Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Spirit in Everyone

June 3, 2025

When the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, it came to a much bigger group than expected.

Here’s a transcript:

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, so I’m thinking about the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-21, Luke’s account of the first Christian Pentecost.

Pentecost is originally a Jewish holiday, so Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem were already gathered and prepared to celebrate God’s gift of the Law. As Luke describes it, there came the sound of a mighty wind. They saw something that looked a little bit like flames dancing upon their heads. Most importantly, they went out into the streets and started to tell the story of God’s love in Jesus Christ. They spoke that story in languages that they did not understand, but that countless others around them did.

When they were challenged about being drunk early in the morning, Simon Peter got up and quoted the prophet Joel that men and women, young and old, would see visions and dream dreams. Today, said Peter, these things have been accomplished before you.

In various places throughout the Scriptures it is said that God’s spirit is rare, selective, uncommon. It was the experience of the early Christians that God’s spirit was present, not just to some, but to all. To the young, who might be disregarded. To the old, who might be discounted. To the men (frankly, we tend to expect men, if anybody, to be filled with the Spirit). And to the women, who we still, to this day, tend to doubt whether they have the capacity to receive God’s Spirit.

Joel said they would. Peter said they did. The experience of the church for the last two thousand years says that they do.

Young and old, men and women, see visions and dream dreams.

It is the task of the Church to try to understand the visions and dreams. It is the task of the Church to discern the meaning of what our men and our women, of what our youth and children, of what our kupuna say that they have seen or dreamed. It is not the task of the Church to say through whom God will speak. God has made it clear but that can and will be anyone.

It is up to us to listen.

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

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner

Pastor’s Corner: People are Different

July 24, 2024

People are different.

I doubt this statement surprises you at all. Parents, siblings, friends, children, all the people we’ve known in our lives: they’ve all been different. Personalities, tastes, the curve of an eyebrow or the crinkle at the eyes when they smile all testify to the variety of humanity.

I’m thinking of someone I knew once who was always open to reconsidering a decision.

We worked on a project together, and by and large we worked together pretty well. It required a lot of our time and a lot of our effort, and it required so many little decisions along the way.

Some people really enjoy the experience that comes before a decision. They like to review the possibilities, “taste” the variety of outcomes. Others find that an uncomfortable place to be. They like to come to a decision, make it, and move on – while those in the first group fret about missed opportunities.

Personally, I’m so much in the middle that I joke that I don’t care whether I’ve made a decision or not. My partner, however, was firmly among that first group of people. As much as I like to look at options, I also prefer to stick with a decision once made (unless it’s clearly not working out). At one point in our project, of course, my partner reopened the conversation about a choice we’d already made. “But we decided that,” I said. “All decisions are tentative,” he replied.

The ”moral” of this story is not that I was right, and he was wrong. Nor was he right and I wrong. We each worked according to our customs and comfort. It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes it rubbed one or the other the wrong way.

And we still managed to work together and produced something pretty amazing. People can do that, even when they’re very different.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Home Undivided

I’m thinking about the third chapter in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 3:20-35). At this point in his account, Mark has described the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry, some of the opposition that began to develop, but especially the degree to which people were attracted to Jesus: to his teachings, and also to seek healing for their ailments and illnesses.

As this passage opens, Jesus had returned to his home in Capernaum. So many people surrounded the house, said Mark, that Jesus was not even able to eat. Some of those who were suspicious of his teachings accused him of casting out demons by the power of demons. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” Jesus replied. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

1800 years later an American politician would quote those words, and we tend to remember them more because he said them, than because Jesus did. Nevertheless, Jesus may have been first. Jesus quoted a lot, so it’s hard to tell.

Unity is a challenging thing in the Christian Church. Unity in first century Judaism was not to be found. There were significant differences between fairly substantial and organized branches of Jewish teaching and thought: Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes. Jesus himself represented a particular tradition within the Pharisaic tradition. He taught an awful lot like what is recorded of Rabbi Hillel, who had spoken some 50 to 60 years before.

But although they argued, they lived together in reasonable amity — at least until the rebellion came — and that kind of unity, that ability to live with one another’s differences, that ability to appreciate one another for who they are regardless of where they may fall on particular questions: that was a characteristic that made for endurance of what were otherwise pretty challenging conditions in the first century.

Here in the 21st century we once more experience challenging conditions. We have perhaps emerged from a lengthy global pandemic (I’ve seen that there are some warnings that illness may rise once more this coming year). In the United states we are faced with significant political challenges. And the entire world faces, whether they acknowledge it or not, the realities of a changing climate and its effects upon agriculture, upon transportation, upon literally where one can build a home.

A house divided against itself cannot stand, said Jesus, and we have seen the truth of that assertion time after time after time over the centuries. How can we, how will we, live with one another and appreciate one another for who we are? How will we attempt to correct the mistaken views which some will inevitably have? How will we correct our own mistaken views when others bring new information to us?

Unity without diversity is simple tyranny. But diversity without some sense of unity, well, that leads to inevitable conflict, and conflict that can get terribly, terribly serious. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Let us not divine our home.

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.