(Author’s note—this post can be thought of as Part I of a two-part series on the power of enforcing doctrine—and, indeed, of orthodoxy itself—in the contemporary church. Part II will be posted tomorrow, the 20th. –E.A.)
Sometimes, I feel like all I do on this blog is write about the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
Writing about them is…I dunno…the Vatican and the American bishops feel so completely out-of-step right now that sometimes, pointing it out is like blowing up my toilet with a hand grenade rather than with a simple homemade cherry bomb. It’s overkill.
Yet Bill Keller, until recently the executive editor for the New York Times, wrote a…well, interesting column yesterday that, as far as I can tell, consisted of two things:
-A laundry list of complaints about how Bill Donohue, the perpetually pissed-off leader of the Catholic League, probably clubs baby seals and drinks kitten’s tears in his spare time.
-An offhandedly casual call to progressive Roman Catholics to take their ball and leave the Catholic Church because clearly their hierarchy has no interest in appearing welcoming to them.
As to the first, well, I would simply point you in the direction of South Park’s fantastic season 11 Easter episode, which, in true South Park fashion, rips into Donohue’s zealotry and single-mindedness with barely disguised glee. As is often the case when South Park takes on religious issues, you may not like their low-brow style, but they do get an awful lot of it right.
As to the second…ugh.
I’ve been a Disciple my whole life. And I simply can’t imagine being anything else right now.
I don’t think that she would do this (read: this is purely hypothetical), but if my church’s General Minister and President, Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, were to, say, come out in favor of reprimanding Disciples academics for what they wrote, I’d be ticked off, but I probably wouldn’t leave the Disciples over that. I’d want to stay and try to change the Disciples rather than give up on them, because my Disciples identity simply isn’t something I can walk away from lightly.
Granted—if I personally were reprimanded by my GMP, I might well want to find the door myself, and fast. But the equivalent to that analogy would be Keller saying that the nuns should consider an exodus, not the entire moderate-to-liberal wing of the Roman Catholic Church.
I will also say that it does help that the Disciples are certainly less creedal and hierarchy-driven than the Catholic Church, and my own personal orthodoxy is fairly minimal (belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, belief in the priesthood of all believers, the inspired nature of Scripture, and maybe a couple of other goodies). But because my own orthodoxy is minimal, I feel like it is breathtakingly uncaring to suggest that a person abandon their lifelong faith identity as easily as Keller does, because such a suggestion implies that they can just shop around for another faith family like one would shop around for a better-fitting pair of jeans.
That mentality is not only denigrating to the person hearing that suggestion, it’s denigrating to the church.
Honestly, it bothers me terribly that we have taken the mentality of “church shopping” to such an extent that whenever our church says or does something we disagree with, we are encouraged to call it a day rather than stay and try to gently win minds and hearts over. I really do worry that doing this only makes churches act even more like echo chambers, where the orthodoxy of each church reigns, and where less and less actual teaching takes place because you’re already preaching to the choir.
This phenomenon, in turn, is one of the things that bothers me the most about a church using excessive means to police its own orthodoxy, and this includes massive statements of faith—sure, nobody can accuse you of false advertising regarding what you believe, but you’re also presenting, in many cases, a ridiculously long list of non-negotiables and saying that you will tolerate no dissent over a theological question as inane as which heresies are “damnable” or not (though you can scroll all the way to the bottom of this to find out!).
When we allow—or, in the case of Pope Benedict XVI, actively make—our churches to be such homogenous petri dishes of doctrinal sameness, it leads to more PR problems for the church. In the end, we may wind up only adding ammunition to one of the strongest stereotypes that unchurched folks have of us--that we are clergy-led automatons incapable of independent thought who delight in being told what to do.
And that’s unfortunate.
Question: How do you know if a church is right for you? What would have to change for it to not be the church for you anymore, and what would you do about it?
Part II of this series will be a discussion on the hospitality dimension of statements of faith—that is, the pros and cons of extensive statements of faith vis-a-vis the unchurched crowd. It is in part inspired by this recent post from Disciples writer Christian Piatt.
(Finally, full disclosure—my congregation’s statement of faith can be found here at the bottom of the page. It is fairly minimal, and it includes a point on the necessity for freedom of belief. Both of those aspects are by design.)
Yours in Christ,
Eric
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
This Week's Sermon: "Postmodern Parthia"
(...yes, I did indeed say in my last post that I felt we Christians overuse the term "postmodern." I'm just a bundle of contradictions.)
Revelation 6:1-8
Then I looked on as the Lamb opened one of the seven seals. I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” 2 So I looked, and there was a white horse. Its rider held a bow and was given a crown. And he went forth from victory to victory. 3 When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 Out came another horse, fiery red. Its rider was allowed to take peace from the earth so that people would kill each other. He was given a large sword. 5 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” So I looked, and there was a black horse. Its rider held a balance for weighing in his hand. 6 I heard what sounded like a voice from among the four living creatures. It said, “A quart of wheat for a denarion,[a] and three quarts of barley for a denarion, but don’t damage the olive oil and the wine.” 7 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” 8 So I looked, and there was a pale green horse. Its rider’s name was Death, and the Grave was following right behind. They were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill by sword, famine, disease, and the wild animals of the earth. (CEB)
“The Greatest Movie Never Made: The Book of Revelation,” Week Three
The kick drum was booming, the lights were dimming, and the absolutely packed auditorium was filled with anticipation so intense that you could cut it with a blade. And this was in 2003, yet I remember it well.
Nine years ago, almost to the day, I saw my first-ever post-sermon altar call.
Mind you, I have witnessed many altar calls and loved them—usually at the very end of a service, during the closing music, for people who wanted to dedicate or rededicate themselves to Christ and become members of that particular church.
This was, rather, a “turn or burn” altar call.
I was seventeen and on mission in Atlanta, Georgia, with the International Christian Youth Fellowship, the youth arm of the Disciples of Christ. We had worship every night, and on that first night, we got a…I’ll be diplomatic and call it an "intense” sermon that culminated in an altar call, because, you know, this ain’t All Dogs Go to Heaven—it’s Only Particular Christians Go to Heaven. That’s what the preacher said. Several of my friends, crying, walked forward.
I walked out.
It wasn’t because of the altar call itself.
It was because of the altar call under threat of hellfire.
It was because of the message that I felt denigrated my agnostic father.
It was because of the message made my friends—loving, caring Christians all—suddenly terrified for the fate of their souls.
I felt sick. And in that moment, I caught a glimpse of why my peers leave the church, why many of them never come back, and why this is one of the greatest threats to the church.
Today marks the third week of our summer sermon series. After all, summer is the season of blockbuster movies about superheroes or thrilling heists or action-packed military exploits, and at first glance, the Bible wouldn’t seem to stack up well to such epic storytelling. Jesus preached a lot of turning the other cheek, the rest of the New Testament are a bunch of letters, and the stories of the conquest under Joshua, or of the wars with the Philistines under Saul and David, are far off in the dusty recesses of the past, documented vividly in the Old Testament, but still a thousand or so years before Christ. So, enter the book of Revelation. After decades of subjugation by Rome, which included the sacking of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple in the year 70 CE, Saint John writes this final letter of the Bible from his lonely exile on the Greek island of Patmos some roughly twenty years later. His letter is a vivid, harrowing vision of what the future may hold in store for God’s people, and it has often been misinterpreted by Christians since, often in, frankly, wholly incorrect ways. I can’t promise you the right answers in this sermon series, but I can promise you a lot of interesting questions to debate during our fellowship time after worship is over!
The first week was mostly a crash course introduction to how exactly we are meant to read Revelation to begin with—and that is with the humility and knowledge that we are not John himself, and could not begin to understand his mind—and last week, we began going through his actual vision, and we start in a familiar, heartwarming place before today, this week, when we begin to delve into the realm of devils and dragons and wars between Heaven and Hell with the appearance of the iconic four horsemen of the apocalypse, the first great threats in John’s vision.
There are four horsemen, one after the other, representing conquest, war, famine, and death--contrary to popular belief, there is no horseman in Scripture who represents pestilence. And it is also very important that they are horsemen. One of the greatest military threats that Biblical Israel faced was that of Parthia, an empire in modern-day Iran, whose armies were known for their fearsome and legendary cavalry. These cavalry fought primarily with two weapons—the bow and arrow, and the sword. These two weapons are wielded by the first two horsemen—conquest and war. The image of the Parthian cavalry is invoked by John because, quite literally, they represented to ancient Israel war and conquest, and that which follows—famine and death.
Famine from the resources used and destroyed by war, and from that famine comes the tyranny of the scales—the scales which were used to weigh pieces of silver and gold to pay for food (think of how we would use a cash register today). And when there is too little food, prices increase. It’s supply-and-demand, economics 101. A day’s pay for a quart of wheat, or for three quarts of barley, was the equivalent of price-gouging--imagine paying an entire day's salary for a loaf of Wonderbread! And when you can no longer afford food, starvation comes and death claims you.
What John is describing is, in fact, the reality that the greatest threats we face are from one another. Our ability to claim another’s life by means of violence and economic exploitation is the first threat that we see in the entirety of Revelation—chapter one is the introduction, chapters two and three are letters to various churches, chapters four and five are peaceful visions of Heaven, and here is the first threat to that peace—the threats of violence and scarcity. And whether we choose to admit it or not, they are the greatest threat the church faces today.
We can make all the noise we want about evolution versus creationism, or who is allowed to be married or not, but the number of deaths that they directly cause is relatively small to say the least. Yet an estimated 25,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes—that’s over 1,000 people every hour—and over 4,000 people die every day from violence. And the number of people who die because we teach evolution in our schools? Well…probably pretty close to zero.
The simple truth, the annoying, won’t-shut-up-and-go-away truth is, that there are REAL concerns facing the church today regarding what the four horsemen represent—there are real concerns about violence and starvation that we can do something about, by supporting, say, the battered women’s shelter in Kelso, and by providing for the Kessler Elementary School’s food aid for students. And I am so very, very grateful that these are what this congregation chooses to expend its resources on, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because to our unchurched neighbors, that is what they often want or need to see from us to recognize our faith as genuine. As James writes, "By your works, I shall know your faith!"
Because faith that misses the big picture—that pushes aside the big stuff to invent littler stuff to tackle—that is the sort of faith that is what is turning people away from the church today. The Barna Group, a California think tank focused on faith and culture, published a study last year that included these eye-opening facts: 22% of 18-to-29-year-old adults believe the church ignores the problems of the real world. 36% believe they cannot ask their most pressing life questions in church. And because of that type of stifling atmosphere—where, for instance, turn-or- burn pronouncements of hellfire and condemnation make up the message—because of things like that, 20% of people my age say that God is missing from their experiences of church.
When we ignore what the four horsemen represent, we create another great crisis, another foe, another Parthian army, that the current, post-modern church must face and conquer—of disbelief in us!
It would be disingenuous for me to ignore the concerns of the real world from the pulpit (that I never use!). It would be shameful for me to turn this church into a place where you could not ask any pressing questions. But neither of those things kept me from terror’s grip when I got in front of you last week and tore into the reality that there are churches that teach their children virulent homophobia from a very early age. Many of you told me afterwards that you noticed how nervous I was, or even that such nervousness was unlike me. And I’d like to think that it is, because it is not often that I preach with the fear in the back of my mind that by preaching what I believe to be true, that I would cause an uproar among you for daring to push the envelope.
I cannot say, and will hopefully never have to say, that I am sorry for preaching what I believe to be true. But I am sorry, very sorry, that I did not have more faith in you. I was terrified that I was about to cut this congregation’s throat by saying something you so would not want to hear that you would shut your ears to me. But I have learned that this is not so. And learning this restores my faith, and I hope it does for you as well, that this can indeed be a church which dedicates itself to the true crises that we face, rather than the crises which we manufacture.
For in the four horsemen, we have seen the faces of the evils that we are called to quell. And may our doing this provide to those who have walked away from the path of Jesus Christ a wondrous reason to return to it once more. Because I will say this for my generation—we may not always be certain of what our faith looks like, or even that we have that much faith, but we know it when we see it.
We know it when we see it.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
June 17, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Behind the Scenes of Sermon Writing: Five Rules I Live By
...but if I was a pirate pastor (note to self: excellent idea for a Halloween costume), these would be more like guidelines than actual rules. Besides, really, these are guidelines because they work for me--whether they'd work for you or for others is anyone's guess!
Between my student associate ministry in Concord and my current solo pastorate here in Longview (plus a few pulpit supply gigs here and there), I just hit the 50-sermon milestone—I’ve given about a year’s worth of sermons in my career.
For a while, when people asked me how I had written them (presumably so that they could be better informed about how such a comedy of theological errors could come from the pulpit), I was never quite sure what to tell them—I just would sit down and write, and pray, and write some more, and let the whole thing simmer over low heat for a while like a good beef stew.
I realized that this was especially true for my most recent sermon—the “As it is in Heaven” sermon on Revelation 4. Because of the subject matter, I took an exceptionally long time to muster the courage to compose it—I was still writing content on Saturday night, whereas 9 times out of 10, if I’m working on a sermon on a Saturday, it is purely to give the sermon some polish rather than adding content, as I almost always write them much earlier in the week.
But one of the most important things after you leave seminary and enter full-time ministry is figuring out who you are as a pastor—as a teacher and a counselor and a leader, but perhaps most importantly as a preacher. I have finally begun to get to know myself a bit, so now, whenever you ask me how I wrote my latest Biblical atrocity of a sermon, I’ll point you here!
1-Prior Preparation Helps Prevent Poor Performance
With the exception of holidays like Christmas and Easter, I preach almost entirely in the format of sermon series—that is, in multi-week arcs (usually 4-8 weeks long), and these arcs are centered around a particular Bible story, or theme, or Christian book.
This style necessitates planning these arcs weeks—and usually months—in advance. For instance, I have texts and general themes picked out for my next FOUR sermon series after the current one I am doing on Revelation, which will take me clear into December. Even if I won’t actually get to the nuts and bolts of a sermon until that week, its theme has likely been knocking around in the darker recesses of my brain for a long time. The benefit for me is that it forces me to maintain some in-depth continuity in worship rather than simply writing whatever comes to mind on any given week (while I definitely indulge in that, I try to do so here on the blog, rather than in my sermons).
2-Juggling is for the Circus
I’m also a series preacher in that I don’t preach from the Revised Common Lectionary, an ordering of texts published every year that is designed to allow a preacher to go through *most* of the Bible every three years. The RCL includes 1-2 Old Testament readings, a Gospel reading, and a reading from one of the letters of the New Testament (ie, Paul’s letters, or Peter’s, or John’s, James, etc). The RCL’s goal is admirable, but I worry that it might fall short at it because it necessitates skimming over great swaths of the non-Gospel, non-Psalm books, which forces preachers in turn to reach for the McNuggets, the most well-known passages of those underrepresented books, rather than for the whole thing.
And after trying originally to preach on the RCL for my first couple of sermons, I now know that I am really only good for one text per sermon—whenever I try preaching on multiple texts at once, it is the preaching equivalent of juggling, and when it goes wrong, it is nearly as spectacular a disaster. So while I may bring in a variety of Biblical passages to augment my sermon, it will almost always feature only one text, and this is another benefit of preaching in a series—I can structure the ordering of the texts to best suit my preaching’s needs.
3-Everyone Loves a Good Story
My childhood pastor was—and is—an excellent storyteller, and though I know that I am supposed to preach with my own voice rather than imitate someone else, I have tried to emulate the approach of beginning each of my sermons with a story or anecdote. Sometimes the stories are funny, sometimes they are serious, but every time I try to bend over backwards to make sure that the story fits the message, and not the other way around.
The stories also aren’t always about me and my experiences—of course, some are, but I’m also 26 years old, and some of the folks I am preaching to are three times my age, and have me beat but good on the life experience front, so I try to rely on a diverse array of stories beyond my own. I’ll try to consider not only what has been happening in my life, but in the lives of my congregants and in the world of current events before I settle on a tale to tell.
4-Keep It Simple, Stupid
At the risk of speaking ill of any of my well-intentioned, dedicated, and extremely talented colleagues, I must admit that there are few styles of preaching I find more stupefying than the style that says you have to have exactly three (or whatever) distinct points to your sermon, and that (even worse) each point must begin with the same letter.*
To quote the ‘80s robot, “Like, gag me with a spoon.”
And so somewhat related to rule #2 on only using one text, another of the most valuable lessons I have learned was that a sermon should say only one thing, and say it well. It’s impossible for me to cram everything I know about the Bible into a 15-20 minute message, so I shouldn’t bother trying. Much like a good research paper, a sermon needs a thesis statement—or at least a bottom line. I have since learned that if I cannot sum up the basis of my entire sermon in a single sentence, then I need to take the whole thing back to formula.
*As an aside, is ministry is the most alliteration-happy occupation ever? Going through the newsletters of my colleagues’ churches, their columns often go by names like “The Pastor’s Pen” or “Musings from the Minister.” I simultaneously laugh and weep at my profession’s collective corniness, even as I indulge in it myself (see previous sentence clause’s use of “collective corniness”).
5-The Highest Technique is to Have No Technique
Beyond those four basic rules (er...guidelines) listed above, I have few other requirements for how I write my sermons. Because I detest the overuse of the word “postmodern” (especially in the church, where, let’s be honest, we acclimate to change about as quickly as a polar bear would acclimate to the desert), I prefer labeling my preaching as “freestyle.”
What that means (to me) is that I place no artificial requirements upon my sermons when writing them—no needing X number of illustrations, or Y number of quotes from Biblical scholars, or Z amount of action steps. I just write. I pray a lot, I unpack my thesis wherever it leads and guides me to, I pray some more, I edit, and I try to wrap things up in a nice, tidy way at the end.
This has the ancillary benefit of actually decreasing my dependence on out-and-out quoting outside sources. That doesn’t mean I don’t use them, but that I am more apt to paraphrase or quote briefly rather than quoting extensively, which in turn leaves more room for my OWN words, and for God to use my voice to speak His truth. In this way, my preaching becomes my own, and God's own.
So…with apologies to Bruce Lee, I think that (at least, for me) it is best to describe my preaching technique as being no technique.
I don’t know if this was illuminating or useful in trying to explain how the sermons that get slapped up here every week come into being (or if it was merely an exercise in me talking about myself)…but it has been beneficial for me to try to explain my process, as it has helped me gain a more in-depth perspective into who I am, and who God has made me, as a preacher.
To fellow preachers and teachers of the Word out there...how has God led you to your personal styles of offering the Gospel?
Yours in Christ,
Eric
Between my student associate ministry in Concord and my current solo pastorate here in Longview (plus a few pulpit supply gigs here and there), I just hit the 50-sermon milestone—I’ve given about a year’s worth of sermons in my career.
For a while, when people asked me how I had written them (presumably so that they could be better informed about how such a comedy of theological errors could come from the pulpit), I was never quite sure what to tell them—I just would sit down and write, and pray, and write some more, and let the whole thing simmer over low heat for a while like a good beef stew.
I realized that this was especially true for my most recent sermon—the “As it is in Heaven” sermon on Revelation 4. Because of the subject matter, I took an exceptionally long time to muster the courage to compose it—I was still writing content on Saturday night, whereas 9 times out of 10, if I’m working on a sermon on a Saturday, it is purely to give the sermon some polish rather than adding content, as I almost always write them much earlier in the week.
But one of the most important things after you leave seminary and enter full-time ministry is figuring out who you are as a pastor—as a teacher and a counselor and a leader, but perhaps most importantly as a preacher. I have finally begun to get to know myself a bit, so now, whenever you ask me how I wrote my latest Biblical atrocity of a sermon, I’ll point you here!
1-Prior Preparation Helps Prevent Poor Performance
With the exception of holidays like Christmas and Easter, I preach almost entirely in the format of sermon series—that is, in multi-week arcs (usually 4-8 weeks long), and these arcs are centered around a particular Bible story, or theme, or Christian book.
This style necessitates planning these arcs weeks—and usually months—in advance. For instance, I have texts and general themes picked out for my next FOUR sermon series after the current one I am doing on Revelation, which will take me clear into December. Even if I won’t actually get to the nuts and bolts of a sermon until that week, its theme has likely been knocking around in the darker recesses of my brain for a long time. The benefit for me is that it forces me to maintain some in-depth continuity in worship rather than simply writing whatever comes to mind on any given week (while I definitely indulge in that, I try to do so here on the blog, rather than in my sermons).
2-Juggling is for the Circus
I’m also a series preacher in that I don’t preach from the Revised Common Lectionary, an ordering of texts published every year that is designed to allow a preacher to go through *most* of the Bible every three years. The RCL includes 1-2 Old Testament readings, a Gospel reading, and a reading from one of the letters of the New Testament (ie, Paul’s letters, or Peter’s, or John’s, James, etc). The RCL’s goal is admirable, but I worry that it might fall short at it because it necessitates skimming over great swaths of the non-Gospel, non-Psalm books, which forces preachers in turn to reach for the McNuggets, the most well-known passages of those underrepresented books, rather than for the whole thing.
And after trying originally to preach on the RCL for my first couple of sermons, I now know that I am really only good for one text per sermon—whenever I try preaching on multiple texts at once, it is the preaching equivalent of juggling, and when it goes wrong, it is nearly as spectacular a disaster. So while I may bring in a variety of Biblical passages to augment my sermon, it will almost always feature only one text, and this is another benefit of preaching in a series—I can structure the ordering of the texts to best suit my preaching’s needs.
3-Everyone Loves a Good Story
My childhood pastor was—and is—an excellent storyteller, and though I know that I am supposed to preach with my own voice rather than imitate someone else, I have tried to emulate the approach of beginning each of my sermons with a story or anecdote. Sometimes the stories are funny, sometimes they are serious, but every time I try to bend over backwards to make sure that the story fits the message, and not the other way around.
The stories also aren’t always about me and my experiences—of course, some are, but I’m also 26 years old, and some of the folks I am preaching to are three times my age, and have me beat but good on the life experience front, so I try to rely on a diverse array of stories beyond my own. I’ll try to consider not only what has been happening in my life, but in the lives of my congregants and in the world of current events before I settle on a tale to tell.
4-Keep It Simple, Stupid
At the risk of speaking ill of any of my well-intentioned, dedicated, and extremely talented colleagues, I must admit that there are few styles of preaching I find more stupefying than the style that says you have to have exactly three (or whatever) distinct points to your sermon, and that (even worse) each point must begin with the same letter.*
To quote the ‘80s robot, “Like, gag me with a spoon.”
And so somewhat related to rule #2 on only using one text, another of the most valuable lessons I have learned was that a sermon should say only one thing, and say it well. It’s impossible for me to cram everything I know about the Bible into a 15-20 minute message, so I shouldn’t bother trying. Much like a good research paper, a sermon needs a thesis statement—or at least a bottom line. I have since learned that if I cannot sum up the basis of my entire sermon in a single sentence, then I need to take the whole thing back to formula.
*As an aside, is ministry is the most alliteration-happy occupation ever? Going through the newsletters of my colleagues’ churches, their columns often go by names like “The Pastor’s Pen” or “Musings from the Minister.” I simultaneously laugh and weep at my profession’s collective corniness, even as I indulge in it myself (see previous sentence clause’s use of “collective corniness”).
5-The Highest Technique is to Have No Technique
Beyond those four basic rules (er...guidelines) listed above, I have few other requirements for how I write my sermons. Because I detest the overuse of the word “postmodern” (especially in the church, where, let’s be honest, we acclimate to change about as quickly as a polar bear would acclimate to the desert), I prefer labeling my preaching as “freestyle.”
What that means (to me) is that I place no artificial requirements upon my sermons when writing them—no needing X number of illustrations, or Y number of quotes from Biblical scholars, or Z amount of action steps. I just write. I pray a lot, I unpack my thesis wherever it leads and guides me to, I pray some more, I edit, and I try to wrap things up in a nice, tidy way at the end.
This has the ancillary benefit of actually decreasing my dependence on out-and-out quoting outside sources. That doesn’t mean I don’t use them, but that I am more apt to paraphrase or quote briefly rather than quoting extensively, which in turn leaves more room for my OWN words, and for God to use my voice to speak His truth. In this way, my preaching becomes my own, and God's own.
So…with apologies to Bruce Lee, I think that (at least, for me) it is best to describe my preaching technique as being no technique.
I don’t know if this was illuminating or useful in trying to explain how the sermons that get slapped up here every week come into being (or if it was merely an exercise in me talking about myself)…but it has been beneficial for me to try to explain my process, as it has helped me gain a more in-depth perspective into who I am, and who God has made me, as a preacher.
To fellow preachers and teachers of the Word out there...how has God led you to your personal styles of offering the Gospel?
Yours in Christ,
Eric
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
They Be Rollin', They Hatin', Patrollin' Tryin' to Catch Me Writin' Heresy
(…Okay, I ran out of syllables towards the end, but I decided I’d rather have the title rhyme with the original lyric.)
Dear Bishops and Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church,
Look.
I love a lot of the work you guys have done over the years. You’ve elected some amazing popes recently, from John XXIII to John Paul II. Your ecumenical and nonviolence work has been the equivalent of a quantum leap forward for the world.
And this is to say nothing of the ministry I’ve benefited from via your rank-and-file clergy. One of my college chaplains is a Franciscan sister. One of my most formative seminary Bible professors is a Dominican priest.
So I’m a fan. A big fan, even.
Hopefully my emotional and academic attachment to the Catholic Church lends me just enough credibility to openly ask this on the day that the Vatican is now meeting with leaders from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious...
What the @#$%&!* happened?
I’m not even talking about the pedophilia scandal at the moment—my feelings on it are fairly well-formed.
But what happened to you men of power not feeling threatened by the theologies of articulate, compassionate, intelligent women religious here in the States?
Maybe it is because my childhood pastor is female, or that I was taught religion by women in both college and seminary, or that I belong to a denomination headed by a female pastor, or that I simply have to conclude the Apostle Paul was full of it when he wrote in 1 Corinthians that women should stay silent in churches after effusively praising the deaconess Phoebe in Romans 16 but…
What could it possibly be that has alarmed you so about a highly-regarded woman religious theologian saying that possibly some aspects of human sexuality aren’t quite as black-and-white as they first appear?
What could it possibly be that has worried you so much about the LCWR that you’re putting cleaning your own house on the back burner so that my fellow Washington native Archbishop Peter Sartain can give them the third degree instead?
What could it possibly be that you take such a consistent pro-life approach in ethical debates, but are balking at covering contraception for women when contraception demonstrably reduces the number of abortions in countries with consistent birth rates?
Are you fearful of your actions stifling academic and theological creativity here in the States?
Are you concerned about how your church looks when you give Bernard Cardinal Law, architect of the Boston pedophile priest cover-up, an enviable position in Rome, but tolerate no doctrinal variance from the people who are actually on the streets, doing ministry day-in and day-out?
I’m genuinely wondering here, because I remember what the German Catholic theologian Hans Kung said about Pope Benedict XVI in 2009—that Benedict is enclosed in the Vatican and so sees only the Vatican world. And I feel like I’m beginning to understand what Professor Kung is saying.
I mean, here in the non-Vatican world, I give thanks every day that I belong to a church where I do not have to fear the possibility of my regional minister (my equivalent of a bishop) paying me a visit to tell me that I have committed heresy and that I need to be reined in by a bunch of randos who call themselves the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Besides, what would we call such a body in the Disciples? The Congregation for the No Creed but Christ? That’s a gas.
Yet even in that reality, I was still, in my gut, fearful of giving the sermon I just gave this past Sunday because of how much I’ve been pushing the envelope here regarding same-sex equality and the possible ballot referendum in November.
For parish pastors to be able to preach truth in love, and truth to power, necessitates our ecclesiastical superiors trusting in us, their rank-and-file clergy, that we will preach and teach Biblically-inspired messages of divine love.
When you do not trust us, we cannot do our jobs—the jobs you ordain us to do. And when we cannot do our jobs, the church, and Christianity itself, suffers mightily.
Why can’t you see that?
Yours in Christ,
A Protestant pastor who loves your church and desperately wants to believe in you
Dear Bishops and Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church,
Look.
I love a lot of the work you guys have done over the years. You’ve elected some amazing popes recently, from John XXIII to John Paul II. Your ecumenical and nonviolence work has been the equivalent of a quantum leap forward for the world.
And this is to say nothing of the ministry I’ve benefited from via your rank-and-file clergy. One of my college chaplains is a Franciscan sister. One of my most formative seminary Bible professors is a Dominican priest.
So I’m a fan. A big fan, even.
Hopefully my emotional and academic attachment to the Catholic Church lends me just enough credibility to openly ask this on the day that the Vatican is now meeting with leaders from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious...
What the @#$%&!* happened?
I’m not even talking about the pedophilia scandal at the moment—my feelings on it are fairly well-formed.
But what happened to you men of power not feeling threatened by the theologies of articulate, compassionate, intelligent women religious here in the States?
Maybe it is because my childhood pastor is female, or that I was taught religion by women in both college and seminary, or that I belong to a denomination headed by a female pastor, or that I simply have to conclude the Apostle Paul was full of it when he wrote in 1 Corinthians that women should stay silent in churches after effusively praising the deaconess Phoebe in Romans 16 but…
What could it possibly be that has alarmed you so about a highly-regarded woman religious theologian saying that possibly some aspects of human sexuality aren’t quite as black-and-white as they first appear?
What could it possibly be that has worried you so much about the LCWR that you’re putting cleaning your own house on the back burner so that my fellow Washington native Archbishop Peter Sartain can give them the third degree instead?
What could it possibly be that you take such a consistent pro-life approach in ethical debates, but are balking at covering contraception for women when contraception demonstrably reduces the number of abortions in countries with consistent birth rates?
Are you fearful of your actions stifling academic and theological creativity here in the States?
Are you concerned about how your church looks when you give Bernard Cardinal Law, architect of the Boston pedophile priest cover-up, an enviable position in Rome, but tolerate no doctrinal variance from the people who are actually on the streets, doing ministry day-in and day-out?
I’m genuinely wondering here, because I remember what the German Catholic theologian Hans Kung said about Pope Benedict XVI in 2009—that Benedict is enclosed in the Vatican and so sees only the Vatican world. And I feel like I’m beginning to understand what Professor Kung is saying.
I mean, here in the non-Vatican world, I give thanks every day that I belong to a church where I do not have to fear the possibility of my regional minister (my equivalent of a bishop) paying me a visit to tell me that I have committed heresy and that I need to be reined in by a bunch of randos who call themselves the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Besides, what would we call such a body in the Disciples? The Congregation for the No Creed but Christ? That’s a gas.
Yet even in that reality, I was still, in my gut, fearful of giving the sermon I just gave this past Sunday because of how much I’ve been pushing the envelope here regarding same-sex equality and the possible ballot referendum in November.
For parish pastors to be able to preach truth in love, and truth to power, necessitates our ecclesiastical superiors trusting in us, their rank-and-file clergy, that we will preach and teach Biblically-inspired messages of divine love.
When you do not trust us, we cannot do our jobs—the jobs you ordain us to do. And when we cannot do our jobs, the church, and Christianity itself, suffers mightily.
Why can’t you see that?
Yours in Christ,
A Protestant pastor who loves your church and desperately wants to believe in you
Sunday, June 10, 2012
This Week's Sermon: "...As it is in Heaven"
Revelation 4:1-11After this I looked and there was a door that had been opened in heaven. The first voice that I had heard, which sounded like a trumpet, said to me, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in a Spirit-inspired trance and I saw a throne in heaven, and someone was seated on the throne. 3 The one seated there looked like jasper and carnelian, and surrounding the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. 4 Twenty-four thrones, with twenty-four elders seated upon them, surrounded the throne. The elders were dressed in white clothing and had gold crowns on their heads. 5 From the throne came lightning, voices, and thunder. In front of the throne were seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God. 6 Something like a glass sea, like crystal, was in front of the throne. In the center, by the throne, were four living creatures encircling the throne. These creatures were covered with eyes on the front and on the back. 7 The first living creature was like a lion. The second living creature was like an ox. The third living creature had a face like a human being. And the fourth living creature was like an eagle in flight. 8 Each of the four living creatures had six wings, and each was covered all around and on the inside with eyes. They never rest day or night, but keep on saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is coming.” 9 Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to the one seated on the throne, who lives forever and always, 10 the twenty-four elders fall before the one seated on the throne. They worship the one who lives forever and always. They throw down their crowns before the throne and say, 11 “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, because you created all things. It is by your will that they existed and were created.” (CEB)
“The Greatest Movie Never Made: The Book of Revelation,” Week Two
The eyes of the dying business mogul flitting about, taking in the entire room, filled with the people who had loved him the longest and dearest in life—his sisters, and his spouse, and then—for the longest time, his gaze settled upon his children. The doctors had given him a coin flip of a chance of making it through the night, and so they had all assembled as quickly as they could—as quickly as almost any family would. And they had arrived soon enough to, possibly, be the catalyst for this dying man’s final words, because those final words came after having seen all of the people who had come to lovingly escort him into eternity, and at that moment, having seen all of those faces, Steve Jobs gasps out, three times, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”
His sister Mona Simpson, conveying the story of Steve’s death in her funeral eulogy, said that he had told her that he knew he was going to a better place. And I know that we’re supposed to see that better place in the form of the stereotypical white light that we’re supposed to run towards, but..if we as Christians are meant to bring Heaven, the Kingdom of a God of love, to earth, then to see our loved ones as we die is perhaps the greatest precursor to Heaven that we may ever have. And it is a privilege that I wish John would have had in exile on the island of Patmos.
Today marks the second week of a brand-new summer sermon series for each of us. After all, summer is the season of blockbuster movies about superheroes or thrilling heists or action-packed military exploits, and at first glance, the Bible wouldn’t seem to stack up well to such epic storytelling. Jesus preached a lot of turning the other cheek, the rest of the New Testament are a bunch of letters, and the stories of the conquest under Joshua, or of the wars with the Philistines under Saul and David, are far off in the dusty recesses of the past, documented vividly in the Old Testament, but still a thousand or so years before Christ. So, enter the book of Revelation. After decades of subjugation by Rome, which included the sacking of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple in the year 70 CE, Saint John writes this final letter of the Bible from his lonely exile on the Greek island of Patmos some roughly twenty years later. His letter is a vivid, harrowing vision of what the future may hold in store for God’s people, and it has often been misinterpreted by Christians since, often in, frankly, wholly incorrect ways. I can’t promise you the right answers in this sermon series, but I can promise you a lot of interesting questions to debate during our fellowship time after worship is over!
Last week was mostly a crash course introduction to how exactly we are meant to read Revelation to begin with—and that is with the humility and knowledge that we are not John himself, and could not begin to understand his mind—and this week, we begin going through his actual vision, and we start in a familiar, heartwarming place before we delve into the realm of demons and dragons and wars between Heaven and Hell. So we begin with John’s vision of Heaven itself, not as it will be, but as it is.
Remember how I told you last week about how John begins writing in the present tense, rather than in the future tense? Well, the same holds true here for his vision of the heavenly throne of God. As he writes, “…on each side of the throne are four living creatures,” and “Day and night without ceasing, they sing, “Holy, holy, holy…” This, to John, is quite simply Heaven as it exists in its present incarnation.
A word about the living creatures—the lion, ox, human, and eagle—each traditionally corresponds to one of the individual Gospel writers. In Christian tradition, Mark the Evangelist is associated with the lion, Luke with the ox, Matthew with the human, and John with the eagle, and in this vision, they are as the seraphim, the highest order of angels, in Isaiah’s famous vision in the sixth chapter of his own book—“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne that was high and lifted up, and the edges of His robe filled the Temple, and seraphs were stationed around Him. Each had six wings…they shouted to each other, saying, “Holy, holy, holy…” Imagine the evangelists themselves—the writers of the Gospels of Jesus Christ—surrounding god praising Him, saying, “You are worthy, our Lord and our God.” Just as we go into Heaven hopefully surrounded by our loved ones, so too does God rule in Heaven surrounded by His own loved ones: those who dedicated their lives to spreading the Good News.
But the problem with proclaiming Heaven is that you are liable to hear as many versions of Heaven as there are Christians in the world. This is not even John’s only vision of paradise—we will hear another version of it much later in chapters 21 and 22! Which is, really, entirely fair. I cannot imagine that your first thought of what Heaven might be like has turned out to be your only thought of what Heaven might be like.
When I was a little kid, I saw all the paintings of Heaven being in the sky, where Jesus ascended to and where angels fly around…and then my parents started taking me on airplanes, and I didn’t see any of that, so I concluded that Heaven must be in outer space, and that everyone there was dressed like Neil Armstrong. I am perfectly fine with saying that, even though Jesus says we must be as children to come to Him, that my childlike vision of Heaven is probably wrong. But to the eternal discredit of the church, there are children being raised today with equally erroneous visions of Heaven that have far more drastic consequences.
Making the viral rounds on the internet over the past week or two has been a clip of a worship at the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Indiana. In that clip, a small child is singing onstage a song he was very clearly coached in by an adult, and the song is: “I know the Bible’s right, and somebody’s wrong. I know the Bible’s right, and somebody’s wrong. Romans one twenty-six and twenty-seven, ain’t no homos gonna make it to Heaven.” If you watch the clip itself, you’ll see the pastor nod his approval, and the adults in attendance immediately, with thunderous applause, give the child a standing ovation.
There are no words to convey my shame I felt when showed this clip by friends asking me, “is this what church is about,” that would teach a little child to say such things, because I believe it offends not only my personal conscience, but it offends Scripture. Look at how John ends chapter four—that God “created all things and by (God’s) will they existed and were created.” Gay and lesbian people were created by the same God who creates heterosexual people, and I have to believe that any version, any vision of Heaven, would affirm that reality when trying to guess at who gets in. And I know how many of y’all feel about same-sex equality; you’ve told me and shared with me, and that trust means so very, very much to me. God may have cast Lucifer out of Heaven, but you’ll never hear me predict from the pulpit any other exile.
Earlier this week, I received in the mail a pastoral letter from our church’s General Minister and President, Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, outlining the church’s current position on sexual orientation, which can basically be summed up in, “everyone is welcome.” It’s two pages on this sentiment, but the money quote is hidden at the bottom of the first page: “Human sexuality is not an “issue;” it’s who we are. It’s about all of us—including our friends and family members who are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender—children of God with names and stories and a faith journey to recount.” As surely as God created all things by the sheer force of His will, God created these children with names, and with stories, and with faith journeys, and far be it for me to be like Saint Paul in First Corinthians and Timothy and pretend to know who gets in and who stays out, because one of the other parts of Revelation is the story of the dragon against Saint Michael, and as we will in a couple of weeks, reading it shows what happens to the presumptuous when they dare to take on the throne.
And so while it may be comforting and even exciting to imagine what Heaven will look like, I humbly ask that we instead return to the creatures whom God has surrounded that throne with—the animals of the four Evangelists, God’s loved ones who have surrounded Him, and who wrote to us of the coming of a Messiah of love, not of hate.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John…forgive us for not hearing that Messiah as well as we could have, or should have. And help us find the way to live out that prayer that we were taught in your Gospels, “on earth as it is in Heaven.” Because in the end, if I’m honest with myself, that’s all I really want. To see us, here on earth, surrounding one another as loved ones in Christ, as it is in Heaven—free of prejudice, free of shame, and full of faith in the God who made us all.
Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
June 10, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Publicity Hound, Part II
After my first foray into being interviewed by the local paper when I arrived at Longview FCC, I still to this day hear good-natured cracks from my friends over me wearing my Steve Jobs turtleneck sweater for the interview.
Thankfully, this second foray, an article about Taize-style worship, into local media exposure did not include a photo op.
My friend and colleague Rev. Phil Rushton and I are quoted extensively in the article, as we both have begun leading occasional evening services at our respective congregations that utilize the Taize style (in my case, I have also blended it with Quaker and emergent spiritual practices as well, but the article does make that clear, that what we hold is not an exclusively Taize-style service).
It's a good article that includes some thoughtful food for reflection from a couple of young bucks in the ministry who are both doing a lot of work in trying to re-think what church can look like for today.
But I do want to make one clarification: I am quoted as saying that, "I thought, 'why not, in addition to the traditional morning service, add some kind of evening prayer service?'" This is not completely accurate.
The idea of an evening prayer service did not originate with me, it originated from within my congregation. I cannot (and am not) attempting to take credit, especially a bow in public, for the creativity and spirituality of my parish. The monthly ACTS worship we put on is their brainchild, not mine, and I am simply grateful to be allowed in to help guide that ministry!
Yours in Christ,
Eric
Thursday, June 7, 2012
On Socialism and Scripture
For longtime friends and readers, y'all probably know that my worldview, while Biblically-oriented, will sometimes veer left of center.
So I offer a disclaimer to this post--I do not identify as a socialist because I do not believe in a government-planned means of production. Please do not say that I am. I believe in providing strong social safety nets within the confines of capitalism.
But I am worried that some of my colleagues of the cloth are forgetting that our church was actually founded, at least in part, upon socialist principles in that it practiced the redistribution of wealth. So, what follows is what I recognize may be a potentially polarizing post in that while I am not defending socialism per se, I do believe that it should not be assailed on the basis of Scripture. As with all of my more polarizing posts, I hope that you see my heart in this and that I am trying to speak truth in love.
See, the Bible is quite clear that redistribution of wealth is, in fact, a valid spiritual discipline. I would guide you to Acts 2:44-45: "All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute to proceeds to everyone who needed them," (Common English Bible) as well as Acts 4:32: "...None of them would say, "This is mine!" about any of their possessions, but held everything in common." (CEB) and, finally, to Acts 4:34-35: "There were no needy persons among them. Those who owned properties or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds from the sales, and place them in the care and under the authority of the apostles. Then it was distributed to anyone who was in need." (CEB)
The context of these passages comes in the midst of the very birth of the Biblical church, which referred to itself as The Way (Acts 9:2). They belonged to a nation under the rule of a foreign empire that did indeed bring with it many public works (to quote from Monty Python's John Cleese in the hilarious Life of Brian: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?!").
But the Roman empire did not provide anything along the lines of what we would think of today in terms of Social Security--the family unit in New Testament Israel were expected to provide for one another from birth to death. It is easy to imagine how, for these new followers who likely had to give up many trappings of their previous lives, The Way had become their new family.
I think where all of this gets lost in translation is that the notions of "family" are radically different today--where the nuclear family, rather than the extended family, is the norm. More and more folks (including yours truly) live by themselves. Social isolation is arguably on the rise, in spite of the wave of social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
So, who is our Biblical family? The easy answer is to say, "Everyone!" but for most of us, our actions would demonstrate that we really do not believe that answer. So the question remains--shamefully--inadequately answered by the church.
And where the church has had to step back--whether through disestablishment, or erosion of moral authority, or dwindling resources, take your pick--the government has stepped up by redefining family in the same mold as, ironically enough, the Roman Empire--citizenship.
There's a scene from an early episode in the first season of the television show The West Wing in which Martin Sheen's Josiah Bartlet says, in response to a terrorist attack on a US military plane, "(One) could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words 'civis romanus sum.' I am a Roman citizen."
I bring that quote on purpose, because it is precisely Paul the Apostle's defense when he is arrested brought before a Roman tribunal: "Paul said, 'I am a citizen by birth.'" (Acts 22:28, CEB) And as Luke conveys, the Roman centurion Paul says this to becomes instantly alarmed that he has detained a Roman citizen.
We American Christians engage in the redistribution of wealth for the benefit of fellow citizens every time our taxes go to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, or any other number of government aid programs (full disclosure--part of the reason this is on my mind is because June 15 is a quarterly deadline for pastors to send in their quarterly Social Security taxes, which churches are by law prohibited from automatically deducting from our paychecks...long story).
We also engage in the redistribution of wealth whenever we give alms or charity.
If you have ever given to my congregation, you've engaged in the redistribution of wealth, because we maintain a discretionary fund to aid needy families with urgent financial crises.
If you have ever given to my denomination, you've engaged in the redistribution of wealth, because the Disciples maintains aid programs through the Global Ministries and Week of Compassion organizations.
So even though I do not identify as a socialist, I worry that using it as a slur or criticism to hurl at your opponents denigrates Christian Scripture and the Church.
And I realize that charitable giving is voluntary and paying Social Security taxes is not. But if you're arguing that the US government should adhere to a more "Christian" set of principles on other issues (same-sex marriage, creationism, school prayer, take your pick), then that objection would not seem to hold water.
So...if you are a Christian who believes that socialism is, to borrow from Catholic Father Andrew Kemberling, "a foreign threat to our democracy," then I am genuinely interested in learning how you reconcile that belief with the Bible, and specifically with The Way as conveyed by Luke in the book of Acts.
Yours in Christ,
Eric
PS: For those of you who read my last post--Gus the Housefly died on the office floor last night, presumably of natural causes (that is--he was not swatted). Requiescat in pace.
So I offer a disclaimer to this post--I do not identify as a socialist because I do not believe in a government-planned means of production. Please do not say that I am. I believe in providing strong social safety nets within the confines of capitalism.
But I am worried that some of my colleagues of the cloth are forgetting that our church was actually founded, at least in part, upon socialist principles in that it practiced the redistribution of wealth. So, what follows is what I recognize may be a potentially polarizing post in that while I am not defending socialism per se, I do believe that it should not be assailed on the basis of Scripture. As with all of my more polarizing posts, I hope that you see my heart in this and that I am trying to speak truth in love.
See, the Bible is quite clear that redistribution of wealth is, in fact, a valid spiritual discipline. I would guide you to Acts 2:44-45: "All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute to proceeds to everyone who needed them," (Common English Bible) as well as Acts 4:32: "...None of them would say, "This is mine!" about any of their possessions, but held everything in common." (CEB) and, finally, to Acts 4:34-35: "There were no needy persons among them. Those who owned properties or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds from the sales, and place them in the care and under the authority of the apostles. Then it was distributed to anyone who was in need." (CEB)
The context of these passages comes in the midst of the very birth of the Biblical church, which referred to itself as The Way (Acts 9:2). They belonged to a nation under the rule of a foreign empire that did indeed bring with it many public works (to quote from Monty Python's John Cleese in the hilarious Life of Brian: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?!").
But the Roman empire did not provide anything along the lines of what we would think of today in terms of Social Security--the family unit in New Testament Israel were expected to provide for one another from birth to death. It is easy to imagine how, for these new followers who likely had to give up many trappings of their previous lives, The Way had become their new family.
I think where all of this gets lost in translation is that the notions of "family" are radically different today--where the nuclear family, rather than the extended family, is the norm. More and more folks (including yours truly) live by themselves. Social isolation is arguably on the rise, in spite of the wave of social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
So, who is our Biblical family? The easy answer is to say, "Everyone!" but for most of us, our actions would demonstrate that we really do not believe that answer. So the question remains--shamefully--inadequately answered by the church.
And where the church has had to step back--whether through disestablishment, or erosion of moral authority, or dwindling resources, take your pick--the government has stepped up by redefining family in the same mold as, ironically enough, the Roman Empire--citizenship.
There's a scene from an early episode in the first season of the television show The West Wing in which Martin Sheen's Josiah Bartlet says, in response to a terrorist attack on a US military plane, "(One) could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words 'civis romanus sum.' I am a Roman citizen."
I bring that quote on purpose, because it is precisely Paul the Apostle's defense when he is arrested brought before a Roman tribunal: "Paul said, 'I am a citizen by birth.'" (Acts 22:28, CEB) And as Luke conveys, the Roman centurion Paul says this to becomes instantly alarmed that he has detained a Roman citizen.
We American Christians engage in the redistribution of wealth for the benefit of fellow citizens every time our taxes go to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, or any other number of government aid programs (full disclosure--part of the reason this is on my mind is because June 15 is a quarterly deadline for pastors to send in their quarterly Social Security taxes, which churches are by law prohibited from automatically deducting from our paychecks...long story).
We also engage in the redistribution of wealth whenever we give alms or charity.
If you have ever given to my congregation, you've engaged in the redistribution of wealth, because we maintain a discretionary fund to aid needy families with urgent financial crises.
If you have ever given to my denomination, you've engaged in the redistribution of wealth, because the Disciples maintains aid programs through the Global Ministries and Week of Compassion organizations.
So even though I do not identify as a socialist, I worry that using it as a slur or criticism to hurl at your opponents denigrates Christian Scripture and the Church.
And I realize that charitable giving is voluntary and paying Social Security taxes is not. But if you're arguing that the US government should adhere to a more "Christian" set of principles on other issues (same-sex marriage, creationism, school prayer, take your pick), then that objection would not seem to hold water.
So...if you are a Christian who believes that socialism is, to borrow from Catholic Father Andrew Kemberling, "a foreign threat to our democracy," then I am genuinely interested in learning how you reconcile that belief with the Bible, and specifically with The Way as conveyed by Luke in the book of Acts.
Yours in Christ,
Eric
PS: For those of you who read my last post--Gus the Housefly died on the office floor last night, presumably of natural causes (that is--he was not swatted). Requiescat in pace.
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