Can Power Be Good?

Did your credit call ever call you as you left the store? Mine did. 

Here is the audio portion of Sunday’s message about power.

What Kind of Church Will We Be?

From Luke 18:9-14

A message in the wake of this year’s Presbyterian General Assembly looking at the church through the lens of unity and purity: What Kind of Church Will We Be about the struggles among the faithful and the possibility of help in Sinners Anonymous.

Easy on the Eyes

This recorded sermon is from 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 given at Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church in Akron, Ohio, on June 17, 2012. See as God sees, not as mortals see.

The following is a transcript of the live no-notes presentation flawlessly prepared by eDigitalTranscription.com. All errors are mine own. The recording is downloadable here.

“She’s a looker.” “He’s easy on the eyes.” You ever heard these expressions? These expressions are right here in our scriptures today. One of the expressions, when David comes, one of the ways to translate that is that David was easy on the eyes. Do you judge by outward appearances? By look? You can’t help but do it. You can’t help but look. It’s almost genetic that we look at someone, and we size them up by how they look, their appearance, whether they’re comely or good-looking or tall or thin or all that. Sometimes we don’t even realize it.

When I came back to Akron, I needed a doctor. Turns out that my doctor was no longer there after 30-some years away. And so I thought, I know what I’ll do. I’ll ask a nurse. Nurses know. They know who are good doctors. So I went and asked nurses. And I said, “Hey, who is the best doctor?” And they looked at one another, and they said, “Well, Dr. [Shanafelt] or Dr. [Fantelli]. Yes, yes, definitely Dr. Shanafelt or Dr. Fantelli. It’s hard to tell. One of those two.” And the other one’s, “Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, those two. Those two, definitely those two.” So I said, “Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Where are they?” “Well, they’re both out in Tallmadge.” Okay, great.

So I went out, signed up. Shanafelt was out. I had Fantelli. I said, well, they said either one was good. Fine, got along great, start going to the doctor. And months later, your intrepid pastor says to the nurses, “Hey, thanks for that recommendation for Dr. Fantelli. I’ve gone out there and really like him.” And the nurse says, “Yeah. He’s dreamy.” They didn’t know I was asking about a doctor to go to for doctoring. They thought I was asking who was the “best” doctor. He is quite a handsome man. And at the time he was single. He’s getting married soon. The difference between looking and seeing. I was looking for a doctor. They were looking at the outward appearance.

The Lord doesn’t see as mortals see. Did you see the changes? That’s actually a change in verbs in the Hebrew about between looking and seeing, looking on the outward appearance and then seeing what’s really there. You ever wonder that, boy, that was a long reading. Why didn’t God just tell Samuel, “Hey, Samuel, got a job for you. Go on down to Bethlehem, check out Jesse, he’s got a son David, probably out with the sheep. Anoint him king. We’re good to go.” You know, like 10 verses gone. Why didn’t he just do that?

Instead, there’s good old Sam, you know, sitting by the fire. Who knew he had eight sons? Geez, seven’s perfect. And so one after another they come by. One after another, Sam is looking and saying, “What am I doing here? Lord, nope, no. What is this guessing game? Just tell me which one it is.” The Lord never tells him to go get David. He has to see it for himself. Finally, in this little drama, in this pageant, if you will, of men walking by, I can imagine – what do you think? Was there a swimsuit competition, you think? I don’t know back then. What would they do? He now he goes, “And what would you do, your fondest wish for the world?” And then he goes, “Oh, no, not that one.”

But after all the pageant was done, and after the judges had put in their – imagine, if you will, the pageant is done. Everyone’s gone. And then the judges come back and say, none of these. No one. You got anybody in the back? Samuel finally sees beyond what he looks at. He’s looking at seven sons, a perfect number, well suited to be kings. And God says, you know, looking’s not enough. You’ve got to see more than what you can look at. And it occurs to him, maybe there’s something here I’m not seeing. More than what I can look at. And he turns to Jesse and says, “Am I seeing everything? Is there another son? I don’t know.” “Oh, yeah, I’ve got another son. He’s out there getting the sheep.” “Bring him here.” And God says, “You got it. You got it.”

Remember that grief, that sadness you were with Saul? You know, imagine Samuel’s got to be so sad. I mean, he was rejected as a judge. You know, they didn’t want him anymore. He was old. They actually came out and said, “You’re old. You’re old. We don’t want you no more.” How many here like to hear that? Okay, I’m saying no, none. And then they said, here on Father’s Day, last week they said, “Your sons are no good.” And it really hurt because they weren’t any good. “Yo, your sons are no good. We want a king.” Sammy did everything he could. Even argued, drug his feet against God to not get him a king. They made him get a king. He got a king.

And just as he said, king screwed up. Big screw up. Horrible screw up. Didn’t do what God says. He’s constantly after Saul, yelling at him all the time. And Saul, Saul doesn’t even care. Saul less than cares. So imagine, if you will, he comes in, he goes da da da da da, and Saul basically says, “What’s the big deal? What’s the big deal?” When you’re a prophet, you like to be a big deal. And Saul’s saying, “God, get away from me. You bother me. I’m doing okay.” Saul. You think Saul was such a bad king, even God was sorry he made him king. That’s pretty bad.

Imagine how sad Samuel was at the way his life had turned out. He’s too old. He’s thrown out. Didn’t even get a decent retirement party, no severance, nothing like that. His sons are a disappointment or a scandal, and everybody knows it. The king, the one maybe thing that he had going for him, that he got the king going, he didn’t want to do. He thought it was a bad idea, and it turned out to be a bad idea. Did anybody come back and say, “Hey, Samuel, you were right, that was a really bad idea to do a King Saul. You were right. I should have listened to you?” No, nothing. They were too busy out partying.

He must have thought he was a failure. And not only that, he must have thought God’s plan was running toward ruin. And for that God comes to him and says, “Quit your bellyaching, quit your sadness, get out of the dumps, get out of bed, take a trip, go to Bethlehem. I’ve got things for you to do.” “What are we going to do? Just tell me.” “No, you’ve got to go do it. Go. You have to go find out. I’m doing more than you’re looking at. You have to see that there’s more than what is just the appearance.”

You have to see that, just because you look out and you see nothing that God has chosen, that somewhere out in the hills, tending sheep, is a shepherd boy that will be king, that will be the father of the savior, Jesus Christ. It’s here that the lineage shifts, where the kingdoms come in, where you pick up the line of David that eventually will get us to Jesus Christ of the House of David from Bethlehem. God was doing a great thing. Samuel couldn’t see it because he wasn’t looking in the right place.

Our scripture from Mark today talks about the kingdom of God like that. And when we think about kingdom, unfortunately we think about border guards and about places on the map and about drawing the boundaries. And we talk and we think more about political and economic subdivisions, and we talk more about the reign of God. Maybe a better translation of the kingdom of God is the reign of God. Remember the Lord’s Prayer. It says “Thy kingdom come,” and then right after, “Thy will be done.” Remember, Hebrew likes to be paralleled, say the same thing twice, different ways. Where’s God’s kingdom? Where is it? Can we go there? Can we take a vacation? Can we get a trip ticket to that? The kingdom of God is where God’s will is done.

So if you’re looking around, and you’re like Samuel, and you want to stay in bed? And you give up because no one’s listening to you, everything’s gone to pot, things have gone from bad to worse because they didn’t listen to you? If you’re in that and say, now, can nothing good be going on in the world, everything is horrible, shut it all down, start it over, you’re not seeing as God sees. You’re not looking in the right place. And if you think about David, too, he got anointed king. Would you want to be anointed king? Who wants to be anointed king? I can always ask questions with negative answers because no one raises their hand in congregation, so that’s good. No one wants to be king. You do not want to be king because Saul’s going to kill you.

And sure enough, there were a lot of problems before David gets to be king. He gets to be working too hard as an armor-bearer and as a musician. He’s employed below king. He doesn’t start out as king. He’s got to go fight Goliath. That’s not a good time. He is running away from Saul, who strikes out after him when he gets angry and jealous. He has to leave his friend Jonathan. He has to fight with those that he had formerly served with. He’s in exile. He’s running. He’s a refugee. He lives as an outcast. This is king?

So in the great scheme of things, what does our scripture tell us today? It tells us on one hand, yeah, David’s king. And you can say, you can assert it all down and say, hey, that King David, he was legit. He was the one chosen by God, as opposed to Saul that was chosen by the people and ratified by God. But God chose a King David. You can say that. But I think the more at least as important thing is how God brought Samuel along to that, and how God brings us along to tell us that what you’re looking at is not what I see. What is making you depressed and keeping you in bed and grieving over things that used to be, and how things have gone wrong, while true, while correct, while reality, is not the whole story. It’s not even the most important part. It’s not even the part that’s going to last. The part of the story is that what you can see as I see.

Remember that prayer from “Bruce Almighty,” that wonderful prayer after the Miss America prayer, where the actor, Jim Carrey, tells Morgan Freeman as God of his love of his life that he’s been trying through the whole movie to get. He goes, “Do you want her back?” And he says, “No, I want her to be happy. I want her to be loved as she’s deserved to be loved by me. I want someone to always see her as I see her now through your eyes.”

William Willimon tells a story on himself. Often his stories are about how he screwed up as pastor and what he learned from it. One time he went to visit a dying member, a saint in the church, and talked to him about the afterlife, about what is to come, and about his faith. And the man said, “I have no fear. I know I am going on to God’s love.” And Willimon said something that’s right out of the pastor book: “Yes, we all have a sure and certain hope in the kingdom of God and the future afterlife,” or something like that.

And the man said gently, “It’s not because of my hope that I have no fear.” “What do you mean? The promise of eternal life is not your hope?” “No, no. Oh, it’s nice. But my faith is based on my life that I’ve lived throughout. You see, no matter what has happened, no matter what screw-ups have gone on, no matter how far away I’ve run from God, no matter what has gone wrong in my life and in the culture and the church and in my house and all that, God has come and got me. God has found a way to me. God has redeemed me. God has reached out. I see, as I look back, I can see God’s working his purpose out. And I know that such a God, that works so hard to get through so much to get to me in my life here, will not let a thing like death stop him from loving me eternally.”

Strive to see how God sees. When things look hopeless, when there doesn’t seem to be anything, figure out the question and ask, “Are all your sons here? Are there any others?” Find out what hidden purpose God is working at, and know that God is working his purpose out, and look and see the works of God’s kingdom.

William Gibson says, “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” Same with God’s kingdom. There’s little pieces of it here and there and over here and over there. And if you just take a glance, you’ll miss it. You’ve got to see how God can see. Be that prayer. See people always. See the world always as God sees.

Amen.

Easy on the Eyes mp3

God and King

How To Escape Slavery

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

God and King mp3

We Are The World

We Are the World

a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

Sermon from Worship Service Mary 26, 1985
at First Presbyterian Church in Rochester, Indiana.

Get the vintage PDF here!

Acts 2:1-13

Today, most Christian churches are celebrating Pentecost, the last major Christian holiday that hasn’t been discovered by the advertising and sales agencies. At Advent and Christmas, we celebrate Jesus Christ coming into the world, at Pentecost we celebrate Jesus Christ going out into all the world. Listen to this description of events at the first Pentecost recorded in Acts 2:1-13. This the story of the day the worldwide Christian church was born.

This speaking in foreign languages or ”in tongues” as the King James and Revised Standard versions translate this section is not a ”heavenly” tongue that is understandable only by those given the gift of interpretation. It is a gift that allows me to hear someone and understand another pers0n and enables that person to hear and understand me no matter what language we speak. It is like having an instantaneous translator whispering the translation into your ears.

Due to this new understanding, all were amazed and confused saying to one another, ”What does this mean?”. 0ur reading from Acts 2 tells us about a new, amazing thing that happened, the gift of the spirit and the birth of the Christian church. What happened? Does this describe it? ”Behold, they are one people and one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them.” I think that is a very good summary of what happened that Pentecost.

The only problem is that this quote is not about the Pentecost experience in Acts. It is not even in the New Testament! It is in the Bible, in Genesis chapter 11, in the story of the tower of Babel. God says this to himself right before he confuses the one language of humankind into many tongues and separates humans into different peoples.

Pentecost is the reversal of Babel. Where at Babel humankind was separated by language, at Pentecost all were united by language. Pentecost brought down the barriers of different language erected by Babel in Genesis Chapter 11. At Babel, the Bible tell us that human language was confused and humans were divided. Here, in the New Testament, all humanity is united with one language. They can understand one another no matter what their nation is, no matter what their language is.

In Acts 2 all the people HEAR. This is usually the proof text for glossolalia, speaking in tongues, but the emphasis here is not on speaking but on HEARING. This not a new kind of babbling but is Babel in reverse! Now all understand, hear each other. The Spirit of God, the master builder laid the foundation of the church against the rubble of Babel. While human selfish, power-hungry efforts to build leads to confusion, God’s sacrificing, power-giving efforts to build leads to hearing, to understanding. The birth of the church occurs in the context of listening to one another. As Christians our birthright is listening and hearing each other.

Pentecost is God’s vision for the church, united together. Not that everyone exactly alike, but that all different types, races, nationalities, political and economic beliefs, are united by God’s Spirit understanding one another as well as if they all were our own brothers and sisters.

On Pentecost there came the newness promised by Jesus that replaced the old way of relating of to God. Following Jesus as a disciple had ended but had given birth to the church. The loss of the personal relationship as Jesus’ disciple was real. Yet only by this loss, was the possibility of the good that is the church able to become real.

When we choose the spirit, we lose the other choices. We must put aside our pride and individual distinctions. I becomes we. We say good-bye to rivalry, to power-plays, to privileges we get because of our economic status, our race, our nationally, or our sex. We lose much, so we can gain the fruits of the Spirit.

I think this is why people were afraid of the change that happened during that first Christian Pentecost. The newness was so overwhelming they couldn’t accept it, they mocked it as the drunken result of new wine, and they refused to believe such a thing could happen by being confused and perplexed. For they were losing something, they were losing their identity as Parthians, Medinan, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Asians, Egyptians, Libyan, and even Jews, becoming united as new members citizens of Christ’s land, Christians. The gain was great and good, but the loss is still real.

I like to think the song ”We Are the World” captures a piece of the Pentecost spirit, the spirit of all humankind joined together. There are some that laugh and mock that idea. They jeer at the efforts of others in advancing God’s will that all people live together in one big family, all different, but all caring for one another and understanding each individual. In the first century, they say they were filled with new wine, drunk. Such a vision of peace was possible to only to one drunk. Today they might insist that pea -c· e is possible only if the ”other guy” changes first or that peace among all people is the responsibility of someone else, government, the church, or even rock and roll stars. Friends, there is no other guy, we are the world, we are the children of God who have been called since Pentecost almost two thousand years ago to live together as one people.

The World must come together as one. This is the promise offered by Jesus Christ to all those who repent and are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin into God’s great big family. Make the change, let us realize that a change can only come in this world when we all stand together as one faithful people having taken the name of Jesus Christ.

We Are The World

Written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie

There comes a time when we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it’s time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can’t go on pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of God’s great big family
And the truth, you know,
Love is all we need

Send them your heart so they’ll know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stones to bread
So we all must lend a helping hand

When you’re down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there’s no way we can fall
Let us realize that a change can only come
When we stand together as one

CHORUS

We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start givingThere’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own livesIt’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me