Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: A Little Wisdom; A Lot of Wisdom

January 4, 2026

Jeremiah 31:7-14
John 1:1-18

It’s still Christmas. It really is twelve days long in the Church calendar, and we’re on day eleven, so you can thank your lucky stars that you’re not likely to receive eleven pipers piping or eleven missionaries today. On this eleventh day of Christmas, if we’re thinking about the Holy Family, we’re probably thinking about the mixed joy and fear of Jesus’ parents, still trying to figure out what their newborn would need next.

The Revised Common Lectionary wants us to turn our attention elsewhere. As Cody J. Sanders writes at Working Preacher, “The prologue of John’s Gospel cracks the lens with which we are tempted to engage in any too-small reading of the Gospel by directing our attention toward a cosmic space-time reality. Unlike the Lukan narrative that often shapes our imaginations in the Christmas season, the Second Sunday of Christmas plunges us into the deep time of the primordial Genesis creation narratives with John’s opening words: ‘In the beginning…’”

You’ve probably caught the reference John made to the beginning of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1) You may not have caught the other parallels John made with other classic texts, particularly those from Jewish Wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. As Jaime Clark-Soles writes at Working Preacher, “John brilliantly presents Jesus in the role of Lady Wisdom in a number of ways. As we read in numerous LXX texts, Lady Wisdom (hokhmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek) is God’s partner: she helps to create the world, she delights in the human race, she continually tries to help humans to get knowledge and flee from ignorance. She cries aloud incessantly. Unfortunately, the Old Testament tells us that she is often rejected because fools hate knowledge and humans would rather wallow in ignorance, for the most part.”

As I mentioned in this morning’s children’s time, wisdom and knowledge aren’t the same thing, but… acting in ignorance, deliberately choosing ignorance, is definitely not wise.

In contrast, wrote John, Jesus, God’s Messiah, embodied the ancient concept of Wisdom: knowledgeable, just, generous, righteous, thoughtful, faithful, peaceful.

These had been the virtues encouraged by Judaism: written in wisdom literature, declared by the prophets, required in the Law, and celebrated in the Psalms.

Those are the virtues exhibited by Jesus.

A little wisdom had become a lot of wisdom.

It’s a wisdom that’s not just of the intellect. “The Word became flesh and lived among us” – the word “lived” can be translated as “pitched a tent.” “Pitching tent,” writes Karyn Wiseman at Working Preacher, “means coming to be fully part of the world in which you live and minister. The Word in this text is doing just that — coming to ‘pitch tent’ with humanity. The Word made flesh comes to be in the world and to change the world.” Dr. Clark-Soles writes that John is “a very touchy-feely Gospel… John wants us to understand that the same intimacy shared by God and Jesus is shared with us and Jesus/God. Hence, the Incarnation.”

“Moreover,” writes Karoline Lewis at Working Preacher, “in the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, now God not only goes where God’s people go, but is who they are. That is, God now dwells with us by taking on our form, our humanity. This ‘different’ dwelling of God is God being where God’s people are, and now who God’s people are.”

A little bit of wisdom has become a whole lot of presence, God’s presence, with us, with everyone, with all the world.

The wisdom Jesus embodied is the wisdom Jesus lived. He brought compassion and forgiveness to people who’d been told they deserved no forgiveness and would receive no compassion. He rejected the options of servile acceptance of tyranny and of violent upheaval against tyranny. He encouraged rigorous personal ethics and a community ethic of mutual care and support. He refused to accept the casual practices that had enriched moneychangers around the Temple at the expense of faithful people. When they came to arrest him, he did not meet violence with violence.

Jesus set us the challenge of living that same wisdom, and it is a challenge. It’s a high bar. It’s a wisdom that may call us to put others’ interests over our own. It’s a wisdom that looks foolish when it leads to a cross.

It’s a wisdom that leads to resurrection.

The foolishness of the world leads to suffering, dissension, and death.

I really wish people wouldn’t hand me perfect sermon illustrations on Saturday, but some people have a talent for it. The headline of yesterday’s editorial from the New York Times Editorial Board was, “Donald Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise.” They concluded with these words:

“We will hold out hope that the current crisis will end less badly than we expect. We fear that the result of Mr. Trump’s adventurism is increased suffering for Venezuelans, rising regional instability and lasting damage for America’s interests around the world. We know that Mr. Trump’s warmongering violates the law.”

This is the kind of leadership that Jesus simply rejected. He wouldn’t do it himself. He wouldn’t bow to those who tried to govern him that way. Let’s be clear: it got him crucified. Nothing they did could force him to change his ways. Nothing they did could prevent his resurrection.

Fortunately there are examples of people following Jesus’ wisdom in the world.

Melissa Bane Sevier writes in her blog: “Yes, there are people who do really bad things in this world.  But there are also moments when we can point to some person or act and think:  There.  There it is.  That’s how we see eternity right here.

“Maybe it’s some random act of kindness.  Or the face of your most precious loved one.  Some deep goodness you see in a person you know or a stranger.

“We have each other.  The Word is made flesh anew each day, right here among us.

“And we glimpse grace and truth.”

Glimpse grace and truth in those around you. Let others glimpse Christ in you.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches. Sometimes they’re intentional. Sometimes they’re not.

The image is Wisdom by Titian (ca. 1560) – Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15465552.

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 What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Return of the Messiah

When Jesus spoke about the coming of the Messiah figure, the warning signs he named had already happened – and he, of course, was already here.

Here’s a transcript:

We’ve just got a couple of days to get ready for our Thanksgiving celebrations, but I’m thinking about Advent. This coming Sunday, the first of December, is also the First Sunday in the Advent season, in which we are preparing for yet another great holy day: the celebration of Christmas.

We also change gospels, moving from a year with the Gospel of Mark to a year with the Gospel of Luke. And as you might expect to begin a season preparing for the celebration of Jesus’ birth, this week’s text is in the twenty-first chapter of Luke (Luke 21:25-36).

Jesus spoke these words to his disciples in that last week before his crucifixion, in the Jerusalem temple, and talking about, well, the end of the world.

He talked about signs of earthquakes and of panic and of wars and of great waves. He spoke of more prosaic kinds of things, that you can see when trees put forth roots to become leaves, you know that summer is coming. And so you’ll know, Jesus told his followers, that end times are coming when you see end times kinds of events.

The problem, of course, is that the end times kind of events that he described, things like earthquakes and great waves and people in panic: they happen all the time. So when, we might ask, will the Son of Humanity — the Christ, the Messiah — draw near.

Apocalyptic used that kind of imagery so that authors could talk about the things that were going on in their own time in a kind of coded way, so that they could criticize rulers and powers without running quite as high a risk of being targeted by them for oppression, arrest, even death. Using the imagery of apocalyptic, Jesus once more made the case that the promised one, the Messiah, was already here. All these waves, all this panic, had already occurred, and Jesus was here.

The very beginning of his ministry, and throughout it, Jesus’ core message was that the reign of God is at hand: repent and believe in the good news.

So as we come into Advent we anticipate something that has already happened: the birth of Jesus. As we come into Advent we anticipate something that has not quite already happened: that is, the return of Jesus. Of course, in his resurrection he did return.

In this Advent let us remember that Jesus is always here, always with us, so that we can get through the storms and the wars and the panics not alone, but accompanied by the one who loves us best.

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: In Danger

June 23, 2024

1 Samuel 17:32-49
Mark 4:35-41

That little boat on the Sea of Galilee was in real danger. Galilee is shallow and surrounded by hills. That means that sometimes the wind gets channeled between the hills and kicks up the water into good-sized waves. It turns out that one of the worst times to embark upon the Sea of Galilee is night.

When Jesus and his disciples set sail.

Jesus, apparently, was worn out, because the heaving boat, the sound of waves and wind, and the cries of his friends didn’t wake him. This is somebody who could sleep on an airplane. The flying spray and the groaning boat eventually persuaded his disciples, some of them sailors, that something more than nautical skill was needed. In danger, in desperation, they called on Jesus.

And Jesus accused them of being cowards (that’s a translation offered by several commentators). Jesus accused them of not having any faith.

Huh?

Fear is the natural response of a human body in danger. Fear gets various glands busy, producing things like adrenalin that will give that extra kick of energy to fight or flee from danger. Fear is normal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

As for faith: they woke Jesus up for help, didn’t they? They went as far as human skill and strength could go, and then they followed their faith right to Jesus. He could help. He did help. See what faith can do?

Why didn’t Jesus see it that way?

I suppose it might be the way they asked for help.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Yeah. That might be it.

How many of us, frustrated at something that didn’t happen that we wanted to happen, have asked a father or mother, an auntie or an uncle, “Don’t you love me? Then why didn’t you do this for me?” I’m pretty sure I remember doing that to my mother when I was four. It’s possible that I did it to my father when I was forty, but let’s not go into that.

It must be said that God has heard such things for centuries. Jeremiah called God a “deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” (Jeremiah 15:18) Psalm 10 asks, “Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” Psalm 80 wonders, “How long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?” And of course, Psalm 22 opens with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus quoted that psalm from the cross.

The disciples knew what that felt like when they woke Jesus with those accusing words.

It turns out that wasn’t the faith Jesus had been hoping for.

It was one thing to believe that Jesus could make a difference in the storm. It was another to trust in his willingness to do so. Which would offend you more? That someone isn’t certain that you can do something, or whether you care enough about them to do it? These people were, at that time, the closest people in Jesus’ life. Of course he ached when they asked him, “Don’t you care?”

As for that fear, Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “The problem isn’t fear; the problem is where fear leads. When I face fearsome circumstances, my go-to position is not trust or even curiosity; it’s full-on suspicion. In my fear, I conjure up a God who is stony-faced, implacable, and loveless. A God to whom I am expendable. A God who withdraws. Once I’ve conjured that God, I withdraw, too. I curl up tight and focus on mere survival, convinced that I’m alone. All capacity for reflection disappears.”

The disciples were afraid. Nothing was going to change that. What did they do in their fear? Did they maintain their confidence that their friend and teacher loved them? Cared about them? Shared their lives and their trust? They could have done that, but that took courage, and they let courage fly away on the wind.

They got rebuked for it, but I’ll tell you, better a rebuke than drowning, in my opinion.

When Mark’s Gospel began to circulate among Christians, things were not good. The rebellion against Rome had erupted in Jerusalem, and the Temple had burned. Christians had been persecuted in the city of Rome under Nero and sporadically in other provinces of the Empire. Sharon H. Ringe writes at Working Preacher, “If Mark’s account of Jesus’ life and ministry were to be ‘good news’ for the church, it would have to proclaim that message in the midst of the storms through which they were living (and in which many were dying). It would have to shine a light of hope in the nighttime of the life of the church, and not only proclaim the coming ‘day’ of Christ’s longed-for return in power. This story affirms that still in that nighttime, when the long and perilous journey is in process, the cosmic authority of the crucified and risen Christ is with us. God is with us, and we are not alone.”

We are not alone. We are in danger, but we are not alone.

This is not the first century Roman Empire, and we are not subject to arrest and detention for being Christians in the US, no matter what some people claim. This is no longer 2020, and our risk from COVID-19 is much reduced from four years ago. Again, despite what some people claim, violent crime in the United States is down. Eric Levenson at CNN quotes FBI statistics for the first quarter of 2024: “The new numbers show violent crime from January to March dropped 15.2% compared to the same period in 2023, while murders fell 26.4% and reported rapes decreased by 25.7%. Aggravated assaults decreased during that period when compared to last year by 12.5%, according to the data, while robberies fell 17.8%.”

Rates in Hawai’i, by the way, tend to be significantly lower than the US as a whole.

So what are we in danger from? What’s the storm that’s threatening our boat?

Has anybody noticed that we’re getting older?

OK. You aren’t. But I certainly am. My portrait that hangs on the wall in the church Lounge alongside all the other pastors of this church shows somebody with a dark red mustache. It’s pretty much white now. When I worked for the Connecticut Conference, one of my tasks was to take photos at events. That meant I spent a lot of time crouching at the front of a room. Well, a few years ago I was visiting someone in a nursing home, and I crouched beside the bed because it was set low and there wasn’t a chair in the room. My legs went to sleep. When I finally got them awake enough to carry me out, I was sure that I was going to fall flat on my face in the hallway and the staff was going to admit me.

Sleepy legs aside, the simple truth is that aging is a pretty stormy thing, isn’t it? Not only do our bodies have more trouble doing the things we’re used to, they also start doing things we don’t want them to do. Hypertension. Heart disease. Decreased lung capacity. Neurological conditions. Cancer. How many of us have been in the boat accompanying someone through their storms? How many of us look ahead and see that the seas ahead may be rising, that the winds might be strengthening?

As I look ahead as a church leader, I see storm clouds. We in the United Church of Christ and in the mainline Protestant tradition have lost members, and influence, and resources over the years. Aging membership means storms for each of us, and it also means a storm for the church as a whole, as we confront the world’s deep needs with fewer people, and with less money, than we’ve had before. Well we might ask if Jesus cares whether the United Church of Christ, or Church of the Holy Cross UCC, exist.

Debie Thomas writes, “I think I will spend the rest of my life seeking this one grace — the grace to experience God’s presence in the storm. The grace to know that I am accompanied by the divine in the bleakest, most treacherous places. The grace to trust that Jesus cares even when I’m drowning. The grace to believe in both the existence and the power of Love even when Jesus ‘sleeps.’ Even when the miraculous calm doesn’t come.”

The one thing I am sure of is that when the storm is upon us, Jesus is there. God is there. The Holy Spirit is there. Sometimes over the years that has been a comfort. Sometimes over the years that has been a frustration. Sometimes over the years it’s been all that kept me going. Sometimes over the years it’s been the gentle arm over my shoulders when I had to come to a stop.

In danger, in the storm, go ahead and call for Jesus. Wake him if you feel you must. If you can help it, try to avoid, “Don’t you care?” It didn’t work with your mother, it’s not going to work much better with Jesus. But either way, Jesus will be there, the Holy Spirit will be there, God will be there, and in the midst of the storm, you will not be alone.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes in the course of preaching. Mostly he hope these are improvements.

The image is Christ on the Sea of Galilee by Eugene Delacroix (1853) – https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51982.html?mulR=258816936%7C28, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77326827.