Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon: Towards Peace

December 7, 2025

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

It’s a vision of improbable things.

Wolves living peaceably with lambs, leopards and kids, calves with lions, cows with bears. They’re all grazing, which you’d think wouldn’t work for the wolves, leopards, lions, and bears. They don’t have the right kind of teeth.

Through them wander these little children who lead – I grant you that little children lead us around all the time, but that’s only until we catch on – and they even play safely around the poisonous snakes.

It seems fantastic. As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Then, there is the testimony of the Banyan tree. It’s an extraordinary spectacle. Roots grow from the branches of the tree. The branches are long and the roots seek water from the ground. The Banyan tree can live for hundreds of years and expand to cover acres under its canopy of branches and sustaining roots. Most trees do not function this way, and the Banyan tree may seem like a creation of fantasy rather than another version of a fig tree.

“The world described in Isaiah 11 may also seem to be the fruit of impossible fantasy rather than a prophetic, imagined future crafted by the abiding love and longing of the Holy One.”

Living in Hilo, we’re familiar both with the wonders of the banyan tree and with its strange fragility. We’ve seen great trees come crashing tragically down. And we’ve seen them grow and thrive supported by those fantastic roots.

Is the banyan, or the remade natural world, really any more improbable than what launches this utopian vision: the image of a leader emerging from the house of David who demonstrated wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the LORD?

Isaiah lived through the reigns of good kings and bad kings. He had advised King Ahaz, who got very bad reviews from the authors of 2 Kings: “He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord,” is how they introduced him in chapter 16. Isaiah had much better experiences with Ahaz’ son Hezekiah, who received great praise from the authors of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. “He did what was right in the sight of the LORD just as his ancestor David had done,” reads 2 Kings in chapter 18.

Is it so strange that a ruler should govern with wisdom and understanding, with knowledge and in the reverence of God?

Corrinne L. Carvalho writes at Working Preacher, “It is difficult for Christians to hear this poem, especially during the season of Advent, and not think it celebrates the birth of Jesus. But it is important to remember that this yearning for a perfect world pre-dates and exists independently of the Christmas story. I think if people around the world were asked to draw a picture of a perfect world leader, that ruler would have many of these same attributes.”

Although… there are some who have other ideas. Michael J. Chan writes at Working Preacher, “In the royal propaganda of the ancient near East, royal figures frequently encounter predatory animals, and especially lions. And so it is no surprise to find the royal child depicted as a shepherd among lions. What is surprising, however, is the way in which the young shepherd interacts with them. In general, kings would be depicted fighting and killing lions, not leading them or living among them.”

Fighting and killing. Not leading. Not living among them.

Does this sound familiar?

Isaiah’s vision of peace relies upon leaders who make peace a priority. Peace, not power. Peace, not privilege. Peace, not pride. Isaiah’s peaceful ruler relies upon the wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, the reverence of God. Isaiah’s peaceful ruler uses that wisdom and righteousness and reverence to look more carefully at the stories they hear. They give regard to the concerns of the poor. They relieve the oppression of those who suffer from the acts of the powerful.

In his novel Jingo, Terry Pratchett described a dialogue between a ruler, Lord Vetinari, and a genius, Leonard of Quirm.

“As they say, [said Lord Vetinari] ‘If you would seek war, prepare for war.’”

“I believe, my lord, the saying is ‘If you would seek peace, prepare for war,’” Leonard ventured.

Vetinari put his head on one side and his lips moved as he repeated the phrase to himself. Finally he said, “No, no. I just don’t see that one at all.”

Terry Pratchett, Jingo (New York, HarTorch), 1997

We make peace by moving toward peace. We move toward peace in our households when we stop insisting on our way, or our authority, or our “rightness.” We move toward peace when we work on our relationships. We move toward peace in our voluntary communities when we work through the different ideas and disagreements and choose a way we can share together. We move toward peace in our churches when we accept that there are things we don’t know about God and about the nature of the world and prioritize the welfare of those affected by our decisions.

We move toward peace in the world when we select leaders who decide in the interests of all people, not just themselves or those in their circle or class. We move toward peace in the world when we send leaders packing who demonstrate that they work for themselves, not others. We move toward peace in the world when we make it clear that we will not tolerate injustice, intolerance, oppression, cruelty, and tyranny.

We move toward peace in the world when we embrace peace within ourselves. We move toward peace in the world when we choose the righteousness of God rather than the self-interest which is so common. We move toward peace in the world when we ourselves take the time and effort to learn more than what appears to be obvious, and seek diligently for truth. We move toward peace in the world when we choose wisdom over folly.

As Cory Driver writes at Working Preacher, “God has always been calling the Holy Community to justice and faithfulness, and has always promised to send leaders who will show the way. It is such a leader that we, along with Isaiah, look for during this Advent.”

Let us be such leaders in our families and communities; let us be such citizens in our nation, let us insist upon such leaders in the houses of government in the world.

Let us journey toward peace.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric writes his sermons in advance, but he makes changes while he preaches, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not.

The image is Peaceable Kingtom by Rick and Brenda Beerhorst, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55782 [retrieved December 7, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74782490@N00/5816094892.
Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: An Example to Imitate

November 16, 2025

Isaiah 65:17-25
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

In some circles, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is a very popular verse. “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” I think it’s safe to say that it supports a worldview in which activity, effort, and industry are valued. It contributes to the idea of the Protestant work ethic, which says that labor itself is a Good Thing.

In some other circles, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is a very problematic verse. Folks in these circles ask about those who, for one reason or another, can’t work. They speak of factors like health or available employment. They may also raise the virtues of generosity and sharing. Jesus, they observe, didn’t ask any of the five thousand to do some work before he fed them on a Galilean hillside.

So which is it? Eat only through work? Or should everyone eat?

Frank L. Crouch writes at Working Preacher, “In scripture, the question of how we justly distribute food and other resources within our communities lies on a continuum, with this statement from Paul on one end: ‘Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,’ and a statement from Jesus on the other end, ‘Give to everyone who begs from you [Greek “aitéo”: asks, requests, pleads for, demands], and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you’ (Matthew 5:40-42). Or, from the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, ‘Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).’”

So… it’s both.

I could end the sermon right here, but I’m not sure any of us would be impressed with the amount of work that took.

It’s probably not what Paul had in mind, either.

The Greek word Paul used that the NRSV translated as “idle” has other meanings as well. As Jennifer S. Wyant notes at Working Preacher, “Outside of the New Testament, this word means ‘disorderly or irresponsibly’ and is often found within the context of battle imagery, of men not being ready at their post or ready for the fight ahead because of their disorder.” That fits with the description of “busybodies” in verse 11. The people Paul criticized weren’t just relying on other people to support them. They were disrupting the church community at the same time.

So who were they?

As I thought about it, I came right up against the fact that very few people in the first century could eat without work. According to a 2017 article by J. W. Hanson and S. G. Ortman (1), between three-quarters and four-fifths of the population of the Roman Empire lived in the rural country. In other words, they worked farms, or possibly in quarries or mines. There was very little question of working or not working on a farm. As anyone with a garden knows, let alone a farm, getting the plants you want to grow without having the plants you don’t want to grow growing with them requires continuous labor.

Thessalonica, of course, was a city. It had a port that provided trade connections for a significant area of Macedonia. That meant a higher proportion of skilled workers, of financial supports, and of simply more wealthy people. Still, it’s worth remembering that most of the residents of the city would have been quite poor by our standards. According to Sarah E. Bond, a good number of them, based on the archaeology of Pompeii, were probably slaves, perhaps up to a fifth.

So who, I wondered, could be eating without work? It wouldn’t have been the slaves. It wouldn’t have been the poor laborers. It wouldn’t have been the bakers or blacksmiths or builders. Who could it be?

The clue was in what Paul wrote just before this verse about working and eating. “…We were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right but in order to give you an example to imitate.”

Who gets fed by a religious community? Who might have the right to be fed by a religious community? Religious leaders. Yep. Folks like… me.

Well. That’s awkward, isn’t it? Especially just a couple weeks after you passed a budget that will feed me for the next year. Especially in a year when I took three months off to be an idle busybody. Yeah. That’s awkward.

Paul was the apostle of the new Christian communities of Greece. And he had a fundamental notion of what was important in these new Christian communities. It was, first and foremost, trust in salvation through Jesus. A close second was the welfare of these new Christian communities. “Let all things be done for building up,” he told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 14:26). “Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor,” he wrote the church in Rome (Rom. 15:2). “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up,” he said to the Ephesians (Eph. 4:29). And he wrote, “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing,” in a previous letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:11).

He did his level best, he said, to give them an example of building up. Bring the gospel as a gift, and don’t make the recipients “pay” for it. It might be appropriate to be supported in that way – Paul says it would have been, but he didn’t take advantage of it. He chose not to take advantage.

In contrast, others seemed willing to take advantage of their positions of leadership. “It is not that they are simply lazy, or heaven forbid, unable to work,” writes Mariam Karnell at Working Preacher. “These people are able to work, but use that ability to create chaos in the community. As such, they directly contradict the example of the apostles who by status would not have had to work but did anyway. This passage has nothing to do with whether a social welfare should be in place to catch the helpless in society; this is entirely concerned with those who should and can work but refuse and instead direct their energies to causing chaos in the community. This day and age when it is entirely possible, and disturbingly common, to work full time — or more than full time — and still not earn a living wage, Christians need to be profoundly careful with our rhetoric about those who depend on welfare for survival. We should be fighting for justice and help for those in that position, rather than carelessly branding people with this passage.”

As I said right at the start, plenty of people have chosen to brand people with this passage. So let’s take a quick look at who gets support through the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in Hawai’i. Well, it’s a large number. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, in 2024, 161,600 Hawai’i residents received SNAP benefits, 1 in 9. That’s a lot. It’s actually lower than the figure in the United States as a whole, where it’s 1 in 8. Over half of SNAP participants are in families with children. 35% are in working families. 37% are in households which include kupuna or disabled adults.

While I’m sure they’re in there somewhere, that doesn’t sound like an overwhelming number of lazy busybodies.

The average monthly benefit per person in 2024 was $378. That will buy just short of 19 large pizzas. Cheese pizzas, no other toppings. Not including delivery. I guess that would feed me; a pizza every other day for 30 days. It’s not extravagant, though, is it?

And why are a third of Hawai’i’s SNAP recipients in families where somebody is employed? Because they’re not being paid enough to cover housing and their other bills and buy food. Our food aid programs aren’t subsidizing lazy people. They’re enabling large companies to pay their employees less than it costs to live.

What builds up our community, both within the church and in the wider society? What makes us stronger? What makes us wiser? What makes us more gracious?

I don’t think Paul or Jesus would say that hungry neighbors contribute to a healthy community. I don’t think they’d say that rigid lack of empathy or outright cruelty make us a more blessed island. I don’t think they’d say that those who are already struggling to survive should starve if they can’t persuade someone to pay them a living wage.

I do think they’d call upon those in positions like mine, or in some place that you might occupy, to demonstrate the work of Christ: compassion, support, encouragement, and yes: food.

That, I’d say, is an example to follow.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

(1) Hanson, J. W.; Ortman, S. G. (2017). “A Systematic Method for Estimating the Populations of Greek and Roman Settlements”. Journal of Roman Archaeology. 30: 301–324

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the recording does not precisely match the prepared sermon text.

The image is Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (ca. 1618-1620) – Blaffer Foundation Collection, Houston, TX, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=596565.

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

What I’m Thinking: Who Doesn’t Work?

Paul told the Thessalonians that those who don’t work shouldn’t eat. But who didn’t work in the first century? Leaders.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the third chapter of Paul Second Letter to the Thessalonians (2 Thessalonians 3:6-13). It’s an odd section. Paul raised an issue that he raised very rarely in his other surviving letters: that is the question of people who didn’t want to work.

Now, how many people actually do want to work? I don’t particularly want to work. I have to for a couple of reasons. One, of course, is that I like to fulfill other people’s expectations. Another is that I enjoy having a place to live and things to eat, and those come to me through work. And it must be said that if I didn’t work in this vocation to which God has called me, I’d be hearing about it from God.

And I do like to sleep through the night.

Most people in the first century had to work. They had no other option. They were poor. If they went very long without working, then there wasn’t anything that was going to come in. A fair number of the people in the Thessalonian church were probably slaves. They didn’t have any choice about whether to work or not.

So one of the questions that I bring to this particular passage is: who was Paul talking about? Who was in that church that had the ability to not work?

The answer I come up with is: leadership. Leaders within the church.

There were people in the first century who didn’t work (at least, compared to the vast majority of the poor people of the time). Those would have been the wealthy landowners, the nobility, the members of the imperial family. That’s a very small number of people indeed. So why would there have been people in this struggling Christian congregation in Thessalonica who were able to not work? Were they entirely relying upon the charity of the other members of the church? Quite possibly, but why would they think they could do that at all?

And I think they were emulating Roman custom, or at least Roman style. If you were a leader, you didn’t work. If you were in charge, you didn’t work. If you had the right of command, you didn’t work.

Paul made clear in a couple of his letters that one of his practices was to avoid burdening the churches that he was working with as they were born and initially developed. He maintained a vocation, a profession, and funded his work that way. He also says in this section that he had a right to be supported by the people in the church. So I think the ones who are asserting a right to be cared for by the people of the church are not the elderly who worked as much as they can. It’s not the sick who can no longer make the efforts without collapsing. And it’s certainly not the poorest of the poor who’ve worked all their lives.

It’s the leaders. It’s the ones in charge. They — we — are the ones most likely to take advantage of others’ resources and rely on them, and not take care of ourselves.

So as you think what about people who work, as you think about the people who lead, remember that leadership and work are supposed to be united. Leadership and work are supposed to go hand in hand. Leadership and leisure, at least in Paul’s eyes, not so much.

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: Mystery

January 5, 2025

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

When I was in seminary, one of my professors had something useful to tell us about theological mystery, that is, the things we had to admit we did not know and probably would not know. “Before you call it a mystery,” said Dr. Carlston, “do the work to see what you can learn about it.”

Do the work before you call it a mystery.

I don’t know if it made the papers he read any better, but it certainly made them longer. His students couldn’t get away with writing, “It’s a mystery,” as the first and last line.

Do the work before you call it a mystery.

Like the ‘apapane trying to find the source of nectar’s sweetness, you may not have the resources to learn the truth. You may not be able to peer into the workings of leaves and chlorophyll, or the daily work that roots do to pull water and nutrients from the soil. The chemistry of it all might be beyond your education or the tools available. That’s OK.

Do the work before you call it a mystery.

John’s Gospel opens with this profound section that, for nearly two thousand years, has swept its readers into the realm of mystery. As Meda Stamper writes at Working Preacher, “Because the prologue is poetic and mystical, it moves us in a way that transcends thought. The glory of the Synoptic angels and star is expanded into a view from before time into forever. Then the ‘we’ of 1:14 draws us into this cosmic love story of God and the world and every human in it.”

That’s the “we” of “We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Now, it’s likely that when we’re done with this sermon, it will still be a mystery. But… let’s do the work.

The opening of John’s Gospel has roots in the life of Jesus Christ, of course. It also has roots in Jewish and Greek thought. The “Word” that was in the beginning with God strongly resembles the figure of Wisdom from Proverbs 8. In Proverbs, Wisdom labored beside God in the Creation of the world: “Then I was beside him, like a master worker.” (Proverbs 8:30)

Greek philosophers, probably somewhat later, developed the concept of Word, or logos in Greek, that connected the rational structure of the world with rational speech. Heraclitus wrote, “This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to ever understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep.”

Philo of Alexandria, who was born about fifteen years before Jesus, incorporated that Greek idea of a rational universe expressed by logos, by Word, and wrote: “…No material thing is strong enough to bear the burden of the world. But the everlasting Word [logos] of the eternal God is the firmest and surest support of the whole. He stretches to reach from the middle to the edges and from the heights to the midst, uniting and binding all the parts with nature’s unfailing course. For the Father who begot [gennésas] him made him the unbreakable bond of all.”

Does that sound familiar? “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

I don’t know whether John read Philo. I don’t think it matters. People were comparing the thinking of Greek philosophers and Jewish theologians in the first century, finding similarities between a rational universe that resembled rational thought, and a universe created through the exercise of Divine Wisdom. It seems John knew about that.

And along came Jesus.

During his life and ministry, it has to be said, people didn’t seem to make a connection between Jesus and logos, Wisdom, or Word. They knew him as a healer, storyteller, and healer. They began to ask questions about whether he fit the definition of a Messiah – and enough people asked that question loudly enough that the Romans stepped in to crucify him as an attempted rebel. As impressed by his wisdom as they were, even his closest friends don’t seem to have asked, “Are you the Wisdom who created the universe with God when it began?”

After Jesus’ resurrection, however, people began to ask that very question. They began to employ the phrase, “Son of God,” which might not have meant more than the idea that we are all children of God, but they meant something different. The Apostle Paul wrote the Colossians, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:15-16)

Sound familiar?

Logos. Word. Wisdom. Son.

“God choosing to put skin on and walk among us,” writes Karyn Wiseman at Working Preacher, “is one of the pivotal points in salvation history, which begins with the redemption of the Hebrew people and continues in the story of Jesus, his ministry with his disciples, and his death and resurrection (verse 14). This point of Jesus being fully human and fully divine has been a bone of contention in history and continues to baffle some in the faith today. But for me it is one of the most important tenets of the faith — that God loved the world so much that God came to dwell among us, teach us, and die for us (John 3: 16).”

I can connect the dots from Jewish and Greek thinking to John’s opening words. I can connect the dots from the figure of Wisdom to the Apostle Paul’s declaration of “the firstborn of all creation.” What I can’t do is describe the process by which God’s grace became flesh and dwelt among us. It’s as mysterious to me as the processes of roots and light and chlorophyll are to the ‘apapane – and it’s possible that the ‘apapane has a better understanding of those things than I know. Christ’s incarnation remains, in great degree, a mystery.

The impact of the Incarnation, though: ah, that’s another thing. Dr. Wiseman is right. “This point of Jesus being fully human and fully divine has been a bone of contention in history and continues to baffle some in the faith today. But for me it is one of the most important tenets of the faith — that God loved the world so much that God came to dwell among us, teach us, and die for us (John 3: 16).” I don’t think I can put it better than that.

By whatever mysterious mechanism, God chose to be born as one of us, to live as one of us, to eat and drink and speak and listen and do all the things as one of us, to die as one of us. Why? To love us in a new and different way. To show us the depth of that Divine love. To invite us into that love now and for eternity.

Yes, it’s a mystery. But it’s a mystery of love, which always has some mystery in it. It’s a mystery that lifts and comforts the soul. It’s a mystery that invites us to keep looking into it, to learn more, and to encounter God’s love once again.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric preaches from a prepared text, but he is inclined to vary from it. Sometimes he thinks that’s better.

Photo by Eric Anderson.