When Jesus met a woman at a well in Samaria, it turned out that they both had something to offer to one another: Refreshment.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 4:5-42): the conversation between Jesus and a woman he met at a well in Samaria.
The conversation started with Jesus’ simple request that she share some of the water she was drawing so that he could have a drink. It went from there to matters much deeper — deeper even than the well, if you like. It went to spiritual matters. It went even to the identity of the Messiah, the Deliverer, the one who was coming.
Unlike lots of other conversations, Jesus actually acknowledged to the woman that he was the Messiah.
The conversation was persuasive enough that she went back to the town and invited her neighbors to meet him. She said, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. He couldn’t be the Messiah — or could he? Come and see.”
It occurs to me that this story is about refreshment. It started with Jesus asking to be refreshed with the literal water to be drawn from the well. It continued with the refreshment that Jesus offered to this woman and to her neighbors: refreshment of the spirit.
He offered and delivered not just an acceptance, but also real valuing for her and for those around her, despite the fact that she was a Samaritan, despite the fact that she was a woman, despite the fact that there were a number of things that should have kept them distant from one another.
Yet they refreshed one another.
I think refreshment is a central activity, a central calling, a central obligation, if you like, of the life of faith. We are not simply here to be ourselves. We are here to support one another, to be a community, to be a family, if you like. In that family we refresh one another. We provide refreshment such as water, food, shelter. We provide refreshment emotionally and relationally. And when and how we can, we offer refreshment for the spirit: that living water of which Jesus spoke that flows through our very souls and renews our lives.
Refreshment.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
As he sat down to write his letter to the church in Rome – or perhaps as he stood to dictate it to the scribe, Tertius, who offers greetings at the end of the letter – the Apostle Paul had an agenda. He planned a trip to Spain. He had travelled a lot in the years since the risen Jesus summoned him to proclaim this good news. He hoped to go even further, to the place Clement of Rome, writing at the end of the first century, called “the farthest west.”
Along the way, said Paul, he wanted to visit the Christian community in Rome.
Unlike his other letters in the New Testament, Paul wrote this letter to people he didn’t know. He hoped for their assistance, I’m sure: a place to stay during his visit. He said he looked forward to preaching the gospel, so I’m sure he planned to do the same things he’d done in cities and towns across modern Israel, Syria, Turkey, and Greece. He wanted to meet people he’d heard good things of, names that had reached his ears across the Mediterranean Sea.
The Letter to the Romans was Paul on his best behavior, writing to strangers, trying to make a good impression.
Paul knew, and the Romans knew, that their church had had problems. A major one was that there’d been fights in the streets. The Emperor Claudius had banished Jews from the city of Rome on because of “disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus,” which most scholars interpret as dissension between Jews and Jews leaning into the new understandings of Jesus. The chances are very good that most if not all of the members of the Roman church had been shut out of the city, though it’s unknown for how long.
That probably wasn’t the Roman church’s only problem. Romans has sixteen chapters. The last chapter is a long set of greetings. Chapters twelve through fifteen contain a typically Pauline set of advice including, “Let love be genuine,” and “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Except for his opening introduction, he gave the rest of the letter: his time, his consideration, and his considerable focused attention, to one question: What difference is there, if any, between God’s relationship with Christians of a Jewish background and God’s relationship with Christians of a Gentile background?
It was a knotty problem. As Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “In Romans 3:29 Paul asked a provocative question: is God the God of Jews only? Or is he not also the God of Gentiles? In contrast to every attempt to claim God as ours, and ours alone, Paul says that in Abraham God loves all people equally. In the famous words of this week’s gospel, God so loves all the world (John 3:16). Our tendency is to fear the other, to marginalize the strange, to dismiss all that is different from who and what we know.”
That’s true now, and it was true in the first century. Jews had long regarded their relationship with God as unique. God might have created the world, but had only entered into covenant with one group of people. On the other hand, Romans – especially those dwelling in the city of Rome – regarded themselves as the greatest people ever. Most people living in the Empire were not Roman citizens and lived under different laws. Roman citizens, for example, could be executed for treason but they could not be crucified.
The Roman church included both Jews and Romans. Some of the latter would have been citizens and some non-citizens, adding another layer of class distinction to an uncomfortable mix, with everyone wondering: How does God really feel about that person on the other side of the room?
That’s why Paul got so excited about a revolutionary idea: that a relationship with God could be established not by living in the right place, not by divine selection, not through ritual observance, but through faith. Anyone could make the decision to trust in God. Anyone. “For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us)…”
Not only for me. Also for them. Not only for us. Also for them. Not only for the select of Rome. Also for Spaniards. Not only for the Jews. Also for the Greeks. Not only for the men. Also for the women. Not only for today’s believers. Also for tomorrow’s believers. Not only for people of the “Christian” nations. Also for the people of the non-Christian nations. Not only for the rich. Also for the poor. Not only for the powerful. Also for the marginalized. Not only for the respectable. Also for the discounted. Not only for the Americans. Also for the Iranians. Not only for the Republicans. Also for the Democrats, and the Independents, and the Greens, and the Libertarians, and so on. Not only for the people who agree with me. Also for the ones who don’t.
Let’s face it. God gets along better, with more people, than I do.
As Lucy Lind Hogan writes at Working Preacher, “Paul had experienced God’s amazing, unbelievable, overflowing love and forgiveness. How could God, in Jesus Christ, have forgiven him for all the evil that he had done? How could God accept the one who had sought to murder the disciples of Jesus? Because that is who our God is. For Paul, justification by grace was a theological concept only after it had been a life changing, throw-you-to-the-ground, awe-filled experience. God had offered him new life, and he had believed.”
These are anxious days. Hold on to that core of trust and faith: God loves you just as much as Paul or anyone. God loves you.
God also loves us. And God loves them. No matter who “we” are. No matter who “they” are.
Not only for us. Also for everyone.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while preaching, so the sermon prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
As Matthew described it, Jesus began his ministry by teaching the good news of God’s realm, summoning people together into it, and bringing people healing. This is the core of Christianity.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 4:12-23), his account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
That ministry began when John was arrested. Jesus returned to the region of the Galilee. He then went and recruited the first of his disciples — Peter and Andrew, James and John — from where they had been fishing in the sea of Galilee. He taught in the synagogues. He proclaimed the good news of the Realm of God, and he cured the sick, any who came to him with some kind of a disease.
I think you can argue that this is the essence, not just of Jesus, but of Christianity. It is founded in the teaching (and the teaching of what?): the teaching of Good News, the teaching of God’s nearness, the teaching of God’s forgiveness, the teaching of God’s love.
And how do we express that love? We express it through healing, through comfort, through gathering people together, through building a better society, a better world.
There are so many ways to understand “Messiah,” “Anointed One.” The most obvious ones are to connect anointing with the creation of the monarch, or the appointment of a general, the selection of a leader of war. But Jesus, though he was the Messiah, simply didn’t go in any of those directions. He accepted baptism rather than an anointing with oil. He brought healing rather than war. He preached good news rather than condemnation. He spoke of repentance in order that people would find their way to full participation in the Realm of God.
“Come with me and I’ll make you fish for people,” he said to those first four followers. Fish for people not so that they might be consumed, but so that they might thrive.
This is the essence of Christianity: Teaching. Teaching good news. Summoning people together. And seeing that as many as we can find their healing.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
I don’t know how it came into the ‘apapane’s head to organize a Christmas pageant. I don’t even know how he’d heard about Christmas, let alone a Christmas pageant. Nevertheless, he flew all over the island, searching for creatures to take part in the pageant. He asked the I’iwi, who was feeling grumpy that day and didn’t say yes, or no, or anything at all.
He asked the ‘io, which was very brave of him. The ‘io said she might come and looked… hungry.
He flew down to the shoreline to ask the honu. She said no, she wasn’t going to swim up to the mountain forest, which seemed fair. A house sparrow said he might fly up after he’d finished his bath.
A saffron finch thought it sounded odd but said he might hang around for it. The ‘apapane asked a yellow-billed cardinal and a myna. They both looked doubtful, and then the myna started an argument with some other mynas that wasn’t over when he left to talk to more shorebirds.
The auku’u looked puzzled, but said he’d come. “I’m coming, too,” announced a kolea. “I’ve flown thousands of miles for this. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“If the kolea is coming, I’m coming, too,” piped up an ‘akekeke, and a hunakai said the same. The koa’e kea announced that she would play Mary, because didn’t Mary have a long tail? The ‘apapane wasn’t sure, so he didn’t argue. An ala’e ke’oke’o asked if there was a good fish pond up in the forest, and when he was told there wasn’t, looked skeptical.
The ae’o said she might turn up. If she felt like it. If she didn’t have anything else to do. The cattle egret said, of course he’d be there. One of his ancestors had been present at the original birth, hadn’t she?
The ‘apapane left the shorebirds to spread the word further and returned to the forest. The oma’o stopped singing barely long enough to say, “Yes.” The ‘alawi just looked nervous and kept hunting insects without saying anything.
He searched long and hard for an ‘akiapola’au, who asked, “What’s that all about?” After listening to the ‘apapane’s explanation, he gave a whistle and flew off into the forest. The nene just stared at him.
When it was pageant time, it was chaos. Creatures stepped into the clearing the ‘apapane had selected, then faded back into the trees again. Frightened chirps flew back and forth, and so did frightened birds. Mejiro and ‘elepaio peeped out from the trees. The mynas announced that they would be the angel chorus, then exploded into another argument.
“What do you need to settle down and play your parts?” shouted the ‘apapane from a tree.
“Is the ‘io here?” asked an ‘amakihi. “Yes,” said the ‘io from the sky overhead. “Are you going to eat us?” asked the ‘amakihi. For a moment there was silence. Then the ‘io said, “No. Not today. Today there’s a pageant to do.”
The ‘apapane spent the next hour answering the questions. The koa’e kea had just flown in from a lava fountain, and since she wanted to play Mary, she did. A kioea had flown up from the shore and wanted to play Joseph. “You’re a rare bird,” said the ‘apapane, so he did. The little ‘elepaio played shepherds while the nene played sheep. The I’iwi didn’t want to cheer up, so he played the grumpy innkeeper. The sleeping pig was cast as a sleeping cow and did it very well.
High overhead the ‘io provided the voice of Gabriel, while ‘apapane, ‘amakihi, mejiro, and mynas sang as the angel chorus. Seabirds and shorebirds took places as creatures of the stable.
When the time came, birds from other shores – a northern cardinal, a red junglefowl, and a pair of zebra doves – played the magi.
The ‘akiapola’au lay just one egg and very rarely, so a young one played Jesus.
When it was over, the creatures vanished back into the trees, leaving the ‘apapane alone in the silence. He’d answered every question, met every need, somehow.
The trees rustled in the breeze, applauding the ‘apapene’s Christmas pageant.
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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In the first century in which the Apostle Paul lived, Christianity was very new. It wasn’t always clear how it was supposed to work. Its best-known leaders didn’t always agree.
Then there were the basic problems of living in the first century. Most people were poor, very few people were middle class, and far fewer people were rich. “Give us this day our daily bread” was a heartfelt prayer for most people. Injury and illness could be much more dangerous than they are for us. Without antibiotics any infection could overwhelm a body’s ability to survive and recover.
And then, there were the problems of becoming a Christian. It was a new faith, unfamiliar to most people. As an offshoot of Judaism, it would appeal to some Jews, but concern others who worried that their faith was being corrupted. Paul himself had been on both sides of that argument. Far more people, however, would have followed the religious traditions of Greece, Rome, or Egypt, and found Christianity unfamiliar, unsettling, and even threatening.
In Thessalonica, it seems that the Christian community had suffered a lot of pressure from those around them. That’s why Paul wrote. In First Thessalonians, Paul wrote, “For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did…” (1 Thess. 2:14). We don’t know what the source of the persecution was. It might have been the pressures of prejudice from those around them. They might have been overcharged or refused service in shops. They might have faced taunts in the street. They might even have suffered assault and injury.
Or there might have been official suppression of the Christian community. They might have been “moved aside,” or arrested, tried, and punished for not following the customs of Rome. And, of course, there might have been both. Taunts in the streets leading to provocations and assaults, which were followed up by arrest, appearance before the magistrates, and further punishment.
That happens to marginalized people. In a lot of places. In a lot of time periods.
Whatever was happening, it concerned Paul, who had been instrumental in founding the church in Thessalonica. He feared that the suffering would drive people away from the church, and away from the faith itself. “I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain,” he wrote in First Thessalonians. “But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love” (1 Thess. 3:5-6).
They had held on. They had not been shaken.
Shaking is a frequent part of the life of faith. Or rather, getting shaken. It was the situation of Jesus’ friends and followers. Jesus kept shaking their expectations. It was the situation hundreds of years before when the exiles who returned from Babylon to Jerusalem found that they had more work before them to rebuild God’s Temple than they’d anticipated. They’d been shaken. Haggai reminded them that God shakes the world.
The Thessalonians had been shaken by their persecution. They had been shaken, but they had not fallen.
Paul feared, however, that they might fall to something else, something that you and I don’t fear quite so much. “…We beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.”
Why would he fear that? Because the Thessalonians wanted it to be there.
I don’t blame them.
There has been more than one occasion in my life where I have thrown my hands into the air and said something like, “Come, Lord Jesus!” What I meant was: I was ready for the Second Coming. I’d seen or felt too much pain. I’d seen or felt too much oppression. I’d seen or felt too much, and it was time for it to come to an end. Let history close. Let the new sunrise dawn. I was ready for not just a change, but The Change.
So far, to be clear, that hasn’t happened.
The Thessalonians, I suspect, were drawn to predictions of the end, of Jesus’ imminent return, because they had suffered. They’d suffered more than they wanted. They’d suffered more than what was just. They’d suffered more than they thought they could bear. “Come, Lord Jesus!” was a cry to end the suffering. It was a cry to have mercy.
Mariam Kamell writes at Working Preacher, “For some churches and preachers, it becomes a fascination bordering on an obsession, but the teaching of ‘escape’ through the rapture leaves people paralyzed about how they ought to live in the world now while they wait. In a sense, life can become a mere holding cell, a waiting pattern till they can escape and go to heaven. But Paul’s focus is to remind them instead of all the things that need to happen first, so they ought to trust God and continue on doing good rather than obsessing about the end.”
My guess is that you are not likely to be obsessing about the end of time, or the end of history, or the end of the world as we know it. I would further guess, however, that something has happened in your life, perhaps recently, perhaps some time ago, where you’ve asked, “When is this going to end? I’m tired of being shaken. I’m weary of being reshaken.”
When is this going to end?
I remember feeling like that about the Puna eruption in 2018. I remember feeling like that about Hurricane Lane that same year, which settled off the southwestern coast and dumped heavy rain on us for three solid days. I remember feeling like that during uncertain times of my career as a minister, during health crises in the family, during the breakup of my marriage.
When is this going to end?
The Thessalonians wanted to know. They wanted to read things in their time as signs of the end. They wanted the suffering to be over.
Paul, however, couldn’t reassure them that way. One of the characteristics of first century apocalyptic literature – a format in which contemporary events were criticized by declaring how they’d be judged at the end of time – is that the meaningful signs are things people could have seen. And in fact, during our Bible Study on Wednesday, one of the group read, “He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God,” and gave that person a name. I would guess you could give such a person a name. I would also guess that we wouldn’t all give that person the same name.
Right?
Paul couldn’t tell them that Jesus was about to return and that their suffering would end. What he could do was commend them for their faithfulness and urge them to hold on. “Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.”
“Paul’s point,” writes Nijay Gupta at Working Preacher, “is not to sketch out a full timeline of eschatological events. His point is that some big things are yet to happen, and there is really nothing we can do to stop them (unlike issues of political strife and economic turmoil, matters that we certainly can and must address).”
Paul’s point was to say, I hear you. I ache for you. I am proud of you. I pray for you. My heart is with you.
“My thoughts and prayers are with them,” has, all too often, substituted for real help in our day. Properly, thoughts and prayers should be coupled with concrete action. We have our limits, however. We can’t do all we want to do, like the ‘apapane who can’t find another flower for a hungry i’iwi, or when a loved one’s illness brings pain I can’t relieve, when the world around has problems I can’t address.
This week Mary Luti quoted the late Pope Francis in a UCC Daily Devotional. He said, “The world needs to weep. The marginalized weep, the scorned weep, the sick and dying weep, but we who have what we need, we who are privileged, we don’t know how. We must learn. There are realities in this life you can see only with eyes clarified by tears. If you don’t learn to weep, you can’t be a good Christian.”
Paul wrote, my heart is with you. My prayers are with you. My tears are with you.
Let’s be with one another. Let’s be aware that God is with us.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric writes his sermons ahead of time, but he also makes changes while he preaches. The sermon you watch will not be the same as the sermon you read.
When I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut. I also wanted to be a firefighter. I seem to remember that I wanted to be a soldier for a while. I don’t recall ever wanting to be a politician, but I did think it would be cool to be President – even at that age I recognized that there is a difference between running for office and doing the work of the office.
Now. As an astronaut, I didn’t want to be the command module pilot, left orbiting the moon while my two colleagues landed and explored. I wanted to be the mission commander. And I wanted to be a fire captain or a fire chief. When I wanted to be a soldier, I imagined myself as a general.
You get the idea? I had some ambition. I was going to be President, after all. I was going to be the one you remembered.
What if I’d had the ambition of Jesus?
In chapter 6 of Luke, Jesus had just appointed twelve of his followers as “apostles,” or messengers. I’d say that shows some ambition and initiative. He’d then come to what Luke described as a “level place” and found a great crowd seeking healing. He gave them healing. That shows power and capacity. Then he got them settled down somehow, which shows capability, and told them:
Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are the weepers. Blessed are those who are hated.
I did a Google search for “inspirational quotes,” and its AI overview gave me the following:
“Inspirational quotes include ‘Believe you can and you’re halfway there’ (Theodore Roosevelt), ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams’ (Eleanor Roosevelt), and ‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do’ (Steve Jobs). Other popular themes focus on resilience, such as ‘It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up’ (Vince Lombardi), and personal agency, like ‘Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me’ (Carol Burnett).”
So. Nothing about how blessed the poor are. Actually, nothing from Jesus.
Hm.
Jesus had a few words to say for those who were in different circumstances of life. Woe to the rich, woe to the full, woe to those who laugh, woe to those who are held in honor.
Funny. Those weren’t among the inspirational messages, either.
Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “It seems to me that Jesus’ woe statements are revealing something—that the things we assume are advantages are actually illusory. What if money, food, comfort, self-won security, respectability, and the like are things that kill our souls—not just in some far-off afterlife but right here, right now? What a tragedy to mistake them for benefits given by God, then.”
What a tragedy indeed. And still not in tune with the inspirational messages of the twenty-first century.
Fortunately, Jesus went on to tell us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, and submit to assault and robbery.
Do I have to mention that this isn’t very inspirational, either?
It can also be dangerous. This passage has all too often been used to encourage victims of abuse, particularly in domestic situations, to continue to suffer abuse. I can’t believe that’s what Jesus wanted. Jesus pronounced woe on the wealthy, the well fed, and the merry. Do you really think he’d say, “Blessed are the violent?” No. And when Jesus declared a wake-up call for the comfortable, I’m sure he declared it for the violent as well.
How do I know that?
Because he asked those who’d been victimized not to respond to violence with violence. Violence has to end, not be escalated.
That’s not very inspirational, either.
But maybe something else is. Or rather, someone else is. Someone, or rather, several someones.
Why are we here today? To worship God, yes. But today we also make the time to honor those who have touched our lives with love. They blessed us.
They blessed us whether they were relatively rich or relatively poor. They blessed us when they were hungry and when they’d had a full meal. They blessed us when they were merry and they blessed us through their tears. They blessed us when people commended them and they blessed us when people thought they were out of their minds to do so.
They blessed us and so we honor them.
Don’t answer this question. Think about it. Are there people who died in the past year that you didn’t choose to name, and to remember, and to honor? I’m not talking about the people you’ve heard of but didn’t know. I’m talking about the people you did know, but you didn’t have that good a relationship with them because, well, there were problems. You argued. There was bullying. Disagreement over money – doesn’t that happen often. Whatever it was, it was such that you just didn’t want to be friends. When you heard that they’d died, you may have said a brief prayer for those who love them, but… you didn’t feel the need to pray for yourself.
Like an i’iwi that bullies, that’s a sad way to be remembered. And, when it comes to a service like this, to be forgotten.
None of the people we’re honoring today were perfect. I’ll light a candle for my stepmother, the Rev. Shirley Anderson, today. As is the case with a lot of people later in life, she spent the last ten years trying to downsize. Inevitably, that meant distributing stuff to her children, her stepchildren, and all the grandchildren. Including the one who lived in Hawai’i and had to ship everything 5,000 miles. I brought something away from her apartment from every visit I made to her except the last one.
No, Shirley wasn’t perfect.
She was so loving, though. So caring. So attentive to people. So concerned about their needs. She put her time and energy into learning and responding and helping people grow. She did that as a member of the family. She did it as a pastor.
That’s how – and that’s why – she is remembered. I would guess that that’s how you’re remembering those for whom you’ll light a candle today.
Susan Henrich writes at Working Preacher, “The blessed are those who have caught at least a glimpse of God’s future and trust that it is for them. The blessed may be poor or needy, even weeping in life by the standards we humans have in our very bones, but they are blessed in both trust in God and in God’s future, in their hope of justice. The woeful are those who have forgotten that the ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ The woeful are those who say ‘yes’ to the title question of an old song, ‘Is that all there is?’”
We honor those who saw a glimpse of God’s future and knew that it was for them, and for you, and for us. That’s how we remember them. That’s why we honor them.
You entertain the wealthy, set aside the sick, refuse the refugee, and call it greatness.
While I have known a woman in whose presence every soul received a lift. Every soul was lightened by her gift.
Jesus can and does inspire us, even as he’s in conflict with most of our more customary inspirational literature. But let’s face it: he’s hard to follow. He’s demanding. His yoke isn’t all that easy. His burden isn’t all that light.
But these saints? They showed us that there are ways to follow, ways that can be accomplished by human beings, imperfect as we are. They showed us that it’s not about success and power, or about comfort and riches, or about respectability and position. It’s about care and compassion, faithfulness and commitment, energy and love.
And love. Love always. Always love.
May we be remembered as these saints, for our love.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric does make changes while preaching. Sometimes he intends to make them. Sometimes the changes happen.
As this month ends, we will remember the ones who have blessed us and gone to God’s blessings on All Saints Sunday, October 26th. This service moves me every year as the rows of candles come alight and glow, revealing just how much brightness the saints among us have shown.
Their glow also reveals the traces of tears down our cheeks.
I would love to remember those who’ve blessed me with an unwounded heart. I would love to sing their praises unrestrainedly. I would love to speak of their virtues without a tremor. I would love to celebrate their life in God’s realm without regret. Of course, I cannot.
Grief cannot be disentangled from love. God holds our loved ones in tender care, in new life, and in everlasting love. I believe that’s true. It is also true that the soft words, the gentle hugs, and the merry smiles I’ve treasured in them are now lost to me save in memory. That hurts. I wish it didn’t, but it hurts.
We light our candles as a reflection of their brightness. We also light our candles to bring new light to our own hearts.
Come honor and remember the saints of our lives on October 26th. Come light a candle in their memory. Come and feel again the joy they brought you, and feel again the grief of their loss. Come celebrate the saints, and recall that one day we will be restored to one another in the gracious love of God.
Increase our faith. It seems like a good thing to ask as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus. Increase our faith. Any sensible faith leader would applaud someone’s efforts to deepen their devotion.
So… why didn’t Jesus?
As Francisco J. Garcia writes at Working Preacher, “Jesus’ loaded response to the disciple’s request for more faith—telling them that all they required was the faith of a tiny mustard seed to do the impossible—tells us that they are asking for the wrong thing.”
We’ve seen this happen with the disciples before. It’s one of the ways in which they stand in for us in the Gospels. How often do we, after all, ask God or Jesus for the wrong thing?
You don’t need to answer that.
But let’s think for a moment about what gets described as faith by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. “Faith manifests itself in many ways, by a variety of people,” writes Audrey West at Working Preacher. “Faith is persistence in reaching out to Jesus (Luke 5:17-26) and trusting in Jesus’ power and authority (7:1-10). Faith is responding with love to forgiveness received (7:44-50), not letting fear get the upper hand (8:22-25), and being willing to take risks that challenge the status quo (8:43-48). Faith is giving praise to God (17:11-19), having confidence in God’s desire for justice (18:1-8), and being willing to ask Jesus for what we need (18:35-43).”
What do these actions have in common? A couple of things: First, they are actions. They are things that people do. You might recall that in the letter of James we read that “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Jesus and Luke might put it differently. They might say that faith without action isn’t faith.
I can’t see why Jesus would be irritated to be asked how to increase faith based on its connection to action, though. Ask me what you can do to have a more active faith and believe me, I’ll come up with a good long list!
But remember, there was something else that those actions of faith have in common. They are actions that we take. That we take. That we, ourselves, take.
They’re not something that Jesus can do for us. They’re not something that the Holy Spirit does for us. They’re not something that God does for us.
They asked Jesus to increase their faith. But Jesus doesn’t increase our faith.
We increase our own faith.
OK. Just believe harder. Right?
Well, no. We go back to that first principle. Faith is action.
As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What if faith was not believing hard, but rather placing our tiny selves—in the cosmic sense, no more than the tiniest seeds—in alignment with the love of the cosmos? Just as in nature, the seed surrenders to the ground (John 12:24), so we, also of the same stuff as the seed, surrender to this work of creative love.”
Jesus followed up on the comparison with the mustard seed – our tiny selves, our tiny powers – with the troubling story of being the unthanked, unhappy, and pretty much unfed slaves of a demanding master. If that’s what faith and following Jesus is like, most of us would say, “You can take that away and toss it out.” But Jesus, routinely, overturned the relationship of master and slave in his stories and his sayings. He even did it in this short example. It starts by inviting us to understand ourselves as the master, and ends by equating us with the slaves.
What did the slaves do in the story? They set the table. They prepared the food. They served.
That, dear friends, is how to increase your faith.
Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I believe the invitation in this lection is for us to go forth and live in light of what we already see, sense, hear, and know. In other words, the invitation is to do faith. To do the loving, forgiving thing we consider so banal we ignore it. Why? Because the life of faith is as straightforward as a slave serving his master dinner. As ordinary as a hired worker fulfilling the terms of his contract. Faith isn’t fireworks; it’s not meant to dazzle. Faith is simply recognizing our tiny place in relation to God’s enormous, creative love, and then filling that place with our whole lives.”
When I think about the most faithful people I’ve known, I don’t think of the showy ones. I don’t think of the powerful ones. I don’t think of the well-known ones. Mind you, I’ve known (or known of) faithful people who could be described in all of those categories.
It’s just that the most faithful people I’ve known spread love about them wherever they went, and as you may have noticed, that’s not something that makes people famous. It doesn’t get them into positions of power. It doesn’t get them noticed – except by a fortunate few who recognize that greatness comes from love and compassion, not from might and mayhem.
We are great not when we are the demanding masters, but when we are the dedicated servants. We are great not when we exercise power and coercion, but when we exercise diligence and compassion. We are great not when we are fed, but when those around us are fed.
Histories, I have to say, tend to glorify the glory hounds. They give people names like William the Conqueror, Frederick the Great, based on success as warriors.
We are the people of Jesus, however, and Jesus didn’t lead armies, didn’t conquer nations, didn’t even evict the occupiers of his land. What he did was teach and gather and heal.
He taught us to set the table.
He taught us to see that everybody gets fed.
As we come to the table on the World Communion Sunday, remember that it is set for us by the God who serves. It is our model of faith.
Let us set the table.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
We regret that we continue to have audio problems with our live video stream, so a recording of the sermon is not available.
The image is “The Parable of the Mustard Seed” an etching by Jan Luyken found in the Bowyer Bible (ca. 1791 – 1795) – Harry Kossuth photo. Electronic image created by Phillip Medhurst 10 August 2009., FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7549966.
“Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”
They must have been stoked. Sent out without luggage or even a change of clothing – let’s not think about that for too long – the seventy (or seventy-two, the oldest copies of Luke don’t agree) had been told to bring peace, healing, and teaching to the villages of Galilee where Jesus planned to go. Imagine how nervous they’d have been. Will we find welcome? Will we find words to say what we’re supposed to say? Will we bring peace when we arrive? Most of all: when they bring us somebody who’s sick, will they receive God’s healing through our hands?
The answer to all of those, including the last, was, “Yes.” “Even the demons submit to us! How cool is that?”
Jesus, the great motivational speaker of the first century, then seems to have forgotten everything he knew about motivational speaking. Right? The thing to say was something like, “Well done! You’ve accomplished great things! And look, I’ve got even greater things that you can do! You know you can! Let’s go out and make Judea Great Again!”
But Jesus didn’t do that.
“You think you did great things? I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lighting. Don’t get excited about spirits that come out when you call. That’s small stuff. Calm down. Chill out.”
I don’t think he’d have been a hit on the motivational speaker circuit.
If you want to get excited about something, rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Well, what does that mean? The phrase only appears once in the entire Bible, right here, so we haven’t got a lot of help. If I ask the question, “Whose name does God know?” the answer I give myself is, “Everyone.”
Rejoice that your name, like everyone’s name, is known by God.
Again, it’s a tough sell for a motivational speaker.
And it’s exactly what Jesus said. The Good News of God’s reign is not about power, even over evil. It’s not about accomplishment, even of healing. It’s not about me being better than you. I’m not (you probably knew that). It is about all of us being held in the heart of God.
Rejoice that you’re held in the heart of God.
When I was in school, I liked to work for extra credit. I’d answer those optional questions on tests; I’d write a few extra paragraphs when invited. Those came with rewards. They’d bring up my average grade. They might even impress the teachers – at least, I thought they did.
Jesus didn’t give extra credit. Even to those who’d gone the extra mile.
Your names are written in heaven. That’s enough, you know. In fact, that’s what there is.
It’s not just school that insists on extra credit. So many parts of our lives scream out, “Here are the great ones. Here are the heroes.” On the weekend of the Fourth of July, American pride in country can be earnest and uniting, but it can also be prideful and jingoistic. C. S. Lewis wrote, “I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, ‘But, sir, aren’t we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?’ He replied with total gravity—he could not have been graver if he had been saying the Creed at the altar—’Yes, but in England it’s true.’ To be sure, this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul) a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can however produce asses that kick and bite. On the lunatic fringe it may shade off into that popular Racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid…”
[Found in “The Four Loves” in The Beloved Works of C. S. Lewis (New York, Inspirational Press), 1998.]
We don’t have any recent experience of that, do we? A combination of American patriotism and Christian belligerence that betrays the best ideals of both?
Well, maybe we do.
If casting out demons doesn’t make a difference in God’s love for us, then how much difference does it make to be British? Or Japanese? Or American? Or Hawaiian? Yes, it makes a lot of difference in human relationships, but are we held differently in the heart of God?
No. It doesn’t seem that we do. All our names are written in heaven. That’s enough to rejoice in.
We still get to participate in bringing that good news to others. Jesus asked for laborers; Jesus got seventy to go out and do the work. It wasn’t complicated. It could be challenging, but not complicated. He kept it simple. Visit the village. Accept hospitality. Share your peace. Heal as God enables you. Move on to the next. It’s simple.
“It’s amazing how often I needlessly complicate the Christian life,” writes Debie Thomas at JourneyWithJesus.net. “’But what does God want me to do?’ I groan. What is God’s will? How shall I hear God’s voice and discern God’s plan?
“Are the answers really all that hard? Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly. Pray, listen, learn, and love. Break the bread, drink the wine, bear the burden, share the peace. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
“Get off your high horse and get in the water. Sit down at the dinner table and speak peace to those who are feeding you.”
Rejoice that you, and they, have our names written in heaven. We are known by God. We are valued by God. We are loved by God.
Written in heaven.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric writes the sermon in advance, but he also makes adjustments as he preaches, so what he wrote does not precisely match what he said.
The photo of a koa’e ula (red-tailed tropicbird) is by Eric Anderson.
