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

How to be faithful when days blur into weeks and months.

Well, It’s Blursday, the Upteenth of Meh…Again
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from an empty sanctuary and full zoom on a laptop at St. John’s Presbyterian in Reno, Nevada lot on August 23, 2020. Originally given at Lee Vining/Bishop Zoom on July 19

Genesis 28:10-19a

Sermons also available free on iTunes

 Looking for the way to be faithful in the world without gathering with the saints

Two sisters were terrors at home, school, neighborhood, everywhere but church. There they were angels because that was God’s house. Well, with the school and church building closed and the parents were stuck with them day after day without any away time or church angel hours. 

So they do what parents do when they are at their wits end, they called the pastor and asked her to do put the fear of God in them. So the pastor said, “Let me talk to the oldest.” 

The parent handed the phone to the oldest and the pastor quizzed her, “WHERE IS GOD?” and the oldest said, “At God’s house!” The pastor continued, “Ok, No body is at God’s house, where is God?” The child didn’t know the answer but knew she was in big trouble. She froze. 

 

Her sister asked, “What’s wrong?”

 

The oldest pushed mute and answered her: “The Pastor Can’t Find God! She Thinks We Stole Him!

 

Where is God is the question of 2020. Since March we have been spread abroad from west to east to north and south. To homes, laptops, phones, tablets, zoom, YouTube, Facebook. And we wonder, “Where is God when God’s House is Closed?” 

 

James Goff had a cartoon in April where the devil is bragging that he closed every church. God is next to him saying, I opened a church in every home.

 

The wave of blogs virtual worship guides and the stream of emails with requests for rulings about what was real worship or real communion flooded the web, twitter, emails and Facebook posts. 

 

Christians of a certain age will hear the lament in the question from “On The Willows” from Godspell. Psalm 137:4 How can we sing the Lord’s Song in a foreign land? 

Rev. Joey Lee, the Executive Presbyter of San (Hos say) says if we complain about lockdown…try being a refugee.

 

We catch up with the heel grabber Jacob who has just started being a refugee on his way toward Haran. He is fleeing his sheltering home and family support because it is not safe to stay there. From favorite son to refugee. In the desert he found a place to stay overnight. There he found God standing beside him tell him that God is with him and will keep him wherever he goes. Jacob’s named the place, Bethel, the house of God. He fled his house and found himself in the house of God. 

 

For Christians, the answer to the pastor’s question is not a place, but a person. God acts to make sure we know he is not housebound to a place by Jesus or rather Immanuel, God with Us. Where is God when God’s house is closed? As Jacob found out, God is standing beside us. God is Immanuel, God is with us. 

 

God is not housebound. Jacob may leave home, but God’s house goes with him. Psalm 139 has a similar promise most often heard at funerals and memorials. The leaving is magnified in verse: 

Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. 

 

God found Jacob in the desert, but this isn’t a story about Jacob’s ladder to heaven it is about God setting his ladder to heaven wherever we are. God is the subject.

Jacob did everything he could to grab his piece of heaven, to secure his place and future. His artful deal swindled his brother out his birthright for a bowl of stew. He tricked his blind father to steal the blessing that was due his brother Esau. He was a heel grabber from birth. 

Yet there is a reckoning. Today we find him in the desert. Without family, fortune or future; that birthright and blessing cut off by the fear of that is brother would be angry and vengeful. His scheming for all left him with nothing. 

Yet it isn’t just us who finds him, but God. Who gives him the blessing not of his father for his family, but to be a blessing to all the families of earth. God who replaces his birthright with the promise of the birth of offspring like the dust of the earth. God, who builds Bethel, the house of God around the homeless refugee not artful deals of grasping Jacob.

The church is stripped of all of the things we planned, prepared and schemed for over the decades: 

 

• We have been exiled from our beautiful buildings even our favorite pew…
• Eye contact is replaced with far away stares.
• Handshakes and hugs are replaced with  video smiles and distant waves.
• In person, even smiles are masked away And in person means double arms length, too far to hug.
• Like a modern day Babel, our chorus is fractured solos, we sing together alone; our unison responses jumbled syllables scrambled by the tech tubes that connect our eyes but not our voices.
• We can no longer receive communion from a neighbors hand but only take it from our own.
• We are in the desert, alone, in exile from all we have gathered and grabbed, stripped of our birthright and blessing.

Sir Winston Churchill is credited with first saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” He said it in the mid-1940s as we were approaching the end of World War ll.

 

Jacob doesn’t waste his crisis. He recognized that he is a guest of God’s house wherever he is. Not by his own cunning, but by God’s care. That ladder is not a way to heaven as it is an affirmation of that God’s work is going on, even here. Angels are moving cares up to heaven and messages are coming down us. The supply chain is secure delivering even in the desert even though zoom.

 

And he vows to return to this place where God’s house is. Rev. Joey Lee, also says that when the quarantine hit changes that we been working on for years where made in a weekend. Our tech friendly expansive ministry is reuniting the ex-pats, the homebound, the young, the physically and socially distant, the ones who can’t hear but now can turn up the volume, the ones who can’t walk but now have church delivered, the one who work or play on Sunday morning, let’s not forget this place where God came beside those alone and away from the home. A ladder delivering grace and inviting a connection to God from wherever you are.

 

Virginia City Presbyterian that still has gas light fixtures because they are not convinced electricity might be a fad, hung a video screen in their sanctuary after a unanimous approval from the session so folks weren’t required to touch and pass hymnals and paper. What a faithful response to exile. When I heard that, I asked my echo what the ski conditions in hell were. 

 

I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future. Ralph Abernathy

 

The quarantine is a forced demonstration that God’s house is not built of our traditions, our schemes and empire building but where people stop to rest and find God beside them. Setting up a ladder to heaven where faith climbs and blessing descends.

 

We can keep the faithful attitude of how God is present where we are instead of trying to jam God into where we were. We can all be like my mother-in-law Kathryn who lives in the desert of Sedona on House Rock Road. We can set up our house rock and say remember, God is here. God is with us where ever we stop and look for God. 

 

“He’s Always There”

 

The Lord leads us on

with tender care,

lifting our

burdens to bear

He blesses us

as we pass on,

to what awaits

eternal dawn

Tho we so often

may not see,

He’s always there

and will always be…

 

J. Paul Horgan   “The Poem Painter”

7/17/20   c.

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

What is On Line by Reopening Church Buildings?

How long did Noah and his family shelter in place? Answer below. 

A church pastor told me about being encouraged/pressured/ordered to start having services in the church building again. Here is part of my response as I consider a church reopening for worship before the rest of Nevada.

Section 4 of Directive 013 is hereby amended. Effective May 1, 2020, places of worship may offer services on an in-car or drive-in basis, if these services allow occupants to remain in their vehicles, can be held in a manner consistent with social distancing guidelines, implement precautions intended to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and abide by other guidance promulgated pursuant to this Directive. The prohibition of ten or more persons for indoor services shall remain in effect for the duration that this Directive shall be in effect, unless specifically terminated or renewed by subsequent order. - DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY DIRECTIVE 016  April 29,2020

I don’t know if civil disobedience is something we want to do right now. If not, then with a limit of 10 in worship, I don’t know if reservations will be taken for the 8 people who can join you and the organist or it will be by first come, first served with a full sign on a locked door after #8 comes in. Or by lottery? Or taking turns each week by last name? Doesn’t seem very workable. 

What is the insurance coverage for going against government restrictions if someone gets ill, or someone dies after being with a church goer? Consultation with the insurance folks and a lawyer would be prudent before civil disobedience. If there is a fine or court costs or a suit is the church prepared to pay or it is up to individual session members and the pastor?

What is the public relations plan if and when the church becomes known as a nexus for infection of the community and beyond? Is the congregation okay with the risk of being known as irresponsible with public health?

This tragic outbreak wasn’t a Presbyterian group but it was in a Presbyterian Church and would be heartbreaking to repeat:

A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead

By RICHARD READ SEATTLE BUREAU CHIEF 

Los Angles Times, MARCH 29, 20207:34 PM

What health benefits and protections is the session offering its employees they require to come to work? Is the session prepared to assume the liability for their illness if they go against the governmental order? It might not be covered by the church’s policy. Again, a lawyer and insurance agent would be good to consult. 

Romans 13 is usually cited when we wonder about submitting to a government.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. - Romans 13:1 NRSV

Reading on to verse 10 we see that “Love does no wrong to a neighbor;” I can’t help but believe that would cover not putting our neighbor’s health and life at risk by spreading disease, even a disease we didn’t know we had.

There is the concept that we care about the least of these, in Matthew 25:31-46 NRSV (excerpts below)

I was sick and you took care of me…” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it…that we saw you sick…?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” 

and not to become a stumbling block to the weak by exercising our freedom:

But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling-block to the weak. 1 Corinthians 8:9

If church history is of interest as well as scripture, the story of Reverend Cotton Mather and Onesimus is illuminating on the “God will protect us” or “It is God’s will who lives and dies” beliefs. Our nation went through this debate

in 1721 over smallpox treatment even before we decided to be a nation.

This was not just a health crisis; it was also a theological one. The majority of Puritan clergy regarded the epidemic as divine will…The only explanation for suffering was the wrath of God, and so the only recourse they had was to determine which set of sins had unleashed it, and to find a way to atone. Yet when the sickness hit close to home, Mather began to rethink this position. With his children suddenly showing symptoms he had seen so often when visiting the dying in “venomous, contagious, loathsome Chambers,” he began to wonder:If it was in man’s power to counteract illness through the God-­given gift of the intellect, would it not be wrong to squander grace by failing to do so? 

The Puritans Were America’s First Anti-Vaxxers
The New Republic By PETER MANSEAU

 February 6, 2015

Finally, as Noah shows us, sometimes faith is staying inside sheltered by God; quarantined from the storm outside. 

It rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Noah and his family stayed in the ark for a year until it was safe to come out.

The real question that all churches are going to face is how do we plan to reopen once the Governor says it is OK? In our cases, that will happen when he says 50 or fewer people can gather as long as social distancing is practiced. Last week I sent an email to my session asking the following questions:
1. How can we follow the social distance guidelines in our worship space?
2. Should we require everyone to wear a mask?
3. Should we limit the number of people who can be present at any given time?
4. Since singing requires us to breathe more deeply, should we limit singing in our worship?
5. Will it be safe to hold our coffee time?
6. How can we keep our space clean?
I also asked the session if we should forward these questions to the entire congregation.
So far I have had various responses from “none of these options sound good” to “ Until we are all immunized/vaccinated from COVID-19…I do not see any way to social distance in our current sanctuary space”. I concluded my email by saying, “In all of this, we need to seek God’s will for our church family. Please pray for discernment as we consider how to move forward.”

May 4, 2020 | Pastor Carl

Ryan Landino

Pastor-preacher-priestperson of PCUSA church in northwest IL.
Happy husband, loyal dog lover, aspiring anti-racist, Philly sports phan

Paperbound Ministry

One of the Presbytery’s pastors told me, “We are finding out how many of our people we don’t have email addresses for. So all our email updates and on-line invitations to worship were passing them by.”

With every member becoming homebound the church has pivoted to serve them with long wished for robust online services. Those that can’t or won’t follow the folk to the screened in church are the paperbound.  They are the new overlooked faithful remnant of the church.

What online ramps are needed to let the paperbound enter into the church online?

Shut-in from the world wide web and even email, and denied the in-person networking which connected them with the church, the paperbound are left with the US postal mail and phone calls while in person gatherings are suspended.

What are some churches doing?

• Mailing the online eblasts to folks without email
• Tracking email opens and replies to make sure the emails are being received and read (Mailchimp, Constant Contact and other mass email services provide this tracking) and following up on the unopened or bounced emails of members
• Calling folks not only to see if they are okay but what issues they have with attending on-line worship
• Dusting off and updating a phone tree to communicate to the paperbound
• Mailing a paper copy of the sermon, bulletin or online worship aids especially when they contain prayer concerns and
• Considering installing digital ramps over the many steps to participate on-line   
  • Mailing a DVD with recordings of the worship videos
  • Posting on YouTube that some can get on their smart TVs without a computer
  • Dropping off laptops with webcams or webcams on porches of those with computers and some tech skills but without webcams and microphones
  • Highlighting phone numbers for call-in participation in on-line meetings

What is your church doing for paperbound ministry? Let me know and I’ll update this article

Jesus Wept

 

Weeping over the Whys of life

Jesus Wept
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Click the title above for a mp3 recording 

Audio from Valley Presbyterian Church, on March 8, 2020
edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions; all errors are mine. 

John 11:1-45

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Speaking to a congregation after a pastor candidate decided not to come and meet them.

I don’t know about you, but I always want to know why. I’m nosy that way. And **** in her email – Leigh didn’t tell you. In her email said “personal concerns,” “personal reasons,” something with “personal” in it. And that’s kind of code. The first part is “It’s not about you, it’s about me.” Which is good. So it’s not about you. That’s good. Second part of the code is “Don’t ask.” So the whole “why” thing is kind of shut down for a while. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll talk again in another 30 years, and we can look back and figure out what happened. I don’t know.

But the why. “Why” about ministers, there’s a lot of that. You know, I don’t know about other professions. I don’t know, maybe getting this wherever you work, social service, or working with people on all sorts of things. But even in retail, I guess I get a little. But, boy, when I was a minister, I got a lot of whys. You know? Why are you doing it that way? What kind of minister are you? Why aren’t you doing this? Why haven’t you been here? How come you did not visit there? I was in the hospital; why didn’t visit me. Oh, my god.

I guess I was pretty defensive. And always drawn to this verse in the story, “Jesus Wept”, because it was actually my first sermon was on this verse in the story because I think I knew what was coming Kind of prophetic. Yeah, people are going to be out there criticizing your ministry no matter what you do. Even Jesus got trouble. You know, he had the disciples kerfuffle there was the discussion about to go or not to go, he’s sleeping, he’s not sleeping. But the two sisters just really, really get me. And I emphasize that in the reading because the sisters ask the exact same question. And I don’t think that’s just a cut-and-paste error because they didn’t have that back then, they didn’t just copy the question from one sister to another without updating it.

But they asked the exact same question. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Maybe not a question. More an accusation. And he had two totally different answers, responses to them. Not so much an answer. I mean, Martha comes out, and I guess maybe they’re alone together? Maybe ran out.

I’m thinking disciples, they’re always hanging around, I don’t know if they’re there. But not a crowd, anyway. Socially distant. They had this little theological discussion about Christ and the last days and the dead coming up and, you know, Christ is Lord, and do you believe this, and the faith statement. All in all a very, good seminary quiz answer about what you do when somebody has a crisis of faith.

That’s fine. You know, maybe that’s okay for you. You know, maybe that is a ministry to you. And I’m thinking it was a ministry to Martha, to hear about the faith statement and what we believe and the greatness that everything will even out in the great beyond, and by and by everything will make sense. God works all things for good, and we’ll all be together in heaven. Maybe that’s okay for you, and maybe even I need that sometimes. But in all the big and little griefs of the life, you know, everywhere from losing a pastor candidate to losing a brother, the idea that, well, you know, God’s going to fix it in the end. Doesn’t help right here and now. At least for me.

Then Mary comes out, and we know Mary has a whole crowd with her. The crowd came to comfort Mary. Did you catch that? They didn’t come to comfort Martha, I guess. Martha’s not the easiest person to warm up to, if you’ve been following her in the scriptures. Maybe there was other times she was really gracious and wonderful and had a lot of friends over. But this time they came to comfort to Mary. Maybe that’s an editing error. But still, they all following Mary out. They didn’t follow Martha out.

So there’s a crowd there. Same question. Lord? Is it a question? I think it’s an accusation. I think it’s a statement. Inside the accusation, the criticism, there’s faith wrapped up in there. It’s like faith wrapped in an accusation and given to him, you know, you can’t really say, well, don’t say that. Well, no, because inside the disappointment, there’s hope: “And if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Well, we already know his answer; right? I mean, we had the answer, and it worked for Martha; right? You talk about, yeah, I am the Lord. I bring up all the dead in the end of the time, and all the raising. You believe I’m the Lord and zippy, zowie, you got it done. I got it. I got this. I know this. But it says that Jesus saw her weeping. He saw the crowd. And he began to weep.

Now, that awkward word there, he began to be weeping or whatever that is, that’s a signal. Greek it’s called the aorist tense. They have this little annoying verb tense in Greek that we don’t have in English because we don’t have time to fool around with that stuff. Literally because aorist doesn’t have any time. The aorist verb, it just happened. You know? It’s like when a dish breaks and you ask the kids. They respond: “I don’t know, it just happened.” There’s no time associated with it. There’s no past, present, or future, and there’s no beginning and end. It just happens that in the great time-space continuum there was weeping.

He began to weep. And the crowd, you would think, might have said, what a crappy minister. He should have words of faith and assurance. He should have wonderful things to say, wonderful words of love. He should tell them about the coming raising of the dead, you know, like Martha, which they did not hear. You would think they’d be upset with him for weeping, of all things. Certainly he will never be the President if he cries in public.

But they said, “See how much He loved them.” See how much He loved them.

I know it’s hard for you to believe, but when I was in the ministry, a lot of people couldn’t believe I was a minister. I know it’s hard to believe. In fact, some of them would come up and say, “You don’t act like a minister.” And sometimes that was a compliment, and sometimes it was an accusation. It was kind of hard to tell sometimes where on the spectrum the comment was supposed to land. But “You don’t act like a minister” I got quite a bit. And I also have a book I’m writing, and I know it’ll be published someday, it’s called “Reverend Righteous Snappy Answer to Stupid Religious Questions.” I sure Mad Magazine will come back to publish it.

One of SRQ Stupid Religious Questions is this one: “You don’t act like a minister.” And my response is that is because I’m not acting. I am a minister. Deal with it. This is what a minister looks like. And, you know, I’m sure that women ministers get it more than than I do. Of course, the Christy thing didn’t help at all. But that’s what’s going on here.

You know, when someone dies, or when hopes die – I was really hoping for (the candidate) to come here. I was so excited. I want to know why. Why didn’t that happen? As if, if I knew, it’d be okay. But in reality, if I knew why, I’d still be upset. I’d still be disappointed. Even if she had the absolute most greatest reason in all the world. Maybe she’s engaged to be married, and her husband-to-be doesn’t want to move. That would be probably the best. I don’t know. So I would still be upset.

So why do I want to know why? It’s not going to help me. It’s just going to lead to more questions and problems and upsetness and why do I want to know why? It’s the first temptation; isn’t it? In the Garden of Eden, God said, “Don’t go to that tree. Stay away from that tree.” What do we do? “Why?” And then the snake picks up on that. And the snake says: “Psst. You’ll know why if you eat out of the tree. You’ll be like God. You’ll know good and evil. You’ll know all the whys. Go ahead, eat up there.” Oh, my gosh. That sounds great to us. We want to know why. We eat up. And then the troubles begin. Why?

1995. This is kind of a retrospect of my life, but that’s okay. You’re stuck with me. Ha. 1995 I decided to quit understanding computers. I remember the day. Up to then, from 1976 to 1995, I understood computers. I can understand why things work. I could take them out. I was getting into assembly language. Oh, my gosh. I knew it all. I knew those guys.

And when Win95 came out, especially on this day, when it changed the clock by itself without me, even though I set it the night before, I was so proud. The computer set daylight savings time, so I was an hour off even though I reset the clock. I realized I would never understand computers again. I wouldn’t know why. And I decided to focus on how. How, without knowing why, how can I work with them? How can I get them to do as I do? How can I help other people to get to do with them what I do? How do I live with computers that I do not understand?

And that’s where we’re at. We don’t like to be there. And Jesus, even in the why question about why did Lazarus die, why did – he wasn’t too much on the why. But even in that thing he talked, he talked about not why, but who? The why looks back; doesn’t it? Looks back to the past about things were going and lived back there and cause and effect and all that, and you get all wound up in craziness. And like I said, it doesn’t help here and now. The question is, who is God, and who are we in response to that? How are we going to live then?

The second encounter, with that accusation, that faithful accusation of, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. What kind of God is it that lets someone die? The God that weeps. The God that began to weep, and we don’t know if the weeping ever ends. A God that is always emotionally with us in our sorrow and grief and sadness.

When folks say, “Where was God when this terrible thing happened?,” that God was there feeling every bit of the pain and sadness and hurt and fear and crying along with us. And if we’re good, like the crowd back then, we’ll say, “See how much God loves us.” Not that he fixes stuff, not that he explains things to us, not that he makes all things right in the great by and by. But he loves us enough to weep with us at the sorrows and the unfairness and the evil and the tragedies and the challenges of this life.

So faith, the life of faith, the life of the church, the life of a minister, is not so much about finding out why, or explaining whys. You can’t do it. Hey, I can’t do it. For a 20-year-old computer I can’t tell you why it does things. People ask me that all the time. And I just say “Microsoft.” And that usually is enough. But the question is, for the faithful, work and life today is, given that we have a God who loves us so much to weep along with our tears, how do we live? What do we do? How are we with other people? How do we find to live? And that is a future thing, not a past thing with why why why, but how how how. And it all springs from who in the middle. Who are we as a people, who do we worship as God, will tell us how we live.

We live as a people that are compassionate. We live as a people that seek justice. We live as a people that gets angry when things aren’t the way they should. We live as a people that try to fix wrong. We live as a people that try to give sight to the blind, to free the oppressed, that deliver release to the captives. We’re those kind of people. We’re not saying, well, why are they blind? Why are they captive? Why are they oppressed? Why does God love all that? That’s only important if it figures us how to fix it. How to be faithful in a place we don’t know all the whys and the causes. And yeah, sometimes is weeping with those that weep.

Everytime you hear “politically correct” — consider subsituting “compassionate”

Disturbing trend in our country today. And I find it all summed up in the politically correct, which is used to dismiss any kind of concern or compassion for those that are not like us, or doesn’t experience what we experience. Oh, well, their concerns, that’s just being politically correct. You know, every time you hear that you can substitute the word “compassion,” and it works. Oh, that’s just being compassionate. We are the compassionate ones. Because we follow God, who is compassionate, who has passion with us, who is God with us in our sorrow and heartache. We are those kind of people.

You ever heard of imposter syndrome? Ever hear of that? Yeah, where you think you don’t deserve where you are, what you do, and how you are? And you think everybody’s going to find out one day I’m a fraud? It’s like that dream that you have where you think you’re in school, and you don’t have any of your homework done; and by the way, you’re naked, too. Agh. You know, that kind of dream. Everybody’s had that. Yeah, that one. That fraud, that imposter syndrome, I had that a lot, you know, as a minister because, well, the constant “You don’t act like a minister” didn’t help.

But I had a lot of that as a minister, and I realized how imperfect I was. I mean, I was my worst critic, still am, about how I’m not doing everything that’s right and good and should. And I was talking to my counselor about that. And I was talking about there’s at least two women that admit that I was a major part of why they became a minister. I got one on video, so I brought receipts.

A little deeper than the video clip, we talked a little bit about why I was a good model for entering ministry. Both pointed out to me privately that it wasn’t because I was perfect that they became a minister. Because both of them said, and this is slightly disturbing, both of them said – and these are different states, you know, different churches. Both of them said, “Well, I looked up, and I saw Christy. And I thought, well, if he could be a minister, I could be a minister.” You already felt that. You’re there now. Well, if he could do it, I guess I can do it. I think I may be good. I don’t know.

And she pointed out to me, you know, did you notice that it wasn’t your perfection that brought those women into ministry and to hear the call of God. It wasn’t how perfect you were or your mastery of things, but it was exactly your imperfections, your sincerity and honesty about your limitations and how you didn’t have all the answers, that let them hear the call of God. Wow, earned their money that week, huh, yeah, the big one. Here’s what one says.

And she went on – the second Sunday we were there was 9/11 in her church. And she asked me – I didn’t know who she was. Week 2, I didn’t know anybody. She comes up, she goes, “Are you going to speak about 9/11 in the children’s message?” I go, “Yeah, I’m going to talk to the kids about it.” “I’m not having my kids in church, then.” Off she goes. I go, well, hello to you. You know.

And we went from that, over the year, the 18 months I was there as interim, that a year from then her and I led a remembrance service with communion and multimedia for the community that night for 9/11. And then she went on from that to go to seminary, become a minister, get a church, and become the editor of Presbyterians Today, the PC(USA) magazine. And here’s what she said as I left that church.

“On a more personal level, I find that you bring an honest vitality to the faith that I haven’t experienced before. You make it something to live rather than something to ponder from the pew. More importantly, you managed to do it without overwhelming earnestness, sappy sentimentality, or condescending judgment. Your approach feels fresh, straightforward, and comfortable. I will miss that.”

And I really treasure that, obviously. Something to live, and not something to ponder from the pew. Something to figure out how to be faithful instead of struggling with the whys and the wherefores. That’s faith. That’s what we’re called to do.

Amen.

Jesus Wept

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