Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: The One You Love is Ill

March 22, 2026

Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 11:1-45

Someone you love is ill. What do you do?

You might well say, “I go visit them.” But is that what you do?

Don’t you think about it first?

Thinking is a good idea, because the people you love aren’t all the same. There are some who really do want you to rush over and comfort them. Hopefully you know who they are. Sometimes people tell you what they want, and sometimes they expect you to know. You’ve run into that before.

There are others, however, that really prefer to deal with their illness on their own as best they can. They might be very private people, or they don’t just don’t like someone around when they’re feeling bad. Some don’t want others to see them when they’re in their pajamas.

A few, of course, tell you that they’ll take care of themselves, thank you very much, and then expect you to turn up anyway. People don’t always tell you what they really want. You’ve run into that before.

After you think about the person who is ill, you think about what, if anything, you have to bring. You might think to bring food, and that means taking time to prepare or package it. You might think to bring a book to read or something out of your collection of CDs or DVDs – for the younger folks listening, those are antique devices to play music or videos. A memento. A stuffed animal. You may take some time to get things ready before you visit.

Let’s face it. You’re likely to think about how sick your loved one is. What do you think they actually need as opposed to whatever they may say they want? You have other obligations. When does your sick loved one become the next person you visit?

Jesus thought about it. “This illness does not lead to death,” he said. “Rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of Man may be glorified through it.”

It strikes me that it’s possible to be wrong and right at one and the same time. “This illness does not lead to death,” he said – but it did. Lazarus died. “This illness does not lead to death,” Jesus said, and in a very real sense it didn’t because it led beyond death. Lazarus lived.

If I listen to this as someone trying to decide whether to go visit a loved one who is ill, I sympathize with Jesus’ decision to stay put. The illness was not to the death. Lazarus had plenty of people around him to care for him. Jesus had time. Jesus also seemed to believe that the delay would make Lazarus’ eventual recovery even more a sign of God’s glory.

I have to say, he was right about that, too.

He waited two days, then announced that he was returning to Judea to awaken Lazarus. Or, well, awaken metaphorically. As he eventually informed his disciples, Lazarus had died. He would arrive too late to heal him from his illness.

But not too late to mourn with the others who loved him.

I got curious here, and I thought about days and travel times, and finally realized that however long it took Jesus to get there, the two day delay didn’t make a difference. When he arrived, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. If Jesus had left immediately on hearing he was ill, he would have arrived when Lazarus had been in the tomb for two days. Without a miraculous way of travelling, which I grant you isn’t impossible for a person who did miracles, the best he could do was arrive before the third day after which Jews believed revitalization of a dead person was impossible.

When Martha and Mary said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” there may have been some reproach, but it wouldn’t have been for a two day delay they knew nothing about. It was that Jesus hadn’t been there, couldn’t have been there, but where on Earth did they want him? There. It couldn’t happen and it didn’t happen.

That happens with us, too. Have you ever made the cold, hard calculation between visiting someone and attending their funeral? I have. I would guess plenty of people have. We do the best we can with phone and video applications, but we have limited time and resources for extended travel, don’t we? We want to be there, we ache to be there, but we have limits and we have to choose. Sometimes we choose to be there with those who grieve.

Jesus went to be there with those who grieve.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “When Jesus weeps, he honors the complexity of our gains and losses, our sorrows and joys.  Raising Lazarus would not bring back the past. It would not cancel out the pain of his final illness, the memory of saying goodbye to a life he loved, or the gaping absence his sisters felt when he died.  Whatever joys awaited his family in the future would be layered joys, joys stripped of an earlier innocence.”

Someone he loved had been ill. Someone he loved had died.

He came to weep. He came to comfort.

He also came to say something about who he was. “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Laura Holmes writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus proclaims ‘I am’ statements in 14 passages in John’s Gospel. Nowhere else does someone respond to the proclamation with a statement of belief. Martha not only says, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe,’ but she places that language of belief in the context of the Gospel’s proclamation about Jesus: Jesus is the Messiah (3:28; 4:26; 9:22, 35–38), the Son of God (1:34, 49; 3:16–18), ‘the one coming into the world’ (1:9; 3:31; 6:51; 8:23; 18:37).”

This is also an odd departure from other “I am” statements. Usually in John’s Gospel, Jesus performed a sign, then had conversation about it, and concluded with his own assertion of how the sign revealed who he was: “I am the bread of life.” “I am the light of the world,” and so on. In this case, Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life” before he actually did the sign. As someone in Bible Study said this week, the chances of anyone paying attention to what Jesus said after this miracle were pretty small, so best to get the words in first. But it also gave Martha the opportunity to testify to her trust in Jesus before he validated that trust. It’s a stunning moment, really only matched by her sister Mary when she anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume in the next chapter.

Jesus heard. Jesus paused. Jesus learned. Jesus moved. Jesus assured. Jesus spoke. Jesus wept. Jesus called. Lazarus lived.

Someone you love is ill.

What do you do?

You think. That’s a good thing. You make choices. That’s a difficult thing. You act, and that may be a good and welcome thing, and it may be an ill-chosen and unwelcome thing – we’re well meaning but not perfect. If any of you have resurrection power, you’ve been quiet about it. I’ve been quiet about it because I don’t have it.

Whatever you do, you do it as a follower of Jesus, aware that even when Jesus looks late, there’s never a too late for Jesus. Martha dared to affirm her faith in a resurrection on the last day. Jesus did correct her somewhat, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Maybe that’s a useful correction for us as well:

As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “We tend to focus on the resurrection that we situate for ourselves as a distant promise, our guarantee of salvation, our eternal life with God and Jesus in heaven. But what might it mean that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? That we are raised to life, not as future salvific existence, but to life right now, right here, with Jesus?”

It might mean that we worry less about two days delay. Jesus the resurrection and the life is with us, and with those we love.

It might mean that we treasure those phone conversations and video chats more. Jesus is the resurrection and the life for those of us at both ends of the wire.

It might mean that we approach death not with less sadness, but with more hope. Jesus is the resurrection and the life both for us and for those who have died.

It might mean that we live each day with more courage and with more joy. Jesus is the resurrection and the life, so that the beauty I celebrate today will be different and beautiful and worth celebrating tomorrow.

Jesus wept and called Lazarus to life in the same breath. Imagine what he does in one breath for you.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the sermon text does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.

The image is The Resurrection of Lazarus by Giovanni di Paolo (1425) – Walters Art Museum: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18833003.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Shaken and Reshaken

November 9, 2025

Haggai 2:1-9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

In the first century in which the Apostle Paul lived, Christianity was very new. It wasn’t always clear how it was supposed to work. Its best-known leaders didn’t always agree.

Then there were the basic problems of living in the first century. Most people were poor, very few people were middle class, and far fewer people were rich. “Give us this day our daily bread” was a heartfelt prayer for most people. Injury and illness could be much more dangerous than they are for us. Without antibiotics any infection could overwhelm a body’s ability to survive and recover.

And then, there were the problems of becoming a Christian. It was a new faith, unfamiliar to most people. As an offshoot of Judaism, it would appeal to some Jews, but concern others who worried that their faith was being corrupted. Paul himself had been on both sides of that argument. Far more people, however, would have followed the religious traditions of Greece, Rome, or Egypt, and found Christianity unfamiliar, unsettling, and even threatening.

In Thessalonica, it seems that the Christian community had suffered a lot of pressure from those around them. That’s why Paul wrote. In First Thessalonians, Paul wrote, “For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did…” (1 Thess. 2:14). We don’t know what the source of the persecution was. It might have been the pressures of prejudice from those around them. They might have been overcharged or refused service in shops. They might have faced taunts in the street. They might even have suffered assault and injury.

Or there might have been official suppression of the Christian community. They might have been “moved aside,” or arrested, tried, and punished for not following the customs of Rome. And, of course, there might have been both. Taunts in the streets leading to provocations and assaults, which were followed up by arrest, appearance before the magistrates, and further punishment.

That happens to marginalized people. In a lot of places. In a lot of time periods.

Whatever was happening, it concerned Paul, who had been instrumental in founding the church in Thessalonica. He feared that the suffering would drive people away from the church, and away from the faith itself. “I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain,” he wrote in First Thessalonians. “But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love” (1 Thess. 3:5-6).

They had held on. They had not been shaken.

Shaking is a frequent part of the life of faith. Or rather, getting shaken. It was the situation of Jesus’ friends and followers. Jesus kept shaking their expectations. It was the situation hundreds of years before when the exiles who returned from Babylon to Jerusalem found that they had more work before them to rebuild God’s Temple than they’d anticipated. They’d been shaken. Haggai reminded them that God shakes the world.

The Thessalonians had been shaken by their persecution. They had been shaken, but they had not fallen.

Paul feared, however, that they might fall to something else, something that you and I don’t fear quite so much. “…We beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.”

Why would he fear that? Because the Thessalonians wanted it to be there.

I don’t blame them.

There has been more than one occasion in my life where I have thrown my hands into the air and said something like, “Come, Lord Jesus!” What I meant was: I was ready for the Second Coming. I’d seen or felt too much pain. I’d seen or felt too much oppression. I’d seen or felt too much, and it was time for it to come to an end. Let history close. Let the new sunrise dawn. I was ready for not just a change, but The Change.

So far, to be clear, that hasn’t happened.

The Thessalonians, I suspect, were drawn to predictions of the end, of Jesus’ imminent return, because they had suffered. They’d suffered more than they wanted. They’d suffered more than what was just. They’d suffered more than they thought they could bear. “Come, Lord Jesus!” was a cry to end the suffering. It was a cry to have mercy.

Mariam Kamell writes at Working Preacher, “For some churches and preachers, it becomes a fascination bordering on an obsession, but the teaching of ‘escape’ through the rapture leaves people paralyzed about how they ought to live in the world now while they wait. In a sense, life can become a mere holding cell, a waiting pattern till they can escape and go to heaven. But Paul’s focus is to remind them instead of all the things that need to happen first, so they ought to trust God and continue on doing good rather than obsessing about the end.”

My guess is that you are not likely to be obsessing about the end of time, or the end of history, or the end of the world as we know it. I would further guess, however, that something has happened in your life, perhaps recently, perhaps some time ago, where you’ve asked, “When is this going to end? I’m tired of being shaken. I’m weary of being reshaken.”

When is this going to end?

I remember feeling like that about the Puna eruption in 2018. I remember feeling like that about Hurricane Lane that same year, which settled off the southwestern coast and dumped heavy rain on us for three solid days. I remember feeling like that during uncertain times of my career as a minister, during health crises in the family, during the breakup of my marriage.

When is this going to end?

The Thessalonians wanted to know. They wanted to read things in their time as signs of the end. They wanted the suffering to be over.

Paul, however, couldn’t reassure them that way. One of the characteristics of first century apocalyptic literature – a format in which contemporary events were criticized by declaring how they’d be judged at the end of time – is that the meaningful signs are things people could have seen. And in fact, during our Bible Study on Wednesday, one of the group read, “He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God,” and gave that person a name. I would guess you could give such a person a name. I would also guess that we wouldn’t all give that person the same name.

Right?

Paul couldn’t tell them that Jesus was about to return and that their suffering would end. What he could do was commend them for their faithfulness and urge them to hold on. “Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.”

“Paul’s point,” writes Nijay Gupta at Working Preacher, “is not to sketch out a full timeline of eschatological events. His point is that some big things are yet to happen, and there is really nothing we can do to stop them (unlike issues of political strife and economic turmoil, matters that we certainly can and must address).”

Paul’s point was to say, I hear you. I ache for you. I am proud of you. I pray for you. My heart is with you.

“My thoughts and prayers are with them,” has, all too often, substituted for real help in our day. Properly, thoughts and prayers should be coupled with concrete action. We have our limits, however. We can’t do all we want to do, like the ‘apapane who can’t find another flower for a hungry i’iwi, or when a loved one’s illness brings pain I can’t relieve, when the world around has problems I can’t address.

This week Mary Luti quoted the late Pope Francis in a UCC Daily Devotional. He said, “The world needs to weep. The marginalized weep, the scorned weep, the sick and dying weep, but we who have what we need, we who are privileged, we don’t know how. We must learn. There are realities in this life you can see only with eyes clarified by tears. If you don’t learn to weep, you can’t be a good Christian.”

Paul wrote, my heart is with you. My prayers are with you. My tears are with you.

Let’s be with one another. Let’s be aware that God is with us.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons ahead of time, but he also makes changes while he preaches. The sermon you watch will not be the same as the sermon you read.

The image is Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (between 1618 and 1620) – https://www.mfah.org/art/detail/20223, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74425088.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Remembered

October 26, 2025

Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

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.

As I wrote six years ago,

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.

The image is The Sermon on the Mount by Fra Angelico (1437) – Copied from an art book, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9048898.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Gifts of the Angel

When Elijah fled from the threats of his monarchs, an angel brought him simple things to revive him: a meal and a rest.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking that I’m very grateful to Lori Yamashiro, the Office Coordinator of the Hawai’i Conference of the United Church of Christ, because she will be delivering the message this coming Sunday while I’m traveling. I’m deeply grateful and I’m looking forward to hearing her wisdom when I return and can watch the recorded service.

I am, however, also thinking about the nineteenth chapter of First Kings (1 Kings 19:1-15). The prophet Elijah had had a great success calling down fire from heaven to ignite a sacrifice soaked in water, when the prophets of Baal could not. The queen of Israel, Jezebel, however, was not impressed. She sent word that Elijah was to be sought, arrested, and executed.

Despite his recent success, Elijah fled, and he headed out into the wilderness — in fact, towards the wilderness through which the people of Israel had wandered many years before. Along the way, he settled down next to a book and he went to sleep, asking that he might awake and die. When he woke, he found an angel standing there, and there was food and water for him. The Angel told him to eat and drink and sleep. Elijah did, and then found the angel with food again. He ate, he drank, and he slept again.

And then he continued his journey.

I’ve been known to say that (it’s not original with me) this is a Scripture text that demonstrates the power of a nap and a snack for carrying on with the work of God. And however trite it may seem, it is also true. Elijah, after all of his exertions: he was tired. And Elijah, despite his success, also knew that the power of the nation was not to be disregarded lightly, and so he feared.

Tired and afraid, he fled.

Each of us finds ourselves in places where we get worn out even by the successes, even by the triumphs. And you and I also find ourselves in places where we fear: where we fear perhaps to fail, or perhaps we fear some outside agency, or we just fear that we’ve worn ourselves out and we’ve got nothing left.

Elijah took a break. He thought it was going to be a longer break than it was, but he took a break, and that is a guidepost for us: because there will be times that we need to rest and recover. There will be times when we need to renew and reform. There will be times when we need someone to take care of us, give us something to eat, and encourage us to sleep.

There’s one other thing that occurs to me. This did not end to the story of Elijah in First Kings. He had more to do (and God gave him his instructions later on), but it occurs to me that giving somebody a snack, giving somebody the opportunity to rest: this might be the single easiest way for us to act as angels to someone else.

So where are you? Are you weary and afraid? Rest and eat.

Or is there somebody weary and afraid around you? For them, be an angel.

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.