Catch Me When I Fall

 By Visitor7 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

What are we to do in life…and in firefighting.

Catch Me When I Fall
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Click the title above for a mp3 recording 

Audio from South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. 

Micah 6:1-8 &
Matthew 5:1-12

Sermons also available free on iTunes

I don’t know if you remember the first time you heard the Beatitudes, especially if you heard them from Luke, because Luke doesn’t mince words.  He just straight out says, “Blessed are the poor.”  Doesn’t even add that “in spirit.”  Straight out poor.  Have you ever, first time you heard that, did you say what is this guy talking about?  These people are not blessed.  I know blessed.  I seek blessing.  I know what it is.  It is carefree, not woe-foe.  And woe-foe is what all these are:  persecution, insult, mourning of all things.

Blessed?  Not blessed.  Jesus, something’s wrong there, either with our translation or maybe even with what I’m understanding blessed is about.  I know about mourning, and I know about crisis.  I know about persecution.  I know about insults.  I know about trouble.  And not because I’ve served the church as a pastor.  Not this church.  This church is wonderful, I know.  But because I served as a firefighter.  And we did fires, and we did heavy rescue, which means auto accidents.  We had 224, 55 both ways, one lane each way, and they didn’t really do 55 out in the country.  I know some mourning.  I know some grief.  I know some trouble.

We were on the fire department after a meeting.  It’s a volunteer fire department, and that’s an important underline there.  Volunteer, which means when that alarm went, we dropped everything and ran to the fire station to get in there.  You had five minutes to get on that truck fully geared because that truck was rolling in five.  When I started, I missed several runs and went to an empty – because I was not quick.  God bless them, they offered, they were trying to help me, they said, “Rev, here’s what we’ll do.”  Now, did I mention the church was next door to the fire house?  I still missed the runs.

They said, “Rev, here’s what we’ll do.  We’ll get out all this hose out of the back of the fire truck.  We don’t hardly ever need it.  We’ll put your desk right here in the truck, and your chair, and your computer.  And then you’ll be right here, and the alarm will go off, and then you’ll be in the truck.”

Well, from then on, I made those runs.  And we were talking to the guys, a new guy, about the volunteers and how we go, and go run, and there’ll be training, and it’ll be great, and oh, yeah, you need a partner.  And he said, “You know what you should do, you should go on the run with us.”  “I can?”  “Yeah.  Yeah, just come along, you should come, you’ll see, and then you’ll see, it’ll be great, and then you can do training and all that.”  So we’re talking.  And suddenly the room fills with beeps.  Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep.  Our pagers off.  It’s a run.  We’re starting to move.  It’s like that poor prospect, he’s the only one stationary.  He’s in an eye of a hurricane.  Things are flying all around, we’re getting ready, we’re going.  We’re listening as we’re running.

Then in comes an EMT on our squad.  He comes in, and he just yells one word.  “Code.”  Well, now it’s like that hurricane went over an erupting volcano because now that means someone is trying to die.  We do not allow dying people after the alarm goes.  That is not allowed.  We gather up – we went from very fast to no time at all.  So instead of six people fully dressed in the cab ready to go, it’s going to be three people, the first three that threw their stuff in the truck, and we’re going to be on the move, and we’re going to be rolling as we’re getting in the truck.

And that poor new guy, seeing all this, he says, “Should I go?  Should I go?  Can I go?  Can I go?”  And he just got grabbed and thrown in the truck with the gear.  And he’s down on the floor, we’re all there, we’re rolling out, and I made that truck, God bless it.  So I’m in there.  He’s in there.  He’s on the floor.  And he’s, like, actually looking up at me.  And he’s saying, “What do I do?”  That’s what Micah says.  “What do I do?  What does the Lord require of me?  What do I do?”  And Micah has an answer, says God tells you three things.  And the way I learned it:  Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.  That is what you do.  What, Christy?  No sexual purity code?  No things about righteousness?  No spiritual laws?  No things, credos that you have to say and believe these four things in the correct way?  No way to understand the ordination and unbroken line from the line?  Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly with your God.  Those three things.

Now, we’ve got to talk about them, of course, because I got time.  Do justice.  Now, justice has been perverted.  Justice has been watered down.  Justice has been changed into generic, been secularized, and I’m here to tell you I’m not talking about that justice.  I’m not talking about those criminals must pay.  I’m not talking about throw them away in the jail and lock them up and throw away the key.  I’m not talking about us being the number one country in locking up our people.  I’m not talking about that kind of justice.  I’m not talking about making them hurt, making them pay.  I’m not talking about they’re going to have to suffer as much as I suffered.  That’s not justice.  That’s not Bible.  That’s something else.

In Bible, justice means everybody has what they need to live.  You know a just society when everybody has what they need to live.  That’s justice.  Do justice.  Make sure everyone has what they need to live.  Do justice.  And that’s what we were about in that fire department.  You know, when that EMT, he didn’t have to come in and say a lot of words.  He didn’t have to say this is a really good person, a friend of mine, has lived a good and moral and upstanding life and has kids that depend upon him and has, through [indiscernible], quit smoking years ago.  You know?  None of this [indiscernible].  So we have to go and make sure that person has what they need to live.  No.  All he had to say, someone needs us to live.  Code.  That’s our code.  Someone needs us to live.  That’s done.  That’s it.  No more questions.  We are going to make sure they live.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on emergency services, but emergency service, you’ve got something called the “golden hour.”  You’ve got one hour between whenever you had a problem – the heart attack, car accident, whatever your problem is – you’ve got one hour from there to get into definitive care.  That means a hospital.  You’ve got one hour.  After an hour, your chances of recovery and survival go way down.

So in Ottawa, Ohio, God bless us, we had one hour.  But there’s a thing.  The hospital’s a half hour away.  So we’ve got a half hour.  Everybody else got an hour.  We got a half hour.  But we’re okay with that, really.  So we are – whatever it takes.  Because, you know, they could die without the fire department.  And we’re sad like normal people.  Oh, that’s sad.  You know, I didn’t know.  It was sad.  They died.  That’s happened.  But you didn’t call us.  Or they could actually die after we got them to the hospital.  We’d like a couple hours, maybe a day or two.  That’d be okay.  We’re sad.  We’re still sad.  But we say, you know, we did what we could.

But you do not die during that hour, half hour that we have you.  Whatever it takes to live, you’re going to get it because that’s us.  Justice.  Whatever it takes for you to live, we’re here to make sure you’ve got it.  So I made a visit of one of my church members.  And I only come up here once every six months, so you’re going to get, like, three sermons.  So I only come up.  So I made a visit to one of my church members.  She was trapped inside of her car that got hit by a semi on the highway.  It was a rather unique pastoral call.  And she was trapped in there, and we were going to have to cut her car, cut her out.

So for some odd reason, they thought I should be in charge of this call because I was the most senior, the first one there.  I learned my lesson.  I made them trucks, buddy.  So they said, what are we going to do?  We’ve got to cut her out.  Got to cut her out.  It’s going to take 20 minutes to cut her out.  We’re there working on it.  And he said, “We’re going to have to call a copter.  We have to call it.  Call the copter.”  “You want me to call them?”  “Do it, call it.”

So they call it.  That’s a $7,000 decision, then.  And you really don’t have time to plan and say, you know – now.  You’ve got to decide now.  $7,000.  In comes the helicopter.  Only question is, what do you need to live?  You’re getting that.  And you know what?  I did not know she was a member of my church until she was on that helicopter.  And they turn to me, go, “Boy, that’s really strange.  We’ve got a member of your church.”  What?  Because my job, my sole job there, besides making very difficult decisions, was to hold the door so when they cut it off, it didn’t fall on the leg that wasn’t hurt.  We try not to make it worse when we save people.  And I was, like, totally focused on her leg.  I was, like, holding that door:  the leg, the leg, the leg, the leg.  I didn’t know who she was until off she went, and it was somebody else’s, and we got her there.

Extreme example, but all our questions was what does this person need to live?  What has to be done?  Do we have to call in a backhoe?  Do we have to wake up somebody?  Do we have to do that? 

 Let’s do that now, get it.  No one dies on our watch.  No one dies on our call.  Do justice.  What do you do?  What do you need to live?  You’re going to get it, no question, because we’re a just society.  We’re the fire department.  No one dies.  You get what you need to live. 

The second one is loving kindness.  And it always is translated different.  Sometimes it’s show mercy.  It’s all sorts of things because we don’t have a good word for “hesed” in our English language, because it is God’s love to people, and that’s just a lot of things to figure out.  What is God’s love to – it’s just overwhelming.  It is what is unmerited, undeserved, no reason you should expect it.  You get all the love you need.  And here you go.  Guess what.  It’s about the fire department floor.

You know, Bob called me Friday to preach, and I said, “I’m going to go talk about the fire department.  I like doing that.  I’m going to do – you called me Friday night, buddy.”  So we’re down there, and the fire department started out in most towns as an insurance company in that it was insurance, fire insurance.  And they were really good with the fire insurance.  You bought the insurance, and they took a little placard – and you can see these.  Carson has some in the museum.

They took a little placard – the Historical Society goes, oh, yeah.  You take a little placard and put it on your house saying, “Protected by Company No. 14 Insurance Company.”  And that means that, when you’re caught fire, you know, they come in, “Oh, yeah, that’s us.”  You know?  But if they come and say, “Oh, too bad for you.  Oh, wait a minute, your neighbor’s got it.  Well, you’re good, but I want to make sure they don’t burn down.”  And this would literally burn down, but the neighbors would get it.  And there are stories of people coming out, trying to pay up their premium as their house is burning.  Such capitalism.  You know, oh, my goodness, supply and demand.  Imagine what you could charge for a premium, while the house was burning, for fire insurance.  Oh, that was a lovely system.

But we rejected it.  We said, no, we’re going socialist.  We’re going socialist.  I’m sorry.  We’re going to love you all, no matter what you did, paid your premium or not.  Gosh darn it, we’re going to put out your fire.  You don’t deserve your fire put out, but we’re going to put it out anyway because that’s the kind of people we are:  loving kindness, undeserved love that takes care of you when you’re in trouble.  I need some loving now.  I need water.  My house is on fire.  I need help.  Well, you didn’t pay up, so no.  No.  That’s not the fire department.  That’s certainly not God.  And that’s certainly not the way God wants us to be.

Love kindness.  Put out the fire.  Don’t be asking if they deserve it, or if they paid their premium, or if they’re in our club, or if they’re here according to the rules that we put in this year or that year.  Don’t ask them the questions.  You see they need some love.  They need some help.  Love them anyway.  I’m going to take care of you.  Yeah.

The last one’s a two-parter, sneaks it in there.  Did you notice?  The walk and humbly.  Both of those things are tough.  I know about humbleness.  I don’t know if you know about this.  But I was the Grand Marshal of the Humble Parade three years running.  Humbleness is hard because humbleness, I think for me, is admitting to the possibility that in some universe maybe parallel to ours, I might be wrong.  It’s very difficult for me, very difficult.  Usually right about now – my wife’s not here, but usually my wife is shouting “hallelujah” right here.

But it’s the humbleness, and I think that, you know, I might be wrong about that.  I might not have all the answers.  I might not be able to stand up all by myself all the time perfectly well.  I just might need some help sometimes now and then.  Humble.  And part of that humbleness is walking with God.  You know, did you see that’s walking “with”?  It’s not walking ahead.  Do you have people in this church – I’m not looking at anybody, you know.  Do you have people in this church that get out in front of God?  You know, God is here and there.  You’re way over there saying, “C’mon, God, you’re supposed to be over here.  Hurry up, God.”

You know that saying, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread?”  I think that fear may be the actual kind of fear in the Bible, the kind of the holiness, awesomeness, respectful kind of fear of God.  So angels are saying, you know, I’m just going to wait on God with that; you know?  You go ahead and run up there, fool.  But I’m going to walk with God on this.

My son Robert – I can tell family stories, too.  So my son Robert is different than my daughter Rachel.  And they just – they had little meetings and decided, oh, I’ll be this way, you’ll be that.  Okay, I’ll do this.  I’ll like that; you’ll hate it.  Okay.  So Rachel would never hold your hand, from birth.  You know, usually little kids will hold your hand till they learn they’re not supposed to, and they go, “No, I’m going to walk by myself, I’m can do it all myself, I’m a big girl.”  You know.  Rachel was like that from birth, could not hold your hand.  Oh, that child.  So we have Robert.  Robert, reach out for holding your hand.  Even through grade school – is Carter still holding hands?

ATTENDEE:  He does sometimes.

Sometimes.  But my Robert went all through grade school.  And he didn’t hold your hand.  He wanted to touch your hand, just palm the palm, like this.  And he says, “I like it when I can touch your hand because I can feel your speed, and I can walk with you.”  If you’re in front of God or behind God, you’re not walking with God.  You’re not feeling.  You’re not holding hands with God.

So you know we’re annoyed by those people that are way in front of God, going where even God doesn’t want to go yet.  But don’t be thinking that the people that are just back here standing where God has already left is any good.  You know, the people that say, “I am taking a stand for God.”  That’s almost never a good thing, you know, because it’s a walking thing.  It’s a walking thing.  You’re moving.  If you’re standing with God, you’re supposed to be walking with him.  The world’s not perfect yet.  I hate to tell you this.  Even in Lake Tahoe, which is pretty close to heaven.  Still not perfect.  God is still walking.

So if you’re taking a stand, God might be walking away from you.  Reach out your hand for God.  Be humble, saying, you know, God, I need a hand.  And that brings me on back to that scene in the cab of that poor prospective volunteer, on the floor of the cab, lots of noise, then he’s screaming, grown men trying to get dressed in a small area.  Not the most hospitable kind of place.  He’s yelling at me, “What do I do?  What do I do?”  And I looked at him, and I said, “Catch me when I fall.”  Because when you’re up on one leg, putting on your turnout, and there’s this humongous fire truck and a crazy man’s driving there as fast as he can because remember, no one dies after that alarm goes.  And he’s taking the corners just about up on two wheels.  Chances of falling over are pretty much close to 100 percent.  And sure enough, we’re whipping around a corner, and I’m on one leg, and I’m starting to go over, and I say, “Now.”  Two hands come up, push me back up straight.  And I say, “Good job.”  Humbleness, that someday we might fall, and we’re going to need someone to catch us when we’re going over.

Now, right about now you’re thinking, gee, Christy, those are great stories, and I love to stand here all day listening to you talk.  But what about those Beatitudes you just read, and you were talking about craziness?  Are we just going to leave them there?  No.  Because it turns out that when ministers have a hard time with the scriptures as presented, they go back to the original language and try to find another word.  Pro tip.  Always good.  So you look at it, and you say, well, what else does “blessed” mean, makarios?  What else could it be?  And you look, and you say, oh, here’s one.  Happy are those that mourn.  Happy are those that are persecuted.  Happy are those – that is not helping.  I know happy better than I know blessed, and that’s not happy.

But if you look a little bit closer, you can see it can also mean happy and blessed are in the aura in the region, and it’s like you’re going to be taken care of.  You’re going to be all right.  Things are going to be set right.  You’re going to be okay.  You’re going to be all right.

I sold computers also with a guy, Jeff Elliott, and he was a much better salesman than me, hit his quota every month.  And he would be constantly on the phone with people, and he’d say at least a dozen times on every phone call, “You’re okay.  You’re okay.  Yeah, yeah, you’re all right.  You’re all right, you’re okay.  You’re okay.  Yeah, yeah, you’re okay.  You’re okay, okay, okay.”  And I knew they weren’t.  I knew, no, we really screwed that up royal.  That’s not happening.  And, “Oh, yeah, okay.  You’re okay.  Yeah, we got it.  You’re all right.  You’re okay.  Yeah, okay, good, good.”  And he’d hang it up.  And then he would work to make it okay.  He would just be on fire to make that okay because he already told them a dozen times.

And I think that’s the Beatitudes saying, hey, it’s okay if you mourn.  It’s okay if you’re persecuted.  It’s going to be okay because we’ve got this community that I’m bringing together, that I’m working on, that I want you to be a part of, that’s going to catch you when you fall.  I’m working on this community that’s going to do justice, going to make sure that everybody has what they need to live.  I’m working on this community that’s going to be loving kindness, you know, like God, that’s just going to love you whether you deserve it or not and is going to be there when you need them because they love you.  Even though they don’t know you, they just love you, and they’re going to be walking with you humbly, and we know that we need, not only God, but we need each other because we’re all humble.  We’re not absolutely convinced we have all the answers, and we need each other to find out the truth.  It’s going to be okay.  It’s going to be okay.  It’s going to be okay.  

Friends, be okay.  Catch all the people when they fall.  Do justice.  Love kindness.  And walk humbly with God.  Amen.

Searching for Sunday

How to get alongside of the “nones” of religion and join them in humanity’s search for God.

Searching for Sunday
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Click the title above for a mp3 recording 

Audio from Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Reno, Nevada in July 2017, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. 

Acts 17:22-31

Sermons also available free on iTunes

Corn. So much corn. You cannot imagine how much corn there is in Indiana. You think you can? There’s more. There is so much corn there. I’m talking corn that grows up 10 feet tall. This is before GPSes. You’d need a periscope to try to drive because you cannot see anything but corn. And they think that’s normal in Indiana. I brought two children into the world. Well, I didn’t. I stood around and watched my poor wife scream, curse at me when she brought the kids in the world in Indiana. But they came into corn country. I’m telling you, there was corn squash. There was corn chowder. There was corn soup. Oh, yeah. There was corn casserole. Corn, corn, corn. In fact, in a small town you did not have to worry about locking your car doors anytime except August because, if you did not lock your car doors and roll up your windows, you would come back, and your back seat would be full of corn. It’s everywhere. And then once it was harvest, those little husks, the little husks which we call the “tumbleweeds of the Midwest,” they just blow everywhere. There’ll be corn husks there. You’d sweep it off your porch. Oh, corn, corn, corn.

Well, things came to a head, and we moved to Ottawa. A little less corn. Still a lot there. Lot of corn. And then I got the call. I got the call from my college roommate saying, “Let me pay you twice as much to work half as hard and get every weekend off.” And I said, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. I hear you, Lord.” I’m going to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where there’s no corn. Very little corn. Lot of coal, not much corn. So I took those poor, poor children from the small town rural environment with all they knew, all they grew up, and I brought them to the semi big city of Greensburg. And, yes, they had a bus service. I’m telling you, metropolis.

And I thought they were doing okay. Little bumps and bruises along the way, you know, because now they’re in the big city. We went there right at the beginning of school. And I thought they’re being all right. I think they’ll be okay. I think I was kind of excited. And my daughter Rachel, God bless my daughter Rachel, she says what she thinks very loudly. I don’t know where she gets it. Her mom is the most demure and quiet person you would want to meet. It’s a mystery.

Well, on one of these occasions when she said what she thought, because everybody needs to know it right now and at full volume, it happened with this. Richard? This happened. I don’t know if you can see it. But come autumn, she looked at the neighbors, and they had corn husks on their porch, tied up as decorations. She was freaked out on this. She asked them, “Why do you put trash on your porch?” And then they told her that, well, “We bought it for decoration.” She goes, “You paid for this?” She was totally freaked that there was husks on the porch. Trash, trash on your porch, and you think it’s pretty. What is wrong with these people? What has my dad done to me to bring me here?

What do you do? What do you do when someone values trash? What do you do when someone posts on your Facebook page, with a big thumbs up, trash? What do you do when you go to Thanksgiving dinner with a Trump supporter? What do you do when you go to that with a lover of Hillary? What do you do? Richard. You’ve got some choices. You can laugh, either out loud or the eye roll, very popular with the young people. You can laugh out loud at them. They don’t know what they’re doing. They know nothing. Ha ha, so funny, trash on the porch, and they pay for it, ha ha ha. Oh. Or you can yell. You can yell, either right at your screen or at them. You can yell and be angry and call them names. You big snowflake. You racist. You, oh. You are just whatever.

You can yell. You could leave. You can leave. I’m in groups, and I call up people, and I say, “Hey, we haven’t seen you.” You know, support groups where people get help, real help. And they said, “I can’t come anymore because, you know, I thought I knew her, and she voted for – how could she do that? I can’t come back.” “I’ll never go to Thanksgiving dinner as long as Uncle Art’s there. I just can’t stand his diatribes.”  You can leave. You can yell. You can laugh. Those are all options. 

This guy’s the problem. Public Enemy No. 1, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. Maybe our next President, the way things are going, who knows. He’s out there running for office. He doesn’t say that, but he is. But he has come to this great discovery. Have you seen it? Did you see it? Do you read the craziness that I read on Facebook and Twitter that talked about how Facebook wants to be the church? Did you see that? He didn’t say that; but, you know, that gets you clicking on the old Facebook things, which is, again, back to him.

But he had what he called the First Annual Community Facebook Summit. He’s trying to make Facebook into a big community. He says that he’s a little disappointed. He likes meaningful communities. He had a big summit. He wants everybody joined up in community. In fact, he changed the whole mission statement of Facebook, give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That is Facebook’s mission: Bring the world closer together. And he points out – and he did this on the month that they got – how many people log into Facebook on a month? Not here, but throughout the world. How many people do you think? Go ahead, you can sing out. This isn’t a Presbyterian church….

What? Five million? That’s a lot. A billion? They’ve passed two billion. Two billion people a month. That’s not just people, you know, just had an account last year or something like that, or signed in to look at baby pictures. Two billion people a month sign into Facebook. And Mark is upset because only one out of 20 is involved in a meaningful community. One out of 20. That’s still 100 million people. That’s still a lot of people, Mark. And so he’s about trying to build community. And he takes a look at the church as a way to go about building community.

He says a church does four things. And this is Mark, not me, so don’t be grading on a curve because this isn’t the seminary answers. Four things, not the great signs of the church, we Presbyterians that are slumming it here at the Lutherans: inspire, motivate, give safety, and support. Inspire, motivate, help each other in times of crisis, and support each other in just the regular times. That’s what he’s trying to do.

I think that’s pretty good. Inspire. Give them something, there’s something better out there, something better you can do. You can be better. You can do better. Motivate. Come on. Let’s do it. We’re all getting together this Sunday. We’re going to go do this. Let’s go. Come on, you know you want to. And then safety. In times of crisis, how many times have you reached out to a church person, and they were there? I hope at least once or twice. I hope you didn’t have that many crises. You know? I hope so. And support in other times.

I remember when we moved to that Greensburg place it was so strange because, all the time in my adult life, when I moved to a new community, I was like, put right in a slot. You know? I had friends. I had a social life. I had connections. I had people telling me – I had, at one church, I had a hair appointment. I swear that he goes, “Well, I told her you were coming in to get your haircut because the pastor always goes to this one.” So it was easy. It was kind of creepy, but it was easy. And then I went to Greensburg, and no one – I couldn’t even get the water company to return my call, you know.

And my son – my son, great guy, great guy. He barely talks. Don’t know why. Me and Rachel, and then him coming along, there wasn’t any oxygen left. He got in a horrendous bicycle accident, horrendous. It seems that in Pennsylvania they have something that they don’t have in Indiana. It’s called, uh, hills, that’s it. And he discovered hills on his bicycle and had a terrible breakup. Oh, it was pretty – it’s a whole ‘nother sermon. We won’t go there. Come at 1:00. I’m going to guest preach, too. I’m just double hitting it today.

But I got in the helicopter with him, say, “I’m going.” He’s in the helicopter; I’m going with him. So I got the helicopter ride. And my poor wife – to Pittsburgh, which was 30 miles away. Because from the fire department, somebody goes on the helicopter, they usually don’t come back. And I was, like, freaking major and trying not to let my wife see it. And my wife, I just left her. And she goes, “I don’t know how to get to Pittsburgh. I don’t know where the hospital is. What am I going to do?” So she called our pastor, who found a church member to say, “I’ll take you. You just follow me. I’ll get you there.”

Support in times of crisis. Help in crisis. That was huge help. We support each other, too, don’t we? We support – I tell the kids, when they’re doing things, they want to do a presentation, they’re all nervous and some, and they want to talk about their mission trip or Sunday school, their project or whatever. They’ve got Girl Scout cookies. Whatever project it is, you’ll never find a more supportive community. Don’t worry about it. Get out there and just do your best, they’ll love you. Because that’s what we do. We support each other, even when we are not in crisis. This guy caught it, Zuckerberg. We don’t know if he’s a big church person. Don’t think so.

What does Paul do? What does Paul do when he goes to this place? Richard, got it? What does Paul do? I’ll get to that in a minute. Don’t freak. What does Paul do when he goes to this place that is very strange? This is like God Central. Every god that was any god would have – it was like, you know, a Walmart has that place, everybody goes to Walmart. You’ve got to be at Walmart. If you’re going to be anybody, you’ve got to go to Bentonville, Arkansas and have a little office there and be a – it’s like Athens in God times. Any god is going to be at Athens, going to be hanging out there.

And there he is. It’s like gods everywhere. Everywhere you look, there’s a statue, a shrine, a temple, something to gods all over, from all over the place. I’m telling you, what is it like? It would be like Paul was a community organizer in Trump Tower. With a press badge. Okay? It’s like that. That is how out of place Paul is there. The good Jew who’s now a Christian. And it’s a crazy hard place to be. What does he do?

Now, he could go around and say, “You paid money for this trash? We throw away this stuff where I’m from.” No. He connected with them. He says, you know, “I went around your city, looked at your stuff.” How respectful. “I see you are a religious people.” Isn’t that great? Great opening. “I see you’re a religious person.” We’re together on that.

And I even read some things. I read an unknown god. Can you sound that out, you Greek speakers in the congregation out there? Maybe we got one, I don’t know. Ag-nos-tic.

That’s agnostic god. Agnostic god, unknown god. Ever hear of the Agnostics? Ever heard of them? Don’t know? Maybe god. Maybe not. Don’t know. Spiritual, not religious. You know, spiritual not religious, that’s like saying I like water, but I can’t stand the plumbing. It’s kind of helpful to have the plumbing with the water, but okay. Go ahead, Richard, go on. There. You’d better know about the Agnostics.

Now, you look at religion in America, and I want to tell you right now, I’d like to declare an update on the war on Christmas. Failure, big failure. Not doing well at all. Because as we know, Christmas has surrounded Thanksgiving. It’s about ready to give up. And it’s on the march toward Halloween; you know. Christmas is winning; all right? We’ve got 71 percent; Nevadans, 66. Come on. Seventy-one percent Christian. Now, 6 percent is the other faith. You know, you go on – I don’t know if anybody’s hair’s on fire about all the Muslims everywhere, and the Hindus, and the Buddhists and the – oh, terrible. That’s 6 percent.

If you want to get your hair on fire, 23 percent, I think it’s up to like 27 percent in Nevada, are “nones.” Here’s where our hair should be on fire. Twenty-three percent have that unknown god in their front yard. Richard, go ahead and go on next. And you say, oh, what’s the big deal? We’re winning, 71 percent. Winning. And you look up here, and this is another chart. Oh, when Pastor Christy came he had charts, diagrams, all sorts of wonderful things. Greek. I tell you, Scott, he really did his homework because he only preaches once a year.

Anyhow, look up here. All Christians down. Going to the right is bad. I don’t know if I’m swiping right or left, but going to the right is bad. We’re going down 7.8 percent over the last seven years, 2007—2014. We’re down 7.8, all Christians. All Christians. All Christians. But look. Look at our friends. Well, you got all non-Christians, 1.2. Oh, hair on fire. But anyhow, look at all unaffiliated. That’s the nones. That’s the unknown. That’s the agnostics. Unaffiliated, nothing in particular, number one choice. They’ve grown 6.7. So the 6.7, 1.2, adds up to about seven.

We’re losing ground. And we’re losing it, not to the Muslims. We’re losing it to the nones. We’re losing it to the people that Paul met in Athens. We’re losing it to the agnostics, to the unknown gods. So we should figure out how we are going to talk to the nones, to the unknowns. And Paul’s speech before the assembly of the nones – and, oh, and, yes – should give us some examples. Go ahead, Rich. We’re going to be hanging on this for a while.

What does he do? What does he do, the community organizer with the press pass in Trump Tower? He tells them that he studied what was important to them. Have we done that? Have we gone around, living their life – I used to think the malls were the new temples, but those have kind of fallen apart. I’ve got to really think that the hospitals are our new temples, you know, and the doctors are the high priests and, you know, ooh, do-do-do, doctor tell me he fix me up, you know. And have you seen the new hospitals? They’re awful nice. You know?

But have you seen the idols? Have you seen what people worship? Have you seen where they put their face? To an unknown god. I’ve seen you’re very devoted – to your phone. I’ve seen you’re very religious – about keeping your phone online and charged up. Can we do that? Can we say something to him about what’s good about the nones? What we have in common?

And look how Paul goes on. Paul says, you know, we’re all here groping for God. It’s right there. Groping. Searching. Searching for Sunday. Something spiritual. Something more to motivate us, to inspire us, something that binds us together because we want to help someone. We’re usually good. Humanity is pretty good about helping, and we have to give a chance if we have something in common. He says, “We’re all in this together.” He doesn’t say, “Your stuff’s trash, my stuff is beautiful.” He says, you know, we’re all in this together. We’re all looking for God.

There was three qualifications to be a god in Athens, three qualifications. One, God had to have a house, a shrine, a temple, something where they can hang out. I tell you, I don’t know what was going on in the Mideast, but there was a housing shortage for God. You couldn’t get anywhere without houses of the holy. They were always building them everywhere. And if you remember, Abraham tried to build a house for God. And even in the New Testament, good old Peter tried to make little houses for Abraham and the Transfiguration and for Jesus and for Isaiah, Elijah. Houses for the holy, number one. Number two, you had to have a prophet, an advocate, a speaker, someone that can tell you, introduce you to the god, a host, someone to tell you about that god. And, number three, you had to do something good for Athens. Oh, come on now. We’re not going to have you come into our town unless, you know, we get a little taste, a little something-something that you can benefit us from.

And that unknown god altar was probably someone that something good happened in the city, and they didn’t know who to credit. So they just put up the, oh, whatever god. See, what Paul does with that, Paul uses their own philosophers and poets, quotes their own things. We are all offspring of God. He quotes their sacred texts back to them and says we’re all in this together. We’re all looking for God. And your own poet says that we’re all God’s offspring. You see, God made us. We don’t make God. Whew. God made us. We don’t make God. Like Abraham. You know, Abraham says, “Let me make you a house, God.”

And God turns around and goes, “No, I’m going to make you a house. You’ve got this all wrong, Abraham. I don’t need you. You need me. You’ve got this all wrong, Abraham. You’re not going to make me a house to live in. I’m going to make you a house, a dynasty. I’m going to make you a family. I’m going to make you a tribe. I’m going to make you renowned throughout all the world. I make you. You don’t make me.”

Paul flips it. He says, “I’m not here telling you that there’s another God, another house. Come and see mine. Mine’s the best. Let me introduce you to my god. I’m here to say I’m with you. I’m a searcher. I’m a seeker. I’m a knower. But I know where to go.”

Evangelist named Klein says evangelism is simply one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread. So if we can get off of this us/them, they’re horrible; turn off that phone, get off my lawn, which is the new get off my lawn; if we can get away from that and say “I see you’re very devoted to your friends. You want to stay connected. Even when you’re with real-live people you want to stay connected with, to your friends in high school, to your friends in grade school and your college friends and your friends from your move and all these on your Facebook, and you want to text them and let them know about you. I see you’re very connected, and you’re very interested in other people. I can see that in you.”

Isn’t that so much better than saying, “Get off the phone and talk to the person in front of you?” I think Paul would have done the first. “I see that you’re very interested in the lives and hopes and challenges of others. That’s good. I’ve got a place that does that at least every week.” Can we do that? Can we be like Paul in that crazy place?

This is a dinner. And maybe you’re trying to figure out, well, how does that be? How does that work? How does that work? Well, you see that there’s chefs, and there’s guests. And the chefs are there, and the guests are there, and they’re working together. And I don’t know how many of you have thrown a dinner party. I have this barbecue, outside barbecue.

I was talking to someone last week, and she was talking about, oh, I’ve got all the church people, of all things, I’ve got all the church people coming up, and that pastor’s wife won’t tell me how many people are coming. I’m going crazy. I need information. I need how many coming. Do I have enough food? And now there’s a kids’ program. What am I going to do with the kids? I don’t know what to do with the kids. And I’ve got food and the chairs, and the house is not clean, and we’ve got this broken down…

It is crazy being a host and trying to take care of everybody. Where if you’re a guest, what do you do? You have to please – you have to RSVP. That’d be nice. You know, you can ask, “Will there be a gluten-free option?” You can ask that. I mean, that’s iffy. I don’t know. Why don’t you just bring it yourself? Why not? Bring something – gluten-free, vegetarian often, whatever you need. Bring that along. And then you’re done. You’re a guest. You’re there to see what’s going on and to enjoy the experience and to see what the host has planned for you and enjoy the company of others. Such a different head.

I think so much time in the church is wasted about us planning the dinner party and being the host, like we’re in charge. Presbyterians, we know we’re not in charge. We’ve got that whole predestination thing going. You can’t upset us because it’s all in God’s plan. You know what the Presbyterian said when he fell down the stairs? He said, “Oh, thank God that’s over.”

I mean, what are you going to do? You’re not in charge. Presbyterians, our absolutely fundamentally bedrock thing, convinced that we are totally unnecessary to God. And we will fight you to the death on that one, that God doesn’t need us at all. And that is a proper attitude to have when we’re doing church in that we’re not trying to tell other people how to work and how to act and where to sit. We’re not making the seating assignments. We don’t have the little place cards saying you go here; you go there; and you “um” supporters, you’re out here in the kitchen, and shut up, will you? That’s not us. We’re not the host. We’re a guest. We’re groping for God same as you. Same as you. And God doesn’t live in anything we make. God is not limited to the stuff that, in our imaginations, that we come up to. We’re all guests. Next one.

And this guy again. Christy, I hate when you yell like that because I can’t get any sleep in during the sermon. Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg wants everybody in the community. He wants half of Facebook in the community, and he’s got one out of 20. He wants to get one out of two. And he had this big summit because he’s figured out how to do it. And you’re going to be shocked. You’re going to be amazed. You’re going to be – you’re going to say, “What a revelation. The man’s a prophet.”

He has figured out – and this is a lot of metrics, a lot of deep data-type stuff. He’s figured out that people don’t join meaningful communities. People, oh, sure, they’ll join, come see the funny kitten pictures, you know, yeah, everybody joins that. But meaningful communities for support, meaningful communities for responsibility and accountability, people do not join them. They don’t volunteer to join. Mark Zuckerberg has found that people join meaningful communities when they’re invited by friends. Oh. Have we ever heard that in church before? It’s not “Build Facebook and they would come.” No. People come to a meaningful community when they’re invited by friends. And that was his whole thing. You guys have got to invite people in order to have a meaningful community. And you know what he says about Facebook is right what we’ve been saying in church. People don’t join meaningful communities unless they’re invited by a friend.

So guess what. You want more people in a meaningful community, and you want them to join you? You know, don’t tell them what to do. Tell them what you’ve done and say, I’m with you. I’m groping with God, too. I’ve found a community that helps me with that, helps me be a better me. I’ve found a community that will inspire me to be the best person that I can be. I’ve found a community that will motivate me, that will come up to me and tell me, here’s something you do. Here’s an opportunity for service. Here’s something we’re doing this Saturday. Can you come and help us feed? Can you come help us pack? Can you come and help us with this mission? Motivate us. I found a community that will help me when I need help. I found a community that supports me in prayers and in material support and in time. I found all this. Why don’t you come with me to this meaningful community? Go ahead, Richard, go to the last one.

All right. So your challenge, your homework is to see beauty where you used to see trash. Huh? Yeah? Try to appreciate when they bought the trash and put it in a bundle and put it on their porch intentionally. See the beauty where other people see trash, where you, you used to see trash. Where you used to be “us” and “them.” Find something common that you have. Find something you can get behind, that you can admire, that you can affirm. “I see you are very religious. I see you are very connected. I see.”

My daughter keeps up with her high school friends, her college friends, her friends from farm country. I don’t. I admire that. Can you do that, too? Because we’re all groping for God. We’re all searching for Sunday. We’re all guests at God’s banquet. God bless you in your search for Sunday. Go out and find someone to search with you. Amen.

Get In The Picture

Mary Lu Ramsey  

July 12, 1937 – December 27, 2016

Who here is NOT in a Mary Lu photo? Not so fast. She had 5,000 on flickr and many more waiting to be photoshopped: lighting corrected, wrinkles ironed out, beards evened up, bodies smoothed, red-eyes removed, basically making us look to all as only someone who loves us dearly sees us.

What do you say to all this? Not just to the unstoppable love of God, that Tom read from Romans but to that obituary on the back of the bulletin? She wrote it. What a wonderful life.

• Sister, student, spouse,
• artist, activist, advocate,
• teacher, tutor, tech,
• professor, photographer, presbyter,
• musician, moderator, mom

and grandmom. Grand indeed.

Like, Tom, I have a favorite version of Romans 8. I like the alternate translation found in a footnote of the New International Version for verse 28. And we know that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good. God is the subject not things in this translation, and there is a partnership with those who love him to make all things good. I commend to you this understanding rather than the fake good news that somehow bad begets good, pain produces progress, or sadness is the seed of joy all by themselves like God was an cosmic insurance adjuster reacting to evil by making us whole again after damage and injury, paying us back so we can go shopping for new and better goods.

Instead, this reading matches up with the rest of the reading of God’s action in the world and our lives. And, it points out that how those that love God back, join God in loving the world into the good, a vast angel wing conspiracy for bring good into the world.

Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was a Presbyterian Minister who was ordained for children’s ministry on television. He was asked about how parents and teachers can help children deal with the horrors natural and human made that beam out for our screens. He shared what his mother did for him. She told him to look for the helpers. For the firefighters, rescue workers, medics, ordinary people who turn from their own sorrow to ease the suffering of others. Don’t focus on the chaos and destruction,  Look for the helpers, look for the helpers.

Speaking of helpers, my brothers Tom and Tim are here. They stepped up when needed. As always; as our parents did and taught us to do. There is one brother not here in body, Ric. Ric had a challenging life. Struggling with learning disabilities that made parenting and teaching him a struggle. How to behave, how to learn, how to read, things that came easy to his parents, things his brothers did well for the most part, were to him mysteries difficult to grasp, and he was difficult.

Did you read that after Ric was born, Mom went on from college to get her Master in Education with reading specialization, started as a part-time tutor for children with learning disabilities, which lead to a career teaching children who struggled with school how to read and learn. At the end she passed on her knowledge to another generation of teachers so they can give the help she struggled to find for her son Ric. Along the way she was a lifelong advocate for children with learning disabilities, strongly supporting Akron Area Association for Children with Learning Disabilities throughout her life, other than family, they were the last group she hosted in her home late this year, the aging activists she called the group. Did you see what she said about her education and training helping children with learning disabilities “her best teachers were her children”. Ric mostly I imagine. Mom was subtle like that, unlike her son who she NAMED JOHN.

I’m not telling you that all sadness and difficulty can be overcome, swept away, made all better. You know better. In fact, on the day she said everything went wrong, Ric, overwhelmed with life stopped struggling in this life and left it. Yet even in that horror we see Mom’s hope and work for the good and the better. We see Mom at Compassionate Friends helping others get through the hell of losing a child, giving the help she needed to others. Joining in with them in that vast angel wing conspiracy working for good with God. Look for the helpers when everything goes wrong, for the last 79 years you would most likely see Mary Lu…helping.

In 1907 a pastor, William Watkinson, wrote “it is Better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. A candle? In this and many other dark areas of life, Mary Lu was fireworks.

About those thousands of photos. When she was limited in what she could do, when breath was a struggle, she still wanted to photoshop, when she could not get to her desktop computer these last days her concern was not so much being bed ridden but that her notebook didn’t have photoshop on it.

Sorry Mom. I didn’t understand about those photoshopped photos. At the last when she couldn’t do all the good in the world she wanted, she turned to bringing the good out of even the most evil of photographs. Teasing beauty out of blandness, illuminating darkness, smoothing the rough edges in faces and bodies left by life’s struggles. Doing in photos what she did in life. Working for good in all things. Making the world a better place for those around her. Being the helper good people looked for.

When we look with fondness at all Mary Lu gave for children, church, and community, we remember the great gift given by God in Jesus Christ, who left heaven and came to us to show us how to live and die for others, as a servant for others. Because of his great gift, Mary Lu and we have life eternal.

Even though we know God’s power and love make Mary Lu as real and present to God as she ever was to us in this life. We still hurt, we groan inside too deep for words at her absence from our human senses. I have no prayers to answer the questions or fill in the blanks left by Mary Lu’s passing, we have to rely on God’s spirit to bridge that gap between the twin realities our aching loss and God’s amazing grace. For I cannot take away the pain that you feel at Mary Lu’s passing. For love and grief are different sides of the same coin, they are joined in this life, the only way to not receive grief is to reject the gift of love. Even Jesus wept at the passing of his friend, Lazarus. When we lose someone we love we grieve. So to deliver you from the grief you feel I would have to eliminate the love that you have for Mary Lu. You wouldn’t want me to do that even if I could. But what I can tell you that Mary Lu is at rest, free from the weakness of disease, and she is at home with the Lord, breathing easy.

Don’t let the grief of her passing end the spirit of kindness and helpfulness that Mary Lu embodied. Instead hold on that kindness, and honor her and Christ by joining with God bringing good, being a part of that vast angel wing conspiracy when folks look for the helpers, may they see you in that picture.

Granddaughter Rachel Ramsey had her own message.

Soul Opportunity

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 Opportunity
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Click 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?

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Got Any Change?

Christy asks us to consider if people can really change.

Got Any Change?
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Click the title above for a mp3 recording 

Audio from Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church on October 2016, edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine. 

Acts 9:1-20

Sermons also available free on iTunes

Can a person change?  George Wallace, four term governor of Alabama.  His first run was in 1963.  He started off his campaign by standing on the exact spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office for the Confederate States of America.  They have a star in Alabama, and you can stand there.  And he stood right there and said in 1963, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” He was elected governor and pursued those policies, as he promised, of segregation, against the civil rights, the poster child of those who would stop any kind of rights for African Americans, for the blacks in the country.

Twenty years later, in 1983, George Wallace again became governor of Alabama.  But this time, 1983, he would gain 90 percent of the black vote in Alabama.

Can a person change?  Well, in 1972, while running for President – the most successful third-party candidate in recent history.  No third party candidate has done as well as George Wallace.  In 1972, during the race for the President, he was shot five times in an assassination attempt.  One of those shots severed his spine and left him partially paralyzed.  His son, George Wallace, Jr., said that his father had two lives, one before the assassination and one after.  George Wallace, Jr., in his book, George Wallace, The Man You Never Knew By The Man Who Knew Him Best,” George Wallace, Jr. said that, lying there on the pavement, shot, paralyzed, close to death, was a Damascus Road experience for his father, a conversion.

George Wallace, in the years and decades that followed between the shooting and his final term as governor, sought out civil rights leaders like Rep. John Lewis, said he was wrong, and asked for his forgiveness.  George Wallace went to black churches, apologized, said he was wrong, and asked for their forgiveness.  George Wallace, after getting 90 percent of the black vote in his last term of government, appointed blacks throughout his administration and to his cabinet.  The first one to do so, starting a practice in diversity that continues today, starting with the example that George Wallace set.

Can a person change?  Saul, on the road to Damascus, not for a vacation, not for a guest preaching gig, nor any happy or good reasons. Saul was on the road to Damascus with letters, with writs of arrest to drag back the Christians to Jerusalem where they could be tried and, if all went well, stoned to death. 

Saul, not Paul yet, Saul on the road to Damascus, struck down.  Something happened.  You can read all sorts of theories.  They’re making a diverting hour, if you want to do that.  But something big happened to Saul on the road to Damascus.  He was struck down.  He was left blinded.  He heard the Lord and had to be led by the hand away.

Can a person change?  Well, Saul went from being letters of death and destruction for Christians to writing letters of hope and encouragement.  He went from tearing down the church to building it up.  He went from trying to wipe it out to being the best evangelist in the history of the Christian church.  He wrote most of the New Testament.  What we think of as normal and orthodox and the way to do things goes to Saul, now Paul.

Can a person change?  You may say, “Well, I guess so, Christy.  But I really don’t want to be shot or blinded.  Is that what you’re telling me here?  We should be going out that way?  Is there any other option?  Could I have Option C, please?  Something not, you know, a near death experience?  Is there something a little bit less that I could do?”

But, you know, there’s another guy in the scripture today.  He is kind of the hero of the story, and he doesn’t get near enough credit:  Ananias.  Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an Ananias position.  It is not a comfortable position.  Ananias is just, far as I know, he’s minding his own business.  He’s not on the road to Damascus.  He’s not making speeches about segregation.  He’s not running for governor.  He’s not a public person.  He’s not just trying to get through the day.  And the Lord comes to him.

Now, Ananias does something right, and this is something I always try to tell people when we talk about when an angel comes, or God, or Jesus comes.  You know, you want to watch what you say.  You know.  Because it’s kind of a big thing.  And Ananias gets it right, just like good old Hymn 525 in the Presbyterian Hymnal.  “Here I am, Lord.”  When God calls you, the only thing you can say, the best thing to say is, “Here I am, Lord.”  Boom.  I’m here.  Present and accounted for.  You know, don’t say “What?”  Or “Who are you?”  Or “Why are you bothering me?”  None of that.  Those are all bad answers.  The best answer is, “Here I am, Lord.”

So a strong start for Ananias.  Strong start.  We like that.  But then it goes, gets bad really quick because, when the Lord tells you to do something – and, you know, especially the Risen Lord, you know, the glory, everything there; you know?  And don’t correct the Lord.  If you want to, don’t do it.  Resist the impulse of trying to tell the Lord how he got things wrong.  He got off easy on this one.  Pretty much just repeat it.  But he was saying, “Hey, Lord Risen, Ruler of the Universe, Lord of All Creation, Savior of Humanity.  You probably don’t know this, but that guy Saul, he’s coming after us.  He’s a nasty guy.”  Ananias doesn’t think he changed.  There’s no reason to think that he changed.

And the Lord pretty much just repeats to him, “I’ve chosen him.”  And doesn’t even give the – Ananias goes, hey, he’s a different kind of guy yet.  Because, see, I don’t think he was.  I mean, he just got the – all Paul got was a zap in the eye and, you know, why do you persecute me, you know, he just sort of got convicted, if you will, just God saying “You’re doing it wrong” kind of thing.  We don’t know if he changed.  And neither does Ananias.

You ever been in Ananias’s situation?  Thinking that you should be doing something, but you don’t want to?  It’s risky?  Ever been in an Ananias kind of situation, where you’re in an opportunity to help someone, that you can say you can help someone, but you don’t know, not only do they not deserve it, but it might work out of costing you a lot.

Have you ever been in an Ananias situation where you had to trust that someone will change?  Not that they had changed, not the whole believing thing, but they will change.  Ananias goes to Saul, the persecutor, the one that was trying to drag his friends and himself away from their homes and their family, to take them to religious trial that was just nothing but a show, so that they have an excuse to torture and kill them?  Ananias went there and healed that person and blessed that person, and prayed that the Holy Spirit comes onto that person.

Ever been in an Ananias situation?  Is change possible?  I submit to you that change is possible when we allow it.  I submit to you that other people can change when we allow it, when we make the place available in our hearts and in our spaces and in our minds to allow other people to change.  What if John Lewis said to George Wallace, “Forget you, man.  Forget you.  All the harm you’ve done?  Selma?  You were governor during that.  How dare you come in here and say that?  Sure, now you want this.  Forget you, man.”

What if the black voters of Alabama said to George Wallace, “Oh, no, oh, no, you’ve been governor twice before.  Ha ha ha.  You’re going to – fool me twice, no.  No way, man.  We’re not voting for you.  We don’t believe you.”  George Wallace would never have changed.  He never would have appointed African Americans throughout his administration and on his cabinets.  He never would have had that last term as governor to change Alabama.

What if Ananias never went to Saul?  That would have been a reasonable thing to do, a logical thing to do, a safe thing to  do, a smart thing to do.  He had no guarantees.  He’s going to do all this.  All right.  He had letters of death in his – with him for Ananias.  And Ananias went.  So you’re healed.  Holy Spirit comes upon you.  You can change.  I submit to you that that’s when Saul changed to Paul.  I submit to you that’s when the ministry began.  I submit to you, that’s when he got the Holy Spirit, not on the road when he gets zapped down and blinded.  That wasn’t the Holy Spirit.  I think the Holy Spirit was the healing and the blessing.  And you know what?  That was Ananias.  That wasn’t Saul.  That was the Holy Spirit working through Ananias to change Saul.

Can people change?  If we let them. 

Can people change?  If we encourage them.   

Can people change?  If we allow it. 

You probably heard of this guy called Gandhi.  He’s a very, very popular guy to quote in sermons.  He’s so popular, he even gets quoted in things he didn’t say.  You know you’ve made it when people are doing all the work for you.  You may have heard the quote of Gandhi that said, you know, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  That’s great.  “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” attributed to Gandhi.  You could find that right on the Internet, you know.  It’s all over.  But he never said that.  He never wrote it.  Now, he might have, but they didn’t have Twitter back then.  You know, that would have been a great tweet, Gandhi.  But no.  He went – he might have said that, if that were bumper stickers then or Twitter was a thing at that time.

But what he did say was something more profound.  How about that?  More profound than Twitter.   He did say,

“We but mirror the world.  All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body.  If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.  As one changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him.  This is a divine mystery supreme, a wonderful thing it is, and a source of our happiness.  We need not wait to see what others do.”

We are but a mirror of the world.  The world is in us, and we are in the world.  You know, Gandhi wasn’t a Christian.  Well, he claimed to be a Christian.  He claimed to be a Hindu.  He claimed to be a Muslim.  He claimed to be everything.  That’s the kind of guy he was.

But the world in a person and the person in the world sounds to me like the incarnation, sounds to me what Jesus Christ was and is – the world made flesh.  The savior of the world in a person.  Because of the way he lived, because of the way he lived and died and rose again, because of that person, the world changed.  Because of who he was, the world changed.  The world was redeemed by that person.  Gandhi knew that.  We’re not just fish in the ocean, moved by the currents out of control.  We also affect the ocean as we move ourselves.

Ananias changed the world by changing himself.  Which allowed Saul to change to Paul.  Which allowed the New Testament to be written.  Which allowed the great news of Jesus Christ to spread throughout the civilized world.  Have you ever been an Ananias?  Have you ever had an opportunity to help someone change?  Have you ever had an opportunity to believe in someone’s change?  Have you ever had an opportunity to act as if someone was actually better than they were?  You see, if you want other people to change, if you want the world to change, Jesus Christ shows us.  Gandhi knows.  Gandhi knows this.  Wallace lived it out.  We see it in the conversion of Saul to Paul.  If you want the world to change, if you want others to change, Gandhi tells us you do not have to wait to see what they do.  You do not have to wait on them to change.  You can change how you react to them, how you talk to them, how you bless them, how you heal them, how you ask for the Holy Spirit to be with them.  You don’t have to wait on the others.

The question, then, is not can other people change, which is what we often think of it.  But the question is, how can I change so the world will change?  How can I be a blessing?  How can I act as if the world was a better place and thereby make it a better place?  We believe this.  We believe in the incarnation.  We did not have special crazy supernatural bolts of lightning from the heaven.  We didn’t have worlds moving around.  We didn’t have thunderclaps.  We didn’t have all sorts of supernatural events.  We had a person who changed the world by being that change, incarnate. God’s will lived.

We believe that a person can change the world.  And we believe that we have the ministry of that person within us, as well; that we can be people that live and believe and act and treat others so that they are free to change, so that together we can change the world. 

Can people change?  If we do. Michael Jackson had several songs, several number one songs, great career as a musician.  There’s a song that was number one, the first song he did not write.  He did not write the song “Man in the Mirror.”  It was written by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett.  But it may have been his favorite.  It was definitely his most spiritual.  He even got a church choir to help him sing it and present it.  And I couldn’t help but think of that when I read about Gandhi saying, “We but mirror the world.”

Here are some lines from “Man in the Mirror” by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett: 

“I see the kids in the street with not enough to eat.  Who am I to be blind, pretending not to see their needs?  I’m starting with the man in the mirror.  I’m asking him to change his ways.  And no message could have been any clearer, if you want to make the world a better place.  Take a look at yourself, and then make a change.” 

Performed by Philosopher and prophet Michael Jackson.  The world can change.  People can change, if you do.  Amen.

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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 a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Got Any Change