Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: One More Time

October 20, 2024

Isaiah 53:4-12
Mark 10:35-45

My first job for which I was paid – other than coins from the Tooth Fairy – was as a performing magician. I did three shows at the Blandford Fair in Blandford, Massachusetts, when I was around thirteen. And I got paid for it.

I wasn’t terribly good, but I was better then than I would be now. I’ve forgotten a lot of what I knew.

Most of what I knew came from the writings of Henry Hay, particularly his 1947 book Learn Magic. I do remember something from that book. More than once, Hay urged his readers to slow down and give the audience a chance to grasp what was going on. He’d say something like, “Hold up a coin, and count slowly to three. By that time, the slow one in the back knows you’re holding a coin.”

And if you have to, repeat yourself. Repeat yourself again, until everybody knows what you said. Later in life I learned a similar formula: Tell them what you’ll tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.

By this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had been struggling to convince his disciples that his journey to Jerusalem would end in arrest, crucifixion, and death – and that this would be OK. It hadn’t gone well. In chapter eight, when Jesus first said it, Simon Peter’s protest had been so forceful that Jesus lashed out with, “Get behind me, Satan!” In chapter nine, Jesus said it again, and none of his disciples dared to ask him what he was talking about. They did, however, start arguing about who was greatest.

Jesus told them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” You might recall that I preached on that story, asking, “Who wants to be first?” and suddenly nobody did.

Here in chapter ten, Jesus told the twelve for the third time that he would be killed and resurrected. The lectionary, somewhat strangely, skips that section, and jumps to what we read this morning, when James and John asked for a special place at Jesus’ side. Let’s be careful, however, to be sure of what they meant.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson writes at Working Preacher, “James and John misunderstand the glory they are pursuing actively, for Jesus’ ‘baptism is not a matter of action but of passion. Their boastful assurance ‘We are able!’ earns a response from Jesus whose irony can only be grasped by those who read to the end of the story: you bet you’re going to undergo this baptism, but it doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

They thought it meant the liberation of the people of Israel from foreign domination, which included the Hasmonean monarchs who were so clearly lackeys of the Romans. Goodbye Caesar; goodbye Herod: Welcome, King Jesus! A new-crowned monarch would need a royal court, you see, a collection of aides and officials to pass along Jesus’ directions and, of course, receive near-royal honors themselves. The most powerful of them would stand to the right and to the left in a formal setting.

They thought they were asking for what other civilizations might call a Prime Minister, a Chancellor, a Grand Vizier. It’s an impressive ambition for a couple of fishermen from a backwater part of the world.

Debie Thomas, writing at JourneyWithJesus.net, notes that James and John did a few things right. “First, the two brothers place their full faith in the right person… Second, they are ambitious for the reign of God.  They expect and want Jesus to be glorified; they expect and want the world’s wrongs to be righted… Thirdly, James and John ask. They approach Jesus boldly, and make their request with hearts full of confidence. Is the request tacky? Yes. Is it borne of ignorance and immaturity? Yes. Are some of the motives behind the request selfish?  Yes. And yet. They ask.”

As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “Since this is the third time that Jesus has disclosed his impending death, and the third reaction, a question would be whether James and John have a sense of what Jesus’ ‘glory’ really is. The twelve’s reactions to the first two disclosures would indicate that none of them gets or accepts that death is in the package.”

Do any of us, really?

One more time, Jesus brought the twelve together to tell them, “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

One more time.

Mark quoted Jesus on this theme twice. Matthew quoted Jesus on this theme of greatness via service four times. Luke made it five times.

I mean, one more time, right?

John didn’t really quote Jesus on this, but he made sure to demonstrate Jesus’ emphasis on greatness through service, when he described Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.

They didn’t get it, so Jesus said it one more time. I would guess that some in the early church didn’t get it, either, so Matthew and Luke said it one more time and time again. I would guess that when John got to writing, there was enough of a gap between words and actions that instead of saying it one more time, he wrote about Jesus doing it one more time.

One more time.

What if we did understand greatness as service? What if we reserved honor for those who help other people? What if we provided resources and power to those who share it with those around them? What if we made sure that we reward those who lift up (and who are lifted up), rather than those who take and grab and keep and hoard?

What if we honored Jesus with magnanimity, not might?

What would the world look like?

Just to start, a world devoted to serving neighbor and stranger would not go to war. If you prize the welfare of others, you don’t kill them. Or rape them. Or plunder them. Crime rates would plummet, partially because if you care about someone else, you don’t steal from them, but also because the motives for stealing drain away. If you’re hungry, someone will care enough to feed you. If you’re out of work, people will help you find a way until there’s work again.

For that matter, people who care about one another work as best they can, because it’s one way to contribute and to share.

Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and all the other prejudices and oppressions also lose their foundations. When I make your welfare an important thing in my life, how can I accept anything that diminishes you? How can I permit someone else to denigrate you for being who you are, or prevent you from achieving the good you are capable of? How can I withhold my support for you being you?

I won’t pretend that this will be a paradise. Even if every human being fully commits to every other human being, the natural world will not. Floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, storms, and volcanic eruptions will shatter and disrupt lives. Imperfect human understandings of our impact on the world could lead to things as serious as climate change.

At the interpersonal level, my commitment to your well-being does not mean that I understand your needs. I may get it wrong. I may mistakenly hurt or even injure you. So no. It’s not a paradise in the way we often envision one.

But isn’t it a lot better than what we have? Isn’t it worth dreaming? Isn’t it worth working for? Isn’t it worth changing ourselves for?

Getting there – well, that’s the hard part, for certain. Our structures of power, prejudice, and privilege are well established. Christianity has made relatively little headway against them in two thousand years, and has often adopted them as its own during that time.

So. Small steps. Make positive choices for the welfare of other people. Do the work to find out what people actually need before you do something they don’t need.

Check yourself for your own preconceptions and privilege. Will an action benefit you? Examine it carefully. It may also serve others more than yourself. If it’s better for you than anyone else, though, and especially if it harms someone else, maybe try something different.

Jesus said it to his disciples one more time. He tried it with them one more time, and he’s trying it with us one more time.

One more time, and one more time, and one more time.

The destination is worth the effort.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric sometimes improvises while preaching. Sometimes he even intends to!

The image is “The Songs of Zebedee,” an etching by Jan Luyken from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations housed at Belgrave Hall, Leicester, England (The Kevin Victor Freestone Bequest). Photo by Phillip Medhurst – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20225346.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Reflection for the ‘Aha Mokupuni

October 19, 2024

Luke 22:24-30

Sometimes I feel like Jesus and I have something in common. I felt like this as the parent of young children, and as the technical support person for people confused about computers, and as a preacher. The thing I think we have in common is:

We repeat ourselves.

If you missed that: Jesus and I repeat ourselves. Repeatedly.

Jesus dealt with this question of “who is the greatest” twice in Mark’s Gospel. In Matthew, it rises to four times if you include the time Jesus told his disciples that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. In Luke, the count rises to five.

So it seems likely that Jesus tried to get this message across, and it also seems likely that it was a rough message for folks in the early decades of the church, because the Gospel writers emphasized it and re-emphasized it. Uniquely, Luke sets this debate about who is the greatest, and Jesus’ counter to it, at the Last Supper. The Last Supper. Talk about giving this message pride of place!

I haven’t mentioned this message’s appearance in the Gospel of John, because, well, John chose fewer stories for his Gospel and he didn’t tell the one about the disciples arguing about greatness. At the Last Supper, however, John did describe Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. It’s the same theme as what we hear from Luke, isn’t it?

Jesus said, “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

It’s… kind of a tricky message in this world of ours, though. For several centuries, the powerful have successfully appealed to it to discourage the powerless, the poor, and the oppressed from protesting their condition. Speaking this message as a kahu, I run the risk of telling my hearers that they should accept injustice. Plenty of people have told them precisely this: your condition is the will of God, and Jesus says, “Accept it, and oh by the way, give thanks that you’re poor and the person telling you this is rich.”

Jesus, however, didn’t say that. Jesus quoted Isaiah about the rich being sent away empty. Jesus told that story about the reversal of fortunes experienced by a poor man and a rich man after their deaths. It was the rich and the powerful who made sure Jesus died upon a cross.

Jesus wasn’t one of the rich and the powerful. His disciples gave him respect as a teacher and guide, but he didn’t move in the circles of the priesthood or the nobility and certainly not the monarchy. When he spoke of servants, he spoke of people not that much different from himself.

I think Jesus envisioned a world of compassion and care. If all are servants to one another, nobody oppresses anyone else. If all are servants to one another, all benefit from one another’s service. If all are servants to one another, all needs can be satisfied.

We’re a long way from that.

The question is, how do we get there?

We get there by focusing on that goal: a world of compassion and care. We get there by taking steps that are consistent with the goal – deeds of compassion and care – and by naming the deeds that are compassionless and uncaring. We get there by refusing to resort to the means of the oppressors, violence and force. We get there by describing the vision in such a way that others adopt it for their own.

We get there by feeding one another on the life and spirit of Jesus, who meets us at this table, the table at which he repeated himself, saying: “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

There was no audio or video recording of this sermon, which was offered to the ‘Aha Mokupuni of the Hawai’i Island Association on October 19, 2024.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: It’s Still Not Easy

October 13, 2024

Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Mark 10:17-31

Have you ever considered the curbstone?

It’s not a new invention. There were curbstones in Pompeii, the Roman city buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. They appear to have been a water control mechanism, because Pompeii didn’t have underground drainage systems – sewers. Overflow from rain, fountains, and aqueducts went down the streets, which had high curbs to either side to prevent the water from entering the homes and shops.

These floods were apparently common enough that Pompeiians built stepping stones to allow people to cross the streets without stepping into the flowing water.

Most places, however, didn’t have curbs along streets until the 19th and 20th centuries, when people began to seriously separate vehicle traffic from pedestrian traffic. That kept boots out of the mud – until you had to cross a street, so that didn’t work all that well, did it? – and it kept people out from under carts and horses’ hooves and, as the 20th century went on, the wheels of cars and trucks.

The unintended consequence of all this was to make it more difficult for people with a mobility disability to get around. A curb means an abrupt change in level. It could be managed with a sloped curb, but those take more time to shape and, perhaps, invite vehicles to cross into pedestrian spaces. Disabled people, already confronted with stairs inside of buildings, now had an additional barrier to surmount before they even entered a building.

Wealth – or at least affection for his possessions – became an obstacle for the man who spoke to Jesus. It prevented him from… well… if we take the words as they’re written, it prevented him from inheriting eternal life. At least, it became a barrier to his access. A barrier he had the power to remove.

For a disabled person, however, the world is filled with barriers that other people placed, barriers that the disabled person cannot remove. Street curbs obstruct wheelchairs, and lights-only crosswalks restrict people with limited eyesight. Each of these can be changed, and since the American with Disabilities Act went into effect in 1990, many of them have been. Slowly. And sometimes rather painfully.

It’s still not easy for disabled people.

The world, let’s face it, is not always kind to human beings. We stub our toes on stones, we swelter in the heat, we shiver in the cold. These are things we cannot control. They affect people with disabilities, too, and sometimes those disabilities make it harder for affected people to make their way through the world. They find a way.

It’s the ones that we people built, however, that rankle. It didn’t have to be done that way. It can be reconfigured and upgraded, and… do we do it? Do we?

There was opposition to the passage of the ADA from institutions that didn’t want to spend the money so that disabled people could get access to their goods and services, or even just their neighborhood.

They were shocked and came to the government angrily, because they had many possessions.

It still isn’t easy to overcome that barrier we create for ourselves.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson writes at Working Preacher, “Who can argue with Jesus on this one? We know he’s right about the law and about the wealth. It’s the double-bind of our Christian formation: this lesson is so deeply internalized that it’s nearly impossible to hear it for the chasm in our lives of faith that it is.”

Chasm seems like an overstatement. I’m not wealthy. I looked it up. I went to Pew Research Center’s tool to determine whether I’m high, middle, or lower income, and found that I’m in the middle group, along with 56.8% of other residents of Hawai’i and 52% of Americans. I grant you that the results might be off because I didn’t have my tax information handy, but they wouldn’t be far wrong.

The world is bigger than Hawai’i or the United States of America, and it turns out that Pew has a worldwide income tool. Using that calculator, I join the 39.8% of people in the high income group.

Wait. 39.8% of people in the world are high income?

Oh. No. 39.8% of people living in “advanced economies” are high income.

According to World Vision, nearly 9% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, trying to survive on less than $2.15 a day.

And it’s still not easy.

It’s still not easy to convince myself that I have this kind of privilege. But I do. I’m not struggling to make my car payment, or my medical bills, or my rent. I have struggled with those in my life. One day several years ago I didn’t make a twenty mile round trip drive on the weekend because I didn’t think I had enough gas in the car, and I wouldn’t have the money for gas until payday on Monday.

It’s still not easy.

It’s not easy because I worry more about the things I want than the ways I can help. It’s not easy because I protect the things I like rather than sharing with people who don’t have such things. It’s not easy because I like my comfort, and I don’t want to be uncomfortable.

What’s going to happen if I take Jesus seriously and give these things up?

It’s still not easy.

Mark wrote that Jesus “looking at him, loved him.” Debie Thomas observes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “But notice that Jesus’s love doesn’t leave the young man where he is. In other words, Jesus’s love isn’t ‘nice.’ It doesn’t prioritize the young man’s comfort over his salvation. Jesus’s love is provocative. It’s incisive. It’s sharp. Even as it offers unconditional welcome, it also offers mind-boggling challenge.”

Are we ready for that challenge, which still isn’t easy?

Heaven knows, from all available evidence, that I’m not.

Heaven knows that lots of the people of the world aren’t ready, either. Two millennia after Jesus tried to squelch that silly notion that wealth is the result of virtue, we still credit rich people with undeserved righteousness. Clement of Alexandria had some pointed things to say about that in the second century: “Those who bestow laudatory addresses on the rich appear to me to be rightly judged not only flatterers and base… but also godless and treacherous…”

Bishop Clement didn’t hold back.

I just learned a really unsettling story in this vein thanks to British historian Mark Felton. In a recent video, he described SS leader Heinrich Himmler’s attempts to protect wealth that he and the SS had amassed over the course of Nazi power in Germany. The purpose was to make it available for a renewed Nazi party and Nazi state. Using the connections of German companies and industrialists, they transferred money to places it would not be seized by the Allies in Switzerland, South America, Scandinavia, and also Great Britain and the United States. British and American intelligence operatives discovered the program and… at least some of them got involved in it and benefited from it, including the US’s chief intelligence officer in Europe, Allen Dulles. Why? As Dr. Felton said, “They were indeed like-minded: they liked money, and didn’t mind where it came from.”

They didn’t even grieve over their many possessions, now did they?

Can we please stop pretending that wealth and virtue have any relationship with one another? It’s true that poverty does not make people righteous, and that wealth does not make people unrighteous. It is also true that poverty does not make people sinful, and that wealth does not make people good.

Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “Let’s just take Jesus literally. We do have too much. We need to give it away. We have not given out of our abundance. So we are eager to stand behind Jesus’ injunctions against rich people. We readily chide those who hoard their wealth. We are quick to say to another, ‘With all you have? Good luck getting through the eye of a needle, friend.’ Yet all the while, we secretly wish we had wealth to hoard. Or at least more than we have. And then we have succeeded in wiggling out of Jesus’ charge. ‘I don’t have money like this guy, so Jesus isn’t talking to me.’ And all of a sudden we’ve managed to escape Jesus’ words to us, ‘you lack one thing.’”

It’s back to us, and it’s still not easy. It’s not easy to see those obstacles that we’ve made which are no barrier to us, but are to someone else. It’s not easy to see the ways our situation of relative wealth or gender or social status blocks us from fully appreciating and receiving the love that Jesus has for us. It’s not easy to accept Jesus’ challenge to lay those precious things aside, those many precious things aside, and follow him.

It’s still not easy to recognize that Jesus loves us and loved us first, and in that love both wants the best for us and wants the best of us.

It’s still not easy. It’s still our challenge. It’s still Jesus’ way.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally. What you read is not necessarily what he says.

Photo by Eric Anderson.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: So I Don’t Whine

September 29, 2024

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Mark 9:38-50

I do not share a lot of character traits with Moses, sad to say. I do not have a relationship with God such that I’m likely to receive stone tablets inscribed with commandments. I’m not likely to so impress a tyrant to free a substantial population of oppressed people – more’s the pity. I will probably not lead a group of people into a place of scarce resources. You might feel somewhat relieved about that last one. Frankly, so am I.

There is one characteristic that we share, however. Moses and I can both… whine.

Moses had reason to be upset, at least more reason than I usually do. As David G. Garber, Jr., writes at Working Preacher, “The lectionary verses return our focus to the character of Moses, caught between a weeping people and an angry God. Moses turns to the lament tradition and asks God why God set the burden of leadership upon him. Like Elijah, Jonah, and Job, Moses resorts to the extreme language of a death wish at the conclusion of his protest: ‘If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery’ (verse 15).”

“If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once.” That’s quite a whine.

As Terence E. Fretheim writes at Working Preacher, “The people have been taken out of Egypt, but it proves difficult to take Egypt out of the people. The familiar orderliness of Egypt seems preferable to the insecurities of life lived from one oasis to the next.”

I understand Moses’ whining. I also understand the people’s concerns. Earlier in the Book of Exodus, God generally responded to their complaints with swift compassion. They were thirsty – there was water. They were hungry – there was manna. They were chaotic – there was Law.

Here in Numbers, however, as they moved away from Sinai toward their destination, God’s responses changed. As Margaret Odell writes at Working Preacher, “In Exodus, the same complaint sounded like vulnerability; here it smacks of rebellion. By the end of the chapter (and outside of this lectionary selection), God will respond to the complaint by sending so much quail it will come out of the Israelites’ nostrils. God judges complaining Israel with a blessing — or blesses them with judgment; it’s hard to tell.”

Before sending the quail, however, God did something else. God dealt with the whining leader before dealing with the weeping people. God gave Moses some help.

“Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel,” God said. These were already leaders within their families and their extended clans. They would have arbitrated disputes and comforted disappointments and given good advice. They were not, however, regarded as part of the overall leadership of the travelling nation of Israel. People would bring some questions to an elder, but if it was about something more serious like, oh, we’re tired of manna, that would go to Moses.

But not any longer. The seventy elders would take up new roles of leadership within the nation. They would be able to answer questions that previously had gone only to Moses. They would reduce the burden, and also have the opportunity to proffer their own advice to the once-solo prophet.

Margaret Odell continues, “At the heart of Moses’ complaint, then, is a complaint about the divine character. What does divine favor mean, after all, if only Moses receives it? At the beginning of the long trek through the wilderness, Moses legitimately asks what is in store for him as the sole bearer of this people who were supposedly the apple of God’s eye.

“Fortunately, God does not respond to Moses’ actual request — ‘let me die!’ but to the substance of his complaint — that he is all alone with this burden.”

It’s a funny thing about singular leadership. It so seldom actually works. People who “go it alone” generally experience failure. They miss opportunities that others might have spotted. They choose out of ego or prejudice with poor results. Or like Moses, they simply lose connection with the people they’re trying to lead.

And they get whiney. Really whiney.

When leaders assemble a group of other leaders, there is a far greater likelihood that good ideas will get the attention they deserve. One sad example is the history of electrical transmission in the United States. Thomas Alva Edison was the great electrical genius whose work guided initial electrification efforts, but he made a significant mistaken calculation. He decided that direct current – DC, as most of us know it – would be the most efficient form in which to supply homes and businesses. Nikola Tesla, another genius, advocated for alternating current – AC. Edison assumed that they could overcome the transmission limits of DC, and it turned out he was wrong. That’s why we use AC in the power grid today.

Edison had, of course, plenty of people working with him. If any told him he was wrong, they didn’t have the influence they needed to.

In 1900, public health authorities in San Francisco, California, diagnosed cases of bubonic plague. In response, the Governor of California, Henry Gage, did precisely nothing. He denied that there was a problem for two solid years, during which the disease spread among the rat population and increasingly spread to people. It took a new governor and two more years of solid effort to end the epidemic.

Which returned, unfortunately, in the wake of thee 1906 earthquake, when conditions in the camps set up for survivors facilitated the spread of disease. Eventually it came under control once more.

I first learned about the San Francisco plague in 2020. All I could think was, “How little we’ve learned” about public health, contagious disease, and the ego of human leaders.

Arguably, one of the causes of the Protestant Reformation was the gap between the senior religious leaders of the Church and the people – or at least between senior and junior leaders. Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, but not senior among them, when he composed his 99 Theses. John Calvin developed some of his Reformed theological ideas while still a student in France, before he moved to Geneva. Senior Church leaders first ignored, then tried to harshly punish these new ideas. And so the Church of the 1500s divided.

With a lot of whining on, I must admit, all sides.

I have mentioned, I think, that the Nominating Committee for our church is at work? We don’t need seventy elders, mercifully, but we do need some people of wisdom and discernment to take a place in our ministry together. Frankly, some of our long-time Moseses are tired. They need to take some time to, at the very least, catch their breath. It’s also true that fresh minds may have fresh ideas, and if you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Why doesn’t Church of the Holy Cross do…?” well, this is an opportunity to ask that question where decisions get made.

It must also be said that without the lay leadership of this church, I would be completely at a loss. Despite my carefully crafted reputation for complete knowledge of everything, the simple truth is that I don’t know everything. I sometimes think that the role of aging is to demonstrate, year by year, how little I know. It’s a reliable source of humility, for me at least.

And without the leaders of this congregation, one particular possibility raises its very ugly head. As I said, I’m not much like Moses. Except in our ability to whine.

Do you really want me whining? It’s not pretty.

I didn’t think so.

Joining church leadership to keep the pastor from whining is not, I admit, the best reason to do so. If that’s what you’ve got, I’ll take it. I really hope, however, that you join the leadership because you’ve got ideas, or because you’ve got wisdom, or because you’re feeling that inspiration of the Spirit that had Eldad and Medad – who couldn’t follow directions – prophesying in the camp.

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What can it mean if the divine spirit is suddenly showing up in the camp?  Away from the tent?  Away from Moses?  Among men who don’t follow the rules?  Won’t such lapses in propriety and etiquette end in chaos?  What if the spirit keeps showing up in odd, unexpected places?  What will happen then?”

Well, at minimum, it means your pastor will be smiling and praising God, not whining.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric tends to make changes while he is preaching, so the recorded video does not precisely match the prepared text.

The image is Moses Elects the Council of Seventy Elders by Jacob de Wit – AQGtI5P6nkpYyw at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21988106.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Who Wants to Be First?

September 22, 2024

Jeremiah 11:18-20
Mark 9:30-37

Who wants to be first?

I do, of course. I want to be first in the buffet line, and I want to be first getting onto the airplane, and I definitely want to be first off the airplane if I have a short layover, and I want to be first in my class, and I want to be first to select a seat in the theater.

I admit that, with the last name “Anderson,” I was usually assigned the first seat on the left side of the classroom. Except in Chemistry class, when Miss Ames sat ahead of me. My friend whose last name was “Yee” sat in the rear seat on the right side.

Even though I was a pretty good student, I didn’t always want to be under the teacher’s eye like that. Not to mention that if I wasn’t assigned there, I could sit with my friend, who was a fun guy to be with and, on the rare occasions we did get to sit near one another, we were pretty good at distracting one another much like I’m now distracted from this sermon.

The disciples wanted to be first. Until Jesus wanted one of them to tell him what was going on. Then… nobody wanted to be first. Not even Simon Peter, who usually had an answer to any of Jesus’ questions. In fairness, Mark tells this story not long after Simon Peter had had two pretty big and somewhat traumatic experiences. In chapter eight, Peter was the one to declare that Jesus was the Messiah – that must have been a high moment for him. A moment later, though, he protested Jesus’ announcement that the Messiah would be arrested and killed. Jesus’ response was harsh: “Get behind me, Satan!”

At the beginning of this chapter, chapter nine, Peter, James, and John joined Jesus in the trek up a mountain and experienced the Transfiguration, when a glowing Jesus spoke with those great prophets Moses and Elijah. Simon Peter offered to put up shelters for them, but a voice from heaven silenced him, thundering the words, “Listen to him!”

Getting silenced harshly by Jesus is rough. Getting silenced by the voice of God? I’d be quiet.

I think.

Nobody wanted to be first to tell Jesus what they’d been arguing about.

Everybody wanted to be first in what they’d been arguing about. Everybody wanted to be the greatest.

Except… Jesus.

Courtney V. Buggs writes at Working Preacher, “Gentleness and kindness are virtues that sound good, but grit and ruthlessness are often associated with the most powerful and successful. Ambition is celebrated for some, critiqued in others. Jesus disrupts their notion of greatness and significance with an inversion of the social order: ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant [also translated minister] of all’ (verse 35).”

As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “If Jesus was concerned about his position, the incarnation would not have taken place. His very being embodies the shift he invites the disciples to embrace.”

In that moment, in that house, I’m not surprised the disciples didn’t understand. Divine incarnation was not a significant element of Jewish theology. The Greeks and the Romans had stories about wandering gods. Jesus’ friends had probably heard a couple of them. Jews did have stories about interactions with disguised angels (remember Abraham’s three visitors), but they maintained some distinction between messengers of God and God. They weren’t going to think of Jesus as being God incarnate.

They would think of him as being Messiah, but as I’ve said before, the dominant belief about the Messiah in the first century was that he would be the military and political leader to free the Israelites from Greek and Roman rule. Successful military and political leaders aren’t rejected or executed. Jesus’ predictions about “the Son of Man” didn’t make sense. They already had seen Jesus’ reaction to Peter’s protest.

Nobody wanted to be first with that one. Or, well, second.

They would have been happy to be second to Jesus, which would put one of them first among the twelve. In chapter ten Mark told the story of James and John asking Jesus to sit at his right and left “in his glory” – in other words, when he overthrew the Romans and sat upon his throne. They still didn’t get it.

Jesus took the opportunity to say, again, “…whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:43-45).”

In the first century, that ran against the grain. Very few people could reasonably hope to attain the heights of wealth and power, but they wanted to get there. In the twenty-first century, well, as Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I think it’s fair to say that our contemporary culture is obsessed with greatness. Consider the endless iterations of the GOAT meme. Who is the ‘greatest of all time’ artist, athlete, musician, or president? There’s even a television reality show called The Goat, in which ‘reality stars’ from other reality shows compete for the title of the greatest reality show contestant of all time. You can’t make this up, right?”

You can, but nobody would believe you.

They didn’t believe Jesus, either, despite his constant repetitions. It took the cross and the resurrection to show them that when he said it, he meant it. Be a helper. Be a caretaker. Welcome the most vulnerable – like this child here. Serve serve serve serve serve. If you want to strive for greatness, strive to serve the most people the most effectively and the most compassionately. Serve all the way to the cross.

As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “Perhaps this is the most scandalous of scandals in Mark’s gospel. By identifying so radically with a child, by embracing the road to rejection, suffering, dying and being raised, Jesus is re-defining both greatness and Godness. It is not in the glory and honor of the Caesars, but in the vulnerability of a child that we encounter God.”

Who wants to be first?

It’s worth mentioning that Jesus wasn’t the only one who knew this. In the second century Jewish rabbis collected what their predecessors had said about the Book of Exodus. Among the stories was one about Rabbi Gamaliel serving his fellow teachers at a meal. They thought he shouldn’t do such a thing, that it was beneath his dignity. But one of the rabbis said, “Abraham himself served his three visiting angels.” And then another said there was one greater than Abraham who served:

“The Holy One, blessed be he!
He gives to each and every one what he needs
and to everybody what is wanting —
and not just to proper people [benei Adam kosherim],
but also to evil people and to people who worship idols.”

How much more should we accept God’s invitation, instruction, and encouragement to serve?

I know it’s counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. I know the pursuit of excellence is also a worthwhile value. But we pursue excellence in so many wrong things. We “keep up with the Joneses,” when we could be helping to raise up the Joneses.

As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “Mark is pointing to something important, something essential, about believing in Jesus. Because God becoming human, the incarnation, upended every assumption of greatness that the world deemed as definitive. Because God becoming human decided that greatness is not about separation but solidarity, not about better than but relationship. Not about self-adulation but empowerment and encouragement of the other.”

Who are you doing your work for? Is it for your family? That’s not bad. Families are important and it’s vital to meet their needs. Are you working for friends? That’s not bad, either. Support and encouragement builds and maintains strong relationships.

Are you working for a community with which you identify? That’s good, too. Human beings need communities in order to be human. But… do you stop there? Are there no children in other communities with whom you’re concerned? Are there children within this community who do not receive your care? Are there needs that go unmet, not because there aren’t the resources, but because there isn’t the will?

“What if Jesus is right?” asks David Lose at davidlose.net. “I mean, what if we imagined that greatness wasn’t about power and wealth and fame and all the rest, but instead we measured greatness by how much we share with others, how much we take care of others, how much we love others, how much we serve others. What kind of world would we live in?”

Who wants to live in that world?

Who wants to be first?

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches. Sometimes a few, sometimes quite a few.

The image is Christ Teaching the Disciples by Bazzi Rahib, Ilyas Basim Khuri, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56626 [retrieved September 22, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jesus_teaching_his_disciples.jpg.
Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: The Coconut Wireless Tongue

September 15, 2024

Isaiah 50:4-9a
James 3:1-12

The single most efficient communications system I have ever encountered in my life is known as “The Coconut Wireless.” And I’m afraid, contrary to the hopes of my colleagues in the Hawai’i Conference who edit and manage the Conference’s electronic newsletter of that title, that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the original Coconut Wireless that gets good news and bad news from friend to friend and family member to family member in less time than it took for the original event.

If only the original Coconut Wireless had editors as good as those for the Hawai’i Conference’s Coconut Wireless. I’m afraid that the news we distribute so effectively around Hilo, Hawai’i Island, and far beyond, is… inconsistently accurate. And inconsistently well-meaning. And inconsistently careful about telling other people’s stories.

I may think the Coconut Wireless is more efficient than similar “unofficial” communication systems I’ve encountered in my life, but it definitely shares those inconsistences with the other “rumor mills” I’ve known. I’ve been told that family members were dying by other family members – and yes, they were pretty sick, but not dying. I’ve been told that people were upset with me or that they were pleased with me, and in conversations with those people later, found out that neither was true. I’ve lost count of the recommendations people made for people who weren’t interested in what they were being recommended for.

And I’m still aching about the reassurances I have given that I simply didn’t know enough to give. “It will be all right,” is what I said and what I wanted, but it wasn’t what I knew, and sometimes… it wasn’t all right.

“…No one can tame the tongue,” wrote James, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

Sometimes our Coconut Wireless goes that far, doesn’t it?

Margaret Aymer writes at Working Preacher, “What does it mean to think of one’s tongue as that which controls one’s whole being? Or perhaps, in today’s vernacular, what does it mean to think of one’s entire being as controlled by what we post on social media?”

To be honest, we don’t need social media to spread information (and misinformation) efficiently, but Dr. Aymer’s question is on point. We are accustomed to thinking that our actions must match our words. Last week we sang it, in fact, with these words from “Christian, Rise and Act Your Creed”: “Let your prayer be in your deed.” James said similar things earlier in the letter. We read one of them last week.

“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily foodand one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:15-16) Well, not much. No wonder James went on to say that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

He wasn’t just interested in matching word to deed, however. He had observed the way that our words lead our deeds. It’s like the bridle of a horse, he wrote. It’s like the rudder of a ship. It’s like a flame.

It’s rather clever writing, actually. Did you notice that all of them have something to do with tongues? The bit goes into the horse’s mouth, over the tongue. The rudder of a ship is tongue shaped. And we talk about… tongues of fire.

Dr. Aymer continues, “[James] argues, the tongue has the capability of destroying one’s religious practice and that of one’s community. Here, James invites meditation on destructive ‘speech,’ more broadly defined. One might, for instance, think critically about racist speech, vitriol against immigrants, or the practice of ‘trolling’ on social media.”

If that sounds like Dr. Aymer had the current political climate in mind, she wrote those words in 2018. When, it must be said, the political climate wasn’t that much different.

When it comes to our Coconut Wireless, it is indeed difficult to bridle our tongues. Juicy news is just too good not to share, right? Even if we don’t have confirmation that it’s true. Even if it might hurt someone. Even if it’s someone else’s story to tell, not ours. James wanted us to use our faith to guide what we say. Too often, we say it, and then our tongues become the guide for what happens after that.

Gossip, however, is not the worst example of the unbridled tongue. The Coconut Wireless carries care and compassion, too. It’s how we find out that someone needs help, and it’s how we start to organize support for them. No, it’s when the tongue dips into the evils within the human spirit and casts them out into the world: that’s when the tongue becomes “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

It’s been twenty-three years since that terrible September 11th when so many people died. Do you remember the ways in which tongues wagged? Do you remember the hateful things said about Afghans, about Arabs, about all Muslims? I remember some efforts by national leaders to restrain such things, but they weren’t enough. In 2011 the Justice Department reviewed anti-Muslim hate crimes from 1998 to 2010. In 2000 there were less than 50 reported incidents. In 2001 there were nearly 500. In 2002 they fell to about 160 – but they continued to be between 100 and 170 right up to 2010.

Hateful words led to hate crimes.

This past week a hateful – and baseless – accusation against immigrants in an Ohio community received a lot of amplification. Hateful words on a national stage led to bomb threats that closed elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio, for two days this week. The people amplifying these racist lies have not just refused to recant them, they have repeated them.

Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What we say can reveal more about us than about the recipient of our speech. The scary part about toxic talk is that it reveals the character of our inner identity. ‘Out of the overflow of the heart,’ said Jesus, ‘the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned’ (Matthew 12:34–37).”

Well. I suppose I should be grateful for some revelatory unbridled tongues. I’m afraid I’m not, though.

“Bridling the tongue is not for the faint of heart,” writes Casey Thornburgh Sigmon at Working Preacher. “It takes courage and a strong heart to listen in order to hear another, to tune into the Spirit’s whispers through them and in the space between people, rather than to listen only for a gap to insert yourself in an unbridled fashion.

“Our American society hasn’t the faintest idea how to listen. So much of American Christianity is a shouting match. Foolishness abides. Fires are set, and what is the cost?”

We know the cost. We do not need to pay it.

James offered no easy guidance to bridling the tongue. He simply said, “Do it.” So here are a few suggestions of my own.

First, if you don’t know it’s true, don’t say it. I’m not talking about asking questions for learning. If you don’t know something, by all means ask. But if the sentence begins, “I heard that…” make sure that the person you’re quoting had the ability to know what they told you. If they didn’t, check with someone who does. If you don’t know it’s true, don’t say it.

Second, ask yourself whose story this is to tell. Who is concerned in it, and who is affected by it? If the story is about you, it’s yours. You can tell it or not as you need or as you please. But if the story is about someone else, did they give permission to share it? What impact might it have upon them if it goes farther than you?

Impact: that’s the third thing. Will what you say tend to help or to harm? Will it organize support or coalesce into shame? Will your jokes be “laugh with” or “laugh at?” Will other people be further affected, particularly by speech that can be heard as prejudiced?

Here’s James’ advice: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”

That works, too.

I’m still impressed with the efficiency of our Coconut Wireless. It’s so quick. It’s so effective. It makes things happen.

By what we say, may our Coconut Wireless also be truthful, sensitive to others’ stories, and focused on compassion.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the text will not precisely match the recorded sermon.

The image is an icon of Saint James the Just (neo-Byzantine). Artist unknown. The picture originates from the days.ru open catalogue, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=329361.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Open to Mercy

September 8, 2024

James 2:1-17
Mark 7:24-37

“[Jesus] said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’”

So much for “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”

A lot of theologians and Biblical scholars over the years have done interpretive backflips – which is like interpretive dance, I suppose, except it doesn’t look as good – to make Jesus sound… appropriate… in this verse. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “What do we do when Jesus seems to be as bad as everyone else… when the words he speaks cause us great discomfort and seem to be at odds with the God that we know and love? The passage in Mark is not the first time that someone—or even an entire group of people—gets othered by the one we expect to do and be better. But, this is Jesus doing that work, and his language seems particularly harsh. Readers and listeners surely ask the question, ‘Did Jesus just call that woman and her child and the people in their community… dogs?’ Even after reading, studying, and even preaching this passage, I am still asking. It’s that jarring.”

I don’t think we can give Jesus an excuse here. I think we have to deal with it just the way that the woman dealt with it two millennia ago. We have to hear it, swallow it, challenge it, and see if that makes a difference.

This Syrophoenician woman’s challenge made all the difference in the world.

Jesus wasn’t looking to heal anybody that day. He had come to Tyre, which is in present-day Lebanon. In the first century, it was outside the regions of Judea and Galilee, where Jews were in the majority. In Tyre, Jesus was a foreigner and an outsider. From what Mark says, that he was trying to avoid notice, that was deliberate. It looks, in fact, like another of Jesus’ always-frustrated attempts in the Gospel of Mark to get some time off.

When you’re on vacation in Las Vegas, do you really want to be doing your Hilo job?

Somehow – we don’t know how – she’d heard about him. Somehow – we don’t know how – she spotted him. She brought all her need and all her fear and all her love for her daughter and laid it at Jesus’ feet. She “begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.”

Jesus said, offensively, “No.”

She was the supplicant in that moment, and she was a woman confronting a man in a deeply sexist culture. He, on the other hand, was an outsider who couldn’t count on support from the people who were, after all, neighbors to this woman. This story doesn’t fit neatly into our categories of power and authority. Jesus’ statement about children and dogs makes it sound like he believed he was “in charge” in that moment. On foreign soil, however, that was something of an illusion, and she knew it. Her response, which has often been described as a moment of humble petition, sounds different to me.

I think she landed a blow right on Jesus’ hubris. I think she cast a dart that punctured Jesus’ pride.

It’s funny how people think better and more compassionately when their self-importance gets set aside.

They become open to mercy, to acting mercifully, to letting mercy triumph over judgment.

That’s how this story becomes about us even more than it is about Jesus.

It’s election season – well, campaign season. One of the things that frustrates me about campaign season is the way that so many candidates set out to prove that their opponent is a jerk, and how successfully they do it. The problem is, when someone sets out to prove that someone else is a jerk, they usually do so in ways that reveal that they, too, are jerks. When I need to choose between one demonstrated jerk and another demonstrated jerk, I make that choice without enthusiasm.

There’s another characteristic of much of American politics, though, that’s more frustrating than proof of jerkiness. It’s the insistence that a candidate’s proposals and policies have remained fixed and constant. No “wishy-washy” modification of position. No change. No growth.

No… learning.

Seriously? I’m supposed to be impressed that a person running for public office has never learned anything?

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “The ‘Good News’ is not that we serve a shiny, inaccessible deity who floats five feet above the ground. It is that Jesus shows us — in real time, in the flesh — what it means to grow as a child of God. He embodies what it looks like to stretch into a deeper, truer, and fuller comprehension of God’s love.”

Last week we looked at the stories just before this in Mark’s Gospel. In that sermon, I said, “Most of all, he [Jesus] would not mistake the trivial for the vital. He would not mistake the somewhat important for the greatly important.” It’s somewhat embarrassing to have said that, because Jesus mistook the trivial for the important just five verses later. It’s more embarrassing to have made the same mistake myself. Yesterday.

Yesterday I was attending an anti-racism training session. It’s something I’ve done before. So I shouldn’t have done what I did. I got focused for some time on some errors in history, which were, in the end, trivial. It took some time to realize what I’d done. When I did, I was embarrassed and ashamed. And I had some difficulties falling asleep last night.

I wonder if that’s how Jesus felt.

Maren Tirabassi writes at her blog, GiftsInOpenHands:

Jesus thought he was willing
to enter every aspect
of human life and death.

Scorn, betrayal, suffering?
Bring them on,
but probably he never
imagined shame.

Being human is to feel shame.

I don’t know for certain how Jesus felt. I know how I’ve felt – not just once but many times. Yes, being human is to feel shame. Which is a shame in itself.

But will we grow from it?

Courtney V. Buggs writes at Working Preacher, “The use of ‘dogs’ to refer to this woman (and her community) recalls the derogatory terms used to describe Black women in modern society. Vice President Kamala Harris, former First Lady Michelle Obama, tennis extraordinaire Serena Williams, and Presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett are but a few women who have been publicly maligned with harmful language.”

Will we grow from that?

Will we open ourselves to mercy? To giving mercy, but also to receiving it for our errors and sins?

Will we learn?

It’s a funny thing about the second healing in this morning’s reading from Mark. Jesus had left Tyre and returned to the region near Galilee, but this time to the eastern side, in modern Jordan. Like Tyre, the area was inhabited mostly by Gentiles. And as in Tyre, people came up to him asking him to heal someone who almost certainly was a foreigner to Jesus.

This time, Jesus offered no protest. He did things that, frankly, we really only tolerate from medical personnel. He put his fingers in the man’s ears, and touched his tongue. I mean, yuck.

He’d also touched a Gentile. That would have been frowned upon, certainly. But he chose the important over the trivial.

Jesus acted with mercy.

Barbara Messner writes at her blog, BarbPoetPriest,

Yet Jesus showed the way of self-searching
that faces the shame
of rash judgement, acknowledges true words
heard and respected.
Brave challenge cast out demons of dishonour,
healing healer and child.

There are so many demons of dishonor among us whose cries drown out the summons to mercy. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, elitism, greed, power, self-righteousness, the temptations of the trivial. These things and others would have us believe that there are good reasons to withhold mercy. Mostly, those reasons don’t hold up. Mostly, those reasons will end up shaming us, perhaps in private, perhaps in public.

If we turn away from those things, however, if we let the shame wash over us, if we acknowledge the guilt, if we perceive another way, if we choose another path, then we open ourselves to mercy and open ourselves to sharing mercy. As Jesus opened himself to mercy.

So he “cast out demons of dishonor, healing healer and child.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes the sermon text in advance, but he has been known to improvise. The prepared sermon will not match the sermon as delivered.

The image is Christus und die Kananäerin (Christ and the Woman of Canaan) by Adolf Hölzel (before 1926) – Der Protestantismus der Gegenwart, Stuttgart 1926, Tafel nach S. 320, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46082202.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Inside and Outside

September 1, 2024

James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I probably shouldn’t tell you this. It’s something of an open secret among clergy, that there is something “performative” about being a pastor. That is, ministers are aware that we have to present ourselves as someone worth imitating, while also knowing that some aspects of our characters or histories won’t stand up to scrutiny. The truth is, we’re aspiring to become the person we present ourselves to be.

But every once in a while, we yearn to spend some time in a “safe space,” to speak more openly about this person who isn’t quite what we aspire to be, and… well. Frankly, when we do, it sounds a whole lot like talking stink.

Which is a pretty good indication that religious leaders haven’t changed all that much since Jesus confronted this set of visiting scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem. D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “I think the identification that these folks came from Jerusalem is significant. In Mark, Jesus’ ministry is in Galilee, where he is enormously popular. The antagonists come from Jerusalem (in Judea) and Jesus only goes to Jerusalem during the last week of his life – to die.” Back in chapter 3, another group of scribes from Jerusalem accused Jesus of being possessed by Beelzebul, so I think Rev. Davis is onto something here. Jesus had got along quite well with the local Pharisees, who probably considered him one of them, but the ones from the big city, well. They were looking for ways to discredit him.

They found one. Despite Mark’s assertion, it wasn’t true that regular handwashing was a practice of “all Jews” in the first century, but it was certainly highly recommended by the notable teachers of the day. For that matter, it’s highly recommended by notable teachers of our day in schools, homes, hospitals, and so on. Not three years ago we guided people into this sanctuary past a set of sinks to make sure worshipers arrived with clean hands.

Our lectionary editors have somewhat helpfully, and somewhat not, removed a section of this text that explains why Jesus got so worked up. The people who criticized him and his disciples engaged in a practice that avoided their obligations to care for their aging parents. The greed and callousness that came out of them, asserted Jesus, defiled them much more than unwashed hands.

As Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “At least one part of this passage is straightforward, although disturbing: Jesus explains where evil comes from. It comes from within all those people who bug you. But also from within you. Me, too.”

Ouch.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Again, it’s easy for us to look down on the Pharisees, as if we in our enlightened modernity would never make their mistakes. But honestly, are we any different? Don’t we sometimes behave as if we’re finished products, with nothing new to discover about the Holy Spirit’s movements in the world?“

Ouch again.

Jesus did not reject the tradition of handwashing, we should note. He simply would not use it as a basis for religious condemnation, either of his own followers or anyone else. He also would not use one kind of religious obligation – making gifts to God – to avoid another kind of religious obligation – care for one’s parents. Most of all, he would not mistake the trivial for the vital. He would not mistake the somewhat important for the greatly important.

He would not – did not, and does not – misunderstand the complicated nature of the human heart, which contains side-by-side the evil intentions he listed so fiercely, and the positive intentions toward the virtues I can quote from last week’s reading from Ephesians: truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and reliance upon the Holy Spirit. James, writing many years after Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, reminded his hearers of this crucial theme in the life of Christian faith: not everything in the human heart is supposed to be brought out into the open, and the important things of the faith are not supposed to be locked away in there. “Human anger does not produce God’s righteousness,” wrote James, and haven’t we seen the truth of that a few times over the centuries? “Be doers of the word and not merely hearers,” wrote James. Don’t leave the truth, righteousness, peace, and all the rest remain within you, but let it be shared.

And oh, yes: “Care for orphans and widows in their distress.” If you feel like you’ve heard that one before, the prophets of the Old Testament said it. A lot.

And bridle the tongue. That’s one of James’ obsessions. We know a lot about the way words bring harm, too, don’t we?

Karoline Lewis writes, “We need only the ramping up of the political season to remind us that words and actions are a revelation of character. What we say and what we do reveal who we are. It is that simple. Jesus knew that. Mark wants us to know that. And we often forget that.”

Dr. Lewis wrote that in 2015, by the way.

And she also wrote this: “All of these texts articulate how hard it is to live what we believe, to speak our truth, to be willing to bring forth in our words and our actions what is in our hearts. And how hard it is to hear that what others hear from us does not seem to be us. That’s why you need people around you who will tell you the truth when they see a disconnect between who you are and what you say and do.”

The gathering of the Church is not to enable ministers to talk stink. It’s to enable ministers – lay or ordained, because we all serve on Christ’s behalf – to help one another avoid talking stink. The gathering of the Church is not to condemn the failures of those inside or outside, but to support those who strive to learn from their failures and work towards their best. The gathering of the Church is not to establish a city on the hill inaccessible to those with unwashed hands, but to welcome in those who want to share the gifts that God has given them.

In this gathering, Jesus feeds us on the bread of life, and satisfies our thirst with the cup of blessing. As we come to Christ’s table shortly, let us find there the nourishment to move forward as disciples together.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

The image is “Eating with Unwashed Hands,” an etching by Jan Luyken from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations housed at Belgrave Hall, Leicester, England (The Kevin Victor Freestone Bequest). Photo by Philip De Vere. Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20225111.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Unarmored

August 25, 2024

Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20

It was a hymn tune first, with lyrics that included “Oh Brothers” (and in the next verse “Oh Sisters”) “will you meet me on Cannan’s happy shore?” It was one of those sung in the camp meeting worship services of early 19th century American settlements in the West.

With the arrival of the Civil War, however, the tune found a new set of lyrics. “John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave; his soul’s a marching on.” It became a marching anthem for soldiers of the Union Army, who took inspiration from the intense anti-slavery activist John Brown, who had been executed after a frustrated attempt to seize guns to outfit an uprising among enslaved African Americans in 1859.

Julia Ward Howe heard the song during a review of Union troops in Washington, DC. A companion, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, suggested that she come up with a new set of words – and she did. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” became a marching anthem for the Union armies as they moved to battles throughout the 87 year old nation.

The Civil War is still, today, the deadliest conflict in the history of the United States of America. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” played a role in inspiring  hundreds of thousands to kill or be killed.

I get… anxious… about military imagery in hymns, theology, and yes, in Scripture. Human beings are gifted at transforming military metaphors into actual assaults. For that matter, they transform other symbols for use in armed conflict. Famously, the Emperor Constantine put two superimposed Greek letters on his shield before he went to battle against Maxentius in 312 with the Imperial throne at stake. The letters were Chi and Rho – which look like an X and a P to our eyes – the first two letters of “Christ” in Greek.

Constantine won. Maxentius died. We don’t know how many others died with him. Constantine legalized Christianity in the next year, ending nearly three hundred years of intermittent persecution. Unfortunately, it would also strengthen the notion of a warrior Christ, one who would give military victory, and incidentally label all those opposing Rome, or France, or Spain, or England (or take your pick) as evildoers to be cut off from remembrance on the earth.

The Apostle’s metaphor of the Whole Armor of God has been used to endorse the holy wars, the inquisitions, the crusades that have taken so many lives and grieved their purported Divine endorser. I have no doubt it would also grieve the Apostle.

Sarah Henrich writes at Working Preacher:

Yes, it is dangerous indeed to classify those with whom one disagrees as agents of the devil. We have three protections against making Ephesians 6 a warrant for warfare or oppression:

  • first, this metaphor was written for minority persons;
  • second, flesh and blood opponents are not those against whom one contends;
  • finally, the very nature of the armor makes clear that the message here is a survival strategy for persons of faith in a hostile world, not a strategy for aggression.

Take a good look at this Whole Armor of God. It’s not intended for a battle against human beings. Imagine going into a conflict equipped only with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit. The people who came with real armor and real weapons are going to hurt you. To put it into poetry:

I’m grateful that the struggle is not with
the powers of blood and flesh. Not if
I’m to rely upon these items
for protection of my vital spark.

What happens to the righteous? Why,
they suffer, as do those who speak of peace.
A shield of faith is powerless against
an arrow, or a club, or fist.

Should I entrust my head to its
salvation? The logic doesn’t work for me.
I wish I thought an offense of the Spirit,
of the Word, protected anyone, but… no.

And worst of all, to recommend
I gird my waist with Truth, as if
the truth has ever carried any weight
when cut so easily by lies.

Those virtues will not help you very much in a human conflict, let’s face it. Certainly not in physical combat. They’re not always very helpful in negation or debate. More than one party to a lawsuit has found that truth and righteousness falter under the pressure of greed and lies.

And peace may be the most fragile thing of all. It vanishes as soon as violence or coercion take place.

Why, then, did the Apostle advise us to enter these encounters essentially unprotected, unarmored?

It’s because there is no substitute for virtue.

Remember that these virtues are not about interactions with people – though I note that we should be using them in interactions with people – they are primarily about resisting the influence of spiritual forces. In our tradition at this time we don’t give a lot of attention to the idea of spiritual forces other than God. We don’t explain mental illness or distress with possession by demons. We don’t explain the power of greed as resulting from demonic influence. We don’t understand our own temptations as coming from anyone other than ourselves.

Many of our ancestors, physical and spiritual, did. They employed these virtues of truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit to resist the temptations around them, temptations to selfishness, to the abuse of power, to the abandonment of their relationship with Christ. In that context, these virtues had the ability to help.

As I say, we don’t think that way about temptation. For us, it comes from within.

Does it matter?

Whether temptation is an external force or an internal collision with desire, these same virtues have the capacity to help us resist. When we search for the truth about this thing we’ve come to desire, perhaps we’ll learn not only that it’s not all it claims to be, but that it won’t make us happy anyway. I keep wondering whether, before the 2007-2008 financial crisis, if more people had spent more time understanding the truth about the financial instruments being traded, if they would have calmed things down. If more of them had been able to check their greed at the door, would things have changed?

I think so.

It’s not just the obvious temptations of sex and greed. As Katie Hines-Shah writes at The Christian Century, “’Spiritual forces of evil’ are present in mundane human life. Racism, sexism, homophobia, greed, destruction of the environment, lack of concern for human life, failure to do the good that is within us—these are forces of evil, from the classroom to the boardroom. Faithful Christians need to gird themselves against them.”

Let’s face it, the world has taught us racism, sexism, homophobia, greed, disregard for the environment. We see these things sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically, from the offhand racial microaggression to the open and casual dumping of toxic waste. We have been taught to value human life, but to value the lives of ourselves, our families, our communities higher than others. And that makes a difference. It permits us to tolerate or even support evil.

What have we learned about doing good? That it’s the thing to do? Sometimes – but not always, right? Sometimes it would be futile, so we shouldn’t. Sometimes it would promote bad habits in someone else, so we shouldn’t. Sometimes it would put us at risk, so we shouldn’t.

All of those can be difficult questions… but can’t we do the good that is within us more often than we do?

I sincerely wish that truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Holy Spirit offered real protection in the real world. They don’t. They offer us protection only in the world of the spirit, which is a strange place with strange rules. The sad truth is that we confront the evils of this world basically unarmored against their physical manifestations. The sad truth is that we frequently fail to understand the ways in which these virtues protect us against injuries to our souls.

Take on, then, this Whole Armor of God with eyes wide open. Know that you will still face the challenges of life, and that you will still face challenges to the soul. Those virtues may not help you much in the world.

But those virtues are the best there are to protect you against spiritual harms. Those virtues will guard your soul.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares the sermon text in advance, but while preaching things happen and things change. What you view will differ from what you read.

Photo of Roman crocodile armor by Ken Kennedy (taken in the British Museum) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/kkennedy/503916291/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16228691.