  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 Hardness of Heart. (transcript being prepared.)

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Hardness of Heart

  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.

Hanlon's Razor

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

Four Julys

  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 

Normal or Nomad

   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 

One of Twelve

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.

Unity

   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?

Bringing Forward What's Behind

   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…

Stop the Shouting

   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.  

Well, It’s Blursday, the Upteenth of Meh…Again

Weeping with the whys of life with Jesus.

Jesus Wept

  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

Dying in a Ditch...And Then It Gets Worse

  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.

Cathedrals and Measles

Catch Me When I Fall

Searching for Sunday

 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.

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