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Conversations Before the Cross 4

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A Man Born Blind from Birth

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Fourth Sunday in Lent/A • March 15, 2026

John Chapter 9

What are his references? That’s a question most of us ask in one way or another from time to time. Employers ask it: no one hires someone without at least trying to find out how they did previously. And the answer doesn’t always have to be positive! I was fired from my first job as a ministerial intern in seminary after a long period of conflict with the senior minister. A while later I began looking for a new job and found a church and minister that really excited me. I told them about my experience, trying to be objective, not trying to hide any of the details; I remember the minister interviewing me saying, “So, you resigned from your last job? I said: No, I was fired. The minister said he didn’t feel a need to check my references, but of course he did, so he did something ministers do under the circumstances: he called a friend in a church nearby. So not long afterward I was called into the senior minister’s office to hear him say, well I decided to do a little checking on you after we talked, so I called a friend who knows the situation in the church where you worked…and he said the guy you worked for is crazy and being fired there is an honor!

What are his references? It’s a question that creeps into our relationship with Jesus in one way or another. We see his story through the glasses of our common sense, our life experience and our own individual histories. We look for the points in these histories that can connect and explain his story. These are Jesus’ references. There’s nothing new about this process, the earliest Christians did the same thing. They were in many cases Jews who looked for a special person from God, just as God had sent Abraham, Moses, Elijah, David and Elijah. In many ways Jesus met these expectations, but in others he did not. The story about the man born blind from birth was remembered because it spoke to the questions of Christians trying to live their daily lives in harmony with God’s intention—trying to understand whether Jesus of Nazareth was a part of that intention.

This story matches the story of the church. It is our story. We also are people who encountered Jesus, were changed by him and now live in a world where his presence is not always apparent. We look forward to a final time when our Lord will appear beside us and we will be able to see him and touch him. Our problem is what to do in the meantime. This is finally an individual challenge: remember, neither the blind man’s friends nor his parents, neither the crowds nor the Pharisees, were any help to him in understanding how to live with his new sight. There is a mystery here, a mystery that lies at the heart of the way God loves us. For in the structure of our relationship with God there is a scandalous particularity, an individuality, that shakes the foundations of every life that takes it seriously. “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?”, the Psalmist asks, and the answer is always someone’s name, some particular name, some particular person. 

Why one person and not someone else? Why you and not me? Why me and not you? This scandal, this particularity, lies near the heart of all our questions about suffering and meaning. Who is this blind man that he should be healed—while others remain blind. Is his moral life more faithful? Does he pray more deeply or more eloquently? Is his faith stronger or in need of strengthening? Nothing in the text answers such questions, nothing in the action of the story gives any explanation. So it is with us, isn’t it? Since ancient times, one strand of thought in Israel held misfortune and disability and disease to be the direct consequence of sin, sometimes a consequence carried on through generations. There is a part of our religious impulse that always wants to quantify. So much sin, so much grace: measured out like the sugar and flour of a cake mix, balanced off like the weights on a jeweler’s scale. But Jesus directs attention away from the surface to the deeper realities of the situation. Sin is related to grace, of course, but not as the disciples think. The man’s life is not a result of his own action but is part of the structure of God’s revelation. The blind man is about to become the living gospel, the person who bridges the gulf between God and human being.

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall go for us”, the Psalmist asks, and the answer is always some particular person at some particular moment of time. So Jesus came to a small village for a moment and opened a blind man’s eyes. We tend to think of such characters as special, different, not like us, but the fact is that he is precisely like us. He is a young man who has overcome the obstacles of his life, found a trade and is working industriously at it. He is just like us: pregnant with the possibility of epiphany, capable of becoming the candle by which the divine flame of God is seen to burn and give light. The disciples want to give this man a practical explanation, almost a scientific one. “Who sinned?”, they ask, “This man or his family?” But to Jesus the man’s circumstances including his blindness are an occasion for showing God’s presence. “This happened so that the work of God”—some translations say glory of God—“might be displayed in his life.”

The Pharisees of the story are puzzled because Jesus doesn’t follow what they expect: His references are nonexistent and his behavior is scandalous. Since they don’t know who he is they concentrate on the how: their concentration on the question of how Jesus healed the man is so striking that he finally asks if they also want to become his disciples. They are seeking a clue to the who through the how: They want the regular procedures followed; they want the rules to apply to everyone. They want to know who Jesus was: where he came from, where he’s been, what schools h attended, how he learned to heal. There is comfort in the past: it is predictable, it is safe, it can’t get out of hand and surprise you. “We are disciples of Moses,” they tell the man.

But they’ve forgotten Moses was once a wild, free spirit on fire with God. They’ve forgotten the Moses who asked to see God, though that was against all rules. They remember only the rules Moses left. Moses said, “Keep the sabbath holy” and they have transformed that into something else entirely: don’t work on the sabbath. They can’t see that healing is holy; they only see Jesus breaking a rule. Finally, they conclude, he can’t be from God. They don’t know his references and so they simply say, “As for this man, we don’t know where he comes from”.

But the blind man is amazed at this: here are the religious and political authorities of his life puzzled. 

Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from yet he opened my eyes. If this man were not from God he could do nothing! 

This is the ultimate testimony of the believer, the follower of Jesus Christ: that our lives have been changed, healed. And that this is so, regardless of how the world may see or understand that change. Sometimes the change is remarkable and radical. Sometimes it is internal and quiet. Sometimes it leads to moments of soaring courage; more often to the simple endurance of living life hopefully each day. The blind man’s history hasn’t changed but now he lives with vision. He is healed. His future is new; as Paul said, “In Christ there is a new creation.” Christ calls us to a new creation, a creation beyond the rules we knew and lived by.

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” This blind man—this particular life, at this particular moment—is the means by which God chooses to work and call others. Who would have thought God would choose such people: a nine or ten year old shepherd, a blind man sitting by the road side. You, me, the person sitting in the pew next to you: are these really the means by which the Almighty God chooses to work and become known? Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? It’s us: there isn’t anyone else. The people of these Bible stories are not the heroic figures we romantically assume. They are people who are busy about their lives and getting on with them. People who have their own hearts and hopes but who are changed when they become the particular way God’s work is demonstrated and moved forward.

The blind man’s story is our story as well, if we are the followers of this Jesus of Nazareth. The blind man is not any more prepared to become the visible agent of the invisible Spirit than you or I, and the whole event causes considerable disruption in his life. Friends desert him. His parents refuse to defend him. The religious and political authorities of the village and the area cross-examine him and threaten him and are finally puzzled by him. Through all this, the agent of his change—Jesus, the one who caused the change—is nowhere to be found. If this is, as I suggested, intended to be not only the story of the blind man but the story of the church and therefore our story as well, what does it suggest the task of faithful Christian people is?

The clue to the answer is near the end of the story. After all the shouting has died down the man meets Jesus again, though of course he doesn’t recognize him—remember, he’s never seen Jesus before. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks, and when the man asks who this is, Jesus reveals his identify: the man replies, “Lord, I believe.” What is the most important task of believers? Perhaps it is simply to be believers—to live as believers—to keep living as believers. This is, a simple and yet enormously difficult formula. Our culture, like the culture of the first century Christians who remembered this story, is hostile to Christian faith and seeks to erase it by a concentration on the technological question, the question of how things are to occur, how life is to be lived. So our culture constantly offers us formulas: take control of your own life, read this book, listen to this speaker, see this therapist, try this diet. In this culture, our faith offers not a how but a who: Jesus of Nazareth, God’s anointed, the Christ who comes into the world. We offer an invitation: not to take control of your own life but to offer your life to God who is known in this man.

To respond in this way is anything but easy. It’s striking to realize how difficult the blind man’s life becomes after he is healed. His friends and family desert him, his trade is lost and the local authorities keep after him. Does he have moments when he wished he had his simple life back, wished the l light would go out again and he could sit by the side of the road begging? Perhaps, but what the story suggests is a man so transformed by this experience that he can hardly imagine his former life. At the end of the story, when he knows Jesus, the text simply says “he worshipped him”. Christian faith is finally this: the ability to worship Jesus, not because you have been given satisfactory references but because you have seen what he has done and know that if this man were not from God, he could do nothing. What are Jesus’ references? You are—I am—we all are together. “You are the Body of Christ and individually members of it”, Paul says. We are the ones he is healing; we are the ones he has taught to hope. Hope is ultimate healing. It comes not from a reference or a technique but from a decision about whom you will believe and what you will worship. 

Nowhere is that decision more clearly defined than at the end of this story. There finally we have the alternatives we also face. The blind man responds to Jesus simply when Jesus reveals his identity: “‘Lord I believe’..and he worshipped him”. The Pharisees are still fussing, still asking, “What are his references?”. By the end of the story, the blind man has a vision that lights his life; the Pharisees are blind. 

We walk in a forest throughout our lives. There are dark shadows that stretch out; there are places where the path is not clear. There are dangers and difficulties and moments when the way opens on inexpressible beauty. As we walk through this forest, we must ultimately decide whether we will trust the vision of Jesus Christ or stumble blindly, hoping on our own to avoid the pitfalls. Nothing guarantees our choice. Putting a cross on the sign does not mean we will not act like Pharisees inside. Only our decision to freely embrace Jesus as a guide can keep us on the path; only our commitment to come to him, as the blind man did, whatever our lives, whatever our history, and simply say, “Lord, I believe”.

Amen.

Conversations Before the Cross #2

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A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Second Sunday in Lent/A • March 1, 2026

The black and white flickering picture on the screen highlights the dark points of farm implements, makes the wrinkles on faces stand out, tells us the movie is sometimes long ago. It’s the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, but it begins with the dust and dreary farm and the harsh black and white light. We’re in Kansas in the depression. Dark clouds forming a funnel, an image burned on everyone who’s ever lived in tornado country as disaster in motion, and suddenly the house is lifted, Dorothy with it, whirling through the air. When it lands and she opens the door suddenly the world is transformed: it’s now in color. Perhaps you know the story, how Dorothy sets off to find the wizard and a way home. Along the way she meets the Scarecrow, who wants a brain, the Tin Man, who desires a heart and the Cowardly Lion who begs for courage. Each is invited to come along and each has to ask the same question this conversation asks us: do you believe in the possibility of transformation? Can the world change color, can the leopard change his spots, can the whole world change—can you change?

That’s the question Nicodemus is left pondering. He comes to Jesus at night, when good Jewish men are locked up in their gated homes. He is a substantial man, well off, presumably married with kids at home. He’s respected, a leader in his community and his synagogue. Yet something brings him out, some need, some emptiness. Long after Nicodemus, St. Augustine would write, “Lord, you have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” [Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1] Perhaps he has a restless heart. Perhaps he’s just curious.

He comes to Jesus with courtesy, calling him Rabbi, a term of respect, roughly comparable to “Reverend” or “Teacher”, and he says that he knows Jesus “came from God”. He’s been impressed by the signs Jesus has done. Presumably, he means the healing which was an important part of Jesus’ ministry. He doesn’t ask a question; he simply comes. What would you have asked? What do you want to know from Jesus? Perhaps Jesus is used to such seekers; perhaps he simply sees the restless heart before him. He says, simply, directly: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

What do you hear Jesus saying? We are so used to American cultural religion with its emphasis on what we do, on the gospel of achievement applied to salvation, that we may hear the familiar phrase, “You must be born again.” But that’s not what Jesus says. First, he doesn’t command anything. There’s no imperative here. It’s a simple, flat statement: “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.” I think Nicodemus must have heard the born again part, as we often do. Because he immediately focuses on the physical: no one can be born again he says. We apply the same thought, often, to ourselves. Nicodemus makes the obvious argument: grown up, grown old, we can’t go back ad start over. “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Isn’t this really what most of us think? You are born, you grow up, you learn things, you experience things. You have some tough times; you have some good times. At times you prosper, at other times you don’t. Through it all you accumulate all those bits and pieces that make you, you. And among them are some scars, some injuries that left a mark. Maybe it was a marriage that didn’t work out; maybe it was a loss, maybe it was a friend who isn’t a friend any longer. Maybe you never quite lived out some dream you had earlier on. How do you go back and restart  after all that? I’ll tell you a secret only two people in the world know: I wasn’t that great a parent to my oldest child. I didn’t know how to be a parent, I certainly didn’t know how to parent a girl. I didn’t tell her how proud she made me nearly enough, and I wasn’t kind enough, and I didn’t know how when she raged to think, “Well, she’s 13, it’s just hormones,” and walk away, so I yelled back. I’d give a lot to  go back and change that. But I can’t.

Maybe you have something like that, something you wish had been different but never will be. So maybe you agree with Nicodemus: you can’t go back. If you do, then it’s so important that you listen closely to what Jesus says. Because you and I and Nicodemus have all misunderstood Jesus if we thought he was talking about going back. He says,

‘You must be born from above.’

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [John 3:8]

Jesus isn’t talking about being born again at all. He’s talking about being born of the Spirit: being reborn. Jesus isn’t talking about undoing the past: he’s asking about the future. The wind blows where it will: it’s hard to predict, it’s hard to see. So is the future, and the question isn’t what about the past, but what are you going to do about the future? Can you live as someone born new today from God’s Spirit?

This starts with seeing. How many of God’s blessings do you see each day? How do you see other people. We are being asked today by a great political movement to see people of other faiths, Muslims particularly, as fearful. Do you see others, strangers, as children of God, the same God who loves you? Can you see this way? Can you start, not over, but fresh each day, freshly looking out for what God is doing. There was a moment when Western surgeons learned to treat cataracts which were often the cause of people being blind from birth. Annie Dillard talks about some of these people in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, concluding with this case.

…a twenty-two-year-old girl was dazzled by the world’s brightness and kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When at the end of that time she opened her eyes again, she did not recognize any objects, but ‘the more she now directed her gaze upon everything about her, the more it could be seen how an expression of gratification and astonishment overspread her features. She repeatedly exclaimed,
‘O God! How beautiful!’ [Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 30f]

Jesus invites Nicodemus  to a new life, not to a do over of his old life; not to be born again but to be born from above, into a new spiritual life.

This, he says, is his purpose: 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

And the first step is to believe and begin the journey. 

What happened to Nicodemus? We don’t know; the gospel never mentions him again. But sometimes it takes a while for the seeds of the spirit to sprout and blossom and bear fruit. There is a moment when the Tin Man, the Scare Crow and the Cowardly Lion think the gifts they seek, the new life they hoped to find, will never happen. What happens then? The wizard gives them each a gift to recognize the gifts they already have. The Scarecrow gets a degree, the Tin Man a heart and the Lion a medal for courage. What about you? What would it take to change your life? What would it take for you to believe that’s possible, that you can be born from above? 

Perhaps it is to simply to see God’s love, the way that girl saw the world. Maybe one of your wounds is that somewhere along the way, someone suggested God was sitting like a judge, writing up everything you’d ever done wrong. Maybe your list is long. Then listen: God is here, not to judge, but to love; God is here, not to judge, but to save. God is here, inviting you to start fresh today. God is here: how beautiful.

Amen.

Conversations Before the Cross 1:

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Satan Speaks

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

First Sunday in Lent/A • February 22, 2006

Matthew 4:1-11

What was the best day of your life? Go there for a moment: remember it. Was there a party? Were you with a few people, family, a crowd, or were you alone? Was there cake? There’s often cake on the best day of your life. What did it smell like? How did it taste? Did you know then it would be the best day of your life? I mention all this because Jesus’ baptism must have been about the best day of his life, even though there is no report about cake. I don’t think chocolate cake had been invented yet, so perhaps it doesn’t matter. But there was a crowd, his friend John, and wow: a voice from heaven! Even when Jacquelyn and I were married, there was no voice from heaven, though she looked like an angel. “You are my beloved child, I’m pleased with you.” Some of us live our whole lives waiting to hear that; it must have been amazing. 

All of this is a prelude, it turns out, because no one gets to live in the best day of their life forever ,and for Jesus, the next day is terrible. It’s like living here, having it hit 50 degrees one day and then a couple of days later barely making 16. Ouch: things sure can turn around. In the life of Jesus, the turnaround is to go from heaven opening to being driven into the wilderness and going hungry for 40 days. No cake; no food at all. Just the dangerous, daunting, desert wilderness where all you can hear is your empty stomach begging to be filled. This is the site of temptation: this is where temptation always occurs, when we are empty. How can I get what I need? Isn’t that the question that leads to temptation? 

“Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include this story, apparently using two different versions which they combine. Since no one else is present, we can only conclude they are relying on Jesus’ own account of his time in the wilderness. Geography is theology in the gospel. To go from the Jordan River into the wilderness is to go backward on the journey of God’s people. There, just as they had been, Jesus is hungry, thirsty, and there he faces temptation. He faces it alone: the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove has flown off; the voice from heaven is silent. Jesus, as the song says, has to walk this lonesome valley by himself.

Alone, hungry, vulnerable, Jesus fasts for forty days and nights. Here is the first thing to learn about temptation: it often comes when we are most vulnerable. Today we rarely practice the spiritual discipline of fasting in Protestant churches, but our fathers and mothers in the faith did. We took over Thanksgiving from the Pilgrims; seldom mentioned and almost never included in Thanksgiving is the fast that preceded it. Today, the Lenten discipline of giving something up has fallen into disfavor, but giving something up, taking something off the table of possibility, induces temptation. It walks us into the valley where Jesus walked.

Imagine him there in the desert. He’s lost but beyond worrying about direction. There is a moment when you become so focused on your hunger that nothing else matters. This is the moment he hears the voice of temptation; this is the moment, alone, hungry, vulnerable, he is like us, on his own, facing temptation alone. Three temptations are mentioned, but in a sense, they are the same temptation. All of them circle back to this simple principle: who’s in charge here?

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.” This is the first test.

A few days before, he is acclaimed as Son of God, but what does that mean? The first temptation is to use who he is to sustain himself on his own, to feed himself. God fed the people of Israel with manna, bread, in the wilderness; why shouldn’t the Son of God feed himself by making bread appear? It is a test: if you are the Son of God—the question suggests that perhaps he is not the Son of God after all. Does he believe in what’s been said? Does he believe in his own call? And can that call, that power, be used for himself, to meet his own needs? The second temptation, to recklessly throw himself out into the air, depending on the angels to save him, is like it. Both ask: do you believe who you are? Show it by using the gifts of God not for God’s purpose but for your own.

The Wizard of Earthsea is a long story about a young wizard who becomes so proud of his gifts that he uses them to show off. But in showing off, a dark side of him splits off, and the rest of the tale is a story of how that darkness darkens the world until finally, as a wizard named Sparrowhawk, he must confront the darkness. Along the way, he learns this most important lesson: that all gifts are given with a purpose, and the purpose is to serve others and serve the larger unfolding, blossoming purpose of the creator. The challenge of the temptation to Jesus asks whether he will serve his own needs or stand in humility and serve the unfolding purpose of God. Why am I hungry, he must have wondered: the answer is so that in hunger, he can learn humility.

The final temptation in the wilderness sums all temptation up because it asks who Jesus is serving. All the kingdoms of the world are offered, a way of summing up worldly success; only serve me, the tempter says.

How does Jesus face these temptations? He faces them by living from God’s Word. Today we live in such a self-regarding culture that worship is often judged by the standards of entertainment. “I really enjoyed that,” someone will say, and there are endless advertisements for preachers to help us make worship more fun, more interesting, more lighthearted. But worship is really a way to come back to the Word of God. This is what finally answers temptation and it is the only thing that answers it. Three times Jesus is tempted; three times he quotes back God’s Word to the tempter.

We all walk through times of temptation. We all walk through wildernesses. We all face questions. Tracy Cochran writes, 

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. “[Quoted by Tracy Cochran, In the midst of Winter, an Invincible Spring, Parabola, Spring, p. 26]

If we want to find the adventure, we have to walk through the temptation and answer the question of who we are serving. 

This year, this season, this Lent, I hope to walk with you, listen to God’s Word, listen to the characters in the story, listen to their questions. Here is the first and most important and the tempter is asking it every single day: who are you serving? Rainer Rilke, a German poet, said in a letter to a young friend, 

I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” [Rainier Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1903.]

This season, we are challenged to live the questions God’s Word asks, to confront them, to wonder with them, to let them live in us and change us.

Amen.

Remember Who You Are

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Fifth Sunday After Epiphany/A • February 8, 2026

Isaiah 58:1-12 • 1 Corinthians 2:1-16 • Matthew 5:13-20

What are your rules?  We all live with rules. Before I got here things morning, I put on a suit and tie; I grew up with a rule that said this is how professional men dress. Even when I was a little boy, my mom would make me dress up and stick a clip on tie to my shirt. Today, wee drove down Front St.; Jacquelyn drives and she obeys speed limits. I came in, put in the code for the alarm because that’s the rule for entering the building. And before I came to lead worship, I put on this robe. The robe originated in the 16th century; it’s what college people wore. It was a reaction against the fancy vestments of Anglican and Roman Catholic clergy. Somewhere along the way over the years, we added on a bit of the vestment for color, and that’s why I have this stole. It’s a symbol that says I’m ordained to lead worship and administer the sacraments; the color is chosen by the rules for different seasons, it’s not just whatever I feel like wearing. So you see, already before I even said, “The peace of the Lord be with you”, I’ve already threaded my way through and entire matrix of rules. We all live that way: I’m sure you could think for a moment and list a half dozen rules about dress and behavior you’ve already observed today. I begin today with rules because the scripture lessons we’ve heard today are all about rules and how to understand them.

To understand, we need to know a bit of history. In 586 BCE, the Babylonians stormed Jerusalem and destroyed it. They took the gold from the Temple and burned it, the Temple that had stood for 400 years, since the time of Solomon. They took the leaders and many others into captivity in Babylon. Fifty years later, the Babylonians were defeated by the Persians from present day Iran. The Persian king allowed the captives to return and rebuild the Temple and they began to do that. To commemorate this wrenching history, four days of fasting were instituted each year: one for the day the siege had begun, one for the day Jerusalem fell, one for the day the Temple was burned and a fourth that commemorated the murder of an early leader in the rebuilding. 

The oracle we heard this morning comes from the third prophet to use the name Isaiah, and he lived during this period. Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of European cities after World War 2, full of ruins, people slowly moving among them. That’s how we should imagine Jerusalem in this time. Temple worship was renewed, and the fast days were proclaimed. But people did not feel God’s presence and that’s what’s reflected here. It’s a about people who are performing the rituals of faith without its heart—and God’s reaction.

Shout out; do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

“Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.

[Isaiah 58:1ff]

In other words, their world is falling apart and their connection to God is distant; they don’t feel God answering them. 

It’s as if they’re looking for God and saying, “Hey! You’re not obeying the rules! We fasted, we spent a day in ashes, we went to worship, home come you’re not working for us?” It’s as if faith in God were a transaction. Go to a store, pay your money, you get your goods; doesn’t God work that way? Fast, pray, observe the rituals—shouldn’t God do God’s part? How many of us have tried this. Someone we love is sick or in danger, something we dread threatens, and we pray what I call the “If prayer”: “If you heal this person, avert this disaster, do what I want just this once, God, I’ll go to church, make a donation, or do something we think God wants.” These people are doing the If prayer in a larger way, and it isn’t working. They think God isn’t abiding by the rules, but the truth is, God’s rules are simply different.

So the prophet goes on to explain the sort of fast that God wants.

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin? [Isaiah 58:6f]

If you remember last week’s reading from Micah, you may be thinking this sounds a lot like what Micah said, that God wants us to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. That’s the heart of God’s rules; that’s the core of Torah and Jesus is going to sum it up when he’s asked and say the greatest commandment is to love God completely and to love your neighbor as yourself.

That’s great in general. But as one leader said, “People don’t eat in  general, they eat every day.” How can we embody this day to day? We’re living through a difficult time. People are so divided that even simple social events have become minefields. No one wants to lose friends and yet, we are meant to live by God’s rules. This is why the downtown clergy organized the pilgrimage for peace. We didn’t want another partisan demonstration, we didn’t want signs—although some people brought them—we didn’t want to shout. We wanted to step back and say just what we begin every worship service with here: “The peace of the Lord be with you.” We wanted to show our community what the mind of Christ looks like and that it’s so much more important than the labels on our churches or our politics. Peace is not just refusing to argue; peace is something deeper, it is seeing the dignity of each person, understanding they are a child of God. That lifts yokes, as Isaiah says. 

Living this way is what the Apostle means by having the mind of Christ. The people fasting and complaining are failing because they think outward gestures alone will attract God. Having the mind of Christ means looking at things differently, a way that shows a concern for others. That’s not how our culture is teaching us to think these days. We all know the signs: the way that we’re constantly invited to division. When I was an elections official, we once spent ten minutes talking about what colors of clothing were appropriate for poll workers: no blue, no red, no hats, no slogans. It’s more rules than the ones for which stole! We can all see where this has gotten us: two people shot and killed in Minneapolis, the arrest of thousands of people just trying to do exactly what our great grandparents did, go to America, work hard, make a life. How do we change this shift? How do we live with the mind of Christ.

I found a story the other day that I want to share about a man my age who learned to do this. His name is Frank and this is how Frank woke up.

I almost threw a punch in the checkout line last Tuesday. Not because I’m violent, but because at 74 years old, I finally woke up.

My name is Frank. I’m a retired mechanic from outside Detroit. I live alone in a house that smells like old dust and silence. My wife, Ellen, passed six years ago. My kids? They’re busy in New York and Atlanta, chasing careers, raising grandkids I mostly see on FaceTime.

I realized recently that I had become invisible. I was just “that old guy” blocking the aisle with his cart, counting pennies because Social Security doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.

Every Friday, I go to the big superstore on the edge of town. It’s the highlight of my week, which tells you everything you need to know about my life.

That’s where I met Mateo.

He was the cashier at Lane 4. Young, maybe 22. He had a piercing in his eyebrow and tattoos running down his arms—sleeves of ink that disappeared under his blue vest. To a lot of folks from my generation, he looked like trouble.

His English was heavy with an accent. He’d say, “Did you find everything okay, sir?” and most people wouldn’t even look up from their phones. They’d just shove their credit card at the machine.

I watched people treat him like furniture. I heard a lady in a fancy coat huff, “Can’t you go faster?” I heard a man mutter, “Learn the language or go home.”

Mateo never flinched. He just kept scanning, smiling, and saying, “Have a blessed day.”

Three weeks ago, I was behind a young mother. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, a baby crying in the cart. She was buying store-brand diapers and two jugs of milk.

When she swiped her card, the machine buzzed. Declined.

She turned beet red. “I… let me put the milk back,” she stammered, holding back tears. “I get paid on Monday.”

Before I could reach for my wallet, Mateo was already moving. He didn’t make a scene. He didn’t announce it. He just pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill from his own pocket, scanned it, and handed her the receipt.

“It is covered, Miss,” he said quietly. “Go feed the baby.”

She looked at him, shocked, whispered a thank you, and hurried out. The next customer immediately started complaining about the wait.

But I saw.

That night, I sat in my recliner and stared at the wall. Here was this kid—working for minimum wage, getting treated like dirt—giving away his own money to a stranger. Meanwhile, I’d spent the last five years feeling sorry for myself.

The next Friday, I wrote a note on a napkin. When I got to his register, I slid it over. It said: “I saw what you did for her. You are a good man.”

Mateo read it. He looked up, and for the first time, his professional mask slipped. His eyes got watery. “Thank you, Mr. Frank,” he whispered.

We started talking. I learned he works two jobs. He takes night classes online to become a Paramedic. “I want to save lives,” he told me. “My parents sacrificed everything to get me here. I cannot waste it.”

Then came last Tuesday.

The store was packed. Tensions were high. Inflation has everyone on edge. A large man in a baseball cap was slamming his items onto the belt. Mateo made a small mistake—he had to void an item. It took an extra thirty seconds.

The man exploded.

“Are you stupid?” the man shouted, loud enough for three lines to hear. “This is America. Why do they hire people who can’t even work a register? Go back to where you came from!”

The air left the room. People looked at their feet. The cashier next to us looked terrified. Mateo just stared at the scanner, his hands trembling slightly.

My heart was hammering in my chest. My whole life, I’ve been the “keep your head down” type. Don’t make waves. Mind your business.

But this was my business.

I stepped forward. My joints ached, but I stood as tall as my 5’9″ frame would let me.

“Hey!” I barked. My voice cracked, then found its steel.

The angry man spun around. “What?”

“He works harder in one shift than you probably do all week,” I said, pointing a shaking finger at Mateo. “He is studying to save lives. He helped a mother buy diapers when she was broke. What have you done today besides yell at a kid?”

The man turned purple. “Mind your business, old man.”

“Decency is everyone’s business,” I said. “You want to be a tough guy? Be tough enough to show some respect.”

The line went deadly silent. Then, a woman behind me started clapping slowly. Then another guy nodded. “He’s right,” someone muttered.

The angry man grabbed his bags and stormed off, muttering insults.

I looked at Mateo. He wasn’t trembling anymore. He was standing straight, shoulders back. He looked at me, and nodded. A silent bond between a 74-year-old rust-belt retiree and a 22-year-old immigrant student.

I walked to my car shaking like a leaf. I cried in the parking lot. Not out of sadness, but because for the first time in years, I felt alive. I felt like a human being again.

Yesterday, Mateo handed me my receipt. On the back, in neat handwriting, he had written: “My father is far away. Today, you were like a father to me.”

I’m sharing this because we are living in angry times. We are told to hate each other. We are told to pick sides.

But here is the truth I learned at Walmart: You don’t have to solve the border crisis. You don’t have to fix the economy. You just have to change the air in the room.

Be the one who speaks up. Be the one who sees the person behind the name tag.

We are all just walking each other home. Make sure you’re good company. 

[https://www.facebook.com/MindInspireofficial/posts/i-almost-threw-a-punch-in-the-checkout-line-last-tuesday-not-because-im-violent-/716147278216554/]

God’s rules aren’t complex or difficult. Love God, Love your neighbor. Have the mind of Christ whether you’re here or at Walmart or Giant or work or somewhere else. In the mind of Christ, all people are God’s children. It’s the ultimate birthright citizenship: every single person included. When we live like this, when we make our church a temple of this kind of love, we are truly God’s people. Then we shine like a lighthouse of love; then indeed, we are like a lamp set on a stand that gives light. So remember who you are: God’s child, Christ’s follower. Act like it, live like it, share it.

Amen.

One Day

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor ©2026

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany/A • February 1, 2026

With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. 

—Micah 6:6-8 (NIV – Used by permission

An old man is walking on a path with the sea off to his left and as the breeze blows on the water and his family trails quietly after him, we might think this is a group on the way to a picnic. But soon the concern on his face and the worry in the eyes of his family show and it’s clear a picnic is not their destination. We see a cemetery: row on row on row of white crosses and we’re told this is Normandy, this is the great American cemetery where thousands and thousands of American men are buried. Men who stormed ashore across those beaches in fear and fire to defeat an awful demonic evil. Men who gave their lives so others, so that you and I, would be safe. Here is a man who was part of that generation which grew up in depression and then was called to go off at the beginning of adulthood to kill or be killed. As the man stops in front of one particular cross, the tears stream down his face. He turns to his wife and says, “Am I a good person? Have I lived a good life?” 

The scripture reading pictures just such a moment. Am I a good person? Haven’t we all asked that question: The lesson imagines a man who comes to a priest or prophet, to someone he believes can speak for God, to ask just that question. Am I a good person? What can I do to be a good person? With what shall I come before the Lord? One by one he goes through the options the ancient world suggested. Should I bring a year old calf? Can I be justified for the price of a cow? Should I bring thousands of rams? Rams are male goats. I’ve never seen thousands of them but once I brought a baby goat home from school to keep at my house overnight. That one single goat made such an incredible mess of our basement and smelled so bad that I can’t imagine anyone having a thousand of those things in any kind of religious meeting house. Should I bring streams of oil? The oil they mean here is olive oil. It was used for cooking and perfumed and used instead of bathing: you would pour the oil over yourself and then scrape it off. Should I bring streams and streams of oil? 

You see what this man is doing? He’s bidding for the love of God. I asked the children in a church once, “What would it cost to hire your mother to do what she does for you?” I got lots of responses: $15, $20, even $100! What would it cost to be a good person before God? —a prize calf, a thousand rams, streams of oil, even a first born child. The religion of Israel didn’t practice child sacrifice but others around them did. One archaeologist has discovered at Carthage a place with over 15,000 baby skulls. That was the cost over the years of people feeling they were good persons before their God. This man is not exaggerating, he is asking what it will cost to be a good person before God and he’s wondering if it might not be very dear indeed. He wants to know the answer to a question we all ask: What does God want? What does God want from me?

The answer is simple: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. Justice in the Bible comes with a special concern for the poor, the immigrant, the widow, the child, for anyone, in other words, who is vulnerable. Mercy is that unlimited love God models for us which asks not what is fair but what will help. Justice is about public policy , how we act as a community; mercy is what we do as individuals to fulfill our vocation to bless others. Humbly walking with God means simply thinking God might be more right than your own opinion. This may seem simple; it turns ought to be tough. Every church meeting for example begins with a prayer for guidance; most then go on as if What We Did Last Time is the true Torah. We say, “It seems to me…” and share our good common sense although clearly nothing in the scripture makes sense. There, an old woman named Sarah has a baby, a tree trimmer named Amos knows more about God’s Word than all the Ph.D. temple priests and fishermen become apostles.

What does God want? Do justice; love mercy. These things are hard so we often substitute social service programs. A number of years ago I worked in a church with a food pantry. The rule for getting food from the food pantry was simple: if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. This rule never bothered the poor folks who got food; it always bothered the well to do folks who handed it out. We had long committee meetings about the rule and how to change it so that only people who deserved food would get it. Some of the farmers from the area churches didn’t like the pantry feeding migrant workers because they felt the workers didn’t hav]e as much motivation when they knew their families would get fed regardless of whether they worked. Some people didn’t like giving food to women on welfare who drove cars even if it was the only way their kids would be sure to get a decent meal. Finally after years of wrestling over the pantry rules, an old man said at a meeting, “I’m tired of arguing about this. The Bible says Jesus told his disciples, ‘You give them something to eat!’  He didn’t make any rules and neither should we”. There was a long silence and in that moment a miracle happened: a program with the rule mentality of the Department of Social Services turned into a place where Christians were doing justice. In the eight years I worked in that church the food pantry went from being a little four or five bag a day operation to a program costing $39,000 a year. But the  biggest change wasn’t in the food pantry, it was in the people who ran it as they came to understand what it meant to do justice even when it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t fit the rules.

 What does God want? Do justice, love mercy, show them both in your daily walk so that walk becomes more about following God than getting where you think you should go. Now we are at the beginning of a new decade. We have a choice: we can make this moment like one of those opening prayers at a committee meeting that’s forgotten by the time the minutes are read or we can ask, “What does God want?” If we ask, it will soon be clear that God does not want a calf, God does not want a bunch of goats, God does not want streams of oil. What God wants is simple: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly. Isn’t that when we are at our best? 

A few years ago some Congregationalists, Reformed churches just like this one, got together with just these purposes in mind. A slave ship named Amistad had landed in New London and they did what we do best: held a meeting. The meetings expanded and soon the step that’s natural for Congregationalists was taken: they organized a committee. That committee worked for years until finally those slaves were set free and even the United States Supreme Court had to admit that slaves were people. Just about every old Congregational Church in New England has some part of this story to tell. One congregation I served founded the first school for the children of escaped slaves during this time. Why did these people do this? Because they heard what God said: Let my people go; because they asked what God wanted and heard God wanted justice and mercy and humility. That moment, when Congregationalists set out to do justice, is one of the best chapters in our story. And if we want to write a chapter just as good, it will take more than raising enough money to buy a calf and some goats and olive oil, it will mean spending more time on how we can do justice and love mercy better instead of just refining our knowledge of Roberts Rules of Order.

It’s hard to know how to do these things. But I know what it looks like when it happens. One summer I was in Boston with Jacquelyn. We have a continuing argument her about giving money to pan handlers. I keep quoting a theologian, William Sloane Coffin, to the effect that charity is not justice; she keeps saying, they need the money. We were crossing a street and there was a man in a wheel chair who had been pan handling without much success. He was about to go try his luck elsewhere. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her get her dollar out. But he didn’t see it, so he went on about his business, which was finding a better corner to pan handle, so he started to cross the street. She got to the other side and he wasn’t there anymore, he was out in the street, halfway across, and she went running after him, out into the street, to give him that dollar. When she caught up with him, he looked at her like she was a crazy woman, I don’t think he has a lot of people running after him to give him a dollar. And I knew I’d lost the argument. I thought, that’s it, that’s what we should be doing, running into the street because we love mercy so much we just can’t bearÏ to miss a chance to show some. We should be doing what that old man did at the meeting: reminding each other of just what God has to say about justice and asking how we can do some. We ought to ask of every program in this church, we ought to ask of everything that is said in this church, how is this going to help us do justice, how is it going to let us express mercy, how is it a part of our walk with God?

The image with which I began is the beginning of the movie Saving Private Ryan. The man in the cemetery is Ryan, now grown old, but most of the film is a flashback to a time after the invasion of Normandy when a patrol was sent to find and bring back Private Ryan. The flashback ends with a battle on a bridge and there is a moment when Private Ryan confronts the commander of the unit which had been sent to save him. It’s a moment full of the sound of explosion, the smoke of gunfire and the confusion and fear of everyone. As the captain lies dying, bleeding from wounds he received saving Private Ryan, he grips Ryan’s arms, looks into his eyes and says, “Earn this…earn this.” God has given into our hands all of creation and the time to enjoy it, to live in it, to appreciate it. But creation is not just a fact; it is an occasion, it is an occasion for us to live out the great potential we have to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God. Each day asks: what is to be done; each day invites us to do what God wants. One day we will; will this be that day?

Amen

This sermon has been revised. It was originally written for the United Congregational church of Norwich, CT, won the Connecticut Fellowship Sermon Award in 1999 and was preached at the communion service of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches in 1999

What’s In a Name?

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Fourth Sunday in Advent/A • December 21, 2025

Isaiah 7:1-10 • Romans 1:1-7 • Matthew 1:18-25

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet; / So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, / Retain that dear perfection which he owes / Without that title.

Juliet has a problem: she’s fallen in love, deep, hopeless, the way adolescent girls do, with a boy who’s from a family her family hates. She famously points out that it’s his name that’s the problem, not he himself. So, just like a favorite football player, traded to a new team, putting on a New Jersey, she suggests he simply get rid of the name.

Names are the first things we get, and they often reveal something about who we are. Romeo’s last name is Montague, and he’s the enemy of the Capulets, Juliet is a Capulet, and the families are enemies. Names often carry meaning, honoring someone like a grandparent or a friend. I was named after my dad’s best friend when I was born. He played trumpet in the University of Michigan band. Later, they had a disagreement, so I haven’t seen the man I’m named after since I was about six. Some names show affection or are private. Jacquelyn is from Texas, and when we became a couple, she brought that southern spirit home. She calls me “Preacher man,” and no one else is allowed to use that name, and no one does. It’s her private name. All three of today’s scripture readings encourage us to name our savior. They challenge us with different names and invite us to experience him in various ways.

To understand the section from Isaiah, we need a bit of background. King Ahaz’s Judah is caught between Egypt to the south and Assyria to the east. Some local kings have allied with the Egyptians and want Ahaz to join them, so the kings of Damascus and Samaria are at war with him, fighting around Jerusalem. He’s unsure of what to do, and when he turns to the prophet Isaiah, he’s told to rely on God. Isaiah invites him to ask for a sign from God, but Ahaz refuses. So, Isaiah tells him what sign will be given: a child who will be named Immanuel. ‘Immanuel’ means God with us; it comes from the Hebrew word for God—El—and the Hebrew for ‘with us’. Isaiah is teaching Ahaz this fundamental fact: God’s permanent presence. He wants him to make a difficult choice: to rely on God when Ahaz only sees the armies of his opponents. 

Isn’t it interesting how we all approach tough decisions? What’s the first thing we do? Do we crunch the numbers, jot down the pros and cons, or maybe just rely on a well-worn saying or some online advice? What if we really considered God’s presence in that moment? What if we turned to God in prayer, asking for less of a direct answer and more of God’s hope? What if we called God Immanuel? How would that shift our perspective? How would it transform our church?

I used to go to a gathering of clergy every April and I had a lot of friends who were older ministers. One year, a discussion leader asked us to talk about what we actually did during the week. For me then, it was mostly researching the scripture, preparing a sermon, so I said that; most of the people in the group said the same. One of us, a man I had come to respect a great deal, said, “Every morning I go in the office, look at the calls, say hi to my secretary and then I take the church directory in the sanctuary and I sit and pray for each person in the church.” I was stunned. I certainly prayed for people but usually just the ones who were in the hospital or sick or had asked for prayer. I’d like to say I went home and started doing this and I did for a couple of days but then things got in the way and it slipped away. Years later when I faced a difficult conflict at the beginning of COVID, though, I was so frustrated that I began to do it again. It didn’t solve the conflict but it did quiet me so I stopped being angry. I began to be less angry and more able to be a real pastor. I regularly do that now: I pray for each of you, I pray for our church. I see it as my most important job. I wonder: what if every day, every one of us simply asked God to help us be a more faithful, vibrant, loving church?

I’m eager to move on to Matthew and his account of the advent. He begins with a genealogy that traces 14 generations from Abraham to Joseph. He wants us to understand that this birth is a part of God’s enduring relationship with these people. Some of the names are truly remarkable. Rahab, for instance, was a prostitute who aided the Jews in capturing Jericho; Bathsheba famously had an affair with King David. Ruth, on the other hand, isn’t a Jew; she’s from Moab, which means she comes from a completely different family. Finally, we arrive at Joseph, who is distantly related to King David and, therefore, to God’s promise to David that his line would always be with him. This story is all about Joseph; if you’re interested in Mary, come back on Christmas Eve, when we’ll read Luke’s story, which is all about Mary. 

Joseph and Mary are engaged, which is a much more serious commitment than our engagement today. It’s been publicly recognized, and there might even be a contract. Now, Joseph has discovered that Mary is pregnant and immediately assumes she’s been unfaithful. He’s a good person who follows the Torah, and the Torah in Deuteronomy suggests that he should end the marriage. He knows this will be incredibly difficult for her, and he truly cares about her, so he does what we would do: he takes his time, considers the situation, and comes up with a plan to get out of the marriage without hurting Mary too much. “Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly.” [Matt 1:20] But then, an angel appears to him in a dream. The angel begins like all angels do, saying, “Don’t be afraid,” but then says something that doesn’t quite make sense: “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife; she’s going to have a child, and you’re going to name the child Jesus.” Well, the angel doesn’t actually say ‘Jesus’; he says ‘Yeshua,’ which is Hebrew for Joshua. Later, it gets translated into Greek, which doesn’t have that ‘sh’ sound, so it becomes Jesus. It’s a name that means, “God saves.” 

So, that’s what he does. Now, there’s the tricky part of Mary being a virgin—or not. Early on, Christians linked the Isaiah passage we read with this one. In Greek and later Latin, a Hebrew word meaning ‘young woman’ was translated as ‘virgin’ because it wasn’t really about the body but more about young women in general. The church really took hold of this. Today, it’s a big deal for some, but a stumbling block for others. If it helps you, that’s great; if it doesn’t, that’s okay too. It’s important to remember that we focus on the biological details here in a way that no one in Jesus’ time would have. They had lots of stories about virgin births. Some people even believed that Emperor Augustus was born of a virgin, and there are other similar stories. It’s a way of saying that in this person, God has come to humanity in a special way. And the reason for this coming, this advent, is specific: salvation.

What does salvation mean? For some, it’s about an emotional experience; for others, it’s a quiet, internal feeling. Generally, it means understanding that God isn’t just everywhere, but with you, personally present. When we feel God present, we often feel a sense of our own inadequacy, our own sinfulness. I know this feeling; I stand here and talk about loving my neighbor, but when that neighbor is driving poorly near me, I can get pretty angry. Still, I know God is with me, present, sometimes disappointed, always forgiving and inviting me to grow up a little, act on what I believe. Calling the baby Jesus is a marker: God is not just present in history, but right here, in this person, and as that person grows up, God is providing a class in how to live a Godly life, even when that life ends in a cross.

This brings us to Paul and his letter to the Romans. Unlike many of Paul’s letters, this time he was writing to a church he hadn’t gathered, to people he didn’t know. The section we read comes from the beginning of the letter. He’s introducing himself, and he does it by calling up names. “Paul, a slave or servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle.” There’s a lot to unpack in this simple sentence. First, he’s added another name to Jesus: Christ. Christ is the Greek word that translates “Messiah.” Messiah means “the anointed one” or “the chosen one,” chosen by God. The job of the Messiah is to redeem God’s children. Now, we already know Matthew has given us a long list of the family of God’s children; Paul is going to explain to the Romans and to us that we also are part of that family, adopted into it. And in that family, there are no distinctions. We’re all invited equally, invited by God, made into one family by God.

He names himself an apostle, someone who has seen the Risen Lord, and then he says that he is a servant or a slave of Jesus Christ. He’s giving us a rule about how we stand in relationship to Jesus: not as equals but as servants and members of the kingdom he preaches. He’s going on and talk about what it means to live as part of that kingdom but right here, right from the beginning, he’s inviting us in.

That’s really what all these names are: doorways into the meaning of Christ for us. So today’s scriptures give us three names, three doorways, into the meaning of Christ for us. We started with Immanuel, God present with us. We went on to Jesus, God saves. Now we are given a new name: Christ, the anointed one, the chosen one of God. You probably have different names too: husband or wife, son or daughter, dad or parent or mom. If you work, you have a title at work. And you have your own private sense of self. What name does God call you? What name will you call God?

Amen.

Lighting the Candle of Joy

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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 in Advent – Year A • December 14, 2025

Isaiah 35:1-10 • James 5:7-10• Matthew 11:2-11

Seasons of the church year have a luminous aspect. Easter is all light. There was a time in my life when I’d get up before dawn, preparing to lead a sunrise service. I know some people do sunrise services at a more convenient time, but I’ve never been an easy pastor; I always insisted on literally gathering before sunrise so it would happen during the service. Lent is dark: we start with ashes, we think about suffering culminating on Good Friday and the cross. Christmas is all lights: we put them on Christmas trees, and I’m old enough to remember the annual chore of climbing on ladders, helping my dad put up outdoor lights. 

But Advent, Advent is unique; Advent is both dark and light. It began as a little Lent; when I was first in ministry, we wore the same colors for Advent as for Lent. I was gone for a few years and when I came back, someone had decided we’d wear blue for Mary. But still, Advent has a darkness to it, balanced by the candles of Advent. So there is light as well. Christmas Eve is the best example: the next to the last thing we do on Christmas Eve is darken the worship area, just before we all light candles. I’m looking forward to sharing that moment with you in a couple of weeks. Advent light comes in stages, one candle at a time. A candle for hope, a candle for peace, and next week a candle for love. All these are blue; one candle alone is pink, the candle for joy. The reason for the tradition is that in the Latin mass, the word ‘Caudate’, which means ‘Rejoice’ began the service. So our challenge today is how can we light the candle of joy not only here but everywhere?

Today’s scripture readings have that light and dark in them. We started today with Isaiah’s prophecy that gushes out like a warm soda bottle someone shook up. He starts with all creation rejoicing. We often forget how central creation is to God. But there it is overflowing: desert blooming, “…it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and shouting.” [Isaiah 35:2b]. Wow: my English teacher would never have allowed “rejoice with joy”, it’s too much, it’s over the top. But it doesn’t stop with creation, it’s people too, and not just the healthy ones either.

Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”  [Isaiah 35:3f]

That really feels like I’m being personally addressed because honestly, my hands are not as strong as they were; I have trouble gripping the line on the boat these days, and my knees, well, my running days are over for sure. And the highway taking us home to God is so well-marked, so straight, so perfect that, according to Isaiah, “not even fools, shall go astray.” What Isaiah seems to have in mind is joy coming from heaven like a snowfall or a rain shower. You can’t escape it; it’s going to get on you even if you have bad knees, arthritic hands, even if you’re a fool. God’s light is going to shine so powerfully that every corner is lit up, every person is lifted up, and even creation itself is full of the joy of God’s coming.

Well, that’s the fun part of today’s Word: all God’s children parading together in joy. But there’s a darkness too. Before we get to carried away, we need to listen to the gospel. There, things are not joyful, there things are not light. There we are taken to a prison cell in a dark dungeon. King Herod Antipas was a famously bad actor and among his may sins was having his brother killed so he could marry his brother’s wife. John has been speaking about this and just like today, political violence from leaders was common. So John’s been thrown in prison. I’ve visited in prisons and they are not fun places. They’re noisy and drafty and there is an air of pervading violence. Even if nothing bad is happening right now, you feel like it could at any moment. The only light in that time is from candles or lamps of burning oil and those are expensive; no one’s going to waste them on a prisoner. I imagine John sitting in the dark, hearing the cries of these, wondering if it all is ending, if he was wrong. So he gets a couple of friends to contact Jesus and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” [Matt. 11:3]

What would you say? How would you answer? Jesus doesn’t do theology, he doesn’t demand faith in him, he simply says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see” and then he points out the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

…the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. [Matt. 11:5]

He’s quoting Isaiah 35:5-6 but surely he also has in mind what we read this morning. Where Jesus goes, the candles of joy are lit and the light of God shines. There’s no demand to come to Jesus; instead, there is this invitation to open your eyes and look around.

Isn’t this our challenge? How do we also light those candles. How do we say to our world, our city, our friends, “Look here if you want to see Jesus? This week I listened to an NPR show with a man who talked about how important his mother was to him. He said that she was 89 and had some medical challenges these days, and he admitted, in all honesty, taking care of her is sometimes a burden. He talked about how he has to wash her, help her use a bedpan, and that she isn’t always nice about the whole process. Then he said this amazing thing, “What I’ve learned, though, in caring for the one who brought me into the world, is that it is a kind of prayer.” He went on to say that too often we think of prayer as asking for something; for him prayer has become this act of service, this care for another. He’s found a new purpose and a new relationship not only with his mother but with God as well. Because he’s lighting a candle of joy in the process of doing something difficult for another.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a whole novel about a woman who was terribly burned as a child. Taken to a healer, they are only able to save her life, not fix the damage. What the healer says is powerful: “What cannot be healed must be transcended.” So our question is how to we take the dark parts of life, transcend them, make them into prayer, make them a candle of joy to light?

I know that in my life, one of the most difficult things was when Jacquelyn started working as a flight attendant. I don’t have that reflexive fear of flying many have but I do know that thins happen on airplanes. Somewhere in the background of my mind are the flight attendants on 9/11 and in 2009, not long after she started, an airplane landed in the Hudson River. Planes do crash and even when they don’t, sometimes Flight Attendants get hurt on the plane. Jacquelyn has gotten hurt. So when she started going off to fly every week, it was hard, it was very hard. I didn’t sleep at night; I worried. Every time I said goodbye it felt like it might be the last time I’d see her.

But we’ve been doing this a long time, now. I still have problems some nights when she’s gone, but I’ve learned this important thing: my original thought was right, when she goes off to fly, I might never see her again. But she’s here now. She’s with me now. So it’s up to me to use this time to make a good life with her, and we work at that together. That’s become my prayer: thank god she’s here now.

My friend Jefferson gave me a book of Maya Angelou’s poems last Sunday. One that spoke powerfully to me says,

Thank you, Lord.

I want to thank You, Lord,

For life and all that’s in it

Thank you for the day

And for the hour and for the minute

I know many are gone,

I’m still living on

I want to thank You.

I went to sleep last night

And I arose with the dawn

I know that there are others

Who’re Still sleeping on

They’ve one away.

You’ve let me stay.

I want to thank You.

We don’t know why we’re here, always. Yesterday, I know you heard about the terrible shooting at Brown University in Providence, RI. I can’t imagine what that’s like: to be calmly preparing to take an exam and have violence suddenly burst in. One of them said this,

Spencer Yang, 18, who was shot in the leg in his Brown classroom on Saturday afternoon, described helping a fellow student who was seriously injured as they hid behind seats.

“To keep him conscious, I just started talking to him, so he didn’t close his eyes and fall asleep,” Mr. Yang said in an interview from the hospital, where he was being treated for a wound in his leg. “I handed him my water,” he said. “He wasn’t able to respond that well. He was just there nodding and making noise.” “He’s stable now, thankfully,” Mr. Yang added.

When Mr. Yang got up that morning, he didn’t expect to help save a life. When he went to that classroom, he didn’t expect to lie on the floor. But thank God he was there.

That’s it really: I don’t know if I will be here tomorrow, I don’t know if Jacquelyn will be here tomorrow, but she’s here now, I’m here now. When we realize what a wonderful, miraculous thing that is, it can become in our lives, a kind of prayer. Thank you, Lord. I’m still here: help me let my life light a candle of joy because you give me this life. 

Amen.

Web of Wonder

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ 

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor

Second Sunday in Advent • December 7, 2025

Isaiah 11:1-10 * Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 * Romans 15:4-13 * Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon begins at 27 minutes

There is a story of a poor family at Christmas who had only enough to get a tree. There were no ornaments, no tinsel, nothing at all to hang on it. Still, they swept and dusted and scrubbed and prepared the house for Christmas just as if a great Christmas ball were to be held there. They moved the sofa; they cleaned behind the cabinets. Even the dog’s water bowl was washed and dried and put back clean. When all was done, they went to bed. But during the night a spider came crawling down from the attic where it had hidden during all the fuss. The house was so clean, there was no place to start a web. Then it saw the tree: branches lifting needles with lots of wonderful spots just waiting for a spider web. The spider began to spin and soon others joined it so that by morning the tree was decorated with a gossamer web. And when the family came downstairs and saw the web the spiders had fashioned, something mysterious happened. Maybe it was the morning light, maybe it was something more, but suddenly as the dawn came through the window, the web shone with silver and gold and the tree was decorated with a web of wonder.

It was Sunday, December 7, 1941,  and people were just leaving the performance of Handel’s Messiah at Duke University. Still full of the soaring inspiration of the music and these great words of hope from the prophet Isaiah, they left the chapel and found people clustered around radios, listening to the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, they were thrust from the comfort of Christmas to the wilderness of war. I wonder: did any of those people sit in the jungle wilderness of Guadalcanal a year later and remember that day? Did any of them remember three years later as they shivered in the snows of the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge? Did they listen in that wilderness for the voice of one crying, “Prepare the way of the Lord?” Those people who left that chapel and heard the news of Pearl Harbor had their world forever changed. 

We live our lives moment to moment as if we were fully in control, as if we were driving a road we’ve driven many times before. But great events can crash into us from nowhere—and we are changed. Some personal crisis, some accident of the spirit, and suddenly just as we thought we were making time, we are sitting by the road. One poet has written about the experience this way.

At the Art Reception

held in a Modern Bank

my daughter ran full speed

into a wall of glass

ricocheted five feet

and, for a second,

lay stunned.

till screams echoed throughà the lobby:

guests sipping wine,

turned with a chorus of eyes.

I picked my wounded butterfly off the floor

her screams turning to sobs

a red welt rising on her forehead

and together we examined that invisible wall

that comes out of nowhere

and knocks us flat

without any interest 

The invisible wall that knocks us flat leaves us reeling in the wilderness. 

That’s the place where Isaiah said we should listen for the voice of one who cries: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” The wilderness of Judea is dry and rocky and dangerous. The wilderness is a place of desolation. You can die of thirst or, if it rains, you can be killed in a sudden flood in a wadi. The real wilderness has snakes and lions and it’s kill or be killed. The real wilderness doesn’t care that you bought your tent at REI and your sleeping bag at L. L. Bean; the real wilderness simply doesn’t care, it has no interest. The real wilderness is full of invisible walls that leave you weeping with a red welt.

The wilderness is also a spiritual place. The wilderness is where Cain is sent to wander when he kills his brother and where Moses runs to hide from the law. The wilderness is where Israel goes after the Exodus and the wilderness is where Judah ends up when enemies break the gates and overcome the walls of Jerusalem. The wilderness is where you face temptation alone. Even Jesus faced temptation in the wilderness: it’s a place of hard choices. The wilderness is that place which becomes our address when we are knocked flat and left weeping alone. And it’s in the wilderness that John hears God’s call to proclaim the time for preparation. “Prepare the way of the Lord”.

John’s call forces us to choose what we will do about the wilderness. One solution is to call it home. When the Jews were in exile in Babylon, a psalmist asked, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Many answered by saying we can’t. So they learned the songs of Babylon, they learned the dances and the customs of Babylon. The moral and spiritual wilderness that was Babylon was all they could see and they couldn’t believe in anything else. They made the wilderness home; there was a promised land God intended for them but they missed it because they settled for a home in the wilderness. Even when they returned to Judah, they brought that wilderness with them so that by Malachi’s time, many had stopped singing the Lord’s song even in the promised land.

“Prepare the way of the Lord”,  John says. Just as some of the exiles lost their faith, others remembered God. Have you ever been so far from home you wondered if you’d ever see it again? Have you ever gone so far away you don’t think you can come back? I’m not talking only about geographical distances: I mean really far away, farther than anything measurable in miles. The wilderness is where we live away from others, believing we can’t find the way home. Some Jewish exiles Babylon looked homeward and hoped. They hoped for what Isaiah pictures, for God to come and make a way home. They hoped the mountains would be made low, so they could go home; they hoped the valleys would be filled up, so they could go home; they hoped the crooked roads would be made straight, so they could go home. 

“Prepare the way of the Lord”—there, in the wilderness, that’s what we are told. Get ready, because God is coming and there is no power that can stand in God’s way. There is no mountain high enough to stump God: there is no grief dark enough that God can’t let light in, no loneliness so profound that God cannot overcome it. Every mountain and hill shall be made low. There is no valley so low God cannot find you in that depth. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil because God is coming and every valley shall be filled. And all the crooked things of this world—all the crooked paths will be made straight. God is coming to straighten them and to tell the truth, the straight truth: like a refiner, showing what is true inside. God is coming, over and over again—God is coming. Remember that our home is with God and that God is making a way home for us.

Where are you living? You may be in the wilderness but you can choose to live in the Kingdom of God. Your address may be in the wilderness but you have a home with God. That is the gift of Jesus Christ: “..in my father’s house are many places,” he said—I go to prepare one for you. Advent calls us to remember we have a home and demonstrate what this life looks like 

That’s why churches exist. Loren Mead, lists among the ten characteristics of really great churches that they are places where mutual responsibility is shared and mutual aid is possible. That is, churches are places where we can embrace each other and discover that in the midst of the wilderness, we are at home in the Kingdom of God. They are where we practice peace. 

We begin to do that when we understand our lives as a mission. Some years ago I had the good fortune to be the pastor for Arvilla Cline. Arvilla was a slight woman in her 90’s who had been the much loved Latin teacher at a school for girls in Albany. She was a person of amazing intellect ,much loved by her former students. One night a woman appears at the door or our church. It was winter and she had no coat or boots; she made it clear she needed refuge although she spoke very little English. Jacquelyn and I took her home for the night; she stayed with us for a couple weeks and gradually we learned she had been purchased by a man from a refugee camp in Somalia. She herself was from Eritrea; her name was Letamariam. We didn’t have the space to let her permanently live with us so I put out a call in church. Imagine my surprise when Arvilla contacted me and said she’d be glad to take Letamariam. So we moved her there. Now, because Arvilla was a Latin teacher, she was used to overcoming language barriers. Bit by bit, she taught Letamariam English, helped her learn about American culture and think about a new life. Ultimately, we were able to connect Letamariam with some folks in Ohio. She moved there, went to college, married and has a couple of kids now. When all this was over, I sat with Arvilla, thanking her and this was what she said: “I wonder what my next mission will be.”

What is your next mission? We cannot avoid the wilderness no matter how carefully we walk, no matter how well we plan. But we need not live in it permanently, we need not allow it to become our home. We can live in the affirmation that God is coming; we can live in the community of God’s people.  If we will prepare for the coming of God, then we are promised a transforming presence that will come when we least expect it.

This is the promise of God: prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness…because God is coming and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Prepare your life: God is coming to spin a web of wonder. Prepare the way of the Lord—so you can get on to your next mission. 

Amen

Climbing Up the Mountain

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

First Sunday in Advent/A • November 30, 2025

Isaiah 2:1-5 * Psalm 122 * Romans 13:11-14 * Matthew 24:36-44

“…they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.” [Isaiah 2:5]

In 1939, the generation which had fought the “war to end all wars” 20 years earlier went back to war. In those 20 years, one of the most alarming changes had been the rise of air power. Fearful that London would be bombed, as in fact it was, British authorities organized the removal of 800,000 people to the countryside; about one and a half times as many as live in the Harrisburg-Carlisle area. Most were children. They gathered with a few clothes, a gas mask, and a name tag and were sent to rural villages where host families picked them out, sometimes separating siblings. This memorable event is the background to C. S. Lewis’ book, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. That story begins with four children sent out of London to stay at an old mansion with a sometimes distracted older professor and his housekeeper. As children do, they get bored and explore unused rooms, finding a wardrobe. Climbing into it, they find it is the gateway to a fantasy land called Narnia, where a great conflict between the Wicked White Witch and the great Lion Aslan is underway. Ultimately, Aslan sacrifices his life to save the children and is then resurrected, and the children lead the way to a great victory, saving Narnia. They become rulers and one day, on a hunt, they accidentally ride past the entrance to Narnia and find themselves climbing out of the wardrobe, back where they were, children again, but with this wonderful memory of victory. That memory sustains them; they know that whatever evil freezes the world, it will ultimately be made green again.

Today’s readings in Isaiah and Matthew are a special kind of literature called eschatology. Eschatology is a kind of literature that looks back to this time from the vantage point of God’s final victory. There are many kinds of language. That shouldn’t surprise us. Looking at a rose, for example, a botanist would say, “A rose is a woody perennial flowering plant in the genus Rosa, family Rosaceae. But the poet Shakespeare said,

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live;

Wow: totally different, both true. Same rose: different languages. The scientist wants to describe the rose. The poet wants to describe the experience of the rose.

Isaiah is a prophet of a time when God’s people are defeated by the terrible armies of Assyria and Babylon. The reason for the defeat, the prophets say, is the unfaithfulness of the people. So in the face of such sin, God refuses their offerings, refuses their worship, refuses them God’s help. That’s what comes before this Word from the Lord. That’s what God’s people are experiencing. Isaiah tells it in all its terribleness.

Your country is desolate,
    your cities burned with fire;
your fields are being stripped by foreigners
    right before you,
    laid waste as when overthrown by strangers. [Isaiah 1:7]

After speaking about the devastation of God’s people, the prophet then has another vision. It’s as if he turned a telescope around. Now he looks from the final victory of God, and we hear the vision that was read this morning.

In the midst of devastation, there will be new harvests. In the midst of conflict, there will be peace. What makes the difference? The advent of God as the great judge.

God shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore. [Isaiah 2:4]

This is the language called eschatology; this is the prophet wanting us to experience the hope of God’s promise.

That’s what Jesus is doing in the portion of Matthew we read this morning. He lives in a place occupied by a foreign army, governed by rulers who are famously unjust and uncaring. He tells his followers that the time of God’s Kingdom has arrived; the very time when God is become the judge, just as Isaiah said. He tells them that people are missing it. Some get it; some don’t. 

For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. [Matt. 24:38-40]

So Jesus is turning the telescope around, changing the view. “No one knows” when God will break in and the crisis will occur, he says. 

That alone should tell us to ignore all those people who think they know everything about God’s plan. For a long period, we had the “Left Behind” series, which was more about making money for a few people than the real word of God. The real word is: no one knows when the advent of peace, of justice, of God’s immediate presence will happen. Instead, Jesus simply says, “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” [Matt. 24:44] Paul preaches the same message and simply says, “Walk decently”, in this time between.

The word of ultimate hope can be powerful. In the years before the Civil War brought the liberation of slaves throughout our nation, many had the courage to leave their bondage, and flee north to freedom. Part of what empowered them was the stories of the Bible of how God had led people from bondage to slavery. They made the story their own, they made all these stories their own. And they used songs to communicate. One of those songs was, “Climbing Up the Mountain, Children.” The song says,

Climbing up the mountain children, I didn’t come here to stay

And if I nevermore see you, gonna see you on the judgment day.

It reminds us all of where we are: climbing a mountain, moving upward toward God’s vision of us, toward a community of joy, a community of justice. It reminds us that we may get lost on the way but that ultimately in God’s final judgment, we are all brought together, we are all gathered as God’s children.

I imagine every one here is climbing some mountain. For some, it’s physical illness and pain, for some it’s a nagging gray hopelessness, for some it’s worrying about the circumstances of life, how to stretch a budget to fit needs. In the 1850s, many enslaved people were escaping. William Still was an African-American abolitionist who frequently risked his life to help freedom-seekers escape slavery. In excerpts from letters, Still left a record of some of the letters sent to him from abolitionists and formerly enslaved persons. The passages shed light on family separation, the financial costs of the journey to freedom, and the logistics of the Underground Railroad. In those letters, they often refer to escaping people as “goods” or “boxes”. One I want to lift up says simply,

We knew not that these goods were to come, consequently we were all taken by surprise. When you answer, use the word, goods. The reason of the excitement, is: some three weeks ago a big box was consigned to us by J. Bustill, of Harrisburg. We received it, and forwarded it on to J. Jones, Elmira, and the next day they were on the fresh hunt of said box; it got safe to Elmira, as I have had a letter from Jones, and all is safe. [https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-sectional-crisis/stories-from-the-underground-railroad-1855-56/]

These people, including people from this very church, were all in danger. But these people believed in the promise of freedom and a new life. So they climbed that mountain in that hope.

The hope of advent isn’t simply that Christmas will come; it is what Jesus says, what Isaiah says, that in the love of God, we have a place, we are embraced as children of God. In that hope, in that peace, we come to Advent not as people marking off the days until Christmas, but knowing that God comes into our world, into our lives,
even when we least expect it.

Amen.

Thanksgiving Vision

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Thanksgiving/Reign of Christ Sunday • November 23, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen