It's Moving Week!

As you may have already noticed, this week's sermon was not posted here to the Theophilus Project, and that is because my blog has new online digs, at my new website: ericatcheson.com.

I have loved this blog and getting to share it with you, but after nearly seven years, it was in dire need of a refresh, and as I begin a new phase of my ministry career, combining my blog with my professional website made obvious sense.

The blog is moving, but the writing and advocacy will continue. Especially with Oregon Trail Theology now well into the editing process and my doctoral thesis a little more than two months away from being defended, one of my short term goals is to resume writing content for the blog that goes beyond my Sunday sermons.

While my online presence will be moving, the Theophilus Project will remain up and available for the foreseeable future.

Thank you for reading and hearing what I have had to say over the years. I hope to continue to add to the conversation with you for many more years to come.

Yours always in Christ,
Eric

This Week's Sermon: "A Great and Powerful Wind," 1 Kings 19:1-14

1 Kings 19:1-14

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, how he had killed all Baal’s prophets with the sword. 2 Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah with this message: “May the gods do whatever they want to me if by this time tomorrow I haven’t made your life like the life of one of them.” 3 Elijah was terrified. He got up and ran for his life. He arrived at Beer-sheba in Judah and left his assistant there.

4 He himself went farther on into the desert a day’s journey. He finally sat down under a solitary broom bush. He longed for his own death: “It’s more than enough, Lord! Take my life because I’m no better than my ancestors.” 5 He lay down and slept under the solitary broom bush. Then suddenly a messenger tapped him and said to him, “Get up! Eat something!” 6 Elijah opened his eyes and saw flatbread baked on glowing coals and a jar of water right by his head. He ate and drank, and then went back to sleep. 7 The Lord’s messenger returned a second time and tapped him. “Get up!” the messenger said. “Eat something, because you have a difficult road ahead of you.” 8 Elijah got up, ate and drank, and went refreshed by that food for forty days and nights until he arrived at Horeb, God’s mountain. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night. The Lord’s word came to him and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?” 10 Elijah replied, “I’ve been very passionate for the Lord God of heavenly forces because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant. They have torn down your altars, and they have murdered your prophets with the sword. I’m the only one left, and now they want to take my life too!”

11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord. The Lord is passing by.” A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Lord. But the Lord wasn’t in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake. But the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Lord wasn’t in the fire. After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat. He went out and stood at the cave’s entrance. A voice came to him and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?” 14 He said, “I’ve been very passionate for the Lord God of heavenly forces because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant. They have torn down your altars, and they have murdered your prophets with the sword. I’m the only one left, and now they want to take my life too.” (Common English Bible)

“From Haran to the Negev: When God Foretells Transition,” Week Three

We have just spent two weeks seeing world-class athletes compete not under their own nation’s flag, but under the Olympic flag—as Russia was banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics for their state-run doping program, and even as they had athletes test positive for performance-enhancing drugs during this Olympics, the rest of their contingent continued competing under the Olympic flag.

There is a long tradition of athletes competing at the Olympics under the Olympic flag, often athletes who are stateless, like Guor Maker, also known as Guor Marial. He is a South Sudanese-turned-American marathon runner who competed in track and field in high school and college and eventually qualified to run the marathon in both the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, with the first being under the Olympic flag as well. To answer exactly why he had to compete under the Olympic flag, I’ll let the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees explain:

Guor lost 28 family members during the Second Sudanese Civil War, including eight siblings, and spent much of his early life on the run. He was eventually captured and used as forced labour. In 1994, he joined relatives in the Sudan capital, Khartoum, where he remained until leaving for Egypt at the age of 14. Two years later, he went to the United States, where he was granted refugee status.

In June 2013, to mark World Refugee Day—and after nearly 20 years away—Guor returned to his village in South Sudan from his new home in Arizona. With the help of UNHCR he was reunited with his parents and other family members who had last seen him in 1993.

If you caught the use of the term “forced labor” in that story—that means “slavery.” He was enslaved. But he escaped. He found sanctuary and security as a refugee here in the United States and, on top of competing in two Olympics, just last month enlisted in the United States Air Force as an airman.

Not too bad for someone who was kidnapped into slavery during a genocide.

I don’t want Guor’s story to just fall into the “heroic, noble refugee” stereotype, though. What I want us to take away from this is, if we can imagine even a fraction of it, the sheer abandonment that one feels in being kidnapped into slavery during a genocide, because it is that sort of abandonment that followers of God have felt at so many points throughout history, and what can help us understand Elijah’s predicament here in 1 Kings 19.

This is both a new sermon series and my last sermon series for you here in Longview. With my last few weeks as your pastor, I want to speak to you in spirit and in truth about the nature of our transition into new roles in one another’s lives, and what my own hopes are for this mighty family of Jesus followers when I am no longer here.

To do this, our Lenten sermon series will cover different stories of transition, moving, and new starts throughout Scripture. We began this series with one of the oldest and greatest—the calling of Abram and Sarai by God to pick up their lives at Ur in Mesopotamia and relocate to Canaan by way of a place called Haran, from which this sermon series takes part of its name.

Haran is located in what is now southern Turkey (and is now called Harran, with the extra ‘r’), and its name comes from ancient Akkadian to mean “road” or “crossroads,” which is an appropriate name for both a waystation for a traveling couple and this series as we approach a crossroads in the life of our congregation. So, this series derives its name from it and from the ending of that passage from Genesis 12, which says that Abram and his household continued on toward the Negev.

Last week, we talked about the the story of Moses at the burning bush. The voice of God has just told Moses that God has seen the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt and is sending Moses to right this historic wrong, but there is still more: Moses needs to know who it is that is sending him to undertake this monumental task. God simply replies, “Say to the Israelites, “I AM” has sent you.”

Today, God has sent another Biblical hero—the prophet Elijah, whose defining trait is the passion with which he opposes the worship of the false deities in the Old Testament such as Ba’al. It so determines Elijah’s sense of faith and public ministry that his name, Elijah, means, roughly, “My Lord is my God.” (From the Hebrew words “Elohim,” for “Lord,” and “Yah,” for “God.”)

Elijah’s fierce opposition to Ba’al worship lands him in trouble, though, because he has just bested in public, and subsequently killed, the priests of Ba’al and Ahab, the king of Israel who worships Ba’al and opposes Elijah, has his wife and queen, Jezebel, pursue Elijah. Jezebel is used as an antifeminist archetype in Christianity today, but essentially who she was is the result of ancient Near Eastern diplomacy: an alliance sealed in marriage, and she brings with her the worship of her gods, in this case the Canaanite god of rain and storms.

Elijah’s fear of Jezebel is so acute, though, and his sense of failure so great, that he literally curls up and wishes for death, praying for God to take him because he sees himself as no better than his ancestors who came before him.

But God is not finished with Elijah just yet. And God makes sure that Elijah knows that. As endangered as Elijah feels, God’s messenger makes it clear to him that God is still present.

A great and powerful wind tears through the stones on the mountain, but 1 Kings says that God was not in it. Then an earthquake, and then a fire. But then God’s voice reappears, in what is now known as the “still, small voice.”

It may feel as though a great and powerful wind is strong enough to rip through the cornerstone of a church, but that does not mean that God is in that wind. God may well appear afterwards, after the initial shock and trepidation.

That may not have initially reversed Elijah’s feelings of loneliness and hopelessness or helplessness. But they eventually, as the chapter progresses, spur Elijah back to his feet to go and find his apprentice Elisha so that they may continue their public ministry together.

We do not always escape in this lifetime the very lowest moments of this world. Such moments take the lives of millions, through injustices like the trafficking and slavery of people like Guor Maker, or through addiction and homelessness, or domestic violence—the ways in which we are brought down by one another are seemingly endless, and many do not end in as happy a way as Guor’s story, or Elijah’s for that matter.

It is important to acknowledge that not all stories end the way we necessarily want them to.

But it is equally important to set all our stories up for as much success as humanly possible.

A new chapter in the story of this congregation will soon begin to be written. What it will say, and how it will end, is up to you, as the Holy Spirit leads you.

My hope and prayer, though, is that what you will write—in a job description, in a congregational profile, even in words of encouragement to each other—will be something that reflects the faith in God that lives within you, and does right by that faith.

Elijah felt he could no longer to right by his own fierce faith in God, and for a moment, he let go and waited for death. It is really not a bad example to look to—letting go of certain things can be an important moment of faithful surrender, because Elijah is completely real before God. He is not pretending to be anything other than distraught. There is real honesty and authenticity in that.

But that moment of letting go did not end Elijah’s story. Nor should this time of letting me go, and me letting you go, end your story. Do not think that God has placed a period where, in fact, God may well have placed a comma instead.

There is still much more story to be written. And you remain the ones whom God can use to write it.

Write the story well, my church. Write it well.

May it be so. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson

Longview, Washington

March 4, 2018

This Week's Sermon: "I am Sending You to Pharaoh," Exodus 3:11-20

Exodus 3:11-20

But Moses said to God, “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 God said, “I’ll be with you. And this will show you that I’m the one who sent you. After you bring the people out of Egypt, you will come back here and worship God on this mountain.” 

13 But Moses said to God, “If I now come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they are going to ask me, ‘What’s this God’s name?’ What am I supposed to say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. So say to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”

15 God continued, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, Abraham’s God, Isaac’s God, and Jacob’s God, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever; this is how all generations will remember me. 16 “Go and get Israel’s elders together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me. The Lord said, “I’ve been paying close attention to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 I’ve decided to take you away from the harassment in Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land full of milk and honey.”’ 18 They will accept what you say to them. Then you and Israel’s elders will go to Egypt’s king and say to him, ‘The Lord, the Hebrews’ God, has met with us. So now let us go on a three-day journey into the desert so that we can offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ 19 However, I know that Egypt’s king won’t let you go unless he’s forced to do it. 20 So I’ll use my strength and hit Egypt with dramatic displays of my power. After that, he’ll let you go." (Common English Bible)

“From Haran to the Negev: When God Foretells Transition,” Week Two

The images were quintessentially Olympian, but also personally poignant. One, a devastated second-place finisher, skating on home ice, trying and failing to hold back the tears. The other, a newly-crowned Olympic champion, but taking her first moments in that newfound status to embrace and comfort her vanquished opponent.

Japanese speed skater Nao Kodaira had just won gold in the women’s 500m event, but beside her was an inconsolable Lee Sang-wha of South Korea, who lost the gold to Kodaira by less than two-fifths of one second.

We tend to see our Olympians as champions, representing what is supposed to be the very best of our nations, and whose dedication to their craft is unparalleled. It has to be if you are going to end up on an Olympic podium in any event.

But what is very best in us cannot be limited only to the physical. The very best of us spiritually matters as well. It mattered then, on that ice rink, and especially so given the extremely fraught history that Japan and South Korea share, as the latter bears extensive historical trauma from being conquered and occupied by the former.

Every two years, we send our very best to the Olympics, knowing that they are our very best. But even then, our very best find ways to confound us, to be even greater. The nature of their greatness are made known through their deeds. Such are the ways of God, and of what God expects of us.

This is both a new sermon series and my last sermon series for you here in Longview. With my last few weeks as your pastor, I want to speak to you in spirit and in truth about the nature of our transition into new roles in one another’s lives, and what my own hopes are for this mighty family of Jesus followers when I am no longer here.

To do this, our Lenten sermon series will cover different stories of transition, moving, and new starts throughout Scripture. We began this series last week with one of the oldest and greatest—the calling of Abram and Sarai by God to pick up their lives at Ur in Mesopotamia and relocate to Canaan by way of a place called Haran, from which this sermon series takes part of its name.

Haran is located in what is now southern Turkey (and is now called Harran, with the extra ‘r’), and its name comes from ancient Akkadian to mean “road” or “crossroads,” which is an appropriate name for both a waystation for a traveling couple and this series as we approach a crossroads in the life of our congregation. So, this series derives its name from it and from the ending of that passage from Genesis 12, which says that Abram and his household continued on toward the Negev.

We pick up today with the story of Moses at the burning bush. Moses is itself an Egyptian name, because as a child, Moses's Israelite mother set him adrift in the Nile to save him from Pharaoh's purges of the Israelite boys, and he was in turn discovered and raised in Pharaoh's own household. Moses subsequently went into exile after killing an Egyptian, and we pick up with him here as a shepherd in the service of his father-in-law, Jethro.

The voice of God has just told Moses that God has seen the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt and is sending Moses to right this historic wrong, but there is still more: Moses needs to know who it is that is sending him to undertake this monumental task. God simply replies, “Say to the Israelites, “I AM” has sent you.”

Well, that clears things right up!

What God’s name communicates, though, is that God is beyond all our finite words, labels, and classifications such that only God’s name is capable of accurately depicting and describing God. Only God can accurately describe God. Indeed, the name God gives to Moses, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, is perhaps best translated as “I will be what I will be,” not the more traditional Christian translation of “I am what I am.” Or, as my Jewish Study Bible puts it, “My nature will be made known through my deeds.”

God’s nature will be made known through God’s deeds. God, in other words, will be shown through God’s best, the love, grace, and protection that God has to offer. God is made known by expressions of those virtues, and we are mean to see those expressions in our own lives.

God is, and will always be, the very best, but it is not God who appears before Pharaoh. It is Moses, through whom God eventually performs the plagues that lead up to the Israelites’ liberation.

It is emphatically not a role that Moses wanted, and one that he spends a great deal of the following chapter trying to plead his way out of, and really, understandably so. This isn’t what he has signed up for. He killed a man and expected to live out the rest of his life in exile from his former existence as a prince of Egypt. Why would he, of all people, be the one to now return and be sent to Pharaoh to demand the freedom of Egypt’s Israelite slaves?

Because he still, with all his failings, represented Israel’s best. He became their champion. He was the one to represent them, and he did so movingly.

We do not always get called by God to do that which we think we have signed up for, either. Our circumstances change, the communities around our churches shift, and as much as we might want our church to feel like a time capsule, in which only the bare minimum changes from year to year, we know that this is not a sustainable way to be church. More is required of us. Just look at the children of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This is never what they signed up for. But they have taken on new roles as our nation's consciences with grace and composure.

We cast about, then, for our own freedom as a parish—freedom from insecurity, freedom from fear, and freedom from a mentality of scarcity. We have been blessed with an incredible story and space, and as poor as we may sometimes feel, we must remember in those moments that spiritually, we truly are not.

It is easy, far too easy, to forget the feeling of being blessed. That ease is why spiritual disciplines are needed of us, for while negative reinforcement tends to turn into stone, positive reinforcement often evaporates into the ether.

So even though I will no longer be here several weeks from now to cheer you on, I hope that you will continue cheering each other on with that positive reinforcement that comes from a belief that your Christian faith still has a role to play in our community. I hope that you will continue to see what is best, and bring that to the fore, during the transition period you are about to undertake.

For I realize that this upcoming interim period will require strength that I imagine will at times, feel herculean or Olympian in nature. You may wonder or even worry if you have such strength in you at all. Rest assured, you do. I have faith in this church to do what is right by God, by the Holy Spirit, and by the Body of Christ. I have faith in what is the very best of us.

That faith does not, and will not, change after I leave. I will always be praying for you and cheering you on from afar. God asks an awful lot of us, but generally rightly so, and I will be hoping for you to keep rising to God’s call in your ears.

I continue to believe that God is calling you to be something new and freeing, that, whatever it is, might unshackle us from feelings of scarcity and back into faithful abundance. It is a big task, but nowhere near as big as what God is asking of Moses here, to free a people from not just spiritual scarcity, but physical and existential scarcity that comes from being enslaved.

Moses, understandably, thinks that God has picked the wrong person. But we know that God did no such thing. Nor, then, should we believe that God has picked the wrong church or congregation.

The Exodus story is one that is, at its core, about liberation from the bondage of slavery. It simultaneously belongs to Judaism while also inspiring generations of abolitionists and liberation theologians to change the course of human history for the better. I pray that it, in turn, inspires you to change the course of our own community, and of your own faith and its deeds, for the better.

For there is still much work to do. And you are still among those who can do that work.

Do not ever forget that divine truth.

May it be so. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson

Longview, Washington 

February 25, 2018