Eric S. Fought

We’re Still Here

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I’m grateful to the editors of U.S. Catholic magazine for providing me with the opportunity to tell my story and enter the ongoing conversation regarding the clergy abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.

You can read my essay, “We’re Still Here,” which is published in the July issue of the magazine by clicking here.

In the mid-1980s I was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest, the pastor of my parish in rural Wisconsin. For many years I didn’t tell anyone, keeping what seemed like a promise. Gratefully, our family moved in December of 1986, and I never saw the priest again. He died in 2008.

I’m 42 now, more than 30 years removed from the trauma I experienced. I’ve had the opportunity to address what happened with many professionals, close friends, and fellow survivors.

As the church continues to grapple with this crisis, it is important that we are intentional about the reality that many survivors have chosen not to leave, but remain. Indeed, we’re still here, we welcome your prayers, and we yearn for you to know us and our stories.

Read the essay by visiting the U.S. Catholic website.

Sent Out in Pairs

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The international fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous began in 1935 when two men, Bill W., and Dr. Bob S., met in the home of a mutual friend in Akron, Ohio. Medical professionals, friends, family members, clergy and the men’s spouses all described Bill and Dr. Bob as “hopeless cases,” likely to die from alcoholism, a disease of the body, mind, and spirit. The key for Dr. Bob was that he found in Bill, and many other alcoholics he would encounter during the rest of days, a fellow traveler, someone who truly understood what it — alcoholism — was like. And Bill found in Dr. Bob, and countless alcoholics he would meet over the remainder of his life, someone whom he could help simply by sharing his own experience, strength, and hope.

The program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the many 12-step fellowships that have been created over the years are based on the principle that alcoholics and addicts stay clean and sober by reaching out to others and giving away what they have been given. It was through attraction, and not promotion, that the fellowship grew from two idealistic drunks to an organization with a presence in more than 180 countries around the globe.

In Sunday’s Gospel text, Jesus sends 72 disciples out into the world. It is, indeed, an unusually specific numeric reference. But, perhaps more important than the number 72 is the number two. The disciples were sent out to minister in pairs.

This is good news for sure. After all, it wasn’t going to be an easy life. Lambs among wolves…no money bag, no sandals or sack to carry anything of value with you. All that the disciples had was themselves, their faith in Jesus, and their ministry partner.

In the life of discipleship, the question is not what you need but who.

We don’t walk this journey alone. We need each other — for support, encouragement, a listening ear, perhaps even advice at times. We learn from the experience of others who have walked before us, and we share our own experience with those who walk with us.

In our current context, the harvest that is in need of reaping is the tremendous pain that so many carry around each day. Our opportunity, as followers of Jesus, is to go out into the world (from the comfort of our pews and our homes) and bring with us open hearts, listening ears, and a prayerful presence. With that presence, with those ears and with our hearts, we can harvest much that burdens our neighbors.

However, we will only be able to really help those who are hurting if we are authentic about the pain we carry ourselves. In sharing our own experiences of grief, mental illness, economic insecurity, addiction, strains on our families, and other challenges that cause us hurt, others can relate. And in relating, they are not only meeting us but meeting Jesus, who has sent us out ahead of him.

People who are hurting — all of us — need to know that the kingdom of God is at hand. That should not instill further fear and shame, but hope. For the kingdom of our God brings love, liberation, reconciliation, and resurrection. Too often, and for too long, we have failed to share such a hope-filled message. And now, more than ever, we need to get it right.

And in so doing, by going out into the world two-by-two, we can bring hope to that hurting, bruised and broken world. Along the way, we, too, will be helped, for just as one alcoholic helping another alcoholic keeps both sober, one hurting child of God helping another will keep both in the loving arms of their Creator. The laborers will grow, not through promotion, but through attraction, to the liberating, life-giving movement of discipleship we tend to call the church.

Copyright – Celebration Publications – July 2019

The Spirit of Pentecost

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Several years ago, a friend of mine, a bishop in the Episcopal Church, gave a sermon on the Feast of Pentecost, making note of a sermon she had heard from a Southern preacher. In the south, she noted, Pentecost often comes right at the beginning of hurricane season. To the faithful along the Gulf Coast and up and down the Atlantic, wind has a very different significance than it might to those of us who grew up in the Midwest.

Wind, in such a climate, is not a positive source of life, but one that often causes death, destruction and pain. The slightest breeze in June or July can bring shivers for anyone that has ever been evacuated or lost a home.

The wind of the Spirit, the role the Spirit plays in our lives and the questions we are asked in the process of discernment aren’t always positive. It’s often the big questions in life that cause us to stop and consider how the Spirit is working. Those questions aren’t always questions or situations we want to face.

The Spirit calls on us to consider the best way to respond to whatever the wind is pushing us towards. We are called to discern how to handle the care of an ailing spouse or parent or child, perhaps even to pray about the journey at the end of life and the decisions that come with it.

Indeed, it seems that the Spirit works in us even when we might not even believe that God is with us anymore. The wind of that Spirit pushes us to reach out for help when we are struggling, after a relationship ends or a job is lost. That wind blows even when we put up as many defenses as we can, no matter how far we dig our heels into the sand.

Even when we think we’ve said no, the Spirit demands that we continue to discern and engage.

However, the Spirit doesn’t always act as a mighty and destructive wind. At times, that same Spirit acts as a breath, offering us new life and energy, often at times when we need it most. Here we are reminded of the presence of God, even in the most simple and mundane ways. In the way we breathe, or how someone makes our day with a smile or a note or a surprise.

The Spirit doesn’t just show up as a mighty wind, asking us to discern the biggest decisions in our life, like choosing religious life or marriage or single life, how to best pick up the pieces when someone dies, or even what to do when we win the Powerball jackpot.

The Spirit and our call to discernment from that Spirit shows up in varied ways—as both a mighty wind and as a life-giving breath—throughout our lives, even when we aren’t paying attention.

And, as we are reminded in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the call to discernment is not only an individual spiritual endeavor. Indeed, for us as Christians it must happen in the midst of a community, where we are not individuals at all, but the same spirit.

There are many parallels between the church in Corinth and our church today. The need for, and pleas toward, unity that Paul expresses to the deeply divided community he seeks to minister to can easily be adapted to our own lives, our parishes, and the church throughout the world.

We are called to consider, as the church in Corinth considered, how to welcome those who are different than us into our midst, even and especially when they are sitting right in the pew next to us.

We are called by the Spirit to discern how to move beyond charity and towards justice, to find ways to bring about compassion in a world that is so deprived of it. We are blown around by the wind of a Spirit that asks us to talk to one another. That Spirit tussles us until we can finally let go of all that divides rather than unites, that harms more than cares for our neighbors.

Just as we will likely not survive a hurricane standing alone in the middle of a coastal boardwalk as the eye of the storm makes landfall, we cannot thrive without each other.

How do we honor the diversity of gifts that we all bring to this specific time and place? No matter the gifts given to each of us – they all stem from the same community, the same Spirit, and the same God who makes it all happen.

These Days Ahead

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I struggle with Lent, which is natural. It’s meant to be challenging, the invitation is to conversion, to change. And we all know change, even the idea of it, is hard.

But I also struggle with Lent because I know that for those of us that walk each day living with mental health conditions of various types, this season provides specific challenges.

The reality of suicidal ideation already places death front and center. The last thing many of us needs is a reminder.

Low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness are not the result of a chosen path toward spiritual kenosis, but daily challenges to navigate.

For me, and perhaps for you, Lent offers the chance for a new perspective.

Rather than choosing to give up chocolate or pie or even cigarettes, I try to instead give up all that keeps me from living fully: crippling self-doubt, painful memories, fears and insecurities about the future, toxic relationships.

But—and this is important—I also remind myself that some, if not many, of these things are out of my control, symptoms of chronic illness rather than failures on my part.

Some things we can let go of, some things we can’t. Sometimes I can choose gratitude, some days all I can do is drink my coffee and put on my shoes and do the best I can.

Lent is a time to be reminded that it’s all part of the journey.

These days remind us not only of Jesus’ journey from death to new life but our own. Together, we walk through the many challenges of our lives mindful of the hope that Easter brings, and we do so amid a community of people walking the same path. Outside of the walls of our home or parish, we find growing division, and many people experiencing pain. This season prepares us to walk with Jesus into Jerusalem, through the streets to the cross and the tomb, and listen for the call to bring the hope of resurrection to a world in need.

More than anything, Lent reminds us of our humanity. To say that “we are dust” is not to say that we are dirt. It is a call to embrace who we are, to connect with others who share in the messiness, and to seek out our loving Creator, ever more mindful of that Creator’s invitation to be embraced by love, understanding, and life-giving water to stymy our dustiness.

An Untitled Prayer

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O God, your people are hurting. Many feel lost, afraid, ready to give up.

Bring us back to a place where we seek authentic community, where we long to understand each other, especially those that come from differing places and views.

You call each of us to reconciliation. Give us the strength and wisdom and temperament to get there.

For those that have died, we pray for a peaceful rest. For those who have been abused, we pray for healing and forgiveness. For those who seek to do evil, we pray for a change of heart. For those who are weary and ready to give up, we pray for courage and strength. And, for a world in need of joy, we pray for voices that laugh and sing and shout.

We ask this in the name of our loving, liberating and life-giving God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

“Whose Image Do We Bear?” | Matthew 22:15-22

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This week’s Gospel reading provides a break from the series of parables we’ve been walking through, those moments in which Jesus has been telling us about the nature of the Kingdom of God.

This passage from Matthew’s Gospel is also a bit out of sequence liturgically. Jesus has just processed triumphantly into Jerusalem, that moment which comes at the end of the season Lent, that moment known to us as Palm Sunday. And Jesus has just entered the Temple in Jerusalem, questioning all those who were buying and selling goods there, overturning their tables and calling it a “den of robbers” before curing the blind and the lame.

He’s not making many friends in the process, and we know what is about to happen.

This is the context in which this story sits in the overall narrative of Matthew’s gospel. And we know it is a significant story, because it also shows up in the other synoptic gospels of Mark and Luke.

A group approaches Jesus, made up of Herodians, those loyal to Herod’s Roman dynasty and also the disciples of the Pharisees, those religious leaders who were growing in opposition to Jesus’s ministry and in opposition to Jesus himself.

They have come to test Jesus, to put him on the spot. In the ancient world, asking someone a question in a public space was the same as impugning someone’s character, questioning someone’s integrity.

To make matters worse, they start out by trying to flatter Jesus. Kind of in that way that your friend from homeroom would try and compliment your mother when he came over for spaghetti dinner.

Well, Jesus was just about as impressed as your mother was.

He knew that these men had come to trap him. And he wasn’t going to play along. Tensions were high, and so were the stakes.

Is it lawful, they ask, to pay taxes to the emperor or not?

The trap is set—if Jesus answers one way, he will anger those loyal to Rome. If he answers another way, he will prove to those who doubt him and his ministry, that he is to be suspected after all.

By producing a coin, these men indeed are proving to be hypocrites, as Jesus charges. For the Pharisees, possessing a denarius proved that they were participating in and benefiting from the economy of the oppressor. For the Herodians, if they produced the coin, it would have not been a coin that King Herod had minted, which indeed had followed the Jewish custom avoiding idolatry by not casting images of persons.

The denarius featured the likeness and title of the emperor, Cesar, asserting his divinity.

In the end, Jesus doesn’t get caught in the trap at all. Instead, he answers the question. But, he answers in a way in which his adversaries cannot win, and in which God does.

The answer Jesus gives is both practical and spiritual. Give what belongs to the emperor—those coins in your pocket, for instance, those belong to him. But, once you’re done with that, and even before, give to God what is God’s.

Because, what belongs to God? Everything. All that we have, all that we are, all that is, indeed all that ever will be belongs to the Creator of all things.

Jesus is reminding those gathered around him what is really important.

The message isn’t about compartmentalizing what we have. It’s not about the separation of church and state—giving to the government what is the government’s in mid-April and giving to God what is God’s in church on Christmas and Easter.

No, what Jesus is saying here is that everything belongs to God, and that while the empire might seem God-like, and those in power in the empire might believe they rise to divine status, in the end there is only one God, and it is to that God in which all belongs.

The coin presented to Jesus bears the likeness and title of the emperor. And Jesus calls those who present the coin hypocrites, for they have forgotten that what is etched on the coin, the words claiming divinity for Cesar, are false.

But even more importantly, and truly important for us today, the Pharisees and Herodians had forgotten whose likeness is etched on themselves.

Certainly, the Pharisees would have been familiar with the beginning of Genesis. The 27th verse of the first chapter reads, “so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Hopefully you know we are included in that act of creation, in that declaration that humankind is created in the image of God. You might question whether or not the entire universe could have possibly been created in six calendar days. But we know, we’ve experienced, we believe, that God created us in God’s very likeness.

And with that comes, of course, great responsibility. Because, if we are to heed the statement of Jesus, the directive to give to God what is God’s, then that means that we not only have to give our all, we must act in God’s image in the world today.

We are not to act as gods of course—that’s exactly what Jesus was speaking out against—but we are called to act as God’s partners, God’s agents, God’s co-workers in the vineyard.

As we reflect on the idea and the reality of empire, we know that many characteristics of the way empire was experienced in the time of Jesus are the same today. We have rulers—in some parts of the world they even continue to be called kings. And governments still work in ways that capitalize on fear, indifference, suffering and human failings. Remarkably, this empire, the government here in our own country even continues to view execution, the manner in which Jesus himself was killed, as a valid form of punishment in the year 2020.

However, as we reflect, we must also recognize that in many ways empire is much different in our world today.

Empire no longer shows up in the form of one ruler, or even solely in the form of government. It is a part of every aspect of our lives, from the media we consume (and the phones in which we do that consuming) to the vehicles we drive and the books we read. Every moment of every day the empire of which we are a part markets to us, capitalizing on our fears, our desires, our hopes, our dreams and our weaknesses.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is asking us whose image do we bear? The image of God or the image of the empire?

Like many of you, I have really struggled to find a way in which to interact as a Christian in the political world of our day. As the media reminds us each day, we as a people have become more and more polarized. This, of course, is part of empire too, the more divided we are the easier it is to distract and defend actions that most of us object to.

But let me be clear. This isn’t solely about the current occupant of the White House. Empire existed long before he was elected, and empire will exist long before he gratefully returns to his gold-platted patio furniture.

We have been deeply divided as a country before. Indeed, it is hard to pinpoint a time when we weren’t, with perhaps the days following the September 11th attacks or Pearl Harbor being exceptions.

Technology does make it easier to sow division though, and it is so easy to get caught up in the vicious back-and-forth on Facebook and Twitter and newspaper comments sections. That is where empire is communicated, that is where we most often buy into it most personally and most directly.

The question before us this morning is this: whose likeness do we bear? The empire’s or God’s?

We know how it is that we were created. We know that in our baptism we were once again literally bathed in Christ. And yet we act as though we aren’t really sure whose likeness we bear in the end. We act as though we can lead a compartmentalized life—bearing God’s likeness here on Dale Street while bearing the empire’s while walking done Grand Avenue.

Jesus isn’t asking us to be perfect, far from it. But he is reminding us, today and always, that we are beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of a God that asks more of us. To give to God what is God’s means that we have to try and give our all—to resist the empire and the way in which it exploits, imprisons and executes.

Last Sunday afternoon many of us gathered in this sanctuary for a meeting with candidates for mayor of this city. The election is just over two weeks away. We heard, not only from the mayoral hopefuls, but from many residents of Saint Paul who shared their stories of the struggles they or their loved ones experience every day. Those who shared those stories stood up to empire, which would rather they remained silent. And the same is true of all those of you who will go to the polls and vote, making your voices heard, and in those of you who will help your neighbors do the same.

Resisting empire doesn’t mean building a hermitage in the woods where you leave the world. Although it could I suppose. Resisting empire for those of us who aren’t hermits means remembering who we are, and whose we are. And by recalling the likeness we bear, we work for justice, for peace, and for a better world.

Please pray with me.

Lord God, Creator of all, in your wisdom, you have bound us together so that we must depend on others for the food we eat, the resources we use, the gifts of your creation that bring life, health and joy. Creator God, we give thanks.

Holy be the bodies of those who know hunger, sacred be the bodies of those who are broken, blessed be the bodies of those who suffer.

In your mercy and grace, soften our callous hearts and fill us with gratitude for all the gifts you have given us. In your love, break down the walls that separate us and guide us along your path of peace, that we might humbly worship you in Spirit and in truth. Amen.

Prayer adapted from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.