Sunday, February 25, 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

Sunday, February 18, 2018

This Week's Sermon: "God Said to Abram," Genesis 12:1-9

Genesis 12:1-9

The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, those who curse you I will curse; all the families of the earth will be blessed because of you.”

4 Abram left just as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. 5 Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all of their possessions, and those who became members of their household in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in Canaan, 6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the sacred place at Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. The Canaanites lived in the land at that time.

7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I give this land to your descendants,” so Abram built an altar there to the Lord who appeared to him. 8 From there he traveled toward the mountains east of Bethel, and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and worshipped in the Lord’s name. 9 Then Abram set out toward the arid southern plain, making and breaking camp as he went. (Common English Bible)



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

I still remember the daylong drive here from Berkeley to Longview in September, 2011. I had just last month signed the letter of call establishing myself as your incoming pastor, dropped out of the Master of Theology degree program I would have otherwise begun at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, and gave away what little furniture I owned in the (extremely) humble four-room apartment I shared with my seminary roommate.

Aside from my books, which I had shipped here, the entire rest of my life fit in my modest 2008 Nissan Sentra—the exact same one you see parked by the church most days of the week. Surrounded by precipitously packed dishes and piles of clothes, and chugging Starbucks the whole way to stay alert, I made the sojourn from the Peoples’ Republic to Kelso in one very long day.

And I remember being absolutely terrified.

I was a twenty-five-year-old pastor who had been ordained not even three months ago. I had never been a solo pastor. The previous two years at First Christian Church in Concord as I finished seminary, I had always had a safety net in the form of their then-senior pastor, Russ.

That’s why I told you I like wearing my robes on Sundays—so you couldn’t see my new-pastor knees knocking from nerves.

But God had called me here, just as God calls forth Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah) from Ur to Haran—and that journey was no one-day road trip in an air-conditioned sedan. Imagine the fear they had to set aside…for courage in the face of God is not necessarily the absence of fear, but doing right by God despite the fear you may feel. And it’s where we are at now, six-plus years later.

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 begin today 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 and then to the Negev, 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.

Truthfully, our parish has likely been at that crossroads for a while now. My upcoming departure puts where we are into the spotlight, but we have long been at a place where we have to decide exactly what sort of a faith family we want to be.

Take Abram, for instance. He is already seventy-five years old—already well into what we typically think of as old age—and as his story unfolds, we will see that he has no compunctions about pushing back a bit with God when he feels he should, like when he bargains God down from fifty righteous men to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to just ten.

But Abram’s longevity does not keep him from picking up and obeying God’s commission to move from Haran to Canaan. On the contrary, the Genesis account states that he “left just as the LORD told him.”

We may see such response to God’s call as an example of, or a lesson concerning, obedience. And we would not be wrong for doing so. But we would be wrong for seeing this story as only about obedience.

It is about trusting in a new future because it is God who calls you into it.

That new future for you will not include me in this role. I may still be young(ish?), but after six-plus years, I can hardly be considered new. But in some form or fashion, newness is going to have to be a part of our congregation’s future, whether by hook or by crook.

Embracing newness in small ways while I am still here can prepare us for the newness that will come in bigger ways after I am gone. One of my biggest wishes for this parish is a way back towards that pursuit of newness that defined the process that brought me here in 2011. I fear that we may have lost sight of that pursuit of what our future might hold in favor of keep as tight a hold as possible on what we still have.

Yet doing ministry from such a place of emotional and spiritual scarcity is never sustainable, because scarcity by definition does not come with a safety net.

As the temptation to withdraw back into the shell of our historic building and of our favorite pews and our favorite fellowship hall tables begins to rear its head, please remember that this is all it is—a temptation.

It is right that we should be tempted during this season—it is Lent, after all, and its forty days parallels the forty days that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness before Satan appeared to tempt Him.

The things with which Satan tempted Jesus were entirely temporal, though, not eternal. And as you are about to embark on this journey of transition and discernment, know that you too will be tempted by things that are temporal and fleeting. My hope and prayer is that you keep your focus upon that which is eternal: God, God’s love for you, and God’s presence as revealed and mediated through Jesus Christ.

Return, then for a moment, to the story of Abram. There were (and are) so many reasons we come up with to say no to God’s call in our lives—our own insecurities, our own fears, and our own desires for earthly power that have nothing to do with God’s own singularly creative power. We as humans are extraordinarily talented at saying no to God. But Abram said yes—a characteristic which defines his life throughout Genesis.

Abram says yes to God.

We said yes to God together six-and-a-half years ago, and it began for me with a road trip into the unknown, just as I know that my arrival represented for you the beginning of a journey into the unknown.

But now, it is time once more to begin another such journey. It is time to say yes to the God who calls us onto that path towards the future, whatever it might hold.

We are not at *the* Haran, you and I, but we are at *a* Haran—a crossroads. We will soon take different roads from that Haran—different road trips, if you will, each of us hopefully laden with lessons that we have taken from the other from my time here as your pastor.

In that way, too, we shall be a bit like Abram, whom Genesis says brought everything with him from Haran to Canaan—all his possessions and his entire household.

But for us, I hope that the possessions we will be taking with each other when we reach that fork in the road will be emotional and spiritual in nature. For I know that when I pull that same Nissan Sentra out of the parking lot here for the last time, it will be laden not with the threadbare trappings of a recently-freed graduate student, but with the memories of a pastor who has lived and loved alongside you.

How grateful I am for that eventual reality, bittersweet though it is for me to contemplate right now.

May God laden you down, then, with possessions not of the sort we are tempted by, but of the sort that we need as the future points us ever forward.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington 
February 18, 2018