Monthly Archives: May 2026

Future Perfect

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Pentecost Sunday/A • May 24, 202

Acts 2:1-21 • 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 or Acts 2:1-21 • John 20:19-23

I grew up in the era of diagramming sentences: did you? Do you remember this? It was how grammar was taught. Since I was a big doodler on notes, I imagine if you could go back and find my old English class notes, they would be an amazing mass of lines parsing a sentence and little drawings of sailboats. I wasn’t very good at grammar then. It wasn’t until I took Ancient Greek in college that I got serious about it. Greek is all about grammar. One of the forms we learned was the future perfect. The perfect means action completed; the future part says it’s happening in the future. So, for example, “When the service is over, I will go home and have breakfast”, means I’m certainly going to have breakfast but not until later. “By 2:00 PM, Jim will be ready for a nap”, is another future perfect. That’s all the grammar I want to do this morning, so you can relax now. But I wanted to make this point: Pentecost is a future perfect of God doing what the prophet Joel said: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people.”

Pentecost is often called the birthday of the church but it has counterparts in other faiths. It occurs on the Feast of Shavuot, a Jewish celebration of the giving of the Torah; the moment God’s people were set aside as a whole community.. In the Muslim world, pilgrims gather for Eid al-Adha marking the end of the Hajj, where differences in wealth, status, and nationality are set aside before God. All these have in common the experience of being a community inspired by God’s Spirit, moved by God’s Word.

Pentecost follows on the story of the Ascension that we read last week. There, Jesus tells the disciples, “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.” [Acts 1:8] Now we’re told they are gathered and there is a sound, a “Whooooooshhhhhh” throughout the room. Say it with me: “Whooooshhhh”. Pentecost begins with sound. Then there are the tongues of fire. Ministers love to play with this. One of the ministers I listen to laughed this week about using flash paper in a bowl early in his career; the flame whooshed up and he lost his eyebrows. I’ve thought about doing something like that but honestly this building has been here since 1822 and I’m not about to risk being the pastor who burned it down. The members of the building committee can thank me later. So I’m not doing flames today; you can imagine them. 

After the tongues of fire, we get more sounds. The disciples, the followers of Jesus go out into the street. Now perhaps because it’s Shavuot, there are lots of people and miraculously they can understand them and the people can understand the disciples. Have you ever been in a place where no one speaks your language? It’s frustrating. Simple things like going into a store and asking, “Do you have a AA battery?” become complicated. Every once in a while, you run into someone who speaks your language and it’s like a little miracle. 

This bit about the languages is the center of some churches; their services have people doing what’s called ‘speaking in tongues’. But ecstatic speech like that is not Pentecost. Pentecost is about that little miracle of understanding. Genesis tells a story of the building of the Tower of Babel, an effort by people to become God like that becomes the occasion for God to create languages and misunderstanding. So Pentecost is the reversal of the Tower of Babel. It’s a future perfect: suddenly, instead of being divided by language, people are united together, understanding each other. That’s the energy of Pentecost: it isn’t in the whooshing wind, it isn’t in the fiery tongues, it’s in the gathering of all people because, as Joel said, 

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

Pentecost is a vision of a future God has already seen.

John gives us a different account of the arrival of the Spirit among believers. He says that just before Jesus ascends, he tells the disciples,

“Receive the Holy Spirit. f you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” [John 20:22b-23]

So the coming of the Spirit has a purpose: it’s to empower God’s people to do the work of forgiveness. God’s making a future; Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who presided from the dark storms of apartheid in South Africa into the dawn of a new society based on equality said, “Without forgiveness, there is no future.” When we are chained by guilt over past wrongs, we can’t see a way forward; the same is true for others. So our job is to create a future by teaching and practicing forgiveness.

This doesn’t happen in a moment; it isn’t now, it’s a future perfect, it’s where we’re going, it’s where God is going. We recognize it when we say with our lives, “Jesus is Lord”; not our past, not our resume, not our prejudices. We all let these run our lives at times but when the Spirit controls us, then we say with our whole selves, Jesus is Lord and act like it. That’s the point Paul is making in the letter to the Corinthian Christians. Their church is filled with conflict because they are making a hierarchy out of gifts; Paul simply says, many gifts, one Spirit, many gifts, one Lord, many gifts, one purpose by one God who intends to form us into the body of Christ.

This doesn’t happen in a moment; it isn’t now, it’s a future perfect, it’s where we’re going, it’s where God is going. Every time we come to the Table of the Lord, we remember where we are; every time we come to the Table of the Lord, we remember where we’re going. Every time we come to the table of the Lord, we are meant to recognize him in our midst. Every time we come to the table of the Lord, we should come forgiving and knowing we are forgiven. For every time we come to the table of the Lord, it’s meant to be a little Pentecost, a moment when we see again, as a future perfect, how God’s love is gathering, nurturing, inviting, and claiming us. You are not your own: you are a part of this wonderful congregation, some of which meets here today, some is throughout the world, and in the future perfect hope of God, all of which is living out the love of God.

Amen.

This Is the Day

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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/A • May 17, 2026

Acts 1:1-11 * Psalm 47 or Psalm 93 * Ephesians 1:15-23 * Luke 24:44-53

Imagine two boys. One is born while his parents still live in student housing. His dad starts a new job; mom stays home with him. His parents don’t have a lot but they get by. The move to a new state; his dad gets promoted. He gets a new brother; he’s not very good at the games bo ys play, he prefers books and his mother feeds that, encourages it. They take vacations with an extended family at the beach. It isn’t luxury but it’s fun. He grows up in a turbulent time, goes to college and marries at 20, moves far from family. The other boy is a surprise; his mother is 41 when she has him. She stays at home at first but then she goes back to college; his dad works a lot and he’s going to school too. So he’s mostly on his own. He learns to make friends; he has two older brothers. By the time he’s a few years old, his parents are both working professionally and the family is doing well financially. He’s smart and engaging and his parents take him on vacations to Europe. These two boys are brothers but if you ask them about their history, you’ll never know they come from the same family.

It’s the same with the stories of Jesus after the resurrection. We have about eight accounts. Mark says nothing; Mark ends in the middle of a sentence, some scholars believe there was more that got lost, like a book you find in a “$1.00 pile” missing the last chapter. Matthew tells us the disciples saw Jesus and he told them to go to Galilee and wait; then he appears there and tells them to go baptize the whole world. John tells us Jesus appeared to Mary and a week later to the disciples and then yet another week later to the disciples and Thomas. Paul sees him years later on the road to Damascus and writes to the Corinthian Christians that he was seen by more than 500 people; we don’t have their accounts. Luke says Jesus appeared to some people on the road to Emmaus who didn’t recognize him at first and only did when he broke bread with them; he tells them to wait in Jerusalem. I suppose some people would come away from this confusion of stories and contradictions wondering whether anyone saw anything. What I take from it is that just like the two boys in different families that are the same, Jesus appeared in different ways at different times to different people.

Luke is the one who tells us about Jesus’ ascension. Luke is the author of both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of the Act of the Apostles. He says Jesus appeared over a period of 40 days; apparently he isn’t counting the appearance to Paul. This is the scene he presents. The disciples are gathered by the Risen Christ. Is it a picnic? A meeting? We don’t know what they thought. Maybe they’re just happy to be with him again. He tells them they are going to be baptized by the Holy Spirit; we’ll celebrate that next week on Pentecost.

But the disciples are like children: they’re focused on what they want to know, not what he’s telling them. “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They have in mind the kingdom as a conquest, a reforming of the government. They imagine General Jesus will ride to victory over the Romans and the Herodians and set things right and, oh, by the way, put them in charge. He’s already had to stop them bickering between themselves over who is the best disciple, who will sit at his right and left hands when he reigns in victory. This is like two boys too isn’t it? “Mom loves me best, no she loves ME best!” Jesus has been to Jerusalem, been crucified, died, been raised, just like he said They’re impatient for the next chapter; they want to get on to the good part, where they help him run things. “Will you restore the kingdom now, Lord?”

Jesus, as he always does, forges ahead with his purpose. He tells them in effect that when the kingdom is restored is none of their business: “It is not for to know the times or period that the Father has set by his own authority.” When I was the pastor at Suttons Bay Congregational church, I used to take our youth group to rallies. They were far away and we’d often leave at night. Periodically kids would wake up and say, “Are we there yet?” I’d always say my version of what Jesus says: “In about ten minutes.” It took them a few trip to realize that “about 10 minutes” was the answer regardless of the reality.

Once again, Jesus tells them they are going to receive the Holy Spirit. He tells them they are going to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria. These are places progressively farther away. They’re near Jerusalem; Judea is the larger area. Samaria is next door. “You’re going to be my witnesses in Harrisburg, in Mechanicsburg and Maryland;” something like that. The fundamental point is that they are going to have to go out into the world and tell people about him, about what he taught, about what he did, about who he is. 

Then he’s gone. He ascends to heaven. We are human, we have up and down and sideways, so Luke uses the language of direction to describe this. We get focused on the details: how did he do it? How far up did he go? A confirmation kid asked me once, “Did he sprout wings?” This all misses the point. The point is not that heaven is up there somewhere and he’s on his way. The point is that Jesus is fully revealed as who he is, always has been: the Son of God, Lord, a heavenly one who is now going home.

So one moment they are standing there asking questions, maybe chattering among themselves. Did they hear what Jesus said? Did they understand it? We don’t know. Luke tells us that he gives the command and then ascends and they’re left there, on their own. Oh! Not totally alone: there are a couple of angels. The angels say, “Why are you standing around? Can you imagine this moment? The artist Dali has a wonderful painting depicting just Jesus feet: it’s meant to be what the disciples see as Jesus ascents. I think they must have been stunned; this meeting hasn’t gone like they thought it would. They came prepared to hear the next phase of Jesus’ campaign to take over Jerusalem; they came prepared to be promoted to sit at his right and left hand. Now they are left just standing there, gazing into heaven. And they realize they are not on their own.

Luke says what they did was to worship Jesus and to go back and were in the temple constantly rejoicing. Perhaps they remembered what he’d told them: “I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” [Luke 24:49] In a sense, they are doing exactly what we sang about at the beginning today: “This is the day, I will rejoice”. We’re coming near the end of the season of Easter so it’s a good time to remember this.

Because this IS the day to rejoice.We live in a culture that constantly tells us to worry. We worry about prices: will we be able to afford gas and food and other things. We worry about our country and whether it will be able to sustain the democracy which is its core principle: that all people are created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We worry about our church and its future. I’m sure you have your own list. Now think of those followers of Jesus. They have most of those things to worry about too. They have the looming shadow of powers that have just executed Jesus but they know this IS the day to rejoice because God’s power raised him up. This IS the day.

This IS the day to do what Jesus said and what Jesus said is: wait for the Spirit. It’s hard to wait, we want to do things, make progress, get ahead. But Jesus wants us, to wait for the Spirit. When I was first on my own, my mother gave me one of the most useful books I’ve ever had. It was the Betty Crocker cookbook. Do you have this? It had recipes for everything. I didn’t know how to cook but all I had to do was open Betty Crocker and she’d tell me exactly what I needed and what to do to produce everything from a hamburger to a cake. I could do it on my own: no waiting. Don’t we often treat church like this? I was ordained in 1975 as the mainline churches began to lose members and Christian bookstores were full of recipe books on how to grow; I still have bunches of them. It felt like I could do it on my own. But I couldn’t. The first time I used one of the big recipes and put together a whole church project that was going to transform our little church in Seattle into a big church, it was a total failure. I hadn’t waited for the Spirit.

This is the day to wait for God’s Spirit here. I am done reading recipes and doing it on my own and I hope you are as well. This is the day that the Lord has made: This is the day to be sure God’s Spirit will come if we wait.

This IS the day to seek that Spirit. We have this wonderful platform, this building, our history. This is a place where enemies were loved: once upon a time Salem was filled with wounded Confederate soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg. Once upon a time slaves on their way to freedom were hidden here. Once upon a time a crowd of people filled these pews in the new settlement of Harrisburg. But that was then; this is now This is the day when we should look forward. We live in a city full of lonely people and we ought to be praying every single day on how we can heal them, give hope. They don’t need a recipe: they need the love of God. This is the day to offer that love. Jesus said: “You are witnesses” So this is the day to tell someone what God has done in your life and invite others to that Spirit of gentleness, that spirit of acceptance, that spirit that we share.

Amen.

Knowing God

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Sixth Sunday in Easter/A • May 10, 202 – Mothers Day

Acts 17:22-31 * Psalm 66:8-20 * 1 Peter 3:13-22 * John 14:15-21

We recently went to Spain again; we love vacations there. One of the best parts for me are the way every city has so many open spaces: gardens, plazas, always with pleasant places to sit, frequently with service from small cafés nearby. All cities have open spaces where people gather; we have them here in Harrisburg. It’s common to see a group on the steps of the capital and any nice Saturday brings out crowds at the Broadway Market. What’s true for us was true for ancient cities as well. Athens is a place inhabited since before history. We know that by 508 BCE, a man named Solon had organized a community there and founded the world’s first democracy. They didn’t have voting machines, so citizens would gather in a plaza called an agora in Greek to argue, debate, vote. Perhaps that’s why Athens became known throughout the ancient world for its thinkers, its philosophy. It was home to Socrates, to Plato, to Aristotle and though conquered by Rome around 86 BCE, it remained an intellectual center in the ancient world. We see photos of the city with its towering temples now and they are the surviving white marble but in ancient times, in the time of Jesus, the temples were painted bright colors. At the top of Athens stood the great temple of Athena; down the hill was the agora, where people still met to debate. Beyond that was the Areopagus, sometimes called Mars Hill, a rocky up thrust and that’s where we find Paul in today’s reading.

We’ve jumped over a lot in Acts. Last week, we heard about the stoning of Stephen and perhaps you missed the little detail at the end, that a man named Saul held the coats of the people killing Stephen. That Saul was a lawyer who became a prosecuting attorney but on his way to investigate Christians in Damascus, he was struck by a vision of Christ so powerful it knocked him off his donkey. Seeing the Risen Christ, he is overwhelmed and became blind. He has to be taken into the city to be healed. From that time on, he learns about this new faith and he begins to preach it. By the time we met him here, he’s made a journey up the coast of Asia Minor, founded churches, spoken to people and argued forcefully that the new gatherings called in Greek ekklesia, in English, churches, should include both Gentiles and Jews because God’s grace is more important than human distinctions. 

Now he’s come to Athens and as he looks out over the city from the hill, he sees the great temples that fill the city. For centuries, good Jews, and Paul is certainly one, were horrified by the idolatry of pagans. He’s seen that everywhere; it’s all over the ancient world. Can you imagine him there, on a rocky rise, getting ready to speak to crowds who are curious but not interested? Boston University School of Theology where I graduated seminary is a long, high building; another mirrors it just to the east. In between, is a big chapel building, and in front of that an plaza where often preachers, sometimes professors, sometimes students, would set up a lectern and preach to the passing crowds. The street is a broad divided avenue, Commonwealth Avenue, so there are constantly cars passing, people walking past, hurrying to somewhere. A guy used to set up a drinks cart near the lectern; perhaps he knew preaching is thirsty work. So that’s how I think of this moment. 

He begins like all good preachers by connecting to the experience of the listeners, tells them he’s been walking around and he’s noticed they’re very curious about religion. There are lots of temples and there’s even one called, “To the unknown God”. That’s his take off: this God you don’t know, I know, he says, and I’m going to tell you about him. Now “knowing” is so important to Greek that they have at least three differing words for it: one for knowing a fact, like I know the pulpit is wood, one for knowing by experience, like I know that it’s going to be a little warm here until the heat settles down and it’s fully summer, and one for completely understanding, and having full knowledge. That’s what Paul is offering: to fully experience God.

Of course, people have been trying to do that for a long time and just like us, they have rituals that help give them that feeling. The fundamental ritual is to take something valuable and give it to one of the Gods, who are imaged by huge statues. It’s transactional: you give, God helps. We have that kind of religion still; there are supposedly Christian preachers who will tell you that you will get a blessing if you give to their ministry. Paul is clear: that’s not true. 

The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

From one ancestor he made all people to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him–though indeed he is not far from each one of us [Acts 17:24-27]

This is the hardest Sunday School lesson and the most basic: that God is greater, that God can’t be manipulated like we can. So we often use human images but those ultimately fail. The true God is so much more than human, for as humans, we need things, we need nurture, we need each other; God needs nothing, God is beyond need.

Paul tells them that no matter how wonderful our artful depictions are, God is not made from gold or silver—perhaps today he’d add silicon. There is no image, no picture we can offer that captures God, for God can’t be captured. Finally, Paul tells the Athenians to repent. Now repenting isn’t saying you’re sorry for something bad; repentance means changing your direction. It’s the experience of finally admitting you’re lost, stopping, and getting a new way. Paul calls the Athenians to repent and turn not to an unknown God but to knowing this God who is real and present and always has been. And finally he tells them that the way to know God is through a man who presented God in human form, who was raised from the dead.

That man, Jesus Christ, is the one speaking in today’s Gospel reading. It follows right from last weeks’ reading. The context is still the last supper. Jesus has just said he is giving his followers a new commandment, to love one another, and acted out this love by washing their feet, taking on the role of a servant, comforting them, just hours from his own death on a cross. I’ve seen this kind of love once in my life. My father in the faith, Harry Clark, was in the hospital, just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and complications from it. I knew this meant he didn’t have long to live, and for a few moments we sat just the two of us. We’d both been pastors a long time; we both knew what the diagnosis meant. But my adopted sisters were in denial. Harry and I didn’t talk much, except to acknowledge what was going to happen, that there wouldn’t be a recovery. And then he said quietly, “Don’t tell the girls, they aren’t ready yet.” Here was a man who loved life, loved learning, never stopped living, never stopped thinking, acknowledging his end and in that moment, his one thought was love for his daughters, for all of us.

Jesus knows he’s going to a cross; he knows his time with his friends is about to end. In that moment, his one thought, his one move, is to comfort them. He knows they will fall away, he tells Peter as much. Yet there’s no anger, no pleading to stay faithful. He simply says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. [John 14:15} And then he promises them God’s presence in the person of a Spirit, a Spirit that will let them continue to be with him, will comfort them, advocate for them, lift them. In Aramaic, in Hebrew, in Greek in all the languages these words were first known, the words for spirit and breath and wind are the same. Genesis says that at creation it was the spirit—the ruach YHWH—the moved on the waters to turn chaos into an ordered, fruitful place. It’s the Spirit that divides the sea and lets God’s people escape slavery and it’s the Spirit that brings God’s Word to the prophets. One poet said,

the Air is everywhere.

Holy Air,
Stirring the waters of creation,
Sweeping across the desert.
Breathing life into humans.

Feel the Air, Holy Air,
like the rush of a mighty wind
awakening lost spirits.

Breathe the Air
source of life,
filling a newborn’s first cry.

Breathe deep, the Holy Air,
centring in your Presence.

Breathe on me,
breath of God.
Fill me with your love,
your Holy Air.

[https://worshipwords.co.uk/holy-air-poem-dance-susan-brecht-usa/]

What should we do about such love? Isn’t it precisely what Paul says?—repent. Every week, I sit down on Monday or Tuesday to put together the liturgy we share on Sunday morning. I pick hymns; I insert the scripture readings. But before I get far, I need to think about the Prayer of Confession. It’s a little thing, right there near the beginning and yet it’s the foundation for the whole service. We need that prayer; I need it. I need it because I know that I have not followed Christ’s command to love all the time. I know that I got mad at someone driving; I know I am not loving about the stupid guy who parks his stupid BMW in front of my house in a way that takes up two spaces. I should be more loving; I should be more compassionate. But in the moment, I’m not. So I need to come and say, “Wow, Lord, I hardly got home before I messed up; there are al these times this week when I was off the path, away from the way. Help me get back with you; help me start over right now.” That’s what the Prayer of Confession really is: it’s repenting and choosing to come back to God. It’s determining to know God every day, everywhere, for God is everywhere. It’s the commitment, even though I haven’t succeeded, to walk the way of Christ because he is the way to knowing God.

Amen

Dwelling Well

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Fifth Sunday in Easter/A • May 3, 3036

Acts 7:55-60 * Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 * 1 Peter 2:2-10 * John 14:1-14

“I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”  [Psalm 23:6]

We all live somewhere; we grew up somewhere, perhaps moved, made a home, moved again, and so on. All along we were dwelling somewhere. But what does it mean to dwell in the house of the Lord? Today we’ve heard four different affirmations of faith. “In you, O LORD, I seek refuge…” [Psalm 31:1] the Psalmist says. A refuge is a safe place; it’s not hard to imagine someone in a frightening moment looking for a safe place, is it? We get warnings sometimes: “seek shelter!” —a storm is coming. Michigan, where I mostly grew up, gets tornadoes and you learn early to listen for the sirens and go somewhere safe. When I was in college, the night before a final exam, a tornado was sighted near our dormitory so hundreds of us trooped down to the basement, sprawled on the floors, trying to study but also to keep our fears down. This is the Psalmist telling us that in a time of trouble, his or her refuge is in God. Then we heard the last words of Stephen, perhaps the first Christian martyred for his faith. He’s been speaking out against the authorities of his time and place and for that he’s being stoned to death. This is his prayer: “”Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”” [Acts 7:59]. Then we heard from the writer of First Peter, years after Jesus’ ascension, reminding brothers and sisters in Christ, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” [1 Peter 2:10] Finally, we have this wonderful section from the Gospel of John, where Jesus comforts his disciples. All of these are really an invitation to come dwell with God.

Think about the context behind what Jesus is saying. This is the moment we call Maundy Thursday. They’re in Jerusalem but darkness is gathering. It’s passover; the city is full of currents. Passover is a reminder of how God brought God’s people out of slavery, defeated Pharaoh and gathered them, in Jesus’ words, as a mother hen gathers her chicks. Now those same people are oppressed by the taxes and the laws of the Roman Empire. Extra troops have been brought to Jerusalem because Passover sparks the Jewish memory of freedom and some might act on it. At the same time, Jesus has been speaking and the authorities are angry and authorities always express fear by using power. So I imagine this is a fearful moment, and certainly Jesus must feel the fear in his friends and he speaks to them to quiet their fears. 

He tells them not to let their hearts be troubled, that he’s preparing a place for them and that with the father there are many dwelling places. That, at least, is the translation we read this morning. But perhaps you grew up like I did with an older translation that instead of “many dwelling places” said “many mansions”. This is an old joke in our family. Jacquelyn grew up with that and sometime after we were together I preached on this passage and explained that what Jesus has in mind is not a sort of suburb with lots of individual homes.

But that’s an American cultural idea. What Jesus has in mind is certainly the sort of homes common in Palestine. They looked like those U shaped motels on the Jersey shore; you know what I mean? Lots of rooms, different levels, all curling around an inner court. At the shore, there’s a pool in the court; I’m not sure if Jesus included the pool. What he’s saying is there is space for you, we’re all going to be together, and there’s a place for you. At first, Jacquelyn didn’t like it: she said, “You took away my mansion and you’re replacing it with a motel?” I said it’s not me, it’s Jesus, talk to him. What Jesus has in mind aren’t separate mansions but a community grouped together; what Jesus has in mind is dwelling together with God.

He shows them how relationships work in that community. It’s in the part just before what we read. He takes a towel and a bowl, wets the towel and bends to wash his friend’s feet. People generally wore sandals in those days so feet got really dirty; there’s mud, there’s whatever they’ve stepped in. Washing feet was a courtesy usually performed by slaves. Yet here is their master bending before them, acting like a servant. It’s uncomfortable. Honestly, it is today among us which is one reason that although I’ve conducted may Maundy Thursday services, we almost never, ever, actually do what Jesu did, wash each other’s feet. It’s too intimate; it’s too personal. Once someone asked if we were going to do that at Maundy Thursday because if we were she wanted to get a pedicure beforehand; she didn’t want ugly feet I guess. The thing about Jesus is that he doesn’t care if your feet are ugly, he wants to teach you to serve others and he does it by acting out a love that makes you beautiful. He doesn’t care when you feel worthless, he gives his life to show you how much yours is worth.

We get to overhear two conversations here. The first is with Thomas. Remember Thomas? We talked about Thomas a couple weeks ago. Thomas wants specific, hard answers. So when Jesus says, “I’m making a place for you and you know the way,” Thomas speaks up and says “No we don’t; Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” [John 14:5] The word ‘way’ here translates a word that has multiple meanings. It can mean road or path; it can mean a whole set of directions. It can also mean a spiritual discipline. Thomas is looking for directions: how do we get where you’re going? Jesus answers with what’s become one of the most quoted verses in the whole Bible: “Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [John 14:6] I know you’ve heard this, we all have. But often when it’s quoted, the part at the beginning gets left out: “Jesus said to him…” This isn’t a general teaching for everyone: this is specific to Thomas. 

This gets quoted to make Christians feel superior but the whole context here is humility. Jesus washes the disciples’ feet; Jesus tells them not to be troubled. Jesus says, there are lots of places in my father’s house, I”m getting one for you. There’s no exclusion here if you listen to the whole conversation. Just a little bit before, there’s the part we read last week, about Jesus being an open gate; here, there are many dwelling places, enough for everyone. Jesus is offering to include everyone. His point is that you don’t need directions, you don’t need a map, you have his life, you have him. He embodies the way. And if everyone coming to the Father is going that way, it’s entirely possible they are going that way with someone else. Perhaps with Mohammed, perhaps with the Buddha, perhaps Moses. It doesn’t matter where you come from in Harrisburg, if you’re going to the west shore, you’re going over a bridge. It doesn’t matter where you live, what you believe, if you come to the father, you’re coming by way of love and humility. 

One writer put it this way.

Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).  He didn’t say that any particular ethic, doctrine, or religion was the way, the truth, and the life. He said that he was. He didn’t say that it was by believing or doing anything in particular that you could “come to the Father.” He said that it was only by him—by living, participating in, being caught up by the way of life that he embodied, that was his way.

Thus it is possible to be on Christ’s way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don’t even believe in God.

A Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank. [https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2011/05/lectionary-commentary-“a-progressive-christian-reading-of-john-146”-for-sunday-may-22-2011/]

It’s Jesus himself, his life, that is the way and he welcomes everyone to come along.

The other conversation we get to overhear is with Philip. “Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” [John 14:8] Now, Philips question has a long history. Throughout the Bible, throughout history I imagine, people wanted to see God. Jacob wrestled with an angel and said, “I have seen God face to face yet my life has been spared” [Genesis 32:30] Moses asks to see God’s glory and God passes by. [Exodus 33:18-22] Isaiah sees God seated on a throne. [Isaiah 6:1] The truth is we can only see what our eyes tell us and what we imagine and God is greater than either one. As you know, Jacquelyn and I just came back from a week in Spain. We visit Cathedrals and art museums when we go and they’re both full of wonderful, artistic pictures. They mean to show God but they can’t. You can’t see the ocean, you can only see the surface and it’s the same here.

So Jesus tells Philip the truth, the greatest truth of Christian faith: that God is fully in him, so if you want to see God, look at Jesus. “Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? [John 14:9] Every Sunday we gather here, every Sunday I come here with one mission. I learned it years ago in a little church where I was a supply preacher. The pulpit had a little brass plaque that said, “Sir, we would see Jesus”. That’s my mission: to show Jesus. Because if we see Jesus, we’ve seen the Father. If we know Jesus, we know the Father, who has always known us.

I read a book on preaching once, trying to learn to do it, and it said every sermon should have an easy answer to, “what do you want the congregation to do?” The author meant that there should be a ringing challenge to some great action. I don’t think this is good sermon in that way; I’m not going to challenge you today to do anything except this: pray for us here at Salem to be a place where it’s obvious God is present. Pray for us to be a church where we are dwelling well with the Lord. Pray for us to feel God’s spirit moving so that indeed, we will know the way and the truth of God’s love.

Amen.

Never Too Late

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Second Sunday in Easter/Year A • April 12, 2026

John 20:19-32

When I was in college, and later seminary, a lot of my life was dominated by deadlines to write papers. I had a bad habit of putting off doing these until right before the deadline, so they were often late. My favorite professor was Dennis Duling, a New Testament scholar who taught my last class in seminary. I turned the final paper in a day late as usual; when I got it back, there was a big ‘A’ on the front and a note: “I’m not taking the usual points off for your usual lateness. You are about to learn there is no way to hand a sermon in late.” He was right and for most of my life, I’ve lived with the fact that on Sunday morning there is an absolute deadline. These days it’s 10:30 AM on Sunday. That’s it, no matter what else is going on, I have to be ready to walk in here, look out at all of you and say with conviction, “The peace of the Lord be with you.” There’s no excuse, no matter what else is going on, for being late. It’s not just me, either. Jacquelyn’s work as a flight attendant demands absolute timeliness. If she isn’t ready for a flight, the flight can’t leave. So it’s a very serious matter. She deals with it by being an hour early at the airport; I deal with it by going off to my office about five minutes early. How do you deal with staying on time? I ask because today’s gospel is the story of a man who was late for the most important moment in his life. Today we’re listening to the story of Thomas and the disciples and how Easter came to them.

There’s so much to hear before we get to Thomas. Just imagine the disciples’ situation. For perhaps three years or so, they’ve left their lives and followed Jesus, cared for him, accepted his care for them. He lifted them up in hope of a coming kingdom. Even when they were worried about the journey to Jerusalem, they followed along. They must have been amazed at the crowds entering the city. They must have wondered seeing him in the Temple, trashing the money changers. And they must have been scared when suddenly the soldiers appeared at Gethsemene and arrested Jesus, took him away roughly. They saw he’d been beaten, they saw the blood from the crown of thorns and they saw him gasping out his last breaths on the cross. They saw the death of Jesus; they felt the death of hope. 

Now they’re together and they’ve locked the door, the text says “in fear of the Jews”. This has nothing to do with Jews as a people; they’re afraid of the same authorities who arrested Jesus and sent him to the Romans, the only ones with the authority to execute him. They’re gathered for the funeral luncheon. The woman have told them a crazy story about seeing the Lord and an empty tomb, but they didn’t believe them. They believe in common sense: dead people stay dead. All you can do is grieve and get back to normal.

So there they are: you know how these things go, quiet conversations, food, no one eating much, people hovering around the family. Here there is the locked door; here is certainly the memory of their last supper a few days ago, perhaps a happy seder. Suddenly, Jesus appears. He walks through the door. I always wonder: does that make any noise? Does the door creak when he passes through it? There he is: alive. Wow. Did they all go silent? Did they drop plates they were holding? Imagine if you’d just taken a big bite of something, do you swallow? “Peace be with you,” he says. Shalom aleicham: the common every Friday greeting of shabby, what someone says at the beginning of the service. Yet so much more here.

He shows them his wounds. Isn’t that how we all connect? A long time ago, Jacquelyn gave me the most important advice I’ve ever gotten about sermons; “Don’t be the hero of your own story.” When I want to illustrate something for you, I deliberately show the times I failed, times I got it wrong. I want you to see my wounds because we are all wounded and when we see each other’s wounds, we know each other. They see his wounds: they know it’s him.

Don’t miss this part of the story running on to hear about Thomas, we’ll get to Thomas but stay here and see this. Jesus walks through a door, Jesus is alive, and he comes and the first thing he says is, “”Peace be with you.” I think today a lot of us are locked up in rooms for fear. We are careful talking about our politics, our religion, because it’s easy to give offense. So we lock up the doors but listen here: Jesus walks through doors. Jesus goes where everyone is excluded. Jesus comes even when we’re hopeless and sad and this is what he as to say first: “Peace be with you.”

That’s not all, though. He goes on to say that he’s sending them; he’s sending us. And he’s sending us just like the Father sent him. This is what it means to be the Body of Christ, that we are sent just like him, and our job is to forgive sins. In other words, to give peace to others, just as he gives it to us. You know, the church picked up on the last part, “…if you don’t forgive sins they are retained,” and used it as a fund raising tool. The only way to get forgiven is to come to us! But that’s not the gospel, that’s not the command; the command is to go out and forgive sins. The command is to go out and be Jesus to others.

We’ll talk more about this another time but I want to get on to Thomas. Remember Thomas? This is a story about Thomas. So the story is the whole group gathers a week after the crucifixion. Maybe they’re celebrating shabbat, maybe they’re just grieving. They’re scared of the authorities; they lock the door. But Jesus walks right in, says Peace be to you and then gives them a mission. But Thomas was late; Thomas wasn’t there. So a week later when he does show up, they all tell him, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas pouts. Maybe he looks around, sees this group he’s spent so much time with, sees that nothing has changed. They’re still the same folks, the door is still locked. Thomas doesn’t believe them about seeing the Lord. Why would he? They aren’t out forgiving, they aren’t out being Jesus. They’re still in a locked room.

So once again Jesus walks through the door, once again Jesus says, “Shalom alchem—peace be unto you”. Once again he shows his wounds. Thomas touches them. And finally, Thomas says, what we all say finally: “My Lord and my God.” Thomas believes; Thomas receives the Spirit. 

We had a fine service last Sunday celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. Caleb and Joe and Carmen provided wonderful music. We got to sing those old familiar hymns, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”, and a newer one, “Pass It On”. We heard the story, we listened to God’s Word. Now, what’s different? What did we do this week to show someone we know the love of God in Jesus Christ? Think for a minute: what did you do to show someone Jesus?

It’s a hard question, isn’t it? The simple humility of Jesus doesn’t match the angry moment in which we’re living. Many of you know we have a boat down in Baltimore. A few days ago, I was down there, staying overnight. There’s wifi in the lounge, I had a sermon to write, so I was there in the lounge, working away, alone and a guy came in and sat down, turned on the TV. 

Now all of us at the marina have boats in common, so there’s always something to talk about. But that night President Trump was speaking about the war he had started in Iran and he put that on. There was this long uncomfortable time while we watched silently, both of us afraid to say anything, to comment; we all know how angry conversations about politics can get. Finally, he said something not too off base, I replied, and we both relaxed and realized we were on the same side and then the conversation flowed. But we had to make sure we were ok first. 

That’s common today, I think. I didn’t show off Jesus that night. I just found a comfortable conversation. How do we move beyond those? We start with compassion. I have a favorite flight attendant story that doesn’t involve Jacquelyn, my personal flight attendant. It’s about a plane that lands late in Salt Lake City one night. You can imagine the situation: everyone’s tired, everyone just wants off the plane, arrangements have been disrupted, people are anxious. As the plane was rolling toward the gate, one of the flight attendants got on the PA. 

The flight attendant asked passengers to raise their hand if they were ending their journey in Salt Lake City, the flight’s destination. After most of the hands in the cabin went up, he continued.“Now, everyone who has their hands up: Imagine the anxiety you’d feel if you had to catch another flight tonight and weren’t sure you’d make it. Put your hands down. And now, those connecting to Palm Springs, and Denver, raise yours!” “Everyone, look around,” the flight attendant requested. “These are the people who’ll be sprinting off the plane tonight as soon as we land. Look at them, and imagine this was you.”

The flight attendant then implored everyone in the cabin who didn’t have a connecting flight to stay seated and give the other passengers space to get out as quickly as possible.

“If we all play our part, they can make it,” the flight attendant said. “Thank you so much for your consideration and help. Every one of those guys appreciates you for it.”The energy in the cabin completely shifted.

Everyone suddenly shared the same mission,” “We all knew who the people were that needed to hustle now. And we were all in it with them, feeling their adrenaline in our veins.”

When the plane landed only connecting passengers stood up. Others helped them with their bags. Afterwards, the remaining passengers patiently got up, grabbed their things, and exited calmly.

“The whole plane was rooting for them,” one passenger said.

It’s not much, is it? One plane, one group of people. But think how that compassion changed the moment for everyone there. Everyone landing on that plane wanted off as soon as possible; that flight attendant took their wants and transformed them into compassion.

That’s our job every day: to be the people who turn desire into compassion, who take pride and turn it into humility, who take guilt and forgive it and turn it into a new life. Last week, and the week before, I asked you to imagine asking Jesus, “What now?” Today we have the answer: go out and be Jesus, go out and forgive, go out and show the love of God every day. People are angry because they’re wounded; it’s our job to be the healers, the hopers, the helpers. At the very end of that reading in John, when he’s closing out the story, there’s one more thing we shouldn’t miss: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That’s us.

The women go to the tomb, find it empty, tell the disciples the Lord has risen. The disciples don’t believe them. So Jesus comes to them in person to show them he’s alive. Thomas doesn’t believe it when they tell him, so Jesus again, says the same things, does the same thing. It’s the same for us: it’s never too late, Jesus just keeps coming, Jesus just keeps hoping that we will be his body, carry his Spirit, live the new life he means to give. 

Amen.