Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: The Core of Christianity

As Matthew described it, Jesus began his ministry by teaching the good news of God’s realm, summoning people together into it, and bringing people healing. This is the core of Christianity.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 4:12-23), his account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

That ministry began when John was arrested. Jesus returned to the region of the Galilee. He then went and recruited the first of his disciples — Peter and Andrew, James and John — from where they had been fishing in the sea of Galilee. He taught in the synagogues. He proclaimed the good news of the Realm of God, and he cured the sick, any who came to him with some kind of a disease.

I think you can argue that this is the essence, not just of Jesus, but of Christianity. It is founded in the teaching (and the teaching of what?): the teaching of Good News, the teaching of God’s nearness, the teaching of God’s forgiveness, the teaching of God’s love.

And how do we express that love? We express it through healing, through comfort, through gathering people together, through building a better society, a better world.

There are so many ways to understand “Messiah,” “Anointed One.” The most obvious ones are to connect anointing with the creation of the monarch, or the appointment of a general, the selection of a leader of war. But Jesus, though he was the Messiah, simply didn’t go in any of those directions. He accepted baptism rather than an anointing with oil. He brought healing rather than war. He preached good news rather than condemnation. He spoke of repentance in order that people would find their way to full participation in the Realm of God.

“Come with me and I’ll make you fish for people,” he said to those first four followers. Fish for people not so that they might be consumed, but so that they might thrive.

This is the essence of Christianity: Teaching. Teaching good news. Summoning people together. And seeing that as many as we can find their healing.

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 Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Without Pride or Privilege

Transcript 1/6/2026

Jesus joined all humanity in his baptism, and led us from those waters into the ways of service, humility, and love.

Here’s a transcript:

Hau’oli Makahiki Hou! Happy New Year!

And I also wish you a Happy Epiphany. I’m recording this episode of What I’m Thinking on the Epiphany holiday. Epiphany is one of the most ancient of the Christian celebrations. It recognizes the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. And so as we begin 2026, may we all find God’s love revealed to us, not just through What I’m Thinking, but in God’s movements in our hearts and in our souls.

I’m thinking about a way in which God moved in the heart of Jesus. That’s the third chapter of Matthew: Jesus’ baptism.

Unlike the other Gospels, Matthew described a conversation between John and Jesus. “I ought to be baptized by you,” John protested, “yet you have come to me.” “Let it be so for now,” said Jesus, “for this way we will do all that is required.” And so John baptized Jesus; he came up out of the water; he saw the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove; and he heard those words: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Matthew emphasized something that the other Gospel writers, I think, understood but chose not to emphasize, and that was Jesus refusal to play into notions of power and of privilege. Instead, Jesus chose to fully join us in that necessity of recognizing what we have done poorly or sinfully, and that we need to take steps to wash that away, to set it into the past, and take on new ways.

Jesus did, indeed, take on new ways following his baptism: his baptism launched his ministry. But he didn’t need the baptism to begin it, now did he? And John made that clear.

Jesus did the thing even though he didn’t need to because he didn’t want to take a shortcut that the rest of us cannot. Jesus chose not to exercise any kind of privilege or pride. He chose not to live in hubris. He chose to give us an example of humility and of acceptance and of following the hard and sometimes painful steps that lead us towards a brighter future, that lead us towards doing fully the will of God. Jesus in the Jordan not only joined us; Jesus led us from the waters of baptism out into a life of full service, and faithfulness, and loving kindness.

It was an astonishing thing to do then and now.

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 Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Dream

Joseph had a dream, and it changed what he did, and what he did changed things for Mary and Jesus, and what they all did changed the world. What is your dream?

Here’s a transcript:

The service for the Fourth Sunday of advent the Church of the Holy Cross will feature the Christmas pageant performed by our young people. I’m not thinking about this week’s Scripture with the idea that it will become a sermon, but I am still thinking about the first chapter of Matthew (Matthew 1:18-25).

Luke described the circumstances of Jesus birth; Matthew didn’t. Matthew, however, talked about one of the real difficult moments in that series of events: because when Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant, he determined to set her aside: quietly, so that she wouldn’t be shamed any more than she already was.

Then he had a dream, and in that dream an angel assured him that she was with child by the Holy Spirit, that this child would be the Messiah, and that he would be the one who would be called Immanuel, God with us.

You’ve got to have a dream.

That’s an old song from a musical, but it’s also true. Dreams change things when we set out to put those dreams into reality.

Joseph might have shrugged it off — I’m not sure how you shrug off the words of an angel whether in waking life or in dream life — but he could have. Mary could have had her child, the Messiah, all alone, cut off from family and friends. But Joseph had a dream, and Joseph’s dream meant that he had a role to play, and that was a supportive partner to those who were taking the lead roles: to Mary the mother who would carry and then comfort the newborn child, to Jesus himself, Jesus who would eventually carry everything including the cross, that Jesus had done so because Joseph had a dream and set out to live that dream.

What is your dream? Is it a dream of love and care and support? Is it a dream that overcomes your prejudices? Is it a dream that leads towards life becoming better, not just for you, not just for your family, but for all those around you and those perhaps on the far side of the world?

Dreams change life. Have a dream and live it.

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 Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: What Did You Go Out to See?

December 14, 2025

Luke 1:46-55
Matthew 11:2-11

“What did you go out to see?” Jesus asked the crowds, referring to the ministry of John the Baptist. “A reed shaken by the wind?”

I rather like that image, even though I suspect, along with Biblical scholars, that I don’t really understand it. It’s probably a first century phrase that has long since fell out of regular use. But would you go out to see grass blowing in the wind? (Well, I might, but I’m a photographer and I’ve been known to take pictures of grass blowing in the wind.) I just imagine a somewhat large reed growing from the riverbank and giving off a low tone as the wind blows across it. Instead of the voice of the prophet, you’d get the voice of the wind and the reeds.

Now, I suppose you might prefer that to someone who greeted his visitors with “You brood of vipers!” But would that bring you out? Probably not. You might come out to see someone wealthy and showy – that describes most big concert performers, come to think of it. You’d go out for those. Lots of people do.

Neither musical grasses nor well-dressed people brought people out to see John the Baptist. As Jesus put it, they came out to see a prophet, and more than a prophet. They came to see one who might give them some hope for a radical change in their condition. They came out because they were poor, and were going to stay poor, and they hoped that someone could change that. They came out because they were treated at best with indifference by the rulers of their day and at worst – all too frequently at worst – with casual cruelty, and they hoped that God cared about that. They came out because they knew they weren’t living by the laws of Scripture, and they knew that they needed to seek God’s forgiveness. They came out because forgiveness through the Temple was expensive: they had to bring sacrifices. They came out because John said they would find forgiveness with a simple – and inexpensive – bath in the Jordan River.

It was concerns like that which brought them out to see Jesus, too. Jesus didn’t baptize, but he and John shared their basic message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It’s also possible that it was John’s arrest that prompted Jesus to begin his preaching ministry. According to Matthew 4, Jesus returned to Galilee after John was imprisoned.

Quite aside from their shared experience of John’s baptism, they shared a message and they shared an offered hope. They may even have shared some time and some conversation. Perhaps they made plans. If they did, Herod’s decision to imprison John interrupted them.

Whatever may have been the case between the two of them, each of them brought out the crowds, and I would guess that most of those in the crowds wanted the answer to some variant of the question John’s messengers brought to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” As James Boyce writes at Working Preacher, “Along with John we say, ‘Give us more data.’”

Well, what was the data?

There’s healing, and healing that restored people to their families and to their communities. Lacking sight, difficulties with mobility, the inability to hear, different kinds of diseases: all of these are conditions in which people can live with dignity and respect, contributing to those around them and to society as a whole. That was less true in the first century, when there was no Americans with Disabilities Act. Any of those people would have had to beg, which is a degrading way for people to survive, and those with some skin diseases would have been forced out of their homes entirely. Jesus acted not just to relieve people’s pain and suffering, he also acted to restore their relationships with others.

In our days, I have to tell you, we have all the power we need to maintain and even strengthen the relationships we have with people with challenges to sight, hearing, mobility, and overall health. Relatively few of us have the power to change the conditions of the body – with acknowledgement of the medical professionals among us – but all of us can treat people with full respect and honor their worth. We can welcome their contributions to our society and make the accommodations which permit them to live fruitfully. We can make sure that there are curb cuts on the streets at pedestrian walkways. We can, oh, I don’t know, use a font that is more easily read by a screen reader. We can set aside our prejudices and take up our commitment to regard all people as created in the image of God.

Karri Aldredge has a particular insight about good news and the poor. She writes at Working Preacher, “Of particular note is Jesus’ final statement: ‘The poor have good news brought to them.’

“This phrase is often interpreted as sharing the gospel with the poor. The Greek reads, more literally, that the poor are gospelized. They don’t just receive good news. They experience it. This reflects the long list of actions Jesus has just named. Those most vulnerable in society—like John in prison—receive the gospel not only through words but through actions and community relationships.”

I like that. In Jesus, the poor don’t just listen or hear. The poor get good newsed.

“Perhaps the work of Christ,” writes D. Mark Davis at leftbehindandlovingit, “is a way of resisting any system – whether imperial, political, medical, social, or religious – that de-humanizes and de-communalizes life. For many years I have had a definition of sin as ‘anything that is destructive of life and community.’ I think that definition and this description of what the reign of God through Christ looks like are very complementary.”

If that is the work of Christ – to bring humanity back to human beings, whether they have been oppressed by law, prejudice, illness, injury, custom, church, and death itself – if the work of Christ is to restore humanity to human beings, then that’s something worth coming out to see. That’s better than a well-dressed public figure. That’s better than a row of reeds singing on the wind.

What have you come out to see?

There are better things you could do with a Sunday morning. Think of all the things you could do to make yourself happy. Starting with sleeping late, for many of us, right? A nice leisurely start to a low-anxiety day, and low-anxiety days are precious, few and far between. There might be things you’d like to read, or craft projects that keep your mind and fingers engaged. You might experiment with some new delight, or take care of those nagging chores you didn’t get to during the week. Seriously. There are much better things you could be doing than sitting around listening to me.

Except.

If we’re here, we just might get some hints to the answer to that question: “Are you the One, Jesus?” We might just make a connection with that One. We might just deepen our relationship with that One over weeks and over years. We can’t count on these things strengthening steadily, no. John showed that. He baptized Jesus and he still had to ask that question when things went sideways for him. None of us live lives of faith without going through times of doubt and living through times of shadow.

So we’re here to be our messengers to ourselves, to ask John’s question for ourselves, to make that connection with Jesus and find out who he is for us and for all those around us. We keep trying, because, as Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “…who Jesus is is not a pronouncement.  Not a sermon, a slogan, or a billboard.  Who Jesus is is far more elusive, mysterious, and impossible-to-pin-down than we have yet imagined.  The reality of who Jesus is emerges in the lives of the plain, poor, ordinary people all around us.  We glimpse his reality in shadows.  We hear it in whispers.  It comes to us by stealth, with subtlety, over long, quiet stretches of time.”

What did you come out to see?

Whatever that might be, you saw the signs of the One who humanizes humanity. You heard it in the words we read. You experienced it in the welcome greetings that came from the others gathered here. You felt it in some movement of your soul, one which you may not be able to describe but which you know is real.

Here you have sought and found the signs of the Christ.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares the sermon text beforehand, but he makes changes while preaching. Sometimes they’re intentional; sometimes they’re not.

Photo of grass blowing in the wind by Eric Anderson.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Good News

When John asked Jesus if he were the they’d been waiting for, Jesus took the opportunity to define what a Messiah was, and to invite everyone into thee Realm of God.

Here’s a transcript:

For this third Sunday of Advent, I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 11:2-11). If this seems a little far along in the book to be describing things that happened before Jesus’ birth, well, it is.

John the Baptist, who had baptized Jesus, had been arrested and was being held in prison by King Herod. He sent messengers to Jesus to ask him if he was the one who had been promised, or should they wait for another? Jesus said to the messengers, go and tell John what you see and hear: the people are being healed, the dead are being raised, the poor hear good news.

The messengers left, and hopefully that message brought John some comfort and reassurance.

Jesus then turned to the crowd and asked them why they had gone out to see John the Baptist in the first place? Did they go to hear a reed that was being blown by the wind? Did they go to see somebody in great clothing?

No. They went to hear a prophet. And yet, said Jesus, the least in the realm of God is greater than John the Baptist.

Well, that’s a lot, isn’t it?

In this message, Jesus defined for us what he meant an Anointed One, a Messiah, to be: a healer, a teacher, someone who restored people to life, someone who restored people to the full care of their communities. But Jesus also defined what it is to be a prophet. A prophet is one who tells the truth despite discomfort, despite oppression.

But Jesus also said it is God’s grace, the grace that brings us into the realm of God, that surpasses everything. God’s grace made John a prophet. God’s grace makes each and every one of us a citizen of God’s realm.

As we approach this season of Christmas, as we prepare to rejoice once more in the gift of Jesus Christ, let us rejoice as well that we have been included in that same realm of God as John the Baptist, that we share it with that great prophet and with so many other saints over time.

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, Uncategorized

Sermon: Towards Peace

December 7, 2025

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

It’s a vision of improbable things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does this sound familiar?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us journey toward peace.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

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

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

What I’m Thinking: Peaceable Kingdom

Isaiah’s vision of an utterly peaceful world began with wisdom, compassion, righteousness, and peace. May we move toward it this Advent season.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 11:1-10). This coming Sunday is the second Sunday of Advent. The theme is peace, so it is entirely appropriate that the Isaiah reading is one of his accounts of the Peaceable Kingdom.

The wolf and the lamb lying down together. The lion eating straw like the ox. “And a little child shall lead them.”

Not surprisingly, Isaiah started with a description of what leadership would look like: that a shoot would emerge from the stump of Jesse, and that this new monarch would rule in a new and different way, with wisdom, with righteousness, with the fear of the Lord – that kind of reverent respect that, well, is frankly very uncommon amongst leaders of nations, now isn’t it?

The foundation of peace for the natural world, Isaiah said, was peace within the human world.

I can’t say that that is obviously true. If human beings ceased to make war upon one another, if human beings ceased to commit crimes against one another, if human beings abandoned violence forever, I’m afraid there would still be hunting in the forests and in the seas – at least until God changes the world. Nevertheless, Isaiah was absolutely right to seek out that first part of the vision rooted in peace amongst human beings. Because even if we can’t directly affect the peace of the rest of Creation, we can make peace amongst ourselves. We can choose wisdom over folly. We can choose compassion over violence. We can choose peace.

All too frequently, we choose folly. We choose violence. we choose war. All too rarely, we choose wisdom. We choose compassion. We choose peace.

In this Advent season, may we take a step, even a fraction of a step, towards Isaiah’s vision. Let us choose wisdom, righteousness, compassion, and peace.

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 Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Worthy Hope

Hope is an exercise in imagination: to believe the world can be better than it is. Let us hope for and work for what is worthy: a world of peace.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the second chapter of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 2:1-5). That’s his vision of the mountain of Jerusalem, Mount Zion, becoming the focus for the peoples of the world, streaming into its gates to learn the ways of God. In those days, Isaiah imagined, then swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning books because it would be the day of peace.

There are times in life, in history, in communities, in societies when the word “hope” gets tossed about: How do I find hope? How do I maintain hope? In the face of what may be really severe conditions, somebody afflicted by a major storm or an earthquake: where do they find hope? Someone in the midst of war: where do they find hope? Someone in the midst of injustice: where do they find hope?

Ind I wish that I had a way to tell you how to feel hopeful. The problem is that I can’t tell you how to feel anything. The hope that I can say something about is a hope that we choose. It is an exercise in imagination, of looking at what is and deciding that it does not need to be that way. It can be different, it should be different, and with work and the grace of God it will be different.

I can still feel pretty pessimistic about it all, but I choose to believe that the evils that are will fail, and the good which is not yet will come to be.

So there’s that decision to hope. There’s also the choice of what to hope for. I stand with Isaiah: a vision of peace, a vision of people ordering themselves into a supportive society. There are plenty of people in the world who hope for very different things. They might hope for their personal enrichment. They might hope to dominate others. They might hope that their nation invades and overthrows others. To my mind these are not worthy hopes.

These are not the hopes of Isaiah. They’re not the hopes of Jesus. I’d say they are not the hopes — the proper hopes — of the followers of Jesus.

Choose to hope. Choose to hope for blessed communities. Choose to hope for peace.

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 Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Are You Convinced?

September 28, 2025

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Luke 16:19-31

I can’t know for sure, but I think that when Luke was assembling his gospel from the bits and pieces of Jesus stories he’d collected, one of those scrolls contained the three long stories that we only find in Luke: the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. I’m probably wrong, but these stories are longer than most, take more time to develop character than most, and have really pointed endings.

A story which ends with the faithful brother reprimanded for his faithfulness? That’s pretty surprising. A story which ends with absolutely the wrong hero? That’s quite a challenge. A story which says, “Give to the poor or go to Hades?”

They don’t get much more pointed than that.

It’s also counterintuitive in the first century and in the twenty-first century. As Kendra A. Mohn writes at Working Preacher, “It is common to equate wealth with virtue, whether today or in the ancient world. Good people who work hard and live righteously can expect to be rewarded with means; likewise, people with means are seen as good (smart, hardworking, righteous) because they were able to acquire wealth. In the ancient world, concepts like wealth, virtue, and masculinity worked together and reinforced one another to solidify elite status.

“The idea that the rich man is a good man is directly challenged by Jesus’ parable.”

We tend to assume that at least reasonable economic success comes from the virtues of hard work and good choices. There’s a lot of truth to that. I’m not sure if many of you know that I established and ran a consulting business for quite a few years. I really only closed it when one of my clients – the Connecticut Conference of the UCC – asked me to give them full time and I got taken on as a staff member. I’ve got some experience with the kind of initiative, creativity, inquiry, and ongoing effort it takes to make that kind of thing work.

Mind you, I don’t say that to claim those virtues. I just know they’re needed. As you might have noticed, my efforts as a business owner did not bring me substantial amounts of wealth.

In these three long parables found in Luke, Jesus emphasized some rather different values. In the Prodigal Son, the virtue of forgiveness. In the Good Samaritan, the virtue of compassion. In the Rich Man and Lazarus, the virtue of generosity. None of those are, I hasten to mention, incompatible with the virtues of hard work, diligence, and discernment, although I’ve heard people say that they are. These are the ones who say that empathy is a weakness, even the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.

All right. If you don’t want to call it empathy, don’t. Empathy describes a feeling, and as I say a lot, feelings aren’t things we control. We feel feelings.

But we act compassionately. We extend forgiveness. We give generously.

Or, I suppose, we don’t. But those are the virtues Jesus lifted up in these longer stories.

Now, how many of you are big fans of the story of The Prodigal Son? It can be a little rough on us older brother types – for the record, I am the older brother in my family, though I think my brother has had to forgive me more often than I’ve had to forgive him – but the ending leaves us in a place where we anticipate the reunion of the family.

How about The Good Samaritan? Who’s a fan? Those of us in the religious professions can certainly have a rough time with it, but let’s face it. There’s a part of our culture which enjoys the triumph, especially the moral triumph, of the outsider. So hooray for the Samaritan!

And we didn’t expect that much of the religious officials anyway.

The Prodigal Son. The Good Samaritan. Good stories. Well known. Well remembered. Quoted from time to time, even.

When was the last time you quoted The Rich Man and Lazarus?

Well, I haven’t either.

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home. John T. Carroll writes at Working Preacher, “An enormous and growing wealth gap separates a few—both individuals and nations—from the many who live in poverty. Sound familiar? First-century life within the Roman Empire was much like the reality we know, in this regard. The Gospel of Luke assumes and addresses this reality.” And as Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Preservation of the comfort of the privileged allows more injustice to occur than pure evil. At no point does the story suggest the rich man caused Lazarus to suffer initially. Yet, his inaction allowed it to continue. As Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’”

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home because we know that the virtue of generosity is one of the hardest. There’s a lot of risk to generosity.

We fear that if we give too much, we won’t have enough. Right? That comes in the big decisions, when we’re choosing how much to contribute in the year to things we support, and it also comes in the smaller decisions, when we’re deciding whether there’s enough in our wallet to give something to the panhandler on the sidewalk.

How much do we need to keep to maintain our lives? It’s a hard question, in the moment and in the long term. Speaking for myself, I tend to decide that what I need is probably more than what I really need. Anyone else feel the same?

There’s another risk to generosity, and I fear it and I hear it all the time. Will the person I’m generous to be properly grateful? Remember the story of Jesus and the ten people he healed from leprosy. Only one came back to say thank you – and it was a Samaritan. I’d rather not be generous if I don’t get a thank you.

So I’d guess that Jesus didn’t heal anyone again… Oh, right. He did.

Generosity isn’t about the people we give to. It’s about us. We decide. We reach out. We give – or not. Gratitude is an important part of generosity, but to be frank, it isn’t necessary for generosity to happen. If you have any doubt about that, think about God’s incredibly generous gift to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Have you fully expressed your gratitude for that? Is it actually possible to give adequate thanks for that?

In this parable, Jesus stressed not just the importance of compassionate giving, he emphasized its urgency. Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “…what I appreciate most is that it’s an urgent story.  It doesn’t mince words about what’s at stake.  It doesn’t pretend that our years are limitless and our options infinite.  This is a story about time running out.  About alternatives closing down.  This is a story for us.”

We get to be generous here and now. Instead of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die,” Jesus asked us to be compassionate and generous, for tomorrow we may die.

Melissa Bane Sevier writes at her blog, “No matter our social and financial status, we all have responsibility for the other. A cautionary tale, this parable pushes us to see and hear the suffering of the poor and to cross that enormous gulf that exists between people, between communities. To see the poor and the sick as people with names, not just some jumble of faces. To name the injustices and illnesses they deal with. To reach out while we’re all still living, because it is the only chance we have to try and make things right.”

Did you notice the other major difference in this parable between the rich man and Lazarus? Jesus gave the poor man a name – relatively few of the characters in his stories got names – and the rich man didn’t. Mind you, the name was carefully chosen. “Lazarus” is a version of the Hebrew “Eliezar,” which means, “God is my help.”

God is my help.

In this story, that turned out to be true. God was the only help for Lazarus.

In our reality, we cannot let that be true. We must be part of the help for the Lazaruses of the world. God is their help, but we can be and must be part of that help.

It’s important. It’s Jesus’ summons. It’s urgent.

Are you convinced?

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Unfortunately, the video recording of worship for September 28, 2025, did not include audio.

The image is Works of Mercy with Dives and Lazarus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57065 [retrieved September 28, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Works_of_mercy_with_Dives_and_Lazarus._Oil_painting_by_a_Fle_Wellcome_V0017623.jpg.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: What is the Power of Faith?

August 17, 2025

Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29-12:2

“Now faith,” wrote the author of Hebrews at the beginning of chapter eleven, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

In some ways that’s a definition oriented toward the modern and post-modern ages of skepticism about religion, when the question of the existence of God is one that gets asked regularly. In the first century, however, that was not the burning religious question. The existence of not just the Hebrew God but of divine beings in general was mostly assumed. Most people of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and the surrounding nations simply accepted the reality of a multitude of gods, some of greater power, some of lesser, that inhabited sacred sites or blessed certain cities. The question was not one of belief. The question was, “How do I keep these gods happy?”

Happy gods, you see, protect your community. Happy gods make sure that the rains come at the right time for your crops. Happy gods keep the destroying insects away. Happy gods make for a good harvest. Happy gods will protect you when a neighboring city decides that they didn’t have a good harvest and they want to steal yours.

Different cultures had different ideas about how to keep the gods happy, but in general it came down to this: perform the right rituals at the right times. That might mean animal sacrifice, it might mean chant this chant, it might mean everybody join the parade down the main street, it might mean a major sporting event. Keep the gods happy.

That wasn’t how Judaism worked, at least not in the village synagogues, where the teachers worked hard to understand the ways God expected them to live out their lives. Sometimes they were concerned with elements of home ritual, the exercises of ritual cleanliness, but they were also concerned with the questions of relationships and behavior. What did God expect of people as they lived together in community?

Christians retained the ethical standards of Jewish teaching, though they left behind many of the ritual practices. They continued to meet and worship in the style of the Jewish synagogue rather than creating a sacrifice system like the Romans. With their understanding of God’s forgiveness to human beings, they emphasized the need to trust in God’s grace as the central act of pious people. God’s grace, they concluded, called for a response, a foundational reliance upon what God had done and what God would do. They called it “faith.”

But they also faced a significant theological problem, and we still face it today.

What is the power of faith? What impact does it have? What difference does it make?

It was a big question for first century Christians. They were out of step with those around them, and it put them at a disadvantage in day-to-day life. Public officials might be sympathetic, but they might not. The letters of the Apostle Paul reveal that he suffered repeated arrest, imprisonment, and beatings for his activity as a Christian preacher. Some Roman governors were indifferent to Christians, but others were actively hostile. After the great fire of Rome in 64, the Emperor Nero blamed Christians for the catastrophe as a way to deflect criticism from himself.

It’s strange how things don’t change very much. Public officials get criticized; they some way to blame somebody for it or for something entirely different, whatever the facts might be.

The author of Hebrews addressed that question of impact by listing the ways faith had changed the lives of people in the Bible. Abraham had his children. Moses freed the Hebrew people from slavery. Rahab survived the invasion of the Israelites. Gideon won battles. David became king.

“This ‘hall of fame of faith,’” writes Christopher T. Holmes at Working Preacher, “does more than describe what faith is; it also illustrates what faith requires. Faith is active and demanding.”

The first effect of faith, then, is to keep one connected to God’s expectations. Christianity is not a sit-around-and-do-nothing kind of religion. It’s a religion that recognizes need and suffering and steps forth to address it. It’s a religion that summons us to aid the desperate and to protect the oppressed. It’s a religion that calls us to make tomorrow better than today. Abraham, Samuel, and many others did just that.

But then the message turns. “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment.” Active faith does not guarantee victory. It does not guarantee success.

As Mary Foskett writes at Working Preacher, “The stories of men and women of faith that the writer summons to mind for the readers not only weaves the community’s own story with those of the ones who have come before, it also connects them to the story of Jesus. For the writer and the community, Jesus is the consummate model of faith. In the same way that he disregarded the shame that accompanied his suffering, so can those who seek to follow ‘by faith’ set aside shame and endure the kind of suffering that can accompany the life of discipleship.”

Another effect of faith is to provide a way to understand at least some of our suffering, that it can be a consequence of an active faith. Not all suffering is, mind you. If I walk out in front of a car and get hit, my suffering is a result of carelessness, not faith. But if I describe the national economy in accurate numbers and get fired for it, and my faith calls me to truth, then yes: that’s suffering for faith.

The author of Hebrews summoned up another image that you may have recognized, and you may not. As is true of today’s long-distance road races, athletes in the first century returned to the stadium to complete a long run. The crowd would cheer to encourage them all the way to the finish line. That’s what the author of Hebrews had in mind when describing this “great cloud of witnesses.” What a wonderful way to think of how our ancestors in the faith support us. Can you hear them cheering you on?

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Living as I do in a culture that worships individualism, I’m quick to assume that I’m alone, unseen, and unfettered in my spiritual life.   But I’m not; I’m surrounded.  I’m surrounded by witnesses whose testimonies both console and challenge me.  I’m surrounded by witnesses whose stories must nuance and deepen my own.  Christianity is not about me and my personal Jesus, doing our own private thing together.  Ours is a profoundly communal faith, one that spans place, culture, race, ethnicity, and time.”

Faith gives us companions. It gives us supporters. It gives us fans to cheer for us from the stands. It gives us people to help us understand. It gives us people to work with. Faith means we are not alone.

It’s not just other Christians, those of our time and those of the past, who accompany us. It’s God. Faith is the way we maintain not just our awareness, but our relationship, with God. Faith, especially an active faith, means that we’re not just trying to keep an uncaring deity “happy.” We’re in an ongoing and growing relationship with a real personality.

This doesn’t bring us to perfection – that’s still coming – but it does mean that we face the struggles of life and the triumphs of life in God’s company. Faith doesn’t necessarily lead to suffering, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to success, but it does lead to God’s grace. Faith guides our actions, it summons up encouragement, and it places us in the constant presence of God’s love.

That’s power. That’s a real power.

The power of faith is to guide us, to strengthen us, and to hold us in the arms of God.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches, so what he said in worship does not match what he wrote ahead of time.

The image is The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs by Fra Angelico (ca. 1420s) – Original uploader was Sampo Torgo at en.wikipediahttps://www.wga.hu/html/a/angelico/00/11fieso2.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3000363.