ExtraChristy

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

We are entering the world of the fruit of Spirit. The works of the flesh are breaking down in this hyperconnected, world. It used to be works you made, what you did. Who you were, how you behaved, didn't matter as much. It was nobody's business, and outside of an expensive private investigator, it couldn't be anyone's business. Now leave an angry phone message and it is on the internet. Treat a girl rotten and get on the who not to date web site. Even minor things are recorded, I remember grossing out a friend of mine: “according to the Rotary's web site you have been a guest at Rotary five times in three years, when are you going to join?”

The book titled How by Dov L. Seidman argues that when everyone can do things cheaper, faster, better than the next person when everything becomes a commodity, HOW you doing something is the only thing that sets you apart from everyone else. In this view, Google isn't a search engine for finding web pages, it is an reputation management system. Google itself is almost spiritual in its motto “Don't Be Evil” which came from a desire not to make rules to direct individual actions on WHAT they should do in various circumstances, “Be on time for meetings” but HOW to act in all situations.

Wikiopedia talks about Google:

Google also falls victim to general criticism of companies that promote their corporate social responsibility, since many economists and business leaders believe that a corporation's first duty is to maximize shareholder value. This point of view holds that corporate social responsibility is either cynical and empty self-promotion (if the company's social responsibility claims are false), or detrimental to shareholder value (if the claims are true). Google, however, claims a third position, that a Don't Be Evil culture is a prerequisite to building shareholder value in the long term for a company that requires public trust to achieve its mission.

I maintain that the works of the flesh is greed, taking short-term profits. Short cuts to quick profits. The pay-off for fornication is quick and fleeting, the same with drunkenness, anger, quarrels, jealousy. All have there counterparts in the corporate world where we are seeing vast changes from the abuses of the Enron scandles and others. For the whats that used to make profits, the widgets, the cars, the people who answer the phone, all are made quicker, cheaper, and more efficient by someone else. People are now looking at how companies work, not what they produce. For the whats are becoming the same.

IBM got out of the computer making business, international business machines, and is now in the consulting business, trading making WHATs into selling their HOWs. Ever take an camera to an Art Fair. Don't do it. A picture of a painting can be copied at a photoshop, enlarged, and hung on the wall in four hours. Next month it could be $19.99 at the discount store. WHATs are becoming less important.

The world of the flesh is failing. It destroys itself. Instead comes the world of the spirit. Note there is only one fruit of the spirit. Not several fruit“S” (You can amaze and astound your friends with that trivia. Many gifts of the Spirit, just one fruit of the Spirit. ) If you are of the spirit, all these flow from the Spirit. It is the “Do be evil” idea of Goggle. All from there instead of from rules on rules.

To live and guided by the Spirit is to work on these items. Dov Seidman talks about it as trust. It is good idea. He has a bio-chemical and anthropological argument for using trust, but we have a better one. Living and being guided by the spirit is at its heart. The belief that the world is good and it is headed for a good purpose. Christians see this in the creation story, were God calls the creation good. We also see it in God's love for people shown in Jesus Christ. It you know the outcome is good, if you believe in God's providence, then it is easier to be patient. If you trust in God to work things out, you can have more self-control. If you don't look at the short term profit, the instant gain, the individual pay-off but the spirit of God in the kingdom, you will see more fruit of the Spirit.

Look at the Gospel…here is a disciples what to take short term profit on their mission to discipline the ones who rejected them. Jesus takes the longer term view…he doesn't punish folks who aren't ready for him yet. He has patience and self-control. What if he did that today? The films would be on youTube and the news, the bloggers would crucify him, and his message and his reputation would be ruined. The reputation latter is climbed one rung at a time, but when you fall, you slide all the way down.

Time and again, I've seen it is it not the incident, the offense, that causes the uproar but the reaction to it but the individual or the institution. And how often have you heard it said, “It isn't what was done, but how it was done.” The flesh is all about “Just Do It” get it done, self-indulgence, short cuts, and short term. The Spirit is about longer term values, about other people, relationship where trust and reputation matter and flow. Google, if they were more theological, might be tempted to replace, don't do evil with the positive, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”.

How would this work out? What would a world, a culture, an economy based on the fruit of the Spirit instead of the self-indulgent works of the flesh look like? It would be one not based on rules and laws, for the Spirit is not subject to rules and laws. How can you legislate trust, patient, generosity, kindness? If all lived by the Spirit, we wouldn't need some many laws, Jesus and the epistle today says they can all be reduced to one, “Love your neighbor as yourself”

What about the abusers? Rules are useful for minimums, for safety to set the floor. But not for motivation or inspiration or the ceiling as Dov Siedman says. You cannot make a rule to be the best for one cannot envision all the possibilities and situations and cover them with rules.

The wave was invented in October of 1981 at an Oakland A's game by Krazy George, the world's sexiest professional cheerleader. Siedman says getting a stadium full of thousands of fans to cooperate and make the wave cannot be done by hiring them (who has that money?), scaring them, (who can frightening folks across a stadium?), or making a rule that everyone has to jump up at the right time? It can only be done with trust in the community. That is how the Spirit transforms, by transformation relationships and people into communities that help one another, that see the bigger picture of a mighty wave of humanity when flesh self-indulgent folks only wonder what's jumping up and down going to do for me?

Be a part of the wave. Live and be guided by the spirit.

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Luke 4:1-13

Do you look like your Driver's License picture? How about your passport photo? We are more concerned about identity than we used to be. We show our driver's license so many times at airports that people have taken to just wearing them around their necks. Visiting in some areas of the hospitals in Akron requires signing in with a guard to unlock the hospital door.

All of these have to do if you are allowed to be where you want to go. Does this person have the stickers and stamps to be delivered to this place? It is a checking of the labeling to see if you are safe for the intended use.

We need an identification card for our hearts. We have one for our faces, but none for our heart. A card we could pull out and show to others and look at ourselves that would tell us who we are and whose we are, not just whether we can fly in an airplane. For the root of all temptation is denying who you are…

The devil tempts Jesus three ways: with materialism…having every thing you want, but not anything you need, bribing people into faith; with power…commanding people into faith; with fame…magically dazzling people into faith. Jesus counters each of these temptations, one of which includes a scripture from the Psalms with responses from the scripture, from Deuteronomy. Jesus looks at his identification card, to see who he is as Savior.

Am I a savior whose purpose is satisfy bodily hunger? He looks at scripture with the story of the hunger in the wilderness and provision of manna by God, to find that God's people do not live by bread alone, that filling our bellies with bread will not give us the life he came to offer.

Am I a savior who commands by state authority and political power? He looks at scripture and finds that a divided loyalty is not allowed. Serving principalities and powers of this world is not the way to be the savior of the world. Only God is to be worship and served. That just isn't who he is.

Am I a savoir who dazzles the crowd and wins loyalty by my fame and entertainment value? He looks at the scripture, the paper that tells him who he is, and sees that we do not use God as a stage prop.

When you have been tempted by the need to succeed and forget who you are, what words have strengthened you and reminded you of your true identity? (The words could be lines from
Scripture, from someone wise, or from something you have read.) What words have you shared with others to remind them of who they are? — paragraph from Thoughtful Christian Lent series

When my son was born, I wanted to name him Robert, partly to honor an Uncle of Bette Lynn's but partly because Robert could be Bob, Bobby, Rob, Robby, so many variations. While he was growing up, people would ask him if they could call him Bob, or Robby..his answer was always the same, “My name is Robert.” He wouldn't say Yes or No, just who he was, “My name is Robert.” always the full sentence. He knew who he was.

A powerful way to raise a child, where television and media bombards them with images of who they should be is to remind them of who they are. We are Ramseys, we don't lie. Ramsey don't hit..ever.

When the tempter, asked Jesus who he was, he said, “I am God's, directed and defined by God's word.” For tempter is a translation of Diabolos… one who throws things around. Toss everything, so everything is out of place and doesn't work. Bible verses are thrown into temptations to escape God's will, evil is shuffled to seem as good, confusion reigns, chaos replaces creation, which God called into being and declared Good.

Tom Long teaches preaching at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and tells a story about a high school play, lovingly prepared by a dedicated teacher/director. Lines were memorized, movements blocked out, lighting arranged, music rehearsed, all was ready for the big night of the show.

All went well until one of the actors forgot his line. The earnest new director whisphered his part, but he didn't hear her. After an uncomfortable silence, he just made up a line. The audience laugh, the tension relieved…but then, encouraged by the reaction, he made up another and another…until the play was broken. And off-stage, you could see the director with tears in her eyes.

The one who throws everything all over the place is forever tempting us to make up our own lines, make them up for success with the crowd. All we can do in order to resist such temptation is reach into the tradition and remember who we are, remember our lines as it were. — from Thoughtful Christian Lent series

AUTHOR

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

The child was fussing, so the mother had to leave the older child in the ice cream store to attend to the younger crying one. Now it was a wrestling match trying to get the child in the origami of the belts of the car seat. After a few minutes the older child came out and got in the car and started squealing for another reason. There in front of them was a glorious rainbow stretching completely across the sky. The mother had missed it, it was blocked by the flaying arms and legs, and drowned out by screams and squeals.

Appropriate symbol for that time in a parent's life, one of God's care and consistency, which God's freely promises to preserve the world.

What gets between us and the glory of God?

Other Things
We can keep busy with work, keeping our mind on our labor even when we are home. Letting work keep us away from God. For students, they can be so wrapped up in school that there is no room to see God. For seniors, the distractions of home and health can keep our minds far from the things of God. For parents, the demands and needs of children can pull a veil over time with God. Sometimes it is impossible to close the door for a well deserved bubble bath, much less time for prayer.

An occasional snowstorm helps break our busyness cycle. Routines are disrupted; Color Our Rainbow had only 8 children on Valentine's Day, about a tenth of what they normally have to take care of. Stacy told me, “It's great! I'm getting all kinds of work done!” Severe weather can rip away the veils of activity and schedule that we have draped ourselves in and expose us to a winter wonderland transformed from ordinary to heavenly, if we are ready to see it.

When your schedule is bumped, or cancellations come your way; consider it is a gift from God and nudge to look up from that which screams for attention. It doesn't need to be the rainbow of God's presence.

Avoidance
Another veil that keeps us from the glory of God is our avoidance of times and places that we might be God. From a private prayer time, to Men of Luke 15 Bible Study, worship, to funeral services, or Ash Wednesday service, we can avoid the presence of God.

Folks like to quote evangelist Billy Sunday, “Going to church won't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage will make you a car.” Yet it is still true, that if you are a car, a garage is a good place to go to keep in running order. It takes a lot more work to be a car, if you avoid the protection and help that a garage can give.

Petrified
We can take a break in our busyness and be physically present and yet still have veils over the glory of God. We can cover up newness and tie down possibility, making sure that more light will never break free. Here is an account of Pastor John Robinson's final address to his congregation we know as the Pilgrims upon their departure to the New World, 1620:

We were now, ere long, to part asunder; and the Lord knoweth whether ever he should live to see our faces again. But whether the Lord had appointed it or not; he charged us, before God and his blessed angels, to follow him no further than he followed Christ: and if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it, as ever we were to receive any truth by his Ministry. For he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word.

Where is God's light breaking forth from his holy Word? I can't wait to see the film “Amazing Grace” about the idealist William Wilberforce who maneuvers his way through Parliament in 18th century England, endeavoring to end slavery in the empire. There is an example of more light breaking forth from the holy Word. What light awaits the 21st century?

Seen God
I have been close to God a few times. I was on a camp-out. Running all over the place at night. When I got up the next morning, I found that my lens was missing from the glasses. I despaired of finding it. It could be anywhere. But I looked, not want to come home with glasses that needed repaired. I looked and looked, had others look. I gave up and prayed. Just stopped where I was and prayed that I would find my lens. I opened my eyes and saw some reflection on the grass right were I was looking with my head bowed. I stopped breathing. Could it be? I reached for it, thinking it was a trick of the early morning dew. It was my lens.

Have you had moments like that? When God poked you and you giggled like the Pillsbury dough boy in the commercial?

For the glory of God, you have to pause, pray, and peer. Make room for God's glory, remove the veils that cover his presence from us and you will see rainbows that God is with us, even when we are not with God.

Isaiah 6:1-8
A few weeks ago I talked about this verse in ExtraChristy, my blog for a weekly devotion that is mailed to the homebound and emailed to several dozen others.

Church people talk funny. In a way we are like foreigners, our homeland is in heaven and we don't exactly fit into a secular society. When our church elects officers, we “stand” for election, never “run” for office. (The image of a Presbyterian elder running does seem odd.)

Rather than chase office, gathering handshakes from special interests and bestowing baby kisses of favors, church folk traditionally are called by others to stand before their spiritual brothers and sisters, for better or worse, as they are, a sinner forgiven by God; ready to serve if it seems right to others.

The call of Isaiah is similar to God's calling of other prophets to serve God and God's people, except he is more willing than most. (Jonah even ran away from the call!) No campaigns, no nominating speech, no talking points, no endorsements, only a willingness to stand and serve, “Just As I Am”.

It is tough to do, we look around at the situation, our own “land of unclean lips” and say: this isn't going to be an easy call to answer. So we have perfectly good excuses and reasons, just like all prophets: Isaiah's was he wasn't good enough. He wanted the holy to leave him be, an man of unclean lips in a land of people with unclean lips.

There are woes around us. We do live among people of unclean lips. A couple of you were with me last week at the Linda Theater for the meeting of the business owners. When Bill Lawhorn asked how many had been robbed nearly fifty hands went up. In our parking lot we had a car broken into while a mother was picking up her children at Color Our Rainbow. The metal grates around the trees out front were stolen last fall and a set of shelves disappeared from Charlie's Place.

We can join the chorus of woes. I was visiting last week and one of the homebound told me she was worried about someone because she seemed to “let it grow on her” and had given up. We can do that, we would have every right to do that. We, like Isaiah, have seen the horrific gap between the holy should be and the unclean of what is. The gulf between what God is and what life is seems too large for someone like us to bridge. Woe is us! Leave us be! It is too much.

Paul talks about his call in our Corinthians reading. “The least of all apostles, the last of all, unfit to be called an apostle”. Paul had persecuted the church, looking to kill the unpatriotic blasphemers who were following this Christ. He was on his way to do just that, when God stopped him and called him. Paul or Saul as he was called then, had a hard time accepting his call and faced a understandably suspicious church. Could God have called someone else was probably a question both Paul and fearful Christians that met him asked themselves.

Well, lets go fishing. That is a good thing to do when times get tough, get away from it all in a low stress sport like fishing. Fishing is basically extreme waiting. I mean if the sport was serious about getting fish, I think it would be called catching. In our gospel, we have professional fishermen, after working all night and listening to a sermon, being told to put their nets out again. Lots has changed in the millenniums since this story, but telling a fisherman how to fish is as bad idea now as it was now. Peter says, as we expect, we have already tried and we are tired. What we don't expect, is that he puts down his nets one more time. He gets out of the boat, out of his comfort zone…and a tremendous catch that fills the boats is the result.

Now, like Isaiah before him, and Paul after him, Simon Peter turns away from Jesus' call: for he is a sinful man. He too has seen the difference between where God is and where he is and has given up being able to cross that gap. Jesus words to Peter does not deny he is a sinful man, any more than God denied that Isaiah was a man of unclean lips. “Be not afraid, I will make you…”
Isaiah, Peter, and Paul. Great leaders for God. None of them were worthy of the job. None of them sought the job. All of them knew it was ridiculous to even try. Yet when they were touched, but a hot coal, a healing hand, or a reassuring word from God, they realize as Paul says “By the Grace of God I am what I am”. We are not to look at the people of the land, the web sites marking burglary, the hands raised in shared pain, the empty nets of years of effort, but at God.

Guess what? God made Isaiah good enough. Unclean lips; God cleans them! Saul the persecutor becomes Paul the apostle, Simon the fisherman becomes Peter the rock on which the church is built. What is holding you back from answering God's call to service, in the church, in your community or in your family? Guess what? God can touch you and burn away what is holding you back, turn you around, put aside your fears that the emptiness of your life is all there is for you.

How to do this? First, listen for God's call. Where is God giving you an opportunity? A couple of people have answered the call for VBS? Do you hear that? Others have stepped forward for outreach and mission with the God Squad. Others have been called to face down pounds of potatoes for Dinner Committee…others have volunteered for Kairos and reached out to those in prison, others have agreed to be elected to session and deacons.

Second, listen to your fears. Tell God about them. It is okay to have doubts. I believe that anyone that wants a call that is sure they are doing God's will is disqualified. For all the holy ones I see struggle with God's call; recognize that they are not even close to living up to what is required and fight off fear of the holy. Tell God about that, talk to your friends and family, write in your journal, for God listens, God knows that if you were where you were he wanted you to be, he wouldn't have to call you.

Third, put the first two together, let God listen and answer your fears. Realize that it “is not you, but the grace of God this is with you”. Accept God's grace and help in the different forms in appears, whether it is through your own spiritual growth, a change in circumstances or the aid of others. Let the burning coal touch your lips, become fit for God, get out of the comfort of the boat; and former enemies become brothers and sisters, emptiness is filled. In faith, follow where God leads you, do not stay where your fear leaves you.

When one person in a General Assembly discussion group claimed that serving in the Presbyterian Church headquarters was like being on the Titanic, I rose to the challenge and asked people to pick their position on the PCUSA Titanic cruise.

1. Playing in the band
2. Rearranging deck chairs
3. Heading for the life boats
4. Filling officer vacancies
5. Pulling on the oars
6. Drilling holes in the bottom
7. Bailing out the water
8. Using the Bailing water to baptize
9. Looking for fun activities with Julie from the Love Boat

I had nine and only need one more for a top ten. Then, things changed, I got this reply: The good news, Christy, is that for many of us, the best analogy for Christians and the church (insofar as boats go, anyway) is that we should have been in the water all the while. That's where the rest of the people are.

Come on in where the people are, where God is calling you, the water's fine…or it will be by the grace of God.

Copyright (c) 2007 Advanced permission is given for non-profit, for-prophet use of the above at no charge as long as it is reproduced unedited with notices and copyright intact. Written copies are provided after they are preached as a courtesy for the personal, private, appreciative use of the congregation of Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church, their families and friends to support the ministry of Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church and its pastor the Rev. J. Christy Ramsey. Join us Sundays! 8:15 Traditional Worship and 10:15 Blended. Mingle in our Gathering Room between services and take advantage of Christian Education opportunities.

Here I am with the Ecunet Traveling Stole. It started its journey in October of 1992. Various members of EcuNet religious computer conferencing group have passed it around since then. Several layers of signatures are on the back, on 3 panels. The book I'm holding is the stole's diary written by the wearers over the years.

I am wearing the late Elinor Mosser's robe. She was a stellar support person for PresbyNet, the Presbyterian section of EcuNet. She wore this robe and stole at her farewell service April of 1996 when she left the church pastorate to be “pastor” to PresbyNet.

I thought the robe and stole should be joined again in tribute to her.