Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Light of Wisdom

November 8, 2026

Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16
Matthew 25:1-13

Usually when Jesus told a story, he described a set of actions and characters that would be basically familiar to his listeners. A woman searching for a coin in her home. Day laborers looking for work. A sower scattering seed.

Here we have another familiar situation – wedding attendants waiting for the groom – that would have been familiar to anyone. The delay was probably pretty common, too. In thirty-eight years of ministry, I have never once had a wedding begin on time. We’re always waiting for somebody. The groom is late? Not a surprise.

Surprise, however, is important. O. Wesley Allen, Jr., writes at Working Preacher, “Parables by definition have a twist in them that is key to understanding the intended impact of the parable (for example, a tiny mustard seed becoming a great tree, when everyone knew there was no such thing as a mustard tree; Luke 13:18–19). That is a problem for this parable because our knowledge of ancient Jewish and Roman wedding practices is somewhat sketchy. It is difficult to know which elements in the parable reflect actual practices and which the original audience would have recognized as being twisted.”

I did officiate at a wedding once where all the bridesmaids carried lit candles, but I don’t think that’s relevant to Jesus’ story. That wedding didn’t start on time, either.

It’s the surprising moments that count in Jesus’ parables. It’s the departure from the expected, from the accustomed, that makes the teaching point.

Jesus described half of the women as wise, and half of the women as foolish. All ten came to meet the bridegroom on time. All ten brought lamps. All ten fell asleep as they waited. All ten awoke to the announcement that the groom was on his way.

Then the differences appeared. The five wise women had extra oil. The five foolish women didn’t. The five foolish wisdom asked the five wise women to share, and they said there wouldn’t be enough oil left. Then they suggested that the foolish women go wake up the oil sellers and buy more oil – at midnight. The foolish women took the suggestion, missed the procession they were supposed to be part of, and missed the wedding feast.

D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “Most first graders will wonder why the wise ones do not share. In the parable’s terms there is not enough oil to supply for all of them. The story does not suggest that the wise are being greedy or unhelpful.”

Is that the surprise? Is that the teaching point? I don’t think so. That’s the thing I’d expect a prudent and prepared person to do. “I brought extra. But everything is now so late that I don’t have enough extra for more than one lamp. If there’s to be enough light for the procession I’ve got to have it for my lamp.”

I’d say that. You’d probably say that, too.

But would I, would you, say at midnight, “Go buy oil”? I wouldn’t. At least, I wouldn’t if I liked you. Or if I liked the oil seller I’d just doomed to be awakened in the middle of the night. No. It makes no sense. It sounds vaguely wise, but I don’t think it is.

Off they went to buy oil. It was foolish not to have extra oil. I think it was probably more foolish to leave the place where the bridegroom was expected.

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “You’re more valuable than your oil supply. So stick around. As far as I can tell, the fatal mistake the five “foolish” bridesmaids make is that they leave. They assume that their oil supply is more important to the groom than their presence at his party. So they ditch the scene at its most crucial moment and go shopping, thus depriving themselves of a wonderful celebration, and depriving the bridegroom of their companionship, support, and love on his special day.”

They were foolish not to anticipate that the groom might be late, and to prepare for that. They were probably more foolish to leave as the crucial moment approached.

The ancient wisdom writers of Judaism, those who wrote the materials later collected in Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon we heard from today, those ancient writers liked to compare wisdom and light. For most human beings, light really helps them perceive and learn things. It’s hard to see in the dark. If you’re accustomed to dealing with the world mostly through your eyes, it’s helpful to have light.

People have said over the centuries that if you want to deal with the world, if you want to live a life of faith, it’s helpful to have wisdom.

What is the wisdom of this story?

For Matthew and the Christians he wrote his gospel for, one of the crucial learnings of this story was that the followers of Jesus had to anticipate a delay. They expected Christ’s return any day now, but forty odd years after Jesus’ resurrection, it hadn’t happened. As Kimberly R. Wagner writes at Working Preacher, “The ones who brought oil are labeled as ‘wise,’ not because they had some kind of predictive powers to know how much oil to pack. Instead, their wisdom was in being ready for a timetable that might be different than the one they would have preferred.” Two thousand years later, we’re pretty well reconciled to the idea that Jesus’ return might be imminent, but probably isn’t. Nevertheless, wisdom calls for preparation, for seeing that we have the resources to maintain our light for when it’s needed to illuminate the celebration.

So when you think about what your wisdom might be, think about the things that keep you alight. What keeps you energized and engaged? What equips you to help someone else? What fills you so that you can celebrate?

I think that’s why the oil couldn’t be shared. The things that maintain your spiritual light aren’t strictly sharable, are they? Someone can inspire you. Someone can guide you. But they can’t hand that energy to you. That’s something you summon yourself.

I think Debie Thomas is also right to tell us that we are important, you and I are important, more important than the light we may or may not be able to shine. Yes, it’s better if our lamps are lit, but our presence, even in shadow, is desired more than our absence to gather resources. If you don’t have the stuff to shine at the moment, that’s OK. Come to the party anyway. If you need to sit quietly in a corner to catch your breath, do that. But be in the celebration. When you’re ready to shine, you’re ready to shine.

As Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “Are our priorities aligned with God’s priorities, or are we so distracted with secondary concerns that we risk missing what is most important — the presence of Jesus in our midst?”

The presence of Jesus in our midst. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst. The very embodiment of wisdom in our midst. Are we prepared to look for wisdom, for the Spirit, for the Christ, in the world around us? Are we prepared to listen to the words of others, to delve into the Scriptures, to appreciate the beauty of Creation, to attend to the movements of our own soul, to discern the promptings of wisdom?

The presence of Jesus is one of the sources for filling your lamp. It’s not the only one, but it’s definitely one, and it might be one that can’t be duplicated. Wisdom “hastens to make herself known to those who desire her,” wrote the author of the Wisdom of Solomon. Jesus hastens to make himself known to those who desire his grace.

There’s also something that lies outside this parable proper. Matthew included a series of parables on this theme of waiting. What do you do while you wait?

In chapter 24, you don’t abandon your responsibilities and abuse your co-workers. Here in 25, you don’t leave the preparation to the last minute. The next story in this chapter is the one about two servants who actively worked to increase their master’s wealth, and one who hid it away. And finally there’s the story about the judgment, when some will be rewarded for showing compassion to their neighbors, and some will be rejected for withholding their support.

What is wisdom in the mind of Jesus? Letting your light shine in kindness, caring, and love.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Unfortunately, we were having technical problems on this day and the sound recording is very low. We regret the error.

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as presented.

The image is Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins by William John Wainwright (1899) – Art UK: entry parable-of-the-wise-and-foolish-virgins-33822, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46118588.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Preparation

What did Jesus repeatedly urge on his disciples in the last days of his ministry? Attention, awareness, and preparation.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 25:1-13)

It opens with Jesus’ story of the ten bridesmaids who came to light the way of the groom into the wedding banquet. They had brought lamps filled with oil in order to do so, but the groom was delayed. By the time he arrived, the oil supplies had depleted.

Five of them had brought additional oil. Five of them had not.

They went out to try to find some, but of course it was nighttime. When they had found some and returned, the festivities had begun, and they were not let in at the door. Be awake, said Jesus, because you do not know the day or the hour.

In that last week of his life, a number of Jesus’ parables concerned precisely this issue. Are you prepared for what is coming? Now, the parable itself does not describe what was coming. Jesus told other stories, said other things, about what that might be. But preparation, wakefulness, attention: that was what Jesus asked of his disciples in those last days.

In our days.

In any days.

It turns out that discipleship is not about withdrawing from the world, or rather it’s not about ignoring the world. We have to understand of the world, we have to be aware of the world, we have to be prepared for what the world might bring. Sometimes that will be good and sometimes that will be bad. Notice that these were people who were preparing, successfully or not, for a celebration, for a party, for a wonderful time.

Some of them were ready. Some of them thought they were ready and were not.

So pay attention dear friends, pay attention to the people around you and where they are and what they’re thinking and what they need and what they can share.

Pay attention to the community around you. What do the people there need? What can the people there do in order to come together as one?

Be aware of the world around you: its needs, its hopes, its resources, its promise.

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: Discomforting Words of the Prophet

During stressful times, the prophet Micah spoke words of challenge to those in power, warning them that their injustice risked the fate of the nation.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the third chapter of the prophet Micah (Micah 3:5-12).

Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah. Both of them lived in the city of Jerusalem during a period when the Assyrian Empire was extending its power to the west and to the south toward Egypt. That meant that the Jewish nations, Israel and Judah, were right in the way.

The people there trusted that God would preserve them. Micah said their trust was at least somewhat misplaced. Oh yes, God had promised to be with them through thick and thin, but they had made promises as well. And according to Micah, they had not kept them.

In particular, they had a rash of prophets that were declaring God’s faithful protection for them, while ignoring the way in which the nations had not kept their covenant with God. They were prophesying for money and for a bribe, said Micah. The political leadership was also taking bribes and perverting justice. They had established the city, he wrote, on blood.

Now, a nation whose leaders do such things, who enrich or empower themselves at the expense of their people, who pervert justice: itt does not take divine intervention for those countries to crumble. It takes time (and it may take quite a lot of time), but in the end nations which act against their own people will fall. It took, in fact, divine intervention not to crush the nation of Israel (Assyria did that) — it took divine intervention to preserve the nation of Judah and Assyrian army camped around them and then withdrew the siege because of an outbreak of illness. They read that as the intervention of God, an intervention prompted by a reform effort of a pious king named Hezekiah.

Later on in his book, Micah noted that God does not hold grudges or maintain anger forever. God yearns to show forgiveness and steadfast love. It still remains our responsibility to build and maintain communities of justice and compassion. It remains our responsibility because if we do not do so, our communities will dissolve of themselves.

But it is also our privilege and our joy to rely upon our God to forgive our errors and to restore us when we stumble. Just remember Micah’s most famous words, “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice and steadfast love and to walk humbly with your God.”

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you are 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: Greatest Commandments

According to Jesus, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor. Neither is easy. Both are necessary.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the end of the twenty-second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 22:34-46), which describes events during Holy Week, that last week before Jesus’ crucifixion.

Jesus had been teaching in the Temple. Somewhat more accurately, he had been responding to challenges from the established religious leadership gathered in the Temple. As this passage begins, Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees, most closely associated with the Temple leadership, when they had asked a question that they thought he could not answer.

At this point, the Pharisees stepped up and they asked him a question: Which is the greatest commandment?

Jesus actually answered this question — sometimes he answered questions with questions, but he answered this one. “The greatest is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.”

These are challenging commandments.

They also are found in more or less those words in the Law of the Old Testament. Jesus did not make these up.

Is it difficult to love God? It is difficult to love God with the thoroughness, with the commitment, with the loyalty of which Jesus spoke. And what about loving our neighbors as ourselves? In the passage in Leviticus from which Jesus quoted (Leviticus 19:15-18), there is more specificity to this commandment. To be protective of your neighbor, and also to correct your neighbor when they are in danger of infringing on the law.

How many of us are really willing to protect our neighbor against the dangers of the world? And how many of us will really dare risk that kind word to a neighbor to let them know that they are running afoul of trouble? Some of us do, and it’s a wonderful thing, and some of us hesitate, and it’s not such a wonderful thing.

Love God, love neighbor: the two greatest of the commandments. May we fully love one another and our maker.

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: Receive the Word with Joy

Paul complimented the Thessalonians for doing something so basic and so important: for receiving the word with joy. So may we.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:1-10). I’m actually thinking about the entire first chapter. Those ten verses are what is laid out as the passage for this coming Sunday in Revised Common Lectionary.

Paul’s custom when opening a letter was to compliment his readers, and First Thessalonians is no exception. The rest of the letter actually continued to be fairly light and loving. In some of his other letters, Paul had more difficult things to say to his correspondents. In First Thessalonians, the occasion for writing seems to have been that Paul was delayed. He had wanted and expected to come to visit. He had been prevented. And he wanted to let them know he was still on his way.

There is an interesting compliment that Paul paid them, which you might look at in a couple of different ways. He commended them for becoming imitators of us (Paul and his companions), and of the Lord (Jesus). For in spite of persecution, they had received the word with joy.

Becoming imitators of figures in the Bible can be a problem. There are plenty of attributes of Biblical heroes and heroines that I would love to imitate. And pretty much all of them have attributes that I would not care to imitate. That, in fact, includes Paul. The hubris, the pride, with which he commends them for imitating him, is probably not something that I should do, not something I should imitate.

There is, however, something that was a characteristic of Paul, and that he noticed in the Thessalonians, that I do want to imitate, and which I commend to you to imitate as well: to receive the word with joy.

It is too easy in religion, any religion, to follow the trails into all sorts of self-condemnation. Any religion has lots and lots of options for self-improvement, and in many cases, those are well-commended to you. But that’s not where we start.

We start with joy.

Paul was abundantly clear throughout his writing career and in all of his work with the churches, that God took the first step through Jesus to bring a new and deeper relationship with people —  relationship which was extended to people that nobody had thought could have that kind of relationship with God — to receive the word with joy.

So that is my advice for you today: to imitate Paul at least to that extent (try and skip the hubris). To imitate Jesus to that extent, because oh my goodness, what joy he could display in his relationship with God. Receive the word with joy and be grateful and exultant in the fact that God loves you.

Receive the word with joy and let the rest of your goodness follow from that.

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: How to Argue with God

October 11, 2026

Exodus 32:1-14
Matthew 22:1-14

You could argue that things had gone very well. Very well indeed. Better than anyone could have expected.

A large group of people – how many people is one of the things that Exodus scholars argue about – had escaped slavery in Egypt. Mass escapes from bondage are pretty rare in history, and successful escapes even rarer. Enslaved people from Africa called the Maroons successfully established and maintained regions in Jamaica in the 18th century. According to the National Geographic Society, some historians estimate that the American Underground Railroad freed around 100,000 people between 1810 and 1850, but that wouldn’t have been all at once. But most attempted escapes or rebellions by enslaved people have ended badly for the people seeking freedom.

These people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had done very well. They were out of Egypt. They had survived a vengeful army. In the dry wilderness of the Sinai peninsula they had water. They had bread. They even had meat – poultry.

They had these things because of the clear intervention of God, the same one who had guided their ancestors of the past. God had first recruited a leader – Moses. God had performed a series of signs for the Egyptians to persuade them to let the Hebrews leave, a series of signs that, I’m sorry to say, got steadily more drastic as Pharoah “hardened his heart.” God had parted the sea for them to escape from the Egyptian army. God had given them drinkable water not once but twice. God had provided the bread. God had provided the quail.

And then God had provided something else. God had given commandments, the foundations of law, the structure not for a band of escapees, but for a nation. Not just a nation, but a holy nation, a priestly kingdom. This disorganized band, homeless in the wilderness, would be one established to strengthen people’s relationships with one another, and with God.

It was going very well.

Then it was going sideways. Moses, the leader who had dealt with Pharoah and led them through the sea and brought forth the water and the food when they complained, Moses was missing. He had gone up a mountain they were forbidden to climb – and given how much thunder they’d heard from it, they had no interest in climbing – and he’d been missing for a long time. The text says he was there forty days and forty nights (Exodus 24:18), but don’t take that too seriously. For centuries, Jewish writers used “forty” as a figure of speech, basically meaning, “a long time.” Which, if you’re a group of traumatized people scraping together their food and water each day, might have been forty hours.

“Make us gods,” they said to Aaron, Moses’ brother – they were still relying upon the same leadership family. Or they might have meant, “Make us God.” You see, the Hebrew word for some generic deity, a god, was “El.” But when they wrote about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they used the plural form: “Elohim.” Which is the word used in verse one. “Make us gods,” or “Make us God.”

Mind you, they’d already heard the ten commandments. They knew not to have any other gods before God. They also knew not to create any idols. The question is somewhat meaningless. Breaking one commandment really isn’t much better than breaking two. When God saw it, God was not happy.

“The LORD said to Moses, ‘Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it…” (Exodus 32:7-8a)

God was ready to abandon the whole project of a holy nation, or rather to start over again with a single person: Moses. “Of you,” God said, “I will make a great nation.”

Callie Plunket-Brewton writes at Working Preacher, “In vv. 11-13, he [Moses] speaks to God of the divine promises to the ancestors of the people, thus implicitly urging God to be faithful to those promises. He also speaks of the terrible waste represented in bringing the people out of Egypt just to destroy them. Granted, he puts it in terms of being bad public relations, but I think it is clear that Moses is reminding God of the tremendous investment God has made in saving the people. Thus, Moses serves to remind YHWH of God’s own character, a character spelled out in 34:6-7: ‘slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness … ‘”

Moses argued with God. And… in this argument, Moses won. The nation would be formed from these people, not just one person.

Moses had argued with God more than once. He’d argued with God about the summons to free the Hebrew people. He lost that one, but he’d successfully negotiated a fair amount of support. I’m not sure that I would call some of Moses’ conversations with God about water and food arguments, because they usually sound to me like complaints, but Moses did get God’s help each time. Nor was Moses the only one to argue with God. Adam and Eve had – badly. Abraham had – rather better. Jacob argued with everybody, including God, and after a memorable wrestling match had received a new name: “Israel,” “One who struggles with God.”

The tradition of arguing with God continued after Moses. Gideon did. King David did. The prophet Jeremiah called God, “a deceitful brook.” And, of course, the most famous arguer with God of all was: Jesus. “Let this cup pass from me.” I grant you, it’s not an angry argument, but Jesus certainly did ask God to reconsider the course before him.

So should you argue with God?

Christianity has, for the most part, discouraged it. Judaism, I must say, hardly encourages arguing with God, but can’t help noting that most of those closest to God and God’s will have done so. But should you?

Sara Koenig writes at Working Preacher, “…the Old Testament gives us examples of humans who understand prayer to be a conversation, and God to be a relational God who actually listens to humans. To settle here does not deny that God is God, but clarifies that God is a God for us and with us.”

Prayer can be a conversation. I’d venture to say that from time to time, prayer should be a conversation. It’s a funny thing. So many people have been taught that prayer is a one-way thing. I’m talking to God. God is listening. Okay.

But prayer can be more than that. Prayer can be a relationship. Prayer can be responsive. Prayer can be an argument. Prayer can make change. The first step toward this kind of prayer is to do something that we’ve been trying to persuade people to do for millennia with uneven success: Listen.

People aren’t all that good at listening to people. But oh, how wonderful it might be if people listened to God. And as I’ve been told in active listening workshops for decades, the first step to effective listening is: stop talking.

I know that doesn’t sound consistent with effective argument with God. But how will you explain yourself to God if you don’t listen to what God has to say to you? Moses listened. God responded. Moses argued. God took another direction. So when you pray, make pauses in your prayer, and listen. Listen.

Note as well why Moses’ arguments were persuasive. Yes, he sounded like a public relations manager, but what did he remind God of? God’s promises. Moses went directly to the remarkable characteristic of Israel’s God: faithfulness. Dependability. Steadfast love.

Moses asked God to be God.

“’In God there can be no wrath,’ 14th century visionary Julian of Norwich wrote in her A Revelation of Love, the first book that we know of written by a woman in the English language.” Amy Frykolm writes of Julian at JourneyWithJesus.net, “During Julian’s day, the wrath of God was everywhere… And yet she was insistent that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not see wrath in God because there was no wrath in God. The reason is simple: God is all love. ‘Wrathfulness and friendship are two contraries,’ she writes. Where one exists, the other cannot exist.’

“If that is the case, then where does all of this talk about God’s wrath come from? Julian’s answer again is simple: it comes from us. We are the wrathful ones. We project that wrath onto God, who is all love.”

If you believe that God is all love, then you can approach God with anything, any feeling, any need. I don’t know how God will respond. I do know that God will listen, and God will respond.

The way to argue with God is to start.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the text as prepared does not match the sermon as delivered.

The image is L’Adoration du Veau d’Or (The Adoration of the Golden Calf) (ca. 1633-1637) by Nicolas Poussin – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157563.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: A God Who Promises

When they built the golden calf, God got very angry, but remained true to the promises that had been made to them. We worship a God who keeps promises.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the thirty-second chapter of Exodus (Exodus 32:1-14), in which Moses learned about the golden calf.

Moses had already received and delivered the Ten Commandments to the people, not the tablets of stone,. God had informed Moses of what the Ten Commandments were down in the camp. Moses in turn had communicated those commandments to the people. These were the broad outlines, the foundations of their relationship with one another and of their relationship with God. Moses had ascended the mountain to learn more, to get more detail, to get more instruction.

At the bottom of the mountain, the people got frightened with Moses gone so long. And they wanted to make their God tangible, they wanted to make their God more real. So they did what people of that age did, they made an idol. People of our age are more likely to invest or build a house or have something that they can touch.

Moses’ brother Aaron — well, he did what they asked, he made them an idol, a golden calf.

Up on the mountain, God saw it and God was angry. They have already broken all the laws that I commanded them, God said to Moses. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to leave these people to die in the wilderness and I will make a nation from you.

I imagine it might have been a tempting offer, but Moses would not go there. Moses said to God, You promised. These people know what you promised. I know what you promised. The world knows what you promised. Can you be seen as a God who does not keep divine promises? “And God changed his mind about the evil that had been prepared.”

God is a God of promises. The promises of Exodus, the promises of First and Second Samuel, the promises of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the promises of Jesus. Despite what we do that hinders our covenant with God, that damages our relationship with God, despite the sins that we commit before God, God’s promises remain and God remains faithful to those promises.

It is a startling thing. What greater love could anyone have than to love through all the misdeeds and the mistakes? All the errors and omissions.

All the things that we do day-to-day to place something else between us and God might not be a golden calf, but if you think about it, you know what it is. And God loves us still.

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

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Better Than Achievement

September 29, 2026

The Apostle Paul was proud of many things – and he came to value the love of Jesus more than any of them.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the third chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Philippians 3:4b-14).

Paul began this section by listening some of the reasons he had for confidence. Confidence of his worth as a human being. Confidence of his place in society. Confidence of his value to God.

Paul’s first attributes were those that he was born with, that he was born amongst the people of God, the Jews. He was even born into the tribe that had provided the House of David. Some of the other attributes were things that Paul had worked for. He had studied in order to gain position amongst the Pharisees. He had exercised his zeal on behalf of the Jewish faith in trying to suppress this dangerous Christian movement. And, he wrote, as to keeping of the law he was “blameless.”

Now we might consider that Paul exaggerated a little bit. We might consider that Paul’s zeal in the light of his later conversion might not have been such a great thing. Paul’s point was that he had left all of these behind his place in the world, even his value to God because he had been embraced, and had embraced in return, Christ Jesus.

The faith of Christ Jesus said to Paul that these other things, these expected things, these ordinary things, these accomplished things of life no longer had any value relative to being accepted into the community of Jesus’ faith. To be known by Christ, to be embraced by Christ, to be called by Christ was worth far more than any of the rest.

That kind of valuing of the things of life versus the things of faith continues to be a struggle for Christians to this very day. We are told that a lot of things are important in the world, and some of it is status, and some of it is accomplishment, and some of it is wealth, and some of it is… and it goes on and on and on. It is outrageously difficult for us to look at all those things and say to ourselves, “But you know what? I’m loved by Jesus, and so the rest of this I can set aside.”

Now, the Apostle didn’t leave everything aside. His learning to become a senior person amongst the Pharisees is obvious throughout his letters. So also is the faith, the core of the faith that was taught to him as a child and as a young adult that continued to inform him all through his ministry as a Christian evangelist.

What is also abundantly clear through all his letters, not just here but everywhere, is that even as he used what he had been given, he embraced more and more fully this invitation from God that came through Jesus. He valued that far more than anything else in life.

So I suggest, may we.

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: Unfair Love

Jesus’ story about every worker getting the same wage makes no sense in the business world – but it does make sense in the love world.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the twentieth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16) Jesus’ story that we usually give the title, “The Laborers in the Vineyard.”

On its surface, an easy, if somewhat puzzling, story. Jesus described a vineyard owner who went out to find workers for the day. He went to the marketplace early, found some folks who were available. They went to work in the vineyard and were promised a denarius, which was the usual daily wage for a laborer.

But this landowner went out several times. He even went as late as about five o’clock in the afternoon, not long before the work had to end because of darkness. And each time he found people and sent them off to work.

When the sun had gone down, he gathered everybody up and had those who had arrived the latest receive their wages first. They received a denarius. Those at the end of the line who had worked the whole day, they also received a denarius, and were angry. Because they had worked much longer, why should they receive exactly the same wage?

The landowner replied, “My money is mine to do with it as I like. Are you upset because I am generous?”

As a story of business and economics, I suspect that anybody who taught in a business school would say this is not the way to do it. Among other things, it means that you’re paying expenses that you probably shouldn’t. It also means that some of your workers are angry with you about the way you treat other workers. It isn’t fair.

As is common in Jesus’ stories, it’s the place that somebody departs from the ordinary and the expected that we typically find the point that Jesus was trying to make. And in this case, it is that unexpected and extravagant generosity: that each person who worked in the vineyard, no matter how long, received the same amount. They received what they needed to live on.

Is it a model for business? Probably not. Is it a model for salvation? I think so. In the end, what can God give us that is more than salvation? If we arrive in the vineyard — that is, if we make the effort to participate in the community of God — what more can God give us than membership in that community? There isn’t anything more.

I think also, however, this is a model for relationships. It’s also something that we know.

We labor to try and treat our children fairly, but we do not treat them equally. Because one has skills and talents the other does not. That same one has needs that the other does not. And so we spend our time focusing on the things that they need or spend our time focusing on the things that they accomplish and that time will be different from one child to the next. We are perhaps not fair, not absolutely even-handed in our love for our own children, because it would be wrong to treat all human beings as if they were exactly the same.

Love can’t be absolutely fair. Love has to respond to what is. Love has to reveal what might be.

Jesus, I’m sure, in part spoke of the love of God here. The love of God is what it is and it is shared equally. And that may not seem fair, but that is what it is. And our love, we’re also called upon to respond to the needs and to rejoice in the successes of those we love, as they occur, but also in such a way that all know that they are loved.

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: Judgment and Spirit

In a community made up of people from different religious backgrounds, the temptation to judge was hard to resist. Paul urged them to resist.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the fourteenth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 14:1-12).

The Roman church was made up of people from quite startlingly different backgrounds. Some had been raised as Jews, others had been raised in the traditions and religions of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and for that matter, many other cultures around the Mediterranean world. They brought very different assumptions about what a faith life was supposed to be like.

Christianity, originating as it did as a reform movement within Judaism (and indeed continuing to attempt to be a reform movement within Judaism in Paul’s lifetime), nevertheless welcomed folks from these other traditions and expectations. And Christianity did not fully endorse or fully reject religions and religious ideas of Judaism or Greece or of Rome. There was a lot to learn and to adapt to and to reframe for both those coming from Judaism and those coming from other faiths.

As a result, they were feeling at their way through the expectations of this new religion that they were calling the Way of Jesus.

Also as a result, they were criticizing one another, and sometimes fairly harshly.

Paul’s advice was, “Do not judge one another.” Those who observe in one way, well, they observe these things in faithfulness to God. And those who do other things to observe, they do those things also in faithfulness to God. It is God who is going to judge in the end. It is not up to us to judge one another.

Well, it is certainly true that a society without any kind of judgment or discernment rapidly draws into chaos as people do this, that, and the other thing. It is also true that the apostle Paul deeply disliked chaos and, as we noted from last Sunday’s reading, had some pretty firm notions on things that were to be done and things that were not to be done. But in matters of faithful observance, Paul was far more willing to let God be the judge of the heart, to let God be judge of the intent, to let God be judge of the devotion, than to permit Christians to run around willy-nilly judging one another.

Leave that to God, said Paul, and in such a way we can build a religious community together that is supportive rather than a religious community that drags one another down.

“Do not judge your brother or your sister,” wrote Paul. We will all be accountable to God, and that is more than enough.

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.