn’t go to the church that Sunday. The offering goes to the world. The church has left the building. It’s a hard program. Carson could only stand it for, like, two or three years, and then they, they switched it to Saturday. It’s hard. It’s hard to leave the building, to give that all up, to give up our service for service to the world. Now, I know what you’re all thinking. Like you think, every time I preach, what in the world does that title have to do with what he’s talking about? Pointers and retrievers? Valentine’s Day? I thought he was going to go with puppy love. Darn, we missed it again. Pointers and retrievers is about stores I’ve been to, churches I’ve served, and people I know. It comes down to pointers and retriever. And you know this. You just haven’t thought about it. Pointers and retrieve – have you ever gone to a store and asked for something, for, A, find someone, A; and then, B, ask for it. Where is this? And what do you get? Do you get a point? Over there? That’s where they should be? It’s where they used to be? That’s where I think it’d be? That’s where something I don’t like is, and [indiscernible] send him over to you? Huh? You get a pointer? Over there somewhere. I think it used to be there, should be there. And you know, if you get enough, you can get a game going, you know, because you get – and then you get closer because, you know, there is no distance in pointing. It’s just a directional thing. It’s not how far. You know, I tried to get a thing, what if we did the fingers thing? That was a little further, that was way far. It’s not really going anywhere. If you could help, I got a Kickstarter project. We might be getting that going. All right. But you get over there, and you get near the place in the same direction, and you get the next sales person, they give you another point; you know? And then you go that way, you get another point. You know, it’s like you’re a pinball, you know, trying to hit the target, boom, boom, all over the place. Oh, pointing. Then there are some stores, some stores, they don’t have any pointers. They got retrievers. “Oh, I’ll go get you that. I’ll get you that. Wait right here.” I don’t like that so much because I am a little nervous. They’re not coming back, you know. Maybe I don’t think well enough of myself, but I’m thinking I’ll never see them again. I really like the retrievers that say, “Come on. It’s over here. Come on. I’ll take you. Come on. Let’s go.” And they go, and they look for it with you. [Indiscernible], it was here. Where is that thing? You know, and they find it. It’s not where it used to be, or not where it should be, or not where it was last week or any of that stuff. It’s, “We’ll find it together. Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go get that. We’ll get it together. We’ll figure this out ourselves. We’ll find it. I don’t know where it is, but I will find out. We will find someone somewhere to get it.” Retrievers. There’s people like that, too; isn’t there? Find people? You go and ask for help, and they say, “No, you can get help over there.” “Oh, these people over there might help you.” “Oh, there’s that book over there. That book there might help you there. And while you’re there, you can do that here, and you should live your life there and get that job there, move there.” Lot of pointers. If you’ve got a couple retrievers in your life, keep them close. “I don’t know, let’s go.” “I’m bringing my truck. You’re moving, I’m bringing my truck. When you want me there?” Not “There’s some moving companies over there, they’re really good.” Pointers and retrievers. Churches are like that, too. Oooh, he’s gone from preaching to meddling. There he goes again. Why can’t we have some puppy love jokes? That was fun. You can go over there for salvation. Do this, do that, find Jesus. If you get this here, come to this service now, we open up our doors here, come here, do this, do that, do the Bible, do the confirmation, do this, do that. You can do that. Then there’s retrievers. I’ll come and get you. I’ll come and be with you. This is from the deacons. We know you’re having a hard time. Retrievers. And now is the place – I like to give, you know, subtitles for people, you know, know what’s going on next is now we get to the scripture. Because some of you say, “Does he ever get to the scripture? There’s scripture.” John – and I’m just doing two verse – there’s a lot of verses here about a lot of stuff. There’s a whole born again anew from above thing. That’s a whole sermon. And if you get it, if [B&C] doesn’t get the thing done, you might hear that one. But tonight, today, you’re just hearing about 16 and 17, just 16 and 17. That’s all. Now, the 16 verse, that’s a pointer verse. I think it doesn’t have to be, but it too often is. How do I get eternal life? Well, you go to Jesus. You go to Jesus to do that. That’s how you do that. For God so loved the world that he gave – and it said he gave his only son so they may not perish but have eternal life. You know that eternal life starts right now. That’s present. It’s not after death. It’s not a death insurance thing. It doesn’t start after we die. The Greek says it’s now. Get eternal life right now. And too often we stop at John 3:16. Too often we stop there. We don’t go to the next verse. We say, oh, great, me and mine, we’re saved. Yeah, we know the way to Jesus and to Heaven. We’re going that way, yeah. Then there’s that pest – there’s more than one verse in the Bible. That’s bad news to some people. And then John 3:16 goes to 17 and messes everything up. We had it gone down, we got ourselves saved, me and mine, we’re with Jesus, we’re eternal life, yay, rah. And then you get the 17th verse, like Jesus, you just couldn’t quit there. You had to go on. And he talks about “For God sent.” What? Wait a minute. Last verse was “gave.” What’s this “sent” stuff? Oh, no. What are we getting into now? The son into the world. Wait a minute. The world? If you look at John, the world’s not a fun place. The world is a bunch of people that are nasty, that are hostile, that are chaos, that are after Jesus, that don’t believe. And that’s the world. Not the good folks here at South Lake Tahoe. Gosh, this is a good church. I have never in 35 years of pastoring heard so many Bible pages turning during a scripture reading. I congrat- proud of yourself. That’s amazing. They’re actually reading the Bible. I was actually – I had chills. I went up there and go, “Whoo, what’s that?” Salute. But it’s the world. The people don’t read their Bible. And people don’t have, well, they may have a Bible, but they never open it. People that are hostile to religion, or even worse than hostile, indifferent, don’t care, don’t think it matters. That’s who God sent Jesus in. Whoa, [indiscernible]. Not to condemn the world? Well, that’s no fun. We’re not to condemn the world? That’s like our number one favorite thing to do. [Indiscernible], we’re going to cut down the debates to, like, 20 minutes, if we can’t condemn the world. Not to condemn the world, but the world through him be saved. Wait a minute. We’re saving the whole world. Oh, ho, ho, I thought it was just me and mine. But you’re telling me that it’s the world, the one you’ve been telling me is so awful and hostile and chaotic and against Jesus, all those outside things. It’s cosmo. It’s cosmopolitan, the cosmos. The whole mess. The whole mess of things will be saved through Him. I should have just stopped, like the football players fan says, just that one verse. You go to 17, you’ve got to go save the world. Wow. What does that look like, that world-saving stuff? How are we different then? One thing’s different is evangelism. Oh, he’s saying the “E” word. This is a really upsetting sermon. Evangelism. When, you know, you know, it’s too often the question is how are we going to get young people to church? How are we going to get the young people to church? If that is your question, your answer is doomed. Doom’s a little strong. I’ll back up. Very difficult, not doomed. Maybe just [doo]. Because you’re starting all wrong. You’re trying to save the church. You’re trying to get the church, the world to save the church. No, the church saves the world. You’ve got it backwards. It’s not going to work right. And I tell you, I know, I’ve raised some of the young people. Got to live with them, raise them right up. And they don’t need saving. Just ask them. They’ll tell you. They’ve been told by their parents, they’ve been told by their school, they’ve been told most by mass media that they are the greatest thing ever, and they deserve the best. And they don’t need saving. So we come peddling salvation to them, well, huh, we don’t need any of that. But that’s John 3:16. What if we peddled John 3:17? Because they, God bless them, and I’m serious, they have a burden, they have a desire to save the world. They want to fix the world. They want to save the world. And if we figure out that’s what we’re about, they’ll join up with us. Or more likely we could join up with them. That is something people want to be involved in, not, hey, we’re here to have a great church. They don’t care. They’re not into save the church. They didn’t go through World War II where the institutions saved the world and the freedom and got the Nazis and all that. And we loved the institutions back then. Back before I was born and after, why, that was the great Fifties. That was super institutions save the world. We all worked together. We made these great things. We built up a spiritual industrial complex in the Presbyterian church in the mainline denominations because we were going to rid the world of evil, and that’s just like the Nazis. Yeah, it’s a different world now, sorry. Don’t trust the institutions. The young people don’t trust the latest app unless they built it themselves. And next week’s app is something different. But they still have the good and clean and passionate desire to make a better world. And if we tell them we’re about that, and if we are about that, if the church leaves the building and does service to the world instead of service for themselves, there’ll be plenty of people. All kinds. All messed up. The Serenity Prayer has a longer version than just the three sentences that we normally associate it and see on plaques. Niebuhr, when I wrote it, wrote several versions. One was a long one. One of the ones that I’ve been working with that’s been helping me with my issues, which you can ask me about later, but it’s taking, as Jesus did, this world as it is, not as I would have it. Taking as Jesus did the world as it is, not as I would have it. I do a lot of “as I would have it” stuff. But after looking at John 17, I’m thinking that if Niebuhr was looking at that verse, maybe he would have written yet another version and changed one word and said “loving,” as Jesus did, this world as it is, not as I would have it. That’s tough to do. Loving as Jesus did the world as it is, not as I would have it. Jesus died for that world, the world he was in: brutish, slavery, militaristic, awfulness, betrayers. That’s the world he died for, not the world he was calling us to. That’s the world he loved. Salvation – and sometimes I do little bumper stickers for people that like to remember one thing for, like, when people ask them, and they weren’t really listening. So this is the time to listen for that, you know, a tweet, if you’d do a tweet. But it’s “Salvation is like potato chips. You can’t stop with one.” John 3:16 may think that John 17 says “For God so loved me.” But he didn’t condemn me, but saved me. No, it’s the world. You can’t stop with one. There’s a church in Arlington, Virginia, First Presbyterian Church of Arlington, Virginia. They’ve been having some troubles lately. They’ve been there about a hundred years, though. But this year is going to be their last Easter. By their choice. Got out among the congregation, the community, and talked to them, talked to the cops and the teachers and the service workers and the people that make the town go, and listened to them, and felt their pain that they could not afford to live in the community they worked. They had to go way out somewhere because there was no affordable housing. And that, oh, yeah, there was some affordable housing. One year they had 122 affordable housing units, 122; 3,600 people applied for those. Hundred twenty-two; 3,600 people wanted them. This church, beautiful church, big land, wonderful location, said we’re going to sell our property, tear down our church, and build moderate income housing. Reserve them for seniors, people that grew up here and lived here and can no longer afford to stay, and other people that need it. They sold their property to a nonprofit that’s been doing housing developments around that at a 20 percent discount. Woohoo, Presbyterian. Gave them all up, and now they’re giving away the parts of the church, the pews and the Bibles to other churches, the homeless shelters, furnishings, getting ready to close up about May or June. And in their place will be a place that serves the world, the poor, the struggling, the working every day, everyday stiffs. The church has left the building. Amen. Transcipt differs from the recording with some exclaimations removed and some patter while I checked my notes edited out. Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommend for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions. Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.