Eldon, Death and The Middle Ages (an appreciation)

[Joey Aszterbaum]

We are atheists.

Now, before you kick me out of the Tribe, let me explain what I mean.

In his book A Better Hope, theologian Stanley Hauerwas says that, “Even if we say we believe in God, most of our lives are constituted by practices that assume that God does not exists."

One of the examples that he gives for this is how we want to die. Ask the person next to you how they want to die. “We all want to die quickly, painlessly, in our sleep, without being a burden.”

Hauerwas then contrasts this with Christians in the middle ages, who feared a sudden death. Even today you can find this way of thinking in the English Book of Common Prayer; “from battle and murder, and from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us.”

Why did they fear a sudden death? It was because “such a death meant they might die unreconciled with their neighbors, their church, and, of course, God. We no longer fear the judgment of God, but we do fear death.”

At this point, you are probably wondering what the heck all this talk about death, atheism and the middle ages has to do with our Pastor Appreciation picnic. After all, Michelle Lomas asked me to share something appreciative about Eldon and is probably wondering when I will get to that.

Here it goes, Michelle.

How in the world do you lead the local church to follow hard after God in the way of Jesus when we are all practical atheists?

Think about this: If we want to die a painless death, where we don’t even know we are dying and we are not a burden on anyone, then what kind of leadership would it take to convince us to actually follow Jesus, a man who died a very public, painful, burdensome and conscious death? A man who commands us to take upon ourselves that very death (symbolized in the cross) and follow?

The pastor’s enormous task is to lead us, through words, thoughts and ritual, in the way of the cross of Jesus; a way that threatens our natural and cultural instincts for survival and requires that we lose our own lives for the benefit of the world…even (or especially) our enemies.

Christianity is not a ‘nice’ religion. That is why being a pastor and leading a local church is a high and dangerous calling. To even apply for the job is to demonstrate awesome courage.

If we are to fear God more than we are to fear death, then how we choose our pastor must be more important than how we choose our surgeon. Even if we as individuals are, in the eyes of the world, in the best of health, the Church knows that, because of the pervasiveness of sin in our world, we are in a life or death situation.

So that is what I appreciate about Eldon: that he dares to hope that we as a tribe can sacrifice our lives of petty self-interest and practical atheism, take up the cross and follow Jesus.

That he has the awesome courage to be our pastor.