SERMON Ron Campbell 1

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SETTING: The Church of Our Lady of the Perpetually Over Spontaneous.

CAST: The Reverend.

(Lights up on a simple podium. There is a dry erase board to the right. Organ
music plays softly. The REVEREND approaches the podium, surveys his flock He is a
combination of Barack Obama and Groucho Marx. He begins slowly, growing
progressively more excited throughout the piece)

REVEREND

Please be seated… Thank you. I’d like to begin by thanking our own Miss Petulia Jenkins
for the lovely floral display. Yes, thank you Petulia. If you didn’t see them on the way in,
make sure you notice the callalillies in the vestibule on your way out. Also the white
roses on the piano in the rectory. Very lovely. St. Clive be praised. Thank you, Petulia. Of
course my grandfather used to say the only thing better than roses on the piano was tulips
on your organ- but that’s for another day, another sermon.

No, brothers and sisters, what I want to talk to you about today is Redemption.

I see some new faces here. Welcome to the Church of Our Lady of the Perpetually Over
Spontaneous. You are among friends. Yea, though He may be a stickler for the prompt
RSVP, we know that God accepts procrastinators. Even as He accepts the very bottom of
a muddied cup. For though ye be Dr. Philistines, telemarketers or rapists, the armpits of
St. Clive are ready to honk for you too. And what is rape really? Could it not as easily be
called “surprise sex? “

As you know, tomorrow is St. Clive’s Day. And I suppose it is “traditional” to surrender
to the hustle and the bustle of the various St. Clive’s Day festivities. Our children are
giddy with visions of the heaping bowls of warm potato salad that come morning will be
theirs to nostril-stuff. The eye gunk fairy will be leaving her little droppings in every
good little boy and girls’ septum. And of course I remember how my own family
celebrated St. Clive’s day. I can still remember our house redolent with the smell of
Grandpa’s Orthotics Soup in the crock pot as we kids placed the dried holiday centipedes
ever so carefully on the traditional holiday compost heap.

Ah yes. These are, indeed, cherished memories.

But brothers and sisters… Many of us get wrapped up in the so called commercialism that
surrounds the St. Clive’s Day season. Oh yes we do. We forget the true meaning of our
most holy of holidays. As we doggedly go through all the holiday rituals, like writing the
traditional list of friends and acquaintances in order of preference and hurriedly
SERMON Ron Campbell 2
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REVEREND (Cont’d)

notifying them of any changes in status over the past year. As we do the last minute
testing of our saliva viscosity for tomorrow’s loogie hanging competitions- let us not
forget what St. Clive was really all about. Let us not forget about Redemption.

I know. I know there are distractions. Designer salt. A distraction. Crème de Menthe. A
distraction. The exquisite clavicle of that blonde in the fourth row. Definite distraction.

But St. Clive tells us that though we may be distracted by the ingredients, we must keep
our mind on the menu. Indeed, we must put the “men” in menu. And the whoa in woman
for that manner.

(THE REVEREND sits on the edge of the pulpit, “bringing it down” a little.)

Let me tell you a little story. I was five years old. I had just received my first body
building scholarship from the University of Southern California. My girlfriend at the
time, a primal scream therapist from Ibiza, had just informed me she’d broken my Easy
Bake oven while trying to rewire it to electrocute our family’s pet hamster. Needless to
say my disappointment was somewhat leavened by my own childish narcissism. In those
days there was nothing like the smell of melted plastic cookie trays to light a lurid light in
my little loins. I wanted to take her back, back to my tree fort with its wall to wall carpet
and it’s slip and slide and its two- count ‘em two- conversation pits and make rabid love
to her until our moms called us in for dinner. I was… distracted.

That’s when I thought of St. Clive.

(He rises to the podium, begins to pace back and forth, warming to his subject:)

Did he not make a television entirely out of bees wax? Did he not hold the sulking title
for the tri state area four years running? Did he not have his palate etched with Angelina
Jolie’s profile? These are all reasons we revere- and fear- the Clivester, but what is the
deeper meaning? What was he trying to offer us? One word, brothers and sisters:
Redemption.

For St. Clive tells us we are ALL eligible for redemption. There is no expiration date on
the coupon that is you. God’s check out girl will scan your items without the muttered
dietary critique nor the rolling of the eye. You may go paper or plastic but you will be
redeemed. But in order to be redeemed we’ve all- each and every one of us- we’ve all got
a job to do.
Your job is to ride that conveyor belt, people. Ride that conveyor belt to glory. Can I get a
witness? Or at least some help out?
SERMON Ron Campbell 3
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REVEREND (Cont’d)

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Do I have enough Nembutol and Curare
bean extract to create the kind of psychotropic cocktail that will prove untraceable in my
beloved wife’s vodka Collins to enable me to retain the remote control long enough to
Tivo a complete season of Dexter?” I’ve caught myself thinking the same thing a
thousand times. You are not alone, brothers and sisters. There are no easy answers. But
there are some questions that have been known to be quite salacious. Let us pray.

Please open your hymnals. The Book of Clive. Limericks four. Verse one. It begins- read
along with me if you would. “There was a young man from Pinole-“ Better yet: put your
hymnals down. Put them down! Throw them down! Stomp on them! Stomp! STOMP!
Good. Okay. Stop stomping. Stop! Are you nuts? You’d stomp a hymnal?

Now I want you to bring your hands up through your chakras. The first chakra. The
looks-within place. Now the second chakra, known as the vestigial limb chakra. Now
bring your hands up through the third chakra, the anabolic steroid chakra. Good, Now
bring your hands up through the fourth chakra, known as… the fourth chakra and on up
through the fifth chakra, the sixth chakra, the shakra Khan, the shaka zulu. The Shaquille
O’neill. Up. Up. Higher. Higher! Now face your palms towards me. Keep those arms
high! Palms towards me. Now bend your backs and lower your palms in my direction.
And bow. Bow to the revealed word of St. Clive through me. Me, your humble servant.
Nice. I don’t know about you but that felt great! Redemption!

(He does a little dance.)

I wasn’t always saved. I suppose my background is pretty normal. I was raised on the
Australian outback. Hyenas licked my afterbirth. We lived off table scraps. We eventually
had to move from the Outback to Chilis. Growing up, my family raised me as a militant
agnostic. It wasn’t easy. Angry villagers burned question marks on our lawn. I lived each
day like it was my last: a lot of crying and screaming. AHHHH!!

(Suddenly philosophical:)
God asks us a question every St. Clive’s Day. God says: “Are you gonna eat the rest of
that English muffin?”
Well, brothers and sisters, are you?

(He lets the question hang in the air.)

First, let’s look at the word; redemption.

(He goes to dry erase board, writes: RE/DEMPT/ION with a grease pen.)
SERMON Ron Campbell 4
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REVEREND (Cont’d)

Redemption is an ancient word. The prefix is from the latin root “red” or “the color of
your Uncle Doug’s nose after a few highballs at the St. Clive’s Day tailgate party.” The
Tertiary syllable, “dempt” was first encountered in the Horticulturalists’ Almanac of 1856
and was used in the sentence; “Leave those clamatos in the basket, they’s all been
dempt.” And of course the suffix “ion” comes from Star Trek.

(He bounds over to the podium, enthused:)

So how do we go about getting our rightful share of it? Redemption? Is there a recipe?
A recipe for redemption? And is there a… secret ingredient. Brothers and sisters, I’m here
to testify: there is.

I learned about it while doing hard time at the Pelican Cove Correctional Facility where I
was serving a six year stint for cranio-sacral technique piracy. I had crossed the highly
trained Reiki Commandos at the Northern California Holistic Institute one too many
times. My cell mate was a serial nose picker known only as “Barry.” We were arguing
one day about our treatment. Our window treatment. It was deplorable. He was being
quite adamant about going with a plaid- Please. While I was calmly suggesting
something a little more au courant, perhaps a charcoal hounds-tooth to set off our stained
and discolored mattresses just right and Presto! It came to me. Redemption is not just the
title of a two part episode of Star Gate SG-1. Nor is it just the title of the theme song
from Rocky II.

Friends; Redemption is too big to be contained in definitions.

It’s too wide, you can’t get around it.
It’s too high, you can’t get over it.
It’s too low, you can’t go under it.
It’ll wait for you when you’re running late. It’s there!
It’ll be ready for you if you’re early. It’s there.
It’s everywhere!
Help me somebody!
I needed Redemption.

So at that moment I began a strenuous regimen of leg squats, hindu push ups and
autofellation. My workouts were so strenuous I had to supplement my diet with heaping
bowls of a testi shaped pasta called testicullini made from vitamin enriched steer gluten.
If I was going to be redeemed, I wanted do it with the rock hard abs you see before you
now.
SERMON Ron Campbell 5
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REVEREND (Cont’d)

Now let’s look at you.

Have you got what it takes to be redeemed?
And what is the secret ingredient?

Well friends, consider the lowly biscuit.

What is it? Some eggs, some flour, a bit of corn starch, a pinch of salt. Mix it all together
and put it in the oven. And you add that secret ingredient. A chemical reaction takes
place.
It rises! Just when you yeast expect it! It rises!
It was there all the time. The secret ingredient, my friends, is LOVE.

Brothers and sisters the time has come to find your inner biscuit! Think of our church
here as a giant convection oven. Only it’s not a convection oven. It’s a conviction oven!
And it’s set to 360 degrees of Love!

And now I want you to rise.

(Indicating the audience. Music: Thus Spake Zarathustra from 2001)
All my little biscuits,
I want you to rise up. Up! Out of your chairs.
Riiise up!
(To someone not standing up:)
Sir, I can see you’re rising up and you’re not even standing up! That’s okay.
Let it wash over you like a Niagra of Viagra. Feel that secret ingredient, brothers and
sisters! Feel it! (You kids remember: always use a condiment.) Rise up my biscuits!
(He is ecstatic.)
St. Clive be praised! I have seen the recipe and the secret ingredient is love!
Petulia! Put me in the cuspidor, I’m ready to be saved! We shall all be redeemed! We
shall! We shall! We shall!
Great St. Clive almighty!
I have found the recipe!
Can I get an Amen!
Amen!
Amen!
A Menu!
(A sudden and complete BLACKOUT.)

END OF PLAY