Hanlon's Razor

 We can search for miracle as well as we can find malice in others

Hanlon’s Razor
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from worship at Christ Presbyterian Church, Gardnerville, NV on August 1,2021

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

Ephesians 4:1-16

Sermons also available free on iTunes

One difference between a community and a cult is just that – difference. A community embraces it. A cult outlaws it. Both are organized around a common goal and beliefs. But community is harder than a cult because everyone is not like you and me. More specifically, it’s harder because not everybody is me. If it was me, everything would be fine. But it doesn’t work that way in community. Only in cults.

You’re saying, why is he talking about community? Because that’s what our scripture’s about. You may think that it’s about spiritual gifts. This is one of those spiritual gifts inventory passages. You know, the one we all love to like. It’s just like, you know, it’s an Amazon Wish List, and we just got a gift card. You know, we’re going through it saying, oh, what can I get? Oh, boy.

But I want to caution you, at least for today, do not pretend that this is Christmas Eve, and the verses are gaily wrapped packages for us to shake and figure out what we got. Because that’s not what the scripture is about. In fact, all the spiritual gift list is not to talk to us about how wonderful it is to have gifts, although that’s pretty good. It is about community. It is about differences, about how people that are different, in different ways, are blessed together to build up the body, even though they are different. You get that? It is about embracing differences.

And look how subtly it has changed. Instead of saying, oh, them, they’re not like us, they’re different; instead of saying people are different, and we’ve got to put up with them, it says what? People have different gifts. People that are different are gifts, not burdens. Not something to be fixed. Not something to be convinced. Not something to come in line with the one true opinion – which is mine, by the way. They are gifts.

What if we went along with that? It goes, “Oh, what a gift that is.” You know, it’s kind of like in the South. I don’t know, anybody from the South? They have that saying, “Oh, bless her heart.” That means I don’t really approve of what you’re doing or saying, but bless you anyway. Now, you can go through what that means. But I’m going to take it to mean you’re a gift. Your specialness, uniqueness, problematic behavior I’m taking as a blessing; I’m taking as a gift.

Now, one of my main errors is I forget to explain my title. So let’s get that done. Hanlon’s Razor is by Robert Hanlon. Did I get the name right?

ATTENDEE: Hanlon.

Hanlon, yes, thanks. I wrote it down for all of us. Yeah, Robert Hanlon is a computer programmer. And he sent in this to a joke book, kind of distilling what has been floating around in literature and quotes for centuries. And he says that “Do not attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Don’t think someone is evil and out to get you when it could be they’re just stupid, and not even thinking about themselves or you or anybody.

Now, Bob, come on. That’s pretty harsh. You know. Stupid? Really, Bob? You know, Bob must be one of those cultural elites, you know, went to college, thinks they know everything. Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve just cut myself with Hanlon’s Razor because I’m assuming malice in what he says. Well, I’m still not happy with the stupid.

So since I’m the one true measure of all things for like 20 minutes, I would like to say a different one. Let’s call it Ramsey’s Razor. That’s great. You saw that coming. Ramsey’s Razor. And I’m going to say do not attribute to malice what can be explained by miracle. Do not attribute to malice, to evil in the world, to somebody out to get you, what could be a miracle.

When you say “miracle,” what do you mean? Some supernatural intervention in the orderly course of nature? Well, yeah, those are showy, and that’s good. But that’s not just all the miracles. For me, miracle is that what we talked about in the gospel, a sign. A work that points to Jesus Christ and to God. And you look at it, and you say, “I see God there.” You know, like you look at my face, and you see Jesus. Right there. A miracle. You think God when you see this. And you see Jesus struggling in the gospel because he straight-off calls him out. He calls him out. He says, “You’re just here because you’ve got the loaves, and you were fed with bread.” And he’s talking about the feeding of the 5,000. He’s talking about the miracle.

And boy, do we go on about that. You know, oh, he just had five loaves and two fish, and then they came up, and they had baskets over, and let’s do the calculation, take an inventory, and how many was that? And it was just men, so it was probably more like 10,000. You know, okay, that’s an okay miracle. But, you know, I’m pretty sure a competent caterer could do that, and definitely a magician could pull that off. There’d be a little prep work, but it’s doable. Far as a miracle goes, I don’t know.

But I tell you, how about this? If, I’m saying if. So no emails to the stated clerk; okay? I’m saying “if” right here. So if, what if this is? You remember the story? It’s supposed to be a sign of God for the miracle. A child comes up. Maybe a girl. A child comes up and says, “Well, I got my lunch. I could share that.” And a disciple says, “Well, what’s that among so many?” And so Jesus accepted that gift, and he brought her out in front of the crowd, and he broke it. Remember? He broke it. He held it up, and he blessed it. He took it from, let’s say a little girl, and shared it out.

And people say, well, it was a miracle because of the baskets. The baskets were magic baskets. They never filled. Well, you know, back then there wasn’t any fast foods, or wasn’t any restaurants on the turnpike. There wasn’t any of that stuff. People, if they were going out for the day, you’d better believe they had food. They were packing a lunch. But you know, when you’re in a crowd, and all sorts of people around, maybe you don’t want to get out your food when there’s a bunch of hungry people around you. Maybe you don’t want to do that.

But, you know, they saw the little girl, and they go, well, you know, the little girl shared stuff. She shared all she had. I’m not going to be shamed up by a little girl. I got stuff. Hey, you want something? It’s like that Nevada Day Parade. Have you ever tried to be sober throughout a Nevada Day Parade? You’ve got to pretty much be militant about it. “Hey, I got something. Try some of this.” You know?

So that little girl, and Jesus’s acceptance of her gift, changed that crowd of strangers into a crowd of friends and family, sitting down for a meal. And where they had scarcity, when they had nothing, they had plenty because they had it with them all along. You know, it’s like that famous church building – have you ever heard of the church building fundraising capital campaign? The campaign person comes up and says, “I’ve got good news. We have all the money we need for this capital campaign.” And everybody goes, “Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.” And then he says, “Yeah, it’s right in your wallets.” Not so much hallelujah there.

And I tell you that my version of the transformation of that crowd from strangers that will let the other persons go hungry, to a family and friends and a community that shares their bread with one another until there’s enough and more left over, I’m telling you that’s a miracle. That shows me God and the way God wants us in the world, much more than how much bread is in that basket in the leftovers. That’s the gospel.

And we look out at the crowd, and they said, oh, that person’s going to take my bread. That person’s going to steal my lunch. That person is going to grab my wine if I bring it out. Malice. But Jesus was able to turn that into miracle. Be okay if I share my stuff. Everyone else will share. It’ll be a miracle. I’ll be a sign of God’s working among us. It’d be a taste of heaven, if I assume miracle instead of malice.

My brother doesn’t call me for decades. He just doesn’t call. And I thought it was, you know, because of that incident 25 years ago, you know, back when we were kids. Or it was because he doesn’t care about me, or because he’s mad at me, or because I’m too preachy, or because of his wife. Malice. None of that’s true. I mean, I didn’t check it out, just put it in my head.

We’ve been pretty much meeting on Zoom for an hour every week during the pandemic. You know, we go back and forth. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not so good; you know? But there’s no malice there. Miracle. I was talking to him, and both of my brothers come on the Zoom most of the time. And he says, you know, “We’ve got to keep this up because, if we don’t, I don’t talk to Tim for a year.” It’s not malice. It’s just that we’re not looking for the miracle.

Twice I was in a big church. How do you know it’s a big church? Because the pastor’s office has a private bathroom. I’m telling you, as I got older, that got better and better, I’ll tell you. And one time I was in a church, and I’d go around the church, doing I don’t know, whatever I was doing. And behind me followed the custodian. The custodian followed me. You know, he just giggled. I could hear him chortling back there. And I go, “What are you doing?” He goes, “Oh, no, don’t mind me. I’m fine.” I walk more and hear him giggling. What’s he doing? What is up with that guy? You know? Couldn’t figure it out.

And I go, why is he following me? Does he think I’m stealing stuff? What is he doing? You know? I go, “What are you doing?” I finally said. He goes, “Well, Pastor, when you walk around with your coffee, you spill little drops on the carpet. And it’s a lot easier just to wipe them up as soon as they come off.”

Malice or miracle? You know, where there’s confirmation bias, you probably heard about this, this is what runs YouTube and Facebook and our magazine subscriptions in olden times, you know, and our television news selection now in that we want to hear things we already know. We want to confirm our beliefs of what we already suspect and believe and understand. And so Facebook and YouTube have really fired up on that. And if you keep watching YouTube, they say, oh, you like that? Here’s a little bit more. Oh, you like that? Here’s even more. And if you like that, here’s even more and more. And you just keep rolling down into a rabbit hole of our own biases and prejudice.

And then there’s also availability bias or availability heuristic. Which means the information that is most recently available, that it’s easy for us to get, is the one we go by. Basically, it’s the lazy principle. You know, it’s a lot easier to read a tweet than a book. It’s a lot easier to go with a hot take from a TV host over a few 30-second sound bytes than it is to listen to a lecture on an expert. It’s a lot easier to watch someone on TikTok or YouTube, or someone at your breakfast table tell you about the latest medical news, about this or that, than to actually go to your doctor and actually talk to someone who actually studied medicine. That’s harder to do.

Availability. We look for the easy stuff. And too often, the stuff that is apparent, that is out there, that is ready for us to consume is the stuff that is designed to make us upset, to fire us up, to say the both/and, either/or, the other side, oh, gets upset, we’re going to suck you in to watch and click. Malice, not miracle.

And the malice people will tell you that the different ones are out to get us. And they’ll have little snippets or little snaps, little tweets to tell you about the different ones that are out to get you. Where in our scripture today we find the different ones are out to bless us. Ramsey’s Razors don’t attribute to malice what God says could be a miracle. Do you know how hard it must be with someone with the gift of prophecy? That person’s got to be hard to put up with. Or an evangelist? Can you imagine being with someone that’s an evangelist? But in our scripture it says those are gifts. Those are miracles. That’s what makes community.

If we look at what we have in our community as gifts instead as obstacles to fix, we can find the miracles. We want to fill up the voids in our life, the emptiness, the unknowns, the questions. And we can do that. We can do that with faith. We can believe that God is there, God is working. We can do that. And we can do that with fear, and so often we do. The scary unknown, the monsters in the dark, the scariness of what is coming next. We can fill that up with fear. And I’m not telling you either one. Sometimes it is fearful. Sometimes it is faithful, and it might be good for us to practice more on the faithful thing. I’m not telling you not to do that.

But I’m telling you, what if we could keep that empty space open? Keep it available for God’s work and miracle? Fill it up, not with faith, not with fear, but just keep it open and say God will show us the way. We’ll be faithful, and God will be there. You don’t have to fill it up with fear, or even with faith.

Ever hear that story about is a glass half full or half empty? That’s a trick question because I believe there’s no way to tell from a static picture whether the glass is half full or half empty. You’ve got to know which way you’re going. Because if you’re filling up the glass, it’s half full. If you’re draining the glass, it’s half empty. It’s on the way to being empty, or it’s on the way for being filled. There’s no way to say right in the middle, is that half full or half empty? It’s only with the direction. Maybe that’s hard to understand.

Let’s talk about church. Is the church half full or half empty? Well, if you’re thinking the church is going to grow, more people are going to come, you’re going to say oh, my gosh, the church is half full. We’d better get some more chairs. If you’re thinking the other way, oh, my gosh, the church is half empty. We’d better get rid of the chairs. Or what if we could say it’s neither half full or half empty? There’s room for others. There’s room for others. There’s room for people to come. Did you know that church planner says if your church is more than 80% filled, new people won’t come because they say there’s no room for me here. They don’t see it as half full or half empty. They look at it, is there room for me?

And I tell you, if we fill things up with malice, there’s no room for a miracle. But if we somehow are able to keep the things we don’t know, the future we cannot see, and say to ourselves that with God we can go forward in there, if we can keep that place open, well, then, there’s room for God to do marvelous things. There’s room for God for a miracle to create community. There’s room for God to say, those people, they’re different. Praise God. It’s a blessing, not a curse.

Amen.

Hanlon's Razor

Four Julys

 Great Things Happen When We Listen to the “Other”

Four Julys
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from worship at St. Paul’s Lutheran Family Church Carson City, NV on July 4,2021

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

Mark 6:1-13

Sermons also available free on iTunes

A video version is at the end of the text

On this July 4th, I would like to talk to you about four Julys. The first July is July 1775. No, not ‘76. 1775. Did you know our Continental Congress was meeting in July of 1775? Well, 12 of the 13. Even back then, Georgia had trouble with their elections.

And that Continental Congress back there in July 2nd of 1775, or July 6th, made a declaration, but not a declaration of independence, an “Olive Branch Declaration,” as it’s called, in which they sent to King George, as loyal colonists, a request for his help, for his righting of wrongs, for justice, for restoration, to let them be a part of their own governing, to release some of the most terrible bans and injustices.

And they wrote these as colonists, and they said they were colonists, and they tried to get King George and the Britons to embrace their great heritage of justice and fair dealing, and asked for fairness and for doing the right thing. They pointed out the excesses and promised that they would, you know, abide by law and order, you know, if they had law and order. If the Crown would come and do right by them, they would do right by them. They pledged their allegiance and their fealty to the monarch and to King George.

Now, remember this was after, not just the Tea Party. That was almost a decade ago. But it was after shots were fired. It was after Lexington and Concord. It was after Bunker Hill. There’s been shots fired. There’s been riots. There’s been violence. There’s been trouble in the street. There’s been disruption of commerce, the absolute worst thing that could ever happen. You know, Bottom Lines Matter.

And after all that, in this July of 1775, they asked the powers and structures and principalities and monarchs to do the right thing, and called on them to deliver justice, to lift the burdens and the laws and the suppression, to let them vote for their own representatives and laws and not have them imposed upon them. All very reasonable requests, done in a reasonable way, in the most gracious way, especially when you remember there was rioting going on.

Well, what happened? Nothing. King George reportedly, and I believe this, didn’t even read that Olive Branch Declaration. Instead he condemned the violence, condemned them for forming a political party, for raising an army and navy. That might have been a little bit too far. He had nothing to say to these people because of their violence. Who do they think they are, going against the monarchy, taking up arms against the King’s soldiers who are there to preserve law and order, protect and serve. Not a very good July.

Second July I want to talk about is the one that you’ll probably be talking about today and over this weekend. Of course July 1776, the next year. Now, rightfully so, you might be reading the Declaration of Independence and looking at all the inalienable rights, and that’s a great thing. And there’s quite a list of grievances there. But in those things, it doesn’t say please fix them. It just says here’s what he did. And most important part of this is, well, the rights are important. The grievances are important. But the beginning and the end of that is the most important thing because at the beginning they don’t talk about being colonists anymore. And at the end they don’t say that they are 12 colonies of the United States. Georgia’s finally got there. They’re all there. Maybe we could blame Georgia on independence, I’m not sure.

But on the last part they say, “We, the United States of America.” Now, none of that’s been done. We’ve got a war to fight before that. And it’s not so sure we’re going to win. But they declared they were not colonists. They were the United States of America, where all white, landholding men are free and had rights. That wasn’t true. But it’s what they believed and what they were going to live and what they pledged their honor and their lives to in that very different summer of 1776.

We asked. We tried. We petitioned. We had examples. We had lawsuits. We had rights. But you wouldn’t listen. So we’re going to stop talking to you and start living right in the way we want to be. And if you have trouble with that, that’s okay. We’re ready to back up what we believe with our lives, our property, and our sacred honor.

Now, the third July’s a little shaky. I didn’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but the Bible’s not really good on timestamps. I don’t know when this incident happened. But go along with me. Let’s say it happened in July, somewhere around AD 33. I don’t even know the year. But I figure I’ve got about an 8% chance of being right saying it’s July. I’m going to take it. And in that July of AD 33, here comes Jesus.

Now, you may have missed the subtleness of our scripture. And God bless the gospel writers and the translators and the Church and everyone else down the age who cleaned the things up. Did you notice the place where it turned? Well, I mean, first they say Jesus is wonderful. Where did he get all this knowledge? It’s wonderful words. Look at this. He’s a power, and he’s doing it all, you know, like what you all say after I preach here, you know, that kind of stuff. And you notice the turn, and what turns a crowd against him?

Eugene Peterson in “The Message,” not really a translation, more like a commentary, running commentary on the Bible, he takes this scripture and reformats it and says, “Who does he think he is?” And everybody turned and said, that’s right, Jesus says it’s supposed to be like that. That’s not his place. That’s not the way he should be. Did you catch that weird thing? You know for us, you know, we’re looking 2,000 years down the road, and we think, what is that “Son of Mary” stuff?

Now, remember this “Son of Mary” phrase, this was before Mary is the woman with the most statues in the world. And I got this straight from a 1980s Trivial Pursuit game, so I know it’s right. Before the veneration of Mary, before the blue everywhere, before rosaries and all that, you’ve got to remember this is first generation. This is Jesus pre-resurrection, before everybody. That “Son of Mary” was no compliment. Remember what we’re dealing with. We’re in a patriarchal society. Oh, my gosh, the definition of patriarchal, where all that matters is who your dad is, who your father is, what your lineage is. So it’s not “Son of Joseph,” it’s “Son of Mary.” You know, he doesn’t have a father. We don’t know who that father is.

Now, my wife, God bless her, she told me I couldn’t say the “B” word that they were calling him in church. I check out things with her. I said, “Can I say this in church?” And she usually says no. And I checked out with her, and she said, “No, you can’t say that.” So they were calling him a “mustard.” So you’ve got to catch that in there. It just slides it over. But they’re saying, “You mustard. Who are you to lecture us about how to live? Who are you to tell us what we’re doing is wrong? Who are you?” And you know what, I get that same thing in church. Who are these people telling us what pronouns to use? Who are these people telling us about racism? Who are these people? They don’t belong here.

Oh, yes, friends and neighbors, there’s still honor/shame culture, alive and well in America today. You know honor and shame. Somebody gets honored, that means someone else has got reduced honor. You know how that is? Like you know when Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world – there’s a list of rich people. He’s at the top. You know, I’m looking forward when he goes out into space because you know what that means. Jeff Bezos goes out in space, every one of us moves one notch up on the wealthy list because he’s not on Earth anymore. He’s going to make us all rich, finally. Finally, a little trickle down from orbit.

That’s how honor and shame works. Everybody’s got a place on the list, and don’t you move. And that mustard son of Mary, he has no right to tell us anything. After all we’ve done for them, they dare to lecture us on critical race theory. How dare they? Don’t they know their place? That’s right. Right here we see Jesus is uppity and doesn’t know his place. What happens to this on this July? Jesus takes it pretty well. He’s astonished by it. Nothing much changed. Maybe we got used to it over the years and decades and millennia. And he could do not mighty power there.

See, just like King George, who doesn’t want to listen to those colonists, the people in Jesus’s time didn’t want to listen to that person who didn’t know their place. So what happened? Well, just like in 1776, Jesus says, okay, I gave it a good shot. I tried. I tried to tell them. And he says, we’re going to go ahead and live the way that we think we should live. We’re going to go out two by two, proclaim God’s good news, release to the captains, recovery of site to the blind, freedom. We’re going to bring out the downtrodden. We’re going to bring down the overbearing.

We’re not going to do this for profit or greed or capitalism. We’re going to do this together and rely on the good natures of others. And if they don’t want to be with us, we’re going to shake the dust off. And that was a curse. That wasn’t just, you know, personal hygiene. It wasn’t some sort of six feet, stay your social distance kind of thing back then. It was, all right, you’re on your own, and to “H” with you. I didn’t ask my wife if I could say that.

And in both those cases, 1776 and in this case, where Jesus went off alone, think about what great things happened. When people stopped worrying about being in their place and whether or not it’s appropriate and cramming that down our throats. I heard that one, too. It says we’re going to live the right way. And if you want to get onboard, you can, but we’re going to do great things. We’re going to be a great nation. We’re going to be a light of democracy and freedom. People are going to want to come here from all over. It’s hard to keep that up. But we’ve done okay so far. And it’s only if we go back to keeping people in their place that we’ll lose it. And we won’t be able to do great things like we have.

Now I’m into the fourth July. Have you been keeping track? I know there’s at least one. The fourth July. July 2021. You all have a choice. Just like they did back in that July in Nazareth, back like they did, those colonists in 1775 and 1776. And you keep hoping and asking and waiting. I mean, now is not the time. You’re too much in a rush. People aren’t ready for that yet. Can’t be that way, 1775 and the folks at Nazareth. And we won’t be able to do great works.

If we go back to saying we’ve got to get back to the way it should be, where everybody needs to be where they were in 1950, where everyone knew without a doubt which drinking fountain was theirs, you know, the good old days for white males, and not listen to anyone else. Because, you know, they’re rioting. They’re rebellious. There’s been shots fired. They have nothing to say to us. It’s not their place. They’re ungrateful for all that we have done for them. We do that, I’ll guarantee you we won’t have a great country, and we won’t have a great faith.

I hope all of you go forth this July 4th, remembering those four Julys. And that you would choose to follow Jesus, two by two, whatever you can do, wherever you can, not for personal profit or gain, and seek not to restore society and shut people back in their places, but seek to heal the sick, to lift up the downtrodden, to help people to cast out demons.

Perplexing. What are the demons today? What keeps people from living full and productive and happy lives? What keeps people from life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Homelessness, not having enough housing. We’ve got enough, we just don’t distribute it right. Hunger. We’ve got enough food. We just don’t give it up. Not be able to choose their representative, and taxation without representation, a common theme.

We were founded on that people choose their legislators, and not in the monarchy the legislators choose their people. Go out and fight them demons. For the answer is not to return to where everyone knew their place, and no one was uppity; but to follow that uppity savior, that mustard son of God, who shows us a new way of life, a new way of living. And we can be great as Christians and as a country. Amen.

Four Julys

Normal or Nomad

 God does call us to a Nomad not Normal life.

Normal or Nomad
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from worship at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Carson City, NV on June 6.2021

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

1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20

Mark 3:20-35

Sermons also available free on iTunes

Video versions (both masked and unbasked) are at the end of the text

We have all felt like Samuel.  No, I’m not talking about being called old by the people, although we may have been there, too.  I’m talking about Samuel going crazy.  This is crazy Samuel time.  When you know what is right.  When you know what happens, and what will happen, and how the world is arranged, and you tell the people that.  In no uncertain terms, you tell them the reality of having a king, for example.  The high taxes.  The forced labor.  All the stuff.

 And the people, they don’t argue.  They don’t have a conversation, much less the compromise or consensus.  They just say, to all your wonderful reasons of how the world works, they say no.  No.  No.  All the stuff you said, all the great reasons you gave, we say no.  We want a king.  We want to be like other nations.  Did you hear it?  We want to be normal.  Who can say hallelujah to being normal?  I haven’t heard more consensus around an idea ever.  I want to be normal.  All praise to the God normal, where everything is normal.

 I want to talk to you about normal, that that isn’t normal.  And they’re proud of that.  I can tell you for sure you are not normal.  And I just have to say one day, one morning, my first Nevada Day parade.  First, we have the governor riding atop a military half-track, going down Main Street.  I go, what?  That’s not normal, the governor in a military half-track going down the main street.  That’s a little odd.  Then next, a few floats later, we have a convertible with sex workers telling us to come on down to the brothel for the Nevada Day Special.  Okay, that’s not normal for this Ohio boy.  And then, to finish up the parade, we have the synchronized shooting rifles drill team.  Okay.  We really don’t think that’s normal in Ohio or anywhere I’ve been.  We shoot guns together in a parade.  Not something we do.

 And we talk about going into a pharmacy or a grocery store, and there are slot machines, and a whole room full of them.  Now, people have told me all my life that the way I eat is a gamble, but here we have the slot machines to prove it.  Normal.  People wanting to be normal.  We want to be like the other nations.  You know, they have a king that goes out before them and fights their battles and does the things that other nations do.  We want to be normal.

 And I’m here to tell you that the Bible is against normal.  Well, that’s not totally true.  I mean, the Bible is sort of split.  The people and God come down differently because God is against normal.  The people, they’re all for it.  And you could say the whole story of the Bible could be, look at the lens between God saying don’t be normal and the people saying, yeah, we really want to be normal.  And that’s all story of salvation.  The abnormal love and grace of God calling normal people into abnormal community.

 And it’s not just the Hebrew Scriptures.  Our reading from the Gospel, we have the family of Jesus saying why can’t that kid just be normal?  Why can’t he get a normal job?  Why is he fooling around with demons?  And you see that it says “restrained.”  The family didn’t come to talk to him.  The family didn’t come to be with him in his meeting.  The family didn’t come to dinner.  They were outside.  They were there to restrain him.  Was this some kind of early intervention?  To try to convince him to change his ways?  To get him out of that cult he was starting?  They wanted him to be normal.

 Does that ever happen today?  I think if you go to any Pride event, you don’t even have to go to the parade.  You can just go to the people that came to watch the parade.  And they will tell you about their family, wanting them to just be normal.  Not be who they are, but be normal.  Not be with who they love, but be normal.  Study just came out in Canada that one out of 10 gay people up in Canada have been forced into some kind of conversion therapy.  One out of 10 in 2021.  To be normal.  Do we worship normal?

 Normally, in a typical year, 300 children die of ‘flu.  Every year, year in, year out, 300 children.  600 parents.  Let me see if I get my math.  Hundreds, thousands of grandparents lose a child.  Normal.  Oh, it’s normal.  But this year, with us wearing masks, keeping distance, washing our hands, zero children died of the ‘flu.  Zero.  That is not normal.  When you tell me, you want to go back to normal, I’ve got to say, hold on now.  Have you thought about what normal was?  Children dying?  You want to go back to normal?

 You know, with normal, for people of color, every time they get a traffic stop, to be in a life-or-death situation, to be somehow an unwilling participant in a murder edition of Simon Says, that if you don’t do what I say as quickly as I said in the right quickly way, your life is in danger.  That was normal.  It was normal for us white people to deny, ignore, explain away, and say, oh, they must’ve done something wrong.  Oh, if they only did things quickly, or did follow instructions, or did this.  It was just normal for people to get killed, people of color to get killed over a traffic stop, over a minor violation, over a misdemeanor.  Is that normal we want?

How about women?  This is the only year, year and a half, in the recent history of our country where women were not constantly told to smile.  They’re so much prettier when they smile.  Where men would tell women how they should feel, how they should look, how they should act.  Heck fire, you didn’t even have to wear makeup if you didn’t want to.  It used to be normal to tell people how to live and how to smile and how they should be in the world.  And now we can put the mask on.  They don’t know if we’re grimacing or whatever.  Do you want to get back to that normal?

What about us religious folks?  Yeah, maybe you’re not a person of color.  Maybe you’re not a woman.  Maybe you don’t have children young and susceptible to the ‘flu.  We’re all in church.  We know what normal is at church.  Want to get back to the normal.  Do we?  I mean, with normal, that if you are not able-bodied and could not sit quietly without interruption for an hour – hour and a half if Christy’s preaching – you weren’t allowed to be in church.  You couldn’t be there.  You couldn’t be a part of the community.  Oh yeah, we had homebound ministry.  God bless everybody for doing all that.  But you couldn’t be with the people.  Couldn’t be with the Zoom.

And you know Zoom’s in the Bible.  You all know that; right?  I’m telling you.  You know what they call the Internet?  The cloud; right?  You’ve heard that.  Cloud?  The Internet?  What’s it say in the Bible?  Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, (Hebrews 12:1) Zoom, we’re talking about you.  And if you weren’t in town, if you were visiting out of town, if you moved out of town, you were cut off from community.  If you couldn’t get it together, and you couldn’t be in the exact same time, the exact same place, you couldn’t experience worship.

And I’ll go further.  Even if you weren’t disabled visibly, some people couldn’t come to church because of social anxiety.  They didn’t like to be touched and hugged and nattered at.  Maybe there was somebody that they weren’t comfortable being around with, they didn’t feel safe with.  They had a divorce, and the other person got custody of the church.  You know how that goes.  But with Zoom online, they could come and could worship together.

I don’t like to be hugged.  I’ve got things, and I pay people to listen to.  You don’t have to.  But I don’t like to be hugged.  I’ve got arthritis.  I don’t wear a badge.  I don’t have one of those wonderful placards that people are wearing now.  But handshakes hurt me a lot of times.  You know how terrible that is for a pastor, to not be able to handshake people?  Not without a grimace?  There’s other people that have more problems than I do that don’t want to be hugged, for one good reason or bad or whatever, and so they don’t come to church.  With Zoom, they can come and be like everyone else.

Don’t be normal.  Examine the normal.  Sure, it’s great.  I mean, this year has been four times the planning, twice the effort, for one half of the results.  It is so much easier to copy and paste, whether it’s church services or our life, to just replicate from one to another, change the dates, couple things, and off we go.  It’s so much easier, and that’s why people love the normal.  But that doesn’t leave much room for God.  If you embrace the normal, and only the normal, God says you have rejected me.

And you know what normal starts with?  “No.”  You can’t have normal without “no.”  No, you can’t have your own feelings.  You’ve got to smile all the time, women.  No, you can’t be with who you love.  No, you can’t be gay.  You just decide to be gay.  Stop being gay.  No, you can’t be it.  No, you can’t be a non—hugger and be in our church.  No, you can’t be disabled and fully participate in worship.  No.  Normal starts with no.

What do you do?  What can we do?  Well, you know, God reminds us in Samuel, you know, his preference.  He says, hey, remember the normal I took you out of?  Remember the normal called slavery, and Egypt?  Remember that normal?  Oh, yes, another day of being a slave.  Well, same day as the last.  Another day of backbreaking work with no hope and no help.  Okay, normal.

And God says no, no more normal.  I want you to be a nomad.  That’s a difference of being normal; right?  And that’s what we’ve been the last year and a half.  We’ve been nomads.  We don’t know where we are or where were going.  We’re saying, do we have masks?  Do we not have masks?  Is there contact?  Is there not contact?  Do we fog the place or not fog the place?  Do we have to stay away?  How many vaccines do we have?  Do we have vaccines?  Is it going to disappear?  Is it not?  Nomads.  We don’t know where we are.  We don’t know where were going.  We don’t know what’s next.  We kept planning for things, and we had to cancel them.  Where does the virus come from?  Where is it going?  What’s going on?  Nomads.

And when we’re not in our normal place, God has room to act.  God has room to do wonderful things, just in the church.  The church has made more changes and accommodations and advancements in the first month of the pandemic than we did in 20, 30 years.  Thirty years we’ve been talking about there’s a whole world outside these walls we could bring in if we just used the technology.  Oh, no, that’s not normal.

I remember – have you ever seen Father Jeff, he’s really into it.  He’s very competent.  But the day they closed church and said he had to go online, in Ohio we call it “deer in the headlights.”  You know, where the eyes get really big.  And he says, “What am I going to do?”  And I go, “I’ll be there.  I’ll be there Tuesday.  We’ll figure this out.  We can get it done.”  So I come in, and he’s just, “What am I going to do?  It’s not normal to not have church, but have church.”

And I asked him a couple of questions.  I said, “Well, do you want to talk and preach to a camera?  Because we could do it that way.  Or do you want to talk and preach to people on a screen that you can see?”  And he says, “Oh, I want to see the people.  I have to see the people.”  “All right.  We’ll get you hooked up.”  It wasn’t normal.  But it was a way during a crisis for the people of God to come together.

And we were gathered from all over.  People from all different places and times of the congregation were gathered together, and we could be together as much as we could, as cyber nomads, surfing the storms of the pandemic.  You thought that was hard.  It was.  You did well.  Some churches aren’t coming back.  I have a church that right now they’re discussing whether to close or not.  But you did well.

But good news.  Don’t rush back to normal.  Don’t rush back to normal.  Because for so many people, normal wasn’t working.  Normal didn’t let them talk to God.  And if you are honest and introspective, perhaps normal wasn’t working for you.  So don’t be too concerned if everybody around you doesn’t look at the world the way you do.  That’s a little upsetting right now.  Like Samuel, you’re going to say, “I have great reasons.  I have the facts.  I have the list.  I have all the YouTube videos that you can watch and know that I am correct.”

But God says, don’t take it personal.  We’re struggling with whether or not to go with me and be a nomad into this new world, or whether to return to Egypt and slavery and patriarchy and monarchy for the false god of normal.  Friends, be nomads.  Follow God.  Be with God in whatever crazy place you are.  Don’t try to shut down and shut out others by saying no to them, “No, that’s not normal.”  Instead say, “Come along with us.  We’re nomads on a journey together.”

Amen.

 Unmasked and Unrobed

 Masked Version with Robe

Normal or Nomad

One of Twelve

How We Count People and Sin

One of the Twelve
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

Audio from worship at St Paul’s Lutheran Family, Carson City, NV on April 11.2021

John 20:19-31

Sermons also available free on iTunes

One of the twelve. Did you catch that? There’s a lot going on in the scripture. But in the 24th verse, the first line of the second paragraph of the reading, we read this: “One of the twelve.” I caught my breath when I read that this year because I realized there wasn’t twelve. Judas was gone. Eleven. Thomas is not there. He’s absent. Ten. What about that young man that ran away in Mark? Nine. How about that rough old fisherman that denied Jesus three times? Eight. “One of the twelve.” How do you count in a fearful time? How many people are here today?

In my day job, I’m the clerk of the Presbytery of Nevada. All the Presbyterian churches in Nevada, a couple lost souls in California we took pity on and a couple others, report to me how many people came to worship last year on average. And they were calling me and say, “What are we going to put down? What’s the right answer? We haven’t met since March. Our average is zero in worship.”

What do we put down? Does Zoom count? How about if there’s two in the little boxes? What if there’s just a strange picture of Wonder Woman every week? Is that really a person? And YouTube views. Does that have to be on Sunday? Or what if we took the whole count? And then there’s Facebook. And then sometimes people do all three at once. I don’t know how they do it, but they do it. How are we going to count how many are a part of us in a fearful time?

If Jesus, and I’ve asked him, came in and could tell me the number, what would he say? What would he say here? What would he say there? How many are in the room? Scriptures, the author of John seems to think all of them were there. “One of the twelve.”

Gallup has something to say. If you know George Gallup and his organization, he’s gone, but the organization goes on. Have you seen the study that just came out? For the first time in the history of this nation church membership is below 50%. The most common membership of church, United States is “none” for the first time ever. Well, we’ve been seeing it coming. It’s been sliding on down. And it’s not just those avocado-eating, toast-eating young people. Even the greatest generations, their percentage has gone down. Every age group, boomers, you name it, everyone, church membership has gone down. We’re at 47%. 1999, not so long ago, we were at 70%.

“No religion” is getting a boost. They’ve gone from 8% up to 21%. Others are kind of in that fuzzy crazy thing of, yeah, I’m with you, but I’m never there kind of thing; you know? I don’t know, you know, you don’t have to worry. I’m not a Lutheran. But in Presbyterian church, half of people who claim they’re Presbyterian aren’t. We have no record of them. One out of two Presbyterians aren’t Presbyterian. So there’s those people.

Now, you may tell me, Christy, no one joins anything anymore. The Book of the Month Club is way far away. People aren’t joiners. They don’t sign up for things. They don’t go to clubs. I mean, look at the Grange. You know, that used to be great. Not so much anymore. Look at the Masons. Look at all the fraternal and lodges, Odd Fellows, the Moose, all those things are all having trouble. And I said, well, okay, maybe. But are you a member of Amazon Prime? That seems to be doing pretty well. Have you heard about this thing called Facebook? I think they’ve got more members than there are people in the world, sharing their lives, encouraging or discouraging one another, making connections, building up, tearing down. Sounds like something we used to do.

Heck fire, even Best Buy is rolling out a membership plan. I don’t know exactly what that would mean, but I’m signing up. And political parties? I don’t know about you, but it seems like a lot more people are joining up political parties. And youth sports. Is there any youth that isn’t a member of two, three organizations? My goodness. So I don’t think we can just say, well, no one’s joining nothing. I don’t think so.

So how do we count? You know, this Sunday we skipped over – did you notice there’s two Sundays in the scripture? It’s really unfair for a preacher to have two Sundays in one Sunday’s reading. I mean, you should separate them out because we forget about that first Sunday, and we look at the second Sunday. You know, the one about the proof and the doubt and the goriness that if we weren’t used to it would be rated “M” on the graphic novel; you know? There’s going to be some hand in the side. Ugh. We skip over that. We talk about the proof and the denial and the doubt and the faith and all this other stuff. There are plenty of sermons on that. I got a couple on the Internet, if you’re really desperate.

But I want to talk about the first Sunday after Easter. You know, today. Where the Bible says one of the twelve wasn’t there. Well, then there wasn’t twelve there, was there, Bible. Bible knows that. Bible knows that Judas is gone. Bible knows that Peter’s not out in the open. Bible knows that one of the disciples ran away. Yet the Bible still says twelve. What happened that first Sunday with the twelve? Jesus came back, and the sermon went something like this. You might recognize it. There was peace. Peace. There was ritual actions. There was joy. And there was a message.

Did you catch it? It closed the service, sermon at the end, classic structure. Jesus said, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Of all the things to say the Sunday after Easter. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Of all the things Jesus could tell them, coming back from hell, rising from the dead, triumphant over the worst the empire could give him, he says about forgiving sins of any, but also warns them about retaining sins of any.

Now, immediately, what did we do as a church? We immediately took this little scripture, and we made a huge big patriarchal power structure, hierarchical, ecclesiastical, with all sorts of penance and potions and indulgences and wherefore and courts and censors and discipline and all this. I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind this first Sunday after Easter. He didn’t think that we were going to make some kind of religious industrial complex out of forgiving and sinning and forgiving and penance and rules and what you have to do to get back right.

And look who was there that first Sunday? Look who was not? A denier, deserter, doubter, and all of them despairing. And to this group he says “peace.” There’s no peace, Jesus. Rome is after us. The Jewish, our own people are after us. We’re hiding here. But you see, peace isn’t the peace we think of, absence of war, safety from conflict. Peace is much, much more than that. Peace is everything is where it should be. Everything is in its place. Everything is fitting. Everything is cozy. Everything is the way that God wants it to be. Peace, peace. The twelve are here because God’s peace is here, and all is where it should be. Peace.

But if you think of peace as the way God wants the world to be, where everything is fitting, where everybody has what they need to live, where everything is cozy, if you will, then you can understand sin. Sin is not some morality play, some purity test, some list of morals or do’s and don’ts. It isn’t about a dress code. It isn’t about a date code. It isn’t about what you pledge to do or not do on a certain time and place. Sin is not doing God’s will. If you are not conforming, if you’re going against what God wants you to do, that is sin. Which is the opposite of peace. Peace is what God wants the world to be like, what relationships should be. Sin is when we don’t do that, when we rebel. When we don’t do what God wants. When we do things for selfish things. When we don’t have our place in society and with people.

And you could think of that first Sunday. You think this is a tough worship service? Mass? Social distancings? No coffee? No hugs? Imagine those people back then. That was a bad Sunday. Jesus dead. Doors locked. Fear of the authorities. Peace. To this he says “peace.” To them he says the world. Let’s not talk sin. Let’s talk about it. If you forgive the way the world is not like what God wants, if you can forgive the way people are not the way God wants them to be, well, then they are forgiven. And I think there were some uncomfortable looks around the room. Was a denier there? Did people kind of look to the side? Say that guy, that guy we have to forgive? God wants peace between me and that guy who couldn’t even say he was with us the time we needed him? Was there a couple people? You know there was. That looked at that empty chair where Judas always sat, you know, that’s where he was. He was just there last week. One of the twelve. That guy. I hate him. You tell me to forgive him? Our things will still be broken.

Or the guy who ran away, not named, in Mark. Was he there? Was the guy who locked the door, oh, we’ve got to. You never know, things are coming to get us. You know who this is. Conspiracy theory guy. He’s everywhere. Even back then. We’ve got to make up with him? What about Thomas? Thomas. He didn’t even show up. We haven’t seen that guy. He’s given up. I hear he went back to work. Him? If you forgive, that’s a lot more tough than some kind of purity test or some kind of moral law, to hear Jesus say you get right with the folks that aren’t the way God wants them to be. And that will fix things.

And then there’s judgment. He warns those folks because he knew. He could read a room. He looked around, and it’s, oh, geez, I’m going to come back next week. You guys got some homework. If you don’t do this, if you retain, if you keep this up, if you keep acting like this, the way God wants the world to be will continue to be broken. The world will continue to be in sin, meaning not the way God wants it to be. If you want to save the world, you can’t keep going after the folks and the things that don’t measure up to God, God’s will.

How do you get rid of sin? We might say repent. We might say get on the right course. We might say penance, depending on our tradition. We might say confession. We might say a lot of things. But the Bible today says the way to get rid of sin is to forgive. To forgive. And are forgiven. And if you don’t forgive, if you retain, if you’re still mad at Peter, you’re still mad at Peter for not having the guts to stand up and support you, if you’re still mad at Thomas for not showing up on Sunday like he’s supposed to, if you’re still mad at Judas, well, then, guess what? Sin’s going to continue. The world’s not going to be the way God wants it to be. And there will be no peace.

And I’ll be here next week and see how you’re doing. Somebody was listening. Somebody took it to heart. Somebody went out to Thomas. You know, they didn’t say Thomas, oh, you really missed something, Thomas. Shame on you for not showing up. Thomas, we have seen the Lord. We have seen what God wants for the world. We have seen Jesus. Here’s our faith. I know you don’t have any. Here’s some. And even though he was a jerk about it, and don’t raise a hand, but how many people you talk to are jerks about things now? Yeah, they’re out in force. Even though he was a jerk about it and says, well, I ain’t calling you a liar, but you’re lying. Unless I see it, it didn’t happen. You still invite that guy to church? They did. They listened to Jesus. And the next week the doors were shut. They weren’t locked. At least they didn’t say they locked. They were just shut. Progress, not perfection.

You know, Jesus answered him, asked him, have you believed because you’ve seen me? I wonder what Thomas would say? Because you know what, he didn’t actually, we don’t have actually that he didn’t actually poke Jesus like he said he had to. He didn’t actually slide his hand in there. At least it’s not in the Bible that he did that. I’m wondering if Thomas said, well, not because I saw you. I’m here because of these guys. Even after me being a jerk and abandoning them, they came and got me. And I didn’t see you. I didn’t poke you. I didn’t look at your wounds before I came to church.

I’m glad you’re here. But the reason I’m here, the reason I’m being faithful is because of these people around me that told me I didn’t have to be perfect, that they forgave me when I abandoned them. That they forgave me for being a jerk and not believing them. And that’s what healed me. Nothing that I did. But the love and forgiveness that the other people have shown to me, that’s what got rid of it. You know, if they didn’t go after Thomas and tell him and invite him, if they retained his behavior that God didn’t want, I wonder if the Bible would say eleven instead of twelve.

Friends, we’ve got some work to do. Going to be a tremendous adjustment as we come to something else other. Already, you’ve already done that, I applaud you. Are we retaining sins or forgiving them? Are we forgiving that things aren’t the way God wants them to be and pronouncing peace? Everyone has a place, and you fit in here somehow. We’re going to make it work. Or are we going to retain the brokenness and the way things God doesn’t want to be? Seems like it’s up to us which way we go, whether we have peace, where everyone is forgiven and loved, or we don’t have peace, where everybody is separated and not counted.

There’s a poem by Ruth Etchells, found it on Facebook. You know, that membership thing.

The Ballad of the Judas Tree

by Ruth Etchells

In Hell there grew a Judas Tree
Where Judas hanged and died
Because he could not bear to see
Hs master crucified

 Our Lord descended into Hell
And found his Judas there
For ever hanging on the tree
Grown from his own despair

So Jesus cut his Judas down
And took him in his arms
‘It was for this I came’ he said
‘And not to do you harm

My Father gave me twelve good men
And all of them I kept
Though one betrayed and one denied
Some fled and others slept

In three days’ time I must return
To make the others glad
But first I had to come to Hell
And share the death you had

My tree will grow in place of yours
Its roots lie here as well
There is no final victory
Without this soul from Hell ‘

So when we all condemn him
As of every traitor worst
Remember that of all his men
Our Lord forgave him first.

From the Church of Scotland website for Easter Day

The audio and transcript are from the Saturday version. Here is a YouTube of the Sunday Service

One of the Twelve: Counting People and Sins

Presbytery Pandemic Toast

The Presbytery of Nevada had to postpone it’s in person meeting, but we still wanted to meet together. Part of the Zoom festivities hosted by our moderator was a toast she asked me to give. From our Zoom meeting on Tuesday, March 9, 2021.

Introduction: Gratitude

Pastors: you had our first year ninistry…again.
I’m grateful for Your creativity and flexibility
Elders: as you all became homebound
I’m grateful for your patience, connection, and forgiveness

History: Love

We are here together apart

Like we have gathered in storms

Of nature and convictions, 

Amidst disagreements and disappointment,

for we know God is with all of us and loves us all.

Story: Welcome

We have chartered a church, installed a Pastor,

welcomed Kate as Presbytery Pastor,

and without being asked

sent “no strings attached” checks to congregations.

We find a way to be faithful and connected

Thanks: Moderator

Thanks to Moderator York, 

Council, Committee Chairs and 

Members, Commission members

In year like no other
a Toast to a Presbytery like no other!

The Presbytery of Nevada!