Join us on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at 11:00 AM for a song streaming live from Church of the Holy Cross. May it bring a lift to your day.
Sermon: Assignment: Mercy
June 14, 2026
Exodus 19:2-8a
Matthew 9:35-10:8
Jesus’ travels through Galilee disturbed him. D. Mark Davis, writing at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, translates verse 36 as, “Yet having seen the crowd he was wrenched with compassion about them that they were having been harassed and tossed aside like sheep not having a shepherd.” Then he writes: “This verse is chock full of strong language. Jesus’ reaction is not just a sweet feeling of kindness, as if he just saw a flock of cute baby lambs. It is a visceral reaction, as the definition of σπλαγχνίζομαι suggests. I think it reads best as a gut reaction, something like ‘furious compassion.’”
“Furious compassion.” You’ve had that feeling, haven’t you? That’s the feeling when you see that somebody has been misled or abused and you’re not only concerned for them you’re angry on their behalf.
People feeling furious compassion tend to tell others about the feeling. They tend to gather people to witness and understand what’s happening. They tend to organize them to do something about it.
That’s what Jesus did. From a larger group of followers, he selected twelve to take on roles not just as learners, but as leaders. He selected twelve to take on the same work that he had been doing. It was no small commission. “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”
Every bit of that charge is laden with challenge. The easiest part seems to be first part: proclaim good news. Good news. Who could object to people proclaiming good news?
Well, the first people who object to good news are usually the people who are benefiting from the bad news. They’re the ones setting the rules that protect their wealth and power from the ones without wealth and power. They’re the ones who accused Jesus of healing people’s demons with the power of demons. They’re the ones who eventually got him executed as a rebel – since when you tell people the good news that God is in charge, not the people who say they’re in charge, it is a rebellious act.
Jesus wasn’t done. “Cure the sick” – I’m afraid that’s not one of my skills. “Raise the dead” – I can’t do that. “Cleanse those with a skin disease” – I can put a bandage on it. “Cast out demons” – maybe I can; I’ve never tried. “You received without payment; give without payment” – how ironic is it that tomorrow is payday?
Matthew only gave us Jesus’ side of the assignment here, but my goodness. The disciples must have been saying something along the lines of, “Who me? No way.”
If they said it aloud (Matthew didn’t tell us), I’m pretty sure Jesus said something like, “Yeah, way.”
Christian discipleship – the Way of Jesus – is Assignment: Mercy.
As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Go and proclaim the good news of the kingdom. Go and cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Go and touch. Go and heal. Go and resurrect. Go and make peace. Go and render believable the compassion of God.”
Assignment: Mercy.
As our myna hopefully learned this morning, mercy doesn’t have to be grand and glowing. Mercy begins with basic consideration. Mercy welcomes others to join in the feast. Mercy steps in to decrease the temperature of a dispute. Mercy. Is attentive to everyone’s safety.
During this weekend’s ‘Aha Pae’aina, called together with the theme of building bridges, there were more than a few exhibits of basic mercy. We greeted one another warmly, with hugs and smiles and aloha spoken and unspoken. We feasted together – my, how we feasted. I’m not sure when I’ll have room to eat anything else again. There were items of disagreement on the agenda, and we addressed them with respect and consideration for the people on either side of the question. And if I can summon up a personal example, while delivering my workshop I froze my feet in their places for a minute or two, because a nine-month old baby was crawling around next to me and I was not going to step on her fingers.
Mercy is also bigger than that. I kept my feet still to avoid hurting a baby. Why can’t the nations of the earth keep our militaries still lest they harm the infants of another nation? Why are we told that it is a virtue to use force ruthlessly and mercilessly? Why are we told that we don’t have the courage to take territory from another nation, instead of being told that our sense of morality prevents us from taking territory from another nation?
Jesus had the opportunity to start a war. When he was arrested, somebody swung a sword. Jesus could have screamed, “Attack!” Instead, Jesus said, “Enough of this,” and healed the injured man.
Assignment: Mercy.
During this ‘Aha, Conference Minister the Rev. Dr. David Popham told me something I hadn’t known – he knows plenty of things that I don’t, of course. He mentioned that Hawai’i has been closely followed by the disaster response people in the UCC and the Disciples of Christ. We’ve been through a lot, for sure: the 2018 Puna eruption here, the fires on Maui in 2023, this year’s series of Kona low storms. He joked, in fact, that sometimes they would call him and tell him things that he didn’t know, which was probably because the local people who would call the Conference were still busy dealing with the situation in front them, while those whose professions it is to assess disasters were communicating with our national church staff.
The point is that we have friends. We have neighbors who meet the definition Jesus provided to “Who is my neighbor?” Do you remember? “Who is my neighbor” was the question that launched the story of the Good Samaritan – and the neighbor was the one who showed mercy.
Assignment: Mercy.
All right. Have I made that point enough? How are you going to fulfill your assignment?
You do it with everything you’ve got. Yes, that’s a big ask. Yes, it’s a lot to give. And in some instances, yes, it’s not going to be enough.
Assignment: Mercy is a call to stay attentive to the small mercies, to the politenesses, the sharings, the protections. None of us can possibly be aware of everything going on around us, but if we can we can look right and left before crossing the street, we can look right and left to see what’s going on with our neighbors. It’s a call to ask about needs and not assume them. A person in a wheelchair may appreciate some assistance from you on a streetcorner, but they also may not. Be vigilant, and let your vigilance include the simple politeness of asking, “How are you doing?” followed, perhaps, by, “What do you need?”
Assignment: Mercy is a call to stay attentive to the big mercies, to the relief from systemic oppression and suffering, from the prejudices of social pressure and the discrimination of unjust law. Assignment: Mercy is a call to remind the world that war simply isn’t the Way of Jesus, no matter what awful things the Church has said to the contrary in the past. Assignment: Mercy insists that people be held accountable for the harms they bring to others, that they be held accountable through an open and transparent process of law, and that those in power shall have no special influence in the adjudication of the crimes of which they’re accused. Assignment: Mercy further calls us to bring people into society as well as we can, to make sure that neither habit nor desperation are major forces to drive people to criminal behavior.
Assignment: Mercy is a call to show that a loving God has had a powerful and positive influence on our lives. It is a call to testify to the grace that God has demonstrated in the world: in Creation, in guidance, in wisdom, in the poetry of the Psalms, in the restoration of distressed people, in the birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, in the activity of the Holy Spirit from the first century to the twenty-first.
At this point, I am sorely tempted to parody the opening of an episode of Mission: Impossible. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to show God’s mercy to a hurting world. If you are caught or captured in this mission, God will not disavow, but will celebrate your actions.
Actually, you want to be caught at this. Let everybody see. Let everybody know. You have accepted: Assignment: Mercy.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches, so the sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
The image is Christ Sends Apostles out in Pairs by anonymous (1573) – https://www.centraalmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/2474-de-uitzending-van-de-twaalf-discipelen-anoniem-noord-nederlands, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80163482.
What I’m Thinking: Assignment Mercy
Jesus set his closest associates on the challenging assignment of bringing compassion to those who needed it so. We have the same assignment.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth chapters of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 9:35-10:8).
This section begins with Jesus’ observation that the people of the villages that he had met were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. There was more work to be done than he could do himself. He summoned twelve from amongst his followers, and he gave them power and authority.
He appointed them to be ambassadors of the movement, to go out and visit these other villages. There, he directed them, proclaim the good news that the realm of God is drawing near. Cast out the demons, heal the sick, and by the way, make no preparation as you go. Don’t save any money, don’t bring even any extra clothing.
It was, and it is, a tough assignment. I would argue that we as disciples today: we are the heirs of those twelve. We are still asked to do something about bringing the reign of God closer to being in the world. To do what we can for the sick, to comfort those who are pressed by evil spirits, and to assist those who are pressed by evil people. We continue in this long tradition of seeing what is wrong in the world, and bringing good news and good action to those who suffer to those in need.
Proclaim the good news that the realm of God is near. Bring healing and comfort and assurance, and you will be doing the work of Jesus.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Sermon: God Desires Mercy
June 7, 2026
Hosea 5:15-6:6
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Do you remember the Pushmi-Pullyu from Doctor Dolittle? The fictional animal (I repeat, fictional) had a body like an antelope or a llama, with a head at both ends and with two pairs of legs and feet that pointed in the same direction as the head and neck above them. According to author Hugh Lofting, the two heads allowed one to eat and the other to carry on a conversation without being rude.
Nevertheless, I can imagine that the two heads didn’t always agree, and I can imagine that that would have been remarkably awkward.
Religion and spirituality have a pushme-pullyou dimension – all religions, as far as I can tell. On the one side, we’ve got the impulse toward a direct relationship with God. People do a lot of things to build that and maintain it. We pray by ourselves. We worship with others. We place art with religious themes around us. We perform certain rituals that we believe God has asked us to do, which includes our practice of Holy Communion, by the way. We dedicate ourselves to furthering that primary relationship.
The other dimension is to do things that we believe God has asked us to do in relation to other human beings. It’s been widely claimed, with pretty good justification, that the “golden rule” of treating people as you’d like to be treated is part of every religious tradition. That’s hard to prove, but check out the Wikipedia article on the Golden Rule sometime. Researchers have found it in a lot of faiths and cultures.
When asked about the Greatest Commandment, Jesus first quoted Deuteronomy 6, which says “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” Jesus then followed up with a reference to Leviticus 19: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
There’s the pushme-pullyou again – Jesus didn’t say doing both at once was easy. But he did seem to think there were priorities.
Jesus appeared to have an odd reputation among his fellow rabbis. They paid attention to him. They respected him enough to invite him as a special guest when he visited their villages. He also puzzled them, sometimes quite a lot. Why would a respectable religious leader and teacher summon a tax collector to follow him? I suppose it’s nice that the man abandoned the disgraceful, collaborationist work, but make him an associate? I mean, eat with him?
Quite aside from ritual uncleanness, that’s gross.
How many people have never been invited to your table because something they’ve done or said or represented is, to you, gross?
For myself, I don’t know. I’ve lost count.
It made a huge difference for Matthew. As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “He is sitting, literally, at the table of his unhealthy and degraded identity as tax collector. Toward him walks the ‘source of life’s fullness.’ The English writer, Jeannette Winterson, says that many great stories begin this way. Once upon a time, there was a person in circumstances that weren’t all that they hoped for. And then there was an encounter. In a moment, the bare facts of what is changed to what if, the expansion of possibility.”
It made all the difference in the world.
Jesus’ rabbinic colleagues were right to be leery. Let’s get that straight. They were following guidance from Law and Prophets that emphasized personal piety and practice to maintain faithfulness to God. They were praying, fasting, worshiping, and resting on the Sabbath. They were doing, frankly, things that we should be doing.
But that’s just one side of the pushme-pullyou.
Remember the other side? Love your neighbor as yourself.
Centuries before, the people of Israel, the northern of the two nations which had split after the death of David’s son Solomon, heard an earnest and, let’s face it, rather troubled prophet named Hosea try to remind them that their national practice of worship and ritual was not enough to maintain the covenant with God. Whatever they did during the week to treat others badly, they firmly believed that their piety won them forgiveness. “Let us press on to know the LORD;” Hosea quotes them as saying, “his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.”
But what about the other side of the pushme-pullyou?
“I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,” Hosea wrote, quoting God this time, “the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Centuries later, Jesus quoted Hosea quoting God to those who asked about hanging out with all these sinners. “Go and learn what this means,” he said: “’I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
If you’ve been listening really carefully, you may have noticed that those quotes don’t match. “I desire steadfast love,” it says in Hosea; “I desire mercy,” it says in Matthew. The reason is that the Hebrew word Hosea used, “hesed,” doesn’t have a one-to-one translation in English or in first century Greek. It means steadfast love, and it means mercy, and it means loyalty, and it means grace.
Commit to steadfast love, mercy, loyalty, and grace to those around you, said Jesus. That’s more important than prayer and fasting and worship and resting at the right time.
God desires mercy from us for them.
It’s also true that God desires mercy from them to us. Personally, I don’t have as much control over the way other people treat me as I’d like. Like you, I’m relying on that foundational teaching of the Golden Rule in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Yoruba, and a host of faiths whose names I’ve never heard to guide their adherents into care, compassion, and mercy for their fellow travelers on the road of life.
Look hard enough at any religion, look hard enough at Christianity, and you’ll find justification to treat other people badly. In Christianity it isn’t that hard, to tell you the truth (I suspect that’s true in plenty of other faiths as well).
Before you pull out that excuse, however, remember Hosea and Jesus and a lot of other Biblical writers, all of whom insisted that God desires mercy from us and for us.
Mercy. It’s more powerful than all the pious actions we might do.
Mercy.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text as he preaches – sometimes he means to do it, and sometimes he doesn’t.
The image is The Calling of Matthew by Jacob van Oost (1641) – Photograph from the original painting, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41538332.
What I’m Thinking: Mercy
The prophets said it. Jesus said it. God desires mercy.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the ninth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 9:9-13, 8-26). This follows the conclusion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I read it as Jesus providing examples, demonstration, embodying, if you will, the very teachings that the Sermon on the Mount is filled with.
There are a lot of healings here, and Jesus healed some people that you might not expect. This section begins with Jesus calling somebody that people would not have expected. He summoned Matthew, a tax collector, to join him amongst his followers. Some of the other religious leaders had questions, and they went to Jesus’ disciples and asked why it was that the Teacher welcomed tax collectors and sinners and even ate with them.
Religious leaders didn’t do that. It was important in those days that religious leaders maintained themselves as clean in order to perform their functions.
Jesus responded by reminding them of something that the prophets had said over and over again. Quoting them, quoting God, Jesus said, “Go and learn what it means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
The cleanliness was all about being prepared to properly offer the devotional sacrifices of the Temple or of the Tabernacle. The prophets had rightly pointed out, and Jesus rightly reinforced it, that God’s preoccupation with human behavior is not exclusively or even primarily with the sacrificial practices. God’s concern with human behavior is the way we treat one another.
And how are we to treat one another? With mercy and not with some kind of self-righteous piety.
People in the ancient world: they got that wrong over and over again, which is why the prophets had to keep saying it. People in Jesus’ day got that wrong over and over again, and that is why Jesus had to say it. In our day, people get it wrong over and over again, and that’s why I have to repeat it.
God desires mercy, not some kind of pietistic religious practice, that may or may not do something about our own relationship with God, but does nothing for the other people for whom God cares.
God desires mercy for everybody around us, and God desires mercy for us as well.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
A Song from Church of the Holy Cross: June 3, 2026
Join us on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, at 11:00 AM for a song streaming live from Church of the Holy Cross. May it bring a lift to your day.
Created
May 31, 2026
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
The first chapter of Genesis is not the Bible’s only account of Creation. There’s another one in Proverbs 8, in which the figure of Wisdom works alongside God in the building of the world. Probably the most famous additional text is the first chapter of John’s Gospel, which echoes both Genesis 1 and Proverbs 8. You’ll likely recall as well the second chapter of Genesis, which looks very much like another account of creation.
When I think about different ideas about Creation, I’m thinking theologically, not scientifically – Genesis was not written as a book to explain how the world works, it was written as a book to explain God’s interactions with the world. That’s one of the reasons Genesis’ editors, and those who assembled the collection of Bible books later, felt perfectly fine about including more than one account of Creation. It doesn’t worry me that Genesis doesn’t match the geological record, or that cosmological theories don’t line up precisely with the first chapter of John. I also don’t get excited that evolutionary theory sort of follows the order of sea life, plants, and then land animals in Genesis.
To me, it’s the theology that matters. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “The contrast with other creation accounts of the ancient world is significant and begins the biblical corpus. The Holy One creates not out of pettiness, spite, avarice, or violence. Creation brings order, diversity, and relationship. It flows out of the identity of the Creator. It is progressive from the beginning, and the stage of rest is yet another progressive step. Creation continues. Rest, by nature, is a pause from activity. Because the Holy One is Creator, creation never stops, it rests.”
What matters to me is that all of the Bible’s Creation accounts emphasize both God’s deliberate choice to make a world of living things, and God’s love for that created world. What’s the refrain of this first chapter of Genesis? “And God saw that it was good,” finally stated as “very good.”
You don’t have to believe in God’s creative action to believe that the universe has value. Some atheists do. Some believers in religions that don’t believe in a divine creation do. Christianity itself begins with the assertion that the world is good, that substance is good, that existence is good. The poet and hymn lyricist Brian Wren writes,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.
Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
good is the body, from cradle to grave…
There are human belief systems that simply don’t accept this. A number of ancient religions did not value the world because they believed it was a divine accident, a by-product of conflict between gods. Some strands of Christianity, I’m sorry to say, have overemphasized soul over body, and as a result have permitted abuses of human bodies and cultures as well as permitting destruction of natural resources and beauty. Some contemporary philosophies, both Christian and non-Christian, stress the primacy of human beings in the universe, and not only tolerate but encourage deforestation, mountaintop removal, and habitat elimination. Just last month an Environmental Protection Agency committee ended review of gas and oil drilling for impact on endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico. Have we already forgotten the Deepwater Horizon accident sixteen years ago? A deepwater well blowout spewed oil for four months.
I don’t think we’ve forgotten. I think there’s a different belief system at work, that says that if certain people benefit, other life on the plant can be disregarded and, if necessary, destroyed.
Whatever some people may think, that view simply isn’t consistent with Scriptural thinking and assertions. Many have stressed that people, in verse 28, receive dominion. OK. Does that imply that human beings can do anything they want? Are human beings who have dominion over other human beings allowed to do anything they want? Is that true of parents? Of community leaders? Of national leaders?
Is it true of pastors? Do you really want me to have unquestioned authority to do anything I want?
If you weren’t sure about that, I’ll help: the answer is no, you don’t. There are provisions in our church bylaws that set limits on the things I can do. There are provisions in the United Church of Christ that set limits on the things I can do.
When we look at dominion in Genesis, the one who exerts power over things is God, and what does God do with that power? God brings order to chaos. God brings light and shape and form. God brings life, and not just life: God brings a system in which life can sustain itself, and other forms of life.
If we assert that we have an unquestioned, unlimited dominion, then exert it in ways that destroy the living systems of God, we are not living out a divine commission. We are tearing at the environment that sustains our lives as well as those of other living things.
God values this world. If we follow God’s ways, we value this world. As much as the honu in the sea or the ‘io in the air, as much as the ohi’a on the mountainside or the paho’eho’e as it flows, we are God’s Creation, a manifestation of holy will and love. We are created.
As the twelfth century theologian Hildegard of Bingen wrote, “God says, ‘I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows. I gleam in the waters. I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With every breeze, as with invisible life that contains everything, I awaken everything to life.’”
It’s the sixth day in which God declares all that has been made “very good,” and that is the day of the creation of the animal life of Earth, ranging from the creeping things – I think that’s probably the insects that we don’t like very much – to humanity itself, made in the image of God, “Male and female he created them.”
Male and female are… very good.
There are, again, different ideas floating around as to the relative value of male and female. History is dominated by the idea that men are worth more, that they are more reliable, that they are better trusted with power than women. It’s a curious idea. According to the FBI, people arrested for violent crimes in 2019 were 72.5% men and 27.5% women. Men in government have started nearly every war ever fought on this planet. Would women do better? I don’t know. I do think we’ve run the experiment long enough to say that it’s time to try something else to see how that works.
More to the point, this basic assertion demands that we accord full value and respect for the dignity of women. The claims of “complementarianism,” the idea that women are of equal value to men but that the two sexes are designed for different kinds of social roles, is simply sexism with a slightly softer texture. “Women, you have equal value to myself” is a meaningless expression when it’s followed by, “and because I’m a man, I’m in charge.”
The image of God does not depend on gender. It just doesn’t.
Humanity in God’s image also means that all people have value. Period. End of sentence. Someone of another religion has the same value as you or me. Someone of another nation has the same value as you or me. Someone of a different political party has the same value as you or me. Someone with power has the same value as you or me. Someone without power has the same value as you or me.
That means we can’t use distinctions within humanity to discount, devalue, or disenfranchise other human beings. Legal immigrants? Full value. Illegal immigrants? Full value. Dark skinned people? Full value. Light skinned people? Full value. Gay people? Full value. Straight people? Full value. Republicans? Full value. Democrats? Full value. Politicians? Full value. Teachers? Full value. Road repair workers? Full value. Incarcerated prisoners? Full value.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” I’d argue that he was right, but the basis is not just in the action of Christ, but in the creative work of God.
Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “We are all, Hildegard teaches, carriers of the divine light. We have interior gardens in which we cultivate these qualities of love, wisdom, and greening inside ourselves. And as love and wisdom flow through us, we participate in the greening of the world. We are, she writes, ‘so entangled with the strengths of the rest of creation that we can never be separated from them.’”
We come into Creation because of the love and grace of God. We come into a Creation already loved and graced by God. We come into a Creation in which we participate in the greening of the world. We come into Creation to celebrate, enjoy, and nurture other people, other creatures, the trees and shrubs, the very flowing fiery rock itself, because all of it, including ourselves, is very good.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the text he prepared does not precisely match what he said while preaching.
The image is Let There Be Light, An Illustration for The Story of the Old Testament by Shigeru Aoki – 「現代日本美術全集 7「青木繁・藤島武二」集英社、1972年, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47599953
What I’m Thinking: Created Good
In the beginning of the Scriptures, we learn that God made the world and human beings and thought it good. Why do we so often decide that some people and some parts of the world aren’t good?
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the first chapter of Genesis (Genesis 1:1-2:4a): the beginning of that book, the beginning of our Scriptures, and of course, the beginning of time. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”
There is a repeated set of words, a consistent phrase that runs through this day-by-day account of the world coming together. At the end of each day, God pauses and looks at what has been created and says it was good. That’s true of light on the first day; it is true of humanity — “Male and female God created them” — on the last day.
Christianity and Judaism as well are both absolutely convinced that the creation is good, that God intends for us to exist, that God even placed some reflection of the Divine upon human beings themselves. We are here because God wants us to be here. We are here because God thinks that it’s a good thing. We are here because God loves us.
There are a lot of systems in the world that do all they can to discount that fundamental goodness of the world. These are systems that will exploit and abuse parts of the world because there seem to be a lesser value than human beings. And so we dig and destroy and we cut down forests and we slaughter the creatures that live in them. This is not supported by these words of Scripture. All those things that we would destroy for our own benefit, those are also good.
It must also be said that there are people that human beings see as not people. And they set out to treat them badly. Sometimes because they’re women. Sometimes because their skin is another color, sometimes because they speak a different language, sometimes because they believe something different about the nature of the world and about God.
In the beginning, God thought all of these were good. In the beginning, God created male and female in the divine image. And in these days, the divine image is equally reflected in every single human being upon the planet. We cannot use the Scripture, at least not this Scripture, to declare that God loves anyone more than any other person.
God made us and intended us to be here. God made us and placed upon us the image of the divine. God made us and loves us today and always.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
A Song from Church of the Holy Cross: May 27, 2026
Join us on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, at 11:00 AM for a song streaming live from Church of the Holy Cross. May it bring a lift to your day.
Sermon: Receive the Holy Spirit
May 24, 2026
Acts 2:1-21
John 20:19-23
There’s a reason why this morning’s story about the house finch guarding his treasure had him guarding… whatever it was. I think we have a similar problem with the Holy Spirit. We know it’s valuable. We know it’s important. We know it’s something to embrace. But…
What is it? When we receive the Holy Spriit, what do we receive?
It doesn’t help that we have two Scriptures offered by the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost with, shall we say, rather different ideas of how the Holy Spirit was given to Jesus’ disciples after his resurrection. The one we probably know better is the Pentecost account from Acts of the Apostles. Jesus had been raised but he had also departed, promising his followers the gift of the Holy Spirit. About a hundred and twenty of them kept close to one another in Jerusalem, and many if not all of them got together to observe the Savuot holiday together. Savuot was one of the three holidays that attracted Jews to Jerusalem in the first century, along with Sukkot in the fall and Passover earlier in the spring. In fact, the Greek name Pentecost stands for the fifty days between Passover and Savuot.
Whatever they’d planned – which was probably Temple worship at some point in the day – the Holy Spirit changed their plans with a rush like a violent wind, the signs of tongues on their heads, then speaking different tongues, and being so successful in proclaiming God’s inviting mercy that their community grew 2,500%.
As Margaret Aymer writes at Working Preacher, “The Holy Spirit proves not to be a quiet, heavenly dove but, rather, a violent force that blows the church into being (Acts 2:41–47). That church consists mainly of immigrants, people of different languages and cultures with different mother tongues (Acts 2:5, 9–12, 14). To these, the message goes forth: a message of the coming of the day of the Lord, full of heavenly portents and prophetic women, slaves, and men. But in the midst of the chaos of Pentecost rests an anchor: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
In contrast, we have John’s account of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The setting is much different: the evening of Easter Day itself. Just a few of the disciples were gathered in a private, even locked space. As Cody J. Sanders writes at Working Preacher, “John’s scene is an intimate proximity of bodies and breath, fright giving way to peace, signs of death bespeaking new life, and a renewed mission for those whose world had seemingly come to an end.”
On the one hand: Close friends gathered alone. The gentle breeze of a human breath. A promise of forgiveness.
On the other hand: Close friends gathered, then driven out into the crowds. The roar of a mighty wind. And… a promise of forgiveness.
One of my convictions about the Holy Spirit is that the Spirit’s manifestations simply aren’t predictable. I recall Elijah’s journey to the mountain of the Law, where he found that the great events of wind, fire, and earthquake were not full of the Spirit, but the “sound of sheer silence” was. I recall that the Spirit visited Jeremiah when he thought he was too young and Mary when she was not a married adult. I recall that the Spirit came to foreigners, not just foreigners, to a Roman officer’s household, and that the Spirit transformed someone fully convinced that the Jesus movement must be ended.
There are so many others. The Spirit doesn’t do what I expect it to do, or what you expect it to do, or what Elijah, Moses, Jeremiah, Mary, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Paul expected it to do.
So what does mark the Holy Spirit?
I’d have to say that the first sign is probably disruption. There’s that unpredictability again, but it’s also because the Holy Spirit isn’t that interested in changing things that are good and right and true. The Holy Spirit intervenes when things are going badly, wrongly, and falsely – or at least when they could be substantially better. The Pentecost story from Acts is disruptive from start to finish, changing the little Jesus community’s plans not just for the day but for the rest of their lives.
John’s account is gentler, but it’s disruptive, too. This was Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples on Easter, and in John’s gospel it took two more visits to shake them out of the notion that they were going to go on with life as usual. When you hear Jesus say, “Receive the Holy Spirit” here, you should probably also hear what he said in the next chapter: “Feed my sheep.”
What else marks the Holy Spirit?
Jesus’ first words to his friends as he appeared among them was, “Peace be with you.” A mark of the Holy Spirit is peace.
If that seems inconsistent with disruption, Jesus spoke those words in the aftermath of state-authorized violence: his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. He lived, and we live, in an age where wars tragically rage among nations and within nations. By the time John’s Gospel was written, Roman armies had swept over the ground Jesus walked and destroyed the Jerusalem Temple.
I’d argue that the world needs some serious disruption to live in peace. As Angela N. Parker writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus has given us a double portion of peace to breathe again. Let us be Jesus followers that transform society instead of being fearful disciples who are holding our collective breath.”
What else marks the Holy Spirit?
Forgiveness and inclusion.
In John, Jesus’ final words were that his followers had been given the power to forgive. I grant you that’s a power you may not want. It’s too big for most of us. Personally, I’m concerned that if I’m responsible for forgiveness there are some people who definitely need it who aren’t going to get it.
Forgiveness is a simple concept. When somebody does something that brings harm to someone else, which might be another person, or God, or both, then that person is obligated to make things right. In religious terms, they have to repent, they have to make restitution, and they have to reform their future behavior. If they do that, if they apologize and try to correct the harm they did, the person they injured has the opportunity to forgive.
Human beings do that a lot. They do things, and then they say, “I’m sorry,” and they try to fix it, and the person they harmed says, “It’s all right.”
Part of our understanding about sin and forgiveness is that God gets involved. God doesn’t want people harming one another, so injuring another person is also a sin against God. When we apologize to the person we harmed, we also need to apologize to God.
Jesus was clear that apologizing to God alone is not enough. In the Sermon on the Mount, he told his hearers that when bringing an offering to God seeking forgiveness, they needed to first make things right with the people they’d harmed. It’s important to apologize to God, but Jesus made clear that that wouldn’t have any impact if there’d been no apology to the people involved.
The current affection for non-apology apologies, “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” and the assertion that “God has forgiven me, so I don’t need to make things right with anyone else,” are both bad theology and bad for human relationships.
When Jesus told his disciples that they had the power to forgive, he told them that they had the power to help people through their repentance to others and come to repentance to God.
They still need to take the steps themselves, however. Forgiveness without repentance and restitution isn’t forgiveness. It’s just license. Permission to cause harm.
Simon Peter, in quoting from the prophet Joel, made clear that the gift of the Holy Spirit would lead to salvation. He made it clear that many of the restrictions people usually apply to human societies would not be honored by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes to young and old, men and women, rich and poor, respected and discounted.
The Holy Spirit comes even to you and to me, who would probably prefer less disruption in life, who would like peace but aren’t sure what a world at peace looks like, and who are somewhat anxious to hear that God pays attention to whether we forgive someone or not. The Holy Spirit comes so that we get shaken from our complacency, so that we no longer accept the violence and coercion so common in the world. The Holy Spirit comes to give us courage to forgive when people apologize to us, and help them find their way to their further forgiveness by God:
So that all the world might be saved.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while preaching, so the sermon as written does not precisely match the sermon as preached.
The image is The Virgin Surrounded Twelve Apostles or The Holy Ghost Appears by the Master of the Crucifix of Pesaro, ca. 1380. Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11148957.