Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: The Moment of Recognition

April 19, 2026

Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Luke 24:17-35

We come to this story on the third Sunday of the Easter season. We’re in a “move on” kind of place. Jesus rose two weeks ago, after all. Last Sunday we heard about events a week later – that’s convenient timing, isn’t it? So we’re ready for the next part of the story.

And today, the dear editors of the Revised Common Lectionary have brought us right back to Easter morning when uncertainty, anxiety, and fear dominated the minds of Jesus’ disciples. The Rev. Barbara Messner captured it beautifully in her poem “You on the Road to Emmaus” on her BarbPoetPriest blog:

Sometimes all you can do is
walk away:
away from the crosses on a hill
and a tomb whether empty or not,
away from your failures as followers
and the loss of your hope and purpose,
away from overwhelming emotion,
that sink hole of anger, grief and fear.

Rev. Barbara Messner

It’s worth remembering that, on Easter morning, Jesus’ closest friends didn’t expect his resurrection. The Gospel writers all report that Jesus had told them, not once but repeatedly, and that they simply didn’t get it. Every Easter account emphasizes what a deeply surprising event it was.

As we join Cleopas and his unnamed companion, they had left Jerusalem with an initial destination of Emmaus. As Katherine Shaner writes at Working Preacher, “Cleopas and his companion were likely very scared about their future. They had seen the brutality of which the Romans were capable. They were not the most immediate targets of this Roman cruelty, but they were attuned to the stories of those who were. They were probably trying to figure out what to do next.”

Emmaus probably wasn’t their ultimate goal. They may not have had one in mind. Just – get out of the city, away from the priests, away from the Romans.

Cleopas and his friend had stayed in Jerusalem long enough that morning to hear that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and some other women (Luke wasn’t clear about how many) had found the tomb open and empty. They’d heard that two figures in white (angels?) had told the women Jesus was alive. They’d even heard that Simon Peter had visited the tomb himself, finding no angels but also no body of Jesus.

Frankly, the likeliest possibility was that the Romans had decided not to let Jesus rest in peace. Desecration of corpses was one of the options for humiliating a defeated foe or condemned rebel – which was how they regarded Jesus. Most of Jesus’ male disciples disregarded the women’s account of angels. They called it an “idle tale,” according to Luke.

All in all, Cleopas and his friend were taking the smart road away from the city where an active campaign against Jesus was likely to start taking in his followers, too.

And then they met Jesus.

Christians reading Luke have spent the last nearly two thousand years trying to understand why Jesus’ two disciples didn’t recognize him. Greg Carey offers at Working Preacher, “I find it more compelling to believe it is the disciples’ expectations that prevents their recognition. This is not the context they expected for an encounter with Jesus.” Michal Beth Dinkler writes, “What if the disciples cannot recognize Jesus because their opinions are already fully formed? Like all humans, their assumptions shape what they talk about, and what they talk about shapes what they see.”

Honestly, I’m not sure it makes a difference. Biblical writers often mention that recognizing the risen Jesus is harder than you’d think. Luke himself, in the next portion of this chapter, wrote that Jesus’ appearance to his gathered disciples terrified them. They thought he was a ghost. Mary Magdalene imagined he was a gardener. The Apostle Paul, felled to the ground by a bright light, had to ask, “Who are you, Lord?”

I think that’s our experience as well. Recognizing the risen Jesus isn’t easy. The world is complicated and quick-moving. People raise up all sorts of things as good and condemn other things as evil. There are theologies that assert that God directly commands some wars, and there are theologies that claim that God condemns all wars. There are theologies that say that wealth and power are signs of virtue, and there are theologies that say that God prefers the poor. There are theologies that say only a few will be received into God’s realm, and there are theologies that say that everyone will be welcomed into heaven.

With such a range and so many possibilities in between, how do we recognize the risen Jesus?

For hundreds of years, Christians have celebrated a triumphant Jesus. Western art has often shown Jesus trampling demons beneath his feet. John Milton’s Paradise Lost opens with an account of a mysterious Christ figure defeating the legions of Satan. The Emperor Constantine, the first to be baptized a Christian (just a few days before he died, but he was), reportedly carried a shield marked with the Chi Rho, the first two letters of Christ, into the Battle of Milvian Bridge. Later on Christian rulers and even religious leaders would go into battle bearing Christian symbols. Bishops eventually encouraged the Crusades, which brought so much death and suffering to the Middle East and poisoned relations between Muslims and Christians to this very day.

Triumphant Jesus seems very curious to me, given that he went to his death without resistance. Triumphant Jesus seems very curious to me, given that the word “triumph” appears only three times in the New Testament, and never in reference to military success. James used it to write, “Mercy triumphs over judgement.”

I think there’s a better possibility in Christ the healer. For Mark the Gospel writer, Jesus’ power to heal and willingness to heal marked him as the Anointed One. It’s worth observing again that in Mark, Jesus instructed those who had been healed to praise God for it and not himself. The point was their wellness, not Jesus’ own reputation. Far more than triumph, I think you’re more likely to find the risen Christ when healing has taken place.

Then there’s Christ the teacher. “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures,” Luke wrote. All four of the Gospel writers made sure to emphasize the power, the wisdom, and especially the truth of Jesus’ teachings. They worked to support them with Scripture, sometimes as Jesus had done, and sometimes because they’d found those Bible references themselves. As a child of a Galilean village, Jesus grew up in an environment in which proper religious practice was based on knowing the Scriptures, considering the different ways they might be interpreted, engaging in spirited discussion of different ways to act based upon them, and choosing what you do and how you live based on those learnings and conversations. Honestly, shouldn’t Cleopas and his friend have recognized him right there? That’s what they were used to. That’s what they’d been hearing Jesus do. They even wondered at how they’d missed it. “Were not our hearts burning within uswhile he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

That’s not what did it, though, was it?

Eric Barreto writes at Working Preacher, “For Luke, however, Jesus is most Jesus at a quotidian table, at an ordinary meal infused with significance because of the people gathered around the food. Jesus is there at this table but so also all the sinners and tax collectors with whom Jesus shared meals… So, it’s instructive that it’s not his teaching that open their eyes. It’s not his presence. It’s his sharing of bread with his friends. It’s his blessing of food. In this sharing of bread at an ordinary table, we catch a glimpse of Jesus’ transformative kingdom.”

The moment of recognition came when they were fed.

Our moment of recognition comes when we are fed.

Others’ moment of recognition comes when they are fed.

As Mahatma Ghandi said, “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

I think it’s about more than the deep hunger of extreme poverty. I think that the setting of a meal, of a table, is one in which relationships get formed and strengthened – also, I grant you, it can be a place where arguments and conflicts get formed and aggravated. When we feed one another, we at least begin in a space of caring, of compassion, of love and sharing.

When Jesus broke the bread for his two not-so-observant friends that day, he broke through to their hearts. They knew their minds had been expanded. They knew their bodies would be satisfied. Now they knew also that the one who had done that was the One in whom they had hoped, alive again beyond hope, alive again beyond despair.

“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.”

May we always recognize Jesus at the table, in the breaking of the bread.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally.

The image is The Supper at Emmaus by an Anonymous Genoese painter, active in the second half of the 17th-century – Acervo de Obras de Arte Europeia em Coleções Brasileiras (Plus Ultra): info; image, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30310751.

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 Sermons

Sermon: Not Any of These

March 15, 2026

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14

I learned something new this week. I learned about “Dark dining.” This is a restaurant where you eat with all the lights off. The idea is to focus your attention on the tastes and scents of the food. Thinking about one of these restaurants, Biblical scholar Roger Nam writes at Working Preacher, “Without the crutch of vision, textures, flavors, temperatures, and nodes of taste are enlightened. It is amazing how the deliberate restriction of sight may enhance a dining experience!”

And that, says Dr. Nam, is the way Samuel found himself approaching the task of identifying God’s chosen successor to Saul, the first King of Israel. He continues: “I wonder how much our own sight blinds us to God’s wishes, and prevents us from truly experiencing God’s intent. Perhaps the occasional experience of blindness can remind us how the gift of sight may prevent us from seeing the heart of God… 1 Samuel 16 implores us that sometimes we only need to deliberately close our eyes to see what God wants us to see.”

“[Samuel] looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely his anointed is now before the LORD.’ But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’”

As you can probably tell from the beginning of the text, things were complicated in Israel. Samuel had anointed Saul as the first King of Israel possibly as little as two years before. God and Samuel hadn’t been enthusiastic about replacing the system of judges with a monarch, but the Israelites had been hard pressed by raids and military incursions from their neighbors, and the people demanded a reliable, consistent leadership. Samuel, at God’s direction, had chosen Saul. It wasn’t long, however, before Saul began to do things he wasn’t empowered to do, such as offer sacrifices, and he failed to do things he was supposed to do. Samuel confronted Saul about it and informed him that God had rejected him.

It seems from the Samuel’s concerns about his safety at the beginning of this passage, and the trembling question of the leaders of Bethlehem – “Do you come peaceably?” – that everybody knew that the King and the prophet were at odds.

What he was doing, of course, was setting up the nation for a lengthy civil war. That’s the best name for it. As you might remember, Saul and David worked as a team for several years. David even married one of Saul’s daughters. A day came, however, when the relationship fractured into open conflict. As Patricia Tull writes at Working Preacher, “Samuel secretly anoints him [David] as God’s chosen future king while Saul is still reigning, and for the next fifteen chapters, that is, most of the story, the conflict between the two kings Samuel has anointed, a conflict neither of them created, balloons from rivalry and jealousy to deadly hostility: the recognized king of Israel, who still had a following, periodically determined to destroy his hidden heir, who time after time eludes his grasp.”

King Saul: Not this one.

God guided Samuel to the sons of Jesse, a respectable resident of Bethlehem. Samuel asked to meet the young men one at a time, or at least the authors presented it as something of a parade, with each one “passing by” in turn. The first was the eldest, Eliab, and Samuel thought he looked like a likely candidate for king: tall and good looking. God chimed in, however, to say, “I have rejected him, for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

If God told Samuel what was in the heart that disqualified Eliab, the story doesn’t say. We only know that Eliab got angry at David later on for asking an embarrassing question – which is, I’m afraid, the usual fate of younger siblings who ask questions that embarrass their older siblings. Was that it?

My guess is, probably not.

Eliab: Not this one.

Then son number two: Abinadab. And: Not this one.

Son number three: Shammah. Not this one.

After that the storytellers ran out of names, because four more young men were run by the prophet, and four more young men were rejected.

Not any of these.

But now Samuel was out of candidates.

It turns out there was one more, one whose utility as a shepherd outweighed the prophet’s request to meet all Jesse’s sons. That was David, of course. You’ve heard the story read, and you’ve heard it before. God told Samuel, “This is the one.”

Not any of these.

This one.

Why?

That’s the crucial question, isn’t it? We don’t know what God saw in the heart of Eliab or the other six brothers that disqualified them. We also don’t know what God saw in the heart of David to qualify him. What made him a good potential king? What made the others less good – we don’t actually know they’d have been bad – what made them less suitable candidates than the youngest of Jesse’s sons?

The closest we can come is to look at what David did after his anointing. What qualities did he show? What did his behavior say about what was in his heart?

The first virtue, I have to say, was compassion. The very next story, wrapping up this chapter, tells how David became a member of King Saul’s entourage. Saul suffered from some kind of mental health ailment, described as “an evil spirit.” Music soothed him, and the musician was David.

The story told in the next chapter of First Samuel is David and Goliath. There are a lot of things you can learn about David in that, but the first and foremost is that he was brave. There are a lot of ways to show courage. David displayed many of them.

Another virtue David displayed repeatedly was loyalty. His friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan is iconic. The two maintained a relationship even when King Saul sought David’s life. Further, David, even as a rebel, remained oddly loyal to Saul himself. There are two stories of David having the opportunity to kill King Saul, and refusing to “raise his hand against the LORD’s anointed.”

Finally, David showed a quality that Saul so lacked that it was what provoked God and Samuel to anoint him in the first place. David displayed a trust in God and a humility before God that clearly separated him from his predecessor. Saul assumed that his status as king gave him priestly powers. David routinely asked God about the things he should do. His relationship with God governed his decisions far more than Saul. David’s relationship with God was further recorded in the psalms he wrote. They reveal a trust and faith that even the storytellers of First Samuel could not fully describe.

What David did not possess, the virtue of the heart that God did not discern, was perfection. It would be nice if he had, because the stories of his reign would be different. But it’s also a relief, isn’t it? God isn’t looking for people who make no mistakes. God is looking for people who are brave, but not always. God is looking for people who care, but not for people who always know exactly what to do. God is looking for people who trust in God, but not people whose faith never falters.

God knows that people are people. God knows that people will fail from time to time.

What God wants is people who try, and try again, and try again.

What God also wants is for people not to be in positions where they cannot or will not fulfill their responsibilities. God wants the inclinations of the heart to be consistent with the roles they’re called to play. Those inclinations may change – that seems to have happened with Saul – but if they’re preventing someone from fulfilling their kuleana, it’s time to move on.

You and I might envy God that ability to see into the heart, but I’ll remind you that we are not so ignorant. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the poet Maya Angelou said, “My dear, when people show you who they are, why don’t you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are? Why can’t you get it the first time?”

May we be visible as people of good hearts the first time and the twenty-nine times after that. When God looks into us, may we not hear: “Not any of these.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while he preaches. The sermon you just read is not precisely as he delivered it.

The image is David Anointed King by Samuel, Dura Europos synagogue painting (3rd cent.), reworked by Marsyas. Yale Gilman collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5107843.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Refreshment

When Jesus met a woman at a well in Samaria, it turned out that they both had something to offer to one another: Refreshment.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 4:5-42): the conversation between Jesus and a woman he met at a well in Samaria.

The conversation started with Jesus’ simple request that she share some of the water she was drawing so that he could have a drink. It went from there to matters much deeper — deeper even than the well, if you like. It went to spiritual matters. It went even to the identity of the Messiah, the Deliverer, the one who was coming.

Unlike lots of other conversations, Jesus actually acknowledged to the woman that he was the Messiah.

The conversation was persuasive enough that she went back to the town and invited her neighbors to meet him. She said, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. He couldn’t be the Messiah — or could he? Come and see.”

It occurs to me that this story is about refreshment. It started with Jesus asking to be refreshed with the literal water to be drawn from the well. It continued with the refreshment that Jesus offered to this woman and to her neighbors: refreshment of the spirit.

He offered and delivered not just an acceptance, but also real valuing for her and for those around her, despite the fact that she was a Samaritan, despite the fact that she was a woman, despite the fact that there were a number of things that should have kept them distant from one another.

Yet they refreshed one another.

I think refreshment is a central activity, a central calling, a central obligation, if you like, of the life of faith. We are not simply here to be ourselves. We are here to support one another, to be a community, to be a family, if you like. In that family we refresh one another. We provide refreshment such as water, food, shelter. We provide refreshment emotionally and relationally. And when and how we can, we offer refreshment for the spirit: that living water of which Jesus spoke that flows through our very souls and renews our lives.

Refreshment.

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, Sermons

Sermon: The Mountain

February 15, 2026

Exodus 24:12-18
Matthew 17:1-9

In his documentary on the Darkness of the Renaissance, British art critic Waldemar Januszczak said, “Mountains have a powerful effect on people. Mountains cloud your judgment. They heighten your emotions and intoxicate you.” He’s right. The vistas from mountains – and the views of mountains – go right to the feelings. You find your breath catching, and not just because of the altitude.

We live at the foot of two of the earth’s great summits. I grant you that I’ve lived here not quite ten years, and most of you have lived here much longer than that, but I put it to you: have you ever looked up at Mauna Kea on a clear day and not felt something? Can Mauna Kea ever make you feel… nothing?

They make me feel something. They catch me, heart and soul, every time.

But do they cloud our judgment? I’m less sure about that. I do know that a mountain makes me see things in a different way. That can be quite literal, when I’m at the mountain summit and seeing the world as I can’t see it from the mountain’s foot. It’s also emotional. There I am, feeling at the top of the world, and not just from lack of oxygen.

I can feel at one and the same time both the greatest of all living beings and one of the small creatures I can’t even see far down the slopes.

Mountaintops are powerful. That’s true. They bring us away from the day-to-day of human living. They show us grandeur that’s beyond us. At the same time they place this grandeur in the palms of our hands.

I suspect that Simon Peter, James, and John anticipated something like that when they climbed the mountain with Jesus. They looked to see the glory of Creation stretching out below them. They expected to gasp air in deep breaths after the exertion of the climb. They probably hoped to hear something new from Jesus, whom they’d just acclaimed as Messiah (and been scolded for misunderstanding what Jesus meant by Messiah) six days before. Top of the world.

They got more than they’d bargained for. Jesus glowed like the sun. The two greatest religious leaders of ancient Israel stood there with Jesus: Moses who’d freed the people from Egypt and delivered God’s Law, and Elijah who’d maintained the faith against hostile monarchs and been carried away to God without dying. The Messiah, people whispered, would be a prophet like Moses. The Messiah, people whispered, would be heralded by Elijah returned.

“It is interesting,” writes D. Mark Davis at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “that neither the transformation of Jesus, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, nor the bright light evoked fear in the disciples. Hearing the voice out of the clouds is what did them in.”

We don’t usually collapse at the top of a mountain – well, except to catch our breath from the climb. In fact, I usually find that the sight energizes me, lifts me up. I move about from place to place to take in the view in all directions. Mountaintops inspire. They rarely overwhelm.

Booming voices from clouds overwhelm. I’d have been overwhelmed. Without doubt. But as Rev. Davis says, all the strange and overwhelming things before that didn’t overcome them. Unusual? Yes. Unexpected? I wouldn’t have expected it. Frightful? No. I think there’s even a hint that, like the simple view from a mountaintop, the disciples found the experience inspiring as well as awe-inspiring. If I understand Peter’s offer to make shelters correctly, they were prepared to extend the inspiring experience, to learn more, to plan more, to prepare themselves for the work they’d undertake when they returned to the mountain’s foot.

Unsurprisingly, significant religious experiences in people’s lives tend to be called “mountaintop experiences.” Those experiences don’t have to happen on mountains. Plenty of them don’t. But like experiences on mountains, including most of the Transfiguration, they tend to inspire, not overwhelm.

Listen to that again. Most of the time, when God reaches out to someone, God doesn’t overwhelm them. God inspires them.

Mountaintop experiences aren’t necessarily visions of glory accompanied by angelic music and words of thunder. Mountaintop experiences are the ones that make a difference to your soul.

Mountaintop experiences are the ones that make a difference to your soul.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “…as long as I can remember, I’ve measured the depth and ‘success’ of my faith by the number of mountaintop experiences I can truthfully claim.  Have I ‘felt the Spirit’ in Sunday morning worship?  Has Jesus ‘spoken’ to me?  Have I seen visions?  Spoken in tongues?  Encountered God’s living presence in my dreams?

“Most of the time, the answer is ‘no.’  Which means I’ve spent most of my life feeling like a spiritual failure.”

Without commenting on the rightness or wrongness of the feeling – feelings, as I’ve noted before, happen whether they reflect external reality or not – I’ve never found Ms. Thomas a spiritual failure. Given how often I quote her in sermons, I’ve found her to be a significant spiritual guide. She’s described here a fairly widespread notion that spiritual success equates to overwhelming spiritual experiences. And… it doesn’t.

Spiritual success, I think, takes place when we pay attention to our experiences of God, whether they’re grand or subtle, and let them change our path.

As Audrey West writes at Working Preacher, “Then and now, the full meaning of a mountaintop experience may not become clear until after the return to the valley, after the passage of time. After they come down from the mountain, the disciples listen, as the voice has instructed: they hear Jesus’ parables, they hear his response to friends and foes, they hear his repeated references to the Son of Humanity.”

“Listen to him,” thundered the voice from the cloud. That overwhelmed Peter, James, and John, but it’s also the central theme of Matthew’s Gospel. Listen to Jesus. Each occasion of listening to Jesus is, to some degree, a mountaintop experience. It has the ability to transform us. It has the ability to redirect us. It has the ability to inspire us.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Are you inspired?

“Blessed are the peacemakers.” Are you inspired?

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Are you inspired?

“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Are you inspired?

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Are you inspired?

I know you’ve been inspired, somewhere, somehow, by something. Why? You’re here. I have plenty of illusions about myself, but I’m pretty sure you can find things to do on Sunday morning that you’d enjoy more than dreading one of my puns coming along. But you’re here. You made the time. You made the effort. Why?

You’ve been inspired. Maybe you’re hoping for some more inspiration, but you’ve already been inspired.

It doesn’t happen every day, as you know. As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “This makes me think that perhaps the experience wasn’t given to the disciples so that they could cling to it. Perhaps it was given to them so that they could practice letting go. On the difficult path ahead, they are going to have to let go of Jesus again and again. Here they are asked to let go of even a vision so profound that it was called ‘transfiguration.’

“Maybe living with the coming and going of clouds incapsulates this lesson daily. ‘And thus I saw him and I sought him,’ Julian of Norwich writes. ‘And I had him and I lacked him.’ This isn’t something to mourn, she counsels, but is instead ‘the common working of this life.’ We glimpse God, and then God goes behind a cloud. In this way, we learn to love rather than cling.”

I’d add that we learn to love rather than puppet. We learn to love of our own initiative rather than depending on ongoing inspiration. We’re inspired for a moment. We’re changed in a moment. We move forward from there… and continue to learn, grow, change, and love in each place we go, no matter how far from the mountain.

As Maren Tirabassi wrote this week in a comment on ordainedgeek.com, “And so life-changing experiences are not really life-changing, just moment-changing and that always must be enough.”

It must, and it is. Those moments for each of you brought you to this moment. This moment may not inspire you that much, and if it doesn’t I apologize, since that is sort of the point of this exercise, but these moments, these experiences, they lead to new moments, new experiences, and if not all of them have the power of mountaintop moments, they all have power, they all give direction, they all inspire.

In these continuing moments, we follow Jesus. In these continuing moments, we love.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons ahead of time, but he makes changes while preaching, so the text prepared does not match the sermon as preached.

Photo of the summit of Mauna Kea by Eric Anderson.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Mountaintop

Jesus and three of his disciples had a mountaintop experience of God’s presence and love. Can we bring our mountaintop experiences into our troubled times?

Here’s a transcript:

This Sunday is the last one before the beginning of Lent. That makes it Transfiguration Sunday, so I’m thinking about the seventeenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 17:1-9), Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration.

Jesus went up a mountain with his three closest friends: Peter, James, and John. While they were there, Jesus began to glow with some kind of inner light. Two other figures joined them on the mountain that they recognized as Moses and Elijah. Simon Peter offered to build some shelter and prolong the moment. A voice from a cloud, however, said that “This is my beloved son: Listen to him.” A moment later, the cloud was gone, the light was gone, Moses and Elijah were gone, and Jesus was saying to Peter, James, and John, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”

The Transfiguration of Jesus is a mystery. It has been a mystery since those first three disciples experienced it (alongside Jesus, of course). It was a mystery to them as they continued to follow him through Galilee and on to Jerusalem. I’m sure it was a mystery to those that they first told about it after Jesus’ resurrection. It was a mystery to Matthew, Mark, and Luke as they recorded it in their Gospels. And it’s been a mystery to all the rest of us over the centuries who have read it and sought to understand it — especially to those of us who have to preach about it.

We usually call significant religious experiences “mountain top experiences” based, in part, on this example from the Scriptures (there are other examples in the Scriptures as well). Mountains tend to be places where people have significant religious experiences, but they can have them in other places.

The point is that great epiphanies, great revelations of the heart and mind of God, are rare. We, most of the time live with the guidance we receive from Scripture, or from what we’ve been taught, from the example of other people around us. It’s not that common for a voice to sound from a cloud and say, “This is my beloved son: Listen to him.”

But most of us have something like that in our lives, some moment faith touched us more deeply than it had before, some kind of mountaintop experience unique to each one of us.

Hold on to the mountain top experience. Remember to bring its assurance down into the valley, not because the mountaintop experience makes you right about everything else, but because the mountaintop experience reminds you of the ever-present grace and love of God.

The first thing that Jesus said to his friends after that overwhelming experience was, “Do not be afraid.” Friends, I think that is what mountaintop experiences are for. When we’re down in the valleys and things are not going well, we can recall what we experienced that went so deep.

And in that memory we do not need to be afraid.

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, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Promise and Fulfillment

Transcript 1/27/2026

In the Beatitudes, Jesus said that people who were suffering were also blessed. It takes time to appreciate God’s presence.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about one of the best known passages in one of the best remembered sections of all the Scriptures. I’m thinking about the Beatitudes, which open the Sermon on the Mount in the fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 5:1-12).

I’m sure you’ll recognize probably most of these words:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

Familiar, I’m sure. Familiar and comforting. Jesus, I’m sure, intended them to be comforting, but they are comforting in a way that looks forward. They are less comforting in the now. Although Jesus described all of the people having these experiences as “blessed” and blessed in the here and now, the blessings that he associated with these conditions…

So, for example, the blessings for the poor in spirit: Theirs is the Kingdom of heaven, Jesus said. Well, we may own the Kingdom of heaven if we are poor in spirit, but those who are poor in spirit — at least any time that I’ve felt poor in spirit I’ve not been able to perceive even my presence in the Kingdom of heaven, let alone that the Kingdom of heaven was mine. When I was mourning, it took some time before I could appreciate and settle into the comfort. And that’s true for pretty much all of these.

When we are in those conditions of suffering, of sorrow, of loss, of oppression, we are still awaiting the fulfillment of Jesus’ promises. Even that very famous one — blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy — well, all too frequently the merciful are paid with oppression, and suffering, even death. Mercy, it seems comes later.

I don’t think Jesus meant for his followers to always be looking ahead for the fulfillment of his promises. I think he meant for us to understand that we are always accompanied by God. We are always held by God. We are always relieved in our trials by God.

But there is a step between the experience and the realization of God’s presence and strength and mercy. That gap, to some degree, is just natural humanity. When we are in the midst of struggle or trial, I’m not sure it’s possible to fully appreciate God’s presence. Our attention is focused on what we feel, and what we feel is bad. I think what Jesus encourages us to do in the Beatitudes is to expand our awareness from that which is most evident in the moment, to expand our awareness to the presence of God that always was, always is, and always will be there.

Then we can appreciate the comfort. Then we can experience the Kingdom of heaven. Then we can know we are held in the arms of mercy.

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, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: The Core of Christianity

As Matthew described it, Jesus began his ministry by teaching the good news of God’s realm, summoning people together into it, and bringing people healing. This is the core of Christianity.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 4:12-23), his account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

That ministry began when John was arrested. Jesus returned to the region of the Galilee. He then went and recruited the first of his disciples — Peter and Andrew, James and John — from where they had been fishing in the sea of Galilee. He taught in the synagogues. He proclaimed the good news of the Realm of God, and he cured the sick, any who came to him with some kind of a disease.

I think you can argue that this is the essence, not just of Jesus, but of Christianity. It is founded in the teaching (and the teaching of what?): the teaching of Good News, the teaching of God’s nearness, the teaching of God’s forgiveness, the teaching of God’s love.

And how do we express that love? We express it through healing, through comfort, through gathering people together, through building a better society, a better world.

There are so many ways to understand “Messiah,” “Anointed One.” The most obvious ones are to connect anointing with the creation of the monarch, or the appointment of a general, the selection of a leader of war. But Jesus, though he was the Messiah, simply didn’t go in any of those directions. He accepted baptism rather than an anointing with oil. He brought healing rather than war. He preached good news rather than condemnation. He spoke of repentance in order that people would find their way to full participation in the Realm of God.

“Come with me and I’ll make you fish for people,” he said to those first four followers. Fish for people not so that they might be consumed, but so that they might thrive.

This is the essence of Christianity: Teaching. Teaching good news. Summoning people together. And seeing that as many as we can find their healing.

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, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: The ‘Apapane’s Christmas Pageant


I don’t know how it came into the ‘apapane’s head to organize a Christmas pageant. I don’t even know how he’d heard about Christmas, let alone a Christmas pageant. Nevertheless, he flew all over the island, searching for creatures to take part in the pageant.
He asked the I’iwi, who was feeling grumpy that day and didn’t say yes, or no, or anything at all.

He asked the ‘io, which was very brave of him. The ‘io said she might come and looked… hungry.

He flew down to the shoreline to ask the honu. She said no, she wasn’t going to swim up to the mountain forest, which seemed fair. A house sparrow said he might fly up after he’d finished his bath.

A saffron finch thought it sounded odd but said he might hang around for it. The ‘apapane asked a yellow-billed cardinal and a myna. They both looked doubtful, and then the myna started an argument with some other mynas that wasn’t over when he left to talk to more shorebirds.

The auku’u looked puzzled, but said he’d come. “I’m coming, too,” announced a kolea. “I’ve flown thousands of miles for this. I wouldn’t miss it.”

“If the kolea is coming, I’m coming, too,” piped up an ‘akekeke, and a hunakai said the same.
The koa’e kea announced that she would play Mary, because didn’t Mary have a long tail? The ‘apapane wasn’t sure, so he didn’t argue. An ala’e ke’oke’o asked if there was a good fish pond up in the forest, and when he was told there wasn’t, looked skeptical.

The ae’o said she might turn up. If she felt like it. If she didn’t have anything else to do. The cattle egret said, of course he’d be there. One of his ancestors had been present at the original birth, hadn’t she?

The ‘apapane left the shorebirds to spread the word further and returned to the forest. The oma’o stopped singing barely long enough to say, “Yes.” The ‘alawi just looked nervous and kept hunting insects without saying anything.

He searched long and hard for an ‘akiapola’au, who asked, “What’s that all about?” After listening to the ‘apapane’s explanation, he gave a whistle and flew off into the forest. The nene just stared at him.

When it was pageant time, it was chaos. Creatures stepped into the clearing the ‘apapane had selected, then faded back into the trees again. Frightened chirps flew back and forth, and so did frightened birds. Mejiro and ‘elepaio peeped out from the trees. The mynas announced that they would be the angel chorus, then exploded into another argument.

“What do you need to settle down and play your parts?” shouted the ‘apapane from a tree.

“Is the ‘io here?” asked an ‘amakihi. “Yes,” said the ‘io from the sky overhead. “Are you going to eat us?” asked the ‘amakihi. For a moment there was silence. Then the ‘io said, “No. Not today. Today there’s a pageant to do.”

The ‘apapane spent the next hour answering the questions. The koa’e kea had just flown in from a lava fountain, and since she wanted to play Mary, she did. A kioea had flown up from the shore and wanted to play Joseph. “You’re a rare bird,” said the ‘apapane, so he did. The little ‘elepaio played shepherds while the nene played sheep. The I’iwi didn’t want to cheer up, so he played the grumpy innkeeper. The sleeping pig was cast as a sleeping cow and did it very well.

High overhead the ‘io provided the voice of Gabriel, while ‘apapane, ‘amakihi, mejiro, and mynas sang as the angel chorus. Seabirds and shorebirds took places as creatures of the stable.

When the time came, birds from other shores – a northern cardinal, a red junglefowl, and a pair of zebra doves – played the magi.

The ‘akiapola’au lay just one egg and very rarely, so a young one played Jesus.

When it was over, the creatures vanished back into the trees, leaving the ‘apapane alone in the silence. He’d answered every question, met every need, somehow.

The trees rustled in the breeze, applauding the ‘apapene’s Christmas pageant.

Mele Kalikimaka!

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: What Did You Go Out to See?

December 14, 2025

Luke 1:46-55
Matthew 11:2-11

“What did you go out to see?” Jesus asked the crowds, referring to the ministry of John the Baptist. “A reed shaken by the wind?”

I rather like that image, even though I suspect, along with Biblical scholars, that I don’t really understand it. It’s probably a first century phrase that has long since fell out of regular use. But would you go out to see grass blowing in the wind? (Well, I might, but I’m a photographer and I’ve been known to take pictures of grass blowing in the wind.) I just imagine a somewhat large reed growing from the riverbank and giving off a low tone as the wind blows across it. Instead of the voice of the prophet, you’d get the voice of the wind and the reeds.

Now, I suppose you might prefer that to someone who greeted his visitors with “You brood of vipers!” But would that bring you out? Probably not. You might come out to see someone wealthy and showy – that describes most big concert performers, come to think of it. You’d go out for those. Lots of people do.

Neither musical grasses nor well-dressed people brought people out to see John the Baptist. As Jesus put it, they came out to see a prophet, and more than a prophet. They came to see one who might give them some hope for a radical change in their condition. They came out because they were poor, and were going to stay poor, and they hoped that someone could change that. They came out because they were treated at best with indifference by the rulers of their day and at worst – all too frequently at worst – with casual cruelty, and they hoped that God cared about that. They came out because they knew they weren’t living by the laws of Scripture, and they knew that they needed to seek God’s forgiveness. They came out because forgiveness through the Temple was expensive: they had to bring sacrifices. They came out because John said they would find forgiveness with a simple – and inexpensive – bath in the Jordan River.

It was concerns like that which brought them out to see Jesus, too. Jesus didn’t baptize, but he and John shared their basic message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It’s also possible that it was John’s arrest that prompted Jesus to begin his preaching ministry. According to Matthew 4, Jesus returned to Galilee after John was imprisoned.

Quite aside from their shared experience of John’s baptism, they shared a message and they shared an offered hope. They may even have shared some time and some conversation. Perhaps they made plans. If they did, Herod’s decision to imprison John interrupted them.

Whatever may have been the case between the two of them, each of them brought out the crowds, and I would guess that most of those in the crowds wanted the answer to some variant of the question John’s messengers brought to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” As James Boyce writes at Working Preacher, “Along with John we say, ‘Give us more data.’”

Well, what was the data?

There’s healing, and healing that restored people to their families and to their communities. Lacking sight, difficulties with mobility, the inability to hear, different kinds of diseases: all of these are conditions in which people can live with dignity and respect, contributing to those around them and to society as a whole. That was less true in the first century, when there was no Americans with Disabilities Act. Any of those people would have had to beg, which is a degrading way for people to survive, and those with some skin diseases would have been forced out of their homes entirely. Jesus acted not just to relieve people’s pain and suffering, he also acted to restore their relationships with others.

In our days, I have to tell you, we have all the power we need to maintain and even strengthen the relationships we have with people with challenges to sight, hearing, mobility, and overall health. Relatively few of us have the power to change the conditions of the body – with acknowledgement of the medical professionals among us – but all of us can treat people with full respect and honor their worth. We can welcome their contributions to our society and make the accommodations which permit them to live fruitfully. We can make sure that there are curb cuts on the streets at pedestrian walkways. We can, oh, I don’t know, use a font that is more easily read by a screen reader. We can set aside our prejudices and take up our commitment to regard all people as created in the image of God.

Karri Aldredge has a particular insight about good news and the poor. She writes at Working Preacher, “Of particular note is Jesus’ final statement: ‘The poor have good news brought to them.’

“This phrase is often interpreted as sharing the gospel with the poor. The Greek reads, more literally, that the poor are gospelized. They don’t just receive good news. They experience it. This reflects the long list of actions Jesus has just named. Those most vulnerable in society—like John in prison—receive the gospel not only through words but through actions and community relationships.”

I like that. In Jesus, the poor don’t just listen or hear. The poor get good newsed.

“Perhaps the work of Christ,” writes D. Mark Davis at leftbehindandlovingit, “is a way of resisting any system – whether imperial, political, medical, social, or religious – that de-humanizes and de-communalizes life. For many years I have had a definition of sin as ‘anything that is destructive of life and community.’ I think that definition and this description of what the reign of God through Christ looks like are very complementary.”

If that is the work of Christ – to bring humanity back to human beings, whether they have been oppressed by law, prejudice, illness, injury, custom, church, and death itself – if the work of Christ is to restore humanity to human beings, then that’s something worth coming out to see. That’s better than a well-dressed public figure. That’s better than a row of reeds singing on the wind.

What have you come out to see?

There are better things you could do with a Sunday morning. Think of all the things you could do to make yourself happy. Starting with sleeping late, for many of us, right? A nice leisurely start to a low-anxiety day, and low-anxiety days are precious, few and far between. There might be things you’d like to read, or craft projects that keep your mind and fingers engaged. You might experiment with some new delight, or take care of those nagging chores you didn’t get to during the week. Seriously. There are much better things you could be doing than sitting around listening to me.

Except.

If we’re here, we just might get some hints to the answer to that question: “Are you the One, Jesus?” We might just make a connection with that One. We might just deepen our relationship with that One over weeks and over years. We can’t count on these things strengthening steadily, no. John showed that. He baptized Jesus and he still had to ask that question when things went sideways for him. None of us live lives of faith without going through times of doubt and living through times of shadow.

So we’re here to be our messengers to ourselves, to ask John’s question for ourselves, to make that connection with Jesus and find out who he is for us and for all those around us. We keep trying, because, as Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “…who Jesus is is not a pronouncement.  Not a sermon, a slogan, or a billboard.  Who Jesus is is far more elusive, mysterious, and impossible-to-pin-down than we have yet imagined.  The reality of who Jesus is emerges in the lives of the plain, poor, ordinary people all around us.  We glimpse his reality in shadows.  We hear it in whispers.  It comes to us by stealth, with subtlety, over long, quiet stretches of time.”

What did you come out to see?

Whatever that might be, you saw the signs of the One who humanizes humanity. You heard it in the words we read. You experienced it in the welcome greetings that came from the others gathered here. You felt it in some movement of your soul, one which you may not be able to describe but which you know is real.

Here you have sought and found the signs of the Christ.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares the sermon text beforehand, but he makes changes while preaching. Sometimes they’re intentional; sometimes they’re not.

Photo of grass blowing in the wind by Eric Anderson.