https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BESc8LlHaIGTnP6wKCAXEFz1HeS1u8c6/view?usp=s

I was asked to write a Lenten reflection. It came from a marvelous story about a young World War II pilot who lived in Orcutt after he’d retired from the Air Force. The verse from John reminded, me, too, of Arroyo Grande’s war.

Three years before the buses took them away in 1942, Arroyo Grande’s Japanese, in a moment of immense generosity and tragic irony, gifted the church to which many of them belonged–the Methodist Church– with a painting of Jesus in Gethsemane, in a solitary moment without the friends He loved so much, praying for deliverance from a death He knew was inevitable. We begin to see that in John:20-33.

I found the reflection, on Verse 24, in an odd place, in my studies of World War II and in a book I wrote, Central Coast Aviators in World War II. If you click on the link just below the photograph, the video will explain my choice.

The theme, which seems so lost to us today, is Selflessness.

I found this quality in a man, nicknamed “Ike,” so self-effacing and so seemingly colorless–the parakeet in the background of this interview is far louder than he–that at first glance I wouldn’t have looked for Jesus in him at all.

But John XXIII reminded us that Jesus loved food and, even more, He loved the company that being at table brought Him.

From “Ike” Eckermann’s 2012 obituary:

He enjoyed traveling, gifts of service to others, genealogy study, the [Lutheran] church, sharing stories of his military adventures, birdwatching, gardening, and music. Cooking was one of Ike’s greatest talents, and his recipes are treasured by those who were blessed to share meals at his home. 

And there you find Christ, busy in Ike, who is busy in Ike’s kitchen, hovering over an omelet that will emerge lighter than the clouds that protected him such a long time ago and served, with such happiness, at the table of the man whose machine-guns refused to fire.