Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Have a Paddle

November 2, 2025
Isaiah 1:10-18

Luke 19:1-10

I’m mixing metaphors that, in my experience, get mixed fairly often. If you’re in trouble, you might be up a tree. Or up the creek. If you’re in a lot of trouble, you might be up a creek without a paddle. And if you’re having trouble getting your metaphors together, you might be up a tree without a paddle.

Zacchaeus might be one of those up a tree without a paddle.

He doesn’t seem like a likely person to be in trouble. Luke wrote that he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Wealth is supposed to insulate us from trouble, isn’t it? If I’m pursuing wealth but I’m not really greedy, I’m probably trying to protect myself or my family from the things that poverty threatens, and poverty threatens a lot.

Wealth may insulate us from some kinds of trouble – even that’s not quite a guarantee, as some people can tell riches to rags stories – but there’s other trouble that wealth simply can’t protect us from. The wealthy get sick. They may struggle with relationships – arguing about money may actually raise the risk of broken relationships. Rich people may find themselves cut off from social supports.

That’s exactly what had happened to Zacchaeus.

Lis Valle-Ruiz writes at Working Preacher, “The plot is a (hi)story that repeats itself across places and times. It is the story of a person who belongs to an oppressed people by birth but joins the ranks of the foreigners/oppressors by trade, resulting in gain for the person and their family while contributing to the oppression of the community.”

Ironically, in Hebrew Zacchaeus means, “righteous.” I’m pretty sure that generated a lot of comment among his neighbors. He almost certainly started off fairly wealthy, because the Romans didn’t turn to poor people to become tax collectors, let alone chief tax collectors. He probably didn’t have much in common with or much to do with the poorer people of Jericho, which was most of them. In taking that position, though, Zacchaeus had taken a place that cut him off from most even of his wealthy neighbors. If a foreigner, a Gentile, entered your home it became ritually unclean. According to a saying preserved in the second century collection of rabbinic wisdom called the Tosefta, the same was true of tax collectors.

He may have been doing fine financially. He may have been doing okay with a very small number of his neighbors (and they were probably tax collectors, too). As far as the rest of the Jewish population of Jericho was concerned, he was up a tree without a paddle.

What do we do when somebody has built their own trouble? What do we do when they’ve cut themselves off from us? What do we do when they’ve planted the tree, watered the tree, fertilized the tree, profited from the tree, and then climbed the tree? What do we do when they’ve realized they’re up a tree without a paddle and have started to look for a way down?

What do we usually do?

Be honest. What do you usually do when somebody has made life difficult for others, even harmed others, has cut themselves off from you and from others, and suddenly announces that they’d like to come down?

If I could venture to guess, we react much the way that the people of Jericho reacted when Jesus called Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree and invited himself for dinner. With revulsion. With suspicion. With rejection. “Leave him in the tree, Jesus. He got himself there. He chose it. It’s on him. He didn’t even bring a paddle.”

I am not talking about those who have planted and nurtured their tree and are still perched in it, merrily enjoying the fruits of their separation and abusing those below them. I’m not talking about those who have settled into their tree so they can throw things at the rest of us below.

I’m talking about the ones who have decided they want to come down from the tree. The ones who have made an effort to tell us they want to come down. The ones who, like Zacchaeus, have shown that they’re interested in reconciliation.

Now what do we do, we who may be at the bottom of the tree, although if we’re honest with ourselves we’re probably part way up our own tree, what do we do when somebody says, “I want to come down?”

If we follow Jesus, we help them get down. We guide them to place their hands and feet as they descend. We raise our arms to them to give them support and cushion what might be a slip or two. We say, “Let’s get together for dinner. And by the way. You’ve been up a tree without a paddle. Here. Have a paddle.”

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I know that even now, I hold people hostage to versions of themselves they’re striving to outgrow. I know that I refuse people the permission to change, because if they change, I will have to change, too. Likewise, I know that there are areas in my life where God is asking me to stand my ground and tell a new story about myself — a story my listeners might have high stakes in resisting. These are the places where I am tempted to retreat, to quit, to resort to a vision of humanity that is ordinary and mortal, not extraordinary and lasting.”

It’s not just Zacchaeus up a tree without a paddle. It’s you and me, isn’t it? We planted it. We watered it. We climbed it. We threw things at people from up there.

Jesus called us down. Jesus welcomed us down. Jesus told us he’d enjoy our hospitality.

Jesus said, with a smile, “Have a paddle.”

When somebody else wants to come down from their tree, well: “Have a paddle.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons ahead of time, but he tends to make changes while preaching. What you have just read does not precisely match what he said.

The image is Zacchaeus by Niels Larsen Stevns, 1864-1941. Retrieved from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54227 [retrieved November 2, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niels_Larsen_Stevns-_Zak%C3%A6us.jpg.
Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Remembered

October 26, 2025

Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

When I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut. I also wanted to be a firefighter. I seem to remember that I wanted to be a soldier for a while. I don’t recall ever wanting to be a politician, but I did think it would be cool to be President – even at that age I recognized that there is a difference between running for office and doing the work of the office.

Now. As an astronaut, I didn’t want to be the command module pilot, left orbiting the moon while my two colleagues landed and explored. I wanted to be the mission  commander. And I wanted to be a fire captain or a fire chief. When I wanted to be a soldier, I imagined myself as a general.

You get the idea? I had some ambition. I was going to be President, after all. I was going to be the one you remembered.

What if I’d had the ambition of Jesus?

In chapter 6 of Luke, Jesus had just appointed twelve of his followers as “apostles,” or messengers. I’d say that shows some ambition and initiative. He’d then come to what Luke described as a “level place” and found a great crowd seeking healing. He gave them healing. That shows power and capacity. Then he got them settled down somehow, which shows capability, and told them:

Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are the weepers. Blessed are those who are hated.

I did a Google search for “inspirational quotes,” and its AI overview gave me the following:

“Inspirational quotes include ‘Believe you can and you’re halfway there’ (Theodore Roosevelt), ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams’ (Eleanor Roosevelt), and ‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do’ (Steve Jobs). Other popular themes focus on resilience, such as ‘It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up’ (Vince Lombardi), and personal agency, like ‘Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me’ (Carol Burnett).”

So. Nothing about how blessed the poor are. Actually, nothing from Jesus.

Hm.

Jesus had a few words to say for those who were in different circumstances of life. Woe to the rich, woe to the full, woe to those who laugh, woe to those who are held in honor.

Funny. Those weren’t among the inspirational messages, either.

Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “It seems to me that Jesus’ woe statements are revealing something—that the things we assume are advantages are actually illusory. What if money, food, comfort, self-won security, respectability, and the like are things that kill our souls—not just in some far-off afterlife but right here, right now? What a tragedy to mistake them for benefits given by God, then.”

What a tragedy indeed. And still not in tune with the inspirational messages of the twenty-first century.

Fortunately, Jesus went on to tell us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, and submit to assault and robbery.

Do I have to mention that this isn’t very inspirational, either?

It can also be dangerous. This passage has all too often been used to encourage victims of abuse, particularly in domestic situations, to continue to suffer abuse. I can’t believe that’s what Jesus wanted. Jesus pronounced woe on the wealthy, the well fed, and the merry. Do you really think he’d say, “Blessed are the violent?” No. And when Jesus declared a wake-up call for the comfortable, I’m sure he declared it for the violent as well.

How do I know that?

Because he asked those who’d been victimized not to respond to violence with violence. Violence has to end, not be escalated.

That’s not very inspirational, either.

But maybe something else is. Or rather, someone else is. Someone, or rather, several someones.

Why are we here today? To worship God, yes. But today we also make the time to honor those who have touched our lives with love. They blessed us.

They blessed us whether they were relatively rich or relatively poor. They blessed us when they were hungry and when they’d had a full meal. They blessed us when they were merry and they blessed us through their tears. They blessed us when people commended them and they blessed us when people thought they were out of their minds to do so.

They blessed us and so we honor them.

Don’t answer this question. Think about it. Are there people who died in the past year that you didn’t choose to name, and to remember, and to honor? I’m not talking about the people you’ve heard of but didn’t know. I’m talking about the people you did know, but you didn’t have that good a relationship with them because, well, there were problems. You argued. There was bullying. Disagreement over money – doesn’t that happen often. Whatever it was, it was such that you just didn’t want to be friends. When you heard that they’d died, you may have said a brief prayer for those who love them, but… you didn’t feel the need to pray for yourself.

Like an i’iwi that bullies, that’s a sad way to be remembered. And, when it comes to a service like this, to be forgotten.

None of the people we’re honoring today were perfect. I’ll light a candle for my stepmother, the Rev. Shirley Anderson, today. As is the case with a lot of people later in life, she spent the last ten years trying to downsize. Inevitably, that meant distributing stuff to her children, her stepchildren, and all the grandchildren. Including the one who lived in Hawai’i and had to ship everything 5,000 miles. I brought something away from her apartment from every visit I made to her except the last one.

No, Shirley wasn’t perfect.

She was so loving, though. So caring. So attentive to people. So concerned about their needs. She put her time and energy into learning and responding and helping people grow. She did that as a member of the family. She did it as a pastor.

That’s how – and that’s why – she is remembered. I would guess that that’s how you’re remembering those for whom you’ll light a candle today.

Susan Henrich writes at Working Preacher, “The blessed are those who have caught at least a glimpse of God’s future and trust that it is for them. The blessed may be poor or needy, even weeping in life by the standards we humans have in our very bones, but they are blessed in both trust in God and in God’s future, in their hope of justice. The woeful are those who have forgotten that the ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ The woeful are those who say ‘yes’ to the title question of an old song, ‘Is that all there is?’”

We honor those who saw a glimpse of God’s future and knew that it was for them, and for you, and for us. That’s how we remember them. That’s why we honor them.

As I wrote six years ago,

You entertain the wealthy,
set aside the sick,
refuse the refugee,
and call it greatness.

While I have known a woman
in whose presence every soul
received a lift. Every soul
was lightened by her gift.

Jesus can and does inspire us, even as he’s in conflict with most of our more customary inspirational literature. But let’s face it: he’s hard to follow. He’s demanding. His yoke isn’t all that easy. His burden isn’t all that light.

But these saints? They showed us that there are ways to follow, ways that can be accomplished by human beings, imperfect as we are. They showed us that it’s not about success and power, or about comfort and riches, or about respectability and position. It’s about care and compassion, faithfulness and commitment, energy and love.

And love. Love always. Always love.

May we be remembered as these saints, for our love.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric does make changes while preaching. Sometimes he intends to make them. Sometimes the changes happen.

The image is The Sermon on the Mount by Fra Angelico (1437) – Copied from an art book, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9048898.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Out of Joint

October 19, 2025

Genesis 32:22-31
Luke 18:1-8

One of the things that is hard to appreciate in a translation is the presence of puns.

Some of you are thinking that you don’t appreciate puns no matter what the language is.

But we are missing something here. John E. Anderson tells us at Working Preacher, “There is a delightful Hebrew wordplay: at Jabbok (yabok) a ‘man’ wrestled (yabeq) Jacob (y’qob).”

Yabok. Yabeq. Yaqov. Like Dr. Anderson, to whom I’m not related as far as I know, I call that delightful. You may disagree. What we can probably agree is that the author chose those words to call attention to this story, in which Jacob received a new name, Yisrael, “one who wrestles with God,” and that prompts Jacob to name his opponent as God, and further prompts him to give a new name to that place.

No longer Yaqov – Israel. No longer an unidentified Yabeq – Elohim, or God. No longer the ford of the Yabok, but now Peniel, the face of God.

Are you convinced yet that something important is going on here?

Jacob is one of the Bible’s more colorful characters. He’d purchased his brother’s birthright for a bowl of stew, which I suppose you could call shrewd bargaining but I think you could also call it taking advantage of your brother. He’d fooled his vision-impaired father to receive his all-important blessing, which I think we’d have to call fraud. He’d been fooled himself by his father-in-law over which daughter he was to marry, become a father by four women in a family dynamic which means that the phrase “Biblical family values” doesn’t necessary mean “healthy and happy,” and when gathering his family to return home, had once again defrauded his father-in-law so that he journeyed with big flocks of sheep and goats.

This is the underdog that we cheer for. This is also the hero whose actions we cringe at.

This is someone who’d been wrestling with everybody he met for his entire life. That might feel familiar sometimes.

As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “If we turn to the Bible for assurance that life will be easy and comfortable, and every prayer will be answered and God’s blessing will continually rain down upon us, the story of Jacob is not the place to look. What we can take from this story is that the struggle within us—those dark nights of the soul—is holy. We live in and with a God who is willing to be intimate in that struggle, to engage the mystery of ourselves, and to bless the struggle even as it wounds us.”

One of the blessings of Scripture is its reality. I’m not saying that every word is literally true – the parables of Jesus, for example, are fictions. Meaningful fictions, fictions which illustrate truth, but still intentional fictions. What I mean by reality is the way that Scripture doesn’t shy away from rock and sand, from heat and cold, from sweat and blood. When I read this story I can just about hear Jacob’s heart racing and his breath heaving. I can almost feel the tearing feeling of his wrenched hip. I can just about sense his desperation to get through the night. Just to get through the night.

As Callie Plunket-Brewton writes at Working Preacher, “Dark nights of the soul are part of the human experience, and few escape them. Whether we battle adversaries psychological or physical, the dawn does still come.”

We know what it is like to wrestle with the world.

We also have some idea what it is like to lose. As morning approached, Jacob’s hip was put out of joint. I’ve already mentioned that Jacob had been wrestling with everybody he ever met. Now he found himself out of joint with the world.

But there he was. Estranged from his birth family. Estranged from his family of marriage. Living with rivalry and dissension in his household. On the verge of a potentially violent collision with his outraged and defrauded brother. The reality of his hip matched the reality of his relationships.

Jacob was out of joint with the world.

So what do we do when we’re out of joint with the world?

I think we do what Jacob did. We hold on.

As Beth L. Tanner writes at Working Preacher, “Life is sometimes like that. Things happen that cannot be rationalized or easily understood. We survive by nothing more elegant than not giving up.”

We hold on.

Jacob had lost, but not lost all his strength. He wasn’t going to win, and he didn’t. He just held on.

We hold on.

There are a lot of ways in which I feel out of joint with the world these days. In lots of cultures in lots of periods of time, people grieved visibly. They might wear special clothing, or they might perform certain ritual actions. Others could see that their friends were in mourning. They could see that their neighbors were out of joint with the world.

As you know, last weekend I was at my stepmother’s funeral. I’ve been grieving. I’ve been out of joint. I know some of you probably are, too.

So what do we do?

We hold on. Next Sunday we will observe our All Saints Sunday. During that service, we read the names of those who have died since last October, and we light a candle for them. Further, there is a time when we come forward to light candles for those who’ve gone before, until the soft glow begins to rival the daylight. As we do so we hold on to memory, and we hold on to love. We hold on to the hope and faith that God will restore us to one another again in the fullness of time.

We hold on.

Yesterday I put on a clerical collar and stood along Kamehameha Avenue and waved and made the shaka and talked with people and said, “Thank you for coming” along with hundreds of folks who came out to declare their commitment to No Tyrants. We stretched about a half a mile along the street, and yes, there were people dressed as inflatable creatures. Thank you, Portland.

I was there to hold on.

I was there to hold on to an imperfect republic with all its messiness against a burgeoning and merciless autocracy. I was there to hold on to a tenuous commitment to justice for people of all races, nationalities, genders, and identities against growing prejudice and oppression. I was there to hold on to the hope for a society in which everyone would receive due process of law. I was there to hold on to the idea that peaceful demonstration is both moral and effective at improving the laws and mores of a nation.

Was I, were we, successful?

According to Corina Knoll of the New York Times, “When asked if the president had a comment on the demonstrations, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, gave a brief response in an email. ‘Who cares?’ she said.”

Not successful yet.

Hold on.

What if our conflict is with someone bigger than the president of the United States, though? What if it’s with God?

Again: Hold on.

George Peck, who was President of Andover Newton Theological School when I was a student there back in the late 80’s, came from Australia and taught me the meaning of the song “Waltzing Matilda.” He also taught me and all the rest of my colleagues about the down times of faith. While he served as a Baptist missionary and teacher in India, he told us, he lost his faith. He simply no longer believed in what he was doing. What did he do?

He held on. Not to the faith, which wasn’t there. He held on to the things that he did out of the faith he’d had. He kept teaching. He kept preaching. He kept praying. He didn’t know if his faith would come back. But he knew that if he did the things of faith, he’d recognize faith when (or if) it returned.

He held on. And his faith did return.

Jacob held on until the morning, and he was blessed. Dr. Peck held on until his faith grew again, and he was blessed. We’ll hold on until this attempt at autocracy is defeated, and we will be blessed. We’ll hold on to love and memory next Sunday and every day, and we will be blessed.

Hold on, friends. Hold on.

Be blessed.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric tends to improvise while preaching, sometimes intentionally. The recording will not exactly match the prepared text.


The image is Jacob and the Angel by Annette Gandy Fortt, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56023 [retrieved October 19, 2025]. Original source: annettefortt.com.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Prepare Supper

October 5, 2025

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Luke 17:5-10

Increase our faith. It seems like a good thing to ask as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus. Increase our faith. Any sensible faith leader would applaud someone’s efforts to deepen their devotion.

So… why didn’t Jesus?

As Francisco J. Garcia writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus’ loaded response to the disciple’s request for more faith—telling them that all they required was the faith of a tiny mustard seed to do the impossible—tells us that they are asking for the wrong thing.”

We’ve seen this happen with the disciples before. It’s one of the ways in which they stand in for us in the Gospels. How often do we, after all, ask God or Jesus for the wrong thing?

You don’t need to answer that.

But let’s think for a moment about what gets described as faith by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. “Faith manifests itself in many ways, by a variety of people,” writes Audrey West at Working Preacher. “Faith is persistence in reaching out to Jesus (Luke 5:17-26) and trusting in Jesus’ power and authority (7:1-10). Faith is responding with love to forgiveness received (7:44-50), not letting fear get the upper hand (8:22-25), and being willing to take risks that challenge the status quo (8:43-48). Faith is giving praise to God (17:11-19), having confidence in God’s desire for justice (18:1-8), and being willing to ask Jesus for what we need (18:35-43).”

What do these actions have in common? A couple of things: First, they are actions. They are things that people do. You might recall that in the letter of James we read that “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Jesus and Luke might put it differently. They might say that faith without action isn’t faith.

I can’t see why Jesus would be irritated to be asked how to increase faith based on its connection to action, though. Ask me what you can do to have a more active faith and believe me, I’ll come up with a good long list!

But remember, there was something else that those actions of faith have in common. They are actions that we take. That we take. That we, ourselves, take.

They’re not something that Jesus can do for us. They’re not something that the Holy Spirit does for us. They’re not something that God does for us.

They asked Jesus to increase their faith. But Jesus doesn’t increase our faith.

We increase our own faith.

OK. Just believe harder. Right?

Well, no. We go back to that first principle. Faith is action.

As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What if faith was not believing hard, but rather placing our tiny selves—in the cosmic sense, no more than the tiniest seeds—in alignment with the love of the cosmos? Just as in nature, the seed surrenders to the ground (John 12:24), so we, also of the same stuff as the seed, surrender to this work of creative love.”

Jesus followed up on the comparison with the mustard seed – our tiny selves, our tiny powers – with the troubling story of being the unthanked, unhappy, and pretty much unfed slaves of a demanding master. If that’s what faith and following Jesus is like, most of us would say, “You can take that away and toss it out.” But Jesus, routinely, overturned the relationship of master and slave in his stories and his sayings. He even did it in this short example. It starts by inviting us to understand ourselves as the master, and ends by equating us with the slaves.

What did the slaves do in the story? They set the table. They prepared the food. They served.

That, dear friends, is how to increase your faith.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I believe the invitation in this lection is for us to go forth and live in light of what we already see, sense, hear, and know.  In other words, the invitation is to do faith.  To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it.  Why?  Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner.  As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract.  Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle.  Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous, creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”

When I think about the most faithful people I’ve known, I don’t think of the showy ones. I don’t think of the powerful ones. I don’t think of the well-known ones. Mind you, I’ve known (or known of) faithful people who could be described in all of those categories.

It’s just that the most faithful people I’ve known spread love about them wherever they went, and as you may have noticed, that’s not something that makes people famous. It doesn’t get them into positions of power. It doesn’t get them noticed – except by a fortunate few who recognize that greatness comes from love and compassion, not from might and mayhem.

We are great not when we are the demanding masters, but when we are the dedicated servants. We are great not when we exercise power and coercion, but when we exercise diligence and compassion. We are great not when we are fed, but when those around us are fed.

Histories, I have to say, tend to glorify the glory hounds. They give people names like William the Conqueror, Frederick the Great, based on success as warriors.

We are the people of Jesus, however, and Jesus didn’t lead armies, didn’t conquer nations, didn’t even evict the occupiers of his land. What he did was teach and gather and heal.

He taught us to set the table.

He taught us to see that everybody gets fed.

As we come to the table on the World Communion Sunday, remember that it is set for us by the God who serves. It is our model of faith.

Let us set the table.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

We regret that we continue to have audio problems with our live video stream, so a recording of the sermon is not available.

The image is “The Parable of the Mustard Seed” an etching by Jan Luyken found in the Bowyer Bible (ca. 1791 – 1795) – Harry Kossuth photo. Electronic image created by Phillip Medhurst 10 August 2009., FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7549966.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Are You Convinced?

September 28, 2025

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Luke 16:19-31

I can’t know for sure, but I think that when Luke was assembling his gospel from the bits and pieces of Jesus stories he’d collected, one of those scrolls contained the three long stories that we only find in Luke: the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. I’m probably wrong, but these stories are longer than most, take more time to develop character than most, and have really pointed endings.

A story which ends with the faithful brother reprimanded for his faithfulness? That’s pretty surprising. A story which ends with absolutely the wrong hero? That’s quite a challenge. A story which says, “Give to the poor or go to Hades?”

They don’t get much more pointed than that.

It’s also counterintuitive in the first century and in the twenty-first century. As Kendra A. Mohn writes at Working Preacher, “It is common to equate wealth with virtue, whether today or in the ancient world. Good people who work hard and live righteously can expect to be rewarded with means; likewise, people with means are seen as good (smart, hardworking, righteous) because they were able to acquire wealth. In the ancient world, concepts like wealth, virtue, and masculinity worked together and reinforced one another to solidify elite status.

“The idea that the rich man is a good man is directly challenged by Jesus’ parable.”

We tend to assume that at least reasonable economic success comes from the virtues of hard work and good choices. There’s a lot of truth to that. I’m not sure if many of you know that I established and ran a consulting business for quite a few years. I really only closed it when one of my clients – the Connecticut Conference of the UCC – asked me to give them full time and I got taken on as a staff member. I’ve got some experience with the kind of initiative, creativity, inquiry, and ongoing effort it takes to make that kind of thing work.

Mind you, I don’t say that to claim those virtues. I just know they’re needed. As you might have noticed, my efforts as a business owner did not bring me substantial amounts of wealth.

In these three long parables found in Luke, Jesus emphasized some rather different values. In the Prodigal Son, the virtue of forgiveness. In the Good Samaritan, the virtue of compassion. In the Rich Man and Lazarus, the virtue of generosity. None of those are, I hasten to mention, incompatible with the virtues of hard work, diligence, and discernment, although I’ve heard people say that they are. These are the ones who say that empathy is a weakness, even the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.

All right. If you don’t want to call it empathy, don’t. Empathy describes a feeling, and as I say a lot, feelings aren’t things we control. We feel feelings.

But we act compassionately. We extend forgiveness. We give generously.

Or, I suppose, we don’t. But those are the virtues Jesus lifted up in these longer stories.

Now, how many of you are big fans of the story of The Prodigal Son? It can be a little rough on us older brother types – for the record, I am the older brother in my family, though I think my brother has had to forgive me more often than I’ve had to forgive him – but the ending leaves us in a place where we anticipate the reunion of the family.

How about The Good Samaritan? Who’s a fan? Those of us in the religious professions can certainly have a rough time with it, but let’s face it. There’s a part of our culture which enjoys the triumph, especially the moral triumph, of the outsider. So hooray for the Samaritan!

And we didn’t expect that much of the religious officials anyway.

The Prodigal Son. The Good Samaritan. Good stories. Well known. Well remembered. Quoted from time to time, even.

When was the last time you quoted The Rich Man and Lazarus?

Well, I haven’t either.

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home. John T. Carroll writes at Working Preacher, “An enormous and growing wealth gap separates a few—both individuals and nations—from the many who live in poverty. Sound familiar? First-century life within the Roman Empire was much like the reality we know, in this regard. The Gospel of Luke assumes and addresses this reality.” And as Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Preservation of the comfort of the privileged allows more injustice to occur than pure evil. At no point does the story suggest the rich man caused Lazarus to suffer initially. Yet, his inaction allowed it to continue. As Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’”

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home because we know that the virtue of generosity is one of the hardest. There’s a lot of risk to generosity.

We fear that if we give too much, we won’t have enough. Right? That comes in the big decisions, when we’re choosing how much to contribute in the year to things we support, and it also comes in the smaller decisions, when we’re deciding whether there’s enough in our wallet to give something to the panhandler on the sidewalk.

How much do we need to keep to maintain our lives? It’s a hard question, in the moment and in the long term. Speaking for myself, I tend to decide that what I need is probably more than what I really need. Anyone else feel the same?

There’s another risk to generosity, and I fear it and I hear it all the time. Will the person I’m generous to be properly grateful? Remember the story of Jesus and the ten people he healed from leprosy. Only one came back to say thank you – and it was a Samaritan. I’d rather not be generous if I don’t get a thank you.

So I’d guess that Jesus didn’t heal anyone again… Oh, right. He did.

Generosity isn’t about the people we give to. It’s about us. We decide. We reach out. We give – or not. Gratitude is an important part of generosity, but to be frank, it isn’t necessary for generosity to happen. If you have any doubt about that, think about God’s incredibly generous gift to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Have you fully expressed your gratitude for that? Is it actually possible to give adequate thanks for that?

In this parable, Jesus stressed not just the importance of compassionate giving, he emphasized its urgency. Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “…what I appreciate most is that it’s an urgent story.  It doesn’t mince words about what’s at stake.  It doesn’t pretend that our years are limitless and our options infinite.  This is a story about time running out.  About alternatives closing down.  This is a story for us.”

We get to be generous here and now. Instead of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die,” Jesus asked us to be compassionate and generous, for tomorrow we may die.

Melissa Bane Sevier writes at her blog, “No matter our social and financial status, we all have responsibility for the other. A cautionary tale, this parable pushes us to see and hear the suffering of the poor and to cross that enormous gulf that exists between people, between communities. To see the poor and the sick as people with names, not just some jumble of faces. To name the injustices and illnesses they deal with. To reach out while we’re all still living, because it is the only chance we have to try and make things right.”

Did you notice the other major difference in this parable between the rich man and Lazarus? Jesus gave the poor man a name – relatively few of the characters in his stories got names – and the rich man didn’t. Mind you, the name was carefully chosen. “Lazarus” is a version of the Hebrew “Eliezar,” which means, “God is my help.”

God is my help.

In this story, that turned out to be true. God was the only help for Lazarus.

In our reality, we cannot let that be true. We must be part of the help for the Lazaruses of the world. God is their help, but we can be and must be part of that help.

It’s important. It’s Jesus’ summons. It’s urgent.

Are you convinced?

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Unfortunately, the video recording of worship for September 28, 2025, did not include audio.

The image is Works of Mercy with Dives and Lazarus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57065 [retrieved September 28, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Works_of_mercy_with_Dives_and_Lazarus._Oil_painting_by_a_Fle_Wellcome_V0017623.jpg.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: A Quiet and Peaceable Life

September 21, 2025

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
1 Timothy 2:1-7

“I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”

A quiet and peaceable life – that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It sounds pretty good to me. I don’t mind a little excitement from time to time, but that excitement can come from things like making music, watching lava fountains on Kilauea, eating something delightful, and, well, I have been known to glide down a zip line.

Just a little excitement, excitement that is consistent with a quiet and peaceable life.

What fosters a quiet and peaceable life?

First, it’s prayer. It’s the extension of our spirits to God on behalf of others, the people around us, the communities we live in and the communities beyond us, for their benefit and welfare. It’s not just for Christians. As Sunggu Yang writes at Working Preacher, “In this passage, it is very interesting to see that the author urges his readers to invoke (the name of) Jesus, the mediator, in prayers for probably—this is very likely—unbelieving gentile Greek kings and those in high political positions. Simply put: prayers for the sake of unbelievers!”

Why? Because quiet, peaceful communities are created and maintained by all the members of those communities. We all know the havoc that’s created by people that steal things, or who commit violence against others. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who drive recklessly or do their work carelessly. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who say one thing and do another. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who put themselves ahead of everyone else.

The first step, then, is to pray for everyone in a community so that they live and act from a spiritual foundation. Right. How effective is that?

The short answer is, I don’t know.

The longer answer is, I think it’s more effective than we might believe.

The reason is personal. Many years ago, one of the members of my family had a medical crisis. I’m not talking about how prayer influenced the course of healing. I’m talking about how the prayers of other people carried me through that crisis.

My family was pretty well known in our UCC Conference – Connecticut, at the time. Well enough that our story went around church leaders, lay and clergy, and even into the congregations. Literally thousands of people prayed for us. In the midst of a lot of stress and a lot of fear, something miraculous happened.

My feet stopped touching the ground.

Not literally, of course. That’s the only way I’ve ever come up with to describe the feeling, though. Those prayers carried me through the scary days and nights. They carried me through the months. They carried me.

One of the reasons I know it was the prayer that did it is that I’ve had other crises in my life. I didn’t share those events with a large number of people. I didn’t have their prayers supporting me during those times.

I did not feel the sensation of being carried through my stress.

Prayer will not automatically create caring, compassionate people who act for the benefit of their neighbors. If it did, we’d have been living in the peaceable realm for centuries now, and we’re not. What prayer will do is make it easier for people to find and to foster their care and compassion for their neighbors. What prayer will do is lighten their steps through their days.

We start with prayer.

Then we live out our prayers.

In the fourth chapter of this letter, the author advises his readers to “set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12) Actually, an example for the believers and the unbelievers. One of the scandals of Christianity – of other religions as well, but the scandals of Christianity belong to us – is that we haven’t always treated non-Christians as well as we should. We’ve made war on Muslims. We’ve oppressed Jews. We’ve tortured and executed “heretics,” which basically means somebody whose Christian theology isn’t close enough to yours.

It’s up to us to act better than that. To make sure that there are places for people to live, and to pay people such that they can afford to live there. It’s up to us to see that nobody gets persecuted for their religious beliefs or their skin color or their gender or their relationship status or their disabilities. It’s up to us to create a community that protects and nurtures everyone.

Pray. Act. And we will live quiet and peaceable lives.

Maybe.

We have a lot of power over our own prayers and actions, but every one of us knows there are times we let our feelings get ahead of us. There are times when we feel like we’re not being carried by prayer, but being carried away by some other power within us. That’s part of our humanity, and as much as I’d like to believe that prayer and action can prevent that, I don’t think they can. Not entirely. We have to keep an eye on that within ourselves.

More than that, though, we have to face the presence of prayer for “kings and all who are in high positions” in this text.

Despite Paul’s comments in Romans that we should obey the authorities, the simple truth is that Paul himself disobeyed the authorities multiple times. He got in trouble. A lot. In Second Corinthians he proudly wrote, “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning.” (2 Corinthians 11:24-25) Those, plus his uncounted imprisonments and floggings, were the result of refusing to obey authorities. Some of that would have been due to accusations of heresy – when other people didn’t like his beliefs. Some of that was probably due to what we’d call “disturbing the peace” today.

Paul obeyed a good number of the rules of his society, those of Judea and those of Rome, but not all. Not enough. He died at the legal order of a Roman Emperor.

Sometime in the first half of the second century, Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna wrote, “Pray for all the saints. Pray also for kings, and potentates, and princes, and for those that persecute and hate you, and for the enemies of the cross, that your fruit may be manifest to all, and that ye may be perfect in Him.”

Did you notice? Pray for the saints. Then pray for a group that includes kings, potentates, and princes, and those that persecute and hate you. I think that Polycarp considered the powerful of the Empire as those who persecuted him and his fellow Christians, because, well, they did. Like Paul before him, he was martyred at the orders of a Roman official in the mid-150s.

How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities have set against you? How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities themselves have chosen to do the things that cause havoc in a community: theft, violence, recklessness, carelessness, lies? How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities enshrine religious, racial, or gender prejudice in law? The simple truth is that those who rule have an outsized impact on everyone else.

We pray for them not because they are inherently right, but because their impact is so great. When they do well, everyone benefits. When they do badly, some benefit, and some suffer. Some suffer a lot.

Keep in mind that as First Timothy was being written, Romans prayed to their emperors as deities. As Christian A. Eberhart writes at Working Preacher, “In this kind of imperial milieu, the request in 1 Timothy 2:2 to pray ‘for kings’ instead of ‘to the kings’ takes on new meaning. It implies most ostensibly that rulers, like everybody else, depend on the guidance and mercy of God. Furthermore, it indirectly implies that they are not divine but mortal humans.”

We pray for the rulers for the same reason we pray for everyone else: that it might be easier for them to do well, to do the things that foster quiet and peaceable lives for their communities. We pray for everyone so that they are not so burdened with their cares that they give way to the errors of self-centeredness and fear. We pray for everyone because it takes everyone to make a just society.

We act so that people have someone else to emulate, to work with, to live quietly with, to live peaceably with.

And we insist that this quiet and peace be for everyone, not just for “us,” because when peace is denied to anyone, it will break for everyone.

For everyone we pray.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared sermon as he preaches. Sometimes it’s intentional.

Photo of a peace lily by Eric Anderson.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: One Silver Coin

September 14, 2025

1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

For me, it’s not about coins. It’s about keys. If you want to observe frantic me, hide my keys. I will go through everything and then some to find my keys. I know this from painful experience. I’ll mention that most of the time when I’ve misplaced my keys, it’s because I’ve put them in a pocket other than where I usually put them.

That’s not to say that I haven’t been obsessed with coins. I studied and performed a certain number of magic shows as a pre-adolescent and teen. My very first paying job, in fact, was as a magician for a fair. One of the illusions I worked on for a long time was the classic one of pulling coins from the air and dropping them in a container.

I may be giving something away here, but I couldn’t really pull coins out of thin air. If I had, it would have been a lot simpler collecting the coins needed to make it a really impressive illusion. For months I badgered friends and relations for half-dollar coins, paying in nickels, dimes, and quarters (and the occasional dollar bill if I got lucky) to accumulate the proper hoard. I had quite a collection by the time I got busy with other things and stopped performing.

The coins ended up going toward my first (and last, actually) ten-speed bicycle.

So what is the worth of a silver coin? It’s the value of a crowd-satisfying illusion. It’s the value of feet circling to get tires rolling.

What is the worth of a human being?

“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” (Luke 15:1-2)

There are people who are worth eating with, and there are people who aren’t worth eating with. We all know this. Some people raise the level of the conversation, or they fill the room with laughter. They may bring comfort to people who are sad, or they be so appreciative of what they’re served that it brings a smile to the faces of the hosts. Other people drag a party down. They’re constantly insulting people, or they get into arguments. They don’t seem to notice other people’s feelings, or, heaven help us, their sense of humor leans toward puns.

The scribes and the Pharisees weren’t precisely thinking of that, though they certainly worried about social scandal. In the Roman Empire of the first century, lots of people wouldn’t have been welcome at a table, because if you were a member of some class of people, there would have been other classes of people you wouldn’t eat with. Emperors ate with monarchs and senators, not with slaves. For everyone, there was someone who was…

Less than human.

Not worth as much as I am.

Not worth a single silver coin.

Of all humanity’s sins, this is the one that troubles me the most: when we come up with some reason that I (or we) are better than some individual you, or a collective you. I’m better because of who my parents were. I’m better because of my education. I’m better because of my appointed position. I’m better because I’m male. I’m better because of who attracts me. I’m better because I can hear without aid. I’m better because I can run faster. I’m better because I’m white.

I’m worth a lot.

You’re not.

Quite aside from how delusional all that is, it’s a direct contradiction of Genesis’ assertion of the nature of humanity.

“So God created humans in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

We’re created in the image of God. How can anyone be worth more than that?

How can anyone be worth less than that?

How much is a human being worth?

E. Trey Clark writes at Working Preacher, “…what is surprising is that when the lady finds the coin, she chooses to spend it, and likely the rest of her money, on throwing a party with ‘her friends and neighbors’ (15:9). The picture is even more outrageous than the modest shepherd’s celebration. God is a God who celebrates finding the lost, without restraint.”

To Jesus, a human being is worth a cheer that echoes across the heavens. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

It’s worth noting that both the missing sheep and the lost coin are already part of the flock and the household. God’s flock and God’s household are bigger than we think they are. We tend to put constraints on them, thinking that it’s the people like us, right? “Like us” might be members of the family, or our cultural group. They might be part of our church or political party. “Like us” might be any of those reasons that we thought we were better than others.

In Jesus’ stories, the lost sheep was part of the flock already. The lost coin was there in the house. In Jesus’ stories, the flock and the house are big. All people are those sought by God.

All people are those sought by God.

What is the worth of a human being? To God, each one of us is a silver coin, or a pearl of great price.

What is the worth of a human being to us?

Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Most interpretations of this text emphasize the divine love of Jesus, and while that is certainly present, it may be the human love of Jesus that is most note-worthy in the teaching moment. Jesus prefaces the parables with the question, ‘Who among you….’ This phrasing invites his conversation partners and the audience to place themselves in the narrative, not just as substitutes for God, and not only to evoke their empathy for the Holy One’s compassion. The question challenges them to adjust their attitudes because the actions Jesus describes reflect the expected behavior of any human being.”

Every era in history has lived with the sin of “I am greater than you because…” Ours is no different in that way, but we are seeing it expanding, and we are seeing people of influence and power endorsing it. Let me be clear. I do not believe in the use of violence against people who encourage racial prejudice, who empower men against women, who seek to oppress LGBTQ people, who would turn away the tired and the poor at the borders. No violence. No death. Why? Because they are made in the image of God. They are worth a silver coin. They are pearls of great price. No death.

Nor would I silence them. I would repudiate their ideas. I would reject their policies. I would revive the communities that they have been suppressing. I would lift up the value of every human being and insist upon it in law, culture, and community. Frankly, I would see their ideas and ideals lost and forgotten.

I would follow Jesus in valuing every human being as much as a lost sheep, as much as a silver coin. I would follow Jesus in singing with the angels every time a person finds the love of God.

I would be a human being of worth myself.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes to his prepared text while preaching, so you will find that it sounds something different to how it reads.

The image is A Parable – The Lost Coin, by Hochhalter, Cara B., from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59056 [retrieved September 14, 2025]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Consider

September 7, 2025

Philemon 1:1-21
Luke 14:25-33

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

Well. Just when we were beginning to like you, Jesus.

“In a church I was previously a part of,” writes E. Trey Clark at Working Preacher, “it was not uncommon for one of the pastors to say to the congregation after mentioning a challenging teaching of Jesus, ‘If you can’t say “Amen,” let me hear you say “Ouch.”’ This is one of those texts that calls for ‘Ouch.’”

Anyone here willing to say, “Ouch”? Well, I am. Ouch.

Commentators have, I must say, gone to some lengths to say that when Jesus said, “hate,” he didn’t mean “hate.” That’s the kind of thing that makes me a little uneasy, but I have to admit that Jesus said a lot of things that contradict this instruction to “hate.” Dr. Clark notes that earlier in Luke’s Gospel Jesus specifically instructed us to follow the Law recorded in Deuteronomy 6 to love your neighbor has yourself. I think we’ve got to include family among the neighbors we’re supposed to love.

If Jesus didn’t mean hate, if he didn’t mean to actively work against the interests of father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even life itself, what did he mean?

I think it means that when we plan, when we consider, and especially when we choose, Jesus comes first. God comes first. The realm of God comes first. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Discipleship must center the Holy One not the hopes and plans of the follower.”

Is that what we do? Do we center the Holy One? Or do we plan, do we consider, and do we choose while centering something else?

I’m going to guess we make most of those choices while centering something else.

At the close of this section, Jesus named the most obvious of the things people tend to prioritize over God: possessions. I’m not sure that’s been much better expressed than DuBose Heyward’s lyric in the opera Porgy and Bess, with music and additional lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin:

“De folks wid plenty o’ plenty
Got a lock on de door
‘Fraid somebody’s a-goin’ to rob ’em
While dey’s out a-makin’ more
What for”

Think about it. Do you have things that you will protect before giving them to God?

I’m afraid that I do.

There’s another item on Jesus’ list that’s high up on a lot of people’s priority list. “Life itself,” he said. I’m going to use a more common phrase in contemporary life: safety and security. That’s a phrase that wins elections, isn’t it? The candidate that credibly promises to protect me from crime, from war, from disease: this is the candidate that’s going to succeed, isn’t it?

Mind you, “credibly” just means, “believable.” It doesn’t mean, “accurate,” or “competent,” or “true.” The members of the Caesar family promised security to Rome and embroiled it in decades of assassinations and civil war that ranged from Rome itself to Egypt and Greece. The Nazi party promised security, which was bizarre considering that they’d attempted a violent overthrow of the Bavarian government in 1923. Ten years later Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor despite having been convicted and imprisoned for treason.

It turns out safety and security can come with an unaffordable price. The loss of legal due process. The loss of full participation of all people in society. The loss of public health decisions based on scientific evidence.

Order without law. That’s much too high a price for “safety and security.”

The last category Jesus named – the first one named; I’ve been going backwards – was family. That was a hard one in the first century and it’s a hard one today. We have a lot of formal and informal obligations to our families. We regard their welfare as our welfare, and frequently it is. One of the Ten Commandments requires that children honor their parents, and that doesn’t stop when they become adults.

So no, Jesus couldn’t have literally meant, “hate your father and mother” in violation of the Commandment.

As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “This is real and critical engagement that Jesus is talking about, a stark contrast to the typical depiction of ‘the happy Christian home’ where one’s faith is demonstrated by how committed one is to providing every possible advantage to one’s own.”

“Every possible advantage to one’s own” is not faithful Christian discipleship. When we act primarily in our families’ interests, it’s not much different from acting primarily in our own interests. We see this over and over again in the history of feudal cultures around the world, where a small number of families acting in their own interest exerted extraordinary power against the interests of a very large number of families. The industrial age frequently changed the identity of the families, but it didn’t change the thinking very much, did it? People sought to gain power and influence and wealth to pass along to their children and as they did it other people’s children labored in their factories.

I don’t think any of us are 19th century robber barons, so I think it’s harder to discern whether our acts on behalf of our families are consistent with God’s expectations of love and care for them, or whether they contradict God’s summons to care for our neighbors and our community. So how do we know?

Ask this question: What is the cost to others for this thing that benefits my family? If we’re not imposing burdens, if we’re even relieving burdens to others, then I think discipleship and family run side by side. When others suffer from what benefits my family, though: then, I think, Jesus weeps.

Jesus asked those following him to consider the cost, the cost in wealth, the cost in safety, the cost in family power. It’s something for us to consider not once, but each and every time we need to choose. Consider, consider, consider.

As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “To carry your cross is to carry the choices and burdens and realities of a life that has made a certain commitment — a commitment to a way of life that is committed to bringing about the Kingdom of God here and now.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches, occasionally intentionally.

The image is a photo of the fortified Ingush military tower, ‘Hamishki’, circa 16th century, with Erzi towers and Olgetti village in the background. Armkhi Valley, Republic of Ingushetia, Central Caucasus. Photo by © Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94858812.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Pride at Home

August 31, 2025

Proverbs 25:6-7
Luke 14:1, 7-14

Of the classic “Seven Deadly Sins” – pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth – I am vulnerable to… all of them. Which makes me, I suspect, much like most human beings.

Of that list, however, the one I’m most conscious of as an ongoing problem is pride. You may have noticed that I have no problem in standing before you from week to week merrily telling you what you should do. It takes a certain amount of gall to do that. And I’ve got it.

Jesus took an ancient proverb about how to behave in the royal court – cautiously – and brought it home. “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence” became, when Jesus spoke of it, advice to take a seat at the edge of a wedding reception rather than heading for the family table. Jesus’ hearers didn’t spend time in royal courts, unlike those who assembled the collection of proverbs into the book we call, well, Proverbs. They knew all about the complexities of relationships in a Judean or Galilean village.

As E. Trey Clark writes at Working Preacher, “In Greco-Roman society, formal meals like this would often take place at a U-shaped table. Each guest would be assigned a seat at the table that demonstrated their rank or social standing—from highest to lowest. It would be deeply shameful to sit at the place of honor, only to be moved to the lowest place.”

We do not live in a culture that operates the way Jesus’ culture did. The social sanction of shame and the social reward of approval are still powerful, but not as powerful as they were for Jesus and his contemporaries. Still, we would hesitate to cross certain lines, wouldn’t we?

As we enter the autumn, we’re approaching what I tend to think of as “fundraising dinner season” here in Hilo, because aren’t there a lot of them in November and December? Cheryl Lindsay, the UCC’s Minister for Worship and Theology, used to work as an event planner. She writes at UCC.org, “One of the last and most challenging tasks would often be completing the seating chart. Fundraising events, in particular, make this delicate and extremely political work. For events that worked on the first-come, first-served basis, it was a simple matter of tracking reservations in order. Most events, however, did not use that framework. Honored guests, corporate sponsors, organizational leadership were all statuses that needed to be considered in placement. Other relational knowledge, such as collegiality, also played a role. No one worked on seating assignments without having some insider knowledge and sensitivity.”

Having attended more than a few of these dinners over the years, I can attest to that.

Pride, however, isn’t just about putting yourself in a better social position. For me, at least, pride happens when I think I’m right. When I think you’re wrong. In and of itself, being right isn’t pride itself. It’s not hubris to say, “I know something that somebody else doesn’t.” It is, in fact, a likely experience for just about any of us in this fairly specialized work environment of ours. I’ve had training you haven’t; I’m going to know things you don’t. You’ve had training I haven’t. You’re going to know things I don’t.

It’s possible that I’m wrong about some of the things I think I know, even the things that I spent the most time learning. Possible? Let’s face it, it’s likely. I just don’t know what they are. We can all think of things we were taught as true that simply aren’t. The late British fantasy author Terry Pratchett used to refer to education as the process of learning less untrue lies, and there’s something to be said for that idea. I learned the rules of English grammar and they were first taught to me as fairly rigid things. My teachers didn’t mention that some of the best writers broke those rules. In physics, the work of Isaac Newton describes a lot of the reality that we could see and measure in the 18th century – but when we could measure even more things in the 20th century it no longer worked. Along came the ideas of Albert Einstein. Less untrue lies.

Then there are the things that people teach that aren’t true and never were true but people believed it. They still believe it. Things like the inherent moral superiority of this culture over that culture, of this gender over that gender, of this race over that race. Whether it’s Romans, Chinese, Indians, British, or Americans, those things never were true. But they were taught that way. And sometimes we believed them.

Some people still want you to believe them.

Don’t believe them.

You have worth. You matter. But not because of your nationality, the place of your birth, the heritage of your family, your gender, or even your training and education. You have worth because God created you and delights in you. You are special and unique, and everyone is special and unique because God created them and delights in them, too. Even the annoying folks who bring out their pride and tell you what to do as if you didn’t matter as much as they do.

Yes, they have worth. Just don’t believe them when they tell you how much more they’re worth than you are.

“But let’s face it,” writes Debie Thomas at JourneyWithJesus.net, “humility is a tricky thing.  We too easily conflate it with self-effacement, low self-esteem, and complicity in the face of oppression.  Even if we manage to define it in healthy ways, humility betrays us; the very instant at which I claim to achieve humility is the moment when it eludes me.  Worse, very little in our culture rewards or supports the humble.  Whether we’re talking entertainment, politics, sports, or even religion, we in Western cultures have an unhealthy admiration for the loudest, the biggest, and the greatest.  Whether we recognize it or not, we are known around the world for idolizing the superlative.  What would happen to our discourse if we shunned the word ‘best?’”

What would happen if we abandoned the ridiculous assertion time and time again that somebody is the “Greatest of All Time”? I hear it time and again, usually with the acronym “GOAT,” which confused me a lot the first few times I heard it without knowing that the letters stood for “Greatest of All Time.” I grew up on the Peanuts comic strip, in which the one to blame for a failure was often called the goat. I still have that in the back of my mind when somebody gets called the GOAT.

What would happen if we abandoned the notion that each of us has to be the best at something? I’m not the best preacher you’ll ever hear. I’m not the best photographer or poet or musician. That’s OK. I don’t have to be the best. More to the point, I don’t need to insist on being the best. I just need to strive to be better than I was yesterday, to approach the fullness that God imagined at my birth.

I also need to separate knowledge from power. I may be right about something, but most of the time that does not give me license to require it of you. It might not even be appropriate to try to persuade you of it. It might not even be appropriate to mention it. The exceptions are usually when somebody is being harmed. Then it’s time to say, “Somebody is hurting because of what you’re doing. Please stop.” In other matters, though, it’s not my place to tell you what to do.

You know. Like I’m merrily doing now.

As Melissa Bane Sevier writes at her blog, “If you are one of those people who thinks you deserve the best place at the banquet, think again.  You need to be humbled.  And if you are one of those people who thinks (or you’ve been told) you only deserve the lowest place at the banquet, think again.  You need to be strengthened—you need to accept your own privileged status as a child of God.

“At God’s table, every place is the same.  There is always enough to go around.  There is always room for you.  Be strong and be humble.  They are not mutually exclusive.”

Pride might feel good for a while. Self-respect, one that knows we have limits, feels a lot better for a lot longer. Pride might make big changes in the world around us, and some of those might be improvements – but in the long run, people who act out of pride will ignore the consequences to those around them, will even adopt cruelty as a means to their ends. Pride might build a family, a business, or even a nation, but these are families, businesses, and nations with a crumbling foundation. It may take centuries, but they will fall.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the prepared text above will not precisely match the sermon as he delivered it.

The image is “A Parable – Where to Sit” by Cara B. Hochhalter, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59048 [retrieved August 31, 2025]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Unlawful (Sort Of)

August 24, 2025

Isaiah 58:9-14
Luke 13:10-17

Let’s see if we can sort out the question of “lawfulness.” Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. Was that forbidden by the Old Testament law?

It’s a little fuzzy, to be honest, and first century rabbis didn’t entirely agree. As Carolyn J. Sharp writes at Working Preacher, “The list of types of forbidden labor does not discuss healing. Rabbinic authorities agreed that lifesaving intervention was permitted on the Sabbath, but were divided on whether healings of non-life-threatening conditions, such as a withered hand (Mark 3:1–5; parallels in Matthew 12:9–13; Luke 6:6–10) or the orthopedic disease that had afflicted the woman for years in our Luke 13 passage, should be healed on the Sabbath.”

There were people who drew a very firm line. In a document known as the Damascus Document found among Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran, it reads, “No man shall help a beast give birth on the Sabbath day; and if it falls in a pit or a hollow, he shall not lift it out on the Sabbath.” The community that wrote those words, however, was an extremely pious one, and may have substantially removed itself from the “sinful world.” In other words, they represented an extreme, because rather more people would have assisted an animal on the Sabbath.

Jesus, therefore, might have argued from the other end of the spectrum. He might have said, “It is lawful to save life on the Sabbath day. Does it not follow that one should extend healing on the Sabbath day?”

That’s probably the argument that the synagogue leader expected. What he said rather anticipates it, I think. “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured.” In other words, there was healing which was an emergency, and could be done on the Sabbath, and there was healing that wasn’t an emergency, and could wait. Until Sunday.

There was another argument that Jesus might have offered. To quote Dr. Sharp again, “Some interpreters would aver that miracle-working ought not be forbidden, even theoretically, in regulations designed to shape faithful life in the covenant community, since stipulations regarding what is permitted and what is forbidden were intended to honor the Holy One whose divine power would be performing any authentic miracle that occurred.”

In other words, can you challenge the work that God chooses to do, on the Sabbath day or at any time? Jesus might have simply observed that a miracle is the work of God, the one who gave the Sabbath commandment. God can do what God wants to do. And if God thinks that the Sabbath is an appropriate day for healing, then it is.

That’s a pretty good argument, don’t you think?

Why didn’t Jesus make it?

Instead, he chose one of the most mundane acts that was permissible to observant Jews on the Sabbath: untying an animal that had been tied up overnight so that it could make its way to the watering trough. That’s an absolutely necessary accommodation in a pre-industrial agricultural community. You can’t condemn animals to thirst for a day. That’s cruel on its face, and it puts your livestock’s health at risk. Even though tying or untying knots was considered work inappropriate for Sabbath, you could untie them to lead an animal to water.

That’s just common sense. Everyday. One of the things you just don’t think about.

It’s also one of the most profound things that you can do for any creature: set it free so that it can slake it thirst.

It’s thirsty. And it’s bound.

Set it free. Make sure there’s water.

Set it free.

As Ira Brent Driggers writes at Working Preacher, “In Jesus’ view, since the Sabbath law commemorates and celebrates Israel’s liberation, it ought to be a day for enacting — not inhibiting — the present-day liberation of Israelites. Moreover, given the custom of providing water for thirsty livestock on the Sabbath (verse 15), it is surely appropriate to heal a long-suffering Israelite on the Sabbath (verse 16).”

The Sabbath commandment, in fact, has its roots in the liberation of Israel. Most of the Ten Commandments come without an explanation. “Do not steal,” for example. But a few get some expansion, for instance the commandment against misusing the name of God, “for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.” The Sabbath commandment, uniquely, has two explanations.

The first is found in Exodus 20, and it’s the one most of us know best. We keep the Sabbath because God rested on the seventh day from the labor of Creation. Six days work, one day rest, just like God.

The second is found in Deuteronomy 5, and it reads, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

The Sabbath is the celebration of freedom. The Sabbath is the embodiment of freedom. Slaves cannot take a day off. Free people can.

How appropriate, then, for somebody to be freed from pain on the Sabbath day?

More to the point, how appropriate is it for us to put freedom front and center in our religious practice?

I don’t mean a life of “freedom” that excuses or pathetically justifies cruelty. If you’d like that, there are plenty of religious leaders out there who’ll accommodate you. “Do what you like,” they’ll say, “and you’ll be forgiven.” Frankly, there’s some truth to that. God’s forgiveness is, thankfully, considerably greater than mine. That does not mean that God issued liberty to harm others or ignore their pain.

Instead, this is a liberty that permits and fosters the growth of each human being into the person God imagined.

There are cultures in this world that don’t think women should be educated. The most famous activist for education for girls is, of course, Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt in 2012 and is the youngest person to have received a Nobel Peace Prize at age 17 for her advocacy for educating girls in Pakistan.

If Pakistan’s culture seems a long way off, let’s remember that a number of churches refuse to ordain women, most notably the largest single one, the Roman Catholic Church. The United States of America only gave women the right to vote in 1920, and the current Secretary of Defense has approvingly reposted videos in which conservative pastors assert that women should not have the right to vote. Mind you, a Pentagon spokesperson has claimed that the Secretary certainly endorses women’s right to vote, even as he fires senior female generals and admirals at a stunning rate. According to Tom Nichols at The Atlantic, “Of the three dozen four-star officers on active duty in the U.S. armed forces, none is female, and none of the administration’s pending appointments for senior jobs even at the three-star level is a woman.”

I would guess that the woman Jesus met in the synagogue that day would have liked to be liberated from a lot of sexism.

I am quite sure she was glad to be freed from pain. For some disabled people, healing stories are troublesome. Those whose disability brings physical pain tend to say that they would like to be liberated from it. The biggest obstacles most disabled people face, however, is the casual way in which we have constructed things that make it hard for them to enter or to use. How many steps do you climb or descend each day (you may even have a device to measure that)? How many of those steps are an unnecessary obstacle for someone with crutches or a wheelchair? Why did we ever build street lights, especially pedestrian walk signals, without an audible signal?

Is it because, somewhere the backs of our minds, that we believe just a little bit that if someone is disabled that it’s their fault somehow? That we’re relieved of considering them, or caring about them, or making the way accessible for them?

No. We’re supposed to help them as they make their way to freedom.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I am not accustomed to thinking of the Church as a place where hunched, crippled, exhausted people are invited, encouraged, and released to ‘stand up straight.’  Especially not people who are disenfranchised and marginalized by those who hold power and authority both inside and outside the Church.  Women, people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, the poor, the homeless, the elderly, the incarcerated, the mentally ill, the differently abled, the uneducated or under-educated, the spiritually broken.”

Let’s make this church, let’s make every church, let’s make the Church of Jesus Christ one in which everyone can find welcome, affection, and most of all, release from what binds them. Let’s make this Church of Jesus Christ into one fit for the entire human community. Let’s make this Church of Jesus Christ into one fit for the all-encompassing love of God.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric tends to improvise while preaching, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally. The sermon he prepared will not be identical to the sermon he delivered.

The image is “Christ Heals a Crippled Woman,” a print by Philips Galle based on a design by Anthonie Blocklandt for a Dutch Bible (ca. 1577-1579). Digital copy by Rijksmuseum – http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.411762, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84445705.