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

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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

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

John 20:19-31

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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!

Unity

When Rights Are Left To Others

Unity
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from Zoom worship for Lee Vining & Bishop Valley Presbyterian Church February 7, 2021

I Corinthians 9:16-23

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When Larry King asked the comedian George Carlin about the humor of Andrew Dice Clay, the Diceman, that made fun of women, ethnic minorities, queer folk, anyone that was not white, male, abled-bodied, heterosexual. He talked how he was different than the vulgar humor Andrew Dice Clay provided. Carlin believed that comedy was about “punching up”, not punching down. He prefers to make fun of the white, abled-bodied, rich, privileged, powerful men in the world. Punch up the social economic scale.

The punching down starts at 8:57 (should begin there) and ends about 90 seconds later. (The interview continues.)

That was 30 years ago.

We seen a lot of change in the last year. As Joey Lee, the EP of San Jose Presbytery observed in April 2020, churches have made more changes in the last month then he could get them to do in 30 years. I am reminded of a sweet 80-year-old who proudly told me when I commented that she had seen a lot of change in her life, “Yep, seen a lot of change and I was against every one of them!”

One of the changes for me as I’ve been out of my regular circles of friends and good church people is to consider the folks not like me. Me, a white, male, cisgender, married, fairly able, employed person and consider the experience of those not like me.

I used to hear in our Corinthians reading unity and how we are all the same. Maybe even be like Stephen Colbert’s character on “The Colbert Report” who would declare “I don’t see race.” But this year, the reading changed…or more accurately I changed. I thought about what groups Paul, the freeborn, educated, privileged Jewish male Roman citizen chose to list in his unity….

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.

For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

A slave, an immigrant Jew, an outsider, and a person with disabilities walk into a scripture. Sounds like the setup for a Diceman quadruple play for some punch down humor. Paul could have chosen other folks to highlight unity if that was the message: Romans, the rich, the strong, or just “I don’t see race-we are all the same.” If all lives matter is all that matters, did it matter that Paul chose those suffering and outcasts as the other to become as one with?

Some have seen approbation in Paul here, claiming another group’s experience as one’s own. If you reject approbation as a made-up liberal problem stay with me, I have an option. Just think of stolen valor when a person claims military service or honors they have not earned. Try to imagine folks valuing their experience and struggles just as folks rightly value the sacrifice of those who have served their country. Same issue, the only different is how we value what is stolen.

In context this identification with the downtrodden follows Paul’s claiming he has every right to be paid for his preaching. (YAY!) even though he declines to be compensated. (rats—so close) In our time, we might raise at least an eyebrow at the privilege of the wealthy Paul to choose not to be paid for the labor, like unpaid internships at Wall Street firms, that’s free labor is an option most people cannot afford to give or have taken. Is it noble to give up what you do not need or even miss? Maybe it is just not being greedy. Avoiding a vice is not a virtue.

Throughout this section of Corinthians Paul claims his privilege while rejecting it. Paul tells the Corinthians that I could, I should, I have every RIGHT to be paid…but I do not charge. I am freeborn…but I choose to be a slave. I have a get out of jail free card signed by Christ…but I choose to be under the law. I am part of the in crowd…but I choose to stand outside. I am healthy and hardy…but I choose to be with the weak or we might say disabled.

Paul could preach that all he is as fans of the Expanse might say, the boss man not the slave of all, that he is the Jew of Jew, Times Pharisee of the Year, that the law did not apply to him, he could do anything because when you are faithful: they let you. Paul could say we owed him for his great work. Some would cheer this Glory Gospel of Superhero Paul who is Big Time.

These Anti-Paul folk would preach about their own rights for their great accomplishments not their responsibilities to the needs of others. The Anti-Pauls would grumble about the disabled getting the best parking, about affirmative action hires, about being forced to give up their FREEDUMB by wearing a mask because others might get sick or die.

• Yet none would trade reliable limbs for better parking.
• No white person seeks a skin treatment to be black to get that sweet affirmative action.
• No one refuses a ventilator because of freedom from obedience to those medical meddlers. A vent down your throat is a worse than a mask over your nose and mouth. I know.

I don’t get out much so took to twitter to see what folks are saying. I did not even search before I found someone who has met some Anti-Paulites and writes:

I was not prepared for how many people are willing to let others die rather than suffer even a moment’s inconvenience. I have always known these people existed. I have always understood that this sort of callous cruelty was as much a part of human nature as is nobility and sacrifice. I was not prepared for how many of these people there are.

It’s been almost a year. I’ve watched former friends, neighbors, acquaintances evidence this complete inability to comprehend why we should engage in communal self-sacrifice for the sake of one another. I am still reeling. I have had ample time to absorb it. I still can’t.

Joseph Brassey

I hope we never do absorb Anti-Paul thinking.

What would Paul’s attitude look like? Where even cats can put their rights aside for their responsibilities to others. Watch the give and take in this video.

How about a human example? Well, we can find grace anywhere. As Mr. Rogers’ mother advised children in crisis, “Look for the helpers.” There is grace even in Zoom glitches: the blessing and curse of this pandemic liturgical season. Zoom is limited to 100 connections under their standard license. St. Peter’s Episcopal knew that the online funeral of their beloved deacon Betty would draw over 100 from their congregation, family, and all the communities she had blessed in her life. So they bought the 500 person license…and were unaware that they had to enable it online. The funeral came and hit 100 just minutes before the start, and Zoom was closed to others.

Now everyone was invited to the service: technically they had the link and passcode, and emotionally they had the relationship with Betty to be there. EVERY RIGHT to stay…but when folks realized there were people outside who could not get in…without being asked folks unmuted and used Betty’s signature phrase, last heard from her hospice bed, LOVE ALL Y’ALL to say goodbye and log off to make room for someone else. A staggered chorus arose of folks giving up their rights to make room in that sacred privileged space for strangers. So Betty. So Paul. I checked back later to see if there was room and pushed the count from 99 to 100. I got off again. I realized that the good folks were committed to keeping one space open, like Elijah’s empty chair at Seder, so that if someone who needed to be there, they could be. Every time the count got to 100, someone gave up their privileged place and logged off. “LOVE ALL Y’ALL” in word and deed.

For the Sake of the Gospel, for the good news to be good news, for Christianity to be a blessing and not a curse Paul tells us that and lives out a freedom and privilege that is not for him and his but for others, the wage slave, society’s outcasts, a Jews a religious minority-immigrants kicked out of Rome, the disabled. Losers by society standards that Paul calls us and shows us to use our power, our privilege, our birthrights to include. We are blessed so that others can win those blessings as well.

Unity: When Rights Are Left

A Hacker's Perspective

Article by Christy Ramsey

My college completely replaced its computer system. Gone were punch cards and the stacks of paper cascading through metal benches. Instead plastic globes embedded with shiny glass and keyboards drew me into their orbit and I spent years exploring the world of Digital Equipment Corporation and its PDP 11/70

The very name Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) invited investigation.  Their computer systems were named, “PDP” which stood for Peripheral Data Processor, which is a description of a computer (as was “digital equipment”). But, bankers didn’t give loans to computer companies when DEC was starting up, so the computer makers at DEC got financing for Peripheral Data Processors by Digital Equipment Corporation instead. They gave the banks an Easter Egg with a computer company hidden inside.

DEC PDP 11/70 its operating system programs were written in BASIC. 101 BASIC Computer Games indeed! Sweet. Even better, the sysops were learning the new system along with the students. The race between who could explore and claim the uncharted system first was on! The crown of King of Computer Lab passed back and forth daily, sometimes hourly as new exploits were set free by student pioneers and then corralled by the settlers in the staff office.

PIP

DEC continued the word play by naming their system’s copy program PIP, Peripheral Interchange Program, (never say the c-word!) Lazy students discovered that instead of laboriously retyping a friend’s programming assignment printout into their own account, they could just PIP and Print! In minutes, the homework was at the printer with their own account number attached. More time for creative computing or fraternity fun. 

Sadly, the student copying was poorly hidden, having a dozen programs turned in with the same formatting and variable names soon tipped off the professors. One got the system administrators to remove student access to PIP. Back to typing from printouts while parties were rocking and unexplored computer vistas beckoned? NO! Remember: the operating system programs, including PIP, were written in BASIC. I could program in BASIC. So I started working on a BASIC program to copy files from one account to another.

I thought I was busted when a professor shoulder surfed my work. I tensed as he pointed to the heart of my copying code on the screen. He said “Good job. You need LINE INPUT instead of INPUT here”. Hackers help each other along the way. After applying his addition the code worked. I lowered the permissions so that anyone could execute it and PIP was back! His help was multiplied to help many tired typists.

I kept the name PIP to reduce the mental load for some of our easily confused computer using students (They often were coming from or going to football practice, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.) Keeping the name the same eased “customer support” requests but also attracted the attention of a system administrator. She burst into computer lab demanding, “WHO IS RUNNING PIP?!” I calmly turned to her and confessed, “I am. It’s my own copying program since the system PIP doesn’t work anymore.” As if I didn’t know why “it didn’t work anymore”. She glared at me. There was no rule about writing programs; that is what we were supposed to be learning. To break her stare, I offered a compromise: “I could change the name….” She left the room. In a couple of days, PIP access was quietly restored to students. Hackers fix what doesn’t work.

LIMITS

In the late seventies, computer storage space was expensive and therefore scarce. To encourage students to be thrifty yet allow them to work on large projects, storage limits were only checked and quotas enforced only when a user logged out. One could work with large data files and save temporary files while logged in at the computer terminal, but users the sign out process checked to make sure you were under your storage quota before logging off.

The Computer Club had wrangled a shared account for games which was constantly just below the quota limit. This meant the last person out of the account before the lab closed had to delete saved games or scratch files or even (horrors) game programs so the account could be logged off and locked. At closing time one night, I was dreading the shared club account cleaning, deleting files is not a hacker value, so I raced to get off the club shared account before a friend could close out, so I could stick her with the custodian job. Don’t judge me, she was doing the same, both of us smirking at each other as we knew without speaking the rules and the stakes of the contest.

Well, we thought we knew the stakes, we both logged off without clearing out the account! What? We were way over the limit. We left the closed lab swearing to each other we had not deleted files. The next day, before logging in, we did a directory of the account and confirmed we had closed the account while over quota. Could nearly simultaneous log outs defeat the quota check? The first college level Synchronized Keyboarding Team was born. Soon curious students wondered at our practice sessions: two students with their fingers hovering over RETURN (not ENTER back then) counting down before stabbing the key on GO! After practicing, any pair of us could log out over quota every time.

After betting the computer director we could sign off while over quota, we showed him what a little teamwork could do. He paid up and got DEC engineers to fly in and fix the bug. Due to our revelation, every DEC system in the nation was patched. No longer did PDPs simply check to see if any other users were logged in as part of the log out process. This method allowed two signing off users to “vouch” for each other concurrently. Instead, the system set a counter that tracked the number of users logged into an account, the log off decremented the counter, and the user who pulled it down to zero had to be under quota to log out. The supervisor sent a memo to every user telling them their over quota days were over. We didn’t mind, we didn’t need the space and it was rude to take scarce resources belonging to all. Besides…we had other ways around the quota if we needed them.

PRESIDENTIAL PARDON

Remember those teletype terminals? The metal benches that squatted over piles of paper? The college administration decided to establish a satellite computer lab in a classroom building about 500 yards from the computer lab which was in the basement of the library. Not wanting to waste equipment or buy additional Televideo terminals, those sad old paper spewing benches with keyboards were exiled to a large closet under the stairs in the classroom building. They were linked by wire thrown into a shallow trench between the library and closet which was then covered with dirt. No grounding. No shielding. No conduit. No joy. Every time a leaf rustled or clouds bumped, the connection was lost and had to be reset. Students soon learned that the steampunk single line limited terminals were now not just slow, but often dead. No one used them. The staff complained about the work it took to keep old terminals in any empty room connected. They were ignored. I guess having a second computer lab to brag about without any additional cost, was worth grumbling from the support staff even if it was unused.

The satellite lab did have two advantages. One was no waiting or time limit for terminal use. No one was there. This was also the second advantage. No. One. Was. There. Not only were students not in the building, there was NO staff in the evening. So no one shoulder surfing your code (see above). The computer aides and supervisors were 500 yards and four doors away. So even if you popped up on the status monitor, you had plenty of time for a getaway assuming your activities were worth leaving the comfy library to investigate. Faced with chasing one stray or shepherding the corralled herd, supervisors rarely left the ranch house.

One night I was working on a project in my private computer lair. The door opens. This has never happened. Stay calm, someone is probably just lost. It was the president of the college. This may be bad, I thought, he probably isn’t lost. But I smiled and said “Hello”.  Why not? I wasn’t breaking any rules as far as he knew. Mostly, because they hadn’t made computer rules yet.

The President boomed out a way too loud greeting for a nearly empty closet: “Hello! Glad to see you working in here. How is the lab working out?” I bet he was glad to see me. I wondered how many times he had found an empty room, probably every other time. I thought, here’s my chance to speak truth to power and to practice the Hacker ethic when caught, don’t retreat, charge!

“Well”, thinking quickly, “they aren’t really used. You see, there is no supervision here. If a student gets stuck there is no one to help.” I wanted to frame the lack of supervision as a lost opportunity for help and learning for this poor lonely student, me…not have him wonder what other opportunities I could find with no supervision. I also was hoping for some extra hours since I was one of the computer aides. Maybe I could get paid to be in my private computer lair. Go big or go home. And I lived on-campus, so home was not an option.

He left abruptly. It was only after he left that I noticed I wasn’t breathing.

The next day, I came into the main computer lab in the library and found the benches were back! The supervisor told me he didn’t understand it, he had been complaining for weeks with no result, but today the old terminals were just brought back from the classroom building without explanation.

I was happy to explain. “Oh, I told the president last night the classroom lab just wasn’t working out. You’re welcome.” I had lost my private computer lair, but the look on his face was almost worth it. I didn’t investigate whether the terminals returned so lone students could get help or to prevent lone students from helping themselves.

IT’S A TRAP!

I went back to my college about a decade after the exploits and had a tour of the completely rebuilt computer center. I pressed him about the current balance between freedom and security. He admitted that there was one way a student could not only get banned from the computer but expelled from the college: if a “password grabber” program was found on their account.

I didn’t have to ask what that was. I had written the first one on the system. Thankfully they had not thought to make that rule back then. Although, I wondered if I should ask if they would name the rule after me, like other alumni had plaques or buildings dedicated to them. Probably best I didn’t pursue the honor.

The password grabber started with ringing bells on the printer. Some student watching the system status screens discovered that printing was done with something then called “pseudo-keyboards”, “virtual” would be the term today. These keyboards could be attached to devices other than your own terminal, like a printer, and control that device. The first exploit was to send ^G (ASCII Code 07) to a pseudo-keyboard attached to the printer. In the ASCII standard, ^G is defined as BEL, which made a beep or ding: a BELL. Later, I learned how to rapidly turn on and off the single toned beep, to match the frequency of notes and play a little melody, but for now, we were limited to trying to time the commands to have the printer play a single note version of Jingle Bells, more or less. The Line Printer Jukebox effort did not get good reviews among the music critics trying to program in the lab.

After the complaints became greater than the giggles, which was nearly instantaneously, I thought about other system devices that pseudo keyboards could be attached. I realized that devices included every terminal including the ones the staff used to log-in as administrator. In fact, pseudo-keyboards could do more with terminals than ring a bell, they could display text: like the text in a standard log off message and the system login prompt. Since the system login program was written in BASIC, the display output could be matched by a BASIC program. I knew BASIC. With INPUT replaced by INKEY$ for password entry (so “stars” could be displayed instead of typed password characters) a write of the entered credentials to a file, and after printing the standard “Invalid login. Please try again.”, an exit to the real login program: I had a password grabber.

Since there was no fear of expulsion in those days, and I had a friendly helper/competitor relationship with the staff; I showed the director the abilities of pseudo-keyboards beyond beeping the printer. This added some drama to his every login. From then on he started every login by first savagely jamming down CTRL-C and filling the screen with ^Cs, sometimes with a victorious chuckle. After all, a ^C stops the execution of processes and BASIC programs such as my password grabber, which then returns the terminal to system control.

I was a little sad at the brief life of my password grabber. ^C seemed a little like cheating, it was too easy to break a program. (Breaking password grabbers is why some systems require CTRL-ALT-DEL, a descendent of ^C, before logging on today.)

In my sadness, I wondered why system programs written in BASIC didn’t break with ^C. Searching the manuals I found that the system offered a ^C trap, that sent execution to a special handler in the program instead of stopping the program. Another ^C would break the handler execution…unless the first thing the handler did was re-enable the ^C trap. I never used the ^C proof program or shared it, I didn’t want to risk it getting out. Beside it would have ruined the joy the director’s login finger dance gave us. He was happy he outsmarted me. I was happy knowing he just thought he did.

I was glad to have the opportunity and time to explore a new computer system. By being helpful on various projects, sharing what I found with the administrators, and even working at the computer center my hacking was viewed as exploring and learning not as a threat to system security, other students or the college. I hope the hacker ethos of helping others use computer and other systems even better than their makers planned continues to make on-line and real life more efficient, helpful, happy and secure.

The author can be found at the nonprofit ComputerCorps in Nevada recycling, and repairing old electronics with other Golden Geeks and training the next generation of hackers.

from the Summer 2018 issue of 2600 Magazine: The Hacker Quarterly