Pay Attention

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

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

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

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

The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus 

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

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

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

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

Beyond the Story

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

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

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

Pay Attention Please

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

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

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

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

Jesus Listened

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

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

Following Jesus 

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

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

Amen.

The Very Bad, Awful GuyWho Got It Right

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Luke 16:1-13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Making God Smile

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

by The Rev. James E. Eaton, Interim Pastor • © 2025

14th Sunday After Pentecost/Year C • September 14, 2025

Luke 15:1-10 

One of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen is a just born baby learning to make mom smile. Have you seen this? A few years ago, I went to visit a mom with a new baby, a friend and church member. I expected her to be glad to see me; I expected her to be proud to introduce me to her child. What I remember is standing by the bed, ignored, irrelevant, as her new daughter tried out expressions, clasped tiny fingers and stared endlessly into her mother’s eyes, eyes that never left her. The sounds were happy; mom’s smile was quick and constant. After a few moments, she looked up at me, just a little embarrassed, as if caught at something and said, “I’m sorry, I’m totally entranced.” Calmly, enthusiastically, that new baby learned to make each of us smile at her and we did. So when we read in this text: “…there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”, it’s not hard to imagine the experience: we are meant to learn to make God smile like a baby teaching mom, and Jesus is giving lessons.

That’s a nice, feel good message for a Sunday morning. But does it have anything to do with our real lives? How do we make God smile; do we have to smile ourselves? How often we’ve settled for a bland, smiling Christianity that never hears, never sees, the fear and trembling of those around. How often we’ve gone home, scripture read, songs sung, sermon preached, as if the word, the songs, the preaching existed only in a world of endless smiles, while we ourselves live in a frowny face place where things hurt, and we constantly fear the next wave of grief or disaster will overwhelm us. Can we hold on to the smile of God in such moments?

Perhaps we begin to understand how when we see that Jesus teaches God’s smile comes out of being lost, the experience that so terrifies us that we will do almost anything to avoid it. The Bible has two images of being lost. One is wandering in the wilderness, a place full of life-threatening danger, where the things we need—food, drink—are unavailable. God’s people are formed in the experience of wandering the wilderness and Jesus himself is forced there after his baptism. Lost in the wilderness, Jesus meets a tempter who offers easy answers; he hangs on to being lost, until God finds him—the story concludes, “Angels waited on him”. Another experience of being lost is grieving. Over and over again in the prophets, in the Psalms, we hear the anguished voice of God grieving for lost Israel, which has broken its covenant and left its Lord.

We heard that in the reading from Jeremiah this morning. Jeremiah lived in a time of incredible violence. His home, Judah, went to war with the much more powerful Babylonia and was defeated; Jerusalem itself was destroyed, its leaders and many others exiled to Babylon. 

I looked on the earth, and it was complete chaos, and to the heavens,
and they had no light.

I looked on the mountains, and they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro.

I looked, and there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.

[Jeremiah 4:23-27]

Defeat meant feeling deserted by God. The people were lost.

When have you been lost? When has the darkness descended until you didn’t know if there was a path, much less how to find it? There are griefs, there are losses, that leave us lost, wandering, uncertain, unsure, unable to find our way on our own. These past few weeks have seen two murders for political purposes and children shot at their schools. I know every time I read about this, it makes me feel lost.  

When Jesus speaks about the lost, this is what he means. There is nothing more helpless than a lost lamb. A lost dog will wander around and often return home. A lost cat will find its way back. Pigeons home; even a child may ask the way. Lost horses frequently return. But a lost lamb will not come home, will not return, will not come back. It will simply lie down and bleat its fear and the very sound becomes an invitation to predators: easy kill. What should be done about the lamb? The sensible thing of course is simply to abandon it; it’s gone, and leaving the herd might endanger it. Yet here Jesus lifts up the lost lamb as the occasion that leads not only to a satisfied smile on the part of a shepherd but also: “…when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me…’” The joy of the shepherd overflows into a party that invites his friends and neighbors. 

The same is true in the other image Jesus shares. A woman’s dowry was often worn around her neck in his time; to lose a piece was to lose the chance at marriage. Have you done what this woman does? Lost a wedding ring, an engagement ring, a special paper: searched and searched, moved papers, cleaned the whole house, cleaned out a drain, searching until it was found? Again: her joy overflows and creates a community of joy around her. Her joy, his joy, makes God smile.

We live in a whole nation of the lost today. So many are afraid of losing homes; so many have lost jobs. Sons and daughters have been lost in wars. And there are so many voices of fear, angry voices, little Satans really—for Satan just means ‘tempter’ and what they tempt us to give in to the idea that we can fix ourselves by abandoning others, that we can fix ourselves by hurting others. That’s why we have such a plague of violence. Three hundred fifty years ago, Congregationalists, English reformed church folks just like us were scared too, and they let themselves get whipped up into literal witch hunts because someone said that would fix everything. They took their fear out on the least of their communities. This happens today: same thing in a different day and it has nothing to do with the life of Christ or the mission of Jesus. 

What Jesus does is just the opposite: he welcomes people, sinners, the lost, everyone to his table, to this table right here. The mystery Jesus offers is that the solution to being lost is to find someone; the joy of finding will overflow and create a whole community of joy. So he gathers the lost, sometimes called sinners, and he eats with them. He invites them to his table. Who belongs at this table? Everyone who has ever felt lost. Everyone who has ever wandered—everyone! Gay people and straight people belong at this table; young moms and widows and the unemployed and the rich and middle-aged guys who are wondering why just working harder doesn’t make them happier and women who are trying to figure out what to do after the kids are grown, single people and working people and retired people and people who have never been inside a church in their lives. When we gather them at the table of Jesus, when we find the lost and bring them in, we’re helping Jesus and God smiles: there is joy in heaven.

We know this instinctively and sometimes we practice it. One of the great things we do here is the clothing closet. It’s a simple process: we all have clothing we don’t wear, don’t need. So do others. So we gather it up, size it, make it ready, and give it away. It’s just like what Jesus does with Gods’ grace: gives it away, free to anyone in need. We do other things as well. Christian Churches United helps us work with other churches helping people who are lost get found. It’s the fulfillment of our prayer to walk in Christ’s way.

Timothy states the purpose of Jesus bluntly, clearly: “Jesus came into the world to save sinners”  If we are followers of Jesus, doesn’t it make sense that we would be on the same mission? This is the beginning of a new year of programs here. It’s a time to think about vision. We need to ask: what is Jesus doing? What can we do to help? And when we ask, we’ll hear this call from the deep heart of God’s Word, Jesus came into the world to save sinners. When we ask, we’ll remember what Jesus said: finding someone who needs God and didn’t know it, helping someone who needed us and didn’t know it, is a reason to rejoice, a thing that makes God smile. That’s it, that’s my vision: make God smile. Let God’s smile shine, until we can see where we’re going, until we know we aren’t lost, we’re on the way God had in mind all the time.

Amen.

How Much?

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

13th Sunday After Pentecost/C • September 7, 2025

Jeremiah 18:1-11 • Philemon 1:1-21 • Luke 14:25-33

“How much is that doggie in the window?” is a silly song from 1952 that reminds us of one crucial fact we all face almost every day: we count the cost of something. If you remember the song, you probably remember the Patti Page version, but I remember my mother singing it. Little did I know then how much of my life would be tangled up not in the cost of the doggies but the cost of food, rent and other things. We drive a lot, so I check the cost of gasoline; May and I do the grocery shopping, and she does an amazing job of keeping costs down with that. Every Saturday, after we check out, we look at the total bill, and we’re pleased if it’s less than the previous week. What’s true for us as families is certainly true for our church; I know that we have folks who work hard at keeping costs down here and every year we have to approve a budget, a plan for spending throughout the year. But we seldom think about the cost of our spiritual life. What if we asked, not how much is that doggie in the window, but how much will it cost me to be a Christian? How much will it cost to follow Christ? That’s exactly the issue in today’s gospel reading.

Luke says, “Now large crowds were traveling with him…” [Luke 14:25a] The setting for this section isn’t a little group of committed disciples, it’s the larger crowd around Jesus. Some barely know him; some have been healed by him. Some have taken on the task of caring for him and his disciples. And some, I imagine, just got attracted to the crowd. Some people like crowds; some people can’t resist being part of what feels like a large movement. So we have all kinds of folks with him, traveling with him. And at some point, he says something startling to the crowd: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” [Luke 14:26] Wow! That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? We aren’t as family based today as people were in Jesus’ time; most families don’t live in multi-generational homes with an old patriarch running the show. Still, what does he mean by saying that following him is going to mean losing your whole family?

Partly, I suspect, Luke is reflecting the reality of the people to whom he’s writing. We know that the conversion of people often split families in the first century. Just because you went out and were carried away by this new preaching, this new faith, it didn’t mean your dad agreed or your brother or sister or even your wife and kids. I grew up in a home where my mother went to church and dragged me along. My father read the New York Times on Sunday mornings. If he had any Christian faith, I never heard about it. I got involved in a church when I was 12, and it gradually became the center of my life. There was youth group on Sunday nights, camp for a week in August, weekend retreats two or three times during the school year. I learned to be a leader there, I felt the confirmation of God’s call. I knew God meant me to be a minister, but I didn’t tell my dad. Finally, in college, he was questioning my choice of courses one day and I blurted out, “I’m going to be a minister.” He asked why I didn’t want to do something worthwhile with my life. Although he later more or less reconciled to what I did, it was always a point of division between us. So I hear this in that context: yes, faithful life is going to divide people, including families.

Jesus seems to want people to consider that as they think about the way forward. He tells these two short parables. In one, he points out that if you are going to build something, first you sit down and consider what it’s going to cost. In the other, he offers the image of a king, getting ready for war, making a plan. Both seem to be on this point: count the cost, so you are ready to pay when the bill comes due.

I wonder if Philemon counted the cost. We don’t know much about him, just that he must have been an early Christian and a well-to-do one. He’s able to host a church in his house. I couldn’t do that, could you? We’d never fit in our little living room! But here is Paul writing to Philemon, calling him a beloved coworker, mentioning people he knows, and greeting the church in his house. I have a sneaking suspicion that all these nice words are there partly to grease the burden of what Paul wants. Philemon’s slave, Onesimus, is hanging out with Paul and Paul wants to keep him. None of us own slaves; I’m not sure that we really understand what Paul’s asking here. But suppose I borrowed your car, as your pastor; maybe mine had broken down. You have an extra, you agree to lend it to me, and I drive off. Now suppose I wrote you a letter on church stationery with some wonderful words about what a great Christian you are and then explained that I wanted to keep the car permanently; I could mention, “I am more than bold enough in Christ to command you to do the right thing, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.”

That’s a little different, isn’t it? I mean lending a car for a day or two, that’s one thing, but cars are expensive. So are slaves. Paul begins by saying what a loving, wonderful, Christian Philemon is and then gives him something terrible: the chance to prove it in a way that is costly. And beyond the cost, there is the social sanction. The Roman world is built on slavery; Paul is asking Philemon to treat his slave Onesimus not as a slave but as a brother, a “beloved brother”. Paul wants him treated the same way Philemon would treat Paul: “welcome him as you would welcome me… If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me…” and then goes on to say, “I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.” 

We don’t know what Christian faith had cost Philemon to this point; we know that it cost him Onesimus. Oh, he got Oonesimus back—but the slave Onesimus was lost to him forever. Instead, he got a brother in Christ. We don’t know anything about what happened to Philemon, but we do have traditions that there was a Bishop Onesimus who is credited with being one of the ones who preserved the letters of Paul. Without him, we might not have Romans or the letter to the Corinthian Christians or Thessalonians or any of the other letters of Paul. Think what might have been lost. Now, this letter has a darker history also; it was often used in the 19th century to justify slavery itself. Paul isn’t confronting the whole structure of slavery with all its terrible violence; he’s simply advocating for one particular slave, raising him up. So let’s be clear: nothing here is endorsing slavery, whether it’s legal bondage or the terrible labor conditions that amount to slavery that still exist. He’s raising up on particular slave, calling him a brother. And he’s giving Philemon the chance to pay the cost of discipleship. 

That cost can be steep indeed. Jesus lays out it out plainly: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” It isn’t easy to carry a cross; it’s much easier to wear one. In 1942, German leaders met to plan the murder of all European Jews. Today there is a growing movement in some circles to pretend this didn’t happen or that it was exaggerated. It’s taken this long to pretend this because the generation of soldiers who liberated those camps are mostly gone; the survivors of them are gone as well. But the truth is that Germany from the 1930s to the 1940s was a place of arrests by anonymous men, prisons that housed torture chambers, and lawless executions. 

In that time, a group formed called the White Rose. It was small and nonviolent; they published leaflets in Munich denouncing the Nazi regime’s crimes and oppression and calling for resistance. Most were in their early 20s. They were arrested in the spring of 1943; they were subjected to show trials where they couldn’t speak and their leaders beheaded. Others were sent to be murdered at camps like Auschwitz. Many were Christians, and they surely are people who understood what it meant to bear a cross. They bore it nobly, and they remind us today that there is a cost to discipleship, there is a cost that cannot be paid with a check, that can only be paid with life itself. 

Sometimes the cross is just that: a death given in memory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his life. Sometimes it is something hard: treating your former slave as a beloved brother. Sometimes it’s much more simple: helping Christian Churches United or others care for people in need, treating them like children of the same God who loves us all. It’s easier to wear a cross than to bear one, but Jesus has told us that only when we bear the cross can we be his disciples. How much will that cost? Only you know.

Amen.

Watch This!

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

By Faith

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost/C • August 17, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Freedom Now

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost/C • August 10, 2025

Luke 12:32-40  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raised

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost/C • August 3, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet they eventually walked his way and changed the world.

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

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

Amen.

Standing In the Need of Prayer

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

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

Genesis 18:20-32 • Luke 11:1-13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Hearing Aid

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Sixth Sunday After Pentecost/Year C • July 20, 2025

Amos 8:1-12, Luke 10:38-42

Three days a week, May works from an office downtown and on those days I take her to work. We stop for coffee at Lil Amps on State Street about 7:45 or so; early enough that I can leave before the parking people catch me. Most days, it’s just a few people at that hour. A couple of other regulars; you know you’re a regular when they ring up your order before you give it. A few people on laptops. But when the legislature is in session, it changes; there are guys in suits and ties. No one knows what they’ll order. They are busy being important; after all, they are the ones who get things done.

Today we call them by titles like Senior Staff Assistant and Executive Director. But the same pattern goes back thousands of years. The truth is, no leader can get everything done on their own. The most powerful people in government all have drivers and assistants who do things. There’s a famous story about a night a former President and his wife went off for date night, out to dinner, trying to be a married couple. They went to a fancy place in Washington, DC at the end of the dinner, he presented his credit card to pay the bill. His card was declined; it had been so long since he’d paid for anything, the credit card company had deactivated the card. Assistants pay the bills. Assistants give advice too. 

Now in the ancient world, those assistants existed as well and they were often called prophets. We know that these court prophets existed, and we have bits and pieces in the Bible about them. We hear from them in the book of Jeremiah, for example. But there was another kind of prophet as well and These prophets heard God’s Word in their heart. They weren’t royal advisors, they didn’t wear suits or ties, but they came to be a force in Israel. The first of them to have his message written into a book that we have today was a man named Amos. Amos lived about 740 years before Jesus in northern Israel, and he was a true prophet, bringing God’s Word to Israel.

This was a time of peace and prosperity in Israel. After Solomon, David’s kingdom had split into two parts: Judah in the south with Jerusalem as its capital, the larger part, Israel in the north, with its capital at Samaria. It should have been a time for thankfulness; it became a time for the rich to exploit the poor. Of course, there had always been richer and poorer people in Israel, but there wasn’t a great distance. We know from archaeology that in this time, that changed; the rich exploited the poor and stole their land. Great houses were built for them while most people lived in hovels in a land Israel’s faith said had been the gift of the Lord. It’s also a time when the cult of Baal, a sort of prosperity religion, much like today in some churches, grew and there were shrines to other Gods set up.

Amos’ word starts with a vision: a basket of fruit would remind people of the late summer fruit harvest, a time of celebration and prayers for continued prosperity. Instead, Amos brings a word of condemnation. It’s actually funny, a sort of satire. The New Moon is a great festival, something like Christmas; an ephah is a standard measure and a shekel is a coin that’s supposed to have a standard value. So Amos caricatures the rich, imagining them saying, 

“When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” [Amos 8:5f]

The point here is that the rich are cheating. Amos addresses this to those who “trample the needy” and “bring ruin to the poor”.  The result, he says, is that “The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,” says the Lord GOD; “…the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!” [Amos 8:3] Silence is God’s judgment. There is going to be a famine of God’s Word, the prophet says. In other words, all blessing, all experience of God, all direction from God, is going to cease and Israel will be destroyed.

Some scholars believe Amos’ entire prophecy was delivered in one afternoon, one sermon, one bright moment of vision. Then Amos went back to his life as a sheep herder and a vine dresser, a farmworker. We don’t know for sure if that’s how this happened. It can’t have been a popular message, and largely, I imagine, it was ignored. After all, the leaders of Israel were doing well in 740 BCE, and if some were poor, well, wasn’t that their own fault? I’m sure the rich said what the rich always say: they should work harder. Nothing happened after this sermon. There was no lightning bolt, no earthquake. The New Moon festival went on that year and for years after. The rich continued to cheat the poor. About twenty years after Amos, Israelite society had become divided. So when the great power of Assyria swept down on them in 720 BCE, they were defeated. Assyrian colonial policy was to move conquered people to other places so they wouldn’t be a problem. Israel was not just defeated, it was destroyed. They believed God’s Word would save them, but there was a famine of the Word of God in Israel.

We have our prophets. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a prophet who brought God’s Word to the struggle for freedom in the South. Forty two years ago, he was in jail and he wrote a letter to white churches like this one. He said, in part, 

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
[https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html]

Every Sunday, we hear from the Hebrew scripture and the Epistles, the record of the early church, and we say together, “This is the Word of the Lord.” Every Sunday, we hear from the gospel and we say, “We hear your words, O Christ.” The true Word of God is like a seed so if we are truly hearing the Word, shouldn’t it be taking root, germinating, bearing fruit? What if there is a famine of the Word of God because we as a people refuse to hear, refuse to listen, refuse to let it grow up in us? We like hearing the Word of God when it comforts us, when it promises healing, when it helps us feel at peace. But justice is also part of the Word. Amos didn’t come preaching a political message; he came announcing God’s Word. Did anyone listen? 

Today’s Gospel lesson is right on this point. We hear about Jesus’ twelve disciples and sometimes forget that he actually traveled with a larger group. Now they’ve come to the home of Martha and Mary and hospitality is expected, hospitality is one of the values God’s Word teaches, one that Jesus embraces. Imagine 20 people showing up for dinner at your house; what would you do? How would you feed them? We know what it takes to organize a simple after church lunch for 25 or so; what if it was your house and your responsibility?

It’s easy to identify with Martha, isn’t it? She’s doing her best, I’m sure she’s rushing around, trying to get food, get wine ready, abruptly ordering those around her to do things. Set the tables! Here, put these out. Go next door and see if we can borrow some cups, we don’t have enough. I imagine some in the crowd are helping, some always do, but others are just lounging around on the floor near Jesus, listening to him, being near him. At some point, Martha comes out, and sees one of these is her sister, Mary. Wow: wouldn’t that make you mad? Why isn’t Mary helping? Why is she lying there, at the feet of Jesus, doing nothing? The culture of the time doesn’t imagine women doing this; it puts them out in the kitchen. So Martha goes to Jesus, asks him to tell Mary to get herself in gear and help. 

I hate this text, some years honestly I’ve skipped it when it came up. I hate it because I know my tendency is to be like Martha. I’ve spent so much time as a pastor rushing around, getting things in order, making sure churches were functioning, projects going forward. It’s annoying when some people won’t help and I’ve gotten annoyed. And I’ve heard over and over sermons where people were asked are you a Martha or a Mary and felt like saying, “Yes! But if we all were like Mary, nothing would get done! No one would get fed!” 

But this time, reading this, thinking about it, I’ve seen something new in this old story. I think this isn’t as much about Martha and Mary as it is about us. I think Jesus isn’t condemning Martha’s work; I’m sure when dinner is shared, he will thank her. What he’s doing instead is giving an invitation: “I’m here, appreciate that, listen to me.” He is the Word of God in person; that’s what Paul means when he says in Colossians, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” [Col 1:15] If you’re so busy you don’t take time to listen, then you miss the Word, the presence there with you. That’s what it means to say, “You’re worried about lots of things; one thing is important.” What’s the important thing?—listening to Jesus. Because Jesus has come at a time when there is a famine of the Word in his land; over and over he lifts up the Word and preaches it, teaches it, says, “Look, you’re missing the point, because you’re too busy making loopholes.”

So today, here, in this wonderful church, let me ask: are we choosing the better part? Are we hearing the Word, hearing God’s justice the way we sometimes hear trains or traffic from outside?—or are we just rushing around making sure everything gets done? Jesus means to be a sort of hearing aid for God’s Word. So often, the Word gets drowned out by all the noise of our lives. So often even in church, we are anxious about how we’re going to get things done, we’re rushing around, getting annoyed with people who don’t help. Like Martha, today the Lord invites us to listen, listen, listen, to hear the Word of the Lord, to hear it and let it root in us and bear the fruit of the Spirit.

Amen.