If God is for us, who can be against us? wrote Paul. I wonder if God is for all the people who have ever been and ever will be.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 8:26-39).
Unlike most of the other letters of Paul which have survived to become part of our New Testament, the letter to the Romans was sent to people that Paul had not yet met. Some of them he clearly had heard about. He clearly expected that they had heard about him. He planned to visit Rome on his way to Spain, so he wrote a letter to introduce himself and to ask for their help and support as he planned that great journey.
As a result, the letter to the Romans is more expansive than some of Paul’s other correspondence. Paul had more to say about the extent of his thinking and his theology. In his letters to the churches in Corinth and in Galatia, Paul focused more on specific concerns arising within those congregations. In his letter to the Romans, he was trying to describe who he was and how he thought and what he believed about Jesus. And so we have not just the longest of Paul’s letters, we have the one in which he had the most to say.
This section of the eighth chapter is just packed with Paul’s thinking about salvation and about God’s role, not just in creation, but in the extent of God’s love for creation. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The God said that sent Jesus, the God who was willing to sacrifice Jesus, the God who was willing to let the human beings do what they wanted to Jesus, is a God who will respond with grace and with mercy.
In Paul’s thinking no power on earth could step between God’s mercy and those to whom God chose to provide it. Paul called them God’s elect and indeed that’s true, those whom God has chosen. I do wonder if we can assume that God chose a small number. Paul worked diligently to increase that number.
But if God sent God’s Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him (as John, the gospel writer, later put it), well then how much of the world did God intend to save? And if there are no powers that can stand between God and God’s mercy, how many people will God preserve at the end of time?
I do think that I can’t entirely remove the possibility of condemnation for some. Between the freedom of God and the ability of human beings to make pretty catastrophic mistakes, I think that possibility is always there. I also think that God’s intent was, is and will always be, to welcome all humanity into that place of light and beauty and love that God has prepared. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house, there are many mansions, and I go to prepare a place for you.” How many mansions have been prepared for us and for those we know and for those we do not know?
The answer to that question lies in the gracious heart of God.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
I have only briefly been a farmer or a gardener. My parents decided one year to plant a small vegetable garden behind our house. It wasn’t a great location. Between hedges, a small garage, and fruit trees, it didn’t get much sun. The soil wasn’t terribly rich. And then there was the family of garden-loving rabbits that lived nearby. Nevertheless, we planted a garden, and my brother and I were allowed to choose one vegetable to plant. Me: I chose carrots.
I like carrots.
We were careful if not terribly skilled about it. We cleared away grasses, dug holes, carefully planted seeds, watered them, and did whatever else we were supposed to do to make things grow. It took time, of course, but gradually shoots appeared above the places we’d placed those seeds. Shoots also appeared in places we hadn’t planted seeds, because we weren’t very good at weeding. Shoots didn’t appear above all the places we’d planted seeds, for whatever reasons that seeds don’t grow, which may have included shade, poor soil, and rabbits.
As far as I can remember, I only ate one carrot from that garden. I wasn’t patient enough at that age to let them sit in the ground and grow. I don’t remember being all that impressed with that tiny carrot, but I did eat it. I certainly didn’t get the results of a hundredfold increase over what I’d planted.
Of course, you don’t get that with root vegetables.
I am not a farmer.
Most of us aren’t – with at least one of our families here at Church of the Holy Cross a notable exception. Our daily work doesn’t include planting, weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, and starting all over again. I would guess that at least some of you are gardeners, however, and hopefully more successful gardeners than I’ve been, and would recognize that there’s something peculiar about the sower in Jesus’ story.
He’s a very careless sower.
I carefully planted each carrot seed, leaving space between it and its neighbor so there was space to grow. I grant you that carrots and grains grow differently, but this sower seems careless at best. As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Instead of carefully calculating how each and every seed is going to be planted and cultivated, the sower just scatters the seed on all kinds of different terrain. I can almost imagine the people around Jesus, many farmers themselves, all dependent on whatever the earth produces, puzzled and even laughing at Jesus’ depiction of the sower. What is this crazy person doing, scattering seed on ground that he knows won’t yield a harvest? Why bother?”
Even ignorant children like I was know that you keep the seeds away from paths and rocks and thorns. Why didn’t Jesus know that?
Well, of course he did.
When Jesus created his parables, he had a technique of starting with something ordinary, something straightforward, something with an ending you could anticipate. Then he introduced something unexpected, out of joint. It’s that moment in the story, that moment when the audience says, “Wait. What did you just say?” that Jesus used to make his point.
That’s why the sower is so careless.
Because we – meaning the followers of Jesus – are not farmers.
Farmers and gardeners have to focus on results. The resources of horticulture are sometimes scarce and often not under the farmer’s control. So they do the best they can to choose proper soil, to nourish the soil as best they can, to protect the growing plants from disease and low water and things that eat leaves. Farmers and gardeners have to concentrate on the sites and the soils that give them the best chance for a good harvest. They may seek to expand their available good soil by breaking up paths and moving rocks and cutting back thorns, but that’s a long-term investment, isn’t it? They don’t plant seed on that land until the hindrances have been removed.
That’s not how the followers of Jesus work. Because we’re not farmers.
The seed, which Jesus described as the Word, gets cast everywhere and anywhere. It shares with actual seed the characteristic that it grows – seeds grow into plants, the Word grows within the human soul to produce more loving, more compassionate people. The Word, which I think we have to understand as being more than simply speaking of God; the Word, which I think we have to understand as emulating God; the Word, which I think we have to understand as displaying the love of God, gets spread to everyone and anyone.
It doesn’t always take. As Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “One can find examples of each kind of response to the word in Matthew’s Gospel. There are many in Matthew’s story who ‘hear the word of the kingdom and do not understand’ (3:19), including the religious leaders who are antagonistic to Jesus’ ministry from the beginning. The crowds respond positively to Jesus, especially to his miracles of healing (9:8; 15:31; 21:8-9), yet turn against Jesus at the end and demand his crucifixion (27:15-23), leaving us to wonder whether they ever truly understood.
“The disciples themselves might be included among those who fall away ‘when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word’ (3:21; cf. 26:56b, 69-75). And the rich young man unable to part with his possessions (19:16-22) provides a stunning example of ‘one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing’ (3:22).”
What I have to emphasize here is that Jesus shared the Word, the invitation, the compassion, the love of God to all of them. More than once. Over and over. Yes, he ate with the sinners and the tax collectors. He also ate with the nice people, the good people, and some of them, I think, grew in the Word themselves. Others did not.
We are not farmers. Not when we’re sharing the Word and the love of God.
For one thing, how do we know what kind of person we’re sharing God’s love with? The ohi’a, I observe, grows in places that I would never imagine. So does the Word of God. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Who am I to tell God, the Creator of the earth and all that is in it, what ‘good soil’ looks like? Who am I to decide who is worthy and who is not of the sower’s generosity? Who am I to hoard what I have been so freely and lavishly given? Who am I to look at God’s profligate blessing and call it waste?”
We are not farmers. We are disciples.
And the people with whom we share the love of God are not soil, they are people. You can change soil. Famers and gardeners create fertile soil from paths and rocks and thorns with time and effort. Ohi’a trees transform lava rock into fertile soil over decades.
You can’t directly change people – but people can and do change, and you can support them as they do. You can help them nurture the seeds of God’s Word, of God’s love, of God’s grace within them.
You do it by believing it will grow. What is packed hard may soften. What is stony may break apart. What is thorny may be draw aside. Who knows what impact our love and care added to God’s love and grace may have?
We are not farmers. We are disciples.
Debie Thomas continues: “How I wish that the Church — the Church across the ages, the Church across all cultures, denominations, and circumstances — were known for its absurd generosity. How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make. How I wish the world could laugh at our lavishness instead of weeping in the wake of our stinginess. How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular. How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst into colorful, riotous, joyous life.”
Absurd generosity. Like God’s. Like Jesus’.
Let’s do that.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches – intentionally and otherwise – so the sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as presented.
Jesus compared himself to a shepherd, one whose sheep recognized, and one who knew all the names of the ones he cared for.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 10:1-10). This opening section leads toward one of the better known “I am” statements in John’s book, when Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.”
Leading up to that, Jesus spoke about how sheep recognize their shepherd and how shepherds know the names of their sheep. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus said.
Names were extraordinarily important in the ancient Middle Eastern world. Moses wanted to know God’s name. Adam gave names to the animals in the Garden of Eden. And Jesus was given a name which means salvation.
Names were important. Names still are important.
Someone who knows you is somebody who will remember your name. Somebody who values you will work to remember your name. Someone who loves you knows your name.
Jesus told those folks 2,000 years ago that he knew their names, that God knew their names. And through John, Jesus still speaks to us 2,000 years later to reassure us that God knows our names. God cares about us. God loves us.
That’s what I am thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
When I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut. I also wanted to be a firefighter. I seem to remember that I wanted to be a soldier for a while. I don’t recall ever wanting to be a politician, but I did think it would be cool to be President – even at that age I recognized that there is a difference between running for office and doing the work of the office.
Now. As an astronaut, I didn’t want to be the command module pilot, left orbiting the moon while my two colleagues landed and explored. I wanted to be the mission commander. And I wanted to be a fire captain or a fire chief. When I wanted to be a soldier, I imagined myself as a general.
You get the idea? I had some ambition. I was going to be President, after all. I was going to be the one you remembered.
What if I’d had the ambition of Jesus?
In chapter 6 of Luke, Jesus had just appointed twelve of his followers as “apostles,” or messengers. I’d say that shows some ambition and initiative. He’d then come to what Luke described as a “level place” and found a great crowd seeking healing. He gave them healing. That shows power and capacity. Then he got them settled down somehow, which shows capability, and told them:
Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are the weepers. Blessed are those who are hated.
I did a Google search for “inspirational quotes,” and its AI overview gave me the following:
“Inspirational quotes include ‘Believe you can and you’re halfway there’ (Theodore Roosevelt), ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams’ (Eleanor Roosevelt), and ‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do’ (Steve Jobs). Other popular themes focus on resilience, such as ‘It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up’ (Vince Lombardi), and personal agency, like ‘Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me’ (Carol Burnett).”
So. Nothing about how blessed the poor are. Actually, nothing from Jesus.
Hm.
Jesus had a few words to say for those who were in different circumstances of life. Woe to the rich, woe to the full, woe to those who laugh, woe to those who are held in honor.
Funny. Those weren’t among the inspirational messages, either.
Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “It seems to me that Jesus’ woe statements are revealing something—that the things we assume are advantages are actually illusory. What if money, food, comfort, self-won security, respectability, and the like are things that kill our souls—not just in some far-off afterlife but right here, right now? What a tragedy to mistake them for benefits given by God, then.”
What a tragedy indeed. And still not in tune with the inspirational messages of the twenty-first century.
Fortunately, Jesus went on to tell us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, and submit to assault and robbery.
Do I have to mention that this isn’t very inspirational, either?
It can also be dangerous. This passage has all too often been used to encourage victims of abuse, particularly in domestic situations, to continue to suffer abuse. I can’t believe that’s what Jesus wanted. Jesus pronounced woe on the wealthy, the well fed, and the merry. Do you really think he’d say, “Blessed are the violent?” No. And when Jesus declared a wake-up call for the comfortable, I’m sure he declared it for the violent as well.
How do I know that?
Because he asked those who’d been victimized not to respond to violence with violence. Violence has to end, not be escalated.
That’s not very inspirational, either.
But maybe something else is. Or rather, someone else is. Someone, or rather, several someones.
Why are we here today? To worship God, yes. But today we also make the time to honor those who have touched our lives with love. They blessed us.
They blessed us whether they were relatively rich or relatively poor. They blessed us when they were hungry and when they’d had a full meal. They blessed us when they were merry and they blessed us through their tears. They blessed us when people commended them and they blessed us when people thought they were out of their minds to do so.
They blessed us and so we honor them.
Don’t answer this question. Think about it. Are there people who died in the past year that you didn’t choose to name, and to remember, and to honor? I’m not talking about the people you’ve heard of but didn’t know. I’m talking about the people you did know, but you didn’t have that good a relationship with them because, well, there were problems. You argued. There was bullying. Disagreement over money – doesn’t that happen often. Whatever it was, it was such that you just didn’t want to be friends. When you heard that they’d died, you may have said a brief prayer for those who love them, but… you didn’t feel the need to pray for yourself.
Like an i’iwi that bullies, that’s a sad way to be remembered. And, when it comes to a service like this, to be forgotten.
None of the people we’re honoring today were perfect. I’ll light a candle for my stepmother, the Rev. Shirley Anderson, today. As is the case with a lot of people later in life, she spent the last ten years trying to downsize. Inevitably, that meant distributing stuff to her children, her stepchildren, and all the grandchildren. Including the one who lived in Hawai’i and had to ship everything 5,000 miles. I brought something away from her apartment from every visit I made to her except the last one.
No, Shirley wasn’t perfect.
She was so loving, though. So caring. So attentive to people. So concerned about their needs. She put her time and energy into learning and responding and helping people grow. She did that as a member of the family. She did it as a pastor.
That’s how – and that’s why – she is remembered. I would guess that that’s how you’re remembering those for whom you’ll light a candle today.
Susan Henrich writes at Working Preacher, “The blessed are those who have caught at least a glimpse of God’s future and trust that it is for them. The blessed may be poor or needy, even weeping in life by the standards we humans have in our very bones, but they are blessed in both trust in God and in God’s future, in their hope of justice. The woeful are those who have forgotten that the ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ The woeful are those who say ‘yes’ to the title question of an old song, ‘Is that all there is?’”
We honor those who saw a glimpse of God’s future and knew that it was for them, and for you, and for us. That’s how we remember them. That’s why we honor them.
You entertain the wealthy, set aside the sick, refuse the refugee, and call it greatness.
While I have known a woman in whose presence every soul received a lift. Every soul was lightened by her gift.
Jesus can and does inspire us, even as he’s in conflict with most of our more customary inspirational literature. But let’s face it: he’s hard to follow. He’s demanding. His yoke isn’t all that easy. His burden isn’t all that light.
But these saints? They showed us that there are ways to follow, ways that can be accomplished by human beings, imperfect as we are. They showed us that it’s not about success and power, or about comfort and riches, or about respectability and position. It’s about care and compassion, faithfulness and commitment, energy and love.
And love. Love always. Always love.
May we be remembered as these saints, for our love.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric does make changes while preaching. Sometimes he intends to make them. Sometimes the changes happen.
Increase our faith. It seems like a good thing to ask as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus. Increase our faith. Any sensible faith leader would applaud someone’s efforts to deepen their devotion.
So… why didn’t Jesus?
As Francisco J. Garcia writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus’ loaded response to the disciple’s request for more faith—telling them that all they required was the faith of a tiny mustard seed to do the impossible—tells us that they are asking for the wrong thing.”
We’ve seen this happen with the disciples before. It’s one of the ways in which they stand in for us in the Gospels. How often do we, after all, ask God or Jesus for the wrong thing?
You don’t need to answer that.
But let’s think for a moment about what gets described as faith by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. “Faith manifests itself in many ways, by a variety of people,” writes Audrey West at Working Preacher. “Faith is persistence in reaching out to Jesus (Luke 5:17-26) and trusting in Jesus’ power and authority (7:1-10). Faith is responding with love to forgiveness received (7:44-50), not letting fear get the upper hand (8:22-25), and being willing to take risks that challenge the status quo (8:43-48). Faith is giving praise to God (17:11-19), having confidence in God’s desire for justice (18:1-8), and being willing to ask Jesus for what we need (18:35-43).”
What do these actions have in common? A couple of things: First, they are actions. They are things that people do. You might recall that in the letter of James we read that “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Jesus and Luke might put it differently. They might say that faith without action isn’t faith.
I can’t see why Jesus would be irritated to be asked how to increase faith based on its connection to action, though. Ask me what you can do to have a more active faith and believe me, I’ll come up with a good long list!
But remember, there was something else that those actions of faith have in common. They are actions that we take. That we take. That we, ourselves, take.
They’re not something that Jesus can do for us. They’re not something that the Holy Spirit does for us. They’re not something that God does for us.
They asked Jesus to increase their faith. But Jesus doesn’t increase our faith.
We increase our own faith.
OK. Just believe harder. Right?
Well, no. We go back to that first principle. Faith is action.
As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What if faith was not believing hard, but rather placing our tiny selves—in the cosmic sense, no more than the tiniest seeds—in alignment with the love of the cosmos? Just as in nature, the seed surrenders to the ground (John 12:24), so we, also of the same stuff as the seed, surrender to this work of creative love.”
Jesus followed up on the comparison with the mustard seed – our tiny selves, our tiny powers – with the troubling story of being the unthanked, unhappy, and pretty much unfed slaves of a demanding master. If that’s what faith and following Jesus is like, most of us would say, “You can take that away and toss it out.” But Jesus, routinely, overturned the relationship of master and slave in his stories and his sayings. He even did it in this short example. It starts by inviting us to understand ourselves as the master, and ends by equating us with the slaves.
What did the slaves do in the story? They set the table. They prepared the food. They served.
That, dear friends, is how to increase your faith.
Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I believe the invitation in this lection is for us to go forth and live in light of what we already see, sense, hear, and know. In other words, the invitation is to do faith. To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it. Why? Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner. As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract. Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle. Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous, creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”
When I think about the most faithful people I’ve known, I don’t think of the showy ones. I don’t think of the powerful ones. I don’t think of the well-known ones. Mind you, I’ve known (or known of) faithful people who could be described in all of those categories.
It’s just that the most faithful people I’ve known spread love about them wherever they went, and as you may have noticed, that’s not something that makes people famous. It doesn’t get them into positions of power. It doesn’t get them noticed – except by a fortunate few who recognize that greatness comes from love and compassion, not from might and mayhem.
We are great not when we are the demanding masters, but when we are the dedicated servants. We are great not when we exercise power and coercion, but when we exercise diligence and compassion. We are great not when we are fed, but when those around us are fed.
Histories, I have to say, tend to glorify the glory hounds. They give people names like William the Conqueror, Frederick the Great, based on success as warriors.
We are the people of Jesus, however, and Jesus didn’t lead armies, didn’t conquer nations, didn’t even evict the occupiers of his land. What he did was teach and gather and heal.
He taught us to set the table.
He taught us to see that everybody gets fed.
As we come to the table on the World Communion Sunday, remember that it is set for us by the God who serves. It is our model of faith.
Let us set the table.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
We regret that we continue to have audio problems with our live video stream, so a recording of the sermon is not available.
The image is “The Parable of the Mustard Seed” an etching by Jan Luyken found in the Bowyer Bible (ca. 1791 – 1795) – Harry Kossuth photo. Electronic image created by Phillip Medhurst 10 August 2009., FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7549966.
“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.
It’s probably obvious, but in the first days of the Way (before Christians were called Christians) Jesus’ disciples sought to do the things that Jesus had done. They echoed Jesus.
I’m thinking about the ninth chapter of Acts of the Apostles (Acts 9:36-43).
Luke followed up his account of the conversion of Saul (we know Saul better by his Greek name, Paul) with this story about Simon Peter’s visit to Joppa, where a woman named Tabitha (known in Greek as Dorcas) had fallen ill and died. She was an important person in that small community of the Way there in Joppa, so they asked Simon Peter to come.
He sat by her bedside. He said, “Tabitha, get up,” and she rose alive and whole once again.
There are echoes in this healing — resurrection, rather — story of Jesus’ raising of a small girl. You’ll find that story in Luke (Luke 8:40-56), and also in Mark (Mark 5:21-43) and Matthew (that’s an error; it’s not found in Matthew). In Mark’s version of the story, there are echoes of the words. “Tabitha, get up,” is what Simon Peter said. “Talitha cum,” or “Little girl, get up,” is what Jesus said to the child of the ruler of a synagogue.
I think that what this is confirming for us — because for certain we should already know this — is that the ministry of the early church saw itself as an emulation and imitation and echo of the ministry of Jesus himself. The followers of Jesus sought to do the same things that Jesus had done, whether that be healing (and yes, resurrection), or whether that be to accept the outsiders, to teach and feed the hungry, to do the things that Jesus himself had done as he walked the earth.
Nobody said it was easy.
And I’m afraid my talents for resurrection, if I have any, have not been demonstrated. But I do hope I’ve demonstrated some ability to speak love and care and compassion to those around. And I hope I’ve demonstrated some ability to bring healing to a troubled spirit.
What is it that God has given you as a way to comfort, to teach, to lead, to serve. How are you bringing life to those around you?
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below; I’d love to hear from you.
The answer, of course, is yes. You can. You can turn water into wine. There’s a trick to it.
The secret is to add grapes.
I am not the first to make that joke. Augustine of Hippo wrote in the fifth century, “The miracle indeed of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby He made the water into wine, is not marvellous to those who know that it was God’s doing. For He who made wine on that day at the marriage feast, in those six water-pots, which He commanded to be filled with water, the self-same does this every year in vines. For even as that which the servants put into the water-pots was turned into wine by the doing of the Lord, so in like manner also is what the clouds pour forth changed into wine by the doing of the same Lord. But we do not wonder at the latter, because it happens every year: it has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence.”
The world, Augustine observed, is full of God’s miracles, so full that we’ve ceased to recognize them as God’s handiwork.
It seems, however, that somebody goofed among the wedding planners in Cana. They ran out of wine. The hosts may not have been entirely at fault. As Lindsey S. Jodrey writes at Working Preacher, “We may read the story and wonder why the family of the bride and groom failed to provide enough wine. However, it was ancient custom for guests to bring wedding gifts in the form of food and drink to share the burden of providing for such a large group. Thus, the family’s lack of wine may indicate a lack of community support in addition to their own lack of resources. Jesus’ actions are that of a friend and faithful community member; the provision of wine is a sign of shared hospitality.”
When Mary came to her son to tell him there was no wine, his reply, “What concern is that to me and to you?” was a little discomforting. As a guest, he had some obligation to aid his host. Perhaps he had already contributed something to the feast. But perhaps – and John’s narrative of a short time period between Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan valley and his attendance at this wedding some miles away suggests this could have happened – perhaps Jesus and his new followers hadn’t brought anything, or hadn’t brought what his mother considered enough. Even if he had, it’s clear that she thought he could and should do more.
The other half of Jesus’ response, though, was more complicated. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ “hour” (“My hour has not yet come”) was the time of his crucifixion. If it seems like a stretch to say that Jesus saw this moment as one that set him on the path to that terrible Friday, I’ll just say that the author didn’t see it that way. Jesus’ mother appears only twice in John’s Gospel: here, and at the foot of the cross; when the hour had not yet come, and when the hour had come.
There was a simple way to deal with the situation. Jesus might have turned to Peter, Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael, and said, “Come on, guys. Let’s pool our money and go to the wine shop. Between us we might get enough to last out the evening.” If he was concerned that five of them couldn’t carry enough, Mary was enlisting the servers to help. Jesus didn’t have to do what he actually did.
John called it the first of his signs. He meant something specific by that. It wasn’t enough that Jesus did something remarkable, or powerful, or miraculous. That act revealed something about Jesus. It said something about his purpose. It said something about his nature.
John wrote that turning water into wine in Cana, the first of his signs, Jesus “revealed his glory.”
But hardly anyone recognized it at the time.
The chief server didn’t know. Nobody told him where the good wine had come from. The hosts didn’t know. Nobody told them, either. The other guests didn’t know. The servants knew, but if they told anyone else, John left it out. Jesus’ mother knew. Jesus’ closest friends knew, because they were paying attention.
As far as I can see, Jesus revealed his glory to less than a dozen people.
That tells us a lot about Jesus’ glory, doesn’t it? It’s not a glory for show, to display or to impress. It’s not a glory that cries, “Look at me!” It’s not a glory about ego. It’s not a glory that demands worship. It’s a glory that can go unnoticed. It is, to go back to Augustine for a moment, a glory that can lose its marvellousness by its constant recurrence.
It was also a glory of profound compassion.
It’s not clear just how much the hosts would have suffered if they had, in fact, run out of wine at the feast. Some scholars suggest it would have been shameful, which is no small thing in a culture based on honor and shame. Others don’t think they would have experienced any long-term consequences. At the least, it would have been embarrassing. I’m pretty sure that years later, they’d have blushed when the story came up – again – “Remember when the wine ran out at the wedding? Good times!”
Mary thought that was worth avoiding. In the end, Jesus thought so, too.
I’m afraid that doesn’t mean that Jesus will always act to preserve us from simple embarrassment. I can tell you that Jesus might have done done that at various times in my life, but certainly not every time. I’ve been embarrassed more times than I care to count or remember. It does mean that Jesus cares more about the seemingly trivial parts of our lives than we might imagine. It’s not all about life and death, suffering and wholeness, damnation and salvation. It’s also about helping us through the other challenges of life.
Jesus’ compassion extends not just to our health, but to our joy. As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “Turning water into wine is revealing of abundant grace in this season of Epiphany. And what does abundant grace taste like? Like the best wine when you are expecting the cheap stuff.” Jesus’ compassion delights.
Abundant grace is also easy to miss. How many people were at the wedding feast that day? I don’t know. How many received this grace without knowing it? Nearly all. Nearly all.
So can you turn water into wine?
It turns out you can. You and I just have to work harder to make it happen. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Maybe we can be like Mary. Maybe we can notice, name, persist, and trust. No matter how profound the scarcity, no matter how impossible the situation, we can elbow our way in, pull Jesus aside, ask earnestly for help, and ready ourselves for action. We can tell God hard truths, even when we’re supposed to be celebrating. We can keep human need squarely before our eyes, even and especially when denial, apathy, or distraction are easier options. And finally, we can invite others to obey the miraculous wine-maker we have come to know and trust.”
We can turn water into wine.
We can bring more joy into the lives of our families, friends, and neighbors. We can act such that the needs we see get addressed, whether they’re urgent and important or seemingly trivial. We can gather the supports to get things done. We can name and proclaim the acts of grace, the deeds of mercy, the times of transformation, and we can declare, “This is glory, people. Ignore the prattle of the powerful and their pathetic posturing. Glory is compassion. Glory is humility. Glory is love. This is glory.”
Yes. We can say that. We can live that.
We can turn water into wine.
We can also turn wine into water, and for those who have addiction to alcohol, we might have to do that sometimes. There’s a trick there, too. Boil it. The alcohol evaporates first. The point is: Don’t let the metaphor get in the way.
Jesus displayed his glory with compassion, humility, and grace. Let us display our glory with compassion, humility, and grace.
Let us be like Mary. Let us be like Jesus.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric does depart from his prepared text from time to time. Sometimes he’s trying to improve it.
The Book of Hebrews is not the most accessible of the writings of the New Testament. The author spent a lot of time bringing up passages of the Hebrew Bible that most people have never heard of. Just as one example, Sunday School teachers haven’t spent much time of the priesthood of Melchizedek in Genesis 14, while the author of Hebrews spent a fair amount of time reflecting on it.
However, I’m going to give you my one-line summary of the Book of Hebrews. Ready? OK. Here it is:
It’s all about Jesus.
I suppose a little expansion might be helpful…
Are you worried about who to pay attention to? Pay attention to Jesus. Are you worried about death? Life comes from Jesus. Are you worried about forgiveness of sin? That comes from Jesus. Are you worried about whether you should be making sacrifices? Don’t worry: Jesus has made the last sacrifice and no more are required.
Or more simply: It’s all about Jesus.
As Christopher T. Holmes writes at Working Preacher, “The point is clear: Jesus has removed all obstacles that might keep the hearers from entering into God’s presence. The problem, as the exhortation in verses 22–25 makes clear, is with the hearers’ willingness to keep drawing near.”
Let me re-read that exhortation:
“…Let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Amy L. B. Peeler writes, also at Working Preacher, “’Are there any verses in the Bible that explicitly tell us to go to church?’ Students have raised this question several times in my classroom, and rarely is there an occasion where the answer is so straightforward. Hebrews 10:25 is just that verse…” Dr. Peeler teaches, incidentally, at Wheaton College in Illinois.
But why would people “neglect to meet together,” as the author of Hebrews put it? Well, first of all, gathering for religious purposes looked a lot different in the first century.
The weekly Sabbath meetings of the Jewish synagogues were the exception, not the rule, among first century Mediterranean religions. Most devotional activity for Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians consisted either of rituals performed in the home, or of bringing an offering for sacrifice in public. Public sacrifices, however, weren’t held one day a week. There wasn’t a set time when everybody crowded into a building to pray together. In fact, they rarely went into a building. Sacrifices took place outdoors. Most people never entered a temple building proper.
There would have been a few times during a year when everyone came out to worship, but those would have been festivals. And again, the activity of most “worshipers” was probably watching a parade going down the street to one of the temples.
When the author of Hebrews commented on “some” who didn’t gather, “some” was “most.” Jews who lived someplace other than Jerusalem had developed weekly gatherings for prayer and study in synagogues, a distinct difference between them and the others around them. Christians continued the practice.
Like the synagogues, the meetings of Christian communities had a different purpose than the great festivals of the Greeks or the triumphs of the Romans, or even the rituals of the Jerusalem Temple. The author of Hebrews noted it here. We gather “to provoke one another to love and good deeds… encouraging one another…”
That has remained the reason for the Church’s existence in the nearly two thousand years since.
Why do we gather? To provoke one another to love. To provoke one another to good deeds. To encourage one another.
That’s one of the reasons that the pandemic was so hard on us. In the presence of a virulent and dangerous disease spread primarily through the breath, it wasn’t safe to get together. “We stay separate now,” read one version of a common saying, “so that when we gather later, we will all be here.” Two years ago on this day I was home in bed sick with COVID. I recovered. Have we forgotten that over a million Americans didn’t? That over seven million have died across the globe?
We had good reason to keep apart. But it was hard.
It was hard because the ancient Hawaiians were right: “ha,” spirit, breath, is something that two human beings share with one another for the good of both. When sharing breath became hazardous, we lost something that sustained our spirits, something that needed no words to take place, and what could we share over the wires? Words.
Words suffered as well. I was in my forties when I learned something very important about communication, which is that communication hasn’t happened until it’s gone two ways: forth and back. Without response, communication hasn’t really occurred. Which is why parents get so insistent on getting a response from a teenager.
We used the tools available to us to stream a worship experience to you and to anyone else who chose. It was my decision to use a broadcast-style technology, to use a format that gave worshipers little ability to respond during worship. Mostly I made that choice to keep it as simple as possible for you. I wish I’d created some other more interactive ministries, more than a Bible Study, but alas, I didn’t.
Now that we’re back together, we’ve continued the live stream for the simple reason that people still find it useful. Some work Sunday mornings. Others can’t physically make it to worship. Those people – you people – are important, and giving you an opportunity to celebrate God’s grace is important. We will not neglect you.
Don’t neglect, however, to take up what opportunities come your way to provoke others to love and to good deeds, and to encourage them in the faith.
That word “provoke” provoked a fair amount of discussion during Bible Study this week. It seems an odd word to use of love. Katherine Shaner writes at Working Preacher, “Instead of asserting a community built on sameness and good feeling, the preacher seems to note that provocation and exasperation is part of being a community. She exhorts us to build a kind of community gathering that relentlessly, even irritatingly, suggests that actions of love and deeds are not what create faith, but are rather the responsibility of the community which needs to gather because of their faith in the great high priest — a faith God gives.”
Can we be a provoking community, one that doesn’t settle for a little bit of love? Can we be a community that expects more of ourselves than just a good deed or two here or there? Can we be a community that asks, “How can we do this better? How can we make this good available to more people? How can we equip people to live their lives in fullness?”
It’s the irritating sand in the oyster shell that provokes it to produce a pearl. It’s those pesky other nene that allow us to fly with less effort. It’s those sometimes irritating other Christians who provoke us to do good.
Let us not neglect to gather, to provoke one another to love and good deeds, and to encourage one another.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, and so although he wrote the sermon you just read, it sounded different when he said it.
What is the purpose of Christian gathering? To encourage love and good deeds. It’s that simple and that important.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews (Hebrews 10:11-25).
Hebrews concentrates on theology. Specifically, Hebrews makes the case that in Jesus’ death and resurrection God’s forgiveness is fully accomplished, fully realized, fully obtained. There is no reason to continue older religious practices — ancient religious practices — that invited God’s forgiveness, that requested God’s love. In Jesus, the author of Hebrews says, we have obtained all the forgiveness we could ask for and more.
So Hebrews is not a terribly practical book. It is not oriented towards giving us advice about how to live a faithful life.
At the end of this section, however, much of which is concerned with Jesus granting us forgiveness, the author did invite us to some fairly practical things. The author invited us to consider how we might encourage one another to love and good deeds, and the author also advised that we not neglect to gather together as apparently some were staying apart.
Love and good deeds: these are staples of ancient religion. They go back to Moses and Abraham, and of course it was a central message of Jesus himself.
The gathering together, however, that is an interesting one. It reveals the purpose for which we gather together. We gather together so that we can encourage and support one another in the love and in the doing of good things. It’s harder to love people when they are at a distance, not just because of heartache, but also because of lack of knowledge, of lack of encounter, of lack of that special sharing between people who are dedicated to one another’s welfare.
Didn’t we, in the last four years, experience so much loss in not being able to gather together? And yes, gathering was risky, dangerous even, but in less risky times in gathering together we can encourage one another to love and to acts of mercy.
Christians have been struggling to do this for 2000 years. People of faith have been struggling to do it for millennia. So let us make it as easy upon ourselves as we can.
I invite you to our Sunday gatherings in person or, if you must ,on line. I invite you to be there so that we can encourage one another in love and deeds of mercy.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
