When Jesus met a woman at a well in Samaria, it turned out that they both had something to offer to one another: Refreshment.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 4:5-42): the conversation between Jesus and a woman he met at a well in Samaria.
The conversation started with Jesus’ simple request that she share some of the water she was drawing so that he could have a drink. It went from there to matters much deeper — deeper even than the well, if you like. It went to spiritual matters. It went even to the identity of the Messiah, the Deliverer, the one who was coming.
Unlike lots of other conversations, Jesus actually acknowledged to the woman that he was the Messiah.
The conversation was persuasive enough that she went back to the town and invited her neighbors to meet him. She said, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. He couldn’t be the Messiah — or could he? Come and see.”
It occurs to me that this story is about refreshment. It started with Jesus asking to be refreshed with the literal water to be drawn from the well. It continued with the refreshment that Jesus offered to this woman and to her neighbors: refreshment of the spirit.
He offered and delivered not just an acceptance, but also real valuing for her and for those around her, despite the fact that she was a Samaritan, despite the fact that she was a woman, despite the fact that there were a number of things that should have kept them distant from one another.
Yet they refreshed one another.
I think refreshment is a central activity, a central calling, a central obligation, if you like, of the life of faith. We are not simply here to be ourselves. We are here to support one another, to be a community, to be a family, if you like. In that family we refresh one another. We provide refreshment such as water, food, shelter. We provide refreshment emotionally and relationally. And when and how we can, we offer refreshment for the spirit: that living water of which Jesus spoke that flows through our very souls and renews our lives.
Refreshment.
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.
As he sat down to write his letter to the church in Rome – or perhaps as he stood to dictate it to the scribe, Tertius, who offers greetings at the end of the letter – the Apostle Paul had an agenda. He planned a trip to Spain. He had travelled a lot in the years since the risen Jesus summoned him to proclaim this good news. He hoped to go even further, to the place Clement of Rome, writing at the end of the first century, called “the farthest west.”
Along the way, said Paul, he wanted to visit the Christian community in Rome.
Unlike his other letters in the New Testament, Paul wrote this letter to people he didn’t know. He hoped for their assistance, I’m sure: a place to stay during his visit. He said he looked forward to preaching the gospel, so I’m sure he planned to do the same things he’d done in cities and towns across modern Israel, Syria, Turkey, and Greece. He wanted to meet people he’d heard good things of, names that had reached his ears across the Mediterranean Sea.
The Letter to the Romans was Paul on his best behavior, writing to strangers, trying to make a good impression.
Paul knew, and the Romans knew, that their church had had problems. A major one was that there’d been fights in the streets. The Emperor Claudius had banished Jews from the city of Rome on because of “disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus,” which most scholars interpret as dissension between Jews and Jews leaning into the new understandings of Jesus. The chances are very good that most if not all of the members of the Roman church had been shut out of the city, though it’s unknown for how long.
That probably wasn’t the Roman church’s only problem. Romans has sixteen chapters. The last chapter is a long set of greetings. Chapters twelve through fifteen contain a typically Pauline set of advice including, “Let love be genuine,” and “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Except for his opening introduction, he gave the rest of the letter: his time, his consideration, and his considerable focused attention, to one question: What difference is there, if any, between God’s relationship with Christians of a Jewish background and God’s relationship with Christians of a Gentile background?
It was a knotty problem. As Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “In Romans 3:29 Paul asked a provocative question: is God the God of Jews only? Or is he not also the God of Gentiles? In contrast to every attempt to claim God as ours, and ours alone, Paul says that in Abraham God loves all people equally. In the famous words of this week’s gospel, God so loves all the world (John 3:16). Our tendency is to fear the other, to marginalize the strange, to dismiss all that is different from who and what we know.”
That’s true now, and it was true in the first century. Jews had long regarded their relationship with God as unique. God might have created the world, but had only entered into covenant with one group of people. On the other hand, Romans – especially those dwelling in the city of Rome – regarded themselves as the greatest people ever. Most people living in the Empire were not Roman citizens and lived under different laws. Roman citizens, for example, could be executed for treason but they could not be crucified.
The Roman church included both Jews and Romans. Some of the latter would have been citizens and some non-citizens, adding another layer of class distinction to an uncomfortable mix, with everyone wondering: How does God really feel about that person on the other side of the room?
That’s why Paul got so excited about a revolutionary idea: that a relationship with God could be established not by living in the right place, not by divine selection, not through ritual observance, but through faith. Anyone could make the decision to trust in God. Anyone. “For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us)…”
Not only for me. Also for them. Not only for us. Also for them. Not only for the select of Rome. Also for Spaniards. Not only for the Jews. Also for the Greeks. Not only for the men. Also for the women. Not only for today’s believers. Also for tomorrow’s believers. Not only for people of the “Christian” nations. Also for the people of the non-Christian nations. Not only for the rich. Also for the poor. Not only for the powerful. Also for the marginalized. Not only for the respectable. Also for the discounted. Not only for the Americans. Also for the Iranians. Not only for the Republicans. Also for the Democrats, and the Independents, and the Greens, and the Libertarians, and so on. Not only for the people who agree with me. Also for the ones who don’t.
Let’s face it. God gets along better, with more people, than I do.
As Lucy Lind Hogan writes at Working Preacher, “Paul had experienced God’s amazing, unbelievable, overflowing love and forgiveness. How could God, in Jesus Christ, have forgiven him for all the evil that he had done? How could God accept the one who had sought to murder the disciples of Jesus? Because that is who our God is. For Paul, justification by grace was a theological concept only after it had been a life changing, throw-you-to-the-ground, awe-filled experience. God had offered him new life, and he had believed.”
These are anxious days. Hold on to that core of trust and faith: God loves you just as much as Paul or anyone. God loves you.
God also loves us. And God loves them. No matter who “we” are. No matter who “they” are.
Not only for us. Also for everyone.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while preaching, so the sermon prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
“I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”
A quiet and peaceable life – that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It sounds pretty good to me. I don’t mind a little excitement from time to time, but that excitement can come from things like making music, watching lava fountains on Kilauea, eating something delightful, and, well, I have been known to glide down a zip line.
Just a little excitement, excitement that is consistent with a quiet and peaceable life.
What fosters a quiet and peaceable life?
First, it’s prayer. It’s the extension of our spirits to God on behalf of others, the people around us, the communities we live in and the communities beyond us, for their benefit and welfare. It’s not just for Christians. As Sunggu Yang writes at Working Preacher, “In this passage, it is very interesting to see that the author urges his readers to invoke (the name of) Jesus, the mediator, in prayers for probably—this is very likely—unbelieving gentile Greek kings and those in high political positions. Simply put: prayers for the sake of unbelievers!”
Why? Because quiet, peaceful communities are created and maintained by all the members of those communities. We all know the havoc that’s created by people that steal things, or who commit violence against others. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who drive recklessly or do their work carelessly. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who say one thing and do another. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who put themselves ahead of everyone else.
The first step, then, is to pray for everyone in a community so that they live and act from a spiritual foundation. Right. How effective is that?
The short answer is, I don’t know.
The longer answer is, I think it’s more effective than we might believe.
The reason is personal. Many years ago, one of the members of my family had a medical crisis. I’m not talking about how prayer influenced the course of healing. I’m talking about how the prayers of other people carried me through that crisis.
My family was pretty well known in our UCC Conference – Connecticut, at the time. Well enough that our story went around church leaders, lay and clergy, and even into the congregations. Literally thousands of people prayed for us. In the midst of a lot of stress and a lot of fear, something miraculous happened.
My feet stopped touching the ground.
Not literally, of course. That’s the only way I’ve ever come up with to describe the feeling, though. Those prayers carried me through the scary days and nights. They carried me through the months. They carried me.
One of the reasons I know it was the prayer that did it is that I’ve had other crises in my life. I didn’t share those events with a large number of people. I didn’t have their prayers supporting me during those times.
I did not feel the sensation of being carried through my stress.
Prayer will not automatically create caring, compassionate people who act for the benefit of their neighbors. If it did, we’d have been living in the peaceable realm for centuries now, and we’re not. What prayer will do is make it easier for people to find and to foster their care and compassion for their neighbors. What prayer will do is lighten their steps through their days.
We start with prayer.
Then we live out our prayers.
In the fourth chapter of this letter, the author advises his readers to “set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12) Actually, an example for the believers and the unbelievers. One of the scandals of Christianity – of other religions as well, but the scandals of Christianity belong to us – is that we haven’t always treated non-Christians as well as we should. We’ve made war on Muslims. We’ve oppressed Jews. We’ve tortured and executed “heretics,” which basically means somebody whose Christian theology isn’t close enough to yours.
It’s up to us to act better than that. To make sure that there are places for people to live, and to pay people such that they can afford to live there. It’s up to us to see that nobody gets persecuted for their religious beliefs or their skin color or their gender or their relationship status or their disabilities. It’s up to us to create a community that protects and nurtures everyone.
Pray. Act. And we will live quiet and peaceable lives.
Maybe.
We have a lot of power over our own prayers and actions, but every one of us knows there are times we let our feelings get ahead of us. There are times when we feel like we’re not being carried by prayer, but being carried away by some other power within us. That’s part of our humanity, and as much as I’d like to believe that prayer and action can prevent that, I don’t think they can. Not entirely. We have to keep an eye on that within ourselves.
More than that, though, we have to face the presence of prayer for “kings and all who are in high positions” in this text.
Despite Paul’s comments in Romans that we should obey the authorities, the simple truth is that Paul himself disobeyed the authorities multiple times. He got in trouble. A lot. In Second Corinthians he proudly wrote, “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning.” (2 Corinthians 11:24-25) Those, plus his uncounted imprisonments and floggings, were the result of refusing to obey authorities. Some of that would have been due to accusations of heresy – when other people didn’t like his beliefs. Some of that was probably due to what we’d call “disturbing the peace” today.
Paul obeyed a good number of the rules of his society, those of Judea and those of Rome, but not all. Not enough. He died at the legal order of a Roman Emperor.
Sometime in the first half of the second century, Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna wrote, “Pray for all the saints. Pray also for kings, and potentates, and princes, and for those that persecute and hate you, and for the enemies of the cross, that your fruit may be manifest to all, and that ye may be perfect in Him.”
Did you notice? Pray for the saints. Then pray for a group that includes kings, potentates, and princes, and those that persecute and hate you. I think that Polycarp considered the powerful of the Empire as those who persecuted him and his fellow Christians, because, well, they did. Like Paul before him, he was martyred at the orders of a Roman official in the mid-150s.
How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities have set against you? How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities themselves have chosen to do the things that cause havoc in a community: theft, violence, recklessness, carelessness, lies? How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities enshrine religious, racial, or gender prejudice in law? The simple truth is that those who rule have an outsized impact on everyone else.
We pray for them not because they are inherently right, but because their impact is so great. When they do well, everyone benefits. When they do badly, some benefit, and some suffer. Some suffer a lot.
Keep in mind that as First Timothy was being written, Romans prayed to their emperors as deities. As Christian A. Eberhart writes at Working Preacher, “In this kind of imperial milieu, the request in 1 Timothy 2:2 to pray ‘for kings’ instead of ‘to the kings’ takes on new meaning. It implies most ostensibly that rulers, like everybody else, depend on the guidance and mercy of God. Furthermore, it indirectly implies that they are not divine but mortal humans.”
We pray for the rulers for the same reason we pray for everyone else: that it might be easier for them to do well, to do the things that foster quiet and peaceable lives for their communities. We pray for everyone so that they are not so burdened with their cares that they give way to the errors of self-centeredness and fear. We pray for everyone because it takes everyone to make a just society.
We act so that people have someone else to emulate, to work with, to live quietly with, to live peaceably with.
And we insist that this quiet and peace be for everyone, not just for “us,” because when peace is denied to anyone, it will break for everyone.
For everyone we pray.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared sermon as he preaches. Sometimes it’s intentional.
For me, it’s not about coins. It’s about keys. If you want to observe frantic me, hide my keys. I will go through everything and then some to find my keys. I know this from painful experience. I’ll mention that most of the time when I’ve misplaced my keys, it’s because I’ve put them in a pocket other than where I usually put them.
That’s not to say that I haven’t been obsessed with coins. I studied and performed a certain number of magic shows as a pre-adolescent and teen. My very first paying job, in fact, was as a magician for a fair. One of the illusions I worked on for a long time was the classic one of pulling coins from the air and dropping them in a container.
I may be giving something away here, but I couldn’t really pull coins out of thin air. If I had, it would have been a lot simpler collecting the coins needed to make it a really impressive illusion. For months I badgered friends and relations for half-dollar coins, paying in nickels, dimes, and quarters (and the occasional dollar bill if I got lucky) to accumulate the proper hoard. I had quite a collection by the time I got busy with other things and stopped performing.
The coins ended up going toward my first (and last, actually) ten-speed bicycle.
So what is the worth of a silver coin? It’s the value of a crowd-satisfying illusion. It’s the value of feet circling to get tires rolling.
What is the worth of a human being?
“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” (Luke 15:1-2)
There are people who are worth eating with, and there are people who aren’t worth eating with. We all know this. Some people raise the level of the conversation, or they fill the room with laughter. They may bring comfort to people who are sad, or they be so appreciative of what they’re served that it brings a smile to the faces of the hosts. Other people drag a party down. They’re constantly insulting people, or they get into arguments. They don’t seem to notice other people’s feelings, or, heaven help us, their sense of humor leans toward puns.
The scribes and the Pharisees weren’t precisely thinking of that, though they certainly worried about social scandal. In the Roman Empire of the first century, lots of people wouldn’t have been welcome at a table, because if you were a member of some class of people, there would have been other classes of people you wouldn’t eat with. Emperors ate with monarchs and senators, not with slaves. For everyone, there was someone who was…
Less than human.
Not worth as much as I am.
Not worth a single silver coin.
Of all humanity’s sins, this is the one that troubles me the most: when we come up with some reason that I (or we) are better than some individual you, or a collective you. I’m better because of who my parents were. I’m better because of my education. I’m better because of my appointed position. I’m better because I’m male. I’m better because of who attracts me. I’m better because I can hear without aid. I’m better because I can run faster. I’m better because I’m white.
I’m worth a lot.
You’re not.
Quite aside from how delusional all that is, it’s a direct contradiction of Genesis’ assertion of the nature of humanity.
“So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
We’re created in the image of God. How can anyone be worth more than that?
How can anyone be worth less than that?
How much is a human being worth?
E. Trey Clark writes at Working Preacher, “…what is surprising is that when the lady finds the coin, she chooses to spend it, and likely the rest of her money, on throwing a party with ‘her friends and neighbors’ (15:9). The picture is even more outrageous than the modest shepherd’s celebration. God is a God who celebrates finding the lost, without restraint.”
To Jesus, a human being is worth a cheer that echoes across the heavens. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
It’s worth noting that both the missing sheep and the lost coin are already part of the flock and the household. God’s flock and God’s household are bigger than we think they are. We tend to put constraints on them, thinking that it’s the people like us, right? “Like us” might be members of the family, or our cultural group. They might be part of our church or political party. “Like us” might be any of those reasons that we thought we were better than others.
In Jesus’ stories, the lost sheep was part of the flock already. The lost coin was there in the house. In Jesus’ stories, the flock and the house are big. All people are those sought by God.
All people are those sought by God.
What is the worth of a human being? To God, each one of us is a silver coin, or a pearl of great price.
What is the worth of a human being to us?
Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Most interpretations of this text emphasize the divine love of Jesus, and while that is certainly present, it may be the human love of Jesus that is most note-worthy in the teaching moment. Jesus prefaces the parables with the question, ‘Who among you….’ This phrasing invites his conversation partners and the audience to place themselves in the narrative, not just as substitutes for God, and not only to evoke their empathy for the Holy One’s compassion. The question challenges them to adjust their attitudes because the actions Jesus describes reflect the expected behavior of any human being.”
Every era in history has lived with the sin of “I am greater than you because…” Ours is no different in that way, but we are seeing it expanding, and we are seeing people of influence and power endorsing it. Let me be clear. I do not believe in the use of violence against people who encourage racial prejudice, who empower men against women, who seek to oppress LGBTQ people, who would turn away the tired and the poor at the borders. No violence. No death. Why? Because they are made in the image of God. They are worth a silver coin. They are pearls of great price. No death.
Nor would I silence them. I would repudiate their ideas. I would reject their policies. I would revive the communities that they have been suppressing. I would lift up the value of every human being and insist upon it in law, culture, and community. Frankly, I would see their ideas and ideals lost and forgotten.
I would follow Jesus in valuing every human being as much as a lost sheep, as much as a silver coin. I would follow Jesus in singing with the angels every time a person finds the love of God.
I would be a human being of worth myself.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes to his prepared text while preaching, so you will find that it sounds something different to how it reads.
The image is A Parable – The Lost Coin, by Hochhalter, Cara B., from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59056 [retrieved September 14, 2025]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.
Simon Peter had had some really good days. As I mentioned last week, the wave of hostility to followers of Jesus led by Saul had subsided when Saul, himself, became a follower of Jesus. That had allowed Peter to travel to Lydda where he’d healed Aeneas, then to Joppa where he’d raised Tabitha. If I were Simon Peter, I’d have been really excited. Safety. Healing. Resurrection. That’s a hat trick to me.
Not that Simon Peter would have heard of a “hat trick,” of course.
As Luke told the story in the book of Acts, those events led to another event, an event so crucial that Luke couldn’t tell it just once. Just to give you something to compare, Luke told the story of Aeneas’ healing in five sentences. He told the story of Tabitha’s resurrection in twelve sentences. He told the story of Saul’s conversion, the person we know as the Apostle Paul, in nineteen sentences. But this story? The story of Simon Peter’s visit to Cornelius, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the baptism of the household?
Sixty-four sentences.
What we read today is about a third of the text. One of the reasons it takes so much space in the book is that Luke repeated this story. He described it as a narrative, “as it happened,” and then he had people report on their dreams in the narrative, repeating a portion of what happened “as it happened,” and then we get this section in which Simon Peter reported on what happened to his fellow leaders in Jerusalem.
If you’re tempted to let this story glide by as if it weren’t important, Luke has put up a great big sign and has waved flags at you, saying, essentially, “Important story here! Do not pass it by!”
Kyle Fever writes at Working Preacher, “But this is not just repetition for repetition’s sake. Each time the acceptance of Gentiles is relayed a different aspect shines through, depending on the audience and particular situation. The constant remains, however, in that each telling focuses on God’s initiative through the Spirit and its effects.”
When he told this story to the church leadership, Simon Peter had already had time to digest these events. He’d had time to consider his vision in which God declared unclean foods clean. He’d had time to move past the shock of being summoned to visit a Roman centurion, an invitation that he might have expected to lead to his own arrest and crucifixion. Romans had executed Jesus, after all. He’d had time to absorb the warm welcome he’d received in Cornelius’ house, a welcome that actually included the centurion kneeling to him. He’d had time to feel relief that he’d found words to describe Jesus’ life, ministry, purpose, and meaning.
Most of all, he’d had time to reflect on the movement of the Holy Spirit among people who he had known, for a fact, couldn’t be moved by the Holy Spirit. Jewish men? Certainly. Uncommon, but if it was going to be anyone it would be God’s people, and, let’s face it, God’s men. Jewish women? Unlikely, but look, it had happened a couple times over the centuries, so they could cope.
Non-Jews? No. Not possible.
Simon Peter knew that. Tabitha’s friends had probably known that there was no relief from her death. Aeneas had probably known that there was no likely relief from his pain. Ananias had known that there was no way that Saul could change his ways. Saul had known that there was no truth to the message about Jesus.
Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong. That doesn’t change the shock of it, but when you know that something can’t be, how nice it is to discover that it can.
“When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’”
Six years ago Brian Peterson wrote at Working Preacher, “The church’s Spirit-led experience has brought new insights regarding things like slavery, racial equality and justice, women’s ordination, and LGBTQ dignity. Some of that may look obvious in history’s rearview mirror. Still, encountering the Spirit who is alive and pushing the church in new and astonishing directions can be frightening. However, the Spirit is not random or incoherent. The Spirit always pushes the church into greater practice of God’s love for all people of the world.
“This is a text about crossing borders. We know how contentious that can become! We put up walls, concrete or steel or metaphorical. It would have been more comfortable and seemingly safer for the early church to keep Cornelius and his Gentile household at arm’s length.”
Boundaries and borders, it must be said, have their uses. They are necessary. If you look at the simplest forms of life, those single-celled creatures we can see only through microscopes, they have a cell wall. Take away the cell wall, the creatures cease to exist. The reality of a boundary makes life itself possible.
We ourselves consist of somewhere around 30 trillion cells, give or take a few trillion. They’ve all got cellular walls to permit them to perform their different functions around the body. A red blood cell without a cell wall won’t carry oxygen anywhere. A skin cell without a cell wall won’t hold all the other cells in. Skin cells, in fact, are pretty remarkable for establishing a boundary that preserves the life of the other cells. During COVID we saw the results of a virus that could get around the skin barrier, and it wasn’t pretty.
Boundaries have a function.
Boundaries, however, are rarely absolute. A cell wall that won’t admit oxygen and nutrients is one that spells the death of the cell. I just talked about the way skin cells keep other organisms out, but it turns out there’s a bunch of organisms in the body already, and they do very useful things there. Research has shown that bacteria in the digestive tract actually help digest food. There’s plenty of germs that don’t help, but there’s also a lot that do, and our bodies don’t produce those bacteria. They’re with us for the ride.
Boundaries mean that we can have relationships of mutual support and benefit at the cellular level.
Boundaries mean that we can have partnerships at the human level.
Some years after Cornelius had his encounter with the Holy Spirit in Simon Peter’s presence, the Apostle Paul wrote that the Church is like Christ’s body, and like a body, it is made up of many parts, and the many parts aren’t the same, but they support one another. One part can’t do without another, he said.
It turns out that men can’t run the Church without women, though God knows we’ve tried and God knows how badly that’s usually turned out. It turns out that God has called gay men, lesbian women, and transgender persons into the community and into leadership, and God knows we’ve struggled as much or more as the Jerusalem council did at that. It turns out that Micronesians and Filipinos, Hawaiians and Fijians, and people from all the Pacific have been summoned by God.
Mitzi J. Smith reminds us that we do not fulfill God’s welcome without coming to terms with our failure to welcome. She writes at Working Preacher, “Many white brothers and sisters and some people of color deny that they ever perceive or treat people who are racially or economically different from themselves with bias. This is despite being entrenched in racialized, class-conscious institutions and traditions that presume people of color, women and others to be inferior. But the only way we begin to put an end to making distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is to learn to recognize and admit our biases and their impact on human relationships. Racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and other biased behaviors and thinking are not godly; they are motivated by fear of the other and not by love of humanity. ‘God shows no favoritism’ for one human being other another.”
“I truly understand that God shows no partiality,” said Simon Peter in Acts 10:34. He understood it then, but he knew he hadn’t understood it before. He had to learn to extend a welcome, and he had to keep learning it all his days.
Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “What proof do we offer the world of our discipleship? How do we wash the feet of our companions? How do we extend hospitality? How might we organize our local church for reaching out and creating a more inclusive and engaging community within? How do we show up when the world is looking for love?”
There’s our challenge. There’s our summons: to extend ourselves in welcome to those seeking a home for their spirit and healing for their souls.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric preaches from a prepared text, but he often improvises while preaching, so what you hear in the recording will not precisely match the text above.
The Apostle Paul was, it seems, accustomed to repeat himself. In chapter three of this letter, having spent some time telling the Philippians things he’d already told them, he wrote, “To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a source of steadfastness.” After that, he told them some more things… that he’d already told them.
In some ways I can safely say that I emulate the Apostle Paul. Or in at least one. I repeat myself.
I’m pretty sure I’ve told you that I repeat myself before… probably in that sermon I titled, “Repeating Myself.”
No surprises today, I’m afraid.
We don’t know exactly when Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, or what city he was in. He was in prison, but that doesn’t tell us much. In Second Corinthians, he wrote that he had “far more imprisonments” than some other people with whom he was in conflict. Apparently he had the capacity to annoy local authorities with his preaching – and he had the will to do so rather than stay safe and silent.
While it’s no surprise to find Paul imprisoned, he did set a different tone in this letter. For one thing, it sounds like he’d been held longer than he had previously, long enough for the Philippians to hear about it and start worrying about him, long enough for them to worry about his companion Epaphroditus as well. In the first century, jail was not a punishment. People were held for trial and after trial to await punishment, and Paul had experienced “countless floggings” in his career. This time, though, the possibility of execution loomed. “Living is Christ,” he wrote in verse 21. “Dying is gain.”
In the midst of all that, Paul wrote what is safe to describe as the most joyful of his letters, at least the ones we have. This is no Second Corinthians, full of contention and conflict. This is no Romans, dedicated to a thorough explanation of his ideas. This is not even Philemon, encouraging a friend to do something extraordinary. In Philippians, Paul rejoices in the faithfulness and compassion of this congregation he has loved and cared for.
As Carla Works writes at Working Preacher, “Joy permeates this letter. Paul will make use of the language of joy or rejoicing sixteen times. The apostle can have joy in the midst of suffering because of his confidence in God’s work through Christ. His joy is wed to God’s activity rather than to his own personal circumstances. Joy is an appropriate theological response. It is not joy because of suffering, but joy because those who cause the suffering will not have the last word.”
Joy is the first of things that really matter.
Another thing that really mattered, and really matters now, is the presence and support of other people. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Paul’s letters to the churches of his era and to the church today, remind us, across time and distance, that our faith is shared. Our journey is communal. If we are called to be a righteous branch, we recognize that branches are connected to a tree, bush, or vine.” Over the course of the letter to the Philippians, Paul mentioned four of his comrades in the gospel by name: Epaphroditus, Timothy, Euodia, and Syntyche. In fact, Paul routinely named other people as he wrote his letters, either because he wanted to greet them specifically in the church to whom he wrote, or because he was passing along the blessings of people with whom he was working at the time.
What really matters? Don’t do it alone. You don’t have to. And you shouldn’t. Get together, and stay together.
What else matters? Paul named something else in this one-sentence prayer that closed today’s reading: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvestof righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”
Love. Love matters. Love really matters. Love. Agape. Hesed. Aloha. Love really matters.
This is the love that puts someone else’s welfare and interests at or above your own. This is the love that not only knows that we don’t have to do God’s work alone, this is the love that doesn’t let someone else do God’s work alone, either. This is the love that Epaphroditus demonstrated by coming to Paul and getting sick. This is the love that Paul showed by sending the recuperating Epaphroditus home, not just for his benefit, but to comfort the Philippians who were worried about both of them.
This love is not a feeling, but it nurtures feelings, doesn’t it? This love is audible in words, and it is visible in deeds. This love is tangible in making change in the physical world. This love tastes like my friend’s favorite meal. This love has the perfume of blossoms after rain.
These things make us feel good. They make others feel good. This is what love is. And: it really matters.
Paul’s prayer didn’t stop there, though. As L. Ann Jervis writes at Working Preacher, “Paul calls for love that is discerning and courageous, not simply tolerating everything in everyone; love that has insight and wisdom; love that reflects the moral character of God as reflected in Christ.” I’ve said it before, love carelessly expressed may not comfort, may not heal. It may, in fact, annoy, irritate, and mislead. People who dearly loved me have given me some real clinkers of Christmas gifts over the years. I love the people, but I do occasionally wonder how they thought I’d like… you know, that.
Christmas gifts are one thing. Day to day gifts are another. How often do we take on some regular job in the household firmly believing that we are providing relief or relaxation to someone we love? How often did we take it on because, well, it’s easier to do it ourselves than to share it? How often did we take it on because it’s something we were good at and the other person wasn’t, and we just couldn’t be bothered to teach it?
How often do we find ourselves unintentionally limiting the roles our loved ones can take on or the skills they can learn?
Did we ask?
It turns out that knowledge matters when we set out to love. It turns out that we can lovingly do exactly the wrong thing. It turns out that ignorance isn’t loving. Shouldn’t we care enough to ask?
Yes. We should.
Care enough to ask. It really matters.
Care enough to observe, as well. That’s where insight comes from. That’s what allows us to make those inspired guesses about things that will delight those we love. When we pay attention to what pleases those we love, we can make better and better judgements about what will please them next. Insight isn’t a gift that some have and some don’t. Insight is something you build from experience, observation, and consideration. Insight, like knowledge, takes work.
Do the work. It really matters.
What really matters?
Joy. Joy matters. Joy in the grace of God that rises above the current circumstances. Joy matters.
Togetherness. Togetherness matters. Living out our calling from God in company with others, supporting one another in righteousness. Togetherness matters.
Love. Love matters. Sharing and caring for others as we would have them share and care for us. Love matters.
Knowledge. Knowledge matters. Asking when we do not know, so that we can love well. Knowledge matters.
Insight. Insight matters. Paying attention to those we love so that we can love well without asking every question. Insight matters.
Paul repeated himself. So do I. Because it’s so important that we know what really matters, and that we do what really matters.
Love with knowledge and insight. Love together, not alone. Love God’s creation, and celebrate God’s joy.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric preaches from a text, but he does vary from it, as he has done today.
During the Exodus, God intervened to help Moses solve his leadership problem: by adding additional leaders.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of Numbers (Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29). This is a part of the Exodus story, where so many of the events seem to follow this general pattern:
The people of Israel out there in the wild come to Moses with a problem.
Moses panics and prays to God that horrible things are happening and why on earth did you ever do this to me?
And then God fixes it.
And that’s pretty much what we have here. The people were hungry. They came to Moses. They said, “We are tired of manna” (miraculous food… I guess you’d get tired of it). Moses went to God and said, Why did you do this to me? Did I give birth to this people that you expect me to take care of them?”
Now, usually at this point in the story, I’d be telling you about what God did in order to relieve the initial problem. But this time, God did something different (later, God did fix the initial problem). Before that, however, God said, Moses, you’re absolutely right. You cannot carry this people all by yourself as if they were a child and you were their mother. You need help.
And so seventy elders were appointed to become a leadership team with Moses. Sixty-eight of them reported for the initial time in which God and Moses would commission them to their work. Two of them, however, were missing: yet even they responded to the presence of the Spirit of God by declaring God’s grace and mercy in the other places in the camp where they were. When people told Moses that they were doing it, Moses replied, finally seeing the wisdom of additional leadership, “Would that everyone would prophesy.”
We tend to think of leadership as being the acts of a single person. There isn’t much substitute, actually, for somebody to step out, to have a vision, to encourage people to participate in it, join it, and support it. There also isn’t a substitute for other leadership. A single person cannot do it all, and particularly not as the group of people they’re leading gets larger. We all have our roles to play as we gather with other people in order to accomplish significant things, whether that be in a family, whether that be in a social group, whether that be in a workplace, whether that be in the Church.
Find your place and role for that particular activity. Because at one moment you might be the senior leader in one group, you might find yourself a junior leader at the same time in another group. And later on you might find yourself being the one who carries on with the work and supports the other leaders to make God’s grace and love and mercy known.
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.
