Category Archives: AfterPentecost-C

Pay Attention

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

16th Sunday After Pentecost/C • September 28, 2025

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 • 1 Timothy 6:6-19 • Luke 16:19-31

“Which side are you on? Which side are you on?” It’s a line from an old union organizing song; in my head I hear Pete Seeger singing it. But it’s also an ancient question it seems people have always asked. As far back as we know, our stories, our sagas, our poetry speak of sides. Homer’s Iliad, the great story of a war between Greeks and Trojans imagines sides, and the Bible is full of them: Hebrews and Egyptians, Israelites and Canaanites. Genesis traces our division all the way to the first brothers, Cain and Abel, with one being murdered. Which side are you on?

The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus 

The story we read from Luke is the Jesus version of a much older parable. It was always obvious that life had immense inequities. Some are rich; some are poor; some live out on the couch of comfort while others huddle on cold cement. Like the parable we read last week, it begins, “There was a man…” Between that story and this one, we’ve skipped Jesus castigating the clergy there for their attachment to riches. Last week we heard about a dishonest manager who finally uses his dishonesty not to enrich himself but to make relationships; now we hear about another man, never named, who is already rich and doesn’t really understand that it’s relationships, not riches, God wants. 

The situation imagined in the parable is common. There is a rich man; there is a poor man. The rich man has good food, good friends, good everything. He feasts every day; he dresses like a king, for only kings could afford clothes made with the expensive purple dye. The poor man has nothing. He’s hungry and sick; he has the first-century version of no health insurance: he lies in the street with sores, unable to even fend off the dogs. His name is Lazarus, but he’s not the famous Lazarus resurrected by Jesus. He’s all the unhoused folks we see on street corners; he’s the person who lost their home and doesn’t even have a car to live in. 

But, we’re told, at death things reverse. Lazarus, the poor man, is carried to heaven by angels. The rich man? The text simply says: “He died”. In the afterlife, they find their fortunes reversed. The poor man cuddles in the lap of Father Abraham, the revered patriarch and companion of God; the rich man is in a place of torment. This is meant to be a metaphor, not an actual description of the after-life. Jesus has borrowed from the Greeks the concept of a two 

Long before Jesus, similar stories were told of a profound reversal of fortune. “Remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony,” Abraham says in response to the rich man’s complaint. The moral seems to be that God seeks a kind of even keel, a balance, and that the more unbalanced we are, the more we should look for reversal in the future. Be careful if your side is up: in the cycle of life, up comes just before down.

Beyond the Story

Other ancient Near Eastern versions of this story end here, with balance restored and the positions of the men reversed. What’s truly curious about this story is how Jesus has used the story to go on and make a profound point about our relationship with God. Consider the conversation in the afterlife. 

What’s clear almost immediately is that the rich man has learned nothing. He tells Abraham to send Lazarus to get him a drink, as if he still was in charge, as if even there, his comfort was the most important priority. When he is refused, he still doesn’t understand the new state of things; “…then send Lazarus to warn my brothers,” the rich man says. Even here, the rich man can’t see Lazarus as anything but a servant, a means of getting what he wants. Abraham replies that his brothers have Moses and the prophets, a way of saying, they have the scriptures. “But if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent,”

But will they? What will it take to get some attention, some attention for God, some attention for God’s purpose and rules? This story is being remembered and told in a church with amazing similarities to ours. The first century was a time of cultural ferment. All around the people for whom Luke’s gospel were written was a rich cultural buffet with many options. Philosophers and preachers held forth on street corners. It was a prosperous time and some were rich; many were poor. Rome made peace throughout the Mediterranean world and trade thrives in peace time. We know that in the time Luke’s gospel was first read, items from Spain were found in Palestine, Egyptian wheat was eaten in Rome, British goods traveled to Iran and the world was full of choices. But in a world of choices, a noisy world full of the clamor of the market, how is it possible to hear God’s voice and God’s word?

Pay Attention Please

Paul makes the same point in a letter to Timothy. Perhaps the most misquoted verse in the entire Bible is Paul’s statement that “…the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil…” [1 Timothy 6:10] Sometimes we say, “Money is the root of all evil,” but that’s not what Paul has in mind. He knows that money itself has no moral value, it’s just a way of keeping score. Money is an energy stored: so much work, so much sold, so much earned. It isn’t money that’s evil; the evil comes from fixing our focus on money. 

What Paul knows is that anything in this world that so occupies us, so consumes us, so captures us, takes our attention from God. That’s what he means to address and that’s what Jesus is lifting up as well. God wants our attention. The ministry of Jesus, the preaching of the prophets, all are a way of God saying to us, “Pay attention please!”

Here is the issue, presented at the end of the parable: if someone comes back from the dead, will even that be enough to get our attention? This is a Christian scripture; this is a Christian question. We gather every Easter to say, “Christ is risen, he is risen indeed,” but is even that enough to get our attention? But then we look at our calendar, we look at our checkbook, we hear the voices of all those who want us to do something, and we begin to respond. Someone needs a ride; someone needs a job done. We make their approval or material things or some other worldly thing become our goal, and it draws us like the North Pole draws a compass. In the midst of it, the voice of God is often lost. Even our religious life can become a part of the noise. American religion increasingly is about what we do. In many churches, the whole emphasis is on getting saved, saying the right formula. Our prayers become to-do lists for God, delegated duties that are beyond our ability.

But what is God saying in the midst of all this noise? God is saying pay attention. And we will never hear the rest until we do pay attention. The first act of faith is not to memorize a catechism or believe something, it is to take God seriously enough to stop doing, stop saying, and start paying attention. The first act of faith is not to say your prayers; it is to stop and listen The first act of prayer is not to ask, it is to listen.

Jesus Listened

Jesus listened, and the amazing thing is that he heard both Lazarus and the rich man. He heard God erasing the sides, refusing the sides: he saw that to God they were one people, regarded with one love. He heard the suffering of the Lazaruses of this world, of course, and all the accounts of his ministry include healing. But he also heard the desperation of the rich ones too. He never stopped listening to the Pharisees, even when they opposed him. He tells them this story: they are the audience here. He invited them to stop choosing sides and follow God in choosing to share with each other, forgive each other, embrace each other.

Which side are you on? It’s second nature for us to choose sides. We do it in sports, we do it in music, clothing, style. When I bought a Nikon camera years ago, I discovered I hadn’t just bought a camera, I had become a part of the Nikon tribe; there were people who got angry at me because I had that brand of camera. We do it in our politics. The last Presidential election was particularly nasty. I see people losing friendships because of it. Now I love politics, I’ve been involved as a volunteer and sometimes a professional for years. But here it has no place; this is not a place for choosing sides, this is a place for paying attention to God.

Following Jesus 

I want to follow Jesus. Following Jesus means first, paying attention to God. When I pay attention to God, what I see is that God is beyond the sides. God is beyond the divisions. Our God is the God of all: rich and poor, alike. So the more we can do to live as binders together, stepping over the division of sides, the more we will find ourselves following in the footsteps of Jesus. That’s why our church continuously offers a chance to do things that recognize people. We do it individually when we baptize someone. We do it when we act in mission together, as we’ve done with the Christian Churches United. We do it individually when we bring a coat or some food. All these are ways of paying attention to God’s call in Jesus Christ to mutual care.

Which side are you on? Only when we realize the sides are just human inventions will we finally find ourselves where God has been all the time: beyond the sides, caring for all, listening to all, loving all. And it is when we know how God has loved all that we also come to the most powerful realization of all: that God loves each of us.

Amen.

The Very Bad, Awful GuyWho Got It Right

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Luke 16:1-13

Jesus loved bad guys. Over and over in the gospels, we hear echoes of this; the good guys constantly grumble that he “eats with sinners”. Who are these sinners? Well they are people who have jobs that make them unacceptable: undertakers, tax collectors, and so on. They include guys who are just a little sketchy and guys that don’t always do what is conventionally the right thing. This is a story about a guy like that. He’s not a good guy; he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad guy who finally does the right thing.

To understand this story, it’s important to understand something about life in Jesus’ time. The whole country was ruled by a foreign power, Rome, and most of their economy is agriculture. Wine from Palestine was sent to Rome, so were figs and dates and olives. These are crops that take a lot of individual effort. Plant a potato, and it just sits there in the ground until it’s time to dig it up. Plant grapes, and you have to tend them all year long. You have to make sure they are up on stakes off the ground, you have to make sure they have the right amount of water. Olive trees take a generation to bear; you reap a crop your father or grandfather sowed. But most of the people doing all this work don’t own the land they farm. Just like rich people are buying up homes today and renting them out, Judah in Jesus’ time was full of landlords. Some of them were rich men from Rome; they bought up a vineyard or some acreage. They wanted the money from the crop but they weren’t about to go out and work for it. So they hired people or they had slaves. Somebody had to supervise all this of course, so they also hired managers. Managers could act with the force of the owner, we call that power of attorney today, it meant that they were in charge.

That’s what Jesus is asking us to imagine: a manager. A guy who runs the farm. He hires people, he fires them; he makes sure they put in a full day’s work, he makes sure everything is done on time. Even today, most farms run on credit. You go to the bank in the winter and borrow the money to buy the things you need to put the crop in, seed, tools, whatever it’s going to take. Where does that money come from? Today it comes from a bank but in Jesus’ time it came from someone like the manager. Farm managers took a cut of this and we know from documents archaeologists have found that they charged huge interest rates, often 50% or more. This makes you a lot of money; it doesn’t make you popular. This lets you get ahead financially; it doesn’t make you many friends. 

Most of the people around Jesus are peasants; they know all about this system. They know all about managers who squeezed them for interest, they know all about being forced off the land when a crop didn’t come in and they couldn’t pay back a loan. I’m guessing they don’t much like managers; I’m guessing they see them as very bad, awful guys. I suspect some of them might have been cheering inside when the story starts out with the manager being fired; “Got what he deserved,” I hear them thinking. 

This is actually the second in a series of three parables about bad, awful guys. The first one is what we often call “The parable of the prodigal son”. Remember that one? A kid goes off and squanders part of his dad’s property but the really bad, awful guy is the older brother who refuses to welcome him home. Next week we’re going to hear about a really bad, awful guy in hell but I’ll save that for next Sunday. So here between those two stories is this one about this manager and I think he qualifies as a very bad, awful guy. 

For one thing, when the story starts, we’re told that he’s been fiddling the accounts. He’s been fired for embezzlement. That is to say: he was stealing from the company, from the man who owned the farm. That’s bad. Now he’s got a problem: he’s lost his job, and he lives with people he’s been cheating for years. He says, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.” In other words, he’s not about to go work like any common peasant. What else can he do? And then he has an idea: he’ll fiddle with the accounts again.

One by one, he calls the debtor farmers in. He asks them how much they owe. Now loans in this time were written differently than ours. If you owe say, $10,000 on a car, the loan says, “$10,000” and then it gives you an interest rate separately; your payment is some part of the loan and the interest. But in this time, the loan as quoted as the amount borrowed plus the interest. So a loan amounting to 50 jugs of oil is written down as 100 jugs; a hundred containers of wheat might be a loan of just 80 or so. What the very bad guy is doing is knocking off the interest. 

Imagine these people for a moment. They’re laboring under harsh, exorbitant loans. When they’re summoned, surely they’re scared: what if this man who controls their livelihood is going to make some new demand? What if he wants a bribe, what if he wants more interest? Imagine being summoned to the bank and told they’re going to cut your mortgage in half. Imagine getting a letter from a credit card company saying, “We’ve decided to cut what you owe us in half.” Joy hardly describes it, does it? This very bad, awful, guy, this manager who is losing his job, has a great plan in this crisis: he’s going to create joy right here, right now, and hopefully it will carry over to relationships that will sustain him. That’s his plan, after all: “…when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’

This is flagrantly dishonest. There’s no way around it: what he’s doing is wrong according to the standards of any society. So it’s a tough parable. In fact, all week long, listening to the podcasts that help me think about texts, I’ve been hearing pastors complain about having to preach this parable. This is a very bad, awful guy but at the end, his dishonesty works. “His master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly,” the parable ends. This is a joke; this is funny. We all know that no master is going to commend his kind of dishonesty.

You can see in what comes after how hard people struggled with this story. Generally, scholars tell us that parables end with the story and the applications were added on. We see this in various places but this is the only one where we have not one, not two but four different interpretive comments. Three of them contradict the plain sense of the story.

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.

If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? [Luke 16: 10-12]

None of these really catch the story’s meaning which is revolutionary. All of them seem to be a way to restore the conventions of the time. So, why does Jesus tell this story? What does he have in mind? 

We have to go back to the beginning of the parable to see that. It  begins with the bad guy worried about relationships. He’s facing a crisis; his whole way of life is about to fall apart. He’s going to have to depend on people. In this crisis, he acts in a way that goes against the rules of his time and his job. In the same way, Jesus is asking people to understand the coming of the Kingdom in him is a crisis that calls for new relationships, for changing how they’ve been living. We’ve heard his parables about the ultimate value of finding the lost; we’ve seen him welcome the lost to his table. The point is back in the parable of the prodigal son, right at the end, when the father tells the older brother who is pouting about the welcome of his lost brother, “This brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” [Luke 15:32] Against the value of finding the lost, the value of good accounting is nothing. 

Recognizing the crisis of finding the lost is the point here. That’s how Christianity spread in its first years. We hear stories in Acts of mass conversions but the truth is, historians believe Christian faith spread little by little and largely because of the example of people of faith. About the middle of the 200s AD, for example, a massive plague spread through the Roman Empire. Scholars believe it might have been something like measles. People were dying everywhere; Rome itself, the city, was collapsing. We’ve all been through a horrible pandemic, we know what that’s like. The basic response of people in that time was to flee and they fled family, friends, communities. But Christians didn’t flee; they cared for the sick. Bishop Cyprian of Carthage said,

bring yourselves to the sick and poor, and help them. God said love thy neighbor as I have loved you [“Litany for a pandemic”.
America Magazine. 222 (10): 18–25.] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Cyprian#:~:text=%22Litany%20for%20a%20pandemic%22.%20America%20Magazine.%20222%20(10):%2018–25.

It was recognizing that relationships of care and love meant more than anything that spread Christianity. It still does.

Now we live in a time of crisis, also. We’ve been through a plague caused by a virus, we’re in the midst of a plague of gun violence. We’re a small church and of ourselves we may not be able to solve these problems. But we can live our faith every day; we can remember that even the very bad, awful guy, finally got it; the question is, will we. Jesus started with a group about half the size of the people who worship here most Sundays; 300 years later, his way was the official religion of the whole empire.

It’s hard to know how seeds will grow. Jacquelyn and I drive over the I-83 bridge almost every week, headed to her work. She drives, so I get to look around. The other day, I looked at the river, at the still standing pillars from the bridge that collapsed and I noticed something amazing. On the top of one of them, a tree is growing. Some time in the past, a seed landed there, I guess. There was enough dirt to let it germinate, start growing and so far the winds and the rain and the storms haven’t been able to push it aside. It’s right there, it looks to be about three feet tall. It’s small: a sapling. But it’s there, it’s doing what trees do, taking in some nutrients, taking in water, taking in sunlight, making oxygen, growing taller. 

What about us? We’re small but we’re here and every Sunday we come together to strengthen each other, pray, remember the way of Jesus. I hope, like that little tree, we’re growing up in Christ too. God hopes this. What do you hope? What will you do about it?

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.

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?

by

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!

by

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.