Category Archives: AfterPentecost-C

By Faith

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost/C • August 17, 2025

Jeremiah 23:23-29  • Hebrews 11:29-12:2 • Luke 12:49-56

…since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us [Hebrews 12:1]

What witnesses surround you? We all live with them, we remember them in stories, we are guided by examples. Do you have a favorite recipe you got from your mom? Maybe a teacher helped you imagine your adult life. Sometimes those witnesses are very present; sometimes we’re not even conscious of how they influence us. Our church has a family story as well and Susan Nelson works so hard at gathering and maintaining the materials that tell that story; we all owe her a great debt. I often take a moment to look at the model of the log church, our original meeting house, and wonder about the people who worshiped there. I wonder if one day another pastor of this church will look back at this time and wonder about it as he or she hears stories about Pastor Sue and how she was such a blessing here after a long search. It’s good for us to share stories and that’s just what the writer of Hebrews is doing in today’s reading.

This section actually started back with what we read last week. Even before that, the writer begins, “Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” [Heb 11:1] Then the writer begins all the way back with Abel, moves through Noah and Abraham, includes Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Moses and the Exodus, and then through all those mentioned in today’s reading. Hebrews is part of the earliest church and most of the Christians for whom this was written are Jews; this is their family story. Not all the names and stories are as familiar to us: do you remember Rahab? She helped Joshua spy out Jericho. Gideon defeated the Midianites and tore down altars to Baal. Samuel was the judge in Israel who first anointed a king and David is the great emblem of a godly King. These are the family stories; these are the witnesses, the ones who stand behind these Christians who are hearing this just as we heard it read today. “This is who you are,” the writer is saying—to them, and to us.

Who is hearing this sermon? We think that Hebrews was written about 60 AD, so it’s about 30 years after Jesus has ascended. There may have been about 6,000 Christians, mostly in Jerusalem and the eastern Mediterranean. There are churches in Greece, probably in Rome. They’re having a tough time. Most are Jews; some are converts from the worship of other gods. Now Roman gods weren’t simply religious; they were part of the civic life of places. Each city had a patron god and, they were worshiped at festivals. We see the same thing today in many places where the label is Christian, but the real theology is politics. So Christians were seen as unpatriotic. 

Being unpatriotic means you could get in trouble with the Roman authorities. Christians were persecuted in some times and places; we have legends of martyrs from the period, beginning with Stephen who was stoned to death. This is part of the family story too: Hebrews says, 

Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— [Heb 12:35b-37]

This is the family story: it goes way back to Abraham and Sarah, it comes forward to friends in prison, friends stoned, friends who have died for their faith. They know that faith in Christ is not easy; they know it can mean division. 

These are the people for whom this was written; these are also the people for whom Luke is offering the sayings from Jesus we heard this morning. It’s a strange passage, isn’t it? Luke in particular goes out of his way to call Jesus, “the prince of peace”. Yet there’s nothing peaceful here. “I have come to cast fire upon the earth,” he says. Wow! Umm… no, thanks? What we’d really like is just to live out our lives peacefully? Fire is scary. 

Yet there’s a great truth here. Fire can be violent and deadly, but in the ancient world especially, it’s thought of as a way of purifying. We still do this; if something happens with the drinking water in the pipes, we’re told, “Boil water” and the way we do that is by lighting some kind of fire or heat. Jesus talks about division as well, and that can scare us. The Roman world was patriarchal; families were ruled by the eldest male. I can’t imagine he was pleased when some family members became Christians. I remember the early 1960s when boys grew their hair out to look like the Beatles. Just long hair was enough to set off my dad and most other dads.

So here is the little group of Christians, some divided from families, some afraid to go to family dinners like Thanksgiving because they are divided from the family. The writer of Hebrews is reminding them that there is a long family story of faith of which they are a part. They are not alone; they are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. 

Now that’s a lesson for us as well. We are living in a time of great division. Churches have divided over issues like marriage for all, over politics, over whether to have a praise band and so many other things. In the midst of the arguing, Hebrews wants to remind us: we are not alone, we have a cloud of witnesses, watching, sustaining us. And they hope we will simply look to Jesus, Hebrews calls him the pioneer and perfecter of faith. It doesn’t matter that we don’t agree about the length of hair, or the type of music; it doesn’t matter that we vote for different people; it doesn’t matter that we don’t agree about other things. What matters is one thing: are we following Jesus? 

In a few moments, we will share communion. I hope you see the others here sharing this symbolic meal. I don’t mean just the people in this room but the others as well who are sitting with us. The few who came here so many years ago and began this church; the ones before them, who inspired them, taught them. The one who will come after us. I hope you see the cloud of witnesses.

…since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us [Hebrews 12:1]

So indeed: let us run that race, following Jesus, knowing we are part of the cloud of witnesses to the love of God in this place.

Amen.

Freedom Now

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost/C • August 10, 2025

Luke 12:32-40  

Years ago, I was a high school track parent. My older daughter Amy was a lithe, fast girl. She ran sprints and she ran relay races. Now the thing about being a track parent is that the meets take hours and your kid, the one you want to see, be seen cheering, runs for maybe five or ten minutes. We lived in a small town, so I knew lots of people, many in my congregation, so a track meet was a chance to mingle, check-in with people, maybe talk to one of the Trustees. The problem was that it was so easy to get involved in doing the business of being a pastor that it was easy to miss Amy’s races. 100 yard dashes take place fast. They line up, bend over in the runner crouch, someone calls ready, set go, shoots of a phony gun and BAM! Ten or 15 seconds later the whole thing is over. It’s easy to miss; it’s easy to let every day things distract you. 

This is just what Jesus is talking about in the section we read today. Honestly?—I’m not sure why this set of verses was put together for reading; they don’t go together. So let’s take them apart and see how they can each feed us. The section begins with the startling statement, “”Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This verse really goes with what we read last week. Remember the parable of the rich fool who thought he could store up enough stuff to maintain his life? Instead of storing stuff, Jesus says God is giving us the whole kingdom. No bill: no payment, free gift, free grace. This verse and others like it led theologians like John Calvin, the originator of Reformed Churches, to talk about ‘violent grace’, by which they meant that God gives the grace of including us in the kingdom without our doing anything to earn it, whether we want it or not. This is freedom: freedom now, freedom to live in God’s kingdom.

If the kingdom is given as grace, what do we do then? We don’t have to work at earning it; we don’t need barns to store up grace. So Jesus tells this parable. Palestinian houses weren’t like ours, they were little fortresses. Frequently several families lived in one house. Think of those old U shaped motels our parents took us to when we were kids: a bunch of rooms, surrounding a central courtyard. The houses were walled because robbers were a constant threat. So at night, the main gate into the courtyard was shut up.

Now imagine the head of the house coming home late at night; Jesus says, coming from a wedding banquet. Wedding banquets could and did run for days at a time, so there’s no way of knowing when the head of the house will return. What’s the job of the servants? Their whole job is to be ready, whenever that return happens. “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit”, the parable says. Don’t be asleep, don’t be busy with something else, or you’ll miss it. 

What happens when you are ready and open the door to the Lord? “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” Wow! It’s a total reversal of things. Masters never serve slaves; what Jesus pictures is a total reversal of what we would expect that comes from being ready to serve. From the prophets to Jesus, the image of a banquet at which all are welcome is a fundamental picture of God’s kingdom. Here, the kingdom is recognized by being ready to serve, so the moment isn’t missed. 

What does this look like in practice? It might mean something small, like passing by the school supplies aisle and remembering we’re collecting such things this month. It might be saving someone’s life. The village of La Chambon in southeastern France is just a small place. Most of the people worship in the same Reformed tradition we do here. Instead of German Reformed, they are French Reformed, called Huguenots. Hundreds of years ago, they were persecuted by Roman Catholics and the Kings of France, and they haven’t forgotten. In 1940, when the Nazis defeated France, La Chambon was left in the unoccupied zone. But even there Jews were persecuted. Pastor André Trocmé and his congregation offered shelter to these refugees. Many were not French; no one cared. They put them up in private homes, in schools, in their church. They forged identity cards and ration cards for them; some of them were guided across the Swiss border to safety. From 1940 to 1944, they sheltered 5,000 people; 3,500 of them were Jews. A majority of them were children.

There was a cost. On February 13, 1943, Pastor Trocmé and his assistant were arrested and interned. They were eventually released but had to go into hiding. His cousin, Daniel Trocmé was arrested in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz, whether he was murdered. Others who helped were shot by the Gestapo. In recent years, they have been recognized by France and by Israel, where they were honored by being included in a list of rescuers called the “Righteous of the Nations.” After talking with many residents, a filmmaker was so impressed with how they saw what they did as ordinary, that he said, 

“These days we seem to think that good people are those who agonize. They ” sleep on it” and maybe in the morning their conscience gets them to do the right thing. No- this idea is wrong. People who agonize don’t act. And people who act don’t agonize.” [LeChambon]

What’s needed is simply a moral readiness that doesn’t count political party or our own opinions, that only counts what is right, what path Jesus points out. 

Last Tuesday, I was in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel in heavy traffic. There are two lanes into the city and both were jammed; we were creeping along at 15 miles an hour, frequently stopping. Suddenly, far behind me, I saw flashing red lights, and then I heard a siren. An ambulance was trying to get through, and my first thought was, “No way it’s getting through.” Then I noticed something strange for city traffic: people were stopping, letting the left-hand lane drivers in ahead of them, clearing the lane. It all happened fast and suddenly the ambulance, with all its signs of emergency, was flashing past me. The kingdom comes like that. This is what Jesus is teaching, that the kingdom comes as a sudden, urgent, immediate moment and our job is to cooperate with it, move with it, help it to come. Like the servants in the parable, we are told: be ready, live ready, because kingdom moments come when we least expect them. 

In a few moments, we’ll release a group of butterflies, signs of hope, signs of fluttering beauty. But before they were butterflies, they were in a chrysalis, an enclosure. Then at some moment, each one pressed against the chrysalis, bursting it, freeing its wings, expanding them, ready to fly. That’s God’s invitation to us: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” The kingdom is coming; you don’t know when. Get ready; live ready, every day.  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.

Standing In the Need of Prayer

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost/Year C• July 29, 2025

Genesis 18:20-32 • Luke 11:1-13

In 1972, I was a newly licensed ‘Reverend’, hired for the summer to be an interim minister, while a church outside of Detroit started to search for a new pastor. A few days after I started, I was asked to visit a member in the hospital. The man was dying, the family was gathered. It was my first hospital call and as I stood there, I felt out of place; I had no idea what to do. Finally, one of the family members said, “Reverend, could you do a little prayer.” And I did. It’s more than fifty years since that first hospital visit and what I’d discover as I went on was that people always asked for a little prayer; in all that time, no one has ever asked for a big prayer, even though I’ve been asked to pray for big things. Today, we heard the disciples of Jesus ask him to teach them to pray, and I want to think with you this morning about what it means to pray. 

Let’s start with what we heard from Genesis. Isn’t this the most ideal setting for prayer? Abraham is talking to the Lord like you’d talk to your boss. Just before this, God appeared to Abraham and Sarah. They’re senior citizens; the days when they left You’re on the promise that God would provide children and a place are long gone. Like any couple, I suppose they’ve adjusted, had some hard times, but overcome them, settled into a life. Now God comes and, even though Sarah is long past child bearing, blandly tells them that she’s going to have a child before the spring. Incredible! Amazing! Ridiculous! So ridiculous that Sarah laughs at God, though later she denies it. In that deep wisdom of women, I suspect she’s thinking, “It may be God, but God doesn’t know much about women and babies.” 

We’re told that after this, the men look toward Sodom on the horizon. Now because of a misunderstanding about Sodom, it’s important to say as soon as we mention it, that the sin of Sodom has nothing to do with sexuality, gay or straight. The sin of Sodom is violently treating people who aren’t citizens. It’s the violation of hospitality that stains Sodom, and God is angry about it. “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin,” God says. And then we have this sort of prayer; after all, any conversation with God is a prayer. I’ve always loved this prayer, this conversation, where Abraham changes God’s mind.

The Lord is about to destroy Sodom. Abraham asks, “What if there are 50 righteous men in the city?” God agrees it would be wrong to destroy the city if there are 50 righteous men; Abraham argues and finally gets God down to ten; ten righteous men are enough to save the city, it turns out. This tradition continues today: ten men are called a minyan, the minimum number required for a synagogue to hold worship. Isn’t this an ideal image of prayer? God is right there; Abraham argues, God relents, and finally agrees to what Abraham asks. 

Wow. I wish my prayer life was like that, don’t you? Hey God, look, I don’t like your idea about what to do about…fill in whatever is annoying you. How about changing that? Hey God, I have this problem, could you solve it please? Hey God, my friend is sick, could you heal her please? Annie LaMott says there are really only two prayers: “Help me Help me Help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you”. I guess those qualify as little prayers, and I know I’ve prayed both of them. 

When we want more than a little prayer, we often turn to written prayers. My first job in a church was writing a prayer of invocation for each Sunday; I was 16 and fortunately none of those prayers survive. In the same way, Jewish people have and had prayers commonly said. The Caddish is a prayer offered at times of mourning but also in the regular synagogue service, dating back to the time of Jesus. It begins,

Heightened and hallowed be his great name in the world he created according to his will. And may he establish his kingdom in your life and in your days and in the life of all the house of Israel, very soon and in the coming season.
[https://virtualreligion.net/iho/prayer.html#qaddish]

There are other prayers as well, including one called, “The 18 Benedictions”. Certainly there were others, and Jesus’ disciples apparently believe that John the Baptist taught his followers a particular prayer. So now we hear them ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

What follows is what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” We usually use a longer version given in the Gospel of Matthew. But clearly the same prayer is envisioned here. It begins with something we translate, “Our Father.” But the original language has a sense “our father” doesn’t convey. I don’t know about you, but I never referred to my father this way; we called him dad, among my brothers and I and to his face. Jesus begins with ‘Abba’. Some translators and scholars believe this should be translated, ‘daddy’; some disagree, but all agree that what’s said in this beginning is a relationship of intimacy and care. So right from the start, Jesus is saying our relationship with God is like a child cared for by a good parent.

This is the point of the parables he tells as well. Palestinian homes were little fortresses; at night they were locked up just as we lock our houses. That’s my job at our house; every night I go around and make sure the doors are locked. But see what Jesus asks us to imagine: a friend comes asking to borrow bread so that he can offer hospitality to a guest. Hospitality is a key virtue in the kingdom and the question is, will you get up and help or lay in bed? Jesus says you’ll get up, at least because the guy keeps knocking. Then he asks simply, do you think you are better than God? None of you would give a child who asked for an egg a scorpion; 

If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
[Luke 11:13]

What’s being taught here isn’t a formula, it’s a relationship. It isn’t a set of words, it’s a way of being with God. 

The rhythm of that being is behind the words. It begins with affirming God’s reign: who’s in charge here? Is always a great question. It’s especially important to affirm in a culture where we are taught that we are in charge of ourselves. Who’s reigning in your life? It moves to our daily needs, symbolized by bread. We are creatures who need to eat every day and putting the two things together—God’s reign and our need to eat—reminds us of who we are. And then at its center, is the prayer for forgiveness, a way to let go of where we failed and to have compassion on the failures of others. Finally, the prayer asks that we not be tested, a reminder of how Jesus himself was tested. There’s a lot that could be said about all of these but for now the most important thing to say is that Jesus doesn’t seem to be teaching a set of words but a way of living. That way is knowing God reigns, and we are God’s people.

Two weeks ago, we listened to the Parable of the Good Samaritan and I talked about its teaching of compassion; last week we talked about listening to the Word of the Lord. Today we hear Jesus invite us to not just say a little prayer but live our lives as prayers, knowing God as a compassionate presence, knowing we sometimes fail, offering our needs and our failures both to God. 

Taken together, these three pieces—connection, listening to God’s Word, prayerful life—are a recipe for daily discipleship. They are the manual for Christian life and the foundation of our faith. Next week, I’m going to talk more about putting this into action but if you want to get a head start, it’s easy. Pick a quiet time; imagine someone who really annoys you, and ask God to help you understand it’s hard to be them, and for God to help them. Listen to God’s Word; feel free to take the bulletin home, they’re free, read over the lessons from today. Listen to them in your heart. Ask God for whatever you need; remember that God reigns and gives good gifts. Remind yourself that one of those good gifts is you, yourself.

There’s an old spiritual, “Standing in the Need of Prayer,” from which this sermon takes its title. It describes where we all are, every day. Jesus doesn’t teach a prayer: he teaches a prayerful way to live. May that life be ours.

Amen.

Prophetic Patriotism

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

by The Rev. James E. Eaton, Pastor

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost/C • July 6, 2025

Matthew 5:13-16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Are You Ready?

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

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

Luke 9:51-62

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Up and Go!

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Second Sunday After Pentecost/C • June 22, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Generous Pour

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Trinity Sunday/C • June 15, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Rejoice All Ways

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Rejoice All Ways

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY
by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor
Thanksgiving Sunday • November 20, 2016
Philippians 4:7-25

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, “Rejoice!” -Philippians 4:7

Times to Rejoice

On a cold December night in Michigan, my granddaughter Maggie was first slipped into my arms and I was so happy: that moment defined the word ‘Rejoice’. A couple days before, her husband had called and told me my daughter, Amy, had complications from the delivery. Jacquelyn, May and I piled in the car and drove through a snow night to Michigan. When we got there, the crisis had passed and we had the joy of this beautiful baby girl. We rejoiced.

Of course, I can think of other things that have made me rejoice: the simple, honest purity of a good breeze on the water filling the sails and the boat lifting, making the special music of a perfectly trimmed sailboat as she burbles forward. There is the moment, captured in my memory like a diamond on a girl’s finger, when I looked up the aisle of my church and saw Jacquelyn glowing at the other end, beginning to walk toward me at our wedding. I know you have a list of such moments and today would be a great day to share some with others at coffee hour.

Julie Andrews famously sang in The Sound of Music about “…a few of my favorite things”. We all have them. They make us happy, they give us joy, and I suppose that feeling, those things, are the first things that come to mind when we hear Paul’s command to rejoice. But he isn’t content with happy: he expands the thought to say, “Rejoice always.” How can we rejoice always? Because we do not live only in our favorite happy moments: there are all the other ones as well. How can we rejoice in those?

Paul’s Call to Rejoice

Paul is not having a happy moment. He was in prison when he wrote this letter; historians disagree on whether he was in Rome or Ephesus, but there’s no disagreement that he had been imprisoned and probably, as he says in other places, beaten. Paul was a disturber of Jewish synagogues and communities. More than that, the language he and Luke were starting to use about Jesus was a direct confrontation of the Roman Emperor. It’s always important to remember Jesus was executed for political crimes, for proclaiming the rule of God. Now, Paul and Luke and others are using the language of the emperor to speak about him. So it’s especially curious in that setting that in his final summary to the church at Philippi, he calls on them to rejoice. What does he have to be happy about? What do they? What do we?

Doesn’t rejoicing often come from telling stories? We gather perhaps for dinner, we tell stories of other dinners, other times and the stories help us understand who we are together, how much we are cared for in the circle of that gathering. Now we have a story as Congregationalists as well. It’s the story of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving.

The Story of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving

There are many moments since Paul when the light of the love of God has become muddy with human rules and practices. Five centuries ago, a group of people in England just like us were searching for that light. They gathered, a few at a time, listened to the Bible, discussed it, prayed and began to imagine the churches they heard about there. They lived in a moment when churches had been hollowed out by human greed and jealousy. Bit by bit, they imagined and dreamed of a church that was purified and their opponents called them Puritans. Because the new church they imagined would have no bishops, it threatened the whole English establishment. So King James responded by arresting some, executing a few and pushing the others to emigrate. They moved to Holland, to Leyden. But the foreign customs and language there made them long for a new place, their own place and almost exactly 400 years ago, they began to arrange to create such a place in the new world.

Finally, in 1620, a group of them left their pastor and church, returned to England and made ready to sail. There were only 50 or so Puritans on board and another 50 people were recruited because they were carpenters or had other needed skills. They departed at the beginning of September; a sister ship, the Speedwell, went too but had to return when it was too leaky. They were at sea for 66 days. Two months, most of it spent below decks, with their goats and other animals. Two months where anyone over five feet tall had to bend because the ceiling was low; two months of the boat moving and rolling. They expected to land in Virginia; instead, they made landfall on Cape Cod in early November. Although they weren’t where they were expected, they rejoiced and their Deacon, William Bradford, led them in singing Psalm 100, the same Psalm we shared today.

After some exploration, they settled in the area we now call Plymouth, partly because it’s wide tidal beach made landing easy and it appeared vacant. In January—January in Massachusetts!—they began building houses, joining the single men with the 19 families to form groups. Over the next month, they built their community—and 31 of them died, a third of the company. By the end of that first winter, almost half the original community were gone. Did they have a reason to rejoice? Yet we find in their writing, a curious faith, a deep joy. Its source is their absolute conviction that, as Paul says, “The Lord is near”. Living near the Lord, despite the cold, the hunger, the sickness, they continued to rejoice. They made friends with local native people; they learned to plant corn. Children were born.

The Pilgrim Thanksgiving

That fall, with the harvest in, they set a day of community thanksgiving. They did what Puritans often did then, a tradition Congregationalists have mostly dropped: they held a day of fasting and humiliation. But at the end of it they had a party. And they did what we do with parties, they invited their friends and neighbors, in this case the local native chief. Much to their surprise, not only did he come, he brought 103 men with him. Now the Puritans, the people later generations would call Pilgrims, didn’t have a lot. They hadn’t figured out cranberries were good to eat but they had blueberries. They had corn prepared in various ways. Turkeys they had: these could be caught by hand. The native men looked around and realized that these people didn’t know about deer season; they left and brought several back with them. Perhaps that’s where the tradition of bringing something with you to thanksgiving dinner originated. After the feast, the native men did something else: they taught them a game we call lacrosse, a game that contributed to the beginning of football. So you see, even then they watched the game.

What Are We Celebrating?

The Pilgrim Thanksgiving was not the first by Europeans in America. But it spread throughout New England and then into places like Ohio and Michigan and across the north. During the Civil War, when President Lincoln was looking for a symbol of national unity, he was the first President to proclaim Thanksgiving as a national day, a day of unity, time to set aside political and social conflicts and celebrate our common gratitude for God’s blessings.

But what are we celebrating? At many tables this week, everyone will be encouraged to say something for which they are thankful. It’s a wonderful custom and I recommend it to you. But if our joy is measured by our prosperity alone, we will have missed the spiritual message. For thanksgiving is not pay back: get good stuff from God, say thank you like your grandmother taught you. Thanksgiving is a way to say, we know you are near God, we see you sustain us God, we know whatever happens, we can depend on you, we can believe in you, we can have faith in you. That’s why we can rejoice always: in prison, in freedom, in hunger, in prosperity: the Lord is near.

Paul points the way to make this thanksgiving a central part of our lives. He lists marks of Christian life: “..whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise”. And then in a part beyond the set reading for today he says,

I have learned to be content with whatever I have. 12I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. 13I can do all things through him who strengthens me. [Phil. 4:11b-13]

God’s Presence: a Reason to Rejoice

It is his consciousness of God’s presence, a consciousness honed in all the ways of life, in prosperity and in need, in fear and in triumph, that allows him to rejoice.
So also let us give thanks, not as repayment, but as rejoicing, rejoicing in all ways, in all the ways God has led us. Let us share the stories that lead us to thanksgiving; let us remember the stories of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving. They set a table but had no idea who would show up; so also, our table is always left open, always has room. From their little community would grow a great tradition of freedom, of thanksgiving, of rejoicing in all ways. Today we are their inheritors; today we also are called to rejoice always.

Amen.

Do Over, Do Now

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Listen to the sermon being preached at the link below

Do Over, Do Now

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY
by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor
24th Sunday After Pentecost • November 13, 2016
Isaiah 65:17-25

“I want a do over.” I was standing in the cockpit of my boat, trying to back out of the slip. There were two things different about this time. First, we had an audience; some friends had come over to say goodbye. Second, it had gone totally wrong. Jacquelyn cast off the lines at the front perfectly. I put the boat in reverse, all 17,000 pounds started to move backward and then it stuck and swung the wrong way. Everyone hurried to help, but the boat didn’t respond. Finally I figured out that I had left one of the lines on the stern tying us to the dock connected; as soon as I untied it, we were fine. But I had looked ridiculous and created a dangerous situation and all in front of our friends. I wanted a do over.

“I want a do over.” The first time I remember hearing the phrase was from my son. We were playing with a basketball; some game where we took turns throwing it at a basket, trying to get to a score. He would miss and say, “I want a do over” and come up with some excuse, some reason: he was off balance, the ball had slipped: something. Later on, I came to the same feeling on my own, mostly as a parent. No one prepared me for the fact that parenting was so arbitrary, so make-it-up-as-you-go. There were so many times I wanted a do over. Have you ever felt that way? I wonder if that is how God feels about the world: “I want a do over”. In English, we have “Behold I make a new creation” but the Hebrew really says, “Look at me, I’m making a new heaven and earth. “I’m having a do over.”

Understanding Isaiah’s Word

We have to understand the setting to which Isaiah brought the word we heard this morning. God’s people had been disastrously defeated 80 years or so before, a defeat that shook their souls as well as destroying their nation. Thousands became refugees and many were taken into captivity in the foreign city of Babylon. Ever since, God’s people have listened to their grand parents tell them, “In Jerusalem, the gardens were better…in Jerusalem, the weather was better…in Jerusalem, the temple was better”. Now the Persian king has released the Jews and some have returned to Jerusalem. But they’ve gone home to something like Berlin in 1945 or Aleppo today: a wiped out city with ruined buildings. This is the moment in which Isaiah speaks this Word from God and he speaks it to people who must have thought, “We need a do over.”

Our Destination

So we have this Word and the Word really is about where we’re going. What is our ultimate destination? I’ve lived most of my life along the great parallel defined by I-90, a road that begins in Boston, runs through New York, loops south to take account of the Great Lakes, runs through Pennsylvania and Ohio, Indiana, Chicago, up through Wisconsin and Minnesota, then across South Dakota and Montana, where it rises into the mountains and snakes through the passes of Idaho before it flows out into the desert of Eastern Washington, jumps the Columbia River and ends in Seattle. I’ve lived in Seattle, I’ve lived in Boston, and no matter which I was in, I never forgot the one at the other end. I knew the road had a destination; I knew where it was going. God is offering a vision here of where we are going. I’m making new heavens and earth and this is what it’s like: you’re going to enjoy it, you’re going to build houses and live in them, have a vineyard and enjoy its wine. It takes a long time for vineyards to bear fruit but you’ll still be there. I’m going to be there and I’m going to anticipate your every want. Thirdly, the wolf and the lamb are going to lie down: in other words, there is going to be peace, even the natural world is going to be at peace. That’s where we’re going; that’s what the do over is for: that’s our destination. Don’t worry about the trip: God knows where we are going.

Jesus: Endure

The same faith flows through what Jesus says in the reading from Luke. Jesus is a rural person and so are most of his followers. Think how they must have been dazzled by Jerusalem; think how the big buildings, the sights, the sounds, the smells must have impressed them. They must have felt this was a permanent place. Yet now Jesus tells them it’s all going to be destroyed, desolated: “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Just 35 years or so after Jesus said this, it came true, and Luke’s readers know it’s true. Like the shock of Pearl Harbor or the towers falling on September 11, they are living in a moment of shocked grief when it must have seemed, as the poet Yeats said,

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
 Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

He goes on to warn them about the immediate aftermath: violent times, demagogues, false preachers, persecution. All these things have happened in the life and experience of the Luke’s audience. Yet at the end Jesus invites them to this one faith: that in the love of God, there is a permanent place: “…not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Our future is in the hands of a God who loves us.

What About Now?

So: we know where we are going—what about now? What do we do now? Because we know it’s not like that now. The wolves and lambs are not lying down together now. What we are doing is living between the past and that vision. These readings have two ideas about what to do now.

Work Here, Work Now

The first is to work here and now toward that vision. Someone said the Puritans were so effective because they believed everything depended on God but they acted like everything depended on them. They believed God’s faithfulness; they lived faithfully to God. Our nation has come through a long and divisive campaign. Some are triumphant today; many are despondent. But our future is in God’s hands. Our mission remains the same: to sustain here a community of care, where God’s love is evident in the embrace of people who have been embraced by Christ. The Rabbis say: if the Messiah comes, still finish your Torah study for the day. Work is the creative activity by which we are carrying out God’s will in the world. So we are called to work now, we are called to work here, for justice, for the embodiment of peace. We have been hearing this fall about the world changing effect of forgiveness. We have been hearing this fall about the world changing effect of finding the lost. We change the world when we do this now.

Witness

The second thing to do is witness. Luke is writing about 15 years after everything he says in this section has already happened. The temple is already destroyed; people are already being arrested for being Christian. What Luke understands to be our job in the present is to witness. Don’t worry about how you do it either, Luke says. This part always makes me smile at books on how to witness. How do you witness? Live your life: that’s your witness. Live your life in a way that allows Christ to make a difference. A number of social researchers have looked at Christians and others in terms of their behavior; what they find is being Christian often makes little difference. Your witness is to let Christ make a difference in your life now.

Because Christ can make a difference, in good times, in bad times. In 1945, just before his execution by the Nazis for resistance, a German soldier wrote these words to his mother.

Dear Mother: Today, together with Jorgen, Nils and Ludwig, I was arraigned before a Military tribunal. We were condemned to death. I know that you are a courageous woman, and that you will bear this, but, hear me, it is not enough to bear it, you must also understand it. I am an insignificant thing, and my person will soon be forgotten, but the thought, the life, the inspiration that filled me will live on. You will meet them everywhere— in the trees at springtime, in people who cross your path, in a loving little smile. You will encounter that something which perhaps had value in me, you will cherish it and you will not forget me. And so I shall have a chance to grow, to become large and mature.

Amazing Grace

God’s work in the world through people who endure in faith is amazing.
The people that went into exile in Babylon did return and rebuild Jerusalem but they did something far more significant. While they were in exile, the stories, the teachings, the books that now know as the Hebrew Scriptures were brought together and given their final form. The kings and armies and politics of that time are just obscure footnotes read by historians today. The scriptures they brought together have inspired three great faiths and people ever since.
The little group, not as many as are here today, who heard Jesus and endured in their faith in him and his teaching and his vision of God’s reign did see the temple fall, did see the persecution but they endured. They kept his memory; they became his body. Through all our stumbling history, that faith continues today and we are their inheritors. In our lives, in our witness, it has, as the resistance either said, “..a chance to grow, to become large and mature.”

So grieve, celebrate, take a moment to bind up wounds and see where you are. But remember that where we are is not where we are going. Where we are going is in the hands of a God beyond our vision of greatness or defeat. When we grieve, we should not do it as people without hope, as Paul says, but as people who have put their hope in the God who doesn’t fail. The creative God who when all seems dark still can say: “I’ll have a do over: behold, a new creation.” Let us give thanks to God as we work, as we witness, as we wait for God to make the new creation.
Amen