Daily Archives: July 9, 2025

Prophetic Patriotism

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by The Rev. James E. Eaton, Pastor

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost/C • July 6, 2025

Matthew 5:13-16

Most of know the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Less well known is the story of the Arbella and its cargo of 200 Puritans, who landed in Massachusetts Bay nine years later. Yet it was their colony that shaped Massachusetts, eventually incorporating the settlement at Plymouth.  Imagine for a moment that you were the leader of this group. What would you want to say? How would you inspire them? What would you tell them about the purpose of this great and dangerous voyage? John Winthrop was the leader and Winthrop chose to speak to them about charity. More than anything else, Winthrop today is remembered for a sermon in which he said the founding of the new colony had as its purpose to be a city set on a hill, giving light to all and that the method would be to show by their lives the true meaning and fulfillment of Christian love. Winthrop’s ideal wasn’t just spiritual; he is explicit about the need to give to the poor and to make sure each had what was needed. Infused in his sermon is a principle that would come to underlay the  foundation of Reformed churches like this one and, ultimately, the American Way: that there is a fundamental dignity, a fundamental promise, and a fundamental right inherent to each person; that each person represents a gift of God and it is the responsibility of the whole community and especially the church to allow that gift to unfold and serve God’s purpose.

More than a century later, this philosophy—this theology—was firmly planted in New England and flourished throughout the 13 colonies. When Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, two sons of that very Massachusetts colony Winthrop had founded, set out with Thomas Jefferson to define the principles of the new nation in the Declaration of Independence, they went back to this founding principle, that all are created equal, all have a human dignity under God, a purpose and a claim on the freedom needed to live out their purpose. This weekend, we celebrate that moment when our fathers and mothers looked out and said such things and we must ask, as the historic source of this faith, how can we renew it, how can we live it, how can we make it again a light for all. We talk about patriotism, especially at this time of year. But real patriotism is prophetic: it isn’t blue, or red, it’s the vision God gave at the beginning.

Christians often miss the fact that Jesus did not invent a new ethic or preach a different way of life. Instead, he summoned those he met, those who heard him, to remember and renew the living light of God’s word that they had heard from scripture all their lives. He himself said that he didn’t come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. In this, he was doing what prophets do: seeking the vibrant core of God’s Spirit and making it live again. Of course, many of his contemporaries couldn’t see this. We heard his frustration in the story from Matthew today. Jewish children, like our own, made the rituals of their parents into games. We do weddings; children play with Wedding Barbie. We cook; children work in imaginary kitchens. We dress for success; children love to dress up. But what to do with someone who won’t play? 

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’…

Jesus has summoned all who hear him but they refuse to play. They cannot remember the original vision; they cannot see the original hope. The “wise and intelligent” are the worst of all; they are too busy compromising to see the goodness of God. Only those who can come as children receive his gift: the peace that makes it possible to lay down burdens and find rest for the soul, the rest that will allow them to fulfill their purpose in God.

It’s a cautionary tale for us. This weekend we celebrated Independence Day. But in the midst of our red, white and blue feeling, have we reached back to touch the bright vision with which our nation began? It is a vision that believes all have gifts and its genius was always that we offered a place to express those gifts, to make a life by doing the work of expressing those gifts. Where other societies chose to make right birth a qualification, we made hard work the important factor. Where other societies were built like a pyramid with some kind of aristocracy at the top, we said from the beginning, from Winthrop on, that everyone, rich or poor, had a responsibility for everyone. Where other societies glorified a gifted few, we claimed a fundamental dignity for all. This is not simply a political issue; it was, it is, always, a religious, spiritual issue. For the real task of churches is first to lift up a prophetic patriotism. That is, a patriotism that remembers we are founded on a vision of God’s purpose in our community. We do that most effectively when we demonstrate what such a community looks like.

This is what prophets do. Over and over, from Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal, to Amos describing God measuring Israel like a builder with a plumb line, to Isaiah and Jeremiah down through the centuries, all the prophets call God’s people back to the vision with which they began. Reformed churches began by rejecting the pyramid of privilege that was the accepted way in all of Europe when they began. They got rid of bishops; they began the system of voting we still use. Why do we vote in our church? Our congregational meeting is a testimony that every person has a voice, and God speaks through our united voices. One day, we will have a new pastor suggested. The suggestion will come from a Search Committee elected, not a bishop. One day a new pastor will be elected in the same way: by your voice, sharing what you believe the Spirit is saying, not by someone from another place, another church.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson from our history and make it our vision for the future. In the fifth or sixth century, a monk named Dubhan led a group to Hooks Head, a remote corner of Ireland, and built a monastery. Soon the monks noticed that the bodies of sailors were washing up on their pristine beach: they had perished when their ships hit the rocky coastline. The monks decided to set up a beacon and operated it for the next thousand years. No one knows how many ships were guided by that light. No one knows how many captains, lost in fog, anxiously searching  saw that light and avoided the rocks. God knows, and thank God for the work of those monks. Thank God for all those who give us light to see our way in all of life.

This is just another concrete expression of Winthrop’s summons to be a city set on a hill, a light to all. So the question we ought to be asking is what lighthouses do we need to be building on the corners of our property? We know there are dark and dangerous currents in our culture; how can we provide guidance to those caught in them? We know there are rocks on which lives shatter; how can we be ready to rescue the endangered? 

This place is a fine and peaceful place, a meetinghouse with a tradition, an oasis of worship. But if we huddle here within its walls, we can never fulfill its purpose. Jesus has come dancing; we are summoned and if we don’t know the steps, it’s time to learn. We must look to his example and learn his steps. When we do, we will certainly see that he did not stay inside but spent his life on the way, seeking the lost, healing the hurt, restoring the ability of those who had thought they were dead to live again. To dance this way, to live this way, we will inevitably have to leave this place and go out, as a light goes out, into the darkness, to show the way, to offer the love of God.

Amen.

Are You Ready?

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Third Sunday After Pentecost/Year C • June 29, 2025

Luke 9:51-62

The last couple of weeks have seen a lot of packing at our house. May went to Texas to see friends and family; that required planning outfits for going out to dinner, hanging out, visiting in a nursing home and riding on the airplane. This week, Jacquelyn went to work. She takes one suitcase for three days. It has to hold a spare uniform, some clothes for overnights, a battery of electrical hair implements and a bunch of charging cables. She takes a second bag that’s filled with food; airport food isn’t healthy, and it’s expensive. So, three days of breakfast and dinner and snacks along the way. May was gone for five days; Jacquelyn for three. The packing took as long as the trips. I mention all this because today’s reading from Luke is all about travel. It’s a turning point in the gospel. Jesus is going to Jerusalem, and I wonder what he packed. Did he pack anything? Did the disciples carry his baggage? Was there baggage? Surely they had water; another story pictures the disciples eating along the way when they walked through a field of grain, so I’m guessing someone forgot the snacks. Whether they packed or not, this section marks a new moment in the gospel: Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, to the cross, to glory.

Some important things have happened just before this. Jesus has been healing and teaching and exorcizing up in Galilee. Now Luke tells us that Herod Antipas, the Roman appointed ruler of Galilee, had begun to notice Jesus. He’s wondering if Jesus is actually John the Baptist come back; John, whom he had executed, resurrected. He’s wondering if Jesus might be Elijah returned or yet again, a prophet like Elijah. The whole question of who is Jesus forms the basis for this section. 

Two other events lie close in the background. One is Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000 men and many women and children.. The other is Jesus asking his disciples who they think he is. Like Herod, they also suggest Elijah or a prophet, but Peter acclaims him: “You are God’s Messiah”. Christ is the Greek word that translates Messiah. “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”, is what Mark tells us he said. Now, the text tells us, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. It’s not an idle choice; Luke says it is “when the days drew near for him to be taken up.”; the ascension we marked a month ago is clearly on the horizon. Before that, we’ll have the passion, the cross, and the resurrection. Jesus is on the way.

Now if you want to get to Ohio or Michigan, you have to go through Pittsburgh; or take a long detour; we all know that. If you want to get from Galilee to Jerusalem, you have to go through Samaria unless you go on a roundabout route to avoid it. Honestly? That roundabout route is how most Jews like Jesus would go. It’s how other gospels imagine Jesus making this journey. But Luke imagine his as a direct walk, about 90 miles, right through the heart of Samaria. Why is this important? Because Samaria is a taboo place to Jews. Almost 900 years before, King Omri had separated this area from Judah. About 600 years before Jesus, the Assyrians conquered this area, deported most of the people, and replaced them with people from other places. An alternate temple was built in Samaria; they had their own version of Torah, the books of Moses, and their own liturgy for worship. It was all foreign to Jews. Think how different other Christian churches are from us. I remember years ago at an interfaith service, meeting in what was for Congregationalists a fairly ornate meeting house like this one, with stained glass, dark wood. The comment of some Roman Catholics: “Wow, they don’t have any statues at all.”

Jesus is on the way and his way is going to take him through Samaria. Just as Jews didn’t think much of Samaritans, Samaritans didn’t think much of Jews. So t isn’t surprising that when Jesus sends ahead to find a place to stay, the villages along the way tell him “Not here!” Maybe you’ve been in this situation. You’re tired, it’s the end of a day of travel, but what you didn’t know is that there’s a convention in town; all the hotels are full. You try one, then another, only to be told no. You drive by “No Vacancy” signs. It’s frustrating. In this case, there’s a reason no one will receive them: just as Jews hated Samaritans, Samaritans hate Jews. They know Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, and they’re not about to help him. The disciples are offended. ”Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Jesus rebukes them; it’s the same language used for getting rid of demons.

Then as they go along, perhaps out of Samaritan territory, they have these three encounters on the road. The first one is a guy who is so enthused he offers to follow Jesus wherever he goes. The second one, Jesus calls: “Follow me”. And the third one also offers to follow him—after taking care of his family. Now, I don’t know about you. But these three encounters have always bothered me. They seem so extreme. The first guy is told that Jesus has no home. Maybe Jesus is still thinking about the experience in Samaria; maybe he’s heard Herod’s police are looking for him back in Galilee. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” he says. Apparently, it’s enough to stop the guy; his surface enthusiasm doesn’t include having nowhere to lay your head. 

But it’s the second one that really makes me squirm. I’ve spent a lot of time with members of families where someone was recently lost. I’ve seen the way that grief and preparations for a funeral absorb people. So when I hear, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father,” I hear it in that context. Where’s the problem, Jesus? It seems reasonable; it seems kind, after all, this guy is just doing what the culture tells him is his duty. I had two brothers. One was in sales, one is a lawyer, I’m a minister; all of us talk for a living. Yet when my mother died, no one had to tell me that I was the one who would organize her funeral, I was the one who would speak for the family. It was my job, and I flew to Florida and did it. I took a Sunday off from my job as a pastor to do it. Am I any different from this guy Jesus rejects? The last one is perhaps the most surprising of the three. He says he will follow Jesus, but he wants a moment to tell his family. Jesus says no thanks.

How should we understand these encounters? What should they mean to us? To understand them, we have to go back to the context and the beginning. This whole section revolves around Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and to the cross. As one writer said, 

This passage in Luke is not simply Jesus strolling through the countryside looking to create disciples. This is Jesus marching toward the center of Roman civic and Jewish religious authority where he knows that his proclamation of the Kingdom will lead him to execution. [https://modernmetanoia.org/2019/06/17/proper-8c-what-would-jesus-do/]

So this is not a normal trip; this is not a vacation. He’s on his way to lay down his life for everyone. What these three encounters have in common is that the people in them are behaving normally, as if the regular rules of life apply. In Jesus, the kingdom of God is present, and the kingdom is not normal, it is not every day, it is a challenge to all the rules that govern our daily lives.

That’s what these people don’t understand. One is worried about the past: his father waiting for a funeral. One is worried about the future: he wants to let his family know where he’s going and when he’ll be home. The first one is worried about his present: where will they stay tonight? Just like us, they’re getting through the day the way they always do. What they don’t understand is that this is not a normal day, this is not a normal time. They want to follow Jesus without leaving their regular lives. They want to follow Jesus without changing anything.

Doesn’t that pretty much describe all of us? There’s even a hymn, a church song, one of my favorites honestly, that says, “I want Jesus to walk with me.” Think about the message of that: I want Jesus to go my way. But the call of Christ is not that he will walk with us; it is that we will walk with him. Does that mean we can’t do things like bury family members or let them know where we’re going? That’s not the point here: the point is that we hear and respond to the call of Christ when it comes to us. And in Christ, Paul says, as we’ll hear next week, there is a new creation. We are made new and called to act in new ways. 

It’s easy to measure those ways. We heard Paul’s explanation of what that new life looks like.

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
[Galatians 5:22-25]

This is the measure for our church; this is the measure for us. These are the things that show the Spirit present when we demonstrate them.

Are you ready to live this way? Are we ready as a church? Today, Christians are often known for what they are against. What are we for? What light are we shining to help people find their way in the world’s darkness? How can we demonstrate the gifts of the Spirit God has given us? The time is now and the need for these gifts is urgent. When Jesus comes, there is no excuse; there is no delay. The call of Christ is now. Over and over again in parables, he urges on those who follow him the importance of being ready. Are you ready? May we be ready when he comes to us. Amen.

Get Up and Go!

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Second Sunday After Pentecost/C • June 22, 2025

Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15 • Luke 8:26-39

This is a three point sermon. Let’s start by asking you to remember your greatest victory, your greatest moment. When did you spectacularly win? When did you feel like punching the air and shouting “Yes!”? I want to start there because before we get to Elijah in today’s scripture, we need to understand he is coming from the greatest victory of his life, something beyond anything I suspect he believed possible. Unless we start there, we’ll never understand where he ends up. So let’s go back before the beginning of this reading. David’s kingdom is 200 years in the past and it’s broken in two parts: Israel, up in the north, Judah in the south. After a series of military coups and civil wars, Ahab has become king up in Israel. Now Israel has strong neighbors, in particular the port cities of Tyre and Sidon just outside its borders. Today we call these people the Phoenicians, and they were amazing seafarers, founding colonies in North Africa, Sicily and all the way west in Spain.

Now, one way royals build power is through marriage alliances. King Ahab married a woman named Jezebel, the daughter of the king of Tyre and Sidon. You know, when a young woman gets married, she brings with her some familiar things. Jezebel brought the worship of her people’s gods with her: Baal and Asherah. The worship of Baal and Asherah is fun: there’s a big wine festival in the fall, when everyone is encouraged to get drunk and, well, act the way drunk people do. It’s a prosperity religion, much like some of the TV preachers today. It doesn’t come with difficult commandments like the worship of the Lord does. There’s no rules about what you can and cannot eat, there’s no rule about taking care of immigrants and orphans and widows like  the Lord demands. It’s a good time. Now, with support from Jezebel, the worship of these other gods is spreading in Israel. Ahab meanwhile is busy building palaces; we have a whole story about how he more or less steals a vineyard from a man named Naboth; Jezebel conveniently arranges to have Naboth murdered. 

As you might imagine, the Lord isn’t happy about all this. The Lord sees the unfaithfulness of these people and responds the way the Lord always does, by sending a prophet, a man named Elijah, to tell people to knock it off and behave. That’s just what Elijah does and like any ruler, it makes Ahab and Jezebel mad. Jezebel in particular is furious. The Lord decrees a drought in the land; people begin to wonder who is really in charge, if Baal is as powerful as Jezebel has said. So there is a great show down where the prophets of Baal and Elijah show up to light a sacrificial fire. In the event, Baal doesn’t show up, the Lord lights the fire, Elijah leads the Lord’s people in killing the prophets of Baal. It’s a total victory for the Lord, it’s a huge win for Elijah. That’s the background to what we read today. That’s the victory But our reading starts with a curse: Jezebel sends a message to Elijah promising to kill him: “”So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” She means to have him killed. Elijah is scared and he runs. 

That’s where this reading picks up. He’s run all the way south to Judah, out of Ahab’s kingdom but murderers don’t always respect borders. I imagine he’s exhausted, fear is tiring, and he’s been on the run. He sits under a tree and asks God to take his life. Have you been to that place? Where you feel like things will never get better? Elijah is there and he falls asleep and when he wakes up, there’s a carafe of water and fresh bread. And an angel says, “Get up and eat.” He eats but lays down again, and the angel prompts him again: “Get up and eat or the journey will be too much for you.” This is God providing in the wilderness; this is God saying, “You’re not done!” So he eats, he gets up, he goes, ends up at a cave where he spends the night and God asks him, “What are you doing?” I’m going to leave him there for the moment; that’s the end of part one. This is a three part sermon.

So now I want to pick up the story we read in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gerasenes.. There are some things to know about the background. One is that just before this, Luke tells the story of Jesus calming the sea and the disciples exclaiming, “Who is this that controls even the wind and waves?”. A second is that the easts side of the Sea of Galilee is out of Jewish territory; it’s a Gentile area, it’s the base camp for the Tenth Legion, a group of about 6,000 Roman soldiers whose emblem is the head of a boar. A third is that whenever you read about crossing water in the Bible, it’s a cue that says God is doing something big. Think: there is the Exodus, when God divides the sea to save the people, there is crossing the Jordan into the promised land, fulfilling the promise to Abraham. Now we have another sea crossing. What’s going on?

Jesus steps out on shore and the first thing that greets him is a man possessed by demons meets him. It’s not a friendly little meeting. The man is naked and he’s been forced to live outside the city in the tombs. He’s unhoused, he’s certainly stinky and looks wild and he’s shouting. I hate being shouted at especially by strangers. Are you imagining this encounter? The man is yelling, “What have you to do with me? Don’t torment me!” This is a guy who knows something about torment; the story says that he had been kept under guard and bound with chains but got so wild he broke them. What would you do? What Jesus does is simple: he asks his name. It’s simple; I imagine it being quiet, simple, “What’s your name?” What Jesus seems to be doing is restoring this guy to who he really is, who he was meant to be. He’s already cast the demons out of him; the demons beg to go into a herd of swine, which he lets them do, and the herd promptly runs off a cliff. Now you know that in Jewish culture, pigs are considered unclean. The story says the demons are legion, a term for the Roman oppressors and as I said, the local legion has a boar’s head as its symbol. So certainly we’re meant to hear something in this  quietly suggesting the power of the legion, the power of Rome, is being challenged.

But let’s get back to the guy. People hear a commotion and come out; they always do. They see that the guy has been given some clothes, and he seems to be in his right mind, he’s just sitting there. Isn’t it interesting that the story says, “They were frightened”? Doesn’t change often frighten us? We like what we know. These people might be scared of the guy living in the tombs, I imagine they tell their kids, don’t go out there where that guy is. But now that he’s restored, do they take him in? Do they say, “Hey! Glad you’re back with us!” No, they’re frightened, so frightened they ask Jesus to leave. And the guy? We read today that the man who formerly had a demon asked to be with Jesus, but the Greek text actually says, “He asked to be bound to him”. Here’s a guy who knows what being bound means and somehow he misses it; notice that Jesus refuses this. Instead, he sends him home: I think of him saying, “What are you doing?” Go home. He does, and tells people what God had done for him. 

So, we’ve talked about Elijah; we’ve talked about Jesus and the demoniac. This is part three of a three part sermon. And it’s all about you, and me, and this church. We’re at a transition moment. I’m an interim pastor here, which is a bit like being a babysitter. You know the babysitter doesn’t make the rules and only stays for a little while before the parents come home and things go on. It’s the same here; we’re meant to be in transition. So in that sense, we’re in the same position as Elijah at his cave: God is asking, “What are you doing?” I hope you’re asking that question, I know the search committee is. You’ve heard some announcements about creating a new mission statement and that’s what a mission statement is, an answer to the question what are you doing. 

Now what happens to Elijah is a series of earthshaking, noisy events: a great wind, an earthquake, a fire. God isn’t in any of them, the text says; it’s when things are silent that Elijah hears God asking again, “What are you doing?” Elijah tells him how his victory has turned into a disaster, and God simply says, “Go, return on your way.” Keep going, in other words; just keep keeping on. The demoniac has had his life changed, but he’s still stuck in this city where everyone is frightened of him; Jesus says, “Return to your home,” another way of saying the same thing, keep keeping on. Have a little faith; remember that faith is like a mustard seed, so small it can hardly be seen, but bearing the potential to grow into something huge.

This is a three part sermon. You are the third part. God does nothing by force; God invites, includes, summons. Today God asks as back then of Elijah, “What are you doing?” Today God blesses us on the journey home. Today God hopes our faith will make God’s promise of blessing the whole world real. Amen.

A Generous Pour

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Trinity Sunday/C • June 15, 2025

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 and Psalm 8 * Romans 5:1-5 * John 16:12-15

I grew up with two brothers. When my father was about to yell at one of us, he’d preface it by standing straight, hands on his hips and asking loudly, “What do you think you’re doing?” I hated that question, and I swore I’d never do it. Yet when I became a stepfather, I still remember the first time I stood over one of the kids, hands on my hips, and loudly asked, “What do you think you’re doing?” My father was inside me, and he’d taken over. We all have these people from other relationships inside us. It’s not just people we’re close to, either. I grew up in New Jersey in the heyday of the New York Yankees, when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were stars. Baseball was what boys did in New Jersey in those days, but I was really, really bad at it. When I see a ball coming at me, my first instinct is to get out of the way, not catch it. So I was kind of an outcast and to this day, when Jacquelyn and May want to go to a baseball game, something they love, they really prefer to leave me behind, because the voices of those boys telling me how awful I am are still there. Now just as we have these different persons inside us, God has persons inside, so we speak of a “three in one” God. The name for this is the trinity; today is Trinity Sunday and I want to invite you to think about God with me and about how that all fits together.

I want to start with the Holy Spirit. This morning we read from proverbs about Wisdom raising her voice. Sometimes when we think of the Holy Spirit, we miss the whole scripture witness about the nature of the Spirit. I was chatting with someone last week, and they mentioned that when they think of the Holy Spirit, it’s like Caspar the Ghost. That’s easy to see: after all, many of us grew up with Caspar cartoons and Caspar is a friendly sort of ghost. Many of us are old enough to remember when liturgies and prayers often referred to the Spirit as the Holy Ghost. But the Biblical witness about the Spirit isn’t a ghost, it’s more like a wind. In fact, Hebrew uses the same word, ‘ruach’, for ‘breath’, ‘wind’ and Spirit. Greek is the same way: it uses the word ‘pneuma’, which gives us all kinds of words related to something wind or breath related. So the first thing to think about with the Holy Spirit is that it is invisibly animating. We don’t see the wind, but we feel it, we don’t see the wind, but we see its effect, we don’t see the wind, but we know it’s there.

The second thing we see the Spirit doing in Scripture is announcing. The Spirit comes in dreams sometimes, sometimes in visions. The Spirit acts as a messenger between God and our lives. Jesus mentions this in the piece we read from the Gospel of John. He says that he has more to say and that. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. [16:13 ]” This is why the most important moment in prayer is not when we speak but when we listen for the Spirit to speak in our hearts. 

So animating, announcing and there’s a third thing the Spirit does: appreciating. The reading from Proverbs has this wonderful image. It asks us to imagine God busily creating: the mountains are being shaped, the heavens established, beaches carved out and Spirit…

… I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. [Proverbs 8:30f]

I like to think of this as being like a parent, building a sand castle on the beach with a child who runs back and forth, brings buckets of water, maybe stumbles in the sand but delights in what’s built, what’s done together.

So inside God is this person of the Holy Spirit, animating, announcing, appreciating. But there’s another aspect of God we might call the architect. Traditionally, we’ve talked about God the Father and that’s a fine description except it’s gendered and God is not particularly male in scripture. Sometimes male language is used, sometimes female. It’s when we paint God in our image that gender slips in. This aspect of God reminds me of when I worked on a survey crew, laying out roads. In the suburbs of Detroit, there’s a whole group of homes to this day that sit where they sit because someone I never saw laid out a blueprint and along with others I helped turn that blueprint into home lots for building houses. That’s how I think of this part of God: an architected, creating the plan. I may not see the whole plan, I may only see a little part, but I trust that the plan is there, and my job is to follow it as closely as possible.

That brings us to the son: Jesus Christ. The son functions in this trinity of divine by presenting it in a human form. Want to know what God looks like?—look at Jesus. Want to know what God wants?—listen to Jesus. Want an invitation to make your life in God?—Jesus is all invitation. In Jesus, also, we see the pattern God intends for all of us: submission to God’s will, God’s intention. There’s great joy in living with God, but there are painful passages, too. It’s God who sends Jesus to the wilderness; sometimes that’s where we find ourselves. And the cross is the ultimate example of submitting your life even to death.

Now for some, the Trinity is helpful; for some it’s not. It wasn’t for me, in fact, the Trinity is the reason I’m not a Methodist. When I was 12 and in Confirmation, my family went to a Methodist church. The pastor taught the class and when he got to the Trinity, I said something like, “That makes no sense.” He responded by telling me it was a mystery; I told him he just didn’t understand it. Later, someone called my mother and explained it would be better if I didn’t come back to confirmation. We moved not long after that and after a bit of searching found a Congregational church where they cared more about the gospel of God’s love than the Trinity, and they were happy to have me. So if the Trinity isn’t helpful to you, that’s fine; leave it on the shelf, there are lots of other ways of thinking about God.

But what’s most helpful about the Trinity isn’t the details, it’s the relationships. What we should get from thinking about God as three in one is that God is all about relationships. God comes to us not as just one idea, one thought, one picture but as a loving, intimate community. Spirit, Son, Father. How we see God makes a difference; there are so many people who can’t cross the threshold of a church because they only see an angry, glowering face. It’s up to us to show them how God comes to us in many ways. The important part may not be the particulars of each one as much as that they are a divine community of love. 

That’s in the scripture we read today, too. Remember the reading from Romans? It’s part of a much longer section in Paul’s letter to the new Christians in Rome. He doesn’t know them yet, but he’s heard about them. He knows they are struggling; Rome is a tough city and there are occasional persecutions of Christians. There are arguments between Christians also about what they have to do to be part of the Christian family. Paul cuts right to the heart: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We live in a difficult time as well, so that ought to speak to us. I don’t know about you, but reading about all the conflicts all over the world and right here in our own country, I could use a little peace. I could use a lot of peace. 

So first: through this community of God, we are offered peace with God. More than that, out of the abundance of God’s love, we’re being filled. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”, he says. Wow. What a wonderful image: our hearts like a glass, with God pouring love, not just a little, not just enough but a generous pour. Now I wanted to share something about the Trinity today because it’s the day for it, but the most important point isn’t just how we think about God; it’s that God is trying to pour love into our hearts, today, tomorrow, every day. So much that it overflows; so much we can share it. Isn’t that our hope as a church? That the love poured into us, into you, into me, into all of us together will overflow here and lift our whole community.

Amen.

Everyone, Everywhere

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Pentecost Sunday • June 8, 2025

John 14:8-17, (25-27)

“Use your words.” That’s a phrase we’ve said to our grandchildren when they were at that between pointing at what they wanted and asking for it by name. Isn’t language amazing? Think how language can change us, lift us up, cast us down. The Biblical story imagines God creating with language, creation by the Word. “Let there be light—and there was light.” Now today, in this story where language and words are so important, it’s clear that what God means to say is this: ‘ahabak [Arabic}, Wǒ ài nǐ [Chinese], te amo [Spanish] or in English: I love you.

The story we read in Acts invites us into a gathering of the first Christians after Jesus has left. It’s Shavuot, a Jewish festival fifty days after Passover that celebrated the giving of the Torah as well as the wheat harvest in Israel. In the Christian story, it’s also some time after the Ascension; we talked about that last week. Jesus had gathered his followers, told them to stay put until they received the Holy Spirit, and then was enfolded by a cloud and left them. So his followers have been doing what we do when we grieve: retreating, I imagine, but also gathering together at times, praying, healing. Now they are gathered together. Nothing in the text prepares us or them for what happens next.

What happens next, of course is amazing, incredible: tongues of fire! the sound of a rushing wind!—remember that Spirit and Wind are the same word in Greek and Hebrew—it all must have been amazing and stunning. Sometimes I’ve been in worship when we’ve tried to illustrate this. I remember one Sunday morning when we’d brought in three big fans; some people who had hairdos blown around were not amused. And of course there are various things you can do with fire; and no, we’re not going to do them here. This building is old, and I am not going to be the pastor who burned it down. But you get the idea.

When was the last time you were amazed? Think of that moment, hold on to it for just a second. Here are these people still grieving, they’ve come together, told stories of Jesus, probably sung some songs, and suddenly it’s all blowing up. God has spoken. Like Genesis, the Spirit of the Lord is moving and making, and it is amazing.

Creation by the Word is always amazing and mysterious. I know this because I’ve done it and so have many of you. You stand before your friends in a dress that cost more than anything in your closet and that you will probably never wear again; you put on a tux for the first time since prom. Someone speaks and asks if you will marry, if you promise to be married, and you say, “I do!”—and just like that you’ve created a new family, a married couple. You stand before a congregation you’ve been attending for a while, a place that’s helped you feel God’s nearness and presence, and we speak the words of the church covenant together—and just like that, you’re a member of the church, we’ve created a new moment in the church’s history, no matter how old or young that church is.

So here is the Spirit, here is God, doing the same thing: creating something new. That something is us: the church. Pentecost is the moment Jesus’ followers become the church, become his body in the world, caring for the world, as he cared. And of course they are so excited they can’t keep it in the house, they go out in the street. There are things that have to be told and this is one of them. So we have this incredible scene of the first church members in the streets, speaking to people in a way they understand. This isn’t “speaking in tongues”, they way it’s practiced in Pentecostal churches; they is speaking to people in a language they understand.

Now the Bible takes language seriously, and it tells the story of the Temple of Babel to explain why there are so many languages. Long ago, the story says, human beings were so full of pride they built a temple, imagining they could build it high enough to enter heaven through their own efforts. Taller than tall it reached until God saw their pride, saw the tower and cast it down and at the same time, created the variety of languages so that never again would humans cooperate in such a thing. At Pentecost, the speaking is a way of saying that ancient curse has been reversed: God is now speaking to all people in ways they understand. One writer said,

Pentecost is a unification of the separated families of humanity. This unification isn’t accomplished through the will and power of empires and their rulers, but through the sending of the Spirit of Christ, poured out like life-giving rain on the drought-ridden earth. In place of only one holy—Hebrew—tongue, the wonderful works of God are spoken in the languages and dialects of many peoples. The multitude of languages is preserved—a sign of the goodness of human diversity—and human unity is achieved, not in the dominance of a single human empire, or in the collapsing of cultural difference, but in the joyful worship of God.- 

[Alistair Roberts , http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-pentecost-acts-11-21]

You can do this. Use your Words. We sometimes have  folks here who came to church even though they couldn’t speak English. If someone smiles at them, speaks to them, they understood this: you’re welcome here. This is how God speaks: in whatever language is needed to say, “I love you.” When you welcome someone, you create this welcome, you create this presence.

That’s what happens at Pentecost. The special effects, the tongues of fire, the rushing wind, the enthusiasm of the Jesus followers are all just prelude. The real event is what happens when they get out there in the world. 

Amen.

Seeing Is Believing

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Ascension Sunday • June 1, 2025

Acts 1:1-11

“Will you take us back to the good old days, Lord?”, the disciples ask. But Jesus is all about the future. Don’t worry about the past, just wait for the Spirit and then go be my witnesses.

This is the 11th time I’ve started as the pastor of a church and there are some things I’ve learned about starting up. One is that the first thing I need to know: where is the light switch?
It sounds simple, doesn’t it?—until as a new pastor you come in on Saturday night to practice and start stumbling. Switches are pretty simple: one way is on, one way is off, on, off, no in between. But when we move on from the lights, things get more complicated; not everything is off and on. Do you know about Schrödinger’s Cat? It’s a thought experiment from the early 20th century. A scientist suggested imagining a cat placed in a sealed box which is then bombarded with enough radiation to give it a 50/50 chance of dying or surviving. He asked, “Is the cat dead or alive?” —and suggested that actually the cat is in a sort of in between state where we don’t know. Now we are in between pastors at Salem and in that sense, in between one time here and another, between our past and future. That’s also where the disciples are in the story we read from Acts today. A few weeks ago, on Easter Sunday, we celebrated Jesus’ return from the dead. “He is Risen”, we proclaimed: “He is risen indeed.” I don’t know about you, but where I was, we sang “Christ the Lord is Risen today”, we decorated a cross with flowers, we proclaimed his resurrection and return to us. Today is Ascension Sunday and we celebrate his leaving. What does Jesus leaving the scene mean for us?

This text has three parts. The first part makes it clear that the author’s intention is to provide a witness to the life of Jesus Christ. He addresses ‘Theophilus’, a Greek word that translates as “God’s Friend”. The Gospel of Luke is, we believe, the first book to which he refers. Scholars believe both Luke and Acts were written near the end of the first century after Christ, and already the author can simply summarize Jesus’ ministry—“all Jesus began to do and teach” and what we know as the passion story: “his suffering”. 

But the main point of this story comes in two conversations: one between Jesus and the disciples, one between the disciples and two angelic figures. In the first conversation, Jesus tells the disciples to do one thing: wait. Wow! When was the last time someone told you “just wait”? Not one word about going out to heal, not one word about casting out demons, not one word about the next steps in the ministry. Wait, wait for the Spirit to direct you. “While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there…you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 

The disciples have a different idea. “What’s the plan, Jesus?”, they ask. What they have in mind is a glorious victory that restarts David’s kingdom. I imagine they’re frustrated; they ask, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They want Jesus to get busy, they want to get back to the old kingdom, the glory days of Israel. How about it, Lord? Can we just get on with things?

Isn’t this like us? We all have memories of how things used to be in churches; we have a memory of how things used to be in general. I remember when I was first driving, picking up friends in my mother’s car, being able to get enough gas to ride around by scrounging change out of the folds in the seats. I remember when eggs were a cheap food. What about it, Lord? Are you going to get us back there? Some of you remember when the pews here were full, I imagine, and when the church was a more visible part of the community. What about it, Lord? Are you going to get us back there? This is a transition time for this church. Just like the disciples, for many the first instinct is to pull up some picture from the past and ask, can we go back there?  

So it’s especially important that we hear the rest of this passage. When the disciples ask, Jesus simply says: 

It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

This is a transition moment for the disciples. They knew how to be with Jesus, but now he’s gone. They know how to hope he will make things great again. But that’s not their job; their job now, he says, is to wait in the faith that God has a future in mind, that God is moving, and the Spirit will come to them, and their task right now is to be his witnesses. A witness is someone who has seen something and tells others about it. They’ve seen Jesus. They’ve seen him change lives. They’ve seen him change them. Now it’s time to tell others.

This point is made in the last part of the text as well. The disciples are standing there, “gazing into heaven”. Can you imagine this? There’s a cloud, there’s Jesus lifted and leaving. Let go of “how did this happen?” For a moment, just think about those 11 disciples, seeing their leader, their rabbi leave. Salvador Dalí has a great painting of this: all you see are his massive feet. And there’s the moment he disappears from view. My daughter May is kind enough when she works from home to go to Lil Amps and bring me back a croissant. Now, our dog Ellie loves croissants; if I’m still asleep, she will come wake me up, pawing at me to say, “There’s a croissant! There’s a croissant!” I give her bits as I have morning coffee. When it’s gone, I have to hold my hands up to say, “That’s it, all gone!” The cloud is God holding up hands to say, “He’s gone.” And just to make the point, two men in white, messengers, appear. They say, “Why are you standing around, looking up to heaven?” 

Now we are in a transition moment too, so this text ought to speak especially powerfully to us. Just like the disciples, I suspect some are worried about the future, some are wondering how we are going to get along without Pastor Sue. I imagine there are questions being asked, and we need to make sure we’re asking the right questions. The disciples asked about making the past happen again; are we wondering how to do that? Remember that Jesus was all about their future. So while we need to understand our past, our focus should be on, “What’s next?” And “What’s now?” What’s next will take time to figure out; we have a search committee and a Consistory working on making suggestions about that and I encourage everyone to talk to those folks about how you see the future of this church. “What’s now?” Is simpler: we faithfully wait and in the meantime practicing being witnesses. Just wait: wait for the Spirit to make the future clear and in the meantime, be witnesses.

Being a witness means sharing, demonstrating, what Christ looks like. C. S. Lewis was a British scholar and writer who said, “Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.” [Mere Christianity] Our task now is to share what we’ve seen of Christ, be his witnesses in this place in this time. Seeing is believing: to invite others to share the family of Christ means showing them what that looks like. In his book “Living Buddha, Living Christ,” Thich Nhat Hanh remarks to a visiting Christian: “You say you are people of the Resurrection. Show me your resurrection.”

This is a time pregnant with possibility. But like all pregnancies, the end isn’t clear. In this time, we have two tasks. One is to wait faithfully, the other is to witness. To wait faithfully is to believe God has a purpose unfolded in this congregation if we listen for it, if we follow it. To witness is to share your experience of Christ, to be the image of Christ, all week long, all day long, every day. Seeing is believing. Those who followed Jesus saw him and believed. Now let people see us, following his way, inviting them to come along.

Amen.