Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Not Any of These

March 15, 2026

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14

I learned something new this week. I learned about “Dark dining.” This is a restaurant where you eat with all the lights off. The idea is to focus your attention on the tastes and scents of the food. Thinking about one of these restaurants, Biblical scholar Roger Nam writes at Working Preacher, “Without the crutch of vision, textures, flavors, temperatures, and nodes of taste are enlightened. It is amazing how the deliberate restriction of sight may enhance a dining experience!”

And that, says Dr. Nam, is the way Samuel found himself approaching the task of identifying God’s chosen successor to Saul, the first King of Israel. He continues: “I wonder how much our own sight blinds us to God’s wishes, and prevents us from truly experiencing God’s intent. Perhaps the occasional experience of blindness can remind us how the gift of sight may prevent us from seeing the heart of God… 1 Samuel 16 implores us that sometimes we only need to deliberately close our eyes to see what God wants us to see.”

“[Samuel] looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely his anointed is now before the LORD.’ But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’”

As you can probably tell from the beginning of the text, things were complicated in Israel. Samuel had anointed Saul as the first King of Israel possibly as little as two years before. God and Samuel hadn’t been enthusiastic about replacing the system of judges with a monarch, but the Israelites had been hard pressed by raids and military incursions from their neighbors, and the people demanded a reliable, consistent leadership. Samuel, at God’s direction, had chosen Saul. It wasn’t long, however, before Saul began to do things he wasn’t empowered to do, such as offer sacrifices, and he failed to do things he was supposed to do. Samuel confronted Saul about it and informed him that God had rejected him.

It seems from the Samuel’s concerns about his safety at the beginning of this passage, and the trembling question of the leaders of Bethlehem – “Do you come peaceably?” – that everybody knew that the King and the prophet were at odds.

What he was doing, of course, was setting up the nation for a lengthy civil war. That’s the best name for it. As you might remember, Saul and David worked as a team for several years. David even married one of Saul’s daughters. A day came, however, when the relationship fractured into open conflict. As Patricia Tull writes at Working Preacher, “Samuel secretly anoints him [David] as God’s chosen future king while Saul is still reigning, and for the next fifteen chapters, that is, most of the story, the conflict between the two kings Samuel has anointed, a conflict neither of them created, balloons from rivalry and jealousy to deadly hostility: the recognized king of Israel, who still had a following, periodically determined to destroy his hidden heir, who time after time eludes his grasp.”

King Saul: Not this one.

God guided Samuel to the sons of Jesse, a respectable resident of Bethlehem. Samuel asked to meet the young men one at a time, or at least the authors presented it as something of a parade, with each one “passing by” in turn. The first was the eldest, Eliab, and Samuel thought he looked like a likely candidate for king: tall and good looking. God chimed in, however, to say, “I have rejected him, for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

If God told Samuel what was in the heart that disqualified Eliab, the story doesn’t say. We only know that Eliab got angry at David later on for asking an embarrassing question – which is, I’m afraid, the usual fate of younger siblings who ask questions that embarrass their older siblings. Was that it?

My guess is, probably not.

Eliab: Not this one.

Then son number two: Abinadab. And: Not this one.

Son number three: Shammah. Not this one.

After that the storytellers ran out of names, because four more young men were run by the prophet, and four more young men were rejected.

Not any of these.

But now Samuel was out of candidates.

It turns out there was one more, one whose utility as a shepherd outweighed the prophet’s request to meet all Jesse’s sons. That was David, of course. You’ve heard the story read, and you’ve heard it before. God told Samuel, “This is the one.”

Not any of these.

This one.

Why?

That’s the crucial question, isn’t it? We don’t know what God saw in the heart of Eliab or the other six brothers that disqualified them. We also don’t know what God saw in the heart of David to qualify him. What made him a good potential king? What made the others less good – we don’t actually know they’d have been bad – what made them less suitable candidates than the youngest of Jesse’s sons?

The closest we can come is to look at what David did after his anointing. What qualities did he show? What did his behavior say about what was in his heart?

The first virtue, I have to say, was compassion. The very next story, wrapping up this chapter, tells how David became a member of King Saul’s entourage. Saul suffered from some kind of mental health ailment, described as “an evil spirit.” Music soothed him, and the musician was David.

The story told in the next chapter of First Samuel is David and Goliath. There are a lot of things you can learn about David in that, but the first and foremost is that he was brave. There are a lot of ways to show courage. David displayed many of them.

Another virtue David displayed repeatedly was loyalty. His friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan is iconic. The two maintained a relationship even when King Saul sought David’s life. Further, David, even as a rebel, remained oddly loyal to Saul himself. There are two stories of David having the opportunity to kill King Saul, and refusing to “raise his hand against the LORD’s anointed.”

Finally, David showed a quality that Saul so lacked that it was what provoked God and Samuel to anoint him in the first place. David displayed a trust in God and a humility before God that clearly separated him from his predecessor. Saul assumed that his status as king gave him priestly powers. David routinely asked God about the things he should do. His relationship with God governed his decisions far more than Saul. David’s relationship with God was further recorded in the psalms he wrote. They reveal a trust and faith that even the storytellers of First Samuel could not fully describe.

What David did not possess, the virtue of the heart that God did not discern, was perfection. It would be nice if he had, because the stories of his reign would be different. But it’s also a relief, isn’t it? God isn’t looking for people who make no mistakes. God is looking for people who are brave, but not always. God is looking for people who care, but not for people who always know exactly what to do. God is looking for people who trust in God, but not people whose faith never falters.

God knows that people are people. God knows that people will fail from time to time.

What God wants is people who try, and try again, and try again.

What God also wants is for people not to be in positions where they cannot or will not fulfill their responsibilities. God wants the inclinations of the heart to be consistent with the roles they’re called to play. Those inclinations may change – that seems to have happened with Saul – but if they’re preventing someone from fulfilling their kuleana, it’s time to move on.

You and I might envy God that ability to see into the heart, but I’ll remind you that we are not so ignorant. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the poet Maya Angelou said, “My dear, when people show you who they are, why don’t you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are? Why can’t you get it the first time?”

May we be visible as people of good hearts the first time and the twenty-nine times after that. When God looks into us, may we not hear: “Not any of these.”

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while he preaches. The sermon you just read is not precisely as he delivered it.

The image is David Anointed King by Samuel, Dura Europos synagogue painting (3rd cent.), reworked by Marsyas. Yale Gilman collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5107843.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Inclination of the Heart

What did God see in David’s heart to choose him? We don’t know. We can only try to imitate his courage, compassion, and mercy (and not his flaws).

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the sixteenth chapter of First Samuel (1 Samuel 16:1-13): the anointing of David.

At the beginning of this section, God spoke to Samuel, the chief prophet of the day, and said it was time to move on from King Saul. Saul had been selected to be the first monarch of Israel, and God and Samuel had become increasingly disappointed with his conduct and his character.

It was time to move on. It was time to select Saul’s successor. This would be — was — an act of rebellion, one that would eventually move into a lengthy civil war between Saul and Saul’s successor.

God directed Samuel to the house of Jesse, a resident of Bethlehem, because Saul’s successor was to be found amongst Jesse’s sons. You might remember this part of the story: one by one Jesse presented his sons to Samuel. One by one Samuel looked at them and said, “This young man looks like a king.” Each time God said, “This is not the one. Human beings see with the eyes, but God sees into the human heart.”

Eventually Jesse presented his youngest, David. “This one,” said God, and Samuel anointed him.

I do wonder what it was that God saw in David’s heart that God did not see in the hearts of Jesse’s other sons. Certainly David displayed a lot of desirable characteristics as we moved through the story. He was brave. He was compassionate. He could be generous and kind. Were those things not in the hearts of the others?

It is also true that David displayed some of the worst of humanity, especially as he became king and lived into that power. He committed sexual assault. He connived at murder. Were these things not in the hearts of his brothers?

The story doesn’t say.

I do think that the potential for evil dwells in the hearts of any human being. I also think the potential to do good dwells in the hearts of any human being. So what was it that God looked for? What was it that God saw?

I think it was not just potential. I think it was inclination. Which way was David likely to go as compared to his brothers, as compared to anybody else? Was he just a bit more likely to choose the paths of righteousness, of courage and generosity of mercy, than were his older brothers? Again, the story doesn’t say except by describing the things that David did later in life.

I hope that each of us will remember how much we can and can’t see when looking upon our brothers and sisters, our family of humanity. I hope that each of us will make our judgments based on what is revealed of character through choices, decisions, and action. And I hope that each of us will, to be honest, do better than David, that we will each emulate his compassion and mercy and keep away from the sins that he committed.

May we each find ourselves viewed in the heart by God, and may God be satisfied with what is there.

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: Hope Worth Hoping For

November 30, 2025

Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14

There’s an old joke that tells of a man who saw another man beating his head against a wall.

“Is something wrong?” he asked that man.

“Oh, nothing’s wrong,” said the second man, but he winced as he hit his head against the wall again.

“Then why are you beating your head against a wall?” asked the first man.

“Because it will feel so good when I stop.”

In a 2022 essay at JourneyWithJesus.net, Amy Frykolm observes that a lot of our news reading involves predictions of the future. She writes, “We tell ourselves these stories about the future because they allow us to imagine that we can prepare, that we know what’s coming, that if we only analyze the future rightly, we can create viable safety plans. The bigger the predicted catastrophe, the greater we imagine that just by knowing it is coming, we can avoid its most adverse effects. In other words, we use predictions about the future to try to escape the basic vulnerability of being human.

“But Advent is a time in the Christian tradition when we acknowledge that even as we anticipate something we know is coming — the Word, incarnate — we can’t comprehend it.”

Around two and three quarters millennia ago, Isaiah imagined the future and chose hope. It wasn’t an easy choice. Isaiah didn’t think much of the way things were going in his home city of Jerusalem. In chapter one he wrote:

Your new moons and your appointed festivals
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove your evil deeds
    from before my eyes;
cease to do evil;
    learn to do good;
seek justice;
    rescue the oppressed;
defend the orphan;
    plead for the widow.

Isaiah 1:14-17

How do you know things are going badly? The most vulnerable are suffering. As I and others keep saying, it’s all about the widows and the orphans.

As Michael Chan writes at Working Preacher, “In this text, promise and judgement are not contradictory realities: judgment serves promise, and contributes to bringing about the fulfillment of promise.”

Isaiah could not hope for the continuation of what was. People were suffering because of the actions of other people, actions which God had specifically forbidden, actions which God had reminded them over and over again through other prophets not to do. To make things worse, the nation faced a massive external threat. The Assyrian Empire had determined to conquer Egypt. Between the two lay a series of small countries, including the two Jewish nations of Israel and Judah. The Assyrian invasion ended the existence of the northern kingdom of Israel. Judah, Isaiah’s home, barely survived.

When Isaiah dreamed of swords becoming plowshares and spears becoming pruning hooks, of weapons of war becoming tools for planting and pruning, there were a lot of swords and spears coming his way.

He might have hoped for something else. He might have hoped for a Divine victory that overcame the Assyrians. He might have hoped for a new David who would not just chase the Assyrians from Judah, but turn conqueror in his own right, and become ruler of Mesopotamia. Perhaps this new monarch would have such power that he could achieve the Assyrians’ ambition and control Egypt as well. What an achievement that would be. That would be hundreds, thousands times better than David had done.

Isaiah seems to have worked directly with Judah’s kings (he had a long career and served four of them). I’m sure they would have loved to hear that kind of hope.

That’s not the hope he chose.

What is hope and how do you choose it? Rather like love, we tend to think of hope as a feeling, and like love, there’s a truth to that. I can feel affection for someone. That’s love. I can feel positive about the future. That’s hope.

We don’t choose feelings, however, so feelings can’t be virtues. Feelings happen. We don’t control them, and when feelings start to have too much power over us there’s therapy. Fortunately we can often influence our feelings, which is why therapy works, but influence isn’t choice, which is why therapy can be long and hard.

There is another way to think of love, however, and that is choice. To love someone is to set their interests at or above your own. It’s what good parents do for their children. It’s what couples getting married promise to do. It’s what our firefighters have been doing recently during these terrible fires. It’s what John meant when he wrote, “God so loved the world.”

Likewise there is a way to think of hope as a choice. When I hope, I choose to imagine a different world. I choose to believe that things can be better than they are. I choose to embrace a future that improves the present. I choose to live toward, move toward, act toward that future.

I choose a chrysalis.

I choose what to hope for.

That’s important. As I mentioned, Isaiah could have hoped for a sprawling Judean empire. It would have pleased the king, no doubt. He didn’t. He chose to hope for something radically different, different, in fact, from anything he or his contemporaries had experienced. He hoped for peace.

What will we hope for? What will we imagine? What will we believe in? What will we embrace? What will we live toward, move toward, and act toward?

I think we should hope for something worthy of Isaiah. I think we should hope for something worthy of Jesus.

Hope can be so small, can’t it? “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow.” Actually, I do, because it makes some kinds of photography easier. But that’s a pretty limited hope, isn’t it? That’s pretty much just for me. “I hope the stock market keeps rising.” That’s a bigger hope, to be sure, but it sure sounds like it’s still mostly about me, and it’s also a hope where all you’ve got to do is take the long view. In the short term, stock valuations can be really volatile. In the long term, diversified investments rise in value.

I’d like a bigger hope than that.

There’s a phrase with the abbreviation “B-HAG,” which stands for “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.” It’s often recommended that companies, organizations, and advocacy groups choose at least one Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal when they plan. It’s supposed to raise the energy and the investment of time, resources, and labor. And you know, it seems to work. People work for something worth working for.

People hope for something worth hoping for.

Do you remember the song Sammy Davis, Jr., used to sing? Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse wrote it, and Lady Gaga recorded it last year.

Gonna build a mountain
From a little hill
Gonna build me a mountain
‘Least I hope I will
Gonna build a mountain
Gonna build it high
I don’t know how I’m gonna do it
I only know I’m gonna try

Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse

Building a mountain is a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. It’s a hope worth hoping for.

Jesus chose a hope worth hoping for. He chose to hope for communities in which people honored God by caring for one another. He chose to hope that ordinary people would give of themselves for the benefit of others. He chose to hope that power could be made perfect in weakness. He chose to hope that love was stronger than death.

What’s a hope worth hoping for?

I could start with the end of war. It’s brought a lot of misery, a lot of suffering, a lot of death. Let’s do without that.

I could go on to the end of greed. According to the Federal Reserve, as of the end of June, half of Americans possessed 5.4% of the wealth. You heard that right. The other half hold 94.6% of the wealth. The top ten percent of the wealthiest Americans possess 63%.

I don’t think it’s supporting the widows and the orphans.

I hope for the end of greed.

I hope for a world of people that care. I hope for people who plant and harvest. I hope for people who create and build. I hope for people who enjoy beauty and share it. I hope for people who tread lightly on the Earth.

A Big, Hairy, Audacious Hope? Yes, I’d say it is.

A hope worth hoping.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching. Sometimes he decides to do it; sometimes changes just happen.

The image is a Russian icon of Isaiah by an unknown 18th century icon painter – Iconostasis of Transfiguration church, Kizhi monastery, Karelia, Russia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3235458.

Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Are You Convinced?

September 28, 2025

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Luke 16:19-31

I can’t know for sure, but I think that when Luke was assembling his gospel from the bits and pieces of Jesus stories he’d collected, one of those scrolls contained the three long stories that we only find in Luke: the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. I’m probably wrong, but these stories are longer than most, take more time to develop character than most, and have really pointed endings.

A story which ends with the faithful brother reprimanded for his faithfulness? That’s pretty surprising. A story which ends with absolutely the wrong hero? That’s quite a challenge. A story which says, “Give to the poor or go to Hades?”

They don’t get much more pointed than that.

It’s also counterintuitive in the first century and in the twenty-first century. As Kendra A. Mohn writes at Working Preacher, “It is common to equate wealth with virtue, whether today or in the ancient world. Good people who work hard and live righteously can expect to be rewarded with means; likewise, people with means are seen as good (smart, hardworking, righteous) because they were able to acquire wealth. In the ancient world, concepts like wealth, virtue, and masculinity worked together and reinforced one another to solidify elite status.

“The idea that the rich man is a good man is directly challenged by Jesus’ parable.”

We tend to assume that at least reasonable economic success comes from the virtues of hard work and good choices. There’s a lot of truth to that. I’m not sure if many of you know that I established and ran a consulting business for quite a few years. I really only closed it when one of my clients – the Connecticut Conference of the UCC – asked me to give them full time and I got taken on as a staff member. I’ve got some experience with the kind of initiative, creativity, inquiry, and ongoing effort it takes to make that kind of thing work.

Mind you, I don’t say that to claim those virtues. I just know they’re needed. As you might have noticed, my efforts as a business owner did not bring me substantial amounts of wealth.

In these three long parables found in Luke, Jesus emphasized some rather different values. In the Prodigal Son, the virtue of forgiveness. In the Good Samaritan, the virtue of compassion. In the Rich Man and Lazarus, the virtue of generosity. None of those are, I hasten to mention, incompatible with the virtues of hard work, diligence, and discernment, although I’ve heard people say that they are. These are the ones who say that empathy is a weakness, even the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.

All right. If you don’t want to call it empathy, don’t. Empathy describes a feeling, and as I say a lot, feelings aren’t things we control. We feel feelings.

But we act compassionately. We extend forgiveness. We give generously.

Or, I suppose, we don’t. But those are the virtues Jesus lifted up in these longer stories.

Now, how many of you are big fans of the story of The Prodigal Son? It can be a little rough on us older brother types – for the record, I am the older brother in my family, though I think my brother has had to forgive me more often than I’ve had to forgive him – but the ending leaves us in a place where we anticipate the reunion of the family.

How about The Good Samaritan? Who’s a fan? Those of us in the religious professions can certainly have a rough time with it, but let’s face it. There’s a part of our culture which enjoys the triumph, especially the moral triumph, of the outsider. So hooray for the Samaritan!

And we didn’t expect that much of the religious officials anyway.

The Prodigal Son. The Good Samaritan. Good stories. Well known. Well remembered. Quoted from time to time, even.

When was the last time you quoted The Rich Man and Lazarus?

Well, I haven’t either.

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home. John T. Carroll writes at Working Preacher, “An enormous and growing wealth gap separates a few—both individuals and nations—from the many who live in poverty. Sound familiar? First-century life within the Roman Empire was much like the reality we know, in this regard. The Gospel of Luke assumes and addresses this reality.” And as Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Preservation of the comfort of the privileged allows more injustice to occur than pure evil. At no point does the story suggest the rich man caused Lazarus to suffer initially. Yet, his inaction allowed it to continue. As Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’”

Maybe it’s a bit too close to home because we know that the virtue of generosity is one of the hardest. There’s a lot of risk to generosity.

We fear that if we give too much, we won’t have enough. Right? That comes in the big decisions, when we’re choosing how much to contribute in the year to things we support, and it also comes in the smaller decisions, when we’re deciding whether there’s enough in our wallet to give something to the panhandler on the sidewalk.

How much do we need to keep to maintain our lives? It’s a hard question, in the moment and in the long term. Speaking for myself, I tend to decide that what I need is probably more than what I really need. Anyone else feel the same?

There’s another risk to generosity, and I fear it and I hear it all the time. Will the person I’m generous to be properly grateful? Remember the story of Jesus and the ten people he healed from leprosy. Only one came back to say thank you – and it was a Samaritan. I’d rather not be generous if I don’t get a thank you.

So I’d guess that Jesus didn’t heal anyone again… Oh, right. He did.

Generosity isn’t about the people we give to. It’s about us. We decide. We reach out. We give – or not. Gratitude is an important part of generosity, but to be frank, it isn’t necessary for generosity to happen. If you have any doubt about that, think about God’s incredibly generous gift to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Have you fully expressed your gratitude for that? Is it actually possible to give adequate thanks for that?

In this parable, Jesus stressed not just the importance of compassionate giving, he emphasized its urgency. Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “…what I appreciate most is that it’s an urgent story.  It doesn’t mince words about what’s at stake.  It doesn’t pretend that our years are limitless and our options infinite.  This is a story about time running out.  About alternatives closing down.  This is a story for us.”

We get to be generous here and now. Instead of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die,” Jesus asked us to be compassionate and generous, for tomorrow we may die.

Melissa Bane Sevier writes at her blog, “No matter our social and financial status, we all have responsibility for the other. A cautionary tale, this parable pushes us to see and hear the suffering of the poor and to cross that enormous gulf that exists between people, between communities. To see the poor and the sick as people with names, not just some jumble of faces. To name the injustices and illnesses they deal with. To reach out while we’re all still living, because it is the only chance we have to try and make things right.”

Did you notice the other major difference in this parable between the rich man and Lazarus? Jesus gave the poor man a name – relatively few of the characters in his stories got names – and the rich man didn’t. Mind you, the name was carefully chosen. “Lazarus” is a version of the Hebrew “Eliezar,” which means, “God is my help.”

God is my help.

In this story, that turned out to be true. God was the only help for Lazarus.

In our reality, we cannot let that be true. We must be part of the help for the Lazaruses of the world. God is their help, but we can be and must be part of that help.

It’s important. It’s Jesus’ summons. It’s urgent.

Are you convinced?

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Unfortunately, the video recording of worship for September 28, 2025, did not include audio.

The image is Works of Mercy with Dives and Lazarus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57065 [retrieved September 28, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Works_of_mercy_with_Dives_and_Lazarus._Oil_painting_by_a_Fle_Wellcome_V0017623.jpg.

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

Pastor’s Corner: Hope and Optimism

May 28, 2025

I don’t know whether a dictionary would agree with me, but I attach a significant difference to the words “hope” and “optimism.”

I feel optimistic when I sense that things are going well, that good things will happen, that bad things will fade away. Optimistic me usually, but not always, has good reason for the feeling. I might be buoyed up by successes or following others’ good work. I don’t choose what I call optimism; I feel it.

I also enjoy it when it happens.

In contrast, I describe hope as a choice which doesn’t depend on what I feel. When I hope, I look toward a future that looks better than the present, whether I feel that it’s likely or not. When I choose hope, I choose to live toward what is good rather than following what might be an easier path toward what is bad.

It’s certainly easier to hope when I feel optimistic. Hope springs almost naturally from a feeling that things are going well. Hope becomes a virtue when optimism fades. Why would I work toward something that cannot, or at least will not, be?

Enjoy your optimism. The world gives us plenty of reason to celebrate, from the tiny grins of infants to the proud smiles of graduates to the tender embraces of tutu. All these things tell us that the future will be better than the present.

When things say otherwise, that’s the time to hope. The future can be better. The world can be brighter. The people can live in love and peace, though all the powers and principalities seek to bar the way. Hope when it’s easy; hope when it’s hard.

That’s how better days dawn.

In peace,

Pastor Eric

PS: I’ve appended the sabbatical video once again. I hope you enjoy it!

Video: Sabbatical 2025