Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Mountaintop Wisdom

February 1, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that where we want to live?

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

The mountaintop wisdom was in sight from the valley.

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

We need to bring mountaintop wisdom to the valley.

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

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

Mountaintop wisdom.

Let’s bring it to the valley of death.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

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

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

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

What I’m Thinking: True Majesty

When we celebrate the rule of Christ, we celebrate a majesty revealed not in power, but in grace.

Here’s a transcript:

This coming Sunday concludes the traditional church worship year. That year begins with Advent, with the preparation for the birth of Jesus, which makes a kind of sense. But the year doesn’t have an obvious close, so the last Sunday before Advent is known as the Reign of Christ. It celebrates not just the divinity, what the authority, the rulership if you like, of Jesus.

And so I am thinking about the twenty-third chapter of Luke: the crucifixion of Christ.

Jesus did two things in this passage from Luke, and there was one thing he didn’t do. He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” He prayed that from of the cross, from that instrument of deadly torture.

He told a fearful, tortured thief that he, too, would see paradise. Those were the two things he did.

What he didn’t do was to follow the taunts of those who said, “If you are the king, come down. If you are the king, exercise your power. If you are the king, show us in the only way that we recognize.”

In Christ’s crucifixion we learn what true majesty is. It is not gold fixtures or crowns. It is not triumphant leadership of armies or the direction of people against other people. It is forgiveness, and assurance, and the restraint of power.

That is what we celebrate when we call Jesus Christ a monarch, a ruler, a king. That is what we rejoice in when we rejoice in the reign of Christ.

We Christians have emulated the more traditional notions of monarchy time after time after time over the centuries, and it is not to our credit. But Jesus on the cross showed us once and for all what true majesty is, what true power is, what it means to reign.

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: A Quiet and Peaceable Life

September 21, 2025

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
1 Timothy 2:1-7

“I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”

A quiet and peaceable life – that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It sounds pretty good to me. I don’t mind a little excitement from time to time, but that excitement can come from things like making music, watching lava fountains on Kilauea, eating something delightful, and, well, I have been known to glide down a zip line.

Just a little excitement, excitement that is consistent with a quiet and peaceable life.

What fosters a quiet and peaceable life?

First, it’s prayer. It’s the extension of our spirits to God on behalf of others, the people around us, the communities we live in and the communities beyond us, for their benefit and welfare. It’s not just for Christians. As Sunggu Yang writes at Working Preacher, “In this passage, it is very interesting to see that the author urges his readers to invoke (the name of) Jesus, the mediator, in prayers for probably—this is very likely—unbelieving gentile Greek kings and those in high political positions. Simply put: prayers for the sake of unbelievers!”

Why? Because quiet, peaceful communities are created and maintained by all the members of those communities. We all know the havoc that’s created by people that steal things, or who commit violence against others. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who drive recklessly or do their work carelessly. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who say one thing and do another. We all know the havoc that’s created by people who put themselves ahead of everyone else.

The first step, then, is to pray for everyone in a community so that they live and act from a spiritual foundation. Right. How effective is that?

The short answer is, I don’t know.

The longer answer is, I think it’s more effective than we might believe.

The reason is personal. Many years ago, one of the members of my family had a medical crisis. I’m not talking about how prayer influenced the course of healing. I’m talking about how the prayers of other people carried me through that crisis.

My family was pretty well known in our UCC Conference – Connecticut, at the time. Well enough that our story went around church leaders, lay and clergy, and even into the congregations. Literally thousands of people prayed for us. In the midst of a lot of stress and a lot of fear, something miraculous happened.

My feet stopped touching the ground.

Not literally, of course. That’s the only way I’ve ever come up with to describe the feeling, though. Those prayers carried me through the scary days and nights. They carried me through the months. They carried me.

One of the reasons I know it was the prayer that did it is that I’ve had other crises in my life. I didn’t share those events with a large number of people. I didn’t have their prayers supporting me during those times.

I did not feel the sensation of being carried through my stress.

Prayer will not automatically create caring, compassionate people who act for the benefit of their neighbors. If it did, we’d have been living in the peaceable realm for centuries now, and we’re not. What prayer will do is make it easier for people to find and to foster their care and compassion for their neighbors. What prayer will do is lighten their steps through their days.

We start with prayer.

Then we live out our prayers.

In the fourth chapter of this letter, the author advises his readers to “set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12) Actually, an example for the believers and the unbelievers. One of the scandals of Christianity – of other religions as well, but the scandals of Christianity belong to us – is that we haven’t always treated non-Christians as well as we should. We’ve made war on Muslims. We’ve oppressed Jews. We’ve tortured and executed “heretics,” which basically means somebody whose Christian theology isn’t close enough to yours.

It’s up to us to act better than that. To make sure that there are places for people to live, and to pay people such that they can afford to live there. It’s up to us to see that nobody gets persecuted for their religious beliefs or their skin color or their gender or their relationship status or their disabilities. It’s up to us to create a community that protects and nurtures everyone.

Pray. Act. And we will live quiet and peaceable lives.

Maybe.

We have a lot of power over our own prayers and actions, but every one of us knows there are times we let our feelings get ahead of us. There are times when we feel like we’re not being carried by prayer, but being carried away by some other power within us. That’s part of our humanity, and as much as I’d like to believe that prayer and action can prevent that, I don’t think they can. Not entirely. We have to keep an eye on that within ourselves.

More than that, though, we have to face the presence of prayer for “kings and all who are in high positions” in this text.

Despite Paul’s comments in Romans that we should obey the authorities, the simple truth is that Paul himself disobeyed the authorities multiple times. He got in trouble. A lot. In Second Corinthians he proudly wrote, “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning.” (2 Corinthians 11:24-25) Those, plus his uncounted imprisonments and floggings, were the result of refusing to obey authorities. Some of that would have been due to accusations of heresy – when other people didn’t like his beliefs. Some of that was probably due to what we’d call “disturbing the peace” today.

Paul obeyed a good number of the rules of his society, those of Judea and those of Rome, but not all. Not enough. He died at the legal order of a Roman Emperor.

Sometime in the first half of the second century, Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna wrote, “Pray for all the saints. Pray also for kings, and potentates, and princes, and for those that persecute and hate you, and for the enemies of the cross, that your fruit may be manifest to all, and that ye may be perfect in Him.”

Did you notice? Pray for the saints. Then pray for a group that includes kings, potentates, and princes, and those that persecute and hate you. I think that Polycarp considered the powerful of the Empire as those who persecuted him and his fellow Christians, because, well, they did. Like Paul before him, he was martyred at the orders of a Roman official in the mid-150s.

How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities have set against you? How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities themselves have chosen to do the things that cause havoc in a community: theft, violence, recklessness, carelessness, lies? How does anyone live a quiet and peaceable life if the authorities enshrine religious, racial, or gender prejudice in law? The simple truth is that those who rule have an outsized impact on everyone else.

We pray for them not because they are inherently right, but because their impact is so great. When they do well, everyone benefits. When they do badly, some benefit, and some suffer. Some suffer a lot.

Keep in mind that as First Timothy was being written, Romans prayed to their emperors as deities. As Christian A. Eberhart writes at Working Preacher, “In this kind of imperial milieu, the request in 1 Timothy 2:2 to pray ‘for kings’ instead of ‘to the kings’ takes on new meaning. It implies most ostensibly that rulers, like everybody else, depend on the guidance and mercy of God. Furthermore, it indirectly implies that they are not divine but mortal humans.”

We pray for the rulers for the same reason we pray for everyone else: that it might be easier for them to do well, to do the things that foster quiet and peaceable lives for their communities. We pray for everyone so that they are not so burdened with their cares that they give way to the errors of self-centeredness and fear. We pray for everyone because it takes everyone to make a just society.

We act so that people have someone else to emulate, to work with, to live quietly with, to live peaceably with.

And we insist that this quiet and peace be for everyone, not just for “us,” because when peace is denied to anyone, it will break for everyone.

For everyone we pray.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared sermon as he preaches. Sometimes it’s intentional.

Photo of a peace lily by Eric Anderson.

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

What I’m Thinking: Quiet and Peaceful Lives

In our prayers for quiet and peaceful lives, who should we pray for? Everyone.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the second chapter of First Timothy (1 Timothy 2:1-7), in which we are urged to raise our “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings” for everyone, particularly for those who are in positions of power and authority, so we might live quiet and peaceable lives: lives of godliness; lives of dignity.

The first thing I’ll note is that Paul directed these prayers to be raised for everyone. It’s up to a community whether they are going to set themselves up as a place which is consistent with quiet and peaceful lives, in which lives of godliness and dignity can be maintained by everyone. It’s not up to just one or two. We all have to cooperate to make that happen.

It is true, however, that there are major questions that people in authority — they make the choices, and others follow along. Sometimes these are choices but the better: choices that lead towards peace. Sometimes they are choices for the worse: decisions that lead towards war, and when people follow those choices.

I can’t help but observe that the Apostle Paul himself did not manage to live a quiet and peaceable life. It was a life, I think we’d have to say, directed towards godliness. It was a life in which he insisted upon his own dignity and those of other followers of Christ. But it was a life that led him into conflict over and over and over again with those in authority. It was a life that led to a martyr’s death at the orders of the Emperor of Rome.

I have no doubt that he raised his supplications and prayers, that he gave thanks for the good decisions of the officials that he ran into, but I also have no doubt that, well, not everybody in those communities did the things that were needful so that they and their neighbors could live peaceful and quiet lives. And certainly not all of the rulers that he encountered did so — definitely not the last.

Let us continue to raise our prayers. Let us continue to hold those in authority in prayer, not because they are doing what God wants, but because they can be a part of doing what God wants.

And let us continue to pray for one another that we might live and thrive in communities of quiet and peace, lives in which we might live faithfully, lives in which we might maintain our dignity.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: What is the Power of Faith?

August 17, 2025

Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29-12:2

“Now faith,” wrote the author of Hebrews at the beginning of chapter eleven, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

In some ways that’s a definition oriented toward the modern and post-modern ages of skepticism about religion, when the question of the existence of God is one that gets asked regularly. In the first century, however, that was not the burning religious question. The existence of not just the Hebrew God but of divine beings in general was mostly assumed. Most people of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and the surrounding nations simply accepted the reality of a multitude of gods, some of greater power, some of lesser, that inhabited sacred sites or blessed certain cities. The question was not one of belief. The question was, “How do I keep these gods happy?”

Happy gods, you see, protect your community. Happy gods make sure that the rains come at the right time for your crops. Happy gods keep the destroying insects away. Happy gods make for a good harvest. Happy gods will protect you when a neighboring city decides that they didn’t have a good harvest and they want to steal yours.

Different cultures had different ideas about how to keep the gods happy, but in general it came down to this: perform the right rituals at the right times. That might mean animal sacrifice, it might mean chant this chant, it might mean everybody join the parade down the main street, it might mean a major sporting event. Keep the gods happy.

That wasn’t how Judaism worked, at least not in the village synagogues, where the teachers worked hard to understand the ways God expected them to live out their lives. Sometimes they were concerned with elements of home ritual, the exercises of ritual cleanliness, but they were also concerned with the questions of relationships and behavior. What did God expect of people as they lived together in community?

Christians retained the ethical standards of Jewish teaching, though they left behind many of the ritual practices. They continued to meet and worship in the style of the Jewish synagogue rather than creating a sacrifice system like the Romans. With their understanding of God’s forgiveness to human beings, they emphasized the need to trust in God’s grace as the central act of pious people. God’s grace, they concluded, called for a response, a foundational reliance upon what God had done and what God would do. They called it “faith.”

But they also faced a significant theological problem, and we still face it today.

What is the power of faith? What impact does it have? What difference does it make?

It was a big question for first century Christians. They were out of step with those around them, and it put them at a disadvantage in day-to-day life. Public officials might be sympathetic, but they might not. The letters of the Apostle Paul reveal that he suffered repeated arrest, imprisonment, and beatings for his activity as a Christian preacher. Some Roman governors were indifferent to Christians, but others were actively hostile. After the great fire of Rome in 64, the Emperor Nero blamed Christians for the catastrophe as a way to deflect criticism from himself.

It’s strange how things don’t change very much. Public officials get criticized; they some way to blame somebody for it or for something entirely different, whatever the facts might be.

The author of Hebrews addressed that question of impact by listing the ways faith had changed the lives of people in the Bible. Abraham had his children. Moses freed the Hebrew people from slavery. Rahab survived the invasion of the Israelites. Gideon won battles. David became king.

“This ‘hall of fame of faith,’” writes Christopher T. Holmes at Working Preacher, “does more than describe what faith is; it also illustrates what faith requires. Faith is active and demanding.”

The first effect of faith, then, is to keep one connected to God’s expectations. Christianity is not a sit-around-and-do-nothing kind of religion. It’s a religion that recognizes need and suffering and steps forth to address it. It’s a religion that summons us to aid the desperate and to protect the oppressed. It’s a religion that calls us to make tomorrow better than today. Abraham, Samuel, and many others did just that.

But then the message turns. “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment.” Active faith does not guarantee victory. It does not guarantee success.

As Mary Foskett writes at Working Preacher, “The stories of men and women of faith that the writer summons to mind for the readers not only weaves the community’s own story with those of the ones who have come before, it also connects them to the story of Jesus. For the writer and the community, Jesus is the consummate model of faith. In the same way that he disregarded the shame that accompanied his suffering, so can those who seek to follow ‘by faith’ set aside shame and endure the kind of suffering that can accompany the life of discipleship.”

Another effect of faith is to provide a way to understand at least some of our suffering, that it can be a consequence of an active faith. Not all suffering is, mind you. If I walk out in front of a car and get hit, my suffering is a result of carelessness, not faith. But if I describe the national economy in accurate numbers and get fired for it, and my faith calls me to truth, then yes: that’s suffering for faith.

The author of Hebrews summoned up another image that you may have recognized, and you may not. As is true of today’s long-distance road races, athletes in the first century returned to the stadium to complete a long run. The crowd would cheer to encourage them all the way to the finish line. That’s what the author of Hebrews had in mind when describing this “great cloud of witnesses.” What a wonderful way to think of how our ancestors in the faith support us. Can you hear them cheering you on?

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Living as I do in a culture that worships individualism, I’m quick to assume that I’m alone, unseen, and unfettered in my spiritual life.   But I’m not; I’m surrounded.  I’m surrounded by witnesses whose testimonies both console and challenge me.  I’m surrounded by witnesses whose stories must nuance and deepen my own.  Christianity is not about me and my personal Jesus, doing our own private thing together.  Ours is a profoundly communal faith, one that spans place, culture, race, ethnicity, and time.”

Faith gives us companions. It gives us supporters. It gives us fans to cheer for us from the stands. It gives us people to help us understand. It gives us people to work with. Faith means we are not alone.

It’s not just other Christians, those of our time and those of the past, who accompany us. It’s God. Faith is the way we maintain not just our awareness, but our relationship, with God. Faith, especially an active faith, means that we’re not just trying to keep an uncaring deity “happy.” We’re in an ongoing and growing relationship with a real personality.

This doesn’t bring us to perfection – that’s still coming – but it does mean that we face the struggles of life and the triumphs of life in God’s company. Faith doesn’t necessarily lead to suffering, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to success, but it does lead to God’s grace. Faith guides our actions, it summons up encouragement, and it places us in the constant presence of God’s love.

That’s power. That’s a real power.

The power of faith is to guide us, to strengthen us, and to hold us in the arms of God.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes as he preaches, so what he said in worship does not match what he wrote ahead of time.

The image is The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs by Fra Angelico (ca. 1420s) – Original uploader was Sampo Torgo at en.wikipediahttps://www.wga.hu/html/a/angelico/00/11fieso2.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3000363.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: The Warning of Summer Fruit

A basket of summer fruit is beautiful and nutritious. But it also rots – much like communities based on exploitation and abuse.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking that I’m very grateful to the Reverend Linda Petrucelli, who will be leading worship at Church of the Holy Cross this coming Sunday. I myself will be at the General Synod of the United Church of Christ in Kansas City, Missouri. This is the regular national gathering of the UCC. I’ll be doing some work with the UCC Media Justice Ministry. I’ll also be learning and worshipping. I’ll be spending time with old friends and treasured colleagues. This is, in many ways, the family reunion of the United Church of Christ.

Please hold in prayer myself and those others who are going to be traveling back and forth to Kansas City.

I look forward to being back in the pulpit again on July 20th, so therefore I’m thinking somewhat ahead, and I’m thinking about the eighth chapter of the prophet Amos (Amos 8:1-12). Amos was not a cheerful person, but the beginning of chapter eight started rather pleasantly. God showed Amos a basket of summer fruit.

Things went badly from there.

Because God announced a lot of displeasure with things that were happening in the nation. “You who trample on the needy,” said God: beware. People were being sold. people were being cheated. And it was primarily being done by the wealthy and the powerful.

Why start with a basket of summer fruit? Because prosperity looks like a basket of summer fruit: tempting, delicious, satisfying. The problem with a prosperity that is built upon exploitation, that is built upon the wealthy and the powerful adding to their wealth and power at the expense of the other members of society, is that it is hollow, that it fades. If you leave a basket of summer fruit out for very long, it will rot. It will rot to the very core.

This was Amos’s warning 2700 and more years ago. It should be a warning to us to make sure that our summer fruit is the results of a planting that nourishes the soil from which it grows, and not something simply torn from the trees, exploiting everything: soil, roots, plants, leaf. Or in human terms: worker, family, community.

Let us take warning from the basket of summer fruit, and make sure our society does not earn the same condemnation of God.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Written in Heaven

Jesus sent seventy of his followers to teach and to heal. They came back rejoicing – but Jesus wasn’t sure they rejoiced in the right thing.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 10:1-11, 16-20), in which Jesus sent out seventy of his disciples to teach, to heal, and to cast out demons; and the story of what they said when they returned.

Jesus had done something similar before. In Chapter nine, he sent out the Twelve to do the same thing. He gave them a pretty stringent set of instructions; He gave nearly identical instructions to the Seventy. When the Twelve returned, they came back with stories of success; when the Seventy returned, they said that even the demons were subject to them.

Jesus had a curious response to this. He said, “Do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” He didn’t say that to the Twelve. On the other hand, the Twelve are not quoted as rejoicing in their power over the other spirits of the world. But it does occur to me, as I listened to the responses of the Seventy, that there is something curiously missing in what they had to say.

They said that the demons had been subject to them, that is, that they had had power they did not anticipate. But where are the people that they helped? Where are the people who learned something from the stories that they told? Where are the people who recovered from illnesses and injuries? Where are the people who were freed from the domination of a malicious spirit?

They weren’t there. They weren’t in the story that they told (at least, not as Luke gives it to us in this account).

Jesus, I think, noticed that those people were missing. Jesus noticed very clearly that what they celebrated was their power. But it’s not about power, Jesus said.

I probably have liked it if Jesus had said, “It’s about the people you’re helping.” He didn’t say that, but he did pull them back from the exultation. It’s about the that primary relationship with God, he said. It’s about having your name be held precious in heaven.

The reason you went out, seventy followers, is because those other people’s names are also precious in heaven. You were sent out so that people could be freed, so that people could learn, so that people could heal. Rejoice that their names, that your names, that all names are held precious in the heart of God.

It’s not about the power. It’s about the people. It’s about those around us, and yes: It is also about us and the way that God loves us.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: They Were Noticed

June 1, 2025

Acts 16:16-34
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

Two weeks ago the Sunday School made some presentations to the teachers who’ve worked with them during this school year. I was one of those honored. They were kind enough to say they were nuts about me, which really touched my heart. They gave me nuts, too.

They also gave me this insulated travel mug bearing these words: “Difference Maker: A dedicated individual who can make a big impact even with just a small action or few words. Someone who makes a difference in the lives of others.”

Difference maker.

That’s what I’ve wanted to be since I was a small child. I went through a number of ways to make a difference: I wanted to be a firefighter, a doctor, a scientist, a teacher, an actor, and some others before I followed a call to ministry. Which, you’ll notice, is a profession that seeks to make a difference.

Whether I have or not, whether I do or not, is something we can debate. I’ve got to tell you, there are days it feels like the world is going on without paying any attention to me at all. Sometimes that’s just fine. Other times, I desperately wish I could change the course of events.

The Apostle Paul along with Silas and some other companions had been in Philippi for a few days. We read of their work and welcome from the Jewish community in the city last week. Lydia, a leader among them, hosted them in her own home.

The woman described in this story came from much further down the social spectrum. She was a slave – Luke didn’t know or didn’t record her name – and she was a person afflicted by demonic possession. It doesn’t really matter whether the first century diagnosis or a twenty-first century diagnosis of severe mental illness was actually correct. She was doubly bound as an enslaved person and as someone who could not control her own speech and actions.

As Jaclyn P. Williams writes at Working Preacher, “One who needed freedom could clearly call out the source of salvation but could not so clearly embrace that salvation. The same spirit that oppressed her could see the presence of the way of redemption—the way that is Jesus Christ. It is also meaningful that she refers to Paul and Silas as ‘slaves of the most high God’ (verse 17) while she was enslaved by the spirit of divination and those who were taking advantage of her torment.”

She may have been doubly bound, but she made a difference. She made a difference to her owners, who sold her words as predictions of the future. She made a difference to those who purchased her words, or so we assume, because people kept paying for them. She made a difference to Paul, because when she followed and shouted at him over a few days he got annoyed.

You know, I really wish Paul had exorcised the demon for better reasons than pique, but that’s how Luke told the story, so what can I do?

Paul and Silas, up to this point, hadn’t made much of a ripple in Philippi. They’d made friends among the Jewish community, but that was a small group in a big city. The rest of the population didn’t notice them. Until…

Paul got annoyed, and healed a young woman, and cut off her owners’ source of income. That made a difference.

Suddenly they were noticed.

Eric Barreto writes at Working Preacher, “Gripped with avarice, the formerly profitable girl’s owners accuse Paul and Silas of profound treachery before the city’s ruling authorities. Notice, however, that their indictments fail to mention one key piece of evidence: the loss of the unnamed slave girl’s services in a lucrative endeavor! Instead, these rapacious merchants resort to the tried and true method of base ethnocentrism. They accuse Paul and Silas of drawing Philippi’s denizens away from the approved Roman way of life to Jewish customs incommensurate with the city’s ethnic values. Of course, the charges are false.”

The charges may have been false, but the magistrates found them guilty. They imposed the punishments given to people who were not citizens of Rome, which would have been most people at this time in the first century.

Jerusha Matsen Neal writes at Working Preacher, “Acts 16 narrates a leveraging of cultural superiority and social fear for the preservation of an economic system that grounds the status quo. The torture, beatings, and social isolation of prison are powerful technologies in that mechanism. Paul and Silas are not imprisoned because they break a law. They are imprisoned because they are imprisonable people—vulnerable people—who threaten the bottom line of the powerful.”

If you want to be noticed, if you want to make a difference, if you want to change the future: threaten the bottom line of the powerful.

You may not enjoy the attention. Paul and Silas didn’t. Is there a way of making a difference that does not incur the baleful attention of the wealthy, the powerful, the ones with intrenched interests? I’m not sure there is.

Greed is never satisfied. The author known simply as “The Preacher” wrote in Ecclesiastes 5: “The lover of money will not be satisfied with money, nor the lover of wealth with gain. This also is vanity.” Last week I shared some figures compiled by Robert Reich about the budget bill currently before the Senate. The richest .1%, said Dr. Reich, would receive a $390,000 tax cut on average. What I hadn’t checked was how much they earn in the first place.

According to James Royal of Bankrate, in 2022 average earnings for the top .1% were $2.8 million. So they’d be adding 1.3% to their income with the tax cut. Not shabby, I suppose, but hardly dramatic.

At the same time, those earning less than $17,000 will lose about $1,000, 5.8% of their income. They’ve got a lot less to lose.

I’m probably as annoyed as the Apostle Paul was two thousand years ago. I wish I had the power to heal these people double chained by poverty, illness, circumstance, or oppression. I wish I had the power to free people who are chained to their greed, because that’s a harsh bond as well.

Most of all, though, I hope I make a difference. I hope I make things difficult for the ones who exploit others. I hope I make things difficult for those who deprive people of their liberties. I hope I make things difficult for those who use lies and distortions to get their way.

Paul and Silas were noticed. May we be noticed, too.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares his sermon beforehand, but he tends to make changes while preaching. Sometimes he does it intentionally.

The image is Paul and Silas in Philippi, by an unknown artist (between 1591 and 1600). Photo by Rijksmuseum – http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.223502, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84114572.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: They Got Noticed

Philippi’s officials ignored Paul and his companions for days – until he healed a young woman whose illness was a source of wealth to those who owned her. Then they got noticed. And arrested.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the sixteenth chapter of Acts of the Apostles (Acts 16:16-34). The Apostle Paul and his companions had come to Philippi. They had met with members of the local Jewish community; they had spoken to them about Jesus; they had received a warm welcome, in particular from a woman of some substance and leadership named Lydia.

In this part of the chapter they meet with another woman of Philippi, one regrettably whose name Luke did not know or at least did not record. This is a young woman, and she is at the opposite end of the social spectrum from Lydia. She was a slave, and kept as a slave because she had a “spirit of divination” within her. Her owners would make money from her by selling her skills at telling fortunes for their customers.

Well, I don’t know what her condition actually was. It’s for certain that whatever it was, it removed her ability to restrain herself, because she would follow Paul through the streets, proclaiming that he and his companions brought a message of salvation from the most high God. Paul found it irritating and I suppose I would too if somebody followed me for days and said such things about me (which is unlikely).

At one point, Paul turned around and ordered the spirit to come out of her. When it did it left her in her right mind, in her own mind, her own spirit. It displeased her owners, who had Paul and his companions arrested and beaten.

Up to that point, nobody had paid much attention to them. Paul and his companions had mostly spent their time with members of the Jewish community, and they hadn’t made much of an impact on the life of other people in Philippi. But this time, with an act of, admittedly, pique, but also compassion; when Paul healed this young woman, they’d impacted somebody’s economic life, somebody’s source of money, their hope of wealth. And that that was what impelled them to arrest Paul, notice Paul, beat Paul.

I wish I could say that in the two thousand years since, the spread of Christianity has succeeded in getting people less focused on wealth and power, and more focused on the spirit and compassion. If it has, well, it’s a very small improvement. We live in a day when, my God, how wealth and power call with their siren song, that wrecks bodies, minds, and spirits on the rocks of greed.

No, the Christian way is the way that Paul took: to force those spirits that make money for others, that force those spirits that allow us to be exploited, that force those spirits which enrich some at the expense of others, to force those spirits out and call them for what they are: Possessors. Exploiters. Evil.

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 What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Community of Care

Jesus imagined a community without hierarchy and privilege, one based on care and compassion.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 10:35-45), which finds Jesus and his disciples on the road to Jerusalem.

Somewhere along the way, James and John found a private moment with Jesus and asked him if they could be at his right and his left when he came into his glory. Those, of course, would have been the places of greatest prominence in the court of a ruler. Jesus didn’t say them yes or no. He said, in fact, that it was up to somebody else to make those decisions, but he took the opportunity to ask them: are you prepared to be baptized with the baptism that I will go through?

They said, “Yes,” not knowing, I suspect, that by baptism Jesus meant death and resurrection.

In a small group there are very few secrets and, indeed, the other disciples learned about this conversation, and they were pretty annoyed with James and John. Jesus summoned them together and said — again — that amongst his community there was not to be a quest for power, but that the greatest of them would be the servant of all of them.

And he proceeded to demonstrate what that meant when he was arrested and executed upon a cross.

In the first century it would have been almost impossible to imagine a social system, a community, that was organized around mutual service. There were the people at the top and there were the many, many, many more people at the bottom, and that was how things worked. A society in which people took care of one another? Well, it was nearly inconceivable. But Jesus dreamed it.

And some decades later, as he set these words down to parchment, words that eventually we would read, Mark dreamed it again: repeating this message about a community made up of servants, of people compassionately caring for one another.

It’s been two thousand years and we haven’t attained it. It is still the dream of Christ.

But just imagine what that could be: a community of compassion and care. Isn’t that worth struggling for, working for, dreaming towards? Isn’t that worth our efforts, our time, and our faith?

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.