Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Mountaintop Wisdom

February 1, 2026

Micah 6:1-8
Matthew 5:1-12

“Plead your case before the mountains,” wrote Micah some 750 years before Jesus was born, “and let the hills hear your voice.” He wrote about an imagined court in which God and God’s people each tried to make the case that they had kept the covenant, and that the other had broken it. The role of the mountains? They were summoned as judges.

It was Micah’s poetic way of inviting the people of Jerusalem, particularly the wealthiest and most powerful, to consider what God might think of the things they were doing. The prosecution’s opening statement really gets rolling in verses nine and following. “Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights?” Apparently merchants were defrauding their customers. “Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies with tongues of deceit in their mouths.”

I grant you that we’re only getting one side of the case, but it doesn’t sound that hard for the mountains to judge, does it?

The covenant had been first delivered to the people on a mountain. The Temple in Jerusalem, where the people hoped their devotions would excuse their violence and fraud, stood on a mountaintop. God had set high standards from a high place. They didn’t seem to be playing out as intended down in the valleys.

Almost eight centuries later, as Matthew told it, Jesus ascended a mountain to speak to a gathering crowd who wanted to hear him. We’ve grown to call it “The Sermon on the Mount.” Its placement in the Gospel reflects Matthew’s belief that the best way to show that Jesus was the Messiah was to pay attention to what he said. Jesus’ words tell us who he was and who he is.

The first thing he did was to tell his listeners who they were. They were blessed.

As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “You are blessed. You have to hear that on the front end. And note that being blessed is not just for the sake of potential joy, but also for the sake of making it through that which will be difficult. Again, these are Jesus’ first words to his disciples. We need to hear in each and every one of the Beatitudes what’s at stake for Jesus and for his ministry.”

You see, this is another mountaintop moment in the Scriptures. It has a pretty close relationship to the gift of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. It has its precursory echoes in Micah’s summons of the mountains to judge the people. It’s mountaintop wisdom, and the tragedy of mountaintop wisdom is just how often it stays on the mountain and doesn’t make it down into the valleys.

As Lance Pape writes at Working Preacher, “But if the Beatitudes are a description of reality, what world do they describe? Certainly not our own. ‘Blessed are the meek’ (verse 5), says Jesus, but in our world the meek don’t get the land, they get left holding the worthless beads. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ (verse 7), says Jesus, but in our world mourning may be tolerated for a while, but soon we will ask you to pull yourself together and move on. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’ (verse 8), says Jesus, but in our world such people are dismissed as hopelessly naïve.”

I think Dr. Pape has his finger on it: “hopelessly naïve.” Isn’t that what we hear when we assert the Beatitudes as truths? They reflect a better world, but we don’t actually live that way. Some say we can’t actually live that way. For instance, Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, who told CNN interviewer Jake Tapper “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power… These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

That’s the valley. If you can forgive a Biblical reference in a sermon, that’s the valley of the shadow of death.

Is that where we want to live?

It’s where a lot of people have lived over the course of history. The Hebrew people lived in it when they were slaves in Egypt, when their nations were overrun by the empires of Assyria and Babylon, and when they were occupied by Rome in Jesus’ day. The feudal systems of Europe, Japan, and India left a lot of people in the valley of death. As Osvaldo Vena observes at Working Preacher, “Grief comes for all of us, but mortality rates were higher in the ancient world. Parents simply could not expect their children to survive infancy, let alone make it to adulthood. It was not a given. War, food and housing insecurity, and infectious diseases could cut a life short.” In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the aftermath of truly catastrophic world wars, nations and non-governmental actors strove to bring food, farming assistance, vaccination, and stable health care delivery to places on the earth that had lost child after child to the grinding effects of being poor. In 2010 I heard a United Nations official tell a UCC gathering that the end goal of these efforts was not far off. He could imagine an end to extreme poverty.

The mountaintop wisdom was in sight from the valley.

Mr. Miller and his ilk would drive it away, out of sight, obscured by clouds high on the mountain.

We need to bring mountaintop wisdom to the valley.

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Jesus acts.  He doesn’t simply speak blessing.  He lives it.  He embodies it.  He incarnates it…

“This is the vocation we are called to.  The work of the kingdom — the work of sharing the blessings we enjoy — is not the work of a fuzzy, distant someday.  It is the work — and the joy — of the here and now.  The Beatitudes remind us that blessing and justice are inextricably linked.  If it’s blessing we want, then it’s justice we must pursue.”

Mountaintop wisdom.

Let’s bring it to the valley of death.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, sometimes on person. The sermon as delivered does not match the prepared text.

The image is The Sermon on the Mount by Fra Angelico (1437) – Copied from an art book, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9048898.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Uncategorized

Pastor’s Corner: Surpassing Ourselves

The best part of the Christmas story is, I think, the way that people surpassed themselves.
It could have gone much differently. Mary found herself with child by the Holy Spirit, and she could have found herself with-out the support of her family, fiancée, and community. Instead, they believed her. They trusted her. They supported her. They loved her.

People don’t always do that, do they?

Later, caught in an unusual and unwelcome government operation, Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem to find no space available. One of the innkeepers among the many without a place for them created some basic shelter, some semblance of comfort. Meanwhile, on a hillside shepherds chose to follow the wild directions of heavenly beings. Exhausted in the stable, I can’t imagine that Gabriel’s promises of a Messiah sounded likely to Jesus’ first-time parents. When the shepherds brought the angels’ word, they also brought an assurance they desperately needed.

Later, Herod acted like an ordinary king – fearful, jealous, and violent – while foreigners took the extraordinary step (steps, actually) to celebrate the birth of one who would rule in a different way. Their stunning generosity enabled the threatened family to survive, and the infant Messiah to thrive.

Over and over again, people surpassed themselves. They did more than others expected, perhaps even more than they expected of themselves. This Christmas, surprise yourself with your goodness, your mercy, your support, your acceptance, your generosity. Surpass yourself with your family, your neighbors, and your church.

As we celebrate the surpassing worth of Christ, let us give as he would have us give.

Merry Christmas!

Eric Anderson

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Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: An Example to Imitate

November 16, 2025

Isaiah 65:17-25
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

In some circles, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is a very popular verse. “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” I think it’s safe to say that it supports a worldview in which activity, effort, and industry are valued. It contributes to the idea of the Protestant work ethic, which says that labor itself is a Good Thing.

In some other circles, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is a very problematic verse. Folks in these circles ask about those who, for one reason or another, can’t work. They speak of factors like health or available employment. They may also raise the virtues of generosity and sharing. Jesus, they observe, didn’t ask any of the five thousand to do some work before he fed them on a Galilean hillside.

So which is it? Eat only through work? Or should everyone eat?

Frank L. Crouch writes at Working Preacher, “In scripture, the question of how we justly distribute food and other resources within our communities lies on a continuum, with this statement from Paul on one end: ‘Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,’ and a statement from Jesus on the other end, ‘Give to everyone who begs from you [Greek “aitéo”: asks, requests, pleads for, demands], and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you’ (Matthew 5:40-42). Or, from the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, ‘Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).’”

So… it’s both.

I could end the sermon right here, but I’m not sure any of us would be impressed with the amount of work that took.

It’s probably not what Paul had in mind, either.

The Greek word Paul used that the NRSV translated as “idle” has other meanings as well. As Jennifer S. Wyant notes at Working Preacher, “Outside of the New Testament, this word means ‘disorderly or irresponsibly’ and is often found within the context of battle imagery, of men not being ready at their post or ready for the fight ahead because of their disorder.” That fits with the description of “busybodies” in verse 11. The people Paul criticized weren’t just relying on other people to support them. They were disrupting the church community at the same time.

So who were they?

As I thought about it, I came right up against the fact that very few people in the first century could eat without work. According to a 2017 article by J. W. Hanson and S. G. Ortman (1), between three-quarters and four-fifths of the population of the Roman Empire lived in the rural country. In other words, they worked farms, or possibly in quarries or mines. There was very little question of working or not working on a farm. As anyone with a garden knows, let alone a farm, getting the plants you want to grow without having the plants you don’t want to grow growing with them requires continuous labor.

Thessalonica, of course, was a city. It had a port that provided trade connections for a significant area of Macedonia. That meant a higher proportion of skilled workers, of financial supports, and of simply more wealthy people. Still, it’s worth remembering that most of the residents of the city would have been quite poor by our standards. According to Sarah E. Bond, a good number of them, based on the archaeology of Pompeii, were probably slaves, perhaps up to a fifth.

So who, I wondered, could be eating without work? It wouldn’t have been the slaves. It wouldn’t have been the poor laborers. It wouldn’t have been the bakers or blacksmiths or builders. Who could it be?

The clue was in what Paul wrote just before this verse about working and eating. “…We were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right but in order to give you an example to imitate.”

Who gets fed by a religious community? Who might have the right to be fed by a religious community? Religious leaders. Yep. Folks like… me.

Well. That’s awkward, isn’t it? Especially just a couple weeks after you passed a budget that will feed me for the next year. Especially in a year when I took three months off to be an idle busybody. Yeah. That’s awkward.

Paul was the apostle of the new Christian communities of Greece. And he had a fundamental notion of what was important in these new Christian communities. It was, first and foremost, trust in salvation through Jesus. A close second was the welfare of these new Christian communities. “Let all things be done for building up,” he told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 14:26). “Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor,” he wrote the church in Rome (Rom. 15:2). “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up,” he said to the Ephesians (Eph. 4:29). And he wrote, “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing,” in a previous letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:11).

He did his level best, he said, to give them an example of building up. Bring the gospel as a gift, and don’t make the recipients “pay” for it. It might be appropriate to be supported in that way – Paul says it would have been, but he didn’t take advantage of it. He chose not to take advantage.

In contrast, others seemed willing to take advantage of their positions of leadership. “It is not that they are simply lazy, or heaven forbid, unable to work,” writes Mariam Karnell at Working Preacher. “These people are able to work, but use that ability to create chaos in the community. As such, they directly contradict the example of the apostles who by status would not have had to work but did anyway. This passage has nothing to do with whether a social welfare should be in place to catch the helpless in society; this is entirely concerned with those who should and can work but refuse and instead direct their energies to causing chaos in the community. This day and age when it is entirely possible, and disturbingly common, to work full time — or more than full time — and still not earn a living wage, Christians need to be profoundly careful with our rhetoric about those who depend on welfare for survival. We should be fighting for justice and help for those in that position, rather than carelessly branding people with this passage.”

As I said right at the start, plenty of people have chosen to brand people with this passage. So let’s take a quick look at who gets support through the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in Hawai’i. Well, it’s a large number. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, in 2024, 161,600 Hawai’i residents received SNAP benefits, 1 in 9. That’s a lot. It’s actually lower than the figure in the United States as a whole, where it’s 1 in 8. Over half of SNAP participants are in families with children. 35% are in working families. 37% are in households which include kupuna or disabled adults.

While I’m sure they’re in there somewhere, that doesn’t sound like an overwhelming number of lazy busybodies.

The average monthly benefit per person in 2024 was $378. That will buy just short of 19 large pizzas. Cheese pizzas, no other toppings. Not including delivery. I guess that would feed me; a pizza every other day for 30 days. It’s not extravagant, though, is it?

And why are a third of Hawai’i’s SNAP recipients in families where somebody is employed? Because they’re not being paid enough to cover housing and their other bills and buy food. Our food aid programs aren’t subsidizing lazy people. They’re enabling large companies to pay their employees less than it costs to live.

What builds up our community, both within the church and in the wider society? What makes us stronger? What makes us wiser? What makes us more gracious?

I don’t think Paul or Jesus would say that hungry neighbors contribute to a healthy community. I don’t think they’d say that rigid lack of empathy or outright cruelty make us a more blessed island. I don’t think they’d say that those who are already struggling to survive should starve if they can’t persuade someone to pay them a living wage.

I do think they’d call upon those in positions like mine, or in some place that you might occupy, to demonstrate the work of Christ: compassion, support, encouragement, and yes: food.

That, I’d say, is an example to follow.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

(1) Hanson, J. W.; Ortman, S. G. (2017). “A Systematic Method for Estimating the Populations of Greek and Roman Settlements”. Journal of Roman Archaeology. 30: 301–324

Watch the Recorded Sermon

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

The image is Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (ca. 1618-1620) – Blaffer Foundation Collection, Houston, TX, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=596565.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Are You Convinced?

September 28, 2025

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Luke 16:19-31

I can’t know for sure, but I think that when Luke was assembling his gospel from the bits and pieces of Jesus stories he’d collected, one of those scrolls contained the three long stories that we only find in Luke: the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. I’m probably wrong, but these stories are longer than most, take more time to develop character than most, and have really pointed endings.

A story which ends with the faithful brother reprimanded for his faithfulness? That’s pretty surprising. A story which ends with absolutely the wrong hero? That’s quite a challenge. A story which says, “Give to the poor or go to Hades?”

They don’t get much more pointed than that.

It’s also counterintuitive in the first century and in the twenty-first century. As Kendra A. Mohn writes at Working Preacher, “It is common to equate wealth with virtue, whether today or in the ancient world. Good people who work hard and live righteously can expect to be rewarded with means; likewise, people with means are seen as good (smart, hardworking, righteous) because they were able to acquire wealth. In the ancient world, concepts like wealth, virtue, and masculinity worked together and reinforced one another to solidify elite status.

“The idea that the rich man is a good man is directly challenged by Jesus’ parable.”

We tend to assume that at least reasonable economic success comes from the virtues of hard work and good choices. There’s a lot of truth to that. I’m not sure if many of you know that I established and ran a consulting business for quite a few years. I really only closed it when one of my clients – the Connecticut Conference of the UCC – asked me to give them full time and I got taken on as a staff member. I’ve got some experience with the kind of initiative, creativity, inquiry, and ongoing effort it takes to make that kind of thing work.

Mind you, I don’t say that to claim those virtues. I just know they’re needed. As you might have noticed, my efforts as a business owner did not bring me substantial amounts of wealth.

In these three long parables found in Luke, Jesus emphasized some rather different values. In the Prodigal Son, the virtue of forgiveness. In the Good Samaritan, the virtue of compassion. In the Rich Man and Lazarus, the virtue of generosity. None of those are, I hasten to mention, incompatible with the virtues of hard work, diligence, and discernment, although I’ve heard people say that they are. These are the ones who say that empathy is a weakness, even the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.

All right. If you don’t want to call it empathy, don’t. Empathy describes a feeling, and as I say a lot, feelings aren’t things we control. We feel feelings.

But we act compassionately. We extend forgiveness. We give generously.

Or, I suppose, we don’t. But those are the virtues Jesus lifted up in these longer stories.

Now, how many of you are big fans of the story of The Prodigal Son? It can be a little rough on us older brother types – for the record, I am the older brother in my family, though I think my brother has had to forgive me more often than I’ve had to forgive him – but the ending leaves us in a place where we anticipate the reunion of the family.

How about The Good Samaritan? Who’s a fan? Those of us in the religious professions can certainly have a rough time with it, but let’s face it. There’s a part of our culture which enjoys the triumph, especially the moral triumph, of the outsider. So hooray for the Samaritan!

And we didn’t expect that much of the religious officials anyway.

The Prodigal Son. The Good Samaritan. Good stories. Well known. Well remembered. Quoted from time to time, even.

When was the last time you quoted The Rich Man and Lazarus?

Well, I haven’t either.

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home. John T. Carroll writes at Working Preacher, “An enormous and growing wealth gap separates a few—both individuals and nations—from the many who live in poverty. Sound familiar? First-century life within the Roman Empire was much like the reality we know, in this regard. The Gospel of Luke assumes and addresses this reality.” And as Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Preservation of the comfort of the privileged allows more injustice to occur than pure evil. At no point does the story suggest the rich man caused Lazarus to suffer initially. Yet, his inaction allowed it to continue. As Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’”

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home because we know that the virtue of generosity is one of the hardest. There’s a lot of risk to generosity.

We fear that if we give too much, we won’t have enough. Right? That comes in the big decisions, when we’re choosing how much to contribute in the year to things we support, and it also comes in the smaller decisions, when we’re deciding whether there’s enough in our wallet to give something to the panhandler on the sidewalk.

How much do we need to keep to maintain our lives? It’s a hard question, in the moment and in the long term. Speaking for myself, I tend to decide that what I need is probably more than what I really need. Anyone else feel the same?

There’s another risk to generosity, and I fear it and I hear it all the time. Will the person I’m generous to be properly grateful? Remember the story of Jesus and the ten people he healed from leprosy. Only one came back to say thank you – and it was a Samaritan. I’d rather not be generous if I don’t get a thank you.

So I’d guess that Jesus didn’t heal anyone again… Oh, right. He did.

Generosity isn’t about the people we give to. It’s about us. We decide. We reach out. We give – or not. Gratitude is an important part of generosity, but to be frank, it isn’t necessary for generosity to happen. If you have any doubt about that, think about God’s incredibly generous gift to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Have you fully expressed your gratitude for that? Is it actually possible to give adequate thanks for that?

In this parable, Jesus stressed not just the importance of compassionate giving, he emphasized its urgency. Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “…what I appreciate most is that it’s an urgent story.  It doesn’t mince words about what’s at stake.  It doesn’t pretend that our years are limitless and our options infinite.  This is a story about time running out.  About alternatives closing down.  This is a story for us.”

We get to be generous here and now. Instead of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die,” Jesus asked us to be compassionate and generous, for tomorrow we may die.

Melissa Bane Sevier writes at her blog, “No matter our social and financial status, we all have responsibility for the other. A cautionary tale, this parable pushes us to see and hear the suffering of the poor and to cross that enormous gulf that exists between people, between communities. To see the poor and the sick as people with names, not just some jumble of faces. To name the injustices and illnesses they deal with. To reach out while we’re all still living, because it is the only chance we have to try and make things right.”

Did you notice the other major difference in this parable between the rich man and Lazarus? Jesus gave the poor man a name – relatively few of the characters in his stories got names – and the rich man didn’t. Mind you, the name was carefully chosen. “Lazarus” is a version of the Hebrew “Eliezar,” which means, “God is my help.”

God is my help.

In this story, that turned out to be true. God was the only help for Lazarus.

In our reality, we cannot let that be true. We must be part of the help for the Lazaruses of the world. God is their help, but we can be and must be part of that help.

It’s important. It’s Jesus’ summons. It’s urgent.

Are you convinced?

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Unfortunately, the video recording of worship for September 28, 2025, did not include audio.

The image is Works of Mercy with Dives and Lazarus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57065 [retrieved September 28, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Works_of_mercy_with_Dives_and_Lazarus._Oil_painting_by_a_Fle_Wellcome_V0017623.jpg.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: The Uncomfortable Parable

Transcript 9/23/2025

Jesus told a number of stories that people eagerly memorize and repeat. The story of the rich man and Lazarus isn’t one of them.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the sixteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 16:19-31). This is one of Jesus’ parables that is told only in Luke, a distinction that it shares with such well known even popular parables as “The Good Samaritan” and “The Prodigal Son.”

I would not describe this one as popular. I wouldn’t describe it as well known. This is a story that we don’t repeat very often. It’s not hard to see why. It is the story of “The Rich Man and Lazarus.”

The rich man was wealthy. He lived in a great house. He enjoyed his food. Lazarus was a poor man, and ill. He lived outside the rich man’s door. He didn’t even get the leavings from the rich man’s table. Dogs came and licked his sores.

Unlike most of Jesus’ stories, this one continued after the death of its characters. Lazarus found himself embraced by Abraham in heaven, whereas the rich man was tormented in hell. The rich man asked if a warning could be given to his brothers so that they would not make the same mistakes as he had and also end up in torment. He asked even if Lazarus could go and give them that warning. Abraham said they have the warnings of the Law and the Prophets. They will not pay attention even if someone were to return from the dead.

It’s hard to find a story of Jesus that is more pointed amongst a bunch of very pointed stories indeed. “The Good Samaritan” and “The Prodigal Son” are both fairly pointed stories. And it is difficult to find a story that we so gladly forget — conveniently forget — when we are the ones in place of the wealthy man, when we are confronted by the Lazaruses of the world, when we have good things and someone else does not.

This is the contest, if you will, between greed and compassion. All too often in this world greed wins: The desire for comfort, the desire for security. All too often, compassion loses, grace loses, generosity loses.

I don’t really think that Jesus intended to tell us a story about the nature of heaven and hell. He used the conceptions of the time to make his point. I think Jesus was trying to tell us about the relative importance of greed on the one hand and compassion on the other. Compassion, said Jesus, is what comes first. Set your greed aside.

What will it take us to convince us of that truth? I don’t know. Jesus may have known, but notice how pointed the ending of that story is. They’ll not be persuaded even if someone returns from the dead.

And in this world in which greed so often wins, how can we say that Jesus was wrong?

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: Heart for the Vulnerable (Or: It’s All About the Widows and Orphans)

August 10, 2025

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Luke 12:32-40

There is a lot going on in the twelfth chapter of Luke. Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell the story of the Rich Fool, who saved up lots of goods and didn’t enjoy them. The lectionary editors, in their wisdom, skipped over verses 22 through 31, containing Jesus’ advice not to “worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” He observed that birds don’t worry and they eat; flowers don’t worry and they blossom into beauty. Worry, it turns out, doesn’t accomplish anything.

That brings us to this section. And here it turns out that the only thing we have to worry about is… what Jesus said next. “Sell your possessions and give alms.”

Jesus tended to ask a lot.

Isaiah, about 770 years before, had expressed God’s dissatisfaction with a people who had industriously participated in religious ritual but had failed to treat their neighbors well. “Cease to do evil,” said Isaiah. “Learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow… If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.”

To quote something Lorraine Davis said in a Bible study some time ago, something that’s implanted in my brain, “It’s all about the widows and the orphans.”

Is it? I did a quick search to see how often the Hebrew Scriptures demand the protection of widows. Exodus and Deuteronomy say it a total of eleven times. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Malachi named it a total of nine times. In the Psalms you’ll find it another three times. That adds up to twenty-two calls for the protection of widows. I got similar results with a search for “orphan” (I won’t bore you with the numbers). Oh, and there’s one other category that usually gets added to “widows and orphans” as worthy of particular care and protection.

Foreigners. “Aliens” in the usual translation of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The first assertion of the Hebrew Law regarding foreigners in Exodus reads, “There shall be one law for the native-born and for the alien who resides among you.” Further, “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy make clear that foreigners are to be honored and protected no less than 21 times.

If you’re depriving the widows and the orphans, who are the poorest of the poor, of justice and sustenance; if you’re abusing the foreigners, who are the most vulnerable of those living in the nation, then you are failing to do the will of God. As Isaiah put it, “Cease to do evil; learn to do good.”

Why, I wonder, do people with so much wealth and power find it so easy to deprive the poor of what little support they receive? Why, I wonder, do people with so much wealth and power find it so easy to shortcut legal due process for those from other lands? Why, I wonder, do people who claim to follow the ways of Jesus cheer when the supports of the vulnerable are pulled away, when the hopes of the foreigner are dashed?

Fifteen years ago the comedian Stephen Colbert said on the Colbert Report: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition … and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

I’m surprised CBS/Paramount Global ever hired him, not that they’ve cancelled his show.

It is all about the widows and the orphans and the foreigners. If you want to know about a society, take a look at how it treats those on the margins, those without powerful protectors, those most quickly disposable.

Sell your possessions and give alms, said Jesus.

As Erick J. Thompson writes at Working Preacher, “Are we, as individuals and as a church, ready to help others in need? Have we considered the issues of peace and justice that our society is wrestling with so that we can be a part of God’s solution?”

Dr. Thompson asked that question nine years ago when government acknowledged a role to create a social safety net. For quite some time, religious and non-religious non-profit agencies have labored to fill the gaps in that net. Those can be substantial, but imagine what would happen if local, state, and federal assistance to the vulnerable were ended or severely cut back. We would need to take the lead in God’s solution, to care for the widows and the orphans and the foreigners and the impoverished.

All indications are that we will need to take the lead.

It’s not going to be easy. About half of the US population – and it’s about the same here on Hawai’i Island – belong to communities of faith. We typically pay more in taxes than we give to charities, religious and non-religious combined. I suppose it’s not a secret that not everyone listed on a church’s rolls contributes, generally for very good reasons. That’s not a complaint, but it is a reality. We don’t have the resources government has. Do we have the ability to match what they’ve been doing? I don’t know.

But it’s all about the widows and the orphans. It’s about justice for the foreigners. It’s about solidarity with the poor.

It’s going to be even harder, though. On July 25th the President issued an executive order that essentially calls for the criminalization of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction. UCC General Minister and President the Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson responded this week by writing, “While there are members of the homeless population who have substance abuse and/or mental health challenges, these are not the experiences of the entire homeless and unhoused population. Nor is this population solely responsible for ‘crime and disorder.’ It is disingenuous to opine that incarcerating and institutionalizing the homeless population will end crime and disorder.”

According to United for ALICE – ALICE is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed – 10% of Hawai’i residents lived below the poverty level in 2023. Are you shocked by that? I’m appalled. One in ten of our neighbors can’t meet their basic needs. And: an additional 35% of Hawai’i residents have ”income above the FPL [Federal Poverty Line], but not enough to afford basic expenses in the county where they live.”

“Households below the [ALICE] Threshold are forced to make impossible choices — like deciding whether to pay for utilities or a car repair, whether to buy food or fill a prescription.”

Because housing is the biggest expense for most people, everyone in an ALICE household – a third of our neighbors – is one crisis away from homelessness. One crisis: something like a medical emergency, a work-interrupting injury, a house fire, or a natural disaster.

It’s all about the widows and the orphans. And the foreigners. And the folks for whom the ends just don’t meet.

In the meantime, wealthy Americans get trillions in new tax breaks – but the new law imposed a curious cap on the deductibility of charitable donations for the wealthiest. Really. That took me by surprise, too. Make lots of money, pay less taxes. Just don’t help people with it.

Not even the widows and the orphans. Definitely not the foreigners. Don’t aid the poor.

That’s a long way from Isaiah. It’s further from Jesus.

The irony to all this is that Jesus’ story about the servants who stayed awake to welcome their master home experienced a grand reversal. Did you notice? They could have expected to set out a light supper for him, but instead, he had them sit at the table and the master served them.

The master served the servants. The master expected attentive servants, alert servants, prepared servants, active servants. The master asked a lot. Then the master served them.

There are masters in this land who are determined not just to fail the widows, orphans, foreigners, and poor. They are determined to abuse and oppress them, and I don’t think I’m overstating the case. These are the masters whom Isaiah condemned. These are the masters that crucified Jesus.

Let us be the diligent, attentive, and active servants. Let us be the ones who meet the expectations of Isaiah and strive to meet the expectations of Jesus. Let us be the ones to welcome the widows, the orphans, the foreigners, and the poor. Let us be the ones to shed the burden of our possessions and take on the freedom of generosity.

Let us be ready to be seated at Jesus’ table.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric does tend to depart from his prepared text while preaching, so the recording will not precisely match the text above.

The image is The Parable of the Righteous and the Unrighteous Judge (painting on the western wall of the Faceted Chamber), 1882, by the Belousov brothers (Palekh) – http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/barucaba/post311615582/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37093925.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: You Can’t Take It

When somebody wanted Jesus to intervene in a dispute over inheritance, Jesus reminded those who listened that you can’t take wealth with you.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the twelfth chapter of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 12:13-21), in which a man called from the crowd, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the family inheritance with me.”

Jesus first responded by saying, “Friend, who made me a judge over you?” To me that seems a little peculiar, because I think of Jesus as judge over all of humanity. During his earthly ministry, Jesus chose not to exercise that kind of power in that kind of a way.

Instead, Jesus told a story about a man of wealth who had such a great crop that his barns couldn’t hold it all. So he tore the barns down and he built new ones, and there he could store his grain and his goods. But God said, “You fool! Tonight your life is ended, and whose will all your wealth be?”

In a sense, Jesus had done what that first man in the crowd had asked him to do. Indirectly he had told the brother who was holding all of the family inheritance (or at least more than his younger siblings thought he should) that holding on to it would do him no good. In the end, we all come to the boundary of our earthly lives in which material wealth means a great deal. When we journey across that boundary, material wealth means nothing.

Jesus followed in centuries of wisdom tradition in saying that wealth is a thing for this life and this life only. Selfishness and greed will not carry across the boundary. What you accumulate will be left for others and lost to you.

So build up treasure with God.

Jesus didn’t say it in the parable, but he said it often enough in other times: the way to build up treasure with God is with generosity towards those around you. The way to build up treasure with God is by deepening your own relationship with the Divine. The way to build up treasure with God is to follow the ways of Jesus.

When Jesus died, they cast lots for his clothing, because that was all that he had.

You can’t take it with you. You can’t take it with you.

So build up treasure with God.

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: House Devoured

November 10, 2024

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
Mark 12:38-44

Our Every Member Canvass is coming up, beginning once we’ve approved a budget at the All Membership meeting next Sunday. In one sense, that makes this story of the widow’s two coins just a little early. In another, of course, God’s call to generosity is evergreen, always in season.

So. Give everything you have to the Church of the Holy Cross. Down to the last two pennies.

I’m kidding. Unlike some of Jesus’ contemporaries, the scribes he criticized so harshly, the ones who devoured widows’ houses, I’m kidding. Unlike some of my own contemporary religious leaders, who call for major donations while buying mansions and private jets, I’m kidding.

Keep the last two pennies.

All right, I’m kidding again.

But you see the problem, right? It’s a good thing for people to be generous to their faith community, to their neighbors, and to strangers. Love makes the world go around, as the saying goes, and giving goes with love. Do you love someone? You give them what they need. You give them what will delight them. Do you love God? You give God things. You give what will delight the Holy One.

Like two small coins. Or as we might translate it, she gave “her whole life.” That’s how it reads in Greek.

Having warned of religious leaders who devoured the houses of widows, Jesus watched it happen right in front of him, recognized it, named it, and, I would guess, wept.

D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “In a profound way, she [the widow] is acting with nobility and self-sacrifice and she is contributing toward an unjust system. She is giving all that she has and she is abetting a system that will take away all that she has. It is truly a tragic situation facing the widow, because her means of practicing true piety is at the same time a system that is devoid of justice and will, in turn, exploit her.”

As it did.

It wasn’t supposed to. The Law and the Prophets of ancient Israel made abundantly clear who was to be protected and cared for in that community: the widows and the orphans. Oh, and the foreigner, too. As Sung Soo Hong writes at Working Preacher, “If the leaders had kept the Law (for example, Deuteronomy 24:19–20; 26:12–13) and feared God, who is portrayed as the ultimate defender of widows in many passages of the Hebrew Bible, the widow in our passage would have not become that poor. The widow’s extreme poverty is the evidence that the leaders have failed.”

And they still invited her to put money in the treasury.

Debie Thomas asks at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Should we cheer or weep in the face of this story?  Or — here’s a third alternative — should we call out (as Jesus did) any form of religiosity that manipulates the vulnerable into self-harm and self-destruction?  Any form of piety that privileges long-winded prayers over works of compassion and liberation?  Any version of Christianity that valorizes soul-killing suffering as redemptive?  Any practice of faith that coddles us into apathy in the face of economic, racial, sexual, and political injustice?”

My answer to Ms. Thomas’ question is: Yes. We should call it out.

Don’t give us your last two pennies.

I say that despite having a certain amount of anxiety about the financial situation of this church. The pandemic has been hard for us. We have spent more than we brought in for four years for several reasons. Our expenses, as you might expect, haven’t gone down, and some have gone up. Insurance has been a major headache. Our income has suffered. During the pandemic we lost revenue from rentals of space on our campus, and that hasn’t yet returned to 2019 levels. Our members maintained faithful levels of giving, for which I’m grateful, but there have been fewer of them. Mercifully, we lost very few people to COVID in this church, but some people moved away, and other people’s health deteriorated, and some precious people died. I’m afraid that during COVID none of us in leadership here, starting with me, figured out how to welcome new people into this congregation through the virtual space. We’re delighted that new people have joined in the last year, but that’s still nearly four years of losses to make up.

The budget you’ll see in the mailing from our Moderator, Stefan Tanouye, projects a substantial deficit. I simply don’t know how to cover it. Except.

To ask you.

Sometimes when strangers ask me what I do for a living (which isn’t often; most people in Hilo recognize me for some reason), I’m tempted to say that I’m a professional beggar. I literally ask people for money, money that I live on, every week. You might say, “No, pastor, it’s the lay reader that says such things,” and you’d be right, except for one thing:

Where do you think the invitation to the offering they read comes from?

That’s right. The professional. The professional beggar.

That’s OK. I signed on for this thirty-six years ago. Frankly, I just wish I was better at it.

If I was really good at it, do you suppose we could afford a mansion for me and a private jet?

I really do wish I was better at begging because it really isn’t about me. It’s about the church. It’s about maintaining a space in which we can worship. It’s about providing compensation for the hard work of the people who make the music, print the bulletins, and clean the floors. It’s about making spaces available for people to support one another through hard things, for celebrating the blessings of life, for learning about God and God’s world. It’s about having the means to assist those who are hungry, homeless, or hurting. It’s about providing nourishment for the soul, perhaps starting with actual bread (or breadfruit; this is Hawai’i, after all). It’s about sustaining ourselves in a community living out its mission as part of the Body of Christ.

That’s worth begging for.

What do you think? Is it worth giving for?

That’s a good ending, don’t you think? “This church is worth begging for. What do you think? Is it worth giving for?”

I’d like to end it there, but I can’t.

You see, it’s not just religious leaders like me who devour widows’ houses. It’s other leaders, too. People who underpay their workers, and perhaps have either not read or simply ignored these words from Deuteronomy 24: “You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns.” People who reduce the taxes on the very wealthiest and pass on the debt to future generations. People who separate fleeting refugee children from their parents and essentially create orphans when they neglect to track either the children or the adults. People who lie as casually as I drink coffee.

The United States has re-elected as President a devourer of widows’ houses. Plain and simple. Already his followers have sent messages to African American children telling them to report for sale as slaves. Already his followers have sent messages to women: “Your body. My choice.”

I have no words of comfort about this, and I have no patience with those who deny the extraordinary risk now faced by a number of people. What rights will be maintained by LGBTQ people? The Constitution, I’ll remind you, makes no guarantee about the rights of women except the right to vote. Religion is protected by the Constitution – but who defines religion? May not a Congress or a court conclude that “religion” must meet certain criteria? As for race, well. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing equal protection under the law did not protect American citizens of Japanese origin – including children – from being incarcerated during World War II. Oh, and having that upheld by the US Supreme Court.

I am not optimistic.

I will also not give up the faith. I will not surrender in advance. I will not permit the widows and orphans or our day, the most vulnerable of our neighbors, to have their houses devoured by a government unrestrained by moral sense, sound judgement, and effective oversight, without my voice raised in protest.

I do not expect to succeed. Jeremiah didn’t. Hosea didn’t. Amos didn’t. Elijah didn’t. The nations they sought to guide went their own way. Others preserved their words and stories because, it turned out, they’d been right all along to plead for the welfare of the widows and the orphans, the most vulnerable of their societies.

Jesus didn’t succeed, either. Perhaps if the Temple scribes of his day had given up devouring widows’ houses, the calamitous war with Rome wouldn’t have happened, and the Temple would be standing on Mount Moriah today. But Jesus didn’t persuade them. He went to the cross instead.

He transformed that failure into the possibility of new life.

Don’t give us your last two coins, people. We need the money, but more than that we need to be faithful to our obligation to care for one another. Don’t help us devour your house. Do help us maintain this house as best you can, but no more.

As you do, watch and see where the other devourers approach. Watch, see, name, protest, and act.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the prepared text you have just read will not exactly match the video you (may) have just watched.

The image shows the widow depositing the coins with Jesus watching. One of the 5th or 6th century mosaics in the Church of Saint Appolinaire in Ravenna, Italy. Photo by Sailko – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28214920.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Devouring Houses

Jesus warned about greed among religious leaders – and then observed the consequences.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the twelfth chapter of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 12:38-44). At the end of the chapter, as Jesus and his disciples were sitting in the Temple, and none of the officials were any longer willing to ask him any questions or engage him in conversation, Jesus looked around at them all and told his disciples to beware of the scribes. That is, to beware of those who had high position in the official religion of the day.

He criticized them for their appearance, criticized them for their affection for power and respect. He warned that they devour widows’ homes.

And in the next story, Mark describes Jesus as he observed a woman putting two small coins into the giving box for the Temple treasury. “She has given more than any of the rest,” he told his followers, “because she has given everything she had, everything she had to live on.”

It is, on the one hand, an example of extraordinary generosity, of faithful giving, of giving with faith that something will come from God tomorrow — because there is nothing left from today. On the other hand, it is also an example of what Jesus had warned about in the preceding paragraph, in what he taught about religious leaders. “They devour widows’ houses.” And that is exactly what happened when that woman put in the last two coins, all that she had to live on.

I am a religious leader and I am familiar with all the anxieties of maintaining a budget for a church. It is no easier in the twenty-first century than it was in the first century and I am sure that the priests and the scribes and all the rest of them wondered how it was that they were going to maintain that magnificent Temple there in Jerusalem. I wonder how we are going to maintain our structure, how we are going to maintain our programs, how we’re going to maintain our ministries, how we’re going to maintain our faith without significant gifts from our worshippers and our friends.

But do not let me do not let us devour the houses of the most vulnerable, of the most needy in the world.

Do not give us your last two coins.

Give us that — not so much which you can do without — give us that which will enable you to feel good about your giving, to know that you have extended yourself, and are still able to maintain yourself in a life that is rich and full (not wealthy, necessarily, but rich and full).

I would not devour any widows’ home, any poor person’s home, any person that is struggling: I would not devour their home. Give what is right, but also give with an eye to tomorrow, that you may have something to live on.

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.