This Week's Sermon: "More Equal Than Others"

Luke 15:1-7

All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. 2 The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3 Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. 6 When he arrives home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost sheep.’ 7 In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives. (CEB)

“Loss, Mercy, and Redemption: The Luke 15 Parables,” Week One

The young pastor (yes, there are other young pastors besides me!) went off to seminary fresh out of college not just on a mission, but with a dream.  He knew exactly what he wanted in life, and from his calling, and thought that he could get it by attending this particular seminary—as he put it, “it was like I got accepted to Harvard.”

And for a kid who, like me, was born and raised in the Protestant church, it feels like a good gig.  You’re the young boy who went out and made good.  This pastor wanted to be no different.  As he put it, “I wanted to be your average megachurch pastor.  I wanted to play the game, have a pretty wife (who had) a lot of hairspray in her hair.”

And that never quite happened.  Because something happened in seminary.  He saw ministry that did not occur in this bubble of megachurch-dom.  He saw immigrant families face the prospect of being torn apart.  He had colleagues come out to him.  And in the process, he realized something: people, especially young men, trusted him.  This was real.  This was ministry.  And now, far from the dreams of a televised sermon series on “How to be Your Best Self Today,” he pastors a church out of his home while also working as a hospital chaplain and a volunteer prison chaplain.  Because, in the end, that is what being a Christian is—to dream dreams that help others, rather than simply yourself.

With Lent as a new season in the church’s worship calendar, you may notice a few things different—we hang purple, we draw the curtains on our baptistry’s portrait of Jesus, and, naturally, we begin another sermon series.  This sermon series takes us through the 40 days of Lent to Holy Week—the week of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday that is the most important time in the Christian calendar (yes, I dare say, more important than Christmas!).  And Lent traditionally is meant to be a time of reflection and repentance as we do some even more intensive-than-usual soul-searching in preparation for what will eventually be the empty tomb.  And so we’ll be using this year’s Lenten season to walk verse-by-verse through the three parables that make up the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal son.  These stories all have a common theme of being “lost and found,” so to speak, but there is a much larger dimension at work here—Jesus is telling these parables to the scribes and Pharisees—as Luke writes, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.””  And what Jesus is responding with, in so many words is, “Yes, because it isn’t just about you!”

Luke 15 consists of a powerful trilogy of stories, and all of them are told as sort of one giant rebuttal to this charge of the scribes and the Pharisees who are present.  Say you’re having a debate with somebody.  It could be about anything—whether to have burgers or pizza for lunch, who you should vote for, or, dare I even come close to such hotly contested ground…Huskies versus Cougars.  But in this debate, when you say something about your point of view, your opponent not only tells you that you’re wrong, s/he explains at great length, using multiple examples with depth and thoughtfulness, precisely, exactly, painfully why you are wrong.

If you’ve had this happen to you, it feels a little like what it probably is like to try to take a drink from a fire hose.  And that’s what Jesus does here—He’s provoked to respond to the grousing of the scribes and the Pharisees, and he does so by unleashing a torrent of criticism in His trademark way—by telling parables.  Except where He might use just one or two parables—like the parable of the Good Samaritan or the house on sand versus the house on rock, Jesus tells three completely separate stories, right in a row, the last of which is really quite elaborate.

And that’s Luke 15 in a nutshell.  It’s a chapter of complete, unfiltered scolding from Jesus.  And like all scolding, it relies on a few assumptions.  Namely, in this parable of the lost sheep, it assumes that we, the audience, would agree that the shepherd’s action of leaving the herd of ninety-nine to rescue the one is appropriate.  And of course we would make that assumption, because in this parable, the shepherd is Jesus.

And, like most stories in the Gospel, there is a proxy character in the audience as well—that is, a character who we are supposed to identify with as we hear this story being told to us.  In the story of the Good Samaritan, we’re supposed to sympathize with the man robbed on the road to Jericho and left to die.  In the raising of Lazarus, we are meant to be as Lazarus himself was, being called by Christ to awaken to renewed life.

And I think traditionally, or perhaps sentimentally, the audience proxy in the parable of the lost sheep is the lost sheep itself—that’s who we’re supposed to identify with.  It has the added bonus of being profoundly humble, this notion that we are meant to identify with the lost sheep, because that means that we see ourselves in the same lot as the tax collectors and the sinners—the people who Jesus came to save.

But, I have to say, I do not think we always belong in such esteemed company.  Jesus is telling this story not for the benefit of the tax collectors and the sinners—they’re already receptive to Jesus’ teachings.  No, Jesus is telling this story to the scribes and Pharisees.  They are his audience.  And they are represented in this story by the other ninety-nine sheep.  As New Testament scholar Sharon Ringe puts it:

A valuable sheep that is lost merits one’s full attention until it is found.  What is not said, but is taken for granted, is that during the search for the one sheep, the others are left to their own devices “in the wilderness.”  Apparently, those in the audience readily accept the risk as worth taking to recover the valuable animal.

In other words, we aren’t always the lost sheep.  Sometimes we are.  But we share a herd—a world—with many, many more sheep whose needs often take precedence over ours, and sometimes even in a way that might put our needs at risk.

After all, we’re all here.  We all took time on our Sunday to be here.  Most of you are members, many of you serve the church and the world in a variety of truly wonderful ways.  In that most basic respect, I’m preaching to the proverbial choir here.  I’m ministering to people who are already in the flock.

Jesus is calling us to minister to people outside of the flock, but that isn’t just it, either.  He calls us to do so even when doing so directly goes against our own self-interest, or our own false humbleness.  I talked about this in my sermon on Ash Wednesday, but our humbleness has limits.  We’re fine calling ourselves sinners in the abstract because we are all sinners, but once we start digging underneath the surface of that, our egos make things testy very, very quickly.

And you had better believe that this happened with Jesus and the Pharisees—it’s a big reason why they wanted Him out of the picture!  He was exposing their false humbleness for what it was: a façade that hid the belief that they were better than and worth more than their fellow Jews.

And that is a terrible warping of religion, to create a hierarchy of worth.  When I first read through this passage when vision-casting this sermon series, my mind jumped immediately to a book my dad introduced me to as a child—George Orwell’s Animal Farm.  That was partly because most of the characters in both this parable and Orwell’s book are, well, animals.  But it was also because of how the final commandment of the philosophy in Animal Farm was warped.  That commandment began as, “All animals are equal.”  But somewhere along the way, that commandment got changed to say, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

I might tick some of you off by saying this, but while Orwell was critiquing Stalinist communism, it is a critique that is scathingly accurate to the church as well.  Far too often, we have space only for the safe sins to be confessed.  If you play the penny slots at the casino, we can work with that, but if you’re gay, well, you need to be fixed.  If you say the occasional four-letter word, you’re still salvageable, but if you vote for the wrong candidate, you’re going to hell.

The idea that some sinners are more sinful than others…church can never work that way.  Ever.

We need to be the church not just because we are aware of our sinfulness and want to break ourselves of it, but because we also are aware of how dark it is and how much we can be there for someone craving spiritual fellowship and enrichment but who is too afraid to ask for it.

Who are they too afraid of?  God, at least in part.  But also, honestly, some are also afraid of us.  That we would treat them like the Pharisees treated the tax collectors.  And when we do that, we cease to give God reason to celebrate our own righteousness.  Jesus cannot put it any blunter than He does in verse 7: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

It is a choice that tests the very limits of anyone’s inflated sense of self-worth—would you rather be righteous, and not give heaven any reason to rejoice over you, or would you rather be a broken-down sinner, over whom heaven rejoices when they are called and redeemed?

In this story, the choice is clear.  Jesus sides with the lonely.  He sides with the lost.  May we do likewise as well.  Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson

Longview, Washington

February 17, 2013

Ash Wednesday Sermon: "Your Broken Crown"

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus returned from the Jordan River full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. 2 There he was tempted for forty days by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and afterward Jesus was starving. 3 The devil said to him, “Since you are God’s Son, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread.”[a] 5 Next the devil led him to a high place and showed him in a single instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 The devil said, “I will give you this whole domain and the glory of all these kingdoms. It’s been entrusted to me and I can give it to anyone I want. 7 Therefore, if you will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered, “It’s written, You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”[b] 9 The devil brought him into Jerusalem and stood him at the highest point of the temple. He said to him, “Since you are God’s Son, throw yourself down from here; 10 for it’s written: He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you 11 and they will take you up in their hands so that you won’t hit your foot on a stone.[c]” 12 Jesus answered, “It’s been said, Don’t test the Lord your God.”[d] 13 After finishing every temptation, the devil departed from him until the next opportunity. (CEB)

“Your Broken Crown,” Luke 4:1-13, Ash Wednesday 2013

I used this story at the beginning of my Ash Wednesday sermon last year too, but it is such a good one for setting the right balance in mood and tenor for a service like this that I could not pass up a repeat telling of this story.  The Reverend Lillian Daniel, an immensely talented pastor in the United Church of Christ, writes in a book on pastoral ministry that she co-authored, called “This Odd and Wondrous Calling,” about her experience as a pastoral intern at a parish while in seminary.  She says:

“I remember sitting at the back of the sanctuary, reviewing my notes for my very first seminary-intern sermon.  It was to be a mighty word from god that would correct all the hypocrisy, greed, and faithlessness of the local church that was, nonetheless, supporting my education as they had supported that of so many others.  As I mustered my courage to sock it to them, I overheard one woman lean across her walker and whisper loudly to her pew mate, “Ah, our new intern is preaching.  I see it’s time for our annual scolding.”  Later, I would pastor a church near that very divinity school, and hear for myself a few annual scoldings.”

Now, we have no seminary intern here to deliver us our annual scoldings—you just have me!  And it would be all too easy to dismiss Ash Wednesday as the day when the parish pastor administers said annual scolding.  After all, we have come to a place in the life of the church—the big church, not just our parish, but the entire church—where it is easier to either preach exclusively about God’s love or exclusively about God’s wrath.  God is either your chummy pal who you could always shoot some pinochle with, or God is this perpetually infuriated son-of-a-gun with serious anger management issues.  There is no in between. 

And those polarities are appealing to people—they are simple, easy to remember, and Scriptural in the sense that in Revelation, God says to us that because we are neither cold nor hot, that we are lukewarm, He will spit us out of His mouth.  So if our faith is in a God who is not lukewarm, maybe that lukewarm God will not spit us out of His church?  But…no, that cannot be it, either.  The truth is, honestly, that I think many, perhaps most, churches are guilty of idolatry in the basest, most fundamental sense of the term—they have gone and made God in their own image, rather than the other way around, of trying to craft themselves in God’s image--if they are hateful people, then God must be a hateful God.Which is perhaps the most profound sin of all…after all, the very first two commandments of the Ten Commandments are to have no other Gods before Yahweh, and to not make for ourselves any idol or graven image.  In trying to make God like us, we violate both commandments.

The temptation in the wilderness, the story in Luke, and in Mark, and in Matthew, thought not in John, is, then, the opportunity for Jesus try to create God in His own image as well.  The tempter, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, whatever you want to call him, appears, and tries again and again and again to goad Jesus into using His Godlike powers for selfish purposes.  The things Jesus is asked to do, to turn stones into bread, to call upon angels to save lives, these are the powers of God in the Old Testament, the God who sends manna to the Israelites on Sinai, and who sends down the chariot of fire to save Elijah from earthly death.  What Jesus is being asked to do in the wilderness is to play God, to take on the role of the Father who has, for the moment, left Him in the wilderness.  The first time that Jesus is forsaken, to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s language, is not upon the Cross, it is here, at the very beginning of His ministry.  Here, in the wilderness.

In other words, it is a bit ironic that Jesus, in the course of His ministry, is not at the most danger in the wilderness…after all, He is sentenced and executed in the capital city of ancient Israel.  But His first vulnerability comes in a context and setting that is 180 degrees different from where He will find Himself just several weeks from now on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

And it’s with that which Satan eventually tempts Jesus—His current location.  We see it a bit in the first temptation, to turn stones into bread, but where it really comes into play are the next two temptations—Satan actually transports Jesus—“led up” is a close translation from the New Testament Greek—to a place where Jesus can see everything in the world, and then, when that isn’t good enough, Satan “takes Jesus to Jerusalem and place(s) Him on the pinnacle of the Temple.”  In other words, Satan isn’t just tempting Jesus with the obvious—food, fame, and power—but with geography as well!  He’s letting Jesus out of the prison bars of His fast for an instant in the hopes that it will be just enough to sway the Son of God to his side.

Of course, it isn’t.  For Jesus, anyways.  For us, though…that’s an entirely different question.  I mean, don’t we catch a glimpse of something far away from what we currently have and begin to long for it, almost as an escape from our current dreariness and drudgery?  We see an ad for a new car, or an exotic vacation destination, or even a freaking Mega Millions ticket, and our mouths start to drool just a little bit…

And that’s what Satan is doing to Jesus here, except on steroids.  He’s taking this poor chap who has been completely shelterless for 40 days and nights and showing Him the greatest of cities and palaces and in effect saying, “Here, take your pick.  But only if you disavow God for me.”

And that’s what temptation is, isn’t it?  It isn’t this pitched battle—I have always resisted the notion of “spiritual warfare” not only for its overly violent imagery but for its premise that this is somehow a fair fight or battle—instead, it is this sneaking-up on us, bit by bit.  After all, we know what an act of war looks like, and we are kidding ourselves if we think war is meant to be tempting.  No, temptation is temptation because it grows and grows, almost organically.

That characteristic of organic growth is something put on alarming display by Satan in Luke’s version of the temptation.  Because in this story, Satan learns.   His tactics evolve over the course of the story.  Jesus rebuffs Satan the first two times by quoting verses from the Old Testament, so what does Satan do the third time he tries to tempt Jesus? He quotes the Old Testament himself, pulling out a quote from Psalms.

Which should be one of the most telling ways that we know exactly what our sins are—that we will come up with newer and increasingly vehement justifications for them.  We even appeal to our moral authority—Scripture—in order to justify our sins.  It is, in part, how institutionalized slavery persisted for so long in the United States—there were Christians who used the moral authority of Scripture to justify that particular sin.  The same went for delaying women the right to vote, for allowing child labor, and for so many other things we have done wrong in our past.

And so it is disingenuous for us to go to God and pray for forgiveness, for a blanket amnesty, for all the wrongs we may have done without including the wrongs that we know we have done.  I just rattled off some collective sins, but this is just as true for our own personal sins as well.

And it’s tough to admit that.  I get it.  We have this sort of schizophrenic reaction to sin…in the abstract, we’re totally okay with being labeled as sinners.  Because hey, we’re all sinners.  We all sin, do sinful things, sin, sin sin.  But as soon as you take your fingernail and scratch below that thin-layered surface, things get touchy and testy in a big damn hurry.  We may be okay with calling ourselves sinners, but our egos and our sense of denial keep us from really actually owning our own brokenness.

It’s something that we can learn not only from Jesus, but from HOW we depict Jesus.  I honestly have not come across many portraits of Jesus in the temptation as someone who has fasted for 40 days would really look.  Often, Jesus is in some sort of “the thinker” pose or standing elegantly, thoughtfully turning his gaze away from Satan, who is either hovering over Jesus or confronting Him.

How unrealistic, though!  What about the portraits of a starving, exhausted, even emaciated Jesus in sore need of a hair cut or a beard trim?  Is it that we are scared of ever depicting the divine Son of God in such a way, or is it that we are that afraid of owning up to the sheer brokenness that is the human condition?

Maybe it’s a bit of both.  But I have found at least one portrayal—at least, I have seen it as such—that depicts the agony of the temptation.  One of my favorite bands is the British folk quartet Mumford and Sons, and their 2012 album Babel included a song entitled, simply, “Broken Crown.”  Its lyrics, in part, go like this:

Touch my mouth, and hold my tongue, I’ll never be your chosen one.

I’ll be home, safe, and tucked away.  You can’t tempt me if I don’t see the day…

So I’ll crawl on my belly til the sun comes down, but I’ll never wear your broken crown.

I have no idea what the band’s personal meaning was behind these words, but from my perspective, it just feels like the perfect thing that Jesus could have said to Satan.  It acknowledges great physical weakness, but also sheer spiritual strength.  It acknowledges light, but also the coming darkness.  And it acknowledges the broken crown of sin that we can all choose to wear, or to not wear.

What if, this Lenten season, during these 40 days in the wilderness where we come out the other end shouting “The tomb is empty!  He is risen!” we acknowledged the broken crowns we have chosen to wear in our lives…and to turn them over to the one true God, the one true King, the wearer of the one true crown?

In doing so, may our brokenness finally, miraculously, wonderfully be made whole once more.  By the grace of God, may it be so.  Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson

Longview, Washington

February 13, 2013

Habemus Papam

When the soon-to-be-convened voting conclave of the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church burn their ballots in white instead of black, this pronouncement will soon follow--habemus papam.

We have a Pope.

For Christians of my generation, we have only witnessed this ritual once, upon the passing of Pope John Paul II in 2005.  I can still remember where I was when I learned that he had died--on the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, in between rounds of the American Forensics Association's national championship.

We're about to see it all in action again, though.

You likely know by now that Pope Benedict XVI has tendered his resignation as the archbishop of Rome, so I'll skip over his announcement for the moment (besides which, speculating further on why would border on intrusive and poor taste to me--the man has the right to step down).

But I do want to jot down at least a couple of thoughts about the legacy I feel (as an outsider) Benedict XVI is leaving behind, and what I hope from his successor, whoever that may be.

I've written an awful lot about the Roman Catholic Church in the past year, usually in regards to one of two subjects--the sex abuse scandals, or the hackneyed partisan activism of the American bishops in our political process.

Upon further reflection, I wonder if both aren't more closely tied to a particular characteristic, namely, that Benedict XVI (and, by extension, the hierarchy he has appointed during his time as pope)  in the words of Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Kung, does not see the entire world, but rather sees and lives only in the Vatican world.

Benedict XVI had--has--a reputation for a tin ear, which is well-earned.  Barely a year into his reign as Pope, he somehow felt the need to quote a medieval Byzantine emperor to refer to Islam as "inhuman and evil."  And in 2010, he juxtaposed secular humanists with Nazism.

(Side note--here's a rule of thumb I've found useful: If you're comparing someone or something that has never committed genocide to the Nazis, you're doing it wrong.)

In any case, it is no stretch to conclude that Benedict XVI has defined his papacy by a concern for truth that is willing to override all other concerns, to the point of having blinders.

After all, a freshman communications major in college can tell you it is probably a bad idea to say Islam is inhuman, or that atheists are like Nazis, or at least to say that sort of stuff publicly.

And if Benedict was--or is--blind to the consequences that words like that have, then I can see how his handpicked bishops in the States would be blind to the consequences of their ham-fisted approach to American politics over the past year or so, as they became increasingly hysterical in their criticism of President Obama (including...wait for it...comparing Obama to Hitler.  Again, if the person you're comparing to Hitler is NOT a genocidal maniac, you're doing it wrong).

And I can see how the hierarchy continues to be blind to the totality of the consequences of the sex-abuse scandal that has rocked the entire Roman Catholic Church for 11 years now.  If all you see is the Vatican world, the instinct is to protect the pedophile priests before protecting their victims.  And, as we all know, that is exactly what happened for years, even when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Congregration for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict XVI was deputized by John Paul II to be in charge of cleaning the church out of its pedophiles.

And so as a result, you still have, for instance, the reality that Cardinal Richard Mahony of Los Angeles is still an eligible elector in the upcoming conclave to elect a new Pope, despite his disgrace and recent removal by his successor from any and all ecclesiastical duties as a result of his (Mahony's) complicity in the sex abuse scandal.

In truth, we may never know the full consequences of the sex-abuse scandal.

And as such, it is difficult to give Benedict XVI a pass on this on his way out the door.

May his successor, whoever he is, be strengthened and empowered by God Himself to address the work of making the Roman Catholic Church a place that is safe for all peoples of all ages, genders, races, and sexual orientations.

Because that is not just my hope...it is the hope of many, many Americans, including a mighty number of lapsed Catholics who still cling to love for their mother church.  Theirs are stories I recognize, because they are expressions of that same struggle I have, of continuing to love an institution that does not always care for my more progressive or liberal tendencies.

And so they, and me, and likely millions more, eagerly await with anticipation and hopefulness those words that gave me gooseflesh the first time, even though I am not Catholic...

Habemus Papam.

We have a Pope!

Yours in Christ,
Eric

This Week's Sermon: "Sol Invictus"

Luke 9:28-36

28 About eight days after Jesus said these things, he took Peter, John, and James, and went up on a mountain to pray. 29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes flashed white like lightning. 30 Two men, Moses and Elijah, were talking with him. 31 They were clothed with heavenly splendor and spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he would achieve in Jerusalem. 32 Peter and those with him were almost overcome by sleep, but they managed to stay awake and saw his glory as well as the two men with him. 33 As the two men were about to leave Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it’s good that we’re here. We should construct three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—but he didn’t know what he was saying. 34 Peter was still speaking when a cloud overshadowed them. As they entered the cloud, they were overcome with awe. 35 Then a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!” 36 Even as the voice spoke, Jesus was found alone. They were speechless and at the time told no one what they had seen. (CEB)

“Sol Invictus,” Luke 9:28-36

This rugby team’s story was so picture-perfect that it was, in fact, made into a famous motion picture named, in fact, Invictus.  It takes place in South Africa just as apartheid is ending; the ANP hero Nelson Mandela has been elected president, and a young white man named Francois Pienaar is captaining the South African national rugby team.  Both of them seek to bridge the ills of racism and segregation in their own respective spheres of influence—Mandela within the walls of government, and Pienaar on the rugby pitch.  I won’t spoil the entire movie for those of you who have not seen it, but one scene about halfway through the movie documents the entire Springboks team bussing into one of the many inner-city slums that dot South Africa’s land.  Here, the houses are ramshackle affairs made of tin, wood, cardboard, whatever people could get their hands on. 

And I can honestly say after visiting the urban slums of Johannesburg on mission in 2006, the filmmakers were very heartbreakingly accurate in depicting the sheer poverty of the peoples who live in such conditions.  As the rugby players file out of the bus, the children rush over to excitedly mob the one black member of the rugby team, but over the course of the day as the players teach the little children the fundamentals of rugby, we see one of the earliest and warmest interactions of the ethnicities in post-apartheid South Africa, as white adults and black children are drawn together by a simple game. 

It is a moment of transformation, of transfiguration, in a film that is, at its core, all about the transfiguration of an entire nation.  But unlike the transfiguration of Jesus that we are about to hear about from Luke the Evangelist, these transformations of people and of nations often take time…lots of time.  Far from seeing ourselves elevated in glowing white, with Moses upon our left and Elijah upon our right, we must muddle along in our own lives, sometimes sure of the path we walk, and sometimes not.  And far from giving us any answers to guide our paths, today’s Scripture perhaps raises more questions than answers.  And sometimes, that’s okay.  What I’m aiming to do with this sermon is to—very rarely for me—try a one-off type of sermon, but even this is sort of part of a series—it has acted as a sort of post-mortem reflection for me on change and being church that we talked about in our Ecclesiastes sermon series in January.

Now, we know that it was God’s love for us that brought Jesus to the earth, it was through God’s love that Jesus’ ministry elevated the meek and lowly by saying to them that they are as loved by God as the prettiest or wealthiest person out there, and it was by God’s love that disciples found the tomb empty on Easter Sunday.  And it is our capacity to love one another that transforms lives today.  And not just romantic love (since V-Day is just around the corner!), but even just good-old-fashioned affection.

The common denominator, I think, between all of this love is that even if it might strike in an instant, its true benefits often take eons to truly bloom.  Out of love and excitement, God crafted the world out of only light and dark, but it took God six proverbial days to do so, and the process was so exhausting that God was forced to rest on the seventh day.  Out of love for us, God sent Jesus to us to remake society and preach truth to power, but it took about thirty years for Jesus to begin His ministry.  We may fall in love with the person who is to become our spouse, but it takes years of dating and engagement before we are sealed as a couple before God in marriage…unless you’re in Las Vegas, then it takes minutes, and you are sealed as a couple in front of Elvis instead.  And out of love, we may strive to transform the world into better place, but…well, this is something Christians have been trying to do for some two thousand years, and we still have such a long, long way to go.  How enviable, then, is the instantaneous transfiguration of Jesus that Luke depicts.

And so it is important for us to remember that even Jesus Himself did not transfigure the entire world immediately, and neither did His Church.  It was not until Constantine became Emperor of Rome in around the early 4^th century CE—the 300’s or so, many hundreds of years after Jesus’ life and ministry—that Christianity really began to take shape as the trendy, hot, new, popular religion.  What giant, coaster-sized sunglasses and iPads and Instagram are today, Christianity was then, in the 300s.  But before Christianity, the Romans had worshiped, for many, many years, not the God we know, but a large pantheon of other deities, which were at this point in time led by the sun—the Sol Invictus, in English, the Invincible Sun, and these deities were very, very popular.  It’s why we worship on Sunday—the Sun’s Day—instead of the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday…this story, the story of Jesus, was not an easy sell for hundreds of years, even though we may find it so amazingly compelling today.  Indeed, it may still be a tough sell!

What the transfiguration does offer us, though, is the promise that all the work and labor we may put into creating goodness in our lives, that God will be present in every way God knows how.  It cannot be an accident that God appeared to Peter and James and John not only as Jesus but in guise of Moses and Elijah as well.  It is hard to find a more diverse trio of such famed servants in the Bible.  Moses was the leader of the Hebrews out of slavery, he who was raised as royalty in Egypt and renounced it all to bring God’s children home.  Elijah was the nomadic, charismatic prophet of old, who led the effort against the worship of the Ba’als and other non-Israelite deities.  And then there is Jesus.  And just as God so loved all these teachers and prophets, and loved all of their deeds and teachings, so too may God love us, in all we do, in all in which we stumble but also all in which we triumph, and transform, and work to make this world we live in transfigure into something better.  God was made manifest by each of these three very different teachers—so perhaps God can also be made present by this diverse group of all peoples who call themselves Christians…who call themselves the “little Christs.”

The Reverend Peter Storey, a South African Methodist minister who toiled for decades fighting against apartheid before coming to the United States to teach, preached in Johannesburg that if we were to sing a particular South African children’s hymn whose chorus goes, “Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus,” then Jesus’s reply would most likely be, “Okay, here I come, but I’m bringing all these other people with me!”  To transfigure a nation with as much hurt and pain in its past as South Africa does, where non-whites were treated almost universally as second- and third-class citizens, well, despite the production of heartwarming movies like Invictus, we are still not all of the way there.  In Johannesburg, the houses owned by wealthy whites are still not only far more lavish than the urban slums of the city, but they are still often surrounded by tall iron fences.  The term “gated community” takes on a whole different level there.  The bounds of transforming South Africa into a land of peace, and of equality, are being realized with each passing day, but so too are they being pushed, bit by bit, every day as well.  What a wonderful model for us—once we know that we become the best versions of ourselves not instantaneously, but over time, lots of time, we can push ourselves just a little bit, every day, to become that best version of ourselves, the version in which God speaks and acts and loves through each of us.  And Lord, we want that best version of ourselves to be the strongest, the most invincible, that cannot be contained.  But of course it is.  We slide back into our negative selves with such great ease, it is sometimes instantaneous.

I cannot tell you with absolute certainty that this passage proves anything at all about Jesus, invincible or otherwise, other than He was God’s Divine Son and that God loved Him.  But what I can tell you is that even if Jesus Himself wasn’t invincible as a man, the love that He preached absolutely is.  Or, put a different way by the writer and chaplain Rev. Kate Braestrup, it is not merely the beloved that is resurrected, it is love itself, resurrected again and again and again.

The Transfiguration welcomes us into God’s presence and into God’s love.  And that love which we are welcomed into is a love that, we pray, over time, may guide us and transfigure us into the most wonderful images of ourselves.  Tellingly, unlike the other Gospels, in Luke’s version, Peter, James, and John do not avert their eyes from the image of Jesus with Moses and Elijah, but instead we left to assume that they saw their Messiah in all of His glory and splendor. 

And so, wherever God appears, be it in dazzling white or in the cry of a humble, newborn child, in the guise of a starving carpenter in the wilderness or in the mortality of a man executed upon the Cross, may we see that God transfigured and majestic before our eyes, for with God, love reigns, our fears fade, and all manner of things become possible once again.

By the grace of God, may it be so.  Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson

Longview, Washington

February 10, 2013

#bibleschoolpickuplines

Over on Twitter, one of my favorite young (clearly a relative term--she's older and much more experienced than me) pastors, Carol Howard Merritt, started a new bit of hashtag craziness by asking us to come up with our best/favorite Christian pick-up lines with the #bibleschoolpickuplines hashtag.  Because we've been tackling some more serious stuff here and I learned in prepping for last night's Bible study class on Luke 5 that Jesus did believe in having joy and fun in life, here are a few of my favorites from the recent re-tweeting madness...

BUT--on a serious note first, I also think these are fascinating from an anti-language perspective (see the immediate previous entry).  All of these are us using general, contemporary language in very specific ways to impart specific double-meanings known to the "in" crowd (that is, Christians or folks with a working knowledge of Christian culture).  As a 21st-century version of a 1st-century phenomenon, I think it is terribly interesting how God geeks like me are getting their funnies these days.

After all, one of the most tried and true genres of humor is the "it's-funny-because-it's-true" variety, and these fall into the absurdist element of that genre...most of us KNOW that Christian subculture is both oddly and endearingly a bit unusual at times, and poking fun at it is, for me at least, how I show my love.

But that knowledge is what makes the jokes funny to begin with.

(and if you are on Twitter, CHM is definitely worth a follow.)

And now for a few of the tweets themselves:

@dan_nelson42 and @PedestrianLife: "I was going through the Book of Numbers and realized I don't have yours."

@revngeek: "Am I worthy to untie the thong?"

@TwoFriars: "For those of us in Christ, all is lawful, baby."

@AndAFool: "If there's gonna be an altar call, we might as well make sure we need it," and "Is your body complementary to mine, or am I just happy to see you?"

@MeredithGould: "Want to explore tongues?"

...and all of this began with the tweet, "I'd like to amplify your Bible!"

PS: I tweeted a few myself, including:

"You wanna get freaky, Song of Songs-style?"

"Whaddaya say we go back to my tent and uncover those feet?"

"I'm needing to practice my laying on of hands, can you help?"

What would be YOUR Christian pick-up lines?  Feel free to post your best in the comments, or tweet them with the #bibleschoolpickuplines hashtag!

Yours in Christ,
Eric

Anti-Language

A few days ago, this piece from the good folks over at CNN's Belief Blog caught my eye.  And even though the article itself is about a year-and-a-half old, there's lots of truth in its fundamental premise:

Christianity isn't just a faith, it's also a language.  And you either speak it with varying degrees of fluency, or you don't.

It's a little like name-dropping, in a way, in that it is meant to establish someone's bona fides...someone asks me about my  "testimony," they aren't asking me for a deposition or if I've witnessed any crimes lately.  They're asking me about my relationship with God as revealed through Jesus Christ.  (Same goes for the term "witnessing.")

And there are tons of terms that float around the church world that have this sort of double meaning--one meaning out in secular society, and an entirely different meaning within Christianity.

Saved.

Born again.

Mission (or, everyone's new favorite word in church growth, "missional")

Emergent.

And the list goes on and on.

To be honest, I'm not always sure what to make of it.  Sometimes I worry that we as Christians are making ourselves--and our knowledge of Jesus Christ--shut off from everyone else who isn't like us.

My New Testament professor in college called this sort of phenomenon "anti-language."  He argued, basically, that words that commonly mean one thing in a larger culture get co-opted by a smaller culture living within the larger culture to mean something totally different and inaccessible to the larger culture.

It's something that we see in the Bible all the time.  The Book of Revelation is full of it--just ask any Bible scholar about the number 666.

But it's also in the Gospels.  This season, our Tuesday morning Bible study is working its way through the Gospel of John, and already in the first four chapters, we have encountered two glaring instances of this "anti-language."

The first, in John 3, is Jesus telling Nicodemus of the need to be born again, or born from above, depending on your translation.

To which Nicodemus replies, "How can I be born a second time?"  He takes Jesus' words at their most literal and, presumably, at their most common interpretation.

But Jesus is creating a brand new interpretation of some very old words.

The same thing happens one chapter later, at Jacob's well when the Samaritan woman, about to draw water, asks Jesus how He can produce this living water He speaks of, for He has no bucket!

The Greek used in that term can also mean "running" water, like in a stream or river, and it stands in opposite contrast to the still water of the well.

Again--the most common and literal interpretation of a word is not what Jesus goes for.

He instead goes for creating something entirely new...not new words, but new ways of using words that, in the end, become accessible to us through God's guidance.

What if we were to continue to do that with the words we come up with in church today?

What if we made them accessible and inclusive?

What if people knew God's love because we did precisely that?

What a great church that would be!

Yours in Christ,

Eric

Coming Up in Worship (and, therefore, on the ol' blog...)

(I was away yesterday (as you'll see below), and so there is no weekly sermon this week...but otherwise, we are back to our regularly scheduled programming here in our deranged little corner of the Christian blogosphere! -E.A.)

With Lent just around the corner (Ash Wednesday is in nine days, yikes...), I am excited to announce our sermon series for this important liturgical season: "Loss, Mercy, and Redemption: The Luke 15 Parables."  As described below from our newsletter, this series will be a five-week journey through three famous parables, all organized into one tidy chapter by Luke.  We'll spend one week apiece on the first two parables: the shepherd with the lost sheep and the woman with the lost coin, before taking three weeks to dissect the well-known and well-loved parable of the Prodigal Son.

I have been looking forward for a long time to sharing this series with FCC and with y'all here at the Project, and look for these sermons to start coming out on the 17th!  I hope to see you if you're around here, or that you'll follow along if you're a friend from far away!

Yours in Christ,
Eric

This Month in Worship: February 2013

If it's February, then we must be preparing for two big times--Valentine's Day and the season of Lent!  Believe it or not, both are all about love--the Valentine's Day one is obvious, but Lent is also about God's love for us because it culminates in the Passion story of Jesus dying and resurrecting for us!

And though I will not be with you the first Sunday in February, I am looking forward to what is in store.  For the months of February and March, we will be living entirely in Luke's Gospel, with first a look at Luke's account of the Transfiguration in Luke 9.  Then, when Lent itself starts after Ash Wednesday, we will begin a five-week sermon series that goes verse by verse through the three parables Jesus tells in Luke 15: the shepherd with the lone stray sheep, the woman with the lost coin, and--most famously--the prodigal son.  We'll be exploring those parables through the lenses of loss, mercy, and redemption, as we go through Lent preparing to lose Jesus to the cross, to seek God's mercy for our sins, and to be redeemed by His resurrection on Easter Sunday in March.  It promises to be a fantastic sermon series, and I look forward to sharing it with you!

I'll see you Sunday,
Pastor Eric

February 3: Rev. Dr. James Conrod, guest preaching

February 10: “Sol Invictus,” Luke 9:28-36

February 13 (Ash Wednesday, 7:00 pm): “Your Broken Crown,” Luke 4:1-13

New Sermon Series, Lent 2013: “Loss, Mercy, and Redemption: The Luke 15 Parables”

February 17: “More Equal Than Others,” Luke 15:1-7

February 24: “Kjeragbolten,” Luke 15:8-10