Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Love Isn’t Fair

September 20, 2026

Jonah 3:10-4:11
Matthew 20:1-16

Some years ago, my children’s godfather said something that I just didn’t get. My children and his were playing together and one of them came up to us and asked for something that they just couldn’t have. As they departed, disappointed but not surprised, their godfather reminded them of the children’s theme song. “The children’s theme song” went right over my head, so I had to ask.

He quoted the 1969 Rolling Stones classic by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards:

“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you need.”

John was more of a Rolling Stones fan than I’ve ever been, but I had to admit: he was right. Those lyrics are the theme song of children everywhere: you can’t always get what you want.

In Jesus’ story, there seemed to be a lot of people who couldn’t get what they wanted. These were the people who spent various amounts of the day in the marketplace looking for work – some were hired early, some later in the morning, some at the end of the day. These people were doing what could be done to earn a living. They didn’t own land. They didn’t have a specialized skill. They worked the fields and vineyards. It wasn’t steady work. They relied on a farmers sending their managers to the marketplace to find them, hire them, and at the end of the day, pay them.

Pablo Jimenez writes at his blog, “Most Jewish people in the first century were peasants. A good portion of the agricultural land was owned by absentee landlords. Such farmland was cultivated by laborers just as the ones depicted in the parable. Their economic reality was characterized by poverty, subemployment, heavy taxation, and dispossession.”

They hoped to be hired at the beginning of the day. When that didn’t happen, they hoped against hope that somebody would need more labor later in the day. If that didn’t happen, they stayed in the marketplace hoping against desperation that somebody would pay them a pittance for as much work as was left before sundown.

The first workers in Jesus’ story would have thought themselves relatively fortunate. The later workers would have thought themselves pretty lucky, too. The last ones would have been somewhat relieved, but also wondering: on the little they’d be paid for the day, how would they make rent, buy bread, or get fuel for the fire? They’d be behind, and probably not for the first time.

The surprise of the story, of course, is that at the end of the day none of them were behind. All of them got the daily wage. Everyone went home, not with what would enrich them, but with what would keep them going for at least another day.

This situation of a few haves and many have-nots is specifically prohibited by the Hebrew Scriptures. As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “It is a result of debts not being forgiven every seven years or forfeited family lands not being returned every fifty years or the prohibition of “joining land to land” not being observed, and so on. (See Ched Myers for an explanation of the term “Sabbath Economics” at www.chedmyers.org/catalog/sabbath-economics). The mere presence of a place where the landless gather in search of day labor is itself a testimony that the imperial economic structure is contrary to the Sabbath Economics of the OT.”

That alone would be a reason for Jesus to tell that story. It would be a reason for us to hear this story with distress, because we have also maintained an economic system that permits employers to pay less than a living wage. I know we keep hearing all these complaints about “nobody wants to work.” But why would anyone want to work for people who will pay you less than what you need to keep the lights on and the car repaired and the refrigerator stocked? And people do work. They work multiple jobs. They work long hours. They work for uncertain pay. They get labeled as unambitious, unskilled, unsuccessful, unworthy, unimportant.

A few years ago they were the ones required to break quarantine and go to work. It turned out they were essential.

Our economy could learn something from Jesus.

I don’t actually think Jesus spoke entirely about the immoral economics of his day. I’m not sure he spoke primarily about it. “The kingdom of heaven is like,” he said, not “the kingdom of earth is supposed to be like.”

I do think the kingdom of heaven is pretty good model for what the kingdom of earth might be. It’s worth working for.

Jeannine K. Brown writes at Working Preacher, “Are God’s ways really like this? Is this kind of maddening equality, regardless of what one has contributed to God’s kingdom, really a part of the new reality God is inaugurating in Jesus? For Matthew’s Jesus, the answer is ‘yes.’ God’s generosity is an affront to those who think about God’s benevolent rule in categories of status, privilege, and what one has earned.”

What, after all, does God give us?

To start with the most obvious, life. Life itself. God gave us a world, indeed a universe, so full of marvels that we actually get bored by them – what a strange thing that is. Ten years ago, I first drove down Waianuenue Avenue from the hospital and saw Hilo Bay gleaming beneath me in the sun. I promised myself that I would never come down that way and fail to appreciate the beauty of that sight. I’ve done my level best to keep that promise.

Life and beauty, which is not limited to vision but includes sounds and scents and sensations. Company. Challenge. Learning. Growth. Small people. Middle-sized people. Big people. People who are dark complected, light complected, with hair that runs long or short, bright or dark. People who are new, people who we’ve known for decades, people to whom we matter. People. God gave us people.

Most of all, God gave us love. God loved us in the creation of the species, in the guiding of our ancestors. God loved us to set slaves free and bring exiles home. God so loved the world that we received God’s only begotten son so that whoever believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.

At the end of the story, at the end of the day, I don’t see coins in the hand of the manager. I see love presented by the landowner. I see full inclusion of all who came into the vineyard. I see no hierarchy of welcome. I see a love given fully and freely to everyone, every last one.

How can anyone receive more than the love of God? How can there be grades and differences and pay rates to the love of God? What else is there than the love of God?

Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “God, it turns out, is not fair. God does not play by our rules. God does not give us what we deserve. And thank God for that! For if each of us got exactly what we deserved, where would we be? In fact, God lavishes grace and mercy on all of us, no matter how late we have come to the vineyard.”

God loves us. God loves you. God loves me. God loves them. God loves the them that you find it difficult to love. God loves the them who don’t care much for you. God loves us, whether we deserve it or not.

Isn’t that the kind of love we hope for? Isn’t that the kind of love we credit to Jesus? Isn’t that the kind of love that is our faith and our hope? Isn’t that the kind of love that we can say, with Paul, “the greatest of these is love”?

Yes. It is.

Love isn’t fair. Any small child knows that. Love means the polite child and the rude child eat the same dinner. Love isn’t fair. Love means the family celebrates the doctor’s degree and the GED. Love isn’t fair. Love means that the one who staggers home after wasting his inheritance receives a feast because we’re so relieved he survived. Love isn’t fair.

Thank God for that. Because given a choice between God being fair to me for the things I’ve done or not done, or God being generous and loving to me, I’ll take love.

Any day. Every day. To the end of time.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes to his sermon while preaching – sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally. The sermon as you read it does not precisely match the way he delivered it.

The image is “The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard” by an unknown artist in an 11th cent. Byzantine gospel. Paris, National Library. Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, Εκδοτική Αθηνών. Αθήνα 1980. Τόμος Η’, σελ. 202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9472307

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Created

May 31, 2026

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13

The first chapter of Genesis is not the Bible’s only account of Creation. There’s another one in Proverbs 8, in which the figure of Wisdom works alongside God in the building of the world. Probably the most famous additional text is the first chapter of John’s Gospel, which echoes both Genesis 1 and Proverbs 8. You’ll likely recall as well the second chapter of Genesis, which looks very much like another account of creation.

When I think about different ideas about Creation, I’m thinking theologically, not scientifically – Genesis was not written as a book to explain how the world works, it was written as a book to explain God’s interactions with the world. That’s one of the reasons Genesis’ editors, and those who assembled the collection of Bible books later, felt perfectly fine about including more than one account of Creation. It doesn’t worry me that Genesis doesn’t match the geological record, or that cosmological theories don’t line up precisely with the first chapter of John. I also don’t get excited that evolutionary theory sort of follows the order of sea life, plants, and then land animals in Genesis.

To me, it’s the theology that matters. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “The contrast with other creation accounts of the ancient world is significant and begins the biblical corpus. The Holy One creates not out of pettiness, spite, avarice, or violence. Creation brings order, diversity, and relationship. It flows out of the identity of the Creator. It is progressive from the beginning, and the stage of rest is yet another progressive step. Creation continues. Rest, by nature, is a pause from activity. Because the Holy One is Creator, creation never stops, it rests.”

What matters to me is that all of the Bible’s Creation accounts emphasize both God’s deliberate choice to make a world of living things, and God’s love for that created world. What’s the refrain of this first chapter of Genesis? “And God saw that it was good,” finally stated as “very good.”

You don’t have to believe in God’s creative action to believe that the universe has value. Some atheists do. Some believers in religions that don’t believe in a divine creation do. Christianity itself begins with the assertion that the world is good, that substance is good, that existence is good. The poet and hymn lyricist Brian Wren writes,

Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
good is the body, from cradle to grave…

There are human belief systems that simply don’t accept this. A number of ancient religions did not value the world because they believed it was a divine accident, a by-product of conflict between gods. Some strands of Christianity, I’m sorry to say, have overemphasized soul over body, and as a result have permitted abuses of human bodies and cultures as well as permitting destruction of natural resources and beauty. Some contemporary philosophies, both Christian and non-Christian, stress the primacy of human beings in the universe, and not only tolerate but encourage deforestation, mountaintop removal, and habitat elimination. Just last month an Environmental Protection Agency committee ended review of gas and oil drilling for impact on endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico. Have we already forgotten the Deepwater Horizon accident sixteen years ago? A deepwater well blowout spewed oil for four months.

I don’t think we’ve forgotten. I think there’s a different belief system at work, that says that if certain people benefit, other life on the plant can be disregarded and, if necessary, destroyed.

Whatever some people may think, that view simply isn’t consistent with Scriptural thinking and assertions. Many have stressed that people, in verse 28, receive dominion. OK. Does that imply that human beings can do anything they want? Are human beings who have dominion over other human beings allowed to do anything they want? Is that true of parents? Of community leaders? Of national leaders?

Is it true of pastors? Do you really want me to have unquestioned authority to do anything I want?

If you weren’t sure about that, I’ll help: the answer is no, you don’t. There are provisions in our church bylaws that set limits on the things I can do. There are provisions in the United Church of Christ that set limits on the things I can do.

When we look at dominion in Genesis, the one who exerts power over things is God, and what does God do with that power? God brings order to chaos. God brings light and shape and form. God brings life, and not just life: God brings a system in which life can sustain itself, and other forms of life.

If we assert that we have an unquestioned, unlimited dominion, then exert it in ways that destroy the living systems of God, we are not living out a divine commission. We are tearing at the environment that sustains our lives as well as those of other living things.

God values this world. If we follow God’s ways, we value this world. As much as the honu in the sea or the ‘io in the air, as much as the ohi’a on the mountainside or the paho’eho’e as it flows, we are God’s Creation, a manifestation of holy will and love. We are created.

As the twelfth century theologian Hildegard of Bingen wrote, “God says, ‘I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows. I gleam in the waters. I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With every breeze, as with invisible life that contains everything, I awaken everything to life.’”

It’s the sixth day in which God declares all that has been made “very good,” and that is the day of the creation of the animal life of Earth, ranging from the creeping things – I think that’s probably the insects that we don’t like very much – to humanity itself, made in the image of God, “Male and female he created them.”

Male and female are… very good.

There are, again, different ideas floating around as to the relative value of male and female. History is dominated by the idea that men are worth more, that they are more reliable, that they are better trusted with power than women. It’s a curious idea. According to the FBI, people arrested for violent crimes in 2019 were 72.5% men and 27.5% women. Men in government have started nearly every war ever fought on this planet. Would women do better? I don’t know. I do think we’ve run the experiment long enough to say that it’s time to try something else to see how that works.

More to the point, this basic assertion demands that we accord full value and respect for the dignity of women. The claims of “complementarianism,” the idea that women are of equal value to men but that the two sexes are designed for different kinds of social roles, is simply sexism with a slightly softer texture. “Women, you have equal value to myself” is a meaningless expression when it’s followed by, “and because I’m a man, I’m in charge.”

The image of God does not depend on gender. It just doesn’t.

Humanity in God’s image also means that all people have value. Period. End of sentence. Someone of another religion has the same value as you or me. Someone of another nation has the same value as you or me. Someone of a different political party has the same value as you or me. Someone with power has the same value as you or me. Someone without power has the same value as you or me.

That means we can’t use distinctions within humanity to discount, devalue, or disenfranchise other human beings. Legal immigrants? Full value. Illegal immigrants? Full value. Dark skinned people? Full value. Light skinned people? Full value. Gay people? Full value. Straight people? Full value. Republicans? Full value. Democrats? Full value. Politicians? Full value. Teachers? Full value. Road repair workers? Full value. Incarcerated prisoners? Full value.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” I’d argue that he was right, but the basis is not just in the action of Christ, but in the creative work of God.

Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “We are all, Hildegard teaches, carriers of the divine light. We have interior gardens in which we cultivate these qualities of love, wisdom, and greening inside ourselves. And as love and wisdom flow through us, we participate in the greening of the world. We are, she writes, ‘so entangled with the strengths of the rest of creation that we can never be separated from them.’”

We come into Creation because of the love and grace of God. We come into a Creation already loved and graced by God. We come into a Creation in which we participate in the greening of the world. We come into Creation to celebrate, enjoy, and nurture other people, other creatures, the trees and shrubs, the very flowing fiery rock itself, because all of it, including ourselves, is very good.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the text he prepared does not precisely match what he said while preaching.

The image is Let There Be Light, An Illustration for The Story of the Old Testament by Shigeru Aoki – 「現代日本美術全集 7「青木繁・藤島武二」集英社、1972年, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47599953

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Created Good

In the beginning of the Scriptures, we learn that God made the world and human beings and thought it good. Why do we so often decide that some people and some parts of the world aren’t good?

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the first chapter of Genesis (Genesis 1:1-2:4a): the beginning of that book, the beginning of our Scriptures, and of course, the beginning of time. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”

There is a repeated set of words, a consistent phrase that runs through this day-by-day account of the world coming together. At the end of each day, God pauses and looks at what has been created and says it was good. That’s true of light on the first day; it is true of humanity — “Male and female God created them” — on the last day.

Christianity and Judaism as well are both absolutely convinced that the creation is good, that God intends for us to exist, that God even placed some reflection of the Divine upon human beings themselves. We are here because God wants us to be here. We are here because God thinks that it’s a good thing. We are here because God loves us.

There are a lot of systems in the world that do all they can to discount that fundamental goodness of the world. These are systems that will exploit and abuse parts of the world because there seem to be a lesser value than human beings. And so we dig and destroy and we cut down forests and we slaughter the creatures that live in them. This is not supported by these words of Scripture. All those things that we would destroy for our own benefit, those are also good.

It must also be said that there are people that human beings see as not people. And they set out to treat them badly. Sometimes because they’re women. Sometimes because their skin is another color, sometimes because they speak a different language, sometimes because they believe something different about the nature of the world and about God.

In the beginning, God thought all of these were good. In the beginning, God created male and female in the divine image. And in these days, the divine image is equally reflected in every single human being upon the planet. We cannot use the Scripture, at least not this Scripture, to declare that God loves anyone more than any other person.

God made us and intended us to be here. God made us and placed upon us the image of the divine. God made us and loves us today and always.

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, Uncategorized

Pastor’s Corner: Lei Day

May 1, 2024

It’s May Day, and as the song says, it’s Lei Day in Hawai’i!

I am no expert in the craft of creating these exquisite floral adornments. I’ve learned a bit about the birds of Hawai’i, but there are far more plants on this island than birds. I can identify only a few of the more common leaves and blossoms that appear in a lei: maile, ti, plumeria, orchid, and kukui. I am pleased to report that eight years ago I didn’t know what a dendrobium was, and now I can spell it.

So many things go together to create this profusion of lei, a delight not just to the eyes but also to skin and scent. The perfume of a fresh lei is like very little else I know. It says, instantly, “You are welcome and cared for here.”

So many ingredients, and so many combinations, make up the wonder of the lei.

I hope we can take inspiration from those colorful, beautifully perfumed works of art as we live our lives of faith. Too often we imagine faith without color, without delight, without joy. We imagine it with austerity, deprivation, and even hardship.

It’s a strange way to worship the God who filled the sky with stars, and the trees with blossoms, and the ocean waves with pearly spray.

I hope you get to proudly wear a lei today. More than that, I hope you get to faithfully wear a lei today. Proclaim the goodness of One who created in color, and texture, and scent. Proclaim the goodness of One who created as well in flavor and melody.

Tomorrow, let the lei be your guide, as you assemble the blessings of your life into a blessing to share.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Self-portrait by Eric Anderson.