Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Not Far

November 3, 2024

Ruth 1:1-18
Mark 12:28-34

We’ve taken a few steps since last week’s Gospel lesson, set in Jericho along the banks of the River Jordan. Jesus had climbed the slopes from there to the environs of Jerusalem. He entered the city in that great Palm Sunday parade. He’d come back to the Temple the next day and overturned the tables of the money changers.

Mark sets this story on the next day, Tuesday, which began with the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders challenging Jesus’ authority to do such things. That wasn’t a good start, and the conversation deteriorated from there. Representatives of various schools of thought as well as various places on the political spectrum tried to trap Jesus into a statement that would put him in legal jeopardy on the one hand or cost him the support of the crowds who’d cheered him on the other. Preferably both at the same time.

Those efforts had failed.

“One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’”

Up to this point in Mark’s Gospel, bad things have happened when Jerusalem scribes have been present. Jesus had his arguments with other religious leaders in Galilee, but when a group of scribes from Jerusalem showed up in chapter three, they accused him of being in league with demons. So you‘d expect another “gotcha” question from this man.

He didn’t ask one.

He asked a big question, for sure. Three centuries later, a rabbai named Simlai would count 613 mitvot or commandments in the Hebrew Bible. Most of those, obviously, amplify or provide detail of one or more of the Ten Commandments with which we’re familiar. To choose one within the ten, or within the 613? That’s a big question.

But he seems to have been interested in Jesus’ answer, not in setting Jesus a trap. At least I think so, in great part because, unlike his responses to the bulk of the challenges Jesus received in chapters eleven and twelve, Jesus answered the question. Sort of. He cheated a little.

He replied with two commandments.

Both were near-quotes from the Scriptures first century Jews held in common: the five books that begin our Old Testament, known then and now in Hebrew as Torah, or Law. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” comes from Deuteronomy 6. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” comes from Leviticus 19.

As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “This exchange reminds the observer that the good news as shared by Jesus was not a clean departure from Jewish law. Rather, it was an amplification of it.”

When the scribe wholeheartedly agreed, Jesus told him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Not far.

Jesus’ basic message, as Mark described it back in chapter one, was, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” In one sense, then, Jesus could have told anyone that they were not far from the reign of God. It had come near, it has come near, to everyone.

But I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he had a much older idea of the reign of God in mind, a reign of God in which people live out the commandments. What’s the first step toward that?

Knowing how to get there. Love God. Love your neighbor.

That’s how we get there.

As Amy Lindeman Allen writes at PoliticalTheology.com, “The greatness of the love commandment lies not in its surpassing value over and against all of the other commandments of Jewish law but, rather, in its ability to hold up all the rest. It’s less about beating out all of the other candidates and more about helping them to do their jobs.”

Love of God is the foundation for the commandments against worshiping other gods, against worshiping idols, against making false promises in God’s name. Love of neighbor is the foundation of keeping the sabbath, of honoring parents, of the prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, lying, and coveting. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor;” wrote the Apostle Paul to the church in Rome, “therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Love sounds simple, but exercising it affects everything we do, everything we say, everything we plan, everything we set aside. Love enacted requires patience, effort, resilience, and resources. Love made manifest may call for commitment, hardship, even sacrifice.

Love looks like Ruth.

It’s a funny thing. The word “love” appears only once in Ruth, toward the end of the story, which we’ll read next week. As the book begins, Ruth did not claim to love her mother-in-law. She did not say anything, in fact, about her motives. She said, “I will not leave you,” rather more poetically and emphatically than that. It must have been a hardship. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I think it would be safe to say that Ruth’s pledge of fidelity is not made to a companion who is, at this point in the story, easy or fun to be around. Naomi is bereft, depleted, forlorn, and bitter. It’s possible that she’s suffering a full-blown crisis of faith, imagining that the God she thought she knew has withdrawn his love, and cursed her with unspeakable suffering.

“Ruth’s vow, then, is a vow of tenacity, fortitude, and sacrificial loyalty as much as it is a vow of affinity, affection, or ‘love’ as our culture might describe it.  It is the vow of one grief-stricken, traumatized, and profoundly vulnerable woman to another.”

Or to put it another way: she was not far from the realm of God.

With the love that God has for us, love displayed to us so thoroughly in Jesus, we are never far from the realm of God. But we are closest to living the reign of God when we love God and one another. When we, to borrow Paul’s words to the Corinthians, show patience and kindness, when we act without envy, boastfulness, arrogance, or rudeness. When we restrain our irritability over not getting our own way, when we keep no record of wrongs, when we rejoice in the truth. When we bear all things, believe all thing, hope all things, endure all things…

Then we are not far from the realm of God.

Not far at all.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, sometimes from choice and sometimes from chance.

The image is The Seven Works of Mercy by Karl Gritschke. Photo by Alexander Rahm – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3544487.

It is a representation of a painting on a wall of the Dialog Hotel Neuendettelsau. The “seven works of mercy” according to Matthew 25:34-46 and Tobit 1:17, are:

  1. Feed the hungry,
  2. Give the thirsty drink,
  3. Accommodate strangers,
  4. Clothe the naked,
  5. Visit prisoners,
  6. Heal the sick, and
  7. Bury the dead.
Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner

Pastor’s Corner: Cruelty or Compassion?

July 10, 2024

Three hundred years ago on the islands of Hawai’i, making a living was not easy. Fishing ran the risks of sudden storm or rogue waves. Kalo farming required backbreaking labor in the most congenial of soils, and even more when the soil was thin or the water scarce. Fruit may simply grow on trees, but retrieving it wasn’t easy.

Homelessness, however, couldn’t be said to exist. When people left their homes they had a lot of options for building a new hale for themselves. The materials stood in the forests, and very rarely would anyone turn up to say, “You can’t live here.”

Homelessness is a product of a civilization in which some people have access to land, and some do not.

Recently the United States Supreme Court upheld an ordinance of Grants Pass, Oregon, banning “camping” on public land by involuntarily homeless people regardless of the availability of shelter beds. Those who have no other place to go – which is basically the definition of homelessness – can be arrested and jailed. I suppose those people could leave Grants Pass, Oregon, but what if the neighboring communities have similar bans? How soon do the options become a single option: Go directly to jail?

These measures explicitly criminalize poverty.

In the opinion of these stone-hearted justices, the United States Constitution permits such an injustice. Mercifully, it does not require it. We must be better than the Constitution here in Hawai’i, and on Hawai’i Island. We must address the problems of overpriced housing, inadequate mental health resources, and overcrowded substance abuse programs.

The Supreme Court has shown us the way of cruelty. Let us take the way of compassion.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: God is Love

Transcript 4/23/2024

God is love, said John, and that means Jesus’ followers should love. Would that it were so.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of First John (1 John 4:7-21). If you’re familiar with this particular book of the Bible, this is also probably the section that you have been waiting for.

This is the place in the Scriptures where it says that God is love. Jesus didn’t say it. Moses didn’t say it. None of the prophets wrote it. The apostle Paul didn’t write it. Here it is in the First Letter of John.

John wrote that God is love to say that God loved us first, and because God loved us we also ought to love one another.

Loving one another is one of the two great themes in First John, the other being the importance of faith in Jesus. Jesus himself did have something to say about loving one another: He told his disciples to do precisely that. “That is how people will know you are my disciples,” he said, “if you love one another.”

How I wish that that were true in our present day.

All too often, however, people identify Christians not by their love, but by their hate, by their self-righteousness, by their judgment. All too often Christians are identified by what would make Jesus weep.

If you can do anything in this life to help at least one person realize that Christianity’s commitments are to love and compassion and care, then you will have done a great thing, partially because yes, it would be good for people to know that these are the Christian commitments — to love one another, to love the world — but also, of course, because you will have followed Jesus’ commandment. You will have loved someone else as Jesus loved you.

God loved us first. Let us love one another.

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.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Shepherd’s Cornerstone

April 21, 2024

Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24

I’m afraid that “Shepherd’s Cornerstone” is a phrase that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Cornerstones are architectural features of buildings, buildings with foundations. Shepherds in the first century didn’t live in buildings with foundations, at least not very often.

Yet the two ideas come together, at least in my mind, in this passage from Acts. Ancient Israel routinely used “shepherd” as a metaphor for the responsibilities of civil and religious leadership. Look through the psalms and you’ll find, over and over again, “shepherd” used to explain the role of a monarch. In the 23rd Psalm, which we prayed through adapted words this morning, the writer described God’s sovereignty in the world as being like a shepherd.

In Acts 4, the senior shepherds of the Jerusalem Temple gathered together. Rulers, elders, scribes, and notably Luke named members of the high-priestly family: Annas, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander. They had gathered to consider the fate of Simon Peter and John the son of Zebedee.

Simon Peter introduced the other word in my odd phrase: “cornerstone.” It wasn’t original to him. Jesus spoke about the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone while arguing with the scribes and the chief priests in the Temple during the last few days before his arrest and crucifixion. It got them angry, because he’d clearly accused them of hindering God’s plans. I have no doubt that some of them were in the room again to hear Simon Peter repeat it. I don’t think it made them any happier to hear it a second time.

Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “These are not rank-and-file Jews who oppose, detain, and question Peter and John. They are the leaders of the temple and the Jewish nobles whom Rome entrusted with ruling and ensuring the peace in Judea. With the high priest atop the pyramid, they are the tiny percentage of the Judean population that possessed an enormous amount of power.”

Let me step back just a moment to explain why Peter and John were in this predicament. It had been at least two months, possibly more, since Jesus’ death and resurrection. The day of Pentecost had come along with the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that had led Simon Peter to speak in public for the first time. After that, however, the group of Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem stayed relatively quiet. They worshiped in the Temple. They shared meals with one another. They welcome new people into the church. Nobody in authority seemed to notice.

Then Peter and John went to the Temple to worship, and met a beggar who could not walk, being carried to a place where he could beg for his sustenance. Simon Peter told him, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And he did, praising God. People asked Peter to explain it, and he spoke of Jesus’ resurrection and his power to heal.

That’s what got them arrested.

I guess it was okay that they did a good thing for somebody, but they did it in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong theology. Do better next time.

D. Mark Davis writes in his blog, LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “This whole inquiry is rooted in the assumption that the ruling judges are looking down at powerless idiots. The irony is that the powerless idiots have something that the ruling judges don’t: The name of Jesus, whom these judges had rejected, but who has now returned with power. And the undeniable evidence against the judges is simply a man, who was once lame and is now walking.”

In other words, the leadership here has reverted to that most basic of assertions of power: “Because I said so.”

Mitzi J. Smith writes at Working Preacher, “Religious folks who have confused the power of position with the power of God are more likely to reject the power of God operating in others who lack similar position and rank (cf. 4:13), despite how God might use them. We should maintain some humility considering our fallibility, mortality or human condition no matter how high we might climb in institutions. Only God is infallible, inscrutable, and absolutely God.”

The cornerstone of our faith is one that’s often been rejected because it doesn’t look like it will hold the weight. We proclaim as Savior one who wouldn’t save himself. We proclaim as Judge one who endured unjust judgement. We proclaim as all-Powerful one who would not claim that power. Would you build a building on that? Would you build a program on that? Would you build a faith on that?

God would.

That’s the sticky part. God would. And has. And does.

Our cornerstone is a shepherd’s cornerstone, one based upon the role of caring, nurturing, and protecting. Caring, nurturing, and protecting not just human beings, but sheep, who are pretty annoying creatures who don’t have the sense that God gave a… well, something less sensible than a sheep.

While I grant you that human beings are much cleverer than sheep, our talent for getting ourselves into nonsensical situations outdoes anything any sheep has ever done. How do arguments escalate to fights? By the participants adding more energy to the argument as it goes back and forth. By the participants refusing to be the one who will back away. By the participants always being the one who is “right,” rather than the one who is loving.

You’d think that in larger groups we’d do better, but we don’t. So many wars start with provocations going back and forth until provocation has become full scale conflict. National pride is no more rational than individual pride. Given the number of people it kills, I’d have to call it less rational and more evil.

When you know where the provocations lead, why do them? Why?

Why do them when the Good Shepherd told us to love one another?

“Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action,” wrote a later apostle, one we know as John but almost certainly not John the son of Zebedee who stood accused with Simon Peter that day. Nevertheless, they did precisely what that writer advised decades later when they extended love, offering healing in Jesus’ name to one who rejoiced in it. They extended love when they spoke to the people prepared to judge and condemn them that God had taken something rejected and made it important. They extended love when they simply said, a few sentences later, “we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

Our cornerstone, frequently rejected, is the Shepherd’s cornerstone, the cornerstone of love, compassion, generosity, and courage. Our cornerstone, frequently rejected, looks weak to the world but strong to God. Our cornerstone, frequently rejected, is the Shepherd’s cornerstone, upon which we can build a beloved community.

Our cornerstone, frequently rejected, is Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the cornerstone, the Christ of God, the one who loved and commands us to love.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric sometimes omits things while preaching, and sometimes he adds things. Today he added more than he omitted.

Photo of a Karasu-no-tsubo rock (a foundation stone) by MirokunomichiProject – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117934949.