Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: No Stranger

April 26, 2026

Acts 2:42-47
John 10:1-10

Chapters nine and ten do a lot of heavy lifting in the Gospel of John – that is, they are packed with event and import and tension and meaning. It’s not the most poetic writing in the Gospel – I think we have to say that “In the beginning was the Word” gets the poetry prize – but it is poetic. It’s got a lot of moving characters. John started with Jesus and his disciples and introduced a man who had been blind from birth, then brought in some of Jerusalem’s senior Pharisees and a gathering crowd. The healed man was questioned, his parents were questioned, Jesus was questioned.

As is usual in John’s Gospel, the story begins with a miraculous sign, continues through an extended discussion – which here is pretty much an argument – and leads to one of Jesus’ “I am” statements. Unusually for John’s Gospel, chapters nine and ten have one sign and at least two extended dialogues, but three “I am” statements.

Jesus said the first one before even performing the miraculous sign. “I am the light of the world,” he said, and then applied the healing mud to the man’s eyes. The second appears in the passage read just now: “I am the gate for the sheep.” That’s not so well known, though John Narruhn preached a great sermon about that a couple years ago and folks remembered it during Bible Study.

The third follows this passage right at the beginning of verse 11: “I am the good shepherd.”

That’s a lot of “I am” for one sign and a couple conversations. This passage is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Not everybody was up for it.

Jaime Clark-Soles writes at Working Preacher, “Here John showcases Jesus’ habit of conveying truth not propositionally, but poetically. Jesus carries on about sheepfolds, gates, thieves, sheep, and gatekeepers, strangers, and voices. After five verses he pauses and notes that they haven’t got any idea what he’s talking about (v. 6). So, what is an effective speaker to do at that point? Explain the figure of speech (paroimia)? Drop the use of metaphor? Apologize for using such elevated speech and dumb things down, put it all in simplistic terms? Maybe. But that’s certainly not what our Lord and Savior did. Rather, he again (v. 7, palin) throws out the same word-pictures. The whole Gospel of John is nothing if not a piling up of metaphors, figures of speech. How else are we to convey truth about God? What single image, what single word could suffice? Plain speech (parresia) is fine as far as it goes (see 16:26, 29) – but it can’t go far enough to ‘explain’ God.”

If you’re having trouble following, you’re in good company, because Jesus was trying to describe the indescribable, explain the unexplainable. I have a lot of sympathy. For the last couple weeks people have been saying to me, “You must be so proud about your daughter’s ordination.” I say yes, because I am.

“Proud,” however, is at one and the same time the right word and the wrong word. It’s too little a word to encompass all the love I have for Rebekah and her brother Brendan. It doesn’t quite include the satisfaction I have as a church leader to see a talented and capable person accepted into the ranks of leadership. It doesn’t begin to account for the fears I have for someone I love who will be disappointed many times by the likely failures of the church to fully appreciate her gifts, or that people will discount her for her gender, sexuality, her age, her disability, her ordination (yes, that counts against folks in some areas of life), or simply the fact that she’s blond. I’m her dad. I worry about those things.

There’s no word for all that. No one word. I just wrote 132 words and, you know what? Those didn’t do it, either.

So what can we tease out of all these words Jesus spoke in these ten verses of John?

The point of a sheepfold is to protect the lives of the sheep. Sheep can’t stay in an enclosure all the time – they’ll eat everything in sight pretty rapidly – but they’re safer from the overnight dangers in the sheepfold. It’s not perfect. Jesus warned of thieves and bandits, after all, some of whom trying to imitate a legitimate gatekeeper, and some of them climbing over the walls.

We’re familiar with that, aren’t we? We know the risks of burglars and of con artists, the ones who use threats of violence to extract things from us, and the ones who pretend to be someone trustworthy to tease our resources from us.

We know the suffering of people whose spouses or parents abuse them. We know the oppression of people whose governments decide that a group of people will not be protected, indeed will be abused, by the very ones who claim rightful authority. Christians have been an oppressed minority in some places at some times. The spectacle of Christians encouraging and participating in the abuse of people at the margins is a betrayal of everything Jesus taught and lived, and a moral injury to the Church.

Gatekeepers let sheep into the sheepfold, and out again to pasture. It’s a vital role. In the case of actual sheep, they don’t have the limbs to open a gate. Somebody has to do it for them. In the human world, plenty of people can function as gatekeepers, so the question really becomes: how do we know who to let in and let out? There’s an artist named David Hayward, a former pastor, whose work looks closely at this question, because let’s face it, the Church in many ages has been much better at closing the gates on people than opening them. In so much of Hayward’s art, the figure of Jesus embraces a sheep that has been rejected by the rest of the flock, who watch in confusion as Jesus comforts the one they discarded.

As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “’I am the gate.’  Not, ‘I am the wall, the barrier, the enclosure, the dividing line.’  Not, ‘I am that which separates, isolates, segregates, and incarcerates.’  I am the gate.  The door.  The opening.  The passageway.  The place where freedom begins.”

“The sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

Who will we trust to admit us to a safe sheepfold, and who will we trust to open the gate to a fruitful pasture? One whose voice we know, or whose form we recognize, or whose familiar touch wakes us from our sleep. Last week I spoke of recognizing Jesus as the one who feeds us. This week that’s still true – the gate swings open to the grasslands where the sheep graze.

We recognize Jesus also as the one who protects us: protects us from sin by teaching us good ways, by setting an example to follow, and most of all by forgiving us when we fail to follow lessons or example. Jesus protects us from death by opening a new gate to life. Jesus protects us from evil by giving us resources to keep it from taking over our hearts. I wish I could say that Jesus protects us from the evil acts of others, but Christian history abounds with martyrs who suffered, and so may we. When we maintain our sense of grace and refuse to let evil into our spirits, Jesus stands with us.

We recognize Jesus as one who welcomes more and more into the flock, into the sacred community. In verse 16 of this chapter, he said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” We know the voice of the shepherd and the gatekeeper because it keeps calling new people to join us. If we were to close the gate and bar it, if we were to stand upon the walls and defend them against any trying to join us, if we were to declare ourselves the be-all and end-all of Christianity, well. We would not be growing or thriving, would we?

Most of all, we would have replaced Jesus’ voice of welcome with our voice of rejection. At that point, can we call ourselves followers of Jesus at all?

Every gate on this campus makes a sound when it moves. There’s the ringing clang when it closes and shuts, and when it’s closed, small children have a more difficult time before running out into traffic, and that’s a good thing. There’s a bit of a squeal when it opens, and when it’s opened, we come in to worship, to enjoy a meal, to play a game, to comfort a grieving friend, to learn something new, or to make some decisions about the future.

That’s a voice of Jesus I recognize. As I recognize it in our words of welcome, and our efforts to protect or comfort our needy neighbors. There’s the voice of Jesus. No stranger to us at all.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons in advance, but he makes changes while preaching. The prepared text does not match the sermon as preached.

The illustration is The Good Shepherd by Henry Ossawa Tanner, ca. 1918 – This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the National Gallery of Art. Please see the Gallery’s Open Access Policy., CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81324376.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Unarmored

August 25, 2024

Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20

It was a hymn tune first, with lyrics that included “Oh Brothers” (and in the next verse “Oh Sisters”) “will you meet me on Cannan’s happy shore?” It was one of those sung in the camp meeting worship services of early 19th century American settlements in the West.

With the arrival of the Civil War, however, the tune found a new set of lyrics. “John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave; his soul’s a marching on.” It became a marching anthem for soldiers of the Union Army, who took inspiration from the intense anti-slavery activist John Brown, who had been executed after a frustrated attempt to seize guns to outfit an uprising among enslaved African Americans in 1859.

Julia Ward Howe heard the song during a review of Union troops in Washington, DC. A companion, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, suggested that she come up with a new set of words – and she did. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” became a marching anthem for the Union armies as they moved to battles throughout the 87 year old nation.

The Civil War is still, today, the deadliest conflict in the history of the United States of America. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” played a role in inspiring  hundreds of thousands to kill or be killed.

I get… anxious… about military imagery in hymns, theology, and yes, in Scripture. Human beings are gifted at transforming military metaphors into actual assaults. For that matter, they transform other symbols for use in armed conflict. Famously, the Emperor Constantine put two superimposed Greek letters on his shield before he went to battle against Maxentius in 312 with the Imperial throne at stake. The letters were Chi and Rho – which look like an X and a P to our eyes – the first two letters of “Christ” in Greek.

Constantine won. Maxentius died. We don’t know how many others died with him. Constantine legalized Christianity in the next year, ending nearly three hundred years of intermittent persecution. Unfortunately, it would also strengthen the notion of a warrior Christ, one who would give military victory, and incidentally label all those opposing Rome, or France, or Spain, or England (or take your pick) as evildoers to be cut off from remembrance on the earth.

The Apostle’s metaphor of the Whole Armor of God has been used to endorse the holy wars, the inquisitions, the crusades that have taken so many lives and grieved their purported Divine endorser. I have no doubt it would also grieve the Apostle.

Sarah Henrich writes at Working Preacher:

Yes, it is dangerous indeed to classify those with whom one disagrees as agents of the devil. We have three protections against making Ephesians 6 a warrant for warfare or oppression:

  • first, this metaphor was written for minority persons;
  • second, flesh and blood opponents are not those against whom one contends;
  • finally, the very nature of the armor makes clear that the message here is a survival strategy for persons of faith in a hostile world, not a strategy for aggression.

Take a good look at this Whole Armor of God. It’s not intended for a battle against human beings. Imagine going into a conflict equipped only with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit. The people who came with real armor and real weapons are going to hurt you. To put it into poetry:

I’m grateful that the struggle is not with
the powers of blood and flesh. Not if
I’m to rely upon these items
for protection of my vital spark.

What happens to the righteous? Why,
they suffer, as do those who speak of peace.
A shield of faith is powerless against
an arrow, or a club, or fist.

Should I entrust my head to its
salvation? The logic doesn’t work for me.
I wish I thought an offense of the Spirit,
of the Word, protected anyone, but… no.

And worst of all, to recommend
I gird my waist with Truth, as if
the truth has ever carried any weight
when cut so easily by lies.

Those virtues will not help you very much in a human conflict, let’s face it. Certainly not in physical combat. They’re not always very helpful in negation or debate. More than one party to a lawsuit has found that truth and righteousness falter under the pressure of greed and lies.

And peace may be the most fragile thing of all. It vanishes as soon as violence or coercion take place.

Why, then, did the Apostle advise us to enter these encounters essentially unprotected, unarmored?

It’s because there is no substitute for virtue.

Remember that these virtues are not about interactions with people – though I note that we should be using them in interactions with people – they are primarily about resisting the influence of spiritual forces. In our tradition at this time we don’t give a lot of attention to the idea of spiritual forces other than God. We don’t explain mental illness or distress with possession by demons. We don’t explain the power of greed as resulting from demonic influence. We don’t understand our own temptations as coming from anyone other than ourselves.

Many of our ancestors, physical and spiritual, did. They employed these virtues of truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit to resist the temptations around them, temptations to selfishness, to the abuse of power, to the abandonment of their relationship with Christ. In that context, these virtues had the ability to help.

As I say, we don’t think that way about temptation. For us, it comes from within.

Does it matter?

Whether temptation is an external force or an internal collision with desire, these same virtues have the capacity to help us resist. When we search for the truth about this thing we’ve come to desire, perhaps we’ll learn not only that it’s not all it claims to be, but that it won’t make us happy anyway. I keep wondering whether, before the 2007-2008 financial crisis, if more people had spent more time understanding the truth about the financial instruments being traded, if they would have calmed things down. If more of them had been able to check their greed at the door, would things have changed?

I think so.

It’s not just the obvious temptations of sex and greed. As Katie Hines-Shah writes at The Christian Century, “’Spiritual forces of evil’ are present in mundane human life. Racism, sexism, homophobia, greed, destruction of the environment, lack of concern for human life, failure to do the good that is within us—these are forces of evil, from the classroom to the boardroom. Faithful Christians need to gird themselves against them.”

Let’s face it, the world has taught us racism, sexism, homophobia, greed, disregard for the environment. We see these things sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically, from the offhand racial microaggression to the open and casual dumping of toxic waste. We have been taught to value human life, but to value the lives of ourselves, our families, our communities higher than others. And that makes a difference. It permits us to tolerate or even support evil.

What have we learned about doing good? That it’s the thing to do? Sometimes – but not always, right? Sometimes it would be futile, so we shouldn’t. Sometimes it would promote bad habits in someone else, so we shouldn’t. Sometimes it would put us at risk, so we shouldn’t.

All of those can be difficult questions… but can’t we do the good that is within us more often than we do?

I sincerely wish that truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Holy Spirit offered real protection in the real world. They don’t. They offer us protection only in the world of the spirit, which is a strange place with strange rules. The sad truth is that we confront the evils of this world basically unarmored against their physical manifestations. The sad truth is that we frequently fail to understand the ways in which these virtues protect us against injuries to our souls.

Take on, then, this Whole Armor of God with eyes wide open. Know that you will still face the challenges of life, and that you will still face challenges to the soul. Those virtues may not help you much in the world.

But those virtues are the best there are to protect you against spiritual harms. Those virtues will guard your soul.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric prepares the sermon text in advance, but while preaching things happen and things change. What you view will differ from what you read.

Photo of Roman crocodile armor by Ken Kennedy (taken in the British Museum) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/kkennedy/503916291/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16228691.