Christmas Day sermon: "I Am Because You Are"

Matthew 1:18-25

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about[a]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[b] because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”[c] (which means “God with us”).

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (TNIV)

Last night, at the midnight Mass in Vatican City, Pope Benedict XVI spoke these words in his sermon—he said: “Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God's humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light." If my ego were truly the size of this sanctuary, I would follow this up with—“Church! Church! Look what we did! The Pope is preaching our Advent Conspiracy material!” But since my ego is only slightly smaller, I will instead say this—it means so much to me that the work we are doing in this church, the message we have been trying to spread to our community, is the exact same one that was preached in the Vatican at the stroke of Christmas midnight. And it is a more important theme than we know—because while the simplicity will begin in earnest soon—the trees will be taken down and the decorations will be put in storage for another eleven months—the Christmas story we just heard from the Gospel of Matthew is, surprisingly, one of true simplicity.

You see, almost all of the theatrics of the Christmas birth story are in fact found in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew has the visit of the wise men, in chapter two, which we will visit two weeks from now. Almost everything else is in Luke—Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, John the Baptist leaping in the womb, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the stable birth, the manger and swaddling clothes, the angels singing, the shepherds, none of that is in Matthew’s accounting of the birth story. In fact, aside from a cameo appearance from God’s favorite supporting actor, Gabriel, it is a story of something that is still very much popular—a home birth—and a story that is without any external drama whatsoever—all the drama happens inside the dilemma of Joseph.

And it is a dilemma that hopefully makes the earthly father of God more human to each of us—the girl he is to marry, the girl he will spend his life with, whom he loves, is pregnant, he is not the father, and Joseph does not cause a scene, nor does he want to—just like Mary in Luke’s Gospel, Joseph’s first thoughts are never of himself. Perhaps it would be easier for us to understand if Joseph did make a scene, if he did rage and huff and puff and demand Mary’s ejection from his family. He could have gotten it, too, had he wanted it. But he didn’t. It is difficult for me to describe, but I have this hunch that Joseph didn’t do this because he respected Mary as an individual—though he clearly did. No, it was because Joseph understood how intertwined he was to her already, brought together not only by God, fate, chance, or mystery, but also simply because the visit by the angel Gabriel communicates one extremely powerful, extremely simple, but extremely difficult-to-grasp truth—Joseph is who he is because Mary is who she is.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there is an ethical philosophy called ubuntu—there is no good English translation of the word because what it conveys is so directly opposite the philosophy of individualism that reigns here in the West. Roughly translated, it means, “I am because you are.” I am who I am because you are who you are. It is the courage and willingness to let yourself be defined by the people and the community surrounding you. It is the courage that brings you to church to begin with, to even dare to allow yourself to be called, even if only by association, a Christian, rather than as Bob, or Ted, or Stan. As Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes it, “You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality, you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”

But if this philosophy of “I am because you are” turns our own philosophy on its head, then the Bible turns both on their heads. Because it is not enough in church to say that I am because each of you are. I am because Christ was, and because Christ is. Only because Christ came to earth, that he walked, and talked, and broke bread, and sang songs and in the midst of that ministry saved the world entire, only because Christ did that, can I be who I am. Joseph saw it. In Luke’s Gospel, Mary saw it. Only because this child was who he was could they in turn be who they were. And in Matthew’s Gospel, here, what Joseph is told by Gabriel is not, “Please see Mary as a person, don’t do this,” because Joseph already did. No, it’s “You are who you are because Mary is who she is, the mother of God.”

So, in the end, perhaps Matthew’s telling of the Christmas story is not as simple as it appears on the surface. After all, we have not yet gotten into the story of the wise men, or of the descent into Egypt, or any of those other stories of Christ’s infancy that only are told to us by Matthew. And before any of that dramatic action, we are still given the immense, profound privilege of seeing into the heart of an ordinary man, a carpenter, a blue-collar nobody, and see how who he was meant that the entire world would be changed forever. It is not shepherds in the field. It is not angels singing hallelujahs. It is not a long and dramatic journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. But it will do. In delivering to us our Lord and Savior, it will surely do. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 25, 2011

Christmas Eve sermon: "Be Not Afraid!"

Luke 2:1-14

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (TNIV)


It’s an old wheezer of a joke, but it’s still a good one—a man, completely devout in his faith in God, is living peaceably in his house, minding his own business, when suddenly, on his radio comes a weather warning that his area is at risk for sudden flash floods. But the man says to himself, “God loves me, God will save me if He must.” And he stays where he is, even as the floods begin. Sometime after the floods begin, when the waters are now several feet high, a woman comes by in a canoe and she says to the man, “You, over there, your house is flooding. Come, join me in the canoe and I’ll row you to safety.” And the man says to her, “No, God loves me, and God will save me if He must.” The floodwaters continue to rise, and a helicopter flies overhead, and a voice in a megaphone shouts out, “You down there, your house is flooding. Come, join me in the helicopter and I’ll fly you to safety.” And the man shouts up, “No, God loves me, and God will save me if he must.” The man drowns, and at the gates of heaven, he demands an audience with God. And he says to God, “God, I thought you loved me. Why didn’t you save me?” And God replies, “Dude! (If God indeed used the term “dude.”) I sent you a radio report. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a helicopter. What more to you want from me?”

This is the time of year when we celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ in human form, with a heart that beats, hands that hold, and a voice that proclaims God’s love for all people. And really, it is what we needed most to be sent from God. Because if what we needed was simply the lesson, the lesson that God loved us, God could have sent us a teacher. If all we needed was to be made well of our illnesses and our aches and pains, God could have sent us a doctor. If our greatest need was equality, God could have sent us an prophet, and if our greatest need was forgiveness, God could have sent us a priest. But because each and every one of those was such a great need for us, the only thing God could do was to send His Son to us instead. And so in moments when we are tempted to be as the man in the flooded house was, asking God why God did not do more for us, remember—God has already given us the greatest gift of all, His child, a living embodiment of divine love who was born this night in Bethlehem.

The man in the flood story is waiting for God to hit him over the head, to dazzle him with divine presence enough that he would be saved from the disasters that were awaiting him, and it didn’t quite turn out that way. Imagine now, the circumstances of the very first Christmas, way, way, back in that little stable in Bethlehem. The prophets of the Old Testament have long since come and gone, telling us to prepare for the coming of the Lord who will rescue Israel from the mighty empires of the time—Assyria and Babylon. The prophets who foretold the coming of a suffering servant, born to a virgin mother, can no longer guide or comfort Israel under Roman occupation. And so Israelites like Mary and Joseph set out, ready to obey imperial rule, ready to go and be registered for the taxation census. And the baby boy is born, and the heavens rejoice so much that the seams between heaven and earth are broken and the angels pour out, shouting out to the shepherds in the fields, “Be not afraid!”

What a ludicrous thing to say! It is the middle of the night, darkness is all around them, and when they see the curtain between heaven and earth split, the shepherds, Luke says, are rightly terrified—to say nothing of any previous fears they may have had—for their herds, or their families, their own livelihoods—all of the exact same fears that plague us today! Put a different way—the floodwaters are at the gates of their homes, and the angels are saying to them, “Be not afraid!” And any sane person would have to laugh, or keep going about their sane person way. They certainly would not stop and listen! They would go home, sleep it off, maybe call their psychologists in the morning. They wouldn’t actually take the angels’ words to heart!

But…if I were not a cynic, then after such a display of divinity, I would not want to be afraid either—after that sort of reassurance, I would expect God’s return to earth to come in all manner of power and splendor that is deserving of an almighty God. And if that is what the shepherds are expecting, God save them when they arrive at the manger and see a baby instead. Those shepherds could well have reacted as the man in the flood did—“God, I thought you loved me. Why didn’t you save me from my lot in life?” To which God simply says, “Shepherds, I sent you my only Son, whom I love beyond all measure. What more do you want from me?”

Of course, we all know that is not how the story turns out. The shepherds instead return home rejoicing, not feeling for a lack of God’s presence at all. Which is, of course, as it should be. It is not, however, as it always will be…especially for us today, when we will return to the world of work, of obligations, of pressing deadlines and uncompromising financial insecurities, and probably before too long, we too will come close to asking God the same question—“God, I thought you loved me. Why haven’t you saved me?” And if you get to that moment in time, I only ask that reach back to this moment, to this night, 2,000 years ago, when God’s only Son came to earth not in the dazzling cloak of divine wonder, but in the gurgling, crying, and laughing form of a vulnerable baby boy, and while the rest of the world continued turning, for these shepherds, they knew, that God had arrived in the world and that one day, all would be well for them once more…all because the wall between heaven and earth had vanished, and an angel had actually taken the time to preach to them what I have to think the moral of the Christmas story truly, truly is—“Be not afraid!” Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 24, 2011

Winter Solstice Service Sermon: "Deep Calls to Deep"

(Author’s note: This sermon’s theme and refrain of "deep calls to deep" was inspired by the September 11, 2011 sermon delivered by a ministry colleague and longtime friend, McKinna Daugherty. –E.A.)

Psalms 42:7-11

7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

8 By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

11 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God. (TNIV)

Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your waterfalls. The pastors from America were stunned—here, far from their comfortable homes and offices, their richly designed sanctuaries and worship centers, here, in the depths of material and spiritual poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, they were seeing water being drawn from a swamp, for there was nowhere else to receive water. In their shock, they swore to one of the village elders to return, to help bring wells and safe drinking water, and the elder said, “Many of you have promised us such things in the name of this Jesus. None of them ever do.” Dry not only was the village, dry was the spiritual life of the people who had given up on the name of Jesus. And how understandable of them—the Psalmist is not describing God as the water of the swamp, no, God is the water of waterfalls, of waves and surfs that engulf us in the presence of God’s love. Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your waterfalls!

The Psalmist, like the village elder, is in a state of spiritual desert, and he is longing for, dreaming of, praying for, communion with God. And I do not mean in the personal relationship type of communion that we speak so much of these days, the “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your PERSONAL Savior” type of questions. No, communion in its richest sense, to be surrounded by a family, a community, a great multitude of believers, to be swept up in the embrace of a community, to be engulfed by the presence of the Lord not as a hermit, but as a person who is a part of something far greater than themselves.

The holidays are supposed to do exactly that for us. Even if all year long, we’ve been an “I,” or a “me,” the holidays are supposed to make people an “us” by giving us a cause to reconnect with family and friends. And…it does not always quite work out that way. We doubt if Christmas really will bring us any joy and cheer—Christ came to us 2,000 years ago, and we’re still muddling along in a broken and fragile world. We expose ourselves to our own doubts, and those doubts, they have so, so much power over us. Look at what the Psalmist says—after being ripped open to doubt by his enemies, his enemies who taunt, “Where is your God?” He feels an ache, a pain and emptiness, he feels it in his bones—you feel something like that in your bones, you know that things are not the way that they are supposed to be. And what is worse, we, like the Psalmist, respond to the outside world, telling us that there is no God, by even daring to entertain that notion ourselves, even if only for the briefest of moments. Far from the temple, far from the sanctuary, far from wherever God is present in his life, the Psalmist openly wonders, “Where is my God?” And far from the spirit of Christmas, far from the joy and celebration of the holiday season, we too would well be forgiven for openly wondering, “Where is my God?” Engulfed not by the waters of God’s love but by the fierce breakers of unemployment, and addiction, and hardship, and loss, we wait to see if it gets any better, if the waters will recede and we can again walk instead of crawl and run instead of limp. Deep calls to deep, at the thunder of your waterfalls!

The beauty of this Psalm, though, is that we do not know what causes the Psalmist’s abrupt change of heart in these last two verses. Suddenly, without explanation or hesitation, the Psalmist asks himself, why be so downcast? Why feel so empty? This was not…it is not…a sweeping of his pain and hurt under the proverbial rug. Because it is not pretending that things are better in the here and now—it is a promise that it will get better—for I will YET praise Him, my Savior and my God. I will survive this—my demons, my enemies, the ache and the pain, I will survive all of this to praise my God yet again. The simple answer is that this is a show of faith. The longer answer, though, is that it shows a specific kind of faith—the faith that after death comes resurrection, that after loss comes rebirth, that after the heat and fire of the desert, there is a balm in Gilead, the kind of faith that will bend, and will buckle, but that will not completely break. And in the Psalmist’s case, the faith is that after the thirst and dryness of loneliness and heartbreak, there will be the soothing, powerful water of God’s limitless grace. Deep calls to deep, at the thunder of your waterfalls!

As for the village of the elder who had justifiably lost faith in the church, well, they did indeed end up building a clean water well. The swamp, as a source of water, is no more, but it is nonetheless a reminder, even a reassurance, in a way, that such faith is never as easy as it often looks in the eyes of the born-again believer or the cradle Christian. Faith is, and always will be, work. And because of that, in the grand scheme of things, in the scope and grandeur of the entire world, there are so many other dry spiritual deserts of intimidating size. But, sometimes, it is enough, just enough, to offer praise to God that in the midst of that desert, in the witness of all of the shortage and famine of food, shelter, and love, that the world can still be made a better place. I believe it still, simply because deep does call to deep at the thunder, at the grace, at the mercy, at the awesomeness of God’s presence. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 22, 2011

This Week's Sermon: "Loving All"

Luke 1:46-55

46 And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors." (TNIV)


The Advent Conspiracy: Spending Less, Giving More, Worshiping Fully, Loving All, Week Four

It’s an old church camp song, one that I’ve known since I was a little kid, that begins with the lyrics, “My soul magnifies the Lord, my soul magnifies the Lord, who is worthy to be praised.” Like any church song, its roots could of course be found in Scripture, but it was not for many years that I realized this camp song came from this passage, from Mary’s Magnificat. Which was probably just as well—as a little kid, if I had been told that song came from Mary, I would have just assumed it meant the song had cooties. And while I have often been asked about the rhyme and reason behind the Roman Catholic Church’s veneration of Mary (because that makes perfect sense—ask the Protestant pastor about Roman Catholicism!) the truth is that we, too, glorify Mary in many, many ways in Protestant tradition too—even we are not well-known for it like Catholicism is. And the thing is, Mary absolutely is worthy of our reverence, and not simply because she bore the Christ child, for that reduces her to a means to an end, a woman who, like any other in the Ancient Near East, had no worth beyond her womb. No, Mary is worthy of our reverence because of the lyrics of her song, her Magnificat, that she is willing to glorify God out of her own lowliness and loneliness in the world, her first thoughts are never of herself. They are of God, and of believers everywhere who would otherwise be lost to the world.

This is the fourth and final Sunday of our current sermon series, as well as the fourth and final Sunday of Advent, the season the church traditionally dedicates to preparing the way for the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. And…well, we do prepare for Christmas Day, but these days, it feels like it is more for the arrival of Santa Claus than the arrival of Jesus—the arrival of presents and stocking stuffers, rather than the arrival of our salvation. And so in response to this, three pastors across America started this project a few years ago called “The Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World?” as a means to preach preparing for Christ’s coming by giving differently. This project promoting charity revolves around four main themes—spending less, giving more, worshiping fully, and loving all. Via the major prophets who preceded Christ—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—plus Jesus’s mother, Mary, we’ll explore a different theme in each of the 4 Sundays of Advent, and this Sunday’s theme is “Loving All” coming on the heels of the three earlier sermons that revolved around the themes of spending less, giving more, and worshiping fully.

Loving all might be the most clichéd of the themes, but if it is, it is for a reason—it is also far and away the toughest one to actually follow. Love requires effort, love requires follow-through, love requires your whole self, or nothing at all. If ever there was anything in Christianity that must, absolutely must, be preached upon in terms of black and white, it is not heaven and hell, it is not sin and righteousness, it is not saved and unsaved, it is being loved…and unloved. The love we give at Christmas, the generosity we are called exhibit as Christians, it does not come in the form of the glitzy gifts that denote the value of love and the worth of the recipient by the dollar amount on the price tag. The love we are called to give, the love that the archangel Gabriel has called upon Mary to give for the world, cannot be given with anything less than your whole self. And if you worry that your whole self is in a spiritual draught, suffering from a poverty of faith, that is fine—what matters is that you offer it all in how you love. The widow’s gift of the two coins was worth more than all the vast sums donated by the wealthy, because she gave entirely, she gave out of everything, she gave everything.

And Mary is being called to do nothing less here—consider that childbirth in Biblical days was at best a coin flip, and at worst a death sentence. Consider that an unwed mother was shunned in the society of the Ancient Near East so badly that even if she survived childbirth, she was likely to die from lack of shelter. Gabriel has not inspired Mary with a divine charge so much as he has assigned her upon a suicide mission, and her response is not to curl up in fear, or to react in anger to God’s messenger, but instead to praise God over, and over, and over.

And in the midst of this praise, she utters this often misinterpreted line—“for He has looked in favor upon the lowliness of His servant.” It would be a mistake to simply believe that Mary is referring to humbleness, or modesty, or meekness when she is speaking of being lowly, for the Greek is fairly clear—she is talking about societal lowliness, about cultural lowliness. In other words—she knows. She knows that in carrying God’s only Son, she will, on the surface, at least for a time, fail to outwardly live up to the demands of respectability and honor that her world demands of her. She knows what is at stake, and she sings anyways. She sings of God’s promises and blessings for those as lowly as her, and in doing so, she gives words and voice to anyone and everyone who longs for a better world, for their deepest desires, their most heartfelt wants and needs, are being sung in the voice of a teenaged girl.

One of my favorite Christmas songs ever is the song “Mary Did You Know?” And at our last Saturday night jam session when I pipe up and start jabbering away about how much I love this song, and then Wendy’s wedding assistant Arminda just plucks up one of the guitars there and starts singing—“Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water? Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?” It really is a beautiful song, but one that, over the course of writing this sermon, I realized was asking the wrong question. Because just as Mary knows the risks of what she is about to do, she also knows the great joys that will come from what she is called to. It’s right there, in her Magnificat—blessed be the Lord who has done mighty deeds, who lifts up the humble, who feeds the hungry. She knows! So…yes, Mary knows that her son will save all humanity, because she knows that there is no redemption without grace, no arrival without the journey, and no love, no true love, without risk. Because it is a simple matter to love your family, and your friends, and your neighbors. It is an entirely different calling to actually love the rest. But this song, when you think about it coming from a young, young girl, is a song not simply of tribute for past deeds, but of anticipation of even greater works to come. Even in the days of the Bible, God did His wonders through men and women, through Moses, and Elijah, and Mary. Now, God relies upon us to do His wonders, He calls upon us to love the rest, to love all.

And so loving all, then, is in some ways an offshoot of giving more, the theme of this series two weeks ago. As I preached then, only when we empty ourselves completely can we finally begin to give of ourselves fully. And only when we give of ourselves fully can we truly love all, everything and everyone, as God commands us to. I preached two weeks ago of giving more of your own resources, your time, your energy, your labor. But now…now it’s different. I’m asking you to do something that I ordinarily would have no right to ask you to do, to risk everything to try to love as Christ loved, even when we know we will fail at doing so. Loving that much, really, truly loving that much, it is not easy. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not call us to do what is easy, or convenient. It calls us to righteousness, to do what is right. And when you answer that calling, may it be with that same singing voice the mother of God offered as a prayer, written down by an ancient doctor named Luke and sung to this day by children her age around campfires across the world…my soul magnifies the Lord! By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 18, 2011

This Week's Sermon: "Worshiping Fully"

Isaiah 6:1-8

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (TNIV)

“The Advent Conspiracy: Spending Less, Giving More, Worshiping Fully, Loving All,” Week Three

Just before coming here to begin serving as your pastor this past September, I accepted the (unenviable?) task to guest preach at my home parish in Kansas City on Sunday, September 11, ten years after the attacks. I was 15 when the attacks took place, and while I remember where I was when I first heard, and while I remember the shock and awe that I felt, the sheer gravity of it did not truly sink in for me until I prepared for that sermon ten years later, immersing myself in the history of 9/11 in order to vainly try to do it justice. The text I chose was the closing words of the book of the prophet Habakkuk, which is a poem about trusting in the Lord in times of calamity, that even then, God will be our strength, that God will allow us to walk upon great heights. It’s one of my all-time favorite passages, but in looking around after the fact to see what other pastors had done for that Sunday, I saw that many, many of them had chosen this passage from Isaiah, this passage that begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” And it made perfect sense—because for so many people, the new words were, “In the year that thousands of Americans died, I saw the Lord!” In the year your king dies, in the year your neighbors die, in the year when what you feel most is hurt and pain, you see the Lord. And Advent is nothing at all if not preparing ourselves to see the newborn Lord.

Two Sundays ago, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, began a new sermon series for us, as well as a new church year for us. This is the Third Sunday of Advent, the season the church traditionally dedicates to preparing the way for the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. And…well, we do prepare for Christmas Day, but these days, it feels like it is more for the arrival of Santa Claus than the arrival of Jesus—the arrival of presents and stocking stuffers, rather than the arrival of our salvation. And so in response to this, three pastors across America started this project a few years ago called “The Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World?” as a means to preach preparing for Christ’s coming by giving differently. This project promoting charity revolves around four main themes—spending less, giving more, worshiping fully, and loving all Via the major prophets who preceded Christ—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—plus Jesus’s mother, Mary, we’ll explore a different theme in each of the 4 Sundays of Advent, and this Sunday’s theme is “Worshiping Fully,” coming on the heels of two earlier sermons that revolved around the themes of spending less and giving more.

Last week, a number of you joined us in this sanctuary well after our regular service to say farewell to Bess Ray, a longtime member of this parish who passed away on Halloween night. There was, of course, music—some of which we struggled with! There was Scripture. There was a sermon of middling quality. There were prayers, there were all the trappings of a regular funeral service. And then the rituals of church gave way to the eulogies. I heard about the memories of Bess found from cleaning out her purse, I heard from Buffe Antilla about Bess’s church life, but the most moving moment was a young man from Bess’s family saying he saw her in the orange juice he drinks, simply because she would pour a glass for him every morning at breakfast, and for whatever reason, that memory is what stuck. And in the year that Bess died, a sister of faith whom I had never met, I saw the Lord! I saw Him in something vastly different than the rites of church-as-usual.

I have to think that we see people in times of tragedy because, for lack of a better or more elegant term, that is when life gets real. Forget the mundane details of everyday life, if you want to see what a person is really like, to really pierce the façade that many people put up, be there when a person dies. But, hopefully, a person in our life doesn’t die just every day, or every week, or every month. And if it takes such a drastic, life-changing moment to see the Lord, then what does that say about the state about my spirituality, or your’s, or Isaiah’s? How can we bring ourselves to the point of worshiping even if we haven’t seen the Lord? Or, how can we teach ourselves to see the Lord in the mundane, in the everyday?

Isaiah’s vision of seeing the Lord is remarkable simply because it is a vision. Unlike Ezekiel, who we heard from two weeks ago, Isaiah does not deal much in visions. While the book of Isaiah begins with the words, “The vision of Isaiah,” the first five chapters are mostly poetry and song, not an actual, literal, vision. And that completely changes in chapter six, when the first king under whom Isaiah serves dies, and Isaiah’s world is turned upside down—in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah sees the Lord in such a completely different way, and that is what goes to the heart of this sermon series—the belief that Christmas, unshackled from the societal demands of credit cards and obligations and overshopping, that Christmas is all about us seeing the Lord in such a completely different way. Abraham saw God as an angel come to earth. Moses saw God in the burning bush. Isaiah saw God as this being who was so great that the entire Jerusalem temple could contain only the very tip of His robes. And far from the majesty and drama of any of those scenes, we are called to see God in a little baby boy.

But that little baby boy also got lost in the mess for some folks—we haven’t talked about him at all this Advent, but look at the innkeeper, occupied with running his business and did not know or could not realize who the child he was turning away was. Only if he were to get away from the business-as-usual movements of his life would he actually be free to worship Christ as God would have intended, surrounded by the wise men, the angels, the proud parents, all there to worship fully! While the innkeeper is the sort of example of what-not-to-do in the Christmas story, it is not because I think he is, or was, a bad man. Innkeepers did not exactly rake in the big bucks back then—we know from the story of the Good Samaritan that just one day’s wage was worth a month’s stay at an inn. Now, a day’s wage is worth much less than a month’s stay at a motel. So this is a blue-collar fellow concerned with keeping his business afloat rather than with actually stopping, pausing, and recognizing the divinity that is in his presence and tantalizingly within his grasp. He has an out, though—he hadn’t heard the Gospel story yet, because he was a part of the story! So for us, if we have been raised in church, hearing the same Christmas story year in and year out, what is our excuse?

And believe me…I am pointing the finger at myself here—after 18 years in church, I only had what
I would consider a God experience on the morning after an old childhood friend was killed in a car wreck three weeks before I was going to graduate high school. It is the same thing all over again—only instead of the year that King Uzziah died, it was in the year that my childhood friend died that I saw the Lord! I wish, and I hope, and I pray, that this is no longer the case, that instead of the year when we see hurt and pain and death that we will see the Lord, but in the year when we are finally able to escape—even if only for one Advent season—from the financial and social and economic and work and family obligations that keep us running to and fro without rest and that keep us spending our limited resources without end, in the year when we can escape from that, I promise you, with every fiber of my faith in God, that you can indeed see the Lord. Not just in the year that our neighbors of 9/11 were killed, not just in the year that our longtime friends and fellow church members pass away, not just in the year that King Uzziah died, but that in each and every year, you can say to one another, “In the year that I celebrated Christ’s coming, I saw the Lord!” By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 11, 2011

The Business of Ministry: Criticisms and Solutions

(Author's note: What you are about to read is a criticism of seminary education as it currently exists. This should not be read as a criticism specific to my alma maters, the Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union. In regard what I learned from them regarding Biblical studies, theology, and other typical seminary subjects, I believe I received an excellent education. -E.A.)

I hinted at this reality in my profile written by the local newspaper, The Daily News, where I was quoted as saying that seminary can only prepare you for about 30% of actual ministry. I was not misquoted. And I was not referring to the little peccadilloes like self-care, boundaries, and ministerial ethics that I think my seminary actually did a pretty good job of pounding into my head over the course of three years.

I'm talking about actually being able to crunch a few numbers and read a QuickBooks sheet.

I began thinking about this when a buddy of mine posted on Facebook a mini-reflection on the status of standardized testing in American high schools--there was a link to an article by a well-educated journalist who, for poops and giggles, took a state's 10th grade standardized proficiency exams and crashed and burned during the math section, despite his education.

Personally, I understand why, and it has nothing to do with the ridiculousness of teaching 16-year-olds calculus (even if I had the raw mental horsepower to do so, I very clearly lacked the maturity and work ethic to actually buckle down and learn calculus--and I feel sorry for the entire math department at good old Shawnee Mission South High for trying to get me to). It has everything to do with the fact that I have a master's degree, a solidly middle class job, and a reasonably sharp intellect, but since the age of 19, I have not had to do any math, for any reason, beyond basic computation. I couldn't write out a basic geometric proof if you paid me.

The elephant in the room, though, is this: in my line of work, especially as a solo pastor, I am already seeing an area where that needs to change. And that's oversight of the church finances.

The model for many churches these days--whether optimal or not--is that of a corporate model--there is a board of directors (maybe called a leadership council, or an executive body, or what have you) who the pastor reports to, and the pastor then de facto assumes the role of CEO, overseeing the entire operation. Which is fine for some matters, but every year at around this time, churches across the country are struggling to make budget. And I guarantee you that many of them are ill-equipped to work at doing so.

I say this from personal experience. I took at least one class from eight of the nine seminaries in the Graduate Theological Union, and I can honestly say that outside of some sessions about encouraging stewardship and tithing, the amount of education I received on budget, finances, marketing, and other such business-related aspects of ministry was absolutely zero. In fact, the only education I received about church finances came from the church that I did my fieldwork at, and even then it was only because I asked to be there--there currently is not any expectation whatsoever for a pastor to graduate and be ordained while knowing the least bit about how to make a church be financially self-sufficient.

How far we have come from the adherence to the Benedictine rule that demanded monasteries be financially self-sustaining!

I honestly don't know why this is the case, though I have ideas--namely that money is still such a taboo in church circles that teaching about it is likewise still considered a sticky wicket. Now, this is a dyed-in-the-wool progressive Christian saying this, but money need not be evil--it is in how we treat it and what we do with it that it becomes evil. Yet I get the impression that many, if not most, churches treat their budget writing processes and stewardship campaigns the same way many of us treat a visit to our doctor or dentist--we know it is good for us, but we really just want to get it over with first and foremost. But since our seminaries are (generally) run by churches and denominations, that attitude inevitably filters over.

I definitely saw this at PSR. Money was the flash point for some serious campus division during my final year there, where the brass decided to save money through faculty retirements and staff layoffs and pay cuts. Some folks were willing and able to engage this discussion, but I was worried that there may have been others who simply wanted to avoid it as much as possible.

And here's the rub--the students my alma maters are educating now will be the ones who are running them 30 years from now. If we weren't taught good church business models now, what makes our denominations think we would run their schools solvently in the future? It is a cycle that, ferociously and destructively, begets itself.

Please note that I am not saying that we should be in the work of running our churches like businesses--that is completely the wrong mindset. But I am saying there is overlap in how a church (or any non-profit organization, really) is run and how a business is run, and that seminaries as they currently exist do not teach to this reality.

And the thing is, this really does not need to happen, especially with seminaries connected to a university or consortium, as PSR and the GTU both are. It can begin as simply as borrowing a professor from the university's business school to teach a required class on economics for non-profits and community organizations and grow from there. Our field education seminars should have church business as a required component of our seminar material. Even if a seminary is stand-alone, the market for professors is so inundated that I imagine you could hire an adjunct to teach a class like this once a year or once a semester for minimal cost.

As my beloved parish here in Longview and I go forward into the new year--with the knowledge when we look at our spreadsheets that we are very much living on faith right now--I can already look back on my seminary education, only a bare seven months in the rearview mirror, and wish I had been better prepared. Most pastors, I imagine, feel this about a variety of issues. But of all those issues, this one can be such an easy fix if we are willing to cast aside that long-held verboten of actually talking about money in church and what role it really has in ministry, for both better and worse.

...after all, Jesus talked about money all. the. freaking. time. Just sayin'.

Yours in Christ,
Eric

This Week's Sermon: "Giving More"

Jeremiah 22:13-16

13 “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness,
his upper rooms by injustice,
making his subjects work for nothing,
not paying them for their labor.
14 He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace
with spacious upper rooms.’
So he makes large windows in it,
panels it with cedar
and decorates it in red.

15 “Does it make you a king
to have more and more cedar?
Did not your father have food and drink?
He did what was right and just,
so all went well with him.
16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?”
declares the LORD. (TNIV)


“The Advent Conspiracy: Spending Less, Giving More, Worshiping Fully, Loving All,” Week Two

A Christmas tree stood in the family’s living room, when one day underneath it appeared a water bottle filled to the brim with loose change and bills, just like we do for the emergency support shelter. The father, noticing the bottle and not knowing where it came from, sat his six-year-old son down and asked him about it. His son told him that he had saved up money and, as well, had taken the water bottle to school and told his classmates and teachers about the clean water shortage in the world. Sublimely, neither of the boy’s parents knew that he had done this.

Elsewhere, another six-year-old asked her parents not to spend any money on Christmas gifts for her that year, asking instead that the money they would have spent on her be given to a charity that digs wells so that other kids could have clean water to drink. And still another child, a five-year-old, wrote a letter to Santa Claus, explaining his wish for the other children in the world to receive food and water from Santa, and that he, this little boy, had his own bucket of money to give to Santa if it would help. I could follow this up with the clichéd sermon of how children really know more than we adults do. But that oversimplifies the Biblical importance of these types of stories—children are not simply the most humble, they are the most vulnerable among us as well—like the widow in Mark’s Gospel who gives the only two coins she has, despite the vulnerability that a widow unattached to a family would have in ancient Israel. That kind of charity in the midst of vulnerability is what makes stories like those remarkable.

Last Sunday began a new sermon series for us, as well as a new church year for us. This is the Second Sunday of Advent, the season the church traditionally dedicates to preparing the way for the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. And…well, we do prepare for Christmas Day, but these days, it feels like it is more for the arrival of Santa Claus than the arrival of Jesus—the arrival of presents and stocking stuffers, rather than the arrival of our salvation. And so in response to this, three pastors across America started this project a few years ago called “The Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World?” as a means to preach preparing for Christ’s coming by giving differently. This project promoting charity revolves around four main themes—spending less, giving more, worshiping fully, and loving all Via the major prophets who preceded Christ—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—plus Jesus’s mother, Mary, we’ll explore a different theme in each of the 4 Sundays of Advent, and this Sunday’s theme is “Giving More.”

Jeremiah prophesies to a wide array of audiences throughout the 51 chapters of his book, but in this chapter, chapter 22, he is speaking directly to King Jehoiakim, whose name is heavily laced with irony—his name literally means “the one who YHWH has set up,” which makes sense when you remember that his father was King Josiah, who is credited with re-discovering the law of Moses in the Temple, many centuries after Moses’s life and death, many centuries after which Israelite and Judean kings from Rehoboam and Jeroboam to Omri and Ahab had all strayed from the path of the Lord. But Jehoiakim does not live up to his father’s expectations, and Jeremiah’s prophecy today makes that abundantly clear. Contrast King Jehoiakim with the children I told you of at the beginning of my message—out of vulnerability, our children give of themselves. And out of a place where he is likely the least vulnerable of all, the richest, the most well-guarded, the king of Judah seeks only to take and to take to make himself even less vulnerable than he already was—stronger, tougher, greater palaces, built on the backs of injustice and slavery, whatever it took to make this king invulnerable and comfortable in his invulnerability. And in making himself even more invulnerable, by building his upper rooms of cedar, by raising even higher walls to protect those upper rooms, Jehoiakim was further separating himself from his people—he was creating more impediments to being able to give more to them as their king.

This is the part of the Bible’s central message that is almost Zen-like in its paradoxical nature—in order to give more of ourselves, we have to empty ourselves first of whatever it is we have left to give. In order to give fully, we must have so little to give to begin with. This was not the case for Jehoiakim, because as Jeremiah points out to him, and to us, this was not simply a matter of national security—Israelite and Lebanese cedar was highly valued, and red paint was greatly prized. This was a matter of giving yourself more and more, of Caesar rendering unto Caesar, and rather than emptying himself, Jehoiakim is content to fill himself to the brim.

But this was the case for the Messiah whose birth we are preparing to celebrate—as the Gospel of John writes, what was truly extraordinary about the Word of God was that it became flesh, that it dwelled among us, made its home with our homes, spoke our language, and died as one of us. Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians that Jesus, for all his power and splendor in heaven, decided instead to empty Himself and take the most humble of forms, the form of a human servant, and then, only then, could He die upon the cross. Fundamentally, Jesus was incapable of being our Messiah and Savior until He emptied himself of everything He had left—only then could He, in ways only He can, give more. Only then could He give fully of himself.

Meanwhile, those with much, our latter-day King Jehoiakims, still also continue to hoard. But when our kings and men of power are incapable of giving from the depths of their souls—to give out of their own vulnerability, let us step up in their place, in the place of the kings of Israel and Judah who did not have it in themselves to give out of their abundance, in the place of the churches of old that chose to sell indulgences rather than clothe the naked and feed the hungry, and in the place of the churches of today that choose to install Jumbotrons in their sanctuaries-turned-auditoriums rather than to use those sums of money to heed the fundamental command of Christ in the Gospels, to give away all that we have and follow Him without condition.

How to do that, though? When presented with Christ’s command, with Jeremiah’s prophecy against the tiny bit of King Jehoiakim that we know deep down resides in us all, what on earth are we to do? This is the how-to of the entire Advent Conspiracy project, and it boils down, in its most pure and simple form, into two straightforward steps: to engage in alternate gift giving, and to use the funds you save from alternate gift giving to turn into charity and mission. Alternate gift giving is not giving gifts on the cheap—it is finding value in gifts that are not monetary in nature, the gifts that convey sentimental and emotional value, the gifts whose worth is not wrapped up in their price tags, but in their symbolization of love, of including as much of that person, of their relationship with you, in the essence of the gift. It can be the giving of a gift that was made with your time and energy rather than with your money, it can be the giving of a gift to a charity in the name of the person you love, it could be making a gift to be shared between the two of you in a uniquely meaningful way. But in any case, its message is meant to be very different than the plasma flatscreen HD TV or the Starbucks-replica espresso machine that says, “I love you this many dollars much.” And when you turn from expressing love in terms of monetary expense, and instead in terms of emotional expense, it surprisingly can free you to give on behalf of a better world—the kingdom of God that Jesus Christ was born for, preached for, and died for. The kingdom in which our kings and men of power do not content themselves with their vast palaces of cedar, expensive paint, and lavish décor, but who instead are courageous enough to give of themselves until there is nothing left to give. Even if others won’t, may we do likewise, in the name of the child whose birth we await. By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 4, 2011

Letters from the Soul: This Month's Newsletter Column

"Santa's Healthy Eats"

Dear Church,

This will be the third Christmas I have spent as a minister in a parish setting, but only my first Christmas with all of you. Whenever I spend the holidays somewhere new, I always love seeing which Christmas traditions different families and different churches hold dearly to—my pastor in California would collect nativity scenes, my dad in Kansas would always make lasagna for Christmas Eve dinner—those sorts of things.

My own Christmas tradition was pretty basic, really—as a child, my parents taught me to always leave a piece of fruit or some vegetables out along with the cookies and milk for Santa Claus. You have to figure that the old, rotund fellow already has an expensive enough health insurance premium, to say nothing of the group plan the elves are asking for because they really need a union, so it was probably best to offer healthy food. It may have had more to do with my parents wanting to teach me healthy eating habits, but that part just went in one ear and out the other.

I think there was another reason for offering Santa more than just the milk and cookies, though—it was to offer him something more than the expected minimum. After all, Christmas is the day when we welcome our Savior into the world, and the Magi who came to visit him did not give him a varied assortment of junk food, the random holiday fruitcake, or the re-gifted sweater. They lavished Him with the very best of what they had to offer—gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. Theirs is an example that we can all take heed from—that Christmas is a time to promise our newborn Savior that we, too, will give Him not simply whatever we feel like giving, but the very best of our talents and of ourselves. If the cliché is that the true joy in Christmas is in the giving, then may our giving of ourselves once more to the Christ Child be the greatest joy of all.

A very Merry Christmas to you and yours this holiday season!

Yours in Christ,
Eric

This Week's Sermon: "Spending Less"

Ezekiel 7:18-20

18 They will put on sackcloth
and be clothed with terror.
Every face will be covered with shame,
and every head will be shaved.

19 “‘They will throw their silver into the streets,
and their gold will be treated as a thing unclean.
Their silver and gold
will not be able to deliver them
in the day of the LORD’s wrath.
It will not satisfy their hunger
or fill their stomachs,
for it has caused them to stumble into sin.
20 They took pride in their beautiful jewelry
and used it to make their detestable idols.
They made it into vile images;
therefore I will make it a thing unclean for them. (TNIV)

“The Advent Conspiracy: Spending Less, Giving More, Worshiping Fully, Loving All,” Week One

The heart of the capital city was a mixture of technology and heartbreak—high atop a hill stood the American embassy, with plentiful communication arrays along the roof, down the road was the Continental Hotel where all the Western expatriates stayed, but down in a valley off of the main traffic circle stood a rickety church filled to the brim with the poorest of the global poor. American missionaries, including myself, had come to visit them, and what clean water they had that day had been given to us, that we might be able to wash our hands before having lunch with them. There was no running water—a woman had a pitcher to pour water over our hands. It was incredibly moving. I still have pictures of it. But it also was not, it is not, right.

In 2006, I spent three weeks in Africa on a trip sponsored by Global Ministries, the overseas mission arm of the Disciples and the United Church of Christ. And in Luanda, the capital city of Angola—one of the absolute poorest countries in the world—I saw some of the most extreme poverty ever, and one of its most defining characteristics is a lack of safe drinking water, a circumstance that is one of the leading causes of death of children in the entire world. It would cost the world somewhere between $10 and 11 billion to provide clean drinking water to everyone who now does not have it. And, last year, in 2010, on Black Friday alone, we spent $10.7 billion. That one day of holiday shopping—it could have paid for clean water worldwide.

This Sunday begins a new sermon series for us, as well as a new church year for us. This is the first Sunday of Advent, the season the church traditionally dedicates to preparing the way for the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. And…well, we do prepare for Christmas Day, but these days, it feels like it is more for the arrival of Santa Claus than the arrival of Jesus—the arrival of presents and stocking stuffers, rather than the arrival of our salvation. And so in response to this, three pastors across America started this project a few years ago called “The Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World?” as a means to preach preparing for Christ’s coming by giving differently. This project which promotes clean drinking water revolves around four main themes—spending less, giving more, worshiping fully, and loving all Via the major prophets who preceded Christ—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—plus Jesus’s mother, Mary, we’ll explore a different theme in each of the 4 Sundays of Advent, beginning with today’s theme, spending less.

An old parable told by preachers to this day is that there was this very old, extremely wealthy fellow who finally passed away after a long, long life. His many relatives, interested in how his estate would be divided up, went up to the pastor after the funeral and asked, “So…what did he leave behind?” To which the pastor simply replied, “Everything.”

It is the exact same lesson as that of Ezekiel 7 that we are reading today, though perhaps it goes down a little easier when the word is delivered by a kindly preacher in robes compared to a theatrical Old Testament prophet who would eat parchment scrolls for shock value. Wealth provides no protection from death. It can forestall it, yes—people who are wealthier tend to live longer lives. But, as my parents tried to teach me as a kid, he who dies with the most toys still dies. And, as Ezekiel says, if we are still so foolish to cling to our wealth when death is at our door, that wealth, that gold and silver that we have hoarded up, will have become so unclean that nobody will want it. The reality is, though, that greed means that we still do want it, no matter what the Bible tells us. It is why bankers and executives continue to give themselves raises even as the rest of the lower and middle classes suffer. What does it matter if my gold and silver will be distasteful to me in death? I like having them right now! And I have to tell you, it hurts me so much on a gut level to see that happen—to see the rich get richer—when I look around our community with its above-average unemployment, with its citizens who call us literally every single day asking the church, “Can you please help us before our power gets shut off?” The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never overcome it—until the power bill goes unpaid.

Spending less is a message we are never given by the church of our consumerism culture. Whenever we attend worship at the church of consumerism, be it at the altar of the television set, or a newspaper, or a computer, we are preached at, exhorted to, earlier and earlier in the year, to spend more at Christmastime. It is like a cartoon I saw the other day of the Thanksgiving turkey giving the old stage hook to Santa Claus to drag him offstage, while the turkey shouted, “Wait your turn, fat boy, November is MY month!” I saw my first Christmas commercial this year on November 8—a full 47 days before Christmas—and it was not for any charitable cause, like the clean water well-digging done by the Advent Conspiracy. It was for Wal-Mart, which, among many other successful corporations—Apple, Nike, Volkswagen, I could go on and on—have become successful at marketing their respective brands by actually studying how we, churches and other religious groups, even cults, have marketed our own denominations over time. You want to blame someone for why it feels like we worship at the Church of Apple, giving praise to the Holy Spirit of the departed Steve Jobs? They learned how to package their message from us!

But let’s say that in between all of the advertising noise calling us to spend more, you do decide to spend less…okay, spend less than what? What you spent last year? Spend less than your next-door neighbor? Spend less than the average person? What does spending less look like? The best answer the Advent Conspiracy gives is, is celebrating Christmas simpler for you this year? Are there fewer moving parts? Fewer stressful shopping trips to make? Fewer credit card bills to stress over? Because here’s the thing—I’m not asking you to give less to your loved ones, only to spend less. What you lose in quantity of moving parts this Christmas, we will plan on making up for in quality—in fact, that is exactly what we’ll be talking about next week.

C.S. Lewis wrote that one of the best ways to avoid falling into the trap of love of money—the root of evil, according to Scripture—was to give more than we can spare. As he says in his magnum opus, Mere Christianity, “If our expenditure on comfort, luxury, and amusement is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch us, I should say that they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them.” I mentioned a few weeks ago in a sermon about how CEOs and other suits will try to base their compensation on being paid “above average” in their field, even though mathematically, someone must be below average too! Here is the same conundrum, but turned on its head in a wonderful way—Lewis says we must be, as Christians, above average in our giving—and if we all give more, then we are required to give more still to remain above average in what we give away. And here’s the kicker—we need to be able to view what we spend on Christmas not as money we are giving away, but money that is still going to comfort and luxury—it is just not our own comfort, or our own luxury. Gold and silver, as Ezekiel refers to wealth, remains gold and silver, whether in my hands or yours. It is up to us to transform that gold and silver into gifts—not the thirty-dollar necktie that he wasn’t going to like anyways, or that twenty-dollar scented candle that she was just going to re-gift, for they are still, at their core, gold and silver—but into the soul-sized gifts that can change a person’s world. What we spend on Black Friday alone could give the entire world clean drinking water. Imagine what the kingdom will look like if we used that money for Biblical gift-giving this Christmas. May it be so. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
November 27, 2011

Some Thoughts on Thanksgiving

I'll just come out and say it...

the entire premise behind the holiday of Thanksgiving bothers me just a tad. It's the same logic behind Valentine's Day--deliberately show candied affection for your significant other on that one day out of the year, just in case you don't during the other 364. So, with Thanksgiving, it feels like we are supposed to deliberately show thanks this one day out of the year, just in case we're terrible at it the other 364. Then again, Thanksgiving can trace its roots back to the Puritan pilgrims. Valentine's Day is a Hallmark holiday through-and-through.

But because of that little buggering concern, you will probably never see me give a Thanksgiving-themed sermon entitled "How to Have an Attitude of Gratitude." Though, in fairness, that is also partly because I feel like a sermon with that title is something that you are much likely to see Joel Osteen give, or maybe Jim Bakker before his fall from grace.

Yet if Thanksgiving isn't a one-shot opportunity to cram our giving of thanks into one turkey-laden day, then what can we make it into? Right now, the cliche is that it is an excuse for us to eat dinner with people who annoy us and then watch football. Cliches exist for a reason--there is usually at least a germ of truth in them. But in being more deliberate about the relational aspects of a holiday like this--after all, thanks has to have a recipient, we can't really just give thanks to ourselves and expect that to do--can work wonders.

So, in a way, it is my upcoming Advent sermon series writ large--just as we may stray from the authentic meaning of Christmas, so too do we stray from the authentic meaning of Thanksgiving. But, in preparing for this sermon series, what this preacher has learned is that this most certainly does not mean that any holiday, no matter what its side effects, is beyond redemption.

Yours in Christ,
Eric

PS: Please do yourselves, and the world, a giant favor and not actually go shopping on Black Friday. Use that time to cultivate relationships with people who you may otherwise have little time and energy to talk to because of work, distance, and the like--after all, Black Friday has become a de facto holiday here. With that said, a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours tomorrow!

NOT this week's sermon

A certain preacher did not preach last Sunday. So, for those of you who were here looking for yesterday's sermon, I am afraid that there isn't any.

However, I can give you a sneak peek into what the sermons for the next few weeks will be like!

Back when I was doing my part-time student associate pastorate at FCC Concord, my senior pastor there gave me a book to read entitled, "The Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World?" It was co-written by three pastors, one of whom (Rick McKinley), I was familiar with in passing because his Imago Dei church is in my former hometown of Portland, Oregon, and I had actually visited Imago Dei on a couple of occasions.

The book itself is staggering on many levels, but first and foremost (to me) because of this: I felt like I was reading a book written by someone who understood my generation of millennials in a way that other pastors had tried to and failed by either repeating the same sermons of the past, or by skewing far too hard to the right in excluding people and characteristics that I would still consider to be a part of the body of Christ.

In short, the book is about reclaiming Christmas from the consumerist culture that currently surrounds the American holiday season, and the idea is that we can do that by both engaging in alternate gift-giving that is more meaningful than offering a sweater that he won't ever wear, or a fruitcake that she'll just re-gift next year (my granddad on my mom's side of the family swears that there is only one fruitcake in the world, and that it gets passed around every year at Christmas). That alone was enough to earn my permanent adoration, as my family can certainly attest to the peculiar and powerful loathing I reserve for having to gift-wrap ANYTHING.

Then, with the money you save from alternate gift-giving (which should be a pretty penny, since the average American household spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 on Christmas alone), you give to charity instead--in the Advent Conspiracy's case, this is Living Water International, an NGO in the business of drilling clean water wells in the Global South. But it can be any charity you wish.

Let me tell you, for a dorky little do-gooder who is just idealistic enough when he isn't being a cantankerous cynic, that book was some powerful stuff. Two years later, beat up and dog eared, it is now serving as the basis for this year's Advent sermon series, which begins this Sunday, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

I hope to see you there.

Yours in Christ,
Eric

This Week's Sermon: "My Name is Christian"

Mark 9:33-41

"33 They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” 34 But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.

35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

36 He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

Whoever Is Not Against Us Is for Us

38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
39 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us. 41 Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly be rewarded." (TNIV)

“From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations” Sermon Series, Week Seven

The most awe-inspiring church service I have ever sat in was not in a language that I could understand, or in a land that I could navigate, or at a time that I would normally have woken up for. The Church of the Annunciation is a great basilica in Nazareth run by the Franciscan order of Roman Catholic priests, and during my pilgrimage in 2010, I slipped into the domed sanctuary that morning to see, in the grotto where tradition says that Gabriel appeared to Mary, a Catholic mass being performed. I had come halfway across the world to dig up artifacts and tour holy sites, and on this day, all of that globetrotting and adventure-seeking was set aside precisely because I had come halfway across the world—only to feel completely at home in a church I had never seen and would likely never see again, because as I saw the mass unfold, from homily to Eucharist, it called out to Protestant American me, saying, “You are one of us.”

It is so difficult to overstate that sense of belonging in a world like Israel. I was staying at the Nautical College in Acre, a town that was shelled heavily with Hezbollah rocket fire during Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon. Our drives to Jerusalem would take us within sight of the heavily armed and armored walls that separated the West Bank from Israel proper. I spoke no Hebrew, no Arabic, I had tiptoed to the Western Wall and offended nuns with my covered head at the Church of the Beatitudes, it was a place and time so colossally different from where I was first taught of Christ, in America. But in that church service, I belonged in the Holy Land.

And so begins the seventh and final week of our sermon series together, “From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations.” This series is based on a book written by a United Church of Christ pastor, Rev. Eric Elnes, who has pastored a very successful church in Arizona, where they have made amazing use of a diverse array of tools and talents available to them in doing ministry. Eric then wrote this short book called “The Phoenix Affirmations,” after the town in which it was composed, but also for the image of the phoenix, rising from the ashes. And we have talked about a lot of things these past seven weeks together, and I am not even going to try to recount all of them in just a few seconds, because this week is the big one, it’s the take-home, it’s the call to serve—this week’s theme is, “Acting with meaning and with purpose to serve, and to strengthen, and to extend God’s realm of love.”

We’ve all heard that cowboy-ish, Clint Eastwood-esque saying—“If you’re not with me, then you’re against me.” President George Bush said it after September 11. If you’re a film buff like me, Kevin Bacon’s character says it in the latest X-Men movie that came out this past summer. And it is an attitude that more than a few churches have held, both past and present. They point to sayings of Jesus, like “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light, nobody comes to the Father except through Me” from the Gospel of John. And in response to that kind of a bunker mentality, I would guide those brothers and sisters to this story, here, as living, divine proof that you can proclaim Christ as the way to Heaven without being a prickly so-and-so about it, because Christ literally takes that mentality of “if you’re not with me, you’re against me” and turns it on its head—now it’s “only if you are against us can you not be for us.”

And for Jesus, that really is a winning strategy. Even the unchurched often hold Jesus in very high esteem, if only as a moral teacher. In America, at least, precious few are truly against Jesus, so by His logic, everyone else is with Him. Even ardent atheists can hold to the ideas that Jesus taught about loving your neighbor and giving to those who have less than you, yet we still will draw a line at what we do or don’t do based on a shared belief with someone. Say the Red Cross, a nondenominational charity, comes to me, a religious pastor, and asks, “Pastor, can your church host a blood donation drive?” What do you do? Jesus tells us that people and charities in the secular world are not necessarily against us—which means that they are still for us, even if we do not see it, so let us be for them as well. So of course you help the Red Cross!

Now, that’s a softball of a scenario I lobbed to you. The question gets decidedly thornier if the person or charity is involved in a religious wedge issue like abortion, or..Israel v Palestine. But, this, this is how someone can fly halfway across the world and feel so welcome at a mass—though I was not Catholic, or Israeli, or Palestinian, that I did not live there or had any right to say who should, it was a place for me, that told me I belonged there as a beloved child of God.

The Church of the Annunciation produced the exact opposite atmosphere that critics now say churches are about—the emergent pastor Brian McLaren writes of how church members “seem to want…a rigid, sectarian environment where the boundaries between “us” and “them” are constantly reinforced and celebrated, an insular environment which maintains aloofness, fear, or disdain towards the world and its problems.” I am not saying this church does any of those things. But you may know of churches that do. This sounds an awful lot like the same song I was singing when I was talking to you a few weeks ago about Biblical hospitality, and how it eclipsed simple tolerance. And it is—but the difference in today’s message is, how can you carry that hospitality, that sense of mission, into the community, into every other part of your life that is not contained within the brick and mortar of our beautiful sanctuary? How do you extend God’s realm of love, of belonging, rather than merely maintaining that realm within the church?

This time, it is the disciples, not Jesus, who provide the answer. And, as the disciples are wont to be, they show us what not to do. Their failure is twofold—they not only argue over who receives the highest honor in God’s kingdom—when Jewish tradition typically teaches that in death, all may become equal once more, having been freed of earthly riches. And then right afterwards, they are snitching on this anonymous fellow who can do what they can’t—only twenty-some verses earlier in this very chapter, the disciples attempt an exorcism and fail! So I suspect this rejection of the successful exorcist, whose only name to us is that of Christian, it was less about the exorcist using Jesus’ name than it was about jealousy. Both of these cases, at their roots, are about putting yourself before Jesus, about putting your individual identity before the identity that Christ gave you, the name of Christian, the name that literally means, “little Christ.” Before I am Eric, my name is Christian. Before you are Don, or Judy, or Doc, or Justin, your name is Christian.

Fundamentally, then, the single best thing that we can do to extend God’s realm of love is to put Jesus first. It’s an awful cliché to utter, especially towards the end of a sermon, and it is awful precisely because those exact same churches that Brian McLaren talks about—the ones insistent on making an “us and them” schism, the “answer” churches I talked about last week—talk all the time about giving yourself up to Jesus, putting Jesus first in your life, and then, when you violate one of their answers, when you do not tow the party line on those thornier wedge issues, when you actually want to help heal the world’s problems rather than avoid them, you suddenly become one of the “them,” not the “us,” and the church is acting not as Jesus would, but as the disciples would. The very early New Testament church called itself “The Way,” not “The Answer.” Putting Jesus first is not an answer—it is a way, it is the way, to extending God’s realm of love past these walls. I saw it in Nazareth—a church that because they put Jesus first, not the Holy Land first, or the church first, or themselves first, but because they put Jesus first, I felt like I could belong there. And the good news is that you do not have to travel halfway across the world to feel that belonging in your journey—know that you can do so here as well. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
November 13, 2011

This Week's Sermon: "Copernicus Lives"

Matthew 5:17-20

"The Fulfillment of the Law

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (TNIV)

“From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations” Sermon Series, Week Six, Nov. 6, 2011

In Georgia, Pastor Andy Stanley’s Northpoint Church created a video for Youtube that was a gentle parody of their rock concert-style megachurch worship, in which the parody of the pastor stands up there and simply repeats word-for-word after the narrator, “I have all the answers.” And that is pretty much how I want you to view me—I have all the answers. I am a Magic 8 Ball in a white robe and Oakleys. Should we include an extra casserole for this month’s luncheon? Answer is hazy, try again later. But if it’s a pizza casserole, then okay, yeah, do it.

Okay. I don’t have all the answers, as any of y’all who are three times my age will know. But it is what more and more churches are demanding of their pastors these days—gone are the parishes that my Disciples church in California would call the “journey churches,” where faith was about a lifelong search for truth, in favor of “answer churches,” where the answers, such as they are, are spoon-fed to the congregation. In explaining his irritation with such churches, a buddy of mine said to me, “Look, my nephew is a year old. He wants to be spoon-fed? Cool. But if he wants to be spoon-fed at six, no can do. Here’s a fork, feed yourself.” Church is not about treating you like the one-year-old incapable of feeding himself, it is about empowering you to find your own spiritual nourishment for those other six days of the week when you are not here in this sanctuary, worshiping with us.

And so begins the sixth week of our sermon series together, “From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations.” This series is based on a book written by a United Church of Christ pastor, Rev. Eric Elnes, who has pastored a very successful church in Arizona, where they have made amazing use of a diverse array of tools and talents available to them in doing ministry. Eric then wrote this short book called “The Phoenix Affirmations” after the town in which it was composed, but also because the image of the phoenix, being reborn out of the ashes. We’ve talked about a lot of things these past six weeks, from the role of Scripture to worship itself to the church in mission to the nature of God’s infinite love for us! But the glue that ties all of those themes together is that of belief—of faith itself. And so appropriately, this week’s theme is, “recognizing that faith, science, doubt, and belief all serve the pursuit of truth.”

Now, if it feels like we have heard this particular message in Scripture from Jesus before, about the law and the prophets, it is because, basically, we have—week one of this sermon series was based on the passage in Matthew where Jesus says that upon the commandments of “love your God” and “love your neighbor” hang the entirety of the law and the prophets. But the message is a little bit different this time—that none of these laws may be set aside, that none of them shall disappear. Jesus begins His ministry here by teaching to uphold the entirety of the law equally, but elsewhere in Matthew, He says that two laws—love God, love each other—are clearly more important than any other laws or any prophetic teaching. What gives?

In today’s passage, Jesus is saying what I promise you that every visionary, every genius, every scientist has had to say at one point in their work—I am here not to abolish everything you know, I am here to transform it! I am here not to destroy your world, I am here to make it better, please, just have faith that I know what I am doing! It was true for Christ, it was true for the Church reformers from Martin Luther on down, it was probably true for the secular visionaries we idolize today, like Steve Jobs and Christopher Reeve. All of them probably had to give the same disclaimer—I am not here to end your world, I am here to improve upon it! And it is tough to hear, because of that old cliché that has a lot of truth to it—the devil you know beats the devil you don’t. In life, it is almost always much easier to stay inside a cocoon of familiarity—but the feeling that it is actually safe for us? Well…that’s more illusion than anything else.

I’ve said this in previous sermons and I will continue to swear by it, the church is called to be proactive. If all we do is react to what is happening around us, then to be completely honest, we might as well close our doors right now. The pursuit of answers, of truth, is proactive—it is not that the truth is already obtained by us and we are willing to dispense it to whichever sinner walks through our doors. No—we know that we have obtained one precious piece of truth—that Jesus is our Messiah and Savior—and that from that bit of truth we go out to learn even more. But Jesus used so many techniques to find truth—He preached, as He did here in the Sermon on the Mount, but he also told stories, he healed, he traveled, he fed people, he did all of these different things and not one was greater than the other, but all were tools to truth. And I worry so, so, much that today’s church has settled on just a few tried and true ways to search for truth—the same kind of worship that preaches the same kind of theology, followed by the same kind of coffee hour where the same kind of casseroles are served and the same corny jokes are told. It would be like if all Jesus did was to retell the same two or three stories over and over and over—by the final chapter of the Gospels, instead of receiving the Great Commission to go forth and make disciples, or the command to tend to God’s sheep, we’d be treated to our seventeenth rendition of the Prodigal Son, except maybe this time with finger puppets.

And this is where the church can take a great lesson to heart from the not-church world—the secular world, science and all of its complexity, computers and technology, because those sorts of things—science and technology—are always trying to improve upon themselves. After reading one too many articles about how the late Steve Jobs was like a sort of spiritual-slash-corporate priest for Americana, I simply realized that I, too, felt this way about the man for one simple reason—he never, never stopped trying to make his work better. Do not confuse this with having a work ethic—it is about being willing to take risks as well for the sake of improvement.

The best story I can offer to you is that of Nicholas Copernicus, the Renaissance priest and scientist who decided, stubborn old bird that he was, that the earth actually revolved around the sun, and not the other way around—which is pretty remarkable when you consider that the theory he was disagreeing with was Aristotle’s, written well over 1,500 years before Copernicus began his work. Because of that—because he was going against 1,500 years of established belief, Copernicus put off publishing his work for fear of controversy, for fear that the world would not see the Christ in his message—that he had come not to abolish everyone’s beliefs, but to transform them. Copernicus finally relented and published his work—and the day the first copies were complete, he was in bed, having been stricken by a crippling stroke. According to legend, that day, a friend placed his book in his hands and Copernicus looks up, sees his book, and dies, immediately and peacefully, knowing that in his work, he lives, and will always live.

And so when Christians today clam up at change, be it in the form doing everything the same way time and time again, or in the form of disputing every scientific theory that overlaps with Scripture, or even in the form of doubting what tomorrow will even look like, a new challenge is issued to us, a challenge to curiously, inquisitively, even perhaps a tad fearfully, wander outside to see where God’s divine presence might lead us next. If God is a God of the living, a God meant to bring this ancient and dusty book we call the Bible to life, then know that there are answers out there still that we have yet to find. I cannot promise you that I know what God’s entire truth looks like—after all, I have very few answers to give. But I can promise you that I will be there to wander with you, every step of the way. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
November 6, 2011

This Month's "Letters From the Soul" Newsletter Column

"Truth Attracts by Its Own Splendor"

Dear Church,

I have taken to heart the belief that I was called here in part to help this Christian community grow in numbers as well as in spirit. It is both a practical necessity and a Biblical imperative for a church to make disciples. And we will be adding and trying a lot of new, different, and hopefully exciting things in our creation and nurturing of 21st century disciples here in Longview—new programs are being added every month to provide fellowship in Bible study, music, even television and film. The earliest apostles made use of whatever they could to spread the Gospel—word of mouth, the written word, and in the case of leaders like Paul, traveling the world over to preach and to teach. May we do likewise in using our creative energy to find new and exciting ways to offer the Gospel to our neighbors!

And in doing so, remember as well that we must not lose sight of the fundamental truth upon which I have to think the entire Church was created—that God loves us without abandon and without condition. The single best way we can communicate that truth is by in turn unconditionally loving every single person who comes through our gothic sanctuary doors because, quite simply, truth attracts by its own splendor. Seeing that truth in action is as attractive as any other form of evangelism that I know of, simply because of its authenticity.

I know far too many people, especially my age, who have felt deeply hurt and wounded by organized Christianity in the past, because what passed for sacred truth in their churches was the belief that God didn’t love them as they were. No more. It is not enough to allow someone in and to tolerate their presence, or to give them permission to stay. The church exists to allow someone to grow and evolve. May our offering of the Gospel to the community do exactly that.

Yours in Christ,
Eric

This Week's Sermon: "Before Abraham"

John 8:48-58

Jesus’ Claims About Himself
48 The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”

49 “I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. 50 I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”

52 At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”

54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55 Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (TNIV)

"From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations" Sermon Series, Week Five (All Saint's Sunday)

The swelling crowds filled St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, during the spring in a season that is otherwise of rebirth and growth, and instead the flocks had converged upon the Eternal City to mark the passing of a man whom many Catholics have known as the only Pope they ever had—after nearly thirty years on the throne, Pope John Paul II had just passed away, and the crowds were shouting out, “Santo Subito!” “Sainthood now!” It is one of the most powerful memories of my college years, seeing the outpouring of grief that came from Christendom when John Paul died. And what a stirring metaphor for the Church itself—John Paul was by all accounts incredibly loving and charismatic, and on a very personal level, I have taken his teachings about violence and war to heart. But this also became a man whose legacy was tarnished in no small part by the scandals of abuse that were left behind, that the Roman Catholic Church struggles with still. A complicated legacy begun by love but shadowed by hurt—this sounds exactly like the church, especially as we wonder how to speak God’s love in this new, different world.

And so begins the fifth week of our sermon series together, “From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations.” This series is based on a book written by a United Church of Christ pastor, Rev. Eric Elnes, who has pastored a very successful church in Arizona, where they have made amazing use of a diverse array of tools and talents available to them in doing ministry. Eric then wrote this short book called The Phoenix Affirmations, after the town in which it was composed, but also because the image of the phoenix, being reborn out of the ashes. We began this series by talking about the role of Scripture in listening for God’s word and the importance of having a vibrant and artistic worship to attend. Then we talked about the need to include everyone into God’s family in a way that practices real hospitality instead of merely tolerance. Last week, we courageously tackled issues of justice that the church can perform mission in, and this week, our theme is one that is wonderfully appropriate for the Sunday leading up to All Saints’ Day—that in Christ, all things are made new and that we are loved for eternity.

On some level, I think we fundamentally know this, that God loves, that God is love, that God does love us somehow, in some way. That God loves is a fundamental truth of Christianity itself, for Jesus preaches God’s love for all over and over and over. So why do we even preach on it? Well, because it is one of only two sermons that I really know—God loves you, and be good, those are the two sermons I know! I just have learned how to give them a hundred different ways (bet you didn’t know that when you called me). No, I think the need to preach this theme, that God loves us, that God loves you, that need is so constant because the messengers God has given us to deliver that message change so frequently. First, it was the Patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, then Moses and Joshua and the Judges, all ordained by God to do His work. Then we had kings, Saul and David and Solomon, and prophets to go along with them, Samuel and Nathan, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and then after all these patriarchs and kings and prophets, the next messenger we are given is Christ Himself. But even then God will not let us be alone—later in John, Jesus promises us the Holy Spirit to be with us even after He has left, and that Holy Spirit, we see that delivered to us by people we would call saints, and not in the traditional sense of being beatified and then canonized, no, a saint as someone, living or dead, through whom, in whom, you have seen God. There are the big ones who we can all think of—names like Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Dietrich Bonhoeffer—and if we are courageous enough to aim as high as the heavens, theirs are the examples by which we should be led. But how? As one prayer goes, God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.

The true calling of a saint, the how-to, is best summed up in what Mother Teresa said about her own ministry, “I am like the pencil in the hand of a God who is writing a love letter to the world.” Some saints have become famous for their ministry on behalf of a loving God, but many, many more do not, and they serve us all the same. And so the church created a day to honor them as well—All Saints Day—to honor the saints whose names we will never know, but who have acted as God’s latter-day messengers, performing the task that the prophets and the apostles once did of offering God’s love in both word and deed to a broken and hungry world.

And so God’s message has been carried throughout time—from patriarchs to judges and kings to prophets, from our Messiah to apostles and to the saints of today. It is the magnitude of this message that Jesus is impressing upon us in this passage from John—before Abraham was, Christ was. Before the saints were, Christ was. Before the prophets and judges and kings, before there were men, and women, and children, Christ was. And Jesus tells us why in His own cryptic way—he refers to himself as “I am—before Abraham was, I am.” He is using the divine name “I Am What I Am,” God’s name from the story of Moses at the burning bush to show how infinite His grace is—it is as infinite as the number of possibilities for what the divine name might mean. And this infinite Messiah, this Messiah that has lived forever, He exists for one simple, but awe-inspiring reason—only an infinite Messiah can offer infinite love—and that is what salvation is at is rawest, most pure, most wonderful form. As Eric Elnes puts it, salvation is discovering that we are loved infinitely, we are loved beyond our wildest imaginations and then, he says, determining to live our lives according to that discovery. The evangelist Billy Sunday once said the best thing that could ever happen to a person is to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and to then immediately die—to be as pure as possible. And in fact, that is often how baptism was practiced way, way back in the day—folks would wait to be baptized on their deathbeds, so that as much sin as possible could be erased. But it completely misses out on the second half of the salvation equation—the first half is the reality that we are loved by God, but the other half is knowing it, and letting ourselves be transformed by it. And you know what? I love the sunset, the lake, natural beauty as much as anyone, and I can see God there, but when someone tells me how much I am loved by God—I know it in my bones that I am saved. Not because I chose Christ, but because I have no choice but to be loved by Christ. I know it, I know it because the saints around me tell me so.

And I wonder where our church would be without its saints. Because without us, without its people, the church is only an idea, an idea that exists in the imagination, this notion that God’s people might take it upon themselves to act spiritually, to form a holy community. But with us, and through us, the church is a reality, and one that has illuminated the world for the past two thousand years. To honor that is to not only honor the saints who have come before us, the saints who lived and died for the church, including Jesus Himself, though those are often who we think of first on All Saints Day. It honors living as well—the living who serve a loving God, a God fundamentally of love, not of hate. And it honors saints living among us, those who would inspire a roar of voices, from a crowd or even just a whisper from a lonely person, to cry out, “Santo Subito” on their behalf. Sainthood now—sainthood for those children of God across the pews, across the world, who know that they are loved and in response have said, as Mary Magdalene said to Christ in the garden, “Lord, here I am! What is it that you want me to do?” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
October 30, 2011