This Week's Sermon: "Welcome"

Matthew 25:31-40 

“Now when the Human One comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on his majestic throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right side. But the goats he will put on his left. 

34 “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began. 35 I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. 36 I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’ 

 37 “Then those who are righteous will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? 38 When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 “Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’" (Common English Bible)

“Whole: A Movement for Unity in a Fragmented World,” Week Two

Down in Phoenix, something pretty frightening, disturbing, and amazing is happening.

An anti-Muslim event in Dallas saw the killing of two residents of Phoenix by Dallas police officers, and one man decided to retaliate by holding an armed protest outside of an 800-member mosque in Phoenix.

And by “armed,” I mean with sub-machine guns, military camouflage, the whole nine yards.  About 250 such protesters showed up.

Imagine, for a moment, how we as Christians might react if our venerable church building were the site of such a protest, if a quarter-thousand people armed to the nines showed up to protest us.

We’d call the police, slam the door, do anything we could to ensure our safety, right?

But for the Muslims—a group far more a minority than we as Christians will likely ever be in the United States—that wasn’t the option they took.  Instead, they invited the protestors in.  Many chose not to take the mosque up on the invite, but a few did, and here is how the Washington Post reported what happened afterwards:

Jason Leger, a Phoenix resident wearing (a) profanity-laced shirts, accepted an invitation to join the evening prayer inside the mosque, and said the experience changed him.

“It was something I’ve never seen before.  I took my shoes off.  I kneeled. I saw a bunch of peaceful people.  We all got along,” leger said.  They made me feel welcome, you know…”

Paul Griffin, who had earlier said he didn’t care if his t-shirt was offensive, assured a small crowd of Muslims at the end of the rally that he wouldn’t wear it again.

“I promise, the next time you see me, I won’t be wearing this shirt,” he told one man while shaking his hand and smiling.  “I won’t wear it again.”

Usama Shami, the president of the (mosque), invited anyone to join him and the 800 members of the mosque for a prayer.

“A lot of them, they’ve never met a Muslim, or they haven’t had interactions with Muslims,” he said.  “A lot of them are filled with hate and rage…so when you sit down and talk like rational people, without all these slogans, without being bigots, without bringing guns, they will find out that they’re talking to another human.”

Finding out that you are talking to another human?  That's about as basic a side effect as possible from basic, profound, but still incredibly difficult gesture: offering welcome.  And that's what we'll be talking about today.

This is a new sermon series for the summer season, which will take us through June and into early July.  It is based off of a book written last year by Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, who has served for the past eight years as our denomination’s General Minister and President.  As such, she is one of the most visible pastors in our tradition; she has written in magazines and newspapers, preached at national prayer services, and been interviewed by just about anyone you can imagine about what exactly the Disciples think about this or that (trick question: we never think exactly the same about anything.)

Pastor Sharon has used this widespread pulpit of hers to proclaim her vision, which she finally put into a book by the same name as this series, and the name comes from the preamble to the design of our denomination: that we are called to be a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.  In a world broken apart by sectarianism, prejudices, and hatred, we as Disciples are meant to be a movement for making humanity whole but to make ourselves as persons whole.  But what does that even look like?  Well, that is what the book she has written is for.  We are going chapter by chapter through the book, with texts paralleling it from Matthew’s Gospel, and last week, we talked about the nature of wholeness itself, before today, where we move on to the theme of welcome, with this excerpt from Pastor Sharon about a missionary couple, Millard and Linda Fillmore, who came to the Disciples from Habitat for Humanity (yes, the very same who built a home for our Dave and Donna!), and their extraordinary mission in the sub-Saharan African country of Zaire:

The Disciples appointed the Fullers as missionaries to a little brick-making project in Mbandaka, Zaire, bricks that could be used to build houses.  Zaire was a land of complicated relationships between rich and poor, a land of extraordinary natural wealth and even more extraordinary corruption and despair.  However, Mbandaka was the seat of a strong and thriving Disciples church.  From within that community of Zairian Disciples, using bricks from the brick-making project, (a) Habitat for Humanity community was begun.

The Mbandaka Habitat for Humanity account is the story of a community transformed.  It is also a symbol of hope for a world renewed.

The plot of land given for the initial Habitat project in Zaire was available because of its checkered past.  Named Bokotola, it had long existed as the no-man’s land, the “sanitation zone” between wjhite and black Mbandaka of colonial times.  The name itself meant “the person who does not like others.”

As Zairians and international volunteers working together built house after house, however, it became clear a new community was developing.  Bokotola needed a new name.  In beautiful contrast to the old meaning, the new name selected was Losanganya: “reconciler, reunifier, everyone together.”

This is a very powerful, profound, and commonly important sense of community in Sub-Saharan Africa: there is such weight placed on the state of being in community with others that in South Africa, they have a word that has no direct English translation, a word I learned when I went there on mission through our denomination in 2006: ubuntu.  The best translation we can create out of it is: “I am because you are,” but there is no direct word-for-word translation like there is for, say, the word ‘chair’ or ‘bowl.’

And that matters, because our language tends to reflect our values.  We create more words for things we value, and neglect to create more words for things we do not.  We have all sorts of words for money: cash, currency, capital, coinage, and even slang terms like bread, dough, and moolah. But we don’t have a word that means the unconditional regard for other people, the closest we come in English maybe is ‘compassion,’ or, I think in this case, ‘welcome.’

Living out the meaning of welcome in its most radical sense is really very difficult, even though that is the task we have assigned ourselves by posting our “Everyone Welcome” sign out front!

So how do we go about doing that?

Again, I am way late in actually getting around to the Biblical text in this particular sermon, but let’s talk about what Jesus is really saying here in Matthew 25.  He makes it a bit confusing by talking in the third person like the Hulk, but when Jesus is saying “The Son of Man” ascending to His throne, He’s referring to Himself.  And so, as king, Jesus separates the sheep from the goats: those who gave food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, care to the sick, and welcome to the strangers, and those who did not.  Those who do these things for the least of us, Jesus says, we have done for Him directly.

Put that in your proverbial pipe and smoke it the next time you’re tempted to dismiss that homeless addict or that illegally immigrated alien as worthless, or, at least, unworthy of your compassion.

Okay, so why sheep and goats, though?  Why not, say, Seahawks fans and 49ers fans? (ZING!)  Because both act as sacrificial animals (where do you think our term “scapegoat” comes from, after all?).  Well, sheep belong to a shepherd, and Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  If we belong to the Good Shepherd, we must be sheep who do as our shepherd teaches us to do here: to welcome strangers and give to those who come to us in need.

Believe it or not, the protestors outside that mosque in Phoenix came to their Muslim neighbors in need as well—in need of understanding, and of compassion, and it was shown to them, and given to them, and a precious few of those protestors did choose to reach out and partake of that goodness.

Because that is what welcome looks like.

Because without them, you or I cannot be.

Jesus calls us into right relationship with Him, and such a huge, unbelievably huge part of achieving that is by likewise being in right relationship with one another.  It’s a big enough deal that the entire Bible deals with this very issue of welcome, not just Jesus—Abraham is rewarded for welcoming three angels disguised as human strangers, Solomon speaks of the importance of welcome in his proverbs, and the author of the letter to the Hebrews famously says that we should, indeed, must welcome strangers, because those who have done so have unknowingly welcomed angels.

Are you ready for the next time an angel might enter your own life, dressed up as a sinner or as a saint, as an Uncle Moneybags or as an Oliver Twist, as an atheist or as a Muslim? 

Are you ready for an angel who will likely look nothing like how you could ever imagine them to be?

And if you are not yet ready and willing to sit down and break bread with them, ask yourself, “Do I realize that what I am doing to them—or not doing for them—I am doing to my Lord and Savior?”

It isn’t, then, just What Would Jesus Do—it’s What Would We Do to Jesus?  What would we do to a Messiah we say we have welcomed into our hearts, but not to our tables, into our souls, but not into our lives?

Hopefully, then, we will learn to welcome Him into our homes as well.  Hopefully, that is what we would do to Jesus in the end.

May it be so.  Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington

June 7, 2015

I'm Still Not Done Writing About Josh Duggar

Er, well, at least about Josh directly.

This is about the Fox News interview that Jim Bob and Michelle did with Megyn Kelly (the same journalist who felt the overwhelming need to tell America's children that Santa can only be white, because, well, if Santa were black, or Latino, or Asian, well, the magic fabric that dreams are made of would crumble or somesuch...hey, I report, you decide).

And look, I get that they feel like, and even that their daughters might feel like, their family has been more victimized in the past couple of weeks than when Josh's abuse all went down.  That's a question of how they personally feel, and it isn't my place to invalidate that.

But when you put yourself out in the public sphere, scrutiny comes with the territory.  The Duggars' show, 19 and Counting, went on the air in September of 2008, five or six years after Josh's sexual abuse of his sisters and other women.

Instead of lamenting that the media discovered this news through actual investigative journalism (which is, after all, the media's job), start with asking yourselves why, as parents, you elected to expose your children to the public eye knowing full well that this was (is) a part of their story and experience.

I'm not a parent, and as such, I tend to be extremely reticent to ever offer parenting advice to anyone, but I have seen enough instances of parents taking advantage of their kids to know what that looks like.  It's like obscenity: there may not be a standardized definition of it, but you know it when you see it.

And I saw it in full display in the words that spilled forth like some sort of cringeworthy, cascading waterfall of whitewashing and excuse making from the tongues of Jim Bob and Michelle.

Amid said avalanche of minimizing, they said, and this is a direct quote, "It's not rape or anything like that."

Let's pause for effect for a moment, shall we?

...wow.

Okay, when your defense of your son is, "Hey, at least he didn't rape anyone," it is much more honest to admit the gravity of what he did and that you screwed up by whitewashing it, not by trying to minimize the experiences of molestation victims (aka me) by basically saying to us, "Be grateful; it could have been worse."

This is the problem with Christians oversheltering themselves: we become so out of touch with common morality that when it finally catches up to us like the tortoise passing the hare, we end up getting smacked clean in the face by it.  Jim Bob and Michelle have so cloistered not only their kids but themselves as well that they seem to genuinely believe that what happened was not a violation of the bodily vessels God made for us, and that the real threat to children remains transgender people, because "it's common sense." (Again, that's a direct quote from the interview.)

We do this across the board, mind you.  Only 38 percent of us say we personally know a Muslim.  Only 9 percent of us say we personally know someone who is transgender...which honestly probably explains a lot of the vitriol directed by conservative Christians at Caitlyn Jenner even though she has said she in fact identifies as both conservative and Christian herself.

And Jim Bob and Michelle did it not just with their kids, but with their interview explaining all this: by sitting down with the house organ of conservative media, Fox News, rather than any other news outlet that might ask some tougher questions.  Megyn Kelly, to her credit, did in fact some serious and responsible questions, but she also lobbed some serious softballs at the pair, questions that were clearly designed to allow them to deflect blame onto the media for digging into their past and specifically into the sexual abuse by Josh.

Jim Bob and Michelle may well feel like they are taking it on the chin in the media, and I respect that, but they need to remember that they brought this on themselves by so blatantly chasing publicity and fame.  My more conservative brethren often remind me that people need to be held accountable for their choices in life, and choosing to chase the spotlight knowing that the spotlight may one day shine on that part of your story was, in fact, a choice.  To my knowledge, nobody threatened Jim Bob and Michelle and said, "You MUST get your family their own reality TV show and make it as big a hit as possible."  They chose this fame for themselves and for their kids.

Unlike the gay, lesbian, and transgender people they demonize, the Duggars chose this lifestyle for themselves.  They are now experiencing one of the potential consequences of that particular lifestyle of fame and public attention.

But, as Jesus says to us, you reap what you sow.

Yours in Christ,
Eric

Through the Looking Glass: Reflecting on My "Meeting Josh Duggar" Post

After the revelation that Josh Duggar had molested multiple girls--including some of his own sisters--as a teenager and that his parents had engaged in a systematic cover-up of it (including just now getting a judge to destroy the police records of it), I shared my own deepest secret with all of you: that I had, as a child, experienced the exact same manner of molestation that Josh's victims had.

And I was amazed by that post's reception.  Truly.

I had disclosed that fact about my past for two reasons: first, to assure all of you that I was speaking from a place of personal experience about the Duggars and that I wasn't simply piling upon them for the sake of doing so.  But second, and more importantly, because I have come to believe that being a past victim of abuse need not be a secret.  Or, at least, if it is a secret, that it is a choice we make freely, not out of fear.

Because frankly, I don't look like someone you could easily physically or sexually abuse.  I'm 6'3", 240 pounds, and I'm well aware how easily my size and voice can intimidate.  But that's me now.  As a kid, I was a skinny, gangly mess of elbows, knees, and left feet.  I was prey.

Each of us have stages in our lives where we are potential prey--when we are kids, when we are especially emotionally vulnerable, when we are sick or upset, any number of points of time.  And sometimes, we are prey even when all of our faculties are entirely intact, and we end up feeling like failures for not preventing such harm from befalling us.

And as long as we keep abuse a secret, that mentality will continue, I am absolutely convinced of it.

Because I blamed myself after my abuse.  I told myself that I must have somehow asked for it or wanted it, that it made me gay and therefore I had caused this somehow--again, that is what growing up in a homophobic place like Kansas in the 1990's can do to you when you're a kid.

Considering the unhealthily sexist worldview of "Biblical patriarchy" that the Duggar kids were spoonfed by their parents, that a boy's sexual morality is a girl's responsibility, that girls are to blame for not dressing modestly enough or not adhering to the strict courtship rites of their parents, I honestly would be stunned if the Duggar sisters weren't told, explicitly or implicitly, that they had caused what Josh did to them.

Again--I say this based on the machinations of my own mind after I was abused, and I wasn't even taught at any point in my life by my parents that sexual abuse is somehow ever the victim's fault.

Imagine, then, what someone who was taught that must feel, and feel in secret, because if they disclose their secret, much less try to receive justice or reconciliation for it, they are made to blame for being abused.

As long as abuse, then, is handled entirely behind closed doors--as it was with the Duggars for at least a year--this will all continue, shamefully and painfully and, ultimately, unnecessarily.

It is a lesson that honestly we should have learned over a decade ago, when the child sex abuse scandals of the Roman Catholic Church began coming to light.  I said this on Facebook, but I'll repeat it here: what Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar did--from delaying going to the authorities to sending Josh to a perfunctory (fake, really) counseling arrangement to sending him to another abuser (in this case, a state trooper later sent to jail basically for life for child pornography), down the line it mirrored how the Roman Catholic bishops criminally mishandled the cases of pedophilia committed by priests in their dioceses.

We were outraged with those bishops, and rightly so.  So why are we so willing to give the Duggars a pass for poorly handling the abuse committed by Josh entirely behind closed doors?

The truth is, as long as handling abuse is something that we see as having to handle behind closed doors, it will forever be handled inadequately.  Abusers will be able to sweep their abuse under the proverbial rug.

The other night, C and I watched an episode of Doctor Who in which an alien doctor--not the Doctor himself--takes refuge in a 19th-century Western town in America (think a Sergio Leone Western and you get the idea).  This alien doctor uses his technology and scientific knowledge to give the town electricity and save it from an outbreak of cholera.  The townspeople rightly revere him as a saver of lives--until it comes to light that he is in fact hiding there from his previous life as a war criminal who experimented on unwilling subjects.  And in the midst of that revelation, the Doctor says to this other doctor, "You don't get to choose your punishment!  That's not justice."

Abusers shouldn't get to choose their punishments.  Josh Duggar, though, like many other abusers, got to choose his.

Which means we are still looking for justice.

So I shared with all of you what happened to me.  And I couldn't be more heartened to have done so, because you have indeed made my story part of the public sphere where it--and stories like mine--belong.  It is already the most-viewed and most-shared post I have ever written, and my hope is that it brought some light and understanding to a lot more people than I usually have the privilege of writing to.  And even more important on a personal level, the comments I have received via social media and in person have been nothing short of powerfully encouraging.  It means the world to me as someone who preaches and teaches and writes to, in fact, encourage you.

It remains a blessing and a joy to write for all of you.  Your reaction to my post on Josh Duggar underscored that reality.  May my writing continue to be an act of service towards you and the One who created you.

Yours in Christ,
Eric

This Week's Sermon: "Table"

Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus continued on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at a kiosk for collecting taxes. He said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him. 10 As Jesus sat down to eat in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and his disciples at the table.
11 But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

 12 When Jesus heard it, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. 13 Go and learn what this means: I want mercy and not sacrifice. I didn’t come to call righteous people, but sinners.” (Common English Bible)

“Whole: A Call to Unity in a Fragmented World,” Week One

The whole scene was a mashup of things that should never, ever happen, but did. 

A car accident on a busy road.

A five year old boy who was hit.

And in the middle of it, a young, 22-year-old Sikh man who had removed his turban and used it to give the injured child a pillow to lay on as he was being tended to.

Understand, mind you, that Sikhs, according to their religion, must never remove their turbans in public.  For him to do that would be like one of us using our most treasured Bible to wipe up the little boy’s blood: it is the right thing to do according to your morality, but still violates this symbol of your faith that you hold dear.

So this was a BFD for a lot of people, and this young Sikh man, Harman Singh, began fielding interview requests from all over at his little apartment in Auckland, New Zealand.  And one of these news crews, upon entering Singh’s humble abode, noticed how empty the rooms were, and how little furniture they contained.

This honestly isn’t uncommon for the large Indian minority in Auckland, over 100,000 people; when C and I vacationed there on our honeymoon, we met a number of Indian Kiwis who did the same jobs that immigrants tend to do here: driving cabs, doing housekeeping, jobs that require a great outlay of labor for really very little money.

And so this news station did something for this young man with very little materially but with so very much spiritually: they bought him a new bed, sofa, chair, and coffee table…because why have a sofa to share with guests without a table to sit around at?

Harman called it "the biggest surprise of his life," and his home has taken a step in being as welcoming as he himself is.  But as churches, we tend to be the opposite: we have all sorts of property and facilities, but we are not always so welcoming.  Which is where this new sermon series comes directly into play.

This is a new sermon series for the summer season, which will take us through June and into early July.  It is based off of a book written last year by Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, who has served for the past eight years as our denomination’s General Minister and President.  As such, she is one of the most visible pastors in our tradition; she has written in magazines and newspapers, preached at national prayer services, and been interviewed by just about anyone you can imagine about what exactly the Disciples think about this or that (trick question: we never think exactly the same about anything).

Pastor Sharon has used this widespread pulpit of hers to proclaim her vision, which she finally put into a book by the same name as this series, and the name comes from the preamble to the design of our denomination: that we are called to be a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.  In a world broken apart by sectarianism, prejudices, and hatred, we as Disciples are meant to be a movement for making humanity whole but to make ourselves as persons whole.  But what does that even look like?  Well, that is what the book she has written is for.  We’ll go chapter by chapter through it, with texts paralleling it from Matthew’s Gospel, and we begin with this excerpt:

As places to eat, tables matter.  Our first “tables” come to us: Mama’s lap, a bouncy seat on the floor, a high chair.  Family life often takes its most representative shape at table.

Tables also exist as more than places to eat.  Tables can represent gathering in community…Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars…describes the gathering role of tables.  Her book tells you more than you’d ever want to know about the challenges of space travel, including quite a bit about eating in space…

A lot of food in space is delivered from a tube directly into the mouth.  No spoon or fork required.  You miss much eating that way: the smell, the presentation—but it turns out that what you miss most is the social part, the conversation, the sharing around a table.

So now, long duration space ships are fitted with a completely nonfunctional table…nonfunctional, that is, for sitting down to eat in zero gravity.  The table is completely functional, however, as a center for gathering, for being together, for establishing community.  Even when the food is more or less symbolic in nature, the gathering at table matters for the sense of community it creates.

What does this have to do with a tax collector named Matthew…aside from the fact that tradition holds that he is the one who wrote the Gospel we are reading today?  Well, many of you may have already heard my spiel on why being a tax collector was such a reviled occupation in New Testament Israel, but it won’t hurt to brush up.

As a tax collector, Matthew would not have only been a very visible member of his community, he also would have been a very visible reminder of the Roman occupation of Israel.  The Israelites, and the Zealots in particular, believed in their homeland as the Promised Land given to them by God through Moses, and being reminded that they and their land were the vassals of a pagan empire would have galled them at every turn.

But to make matters worse, Matthew is himself an Israelite, even as he works for the Romans.  To his countrymen, he is a collaborator, a traitor to his own people.  He would have fit in incredibly well in the Empire in Star Wars.  He and Benedict Arnold would have been BFFs.  You get the idea.

There is still yet another layer on this giant sundae of awfulness that made Matthew such a reviled chap.  Tax collection didn’t work in New Testament Israel the way it does today, with income and payroll taxes automatically deducted from your paycheck, and you receive an annual refund for the excess tax you paid that year.  No, much as we might like to complain about the IRS, they are downright peaches and cream compared to the tax collectors of New Testament Israel, who were, for wont of a better term, state sanctioned muggers.  They would win the right to tax certain districts at auction, for a price that they would pay directly to the Romans.  In order to make a profit, they would demand more in taxes than what the right to collect those taxes had cost them at auction.

So basically, they lined their own pockets by stealing from their neighbors, and the Roman Empire was fine with this because they didn’t care how their legions got funded so long as they got funded.

And Jesus sits down with one of these rats, not just once, at Matthew’s booth, to tell him to follow Him, but again at Matthew’s home, around his table, with Matthew’s colleagues, tax collectors and sinners all.

When the Pharisees predictably criticize Jesus for this, what is His response? “Go and learn what this means: I want mercy, not sacrifice.”

Jesus is quoting the Hebrew Bible to the Pharisees—schooling them in their own area of expertise.  The verse Jesus is quoting is Hosea 6:6, and in this singular respect, Hosea is very much keeping in line with the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible: Isaiah, Micah, and Amos among others all preach to this truth that what God desires is not sacrifice, either in the form of the burnt offerings of old or of sacrificing one another upon the altar of doctrinal purity, but instead, mercy.

God desires mercy.

And community cannot exist without mercy.

Think about it: every time you sit down at the table to brace yourself for an earful from that relative of yours who is always critical of you or envious of you, that is a mercy you are doing.  Every time you offer to just let somebody vent to you over coffee or a beer, that is a mercy, too.  Every time you provide a table to someone who doesn’t have one to invite people to, that especially is a mercy.

Because it isn’t just about the food or the drink, especially if you aren’t going hungry to begin with.

It’s about being held in regard by another human being, to be worth a place at their table.  Especially if that person would have no obligation to do so beyond basic human and Christian decency.

Jesus is under no obligation to show such regard to Matthew.  In fact, if He outwardly reviled Matthew, Jesus would simply be in step with the prevailing mores of the day.

Nor, for that matter, are Jesus’s disciples under obligation to show such regard for Matthew, and that is where we come in, as Disciples today.  One of Jesus’s disciples, Simon, is a Zealot, one of the fervent, violent insurrectionists against Rome.  The Zealots were not to be trifled with—I got asked (jokingly) once which disciple would emerge victorious in a no-holds-barred MMA fight, and without hesitating, I said Simon.  The Zealots were that fearsome.

Matthew represents the human embodiment of what Simon would have almost certainly despised the most: an Israelite exploiting fellow Israelites for profit on behalf of a foreign emperor.

But instead, Matthew and Simon followed Jesus together.  Think of how many shared meals over the course of three years that is.

And now, imagine Simon and Matthew in their next life as astronauts, sitting around a nonfunctional table in outer space, partaking of tubes of freeze-dried food together, and the part about them being astronauts is far more outlandish to us than the part about them sharing a meal together.

That is the power of the Gospel.  That is the power of the table.  That is the power of Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson

Longview, Washington

May 31, 2015

Original image credit: artfromthesoul.com

Pentecost Book Review: Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution

(With how much I read, I will on occasion do full book reviews in addition to the briefer recommendations like the ones in my previous post.  Here's my latest review. E.A.)

The 20th century French Protestant pastor Rev. Andre Trocme immortalized himself by, like all the other Righteous Among the Nations, putting his life in death's hands in order to save an estimated 2,500 Jewish refugees who had sought safety in Le Chambon.  They survived the Holocaust.  As did he.

Ironically, his courageous and uncompromising stand for life during World War II made it difficult for him to find pastoral work in France, and he eventually ended up pastoring a church in Switzerland, but along the way he authored two books, including Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution (Plough, 2003).

Trocme is up front with his preface to the book: he is neither a theologian or a Biblical scholar, but merely a humble pastor.  Nevertheless, he makes a forceful case for the Jesus Movement as depicted in the Gospels and Acts as a genuinely political revolution (for when has a revolution ever been apolitical?  Trocme rightly has little patience for those who argue Jesus was somehow apolitical), rooted firmly in the Jubilee tradition of Old Testament Judaism.

The Jubilee was a natural evolution of the sabbatical year: every seventh year, farms were meant to lie fallow so that the soil could replenish, and slaves were meant to be set free.  The Jubilee year, every seventh seventh year (so, every 49th year), came with it not just these freedoms but also a complete remission of all debts and the returning of all land to its original owners, which was meant to prevent a landed aristocracy from taking over that which was created by and ultimately belonged to God--the land--and using its riches to exploit God's people for yet more riches (in this way, Trocme also acts, perhaps unknowingly, as a powerful antidote to another harmful belief we have begun to tell ourselves: the prosperity gospel notion that God wants us to be wealthy).

Trocme is likewise up front that he is writing this largely as a rebuttal to existential thought, saying it "may sate one with its lucid analyses, which define the problems, but it fails to offer a courageous obedience capable of resolving them.  Such an approach is nothing but a subtle excuse to evade one's responsibilities in the world and is thus characteristic of a period of moral and religious decadence."

Oof.

As an existential Christian myself, immersed in the theology of Soren Kierkegaard and his theological progeny, that was especially challenging for me to hear.

And yet, Trocme's work does itself overlap immensely with Kierkegaard's existentialism.  To Kierkegaard, laws are not innately just: it is in part why the sphere of faith and its status above the sphere of ethics is necessitated.  Trocme acts, and asks us to act, on the basis of a powerful faith that stands up to and above the unjust laws of a Hitler or a Petain.  And stylistically, Trocme, like Kierkegaard, is hardly systematic, instead using the sheer power of his prose to keep his audience reading as he moves from problem to prescription.  This singular characteristic, along with Trocme's status as a pastor rather than a professor, keeps his words accessible to fellow clergy like me and, I believe, to any layperson interested in learning from his work as well.

That organic ease of writing and reading does not come with it an ease in what is demanded of us: both men are also unyielding to their audiences in their exhortations to wholly and completely follow the risen Christ who promises us life beyond measure and then demands that we seek the same for others.

If, in your own walk with God to achieve that monumental task of seeking life for others, you seek another prophetic voice, picking up Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution is a worthy addition to your bookshelf.  But consider yourself warned: it will not necessarily make that walk easier for you.  Nor, in all honesty, should it.

Disclaimer: my copy of Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution came at no charge from the publisher; however, all opinions here are entirely my own.

Letters from the Soul: This Month's Newsletter Column

(Plus the June outline for my new sermon series...see the italicized section after my reading list! E.A.)

"The Annual Summer Reading List"

Dear Church,

Every June, in honor of the school year ending all across our community, I use my column here to assign some summer reading for anyone who is interested in some recommendations to peruse during their lazy (or not so lazy!) days of summer. This year, I have three books, all published within the last year by female authors in my generation, that will be front and center on my shelf:

"Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church," by Rachel Held Evans (Thomas Nelson, 2015) 

Rachel Held Evans is one of those rare writers whose work actually falls into the "it changed my life" category. Her first book, "Evolving in Monkey Town," about emerging from a very strict Christian background whilst wrestling with all sorts of questions about faith and spirituality, largely resonated with my own personal experience, and this, her latest work, continues in that vein. It springboards off of her migration to worshiping at a mainline Episcopalian church by breaking down her journey according to each of the traditional sacraments of the church: baptism, communion, anointing the sick, and so on, and the sentiment and sheer narrative force of her words is powerful indeed.

"Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity," by Dianna Anderson (Jericho Books, 2015)

There is a strong emphasis in the church on purity, but that tends to translate into an outsized emphasis on sexual purity at the expense of other forms of purity--purity of speech, deeds, even spending habits (do you know where the money you spend on, say, chocolate or clothes goes to?). Dianna Anderson, having grown up, like Rachel Held Evans, in a very strict Christian environment, talks very bravely and personally about how this focus affected her and how it took moving beyond it to develop a genuinely healthy view towards her sexuality after being told all her life how easy it was for one sexual encounter to ruin her completely for life, marriage, and God. Can we start to do better as a church?

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory," by Caitlin Doughty (W.W. Norton & Co., 2014)

Caitlin Doughty doesn't write from an explicitly Christian perspective, but there are references to various spiritualities intertwined throughout her memoir of working in funeral homes in California: about how her relationship with both life and death was formed, and how we in turn can face our own deep-seated fear of death and replace it with a much healthier understanding of what dying today actually entails. For a pastor who has experienced his own fair share of death in our beloved community already this year, this book has become invaluable in helping me process those experiences.

So that's some of what I'll be reading this summer. How about you?

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Eric

Sunday, May 31 also marks the start of a new sermon series based off the July 2014 book "Whole: A Call to Unity in Our Fragmented World," by Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, the General Minister and President of our Disciples of Christ denomination. Considering that we are just now coming off of the Pentecost narrative about followers from all regions of the Middle East understanding one another perfectly despite their differences in culture and geography, this is, I think, a perfectly timed series. In her book, Pastor Sharon details her vision for adhering to the original "no creed but Christ" mentality of our early founders way back during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century: a belief in unity around the singular notion that Jesus Christ is the son of God, the Messiah, and that every doctrine past that is, in the end, commentary on that one reality. It is genius in its simplicity, and it has attracted millions of followers over the past nearly 200 years. For now, though, we'll go through the month of June and the first part of July by talking about Pastor Sharon's vision for a shared table for all of Christ's believers, not simply the ones we like the best or the ones we agree with the most. It's going to be a very fun series to do, and I am excited to be able to share it with you starting on the 31st.  

I'll see you Sunday,
Pastor Eric

“Whole: A Call to Unity in Our Fragmented World”

May 31: “Table,” Matthew 9:9-13
June 7: “Welcome,” Matthew 25:34-40
June 14: “Wholeness,” Matthew 20:29-34
June 21: Guest preacher
June 28: Movement,” Matthew 9:35-38

The Last Full Measure of Devotion

(The following is a repost from Memorial Day 2014, in honor of those who gave that last full measure of devotion. E.A.)

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
The Gettysburg Address
Emphasis mine

In memory of the millions of soldiers whose blood we shed in the name of warmaking and warmongering

In memory of those who gave their lives in the name of protecting the ideals held sacred to this day

In memory of all who have died in battle because we are a violent people, prone to death and to destruction

In memory of the warriors who gave not only their physical lives, but their mental and spiritual lives as well

In memory of the veterans who have fallen to a merciless and cutthroat economic system after coming home

In memory of the families whose plights without their loved ones are ignored and overlooked

In memory of my uncle Albert Mouradian, who paid the price of my family's American citizenship with his blood at Okinawa

In memory of the honored dead who gave that last full measure of devotion

We honor you today

Yours in Christ,
Eric