Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: The One You Love is Ill

March 22, 2026

Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 11:1-45

Someone you love is ill. What do you do?

You might well say, “I go visit them.” But is that what you do?

Don’t you think about it first?

Thinking is a good idea, because the people you love aren’t all the same. There are some who really do want you to rush over and comfort them. Hopefully you know who they are. Sometimes people tell you what they want, and sometimes they expect you to know. You’ve run into that before.

There are others, however, that really prefer to deal with their illness on their own as best they can. They might be very private people, or they don’t just don’t like someone around when they’re feeling bad. Some don’t want others to see them when they’re in their pajamas.

A few, of course, tell you that they’ll take care of themselves, thank you very much, and then expect you to turn up anyway. People don’t always tell you what they really want. You’ve run into that before.

After you think about the person who is ill, you think about what, if anything, you have to bring. You might think to bring food, and that means taking time to prepare or package it. You might think to bring a book to read or something out of your collection of CDs or DVDs – for the younger folks listening, those are antique devices to play music or videos. A memento. A stuffed animal. You may take some time to get things ready before you visit.

Let’s face it. You’re likely to think about how sick your loved one is. What do you think they actually need as opposed to whatever they may say they want? You have other obligations. When does your sick loved one become the next person you visit?

Jesus thought about it. “This illness does not lead to death,” he said. “Rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of Man may be glorified through it.”

It strikes me that it’s possible to be wrong and right at one and the same time. “This illness does not lead to death,” he said – but it did. Lazarus died. “This illness does not lead to death,” Jesus said, and in a very real sense it didn’t because it led beyond death. Lazarus lived.

If I listen to this as someone trying to decide whether to go visit a loved one who is ill, I sympathize with Jesus’ decision to stay put. The illness was not to the death. Lazarus had plenty of people around him to care for him. Jesus had time. Jesus also seemed to believe that the delay would make Lazarus’ eventual recovery even more a sign of God’s glory.

I have to say, he was right about that, too.

He waited two days, then announced that he was returning to Judea to awaken Lazarus. Or, well, awaken metaphorically. As he eventually informed his disciples, Lazarus had died. He would arrive too late to heal him from his illness.

But not too late to mourn with the others who loved him.

I got curious here, and I thought about days and travel times, and finally realized that however long it took Jesus to get there, the two day delay didn’t make a difference. When he arrived, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. If Jesus had left immediately on hearing he was ill, he would have arrived when Lazarus had been in the tomb for two days. Without a miraculous way of travelling, which I grant you isn’t impossible for a person who did miracles, the best he could do was arrive before the third day after which Jews believed revitalization of a dead person was impossible.

When Martha and Mary said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” there may have been some reproach, but it wouldn’t have been for a two day delay they knew nothing about. It was that Jesus hadn’t been there, couldn’t have been there, but where on Earth did they want him? There. It couldn’t happen and it didn’t happen.

That happens with us, too. Have you ever made the cold, hard calculation between visiting someone and attending their funeral? I have. I would guess plenty of people have. We do the best we can with phone and video applications, but we have limited time and resources for extended travel, don’t we? We want to be there, we ache to be there, but we have limits and we have to choose. Sometimes we choose to be there with those who grieve.

Jesus went to be there with those who grieve.

Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “When Jesus weeps, he honors the complexity of our gains and losses, our sorrows and joys.  Raising Lazarus would not bring back the past. It would not cancel out the pain of his final illness, the memory of saying goodbye to a life he loved, or the gaping absence his sisters felt when he died.  Whatever joys awaited his family in the future would be layered joys, joys stripped of an earlier innocence.”

Someone he loved had been ill. Someone he loved had died.

He came to weep. He came to comfort.

He also came to say something about who he was. “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Laura Holmes writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus proclaims ‘I am’ statements in 14 passages in John’s Gospel. Nowhere else does someone respond to the proclamation with a statement of belief. Martha not only says, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe,’ but she places that language of belief in the context of the Gospel’s proclamation about Jesus: Jesus is the Messiah (3:28; 4:26; 9:22, 35–38), the Son of God (1:34, 49; 3:16–18), ‘the one coming into the world’ (1:9; 3:31; 6:51; 8:23; 18:37).”

This is also an odd departure from other “I am” statements. Usually in John’s Gospel, Jesus performed a sign, then had conversation about it, and concluded with his own assertion of how the sign revealed who he was: “I am the bread of life.” “I am the light of the world,” and so on. In this case, Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life” before he actually did the sign. As someone in Bible Study said this week, the chances of anyone paying attention to what Jesus said after this miracle were pretty small, so best to get the words in first. But it also gave Martha the opportunity to testify to her trust in Jesus before he validated that trust. It’s a stunning moment, really only matched by her sister Mary when she anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume in the next chapter.

Jesus heard. Jesus paused. Jesus learned. Jesus moved. Jesus assured. Jesus spoke. Jesus wept. Jesus called. Lazarus lived.

Someone you love is ill.

What do you do?

You think. That’s a good thing. You make choices. That’s a difficult thing. You act, and that may be a good and welcome thing, and it may be an ill-chosen and unwelcome thing – we’re well meaning but not perfect. If any of you have resurrection power, you’ve been quiet about it. I’ve been quiet about it because I don’t have it.

Whatever you do, you do it as a follower of Jesus, aware that even when Jesus looks late, there’s never a too late for Jesus. Martha dared to affirm her faith in a resurrection on the last day. Jesus did correct her somewhat, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Maybe that’s a useful correction for us as well:

As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “We tend to focus on the resurrection that we situate for ourselves as a distant promise, our guarantee of salvation, our eternal life with God and Jesus in heaven. But what might it mean that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? That we are raised to life, not as future salvific existence, but to life right now, right here, with Jesus?”

It might mean that we worry less about two days delay. Jesus the resurrection and the life is with us, and with those we love.

It might mean that we treasure those phone conversations and video chats more. Jesus is the resurrection and the life for those of us at both ends of the wire.

It might mean that we approach death not with less sadness, but with more hope. Jesus is the resurrection and the life both for us and for those who have died.

It might mean that we live each day with more courage and with more joy. Jesus is the resurrection and the life, so that the beauty I celebrate today will be different and beautiful and worth celebrating tomorrow.

Jesus wept and called Lazarus to life in the same breath. Imagine what he does in one breath for you.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

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

The image is The Resurrection of Lazarus by Giovanni di Paolo (1425) – Walters Art Museum: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18833003.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Towards Peace

December 7, 2025

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

It’s a vision of improbable things.

Wolves living peaceably with lambs, leopards and kids, calves with lions, cows with bears. They’re all grazing, which you’d think wouldn’t work for the wolves, leopards, lions, and bears. They don’t have the right kind of teeth.

Through them wander these little children who lead – I grant you that little children lead us around all the time, but that’s only until we catch on – and they even play safely around the poisonous snakes.

It seems fantastic. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Then, there is the testimony of the Banyan tree. It’s an extraordinary spectacle. Roots grow from the branches of the tree. The branches are long and the roots seek water from the ground. The Banyan tree can live for hundreds of years and expand to cover acres under its canopy of branches and sustaining roots. Most trees do not function this way, and the Banyan tree may seem like a creation of fantasy rather than another version of a fig tree.

“The world described in Isaiah 11 may also seem to be the fruit of impossible fantasy rather than a prophetic, imagined future crafted by the abiding love and longing of the Holy One.”

Living in Hilo, we’re familiar both with the wonders of the banyan tree and with its strange fragility. We’ve seen great trees come crashing tragically down. And we’ve seen them grow and thrive supported by those fantastic roots.

Is the banyan, or the remade natural world, really any more improbable than what launches this utopian vision: the image of a leader emerging from the house of David who demonstrated wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the LORD?

Isaiah lived through the reigns of good kings and bad kings. He had advised King Ahaz, who got very bad reviews from the authors of 2 Kings: “He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord,” is how they introduced him in chapter 16. Isaiah had much better experiences with Ahaz’ son Hezekiah, who received great praise from the authors of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. “He did what was right in the sight of the LORD just as his ancestor David had done,” reads 2 Kings in chapter 18.

Is it so strange that a ruler should govern with wisdom and understanding, with knowledge and in the reverence of God?

Corrinne L. Carvalho writes at Working Preacher, “It is difficult for Christians to hear this poem, especially during the season of Advent, and not think it celebrates the birth of Jesus. But it is important to remember that this yearning for a perfect world pre-dates and exists independently of the Christmas story. I think if people around the world were asked to draw a picture of a perfect world leader, that ruler would have many of these same attributes.”

Although… there are some who have other ideas. Michael J. Chan writes at Working Preacher, “In the royal propaganda of the ancient near East, royal figures frequently encounter predatory animals, and especially lions. And so it is no surprise to find the royal child depicted as a shepherd among lions. What is surprising, however, is the way in which the young shepherd interacts with them. In general, kings would be depicted fighting and killing lions, not leading them or living among them.”

Fighting and killing. Not leading. Not living among them.

Does this sound familiar?

Isaiah’s vision of peace relies upon leaders who make peace a priority. Peace, not power. Peace, not privilege. Peace, not pride. Isaiah’s peaceful ruler relies upon the wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, the reverence of God. Isaiah’s peaceful ruler uses that wisdom and righteousness and reverence to look more carefully at the stories they hear. They give regard to the concerns of the poor. They relieve the oppression of those who suffer from the acts of the powerful.

In his novel Jingo, Terry Pratchett described a dialogue between a ruler, Lord Vetinari, and a genius, Leonard of Quirm.

“As they say, [said Lord Vetinari] ‘If you would seek war, prepare for war.’”

“I believe, my lord, the saying is ‘If you would seek peace, prepare for war,’” Leonard ventured.

Vetinari put his head on one side and his lips moved as he repeated the phrase to himself. Finally he said, “No, no. I just don’t see that one at all.”

Terry Pratchett, Jingo (New York, HarTorch), 1997

We make peace by moving toward peace. We move toward peace in our households when we stop insisting on our way, or our authority, or our “rightness.” We move toward peace when we work on our relationships. We move toward peace in our voluntary communities when we work through the different ideas and disagreements and choose a way we can share together. We move toward peace in our churches when we accept that there are things we don’t know about God and about the nature of the world and prioritize the welfare of those affected by our decisions.

We move toward peace in the world when we select leaders who decide in the interests of all people, not just themselves or those in their circle or class. We move toward peace in the world when we send leaders packing who demonstrate that they work for themselves, not others. We move toward peace in the world when we make it clear that we will not tolerate injustice, intolerance, oppression, cruelty, and tyranny.

We move toward peace in the world when we embrace peace within ourselves. We move toward peace in the world when we choose the righteousness of God rather than the self-interest which is so common. We move toward peace in the world when we ourselves take the time and effort to learn more than what appears to be obvious, and seek diligently for truth. We move toward peace in the world when we choose wisdom over folly.

As Cory Driver writes at Working Preacher, “God has always been calling the Holy Community to justice and faithfulness, and has always promised to send leaders who will show the way. It is such a leader that we, along with Isaiah, look for during this Advent.”

Let us be such leaders in our families and communities; let us be such citizens in our nation, let us insist upon such leaders in the houses of government in the world.

Let us journey toward peace.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons in advance, but he makes changes while he preaches, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not.

The image is Peaceable Kingtom by Rick and Brenda Beerhorst, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55782 [retrieved December 7, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74782490@N00/5816094892.
Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Peaceable Kingdom

Isaiah’s vision of an utterly peaceful world began with wisdom, compassion, righteousness, and peace. May we move toward it this Advent season.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 11:1-10). This coming Sunday is the second Sunday of Advent. The theme is peace, so it is entirely appropriate that the Isaiah reading is one of his accounts of the Peaceable Kingdom.

The wolf and the lamb lying down together. The lion eating straw like the ox. “And a little child shall lead them.”

Not surprisingly, Isaiah started with a description of what leadership would look like: that a shoot would emerge from the stump of Jesse, and that this new monarch would rule in a new and different way, with wisdom, with righteousness, with the fear of the Lord – that kind of reverent respect that, well, is frankly very uncommon amongst leaders of nations, now isn’t it?

The foundation of peace for the natural world, Isaiah said, was peace within the human world.

I can’t say that that is obviously true. If human beings ceased to make war upon one another, if human beings ceased to commit crimes against one another, if human beings abandoned violence forever, I’m afraid there would still be hunting in the forests and in the seas – at least until God changes the world. Nevertheless, Isaiah was absolutely right to seek out that first part of the vision rooted in peace amongst human beings. Because even if we can’t directly affect the peace of the rest of Creation, we can make peace amongst ourselves. We can choose wisdom over folly. We can choose compassion over violence. We can choose peace.

All too frequently, we choose folly. We choose violence. we choose war. All too rarely, we choose wisdom. We choose compassion. We choose peace.

In this Advent season, may we take a step, even a fraction of a step, towards Isaiah’s vision. Let us choose wisdom, righteousness, compassion, and peace.

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: Hope Worth Hoping For

November 30, 2025

Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14

There’s an old joke that tells of a man who saw another man beating his head against a wall.

“Is something wrong?” he asked that man.

“Oh, nothing’s wrong,” said the second man, but he winced as he hit his head against the wall again.

“Then why are you beating your head against a wall?” asked the first man.

“Because it will feel so good when I stop.”

In a 2022 essay at JourneyWithJesus.net, Amy Frykolm observes that a lot of our news reading involves predictions of the future. She writes, “We tell ourselves these stories about the future because they allow us to imagine that we can prepare, that we know what’s coming, that if we only analyze the future rightly, we can create viable safety plans. The bigger the predicted catastrophe, the greater we imagine that just by knowing it is coming, we can avoid its most adverse effects. In other words, we use predictions about the future to try to escape the basic vulnerability of being human.

“But Advent is a time in the Christian tradition when we acknowledge that even as we anticipate something we know is coming — the Word, incarnate — we can’t comprehend it.”

Around two and three quarters millennia ago, Isaiah imagined the future and chose hope. It wasn’t an easy choice. Isaiah didn’t think much of the way things were going in his home city of Jerusalem. In chapter one he wrote:

Your new moons and your appointed festivals
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove your evil deeds
    from before my eyes;
cease to do evil;
    learn to do good;
seek justice;
    rescue the oppressed;
defend the orphan;
    plead for the widow.

Isaiah 1:14-17

How do you know things are going badly? The most vulnerable are suffering. As I and others keep saying, it’s all about the widows and the orphans.

As Michael Chan writes at Working Preacher, “In this text, promise and judgement are not contradictory realities: judgment serves promise, and contributes to bringing about the fulfillment of promise.”

Isaiah could not hope for the continuation of what was. People were suffering because of the actions of other people, actions which God had specifically forbidden, actions which God had reminded them over and over again through other prophets not to do. To make things worse, the nation faced a massive external threat. The Assyrian Empire had determined to conquer Egypt. Between the two lay a series of small countries, including the two Jewish nations of Israel and Judah. The Assyrian invasion ended the existence of the northern kingdom of Israel. Judah, Isaiah’s home, barely survived.

When Isaiah dreamed of swords becoming plowshares and spears becoming pruning hooks, of weapons of war becoming tools for planting and pruning, there were a lot of swords and spears coming his way.

He might have hoped for something else. He might have hoped for a Divine victory that overcame the Assyrians. He might have hoped for a new David who would not just chase the Assyrians from Judah, but turn conqueror in his own right, and become ruler of Mesopotamia. Perhaps this new monarch would have such power that he could achieve the Assyrians’ ambition and control Egypt as well. What an achievement that would be. That would be hundreds, thousands times better than David had done.

Isaiah seems to have worked directly with Judah’s kings (he had a long career and served four of them). I’m sure they would have loved to hear that kind of hope.

That’s not the hope he chose.

What is hope and how do you choose it? Rather like love, we tend to think of hope as a feeling, and like love, there’s a truth to that. I can feel affection for someone. That’s love. I can feel positive about the future. That’s hope.

We don’t choose feelings, however, so feelings can’t be virtues. Feelings happen. We don’t control them, and when feelings start to have too much power over us there’s therapy. Fortunately we can often influence our feelings, which is why therapy works, but influence isn’t choice, which is why therapy can be long and hard.

There is another way to think of love, however, and that is choice. To love someone is to set their interests at or above your own. It’s what good parents do for their children. It’s what couples getting married promise to do. It’s what our firefighters have been doing recently during these terrible fires. It’s what John meant when he wrote, “God so loved the world.”

Likewise there is a way to think of hope as a choice. When I hope, I choose to imagine a different world. I choose to believe that things can be better than they are. I choose to embrace a future that improves the present. I choose to live toward, move toward, act toward that future.

I choose a chrysalis.

I choose what to hope for.

That’s important. As I mentioned, Isaiah could have hoped for a sprawling Judean empire. It would have pleased the king, no doubt. He didn’t. He chose to hope for something radically different, different, in fact, from anything he or his contemporaries had experienced. He hoped for peace.

What will we hope for? What will we imagine? What will we believe in? What will we embrace? What will we live toward, move toward, and act toward?

I think we should hope for something worthy of Isaiah. I think we should hope for something worthy of Jesus.

Hope can be so small, can’t it? “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow.” Actually, I do, because it makes some kinds of photography easier. But that’s a pretty limited hope, isn’t it? That’s pretty much just for me. “I hope the stock market keeps rising.” That’s a bigger hope, to be sure, but it sure sounds like it’s still mostly about me, and it’s also a hope where all you’ve got to do is take the long view. In the short term, stock valuations can be really volatile. In the long term, diversified investments rise in value.

I’d like a bigger hope than that.

There’s a phrase with the abbreviation “B-HAG,” which stands for “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.” It’s often recommended that companies, organizations, and advocacy groups choose at least one Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal when they plan. It’s supposed to raise the energy and the investment of time, resources, and labor. And you know, it seems to work. People work for something worth working for.

People hope for something worth hoping for.

Do you remember the song Sammy Davis, Jr., used to sing? Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse wrote it, and Lady Gaga recorded it last year.

Gonna build a mountain
From a little hill
Gonna build me a mountain
‘Least I hope I will
Gonna build a mountain
Gonna build it high
I don’t know how I’m gonna do it
I only know I’m gonna try

Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse

Building a mountain is a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. It’s a hope worth hoping for.

Jesus chose a hope worth hoping for. He chose to hope for communities in which people honored God by caring for one another. He chose to hope that ordinary people would give of themselves for the benefit of others. He chose to hope that power could be made perfect in weakness. He chose to hope that love was stronger than death.

What’s a hope worth hoping for?

I could start with the end of war. It’s brought a lot of misery, a lot of suffering, a lot of death. Let’s do without that.

I could go on to the end of greed. According to the Federal Reserve, as of the end of June, half of Americans possessed 5.4% of the wealth. You heard that right. The other half hold 94.6% of the wealth. The top ten percent of the wealthiest Americans possess 63%.

I don’t think it’s supporting the widows and the orphans.

I hope for the end of greed.

I hope for a world of people that care. I hope for people who plant and harvest. I hope for people who create and build. I hope for people who enjoy beauty and share it. I hope for people who tread lightly on the Earth.

A Big, Hairy, Audacious Hope? Yes, I’d say it is.

A hope worth hoping.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching. Sometimes he decides to do it; sometimes changes just happen.

The image is a Russian icon of Isaiah by an unknown 18th century icon painter – Iconostasis of Transfiguration church, Kizhi monastery, Karelia, Russia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3235458.

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

What I’m Thinking: Worthy Hope

Hope is an exercise in imagination: to believe the world can be better than it is. Let us hope for and work for what is worthy: a world of peace.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the second chapter of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 2:1-5). That’s his vision of the mountain of Jerusalem, Mount Zion, becoming the focus for the peoples of the world, streaming into its gates to learn the ways of God. In those days, Isaiah imagined, then swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning books because it would be the day of peace.

There are times in life, in history, in communities, in societies when the word “hope” gets tossed about: How do I find hope? How do I maintain hope? In the face of what may be really severe conditions, somebody afflicted by a major storm or an earthquake: where do they find hope? Someone in the midst of war: where do they find hope? Someone in the midst of injustice: where do they find hope?

Ind I wish that I had a way to tell you how to feel hopeful. The problem is that I can’t tell you how to feel anything. The hope that I can say something about is a hope that we choose. It is an exercise in imagination, of looking at what is and deciding that it does not need to be that way. It can be different, it should be different, and with work and the grace of God it will be different.

I can still feel pretty pessimistic about it all, but I choose to believe that the evils that are will fail, and the good which is not yet will come to be.

So there’s that decision to hope. There’s also the choice of what to hope for. I stand with Isaiah: a vision of peace, a vision of people ordering themselves into a supportive society. There are plenty of people in the world who hope for very different things. They might hope for their personal enrichment. They might hope to dominate others. They might hope that their nation invades and overthrows others. To my mind these are not worthy hopes.

These are not the hopes of Isaiah. They’re not the hopes of Jesus. I’d say they are not the hopes — the proper hopes — of the followers of Jesus.

Choose to hope. Choose to hope for blessed communities. Choose to hope for peace.

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: Trinity of Wisdom

June 15, 2025

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
John 16:12-15

Lucy Lind Hogan’s commentary on this passage from John, posted at Working Preacher, made me laugh this week. She wrote, “I suspect that most in your congregation would not appreciate a sermon that began like this: ‘There are things that are essential to our faith, but I can’t speak about them because you would not be able to understand. They are far too complicated and way over your head.’”

So, let me check. Raise your hand or give me a nod if you’d object to a sermon that started with, “You’re not going to understand this.”

Well, that’s a pity.

Because I’m not sure you’re going to understand this.

In my defense, the reason I’m not sure you’re going to understand this is because I’m not sure I understand this. It’s Trinity Sunday, so we’re wrestling with understanding the Trinity, not one of Christianity’s simpler ideas. Further, “this” is Jesus’ promise given in John 16:30 that the Spirit of truth will come, and will guide the disciples into all the truth.

Have you noticed how difficult truth is?

Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “What is truth? The dictionary relates truth to fact and reality. Yet, disputes over facts and attempts to hide or dismiss reality may challenge our understanding of truth. Individuals speak of their truth as if it were a choice or varied based on perspective, experience, and acceptance. Is there such a thing as a shared reality when so much of human life is highly segmented and fractured?”

Lord, I hope so. While I grant the possibility of alternate realities – I’m a fan of science fiction, after all – it’s awfully difficult to live in more than one reality at a time. I also grant the existence of unknown reality, when we simply don’t know what reality is, and so different ideas of what it might be all have at least some validity. I certainly grant the existence of different notions of reality, some of which might be correct, or partially correct, or just plain incorrect.

At ground, though, I tend to assume that there is a reality, a truth, to the universe around us. While a vast amount of it might be unknown – it’s a big universe, after all – there’s a lot of truth that we do know and that we can know.

A couple hundred years of experience, for example, teaches us that vaccination significantly reduces the spread and the intensity of infectious disease. According to the National Library of Medicine, the 1853 smallpox outbreak in Hawai’i was the third worst epidemic in Hawaiian history. It killed 5,000 people. There hasn’t been a case of smallpox since 1977 anywhere in the world, and that’s because of vaccination. Those who claim vaccines cause rather than prevent disease are wrong.

They are not telling the truth.

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all the truth. I might wish that the Holy Spirit would just give us all the truth, but that’s not what Jesus said and it certainly isn’t our experience, is it? We have to work at truth. We have to ask questions. We have to evaluate competing answers. We have to compare the assertions of different sources, take a look at how it matches with our experience, and consider whether our experience might be deceptive. People had considered and even practiced inoculation for smallpox for some time in Asia, Africa, India, and Europe, but most people considered making somebody a little bit sick to prevent getting very sick to be dangerous. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the practice gained wider acceptance and not until the 20th century that it knocked smallpox out entirely.

With anti-vaccination people in positions of power and exercising that power to restrict and discourage vaccination, we’re going to see more illness. We’re going to see more death. That’s truth.

Truth is not wholly revealed by observation and experimentation. For one thing, our observation has limits, and our experiments can’t always account for all the potential circumstances. Science always looks for predictable phenomena: I do this, and this happens. But if there’s more than what I do that changes in an experiment and I don’t know it, my predictions don’t work.

That makes the truth of people – or of one person – really difficult to understand.

It makes the truth of God, with whom we are in relationship and within whom there is a relationship that we call “the Trinity,” really difficult to understand.

But maybe, just maybe, there are dimensions of the Trinity that we can understand, or accept, or even rejoice in.

Meda Stamper writes at Working Preacher, “The Trinity presented to us in John is a manifestation of God’s love for us, a way of opening a door to the mystery of God that allows us to see ourselves embraced by it.” When Jesus spoke to his disciples it was in perilous times. They may not have seen it as clearly as he did – they asked “What did he mean by this?” pretty often during his farewell address – but nobody who had been with Jesus in Jerusalem had any illusions about the danger. Jesus’ arrest didn’t come as a surprise.

Jesus offered reassurance, the reassurance of the Spirit’s presence, and the reassurance of the Spirit’s truth, as a sign of his own love and God’s own love for them.

The Trinity is love.

As well as love, Jesus’ words extended hope. As Timothy L. Adkins-Jones writes at Working Preacher, “Maybe through tears of his own, and possibly to weeping disciples, Jesus offers hope to those that he loves. In a world where loss, anxiety, and fear are legion, there will be no shortage of disciples in our midst who are in need of reassurance. Our mission seems to be to offer ways that the relationship Jesus describes in this passage, between Himself, the Father, and the Spirit, brings hope to an anxious people instead of wrestling with the particulars of the Trinity.”

I’ve said more than once that hope as a Christian concept or virtue is not a feeling. It’s a choice. When I hope, I look at what is before me and decide that it does not need to be this way. It can be better. It might be pretty much okay, but it can be better. Or it might be really bad, and I choose to believe it can be better. I choose hope. I choose to work toward my hope.

Choose hope, my friends, Jesus told them.

The Trinity is hope.

Jesus’ words to his disciples continued past where our reading ends at verse 15. “You have pain now,” he told them, “but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

In the midst of that solemn night with its confusion and its sense of threat, Jesus promised joy. At JourneyWithJesus.net, Amy Frykholm writes about establishing a food pantry during the COVID pandemic in Leadville, Colorado: “To cross a mountain stream, you must seek those few rocks that will remain firmly in place, that are flat enough to afford a foothold. We likened our development of the food pantry to looking for these ‘joy’ rocks. What can we do with enough joy, enough letting go, enough delight that we can stay steady while we cross this stream? If we saw ourselves falling into obligation, we’d ask, ‘Is this a joy rock?’ If the answer was no, then we looked for another route.”

Joy. That’s important. It’s a vital part of the journey; it’s a vital part of the work. It’s a vital element of truth itself. If someone’s truth claim perverts justice, threatens harm, or promises suffering, if it lacks joy or subverts joy, it is not true. Read the witness of Proverbs’ figure of Wisdom who, during Creation, “was beside God, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”

Wisdom – Truth – the Holy Spirit – the Trinity – is joy.

Joy. Hope. Love. That’s a Trinity of Truth. It’s worth confessing. It’s worth proclaiming. It’s worth living.

It’s a Trinity of Wisdom.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares the entire sermon ahead of time, and frequently makes changes while preaching.

The image is Three-Faced Christ (The Trinity) by Anonymous Flemish master (ca. 1500) – https://www.artfairmag.com/colnaghi, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=162397197.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner

Pastor’s Corner: Hope and Optimism

May 28, 2025

I don’t know whether a dictionary would agree with me, but I attach a significant difference to the words “hope” and “optimism.”

I feel optimistic when I sense that things are going well, that good things will happen, that bad things will fade away. Optimistic me usually, but not always, has good reason for the feeling. I might be buoyed up by successes or following others’ good work. I don’t choose what I call optimism; I feel it.

I also enjoy it when it happens.

In contrast, I describe hope as a choice which doesn’t depend on what I feel. When I hope, I look toward a future that looks better than the present, whether I feel that it’s likely or not. When I choose hope, I choose to live toward what is good rather than following what might be an easier path toward what is bad.

It’s certainly easier to hope when I feel optimistic. Hope springs almost naturally from a feeling that things are going well. Hope becomes a virtue when optimism fades. Why would I work toward something that cannot, or at least will not, be?

Enjoy your optimism. The world gives us plenty of reason to celebrate, from the tiny grins of infants to the proud smiles of graduates to the tender embraces of tutu. All these things tell us that the future will be better than the present.

When things say otherwise, that’s the time to hope. The future can be better. The world can be brighter. The people can live in love and peace, though all the powers and principalities seek to bar the way. Hope when it’s easy; hope when it’s hard.

That’s how better days dawn.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

PS: I’ve appended the sabbatical video once again. I hope you enjoy it!

Video: Sabbatical 2025

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner

Pastor’s Corner: Expectations

April 17, 2024

A few weeks ago I visited Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park with my camera – which is how I always visit Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park – and walked a trail I’d never walked before. Along the way I saw and heard a number of birds. They mostly flew in the treetops, which on that trail were pretty high, so I couldn’t be certain what birds I was seeing. I pointed my camera and I took pictures in the hope that I could identify them later when I got home.

In particular, I hoped to photograph an ‘amakihi.

I’ve seen them before; I’ve taken pictures of them before. It had been some time, however, since I’d seen or captured one. My trips to the park had won me a number of photos of ‘apapane, which I love. I came home from this particular trip with pictures of ‘apapane and a pair of nene that had decided to camp along Chain of Craters Road, which was delightful. I also believed that I’d finally photographed an ‘amakihi perched in a tree.

When I got home, I discovered that it was a mejiro, a wonderful bird to be sure, but not what I’d hoped.

Disappointment is a funny emotion. Mejiro are special birds. They’re mighty singers and they’re hard to spot. On most days, I’d be delighted to see one. On that day, however, I’d set my sights on an ‘amakihi, and as far as I could tell from the photos, hadn’t seen a single one. I was disappointed.

I don’t write this to say something like, “Always look on the bright side of life” (a la Monty Python). I write it to say that our moods and spirits depend on so many things, and one of the biggest is our goal or expectation. Realizing it, I managed to keep disappointment from becoming a deeper sadness.

It took two more trips to find an ‘amakihi, but I did it. I didn’t see any nene that day, though.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Photo of an ‘amakihi (two trips later) by Eric Anderson.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Written on the Heart

March 17, 2024

Psalm 51:1-12
Jeremiah 31:31-34

Ah, Jeremiah. Such a cheerful fellow.

Kelly J. Murphy writes at Working Preacher, “This is the prophet who cries, ‘Therefore thus says the LORD: See, I am laying before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble; parents and children together, neighbor and friend shall perish’ (Jeremiah 6:21) and ‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!’ (Jeremiah 23:1). It’s no wonder that Jeremiah is often called the ‘Weeping Prophet.’”

All right. Perhaps not so cheerful.

Jeremiah lived through troubled times. At the beginning of his prophetic ministry, he experienced the reforms of King Josiah, which promised to bring the nation of Judah closer to its covenant with God. His hopes were dashed when Josiah died in battle and his successors abandoned the reforms. Each one received the gloomy judgement of the authors of 2 Kings: “He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his ancestors had done.”

Jeremiah aggressively criticized the worship of other gods, the gods introduced by foreign nations, which had grown among the Israelites over the years. He wrote things like this:

As a thief is shamed when caught,
    so the house of Israel shall be shamed:
they, their kings, their officials,
    their priests, and their prophets,
who say to a tree, “You are my father,”
    and to a stone, “You gave me birth.”
For they have turned their backs to me
    and not their faces.
But in the time of their trouble they say,
    “Come and save us!”

– Jeremiah 2:26-27

Jeremiah didn’t just condemn idolatry. He condemned fraud and lies. He condemned the failure to care for orphans and the needy. He condemned greed among the elite. He stood before the Temple and asked if it had become a den of robbers. You might remember that Jesus said something similar about six hundred years later. Jeremiah warned that the inevitable result of this level of faithlessness and sin was the breaking of the nation’s covenant with God, and without God’s protection, the tiny nation would not survive violent encounters with the great empires of Assyria or Babylon, which hovered to the north, or with Egypt, which lurked to the south.

The nation did not survive.

In 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon besieged Jerusalem. King Jeconiah surrendered. The Babylonians took the king and a number of civic and religious leaders to Babylon in exile, including a member of the priesthood named Ezekiel. Ezekiel began writing his book of prophecy after arriving in Babylon.

The Babylonians put Jeconiah’s uncle, Zedekiah, on the throne. Ten years later, Zedekiah attempted rebellion, which Jeremiah also condemned. Zedekiah was wrong; Jeremiah was right. The city fell in 587 to the Babylonian army, the Temple was destroyed, and the nation of Judah perished.

It was the unimaginable calamity. The nation that God had founded and promised to protect died.

And Jeremiah’s message changed.

“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

The “Weeping Prophet” found and declared a new hope.

In the future, he said, there would be a new covenant.

It has to be said that this would not be the first new covenant between God and the descendants of Abraham. It wouldn’t even be the second. God restated the covenant with Abraham, made a covenant with the people through Moses and then had to make it again when it was swiftly broken. God reshaped that covenant as the nation chose to empower a monarchy and did it again when the portable tabernacle found a permanent home in the Jerusalem Temple.

In the context of the fall of Jerusalem, however, the announcement of this new covenant must have astonished its hearers. Wil Gafney writes at Working Preacher, “The passage ends with a commitment from God to forget their sin for all time. These words promised desperately-needed hope to the survivors of the invasion. The God of Creation would re-create them. The God of Exodus would embrace them again. The merciful, tender loving God would forgive all their sin and absolve them of the sins of their ancestors. The sin that led God to surrender Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonians would be forgiven.”

Standing literally in the wreckage of their hopes, Jeremiah offered hope once more.

Nearly three millennia later, how do we understand this hope?

First, the exiles of Judah did return from Babylon – or at least, their descendants did, seventy years after their parents and grandparents were taken away from Jerusalem. I can’t say, however, that they experienced this promise of the law being written on their hearts. They continued to teach one another to know the LORD. We know this because they kept writing books about knowing the LORD, many of which became Scripture for Jews and for us. What do we use Scripture for? To teach about God.

As Terence Fretheim writes at Working Preacher, “Even from a Christian perspective this text has not been fully fulfilled. We still need to encourage others to ‘know the Lord.’ And the claim that ‘all know me, from the least of them to the greatest’ remains a promise for the future.”

It’s not hard to come to that conclusion. We organize our families, our society, and our nation around the assumption that people need to be taught to do what is right, and good, and fit. We spend the early years of children’s lives teaching them not to grab. We have organized educational programs, both secular and sacred, to teach children what we think they should know and to behave as we think they should behave.

Among adults, we devote a good deal of resources to discouraging certain kinds of behavior, primarily versions of theft and levels of violence. We empower people to determine what behaviors should be tolerated and what behaviors should be punished: legislators. We give other people the privilege to investigate forbidden behavior and to use force – which is otherwise prohibited – to stop people from continuing those behaviors: law enforcement. Further resources go to determining the truth or falsehood of accusations, and to applying consequences for engaging in forbidden behavior: courts and judges. Again, those consequences – imprisonment, primarily – are ordinarily forbidden behaviors themselves.

Would this be necessary among a people in whose hearts God had written the law?

Well. Maybe. Maybe not.

In Jeremiah’s day, he could point to specific elements of the covenant with God and say, “These things you’re doing violate the covenant.” In our day, we can do much the same. “You know what is right and wrong,” we can say, “and you’ve chosen what is wrong.”

Knowledge of God’s guidance, knowledge of God’s wishes, knowledge of God’s will doesn’t appear to be enough to prevent people from doing what God doesn’t want them to do. If it’s written upon the heart, would that make a difference? Wouldn’t you and I, with full knowledge of God’s direction, still need to decide for ourselves that we will do what is good, and right, and fit, and not do what is bad, and wrong, and unfit?

Of course we would. It’s no different from our situation now, when we have been taught what we know, and still have to choose.

Jeremiah’s new covenant reinforces God’s ancient commitment to the people of Israel, and by extension to the people of the Earth, not to fully abandon us even when we betray God’s trust. “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” This caught the attention of the author of Hebrews, who connected Jesus’ supreme gift of forgiveness with this ancient promise. “What is imagined here,” writes Margaret Odell at Working Preacher, “is a resilient relationship of trust and mutuality, in which Israel responds to God from the heart, and God accepts Israel freely, with mercy and forgiveness. But what makes the new covenant possible is what had always been true but needed to be learned again. ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ This love, suggests Jeremiah, is nothing new.”

The Scriptures contain abundant stories of people disappointing God, both individual people and entire societies. The Scriptures describe many times when God seems to have given up in disgust and walked away.

The Scriptures also assert that for each one of those times and many more times God has come back, started over, offered a new covenant, extended forgiveness, welcomed a new relationship. That’s been true for great big groups of people and it’s been true for individuals like you and I.

The law may or may not be written on our hearts. What you will find written there is the steadfast love of God, and it has not, will not, and cannot be erased.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric revises his prepared sermon while preaching. Sometimes it’s an improvement.

The image is The Prophets Jeremiah and Baruch (btw 1600 & 1639) by Rutilio di Lorenzo Manetti – Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122066973.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Words of Consolation

Jeremiah spent most of career as a harsh-voiced prophet of warning. When catastrophe came, he spoke God’s words of hope.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the thirty-first chapter of the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Jeremiah is my favorite of the prophets; this section is one of my favorites of his book. It’s frequently called the “Book of Consolation.” 

You see, Jeremiah had spent most of his career warning the people of Judah, and particularly the leadership of Judah, that their actions were in violation of God’s covenant with them. They were running the risk — and at some point Jeremiah announced that they had gone beyond the line of risk — of forfeiting God’s protection for them as a nation. 

Indeed, in Jeremiah’s time the Babylonian Empire conquered Judah, not once but twice, and after that second invasion Jerusalem’s walls lay in ruin and its temple had been burned. The Book of Consolation comes from the depth of Judah’s loss and grief: the loss of their independence, the loss of their place of worship, the loss of their prospect for a future. Into that moment Jeremiah brought words of hope. 

“The days are coming, says the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the House of Judah and the House of Israel, not like the old covenant, which they broke… I will take my law and I will write it upon their hearts. They shall be my people. I shall be their God. 

Christians tend to associate Jeremiah’s new covenant with the new covenant that we understand that God has made with us in Jesus, and indeed there is good reason to think so. We do have a new relationship with God, one that God made with us by coming to us in Jesus, by going to the cross, by returning to life again through resurrection. 

We have to admit, however, that we have not got a covenant that is written upon our hearts. We are no more able to keep the expectations God has of us then were Jeremiah’s contemporaries 2500 years and more ago. We still stumble, we still fall, we still fail to meet God’s expectations. But in the harshest moments that those people knew, in the midst of the most terrible calamity that they could imagine, God came to that harsh-voiced prophet and said: I have words of hope. 

And let that be true for us, that in our most shadowed days, in our most troubled circumstances, let God speak words of hope to each and every one of us: words of hope made manifest in Jesus, words of hope that still lie ahead to be fulfilled, words of hope written upon our hearts, carrying us towards the fulfillment of that new covenant. 

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.