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 Sermons

Sermon: What Really Matters

December 8, 2024

Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

The Apostle Paul was, it seems, accustomed to repeat himself. In chapter three of this letter, having spent some time telling the Philippians things he’d already told them, he wrote, “To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a source of steadfastness.” After that, he told them some more things… that he’d already told them.

In some ways I can safely say that I emulate the Apostle Paul. Or in at least one. I repeat myself.

I’m pretty sure I’ve told you that I repeat myself before… probably in that sermon I titled, “Repeating Myself.”

No surprises today, I’m afraid.

We don’t know exactly when Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, or what city he was in. He was in prison, but that doesn’t tell us much. In Second Corinthians, he wrote that he had “far more imprisonments” than some other people with whom he was in conflict. Apparently he had the capacity to annoy local authorities with his preaching – and he had the will to do so rather than stay safe and silent.

While it’s no surprise to find Paul imprisoned, he did set a different tone in this letter. For one thing, it sounds like he’d been held longer than he had previously, long enough for the Philippians to hear about it and start worrying about him, long enough for them to worry about his companion Epaphroditus as well. In the first century, jail was not a punishment. People were held for trial and after trial to await punishment, and Paul had experienced “countless floggings” in his career. This time, though, the possibility of execution loomed. “Living is Christ,” he wrote in verse 21. “Dying is gain.”

In the midst of all that, Paul wrote what is safe to describe as the most joyful of his letters, at least the ones we have. This is no Second Corinthians, full of contention and conflict. This is no Romans, dedicated to a thorough explanation of his ideas. This is not even Philemon, encouraging a friend to do something extraordinary. In Philippians, Paul rejoices in the faithfulness and compassion of this congregation he has loved and cared for.

As Carla Works writes at Working Preacher, “Joy permeates this letter. Paul will make use of the language of joy or rejoicing sixteen times. The apostle can have joy in the midst of suffering because of his confidence in God’s work through Christ. His joy is wed to God’s activity rather than to his own personal circumstances. Joy is an appropriate theological response. It is not joy because of suffering, but joy because those who cause the suffering will not have the last word.”

Joy is the first of things that really matter.

Another thing that really mattered, and really matters now, is the presence and support of other people. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Paul’s letters to the churches of his era and to the church today, remind us, across time and distance, that our faith is shared. Our journey is communal. If we are called to be a righteous branch, we recognize that branches are connected to a tree, bush, or vine.” Over the course of the letter to the Philippians, Paul mentioned four of his comrades in the gospel by name: Epaphroditus, Timothy, Euodia, and Syntyche. In fact, Paul routinely named other people as he wrote his letters, either because he wanted to greet them specifically in the church to whom he wrote, or because he was passing along the blessings of people with whom he was working at the time.

What really matters? Don’t do it alone. You don’t have to. And you shouldn’t. Get together, and stay together.

What else matters? Paul named something else in this one-sentence prayer that closed today’s reading: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvestof righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

Love. Love matters. Love really matters. Love. Agape. Hesed. Aloha. Love really matters.

This is the love that puts someone else’s welfare and interests at or above your own. This is the love that not only knows that we don’t have to do God’s work alone, this is the love that doesn’t let someone else do God’s work alone, either. This is the love that Epaphroditus demonstrated by coming to Paul and getting sick. This is the love that Paul showed by sending the recuperating Epaphroditus home, not just for his benefit, but to comfort the Philippians who were worried about both of them.

This love is not a feeling, but it nurtures feelings, doesn’t it? This love is audible in words, and it is visible in deeds. This love is tangible in making change in the physical world. This love tastes like my friend’s favorite meal. This love has the perfume of blossoms after rain.

These things make us feel good. They make others feel good. This is what love is. And: it really matters.

Paul’s prayer didn’t stop there, though. As L. Ann Jervis writes at Working Preacher, “Paul calls for love that is discerning and courageous, not simply tolerating everything in everyone; love that has insight and wisdom; love that reflects the moral character of God as reflected in Christ.” I’ve said it before, love carelessly expressed may not comfort, may not heal. It may, in fact, annoy, irritate, and mislead. People who dearly loved me have given me some real clinkers of Christmas gifts over the years. I love the people, but I do occasionally wonder how they thought I’d like… you know, that.

Christmas gifts are one thing. Day to day gifts are another. How often do we take on some regular job in the household firmly believing that we are providing relief or relaxation to someone we love? How often did we take it on because, well, it’s easier to do it ourselves than to share it? How often did we take it on because it’s something we were good at and the other person wasn’t, and we just couldn’t be bothered to teach it?

How often do we find ourselves unintentionally limiting the roles our loved ones can take on or the skills they can learn?

Did we ask?

It turns out that knowledge matters when we set out to love. It turns out that we can lovingly do exactly the wrong thing. It turns out that ignorance isn’t loving. Shouldn’t we care enough to ask?

Yes. We should.

Care enough to ask. It really matters.

Care enough to observe, as well. That’s where insight comes from. That’s what allows us to make those inspired guesses about things that will delight those we love. When we pay attention to what pleases those we love, we can make better and better judgements about what will please them next. Insight isn’t a gift that some have and some don’t. Insight is something you build from experience, observation, and consideration. Insight, like knowledge, takes work.

Do the work. It really matters.

What really matters?

Joy. Joy matters. Joy in the grace of God that rises above the current circumstances. Joy matters.

Togetherness. Togetherness matters. Living out our calling from God in company with others, supporting one another in righteousness. Togetherness matters.

Love. Love matters. Sharing and caring for others as we would have them share and care for us. Love matters.

Knowledge. Knowledge matters. Asking when we do not know, so that we can love well. Knowledge matters.

Insight. Insight matters. Paying attention to those we love so that we can love well without asking every question. Insight matters.

Paul repeated himself. So do I. Because it’s so important that we know what really matters, and that we do what really matters.

Love with knowledge and insight. Love together, not alone. Love God’s creation, and celebrate God’s joy.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric preaches from a text, but he does vary from it, as he has done today.

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 What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Founding Wisdom

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it says – but for the apostle Paul, the beginning of wisdom is the celebration of grace.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the fifth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 5:15-20), in which the apostle advised his readers not to be foolish, but to be wise.

You would expect from the apostle Paul that there would be a long list of things not to do or, conversely, to do, in order to be wise or not to be foolish. Indeed, Paul began with one, and it is something of a theme for him and his letters. He said, do not get drunk with wine because that is debauchery. Instead, he advised, get filled with the spirit: sing hymns and spiritual songs and praise God.

The beginning of wisdom, we hear from Proverbs, is the fear of the LORD. Interestingly enough, the apostle did not quote that. Instead, he turned to a different kind of relationship with God, a different kind of activity towards God. He turned towards praise and celebration.

The beginning of wisdom is rejoicing in the gifts of God.

There are plenty of reasons for regrets, for repentance, even for sadness and sorrow. “The times are evil,” the apostle wrote. But wisdom does not focus there. Wisdom focuses on the gifts of God, the grace of God, the compassion of God, the presence of God, the praise of God.

So let us be wise and not foolish. Let us not replace genuine joy with that that comes from artificial means, whether that be mood altering substances or mood altering activity. Let us begin by appreciating the wonders of the world that God has made. Let us begin by celebrating the gifts and the grace of 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, Uncategorized

Unpreached Sermon: Gotta Dance

This sermon was prepared for worship on July 14, 2024, but not preached because of the assassination attempt against a Presidential candidates on July 13. Instead, Pastor Eric preached “Repeating Myself.”

July 14, 2024

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19
Psalm 24

In the 1952 musical film, Singing in the Rain, there’s a musical number that has never made any sense to me. I grant you that people suddenly bursting into song is standard fare for musicals, which doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, but I never had any problem with that. No, the movie introduces a musical number that’s being included in the fictional 18th century movie The Dancing Cavalier, and the musical number, “Broadway Melody,” is all about somebody who comes to Broadway to become a dancer.

And no, I never have been able to figure out how that went together, but hey, it’s a musical. It’s also amazing. Gene Kelly did some of his best dance work in the number, and it also featured Cyd Charisse. Most of all, it began and ended with Kelly’s musical shout, “Gotta dance!”

King David couldn’t have heard that musical phrase, but he certainly understood it. When they decided to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, he led the procession in a dance. “Gotta dance,” was the phrase of the day, because it wasn’t just David. It was other people in the procession. “David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.”

The ark had been in one place for twenty years. Those were eventful years. Israel had selected a monarch for the first time, King Saul. That hadn’t gone so well. God had appointed a new monarch, David, and while the two worked together for a while David lived as leader of a small armed rebellion for many years. Saul and many of his sons died in battle with the Philistines, but one, Ishbaal, survived and was acclaimed king by the most of the twelve tribes. David ruled in the south until Ishbaal was assassinated, leaving David as undisputed monarch of Israel.

The next thing he did was to seize the Jebusite city of Jerusalem, which had been an independent city-state within the lands the Hebrew people inhabited. David made it the new national capital, and not-very-modestly named it “The City of David.” The new city would not be associated with either the house of Saul or with the places David had ruled while contesting for the throne. It was about as close as they could come to creating a new beginning.

About the only thing missing: the Ark of the Covenant. The chest which contained the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. The symbol of God’s blessing. The central object that represented God’s commitment to the nation. It had been just ten miles away from Jerusalem for twenty years. The time had come to bring it to the political and social center of the nation, and make it the religious center, too.

As Richard W. Nysse writes at Working Preacher, “David’s exuberance can be read as pure gratitude for what Lord has granted him, but it can also be interpreted as politically astute manipulation.

“In other words, David’s motives are not pure and yet God is involved. Sin is real and faith is real; at times they are concurrent in one event and one character. The narrative leaves room for both readings. Perhaps it even insists on both readings, and thus depicts a world that has resonance with our own.”

Gotta dance. But who is he dancing for?

It’s easy to make David into a self-interested political manipulator. He did such things. The worst of them was the rape of Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, but they’re not the only such acts. During his days as a rebel he was also a mercenary for neighboring (and hostile) nations as well as something of a bandit. As John C. Holbert writes in his blog at Patheos, “There can be little doubt that David loves YHWH in these wonderful stories. But there can also be little doubt that, at times at least, he loves himself more.”

Is that the case here? David paused the festival parade between verses 5 and 11 because of a tragic accident that killed one of the attendants. “David was angry because the LORD had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah…” says the text – not afraid, not cautious, not concerned: angry with God. That tends to reinforce some of my suspicious cynicism.

There are other reasons to work the politics of something, though, and that’s the welfare of the nation. David ruled a nation that had suffered years of low-level civil war while they were also vulnerable to repeated conflicts with their neighboring nations. Hostilities between David and surviving members of Saul’s extended family were still conceivable. It didn’t just serve David, it served the nation to create a new sense of unity, to demonstrate that the new monarch would rule justly and with care for everybody’s welfare. Jerusalem’s clean slate, if the Ark of the Covenant could be brought there, would be endorsed by the God of the Exodus who had brought everyone to a new home.

Look, everyone, it’s a new home.

Gotta dance for that.

Well. Maybe.

David’s first wife (the authors of Second Samuel had lost count of his wives in chapter five), Michal, “looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.” If David had been channeling “Gotta Dance” she was in tune with the Jerome Kern song, “I Won’t Dance,” sung by Frank Sinatra in 1957 (and a whole lot of other people after that). Michal, it turns out, thought that David went over the top with his dancing, even making some pointedly rude comments about it. It basically ended any positive feeling in their relationship.

“Gotta dance?” Or “I won’t dance?” Which would you prefer?

Barbara Messner writes in her blog:

I have witnessed sacred dancing
that has stirred my very being:
wordless meaning that’s enhancing
prayer inspired by what I’m seeing –
spirit stirring, feelings freeing.

Yet our mainstream church disdains it,
though the censure is unspoken:
formal liturgy restrains it
into gestures that are token,
careful that no power is woken.

The technicolor rainbow of Christianity has a lot of variety in it: in theology, in organization, in spiritual style, and in the energy of worship. There are parades in churches of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican traditions, but they don’t look much like David’s leaping and dancing. They’re grand; they’re stately. They’re measured; they’re dignified. And on any given Sunday morning, there’s church choirs swaying and even performing dance steps in Baptist churches. There are people crying out spontaneously from the congregation in Pentecostal churches.

On Palm Sunday here, we circle round the sanctuary singing and waving palms, and we might be dancing if I were better at it.

David and those with him, they chose, “Gotta dance.” Yes, there was calculation to it, but people do things for lots of reasons. As Amy G. Oden writes at Working Preacher, “David and ‘all the house of Israel’—all 30,000 of them!—dance before the Lord “with all their might” (verse 5)! Even the list of instruments: ‘lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals’ (verse 5) conveys exuberance.  Holy Presence may invite us into quiet contemplation, into bold action or renewed commitments. Here it evokes festive joy.”

We have some dancing enthusiasts among us. Not 30,000 of them. We have some singing enthusiasts among us. Not 30,000 of them, either. We aren’t terribly exuberant people here at Church of the Holy Cross. But… I know myself well enough to know that there’s some more celebration in me than I usually display. There’s some joyful energy even within this example of a New England Congregationalist, often known as “God’s Frozen Chosen.” I’m more likely to sing it than to dance it, but you know, it’s gotta come out.

Gotta sing. Gotta dance.

We’ve gotta sing and gotta dance because God’s blessings are manifest all around us. Look at those trees. Look at those flowers. Look at that sky (even if it’s gray). Look at that ocean. Look at those people whose smile is brighter than a sunrise. Isn’t that enough reason to rejoice?

But more: we have a congregation worth celebrating, one that care for our neighbors and welcomes the newcomer. We have a commitment to one another and to those who have gone before us. We live and serve with other congregations of the United Church of Christ and the universal Church who share our commitments, our ministry, and our joy. That’s worth celebrating, isn’t it?

And most of all: we have a God of love and grace, a God of forgiveness and redemption, a God of presence and inspiration. What we see and hear and smell and feel and taste is just a fraction of the wonder that is our God. God is with us.

God is with us. So yes: Gotta dance!

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

The image is David Danced before the LORD with All his Might (circa 1896–1902) by James Tissot – http://www.gci.org/files/images/jt/TissDanc.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15343206.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: David Danced

David danced enthusiastically as they moved the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. Do we fully appreciate the joy of faith?

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the sixth chapter of Second Samuel (2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19), when King David brought the Ark of the Covenant into the city of Jerusalem.

The description is of quite a major festival. there are priests, there are attendants, there are musicians, there are lots and lots of people joining in a great parade, and there, somewhere either in the front or in the midst of it (in any case not far in front of the Ark itself upon its cart), King David danced, danced energetically, enthusiastically. Later on he would be criticized by one of his wives for it.

David danced before the Lord.

There are branches of Christianity, and the Congregational tradition is clearly one of them, in which enthusiasm, emotion in worship, well, we’re not enthusiastic about it. We meet a text like this with a certain amount of, well, discomfort. How could someone dance before the Lord so energetically that later on his wife would criticize him for being too exultant?

And indeed, if you look at worship from Church of the Holy Cross you will find that I as a worship leader am fairly measured, and that we as a worshipping congregation are not terribly given towards emotional excess. But maybe we can find a little more room for it.

Why do we want to set aside the joy of faith?

Oh, I am certainly somebody who could be a reason why faith doesn’t seem so joyful. I will happily tell you about all the things that God wants you to do, God wants me to do, and how difficult they all are. That’s very much the case.

But isn’t it true that the very first thing that God wants us to do is rejoice in life? Isn’t it true that the very first thing that God wants us to do is to appreciate the wonders around us? Isn’t the very first thing that God wants us to do is to rejoice in the inexhaustible, ever-flowing love of our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sustainer.

I confess you’re not likely to find me dancing down the aisle (although I try to wave a palm branch pretty enthusiastically on Palm Sunday). Still, we might find some ways to open our hearts a little wider, mightn’t we? We might find some ways to let our spirits and even our bodies move just a little bit, or a little bit more. We might find ways to celebrate the love of God and to let our joy ring out.

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: Why Are You Weeping?

March 31, 2024

Isaiah 25:6-9
John 20:1-18

“Why are you weeping?”

This is a question that may be welcome, and it may not be welcome. “Why are you weeping?” It depends so much on the tone in which the question is asked? How many times have you heard it asked with an accusing tone: “Why are you crying?” and the follow-up statement, “You haven’t got anything to cry about,” not to mention the follow-up threat, “If you don’t stop I’ll give you something to cry about.”

Anybody here ever heard something like that from your parents or a babysitter or a teacher? Anybody here ever said something like that to your child or your relative or your student or your young one in an activity you were leading?

Tell me, did “Why are you crying?” “You haven’t got anything to cry about,” “I’ll give you something to cry about” – did that ever work?

It never worked for me.

They usually cried harder, honestly.

“Why are you weeping?”

There’s another way to ask the question. Actually, there are several, but I like this one. It’s to ask like you’re interested. Like you care. Like you want to comfort. Like you want to help. Even if you don’t know how to help, you’re there to try.

“Why are you weeping?”

Mary Magdalene had good reason to be weeping on that Sunday morning. Her teacher and leader, her trusted guide through wisdom and religion, the person she admired most in the world, had been arrested, tried for crimes he clearly hadn’t committed, and executed in less than a day. The rules of the Sabbath had kept her from visiting his grave for yet another day. Imagine the pent-up grief. You’ve felt something like it. Depending on how comfortable you are with showing emotion, you might have cried, or breathed deeply in and out, or wailed, or sat in complete silence.

Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “When a friend dies, we cry. Mary’s weeping is mentioned no less than four times in four verses. The repetition has the function of emphasizing this important expression of what it means to be human and also validates her response. Of course Mary should cry. The scene would suffer a strange and awkward void if her emotions were not given voice.”

And yet people kept asking.

Her friends, I’m afraid, didn’t ask. Alicia D. Meyers writes at Working Preacher, “Mary’s desire for comfort from these two disciples, however, will leave her empty. Both men eventually look into the tomb and see that Jesus’ body is gone. Even the Beloved Disciple, who is said to ‘believe’ in verse 8, offers no words of hope to Mary. Instead, all three disciples are scattered (see also 16:32). The men ‘returned to their homes,’ while Mary remains outside the tomb, weeping.”

Seriously, folks. Simon Peter and this other disciple – who isn’t definitely identified by John the Gospel writer, so I’m going to have to go with “other disciple” – ran all the way to the cemetery, looked at things, shrugged their shoulders, and left Mary there alone in tears. It wasn’t the best hour for Jesus’ male disciples.

In fairness, I would guess that they didn’t need to ask why Mary was crying. It was the same reason they were crying, though John failed to mention it. St. Augustine wrote, “’And I know not,’ she added, ‘where they have laid Him.’ This was the greater cause of sorrow, because she knew not where to go to mitigate her grief. But the hour had now come when the joy, in some measure announced by the angels, who forbade her tears, was to succeed the weeping.”

How did the angels ask, “Why are you weeping?”

John didn’t describe their voices, but Mary didn’t fly out in anger or collapse in tears. She answered the question. She was mourning someone whose life ended all too soon and now even his body had been robbed away. That grief was so overwhelming that she didn’t even think to ask, “Who are you, and how and when did you two enter the tomb while neither my friends nor I saw you?”

Finally, along came Jesus. I’m pretty sure I know why Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize him. I don’t think she looked at him. When I’m sunk in the depths of emotion, I don’t look at people. My attention is on me and how I feel. It takes a lot to call me out of that. Something more than, “Why are you weeping?” even if asked with the most caring, loving, empathizing tone ever used on God’s green earth.

It took a lot for Mary. Jesus had to say her name.

“Why are you weeping?” Well, now it’s a different answer, isn’t it? Nobody has taken away the body of Jesus; instead, someOne has returned the life of Jesus, some Heavenly One. I’m definitely an old softy, but if the one I’d seen crucified three days before turned up alive and well, I’d be crying. They’d be tears of joy, but I’d be crying.

Mary took those new tears back to find the male disciples, including the two who hadn’t been much help earlier (Mary was a remarkably generous person, wasn’t she?), to tell them the good news.

Why are you weeping?

Life is sometimes called “this vale of tears,” and for good reason. We’re subject to a remarkable number of physical ailments, some trivial, some severe, and for no good reason. I hurt my shoulder a few years ago when I rolled over in bed. Why am I weeping? Because my body does weird things and I don’t like it.

Why are you weeping?

Because the emotional losses of Earth are more frequent than the physical. Lost jobs. Lost relationships. Loved ones who’ve moved away – loved ones who’ve moved on. Our emotions are subject to such things as changes in diet as well as to changes in the world around us that just plain make us sad. Then there’s mental illnesses that leave us with feelings we struggle to cope with and live with.

Why are you weeping?

The condition of this planet warrants tears, tears enough to compound sea level rise from climate change. Nation has gone to war against nation, democratic institutions are threatened, natural and human-made disasters take lives and homes, disrupt our economy, and raise a crop of self-appointed experts to tell us, inaccurately, what went wrong.

Why are you weeping?

You’ve got good cause to weep.

My friends, you have better cause to weep, to weep the tears of joy.

Mary Magdalene was not the last to see Jesus that day. Not-so-empathetic Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved despite his inability to comfort his friends, you know, those guys? They saw Jesus that evening along with the other guys that Mary didn’t hunt up that morning. Admittedly, one of Jesus’ friends missed that party. There’s always one who misses something – but that’s next week’s sermon. Spoiler alert: Eventually even he saw Jesus.

I know it’s not the same for us as for Mary. Her tears of grief were for the lost Jesus. Seeing him transformed them to tears of joy. Your hurts and griefs, your ails and concerns, they’re not the same. The resurrection of Jesus doesn’t change how much they hurt. The resurrection of Jesus doesn’t mean that those tears stop flowing.

The resurrection of Jesus does mean that even those tears will someday flow as tears of joy. The resurrection of Jesus means that even while those tears of sorrow flow, they can be mixed with the tears that praise Christ’s life. The resurrection of Jesus means that those who haven’t been weeping can begin to weep, and begin with the tears that celebrate new life.

The resurrection of Jesus means that tears of loss can begin their transformation to tears of joy. The resurrection of Jesus means that someday every tear will be one of celebration.

Are you weeping? Go ahead and weep. Life is hard. Loss is real.

Are you weeping? Go ahead and weep. Let some other tears join them, though: the tears that rejoice in Jesus’ life.

Are you weeping? Go ahead and weep. Jesus lives and reigns. Weep those tears of joy.

And whether you’re weeping or not, let your soul take flight and your voice raise its Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching every Sunday, not just on Easter.

The image is Noli me Tangere by Bartholomeus Spranger, ca. 1600. Photo by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22775129.