Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Signs and Times

December 1, 2024

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

Isn’t that just how you were hoping to begin the Advent season?

I say this pretty much every first Sunday of Advent, because in the season in which we prepare for Christmas it seems odd to jump to the end of the book. Jesus spoke these words to his disciples in or near the Temple during what we know was the last week before his crucifixion. Why would we be here rather than somewhere in chapter one of Luke’s Gospel?

The answer, in brief, is that Advent is not about preparing for the birth of Jesus. That’s already happened. It’s not even really about preparing for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, though that closer. Advent is the time in which we prepare to celebrate the gift of Christ in the person of Jesus, a gift which was given us two millennia ago, a gift which remains given to us through history into the present, and a gift which will continue to be given to us to the end of time.

Which is why we’re in chapter 21, because here Jesus spoke about things that Christians have interpreted to take place at the end of time. Some of them, however, had already taken place. Earlier in the chapter Jesus spoke about the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. By the time Luke wrote his Gospel, according to scholars, the Temple had been destroyed. Jesus warned his disciples that there would be official persecution of his followers. By the time Luke wrote his Gospel, that had already taken place.

As for the signs and the distress and the roaring and the fainting, well, Catherine Healy writes in The Christian Century, “I am not a biblical literalist, yet the imagery in this passage gives me pause. As our planet gets hotter and tidal floods increase, aren’t we already seeing ‘signs in the sun [and] the moon’? And as rising waters drive more and more climate refugees from their homelands, it’s hard not to notice that ‘distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea’ is already upon us.”

It’s hard not to notice that, indeed.

Based on the way people keep trying to match signs and distress and roaring and fainting with historic events, it’s apparently hard to notice that… these things happen all the time.

I grant you that we’ve had an eventful few years here in Hilo, Hawai’i, but since I began serving as pastor here we’ve had earthquakes, a volcanic eruption that displaced two thousand people, a hurricane, at least a couple of tropical storms, a significant civil disruption, increasing political dissension in the United States rising to an actual insurrection event. Oh, and a global pandemic. I almost forgot that.

Come, Lord Jesus! If you want to return before Christmas, I’m fine with that!

The truth is that these “signs and times” aren’t useful to predict timing because they are so frequent. Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “Yes, Jesus speaks the truth, not about our future, but about our condition, the world’s condition, that never really changes. Perhaps this is the grief of this passage. That nothing ever changes. That God cannot prevent those who seek power from exercising power in the most inhumane of ways. That we still live have to prepare God’s way in spite of fear and foreboding.”

Come back before Christmas, Lord Jesus. I’m more than fine with that.

Except that… Jesus already has. That, I think, was the point he was making with his disciples two thousand years ago. You see, Jesus had already said something about when the reign of God was coming. He said it back in Luke’s chapter four, when he announced in the synagogue that the Isaiah’s promise of a year of God’s favor was fulfilled in their hearing. Or in other words: the Messiah was already present.

God’s promises were already present in front of the disciples who heard him say, “the kingdom of God is near.”

So near, disciples, that you’re part of it just sitting there.

“The season of Advent, as we reflect upon the coming of the Word made flesh and dwelling among us,” writes Cheryl Lindsay at UCC.org, “challenges us to make our love incarnate, our hope unmovable, our peace tangible, and our joy complete.”

That, after all, is what God did in the incarnate Jesus: rooted our hope, founded our peace, completed our joy, and embodied love.

I wish that Jesus’ presence meant that all the signs and times with their distress and roaring and fainting had been transformed into the vision of a Peaceable Realm described by some of the prophets. That, all too obviously, hasn’t happened. If a great outbreak of peace took place, it seems to me that that would be a much bigger and more visible sign of better times.

What we have instead is Jesus’ presence – all the time. As Audrey West writes at Working Preacher, “the apocalyptic vision shared by Jesus is assurance that even (especially) in the face of devastation—whether it is caused by nature’s fury or by human hubris—the reign of God will not be impeded. No matter how much it appears that the world is coming un-done, God’s way endures.” And: “Even during earth-rending moments, God is near.”

The age-old images of disaster and destruction will not, I’m afraid, tell us when history will end. They won’t tell us when Jesus will return. Partially that’s because they’re not much use as predictors, since they’re so common. Mostly it’s because Jesus promised to be with us always, and we trust in the promise.

Jesus has been with us through the earthquakes and storms and volcanic eruptions. Jesus has been with us through the political upheavals and pandemics. Jesus has been with us through the day-to-day blessings of our lives. Jesus has been with us at the birthday celebrations, at the achievements, and at the end of days when nothing much seemed to happen except the same-old, same-old. Jesus will be with us this Advent season and right on into Christmas.

Signs and times be what they may, Jesus is with us.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric frequently makes changes while preaching, accidentally and otherwise, so the sermon text will not precisely match the sermon as delivered.

The image is Jésus se promène dans le portique de Salomon (Jesus Walks in the Portico of Solomon) by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894) – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007, 00.159.177_PS2.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10957468.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner

Pastor’s Corner: Love and Gratitude

November 27, 2024

Despite the persistent effects of nostalgic Thanksgiving films, stories, pictures, and memories, Thanksgiving is a remarkably adaptive holiday.

While many will prepare a turkey for the main dish this week, a good number will prepare something completely different, something that better matches their preferences to their gratitude. Even those serving turkey have scoured the media, the Internet, and their cookbook shelves for a new way to prepare it. We may giggle at the idea of a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck, but doesn’t it illustrate our flexibility around that iconic dish?

As a child, Thanksgiving was a meal we celebrated with Gramma Anderson, mostly at her house in western Massachusetts. We weren’t always there, even if she did have a dining room that best matched the front of a holiday card. My parents hosted everyone a few times, as did my aunts and uncles.

As an adult, Thanksgiving gatherings grew substantially. In addition to blood family, dear friends began to join the celebration. We added a “Thanksgiving Day Croquet Tournament” which took place between dinner and dessert. My parents were the regular hosts for quite some time as they had a dining area big enough for everyone (we borrowed tables and chairs).

Then they shrank again as people graduated, moved, and passed on.

The consistent things about Thanksgiving throughout have been love and gratitude. The locations have changed, the faces have changed, but the love and gratitude have been the same.

May they be a part of your Thanksgiving celebration this week and every year.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Not Neglecting

November 17, 2024

Hebrews 10:11-25
Mark 13:1-8

The Book of Hebrews is not the most accessible of the writings of the New Testament. The author spent a lot of time bringing up passages of the Hebrew Bible that most people have never heard of. Just as one example, Sunday School teachers haven’t spent much time of the priesthood of Melchizedek in Genesis 14, while the author of Hebrews spent a fair amount of time reflecting on it.

However, I’m going to give you my one-line summary of the Book of Hebrews. Ready? OK. Here it is:

It’s all about Jesus.

I suppose a little expansion might be helpful…

Are you worried about who to pay attention to? Pay attention to Jesus. Are you worried about death? Life comes from Jesus. Are you worried about forgiveness of sin? That comes from Jesus. Are you worried about whether you should be making sacrifices? Don’t worry: Jesus has made the last sacrifice and no more are required.

Or more simply: It’s all about Jesus.

As Christopher T. Holmes writes at Working Preacher, “The point is clear: Jesus has removed all obstacles that might keep the hearers from entering into God’s presence. The problem, as the exhortation in verses 22–25 makes clear, is with the hearers’ willingness to keep drawing near.”

Let me re-read that exhortation:

“…Let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Amy L. B. Peeler writes, also at Working Preacher, “’Are there any verses in the Bible that explicitly tell us to go to church?’ Students have raised this question several times in my classroom, and rarely is there an occasion where the answer is so straightforward. Hebrews 10:25 is just that verse…” Dr. Peeler teaches, incidentally, at Wheaton College in Illinois.

But why would people “neglect to meet together,” as the author of Hebrews put it? Well, first of all, gathering for religious purposes looked a lot different in the first century.

The weekly Sabbath meetings of the Jewish synagogues were the exception, not the rule, among first century Mediterranean religions. Most devotional activity for Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians consisted either of rituals performed in the home, or of bringing an offering for sacrifice in public. Public sacrifices, however, weren’t held one day a week. There wasn’t a set time when everybody crowded into a building to pray together. In fact, they rarely went into a building. Sacrifices took place outdoors. Most people never entered a temple building proper.

There would have been a few times during a year when everyone came out to worship, but those would have been festivals. And again, the activity of most “worshipers” was probably watching a parade going down the street to one of the temples.

When the author of Hebrews commented on “some” who didn’t gather, “some” was “most.” Jews who lived someplace other than Jerusalem had developed weekly gatherings for prayer and study in synagogues, a distinct difference between them and the others around them. Christians continued the practice.

Like the synagogues, the meetings of Christian communities had a different purpose than the great festivals of the Greeks or the triumphs of the Romans, or even the rituals of the Jerusalem Temple. The author of Hebrews noted it here. We gather “to provoke one another to love and good deeds… encouraging one another…”

That has remained the reason for the Church’s existence in the nearly two thousand years since.

Why do we gather? To provoke one another to love. To provoke one another to good deeds. To encourage one another.

That’s one of the reasons that the pandemic was so hard on us. In the presence of a virulent and dangerous disease spread primarily through the breath, it wasn’t safe to get together. “We stay separate now,” read one version of a common saying, “so that when we gather later, we will all be here.” Two years ago on this day I was home in bed sick with COVID. I recovered. Have we forgotten that over a million Americans didn’t? That over seven million have died across the globe?

We had good reason to keep apart. But it was hard.

It was hard because the ancient Hawaiians were right: “ha,” spirit, breath, is something that two human beings share with one another for the good of both. When sharing breath became hazardous, we lost something that sustained our spirits, something that needed no words to take place, and what could we share over the wires? Words.

Words suffered as well. I was in my forties when I learned something very important about communication, which is that communication hasn’t happened until it’s gone two ways: forth and back. Without response, communication hasn’t really occurred. Which is why parents get so insistent on getting a response from a teenager.

We used the tools available to us to stream a worship experience to you and to anyone else who chose. It was my decision to use a broadcast-style technology, to use a format that gave worshipers little ability to respond during worship. Mostly I made that choice to keep it as simple as possible for you. I wish I’d created some other more interactive ministries, more than a Bible Study, but alas, I didn’t.

Now that we’re back together, we’ve continued the live stream for the simple reason that people still find it useful. Some work Sunday mornings. Others can’t physically make it to worship. Those people – you people – are important, and giving you an opportunity to celebrate God’s grace is important. We will not neglect you.

Don’t neglect, however, to take up what opportunities come your way to provoke others to love and to good deeds, and to encourage them in the faith.

That word “provoke” provoked a fair amount of discussion during Bible Study this week. It seems an odd word to use of love. Katherine Shaner writes at Working Preacher, “Instead of asserting a community built on sameness and good feeling, the preacher seems to note that provocation and exasperation is part of being a community. She exhorts us to build a kind of community gathering that relentlessly, even irritatingly, suggests that actions of love and deeds are not what create faith, but are rather the responsibility of the community which needs to gather because of their faith in the great high priest — a faith God gives.”

Can we be a provoking community, one that doesn’t settle for a little bit of love? Can we be a community that expects more of ourselves than just a good deed or two here or there? Can we be a community that asks, “How can we do this better? How can we make this good available to more people? How can we equip people to live their lives in fullness?”

It’s the irritating sand in the oyster shell that provokes it to produce a pearl. It’s those pesky other nene that allow us to fly with less effort. It’s those sometimes irritating other Christians who provoke us to do good.

Let us not neglect to gather, to provoke one another to love and good deeds, and to encourage one another.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, and so although he wrote the sermon you just read, it sounded different when he said it.

The image is by Perennis – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81995586.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Encouraging Love and Mercy

What is the purpose of Christian gathering? To encourage love and good deeds. It’s that simple and that important.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews (Hebrews 10:11-25).

Hebrews concentrates on theology. Specifically, Hebrews makes the case that in Jesus’ death and resurrection God’s forgiveness is fully accomplished, fully realized, fully obtained. There is no reason to continue older religious practices — ancient religious practices — that invited God’s forgiveness, that requested God’s love. In Jesus, the author of Hebrews says, we have obtained all the forgiveness we could ask for and more.

So Hebrews is not a terribly practical book. It is not oriented towards giving us advice about how to live a faithful life.

At the end of this section, however, much of which is concerned with Jesus granting us forgiveness, the author did invite us to some fairly practical things. The author invited us to consider how we might encourage one another to love and good deeds, and the author also advised that we not neglect to gather together as apparently some were staying apart.

Love and good deeds: these are staples of ancient religion. They go back to Moses and Abraham, and of course it was a central message of Jesus himself.

The gathering together, however, that is an interesting one. It reveals the purpose for which we gather together. We gather together so that we can encourage and support one another in the love and in the doing of good things. It’s harder to love people when they are at a distance, not just because of heartache, but also because of lack of knowledge, of lack of encounter, of lack of that special sharing between people who are dedicated to one another’s welfare.

Didn’t we, in the last four years, experience so much loss in not being able to gather together? And yes, gathering was risky, dangerous even, but in less risky times in gathering together we can encourage one another to love and to acts of mercy.

Christians have been struggling to do this for 2000 years. People of faith have been struggling to do it for millennia. So let us make it as easy upon ourselves as we can.

I invite you to our Sunday gatherings in person or, if you must ,on line. I invite you to be there so that we can encourage one another in love and deeds of mercy.

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: Not Far

November 3, 2024

Ruth 1:1-18
Mark 12:28-34

We’ve taken a few steps since last week’s Gospel lesson, set in Jericho along the banks of the River Jordan. Jesus had climbed the slopes from there to the environs of Jerusalem. He entered the city in that great Palm Sunday parade. He’d come back to the Temple the next day and overturned the tables of the money changers.

Mark sets this story on the next day, Tuesday, which began with the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders challenging Jesus’ authority to do such things. That wasn’t a good start, and the conversation deteriorated from there. Representatives of various schools of thought as well as various places on the political spectrum tried to trap Jesus into a statement that would put him in legal jeopardy on the one hand or cost him the support of the crowds who’d cheered him on the other. Preferably both at the same time.

Those efforts had failed.

“One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’”

Up to this point in Mark’s Gospel, bad things have happened when Jerusalem scribes have been present. Jesus had his arguments with other religious leaders in Galilee, but when a group of scribes from Jerusalem showed up in chapter three, they accused him of being in league with demons. So you‘d expect another “gotcha” question from this man.

He didn’t ask one.

He asked a big question, for sure. Three centuries later, a rabbai named Simlai would count 613 mitvot or commandments in the Hebrew Bible. Most of those, obviously, amplify or provide detail of one or more of the Ten Commandments with which we’re familiar. To choose one within the ten, or within the 613? That’s a big question.

But he seems to have been interested in Jesus’ answer, not in setting Jesus a trap. At least I think so, in great part because, unlike his responses to the bulk of the challenges Jesus received in chapters eleven and twelve, Jesus answered the question. Sort of. He cheated a little.

He replied with two commandments.

Both were near-quotes from the Scriptures first century Jews held in common: the five books that begin our Old Testament, known then and now in Hebrew as Torah, or Law. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” comes from Deuteronomy 6. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” comes from Leviticus 19.

As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “This exchange reminds the observer that the good news as shared by Jesus was not a clean departure from Jewish law. Rather, it was an amplification of it.”

When the scribe wholeheartedly agreed, Jesus told him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Not far.

Jesus’ basic message, as Mark described it back in chapter one, was, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” In one sense, then, Jesus could have told anyone that they were not far from the reign of God. It had come near, it has come near, to everyone.

But I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he had a much older idea of the reign of God in mind, a reign of God in which people live out the commandments. What’s the first step toward that?

Knowing how to get there. Love God. Love your neighbor.

That’s how we get there.

As Amy Lindeman Allen writes at PoliticalTheology.com, “The greatness of the love commandment lies not in its surpassing value over and against all of the other commandments of Jewish law but, rather, in its ability to hold up all the rest. It’s less about beating out all of the other candidates and more about helping them to do their jobs.”

Love of God is the foundation for the commandments against worshiping other gods, against worshiping idols, against making false promises in God’s name. Love of neighbor is the foundation of keeping the sabbath, of honoring parents, of the prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, lying, and coveting. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor;” wrote the Apostle Paul to the church in Rome, “therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Love sounds simple, but exercising it affects everything we do, everything we say, everything we plan, everything we set aside. Love enacted requires patience, effort, resilience, and resources. Love made manifest may call for commitment, hardship, even sacrifice.

Love looks like Ruth.

It’s a funny thing. The word “love” appears only once in Ruth, toward the end of the story, which we’ll read next week. As the book begins, Ruth did not claim to love her mother-in-law. She did not say anything, in fact, about her motives. She said, “I will not leave you,” rather more poetically and emphatically than that. It must have been a hardship. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I think it would be safe to say that Ruth’s pledge of fidelity is not made to a companion who is, at this point in the story, easy or fun to be around. Naomi is bereft, depleted, forlorn, and bitter. It’s possible that she’s suffering a full-blown crisis of faith, imagining that the God she thought she knew has withdrawn his love, and cursed her with unspeakable suffering.

“Ruth’s vow, then, is a vow of tenacity, fortitude, and sacrificial loyalty as much as it is a vow of affinity, affection, or ‘love’ as our culture might describe it.  It is the vow of one grief-stricken, traumatized, and profoundly vulnerable woman to another.”

Or to put it another way: she was not far from the realm of God.

With the love that God has for us, love displayed to us so thoroughly in Jesus, we are never far from the realm of God. But we are closest to living the reign of God when we love God and one another. When we, to borrow Paul’s words to the Corinthians, show patience and kindness, when we act without envy, boastfulness, arrogance, or rudeness. When we restrain our irritability over not getting our own way, when we keep no record of wrongs, when we rejoice in the truth. When we bear all things, believe all thing, hope all things, endure all things…

Then we are not far from the realm of God.

Not far at all.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, sometimes from choice and sometimes from chance.

The image is The Seven Works of Mercy by Karl Gritschke. Photo by Alexander Rahm – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3544487.

It is a representation of a painting on a wall of the Dialog Hotel Neuendettelsau. The “seven works of mercy” according to Matthew 25:34-46 and Tobit 1:17, are:

  1. Feed the hungry,
  2. Give the thirsty drink,
  3. Accommodate strangers,
  4. Clothe the naked,
  5. Visit prisoners,
  6. Heal the sick, and
  7. Bury the dead.
Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner

Pastor’s Corner: Special

September 11, 2024

When is something special?

Many times over the years I’ve heard that special things are unusual, even rare. At other times I’ve heard that it’s not rarity that makes something special, it’s the way that I take care of it. And there are times I’ve heard that all members of a category are special.

Well. That’s confusing.

Nearly every church in the global Church asserts that Holy Communion is special, then they approach it very differently. For hundreds of years it was so special that most people never received the cup lest they spill it. I grew up in a church that held Communion just five times a year for a while, because it was too special to hold more often. At the same time, a church down the street held communion not just every Sunday but throughout the week. Why? Because it was special.

If non-Christians find this confusing, so do Christians.

When is a person special? Some decry the custom of participation awards, claiming that only the “winners” should be recognized. “If everyone is special,” they say, “then nobody is.”

Really?

I didn’t get participation awards as a child, but that was how things went then. I didn’t graduate from kindergarten or elementary school or junior high. Again, that’s how things went.

But I have no complaint with telling each and every human being, “You are special. You are valued. You are loved.” Because it’s true. God cares for each and every one of us, and for all the rest of Creation, too.

That’s pretty special.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Now That is a Shepherd

July 21, 2024

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

If you search Biblegateway.com for the word “shepherd” in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, you get 109 uses. I’m afraid that some of those appear in the occasional subheadings that modern-day editors have helpfully added, so the original numbers are somewhat lower. Still. 87 uses in the Old Testament, 22 in the New Testament. “Shepherd” is an important word.

One of the reasons for that was the cultural self-image of the Hebrew people. They saw themselves as shepherd people, those who followed the flocks of sheep and goats and therefore spent relatively little time in a fixed abode. Somewhat like the rivalry between the farmer and the cowhand in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma. Do you remember the song “The Farmer and the Cowhand Should Be Friends,” which basically feeds the bad feeling between them? Well, the shepherds were the ancient equivalent of cowhands, and the farmers and city dwellers of the eastern Mediterranean had a similar rivalry.

A fair number of those “shepherd” references in the Old Testament are variants on, “We’re shepherd people, and that’s the best thing to be.”

The Israelites also liked the image of “shepherd” for their national leaders. It might refer to priests or senior civic officials, but the favorite reference was to the king. David, of course, made the metaphor obvious, since as Psalm 78 says,

“He chose his servant David
    and took him from the sheepfolds;
from tending the nursing ewes he brought him
    to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
    of Israel, his inheritance.
With upright heart he tended them
    and guided them with skillful hand.”

– Psalm 78

The one who really liked to compare kings to shepherds was Jeremiah. He used “shepherd” nineteen times, more than any other book of the Bible. And nearly always, he used it as we’ve heard it this morning. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD.”

Jeremiah really didn’t have a high opinion of the kings of his day. Or a mediocre opinion. Low opinion is… getting close. He thought they were awful.

He did, however, provide us with an admirable summary of what a monarch, or a leader, should do and be: “he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” As we come up to our primary election, with the likelihood that a number of our state and county races will be decided by this ballot, I humbly suggest that you vote for the candidates who display the attributes of wisdom and have the capacity and desire to execute justice and righteousness in the land. If they don’t… vote for somebody else.

Maren Tirabassi writes at her blog, GiftsInOpenHands:

I do know that every four years,
(with a tear-drop more anxiety this time around)
I want to believe verse four –

“I will raise up shepherds over them
who will shepherd them,
and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed,
nor shall any be missing, says God.”

even knowing that the Holy One,
is looking right at me
to be less of a hand-wringer,
and take responsibility for the raising-up.

But if you want a real shepherd, the place to look is the sixth chapter of Mark.

Earlier in the chapter, Jesus commissioned his disciples to widen his work, dispatching them about the villages and towns to teach and to heal. As they did so, word came to Jesus, and to the people of Galilee, that John the Baptist had been executed by King Herod. When the disciples returned, still excited about their success, Jesus took them off to go on retreat. They needed a break. They needed to tell their stories. They needed to do some grieving for John the Baptist, whose ministry still influenced them all.

Instead, they found a crowd had anticipated them and arrived before they did.

As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Mark seems the least concerned with character development. We find out who Jesus and his disciples are by what they do and what they teach. Yet, even in this account, Jesus does a remarkable thing by prioritizing rest in the midst of impactful ministry and gathering crowds. This time, it is not his own rest, which he has already modeled as a spiritual practice. Jesus is as concerned with his disciples adopting a routine of rest within the rhythm of their coming and going.”

Jesus “had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.”

It has always impressed me that Jesus, despite his need and his disciples’ need of time to themselves, gave that up in order to serve the people who needed more. As we’ve been reading Mark’s Gospel this year, I’ve been struck by the number of times this happened to Jesus, that he tried to take time away and couldn’t. It’s a minor theme of the gospel, but it’s there. Jesus didn’t have a lot of luck taking time off.

I’m also struck by the appearance of that word, “shepherd.” As Matt Skinner writes at Working Preacher, “‘The system’ has failed the people who flock to Jesus, as evidenced in Herod Antipas’s lethal fecklessness (6:14–29).2 They are vulnerable in a predatory world. No one, it seems, guards their human dignity. They have to fend for themselves. What kind of society places people in that kind of condition?”

I hate to say it, but a lot of human societies do precisely that, and explain it away as… the way things are.

Jesus, however, seeing people in need of leadership, stepped in to provide it. That’s what you’d expect of a Messiah, come to think of it. A Messiah is a leader, a general, a king. “Let’s get together, people! Form up in ranks. To Herod’s palace, march!”

Only… he didn’t do that. At all.

He taught them. Remember what Jeremiah said a shepherd does? Deal wisely? Jesus is a shepherd who teaches wisdom.

I have to assume that some of the people on the beach came seeking healing, because that’s nearly always the case in Mark. Later in the chapter, when Jesus and his disciples, probably still looking for that private retreat, landed near Gennesaret, it was abundantly clear. They brought the sick out to the marketplace. They reached out to touch the fringe of his cloak, just like that woman with the hemorrhage. They were healed.

I say this a lot. People are impressed with power, with glamor, with fame. We tend to defer to people with those things whether their ideas are good, indifferent, bad, or downright horrid. Why, I wonder, don’t we value leadership like that displayed by Jesus? Why do we vote for the self-aggrandizing and power hungry, rather than the wise and the compassionate?

Jesus stepped onto the shore from the boat and saw the vacuum of power, the dearth of governmental concern, the absence of good shepherding. He saw a need. Then he filled it.

But he didn’t fill it with glitz. He didn’t fill it with glamor. He didn’t fill it with the coercive power which is a government’s most treasured privilege. He filled it with wisdom, with compassion, and with healing. Oh, and bread. That first beach they landed on, the one where Jesus saw them without a shepherd? At the end of the day Jesus fed all five thousand of them with five loaves and two fish.

Now that’s a shepherd. There’s one who really cares for the sheep.

Not all of us will take positions of leadership in society. There’s not room for everyone to be mayor, or governor, or president. There’s not even room for everyone to be pastor, or moderator, or a member of one of our governing boards of this church – though I will say that there is definitely room, and the nominating committee is hard at work to find those shepherds of our congregation for the next year.

Jesus didn’t commission his disciples to become mayors or governors or presidents or monarchs, or to be their supporters. He didn’t commission them to become generals or courtiers. He commissioned them to be apostles, teachers and healers. He commissioned them to be the same kind of shepherd that he was.

That is our summons, too. To follow Jesus as people who value and share wisdom, who do our level best to provide healing, who refrain from the acts that divide people and scatter them so that they are no longer cared for.

Because we are cared for by the one who is a true shepherd, guiding us in wisdom, justice, and righteousness, all the days of our lives. That’s a shepherd.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric sometimes ventures away from his prepared text. He hopes he’s improving things.

The image is The Good Shepherd, a 4th century mosaic in the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Aquileia, Italy. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2239686.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Why Trouble the Teacher?

June 30, 2024

Lamentations 3:2233
Mark 5:21-43

I wonder how long they’d been waiting.

Jesus had been teaching along the shores of Galilee. It probably provided about as convenient an open area as they were likely to find near Capernaum. At the end of the day, you might recall, he had directed his disciples to sail across the sea (or lake, however you want to think of it). Personally, I think Jesus was looking for a day off.

It didn’t go all that well. They ran into a storm which forced his disciples to wake him up, and he was cranky about that. They pulled to shore in a place where people shouldn’t have known him. It wasn’t thickly settled with Jews. A perfect place to relax.

That’s when a possessed man found him and called him by name. Apparently the demons – they described themselves as “Legion” – recognized Jesus for who he was. Jesus, of course, could not leave these demons in possession of the man, so they asked to be sent into a nearby herd of pigs. He sent them there, at which the pigs promptly rushed into the sea and drowned.

That didn’t sit well with the locals, especially the owner of the pigs, I’m sure, so they told Jesus to go away.

So much for a vacation.

When Jesus and his friends returned to the Galilee side, they found a crowd, including Jairus, leader of a local synagogue and desperate to obtain Jesus’ aid for his ailing daughter. Had they been waiting all day and all night? I wonder. They headed for the house, with the crowd still milling about and probably getting in the way more than they cleared the way. As they went, a woman reached out and touched Jesus’ cloak, and suddenly twelve years of bleeding ceased.

As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Their journey is interrupted by the hemorrhaging woman. It’s interesting to note that she did not intend to disrupt their movement. Unlike Jairus, she does not need an audience with Jesus to present her petition. She believes his touch will be enough.”

As it was. But it also interrupted the journey. Jesus did not want the recipients of his healing to be anonymous, at least not to him. He wanted to praise her daring to reach out to him in faith.

That’s when the messengers arrived with the tragic news that Jairus’ daughter had died.

It’s funny. I’ve read this story for decades and I have always blamed the woman for slowing everything down, for delaying Jesus before he could reach the girl. When the real delay was caused first by Jesus leaving the area in the boat, and second by the streets filled with people.

That’s when somebody uttered these crucial words: “Why trouble the teacher any further?”

I suppose it’s nice that somebody had some regard for Jesus’ time and welfare. Up to this point in the story, that’s been hard to find. Jesus’ reputation, thus far in the Gospel of Mark, had summoned crowds that make it difficult to eat, had prompted his family to wonder if he was crazy, had brought examiners out from the Jerusalem to see what he was up to, had forced him to cross the lake to get a break (and we know how that went), and had now got him stuck in a crowd so dense that his friends can’t imagine how he distinguished one touch from all the others.

Jesus had not been having easy days.

D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “I do want to note that when Jesus turns and addresses the crowd, he takes back the agency of his actions. He was met immediately by Jairus and regardless of whatever his intentions were it seems that the urgency of Jairus’ daughter suddenly scripted Jesus’ actions. Then, the woman grabs his garment and his healing power goes out of him, with no reference to Jesus’ will or intent at all. Others are determining his actions and even his location. Until now. Now, he stops – as urgent as Jairus may be – he stops and turns and inquires.”

Up to this point in our text, Jesus had been pretty passive. He’d been swept along by Jairus’ plea, and then by the movement of the crowd, and had even healed the woman without making the choice to do so. We don’t often think of Jesus as swept along by the crowd, but in this story, that’s what happened to him.

Until he stopped it all. He took a breath. He asked who touched him. He learned who touched him. He praised the courage of her faith that made her well.

Then: “Why trouble the teacher any further?”

Now the teacher troubled himself. Having praised the woman for reaching out despite her fears, he continued the journey to Jairus’ daughter despite her parents’ fears. Reaching the house, he took charge. He cleared it of everyone except the parents and three of his disciples. Maybe they hadn’t said, “How can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ which Jesus clearly hadn’t appreciated. As D. Mark Davis writes, “Regarding the disciples’ effrontery, it is a wise guiding principle, when speaking to someone who is not stupid, to act as though what s/he has said is not stupid.” So yes. Jesus didn’t need those guys in the house.

And then: a woman who had suffered twelve years had reached out to him and been healed. Jesus reached out to a twelve-year-old girl and said, “Talitha cum. Little girl, get up.” And she did.

This time, Jesus didn’t say, “Your faith has made you well.” Nobody in the room said it, but perhaps one or two thought what I’ve been thinking: “Jesus, your faith has made her well.”

We value faith in the Christian Church. A declaration of faith is a basic part of membership in the Church. We ask it of people who are baptized as adults, and when people are baptized as infants, we ask it of them later at confirmation. When people join a new church, we ask them to affirm their faith again.

It’s almost like the price of admission. You want to see the Jesus movie? Let’s see your faith.

That gets more complicated when we look at our lives in relation to illness and healing. We hear Jesus’ words in the back of our minds, don’t we? “…if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” And: “Have you still no faith?”

But what if Jesus – what if God – has faith in us?

What if faith isn’t the price of admission, but an ohi’a seed that struggles in rocky crevices to somehow, beyond expectation, produce a shoot and branches and flowers? What if Jesus extends his faith in us to us, so that we can receive it and rejoice in it, so that we can nurture it and bear fruit in it? What if God cared so much about the world to make no distinction between those with wholehearted belief and those who wonder if they could have faith? What if God loved the world and its people whether they’re faith-filled or fearful? What if God so loves the world?

It’s clear that faith makes things possible that won’t happen otherwise. On the most basic, human level, a person who believes they can’t do a thing won’t do the thing, and the thing won’t happen. A person who has lost faith in the justice system won’t contest a lawsuit, and that probably means that justice won’t happen. A person who has lost faith in their body’s capacity to recover from an illness won’t seek medical attention, putting their healing at risk.

What faith doesn’t do is open up the compassion of God. God’s love and care flows to everyone, whether they are aware of it or not, whether they believe in it or not, whether they want it or not. Faith makes it easier – not easy, but easier – to accept that love and care and to flourish in it.

So why trouble the teacher? Because that is a way to seek what is already there, and in seeking to accept what is given. Troubling the teacher opens up our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies to the grace of God. Troubling the teacher opens the door so that power may come in and raise us up.

Troubling the teacher might even leave those words echoing in our souls: “Your faith has made you well.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric does make changes from his prepared text as he preaches. Just watch. He’ll do it.

The image is Christ Healing a Bleeding Woman, artwork found in the catacombs of Rome. Art by anonymous (2nd cent.) – http://campus.belmont.edu/honors/CatPix/womanblood.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14728851.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Love. Again.

May 5, 2024

Acts 10:44-48
John 15:9-17

Last week it should have been simple. Believe in Jesus. Love like Jesus. Right?

This week… It’s Love. Again.

I sympathize if you’re thinking, “Seriously, preacher. You’ve made your point.”

But here I am, here we are, with love. Again.

Why?

I suppose I could be wrong, but I don’t think the inhabitants of the world are loving one another as Jesus loved. Or as Jesus loves (present tense). After just a week, the human family seems like it could use a reminder.

Love. Again.

It’s hardly a new message. Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai lived about a hundred years before Jesus. They were both great teachers but also theological rivals. The Talmud and the Mishnah, the great compendiums of rabbinic thought from the centuries just before and just after Jesus, contain a number of saying and stories about them. This one, for example, from the Talmud:

“It happened again that a certain stranger came before Shammai and said to him: ‘I will become a proselyte providing you teach me the whole Torah while I’m standing on one foot.’ (Shammai) knocked him down with the builder’s rule in his hand.

“(The stranger) came before Hillel, who made him a proselyte. He told him: ‘What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go, learn (it)!’”

Jesus’ teaching sounds like he’d learned from followers of Hillel.

Speaking of love again I could emphasize its importance – God asked us to do it – or reflect on the things that make it difficult – like how annoying people can be – but what I can’t do is simply make it easy. It’s not. It never has been. Jesus showed us just how difficult loving other people can be.

But what, I wonder, can make it easier? Not easy – easier?

The first step, I think, is to realize that when Jesus spoke of love, he did not speak of feelings. We are not in the business of persuading ourselves – or others – to feel in certain ways. I won’t say that’s an impossible task, but it’s an extraordinarily difficult task. A lot of people go to mental health therapists because they feel in ways that they don’t want to feel. They spend a lot of time and effort to change that. Jesus didn’t do it in three years of near-daily conversation with his closest followers; I’m not going to do it in a sermon.

The first step is to set feelings to one side as you do the things that you know are loving to someone else.

Reflecting on a scene in the series Queen Charlotte, Cheryl Lindsay writes at ucc.org, “The scene is set. An obedient son waits for his bride. His nervousness emerges as he approaches his mother, the queen, who has orchestrated the match. She thinks he comes to her with an objection or scheme to avoid his impending nuptials. Yet, he surprises her. He has reconciled himself to his fate. Rather than advocating for a reprieve, he seeks her counsel. He does not approach his ruler, he comes for his parent. He confesses his fear that he will not be able to love his wife. The queen visibly shifts from monarch to mother and reassures him that, ‘Love is not a thing one is able or not able to do based on some magic, some chemistry. That is for plays. Love is determination. Love is a choice one makes.’”

Love is a choice, a choice one decides to make, a choice one makes, a choice one follows through on after making. You and I don’t have to feel good about it. It’s love when we do it.

Second, I think there’s a lot to be said for practice. Habit. Reflex. Some of you know that I trained as a challenge course facilitator for a summer camp. When people were moving along high rope bridges strung between two trees, I was on the ground at the other end of a long rope that kept them safe. One of the tasks we did as facilitators was… to tie knots. A knot that won’t pull out, a knot that won’t overtighten, a knot that won’t speed the wear on the rope.

I got some rope like what we used and I tied those knots and tied those knots and tied those knots until my fingers remembered what my brain didn’t always.

Practice is how people tie knots reliably. Practice is how a noio learns to feed itself. Practice is how we steer a car. Practice is how we make the choices to love.

Practice doing loving things over and over again and you’ll find that it’s easier – not easy – to do the loving things the next time.

Decide. Practice. Prepare. Look around for people who might need support from your love. And please, people – don’t mix this up with romance or sex. Who needs to learn something you can teach? Who needs to be comforted because they’re sad? Who needs a hand up, or a leg up, or an advocate, or a silent supporter? Who needs your aid?

Prepare the words you might say – and prepare to change them when they don’t work as well as you hoped.

Prepare your courage, because some of the people who need you are in risky places. You may need courage to accompany them through their challenges.

Do not forget that Jesus went all the way to the cross, and if that isn’t all that common in these days, plenty of Jesus’ friends have loved all the way to the end of their lives. Prepare your words and resources. Prepare your courage.

Augustine of Hippo wrote, “And so, where there is love, what can be wanting? and where it is not, what is there that can possibly be profitable? The devil believes, but does not love.”

If it makes it easier to know that when you love, you are setting yourself apart from the devil, then remember that.

Or you might follow the advice of Kent M. Keith, author of the Paradoxical Commandments, the first of which is: “People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.”

I also think that besides decision, practice, and preparation, there’s nutrition in love. That’s one of the things that church is supposed to be about. We feed ourselves on the Word; and we feed ourselves at the Table. I hope you’ve been fed in the Word this morning. Let us bring ourselves in a few minutes to the Table, where God’s love is poured out for us in bread and cup, and refresh ourselves so that we may go forth and Love. Again.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Sermons change in the delivery, so what Pastor Eric read does not precisely match what he wrote.

The image is Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, (11th cent.) among the mosaics in the monastery of Hosios Loukas, Distomo, Greece. Photo by Ed88, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2543263.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Jesus’ Friends Love

Jesus told his followers to love one another as he had loved them. That’s not an easy thing to do.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 15:9-17), part of Jesus’ “Farewell Address” to his disciples at the Last Supper. We find a familiar theme. Last week’s reading in the First Letter of John in chapter 5 (1 John 4:7-21; oops!),  the theme was love. Here in the fifteetnh chapter of John’s Gospel, the theme is love.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” said Jesus. “You are my friends if you do as I command you. I have called you friends because the servant does not know what the master is doing.”

Love here is not romantic love. First century Greek, which John used to write the gospel, had different words for different kinds of love, and this is not the romance word. No, the love that is described here is a love that involves costs and sacrifice. When one loves in this fashion, one does so despite what it may cost the person who is doing the loving. So this is the kind of love that gives money to someone who needs it. This is the kind of love that will incline one to take a risk. This is the kind of love that took Jesus to the cross.

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

It is not a light and easy commandment.

What it is, is the standard for Christian life. When we act unlovingly, we are not behaving as one of Jesus’ friends. When we do love, then we show what Jesus’ friends are, can be, should be.

So go love someone today. love as many people as you can. Help someone who needs something. Comfort someone who’s in distress. Give somebody the skills and the confidence that they need in order to succeed. Lift someone up who has suffered a failure.

Love someone. Love lots of someones. Be a friend of Jesus.

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.