Category Archives: After Pentecost

Thanksgiving Vision

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Thanksgiving/Reign of Christ Sunday • November 23, 2025

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 • Psalm 100 * Philippians 4:4-9 * John 6:25-35

I once lived in a 120 year old house and the floors in that house had a paint build-up a quarter of an inch thick: gray paint, and three or four layers down white paint and way underneath, if you dug in, there was red too, but when someone finally came in and sanded those floors all the way down to the wood, it turned out they were even better with no paint at all. Thanksgiving is like that. It’s overlaid with so many customs and traditions that it’s hard to see the original event for what it was.  

Yet in that original event there is a peculiar beauty and inspiration. The people we call ‘the Pilgrims’ began as a little group of radical non-conformists who refused to be satisfied by the standard worship of their time. Their lives were formed by Elizabethan England: the England of the Spanish Armada, of Shakespeare, of great advances in arts and letters. It was a time of soaring hopes. Whole new worlds were just being explored, physical worlds across the sea in the Americas, spiritual worlds as the Reformation took hold, intellectual worlds as the beginnings of modern science emerged. It `was a time of extremes: great theatre and bear baiting; impassioned theological debate and men appointed to be pastors who never saw the inside of their church and simply collected the salary. 

They were called Separatists, because wished to separate from the Church of England. They began with a simple idea: to worship within the circle of a small, committed group of men and women, not in the state churches. They wanted to hear the Bible and understand it; they wanted to pray from their hearts, not from a book. Many, many early separatists were imprisoned and died for this faith. Finally, one group left England for Holland where there was more tolerance. But problems there and a foreign culture led them to decide to try another solution. That solution was found in planting a new colony in America. So, after considerable negotiation, planing, and overcoming obstacles, a company of 102 people set out for Virginia on the Mayflower and the Speedwell.

Only a little less than half were committed Separatists, or Saints as they called themselves. The rest were called Strangers (they were mostly called this by the Saints!). After turning back twice and leaving behind the leaky Speedwell, they finally arrived on Cape Code in the fall of 1620, settling at the area they named Plymouth in November, 1620. They missed Virginia by hundreds of miles. For a long time they remained aboard ship, sending out exploratory parties. November in New England is a cold, harsh month, with more cold to follow. They had a poor diet, cramped quarters and little in the way of cleanliness. Many sickened and died, so many that they took to burying their dead in unmarked  graves for fear the Indians would realize how small their band was. In April, the Mayflower left for England and the band was on their own. Despite their best efforts which included pilfering Indian corn storage, they almost starved that first year. They were mostly tradespeople and trades people. They knew little about farming and their crops did poorly. They had not brought the right equipment for fishing, so the great bounty that gave Cape Cod its name went unused. At the end of their first year they held an eight hour prayer meeting, a time they described as of solemn humiliation. Their ration consisted of about 14 pounds of corn a week per person and occasional game. 

Gradually they adapted; they learned. They found fast friends in two Indians who had learned English from contacts with fishermen. These taught them how to plant and fertilize corn. They learned to find the oysters and clams in which the coast abounds. They learned to set snares for game. They made friends with local Indian leaders and they generally treated them well; sometimes those leaders took pity on them and helped feed them. They built lean-to’s and shelters and a meeting house where they could worship Still, their little community was always on the edge of starvation, always just a hairsbreadth from being  wiped out.

By 1622 they had a better harvest, though they were still eating some of the grain brought on the Mayflower. They decided to throw a party. Think of their situation: more than half of the original group dead and buried, a ration of moldy grains and a little corn, hard, unremitting work every day just to stay alive. Would you have felt thankful? These people did. They felt they had reason to rejoice together. The woods were safe because of their wise policy of making peace with the native people. The sickness of the first months had abated and the company was free of dissension and quarreling. So, they gave a party and they gave thanks. 

The first Thanksgiving was not what we imagine. First of all, it was not an afternoon dinner, it was a three day feast. There is no record that turkeys were served at all, although they may have been. Cranberries were probably not used yet, although they were present in droves in the bogs of Cape Cod. And the first mention of pumpkin in English only goes back as far as 1647, so no pumpkin pie. There weren’t any cows in the community so there wouldn’t have been any whipped cream for it anyway. They did have ducks and geese, clams, oysters, succulent eels, white bread, corn bread, leeks and watercress and something called salente herbs. They invited a local sachem, or chief, of the native people named Massasoit, who brought 90 braves with him. Seeing how this would stretch the food, the braves went out and got several deer, so there was venison. They had games, a military review, and lots of wine, both red and white. There was also  considerable beer. Wild plums and berries formed the dessert. 

The celebration was a great success and the Pilgrims held another the next year, and gradually it became customary to hold an annual celebration. The custom spread through New England and entered other states as well. Different areas celebrated on different days, however, until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln set the fourth Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving. That’s the way it’s been ever since, except for 1939, 1940 and 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt changed the date to the third Thursday in November to make more shopping days before Christmas. It wasn’t one of the successful New Deal experiments and so the date was changed back.  

So much for the story of the holiday; it really isn’t much like our celebration at all, is it? No advertisements, no going to the store, no Turkey, no cranberry sauce, no stuffing, no pumpkin pie, no football game, no traveling hundreds of miles to be with friends. Then what connects us to this Pilgrim celebration? I think it is just this: that for a day out of the year we, like the Pilgrims, see, really see, our blessings. And anyone who really takes a look at his blessings is most likely going to feel like doing just what William Bradford said the Pilgrims decided to do: after a “more special manner,” to rejoice together.

Of course, seeing your blessings is not automatic; it begins with the sort of person you are and choose to be. There is a story of a psychologist who wanted to study attitudes and behavior. He took put two boys in special rooms to compare their reactions. One was a very dour, pessimistic guy and the other was a very optimistic, hopeful, bubbly guy. He put the pessimistic boy in a room filled with wonderful toys: remote controlled cars and Lego blocks and every single Nintendo game ever made. He hoped to cheer the boy up. He put the optimistic boy in a room filled with piles of horse manure, hoping to teach him a lesson about how rotten the world can be. 

But when the psychologist came back, he discovered something strange. The pessimistic boy was sobbing, really crying his heart out. And when the psychologist went in and asked him what was  wrong, the boy said, “All these wonderful things, I’m so afraid I’ll break something.
The psychologist, feeling a little remorse about his experiment now, hurried to the room with the horse dung. He expected to find the optimistic boy in tears as well, but instead he discovered him laughing and shoveling the manure energetically. When the psychologist asked what he was doing  the boy replied, with all this manure, there’s got to be a pony here somewhere!

Seeing is not automatic. The Pilgrims were not uniquely religious or hardy or suited to be colonists. They simply had this one strength: an unbending determination to see what they believed were God’s blessings. They came to a hostile, unknown place and died of strange sicknesses. Some simply starved. Yet, gradually they opened their eyes, and discovered there were fish and shellfish and deer and corn and berries and everything needed right around them. These things didn’t suddenly appear; they had been there all along. It just took the seeing, the determination to keep looking out for them, to make them out. And they did and they gave thanks and the thanksgiving sustained them, because it reminded them that these were blessings.

So what have you seen? Deuteronomy has rules for a thanksgiving offering; we read them earlier. Their offerings were grains and fruits and it wasn’t enough to give them; you had to look in a mirror and remember where you came from. 

‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. [Deut 26:5-9]

It’s easy to live where you have what you need and assume you have a right to it. This is a reminder that our lives and all the things that sustain them are a gift and that’s a reason to be thankful.

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday but it’s also Reign of Christ Sunday. We read the lessons for Thanksgiving Sunday but there are also lessons for Reign of Christ. In those lessons, the gospel is Luke’s description of Jesus on the cross. There he is, whipped, tortured, dying. What does he see? He sees two others also crucified; two men who are children of God. This is the greatness of Jesus Christ: that he saw every one of us as children of God. Even on the cross, he’s gathering them in; he tells them that they will be with him in paradise. 

So what have you seen? Thanksgiving is really about vision. It is being able to see what is a gift, what is a blessing, that connects us to the authentic spirit of Thanksgiving, not what we eat or how we celebrate. It is our ability to have Thanksgiving Vision. What have you seen? The opportunity of Thanksgiving is to open your eyes. It is to see the possibilities in your situation. It is to see the blessings that sustain you and know they are God’s gifts. And then finally, when you are done with the special rejoicing, when the wishbone is dry and the pumpkin pie is gone, to decide: what are you going to do about it?

Amen

Finders Keepers

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

All Saints Sunday • November 2, 2025

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 • 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12 * Luke 19:1-10

This is how God starts: everything in order, light and darkness separated, land and sea, a fruitful creation, two people set in a garden. Then the people decide they want to be like God and it all falls apart. There’s violence and shame and sin and it’s a mess. It’s like when you go through one of those periods where you don’t clean, the dishes pile up, the bed’s a lump of twisted covers and sheets and you can’t face it all. 

So God starts over; washes it all away in the Flood, teaches boat building to Noah and Noah goes on a cruise, God promises not to do this again, the waters recede and everything is in order. Then people spread out, they decide to be god like, build a tower and God has to scatter them and invent languages, and it all falls apart.

So God starts over: whispers to Abram and Sarai a promise about a land where they will be God’s people and that they will have children and become the beginning of a blessing to the whole world. God makes a covenant with them, sends them on a long journey, gives them a child, and it all looks good. Then it falls apart. There’s violence, there’s division. The people of God go off to Egypt and become slaves.

So God starts over: gets Moses to go to Pharaoh to say, “Let my people go”, because on the whole, God hates slavery. It takes some doing to convince the Egyptians but eventually God’s people leave slavery, wander around, doubting God some, complaining some, but God gives them a set of rules, Ten Commandments, makes another covenant with them, promises the promised land. They get there and then it all falls apart. They don’t live by the covenant, they think other Gods look like more fun, and they think they can be Godlike themselves.

So God starts over: sends prophets, gives them a Word. One of them is Habakkuk. He lives in a time of deep division. The Chaldeans, a people from present day Iraq, have defeated God’s people but it’s before the final devastation of Jerusalem. He sets out the problem.

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?

1:3 Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.

1:4 So the law becomes slack, and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous; therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

But what’s the solution? Habakkuk says, “the righteous live by their faithfulness”.  But what about the rest? 

I’ve summarized the whole Hebrew Scriptures and perhaps you noticed the repeated, “So God starts over.” This is God: ever faithful, always trying to get back to that garden moment, like someone cleaning a house, making the bed, doing the dishes, putting things away. That’s what Jesus is doing: Jesus is God’s cleaner. And today we heard how he does it. Did you get it? Did you understand it?

It’s a simple story. Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. Just a little before this, he’s told his friends for the third time that he’s going to go there and be crucified. No one wants to hear that but he keeps telling them anyway. Now, Jerusalem is up on a mountain. To the east is the Dead Sea and above that is the Jordan River. There’s a deep, deep valley, it’s actually so deep it’s below sea level. There’s a place at the river where you can ford and there’s been some kind of village there since about 9,000 BCE. There are fresh water springs and palm trees. Out to the east is the wilderness; off to the west is the winding road up the mountains. The city that’s grown up there is named Jericho and it’s one of the oldest cities in the whole world. To get to Jerusalem, you first have to go through Jericho.

That’s what Jesus is doing: he’s in the last stage of going to Jerusalem. It’s like taking the train here from Philadelphia; when you get to Elizabethtown, you know it’s time to get ready to arrive. When you drive up from Baltimore and hit the turnpike, you know it’s time to get over for the Harrisburg exit. He gets to the edge of Jericho and meets a blind man; Luke doesn’t name him, Mark says his name is Bar Timmaeus, which means more or less “Timothy’s son”. He cries out to Jesus; the crowd tells him to shut up but Jesus stops, has Tim brought to him, heals him because of his faith. 

It’s a sign: Jesus has been dealing with so many people whose eyes work just fine but who are blind to the way God’s love just falls on the world like rain. Jesus has been dealing with so many people who are blind to God’s hope for all of us to treat each other with that same love. Timothy’s eyes are now open and he can see fully what he had glimpsed in faith, that Jesus is the Son of God, come to show that love.

They move on into Jericho itself. I’m sure there’s a crowd, after all Luke says that at one point Jesus had sent out 70 people to share the good news about him with others. There are a group of women who have supported him all along. There are the 12 disciples. Just try to walk down Green St. with 12 guys following; you’ll end up stopping traffic. It’s the same thing here. 

If you’ve ever been to old cities, you know that the streets are narrow for the most part with the occasional open plaza area. That’s how I imagine this. There’s a small crowd, some running ahead, some behind Jesus, some trying to stay next to him. Surely news about him has gone ahead and there are people who stop what they’re doing to see. 

Now, I know you’ve all been to a parade and you know how it goes: there are always people in front of you. You always have to decide how hard you want to push and if you’re like me, it’s not that hard. That means going to a parade tends to be looking over people’s heads; not that fun. There’s a guy there in Jericho who has an additional problem: he’s short. He’s not going to look over anyone. This isn’t the first time he’s had this problem, so he does what I suspect he’s done since he was a kid, he climbs up in a tree. His name is Zaccheus, which means ‘Innocent’. But people there don’t see him as innocent;  they see him as a very bad man. He’s the chief tax collector there in Jericho which to most people means the chief cheat. He’s rich, and perhaps he’s not shy about showing it; drives a fancy chariot, has more than three sets of clothes, has enough food every single day. Being a tax collector means he’s ritually unclean; he’s not welcome at worship. 

But there he is, up in the tree, can you imagine him? He wants to see Jesus. Isn’t that like you? Isn’t that like me? I used to preach from a pulpit that had a little brass quotation on it I saw every time I was there, it said “Sir, we would see Jesus”. So, Jesus is coming down the street, with this whole crowd, some just want to be around him, some want him to solve all their problems, some want to touch him. Maybe the tree is in a little square, and the crowd flows in. There are sycamore trees, a kind of fig tree, and there are palm trees, maybe there’s a pool of water, and there’s Zaccheus up in a tree and this is just the reverse of what Zaccheus had in mind. It isn’t a story about Zaccheus seeing Jesus: it’s about Jesus seeing Zaccheus.

Zaccheus is rich but he isn’t popular. He’s rich but he isn’t liked; no one invites him to coffee, no one comes by his office just to hang out. People avoid him. But Jesus sees him and calls out to him, “Come down, I’m going to your house for dinner.” Wow! Imagine Jesus inviting himself to your home. Imagine Jesus seeing you and calling you out by name. “Salvation has come to your house,” Jesus says. But it’s not a popular saying; Luke says that everyone grumbled. Everyone in that crowd feels they are better than Zaccheus; he’s an unclean, unpopular, unrighteous guy. Why is Jesus making a big deal over him? Why is Jesus actually going to his house, planning to eat with him?

It isn’t some great act of repentance by Zacccheus; he isn’t going to change his life on the spot. He’s already pretty much doing good, he says he gives half his income to the poor, he goes beyond what’s required when he wrongs someone. But that all comes after Jesus has announced he’s coming to Zaccheus’ house. It’s not the reason for it, it’s Zaccheus reacting to the grumbling. No, there’s something else at work here and it’s this line near the end: “he, too, is a son of Abraham.” He’s part of the promise, he’s a child of God. It doesn’t matter that he’s rich; it doesn’t matter what he does for a living. He’s a child of God. A lot of those children have gotten lost and Jesus is all about finding them, guiding them back to the family, reminding them of who they are. He wants to remind us as well.

Emily Dickinson famously wrote, “I’m nobody; who are you? Are you nobody too?” So many live as nobody. Jesus comes to remind us of who we are. He sees Zaccheus and he sees what the grumblers have missed: that whatever else he is, whatever he has done, he is a child of Abraham, he is God’s child, a child of blessing and promise. Now today is ‘All Saints Day’ The word ‘saint’ has come to mean someone recognized as extraordinarily good but originally and always in the New Testamet, it means any follower of Christ. Paul says in Christ we have been adopted into Abraham’s family. So what Jesus says about Zaccheus he could say about you or me: this person is a child of Abraham. This person is a child or promise. This person is a saint. This person is a child of God.

Jesus mission is to find the children of God and keep them home with God. Surely that is the real meaning of All Saints. We look back to friends and family we have known and loved; we remember them. Behind them is an even longer line of those who came before. All these are God’s children. All these Jesus came because he finds God’s children and just as the prophets said, intends to restore them to God. 

But All Saints is not just the past; it is the present as well and the future. This is a wonderful congregation. What is said in Second Thessalonians about those Christians so many years before us could certainly be said here.

We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing. [2 Thessalonians 1:3]

That same spirit of the saints is here. It’s here and Jesus is looking at us, as he looked at Zaccheus, saying the same thing about us, that we are children of God, hoping we will recognize each other in that way, act in that way.

So when we hear him talking to Zaccheus, we should hear him talking to us as well, saying the same thing. “This too is a child of God…and today salvation has come to your house.” May that blessing live in your hearts this week and always. 

Amen.

Turn

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Reformation Sunday • October 26, 2025

Luke 18:9-14

When I was little, maybe five or six, I hated making my bed. I didn’t care about my messy room with dirty clothes and toys scattered about. My mother did care and we fought about it endlessly. Finally, one day, she sat me down, and showed me a list. “This is your Do It list,” she said. There was a line for my making my bed, picking up clothes, and some other things. “If you can check off everything each week, you will get a prize. Well, I didn’t care about making the bed, but I did care about prizes. So I started doing the things on the list and I did get some prizes. This little interaction is exactly how religion worked for many centuries. There was a sense that God had a To-Do List and if you faithfully checked it all off, you’d get a prize. The prize might be a good crop, it might be a peaceful life, it might be a good life after death. Whatever the prize, you were buying it by doing your list.

That’s what’s going on at the beginning of the parable Jesus tells. It’s another “two guys” parable; we had one recently about Lazarus and a rich man, we’ve had others. In this one, we start out with a good guy. He tells us he’s a good guy right from the start. “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” The tax collector is the other guy; we’ll come back to him in a bit. “I’m better than all these, God!”—that’s the beginning of his prayer. Then he goes on to tell God he’s done his To-Do list: “ fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” This is actually beyond what he’s required to do. He’s proud of his religious accomplishment. He’s completed the list, he’s ready for his prize. Let’s set him there on the shelf for a few minutes while we think about this system of relating to God by completing a to-do list.

It’s an ancient system. Hundreds of years before Jesus, we hear the prophets talking about how some people speculating on how much it will cost, what they will have to do, to get God’s favor. The first Christians were close to the message of Jesus but within a few hundred years, they were overtaken by Roman culture which included this idea of how you got to God. They also took over the Roman system of hierarchy: someone at the top, a few just below, more below that, and so on down to regular people. They called the ones at the top Archbishops, the ones lower bishops, and they had other titles down to priests. All these over time came to be more interested in power and wealth than the pure light of God’s love.

A thousand years later, this produced some beautiful cathedrals, an elaborate ritual for worship and a deep spiritual emptiness. Some people began to look for another way. They thought the Bible should be in a language everyone could understand. John Hus in Bohemia said this and inspired followers who fought for this new way. John Wycliffe in England translated the Bible into English. Both were killed as heretics but their ideas lived on. A hundred years later, Martin Luther criticized the system of To-Do lists and the corruption of the church around him. This time, some of the princes backed him. When Papal delegates came to Prague to negotiate, they were thrown out a window you can still visit.

But Luther wanted to keep the structure of the church with all its hierarchy. It took others to see that hierarchy is not God’s plan. John Calvin suggested a kind of church governed not by princely bishops but by the people themselves, electing a consistory of leaders who, along with the church’s pastors, would govern the church. His ideas spread through parts of Germany and especially Holland. They were added to by a man named Ulrich Zwingli so that a set of ideas about how to worship began to come together and catch on.

Those ideas generally included four things. First, that a church was not just everyone who lived in an area but a group of people who were covenanted, promised to each other as followers of Christ. Send that being part of a church meant understanding you were saved by faith in Christ, not by completing a To-Do list. Third, that the way to know Christ was through the scripture. Finally, they created churches that were governed by the people in the church, usually through something like our consistory. These ideas…covenant, consistory, conviction, conversation with the Word, became the foundation of what was called the Reformed churches, and they spread through parts of Germany and Holland. In England, the same groups were called Presbyterians—‘Presbyter’  is the Greek word for Elder, the title given to the clergy of these new churches. In England, another group took the idea even farther and said that each Congregation was complete under Christ. They were called Congregationalists.

By the 1700s in Germany, life was tough. Wars had devastated the economy and people were forced to worship however their ruler wanted. That drove many to immigrate to the new colonies in America. William Penn offered these Reformed people land and freedom of worship. So, many Germans came to Pennsylvania and in 1725, just 300 years ago, sponsored by the Dutch Reformed Church, they met and held their first service of communion. I imagine it was cold that day; this is Pennsylvania after all and they were in the wilderness near Lancaster. But their hearts were warm. Gradually, this way of worship, with its emphasis on covenants, and a direct peace with God spread. Eventually some of them got together with some Lutherans and founded this very church.

I’ve been going through our family album, I hope you’ve stayed with me. This is who we are: we believe everyone should be able to read the Bible for themselves, everyone should be able to come to their own way with Christ without a To-Do list or a bill from the church. We believe our church should be governed by us and it is. Someone asked me a while back, knowing I had retired four years ago, how it was to be back running a church. I said, “I’m not running it, I just preach there, the consistory runs it.”

So now I want to take that guy we started with off the shelf, remember him? He’s busy telling God his To-Do list is complete and how great he is, how righteous. But there’s another guy in the story. That guy isn’t righteous. He’s a collaborator with the Romans; he’s a tax collector. And it’s worth hearing his prayer too: “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ [Luke 18:13] This is his prayer; this is his faith, that God’s grace can rain on him even though he isn’t a righteous man. These two are standing far from each other. The Pharisee is alone; the tax collector stands far off. Jesus says this parable is meant for those of us who trust their own righteousness, that is the righteousness that comes from completing your To-Do list. But Jesus says it is the tax collector who goes home justified. 

One writer said about this,

At the end of this story, the Pharisee will leave the Temple and return to his home righteous. This hasn’t changed; he was righteous when he came up and righteous as he goes back down. The tax collector, however, will leave the Temple and go back down to his home justified, that is, accounted righteous by the Holy One of Israel. How has this happened? The tax collector makes neither sacrifice nor restitution. On what basis, then, is he named as righteous? On the basis of God’s divine fiat and ordinance!

God’s grace is experienced in our faith, not in a To-Do list. We can’t make God love us; we can only believe God already does. That’s the message of the whole Reformation; that’s the message of the scripture. Turning towards each other, turning towards God is the way. 

Amen.

All Together Now

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

World Communion Sunday • October 5, 2025

Luke 17:5-10

One of my favorite musicals is The Music Man. Do you know this show? It concerns a con man in early 20th century Iowa named Harold Hill. His swindle is that he gets people to believe there is trouble in their town only he can solve and only by creating a boys’ band. He sells them instruments, he sells them uniforms, he sells them on the idea that he can teach them to play the instruments and march in the uniforms through what he calls “The Think Method”. This simply consists of thinking you can play. Now, I was a trumpet player when I was a boy and part of a band. I can tell you that thinking won’t make your trumpet sound sweet, that takes practice. I was part of a marching band for a while and it’s less about thinking than drilling on making each step exactly the same as the last so that you stay in line. So none of what he says is going to work. There is a wonderful moment in The Music Man when Professor Harold Hill is found out, arrested, brought in handcuffs to the school where the boys are assembled along with the town and told to prove the band can play. He takes up his baton, and with the most unbelieving expression possible, says, “Think, boys, think”. 

I wonder if that’s the same expression Jesus had when he said the things we read today. Jesus was no con man, but he’s been teaching and preaching for a while now. The part we read pictures him alone with his disciples. They’re on the way to Jerusalem, and he’s told them already that there he’s going to be crucified and said discipleship with him means a cross. Yet they just don’t seem to get it. Do we? Just before this section, he talks about forgiveness.

So watch yourselves. “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.

Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” [Luke 17:3f]

Just after this section, Luke tells us that they are traveling along the border between Samaria and Galilee, on the way to Jerusalem. 

These two snippets tell us where Jesus is: he’s crossing borders. He’s calling his disciples to cross them with him. Cross the border from guilt to forgiveness; cross the border from one place to another. In those moments of crossing, the disciples ask, “Increase our faith.” It’s funny, but I’m not sure if we get the joke. These are disciples, followers, but here they are, ordering their Master like he’s a servant. So Jesus gently reminds them of their relationship to him—and ours. They all understand the relationship of servants and master, and he invokes it here: Will a servant be thanked for doing what he was done? Everyone knows the answer. Servants—and disciples—are meant to follow the Master, not have the Master wait on them.

Today, there are many voices wearing Christ’s cross but demanding that he follow them into division. So perhaps World Communion Sunday, this Sunday, is especially important. It began not far from here, in Pittsburgh, in 1933. That was a time when denominations were fiercely competitive, anti-Semitism was officially promoted and racism was rampant. The Shadyside Presbyterian Church began the service as a way of reaching across boundaries of faith. It was promoted by the National Council of Churches beginning in 1940, as the whole world sunk into the violence of a second World War. Today, it stands a reminder that Christ does not belong to us; we belong to Christ. Anyone who tells us that Christ is on one side or the other of political or ethnic conflicts is lying. The call of Christ is beyond the sides, bigger than any of them, a call from the God who loves all. 

Today, all over the world, Christians of every theology, every tradition, every background, every nation, unite to share communion. So we need to see at this table not just those of us here, but people of other colors, other traditions, other customs. It’s a reminder that we all follow Christ. And in that reminder is a miracle waiting to burst forth. 

When Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, begins to conduct the boys’ band, something magical happens. The boys, it turns out, have actually practiced and can get some noise out of the instruments. But it’s not noise the parents hear: the parents hear the sweet melody of their children making music. The camera lets us see what they see. One man cries out, “That’s my Davey!” And somehow, the boys are transformed; they become the band they had imagined.

Christ’s call is for us to become the disciples he imagined: faithful, loving, forgiving. Like Prof. Hill, he raises his baton. Like Prof. Hill, he calls out, “All Together Now”. And waits to hear us.

Amen.

Watch This!

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

12th Sunday After Pentecost/C • August 31, 2025

Jeremiah 2:4-13 * Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 * Luke 14:1, 7-14

These past weeks as schools started up again, a huge source of anxiety has blown up like a balloon. That anxiety is the question going on in the minds of middle school and high school students everywhere: who will I sit with at lunch? Lunch at a middle school or high school is a minefield. There is the cool kids table; you know you can’t sit there. It’s invitation only and how you get an invitation is a mystery so big even AI can’t solve it. There are tables with nerdy boys; no one wants to sit there, it’s a mess. Maybe there’s a band kids table but what if you aren’t in band? I’m sure you can make up your own groups; I imagine most of us can remember this moment. The goal isn’t just to eat lunch; the goal is to Become Cool. That goal animates so much of life. At one end of things, there is the entire fashion industry, devoted to demonstrating what you have to wear to be cool. Remember the 1980s shoulders for women? They were cool; they aren’t anymore. Why? No one knows. At the other end of the struggle to Be Cool are kids, and they are not immune. It’s said that the most common last words for middle school boys in Texas are, “Hey, y’all, watch this!” I don’t think that’s limited to Texas; many of us shiver when we remember some of our own exploits.

Today’s reading from the Gospel takes us to a dinner party with Jesus. Once again, like last week’s reading, the occasion is Shabbat, the sabbath. It’s common to invite someone to share a sabbath meal. Luke says they were watching Jesus closely. Perhaps it’s because in the part that was skipped, he once again healed someone on the sabbath. Surely there’s some controversy about this but no one brings it up here. This is a time and place where “Being Cool” is everything; historians call it “an honor culture”. Your life, your work, everything is woven into your honor, just the way in school, everything counted for Being Cool—or not being cool. One thing that demonstrates your coolness is where you rank at the table. 

It has some consequences for your dinner too. Pliny the Elder was a Roman who described a dinner party in the same period. 

…[the host] set the best dishes before himself and a few others and treated the rest to cheap and scrappy food. He had apportioned the wine in small decanters of three different kinds, not in order to give his guests their choice but so that they might not refuse. He had one kind for himself and us, another for his less distinguished friends–for he is a man who classifies his acquaintances–and a third for his own freedmen and those of his guests. [https://www.romansinfocus.com/sites/www.romansinfocus.com/files/Pliny to Avitus.pdf]

Pliny was horrified by this practice, but it certainly went on. 

Luke shows us Jesus confronting this system of hierarchy and privilege. His comment is simple: 

When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. [Luke 14:8-9]

Simple advice and yet what it means is to overturn the whole system of hierarchy. What if we all ignored the cool kids? What if their table meant nothing? 

I’ve seen this in operation, I’ve seen this come true. I grew up in the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, the NACCC. Every year they hold an annual meeting and its concluding event is a big banquet. Most years, I went through the same anxiety the middle school kids are going through. What table should I sit at? How could I network in a way that might help my career? How could I up my cool, in other words? 

Then I went with Jacquelyn. I still remember going into the first banquet with her; I was nervous as usual, I was wondering where to sit, as usual, I was watching tables fill, as usual, but this time, Jacquelyn was quietly holding me back. I scanned the room and so did she but while I was looking for a cool table, she was looking for something else: an empty table. She found one, pulled me along, and said, “Let’s sit here.” I didn’t know how to say, “No, No No! What if no one sits with us? What about the cool kids table we might get into?” So I just sat down. Gradually, the table filled up. I don’t remember who sat with us; I do remember that from then on, every year, we sat at an empty table. Somehow, though, it was all right; we met some people we might not have chosen. Just as important, instead of being anxious, I learned to enjoy the banquet for what it was: a time of fellowship and connection.

Jesus lives like us in a society that puts a lot of value on some, and very little on others. You signify who’s who with all kinds of rituals: where you sit, who greets you, who you greet. But in the kingdom he preaches, the tables are turned: everyone has value, the last are first, the first last, and the only value that counts is faithfulness to the God who is love. The cool kids are going to hate this; the cool kids do hate it and their first century representatives eventually crucify him for it. But they can’t kill him, they can’t kill this idea: that we are all children of God.

The first step to practicing this is noticing others. Look around: see each person. Each one is a gift of God. See them as a child of God. Each one is God saying: “Watch this!—here’s one of my children.” When we do that, the effect transforms us. It begins here, with us, every Sunday, in the welcome we offer. The reading from Hebrews begins, 

Let mutual affection continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. [Hebrews 13:1-2] 

This is the key: noticing others, showing hospitality that doesn’t discriminate between the cool kids and the rest. 

We don’t know what God is doing all the time; we do know what God has done. So it makes sense to pay attention, notice God’s children, to welcome strangers, knowing even before we know them that they are children of God. Who knows? You just might end up welcoming an angel. 

Amen.

Raised

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost/C • August 3, 2025

Colossians 3:1-11 * Luke 12:13-21

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth,
[Colossians 3:1f]

Paul is talking about baptism here: early Christians were frequently immersed for baptism, held by someone, who dipped them into water, and then literally raised them up. They saw it as acting out Christ’s resurrection. Do you remember your baptism? I’m guessing most here don’t because you were too little. Who was baptized here? We’ve lost that scary part of baptism, traded it in for a fun blessing of a baby. We don’t talk about death when we baptize anymore. 

I’ve done a lot of baptisms over the years. Twice i’ve been a minister in churches where we had lots of families having babies; once in a church where we probably had more baptisms than communion services. There’s been all kinds. Once I almost lost the baby; I was young and not used to holding infants, the child was in a huge christening gown and I felt her slipping inside the gown, so I hurried through the prayers. I’ve had them spit up on me, cry, smile, gurgle as if to talk back.

Our parents went to church, took us, at whatever the appropriate age was, brought us up front, someone put some water on us, maybe made the sign of the cross, prayed over us, and presto! Raised with Christ before we knew it. Perhaps that’s why we don’t often take it as seriously as we should. Today I want to bring some of the things we’ve been talking about this month, making connections, listening to God’s Word, living prayerfully with God’s presence as a way of confronting our world. These are ways to do what Paul says: live raised with Christ, set on things above, not this world.

I want to start with what we read in Luke. Imagine the scene with me. I love the way the old King James Version describes it: “ an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another,” Wow: we’ve all been in crowds, I hate that feeling don’t you? People pressing against each other. And remember, this is before deodorants! Jesus is almost certainly seated in the center; rabbis’ taught seated. There’s no pulpit, no sound system, just Jesus teaching. The crowd is certainly murmuring; someone is saying “be quiet, I can’t hear” someone else is saying “hey you stepped on my foot”. Someone yells out, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” So annoying. There is a thing I think all clergy hate. You’re just about to go in to lead worship, you’re just about to try to inspire a whole congregation, you’re about to preach the Word of the Lord—and someone comes up and says, “oh hey pastor, what did you think about that item at consistory last week?” This is the same thing! The man is teaching eternal principles, but this guy wants him to judge a complicated inheritance case. Moreover, he doesn’t want a fair judgment; he doesn’t ask Jesus to listen to his brother and him, he doesn’t care about his brother at all, he just wants Jesus on his side. He just wants the money, the inheritance.,

Jesus says, “Man, who made me the judge between you and your brother? Then he sets the issue up: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he tells this story. Just like in the parable of the sower, a farmer has had an incredible, miraculous harvest. The story says the land produced abundantly. Notice who is the active agent in this story: it isn’t the farmer, it’s the land itself. So the abundance is really a gift of God. Now the man has a problem and it’s the same problem we all have. ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ For him it’s crops, for the rest of us it’s our stuff.

George Carlin is an old comic who had an entire monologue about stuff. He said,

The whole meaning of life is trying to find a place for your stuff. That’s all your house is, your house is just a place for your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house, you could just walk around all the time that’s all your house is, it’s a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You see that when you take off in an air, and you look down, you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff. Everybody’s got their own pile of stuff and when you leave your stuff you got to lock it up when want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. 

They always take the good stuff they don’t bother with that stuff you’re saving ain’t nobody interested in your fourth grade arithmetic papers they’re looking for the good stuff that’s all your house is it’s a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. Now, sometimes you’ve got to move you got to get a bigger house. You’ve got to move all your stuff and maybe put some of your stuff in storage imagine that there’s a whole industry based on keeping an eye on your stuff.

This is the problem the farmer has: too much stuff! Abundant crops: what to do? What he decides to do, of course, is entirely reasonable. “I’ll replace my barns with bigger ones!” Bigger barns will hold more stuff. Even before he’s called an architect, before the new barns are built, he’s already imagining the wonderfulness of it all. “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ He’s going to have it made!

It’s worth paying attention to the language of this story. First, even before this abundant crop, he’s already a rich man. He has everything he needs; the abundant crop is all surplus to what he needs. Second, over and over again he refers to himself: “’What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ From start to finish, it’s all him, the subject of every part is himself: “I / I / I /I”

At the end of this part of the story, everything is great. The Rich Man is ready to party! That’s where it all collapses, that’s where it all goes wrong. The Lord enters the story, most unusual for Jesus’ parables. And the Lord’s comment on the man is simple, and direct:
“You fool.” This may have meant more to Jesus’ listeners than to us. We equate foolishness with reckless or silly actions. Popular culture has a word for this: “Acting the fool.” But in the Wisdom literature of ancient Israel, the fool is a common term for those who forget God or live apart from God’s rules. Psalm 14:1, for example, says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” When Kings act badly and repent, the Bible often says they have been foolish. This rich man is a fool because he believes his riches can secure his future. Instead, God says, to the fool: “Today your life is demanded of you.” All the stuff will go to someone else. Finally, Jesus leaves us with this principle: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

We know all about getting more stuff. We track sales so we can get more stuff for less money, we know how to invest in stuff to get more stuff. Sometimes in all the stuffing of stuff into our lives, I wonder if there is space for God? How can we be rich toward God?

The things we’ve talked about the last few weeks, connecting with others, listening to God’s Word, a discipline of prayer, these are designed to put stuff in its place. The problem isn’t that we have stuff; the problem is when our focus is so firmly on ‘I’ that we forget God altogether, like the rich man in the story. In the part of Colossians we read, Paul talks about things that take us away from God. He mentions some and summarizes with greed which, he says, is idolatry. And that’s the ultimate human failure: setting up idols that look like us, instead of listening to God and following the path God lays out. 

It isn’t always easy to follow that path. Abraham and Sarah didn’t rejoice every day as they wandered, yet their faith kept them on a path that led them to indeed, as God promised, become a blessing to the whole world. When God freed the Hebrew slaves and sent Israel out from Egypt, they endlessly complained on the way. There’s a point where some said, we should have stayed, at least we got something to eat! But those who kept on the path became God’s people and bore the Ten Commandments to us. We could go on with so many examples, up to and including Jesus’ disciples themselves. They walked with him and frequently misunderstood him; when he rose from the dead, they didn’t immediately believe. 

Yet they eventually walked his way and changed the world.

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, [Colossians 3:1f]

That’s the final issue: are you going to live as someone raised with Christ? Set on the things that are above?— or on building bigger barns for bundles of stuff? It’s the choice we all make; it’s the chance we all take when we follow Christ. See how Paul offers the question?—“if you have been raised with Christ.” You get to answer; you get to live your answer. You will live your answer every day. 

Amen.

Connection

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost/C • Boat/Picnic Sunday • July 13, 2025

Luke 10:25-37

Aren’t we fortunate to live in this beautiful area, gather in this beautiful place by the river? Jacquelyn, May and I live close enough to the river to visit frequently, I hope you notice it as well as you go about your day. The water is constantly changing, sometimes in obvious ways, like when it freezes in the winter, or floods in the spring. Sometimes it’s still and mirrored; other times it foams with energy. 

Water weaves through scripture as an important mark of God’s power. At the beginning, we’re told God’s Spirit moves on the waters and creation results. Later, the signature act of salvation for God’s people is the division of waters that allows them to escape the enslaving Egyptians and again, the waters are divided when they enter the promised land. Washing as a ritual was important in Judaism and still is. The first sign of the advent of the Kingdom is the baptism John offers at the River Jordan and Jesus’ story really begins when he is baptized. At the same time, we know that water can be devastating. I imagine some of you have lived her long enough to remember the flooding in 1972, when Harrisburg was devastated, and we’ve all felt some of the grief over the terrible flooding in Texas that killed so many.

Still, we come to the river, seeking God, and God is here waiting for us to discover that presence. Think of the Susquehanna itself. It’s over 300 million years old. It begins up in New York, near Cooperstown, at Otsego Lake. I live with baseball fans and Cooperstown is the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, so I’ve been there, seen that pretty lake. From there, the river winds its way 444 miles along mountains, past farms, past cities, past forests. Just north of here, it flows past a replica of the Statue of Liberty and Fort Hunter before it flows to us, past us, past Harrisburg and our church, around this island on which we’re met. 

From here, it heads on in a windy, southwestern way, past Three Mile Island and its nuclear reactors, past marshes and towns and finally comes to a great dam at it’s mouth near Havre De Grace in Maryland. There it feeds the Chesapeake; it’s the reason the Chesapeake is not simply salty like the ocean. Its waters flow south, past the Patapsco River that leads to Baltimore, past Annapolis and then the Potomac until at Cape Charles its waters join the ocean.

Think for a moment about how this river, connects us to others. Perhaps others are picnicking along its banks somewhere; perhaps they also search the map of its flood plain when buying houses. It’s not just contemporary people either, the Susquehanna has for centuries nurtured people along its banks, as it does us. How many fish have fed hungry mouths? How many beaver and muskrats have lived along its banks? I remember my first walk down to the river, watching the sun set over its winding water and suddenly seeing a little head pop up: a groundhog was watching me as intently as I watched the river. The river connects us to all these: the people who live along it, the animals, the communities it has nourished for so long.

Now if we think of connection, a good place to begin in scripture is the parable we read today, often called the parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke sets it with an introduction. An educated person is talking to Jesus, asking the deep question I suppose we all ask at some time: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” as he often does, replies to the question with a question: “How do you read the law?” The man replies with a quote from Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” But then he asks another question: who is my neighbor? That’s the tough one, isn’t it? We know “love God, love your neighbor” but who exactly is my neighbor? 

So Jesus tells this story. A man is robbed and beaten and left bleeding along the way from Jerusalem to Jericho. Three men encounter him. Now, Amy-Jill Levine, an Orthodox Jew who teaches New Testament, says that the shape of Jewish stories suggests that once we’ve been told that the first is a priest, the second a Levite, everyone expects the third to be an Israelite. It’s how these stories go usually. But, of course, here the third person is not an Israelite, not even a Jew. It’s a Samaritan. It’s a definitively bad guy. The first two pass him by; only the Samaritan stops to help, and he helps in the most generous way. He bandages him, assuages his hurts with what serves as medicine in that place, takes him to an inn and promises to pay whatever it costs for him to recover. “Which one was his neighbor?” It’s not a hard question at the end, is it?

The first two guys who passed him weren’t bad guys; they’re just on their way somewhere. Maybe the first one is in nice clothes and doesn’t want them messed up by a dirty, half dead man. Blood stains are hard to get out. Maybe one has an appointment in Jericho, and he thinks about stopping, but he just doesn’t have time. So they do the obvious thing, they stay on the other side, they go on by. What’s different about the Samaritan? What does the story tell us? “He was moved with compassion.” It’s that simple: compassion. He sees a man hurt, he doesn’t worry about being late, he doesn’t worry about dirt or whether the hurt guy is a friend or enemy; he’s simply moved with compassion. 

That isn’t always easy. I know I don’t always do it. A few weeks ago, I think my first Sunday as the interim pastor here, it had rained and when I got here, there were two guys sleeping under the arches by the doors to the church. Neither one was bleeding, as far as I know, and I don’t think either one had been beaten up. Clearly, they just wanted a place out of the rain, and they’d found it. They’d both brought big pieces of cardboard to sleep on. I’d like to say I was moved with compassion, invited them in, cooked them breakfast, and connected them with a program to get them housed. But the truth is I didn’t. I said to the one by the east door, “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to wake up and move.” He stirred, looked at me, silently got up and left; the movement alerted the other one, he left too. I picked up the cardboard and put it by the trash. Later, thinking about this, and especially preparing this sermon, reading this parable, I realized my mistake and prayed for forgiveness. Who is my neighbor? I didn’t see him when he was lying right there in front of me.

Thank God I get another chance; thank God I live with an example of compassion. You see, every work day, Jacquelyn deals with hundreds of strangers. Some are great, excited to be going somewhere fun or visiting friends or family. Some are nervous; some are difficult. She has an amazing ability to deal with them even when they are being bad. She has a whole menu of things she does, but my favorite is her final, last straw. That’s when all the smiling and being nice and trying to compromise fails, and she says, “I see it’s hard to be you.” Just that: “I see it’s hard to be you.” 

Long after this service is over, long after the hot dogs and hamburgers are gone and everything is cleaned up, sometime this week, you’re going to encounter someone who has been beaten up. Maybe not by robbers, maybe just by life; maybe by some incident, maybe by a long cascade of incidents. The river reminds us that we are all connected; Jesus reminds us that our neighbor is the person to whom we show compassion. So perhaps you, too, will see that beaten up person and say, simply, “I see it’s hard to be you…how can I help?” And then indeed, you will have fulfilled the law Jesus preached, for you will have lit a candle of love.

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.

Give Thanks for the Appetizers

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Thanksgiving Sunday • November 24, 2024

Joel 2:21-27, Matthew 6:25-33 

It was the year nothing went right. May was in college in Georgia; she decided to go to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving. So Jacquelyn and I were on our own. Then, a friend of ours named Tara was going through a difficult time, so we invited her to come visit. I volunteered to cook, so the women could visit. Now Tara and Jacquelyn both love Victorian home and our town was full of them, so on Thanksgiving Day itself I set about cooking the meal I’d planned while they took off for a walk around our town. 

The real challenge of a dinner like this is getting everything to come out on time. I’d researched the traditional dishes and put a turkey breast in to brine the night before. I patted it dry, rubbed it with oil and spices and put it in to roast, setting the timer according to the directions in Betty Crocker. I chopped and mixed and spiced the various side dishes and got them going. I had everything timed and thought I was doing fine. I was doing the “blast turkey with high heat then turn down” method, so after a half hour, I intended to turn the oven down; instead I turned it off; mistake number one. I didn’t realize what I’d done and thought we were on course. The kitchen mess was mounting when the women returned, talking about how hungry they were and that the house smelled great. They started to pick up bits to eat in the kitchen, I shooed them out, sternly ordering just like my grandmother used to do, “No snacking! You’ll spoil your dinner!” I checked the turkey; not done. They complained about being hungry; I snarled back, “No snacking!”  We waited; I checked the turkey again and it clearly wasn’t cooking. I finally figured out what had happened—along with the fact that we were a solid hour or more from being having dinner ready. Meanwhile, the rolls had burned beyond redemption. Mistake number two. 

It’s a scary thing to tell two hungry women dinner is delayed. I frantically looked around, saw a baguette, sliced it up, spread it with some garlic and tomato sauce and bits of onion, put it on a plate and took it to the women, announcing as if I had planned it all along, “This is the appetizers.” I was so frustrated, angry at myself for my mistakes, feeling like nothing was going right when I heard from the other room the song the choir sang last week: “Give Thanks with a grateful heart.” Except the words were different; instead of,  “Give thanks with a grateful heart”, they were singing, “Give thanks for the appetizers.” We all laughed. The turkey eventually finished. I dropped it on the floor taking it out of the oven, it didn’t matter; we were still laughing about the song. We still do. 

Our Thanksgiving celebration is like the Susquehanna, a river with many sources. Some are harvest festivals, which both the English and the Native Americans celebrated. Some of the streams are legends: no one called the people at Plymouth ‘Pilgrims” for almost 200 years. So there was never a “Pilgrim Thanksgiving”. And we have no record they ate turkey at all on that day; most of the meat was venison, much of the meal was fish and seafood. There is the long history of Thanksgiving celebration in the Biblical record, the New Testament commands to give thanks and most of all the deepest current, which is the power of giving thanks to transform us.

Where shall we dive in? Let’s start with the message we read earlier from the prophet Joel. We don’t know much about him or his time. One thing that’s clear: he preached his Word in the midst and aftermath of a time of fear and desperation. Hordes of locusts had eaten crops and people were afraid. It’s fear Joel addresses here, fear that robs hope, fear that paralyzes. To this fear he says, 

Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things!

Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.

O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for God has given the early rain for your vindication, God has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. [Joel 2:21-23]

He begins with the ground of faith, the history of God’s blessing, and follows the rhythm of creation from land to animals to the trees that bear fruit and the vines that give wine. Only then does he come to us: the children of Zion. God’s first and foremost blessing is creation itself; God’s creation is the ground of hope. “Do not fear…be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!” The answer to fear isn’t redoubled effort, it isn’t what we do at all; it is a Thanksgiving that remembers and appreciates what God has done and invites us to hope in what God will do. The final movement of this song is faith: “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other.” [Joel 2:27]

Jesus is also addressing fear in the passage we read earlier because our fears make us worry. 

31Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” 32For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
[Matthew 6:31-33]

Matthew has wrapped this saying into a summary we call the Sermon on the Mount. We don’t know the exact setting but it’s not hard to guess. Jesus is on the road with his disciples. There must have been times they wondered where the next meal would come from, how they would raise the funds they needed for the ministry, for their own needs. Just like Joel, Jesus calls them to remember God’s creative blessing. He asks them to look around at the lilies, at the birds;
he invites them to put God at the center and give thanks. Thanksgiving is the real cure for fear. Thanksgiving is the doorway to hope.

We’re living in a fearful moment. The locusts of our fear of terrorism and different people are trying to eat up our hope. It’s a story that sells ads, so the media is urging them on; it’s a story that gets attention, so some people who want to lead are telling us the solution is to get rid of the locusts. Last week, I quoted Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, and it’s line, 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

It is especially important that we remember and take to heart the lessons we heard today. Our hope is there; our worry can only be satisfied by the peace of remembering God’s providence and power.

In this moment, in this week, it’s good to remember the Thanksgiving story. It is so overlain with legend and lore that it’s hard to remember the real details. This is the Thanksgiving story. A group of refugees who wanted to worship in the Reformed way, like us, fled persecution in their native land. They went to Holland, where they formed a little cultural enclave. But they don’t really fit in; their religion is different, stricter, their values are different also. So they returned to England and contracted to found a colony in Virginia. Half of the people going weren’t part of the original religious group; they were called ‘strangers’. After a terrible yoyage, they go off course and end up in Cape Cod in November. A measles epidemic had decimated the native population; these new settlers survive by stealing corn from caches those vanished natives left behind. They settle in a protected bay and name it after their departure city: Plymouth. They have a hard time fitting in but some of the native people, the Wampanoag, in the area help them out, teach them how to get along, and they adjust, they adapt. Almost half of the original 102 settlers die the first winter. But eventually they learn to grow corn and other things, they learn to eat the local seafood, clams, lobster and so on. They learn to hunt. 

A year or so later, things are going well. They decide to take a few days off and plan a feast. They invite their neighbors who take one look at the food and decide to supplement it with local meats. Later, the whole experience is romanticized and becomes a kind of living legend. The refugees are now called the Pilgrims. They go on to found churches and communities; they create a culture of congregational democracy that trains people to live in hope, believing God is present and they have a purpose. We are meant to be that people. We are their children. Let us like them, like faithful people in every time, from Joel to Jesus to Plymouth to York, give thanks, the thanks that remembers the Lord our God is in our midst.

Sometimes things succeed; sometimes they fail. The Thanksgiving dinner where nothing went right? It’s remembered by all of us as a wonderful, special one. Somehow, the song—give thanks for the appetizers—the act of giving thanks even when hungry, the choice to see the gift and goodness rather than focus on the failure and fear it transformed the moment. It can transform any moment; it can transform us. Give thanks—this week, always. Give thanks for the appetizers; give thanks to the Lord above. Give thanks and see if it doesn’t grow into a harvest of grace.

Amen.