Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Prepare Supper

October 5, 2025

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Luke 17:5-10

Increase our faith. It seems like a good thing to ask as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus. Increase our faith. Any sensible faith leader would applaud someone’s efforts to deepen their devotion.

So… why didn’t Jesus?

As Francisco J. Garcia writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus’ loaded response to the disciple’s request for more faith—telling them that all they required was the faith of a tiny mustard seed to do the impossible—tells us that they are asking for the wrong thing.”

We’ve seen this happen with the disciples before. It’s one of the ways in which they stand in for us in the Gospels. How often do we, after all, ask God or Jesus for the wrong thing?

You don’t need to answer that.

But let’s think for a moment about what gets described as faith by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. “Faith manifests itself in many ways, by a variety of people,” writes Audrey West at Working Preacher. “Faith is persistence in reaching out to Jesus (Luke 5:17-26) and trusting in Jesus’ power and authority (7:1-10). Faith is responding with love to forgiveness received (7:44-50), not letting fear get the upper hand (8:22-25), and being willing to take risks that challenge the status quo (8:43-48). Faith is giving praise to God (17:11-19), having confidence in God’s desire for justice (18:1-8), and being willing to ask Jesus for what we need (18:35-43).”

What do these actions have in common? A couple of things: First, they are actions. They are things that people do. You might recall that in the letter of James we read that “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Jesus and Luke might put it differently. They might say that faith without action isn’t faith.

I can’t see why Jesus would be irritated to be asked how to increase faith based on its connection to action, though. Ask me what you can do to have a more active faith and believe me, I’ll come up with a good long list!

But remember, there was something else that those actions of faith have in common. They are actions that we take. That we take. That we, ourselves, take.

They’re not something that Jesus can do for us. They’re not something that the Holy Spirit does for us. They’re not something that God does for us.

They asked Jesus to increase their faith. But Jesus doesn’t increase our faith.

We increase our own faith.

OK. Just believe harder. Right?

Well, no. We go back to that first principle. Faith is action.

As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What if faith was not believing hard, but rather placing our tiny selves—in the cosmic sense, no more than the tiniest seeds—in alignment with the love of the cosmos? Just as in nature, the seed surrenders to the ground (John 12:24), so we, also of the same stuff as the seed, surrender to this work of creative love.”

Jesus followed up on the comparison with the mustard seed – our tiny selves, our tiny powers – with the troubling story of being the unthanked, unhappy, and pretty much unfed slaves of a demanding master. If that’s what faith and following Jesus is like, most of us would say, “You can take that away and toss it out.” But Jesus, routinely, overturned the relationship of master and slave in his stories and his sayings. He even did it in this short example. It starts by inviting us to understand ourselves as the master, and ends by equating us with the slaves.

What did the slaves do in the story? They set the table. They prepared the food. They served.

That, dear friends, is how to increase your faith.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I believe the invitation in this lection is for us to go forth and live in light of what we already see, sense, hear, and know.  In other words, the invitation is to do faith.  To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it.  Why?  Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner.  As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract.  Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle.  Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous, creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”

When I think about the most faithful people I’ve known, I don’t think of the showy ones. I don’t think of the powerful ones. I don’t think of the well-known ones. Mind you, I’ve known (or known of) faithful people who could be described in all of those categories.

It’s just that the most faithful people I’ve known spread love about them wherever they went, and as you may have noticed, that’s not something that makes people famous. It doesn’t get them into positions of power. It doesn’t get them noticed – except by a fortunate few who recognize that greatness comes from love and compassion, not from might and mayhem.

We are great not when we are the demanding masters, but when we are the dedicated servants. We are great not when we exercise power and coercion, but when we exercise diligence and compassion. We are great not when we are fed, but when those around us are fed.

Histories, I have to say, tend to glorify the glory hounds. They give people names like William the Conqueror, Frederick the Great, based on success as warriors.

We are the people of Jesus, however, and Jesus didn’t lead armies, didn’t conquer nations, didn’t even evict the occupiers of his land. What he did was teach and gather and heal.

He taught us to set the table.

He taught us to see that everybody gets fed.

As we come to the table on the World Communion Sunday, remember that it is set for us by the God who serves. It is our model of faith.

Let us set the table.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

We regret that we continue to have audio problems with our live video stream, so a recording of the sermon is not available.

The image is “The Parable of the Mustard Seed” an etching by Jan Luyken found in the Bowyer Bible (ca. 1791 – 1795) – Harry Kossuth photo. Electronic image created by Phillip Medhurst 10 August 2009., FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7549966.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Compassion for a Wedding Host

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ signs reveal something about him. At the wedding at Cana, he revealed his care and compassion for the wedding host.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the second chapter of John’s Gospel (John 2:1-11). It’s the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana. This took place early in Jesus’ ministry; John described it as the first of his signs.

Now, John used “signs” in a very particular way. For John, a “sign” was some kind of unexplainable — miraculous if you like — action that Jesus performed that revealed something about him. Jesus didn’t expect to perform a sign at this wedding. In fact, he and his disciples attended just because they’ve been invited. It was his mother that realized that the hosts had run out of wine.

This was a problem. At a wedding the host was supposed to be hospitable, and hospitality meant you don’t run out of the necessities: and one of those was wine. Jesus didn’t want to do it, but his mother told the servants to do whatever he told them.

There is so much here. As usual in his Gospel, John took some time with this story, included details that the other gospel writers simply did not linger for. The back and forth between Jesus and his mother is frankly rather delicious. I mean, what mother really pays attention to what her son has to say, right?

But mostly what strikes me is that this sign revealed something very important about Jesus. He was not just there for the wedding to increase the joy of the newly married couple and of their families. He was also there to make certain that all went well for them in the wedding feast and in the years beyond. He would not see that family tagged with the label of being inhospitable at a crucial time.

This first sign that revealed Jesus’ glory, revealed the depth of his love. Well, maybe not the full depth of his love, but revealed that it was deeper than others had expected (except, perhaps, his mother). May we see in this sign and in all the other signs Jesus’ love, compassion, and care for us, that we, too, might celebrate, rejoice, and believe.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: The Coconut Wireless Tongue

September 15, 2024

Isaiah 50:4-9a
James 3:1-12

The single most efficient communications system I have ever encountered in my life is known as “The Coconut Wireless.” And I’m afraid, contrary to the hopes of my colleagues in the Hawai’i Conference who edit and manage the Conference’s electronic newsletter of that title, that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the original Coconut Wireless that gets good news and bad news from friend to friend and family member to family member in less time than it took for the original event.

If only the original Coconut Wireless had editors as good as those for the Hawai’i Conference’s Coconut Wireless. I’m afraid that the news we distribute so effectively around Hilo, Hawai’i Island, and far beyond, is… inconsistently accurate. And inconsistently well-meaning. And inconsistently careful about telling other people’s stories.

I may think the Coconut Wireless is more efficient than similar “unofficial” communication systems I’ve encountered in my life, but it definitely shares those inconsistences with the other “rumor mills” I’ve known. I’ve been told that family members were dying by other family members – and yes, they were pretty sick, but not dying. I’ve been told that people were upset with me or that they were pleased with me, and in conversations with those people later, found out that neither was true. I’ve lost count of the recommendations people made for people who weren’t interested in what they were being recommended for.

And I’m still aching about the reassurances I have given that I simply didn’t know enough to give. “It will be all right,” is what I said and what I wanted, but it wasn’t what I knew, and sometimes… it wasn’t all right.

“…No one can tame the tongue,” wrote James, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

Sometimes our Coconut Wireless goes that far, doesn’t it?

Margaret Aymer writes at Working Preacher, “What does it mean to think of one’s tongue as that which controls one’s whole being? Or perhaps, in today’s vernacular, what does it mean to think of one’s entire being as controlled by what we post on social media?”

To be honest, we don’t need social media to spread information (and misinformation) efficiently, but Dr. Aymer’s question is on point. We are accustomed to thinking that our actions must match our words. Last week we sang it, in fact, with these words from “Christian, Rise and Act Your Creed”: “Let your prayer be in your deed.” James said similar things earlier in the letter. We read one of them last week.

“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily foodand one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:15-16) Well, not much. No wonder James went on to say that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

He wasn’t just interested in matching word to deed, however. He had observed the way that our words lead our deeds. It’s like the bridle of a horse, he wrote. It’s like the rudder of a ship. It’s like a flame.

It’s rather clever writing, actually. Did you notice that all of them have something to do with tongues? The bit goes into the horse’s mouth, over the tongue. The rudder of a ship is tongue shaped. And we talk about… tongues of fire.

Dr. Aymer continues, “[James] argues, the tongue has the capability of destroying one’s religious practice and that of one’s community. Here, James invites meditation on destructive ‘speech,’ more broadly defined. One might, for instance, think critically about racist speech, vitriol against immigrants, or the practice of ‘trolling’ on social media.”

If that sounds like Dr. Aymer had the current political climate in mind, she wrote those words in 2018. When, it must be said, the political climate wasn’t that much different.

When it comes to our Coconut Wireless, it is indeed difficult to bridle our tongues. Juicy news is just too good not to share, right? Even if we don’t have confirmation that it’s true. Even if it might hurt someone. Even if it’s someone else’s story to tell, not ours. James wanted us to use our faith to guide what we say. Too often, we say it, and then our tongues become the guide for what happens after that.

Gossip, however, is not the worst example of the unbridled tongue. The Coconut Wireless carries care and compassion, too. It’s how we find out that someone needs help, and it’s how we start to organize support for them. No, it’s when the tongue dips into the evils within the human spirit and casts them out into the world: that’s when the tongue becomes “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

It’s been twenty-three years since that terrible September 11th when so many people died. Do you remember the ways in which tongues wagged? Do you remember the hateful things said about Afghans, about Arabs, about all Muslims? I remember some efforts by national leaders to restrain such things, but they weren’t enough. In 2011 the Justice Department reviewed anti-Muslim hate crimes from 1998 to 2010. In 2000 there were less than 50 reported incidents. In 2001 there were nearly 500. In 2002 they fell to about 160 – but they continued to be between 100 and 170 right up to 2010.

Hateful words led to hate crimes.

This past week a hateful – and baseless – accusation against immigrants in an Ohio community received a lot of amplification. Hateful words on a national stage led to bomb threats that closed elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio, for two days this week. The people amplifying these racist lies have not just refused to recant them, they have repeated them.

Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What we say can reveal more about us than about the recipient of our speech. The scary part about toxic talk is that it reveals the character of our inner identity. ‘Out of the overflow of the heart,’ said Jesus, ‘the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned’ (Matthew 12:34–37).”

Well. I suppose I should be grateful for some revelatory unbridled tongues. I’m afraid I’m not, though.

“Bridling the tongue is not for the faint of heart,” writes Casey Thornburgh Sigmon at Working Preacher. “It takes courage and a strong heart to listen in order to hear another, to tune into the Spirit’s whispers through them and in the space between people, rather than to listen only for a gap to insert yourself in an unbridled fashion.

“Our American society hasn’t the faintest idea how to listen. So much of American Christianity is a shouting match. Foolishness abides. Fires are set, and what is the cost?”

We know the cost. We do not need to pay it.

James offered no easy guidance to bridling the tongue. He simply said, “Do it.” So here are a few suggestions of my own.

First, if you don’t know it’s true, don’t say it. I’m not talking about asking questions for learning. If you don’t know something, by all means ask. But if the sentence begins, “I heard that…” make sure that the person you’re quoting had the ability to know what they told you. If they didn’t, check with someone who does. If you don’t know it’s true, don’t say it.

Second, ask yourself whose story this is to tell. Who is concerned in it, and who is affected by it? If the story is about you, it’s yours. You can tell it or not as you need or as you please. But if the story is about someone else, did they give permission to share it? What impact might it have upon them if it goes farther than you?

Impact: that’s the third thing. Will what you say tend to help or to harm? Will it organize support or coalesce into shame? Will your jokes be “laugh with” or “laugh at?” Will other people be further affected, particularly by speech that can be heard as prejudiced?

Here’s James’ advice: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”

That works, too.

I’m still impressed with the efficiency of our Coconut Wireless. It’s so quick. It’s so effective. It makes things happen.

By what we say, may our Coconut Wireless also be truthful, sensitive to others’ stories, and focused on compassion.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the text will not precisely match the recorded sermon.

The image is an icon of Saint James the Just (neo-Byzantine). Artist unknown. The picture originates from the days.ru open catalogue, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=329361.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Now That is a Shepherd

July 21, 2024

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

If you search Biblegateway.com for the word “shepherd” in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, you get 109 uses. I’m afraid that some of those appear in the occasional subheadings that modern-day editors have helpfully added, so the original numbers are somewhat lower. Still. 87 uses in the Old Testament, 22 in the New Testament. “Shepherd” is an important word.

One of the reasons for that was the cultural self-image of the Hebrew people. They saw themselves as shepherd people, those who followed the flocks of sheep and goats and therefore spent relatively little time in a fixed abode. Somewhat like the rivalry between the farmer and the cowhand in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma. Do you remember the song “The Farmer and the Cowhand Should Be Friends,” which basically feeds the bad feeling between them? Well, the shepherds were the ancient equivalent of cowhands, and the farmers and city dwellers of the eastern Mediterranean had a similar rivalry.

A fair number of those “shepherd” references in the Old Testament are variants on, “We’re shepherd people, and that’s the best thing to be.”

The Israelites also liked the image of “shepherd” for their national leaders. It might refer to priests or senior civic officials, but the favorite reference was to the king. David, of course, made the metaphor obvious, since as Psalm 78 says,

“He chose his servant David
    and took him from the sheepfolds;
from tending the nursing ewes he brought him
    to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
    of Israel, his inheritance.
With upright heart he tended them
    and guided them with skillful hand.”

– Psalm 78

The one who really liked to compare kings to shepherds was Jeremiah. He used “shepherd” nineteen times, more than any other book of the Bible. And nearly always, he used it as we’ve heard it this morning. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD.”

Jeremiah really didn’t have a high opinion of the kings of his day. Or a mediocre opinion. Low opinion is… getting close. He thought they were awful.

He did, however, provide us with an admirable summary of what a monarch, or a leader, should do and be: “he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” As we come up to our primary election, with the likelihood that a number of our state and county races will be decided by this ballot, I humbly suggest that you vote for the candidates who display the attributes of wisdom and have the capacity and desire to execute justice and righteousness in the land. If they don’t… vote for somebody else.

Maren Tirabassi writes at her blog, GiftsInOpenHands:

I do know that every four years,
(with a tear-drop more anxiety this time around)
I want to believe verse four –

“I will raise up shepherds over them
who will shepherd them,
and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed,
nor shall any be missing, says God.”

even knowing that the Holy One,
is looking right at me
to be less of a hand-wringer,
and take responsibility for the raising-up.

But if you want a real shepherd, the place to look is the sixth chapter of Mark.

Earlier in the chapter, Jesus commissioned his disciples to widen his work, dispatching them about the villages and towns to teach and to heal. As they did so, word came to Jesus, and to the people of Galilee, that John the Baptist had been executed by King Herod. When the disciples returned, still excited about their success, Jesus took them off to go on retreat. They needed a break. They needed to tell their stories. They needed to do some grieving for John the Baptist, whose ministry still influenced them all.

Instead, they found a crowd had anticipated them and arrived before they did.

As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Mark seems the least concerned with character development. We find out who Jesus and his disciples are by what they do and what they teach. Yet, even in this account, Jesus does a remarkable thing by prioritizing rest in the midst of impactful ministry and gathering crowds. This time, it is not his own rest, which he has already modeled as a spiritual practice. Jesus is as concerned with his disciples adopting a routine of rest within the rhythm of their coming and going.”

Jesus “had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.”

It has always impressed me that Jesus, despite his need and his disciples’ need of time to themselves, gave that up in order to serve the people who needed more. As we’ve been reading Mark’s Gospel this year, I’ve been struck by the number of times this happened to Jesus, that he tried to take time away and couldn’t. It’s a minor theme of the gospel, but it’s there. Jesus didn’t have a lot of luck taking time off.

I’m also struck by the appearance of that word, “shepherd.” As Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “‘The system’ has failed the people who flock to Jesus, as evidenced in Herod Antipas’s lethal fecklessness (6:14–29).2 They are vulnerable in a predatory world. No one, it seems, guards their human dignity. They have to fend for themselves. What kind of society places people in that kind of condition?”

I hate to say it, but a lot of human societies do precisely that, and explain it away as… the way things are.

Jesus, however, seeing people in need of leadership, stepped in to provide it. That’s what you’d expect of a Messiah, come to think of it. A Messiah is a leader, a general, a king. “Let’s get together, people! Form up in ranks. To Herod’s palace, march!”

Only… he didn’t do that. At all.

He taught them. Remember what Jeremiah said a shepherd does? Deal wisely? Jesus is a shepherd who teaches wisdom.

I have to assume that some of the people on the beach came seeking healing, because that’s nearly always the case in Mark. Later in the chapter, when Jesus and his disciples, probably still looking for that private retreat, landed near Gennesaret, it was abundantly clear. They brought the sick out to the marketplace. They reached out to touch the fringe of his cloak, just like that woman with the hemorrhage. They were healed.

I say this a lot. People are impressed with power, with glamor, with fame. We tend to defer to people with those things whether their ideas are good, indifferent, bad, or downright horrid. Why, I wonder, don’t we value leadership like that displayed by Jesus? Why do we vote for the self-aggrandizing and power hungry, rather than the wise and the compassionate?

Jesus stepped onto the shore from the boat and saw the vacuum of power, the dearth of governmental concern, the absence of good shepherding. He saw a need. Then he filled it.

But he didn’t fill it with glitz. He didn’t fill it with glamor. He didn’t fill it with the coercive power which is a government’s most treasured privilege. He filled it with wisdom, with compassion, and with healing. Oh, and bread. That first beach they landed on, the one where Jesus saw them without a shepherd? At the end of the day Jesus fed all five thousand of them with five loaves and two fish.

Now that’s a shepherd. There’s one who really cares for the sheep.

Not all of us will take positions of leadership in society. There’s not room for everyone to be mayor, or governor, or president. There’s not even room for everyone to be pastor, or moderator, or a member of one of our governing boards of this church – though I will say that there is definitely room, and the nominating committee is hard at work to find those shepherds of our congregation for the next year.

Jesus didn’t commission his disciples to become mayors or governors or presidents or monarchs, or to be their supporters. He didn’t commission them to become generals or courtiers. He commissioned them to be apostles, teachers and healers. He commissioned them to be the same kind of shepherd that he was.

That is our summons, too. To follow Jesus as people who value and share wisdom, who do our level best to provide healing, who refrain from the acts that divide people and scatter them so that they are no longer cared for.

Because we are cared for by the one who is a true shepherd, guiding us in wisdom, justice, and righteousness, all the days of our lives. That’s a shepherd.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric sometimes ventures away from his prepared text. He hopes he’s improving things.

The image is The Good Shepherd, a 4th century mosaic in the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Aquileia, Italy. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2239686.