Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Hope Worth Hoping For

November 30, 2025

Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14

There’s an old joke that tells of a man who saw another man beating his head against a wall.

“Is something wrong?” he asked that man.

“Oh, nothing’s wrong,” said the second man, but he winced as he hit his head against the wall again.

“Then why are you beating your head against a wall?” asked the first man.

“Because it will feel so good when I stop.”

In a 2022 essay at JourneyWithJesus.net, Amy Frykolm observes that a lot of our news reading involves predictions of the future. She writes, “We tell ourselves these stories about the future because they allow us to imagine that we can prepare, that we know what’s coming, that if we only analyze the future rightly, we can create viable safety plans. The bigger the predicted catastrophe, the greater we imagine that just by knowing it is coming, we can avoid its most adverse effects. In other words, we use predictions about the future to try to escape the basic vulnerability of being human.

“But Advent is a time in the Christian tradition when we acknowledge that even as we anticipate something we know is coming — the Word, incarnate — we can’t comprehend it.”

Around two and three quarters millennia ago, Isaiah imagined the future and chose hope. It wasn’t an easy choice. Isaiah didn’t think much of the way things were going in his home city of Jerusalem. In chapter one he wrote:

Your new moons and your appointed festivals
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove your evil deeds
    from before my eyes;
cease to do evil;
    learn to do good;
seek justice;
    rescue the oppressed;
defend the orphan;
    plead for the widow.

Isaiah 1:14-17

How do you know things are going badly? The most vulnerable are suffering. As I and others keep saying, it’s all about the widows and the orphans.

As Michael Chan writes at Working Preacher, “In this text, promise and judgement are not contradictory realities: judgment serves promise, and contributes to bringing about the fulfillment of promise.”

Isaiah could not hope for the continuation of what was. People were suffering because of the actions of other people, actions which God had specifically forbidden, actions which God had reminded them over and over again through other prophets not to do. To make things worse, the nation faced a massive external threat. The Assyrian Empire had determined to conquer Egypt. Between the two lay a series of small countries, including the two Jewish nations of Israel and Judah. The Assyrian invasion ended the existence of the northern kingdom of Israel. Judah, Isaiah’s home, barely survived.

When Isaiah dreamed of swords becoming plowshares and spears becoming pruning hooks, of weapons of war becoming tools for planting and pruning, there were a lot of swords and spears coming his way.

He might have hoped for something else. He might have hoped for a Divine victory that overcame the Assyrians. He might have hoped for a new David who would not just chase the Assyrians from Judah, but turn conqueror in his own right, and become ruler of Mesopotamia. Perhaps this new monarch would have such power that he could achieve the Assyrians’ ambition and control Egypt as well. What an achievement that would be. That would be hundreds, thousands times better than David had done.

Isaiah seems to have worked directly with Judah’s kings (he had a long career and served four of them). I’m sure they would have loved to hear that kind of hope.

That’s not the hope he chose.

What is hope and how do you choose it? Rather like love, we tend to think of hope as a feeling, and like love, there’s a truth to that. I can feel affection for someone. That’s love. I can feel positive about the future. That’s hope.

We don’t choose feelings, however, so feelings can’t be virtues. Feelings happen. We don’t control them, and when feelings start to have too much power over us there’s therapy. Fortunately we can often influence our feelings, which is why therapy works, but influence isn’t choice, which is why therapy can be long and hard.

There is another way to think of love, however, and that is choice. To love someone is to set their interests at or above your own. It’s what good parents do for their children. It’s what couples getting married promise to do. It’s what our firefighters have been doing recently during these terrible fires. It’s what John meant when he wrote, “God so loved the world.”

Likewise there is a way to think of hope as a choice. When I hope, I choose to imagine a different world. I choose to believe that things can be better than they are. I choose to embrace a future that improves the present. I choose to live toward, move toward, act toward that future.

I choose a chrysalis.

I choose what to hope for.

That’s important. As I mentioned, Isaiah could have hoped for a sprawling Judean empire. It would have pleased the king, no doubt. He didn’t. He chose to hope for something radically different, different, in fact, from anything he or his contemporaries had experienced. He hoped for peace.

What will we hope for? What will we imagine? What will we believe in? What will we embrace? What will we live toward, move toward, and act toward?

I think we should hope for something worthy of Isaiah. I think we should hope for something worthy of Jesus.

Hope can be so small, can’t it? “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow.” Actually, I do, because it makes some kinds of photography easier. But that’s a pretty limited hope, isn’t it? That’s pretty much just for me. “I hope the stock market keeps rising.” That’s a bigger hope, to be sure, but it sure sounds like it’s still mostly about me, and it’s also a hope where all you’ve got to do is take the long view. In the short term, stock valuations can be really volatile. In the long term, diversified investments rise in value.

I’d like a bigger hope than that.

There’s a phrase with the abbreviation “B-HAG,” which stands for “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.” It’s often recommended that companies, organizations, and advocacy groups choose at least one Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal when they plan. It’s supposed to raise the energy and the investment of time, resources, and labor. And you know, it seems to work. People work for something worth working for.

People hope for something worth hoping for.

Do you remember the song Sammy Davis, Jr., used to sing? Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse wrote it, and Lady Gaga recorded it last year.

Gonna build a mountain
From a little hill
Gonna build me a mountain
‘Least I hope I will
Gonna build a mountain
Gonna build it high
I don’t know how I’m gonna do it
I only know I’m gonna try

Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse

Building a mountain is a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. It’s a hope worth hoping for.

Jesus chose a hope worth hoping for. He chose to hope for communities in which people honored God by caring for one another. He chose to hope that ordinary people would give of themselves for the benefit of others. He chose to hope that power could be made perfect in weakness. He chose to hope that love was stronger than death.

What’s a hope worth hoping for?

I could start with the end of war. It’s brought a lot of misery, a lot of suffering, a lot of death. Let’s do without that.

I could go on to the end of greed. According to the Federal Reserve, as of the end of June, half of Americans possessed 5.4% of the wealth. You heard that right. The other half hold 94.6% of the wealth. The top ten percent of the wealthiest Americans possess 63%.

I don’t think it’s supporting the widows and the orphans.

I hope for the end of greed.

I hope for a world of people that care. I hope for people who plant and harvest. I hope for people who create and build. I hope for people who enjoy beauty and share it. I hope for people who tread lightly on the Earth.

A Big, Hairy, Audacious Hope? Yes, I’d say it is.

A hope worth hoping.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching. Sometimes he decides to do it; sometimes changes just happen.

The image is a Russian icon of Isaiah by an unknown 18th 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 Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Righteous Shepherd

November 23, 2025

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Luke 23:33-43

Ancient Israel had a somewhat romantic view of shepherds. They pictured themselves as herding people rather than farming people, people of the hillsides rather than the plains. They ignored lots of the gritty details of shepherding, including the long hours, low pay, and lengthy list of discomforts. Rather they praised the virtues of the shepherd, including attentiveness, diligence, bravery, and self-sacrifice.

Over and over again in the writings of the Old Testament, the Hebrew writers compared their monarchs to shepherds. In that best remembered psalm, the one-time shepherd who became a monarch compared a shepherd to God.

Both the psalmists and the prophets urged the nations’ leaders to emulate the virtues of the shepherd, to keep the people together, to attend to their needs, and to protect them from outside dangers. The Scriptural record says that on some occasions they were successful. A few of the kings of Israel and Judah received the praise of the prophets themselves and, later, the ones who wrote the histories of the Bible. But most of the time, both prophets and historians sounded more like Jeremiah here, who most likely had the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, in mind when he wrote, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD. Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock and drive them away, and you have not attended to them.”

I’m afraid it’s not unusual in human societies that people call upon their leaders to emulate the virtues of the shepherd and, instead, find themselves afflicted with the gritty realities of sheep herding: long hours, low pay, and a lengthy list of discomforts. In the meantime, the leaders live large.

It’s an old, old story.

Jeremiah lived that old, old story even as he told it so frankly and so boldly. The “righteous branch” from David’s line translates the Hebrew “Tzemach Tzedek,” an ironic reflection on the king’s name, “Tzedekiya,” or “the LORD is my righteousness.” Essentially, Jeremiah said that God was not the king’s righteousness, and another branch from David’s family tree would do much better, thank you very much.

Around six hundred years later, Jesus excited a lot of interest, a lot of speculation, and a lot of comment as he moved through Galilee and Judea. Jews had come to long for, even expect Jeremiah’s “righteous branch,” an “anointed one,” or “mesiach,” which we tend to pronounce “Messiah.” This would be someone to free them from the foreign rule of Rome and to clear the greatly disliked descendants of Herod the Great from their thrones. This would be a new monarch who would fulfill the yearnings of the centuries for a ruler who would display the virtues of the shepherd: attentiveness, diligence, bravery, and self-sacrifice.

But maybe not as much self-sacrifice as Luke described in chapter 23. As Debra J. Mumford writes at Working Preacher, “If Jesus was true royalty, he would not have been crucified on a cross. Secondly, even if Jesus somehow ended up on a cross, as a person with authority in those days, He would have had the power and influence to secure his own deliverance. So, they likely mocked Jesus because it was obvious to them that Jesus could not have been the person some claimed him to be.”

I really can’t overstate this. Kings didn’t get crucified. Saviors didn’t submit to a cross. Messiahs didn’t get executed by the ones they were supposed to overthrow.

The center of the Christian Gospel is that this time, that’s exactly what happened. The center of the Christian Gospel is that a crucified Messiah is exactly what we need. The center of the Christian Gospel is that even death cannot overthrow the righteous shepherd.

The prophets and the psalmists called for a monarch who would demonstrate the virtues of a shepherd for centuries. Even they, I’m sure, would have stood agog, even aghast, to see Jesus take that call to a cross.

What we have in Christianity is a monarch who sets aside the privileges of a king for the virtues of a shepherd.

We’ve spent the last two millennia trying to come to terms with that.

As Alyce McKenzie writes in her blog:

How can a crucified king bring us life? How can a forgiving king right the wrongs done to us and that we have done to others?

How can a peaceful king end the wars that rage within us and around us?

How can a compassionate king find the strength to lead us?

The result, I’m afraid, has been history in which Christian leaders imitated the rulers Jeremiah criticized so harshly more than they emulated Jesus. Contemporary American Christian Nationalism would look comfortably familiar to those who ordered the destruction of the Cathars in the 14th century, or authorized the Doctrine of Discovery in the 15th century, or launched the wars between Protestants and Catholics that afflicted the people of Europe for hundreds of years.

Jesus’ crucifixion forces us to ask who he is, as Emerson Powery writes at Working Preacher. “What kind of king will he be? Posing the question in this way is really another way of asking a more personal question: what kind of church should we be?”

Will we imitate Jesus, or imitate those who crucified him?

This congregation is not, I believe, filled with people in positions of power. We are not the movers and the shakers of the time. We are, however, moving and shaking within our own circles.

First, who are we moving and shaking for?

We need to move and shake for ourselves to some degree. Eating is a good thing. Housing is a good thing. And despite the mythology about people who do nothing and live large that is so widespread in the United States, the only people who live in comfort without working live in mansions. Most people do the job of a living wage, but they’ve also got to advocate for a living wage or they may not get one. As I keep saying, this nation believes in the value of hard work right up until it’s time to pay for it.

I’d argue, however, that if we’re only moving and shaking for ourselves, we’re subject to the same criticisms Jeremiah made of those ancient monarchs.

Even if we’re moving and shaking for our families, that’s still not enough, is it? Those ancient monarchs did what they could to see that their children inherited the power and the privilege that they did – sometimes they did it well, and sometimes they didn’t. But while they focused their attention on the welfare of their own family, what happened to the country? What happened to the people they were supposed to care for?

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture,” says the LORD.

Is it enough to include our friends in our care and concern? Or at least those among our neighbors who think right, act right, do right? A “coalition of the willing,” if you like. Well. Perhaps. It’s pretty good. You can build a community that way. But is it enough?

No. Not according to Jesus.

Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “From the Incarnation at his birth to this moment of humiliation on the cross, Jesus has demonstrated that the kindom of God does not reflect the dominance-driven kingdoms of this world. Strength does not come from exerting one’s power against the powerless or stripping power and authority from enemies. The power of the Spirit enables us to love our enemies and to share power and other resources for the good of all.”

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Jesus did his moving and shaking for the entire realm of God.

He also showed us how. Not, as Rev. Lindsay wrote, by exerting brute power over enemies. That’s the way of the monarchs, not the shepherds. Instead, it’s with forgiveness. Mercy. Sharing. Love.

That’s what a righteous shepherd looks like.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “If there is any moment in the Christian calendar that must smack all smugness out of us — all arrogance, all self-righteousness, all contempt — this one has to be it. Our king was a dead man walking. His chosen path to glory was the cross. If paradise was anywhere, it was with him, only and exactly where his oppressors left him to die: Today. With Me. Paradise.”

That is Christ’s gift to us: Today. With me. Paradise. It is also Christ’s challenge to us that we imitate the righteous shepherd, not the unrighteous monarch, and extend to others that same gift:

Today. With me. Paradise.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes to his prepared text while preaching, sometimes accidentally, and sometimes deliberately. What you read and what you heard will not precisely match.

The image is Christ and the Robber (1893) by Nikolai Ge, 1831-1894, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59662 [retrieved November 23, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ge_ChristandRobber.jpg.
Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: An Example to Imitate

November 16, 2025

Isaiah 65:17-25
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

In some circles, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is a very popular verse. “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” I think it’s safe to say that it supports a worldview in which activity, effort, and industry are valued. It contributes to the idea of the Protestant work ethic, which says that labor itself is a Good Thing.

In some other circles, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is a very problematic verse. Folks in these circles ask about those who, for one reason or another, can’t work. They speak of factors like health or available employment. They may also raise the virtues of generosity and sharing. Jesus, they observe, didn’t ask any of the five thousand to do some work before he fed them on a Galilean hillside.

So which is it? Eat only through work? Or should everyone eat?

Frank L. Crouch writes at Working Preacher, “In scripture, the question of how we justly distribute food and other resources within our communities lies on a continuum, with this statement from Paul on one end: ‘Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,’ and a statement from Jesus on the other end, ‘Give to everyone who begs from you [Greek “aitéo”: asks, requests, pleads for, demands], and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you’ (Matthew 5:40-42). Or, from the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, ‘Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).’”

So… it’s both.

I could end the sermon right here, but I’m not sure any of us would be impressed with the amount of work that took.

It’s probably not what Paul had in mind, either.

The Greek word Paul used that the NRSV translated as “idle” has other meanings as well. As Jennifer S. Wyant notes at Working Preacher, “Outside of the New Testament, this word means ‘disorderly or irresponsibly’ and is often found within the context of battle imagery, of men not being ready at their post or ready for the fight ahead because of their disorder.” That fits with the description of “busybodies” in verse 11. The people Paul criticized weren’t just relying on other people to support them. They were disrupting the church community at the same time.

So who were they?

As I thought about it, I came right up against the fact that very few people in the first century could eat without work. According to a 2017 article by J. W. Hanson and S. G. Ortman (1), between three-quarters and four-fifths of the population of the Roman Empire lived in the rural country. In other words, they worked farms, or possibly in quarries or mines. There was very little question of working or not working on a farm. As anyone with a garden knows, let alone a farm, getting the plants you want to grow without having the plants you don’t want to grow growing with them requires continuous labor.

Thessalonica, of course, was a city. It had a port that provided trade connections for a significant area of Macedonia. That meant a higher proportion of skilled workers, of financial supports, and of simply more wealthy people. Still, it’s worth remembering that most of the residents of the city would have been quite poor by our standards. According to Sarah E. Bond, a good number of them, based on the archaeology of Pompeii, were probably slaves, perhaps up to a fifth.

So who, I wondered, could be eating without work? It wouldn’t have been the slaves. It wouldn’t have been the poor laborers. It wouldn’t have been the bakers or blacksmiths or builders. Who could it be?

The clue was in what Paul wrote just before this verse about working and eating. “…We were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right but in order to give you an example to imitate.”

Who gets fed by a religious community? Who might have the right to be fed by a religious community? Religious leaders. Yep. Folks like… me.

Well. That’s awkward, isn’t it? Especially just a couple weeks after you passed a budget that will feed me for the next year. Especially in a year when I took three months off to be an idle busybody. Yeah. That’s awkward.

Paul was the apostle of the new Christian communities of Greece. And he had a fundamental notion of what was important in these new Christian communities. It was, first and foremost, trust in salvation through Jesus. A close second was the welfare of these new Christian communities. “Let all things be done for building up,” he told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 14:26). “Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor,” he wrote the church in Rome (Rom. 15:2). “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up,” he said to the Ephesians (Eph. 4:29). And he wrote, “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing,” in a previous letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:11).

He did his level best, he said, to give them an example of building up. Bring the gospel as a gift, and don’t make the recipients “pay” for it. It might be appropriate to be supported in that way – Paul says it would have been, but he didn’t take advantage of it. He chose not to take advantage.

In contrast, others seemed willing to take advantage of their positions of leadership. “It is not that they are simply lazy, or heaven forbid, unable to work,” writes Mariam Karnell at Working Preacher. “These people are able to work, but use that ability to create chaos in the community. As such, they directly contradict the example of the apostles who by status would not have had to work but did anyway. This passage has nothing to do with whether a social welfare should be in place to catch the helpless in society; this is entirely concerned with those who should and can work but refuse and instead direct their energies to causing chaos in the community. This day and age when it is entirely possible, and disturbingly common, to work full time — or more than full time — and still not earn a living wage, Christians need to be profoundly careful with our rhetoric about those who depend on welfare for survival. We should be fighting for justice and help for those in that position, rather than carelessly branding people with this passage.”

As I said right at the start, plenty of people have chosen to brand people with this passage. So let’s take a quick look at who gets support through the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in Hawai’i. Well, it’s a large number. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, in 2024, 161,600 Hawai’i residents received SNAP benefits, 1 in 9. That’s a lot. It’s actually lower than the figure in the United States as a whole, where it’s 1 in 8. Over half of SNAP participants are in families with children. 35% are in working families. 37% are in households which include kupuna or disabled adults.

While I’m sure they’re in there somewhere, that doesn’t sound like an overwhelming number of lazy busybodies.

The average monthly benefit per person in 2024 was $378. That will buy just short of 19 large pizzas. Cheese pizzas, no other toppings. Not including delivery. I guess that would feed me; a pizza every other day for 30 days. It’s not extravagant, though, is it?

And why are a third of Hawai’i’s SNAP recipients in families where somebody is employed? Because they’re not being paid enough to cover housing and their other bills and buy food. Our food aid programs aren’t subsidizing lazy people. They’re enabling large companies to pay their employees less than it costs to live.

What builds up our community, both within the church and in the wider society? What makes us stronger? What makes us wiser? What makes us more gracious?

I don’t think Paul or Jesus would say that hungry neighbors contribute to a healthy community. I don’t think they’d say that rigid lack of empathy or outright cruelty make us a more blessed island. I don’t think they’d say that those who are already struggling to survive should starve if they can’t persuade someone to pay them a living wage.

I do think they’d call upon those in positions like mine, or in some place that you might occupy, to demonstrate the work of Christ: compassion, support, encouragement, and yes: food.

That, I’d say, is an example to follow.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

(1) Hanson, J. W.; Ortman, S. G. (2017). “A Systematic Method for Estimating the Populations of Greek and Roman Settlements”. Journal of Roman Archaeology. 30: 301–324

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the recording does not precisely match the prepared sermon text.

The image is Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (ca. 1618-1620) – Blaffer Foundation Collection, Houston, TX, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=596565.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Shaken and Reshaken

November 9, 2025

Haggai 2:1-9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

In the first century in which the Apostle Paul lived, Christianity was very new. It wasn’t always clear how it was supposed to work. Its best-known leaders didn’t always agree.

Then there were the basic problems of living in the first century. Most people were poor, very few people were middle class, and far fewer people were rich. “Give us this day our daily bread” was a heartfelt prayer for most people. Injury and illness could be much more dangerous than they are for us. Without antibiotics any infection could overwhelm a body’s ability to survive and recover.

And then, there were the problems of becoming a Christian. It was a new faith, unfamiliar to most people. As an offshoot of Judaism, it would appeal to some Jews, but concern others who worried that their faith was being corrupted. Paul himself had been on both sides of that argument. Far more people, however, would have followed the religious traditions of Greece, Rome, or Egypt, and found Christianity unfamiliar, unsettling, and even threatening.

In Thessalonica, it seems that the Christian community had suffered a lot of pressure from those around them. That’s why Paul wrote. In First Thessalonians, Paul wrote, “For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did…” (1 Thess. 2:14). We don’t know what the source of the persecution was. It might have been the pressures of prejudice from those around them. They might have been overcharged or refused service in shops. They might have faced taunts in the street. They might even have suffered assault and injury.

Or there might have been official suppression of the Christian community. They might have been “moved aside,” or arrested, tried, and punished for not following the customs of Rome. And, of course, there might have been both. Taunts in the streets leading to provocations and assaults, which were followed up by arrest, appearance before the magistrates, and further punishment.

That happens to marginalized people. In a lot of places. In a lot of time periods.

Whatever was happening, it concerned Paul, who had been instrumental in founding the church in Thessalonica. He feared that the suffering would drive people away from the church, and away from the faith itself. “I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain,” he wrote in First Thessalonians. “But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love” (1 Thess. 3:5-6).

They had held on. They had not been shaken.

Shaking is a frequent part of the life of faith. Or rather, getting shaken. It was the situation of Jesus’ friends and followers. Jesus kept shaking their expectations. It was the situation hundreds of years before when the exiles who returned from Babylon to Jerusalem found that they had more work before them to rebuild God’s Temple than they’d anticipated. They’d been shaken. Haggai reminded them that God shakes the world.

The Thessalonians had been shaken by their persecution. They had been shaken, but they had not fallen.

Paul feared, however, that they might fall to something else, something that you and I don’t fear quite so much. “…We beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.”

Why would he fear that? Because the Thessalonians wanted it to be there.

I don’t blame them.

There has been more than one occasion in my life where I have thrown my hands into the air and said something like, “Come, Lord Jesus!” What I meant was: I was ready for the Second Coming. I’d seen or felt too much pain. I’d seen or felt too much oppression. I’d seen or felt too much, and it was time for it to come to an end. Let history close. Let the new sunrise dawn. I was ready for not just a change, but The Change.

So far, to be clear, that hasn’t happened.

The Thessalonians, I suspect, were drawn to predictions of the end, of Jesus’ imminent return, because they had suffered. They’d suffered more than they wanted. They’d suffered more than what was just. They’d suffered more than they thought they could bear. “Come, Lord Jesus!” was a cry to end the suffering. It was a cry to have mercy.

Mariam Kamell writes at Working Preacher, “For some churches and preachers, it becomes a fascination bordering on an obsession, but the teaching of ‘escape’ through the rapture leaves people paralyzed about how they ought to live in the world now while they wait. In a sense, life can become a mere holding cell, a waiting pattern till they can escape and go to heaven. But Paul’s focus is to remind them instead of all the things that need to happen first, so they ought to trust God and continue on doing good rather than obsessing about the end.”

My guess is that you are not likely to be obsessing about the end of time, or the end of history, or the end of the world as we know it. I would further guess, however, that something has happened in your life, perhaps recently, perhaps some time ago, where you’ve asked, “When is this going to end? I’m tired of being shaken. I’m weary of being reshaken.”

When is this going to end?

I remember feeling like that about the Puna eruption in 2018. I remember feeling like that about Hurricane Lane that same year, which settled off the southwestern coast and dumped heavy rain on us for three solid days. I remember feeling like that during uncertain times of my career as a minister, during health crises in the family, during the breakup of my marriage.

When is this going to end?

The Thessalonians wanted to know. They wanted to read things in their time as signs of the end. They wanted the suffering to be over.

Paul, however, couldn’t reassure them that way. One of the characteristics of first century apocalyptic literature – a format in which contemporary events were criticized by declaring how they’d be judged at the end of time – is that the meaningful signs are things people could have seen. And in fact, during our Bible Study on Wednesday, one of the group read, “He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God,” and gave that person a name. I would guess you could give such a person a name. I would also guess that we wouldn’t all give that person the same name.

Right?

Paul couldn’t tell them that Jesus was about to return and that their suffering would end. What he could do was commend them for their faithfulness and urge them to hold on. “Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.”

“Paul’s point,” writes Nijay Gupta at Working Preacher, “is not to sketch out a full timeline of eschatological events. His point is that some big things are yet to happen, and there is really nothing we can do to stop them (unlike issues of political strife and economic turmoil, matters that we certainly can and must address).”

Paul’s point was to say, I hear you. I ache for you. I am proud of you. I pray for you. My heart is with you.

“My thoughts and prayers are with them,” has, all too often, substituted for real help in our day. Properly, thoughts and prayers should be coupled with concrete action. We have our limits, however. We can’t do all we want to do, like the ‘apapane who can’t find another flower for a hungry i’iwi, or when a loved one’s illness brings pain I can’t relieve, when the world around has problems I can’t address.

This week Mary Luti quoted the late Pope Francis in a UCC Daily Devotional. He said, “The world needs to weep. The marginalized weep, the scorned weep, the sick and dying weep, but we who have what we need, we who are privileged, we don’t know how. We must learn. There are realities in this life you can see only with eyes clarified by tears. If you don’t learn to weep, you can’t be a good Christian.”

Paul wrote, my heart is with you. My prayers are with you. My tears are with you.

Let’s be with one another. Let’s be aware that God is with us.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons ahead of time, but he also makes changes while he preaches. The sermon you watch will not be the same as the sermon you read.

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 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.