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.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: No Fire

June 29, 2025

Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

Jesus’ disciples had been… uneven… through chapter nine. They’d begun well, returning from their own expeditions of healing with stories of great success. Then they’d sort of fumbled when Jesus asked them feed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, which I grant you I’d have fumbled as well. When Jesus asked them who he was, only Simon Peter dared to say that he was the Messiah – then Peter earned a rebuke from Jesus when he protested the idea of a suffering, crucified Messiah.

From there Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a mountain where they witnessed him transfigured into a glowing figure and speaking with Moses and Elijah, two of the faith’s great heroes. Simon Peter earned another rebuke – this time from God’s own voice – on that occasion. And at the bottom of the mountain, the rest of the disciples couldn’t heal a child, and Jesus had to do it.

If all that weren’t enough, they’d argued about who was the greatest and Jesus caught them at it. They’d tried to stop someone from casting out demons in Jesus’ name, and Jesus told them, “Whoever is not against you is for you.”

Jesus’ disciples had done some pretty impressive things, but in some other ways they’d really messed up.

Enter James and John at this moment, with Jesus resolved to go to Jerusalem. A Samaritan village wouldn’t receive him. “Shall we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they wanted to know.

If this seems drastic, there was Biblical precedent, and it came from that same Elijah James and John had seen talking with Jesus on the mountain of the transfiguration. In the first chapter of Second Kings, Elijah encountered a series of captains and their soldiers sent by King Ahaziah to arrest him. The first two ordered him to come with them, and Elijah said, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” And, well, it did.

I have to give James and John credit for their Bible knowledge. They were probably in the neighborhood of ancient Samaria, the capital of Ahaziah’s kingdom of Israel. The Samaritans were the descendants of the people who lived there. If the Samaritans were going to treat Jesus the way their ancestors had treated Elijah, then shouldn’t they suffer the same punishment? Fire from heaven! Let’s go!

Jesus said no. No fire.

Amy G. Oden writes at Working Preacher, “We’ve all felt it. The rise in our gut when someone rejects our most cherished beliefs.

“We recognize the need to justify our views, prove we are right, defend our faith. But we don’t stop there. We also have the impulse to attack — to show how that person is wrong, misguided, even unfaithful. If we have structural or institutional power, we may move to shut them down and ‘command fire to come down from heaven and consumer them’ figuratively if not literally. If we have military or political power, we may use it to harm and punish.”

We may? Oh, I suppose we may.

I suppose we do.

Like a lot of adolescents, I broke my parents’ hearts – at least a little, for a little while. This may come as a surprise to those who are participating in our Confirmation Class, but I didn’t take part in the Confirmation Class of my home church. I was wrestling with questions of faith, and to be honest, I was also wrestling with how far I could push my independence. So yes. On the nights our Confirmation Class met, I stayed home in a somewhat chilly atmosphere.

I probably would have been better off going.

For those of you wondering how I ever got ordained without becoming a church member, I did become a church member three years later. Just not through a Confirmation Class.

More to the point, my relationship with my parents survived my refusal to join the Confirmation Class. Those relationships don’t always survive adolescents’ rebellious exercises. My parents stayed in it despite their hurt and anger. I stayed in it, too, and if I pushed in other ways at other times, I won some and they won some. There were tears, but there was no fire.

No fire.

It turns out that some ancient manuscripts add some text at verse 56. Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I think of this extra verse as the most important verse not in the Bible. At Luke 9:56 some manuscripts add a conclusion to the story: ‘And Jesus said to them, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”’ Clearly, for a later copyist, the simple rebuke of Jesus was not enough; he wanted to categorically repudiate the hatred of James and John.”

Why did that copyist find it necessary? Because, let’s face it, we are awfully good at going from being right to being self-righteous to being other-condemning. I’m there with you. I like to be right (insert joke about how unusual that is here). I like the sensation of knowing that I know, and that I do, the will of God. It’s a Good Feeling.

The next stage could be to say, “Here’s how you can share that Good Feeling.” But is that what I do? Um. Sometimes? Maybe? More often, though, I move to something more like, “Hey! I’m right! You’re wrong! Straighten up and fly right!”

Hello, Self-Righteous Station. All aboard for Triumphalism Terminal!

Amy G. Oden writes, “Triumphalism is a powerful and dangerous drug, closely tied to self-righteousness. It feels so good to be right! To win! To know that God is on our side! Yay us! Boo everyone else! Endorphins pump through our bodies, creating a high we want to sustain.

“Our Christian history demonstrates that triumphalism is our besetting sin. It is a subtle and short step from rejoicing in the good news of Jesus Christ to attacking those who will not share in it. Our history shows that when we have the power to harm others we consider outside our circle of triumph, we are likely to use it. And Jesus will have none of it.”

Jesus will have none of it. No fire.

Barbara Messner writes at BarbPoetPriest.blog:

“Jesus’ way is respect and compassion.
It’s ironic and tragic at present
that some leaders who claim to be Christian
think that missiles will force a surrender.
They are bullies demanding submission:
those who crucified Christ made such choices.”

For those of you wondering about the recent aerial bombings of other countries, I think Rev. Messner points us to the heart of Jesus: No fire.

Those who crucified Christ made such choices. Choices to bring fire. Death. Destruction.

Jesus said: No fire.

No fire.

No fire from heaven to rend the earth.

No fire from self-righteousness to rend the heart.

No fire from God’s own sanctity to burn the spirit.

No fire.

No fire.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes when he preaches. Sometimes he intends to. Sometimes he just does.

The image is an illustration of the Transfiguration from Read’n Grow Picture Bible Illustrations (Biblical illustrations by Jim Padgett, courtesy of Sweet Publishing, Ft. Worth, TX, and Gospel Light, Ventura, CA. Copyright 1984.). Image provided by Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18885603.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Trinity of Wisdom

June 15, 2025

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
John 16:12-15

Lucy Lind Hogan’s commentary on this passage from John, posted at Working Preacher, made me laugh this week. She wrote, “I suspect that most in your congregation would not appreciate a sermon that began like this: ‘There are things that are essential to our faith, but I can’t speak about them because you would not be able to understand. They are far too complicated and way over your head.’”

So, let me check. Raise your hand or give me a nod if you’d object to a sermon that started with, “You’re not going to understand this.”

Well, that’s a pity.

Because I’m not sure you’re going to understand this.

In my defense, the reason I’m not sure you’re going to understand this is because I’m not sure I understand this. It’s Trinity Sunday, so we’re wrestling with understanding the Trinity, not one of Christianity’s simpler ideas. Further, “this” is Jesus’ promise given in John 16:30 that the Spirit of truth will come, and will guide the disciples into all the truth.

Have you noticed how difficult truth is?

Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “What is truth? The dictionary relates truth to fact and reality. Yet, disputes over facts and attempts to hide or dismiss reality may challenge our understanding of truth. Individuals speak of their truth as if it were a choice or varied based on perspective, experience, and acceptance. Is there such a thing as a shared reality when so much of human life is highly segmented and fractured?”

Lord, I hope so. While I grant the possibility of alternate realities – I’m a fan of science fiction, after all – it’s awfully difficult to live in more than one reality at a time. I also grant the existence of unknown reality, when we simply don’t know what reality is, and so different ideas of what it might be all have at least some validity. I certainly grant the existence of different notions of reality, some of which might be correct, or partially correct, or just plain incorrect.

At ground, though, I tend to assume that there is a reality, a truth, to the universe around us. While a vast amount of it might be unknown – it’s a big universe, after all – there’s a lot of truth that we do know and that we can know.

A couple hundred years of experience, for example, teaches us that vaccination significantly reduces the spread and the intensity of infectious disease. According to the National Library of Medicine, the 1853 smallpox outbreak in Hawai’i was the third worst epidemic in Hawaiian history. It killed 5,000 people. There hasn’t been a case of smallpox since 1977 anywhere in the world, and that’s because of vaccination. Those who claim vaccines cause rather than prevent disease are wrong.

They are not telling the truth.

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all the truth. I might wish that the Holy Spirit would just give us all the truth, but that’s not what Jesus said and it certainly isn’t our experience, is it? We have to work at truth. We have to ask questions. We have to evaluate competing answers. We have to compare the assertions of different sources, take a look at how it matches with our experience, and consider whether our experience might be deceptive. People had considered and even practiced inoculation for smallpox for some time in Asia, Africa, India, and Europe, but most people considered making somebody a little bit sick to prevent getting very sick to be dangerous. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the practice gained wider acceptance and not until the 20th century that it knocked smallpox out entirely.

With anti-vaccination people in positions of power and exercising that power to restrict and discourage vaccination, we’re going to see more illness. We’re going to see more death. That’s truth.

Truth is not wholly revealed by observation and experimentation. For one thing, our observation has limits, and our experiments can’t always account for all the potential circumstances. Science always looks for predictable phenomena: I do this, and this happens. But if there’s more than what I do that changes in an experiment and I don’t know it, my predictions don’t work.

That makes the truth of people – or of one person – really difficult to understand.

It makes the truth of God, with whom we are in relationship and within whom there is a relationship that we call “the Trinity,” really difficult to understand.

But maybe, just maybe, there are dimensions of the Trinity that we can understand, or accept, or even rejoice in.

Meda Stamper writes at Working Preacher, “The Trinity presented to us in John is a manifestation of God’s love for us, a way of opening a door to the mystery of God that allows us to see ourselves embraced by it.” When Jesus spoke to his disciples it was in perilous times. They may not have seen it as clearly as he did – they asked “What did he mean by this?” pretty often during his farewell address – but nobody who had been with Jesus in Jerusalem had any illusions about the danger. Jesus’ arrest didn’t come as a surprise.

Jesus offered reassurance, the reassurance of the Spirit’s presence, and the reassurance of the Spirit’s truth, as a sign of his own love and God’s own love for them.

The Trinity is love.

As well as love, Jesus’ words extended hope. As Timothy L. Adkins-Jones writes at Working Preacher, “Maybe through tears of his own, and possibly to weeping disciples, Jesus offers hope to those that he loves. In a world where loss, anxiety, and fear are legion, there will be no shortage of disciples in our midst who are in need of reassurance. Our mission seems to be to offer ways that the relationship Jesus describes in this passage, between Himself, the Father, and the Spirit, brings hope to an anxious people instead of wrestling with the particulars of the Trinity.”

I’ve said more than once that hope as a Christian concept or virtue is not a feeling. It’s a choice. When I hope, I look at what is before me and decide that it does not need to be this way. It can be better. It might be pretty much okay, but it can be better. Or it might be really bad, and I choose to believe it can be better. I choose hope. I choose to work toward my hope.

Choose hope, my friends, Jesus told them.

The Trinity is hope.

Jesus’ words to his disciples continued past where our reading ends at verse 15. “You have pain now,” he told them, “but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

In the midst of that solemn night with its confusion and its sense of threat, Jesus promised joy. At JourneyWithJesus.net, Amy Frykholm writes about establishing a food pantry during the COVID pandemic in Leadville, Colorado: “To cross a mountain stream, you must seek those few rocks that will remain firmly in place, that are flat enough to afford a foothold. We likened our development of the food pantry to looking for these ‘joy’ rocks. What can we do with enough joy, enough letting go, enough delight that we can stay steady while we cross this stream? If we saw ourselves falling into obligation, we’d ask, ‘Is this a joy rock?’ If the answer was no, then we looked for another route.”

Joy. That’s important. It’s a vital part of the journey; it’s a vital part of the work. It’s a vital element of truth itself. If someone’s truth claim perverts justice, threatens harm, or promises suffering, if it lacks joy or subverts joy, it is not true. Read the witness of Proverbs’ figure of Wisdom who, during Creation, “was beside God, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”

Wisdom – Truth – the Holy Spirit – the Trinity – is joy.

Joy. Hope. Love. That’s a Trinity of Truth. It’s worth confessing. It’s worth proclaiming. It’s worth living.

It’s a Trinity of Wisdom.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares the entire sermon ahead of time, and frequently makes changes while preaching.

The image is Three-Faced Christ (The Trinity) by Anonymous Flemish master (ca. 1500) – https://www.artfairmag.com/colnaghi, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=162397197.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Visions and Dreams

June 8, 2025

Romans 8:14-17
Acts 2:1-21

Do you remember how old you were when somebody first told you that you couldn’t do something?

I don’t, actually. I certainly remember it happening, usually after I’d tried it. I had this notion, for example, that I could climb into this piece of furniture that had an intriguing big cupboard in it. I’m pretty sure it was intended for towels, but it sure looked like it had space for a curious three- or four-year-old boy.

Said three- or four-year-old boy had not thought that the cabinet was built to sit pretty flat, with all the weight within its sides, so adding the weight of a three- or four-year-old boy to one side might just cause it to lose its balance. Actually, did cause it to fall over, trapping said three- or four-year-old boy inside the intriguing big cupboard in the middle after creating a terrible crash.

I survived.

My parents also told me that I couldn’t do that. Or that I shouldn’t. Ever. Again.

Some of the things we’re told not to do are for our safety. We’re told not to drive 80 miles an hour through those big turns in the gulches along the Hamakua Coast. Good, say I. We’re told not to cross the barriers along the cliffs of Kaluapele, the summit caldera of Kilauea. I’m happy with that. We’re told not to go swimming for a full hour after a meal to avoid cramps. Well, that’s a bit of a legend, but I’m willing to relax for a bit before taking on the waves again.

People tell us, “No,” to keep us safe.

Except for the times they tell us, “No,” to keep us limited.

About one hundred and twenty of Jesus’ disciples had stayed in Jerusalem after his resurrection, according to Luke’s Gospel and his sequel, Acts of the Apostles. I like to call “Acts” a sequel. It makes me feel that Luke should have ended the Gospel with something like: “Coming soon from this author: the exciting tale of how Jesus’ frightened followers faced the faith and found their fearlessness. Look for it in a bookstore near you!”

We don’t have names for all of the one hundred and twenty. Luke identified the eleven of Jesus’ inner circle of followers, and described the selection of Matthias to replace the betrayer Judas Iscariot and bring the number to twelve again. Luke wrote that there were “certain women” among them, one of whom was Mary, Jesus’ mother. His brothers had joined the group, too.

Then came Pentecost.

Jeremy L. Williams writes at Working Preacher, “Shavuot or ‘The Festival of Weeks’ occurs seven weeks after Passover and begins on the fiftieth day after, hence its Greek name Pentecost. This is one of the three festivals for which some Jewish people would make pilgrimage to Jerusalem (the other two are Passover and the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles). Pentecost is a harvest festival where families bring the first fruits of their harvest in anticipation of God blessing the remainder of the harvest (Exodus 23:16; Deuteronomy 26:5-11). This made Pentecost already symbolically rich for imagining the beginning of a bountiful ingathering, but in Acts’ case what was reaped was not produce, but people.”

Let’s face it, Jesus’ followers had heard a lot of “You can’t do this,” recently. Jesus’ debates in the Temple during the last week of his life had included a lot of “Don’t you dare”s from the people in power. The fact that they scattered to the four winds the night Jesus was arrested reveals that they recognized the danger they were in – kind of the ultimate, “You can’t do this.” The resurrection had certainly changed things, but how much? What were the risks? What kind of power might be with them? Jesus had told them the Holy Spirit would be given to them, but what did that mean? They didn’t know.

They got together in a house that Shavuot, that Pentecost, but they wouldn’t stay there. As Margaret Aymer writes at Working Preacher, “The Holy Spirit proves not to be a quiet, heavenly dove but, rather, a violent force that blows the church into being (Acts 2:41–47). That church consists mainly of immigrants, people of different languages and cultures with different mother tongues (Acts 2:5, 9–12, 14). To these, the message goes forth: a message of the coming of the day of the Lord, full of heavenly portents and prophetic women, slaves, and men.”

They’d been told not to get people excited. They’d been told not to make a noise. They’d been told not to make waves.

If the Holy Spirit had been told that, the Holy Spirit ignored it.

Who told you that you couldn’t do something? Why? Did they say, “You can’t do this because: You’re too young. You’re too old. You’re too female. You’re too Micronesian. You’re too Japanese. You’re too Hawaiian. You’re too gay. You’re too not-what-we-expect-when-we-think-of-someone-in-this-position.”

You can’t. Go away. Hole up with a hundred and twenty others in a house and keep quiet. That’s nice.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t care about any of that.

On that Pentecost Day, the Holy Spirit drove them out of the house. The Holy Spirit filled them with so many words that they had to speak them. The Holy Spirit decided that one or two languages wasn’t enough. Hebrew or Aramaic? Great. Greek? A nice addition. Enough? Not even close. Brush up your Parthian, there. How about Persian? Egyptian? Go for it. Arabic? Good call.

“In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

If you didn’t want to speak to those foreigners, if you didn’t want them in your city, if you didn’t think they were interested, well, too bad. The Holy Spirit doesn’t care about any of that. Put up all the travel bans you want. Be as cruel to fearful people fleeing violence as you want. The Holy Spirit doesn’t care.

The Holy Spirit will speak God’s deeds of power.

What kind of people will speak them? Sons and daughters – good grief, we’ll be listening to women now? Young men haven’t gained any wisdom; but we’ve got to listen to them? Old men ramble, we all know that. But now they’re going to prophesy? And slaves – slaves? Really? The lowest of the low? The Holy Spirit will speak through them?

All flesh, declared the Spirit through the prophet Joel. All flesh, and the Holy Spirit means it.

You can decide that a Navy ship shouldn’t honor a gay Navy veteran assassinated for being gay. You can decide that a Navy ship can’t honor a woman who led slaves to freedom with the code name, “Moses.” You can decide that women shouldn’t have senior positions in law enforcement.

You can decide that women shouldn’t pastor churches. You can decide that gay people aren’t welcome in a church. You can decide all sorts of things.

The Holy Spirit will ignore all that.

The Holy Spirit will speak God’s deeds of power.

The Holy Spirit will bring dreams and visions, and these will be dreams and visions of a world saved, not a world damned by greed, division, prejudice, and selfish pride. The Holy Spirit will come to those at the margins of society, and it will come regardless of gender or age. The Holy Spirit doesn’t care about the barriers human beings so carefully create to lift some up and keep many down.

The Holy Spirit will come to you.

That might be the most astonishing thing of all, because I imagine that a few people, possibly more than a few people, have told you it can’t. You’re not holy enough, right? Or possibly too young, or possibly too old, yes? Did somebody tell you that only a select few receive the Holy Spirit, and that you’re not special enough to be one of those? Did somebody tell you that being female, or gay, or male, or from wherever your ancestors were from made you ineligible?

Guess what? Whoever told you that, and however many people told you that, they were wrong. The Holy Spirit comes to all flesh, and none of those things bother the Spirit in the least.

Or was it you? Did you tell yourself that you weren’t worthy somehow? I’m a sinner. I’m a failure. I’m not smart enough. I’m not vocal enough. Did you come up with some reasons for the Holy Spirit to pass you by?

Guess what? None of those things bother the Spirit in the least.

For heaven’s sake, the Holy Spirit came to the guys who ran away the night Jesus was arrested. The Holy Spirit came to the one who denied knowing Jesus three times. Those things didn’t bother the Spirit in the least. Those things didn’t stop the Spirit for a moment.

Dreams and visions, friends. Dreams and visions of a better world, a richer world, a loving world.

The Holy Spirit is coming to you so that these dreams and visions might be.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares his sermons in advance, but he does make changes while preaching, sometimes intentionally.

The image is Pentecost by Jean Restout (1732) – Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15885407.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: They Were Noticed

June 1, 2025

Acts 16:16-34
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

Two weeks ago the Sunday School made some presentations to the teachers who’ve worked with them during this school year. I was one of those honored. They were kind enough to say they were nuts about me, which really touched my heart. They gave me nuts, too.

They also gave me this insulated travel mug bearing these words: “Difference Maker: A dedicated individual who can make a big impact even with just a small action or few words. Someone who makes a difference in the lives of others.”

Difference maker.

That’s what I’ve wanted to be since I was a small child. I went through a number of ways to make a difference: I wanted to be a firefighter, a doctor, a scientist, a teacher, an actor, and some others before I followed a call to ministry. Which, you’ll notice, is a profession that seeks to make a difference.

Whether I have or not, whether I do or not, is something we can debate. I’ve got to tell you, there are days it feels like the world is going on without paying any attention to me at all. Sometimes that’s just fine. Other times, I desperately wish I could change the course of events.

The Apostle Paul along with Silas and some other companions had been in Philippi for a few days. We read of their work and welcome from the Jewish community in the city last week. Lydia, a leader among them, hosted them in her own home.

The woman described in this story came from much further down the social spectrum. She was a slave – Luke didn’t know or didn’t record her name – and she was a person afflicted by demonic possession. It doesn’t really matter whether the first century diagnosis or a twenty-first century diagnosis of severe mental illness was actually correct. She was doubly bound as an enslaved person and as someone who could not control her own speech and actions.

As Jaclyn P. Williams writes at Working Preacher, “One who needed freedom could clearly call out the source of salvation but could not so clearly embrace that salvation. The same spirit that oppressed her could see the presence of the way of redemption—the way that is Jesus Christ. It is also meaningful that she refers to Paul and Silas as ‘slaves of the most high God’ (verse 17) while she was enslaved by the spirit of divination and those who were taking advantage of her torment.”

She may have been doubly bound, but she made a difference. She made a difference to her owners, who sold her words as predictions of the future. She made a difference to those who purchased her words, or so we assume, because people kept paying for them. She made a difference to Paul, because when she followed and shouted at him over a few days he got annoyed.

You know, I really wish Paul had exorcised the demon for better reasons than pique, but that’s how Luke told the story, so what can I do?

Paul and Silas, up to this point, hadn’t made much of a ripple in Philippi. They’d made friends among the Jewish community, but that was a small group in a big city. The rest of the population didn’t notice them. Until…

Paul got annoyed, and healed a young woman, and cut off her owners’ source of income. That made a difference.

Suddenly they were noticed.

Eric Barreto writes at Working Preacher, “Gripped with avarice, the formerly profitable girl’s owners accuse Paul and Silas of profound treachery before the city’s ruling authorities. Notice, however, that their indictments fail to mention one key piece of evidence: the loss of the unnamed slave girl’s services in a lucrative endeavor! Instead, these rapacious merchants resort to the tried and true method of base ethnocentrism. They accuse Paul and Silas of drawing Philippi’s denizens away from the approved Roman way of life to Jewish customs incommensurate with the city’s ethnic values. Of course, the charges are false.”

The charges may have been false, but the magistrates found them guilty. They imposed the punishments given to people who were not citizens of Rome, which would have been most people at this time in the first century.

Jerusha Matsen Neal writes at Working Preacher, “Acts 16 narrates a leveraging of cultural superiority and social fear for the preservation of an economic system that grounds the status quo. The torture, beatings, and social isolation of prison are powerful technologies in that mechanism. Paul and Silas are not imprisoned because they break a law. They are imprisoned because they are imprisonable people—vulnerable people—who threaten the bottom line of the powerful.”

If you want to be noticed, if you want to make a difference, if you want to change the future: threaten the bottom line of the powerful.

You may not enjoy the attention. Paul and Silas didn’t. Is there a way of making a difference that does not incur the baleful attention of the wealthy, the powerful, the ones with intrenched interests? I’m not sure there is.

Greed is never satisfied. The author known simply as “The Preacher” wrote in Ecclesiastes 5: “The lover of money will not be satisfied with money, nor the lover of wealth with gain. This also is vanity.” Last week I shared some figures compiled by Robert Reich about the budget bill currently before the Senate. The richest .1%, said Dr. Reich, would receive a $390,000 tax cut on average. What I hadn’t checked was how much they earn in the first place.

According to James Royal of Bankrate, in 2022 average earnings for the top .1% were $2.8 million. So they’d be adding 1.3% to their income with the tax cut. Not shabby, I suppose, but hardly dramatic.

At the same time, those earning less than $17,000 will lose about $1,000, 5.8% of their income. They’ve got a lot less to lose.

I’m probably as annoyed as the Apostle Paul was two thousand years ago. I wish I had the power to heal these people double chained by poverty, illness, circumstance, or oppression. I wish I had the power to free people who are chained to their greed, because that’s a harsh bond as well.

Most of all, though, I hope I make a difference. I hope I make things difficult for the ones who exploit others. I hope I make things difficult for those who deprive people of their liberties. I hope I make things difficult for those who use lies and distortions to get their way.

Paul and Silas were noticed. May we be noticed, too.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares his sermon beforehand, but he tends to make changes while preaching. Sometimes he does it intentionally.

The image is Paul and Silas in Philippi, by an unknown artist (between 1591 and 1600). Photo by Rijksmuseum – http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.223502, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84114572.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Leaving Peace

May 25, 2025

Acts 16:9-15
John 14:23-29

These words of Jesus come from John’s account of the Last Supper, specifically from the long (three chapters worth) speech we usually call “Jesus’ Farewell Address to his Disciples.” During Bible study this week (and last week as well), I think it’s safe to say that people found these words to be assuring and, at the same time, confusing. Jesus spoke of coming and going and wouldn’t say where.

We get confused, and a little anxious, and we know how the story goes after this. We know that Jesus spoke of his crucifixion as leaving, of his resurrection as returning, and how were the disciples to understand what he told them without knowing about that? I suspect that Jesus’ friends listened to most of this address the same way I’ve listened to a number of speeches or lectures in my life: letting the words flow over me in the desperate hope that I’ll pick up something sometime that will make it all make sense.

Given our difficulties figuring out all Jesus said in the Gospel of John, I think the disciples didn’t figure it out until after the resurrection, and even then it probably took some time, wouldn’t you think?

Brian Peterson points out at Working Preacher that one of the important things Jesus was trying to convey was that whatever happened, they would not be left alone. He writes, “The first disciples asked where Jesus was staying (1:38); now they have their answer: Jesus is staying with them. Jesus is certainly going away, yet paradoxically, the life of the church is not marked by Jesus’ absence but by the presence of an abiding God.”

Jesus promised that presence through the Holy Spirit, and went on to promise something else: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Peace. Peace.

What did Jesus mean by peace?

Let’s face it, he didn’t mean, “You’re going to live an easy life.” His followers didn’t live easy lives in the first century, and they’re not living easy lives in the twenty-first century.

Even so, people accept an all-too-limited idea of peace. If there’s no war, we might think, there’s peace. Mind you, an end to war is an important step toward peace. There’s no peace in Ukraine or Gaza or Myanmar these days because there are wars going on. Organized violence destroys peace.

So does the violence of official coercion. Osvaldo Vena writes at Working Preacher, “The peace that Jesus gives contrasts sharply with the world’s peace. Even though this affirmation has been spiritualized by conservative and fundamentalist readings of John it is pretty obvious that in its present context this text has in mind the first century world and its understanding of peace as that of the Pax Romana. Therefore, we have here a profound critique of the social and political order of the day.”

The Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, was enforced by a military establishment that routinely committed mass executions, enslavements, and savage punishments. Thirty years after Jesus was crucified – a torturous method of execution used by Romans against non-Romans – a British chief named Prasutagus died, leaving authority over the Iceni tribe to his two daughters. The Romans in Britain ignored his will and annexed his territory. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, “…his kingdom was pillaged by centurions, his household by slaves; as though they had been prizes of war. As a beginning, his wife Boudicca was subjected to the lash and his daughters violated: all the chief men of the Icenians were stripped of their family estates, and the relatives of the king were treated as slaves. Impelled by this outrage and the dread of worse to come — for they had now been reduced to the status of a province — they flew to arms, and incited to rebellion the Trinobantes and others, who, not yet broken by servitude, had entered into a secret and treasonable compact to resume their independence.“

Boudica’s rebellion failed, of course. A Roman force broke her army and slaughtered not just the soldiers but the women and even the pack animals.

Pax Romana.

The peace the world gives. You may recognize it. It’s been popular for millennia.

It was not, is not, the peace Jesus gives.

In the 1985 Pronouncement “Affirming the United Church of Christ as a Just Peace Church,” the 15th General Synod defined Just Peace as “the interrelation of friendship, justice, and common security from violence.” In a just and peaceful community, people live without concern about imminent violence, enjoy the political rights we highly value, and have access to the necessities of life including clean water, health care, food, housing, and employment.

Any other peace, I’d say, and I think Jesus would say, is not peace. It’s better than outright war, but it’s not peace. Not fully. Not completely. Not truly.

There are a lot of people out there, many of whom claim the title of Christian as not just their identity but their authority for what they say, who assert that peace is gained by adhering to their rules and nobody else’s. It’s an historically popular opinion. I mentioned a few weeks ago that the Emperor Charlemagne imposed the death penalty on non-Christian religious observance in parts of his empire. The Church created the office of the Inquisition in the 12th century and through it instigated full-on wars of massacre and pillage against groups with differing Christian theologies. They went on to bring torture and death to non-Christians in Europe. One of the early English translators of the Bible, William Tyndale, was burned to death in 1536 for his Protestant writings. The wars between Protestants and Catholics have stained the world with blood and the Church with shame.

Would that it had ended there. But force as a substitute for peace is as popular as it ever was.

Its most obvious face in the United States is in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They’ve come to coffee farms on this island. They’ve staked out schools. They’ve claimed that political speech is equivalent to terroristic threatening. At a recent meeting of the Micronesian Ministry Committee of the Hawai’i Conference, we learned that some Micronesians are avoiding even travel within the United States because they fear their status will be arbitrarily questioned when returning to Hawai’i.

In the meantime, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that reduces funding for Medicare, which provides access to medical care to the nation’s kupuna, by an estimated $500 billion, according to Robert Reich. Medicaid cuts, which serve the nation’s poor, will cause an estimated 8.6 million people to lose coverage. He writes in a recent post on social media:

“4. How much will the top 0.1 percent of earners stand to gain from it? (Nearly $390,000 per year).

5. If you figure in the benefit cuts and the tax cuts, will Americans making between about $17,000 and $51,000 gain or lose? (They’ll lose about $700 a year).

6. How about Americans with incomes less than $17,000? (They’ll lose more than $1,000 per year on average).

7. How much will the bill add to the federal debt? ($3.8 trillion over 10 years.)”

Pardon me if this doesn’t sound like Jesus’ peace to me. It sounds like the Pax Romana. It sounds like “more for me, less for you.” It sounds like…

Well. It doesn’t sound like Jesus.

Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “Those who say they ‘keep Jesus’ words’ and yet whose words — and actions, for that matter — in no way reflect Jesus’ love. How should we and do we respond to such observable duplicity? Do we look away? Do we remain silent? And why? Because of anxiety? Too worried about the bottom line to be bold in the proclamation of God’s love? Because of fear? Too concerned about securing our future and forgetting that our future, and the future of the church, is in God’s hands? Because of misplaced conviction? Thinking that success of ministry is all up to us, leaving behind the truth that it’s in God we trust?”

The truth is that when Jesus left peace with us, he left a challenge with us. He didn’t leave us a peace that had been accomplished. He left us a peace toward which we strive. He didn’t leave us a peace that makes us feel good. He left us a peace for which we hope. He didn’t leave us a peace that already stands. He left us a peace for us to build.

Yes, that’s not as the world gives. The world will happily give us a peace that is not peace, and insist that it’s the only peace there is.

It’s not. Christ’s peace lies before us. Christ’s peace is the only peace worth having. Christ’s peace is worth building.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric changes things while preaching. Sometimes intentionally.

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