Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Undivided Heart

July 19, 2026

Psalm 86:11-17
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Psalm 86 is a song of an individual person. What I mean by that is that it wasn’t written to be said together in a big worship service, or chanted by a procession through the streets. It describes the spiritual place that one person was in thousands of years ago. It doesn’t tell us a lot – the writer wasn’t very specific about things – but that does help make it accessible to any of us. The themes of the poem are familiar to us, though the events which prompted its writing might not be.

The poet’s first concern was, well, concern. The very first words are: “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.” The psalmist wrote from a “day of trouble.” They had opponents, they had enemies. “O God, the insolent rise up against me; a band of ruffians seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.”

The need for help is not just a common theme in the Psalms. It is a common reality in human life. Sometimes our need is the result of other people’s actions. We might be targeted for crime. We might be discriminated against in employment or housing. We might be suffering from an injury or illness which doesn’t just test our health but also our financial resources and the support of our family and friends. We’ve all been through a global pandemic, when a shortage of human contact made it even harder to endure economic hardship and the fear of dangerous disease.

We know what need is. We know what it is to pray out of our needs.

Curiously, the Psalmist did not just pray out of their need. There’s no shame in doing that; there are Psalms that really do concentrate on the cry for help. This writer, however, spent roughly as much time on a second theme as on their concerns and distress.

The second theme was thanks and praise.

“I give thanks to you, O LORD my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.” A lot of the Psalms praise God. You could make a case that, in some way, they all do, but there are a good number that focus on praising God. About half of Psalm 86 praises God for being merciful and generous, for being great and powerful, for abounding in steadfast love.

We know what it’s like to pray in thanksgiving. We’ve enjoyed successes, we’ve received gifts, we’ve celebrated the beauties of the world. We’ve rejoiced at weddings, we’ve welcomed births, we’ve completed difficult things and received rewards. Out of these and more we pray with thanks.

This is a Psalm which simultaneously praises God’s goodness and seeks God’s aid in some pretty deep distress. It’s a Psalm that knows both pain and exultation, both sorrow and celebration. Which made one line really stand out for me:

“Give me an undivided heart to revere your name.”

In a Psalm that is divided between opposite themes, the writer asked for “an undivided heart.”

I think some people do have the notion that the life of faith is supposed to feel like one thing and one thing only. Once you’ve made the commitment, somehow your faith is supposed to keep you in a similar state of mind from day to day. A read through the Book of Psalms would tell you, to the contrary, that the life of faith is filled with different feelings. A read through one of the Gospels reveals that Jesus himself, though a remarkably consistent person, displayed a range of emotions and reactions on different occasions.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks that Christian faith means our internal life is supposed to be just one thing, but some do.

You don’t have to. At any rate, you don’t have to worry about it when you find that your mind keeps changing and your feelings keep changing from one day to the next. That happened to the prophets. It happened to the Psalmists. It happened to Jesus himself.

So how can this Psalmist call for a unified heart?

“Heart” means a lot of things to us. We think of the heart as the center of feelings. Unity of feelings is really unusual in human experience. It happens, but it happens relatively rarely and in pretty intense situations. I can think of a few occasions, mostly while driving, when the only emotion I was aware of fear. I can also remember times when I was overwhelmed with joy, to the point where other emotions simply weren’t present. That just hasn’t happened all that often, though, and frankly that’s a good thing. Overwhelming emotion is overwhelming. Even the most joyous moments in my life were better as moments than they would be as an ongoing reality.

I’ve also mentioned more than once that our feelings aren’t under our direct control. We can do things to influence our feelings – I’ve found that a good meal reduces my anxieties pretty effectively – but it’s really difficult to tell yourself, “I want to feel happy” and then actually do it. So the deepest understanding of the truth of God, for which the Psalmist prayed, isn’t going to give us a unified heart. We’re still going to feel what we feel, and most of the time that’s a mixture, isn’t it? A mixture of feelings about what’s right in front of it and the things on our mind and the things that linger, good and bad, in our memories.

Did the Psalmist actually mean a unified mind?

I don’t think so, and not just because of the use of the word “heart.” The whole Psalm argues against it, because it’s a Psalm about both need and praise. The Psalm itself is divided in mind.

How do we resolve the paradox of the unified heart in a divided Psalm?

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “It’s not that we hold paradox; it’s that paradox holds us.   We are held in a deep place.  An ample place. A generous, sufficient, and roomy place. Though we might fear paradox, God does not, and it is in God’s soil that we are firmly planted.  We’re safe, even in the contradictions.  Messy and weedy for sure, but safe.”

In our understanding, but even more so in the use of the Psalmists and the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures, “heart” was not just the seat of emotion. It was also a seat of decision: of loyalty. Of commitment. Of devotion. It’s one of the reasons that we use “heart” when we think about the way people come together in loving relationships – they’re rooted in emotion, but they go beyond that to commitment.

For the Psalmist, I think, the unified heart was able to bring together the needs and the thanksgiving, the feelings of fear and the feelings of joy, the reality of deprivation and the truth of God’s presence, into a foundational reliance upon God. That is, what connects need and praise is that we come to God with both.

Unlike emotion, that’s something that we can choose. We can bring our burdens to God for help and for comfort. We can bring our hurts to God for healing and for renewal. We can bring our uncertainties to God for guidance and for wisdom. We can bring our griefs to God for comfort and for resurrection.

And we can bring our successes to God for thanksgiving and for continuance. We can bring our celebrations to God for increase and for sharing. We can bring our joys to God for blessing and for remembering.

The unified heart is the one that knows that God cares about our joys and sorrows. The unified heart is the one that lifts the voice in praise and in petition. The unified heart is the one that waits in silence for God’s aid and for God’s smile.

Don’t worry that you feel different today than you did yesterday. Don’t worry that you think new things from day to day. Feelings will change, and I earnestly hope that you’re learning things as time goes on.

Do raise your needs to God; do raise your thanks to God. That is the practice and the commitment that makes a unified heart.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he’s preaching, hopefully to improve it, and sometimes accidentally.

The photo shows a sculpture of a world being unified. Taken by Eric Anderson in South Korea in 2013.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Need and Praise

Psalm 86 pairs two of the most common prayers of human life: prayer arising from need, and prayer arising from thanks.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the second half of Psalm 86 (Psalm 86:11-17). The lectionary editors have chosen to begin this week’s reading with the words, “Teach me your way, O Lord,” that I may live in your truth. That is a wonderful thing for any of us to do and to pray: to seek from God the guidance and the leadership to shape our lives to mirror that of our God and our Savior.

Curiously, however, it is not the dominant thought of this ancient poem.

Psalm 86 is far more concerned with two other things. The first is a plea for assistance. The author (who is credited as David before the Psalm actually begins) the author says that he is beset with enemies, with a band of ruffians even. The other theme is a theme of profound thanksgiving. The author repeatedly raises praises to God for the things that God has done in the past.

Need and praise. These are the side by side dominant themes of Psalm 86.

I suggest that they can be and frequently are the dominant themes of our lives here in the 21st century. Some of our needs might be fleeting: the hunger we feel when we rise from sleep in the morning, something that we can satisfy with a breakfast. And then there are those whose hungers in the morning are not satisfied with a quick breakfast, but must linger until they find the resources to satisfy them.

There are other hungers that are also deep and enduring: the hungers of the Spirit, the hungers of the soul, the longing for those who have passed away, the longing for justice and for righteousness in a world that often seems to care very little. Need is our constant prayer.

And thanksgiving is also our constant prayer. For we do rise to a world that is filled with beauty. We rise to a world that is filled with human beings who do love one another —imperfectly, it must be said — but love is still the dominant experience of most of us in this world. And love can be the dominant experience for everyone in this world, because human beings can bring it and God always brings that love and grace.

Need and thanksgiving. These are our prayers yesterday, today and tomorrow.

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: We Are Not Farmers (Mostly)

July 12, 2026

Isaiah 55:10-13
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I have only briefly been a farmer or a gardener. My parents decided one year to plant a small vegetable garden behind our house. It wasn’t a great location. Between hedges, a small garage, and fruit trees, it didn’t get much sun. The soil wasn’t terribly rich. And then there was the family of garden-loving rabbits that lived nearby. Nevertheless, we planted a garden, and my brother and I were allowed to choose one vegetable to plant. Me: I chose carrots.

I like carrots.

We were careful if not terribly skilled about it. We cleared away grasses, dug holes, carefully planted seeds, watered them, and did whatever else we were supposed to do to make things grow. It took time, of course, but gradually shoots appeared above the places we’d placed those seeds. Shoots also appeared in places we hadn’t planted seeds, because we weren’t very good at weeding. Shoots didn’t appear above all the places we’d planted seeds, for whatever reasons that seeds don’t grow, which may have included shade, poor soil, and rabbits.

As far as I can remember, I only ate one carrot from that garden. I wasn’t patient enough at that age to let them sit in the ground and grow. I don’t remember being all that impressed with that tiny carrot, but I did eat it. I certainly didn’t get the results of a hundredfold increase over what I’d planted.

Of course, you don’t get that with root vegetables.

I am not a farmer.

Most of us aren’t – with at least one of our families here at Church of the Holy Cross a notable exception. Our daily work doesn’t include planting, weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, and starting all over again. I would guess that at least some of you are gardeners, however, and hopefully more successful gardeners than I’ve been, and would recognize that there’s something peculiar about the sower in Jesus’ story.

He’s a very careless sower.

I carefully planted each carrot seed, leaving space between it and its neighbor so there was space to grow. I grant you that carrots and grains grow differently, but this sower seems careless at best. As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Instead of carefully calculating how each and every seed is going to be planted and cultivated, the sower just scatters the seed on all kinds of different terrain. I can almost imagine the people around Jesus, many farmers themselves, all dependent on whatever the earth produces, puzzled and even laughing at Jesus’ depiction of the sower. What is this crazy person doing, scattering seed on ground that he knows won’t yield a harvest? Why bother?”

Even ignorant children like I was know that you keep the seeds away from paths and rocks and thorns. Why didn’t Jesus know that?

Well, of course he did.

When Jesus created his parables, he had a technique of starting with something ordinary, something straightforward, something with an ending you could anticipate. Then he introduced something unexpected, out of joint. It’s that moment in the story, that moment when the audience says, “Wait. What did you just say?” that Jesus used to make his point.

That’s why the sower is so careless.

Because we – meaning the followers of Jesus – are not farmers.

Farmers and gardeners have to focus on results. The resources of horticulture are sometimes scarce and often not under the farmer’s control. So they do the best they can to choose proper soil, to nourish the soil as best they can, to protect the growing plants from disease and low water and things that eat leaves. Farmers and gardeners have to concentrate on the sites and the soils that give them the best chance for a good harvest. They may seek to expand their available good soil by breaking up paths and moving rocks and cutting back thorns, but that’s a long-term investment, isn’t it? They don’t plant seed on that land until the hindrances have been removed.

That’s not how the followers of Jesus work. Because we’re not farmers.

The seed, which Jesus described as the Word, gets cast everywhere and anywhere. It shares with actual seed the characteristic that it grows – seeds grow into plants, the Word grows within the human soul to produce more loving, more compassionate people. The Word, which I think we have to understand as being more than simply speaking of God; the Word, which I think we have to understand as emulating God; the Word, which I think we have to understand as displaying the love of God, gets spread to everyone and anyone.

It doesn’t always take. As Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “One can find examples of each kind of response to the word in Matthew’s Gospel. There are many in Matthew’s story who ‘hear the word of the kingdom and do not understand’ (3:19), including the religious leaders who are antagonistic to Jesus’ ministry from the beginning. The crowds respond positively to Jesus, especially to his miracles of healing (9:8; 15:31; 21:8-9), yet turn against Jesus at the end and demand his crucifixion (27:15-23), leaving us to wonder whether they ever truly understood.

“The disciples themselves might be included among those who fall away ‘when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word’ (3:21; cf. 26:56b, 69-75). And the rich young man unable to part with his possessions (19:16-22) provides a stunning example of ‘one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing’ (3:22).”

What I have to emphasize here is that Jesus shared the Word, the invitation, the compassion, the love of God to all of them. More than once. Over and over. Yes, he ate with the sinners and the tax collectors. He also ate with the nice people, the good people, and some of them, I think, grew in the Word themselves. Others did not.

We are not farmers. Not when we’re sharing the Word and the love of God.

For one thing, how do we know what kind of person we’re sharing God’s love with? The ohi’a, I observe, grows in places that I would never imagine. So does the Word of God. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Who am I to tell God, the Creator of the earth and all that is in it, what ‘good soil’ looks like?  Who am I to decide who is worthy and who is not of the sower’s generosity?  Who am I to hoard what I have been so freely and lavishly given?  Who am I to look at God’s profligate blessing and call it waste?”

We are not farmers. We are disciples.

And the people with whom we share the love of God are not soil, they are people. You can change soil. Famers and gardeners create fertile soil from paths and rocks and thorns with time and effort. Ohi’a trees transform lava rock into fertile soil over decades.

You can’t directly change people – but people can and do change, and you can support them as they do. You can help them nurture the seeds of God’s Word, of God’s love, of God’s grace within them.

You do it by believing it will grow. What is packed hard may soften. What is stony may break apart. What is thorny may be draw aside. Who knows what impact our love and care added to God’s love and grace may have?

We are not farmers. We are disciples.

Debie Thomas continues: “How I wish that the Church — the Church across the ages, the Church across all cultures, denominations, and circumstances — were known for its absurd generosity.  How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make.  How I wish the world could laugh at our lavishness instead of weeping in the wake of our stinginess.  How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular.  How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst into colorful, riotous, joyous life.”

Absurd generosity. Like God’s. Like Jesus’.

Let’s do that.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches – intentionally and otherwise – so the sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as presented.

The image is a Romanian icon of the Parable of the Sower, date unknown. Photo by Sulfababy of en.wiki – Wikipedia en inglés, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8662451.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Unusual Gardeners

If we planted fields and gardens the way Jesus’ sower scattered seed, it wouldn’t work well. But if we scatter God’s love that way, it might work very well indeed.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking that you might be wondering about the bandage. I did just have to have some skin surgery. It was minor and everything that needs to be removed is removed. You can expect that there will be a bandage (somewhat smaller as the weeks go on) on my brow for the next few weeks.

I am also thinking about the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23). This contains one of Jesus’ best known parables, the Parable of the Sower. It also contains something that is a little less usual for one of Jesus’ parables, that is, an explanation.

Most of the time, Jesus let his stories stand by themselves. In this case, Jesus’ disciples wanted to know what he meant by describing someone who went out and scattered seed in the most unlikely of places. And in some of those places, the seeds simply could not grow or could not thrive. In other places, the seeds sprouted and produced astonishing yields.

Jesus compared the seeds to the Word of God. In some places, the Word of God is simply rejected or choked out. In other places, the Word of God finds fertile ground and bears much fruit.

I think that one of our roles as Jesus’ disciples is to take on that of the Sower. That is, to scatter the Word around. Now, if we were gardeners, and I am not one, but if we were gardeners or farmers, we would be careful about where we placed the seeds. We want each seed to have the best opportunity to produce a plant, to grow, to flower, and to bear fruit. But for the Word, for the grace of God, for the blessings of God, for the description of our loving God, well, for that, the guidance is different, isn’t it? The guidance is: describe the love of God to everyone, whether it seems like they might be thorny soil or rocky soil or good soil, whatever they are.

We will find out who they are by what happens when the Word tries to take root.

We scatter the words. We scatter the love of God. We proclaim the love of God. We display the love of God anywhere and everywhere, so that the love of God may grow around us and bear fruit.

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

Never Satisfied

July 5, 2026

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Some people – and apparently some birds, if my story has any connection to reality – are never satisfied. Serve them coffee and they’ll ask for tea. Serve them hot tea and they’ll ask for iced. Serve them iced tea and they’ll ask for coffee.

That’s fine, mostly. There are many ways in which I, personally, would like the world to be better than it is. I’d like my skin to be more resistant to ultraviolent light. I’d like the rain to hold off until I’m under a roof. I’d love to officiate at fewer funerals of friends and beloved members of this church.

On this day after Independence Day, I’d also like to see the Constitution’s goals of a more perfect union brought closer to fulfillment. I few years ago I read Jill Lepore’s These Truths, a history of the United States from 1492 to 2016. I came away with an appreciation of how often people had made significant gains in achieving a more just and egalitarian government – and how often those gains had been clawed away by succeeding generations, to be won again at a later time.

As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, paraphrasing the abolitionist Theodore Parker, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In Dr. Lepore’s work, we also see that people keep trying to bend it back.

I don’t think anybody should be satisfied with bending away from the full inclusion of all people in the social and political life of the nation. I don’t think denying rights to people of color or to women should be tolerated. I think that LGBTQ+ folks should have every right that a straight person has. I think that any person present in the United States accused of misdeeds deserves proper process of law and reasonable bail.

If we look at this nation without rose-colored filters, we’ll see that we have not attained these things. There’s no reason we should be satisfied. There’s no reason we shouldn’t do the work toward achieving these goals.

But was that what Jesus was talking about two thousand years ago? A little bit, perhaps.

The issue wasn’t the organization or inclusive nature of government, which was organized against inclusion far more than that of the United States of America. The issue was how some people found ways to discount the similar messages of two dissimilar figures: John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth.

As Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “The problem with this generation, Jesus says, is that they listen neither to John nor to Jesus. John’s austere lifestyle led people to accuse him of having a demon, while Jesus’ habit of eating and drinking with sinners earned him a bad reputation (11:18-19). This generation finds reason to take offense at both John and Jesus and thus to evade the call of both.”

Ah, how little things have changed.

Some people are never satisfied, are they?

I swear this dissatisfaction comes from all sides. When the Church advocates for publicly funded support for the poor and marginalized, we get told to stay in our lane and stay out of politics. But then when the Church organizes to provide meals and shelter for the poor and marginalized, we get told we’re creating a public nuisance by having all these poor and marginalized people about.

The social services of the first century were nothing to aspire to, but at least the reality of poor people was accepted. In the twenty-first century, we have a bad habit of closing off spaces to the poor, in the curious belief that somehow if we can’t see them, they don’t exist, and we don’t have to worry about them, support them, or assist them any more.

Never satisfied.

A few weeks ago someone who goes by Pastor Brandon online posted a cartoon in which two figures hold this conversation: “Why don’t you preach more on sin?” “Okay, tell me your sin and I’ll try to preach a sermon on it.” “No, I mean, why don’t you preach on…” “Is that your sin?” “No.” “Well, why would you want to hear a sermon on someone else’s sin?”

That goes to the heart of it, doesn’t it? Each and every one of us, if we’re challenged by some element of the Good News, by some aspect of prophetic summons, by some vision that requires us to change, well. That’s when we start to discount the messenger. Or to rework the message. If we’re Christians, we can’t say that Jesus didn’t mean what he said. But we’re pretty good at changing the meaning of what he said.

To this day, I’m astonished that Christians in political power, from the first Christian Roman emperors to members of the United States Congress, draw a dividing line between the expectations of individuals and the expectations of civil authorities, as if a government run by Christians can start wars of conquest like the Crusades, commit savagery against designated heretics or Jews, or just simply refuse to aid the poor whose poverty has been exaggerated by the acts of other Christians. Did Jesus seek glory through power? Did Jesus gather wealth to himself? Did Jesus call for war and revolution?

No. But later Christians did. Contemporary Christians do. And they keep saying it’s consistent with the words of Jesus.

I started by saying that there’s no reason to be fully satisfied with the nation, and that we need to work for its improvement. I also say that there’s no reason to be fully satisfied with the Church. It has always needed improvement – witness the aggravated letters of Paul – and, so far as I can tell, always will.

Because at the heart of it all is the human talent for finding ways around the clear teaching of John and Jesus and those who echoed them well: we have work to do, obligations to fulfill. It may be a yoke that does not injure, but it is still a yoke and we have to pull. We pull in the presence of Jesus, who encourages, guides, and strengthens us, who saves our spirits and gives rest to our souls.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares a written manuscript, but he does make changes while preaching, so the sermon as recorded is not an exact match to the sermon as written.

Photo by Basile Morin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64696618.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Mister Bad News

June 28, 2026

Jeremiah 28:5-9
Matthew 10:40-42

Ah, Jeremiah. My favorite prophet. No, really. He is. Despite the fact that, as a college student, I had to take a break after reading the book of Jeremiah because it was so depressing (I told you that story last week), I took a course on this book during seminary that has stayed with me for over thirty-five years now.

In that course I learned about the prophet who might have been called “Magor missabib” in Hebrew, something like “terror on every side” in English. It was a pretty good description of Jeremiah’s message. The nation had failed to meet God’s expectations, Jeremiah said. They had erected shrines to other deities and worshiped them, and they had failed to protect the widows and the orphans, the most vulnerable of the population. Jeremiah had warned that this risked the end of God’s protection for the nation, which was a very small one between the two great empires of Egypt to the south and the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, to the north.

Jeremiah’s warning had come true. Judah’s King Jehoiakim had submitted to the Babylonians as a vassal, but he attempted to break that yoke when the Egyptians won a battle against them in 601. Jehoiakim’s rebellion resulted in a siege of the city and their surrender, during which Jehoiakim died. His son Jeconiah ascended to the throne, but the Babylonians replaced him with his uncle Zedekiah.

The nation had surrendered to the Babylonian Emperor, Nebuchadnezzar II. The king, many civic leaders, and many religious leaders had been removed to Babylon (Ezekiel was one of them). The new King Zedekiah was the choice of the Babylonians.

Into that, Jeremiah appeared wearing a yoke, symbolizing and saying in so many words that Babylon would continue to control Judah for some time as a result of their unfaithfulness. Other prophets, notably one named Hananiah son of Azur, disagreed. In contrast to Jeremiah, Hananiah promised that God would restore King Jeconiah and the other exiles and even return the sacred objects looted from the Temple.

I have to say that this would be entirely consistent with a dominant theology of the day. They fully believed that God’s promise that David’s line would continue forever meant that the nation would always be preserved as well. That theology had been confirmed one hundred and fifty years before, when the northern kingdom of Israel, which was not ruled by descendants of David, had fallen to the Assyrian Empire. Judah, in contrast, ruled by a king from the house of David, had endured.

Why shouldn’t that happen again? Why shouldn’t a nation blessed by God be preserved again?

As Tyler Mayfield writes at Working Preacher, “Prophecy is deeply contextual. The content of a particular prophecy is not eternal truth for all situations. What is an authentic, appropriate, and helpful prophecy in one moment and place can be false, inappropriate, and obstructive in another setting.”

Hananiah spoke a word that promised the nation’s restoration. It was a vision that Jeremiah wanted to see. “May the LORD do so,” he said, “may the LORD fulfill the words that you have prophesied.” Who wouldn’t want their nation freed from foreign domination? Who wouldn’t want to see exiled people returned? Who wouldn’t want to see their friends restored to their homes? Who wouldn’t want to see the Temple once more filled with the objects they called sacred?

But Jeremiah didn’t hear the word of God saying that. He invoked the voices of previous prophets who had warned about disasters and conflicts arising from the nation’s unfaithfulness. Those were the prophets people remembered: prophets like Elijah and Elisha, like Hosea and Isaiah, like Micah and Nahum. They weren’t much more cheerful than Jeremiah, and some of them a lot less so.

As Charles L. Aaron, Jr., writes at Working Preacher, “One prophet, Jeremiah, tells the people the truth. The other prophet, Hananiah, tells the people what they want to hear. One appears to us as the brave preacher who endures scorn for speaking the word the Lord gave him. The other appears to us as the soothing charlatan over whom everybody fawns because he offers near-term hope.”

If you want to discern God’s voice, said Jeremiah, take a look at who tends to get things right.

What he didn’t say – what he didn’t have to say, because I’m pretty sure that he left a pretty big echoing silence – was that he, Jeremiah, had declared God’s judgment against Judah and look: they’d been invaded and surrendered to the Babylonians. He, not Hananiah, had been right.

Who should they trust for understanding God’s will in the present?

To be honest, it didn’t require the voice of God to predict Judah’s likely future in 596. They were under the thumb of the Babylonians and they were going to stay there. It didn’t need divine intervention to keep them vassals of that empire. If God did nothing at all, they would stay just as they were.

Hananiah misread the signs of the times just as much as he misread the signs of the Divine. Oh, by the way, he ended this conversation by breaking the symbolic yoke Jeremiah had been wearing, and the story ends with this sad line: “At this, the prophet Jeremiah went his way.”

I think it’s fair to say that we, in the twenty-first century after Jesus, are surrounded by people who are happy to tell us what God’s will is for us, for our church, for our communities, for our nation, and for all the nations of the earth. I also think it’s far to say that I’m one of those voices. If you’d like to know my opinion about God’s will for us, I’m right here to tell you.

So how will you know whether I’m the one who’s right, or among those who are right, or how right I or any of those preaching similar messages might be?

I’d like to say something similar to what Jeremiah did: Go look at the words of the prophets of the past. In theory, that’s a good comparison. Go look for the ones who are Mister or Ms. Bad News. The judgmental ones are right.

In our day, though, we’ve got plenty of judgmental people (and I’d have to include myself among them), but we don’t agree on what to be judgmental about.

Jeremiah found the presence of shrines to other gods in the nation of Judah profoundly troubling. Me, I don’t. It’s trite to say that some of my best friends are Buddhists, but it’s also true that some of my best friends are Buddhists. I’m quite content to let them remain Buddhists as they continue to be kind and compassionate people.

Jeremiah found the abuse of the poor by the powerful to be profoundly troubling. As do I. The gap between rich and poor was probably greater in the sixth century before Jesus than it is now, but it’s much too big now and it’s getting bigger. I am not content to see this nation and this world torn apart by systems that reward a few and impoverish many.

There are plenty of modern-day religious leaders who berate us for living in a religiously pluralistic society. They tell us we should all be Christian. They tell us to remove the Buddhists, the Jews, the Muslims (especially the Muslims), the animists, the Wiccans, the Taoists, the anybody else. Jeremiah might have been there with them. I’m not.

Plenty of these same modern-day religious leaders praise the accomplishments of wealthy individuals. They’ll tell you that wealth is the inevitable result of virtue, and therefore wealthy people are, by definition, virtuous. I think I’ve mentioned before that I think this is really poor theology. I’ll actually call it heresy. Jeremiah would have agreed.

So who’s right? How will we know?

For Christians, there’s a complicating factor. We can’t say that good prophecy comes exclusively from Mr. or Ms. Bad News because… Jesus. Jesus insisted on speaking Good News. I grant you that his good news could be hard on the wealthy, and it could be challenging for the powerful, but there it was: Good News.

I’m not doing well at telling you how to distinguish between the prophets and the charlatans, am I?

Debie Thomas has some wisdom at JourneyWithJesus.net: “As God’s messengers in the world, we are not at liberty to soften the Gospel for the sake of our own likeability.  Jesus has not commissioned us to say whatever is trendy or comfortable or easy or popular.  He has commissioned us to say what is true.  False hope is not God’s hope.  Easy peace is not God’s peace.  And convenient justice is not God’s justice.”

I think I can authoritatively say that if the message benefits a few and burdens many, it’s not God’s justice. If the message promises peace without the hard work of rebuilding broken relationships, it’s not God’s peace. If the hope is entirely disconnected from the reality of today, it’s not God’s hope. If the promise is built on lie after lie after lie, it’s not God’s truth.

Hananiah broke Jeremiah’s symbolic yoke and the prophet went away. The leaders and the people of the nation had made their choice, and they continued to make their poor choices until King Zedekiah’s rebelled about ten years later, resulting in the destruction of the nation and the burning of Solomon’s Temple. Zedekiah’s rule was built on injustice. It was built on violence. It was built on fantasy. It was built on lies. It resulted in disaster, as Jeremiah had foreseen.

May we choose better. May we choose truth.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches – intentionally and otherwise – so the sermon as he wrote it is not precisely the sermon as he spoke it.

The image is The Prophet Jeremiah by Piero della Francesca (ca. 1452) – http://www.wga.hu, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8013834.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Assignment: Mercy

June 14, 2026

Exodus 19:2-8a
Matthew 9:35-10:8

Jesus’ travels through Galilee disturbed him. D. Mark Davis, writing at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, translates verse 36 as, “Yet having seen the crowd he was wrenched with compassion about them that they were having been harassed and tossed aside like sheep not having a shepherd.” Then he writes: “This verse is chock full of strong language. Jesus’ reaction is not just a sweet feeling of kindness, as if he just saw a flock of cute baby lambs. It is a visceral reaction, as the definition of σπλαγχνίζομαι suggests. I think it reads best as a gut reaction, something like ‘furious compassion.’”

“Furious compassion.” You’ve had that feeling, haven’t you? That’s the feeling when you see that somebody has been misled or abused and you’re not only concerned for them you’re angry on their behalf.

People feeling furious compassion tend to tell others about the feeling. They tend to gather people to witness and understand what’s happening. They tend to organize them to do something about it.

That’s what Jesus did. From a larger group of followers, he selected twelve to take on roles not just as learners, but as leaders. He selected twelve to take on the same work that he had been doing. It was no small commission. “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”

Every bit of that charge is laden with challenge. The easiest part seems to be first part: proclaim good news. Good news. Who could object to people proclaiming good news?

Well, the first people who object to good news are usually the people who are benefiting from the bad news. They’re the ones setting the rules that protect their wealth and power from the ones without wealth and power. They’re the ones who accused Jesus of healing people’s demons with the power of demons. They’re the ones who eventually got him executed as a rebel – since when you tell people the good news that God is in charge, not the people who say they’re in charge, it is a rebellious act.

Jesus wasn’t done. “Cure the sick” – I’m afraid that’s not one of my skills. “Raise the dead” – I can’t do that. “Cleanse those with a skin disease” – I can put a bandage on it. “Cast out demons” – maybe I can; I’ve never tried. “You received without payment; give without payment” – how ironic is it that tomorrow is payday?

Matthew only gave us Jesus’ side of the assignment here, but my goodness. The disciples must have been saying something along the lines of, “Who me? No way.”

If they said it aloud (Matthew didn’t tell us), I’m pretty sure Jesus said something like, “Yeah, way.”

Christian discipleship – the Way of Jesus – is Assignment: Mercy.

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Go and proclaim the good news of the kingdom. Go and cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Go and touch. Go and heal. Go and resurrect. Go and make peace. Go and render believable the compassion of God.”

Assignment: Mercy.

As our myna hopefully learned this morning, mercy doesn’t have to be grand and glowing. Mercy begins with basic consideration. Mercy welcomes others to join in the feast. Mercy steps in to decrease the temperature of a dispute. Mercy. Is attentive to everyone’s safety.

During this weekend’s ‘Aha Pae’aina, called together with the theme of building bridges, there were more than a few exhibits of basic mercy. We greeted one another warmly, with hugs and smiles and aloha spoken and unspoken. We feasted together – my, how we feasted. I’m not sure when I’ll have room to eat anything else again. There were items of disagreement on the agenda, and we addressed them with respect and consideration for the people on either side of the question. And if I can summon up a personal example, while delivering my workshop I froze my feet in their places for a minute or two, because a nine-month old baby was crawling around next to me and I was not going to step on her fingers.

Mercy is also bigger than that. I kept my feet still to avoid hurting a baby. Why can’t the nations of the earth keep our militaries still lest they harm the infants of another nation? Why are we told that it is a virtue to use force ruthlessly and mercilessly? Why are we told that we don’t have the courage to take territory from another nation, instead of being told that our sense of morality prevents us from taking territory from another nation?

Jesus had the opportunity to start a war. When he was arrested, somebody swung a sword. Jesus could have screamed, “Attack!” Instead, Jesus said, “Enough of this,” and healed the injured man.

Assignment: Mercy.

During this ‘Aha, Conference Minister the Rev. Dr. David Popham told me something I hadn’t known – he knows plenty of things that I don’t, of course. He mentioned that Hawai’i has been closely followed by the disaster response people in the UCC and the Disciples of Christ. We’ve been through a lot, for sure: the 2018 Puna eruption here, the fires on Maui in 2023, this year’s series of Kona low storms. He joked, in fact, that sometimes they would call him and tell him things that he didn’t know, which was probably because the local people who would call the Conference were still busy dealing with the situation in front them, while those whose professions it is to assess disasters were communicating with our national church staff.

The point is that we have friends. We have neighbors who meet the definition Jesus provided to “Who is my neighbor?” Do you remember? “Who is my neighbor” was the question that launched the story of the Good Samaritan – and the neighbor was the one who showed mercy.

Assignment: Mercy.

All right. Have I made that point enough? How are you going to fulfill your assignment?

You do it with everything you’ve got. Yes, that’s a big ask. Yes, it’s a lot to give. And in some instances, yes, it’s not going to be enough.

Assignment: Mercy is a call to stay attentive to the small mercies, to the politenesses, the sharings, the protections. None of us can possibly be aware of everything going on around us, but if we can we can look right and left before crossing the street, we can look right and left to see what’s going on with our neighbors. It’s a call to ask about needs and not assume them. A person in a wheelchair may appreciate some assistance from you on a streetcorner, but they also may not. Be vigilant, and let your vigilance include the simple politeness of asking, “How are you doing?” followed, perhaps, by, “What do you need?”

Assignment: Mercy is a call to stay attentive to the big mercies, to the relief from systemic oppression and suffering, from the prejudices of social pressure and the discrimination of unjust law. Assignment: Mercy is a call to remind the world that war simply isn’t the Way of Jesus, no matter what awful things the Church has said to the contrary in the past. Assignment: Mercy insists that people be held accountable for the harms they bring to others, that they be held accountable through an open and transparent process of law, and that those in power shall have no special influence in the adjudication of the crimes of which they’re accused. Assignment: Mercy further calls us to bring people into society as well as we can, to make sure that neither habit nor desperation are major forces to drive people to criminal behavior.

Assignment: Mercy is a call to show that a loving God has had a powerful and positive influence on our lives. It is a call to testify to the grace that God has demonstrated in the world: in Creation, in guidance, in wisdom, in the poetry of the Psalms, in the restoration of distressed people, in the birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, in the activity of the Holy Spirit from the first century to the twenty-first.

At this point, I am sorely tempted to parody the opening of an episode of Mission: Impossible. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to show God’s mercy to a hurting world. If you are caught or captured in this mission, God will not disavow, but will celebrate your actions.

Actually, you want to be caught at this. Let everybody see. Let everybody know. You have accepted: Assignment: Mercy.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches, so the sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.

The image is Christ Sends Apostles out in Pairs by anonymous (1573) – https://www.centraalmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/2474-de-uitzending-van-de-twaalf-discipelen-anoniem-noord-nederlands, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80163482.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Assignment Mercy

Jesus set his closest associates on the challenging assignment of bringing compassion to those who needed it so. We have the same assignment.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth chapters of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 9:35-10:8).

This section begins with Jesus’ observation that the people of the villages that he had met were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. There was more work to be done than he could do himself. He summoned twelve from amongst his followers, and he gave them power and authority.

He appointed them to be ambassadors of the movement, to go out and visit these other villages. There, he directed them, proclaim the good news that the realm of God is drawing near. Cast out the demons, heal the sick, and by the way, make no preparation as you go. Don’t save any money, don’t bring even any extra clothing.

It was, and it is, a tough assignment. I would argue that we as disciples today: we are the heirs of those twelve. We are still asked to do something about bringing the reign of God closer to being in the world. To do what we can for the sick, to comfort those who are pressed by evil spirits, and to assist those who are pressed by evil people. We continue in this long tradition of seeing what is wrong in the world, and bringing good news and good action to those who suffer to those in need.

Proclaim the good news that the realm of God is near. Bring healing and comfort and assurance, and you will be doing the work of Jesus.

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: God Desires Mercy

June 7, 2026

Hosea 5:15-6:6
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Do you remember the Pushmi-Pullyu from Doctor Dolittle? The fictional animal (I repeat, fictional) had a body like an antelope or a llama, with a head at both ends and with two pairs of legs and feet that pointed in the same direction as the head and neck above them. According to author Hugh Lofting, the two heads allowed one to eat and the other to carry on a conversation without being rude.

Nevertheless, I can imagine that the two heads didn’t always agree, and I can imagine that that would have been remarkably awkward.

Religion and spirituality have a pushme-pullyou dimension – all religions, as far as I can tell. On the one side, we’ve got the impulse toward a direct relationship with God. People do a lot of things to build that and maintain it. We pray by ourselves. We worship with others. We place art with religious themes around us. We perform certain rituals that we believe God has asked us to do, which includes our practice of Holy Communion, by the way. We dedicate ourselves to furthering that primary relationship.

The other dimension is to do things that we believe God has asked us to do in relation to other human beings. It’s been widely claimed, with pretty good justification, that the “golden rule” of treating people as you’d like to be treated is part of every religious tradition. That’s hard to prove, but check out the Wikipedia article on the Golden Rule sometime. Researchers have found it in a lot of faiths and cultures.

When asked about the Greatest Commandment, Jesus first quoted Deuteronomy 6, which says “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” Jesus then followed up with a reference to Leviticus 19: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

There’s the pushme-pullyou again – Jesus didn’t say doing both at once was easy. But he did seem to think there were priorities.

Jesus appeared to have an odd reputation among his fellow rabbis. They paid attention to him. They respected him enough to invite him as a special guest when he visited their villages. He also puzzled them, sometimes quite a lot. Why would a respectable religious leader and teacher summon a tax collector to follow him? I suppose it’s nice that the man abandoned the disgraceful, collaborationist work, but make him an associate? I mean, eat with him?

Quite aside from ritual uncleanness, that’s gross.

How many people have never been invited to your table because something they’ve done or said or represented is, to you, gross?

For myself, I don’t know. I’ve lost count.

It made a huge difference for Matthew. As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “He is sitting, literally, at the table of his unhealthy and degraded identity as tax collector. Toward him walks the ‘source of life’s fullness.’ The English writer, Jeannette Winterson, says that many great stories begin this way. Once upon a time, there was a person in circumstances that weren’t all that they hoped for. And then there was an encounter. In a moment, the bare facts of what is changed to what if, the expansion of possibility.”

It made all the difference in the world.

Jesus’ rabbinic colleagues were right to be leery. Let’s get that straight. They were following guidance from Law and Prophets that emphasized personal piety and practice to maintain faithfulness to God. They were praying, fasting, worshiping, and resting on the Sabbath. They were doing, frankly, things that we should be doing.

But that’s just one side of the pushme-pullyou.

Remember the other side? Love your neighbor as yourself.

Centuries before, the people of Israel, the northern of the two nations which had split after the death of David’s son Solomon, heard an earnest and, let’s face it, rather troubled prophet named Hosea try to remind them that their national practice of worship and ritual was not enough to maintain the covenant with God. Whatever they did during the week to treat others badly, they firmly believed that their piety won them forgiveness. “Let us press on to know the LORD;” Hosea quotes them as saying, “his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.”

But what about the other side of the pushme-pullyou?

“I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,” Hosea wrote, quoting God this time, “the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

Centuries later, Jesus quoted Hosea quoting God to those who asked about hanging out with all these sinners. “Go and learn what this means,” he said: “’I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

If you’ve been listening really carefully, you may have noticed that those quotes don’t match. “I desire steadfast love,” it says in Hosea; “I desire mercy,” it says in Matthew. The reason is that the Hebrew word Hosea used, “hesed,” doesn’t have a one-to-one translation in English or in first century Greek. It means steadfast love, and it means mercy, and it means loyalty, and it means grace.

Commit to steadfast love, mercy, loyalty, and grace to those around you, said Jesus. That’s more important than prayer and fasting and worship and resting at the right time.

God desires mercy from us for them.

It’s also true that God desires mercy from them to us. Personally, I don’t have as much control over the way other people treat me as I’d like. Like you, I’m relying on that foundational teaching of the Golden Rule in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Yoruba, and a host of faiths whose names I’ve never heard to guide their adherents into care, compassion, and mercy for their fellow travelers on the road of life.

Look hard enough at any religion, look hard enough at Christianity, and you’ll find justification to treat other people badly. In Christianity it isn’t that hard, to tell you the truth (I suspect that’s true in plenty of other faiths as well).

Before you pull out that excuse, however, remember Hosea and Jesus and a lot of other Biblical writers, all of whom insisted that God desires mercy from us and for us.

Mercy. It’s more powerful than all the pious actions we might do.

Mercy.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text as he preaches – sometimes he means to do it, and sometimes he doesn’t.

The image is The Calling of Matthew by Jacob van Oost (1641) – Photograph from the original painting, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41538332.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Receive the Holy Spirit

May 24, 2026

Acts 2:1-21
John 20:19-23

There’s a reason why this morning’s story about the house finch guarding his treasure had him guarding… whatever it was. I think we have a similar problem with the Holy Spirit. We know it’s valuable. We know it’s important. We know it’s something to embrace. But…

What is it? When we receive the Holy Spriit, what do we receive?

It doesn’t help that we have two Scriptures offered by the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost with, shall we say, rather different ideas of how the Holy Spirit was given to Jesus’ disciples after his resurrection. The one we probably know better is the Pentecost account from Acts of the Apostles. Jesus had been raised but he had also departed, promising his followers the gift of the Holy Spirit. About a hundred and twenty of them kept close to one another in Jerusalem, and many if not all of them got together to observe the Savuot holiday together. Savuot was one of the three holidays that attracted Jews to Jerusalem in the first century, along with Sukkot in the fall and Passover earlier in the spring. In fact, the Greek name Pentecost stands for the fifty days between Passover and Savuot.

Whatever they’d planned – which was probably Temple worship at some point in the day – the Holy Spirit changed their plans with a rush like a violent wind, the signs of tongues on their heads, then speaking different tongues, and being so successful in proclaiming God’s inviting mercy that their community grew 2,500%.

As Margaret Aymer writes at Working Preacher, “The Holy Spirit proves not to be a quiet, heavenly dove but, rather, a violent force that blows the church into being (Acts 2:41–47). That church consists mainly of immigrants, people of different languages and cultures with different mother tongues (Acts 2:5, 9–12, 14). To these, the message goes forth: a message of the coming of the day of the Lord, full of heavenly portents and prophetic women, slaves, and men. But in the midst of the chaos of Pentecost rests an anchor: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

In contrast, we have John’s account of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The setting is much different: the evening of Easter Day itself. Just a few of the disciples were gathered in a private, even locked space. As Cody J. Sanders writes at Working Preacher, “John’s scene is an intimate proximity of bodies and breath, fright giving way to peace, signs of death bespeaking new life, and a renewed mission for those whose world had seemingly come to an end.”

On the one hand: Close friends gathered alone. The gentle breeze of a human breath. A promise of forgiveness.

On the other hand: Close friends gathered, then driven out into the crowds. The roar of a mighty wind. And… a promise of forgiveness.

One of my convictions about the Holy Spirit is that the Spirit’s manifestations simply aren’t predictable. I recall Elijah’s journey to the mountain of the Law, where he found that the great events of wind, fire, and earthquake were not full of the Spirit, but the “sound of sheer silence” was. I recall that the Spirit visited Jeremiah when he thought he was too young and Mary when she was not a married adult. I recall that the Spirit came to foreigners, not just foreigners, to a Roman officer’s household, and that the Spirit transformed someone fully convinced that the Jesus movement must be ended.

There are so many others. The Spirit doesn’t do what I expect it to do, or what you expect it to do, or what Elijah, Moses, Jeremiah, Mary, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Paul expected it to do.

So what does mark the Holy Spirit?

I’d have to say that the first sign is probably disruption. There’s that unpredictability again, but it’s also because the Holy Spirit isn’t that interested in changing things that are good and right and true. The Holy Spirit intervenes when things are going badly, wrongly, and falsely – or at least when they could be substantially better. The Pentecost story from Acts is disruptive from start to finish, changing the little Jesus community’s plans not just for the day but for the rest of their lives.

John’s account is gentler, but it’s disruptive, too. This was Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples on Easter, and in John’s gospel it took two more visits to shake them out of the notion that they were going to go on with life as usual. When you hear Jesus say, “Receive the Holy Spirit” here, you should probably also hear what he said in the next chapter: “Feed my sheep.”

What else marks the Holy Spirit?

Jesus’ first words to his friends as he appeared among them was, “Peace be with you.” A mark of the Holy Spirit is peace.

If that seems inconsistent with disruption, Jesus spoke those words in the aftermath of state-authorized violence: his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. He lived, and we live, in an age where wars tragically rage among nations and within nations. By the time John’s Gospel was written, Roman armies had swept over the ground Jesus walked and destroyed the Jerusalem Temple.

I’d argue that the world needs some serious disruption to live in peace. As Angela N. Parker writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus has given us a double portion of peace to breathe again. Let us be Jesus followers that transform society instead of being fearful disciples who are holding our collective breath.”

What else marks the Holy Spirit?

Forgiveness and inclusion.

In John, Jesus’ final words were that his followers had been given the power to forgive. I grant you that’s a power you may not want. It’s too big for most of us. Personally, I’m concerned that if I’m responsible for forgiveness there are some people who definitely need it who aren’t going to get it.

Forgiveness is a simple concept. When somebody does something that brings harm to someone else, which might be another person, or God, or both, then that person is obligated to make things right. In religious terms, they have to repent, they have to make restitution, and they have to reform their future behavior. If they do that, if they apologize and try to correct the harm they did, the person they injured has the opportunity to forgive.

Human beings do that a lot. They do things, and then they say, “I’m sorry,” and they try to fix it, and the person they harmed says, “It’s all right.”

Part of our understanding about sin and forgiveness is that God gets involved. God doesn’t want people harming one another, so injuring another person is also a sin against God. When we apologize to the person we harmed, we also need to apologize to God.

Jesus was clear that apologizing to God alone is not enough. In the Sermon on the Mount, he told his hearers that when bringing an offering to God seeking forgiveness, they needed to first make things right with the people they’d harmed. It’s important to apologize to God, but Jesus made clear that that wouldn’t have any impact if there’d been no apology to the people involved.

The current affection for non-apology apologies, “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” and the assertion that “God has forgiven me, so I don’t need to make things right with anyone else,” are both bad theology and bad for human relationships.

When Jesus told his disciples that they had the power to forgive, he told them that they had the power to help people through their repentance to others and come to repentance to God.

They still need to take the steps themselves, however. Forgiveness without repentance and restitution isn’t forgiveness. It’s just license. Permission to cause harm.

Simon Peter, in quoting from the prophet Joel, made clear that the gift of the Holy Spirit would lead to salvation. He made it clear that many of the restrictions people usually apply to human societies would not be honored by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes to young and old, men and women, rich and poor, respected and discounted.

The Holy Spirit comes even to you and to me, who would probably prefer less disruption in life, who would like peace but aren’t sure what a world at peace looks like, and who are somewhat anxious to hear that God pays attention to whether we forgive someone or not. The Holy Spirit comes so that we get shaken from our complacency, so that we no longer accept the violence and coercion so common in the world. The Holy Spirit comes to give us courage to forgive when people apologize to us, and help them find their way to their further forgiveness by God:

So that all the world might be saved.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while preaching, so the sermon as written does not precisely match the sermon as preached.

The image is The Virgin Surrounded Twelve Apostles or The Holy Ghost Appears by the Master of the Crucifix of Pesaro, ca. 1380. Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11148957.