Tag Archives: Change

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.

Fear and Trembling

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Listen to the Sermon Preached Here

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

16th Sunday After Pentecost • September 8, 2024

Isaiah 35:4-7a, Mark 7:24-37

Jesus is on vacation. Mark says he went up to Tyre, a big coastal town north of Israel, outside its borders. He enters a house and wants some privacy: “…[he] didn’t want anyone to know he was there.” [Mark 7:24b] You know how this works. You go to the shore, maybe Ocean City or Wildwood, rent an Airbnb, just want to be anonymous, kick back, rest up. After all, just before this he’s had a tough time. He got rejected in his hometown and couldn’t do anything there. His mentor and friend, John the Baptist, has been executed. He keeps having arguments with better educated clergy. Maybe his disciples have gotten annoying, the way family sometimes can. So off he goes.

A Woman Comes to Jesus

But when he gets there, it turns out he’s too well known to hide out. Some Canaanite woman, a Gentile, throws herself at his feet when he’s out looking for breakfast. Honestly, I’ve never had a woman throw herself at my feet, so I’m not sure quite what that’s like, but I have certainly been accosted when I’m getting away. It’s a little professional secret that clergy mostly learn early on never, ever, to admit they are clergy when traveling. Years ago when I was young and on a long flight and a woman next to me asked what I did. I proudly said I’m a minister. She spent the rest of the flight telling me why she didn’t go to church and how she didn’t believe in God. I really just wanted to nap, not talk theology. So I’m guessing that’s how Jesus felt. He’s off duty; maybe healing people is exhausting. He’s on a mission, after all, to reclaim Israel for God, to bring all Jews back to a purer, more passionate faith but these people aren’t his problem, they’re Gentiles.

Still, there’s this woman at his feet; no way around her. She’s begging for his attention, his compassion. Her daughter is possessed; she’s desperate. All parents know this feeling, that special, relentless, desperation when your child is sick and no one seems able to help. Jesus might be on vacation, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She looks ridiculous, lying there in the street, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. He’s a man; she’s a woman, he’s a Jew, she’s a Gentile, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She lives in a culture that tells women to be quiet in public, never to talk to a strange man, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter.

Dogs!

I think Jesus must have tried to get around her but couldn’t, so he says something conventional, tries to get out of the situation. “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” [Mark 7:27] Now we think of dogs as fun and cute, and we love them. But dogs in this time and place are dirty, mangy, they live outside in villages, they eat garbage and smell like it. ‘Dog’ is an insult; it’s like one of the many ethnic slurs we all know, no need for me to quote them.‘Dogs’ is what Jews call Gentiles and they typically ignore them. Jesus grew up as a Jew; Jesus is steeped in the culture, he’s human and like all humans, his culture has captured him. So he replies like a Jewish man to this Gentile woman. I’m sure he thought that would be the end of it. A little brusque language, a little insult, done, she’ll go away and leave him alone.

But she doesn’t; she only cares about her daughter, she doesn’t care about the insult. She turns it around: “Even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she says. There’s a little play on words there: she’s turned his insult from an image of the mangy alley dogs to a puppy playing in the home. It’s a good argument and it works. “For saying that, you may go,” he says, and assures her that her daughter is healed. She gets up , goes home and wow! Her daughter is fine, her daughter is back.

This isn’t a very nice picture of Jesus, is it? It isn’t gentle Jesus meek and mild; it isn’t the good shepherd, carrying the lost sheep home on his shoulder. It isn’t the love your neighbor guy we all expect. There are endless articles and commentary and sermons explains this away, trying to give us back the nice Jesus we think we know. Even the Gospel of Matthew, about 20 years after Mark, cleans the story up and makes it about her faith, not the argument. But I want the real Jesus, not the pretty picture someone else painted; I want to know the real Jesus, so I want to know what’s going on here. And what seems to be going on is that Jesus changed his mind. 

Is Jesus Changing?

“Wait, Jesus changed his mind? Isn’t he perfect?” I imagine someone wondering this. We believe Jesus is fully human and isn’t being fully human sometimes being wrong? Jesus thought of his mission as being for the Jews, for God’s people. I think Mark is giving us a peek into the moment when Jesus changes his mind and realizes God’s plan is bigger, more wonderful, than he had realized. We’re getting a look at a moment when Jesus realizes everyone is welcome at his table, everyone is included, everyone is a child of God. Everyone includes a Gentile woman with a sick daughter. She isn’t a dog, she isn’t just a woman, she isn’t just a Gentile, she’s a child of God, just like him, and God loves her, just like him. 

It isn’t easy to admit you’re wrong and change. May and I like to argue, Jacquelyn likes everything peaceful. So when we became a family, Jacquelyn introduced a rule that we call the dance. It works like this: if you argue a point, and you are proven wrong, you have to turn around to the left three times and say, “I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong”, and then to the right three times and say, “You were right, you were right, you were right.” By the end everyone is laughing; peace is restored. We remember that how much we love each other is more important than being right. 

What I love about Jesus in this passage is that he was wrong and could change. Mark makes it clear; it’s what the woman says that changes his mind. The passage asks us too: can we change? Can we listen to our history and our values and change our minds, change our hearts? I think this is something all too rare today. We all moan about the dark divisiveness of our politics, but isn’t it precisely because we don’t listen that we are divided? I wish we could make our politicians abide by the dance rule. I’d love to see some of those guys, instead of defending the indefensible, simply turn and turn and turn and say I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. 

Acting on the New Reality

The rest of this passage makes it clear Jesus is acting on this new understanding. It says he goes by way of Sidon to the Deacpolis. This makes no sense; it’s like saying I went from Harrisburg to York by way of Philadelphia. But geography is theology in the Bible. What Mark seems to want us to know is that Jesus works among Gentiles as well as Jews. The Decapolis is a largely Jewish area. When Jesus arrives, we’re told that some friends brought a man who was deaf and stammered for healing. He takes the man aside and heals him in an astonishingly intimate way, touching his ears, telling them to be opened, wetting his finger on his own tongue, touching the man’s tongue. “Be opened!”, is the command: Ephphatha!

We’re starting a new year of programs and worship here, in a new time. Don’t we need to hear Jesus saying Ephphatha to us? There are some great things here that come from our values. One thing I’ve learned in the last few months is that this church is really great at appreciating. I love that we applaud the music; I love the positive energy of how people seem to appreciate each other here. How can we carry that forward? And what do we need to leave behind? 

Fear and Trembling to Joy

When Paul writes to a new Christian church in northern Greece, in the letter to the Philippians, he tells them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. I think what he means is for them to discover that everything they think needs to be tested, evaluated, considered. I think he means they need to listen to Jesus, not just their own common sense. I think he knows that isn’t easy because it’s scary to change. I think he means to assure them that God is with them in the process. 

The same is true here. At the end of this story, Jesus is on his way home. Along the way, he heals a man who is deaf. Isn’t this all of us? Aren’t we sometimes deaf when God is practically shouting at us? It’s a fulfillment of what Isaiah said: 

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. …then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be opened; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.[ Isaiah 35:4-7a]

Jesus goes on from here with a new understanding. He knows change is difficult; he knows we we have fearful hearts. Yet he says, over and over, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” May we hear him; may we follow him, no matter how it changes us. May we learn the love of God so that our fear and trembling turns into songs of joy.

Amen

The Farthest Shore

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost/B • June 23, 2024

Mark 4:35-41

“Let us go across to the other side.” That’s how this story begins. Remember where we are: Jesus’ home territory, Galilee, up in the north, next to the Sea of Galilee. Remember where we were last week with him: the crowds pressing so tight, he and his disciples couldn’t even eat. “Let’s get out of here,” he seems to be saying—and also—he’s always pressing onward, forward. Peter and Andrew have a boat, James and John are sailors too, so the easiest way out is to get in the boat, sail off. 

Remember how I keep saying that everything in Mark happens immediately? It’s the same here. You know, when I go somewhere, I have to get my phone, maybe pack up my computer and a couple cords and chargers, find my keys, get my hat, find where I parked the car. If May and Jacquelyn are coming along, I need to wait for them to change outfits, get a purse, fix their hair, get a treat for the dog to distract her while we go out the door. It’s a process; is it that way for you? One of the commentators I read this week said the line that says, “They took him just as he was” is a mystery. It isn’t to me; it means, they didn’t wait to fix up, find keys, get phones, they just piled in the boat and left.

It’s an open boat. A few years ago, someone found a Galilee fishing boat from the same period, so we think we know what it might have been like. It would have been stinky: it’s a fishing boat, after all, and fishing boats have a certain aroma. It would have been a little leaky; wooden work boats tend to let a bit of water in through the seams, so there’s always a puddle in the bottom. These boats were rowed so, you can imagine the disciples shifting out the oars; some know what to do, some don’t. They had a short mast they could rig up and a sail, so perhaps they did that. Not all of them are sailors, so I’m guessing some were nervous. Some were in their element. They cast off and set out for the far shore.

It’s about seven miles across the Sea of Galilee, maybe two hours or just a little more. They’re setting out at evening, which is often calm. Jesus is exhausted, and who knows? Maybe a little seasick? The first thing that happens when you get seasick is being drowsy. In any event, he falls asleep. Have you got this pictured? A little open sailboat, raggedy sail catching the wind, bunch of guys sitting around, Jesus asleep, someone steering, someone keeping watch in the bow. That’s when the storm hits. 

I wince every time I read this story because I know just what that feels like. One moment you’re sailing along peacefully, the sails trimmed, the boat burbling along, the pressure on the tiller just enough to hold it steady. Suddenly there’s a bang, suddenly the boat tips, suddenly someone’s shouting to get the sail down, suddenly there’s water coming over the side. Now, my boat is a keel boat, which means it’s going to come back up. My boat has a cabin and a deck, and the water will run off. But this boat, this Galilee fishing boat, is an open boat: no deck, no cabin, no keel. It’s a bit crowded, not everyone there is a sailor, and they must have been bailing furiously, and yelling, and finally they wake up Jesus.

Now, when I thought of this sermon originally, I thought this is the place where I’d describe some time I was sailing and got hit by a squall and got scared. But I think Gordon Lightfoot said it better than I could. In his song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, he describes the storm that took down that big Great Lakes freighter, asking “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” That’s what’s happening here. Whether on a boat or in life, haven’t we all felt this, haven’t we all been hit by a squall? Maybe it’s the death of someone loved, maybe it’s a dread diagnosis, maybe it’s some other event that threatens to overturn your boat like this boat is threatened.

The story says Jesus wakes up, looks around, tells the sea and the wind to knock it off. Just like that, everything is calm, just like that, it’s ok. Wouldn’t that be great when we hit a storm in life? Wake Jesus up, have him say Stop! to whatever is threatening us and just go on? Is that what’s happening here? 

I think what’s actually going on is something deeper, something more profound. Jesus’ healings, Jesus’ exorcisms, the things we call miracles are actually meant to be signs, signals to show us what we can hardly understand, that in Jesus we are meant to encounter not just a miracle worker but the very presence of God. There’s one other place in scripture where the roiling, restless seas are calmed: at creation 

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1

God is acting here: God is stilling the waters. 

The disciples get it. English translations usually say something like, “…they were filled with great awe.” What the original text actually says is, “They feared a great fear.” It’s interesting that in this story, when they think they are perishing, we’re not told they were afraid. It’s only when Jesus stills the storm that they get scared. And it makes them ask the question that’s going to occupy the rest of this gospel: “who is this?”

We’d like to be able to wake Jesus up whenever there’s a storm, whenever we feel like we might be overwhelmed. There’s an old song that says, “I want Jesus to walk with me.” It’s a great song, bad theology because the point is not for Jesus to walk with me, it’s for me to walk with Jesus. What the gospel shows us is that if I want to walk with Jesus, I’m going to have to go places where it feels stormy, I’m going to have to cross to other shores, I’m going to have to change in ways that feel uncomfortable. He says, “Let us go across to the other side,” and the truth is, I’m comfortable right here—he wants me to go to another shore, a new place, a new way, a new creation. 

“Who is this?” The disciples ask: we should ask too. When we figure it out, then indeed, like those disciples much later, we can cross with him. And our destination will be the farthest shore. And we’ll find that as long as we are with him, we are home.

Amen.