Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Help Us!

March 29, 2026

Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 21:1-11

As Jesus rode the donkey – maybe two donkeys, according to Matthew – into Jerusalem, the crowds gathered and shouted. They quoted Psalm 118, a song of thanksgiving and, quite possibly, related to an ancient religious procession from the city entrance to the area of the Temple at the city’s summit. They also called “Hosannah to the Son of David!”

That was a pretty bold thing to say.

As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “The word “Hosanna” is only found in the entry stories of the NT. The Greek term Ὡσαννὰ [Hosanna] seems to be a transliteration of the Hebrew הושיעה־נא [Hoshiana]. When הושיעה־נא [Hoshiana] appears in the OT, such as in Psalm 118:25, it was translated in the LXX as σῴζω [sodzo], “to save.”

Calling for help and aid doesn’t sound so bold, but calling for it from the “Son of David” was. “Son of David” was a royal title, indicating a legitimate claim to the traditional throne of Israel and Judah. It was just short of calling Jesus, “King Jesus,” and not all that short of it.

Bold.

It could well have been even bolder, because it wasn’t just the city’s residents in the city at the time. At JourneyWithJesus.net, Debie Thomas writes,

In their compelling book, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Last Days in Jerusalem, [Marcus] Borg and [John] Crossan argue that two processions entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday; Jesus’ was not the only Triumphal Entry.

Every year, the Roman governor of Judea would ride up to Jerusalem from his coastal residence in the west.  Why?  To be present in the city for Passover — the Jewish festival that swelled Jerusalem’s population from its usual 50,000 to at least 200,000.

The governor would come in all of his imperial majesty to remind the Jewish pilgrims that Rome was in charge.  They could commemorate an ancient victory against Egypt if they wanted to.  But real, present-day resistance (if anyone was daring to consider it) was futile.

When the crowds shouted “Hosannah! Save us! Help us!” to Jesus, they did so aware that the ones they wanted help against – the Romans – were present, armed, and prepared to bring violence just the other side of the city.

Help us!

A bold cry, or a desperate one, or sometimes maybe there isn’t much difference between desperate and bold.

Jesus chose an odd prophetic image to emulate with his donkey and colt. Jesus could have done things to look more like a traditional monarch. He might have sent his disciples to find a horse. He would have looked great on a horse. Everybody looks good on a horse – at least until it starts moving. After that it helps to know how to ride. It would have even matched a prophecy from Jeremiah rather than Zechariah.

If you want to look like a king, get a horse. Not a donkey.

They were bold and they were desperate, and they shouted, “Save us,” because even on a donkey Jesus was the best they had.

As D. Mark Davis writes, “I like how the word κράζω [kradzo] (cry out) is like an onomatopoeia, imitating the croak of a raven. It is used for both loud crowds and desperate people, like a woman crying out for help and Jesus crying out from the cross.”

Desperate people. A woman crying out for help. Jesus crying out from the cross. Matthew 27:46: “’Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

Help us!

I don’t know for sure what that crowd wanted. As with most crowds, I suspect there was a good range. Some hoped for that royal Messiah who would cast out the Romans. Others probably hoped for a new religious, but not political, leader who would do something about the priests. I’m sorry to say that religious leaders aren’t always the best of friends to the people they’re supposed to serve, in the twenty-first century or in the first century. Some might have been shouting “Help us!” because of their individual needs: Healing for an illness or injury, a word of assurance for the hopeless, a gift of food for the hungry. I suspect as well that some joined the crowd and shouted and waved palms because people get caught up in that kind of excitement even when they don’t know anything about what’s going on. “Who is this?” they asked, and there’s always plenty who don’t bother to ask.

Help us!

I don’t know whether Marcus Borg and John Crossan are right that Pontius Pilate entered the city on the other side as Jesus entered on the near side. It would have required some knowledge and planning to time things that way – which, to be sure, Jesus was certainly capable of. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. The crowd would have contrasted the Jesus parade with the Pilate parade. They would have noticed the distinct lack of soldiers. They would have noticed the complete lack of marching drummers and trumpeters. They would have noticed the replacement of the warhorse with the donkey.

“Crossan notes that Jesus rode ‘the most unthreatening, most un-military mount imaginable: a female nursing donkey with her little colt trotting along beside her.’” (quoted by Debie Thomas at JourneyWithJesus.net)

I’ll help you, said Jesus in his choice of mount, but not quite as you think, and probably not quite as you expect, and more than you dare to hope.

I am depressingly conscious of the number of people crying out for help in the world today. Some of them are near: people on this island, O’ahu, and Maui picking up from the wreckage left by floods and high winds over the last two weeks. There is a national UCC emergency offering for that, by the way. Look for information on how to contribute to it in the Weekly Chime on Tuesday.

Others near us suffer from injuries or illness, from the pains of long-term disease, from the fogs and storms of mental illness. Some cope with grief, with feelings of failure, with the words of others telling them that they aren’t of much worth. Some cope with the oppression of violence, violence from those who claim to love them, or violence of those who are supposed to protect them. Let’s face it. Federal courts have clearly stated that a law enforcement agency of the United States is routinely abusing its authority, taking people into custody without due process of law, abusing those it has detained, and avoiding accountability before the courts.

If they do it in Minnesota and Maine, they’ll do it in Hawai’i.

Some of those crying for help are not so near. They live in some of the world’s poorest regions, vulnerable to famine or disaster. Or they live as a marginalized group of people in some of the world’s most oppressive nations. Those people might be identified by skin color, or by national heritage, or by sexual orientation. These people might simply be women.

Some of them are just people living in a place engaged in war. That includes the United States. The war has come home with grief for mercifully few families so far, but the only certain thing about armed conflict is that more families will grieve. It’s for certain that a lot more families are grieving in Iran, and most of them have nothing to do with the issues between the governments. That’s the great tragedy and the great immorality of war. Whatever the justice of the cause – and the American administration has made no coherent explanation answering the questions of just cause – the most just cause in the world inflicts horrendous suffering on innocents. During the Second World War, it’s estimated that twice as many civilians died as those in the military – and again, most of those soldiers and sailors and aircrew had nothing to do with the aggression of their governments.

There are a lot of people in the world crying, “Hosannah! Save us! Help us!”

Jesus, in the meantime, makes his way through our lives on a donkey, not a warhorse. Whatever the show on the far side of the city, the great gift is before us here.

How will he help? Not with military conquest. He didn’t do it in the first century. He’s not going to do it in the twenty-first century. Not with grandeur. He chose a donkey. Not with coercion. He didn’t force anybody to cheer him. Pilate almost certainly did.

The things that Jesus offers – nearness to God, richness of soul, abundance of life in this world and the promise of life eternal – just aren’t as grand or as compelling as the parade of Pilate. They don’t answer the cries of “Help us!” all that directly – but I ask you: if we all truly lived as Jesus calls us and as Jesus expects, would we be at war now?

I didn’t think so, either.

Help us, Jesus!

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches – sometimes deliberately, and sometimes not. The sermon as he prepared it is not a direct match for the sermon he delivered.

The image is The Entry into Jerusalem by Jan Baegert (ca. 1505-1510) – Wuselig, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104993708.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets

February 8, 2026

Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20

In her blog, preaching Professor Alyce M. McKenzie tells a story about a skit she and some students presented one year, which featured her giving feedback to Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount as if he were a member of her preaching class. In the skit, she said, “You remember we learned earlier in the semester that every sermon needs to have one single focus and you are all over the map with this one — salt, light, not coming to abolish the prophets, breaking and keeping commandments. It seems almost like you put a bunch of short sayings together in a row. And one more thing — your final sentence: ‘Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Where is the good news in this sermon ending? It sets out an impossible goal and then tells listeners they’ll be in trouble if they can’t do the impossible.”

The punchline, she wrote, is that while she was marking things on the blackboard with her back to the class, “Jesus” beckoned the other students to follow and they left her alone in the room.

There is some truth, however, to her critique. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus wasn’t making things easy for anyone. To a people whose Scriptures told them about their ancestors repeated failures to live up to the standards of the Law and the Prophets, Jesus said, “Fulfill them.” That’s where the light came from. It’s the source of the salt. And, oh yes, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now, we’ve been taught for years that the Pharisees and the scribes were the villains of the New Testament, and certainly by the time the Gospels were written there was a lot of dissension between the emerging Christians and the senior theologians of Judaism. To Jesus’ hearers, though, the Pharisees and the scribes weren’t bad guys, they were the tip top examples of what goodness meant. These were the people who seriously contemplated God’s law, who worked through the implications of the things the prophets had said. To exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees set the bar incredibly high. Dr. McKenzie properly called it an “impossible goal.”

“’No!’ we might say, ‘Jesus didn’t really mean that,’” writes Karoline Lewis at Working Preacher. She continues, “But what if Jesus did? What if Jesus’ intention was for us as disciples to imagine and live into a righteousness that makes the kingdom of heaven possible? If this is true, no wonder Jesus tells this to his disciples from the beginning. They will need the rest of the Gospel to make sense of and embrace such a request.”

Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. Jesus first – his followers next. Jesus first – and then you and me.

The usual complaint is that the Law and the Prophets are hard to understand. Are they? Really? “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers,” wrote Isaiah hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Is it hard to understand that self-interest is a problem? Is it hard to understand that exploiting people, whether they’re your employees or your family or your neighbor is a problem?

Quarreling and fighting. Clearly problems. And then there are the behaviors that aren’t problems, that are precisely what God was calling for in the Law and repeating through the prophets: Loose the bonds of injustice. Don’t burden people. Don’t enslave them. Share your bread. House the homeless. Clothe the naked. Care for your family. “Then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

Or as Jesus put it, “You are the light of the world.”

A light not to be hidden.

Eric Barreto writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus gives the central insight that lights don’t magically end up underneath bushels. The only way for our light to be covered is if we put a bushel over it. We can hear the incredulous tone in Jesus’ voice, ‘No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel’ (verse 15). Ridiculous! Jesus is clear: we are not victims inevitably doomed to being distracted and drained by the bushels of inferiority or self-absorption or fantasy. Bushels can only block out the light when we put them there.”

There’s a lot of truth to that. You and I are more than capable of hiding our light, not by being humble, but by seeing something to do and leaving it undone. Somebody else will do it, we might think. Or there just isn’t time (which might be true). Worst of all, I’m too important to do this simple thing.

I can also think of more than one way in which others drop baskets over our light. Plenty of people have suffered being discounted by others. It is, in fact, an all-too-common experience. You sometimes hear of it being done by family members, who’ll tell one of the ‘ohana that their work is bad, that their opinions are unwelcome, that they themselves are worthless. We’re also familiar with broader prejudices within societies, which usually qualify certain groups as worth less or even worthless: children, foreigners, people with a different hue of skin, women.

In the January 31st edition of “Letters from an American,” historian Heather Cox Richardson quoted 19th century US Senator from South Carolina James Henry Hammond, who in 1858 told his colleagues that all societies need a “mudsill” class to do the work and to benefit their betters. African Americans served that purpose in the pre-Civil War South, but the North, he said, had “the man who lives by daily labor…in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and ‘operatives,’ as you call them, are essentially slaves.”

Senator Hammond’s words were literally a bushel basket meant to extinguish the light of the world. They have their echoes today. Do not mistake them. They will do what’s chemically impossible: cause salt to lose its taste. They will do what breaks hearts, families, and societies: hide the light.

When Jesus told us to let our light shine, he didn’t just mean, “Do nice things.” He meant, “See that the hungry are fed and the homeless housed. See that the oppressed are freed and the burdened relieved. Do not let the powerful say, ‘Sorry,’ and do nothing as if that took care of it. Do what John the Baptist did. Tell the powerful to repent for their sins.”

Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org:

If our fasting does not enable us to discern God’s will more clearly,
If our prayers do not stir us to address unmet needs around us,
If our blessings do not compel us to bless our neighbor,
If our sacramental rites do not move us to solidarity with the marginalized,
If our praise of the abiding of Creator does not lead to care and respect of all creation,
If our confession does not spur us beyond absolution to repair,
If our assurance of God’s grace does not lead us to extend mercy,
Then why would the Holy and Just God even participate in it?

Yet, if we remove the yoke among us…
If we seek justice, speak truth, and love abundantly,
If we embrace the immigrant among us,
If we make space and consideration for the ignored and isolated,
If we lend our voice for the persecuted, defamed, and disenfranchised,
If we stand up to corruption and bear witness to wrongdoing,
If we raise our voice and move beyond our discomfort,
Then we too may receive the promise of the covenant and the Holy One’s declaration of “Here I am.”

Remove the yoke.

Remove the yoke.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text as he preaches, both accidentally and on purpose.

The image is Study for the Sermon on the Mount, a preliminary study for the cycle of paintings in Loccum Monastery by Eduard von Gebhardt (before 1925) – Van Ham Kunstauktionen (SØR Rusche Collection – Eduard von Gebhardt, Auktion 25.02.2021), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103398414.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Towards Peace

December 7, 2025

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

It’s a vision of improbable things.

Wolves living peaceably with lambs, leopards and kids, calves with lions, cows with bears. They’re all grazing, which you’d think wouldn’t work for the wolves, leopards, lions, and bears. They don’t have the right kind of teeth.

Through them wander these little children who lead – I grant you that little children lead us around all the time, but that’s only until we catch on – and they even play safely around the poisonous snakes.

It seems fantastic. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Then, there is the testimony of the Banyan tree. It’s an extraordinary spectacle. Roots grow from the branches of the tree. The branches are long and the roots seek water from the ground. The Banyan tree can live for hundreds of years and expand to cover acres under its canopy of branches and sustaining roots. Most trees do not function this way, and the Banyan tree may seem like a creation of fantasy rather than another version of a fig tree.

“The world described in Isaiah 11 may also seem to be the fruit of impossible fantasy rather than a prophetic, imagined future crafted by the abiding love and longing of the Holy One.”

Living in Hilo, we’re familiar both with the wonders of the banyan tree and with its strange fragility. We’ve seen great trees come crashing tragically down. And we’ve seen them grow and thrive supported by those fantastic roots.

Is the banyan, or the remade natural world, really any more improbable than what launches this utopian vision: the image of a leader emerging from the house of David who demonstrated wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the LORD?

Isaiah lived through the reigns of good kings and bad kings. He had advised King Ahaz, who got very bad reviews from the authors of 2 Kings: “He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord,” is how they introduced him in chapter 16. Isaiah had much better experiences with Ahaz’ son Hezekiah, who received great praise from the authors of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. “He did what was right in the sight of the LORD just as his ancestor David had done,” reads 2 Kings in chapter 18.

Is it so strange that a ruler should govern with wisdom and understanding, with knowledge and in the reverence of God?

Corrinne L. Carvalho writes at Working Preacher, “It is difficult for Christians to hear this poem, especially during the season of Advent, and not think it celebrates the birth of Jesus. But it is important to remember that this yearning for a perfect world pre-dates and exists independently of the Christmas story. I think if people around the world were asked to draw a picture of a perfect world leader, that ruler would have many of these same attributes.”

Although… there are some who have other ideas. Michael J. Chan writes at Working Preacher, “In the royal propaganda of the ancient near East, royal figures frequently encounter predatory animals, and especially lions. And so it is no surprise to find the royal child depicted as a shepherd among lions. What is surprising, however, is the way in which the young shepherd interacts with them. In general, kings would be depicted fighting and killing lions, not leading them or living among them.”

Fighting and killing. Not leading. Not living among them.

Does this sound familiar?

Isaiah’s vision of peace relies upon leaders who make peace a priority. Peace, not power. Peace, not privilege. Peace, not pride. Isaiah’s peaceful ruler relies upon the wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, the reverence of God. Isaiah’s peaceful ruler uses that wisdom and righteousness and reverence to look more carefully at the stories they hear. They give regard to the concerns of the poor. They relieve the oppression of those who suffer from the acts of the powerful.

In his novel Jingo, Terry Pratchett described a dialogue between a ruler, Lord Vetinari, and a genius, Leonard of Quirm.

“As they say, [said Lord Vetinari] ‘If you would seek war, prepare for war.’”

“I believe, my lord, the saying is ‘If you would seek peace, prepare for war,’” Leonard ventured.

Vetinari put his head on one side and his lips moved as he repeated the phrase to himself. Finally he said, “No, no. I just don’t see that one at all.”

Terry Pratchett, Jingo (New York, HarTorch), 1997

We make peace by moving toward peace. We move toward peace in our households when we stop insisting on our way, or our authority, or our “rightness.” We move toward peace when we work on our relationships. We move toward peace in our voluntary communities when we work through the different ideas and disagreements and choose a way we can share together. We move toward peace in our churches when we accept that there are things we don’t know about God and about the nature of the world and prioritize the welfare of those affected by our decisions.

We move toward peace in the world when we select leaders who decide in the interests of all people, not just themselves or those in their circle or class. We move toward peace in the world when we send leaders packing who demonstrate that they work for themselves, not others. We move toward peace in the world when we make it clear that we will not tolerate injustice, intolerance, oppression, cruelty, and tyranny.

We move toward peace in the world when we embrace peace within ourselves. We move toward peace in the world when we choose the righteousness of God rather than the self-interest which is so common. We move toward peace in the world when we ourselves take the time and effort to learn more than what appears to be obvious, and seek diligently for truth. We move toward peace in the world when we choose wisdom over folly.

As Cory Driver writes at Working Preacher, “God has always been calling the Holy Community to justice and faithfulness, and has always promised to send leaders who will show the way. It is such a leader that we, along with Isaiah, look for during this Advent.”

Let us be such leaders in our families and communities; let us be such citizens in our nation, let us insist upon such leaders in the houses of government in the world.

Let us journey toward peace.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons in advance, but he makes changes while he preaches, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not.

The image is Peaceable Kingtom by Rick and Brenda Beerhorst, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55782 [retrieved December 7, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74782490@N00/5816094892.
Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Uncategorized

Pastor’s Corner: Surpassing Ourselves

The best part of the Christmas story is, I think, the way that people surpassed themselves.
It could have gone much differently. Mary found herself with child by the Holy Spirit, and she could have found herself with-out the support of her family, fiancée, and community. Instead, they believed her. They trusted her. They supported her. They loved her.

People don’t always do that, do they?

Later, caught in an unusual and unwelcome government operation, Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem to find no space available. One of the innkeepers among the many without a place for them created some basic shelter, some semblance of comfort. Meanwhile, on a hillside shepherds chose to follow the wild directions of heavenly beings. Exhausted in the stable, I can’t imagine that Gabriel’s promises of a Messiah sounded likely to Jesus’ first-time parents. When the shepherds brought the angels’ word, they also brought an assurance they desperately needed.

Later, Herod acted like an ordinary king – fearful, jealous, and violent – while foreigners took the extraordinary step (steps, actually) to celebrate the birth of one who would rule in a different way. Their stunning generosity enabled the threatened family to survive, and the infant Messiah to thrive.

Over and over again, people surpassed themselves. They did more than others expected, perhaps even more than they expected of themselves. This Christmas, surprise yourself with your goodness, your mercy, your support, your acceptance, your generosity. Surpass yourself with your family, your neighbors, and your church.

As we celebrate the surpassing worth of Christ, let us give as he would have us give.

Merry Christmas!

Eric Anderson

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

Sermon: Pride at Home

August 31, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some people still want you to believe them.

Don’t believe them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know. Like I’m merrily doing now.

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

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

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

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

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

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

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

Sermon: Unlawful (Sort Of)

August 24, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why didn’t Jesus make it?

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

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

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

It’s thirsty. And it’s bound.

Set it free. Make sure there’s water.

Set it free.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

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

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

Rev. Eric Anderson 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 Pastor's Corner, Uncategorized

Pastor’s Corner: Changes to The Messenger

August 7, 2024

We will change the publication schedule of The Messenger next month. Beginning in September, we will return to issuing two issues a month, retiring the weekly schedule we have used since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

The Messenger requires a significant amount of resources. It accounts for the bulk of our mailing costs each month. Staff – both Momi Lyman and myself – devote time to it. Reducing the frequency of these mailings will save dollars, and also give us time for other responsibilities and projects.

Fewer congregations and other settings of the United Church of Christ produce printed newsletters these days. All of the national office’s publications are electronic. The Hawai’i Conference’s The Friend is one of the last conference newsletters to be printed and posted.

Personally, I am glad that we still print and post The Messenger. Not everybody has access to electronic communications even now, and there are others with access who still prefer a physical newsletter. I strongly believe that effective communication relies, in part, on reaching people where they are. Because I believe that our words have value, I want them to be easily accessible to those who want to hear them. During the pandemic, this was the safest way with which we could remind people that their church cares about them.

We increased the publication schedule in an environment where other contact incurred dangers we needed to avoid. With the risk significantly lessened, I think we can return to the twice-monthly schedule we had when I arrived as your pastor eight years ago.

This is still the church that cares for you.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Uncategorized

Pastor’s Corner: Not So Slow Summer

July 17, 2024

I don’t know why I think summers will slow down, except that it’s a lingering memory from my childhood. The hustle and bustle of school seemed overwhelming in those days, and the stretch of days without those obligations seemed absolutely blissful.

In truth, of course, my brother and I ended up spending time in our parents’ workplaces, which sometimes interested us and sometimes bored us and usually required us to create our own entertainment – something at which every parent holds their breath.

This summer certainly hasn’t slowed down. I set down one set of responsibilities as Chair of the Conference Council in June, and was given another set as Chair of the Hawai’i Island Association Committee on Ministry in July. I’m took a week off in May and I’m taking two weeks off in August, but with my family now more spread out across New England, I’ll spend quite a bit of time on the road.

Where to find rest and peace?

As always, the answer to that question is to create those spaces for myself and hold them for myself. Whether it’s a prayer time at dawn or dusk, or Bible reading at noon, or a place to visit which soothes – these are things within my power to reserve and to protect. I can make the quiet time, and regrettably I can also set it aside for some reason which, in the end, rarely is as important as renewing my heart and soul.

No, you can’t count on summer to slow things down for you. You and I, we have to carve out those times ourselves, and keep them safe, so that God may reassure our hearts.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Unpreached Sermon: Gotta Dance

This sermon was prepared for worship on July 14, 2024, but not preached because of the assassination attempt against a Presidential candidates on July 13. Instead, Pastor Eric preached “Repeating Myself.”

July 14, 2024

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19
Psalm 24

In the 1952 musical film, Singing in the Rain, there’s a musical number that has never made any sense to me. I grant you that people suddenly bursting into song is standard fare for musicals, which doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, but I never had any problem with that. No, the movie introduces a musical number that’s being included in the fictional 18th century movie The Dancing Cavalier, and the musical number, “Broadway Melody,” is all about somebody who comes to Broadway to become a dancer.

And no, I never have been able to figure out how that went together, but hey, it’s a musical. It’s also amazing. Gene Kelly did some of his best dance work in the number, and it also featured Cyd Charisse. Most of all, it began and ended with Kelly’s musical shout, “Gotta dance!”

King David couldn’t have heard that musical phrase, but he certainly understood it. When they decided to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, he led the procession in a dance. “Gotta dance,” was the phrase of the day, because it wasn’t just David. It was other people in the procession. “David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.”

The ark had been in one place for twenty years. Those were eventful years. Israel had selected a monarch for the first time, King Saul. That hadn’t gone so well. God had appointed a new monarch, David, and while the two worked together for a while David lived as leader of a small armed rebellion for many years. Saul and many of his sons died in battle with the Philistines, but one, Ishbaal, survived and was acclaimed king by the most of the twelve tribes. David ruled in the south until Ishbaal was assassinated, leaving David as undisputed monarch of Israel.

The next thing he did was to seize the Jebusite city of Jerusalem, which had been an independent city-state within the lands the Hebrew people inhabited. David made it the new national capital, and not-very-modestly named it “The City of David.” The new city would not be associated with either the house of Saul or with the places David had ruled while contesting for the throne. It was about as close as they could come to creating a new beginning.

About the only thing missing: the Ark of the Covenant. The chest which contained the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. The symbol of God’s blessing. The central object that represented God’s commitment to the nation. It had been just ten miles away from Jerusalem for twenty years. The time had come to bring it to the political and social center of the nation, and make it the religious center, too.

As Richard W. Nysse writes at Working Preacher, “David’s exuberance can be read as pure gratitude for what Lord has granted him, but it can also be interpreted as politically astute manipulation.

“In other words, David’s motives are not pure and yet God is involved. Sin is real and faith is real; at times they are concurrent in one event and one character. The narrative leaves room for both readings. Perhaps it even insists on both readings, and thus depicts a world that has resonance with our own.”

Gotta dance. But who is he dancing for?

It’s easy to make David into a self-interested political manipulator. He did such things. The worst of them was the rape of Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, but they’re not the only such acts. During his days as a rebel he was also a mercenary for neighboring (and hostile) nations as well as something of a bandit. As John C. Holbert writes in his blog at Patheos, “There can be little doubt that David loves YHWH in these wonderful stories. But there can also be little doubt that, at times at least, he loves himself more.”

Is that the case here? David paused the festival parade between verses 5 and 11 because of a tragic accident that killed one of the attendants. “David was angry because the LORD had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah…” says the text – not afraid, not cautious, not concerned: angry with God. That tends to reinforce some of my suspicious cynicism.

There are other reasons to work the politics of something, though, and that’s the welfare of the nation. David ruled a nation that had suffered years of low-level civil war while they were also vulnerable to repeated conflicts with their neighboring nations. Hostilities between David and surviving members of Saul’s extended family were still conceivable. It didn’t just serve David, it served the nation to create a new sense of unity, to demonstrate that the new monarch would rule justly and with care for everybody’s welfare. Jerusalem’s clean slate, if the Ark of the Covenant could be brought there, would be endorsed by the God of the Exodus who had brought everyone to a new home.

Look, everyone, it’s a new home.

Gotta dance for that.

Well. Maybe.

David’s first wife (the authors of Second Samuel had lost count of his wives in chapter five), Michal, “looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.” If David had been channeling “Gotta Dance” she was in tune with the Jerome Kern song, “I Won’t Dance,” sung by Frank Sinatra in 1957 (and a whole lot of other people after that). Michal, it turns out, thought that David went over the top with his dancing, even making some pointedly rude comments about it. It basically ended any positive feeling in their relationship.

“Gotta dance?” Or “I won’t dance?” Which would you prefer?

Barbara Messner writes in her blog:

I have witnessed sacred dancing
that has stirred my very being:
wordless meaning that’s enhancing
prayer inspired by what I’m seeing –
spirit stirring, feelings freeing.

Yet our mainstream church disdains it,
though the censure is unspoken:
formal liturgy restrains it
into gestures that are token,
careful that no power is woken.

The technicolor rainbow of Christianity has a lot of variety in it: in theology, in organization, in spiritual style, and in the energy of worship. There are parades in churches of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican traditions, but they don’t look much like David’s leaping and dancing. They’re grand; they’re stately. They’re measured; they’re dignified. And on any given Sunday morning, there’s church choirs swaying and even performing dance steps in Baptist churches. There are people crying out spontaneously from the congregation in Pentecostal churches.

On Palm Sunday here, we circle round the sanctuary singing and waving palms, and we might be dancing if I were better at it.

David and those with him, they chose, “Gotta dance.” Yes, there was calculation to it, but people do things for lots of reasons. As Amy G. Oden writes at Working Preacher, “David and ‘all the house of Israel’—all 30,000 of them!—dance before the Lord “with all their might” (verse 5)! Even the list of instruments: ‘lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals’ (verse 5) conveys exuberance.  Holy Presence may invite us into quiet contemplation, into bold action or renewed commitments. Here it evokes festive joy.”

We have some dancing enthusiasts among us. Not 30,000 of them. We have some singing enthusiasts among us. Not 30,000 of them, either. We aren’t terribly exuberant people here at Church of the Holy Cross. But… I know myself well enough to know that there’s some more celebration in me than I usually display. There’s some joyful energy even within this example of a New England Congregationalist, often known as “God’s Frozen Chosen.” I’m more likely to sing it than to dance it, but you know, it’s gotta come out.

Gotta sing. Gotta dance.

We’ve gotta sing and gotta dance because God’s blessings are manifest all around us. Look at those trees. Look at those flowers. Look at that sky (even if it’s gray). Look at that ocean. Look at those people whose smile is brighter than a sunrise. Isn’t that enough reason to rejoice?

But more: we have a congregation worth celebrating, one that care for our neighbors and welcomes the newcomer. We have a commitment to one another and to those who have gone before us. We live and serve with other congregations of the United Church of Christ and the universal Church who share our commitments, our ministry, and our joy. That’s worth celebrating, isn’t it?

And most of all: we have a God of love and grace, a God of forgiveness and redemption, a God of presence and inspiration. What we see and hear and smell and feel and taste is just a fraction of the wonder that is our God. God is with us.

God is with us. So yes: Gotta dance!

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

The image is David Danced before the LORD with All his Might (circa 1896–1902) by James Tissot – http://www.gci.org/files/images/jt/TissDanc.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15343206.