Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Beyond Achievement

October 4, 2026
Isaiah 5:1-7
Philippians 3:4b-14

On a shelf in my home is a plastic box containing a medal. You know, a medal, on a ribbon, so it’s suspended from a pin. On it is the single word, “English.”

I don’t actually remember how I earned it, but I did earn it. It was a school prize for… something. In junior high. Or perhaps high school. I don’t remember.

But I have it. Decades later, I have it. Because I am a firm believer in my own achievement.

I believe in passing tests, and hopefully getting higher grades on them than what I scored the last time. I believe in certificates of completion and installation and ordination. I believe in achievement, accomplishment, confidence, success.

It’s kind of a pity that Paul came to think differently.

“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”

Lois Malcolm takes up Paul’s use of the word “flesh” at Working Preacher: “…We need to clarify what Paul means when he speaks of the ‘flesh’ (sarx). He is not negating the human body in and of itself. Indeed, he speaks positively about bodies, whether they be personal or corporate. Rather, Paul uses ‘flesh’ to refer to what is mortal—what will eventually decay or die and thus can be corrupted in its attempts to secure its survival at all costs.”

Paul then listed the mortal, temporal, Earthly things that gave him confidence: his birth among the people of God, his circumcision in fulfillment of the Law, his membership in the tribe of Benjamin. These first three weren’t achievements in our sense of the word, but birth meant an awful lot in the first century, establishing one’s basic place in society. If we’re honest, we have to acknowledge that where and to whom one is born in the twenty-first century makes a huge difference. If I hadn’t been born in New England to educated parents, I never would have had the opportunity to earn my medal in English.

Paul went on to name things he’d taken initiative with: he’d adopted the theologies of the Pharisees, which meant he’d engaged in significant study and education. He’d been so committed to the truth of his faith that he’d sought to suppress a growing movement of heretics within Judaism known as the Church of Jesus Christ. He also claimed, possibly with some exaggeration, that he faithfully kept the Law.

Like me and my English medal, he’d worked to learn. Like me and my criticism of Christian nationalism, he’d demonstrated his commitment to his faith. Now, I don’t claim to be perfect in keeping the Law, but I’m careful about sharing my own failings, so that others don’t get the idea that I’m careless about following Jesus.

If not blameless before God, well, I try to make it look close. Perhaps a little closer than it actually is.

That’s a good resume for a Jewish leader in the first century. Paul had taken advantage of his birth. He’d gained respect and authority.

“Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”

Paul wasn’t a good American.

The United States is a nation that values achievement. I still have the voice of actor John Houseman echoing in my memory, assuring me that at the investment firm Smith Barney, “They make money the old fashioned way. They earn it.” Just ignore the fact that investment income is “unearned income.” Unearned income happens when other people work and I make money from it.

What’s the phrase we keep trotting out? “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.” Despite, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out, “…it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

Nevertheless, we like achievement. We like the self-made individual. We like to say, “That person earned what they got.”

I’ve got a medal for English.

“I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…”

I’ve got more than a medal for English. I’ve got degrees and authorizations and titles. What do you have? A distinguished career? One that comes with licenses and certificates? Do you have property? A home? Do you have the respect of your friends and colleagues? Do you have a family that you love and that loves you?

Can you imagine regarding all of that as loss rather than success? All of that as a burden rather than a delight? As a stumbling block rather than a highway?

It’s hard. It’s hard for me. After all, I’ve got a medal for English.

It’s hard. You and I were raised to believe that we should do things and accomplish things and achieve things. We were not raised to believe that they stand between us and our faith.

But they do. At least, mine do. My achievements tell me that I have gathered what I need by my own effort. They tell me that I am independent, self-sufficient. They delude me, because in all my accomplishments I rely upon those who had gone before me, like my parents, like those who guided nations and churches, people like the Apostle Paul. What would my achievements be without them?

What would my achievements be without God?

What would your achievements be without God?

Go ahead and achieve. Just recognize that you contributed less than you think. You stand on the shoulders of giants. You stand in the hand of God.

I’ll hold on to my medal for English. It’s not much of a distraction. I can’t remember what I did so that someone else gave it to me. So I’ll remember this instead: It was God who made me. It was God who loved me. It was God who put loving people around me. It was God who gave me the talents that teachers helped mold into skills.

First and last, it was God. Beyond achievement, God.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, intentionally and otherwise. The sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.

The image is St Paul Preaching at Athens by Raphael (1515) – Royal Collection of the United Kingdom, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1718078.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Unanswered Question

September 27, 2026

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Matthew 21:23-32

It was Monday. Just the second day of the week. Already, however, Jesus had created an uproar in the precincts of the Jerusalem Temple.

It had started the day before, on Sunday. Jesus had ridden a donkey into the city, and a crowd had gathered to welcome him with cries of “Hosanna!” “Save us!” Although most in the crowd wouldn’t have recognized it – very few people would have Zechariah’s prophecy about a king riding a donkey because very few people could read – they had given him a royal title. “Son of David,” they shouted. That was a very dangerous thing to say when the Roman Governor was in town.

Jesus hadn’t stopped there. He’d gone all the way to the top of the city, the summit of the mountain, where the Temple stood. He’d entered it, and he’d driven the moneychangers and dove-sellers out of it. He’d accused the Temple leadership of allowing it to become a place where people were robbed.

Then a crowd of people seeking healing had flooded in, many of them crying “Save us!” “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

The priests had urged Jesus to stop them. Why? Matthew didn’t say, but – right next door to the Temple was the Antonia Fortress, home to Jerusalem’s resident Roman legion.

So the next day, when Jesus returned to the Temple, the angry and furious priests wanted to know: By what right do you do these things, which threaten the peace of the city, which disrupt the established workings of the Temple, which disregard our authority which comes from the Law of Moses itself?

By what right, Jesus?

As Amy Frykolm notes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “There is a sneer in these questions: Who do you think you are, day laborer, nobody, know-it-all, rabbi of the rabble?”

(I rather like rabbi of the rabble.)

As Ira Brent Driggers writes at Working Preacher, “The chief priests and elders are apparently expecting the name of a teacher; a human association that will help them better understand Jesus’ actions. If you can identify someone’s teacher, then you can better grasp what they’re all about. More to the point, they are prepared to counter any and all claims to human authority with their own authority. At least as far as the local Jewish status quo is concerned, there is no claim to human authority that they cannot trump. They are the temple leaders.”

Jesus decided not to answer the question directly. He offered them a challenge. Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours. Ready? Here it is.

I’m surprised they fell for it. Their question was proper, legitimate, and immensely important. They had the authority to ask it. They had the duty to ask it. They had no need to answer any questions from a rabbi of the rabble.

So. First mistake.

Jesus’ question was: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” John, you remember, offered baptism that, combined with the repentance of the person being washed, granted them forgiveness of their sins.

Washing had been for some time an important ritual practice for Jews, but around issues of purification from uncleanness. That wasn’t the same thing as sin. People became “unclean” in lots of ways, and rarely through any fault. Handling the wrong kind of food could make one unclean. In Jesus’ day, entering the house of a Gentile made one unclean. The response to these was ritual, not sacrificial. Sometimes they waited a prescribed length of time. Sometimes they washed.

When they wanted to be forgiven for a sin, for having done something that was actually wrong, they went to the priest, and they brought an animal for sacrifice – what animal was determined by the infraction and by their level of wealth. The animals were present on the Temple grounds so that people could purchase one there for sacrifice and avoid the problems of keeping one sound while traveling to Jerusalem. Those sacrifices supplied at least some of the diet of the priests.

A baptism for the forgiveness of sins was a problem for the priests.

Nobody had to bring an animal – or money for an animal – to John. John’s baptism was free (at least in money; let’s not forget that repentance can be costly). That meant that the merchants in the Temple didn’t get business, and they probably paid rent to the priests. Further, the priests didn’t get the meat from the sacrifices.

Do you see why a baptism for the forgiveness of sins might have been a problem for the priests? Do you see why, a good couple years after John’s execution, Jesus’ question was still a sensitive one for them?

On the one hand, few of them would have supported John’s baptism ministry in the first place. They couldn’t with honesty say that they believed God had authorized John to forgive sins. Remember – that was the job they believed God had given them. Matthew speculated that they also feared Jesus’ follow-up question, which they may have. Some among them may well have appreciated John’s ministry. In Matthew 3, we hear that Sadducees came for John’s baptism. Some of those Sadducees might have been in the group that challenged Jesus. Most of them didn’t. Most of them hadn’t believed in John.

So they really couldn’t say they’d believed God authorized John’s baptism.

But if they said what they believed, there were others listening beside Jesus. Those were the ones still coming for healing. Those were the ones who’d been shouting “Son of David” the day before. Those were the ones who had been the poor and the desperate and the outcast and the displaced. Those were the ones who’d gone to John the Baptist. Now they stood, rank on rank, behind Jesus. Lots of ones. Too many ones for the priests to say what they thought.

No, Jesus, we won’t answer your question.

No, priests, I won’t answer yours, either.

Even though it is the essential question of Christianity: where did Jesus’ authority come from?

Ira Brent Driggers continues: “For the church, then and now, everything depends upon the source of Jesus’ authority. If it is ultimately ‘from humans’ (Greek: ex anthrôpôn), then Jesus is really no different than the next charismatic leader (except for maybe his more pathetic death), and the church will be forced to define itself only as a human institution among other human institutions. In other words the church will be forced, like Jesus’ opponents, to compete against perceived rivals, reducing its mission to the quest for power, even if it purports to use that power for doing ‘good’ in the world.”

Christians have maintained, as you well know, that God was, is, and will be the source of Jesus’ authority. But where do we see that? What tells us that it’s true?

It’s what Jesus did.

In the story he told, Jesus savagely criticized the religious leaders of Jerusalem, priests and elders, for their failure to do what they said they would do. They were supposed to act not just as intermediaries between people and God, they were supposed to ease the process. They were supposed to guide and support the people as they sought to approach God. They were supposed to help.

Jesus didn’t think they were helping very well. He thought they were raising new obstacles rather than clearing old ones away. He thought they were enriching themselves at the expense of people coming to sacrifice. He thought they were maintaining their power and position, satisfying the Roman overlords, rather than advocating for the people in their care.

They were the one who said, “I’ll do it,” and didn’t.

In contrast, Jesus went and did it. He didn’t just give people hope, he fulfilled that hope. He healed the people that flooded into the Temple. He challenged the power-hunger of the priesthood. And when they came to arrest him, he stopped his followers from committing violence in his defense. He faced his accusers. He faced his judges. He carried his cross. He was crucified, died, and was buried.

That’s one who said, “I’ll do it,” and did it.

That’s what tells us that Jesus drew his authority from God – that he did what God directed.

Mind you, we have some additional confirmation in Jesus’ resurrection. Without that, I grant you, we might simply think of Jesus as a faithful martyr, which is quite a high title, but not Messiah. Anointed One. Blessed and Blessing of God.

Jesus didn’t answer their question with words. He answered it with action. He answered it with faithfulness. He answered it with his life, with his death, and with his resurrection.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches, so the sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.

The image is Jésus se promène dans le portique de Salomon (Jesus Walks in the Portico of Solomon) by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894) – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007, 00.159.177_PS2.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10957468.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Love Isn’t Fair

September 20, 2026

Jonah 3:10-4:11
Matthew 20:1-16

Some years ago, my children’s godfather said something that I just didn’t get. My children and his were playing together and one of them came up to us and asked for something that they just couldn’t have. As they departed, disappointed but not surprised, their godfather reminded them of the children’s theme song. “The children’s theme song” went right over my head, so I had to ask.

He quoted the 1969 Rolling Stones classic by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards:

“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you need.”

John was more of a Rolling Stones fan than I’ve ever been, but I had to admit: he was right. Those lyrics are the theme song of children everywhere: you can’t always get what you want.

In Jesus’ story, there seemed to be a lot of people who couldn’t get what they wanted. These were the people who spent various amounts of the day in the marketplace looking for work – some were hired early, some later in the morning, some at the end of the day. These people were doing what could be done to earn a living. They didn’t own land. They didn’t have a specialized skill. They worked the fields and vineyards. It wasn’t steady work. They relied on a farmers sending their managers to the marketplace to find them, hire them, and at the end of the day, pay them.

Pablo Jimenez writes at his blog, “Most Jewish people in the first century were peasants. A good portion of the agricultural land was owned by absentee landlords. Such farmland was cultivated by laborers just as the ones depicted in the parable. Their economic reality was characterized by poverty, subemployment, heavy taxation, and dispossession.”

They hoped to be hired at the beginning of the day. When that didn’t happen, they hoped against hope that somebody would need more labor later in the day. If that didn’t happen, they stayed in the marketplace hoping against desperation that somebody would pay them a pittance for as much work as was left before sundown.

The first workers in Jesus’ story would have thought themselves relatively fortunate. The later workers would have thought themselves pretty lucky, too. The last ones would have been somewhat relieved, but also wondering: on the little they’d be paid for the day, how would they make rent, buy bread, or get fuel for the fire? They’d be behind, and probably not for the first time.

The surprise of the story, of course, is that at the end of the day none of them were behind. All of them got the daily wage. Everyone went home, not with what would enrich them, but with what would keep them going for at least another day.

This situation of a few haves and many have-nots is specifically prohibited by the Hebrew Scriptures. As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “It is a result of debts not being forgiven every seven years or forfeited family lands not being returned every fifty years or the prohibition of “joining land to land” not being observed, and so on. (See Ched Myers for an explanation of the term “Sabbath Economics” at www.chedmyers.org/catalog/sabbath-economics). The mere presence of a place where the landless gather in search of day labor is itself a testimony that the imperial economic structure is contrary to the Sabbath Economics of the OT.”

That alone would be a reason for Jesus to tell that story. It would be a reason for us to hear this story with distress, because we have also maintained an economic system that permits employers to pay less than a living wage. I know we keep hearing all these complaints about “nobody wants to work.” But why would anyone want to work for people who will pay you less than what you need to keep the lights on and the car repaired and the refrigerator stocked? And people do work. They work multiple jobs. They work long hours. They work for uncertain pay. They get labeled as unambitious, unskilled, unsuccessful, unworthy, unimportant.

A few years ago they were the ones required to break quarantine and go to work. It turned out they were essential.

Our economy could learn something from Jesus.

I don’t actually think Jesus spoke entirely about the immoral economics of his day. I’m not sure he spoke primarily about it. “The kingdom of heaven is like,” he said, not “the kingdom of earth is supposed to be like.”

I do think the kingdom of heaven is pretty good model for what the kingdom of earth might be. It’s worth working for.

Jeannine K. Brown writes at Working Preacher, “Are God’s ways really like this? Is this kind of maddening equality, regardless of what one has contributed to God’s kingdom, really a part of the new reality God is inaugurating in Jesus? For Matthew’s Jesus, the answer is ‘yes.’ God’s generosity is an affront to those who think about God’s benevolent rule in categories of status, privilege, and what one has earned.”

What, after all, does God give us?

To start with the most obvious, life. Life itself. God gave us a world, indeed a universe, so full of marvels that we actually get bored by them – what a strange thing that is. Ten years ago, I first drove down Waianuenue Avenue from the hospital and saw Hilo Bay gleaming beneath me in the sun. I promised myself that I would never come down that way and fail to appreciate the beauty of that sight. I’ve done my level best to keep that promise.

Life and beauty, which is not limited to vision but includes sounds and scents and sensations. Company. Challenge. Learning. Growth. Small people. Middle-sized people. Big people. People who are dark complected, light complected, with hair that runs long or short, bright or dark. People who are new, people who we’ve known for decades, people to whom we matter. People. God gave us people.

Most of all, God gave us love. God loved us in the creation of the species, in the guiding of our ancestors. God loved us to set slaves free and bring exiles home. God so loved the world that we received God’s only begotten son so that whoever believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.

At the end of the story, at the end of the day, I don’t see coins in the hand of the manager. I see love presented by the landowner. I see full inclusion of all who came into the vineyard. I see no hierarchy of welcome. I see a love given fully and freely to everyone, every last one.

How can anyone receive more than the love of God? How can there be grades and differences and pay rates to the love of God? What else is there than the love of God?

Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “God, it turns out, is not fair. God does not play by our rules. God does not give us what we deserve. And thank God for that! For if each of us got exactly what we deserved, where would we be? In fact, God lavishes grace and mercy on all of us, no matter how late we have come to the vineyard.”

God loves us. God loves you. God loves me. God loves them. God loves the them that you find it difficult to love. God loves the them who don’t care much for you. God loves us, whether we deserve it or not.

Isn’t that the kind of love we hope for? Isn’t that the kind of love we credit to Jesus? Isn’t that the kind of love that is our faith and our hope? Isn’t that the kind of love that we can say, with Paul, “the greatest of these is love”?

Yes. It is.

Love isn’t fair. Any small child knows that. Love means the polite child and the rude child eat the same dinner. Love isn’t fair. Love means the family celebrates the doctor’s degree and the GED. Love isn’t fair. Love means that the one who staggers home after wasting his inheritance receives a feast because we’re so relieved he survived. Love isn’t fair.

Thank God for that. Because given a choice between God being fair to me for the things I’ve done or not done, or God being generous and loving to me, I’ll take love.

Any day. Every day. To the end of time.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes to his sermon while preaching – sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally. The sermon as you read it does not precisely match the way he delivered it.

The image is “The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard” by an unknown artist in an 11th cent. Byzantine gospel. Paris, National Library. Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, Εκδοτική Αθηνών. Αθήνα 1980. Τόμος Η’, σελ. 202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9472307

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Why Can’t I Judge?

September 13, 2026

Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35

Paul didn’t want people to judge one another. In particular, he didn’t want Christians to judge one another. He accurately foresaw that people who judge one another don’t live together very well. In a new community of a new faith, that could be catastrophic, resulting in resentments, conflicts, and fractures.

It turns out another famous early leader had much the same notion, a once obscure laborer from a small Galilean village named, as you’ve no doubt deduced, Jesus of Nazareth. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged,” he said in the Sermon on Mount, found in the seventh chapter of Matthew. Paul’s teachings echoed Jesus’ teachings: The Church was supposed to be a non-judgmental community.

There’s only one problem. It is basically impossible for human beings to live life without making judgments. Most of them don’t have moral content – it doesn’t really matter much what I choose for breakfast – but others do. People ask me to do things and I make a judgment about whether I will or not. People ask me to tell them things I make a judgment about whether I can or not. People give me directions or even requirements and, yes, I make a judgment about whether I will do those or not – and face the consequences.

I’ve made countless judgments about the content of Christian faith. I judged the basic assertions of Christianity about the existence and priorities of God, about the nature and work of Jesus Christ, about the strength and presence of the Holy Spirit – and, oh, yes, the triune nature of God. I judged them to be true. I believed them. It’s a curious thing about Christianity that we’re asked to make a judgment – to believe in and trust the beneficence of God – and the very next thing we’re told is: “Do not judge.”

It gets more ridiculous when I consider how judgment is indispensable to learning. Teachers choose what to teach (yes, I know, curriculum gets set by administrators and legislators, but bear with me here). People decide what children should know and when, in their development, they should come to know it. It’s judgment that says children should learn to read. Plenty of places in the world choose not to teach some children to read. Famously, Malala Yousafzai was targeted for assassination for advocating education for girls and women in Pakistan when she was barely a teenager. She survived and her work survived. She remains the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – which is also a judgment.

We learned things that others judged we should learn. We didn’t learn things that others judged we should not learn. We learned things because others tested us to see what we knew and insisted we learn the things we hadn’t because they judged we should.

Without judgment, there simply isn’t learning.

So why can’t I judge?

Audrey West writes at Working Preacher, “It is tough to praise God if you are busy passing judgment on other people. At least that is what the apostle Paul seems to be saying in this passage from Romans, in which he exhorts the community of house-churches in Rome to avoid fighting over non-essential matters.”

Paul named two issues here. It’s not entirely clear whether he knew that these were subjects of debate in the Roman church – remember, he’d never been there – or whether these were handy examples that came from his experience with churches he knew more about. The issue of eating meat or eating vegetables: In First Corinthians, Paul gave a full and detailed consideration of whether to eat things that had been offered to idols. This was apparently a common practice around the Mediterranean cultures within the Roman Empire. Animals sacrificed before idols became meat sold in the marketplaces – that says something about how scale of it all, doesn’t it? If it was a concern in Corinth, it was probably a concern to other churches Paul worked with in Galatia, Ephesus, Thessalonica. It was probably a question in many churches, including Rome.

The other concern he mentioned was whether to observe “special days,” which probably means religious festivals. Which ones? Well, in Galatians 4, Paul wrote, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental principles? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.” (Galatians 4:8-11)

It sounds very much as if the Galatians Paul criticized – rather harshly and judgmentally, I have to say – were participating in pagan seasons and festivals.

There would have been a lot of pressure to do so, both internally – this is what they knew to do – and externally – “I know you’re devoted to this Christ god now, but you can honor Demeter, too, because we really need a good harvest.” In the first century Roman world, very few people limited their devotion to a single deity, and they didn’t limit it to a single pantheon. The Egyptian goddess Isis had a temple in Rome next to the complex to which Roman citizens went to vote.

Some of the Galatians had succumbed to the pressure. So, too, I’m sure, did church members in Corinth and Phillipi and, of course, Rome.

So why can’t I judge?

Paul asserted two things here: First, these practices involving food and festivals were not essential. It was an astonishing statement, given that devotional practice has been considered essential in nearly every religion in nearly every place. Paul was the person, however, who had concluded that if a law so old it preceded the Law of Moses – namely the requirement of circumcision for all males in the community of God – could be set aside if it became a barrier, a wall, a stumbling block for those who sought to enter that community.

Paul judged circumcision, food practices, and religious calendars to be non-essential. It was an astonishing thing to say, but he said it. You could eat, or not eat; you could celebrate, or not celebrate; you could circumcise or not circumcise; and either way you could do so out of devotion to God.

The second thing he said was, “It’s not your judgment to make, anyway. It’s up to God. That’s who judges. Not you.”

As Alyce McKenzie writes at her blog, “When we judge others we place our authority above God’s. We are all only servants of God in God’s household. We are to focus on God, not our supposed superiority to others. All conduct must take its reference from our service to Jesus whose claim to lordship over all comes from his death and resurrection. (Best, 156) We will not have to justify to God the conduct of others, but only our own.”

Israel Kamudzandu writes at Working Preacher, “The question to be addressed in today’s church is as follows: tolerance or love? Romans 14:1-12 is a call to introspection of individuals, groups, clergy, and faith pillars who have settled into a culture of tolerance instead of love, hospitality, and appreciation of others. The entire New Testament is about love, but many people operate with a mindset of tolerating others, rather than loving them.”

When we judge people, we tolerate them. At best. At worst, well, let’s not go there. When we love them, we may be disappointed by some of the things they do. I don’t think we’ll avoid that. Love’s foundation is trust. I trust that you do this thing out of love. I trust you do this thing out of your best wishes. I trust that you do this thing because you believe it will make things better for all of us. I trust you.

You might be wrong – you may not know what you need to know to make the decision you made – but I will trust you did the best you could with what you knew at the time.

Love is founded on trust.

So why can’t I judge? Because I can’t judge you and love you. I just can’t. I can love you and trust you. I can love you and ask, “Can we do this differently? Did you know this would happen? Had you heard what this other person had to say?” You can love me and ask, “What did you think would happen when you did this? Is there a better way to approach such things in the future?”

You can love me and insist that I learn the multiplication table.

What you can’t do is love me and decide that you’re a better Christian than I am. I can’t love you and act as if I’m the be-all and end-all of Christianity. That’s not me. That’s Jesus.

That’s why I can’t judge.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches, both accidentally and intentionally. The sermon as written does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.

The image is Saint Paul, attributed to György Falkoner (c. 1646–1741), 17th or 18th cent. – http://www.bassenge.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12170368.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Love Fulfills the Law

September 6, 2026

Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20

In his commentary on Galatians, the fourth century theologian Saint Jerome told this story: “The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, ‘Little children, love one another.’** The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, ‘Teacher, why do you always say this?’ He replied with a line worthy of John: ‘Because it is the Lord’s commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.’**° He said this because of the Apostle’s present mandate: ‘Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the household of faith.’”

Jerome wrote nearly three hundred years after John wrote the Gospel, so it’s hard to tell whether he’d preserved an authentic memory, or whether he’d preserved a story that reflected the way people thought of John. It certainly honored teachings of Jesus. We honored the “new commandment” Jesus gave at the Last Supper by calling the Thursday of Holy Week “Commandment Thursday” – “Maundy” is an English shortening of the Latin “Mandatum,” which means “commandment.” Jesus also spoke of love as the basis of the “greatest commandments.” As recorded in Mark’s Gospel: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

This wasn’t a new idea. The Babylonian Talmud records this story about Hillel the Elder, who lived in the century before Jesus was born:

“It happened again that a certain stranger came before Shammai and said to him:
–‘I will become a proselyte providing you teach me the whole Torah while I’m standing on one foot.’
(Shammai) knocked him down with the builder’s rule in his hand.
(The stranger) came before Hillel, who made him a proselyte.
He told him:
–‘What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor.
That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go, learn (it)!’”

I note that when Paul spoke of love as the fulfillment of the law, he used the negative form that Hillel had, avoiding doing harm. In contrast, Jesus used the positive form, love your neighbor as yourself.

So what is the good of law?

The Apostle Paul had, in fact, spent a good deal of the Letter to the Romans arguing that the Law of Israel had become a problem. When there’s a standard, he said, there’s not just the risk, there’s the likelihood that people won’t meet it. And when they don’t meet the standard, they’ve fallen into sin. Without the standard, there would be no transgression.

Paul argued persuasively that the Law had failed to prevent people from sinning – it’s an impossible argument to counter. No legal system has ever entirely prevented people from breaking the law. People make unintentional mistakes, such as not noticing that stop sign at the corner. People make uninformed mistakes, such as believing that those entering a traffic circle have the right of way rather than those in it. And people make deliberate decisions to break the law, passing in no-passing zones because they think it will save them time.

Mind you, most people follow traffic laws fully informed and faithfully. Law brings a basic order that’s really useful. Law also gets into the specifics of things. Like most of us on this island, I try to “drive with aloha,” and I’m glad for all the others who do. If we had no speed limit signs, however, I’d have more difficulty doing it. I wouldn’t know, necessarily, whether the road ahead was straight enough for high speeds, or whether around this next curve there is a series of small curves which I may or may not be able to navigate safely.

Not to mention the challenges of a traffic circle. It’s one thing to drive one with aloha, but if you’re driving with aloha, who goes first?

Despite dismissing the Law as a saving force, Paul definitely believed in offering specific guidance. Nancy Lammers Gross writes at Working Preacher, “In the event we are not clear about what the law of love looks like, even after the gifts for ministry and the disposition of love as described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and alluded to in Romans 12, Paul spells out for us what is singularly inappropriate with regard to the law of love as we prepare for the return of Christ: Avoid reveling, which is excessive partying and wild behavior; avoid drunkenness, debauchery, and licentiousness, which may be taken as reckless indulgence in immoral behavior; avoid quarreling and jealousy.”

Indeed, Paul’s letters are full of lists of things to do and things not to do. If you’re looking for guidance in what to do, read Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and so on. Paul happily told people what to do two thousand years ago, and people like me have been happily telling people what to do using his words ever since.

In the end, yes. Paul was right. Love does fulfill the law, at least as long as the law is dedicated to avoiding harm to the neighbor, as long as the law is dedicated to lifting up the neighbor. As we also know, that’s not always the case. Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “When Paul reflects on the second commandment in Romans 13, he writes, “’Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law’ (Romans 13:10). But I can imagine [Maria] Skobtsova having a fiery argument with him about this. She would say, ‘How can you sell love that short?’ She thought of love of neighbor as a ‘dangerous thing’ that immersed a person in the world and in its suffering, stopping short of nothing. Her life itself was a parable about this commandment and her deeply uncomfortable answer to the question: How do you love your neighbor as yourself?”

Maria Skobtsova was an Orthodox nun who hid Jews from the Nazis in occupied Paris, and died in a gas chamber in 1945.

Love does not just fulfill the law, it goes beyond the law.

Poet Wendell Berry died this week. For decades his work has inspired people of faith, so I’ll close with his words:

“I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

           I have no love
except it come from Thee.

           Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching. Sometimes he makes them without intending to. Sometimes He hope they’re improvements. The sermon as written does not precisely match the sermon as preached.

The image is Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles by Duccio di Buoninsegna (between 1308 and 1311) – Web Gallery of Art: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7922656.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Take a Closer Look

August 30, 2026

Exodus 3:1-15
Matthew 16:21-28

When I served the historic Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, I shared an office with my colleague Drew, who also worked in communications and publications. We managed to keep one another entertained when a joke needed to be told, and comforted one another when we were sad, and supported one another when there was simply a lot to be done and less time than we really needed to do it.

From time to time Drew and I would find ourselves really easily distracted. A random glance at some word and we’d be thinking about what a strange way that was to spell it. A name would float by and we’d be thinking about all the people we’d known with that name. The phone would ring and it would take ten minutes afterward to remember what we’d been doing.

We had a name for these days. Based on the dogs in the 2009 movie Up, who could always be distracted by the mere mention of the word, “squirrel,” we called them Squirrel Days.

“Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to mount Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.’”

From a work productivity point of view, Moses had little business turning aside to see this burning-but-not-consumed bush. I’m no shepherd, but here’s what I imagine I, as a competent shepherd, should do if I see a fire in the wilderness.

Move away from it.

Get downhill from it, if I can. Get upwind from it, if it’s possible. Do both, and take the sheep with me. Fire in the wilderness, as we know from our wildfire experiences here on this island and from the terrible disasters in Canada, California, and Maui, is dangerous. Getting out of its path – getting my father-in-law’s sheep out of its path – is the first, most urgent priority.

Turn aside to look at this great sight? I don’t think so.

Nevertheless, that turn to the side, that step in an unanticipated direction, that movement toward risk and not away, was as crucial to the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery as any step thereafter. Without this step, there would have been no steps toward Egypt. Without this step, there would have been no steps into Pharoah’s palace. Without this step, there would have been no steps across the exposed bottom of the Red Sea. Without this step, there would have been no steps up Mount Sinai to receive the Law of God.

As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “God notices that Moses has ‘turned aside’ and then calls to him. Imagine if Moses had ignored that little impulse, that desire to know more.”

Imagine.

Fortunately, Moses did get curious. Fortunately, Moses sought to learn more. Fortunately, Moses took a closer look.

Moses himself was probably not so grateful. Like the later prophets who left us their stories of call – people like Isaiah and Jeremiah – Moses had reservations about his selection as God’s ambassador. Given the message he’d been given, I’m a little surprised that he didn’t run away faster than Jonah. As Amy Merrill Willis writes at Working Preacher, “The typical commissioning scene involves the prophet’s objection to God’s commission. The objection highlights the prophet’s dependence upon God in undertaking sacred work and reveals an appropriate sense of humility. But Moses is not typical in any sense. Instead of one objection, Moses raises four (3:11,13; 4:1,10) before saying flat out, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else’ (4:13)!”

So, not so grateful. Gratitude aside, however, and request to be set aside set aside, he accepted the commission and he assumed the mantle of prophet, leader, and lawgiver.

Because he’d taken a closer look.

It’s time I asked the question: Have you taken a closer look? What do you need to take a closer look at?

Taking a closer look isn’t always popular. Some people these days eagerly ignore expertise. There is a movement of people frequently referred to as “sovereign citizens,” who have adopted a legal theory that essentially means nobody has to obey a vast number of criminal laws. They refuse or ignore the advice of lawyers if they’re brought to court.

It’s hard to tell, but it doesn’t seem likely that that will go well. It’s one thing to look at some documents you found on the Internet. It’s another thing to take a closer look at actual lawbooks, professional rules, and court precedents. I grant you that it’s a shame that law is so complicated, but it is complicated. So is medicine. So is automobile mechanics. So is software development. So are ecological systems. So is plumbing. So is theology.

I’ve heard this statement from before I started my professional education: “I heard of people who went to seminary and they lost their faith, so I didn’t go.”

Because yes, seminary was taking a closer look, and yes, I learned things in seminary that were different from what I learned in Sunday School. That’s OK. There’s a limit to what you can teach in Sunday School.

The British authors Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen described this as a “lie-to-children” in The Science of Discworld: “A lie-to-children is a statement that is false, but which nevertheless leads the child’s mind towards a more accurate explanation, one that the child will only be able to appreciate if it has been primed with the lie. The early stages of education have to include a lot of lies-to-children, because early explanations have to be simple. However, we live in a complex world, and lies-to-children must eventually be replaced by more complex stories if they are not to become delayed-action genuine lies. Unfortunately, what most of us know about science consists of vaguely remembered lies-to-children.”

[Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, The Science of Discworld (New York, Anchor Books), 1999.]

The same might be said of auto mechanics, literature, carpentry, law, accounting, and, of course, theology.

You’ve got to take a closer look.

Just like Moses. As role models go, that’s a pretty good one. As with all Biblical figures, there are things you’d like to avoid – my God, that man could whine – but he took that crucial first step. He turned aside to learn more and it opened up the world.

As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “The poet William Stafford called this kind of curiosity and the following that it leads to ‘the golden string.’ And unlike Egeria or Moses, he saw the ‘end of a golden string’ in everything, in every detail of human life that we notice enough to write down. For Stafford, the whole of the sensual world was alive with the possibility of the sacred practice of noticing. Which makes me wonder: what did I walk by today that I could have turned aside to see with curiosity? What ends of the golden string did I pass by?”

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a photographer and, increasingly, a bird photographer, so for me some of the golden strings are the movement of feathers in greenery, the hops of clawed feet across the grass, the gentle glide of a floating body over the water. Those aren’t the only ones. I’m fascinated by people’s stories, so another golden string is the things people share about what they’ve experienced, what they’ve valued, what they’ve learned. The Scriptures themselves are a golden string – or a big set of strings – for me. So yes, I keep coming back to this story and looking for new things, because each new discovery in Exodus 3, or Luke 2, or John 20, or Romans 8, or Micah 6, or a raft of other texts invite a closer look each time.

What are your golden strings? What do you need to take a closer look at? What would fill your mind to learn more about? What will fill your soul to experience more deeply? What experience can you embrace and, by God’s grace, it will change the world?

At her blog, GiftsInOpenHands, Maren Tirabassi writes:

I’m talking to you –
not because of your impressive brain,
compassionate heart,
not the beautiful singing voice,
rippling muscles, spiritual depth,
perfect complexion, long hair.

You with the toes,
are you listening?

This is the holy moment.

Take a closer look.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes to his sermon while he preaches, so the prepared text above does not necessarily match the recording of how he preached it.

The image is Moses Before the Burning Bush by Gebhard Fugel – Photo permission – Own work (fotografiert in der Ausstellung “Gebhard Fugel 1863-1939. Von Ravensburg nach Jerusalem”. Galerie Fähre, Altes Kloster, Bad Saulgau, 2014), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32072413.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: This Age or Any Other

August 23, 2026

Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

The circumstances of our lives do not match those of those who first read Paul’s Letter to the Romans. We, after all, are not a congregation containing both Jews who had embraced the new Way of Jesus, and Romans who had once worshiped such deities as Jupiter, Vesta, Mithras, or Isis.

Mind you, we are a congregation that contains people from a number of different national and cultural backgrounds, and from several different religious backgrounds, some of which weren’t Christian. So… it’s still not the same.

We do not live under the authority of the Roman Empire. I grant you that those who wrote the US Constitution were substantially guided by the Roman Republic, and used the Latin “senator” in creating one of the legislative bodies. So… it’s still not the same.

But it’s close enough that Paul’s advice to “not be conformed to this age,” meaning the first century around the Mediterranean, is still good advice in the twenty-first century in the Pacific Ocean. We just can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the first century Roman Christians he addressed are the same problems we face. We also can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the twenty-first century are entirely different from the pressures they faced.

For nearly two thousand years Christianity has worked very hard to create a society in which it was easy to follow Jesus. I’m not convinced that we’ve been as successful as we’d like. Europe’s history of wars between its acknowledged Christian nations – not to mention repeated persecution of non-Christians or not-acknowledged as Christians – has echoes in lots of other non-Christian nations in the course of human history.

What are our cultural pressures? First and foremost, I think, there’s pride. Hubris. Arrogance. The conviction that I and I alone am right. The conviction that me and mine are the center. The conviction that my chosen community is the greatest, and by rights should be in charge.

As Elizabeth Shively writes at Working Preacher, “Paul has exhorted his audience to be transformed by the renewal of their mind; now they are to use that new mind to think rightly about themselves and each other: ‘I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment … ‘(verse 3). Paul calls for a new way of thinking that takes account of others.”

I think that Paul addressed that advice about not thinking to highly of yourself as much to himself as to his readers, then and now. Paul was on his best behavior writing to the people he hadn’t met in Rome. He wasn’t so restrained in his other letters. His arrogance took center stage in parts of Galatians, even daring to call Simon Peter a hypocrite. He was self-aware enough to call himself a fool in Second Corinthians, but only after he’d demonstrated the foolishness of his own ego in response to criticism he’d heard. Yes. It was hard for him. I resonate with that from the inside. I think I’ve mentioned that I share that temptation to arrogance. It’s one of the few things I can claim to share with a saint.

Let’s face it, arrogance is a characteristic of Christianity these days. It’s not just the Christian nationalists, although their manifestation of hubris is, I think, the most dangerous of our time. In the United Church of Christ, I applaud our advocacy for marginalized groups while noting at the same time our curious reluctance to move beyond certain points, and I note that when the marginalized come into positions of authority, they are just as subject to the temptation of “I know it better than you” as their predecessors had been. I’d dearly love it if we could solve the problem of arrogance by replacing all the male leaders with female, or the straight leaders with LGBTQ, or elder leaders with young ones, or… insert your own preferred group here. Regrettably, it seems like our favorite prayer is not the Lord’s Prayer, but what Pearls Before Swine cartoonist Stephan Pastis called “The Genius Prayer” in a 2014 strip:

“God grant me the courage to change the things I cannot accept, serenity to accept the things I’ve changed, and the wisdom to know I’m different.”

It’s not the only struggle we have with our contemporary world, however. I think one of our strongest pressures is the temptation to put people into arbitrary categories and make assumptions about them based on those categories. I’m pretty confident that the first century members of the Roman church had a similar problem – Paul wrote powerfully that both Jews and Gentiles (whom he called “Greeks”) stood in the very same position with God, needing God’s mercy. In other letters he wrote of slaves and free people, of men and women, that God’s grace, love, and power were accessible to them one and all.

In the twenty-first century, we struggle with prejudices within ourselves, and we struggle with the systematic “isms” that enshrine prejudice in law, culture, and religious practice. We have made progress. In 2021 the Rev. Elizabeth Dilley, who supports authorization of ministers in the UCC, wrote, “…women now make up 52.5% of all ordained ministers in the UCC.” At the same time, I’m aware of Christian churches that have rolled back access to leadership positions for women, and others that have simply never opened them at all. On Thursday morning I read a social media post asking for Biblical support for the ordination of women.

People, as we understand ordination, there’s not that much Biblical support for the ordination of men.

In addition, we’ve got people openly calling for the repeal of the nineteenth amendment. That’s the one that enfranchises women in the United States of America, that allows them to vote. I thought that question had been settled for a century. I guess we’ll have to keep it settled.

More of a concern in the twenty-first century than the first is the temptation to individualism, to think that community is less important than the individual. It’s a heritage of the European Enlightenment, and one that was really important to undo the feudal systems of Europe and Asia, which were so arbitrary and oppressive. As with most things, it can be overdone, and it has been. Israel Kamudzandu writes at Working Preacher, “I think of Romans as a call to abandon the sin of individualism and to embrace the cross-cultural Christian life. The life to which Paul calls Christians in Rome, and consequently those in the 21st century, is a life that exhibits the essence of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.”

It’s one that embraces the notion that community is important. It’s not just about me; it’s about us. I don’t have all the skills, I don’t have all the gifts. Somebody else can better find the ‘ohelo; somebody else can fix the plumbing; somebody else can handle the bookkeeping. Look at that list of gifts of the Spirit Paul gave here (he wrote other longer lists in other letters): prophecy, ministry, teaching, encouragement, generosity, leadership, compassion. Any one of us might have some portion of each. Some of us will have deeper reservoirs of one of those gifts, and when we share them in community, everyone does better.

Amy Frykolm, writing at JourneyWithJesus.net, composed a reworked version of Paul’s advice here, and it’s stunning, so I share it with you:

“So then, I ask you, my dear family, in light of all the mercy, compassion, and kindness that God has shown us, place your whole selves in God’s hands — mind, heart, strength — this whole embodied being that is you. Make that offering full of life and vitality, as living as living water. The depth of your spiritual understanding and your willingness will fill the heart of God with joy.

“And do not let the ways of this world — its greed, ambition, empty fulfillments — mold and shape you, make you like itself. Instead be transformed through the renewal of your perceptions. Seek every opportunity to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, try out new paths, feel things for the first time and let them sink into your heart. From your heart, your mind, your senses, and your intuition, let yourself be continuously renewed. In this way, you will know what to do, how to act, how to choose the good, the true, the beautiful, the holy, and the whole.”

From the Apostle Paul, from Amy Frykolm, maybe even a little bit from me, there’s advice for this age or any other.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching – sometimes he intends to. The sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.

The image is Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (between 1618 and 1620) – https://www.mfah.org/art/detail/20223, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74425088.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Great Gathering

August 16, 2026

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Matthew 15:21-28

Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s us? Who’s them? Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who gets doubted without benefits?

These are not new questions in the United States, as you well know. The history of Americans’ opinions of people from different national and ethnic backgrounds has some real ugliness in it, and some real bright points. We live far more companionably with people of different sexual orientations than I ever expected – I never thought I’d see legal marriage for LGBTQ relationships, and for now, at least, they’re both legal and generally accepted in many places.

It was once illegal for people of different races to marry in some US states; those prohibitions have crumbled. American immigration law is, I’m sorry to say, a horror show from its origins with the Chinese Exclusion Act, relentlessly racist and, in these days, enforced with cruelty that’s been encouraged at the highest level.

These questions are older than the Hawaiian Kingdom or the United States or any government of the world. The Book of Ezra describes the rebuilding of Jerusalem when the Persian Empire permitted Jewish exiles to return around five hundred years before Jesus’ birth. The exile lasted around seventy years – nearly three generations – so the people had learned to think of at least some of those around them as neighbors. As the children grew into young adults, they began to marry among these neighbors, even though intermarriage was discouraged. Ezra, a priest, announced that the non-Jewish wives would have to go back to their families’ homes in Persia.

If you want to read something heartbreaking, read the tenth chapter of Ezra. It not only says that those families were broken up. It lists them. By name.

Curiously enough, at near the same time another prophet took up the pen. His work ended up as part of the Book of Isaiah, which is a composite work of at least three different authors writing at different times, and also includes a few chapters of Second Kings. Chapter 56 is considered by scholars as the place where this post-exile writing starts. And how did this writer begin?

Thus says the Lord:
    Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come
    and my deliverance be revealed.
2 Happy is the mortal who does this,
    the one who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it,
    and refrains from doing any evil.
3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
    “The Lord will surely separate me from his people,”
and do not let the eunuch say,
    “I am just a dry tree.”
4 For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
    who choose the things that please me
    and hold fast my covenant,
5 I will give, in my house and within my walls,
    a monument and a name
    better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
    that shall not be cut off.
6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
    to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
    and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it
    and hold fast my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

I read there some sections our lectionary editors omitted. The Torah did place limits on who could enter the religious assembly – a worship service, basically – which included men with injuries to their genitals. I really don’t understand why that should be relevant to anything, but then I don’t understand why a lot of things were considered relevant. Leviticus 21 bans someone who is blind from serving in religious leadership. Well, I’m rather pleased that we’ve discerned that that wasn’t a meaningful issue, given that my daughter Rebekah is blind and was ordained as UCC minister this year.

Human history around disability isn’t that good.

As Samuel Giere writes at Working Preacher, “Isaiah 56-66 returns to a basic question: With the diagnosis and the renewed promise both in view, what now? The first movement in this ‘what now?’ is Isaiah 56.1-8. It addresses the reality that God’s blessing spills over the boundaries assumed by God’s people — the insiders.”

At much the same time Ezra was breaking up families – which was not, in fact, required by the Law of the Torah – someone we’ll call Isaiah spoke another vision. He proclaimed God’s welcome not just in the city, not just in the community, but in the place of worship. He proclaimed God’s welcome not just for those foreigners who hadn’t been banned in the Law, he proclaimed it for eunuchs who had been banned in the Law. Isaiah envisioned a realm of God that was greater than the precincts of a Temple, that was wider than the walls of a city, that was more extensive than the boundaries of a nation.

Let it be a great gathering.

The great gathering did have qualifications. “Maintain justice, and do what is right.” This had been the refrain of Israel’s prophets for generations. As Joel B. Kemp writes at Working Preacher, “For the writers of Isaiah 56, admission into God’s community is contingent upon a few ethical (rather than ethnic) requirements.”

Here I invite you to a choice. The Bible was written by many people over hundreds, even over a thousand years. They didn’t believe the same things about the world as we do, and they didn’t believe the same things about the world as each other. They didn’t believe the same things about God as one another. As we’ve heard today from Ezra and from Isaiah, they could and did believe radically opposite things about what God considered right and good and proper at the very same time.

So we have a choice.

We can go with Ezra. We can choose an ethnic group or national heritage and hold that as the highest allegiance and the source of what is good and right. We can be Swedish or Norwegian or English (to start with my own background) or Japanese or Hawaiian or Chinese or Okinawan or American (whatever that means) or Micronesian or one of a host of identities. We can say, “I’m in, you’re out, and there’s nothing you can do about it as long as we hold the power to keep you outside.”

Ezra 10 says we can do that.

We can also choose to form a community made up of people of many ethnicities, many heritages, many backgrounds. We can choose to form a community made up of people we’d previously chosen to ignore or dismiss, like those with disabilities or like those with a sexuality different from our own. We can choose that, knowing that it’s the more difficult way. It requires discussion and debate and discernment about what is good, and right, and fit.

Isaiah 56 says we can do that.

Which will we choose?

So what did Jesus do?

He did… both. Which is awkward.

He refused to aid this Canaanite woman’s request to heal her daughter, and he did it with an insult that wounds us even in translation. He called her and her daughter dogs, and that was exactly as insulting as it sounds. And then, she turned the insult back on itself brilliantly: even the dogs eat the crumbs from the children’s table.

Jesus told her that his community would be Ezra’s community. Her reply reflected Isaiah’s community. She seems to have changed his mind. Suddenly the blessings he was bringing could be shared with those outside of Israel. Suddenly a new world had opened.

Expanding into that world became one of the most noteworthy features of the new Christian Church following his death and resurrection. New life for Jesus became new life for Jews and new life for Gentiles as well. Apostles like Philip and Paul began working with Gentiles to create new Christian communities around the Mediterranean. The foreigners were warmly invited into the Way of Jesus.

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Right now, we are living through times so fraught and so tenuous, everything depends on exactly how good the Good News really is.  It’s not good enough if it’s good just for me, or for the people who look and think like me, or for the people I already happen to like and love.  Is it Good News yet for those dying of Covid?  Is it Good News yet for the starving and the incarcerated and the unemployed and the homeless?  Is it Good News yet for the people across the border?  Is it Good News yet for the people you’ve been conditioned all your life to ignore?

“If the answer is no, then we have work to do.  Remember, Jesus himself has gone ahead of us, widening the gates and throwing open the doors to welcome the voice of a despised foreigner.”

So there’s your options. A community which accepts some and denies many, or a community that welcomes as many as we can.

You can have either one and claim the Bible justifies it. It does.

I know which one I’d rather live in. Give me Isaiah, not Ezra. Give me Jesus – at least after he’d heard the wisdom of the Canaanite woman.

I’d like the Great Gathering, please.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes sermons in full, but he tends to make changes while preaching, some of which are intentional.

The image is Isaiah by an 18 century icon painter – Iconostasis of Transfiguration church, Kizhi monastery, Karelia, Russia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3235458.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: It’s Bigger Than You Think

July 26, 2026

Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

If you’ve been trying to count the Scripture passages I say are among my favorites, well, add another one. Or maybe I’ve already mentioned it. In any case, it’s true. This section of Romans includes some of the words that ring most true in my soul.

I’ve known what it is not to know what or how to pray because the sadness and the hurt go so deep. I’ve been in places where prayer itself has seemed impossible – although God had supported me through many stresses and trials, I simply couldn’t find not just words, but even a direction for prayer in the sorrow of my soul.

How important it is to know that in those profoundly disconnected times, the Spirit helped me in my weakness, interceding with groanings too deep for words.

Sometimes I became aware of that. Other times, I didn’t. It didn’t matter. The Spirit was there, groaning with me whether I knew it or not.

As Israel Kamudzandu writes at Working Preacher, “The inarticulate moans or groans of the Holy Spirit are not oriented to the human conscience but they are directed to God on behalf of a believing faith community… The reality is that human beings run out of words, especially in moments of sickness, death, hunger, poverty, and whenever life confronts us with pain.”

It doesn’t stop there for me. That next verse about all things working together for good for those who love God – well, I know there’s some problems there. Let’s face it, not all things work together for good period. There are plenty of people who do evil and seem to delight in it. There are storms and earthquakes and although they have no conscious intent to harm, harm they do. The history of these islands, going way back or staying recent, reveals both evil intent by human beings and evil impact by impersonal force or human accident.

But still. I read that verse with relief. Maybe everything doesn’t work for good, but God does. God doesn’t set the world into the courses of evil. God acts to mitigate the harm, to transform it into something else. When human hubris and arrogance crucified Jesus Christ, God brought forgiveness in Jesus’ own words and then resurrection in Jesus’ own life. If God was willing to transcend the rejection of God’s most precious gift, then what will God refuse to transcend?

I can’t think of anything.

As Erin Heim writes at Working Preacher, “In Christ, God does not meet our human violence with divine violence or retribution but, rather, takes on our human violence and overwhelms it with God’s self-giving love (8:32–34). In Christ, God promises to bring justice and wholeness through God’s overwhelming love. In Christ, God’s love has had the final word, and in Christ, the ending is sure.”

The question that has occupied a lot of Christians over the last two thousand years is: for whom is this ending sure? That is, once God’s love has had the final word, for whom has God spoken?

It’s a knotty problem.

The plain sense of the English translations with which we’re familiar uses the word “predestined.” A lot of theologians and Bible scholars have concluded, based on that word, that God has chosen some people to become Christians and to be saved in advance. Some theologians and Bible scholars have further concluded, based on this passage, that God has chosen other people not to become Christians and not to be saved. Among those who believed this were Augustine of Hippo and John Calvin. Calvin was one of the Reformation thinkers behind our own Reformed tradition. Our church was more influenced by Calvin than by Martin Luther.

Did the Apostle believe that some people were blessed ahead of time and some people were cursed?

I don’t think so. The reason I don’t think so is found in the purpose of Paul’s letter to the Romans in the first place. When he wrote the letter, Paul hadn’t visited Rome. He seems to have known something about the leaders there, and he seems to have known at least a little about conditions for the Christians in Rome. But he hadn’t been there, and… he planned to visit.

He planned to visit on the way to Spain.

Why was he going to Spain? For the same reason he’d toured around the cities of the Anatolian peninsula, modern Turkey. For the same reason he’d visited the cities of Macedonia and Greece. He was introducing the news that Jesus Christ had lived, had taught, had died, and had rose again for the blessing of humanity. He firmly believed that embracing that truth brought eternal life to those who did so. So he set out to bring that word to a horde of strangers he’d never thought to meet. He set out in journeys fraught with risk and hazard – in his Second Letter to the Corinthians he mentioned that he’d been shipwrecked no less than three times. Now he proposed to take the longest sea journey of his ministry from the eastern Mediterranean to the western.

That’s an enormous amount of effort for someone who believes that God has predetermined it all. If God has set it all out ahead of time, what difference do the actions of any human beings matter? God has set it. It’s determined. It’s done.

Paul couldn’t have believed that and done the things he did.

In Paul’s day, people believed in big powerful deities and in local gods whose influence was limited to small areas or whose concern was limited to particular nations. In contrast, Paul taught of a God who could exert power in many places, but who was concerned for and extending grace to people of many backgrounds, even every background. As Michael Fitzpatrick writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Class, race, sexual orientation, wealth, fame, gender, religion, marriage, political party — none of these categories by which we carve up humanity into various tribes counts for or against a person in the Kingdom.”

Paul’s travels and labors were in service of a first century quest for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Church of Jesus Christ and the Realm of God. “How much grace did God have?” people might have asked him. “It’s bigger than you think,” Paul would have replied. Paul did reply: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It’s bigger than you think.

These are days of factionalization, of separation into my group and your group, of division between the “We’re entitled” and “You’re nots.” It’s not the first time in human history; it won’t be the last. Isn’t it obvious that such thinking feeds the violence of the automobile attack on a Pride parade in Berlin yesterday, or the wars in Iran, Palestine, Ukraine, and more? Doesn’t it buttress the fears of women who receive no justice when they are assaulted?

In contrast, Paul taught of a church in which male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free – the most significant categories of his day – no longer mattered. God’s grace was for all. Did Paul fully recognize the implications of his own thinking? I don’t think so. He was still a person of his time, as we’re people of our time, and there were limits to his imagination just as there are limits to our imagination.

God’s grace is bigger than we think.

Of all the things I try to teach you from this pulpit, of all the things I try to convince you of from this pulpit, of all the things I try to persuade you of from this pulpit, this is the one I most earnestly want you to remember, to believe, and to live from:

God’s grace is bigger than we think. It’s for you. It’s for me. It’s for them. It’s for everybody. It’s for the ones we don’t think it’s for. It’s bigger than you think.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes sermons in full, but he tends to make changes while preaching, some of which are intentional.

The image is usually known as “Earthrise,” taken by NASA/Bill Anders December 24, 1968 – http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a410/AS8-14-2383HR.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=306267.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Undivided Heart

July 19, 2026

Psalm 86:11-17
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Psalm 86 is a song of an individual person. What I mean by that is that it wasn’t written to be said together in a big worship service, or chanted by a procession through the streets. It describes the spiritual place that one person was in thousands of years ago. It doesn’t tell us a lot – the writer wasn’t very specific about things – but that does help make it accessible to any of us. The themes of the poem are familiar to us, though the events which prompted its writing might not be.

The poet’s first concern was, well, concern. The very first words are: “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.” The psalmist wrote from a “day of trouble.” They had opponents, they had enemies. “O God, the insolent rise up against me; a band of ruffians seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.”

The need for help is not just a common theme in the Psalms. It is a common reality in human life. Sometimes our need is the result of other people’s actions. We might be targeted for crime. We might be discriminated against in employment or housing. We might be suffering from an injury or illness which doesn’t just test our health but also our financial resources and the support of our family and friends. We’ve all been through a global pandemic, when a shortage of human contact made it even harder to endure economic hardship and the fear of dangerous disease.

We know what need is. We know what it is to pray out of our needs.

Curiously, the Psalmist did not just pray out of their need. There’s no shame in doing that; there are Psalms that really do concentrate on the cry for help. This writer, however, spent roughly as much time on a second theme as on their concerns and distress.

The second theme was thanks and praise.

“I give thanks to you, O LORD my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.” A lot of the Psalms praise God. You could make a case that, in some way, they all do, but there are a good number that focus on praising God. About half of Psalm 86 praises God for being merciful and generous, for being great and powerful, for abounding in steadfast love.

We know what it’s like to pray in thanksgiving. We’ve enjoyed successes, we’ve received gifts, we’ve celebrated the beauties of the world. We’ve rejoiced at weddings, we’ve welcomed births, we’ve completed difficult things and received rewards. Out of these and more we pray with thanks.

This is a Psalm which simultaneously praises God’s goodness and seeks God’s aid in some pretty deep distress. It’s a Psalm that knows both pain and exultation, both sorrow and celebration. Which made one line really stand out for me:

“Give me an undivided heart to revere your name.”

In a Psalm that is divided between opposite themes, the writer asked for “an undivided heart.”

I think some people do have the notion that the life of faith is supposed to feel like one thing and one thing only. Once you’ve made the commitment, somehow your faith is supposed to keep you in a similar state of mind from day to day. A read through the Book of Psalms would tell you, to the contrary, that the life of faith is filled with different feelings. A read through one of the Gospels reveals that Jesus himself, though a remarkably consistent person, displayed a range of emotions and reactions on different occasions.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks that Christian faith means our internal life is supposed to be just one thing, but some do.

You don’t have to. At any rate, you don’t have to worry about it when you find that your mind keeps changing and your feelings keep changing from one day to the next. That happened to the prophets. It happened to the Psalmists. It happened to Jesus himself.

So how can this Psalmist call for a unified heart?

“Heart” means a lot of things to us. We think of the heart as the center of feelings. Unity of feelings is really unusual in human experience. It happens, but it happens relatively rarely and in pretty intense situations. I can think of a few occasions, mostly while driving, when the only emotion I was aware of fear. I can also remember times when I was overwhelmed with joy, to the point where other emotions simply weren’t present. That just hasn’t happened all that often, though, and frankly that’s a good thing. Overwhelming emotion is overwhelming. Even the most joyous moments in my life were better as moments than they would be as an ongoing reality.

I’ve also mentioned more than once that our feelings aren’t under our direct control. We can do things to influence our feelings – I’ve found that a good meal reduces my anxieties pretty effectively – but it’s really difficult to tell yourself, “I want to feel happy” and then actually do it. So the deepest understanding of the truth of God, for which the Psalmist prayed, isn’t going to give us a unified heart. We’re still going to feel what we feel, and most of the time that’s a mixture, isn’t it? A mixture of feelings about what’s right in front of it and the things on our mind and the things that linger, good and bad, in our memories.

Did the Psalmist actually mean a unified mind?

I don’t think so, and not just because of the use of the word “heart.” The whole Psalm argues against it, because it’s a Psalm about both need and praise. The Psalm itself is divided in mind.

How do we resolve the paradox of the unified heart in a divided Psalm?

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “It’s not that we hold paradox; it’s that paradox holds us.   We are held in a deep place.  An ample place. A generous, sufficient, and roomy place. Though we might fear paradox, God does not, and it is in God’s soil that we are firmly planted.  We’re safe, even in the contradictions.  Messy and weedy for sure, but safe.”

In our understanding, but even more so in the use of the Psalmists and the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures, “heart” was not just the seat of emotion. It was also a seat of decision: of loyalty. Of commitment. Of devotion. It’s one of the reasons that we use “heart” when we think about the way people come together in loving relationships – they’re rooted in emotion, but they go beyond that to commitment.

For the Psalmist, I think, the unified heart was able to bring together the needs and the thanksgiving, the feelings of fear and the feelings of joy, the reality of deprivation and the truth of God’s presence, into a foundational reliance upon God. That is, what connects need and praise is that we come to God with both.

Unlike emotion, that’s something that we can choose. We can bring our burdens to God for help and for comfort. We can bring our hurts to God for healing and for renewal. We can bring our uncertainties to God for guidance and for wisdom. We can bring our griefs to God for comfort and for resurrection.

And we can bring our successes to God for thanksgiving and for continuance. We can bring our celebrations to God for increase and for sharing. We can bring our joys to God for blessing and for remembering.

The unified heart is the one that knows that God cares about our joys and sorrows. The unified heart is the one that lifts the voice in praise and in petition. The unified heart is the one that waits in silence for God’s aid and for God’s smile.

Don’t worry that you feel different today than you did yesterday. Don’t worry that you think new things from day to day. Feelings will change, and I earnestly hope that you’re learning things as time goes on.

Do raise your needs to God; do raise your thanks to God. That is the practice and the commitment that makes a unified heart.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he’s preaching, hopefully to improve it, and sometimes accidentally.

The photo shows a sculpture of a world being unified. Taken by Eric Anderson in South Korea in 2013.