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.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: What is the Power of Faith?

August 17, 2025

Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29-12:2

“Now faith,” wrote the author of Hebrews at the beginning of chapter eleven, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

In some ways that’s a definition oriented toward the modern and post-modern ages of skepticism about religion, when the question of the existence of God is one that gets asked regularly. In the first century, however, that was not the burning religious question. The existence of not just the Hebrew God but of divine beings in general was mostly assumed. Most people of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and the surrounding nations simply accepted the reality of a multitude of gods, some of greater power, some of lesser, that inhabited sacred sites or blessed certain cities. The question was not one of belief. The question was, “How do I keep these gods happy?”

Happy gods, you see, protect your community. Happy gods make sure that the rains come at the right time for your crops. Happy gods keep the destroying insects away. Happy gods make for a good harvest. Happy gods will protect you when a neighboring city decides that they didn’t have a good harvest and they want to steal yours.

Different cultures had different ideas about how to keep the gods happy, but in general it came down to this: perform the right rituals at the right times. That might mean animal sacrifice, it might mean chant this chant, it might mean everybody join the parade down the main street, it might mean a major sporting event. Keep the gods happy.

That wasn’t how Judaism worked, at least not in the village synagogues, where the teachers worked hard to understand the ways God expected them to live out their lives. Sometimes they were concerned with elements of home ritual, the exercises of ritual cleanliness, but they were also concerned with the questions of relationships and behavior. What did God expect of people as they lived together in community?

Christians retained the ethical standards of Jewish teaching, though they left behind many of the ritual practices. They continued to meet and worship in the style of the Jewish synagogue rather than creating a sacrifice system like the Romans. With their understanding of God’s forgiveness to human beings, they emphasized the need to trust in God’s grace as the central act of pious people. God’s grace, they concluded, called for a response, a foundational reliance upon what God had done and what God would do. They called it “faith.”

But they also faced a significant theological problem, and we still face it today.

What is the power of faith? What impact does it have? What difference does it make?

It was a big question for first century Christians. They were out of step with those around them, and it put them at a disadvantage in day-to-day life. Public officials might be sympathetic, but they might not. The letters of the Apostle Paul reveal that he suffered repeated arrest, imprisonment, and beatings for his activity as a Christian preacher. Some Roman governors were indifferent to Christians, but others were actively hostile. After the great fire of Rome in 64, the Emperor Nero blamed Christians for the catastrophe as a way to deflect criticism from himself.

It’s strange how things don’t change very much. Public officials get criticized; they some way to blame somebody for it or for something entirely different, whatever the facts might be.

The author of Hebrews addressed that question of impact by listing the ways faith had changed the lives of people in the Bible. Abraham had his children. Moses freed the Hebrew people from slavery. Rahab survived the invasion of the Israelites. Gideon won battles. David became king.

“This ‘hall of fame of faith,’” writes Christopher T. Holmes at Working Preacher, “does more than describe what faith is; it also illustrates what faith requires. Faith is active and demanding.”

The first effect of faith, then, is to keep one connected to God’s expectations. Christianity is not a sit-around-and-do-nothing kind of religion. It’s a religion that recognizes need and suffering and steps forth to address it. It’s a religion that summons us to aid the desperate and to protect the oppressed. It’s a religion that calls us to make tomorrow better than today. Abraham, Samuel, and many others did just that.

But then the message turns. “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment.” Active faith does not guarantee victory. It does not guarantee success.

As Mary Foskett writes at Working Preacher, “The stories of men and women of faith that the writer summons to mind for the readers not only weaves the community’s own story with those of the ones who have come before, it also connects them to the story of Jesus. For the writer and the community, Jesus is the consummate model of faith. In the same way that he disregarded the shame that accompanied his suffering, so can those who seek to follow ‘by faith’ set aside shame and endure the kind of suffering that can accompany the life of discipleship.”

Another effect of faith is to provide a way to understand at least some of our suffering, that it can be a consequence of an active faith. Not all suffering is, mind you. If I walk out in front of a car and get hit, my suffering is a result of carelessness, not faith. But if I describe the national economy in accurate numbers and get fired for it, and my faith calls me to truth, then yes: that’s suffering for faith.

The author of Hebrews summoned up another image that you may have recognized, and you may not. As is true of today’s long-distance road races, athletes in the first century returned to the stadium to complete a long run. The crowd would cheer to encourage them all the way to the finish line. That’s what the author of Hebrews had in mind when describing this “great cloud of witnesses.” What a wonderful way to think of how our ancestors in the faith support us. Can you hear them cheering you on?

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Living as I do in a culture that worships individualism, I’m quick to assume that I’m alone, unseen, and unfettered in my spiritual life.   But I’m not; I’m surrounded.  I’m surrounded by witnesses whose testimonies both console and challenge me.  I’m surrounded by witnesses whose stories must nuance and deepen my own.  Christianity is not about me and my personal Jesus, doing our own private thing together.  Ours is a profoundly communal faith, one that spans place, culture, race, ethnicity, and time.”

Faith gives us companions. It gives us supporters. It gives us fans to cheer for us from the stands. It gives us people to help us understand. It gives us people to work with. Faith means we are not alone.

It’s not just other Christians, those of our time and those of the past, who accompany us. It’s God. Faith is the way we maintain not just our awareness, but our relationship, with God. Faith, especially an active faith, means that we’re not just trying to keep an uncaring deity “happy.” We’re in an ongoing and growing relationship with a real personality.

This doesn’t bring us to perfection – that’s still coming – but it does mean that we face the struggles of life and the triumphs of life in God’s company. Faith doesn’t necessarily lead to suffering, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to success, but it does lead to God’s grace. Faith guides our actions, it summons up encouragement, and it places us in the constant presence of God’s love.

That’s power. That’s a real power.

The power of faith is to guide us, to strengthen us, and to hold us in the arms of God.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches, so what he said in worship does not match what he wrote ahead of time.

The image is The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs by Fra Angelico (ca. 1420s) – Original uploader was Sampo Torgo at en.wikipediahttps://www.wga.hu/html/a/angelico/00/11fieso2.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3000363.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Heart for the Vulnerable (Or: It’s All About the Widows and Orphans)

August 10, 2025

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Luke 12:32-40

There is a lot going on in the twelfth chapter of Luke. Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell the story of the Rich Fool, who saved up lots of goods and didn’t enjoy them. The lectionary editors, in their wisdom, skipped over verses 22 through 31, containing Jesus’ advice not to “worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” He observed that birds don’t worry and they eat; flowers don’t worry and they blossom into beauty. Worry, it turns out, doesn’t accomplish anything.

That brings us to this section. And here it turns out that the only thing we have to worry about is… what Jesus said next. “Sell your possessions and give alms.”

Jesus tended to ask a lot.

Isaiah, about 770 years before, had expressed God’s dissatisfaction with a people who had industriously participated in religious ritual but had failed to treat their neighbors well. “Cease to do evil,” said Isaiah. “Learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow… If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.”

To quote something Lorraine Davis said in a Bible study some time ago, something that’s implanted in my brain, “It’s all about the widows and the orphans.”

Is it? I did a quick search to see how often the Hebrew Scriptures demand the protection of widows. Exodus and Deuteronomy say it a total of eleven times. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Malachi named it a total of nine times. In the Psalms you’ll find it another three times. That adds up to twenty-two calls for the protection of widows. I got similar results with a search for “orphan” (I won’t bore you with the numbers). Oh, and there’s one other category that usually gets added to “widows and orphans” as worthy of particular care and protection.

Foreigners. “Aliens” in the usual translation of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The first assertion of the Hebrew Law regarding foreigners in Exodus reads, “There shall be one law for the native-born and for the alien who resides among you.” Further, “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy make clear that foreigners are to be honored and protected no less than 21 times.

If you’re depriving the widows and the orphans, who are the poorest of the poor, of justice and sustenance; if you’re abusing the foreigners, who are the most vulnerable of those living in the nation, then you are failing to do the will of God. As Isaiah put it, “Cease to do evil; learn to do good.”

Why, I wonder, do people with so much wealth and power find it so easy to deprive the poor of what little support they receive? Why, I wonder, do people with so much wealth and power find it so easy to shortcut legal due process for those from other lands? Why, I wonder, do people who claim to follow the ways of Jesus cheer when the supports of the vulnerable are pulled away, when the hopes of the foreigner are dashed?

Fifteen years ago the comedian Stephen Colbert said on the Colbert Report: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition … and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

I’m surprised CBS/Paramount Global ever hired him, not that they’ve cancelled his show.

It is all about the widows and the orphans and the foreigners. If you want to know about a society, take a look at how it treats those on the margins, those without powerful protectors, those most quickly disposable.

Sell your possessions and give alms, said Jesus.

As Erick J. Thompson writes at Working Preacher, “Are we, as individuals and as a church, ready to help others in need? Have we considered the issues of peace and justice that our society is wrestling with so that we can be a part of God’s solution?”

Dr. Thompson asked that question nine years ago when government acknowledged a role to create a social safety net. For quite some time, religious and non-religious non-profit agencies have labored to fill the gaps in that net. Those can be substantial, but imagine what would happen if local, state, and federal assistance to the vulnerable were ended or severely cut back. We would need to take the lead in God’s solution, to care for the widows and the orphans and the foreigners and the impoverished.

All indications are that we will need to take the lead.

It’s not going to be easy. About half of the US population – and it’s about the same here on Hawai’i Island – belong to communities of faith. We typically pay more in taxes than we give to charities, religious and non-religious combined. I suppose it’s not a secret that not everyone listed on a church’s rolls contributes, generally for very good reasons. That’s not a complaint, but it is a reality. We don’t have the resources government has. Do we have the ability to match what they’ve been doing? I don’t know.

But it’s all about the widows and the orphans. It’s about justice for the foreigners. It’s about solidarity with the poor.

It’s going to be even harder, though. On July 25th the President issued an executive order that essentially calls for the criminalization of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction. UCC General Minister and President the Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson responded this week by writing, “While there are members of the homeless population who have substance abuse and/or mental health challenges, these are not the experiences of the entire homeless and unhoused population. Nor is this population solely responsible for ‘crime and disorder.’ It is disingenuous to opine that incarcerating and institutionalizing the homeless population will end crime and disorder.”

According to United for ALICE – ALICE is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed – 10% of Hawai’i residents lived below the poverty level in 2023. Are you shocked by that? I’m appalled. One in ten of our neighbors can’t meet their basic needs. And: an additional 35% of Hawai’i residents have ”income above the FPL [Federal Poverty Line], but not enough to afford basic expenses in the county where they live.”

“Households below the [ALICE] Threshold are forced to make impossible choices — like deciding whether to pay for utilities or a car repair, whether to buy food or fill a prescription.”

Because housing is the biggest expense for most people, everyone in an ALICE household – a third of our neighbors – is one crisis away from homelessness. One crisis: something like a medical emergency, a work-interrupting injury, a house fire, or a natural disaster.

It’s all about the widows and the orphans. And the foreigners. And the folks for whom the ends just don’t meet.

In the meantime, wealthy Americans get trillions in new tax breaks – but the new law imposed a curious cap on the deductibility of charitable donations for the wealthiest. Really. That took me by surprise, too. Make lots of money, pay less taxes. Just don’t help people with it.

Not even the widows and the orphans. Definitely not the foreigners. Don’t aid the poor.

That’s a long way from Isaiah. It’s further from Jesus.

The irony to all this is that Jesus’ story about the servants who stayed awake to welcome their master home experienced a grand reversal. Did you notice? They could have expected to set out a light supper for him, but instead, he had them sit at the table and the master served them.

The master served the servants. The master expected attentive servants, alert servants, prepared servants, active servants. The master asked a lot. Then the master served them.

There are masters in this land who are determined not just to fail the widows, orphans, foreigners, and poor. They are determined to abuse and oppress them, and I don’t think I’m overstating the case. These are the masters whom Isaiah condemned. These are the masters that crucified Jesus.

Let us be the diligent, attentive, and active servants. Let us be the ones who meet the expectations of Isaiah and strive to meet the expectations of Jesus. Let us be the ones to welcome the widows, the orphans, the foreigners, and the poor. Let us be the ones to shed the burden of our possessions and take on the freedom of generosity.

Let us be ready to be seated at Jesus’ table.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric does tend to depart from his prepared text while preaching, so the recording will not precisely match the text above.

The image is The Parable of the Righteous and the Unrighteous Judge (painting on the western wall of the Faceted Chamber), 1882, by the Belousov brothers (Palekh) – http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/barucaba/post311615582/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37093925.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Riches

August 3, 2025

Psalm 49:1-12
Luke 12:13-21

It was an easy question, and it should have had an easy answer. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Behind the request is, I expect, a pretty painful story. Under first century Jewish custom, the eldest son received a double share of the property of a deceased father. That’s one of those examples of first-son favoritism that is part of so many cultures. The same eldest son, however, also had the responsibility to divide the property among the surviving siblings – which means the one who had the greatest interest in delaying the division also had to make the division. I imagine that lots of younger sons had the same problem with their older brothers.

Asking Jesus about it was a sign that Jesus was honored and respected. As Niveen Sarras writes at Working Preacher, “It was common in first-century Palestine for Jews to ask rabbis for a legal ruling. The man thought of Jesus as a respected rabbi who influenced people, and could convince his brother to give him his inheritance. By calling Jesus a teacher, he acknowledges his ‘authority to render a decision in his case.’“

Simple request: ask my brother to divide the property as he’s supposed to do. Simple answer: As a respected teacher, I rule that the brother should do what he’s supposed to do.

But if Jesus did the things he was expected to do, the Gospels would be very different.

Jesus launched into one of his favorite subjects, particularly in Luke’s Gospel: the problem of wealth. So he told a story.

The story, writes Meda Stamper at Working Preacher, “…reflects a central theme in Luke and in Jesus’ preaching, the problem of wealth in the context of the holy kingdom where closeness to God is life and attachment to things reflects soul-stifling anxiety and fear.” It’s the story of a rich man who had a good harvest. If we look at him in the light of Joseph’s story in Genesis, the successful farmer wanted to do what Joseph had done: store up the produce of a good year against the hazard of a bad year ahead. In Joseph’s case, we called that more than prudence. We called it inspired.

This wealthy man, however, had no notion of saving against need. He saved for himself. He didn’t mention the people who’d done the work. I suspect they got laid off after the barns were done. He wasn’t aware of his neighbors, either. “What of the widow who walks by and sees the new barns, full of grain, while she has no way of making a living?” asks Melissa Bane Sevier at her blog. “What of the child whose parents choose between food for the children and food for the grownups? What of the rabbi who wishes he had food enough to give away to those who need it?

“Abundance versus scarcity. Too much abundance for a few creates scarcity for so many more.”

Most of all though, Jesus called the character in his story – remember, it’s a story – a fool because he saved the wrong treasure for the wrong thing.

You may have heard me preach about money and riches a few times. Like most preachers, I have a limited set of ideas, and “the problem of wealth” is sermon number three. Of about seven. I’m in good company, of course. Jesus talked about the problem of wealth a lot, too.

Most of us have an uneasy relationship to money. First, most of us don’t think we have enough of it. There is usually something we can think of, which might be an item, a service, a comfort, that we don’t have and can’t get immediately.

Personally, I can think of plenty of things to spend money on, money I don’t have, at least at the moment. A friend thinks I should get an eight-string ukulele to join the four and six-strong instruments I have. Well, I think so, too. I think there are some cool camera lenses that would be useful for taking pictures of flowers. And I’m always curious about microphones, and…

This is rapidly becoming a shopping list rather than a sermon, so let’s stop here.

I have uses for all this stuff. I think. You’d like to hear me play an eight-string ukulele, right?

But am I saving up treasure for God?

That’s a harder question. A good deal of my music goes to celebrate God and God’s world. A good deal of my photography serves to renew my spirit and, I hope, that of some others. That’s worth while, I think. But am I saving up treasure towards God?

God and I are still working that one out.

It is certainly true that added wealth makes this relationship with God and gold harder. Dan Clendenin quotes and echoes the fourth century Bishop John Cassian at JourneyWithJesus.net, writing, “’When money increases,’ observed John Cassian (b. 360), ‘the frenzy of covetousness intensifies.’ Greed is insatiable: ‘It always wants more than a person can accumulate.’”

It would be so much easier if there were a magic threshold at which I didn’t have to work out my relationship between me, money, and God. Then I could just gaze at the wealthy with sympathy for their dilemma, one which doesn’t trouble me. But I can’t. That younger son who asked the question of Jesus probably wasn’t due to inherit much. Jesus didn’t spend much time with the wealthy; there weren’t many wealthy people in first century Judean villages. Any of us can get stuck on money, whatever the quantity is.

According to Jesus, no amount of money is worth anything.

Best to build up riches with God. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Being rich toward God means loving God, neighbor, and self. The inheritance offered shares God’s abundance and flourishing as all needs are met–material, physical, social, spiritual, mental, and emotional. Being rich toward God priorities the status of the soul over the balances in financial accounts. Being rich toward God positions us for peace and joy.”

Love. Abundance. Flourishing. Met needs. A secure soul. Peace. Joy. In the end – and even along the way – those are better riches than money any day.

Unlike the riches in the big barns, you can take those with you.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches, so the prepared text will not match the sermon as preached.

Photo by Eric Anderson

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Persistence

July 27, 2025

Hosea 1:2-10
Luke 11:1-13

Is persistence a virtue?

Sometimes it seems like the virtue that remains when all other virtues have been suppressed. When people face active resistance in their quest to do what is good, and right, and true, persistence in trying to do well may be all you can do. It’s the noble but doomed attempt to scatter the clouds of evil when those clouds are just beyond our reach.

On the other hand, persistence can be a real problem. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” goes the old maxim. Which is fine in some cases, but what if you’re trying to do something you shouldn’t? What if you’re trying to go through red lights? What if you’re trying to steal? What if you’re trying to walk on water?

Jesus managed that last one and so, briefly, did Simon Peter, but if I were to “try, try again” the most likely thing I’d achieve is two lungs full of water. Which I’d rather not achieve.

I’m often in favor of a revised version of the old proverb: “If at first you don’t succeed, try something different.” Experimentation means that failure teaches you something and opens up other possibilities, rather than putting you in a dreary cycle of repeated failure.

Which is fine if you’re trying to do something new, but doesn’t work if you’re trying to maintain your priorities, ethics, values, and commitment to God. Yes, all of those change and grow, but there sometimes comes a point where we go back to that virtue of persistence. Say what you want, people of power. I will do what is right.

In mid-19th century America, it was persistence of that kind that rescued enslaved people from the plantations. In 16th century Europe, it was persistence of that kind that sustained the Protestant movements and offered new possibilities for faithful living. In first century Jerusalem, it was that kind of persistence on God’s part that refused to accept the rejection of Jesus’ crucifixion and transformed it into God’s open door of Jesus’ resurrection.

I’m quite grateful for that kind of persistence.

Jesus raised persistence in the context of prayer. One of his followers asked him to teach them to pray. As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “This request – and the practice of John the Baptizer that he references in the request – presupposes that there is an actual, teachable skill to praying, as well as a disposition that is appropriate to the person pray-er and a disposition that the pray-er ought to suppose about God.” Jesus responded with an outline for prayer that we have generally memorized and pray as the “Lord’s Prayer.” We tend to use the version from Matthew’s Gospel, which is somewhat longer. Both follow the similar outline of praising God’s goodness first, then asking for God’s realm to be established on earth. We ask then for the basic necessities of bread and of God’s forgiveness before closing with the request that we be protected from at least some of the world’s suffering.

If you pray the Lord’s Prayer and extend it with the particulars of your situation, I think you’ll be doing what Jesus taught his followers to do.

But there’s a potential problem. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Read the wrong way, the lection renders prayer transactional, inviting us to believe that God is a cosmic gumball machine into which we can insert our prayers like so many shiny quarters.” Worse, it makes it sound like God has to be cajoled and badgered into responding to our prayers. If you read the sleeping neighbor as representing God in Jesus’ story, and read the persistence of his needy friend as representing our appropriate approach to prayer, well. It makes God sound both unresponsive and uncaring.

This is a God one worships because one is establishing credit with the Divine. “Look, I’ve worshiped you for years,” I can say. “Now I’ve got trouble, and it’s your turn to deliver.”

Here’s my shiny quarter. Cough up the gumball, God.

But Jesus didn’t say that.

Often when Jesus began a parable, he’d use a phrase like, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God?” That was an invitation to consider the actions of the characters in the parable, and see whether one of them might be more… God-like… than the others. But Jesus didn’t begin this story that way. He just launched into it. When it was done, he went on to point out that people know how to do better than the characters in the story. Rather than having to be irritated into responding, parents know how to give their children things that are good for them rather than harmful.

If people can do that, so can God. In fact, God can do it better. Better than kind and loving parents. Much better than sleepy grumpy neighbors.

God doesn’t need to be prodded into response, said Jesus. God is right there even as we pray.

Brian Peterson writes at Working Preacher, “It will not do to think that prayer works either because we continue to hound God about something or because we are so shameless in our asking. We are not the key that makes prayer ‘work.’ If we keep asking, seeking, and knocking, it is only because God has done so first, and continues to do so. We need to hear this parable in concert with verses 9-13, which make clear that God is good, and that God is eager to give not simply the good things that we might ask for.”

Eager indeed. But why, then, did Jesus raise persistence? And repeat it with a similar story later about a widow and an unjust judge?

Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “God is all-powerful, yet God is not the only power in the world. There are other powers at work, the powers of Satan and his demons, the powers of evil and death, often manifested in human sin. Although God has won the ultimate victory over these powers through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the battle still rages on. Consequently, God’s will can be — and often is — thwarted.

“Why bother to pray, then, if God’s will can be thwarted? Again we affirm what Scripture tells us, and particularly what Jesus tells us in this passage: that we are invited into relationship with a loving God who wants to give us life, and who continues to work tirelessly for our redemption and that of all creation.”

You know, it would be simpler to deal with a gumball machine God, one who responds predictably to a shiny prayer with something sweet. A predictable God; a predictable world. If we know anything about God, though, it’s that predictability isn’t one of God’s primary attributes. After all, we believe we’re made in the image of God. Are you predictable? Are the members of your ‘ohana? Your friends?

I mean, I’m fairly predictable here in a pulpit on Sunday, but that’s the nature of the role, not the person. I surprise myself from time to time.

If I can surprise you, then God can surprise you and even more so.

Debie Thomas observes that the only promise Jesus made in this Scripture was that God’s Holy Spirit would be, will be, is given to those who ask. “So here’s the question for us,” she writes. “Do we consider the ‘yes’ of God’s Spirit a sufficient response to our prayers? If God’s guaranteed answer to our petitions is God’s own self, can we live with that?

“I’ll be honest: sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t.  It’s not easy to let go of my transactional, gumball God — idol though he is… I want God to sweep in and fix everything much more than I want God’s Spirit to fill and accompany me so that I can do my part to heal the world. Resting in God’s yes requires vulnerability, patience, courage, discipline and trust — traits I can only cultivate in prayer.”

That’s why persistence with God is so important. It’s not about God’s response to us – that’s coming to us. God loves us. God cares for us. God wants the best for us before we ever say a word in prayer.

We, however, have to make an effort to open ourselves up, to look and recognize the Holy Spirit’s presence, to accept the strength, reassurance, and grace that the Holy Spirit brings. God is not a magic talisman to be invoked and suddenly the world is changed. God is someone to be embraced and suddenly our soul is changed.

Some time ago, Momi Lyman gave me a magic wand for Christmas. It sits on my desk waiting for me to use it. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found the instruction manual, and the world goes on as it will.

I have, however, listened to Jesus’ teaching about how to pray. Prayer isn’t magic. It doesn’t change the world to my liking. It took some practice to become not proficient, but persistent, in prayer.

And I’ve been changed.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric departs from the prepared text from time to time. Sometimes he means to.

The image is An etching by Jan Luyken illustrating Luke 11:5-8 in the Bowyer Bible, Bolton, England (1795). Bowyer Bible photos contributed to Wikimedia Commons by Phillip Medhurst – Photo by Harry Kossuth, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7550704.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Summer Fruit

July 20, 2025

Amos 8:1-12
Luke 10:38-42

As I remember the home in which I grew up, I recall two paintings – prints, actually – that adorned the walls. One was a mother and child. The other was a still life of a bowl of fruit. Summer fruit.

Well, actually, it was apples and pears, which in New England are early autumn fruit, but let it pass.

To all of us in the household, it was a colorful illustration of sweetness, of family, of nourishment, of hospitality.

So to me, a basket of summer fruit is a peculiar way to open Amos’ fierce denunciation of the powerful people of ancient Israel. I’m not the only one to find it strange. Pamela Scalise writes at Working Preacher, “The bounty of sweetness from pomegranates, figs, and grapes, the value of olive oil and wine, the long years of care and cultivation to bring fruit-bearing trees and vines to productivity—all these associations with summer fruit anticipate a good word of blessing. God’s word through the prophet, however, announces the end.”

God – or Amos, because it’s clear that part of an ancient prophet’s role was to choose the human words with which to express what they’d heard from God – had a reason to start with fruit that isn’t apparent to us, because we’re reading this text in translation. As Tyler Mayfield writes at Working Preacher, “…the image is likely chosen primarily to create a wordplay in the original Hebrew. The word for ‘summer fruit’ is qayits, and the word for ‘end’ is qets. The prophet uses similar-sounding words to craft a message.”

As a fan of puns, I approve this message.

I also have to point out, along with other commentators, something that every one of us know who live in this climate. If you leave a basket of fruit out for very long, bad things happen, at least from our point of view. From the point of view of the fruit flies it’s not so bad, but few of us enjoy the sight or smell of rotting fruit on the kitchen counter.

Amos’ readers knew that just as well, and Amos’ readers would have been able to make the connection to the national reality of ancient Israel 750 years before the birth of Jesus. Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net: “He lived during the reign of king Jeroboam II, who forged a political dynasty characterized by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism, and unprecedented national prosperity. The citizens of his day took pride in their misguided religiosity, their history as God’s elect people, their military conquests, their economic affluence, and their political security.” In other words, the nation itself resembled a basket of summer fruit: Ripe. Fragrant. Tasty. Nutritious.

The nation’s prosperity and power, warned Amos, was also the sign of its end, the hidden decomposition that would spread until the color faded, the fragrance fouled, the flavor soured, and the nutrition turned to poison. Why? Because the nation’s riches were founded on exploitation of its citizens.

4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy,
    and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over
    so that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath,
    so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier
    and practice deceit with false balances,
6 buying the poor for silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals
    and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”

7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

Thanks in part to the authors of First and Second Kings, we tend to remember that the primary sin of the ancient realms of Israel and Judah was the worship of foreign gods. When you read what the prophets wrote in their own time addressing the immediate concerns, they did raise that problem. Amos did just that in verse 14 of this very chapter.

But. To Amos, that was secondary.

As Dr. Mayfield writes, “The people’s offense has almost entirely to do with how they treat each other. It’s ethical. Amos 2:6–8 makes this clear:”

If you haven’t memorized Amos 2:6-8, here it is:

6 Thus says the Lord:
For three transgressions of Israel,
    and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,[c]
because they sell the righteous for silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals—
7 they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth
    and push the afflicted out of the way;
father and son go in to the same young woman,
    so that my holy name is profaned;
8 they lay themselves down beside every altar
    on garments taken in pledge;
and in the house of their God they drink
    wine bought with fines they imposed.

To punish these kinds of sins, God announced the destruction of the nation. If that seems harsh, it was. The reality was that God didn’t have to do anything to destroy the ancient realm of Israel. It was destroying itself. The metaphor of the summer fruit was a pun on the end, but it also reflected the not-yet-seen degradation of the nation itself based upon the misbehavior of the most powerful. When those in authority abuse their citizens, when those in power discount the needs of the community, when those of wealth extract more wealth for themselves from those who have the least, those societies cannot stand. They will crumble. They will fall.

The nation of Israel to which Amos prophesied fell about 730 years before Jesus was born, probably about the same time Amos himself died. It fell before the invading army of an enormous empire. Other nations, including its neighbor Judah, survived that great invasion.

But in the northern kingdom of Israel, the basket of summer fruit had fully decayed.

You know, I’d kind of like to stay away from the basket of summer fruit that is the United States of America. I’d like to choose the better part of Jesus, to attend to what he said, and to rejoice in the reassurance of his presence. That’s partially what my sabbatical was about. To soak in the goodness of God.

But then along comes Amos, and I can’t tune him out. As Dan Clendenin writes, “Amos delivered a withering cultural critique.  He describes how the rich trampled the poor. He says the affluent flaunted their expensive lotions, elaborate music, and vacation homes with beds of inlaid ivory. Fathers and sons abused the same temple prostitute. Corrupt judges sold justice to the highest bidder, predatory lenders exploited vulnerable families.  And then religious leaders pronounced God’s blessing on it all.

“Does this not sound strangely familiar?”

Of course it does. Of course it does. In the wake of Congressional decisions to reduce taxes on the wealthiest and increase the burdens of the poor, it sounds very familiar. In the wake of countless people whose refugee petitions were abruptly dismissed and found Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers waiting in the court hallways to whisk them away, it sounds very familiar. In the decisions to end foreign aid programs while flexing military might, it sounds very familiar.

These choices place the nation on the path of decay. Of degradation. Of rot. These choices imperil the social contract that makes the nation function, that brings people to their jobs every day, that underlies their obedience to basic laws, that helps them trust in the integrity of juries and judges. These choices will inevitably degrade the efficiency and reliability of police forces, the military, and the other public servants who maintain our roads, inspect the food supply, and make sure our medications are safe and effective.

These choices link the prosperity of summer fruit with the heartbreak of the end. These choices do not need God to bring catastrophe in punishment. These choices make their own catastrophe.

Israel’s rulers did not listen to Amos 2700 years ago.

We will need to be loud indeed for our leaders to listen to us now.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while preaching the sermon, so what you read here will not be identical to what he said while preaching.

Photo by Eric Anderson.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Written in Heaven

July 6, 2025

Galatians 6:1-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

“Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”

They must have been stoked. Sent out without luggage or even a change of clothing – let’s not think about that for too long – the seventy (or seventy-two, the oldest copies of Luke don’t agree) had been told to bring peace, healing, and teaching to the villages of Galilee where Jesus planned to go. Imagine how nervous they’d have been. Will we find welcome? Will we find words to say what we’re supposed to say? Will we bring peace when we arrive? Most of all: when they bring us somebody who’s sick, will they receive God’s healing through our hands?

The answer to all of those, including the last, was, “Yes.” “Even the demons submit to us! How cool is that?”

Jesus, the great motivational speaker of the first century, then seems to have forgotten everything he knew about motivational speaking. Right? The thing to say was something like, “Well done! You’ve accomplished great things! And look, I’ve got even greater things that you can do! You know you can! Let’s go out and make Judea Great Again!”

But Jesus didn’t do that.

“You think you did great things? I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lighting. Don’t get excited about spirits that come out when you call. That’s small stuff. Calm down. Chill out.”

I don’t think he’d have been a hit on the motivational speaker circuit.

If you want to get excited about something, rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Well, what does that mean? The phrase only appears once in the entire Bible, right here, so we haven’t got a lot of help. If I ask the question, “Whose name does God know?” the answer I give myself is, “Everyone.”

Rejoice that your name, like everyone’s name, is known by God.

Again, it’s a tough sell for a motivational speaker.

And it’s exactly what Jesus said. The Good News of God’s reign is not about power, even over evil. It’s not about accomplishment, even of healing. It’s not about me being better than you. I’m not (you probably knew that). It is about all of us being held in the heart of God.

Rejoice that you’re held in the heart of God.

When I was in school, I liked to work for extra credit. I’d answer those optional questions on tests; I’d write a few extra paragraphs when invited. Those came with rewards. They’d bring up my average grade. They might even impress the teachers – at least, I thought they did.

Jesus didn’t give extra credit. Even to those who’d gone the extra mile.

Your names are written in heaven. That’s enough, you know. In fact, that’s what there is.

It’s not just school that insists on extra credit. So many parts of our lives scream out, “Here are the great ones. Here are the heroes.” On the weekend of the Fourth of July, American pride in country can be earnest and uniting, but it can also be prideful and jingoistic. C. S. Lewis wrote, “I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, ‘But, sir, aren’t we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?’ He replied with total gravity—he could not have been graver if he had been saying the Creed at the altar—’Yes, but in England it’s true.’ To be sure, this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul) a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can however produce asses that kick and bite. On the lunatic fringe it may shade off into that popular Racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid…”

[Found in “The Four Loves” in The Beloved Works of C. S. Lewis (New York, Inspirational Press), 1998.]

We don’t have any recent experience of that, do we? A combination of American patriotism and Christian belligerence that betrays the best ideals of both?

Well, maybe we do.

If casting out demons doesn’t make a difference in God’s love for us, then how much difference does it make to be British? Or Japanese? Or American? Or Hawaiian? Yes, it makes a lot of difference in human relationships, but are we held differently in the heart of God?

No. It doesn’t seem that we do. All our names are written in heaven. That’s enough to rejoice in.

We still get to participate in bringing that good news to others. Jesus asked for laborers; Jesus got seventy to go out and do the work. It wasn’t complicated. It could be challenging, but not complicated. He kept it simple. Visit the village. Accept hospitality. Share your peace. Heal as God enables you. Move on to the next. It’s simple.

“It’s amazing how often I needlessly complicate the Christian life,” writes Debie Thomas at JourneyWithJesus.net.  “’But what does God want me to do?’ I groan. What is God’s will?  How shall I hear God’s voice and discern God’s plan?

“Are the answers really all that hard?  Do justice.  Love mercy.  Walk humbly.  Pray, listen, learn, and love.  Break the bread, drink the wine, bear the burden, share the peace.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

“Get off your high horse and get in the water.  Sit down at the dinner table and speak peace to those who are feeding you.”

Rejoice that you, and they, have our names written in heaven. We are known by God. We are valued by God. We are loved by God.

Written in heaven.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes the sermon in advance, but he also makes adjustments as he preaches, so what he wrote does not precisely match what he said.

The photo of a koa’e ula (red-tailed tropicbird) is by Eric Anderson.