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.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Suffering and Rejoicing

May 17, 2026

1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

Suffering is one of the great questions confronting religion – any religion. Christianity, it must be said, doesn’t have as close a focus on it as other faiths. Christianity has much clearer answers to the questions of sin – we are forgiven through Jesus Christ – and death – we are promised resurrection in Jesus Christ. Buddhism, in contrast, concentrates on suffering and offers a pathway out of Samsara, the loop of lives in which people suffer.

It isn’t our prioritized concern, but Christians experience suffering and they think about it. “Suffering is a major theme in 1 Peter,” writes Jennifer Kaalund at Working Preacher. “The word is mentioned twelve times in this short letter. This repetition makes it clear that the audience is experiencing difficult circumstances. And yet the writer wants to remind them that they are not alone in their suffering.”

Nobody is alone in suffering, you know. Suffering is one of the shared experiences of the human condition. We don’t suffer all the time, thank God. But we all know what it is from experiences of hunger and thirst, injury and illness, failure and disappointment, pain and fear, loss and grief.

The easiest way to understand suffering is that if you’re suffering, you’ve done something to bring it on. It’s easiest because, let’s face it, it’s so often true. My parents used to tell a story about a camping trip we took when I was quite young, maybe two or three years old. My mother had been cooking on a camp stove in a cast iron frying pan, and little me walked over and grasped the hot handle. I don’t remember anything about this, but apparently they had to get me to a doctor, which was awkward because we were on an island without one.

You know and I know that we’ve done comparable things with rather more knowledge of the consequences than little Eric not understanding about hot frying pans. We’ve known something was hot. We’ve known it was going to hurt – sometimes hurt more people than us – and for whatever reasons we came up with at the time, we reached out and grasped the handle.

We saw lots of examples of this during the pandemic, people disregarding precautions, avoiding vaccines, even courting illness with dreadful consequences. A number of folks noted, aghast, that we are going to have to retire the phrase “avoid it like the plague” because, it seems, fewer people than you’d think actively avoid the plague.

Often enough, however, the easy explanation that somebody suffers because they did something to deserve it is plain wrong. Illness, including pandemic-borne illness, happens. It just happens. It doesn’t need any human intervention, knowing or unknowing, to make people sick. I see a dermatologist twice a year because my skin is vulnerable to sunlight. What did I do to create that condition? I was born. That’s it. No further intervention was necessary. I’m not going to change it with exercise, diet, or medication. I can decrease the risk of skin illness, but I can’t change the basic vulnerability.

Random suffering isn’t satisfying. It can’t be. People like life to have meaning, and when suffering becomes part of life, it should be meaningful. The simple truth is that sometimes it isn’t. It’s just suffering.

Early Christianity had to deal with a further example of suffering, and that was the crucifixion of Jesus himself. It could not be explained that he had deserved it – that wouldn’t work. And it could not be called simply random. Jesus himself had said it was meaningful, even necessary to his work. As time went on, other early Christian leaders also began suffering, frequently, as Jesus had, at the hands of the authorities. That wasn’t how things were supposed to work in a properly ordered world.

The world, clearly, was not properly ordered.

Dr. Kaalund writes, “[Jesus’] crucifixion was the result of an attempt to transform oppressive systems, to assert the importance of the lives of marginalized people, indeed, to challenge a worldview that suffering of the many was necessary for the pleasure of a few… We share in Christ’s suffering when justice is denied, when righteousness is not realized, and when the conditions for peace are elusive. So the author of the letter reminds the audience that they should not be surprised when they are standing for righteousness, fighting for justice, and are pursuing peace that they are met with obstacles and challenges. Jesus, too, was challenged in this pursuit.”

Dr. Kaalund illustrates two more sources of suffering. The first comes from the deliberate actions of other people. Some of these people harm others from outside the law – we call them criminals, and we have an entire structure of codes, enforcement officers, and processes to determine responsibility and to deal with their actions. Their actions bring a lot of suffering.

Some of the people bringing suffering, however, operate inside the law. Those were the people inflicting the “fiery trial” on the original readers of this letter. They were magistrates, city councilors, governors, possibly even the Emperor himself if First Peter was written during the reign of Domitian. Undeserved suffering has been inflicted by governments countless times over the centuries, and it has probably done vastly more harm than the operations of criminals, because they’ve got a lot more resources to do it with. Remember that Jesus’ crucifixion was legal. Peter and Paul’s executions were legal. Martyr after martyr died with the full assent of the law.

Slavery was legal. Keeping women from voting was legal. The death penalty for gay and lesbian people is legal in seven UN member nations. The Holocaust was legal. The family separations of the first Trump administration were, as far as the courts have weighed in, legal. And the chaotic sweeps that have brought so much suffering to American cities have been, with some contested exceptions, legal. Legal, and by inflicting so much suffering, horribly wrong.

First Peter raises a further source of suffering: suffering as the result of doing what is good, and right, and true. That was the experience of those enduring the “fiery trial.” They were trying to follow the ways of Jesus, and like Jesus, they were suffering. As Valerie Nicolet writes at Working Preacher, “1 Peter reminds us that what is at stake in the sufferings of Christ-believers is not so much what they believed but what they did. Because they believed that Christ was Lord, and not Caesar, they strived to establish communities marked by love and solidarity rather than by hierarchy and a system of patronage and debt.”

First Peter invites us to rejoice in our sufferings, some of the most bizarre advice given us in religious literature. He could do this because so much of the suffering his readers experienced was of that last kind, related not to their mistakes or random chance or prejudice but to their own diligence in following Christ. Suffering can be an affirmation that one is doing the right thing, and that is a source of rejoicing.

But as Jimmy Hoke writes at Working Preacher, “Exceptionalized suffering lacks solidarity with all who suffer… A critical approach to this passage in light of Christianity’s power to inflict systemic suffering demands rethinking whose suffering counts. Instead of moralizing what and whose suffering counts, this requires asking what it means to roar with solidarity for all who suffer.”

Can we come to aid those who suffer randomly, or worse yet, for their own actions? Of course we can. My parents swooped me off to a doctor when I grasped that hot pan. It’s what we do for children. There’s no reason not to do it for adults.

But what about rejoicing? Do we rejoice within our sufferings if they’re random, or self-inflicted, or more related to something we can’t control about ourselves than actual virtue?

We can, I think, rejoice within our suffering if not because of our suffering, because we are never alone in our suffering. We are all beneath the mighty hand of God, or as the old song puts it, God’s got the whole world in his hand.

We don’t rejoice because it hurts. We rejoice because we have God with us. We rejoice because we have more strength, more confidence, more commitment, than we would have otherwise.

And we rejoice because we know that though our road has led to suffering, it leads beyond it to a better and brighter day. “…The God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.”

It’s a hope and a promise in which to rejoice.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares a full text for his sermons, but he does make changes while preaching. The sermon as written and the sermon as presented are not identical.

The image is a carving of the mask of tragedy by Carl Milles in Stockholm, Sweden. Photo by Holger.Ellgaard – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4326478.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Connections

May 10, 2026

Acts 17:22-31
John 14:15-21

In Acts 17, Paul and Silas had been traveling hard for a while. They’d made a few friends in Thessalonica, which is toward the north of the Greek peninsula, but they’d also found a good few enemies who had stirred up the authorities against them. They’d gone to a nearby community, Berea, and made some more friends. Unfortunately those same enemies decided they hadn’t made enough trouble, with the result that their friends put Paul on a boat and sent him south along the coast to the great ancient city of Athens.

According to Luke, the likely author of Acts of the Apostles, Paul didn’t think much of Athens. “He was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Paul was from Tarsus, a city at a number of cultural crossroads. The Jewish community he grew up in would have been minority amidst worshipers of Greek, Roman, Persian, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian deities. He’d been surrounded by idols all his life.

Well, he didn’t have to like it. He didn’t. He started to speak and argue, first in the synagogue (where folks would have shared at least some of his distress) and then in the public areas where the local philosophers liked to debate. They brought him to the Areopagus, the great square of news and discussion, and prepared to listen – and, I’m sure, to dispute.

Jeremy L. Williams doesn’t believe that Paul’s opening was all that conciliatory. He writes at Working Preacher, “Paul’s statement about the Athenians’ worship practices is certainly pejorative. It would not be unfair to translate his statement as saying that the Athenians are very superstitious (hōs deisidaimonesterous) in an unflattering way (Acts 17:22). They are so bad, to him, that they even worship what they do not know. He uses this as an entry point to launch his message.”

This is the same sort of behavior that led to Timothy insulting his judges beyond their tolerance in last week’s reading from Acts.

Most commentators read this opening differently from Dr. Wiliams, and Dr. Williams himself notes that however inauspicious the beginning, Paul’s sermon grew increasingly effective from there, even though he’d set a challenging task. He had set out to persuade them that a single Creator deity was concerned with human life and behavior, and had demonstrated that concern with resurrection from the dead. I’m not sure I can communicate just how strange that would have sounded to them. Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “By referring to Jesus’ resurrection and implying that all people will likewise be raised from the dead, Paul steers the Athenians toward a notion of communing with the Divine that does not square with their presuppositions. To a crowd interested in the immortality of the soul (and an accompanying contempt for bodies and the limitations they impose), Paul preaches about a God who resurrects bodies. It’s a difficult thing for the Athenians to hear as good news. Why would people want to keep their bodies? It strikes them as icky.”

It was a challenge. He did not entirely succeed. “Some scoffed,” it reads in the very next verse, but also “others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’” Some even joined Paul, founding the Christian community in Athens.

Paul had helped them make connections.

The first connection was within themselves. They had very different notions about the roles of gods and goddesses, about the nature of good and evil, about the relationship between different groups of people. Dr. Williams observes, “Paul’s message about the Unknown God does not deny the Athenians’ wisdom nor does it call for a destruction of their ways of knowing. It acknowledges that from one, God made every family (ethnos) of humans to inhabit the face of the whole earth (Acts 17:26).“

Paul helped them make connections between the things they already knew and the things he was offering to them as new insight. They didn’t have to give up all they knew. They didn’t have to give up the tools with which they learned. They were invited to use those ways of thinking to re-examine what they’d concluded in light of new information.

As you may have noted when trying to teach someone something new, that’s frequently a difficult leap to make. But if you harangue someone with “You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong!” that almost never goes better.

With Paul’s help, they made new connections.

Then they made new connections with Paul, and with one another. Luke even provides us with the names of two of them – Dionysius the Areopagite and Damaris – probably because that man and woman were known in Christian circles. Dionysius and Damaris developed new relationships with this wandering preacher, with those who eventually rejoined him from Berea, with one another, and with those who later made a circle of friends into a growing community of faith.

They made connections within. They made connections with one another. I can only assume – but it’s a pretty good assumption – that they made new connections with God.

We are Paul’s heirs. We are the guides to connection for our generations. We are the ones who will help – or hinder – those who seek to learn, to connect, and to experience God.

“Our world, like theirs,” writes C. Clifton Black at Working Preacher, “is variously if sometimes stupidly religious. Now as then, Christianity faces attackers of all stripes: the sophisticated, the unthinking, and the powerful who are easily threatened. Anyone who considers idolatry dead in contemporary culture has not been paying attention to Wall Street and Madison Avenue, to Hollywood or Washington or Beijing.”

Or, I’d add, to those proclaiming various strains of Christianity, including but not limited to Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel. As Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “At our worst, we Christians have isolated and insulated ourselves from our culture’s mainstream. We can be inward-looking, self-absorbed, self-important, and cloistered, instead of engaging people at our contemporary synagogue, agora or Areopagus… But at our best, Christians have followed Paul’s example of living, learning and sharing the gospel in the marketplace of ideas, in bars and board rooms as well as in basilicas, in university lecture halls as well as in church fellowship halls. In an outward, centrifugal movement modeled after Paul at the Areopagus, believers have engaged real people where they really live, work, and think, in order to gain a hearing for their ‘strange ideas’ about repentance, rebirth, and the resurrection.”

Should you find a spot near the Mo’oheau Bandstand and start preaching? I mean, if that’s where you’re called to, go ahead, but you may have noticed I don’t do that. Nor to Liliu’okalani Garden or Lincoln Park – though I have been known to join a march or demonstration downtown.

Where are you called to make connections?

For many of us, the first setting for relationships is our family – our siblings, cousins, and the extended ‘ohana of both kupuna and keiki. How do we help the people we love make a connection between something we both share as true, and something new that they, so far, haven’t accepted as true? How do we build the love between us into something that helps them find new understandings and act upon them?

Who can you help make a new connection?

Who can you help to a new relationship, one which involves them in a community? The obvious community to invite them into is this one – I mean, Jesus encouraged us to do just that two thousand years ago – but there are other communities that engage and support human beings as they find their full humanity. A service club? Go for it. An organization that relies on volunteers to do good things, like the Food Basket, Habitat for Humanity, HOPE Services, the Ku’ikahi Mediation Center, the Human Society. They’ll find work for you, and they’ll find connections for you, or for the person who needs connecting.

Join a musical ensemble. Audition for a play.

Who do you know who would benefit from those connections?

That’s probably a long list. Who are the first five? That’s more manageable. You can help five people make connections with other people, can’t you?

The goal, in the end, is to help people build their relationship with God – but you can’t skip directly there. It’s built on the connections we make in our brains, hearts, and souls. It’s built out of the connections we make with other human beings who affirm us in these understandings. It’s deepened when each of us take further steps toward the One in whom, as Paul quoted from a pagan Greek poet, “we live and move and have our being.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching from his prepared text. The sermon as preached differs from the sermon as prepared.

The image is St Paul Preaching at Athens by Raphael (1515) – Royal Collection of the United Kingdom, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1718078.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Rough Road

May 3, 2026

Acts 7:55-60
John 14:1-14

Philip Ruge-Jones writes at Working Preacher, “Back in the day, my seminary professors told us that our proclamation should recreate the effect in our own congregation that the Word had on its first hearers.” He goes on to suggest that the most faithful result of a sermon on the death of Stephen would be, in fact, that you do to me what Stephen’s audience did to him.

I’m pretty sure Dr. Ruge-Jones was joking.

You may be wondering why Stephen was executed at all. Who was he? Who were the people who covered their ears and with a loud shout rushed together against him?

Stephen was one of the first seven deacons, a position created in the Jerusalem church to distribute food among its members. That congregation had committed itself to sharing resources, and that meant that they purchased for everyone and then had to deliver it to everyone. Originally the apostles did all that work, but with the growth of the church and their desire to concentrate on speaking to new potential members, they expanded the leadership group and created this new role. The name “diakonos” (which we’ve rendered to “deacon” in English) was the word used for a table servant.

Stephen, at least, and one assumes his compatriots, didn’t just deliver food. He became well known for his words and “great wonders and signs.” This roused some in the city to formally charge him with blasphemy before the council of the Temple priests. His reply to their accusations was… Well, Stephen accused those sitting in judgment of participating in the murder of God’s prophets. “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.”

Stephen found himself on a portion of his faith journey that had turned into a rough road. Up to this point, though the Jerusalem authorities had been concerned about the growing movement of Jesus-followers, they had restrained themselves from major actions, lest they find themselves opposing something inspired by God. With Stephen before them, the mood had changed. It’s worth asking whether Stephen could have expected anything else but a death sentence from them. Luke’s writing suggests, I think, that Stephen’s own words inflamed their hostility so much that they abandoned the judicial proceedings and degenerated into a mob. Jesus, before a court that probably included a fair number of the same people, had not been judged guilty of blasphemy, but brought to the Roman governor for trial as a rebel.

You can read this as Stephen deliberately – or at least foolishly – aggravating his judges to the point they would act against his life. Did Stephen have a death wish? Is that likely to be true of the Christian martyrs who adopted Stephen as the model for their conduct before court after court for the next two and a half centuries? I don’t think so.

What I see in the stories of Christian martyrs is a common theme of a line they would not cross, an action they would not take, a word they would not say, or a statement they would not disavow. They didn’t all share the same line, though many shared one, refusing to recant their faith during the centuries of intermittent Roman persecution. Others refused to wed non-Christians and died for it. Others refused to kill, and died for it.

It’s worth asking: what is the line you won’t cross? What is the truth you will not unsay? What is the falsehood you will not speak, though your life depends on it?

Keep in mind that that may never be tested, and please God it never is. Keep in mind as well that you may not know what it is until it is tested. I am quite sure that if you’d asked Dietrich Bonhoeffer if he’d die for the principle that the Church has to maintain its truth against the dictates of national power, he’d have said, “Perhaps, but that will never happen.” But it did happen.

Where is your line? What is your truth? What will you refuse to do though your life depend on it?

Amy Oden writes at Working Preacher, “The prophetic gaze does not shy away from injustice, or gloss over transgression. The prophetic gaze does not avoid the painful truth. However, its eye is NOT focused on the transgressors.  This may be counterintuitive for many contemporary Christians.

“Whereas so much of our own prophetic speech today is focused on ‘them,’ whoever the political or theological opponents are, Stephen’s prophetic gaze is not on the transgressors. Rather, Stephen’s prophetic eye is on ‘the heavens’ or, we might say, ‘the kin-dom’ or ‘the reign of God’ or ‘God’s life here and now.’”

Where is God’s line? Where is God’s truth? What will you refuse to do because your relationship with God depends on it?

Stephen had seen the suffering of the people of Jerusalem. His first task was to see that people could eat – when you have that job, you’ll meet a lot of desperately hungry people. He knew their rough road.

His determination to bear witness to their suffering and their hope set him on a rough road of his own – arrest, trial, and execution.

At the last, he glimpsed a vision of the rough road’s destination, and held to his truth, praying that God forgive his executioners and committing his spirit to Jesus as Jesus had committed his spirit to God.

May God keep you from rough roads, but if you find yourself upon one, may you follow it with courage, faith, greatness of heart, and a vision of the comfort at the road’s end.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching – sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally. The sermon as prepared does not match the sermon as presented.

Mosaic of Saint Stephen at the Parish House of the Parish of St. Stephen, Amstetten, Lower Austria. Photo by DerHHO – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14965296.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Named and Loved

Jesus compared himself to a shepherd, one whose sheep recognized, and one who knew all the names of the ones he cared for.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 10:1-10). This opening section leads toward one of the better known “I am” statements in John’s book, when Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.”

Leading up to that, Jesus spoke about how sheep recognize their shepherd and how shepherds know the names of their sheep. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus said.

Names were extraordinarily important in the ancient Middle Eastern world. Moses wanted to know God’s name. Adam gave names to the animals in the Garden of Eden. And Jesus was given a name which means salvation.

Names were important. Names still are important.

Someone who knows you is somebody who will remember your name. Somebody who values you will work to remember your name. Someone who loves you knows your name.

Jesus told those folks 2,000 years ago that he knew their names, that God knew their names. And through John, Jesus still speaks to us 2,000 years later to reassure us that God knows our names. God cares about us. God loves us.

That’s what I am 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 What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Fed by Jesus

One of the first encounters with Jesus after his resurrection took place on a road, where he fed their minds and spirits, and then at a table, where he fed their bodies. Feeding people is at the heart of Christian faith.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about a passage in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 24:13-35) that I think at least a little bit about every month in the life cycle of Church of the Holy Cross. It’s the story of Jesus’ encounter with two of his disciples on the day of his resurrection, on Easter.

He met them on a road as they were leaving Jerusalem. They walked with him. They talked with him. He explained things about his death and the reports of his resurrection that nobody at that point much understood. He sat at a table with them. He broke bread and that is when they knew who he was, that is when they recognized him.

I mention this story every time we move into celebration of the Lord’s Supper, as we come to the table of Holy Communion. Because to my mind this reality of knowing Jesus when he feeds us is central, not just to our understanding of the sacrament, but to our understanding of Christianity itself. Christianity is about seeing that people are fed, fed in body, fed in mind as he did along that road, fed in spirit, in ways that are unique to the exercise of religion in general, but also unique of course to the practice of the faith of the followers of Jesus.

We feed people and we are also fed.

Jesus fed them on a hillside miraculously with bread and fish. Jesus fed them by the lakeside with understanding and knowledge. Jesus fed them in the days after his resurrection with a Holy Spirit that has continued to guide us, inspire us, and empower us to this very day.

So come, let us be fed. Come, let us feed others on the spirit of Jesus Christ.

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 What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Assumptions

Sometimes people are glad to be wrong about their assumptions. Easter morning was like that.

Here’s a transcript:

Well, now it is Holy Week. And there is a lot to think about.

I could be thinking about the Monday Thursday text, and indeed I will be. I could be thinking about the seven last words of Jesus, which we’ll read on Friday from noon to three, and indeed I will be. At the moment, though, I am thinking about the twentieth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 20:1-18, John’s account of the discovery of the resurrection.

Most of the time we tend to say that we’re talking about the stories of the resurrection, but we’re not. In most of the Gospels, the resurrection occurs outside of anybody else’s sight or awareness. They learn about it when they come in some of the Gospels to an empty tomb, or in John’s case to a tomb where there are a couple of angelic messengers saying that Jesus is not here.

In John’s Gospel, it’s Mary Magdalene who went to the tomb. She found it empty, rushed back to the city, brought Simon Peter and the disciple that Jesus loved. They looked at the empty tomb and went away. Mary then encountered this angelic messenger whose words didn’t seem to make any impression upon her.

She realized that there was somebody else in the garden with her. She assumed it was the gardener and asked him where Jesus was.

It was, of course, Jesus.

When he said her name, “Mary,” she realized who he was and rushed to embrace him.

The discovery of the resurrection.

It strikes me that there are so many assumptions people made on that first Easter Sunday. The first and the easiest and, frankly, the one that makes the most sense, is that everybody assumed that Jesus had died — as he had — but that he continued to be dead as he hadn’t.

That would be the assumption they were most grateful to find was incorrect.

Mary ran back to the city to find Simon Peter and the disciple that Jesus loved, assuming that they could do something to help. As, of course, they could not. Mary assumed that these words she was hearing weren’t meaningful to her, as they were. Jesus [Ed. Correction: Mary] assumed that this other person moving around the garden had to be a worker and she was wrong again.

And as glad to be wrong as ever a person was glad to be wrong.

The story of the discovery of Easter, the learning of the resurrection, the realization of what had happened: doesn’t it say something to us about the assumptions that we make about the world? How likely is it that the things that we firmly believe turn out to be wrong?

Perhaps the world is a more wondrous and miraculous place than we have let ourselves imagine.

Is not the world one in which Jesus of Nazareth lives again?

Happy Easter to you.

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.