Finding the Dry Ground

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

16th Sunday After Pentecost/A • Date

Exodus 14:19-31 • Matthew 18:21-35

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” That’s part of the Lord’s Prayer, a prayer we offer every Sunday. How often have you prayed this prayer? How often have you said these words? Not all Christians say the prayer this way. Methodists inherited saying trespasses and trespassers from their Anglican roots. I worked in a Methodist church when I was in seminary and trying to keep straight whether to say debts or trespasses was one of the hardest part of leading worship for me. Luke’s version of this prayer has the words ‘sins’ and lately I’ve noticed more and more churches using that version. But Matthew gives us the prayer in 6:12 with a Greek word that literally means debts and that’s what we use here. Debts are easy to understand; they have to do with what do I owe others, and what do others owe me? We have some agreed principles that govern things. My older daughter Amy announced one of these years ago regarding eating out: “The Dad pays”. I never questioned this. But now I have coffee almost every day with May, who makes a lot more money than me. So May quietly modified this; three days a week, I pay for her coffee, Saturdays she buys me breakfast. The debts is satisfied on both ends. 

But what happens when the issue isn’t as simple as dinner or coffee? What about injury? We have this little proverb you may have said: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” In other words, if you injure me once and then I forgive you and let you do it again, that’s my fault, not yours. So: forgive once. The Rabbis’ of Jesus’ time had settled on a more generous idea: forgive three times. That’s part of the background to the story we read in the gospel today. Jesus has ben talking about how we should treat each other and Peter brings up the issue of forgiveness. “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” [Matt .18:21] You see what he’s doing? He’s upping the count from three to seven. Jesus replies, “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.” [Matt. 18:22] That’s another way of saying, “Endlessly!”.

Then he tells a parable. What’s it like when God reigns? Well, it’s like a king who is owed 10,000 talents unbelievably forgiving it all. Do you know how much 10,000 talents is? It’s more than all the taxes for the whole Roman Empire for a single year. Our country currently owes about 41 trillion dollars. I have no idea how much that is, do you? It’s beyond counting. That’s the amount Jesus has in mind: something beyond counting. And look what the king does, he simply casually says, “Forget it”.  The debtor says, “oh, I’ll pay it”, but honestly it can’t be paid and the story says that out of pity for him, the king lets him go. But as he goes, he finds someone who owes him a hundred denarii; a denarius is a day’s pay, figure a hundred day’s pay. For me, that’s about $10,000, a little less than a third of what you pay me. It’s a lot of money but it’s payable. The guy asks for more time but the same man who had just been forgiven 10,000 talents, refuses and has him locked up. I’m guessing, just like the other slaves in the story you’re thinking, “that’s so unfair!” And the king thinks the same thing so he has the first guy imprisoned and the story concludes with him being tortured. Wow: where’ the gospel in this? Where’s the happy ending?

For that, you have to go back to the beginning. Remember Peter’s question? Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” [Matt .18:21] When Jesus replies, he’s not really setting a new number: he’s rejecting the whole notion of counting. In the parable itself, the King brings it back to just what we say in the Lord’s Prayer. The king says, “I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should not you have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” [Matt. 18:32bf] The slave who was forgiven hasn’t done anything to his fellow slave outside custom or law. It’s the King who has moved outside those limits. The King forgave an unplayable debt so his slave could move forward. But the slave didn’t move forward, he didn’t see the new possibility of having his debt forgiven. In the same way, Jesus has been talking about God’s forgiveness but Peter hasn’t understood the point: just like the first slave in the parable, God forgives—but there is s purpose and the purpose is to allow God’s people to move forward, not to keep doing what they’ve always done, not continuing to count the debts of others. 

This is the key point about forgiving: it moves us forward. This is God’s will for us. We see this in the story of the Exodus. God’s people have been oppressed by the Egyptians and their cries come to God as the cries of the oppressed always do. God sends Moses to lead the people out of captivity but oppressors do what oppressors always do: they turn to violence. In the story of the Exodus, God’s people are led out by an angelic figure seen as a pillar of fire. When the Egyptian army pursues them, the power of God moves between the Egyptians and the fleeing slaves. Meanwhile, the wind of God moves on the water barring their way, moving it, dividing it, creating a dry path for them to walk. And they escape, they move farther on the way to the promised land, to the fulfillment of God’s promise, God’s purpose.

We don’t have to look far to see this. In April, 1963, the people of Birmingham, Alabama, rose up against the injustices of the system of segregation that prevented them from living the full lives God meant to give them. The campaign was led by children and it culminated in a march, meant to be a peaceful group of people going to their government to demand their rights. But just like the Egyptians, the powerful in that place responded with terrible violence. One of the leaders of that march was a young man named John Lewis. Lewis was beaten bloody that day but he never gave up. He became a leader and an example and served a long distinguished career in Congress. Lewis told this story.

A few years ago, a man from Rock Hill, inspired by President Obama’s election, decided to come forward. He came to my office in Washington and said, “I am one of the people who beat you.I want to apologize. Will you forgive me?” I said, “I accept your apology.” He started crying. He gave me a hug. I hugged him back, and we both started crying. This man and I don’t want to go back; we want to move forward. – Rep. John Lewis

Moving forward is God’s hope for all of us. And the way forward begins when we celebrate how God forgives us by forgiving others.

In a few minutes, we’re going to have an opportunity to pray the Lord’s Prayer again. In a few minutes, we’re going to be invited to say again, “Forgive us out debts as we forgive the debts of others.” In a few minutes, we are invited by these words to move forward. That’s God’s hope for us. That we will not be like the unforgiving servant and end up imprisoned by our past, by the endless counting of what others did to us, what others owe us. Instead, we are invited to find the dry ground the power of the resurrection is making for us. So today, I want to say, don’t worry about the walls of the past that loom like the water the people of God walked through; walk on the dry ground. Don’t worry about the walls of anger, walk on the dry ground of forgiveness. Don’t worry about the walls of bitterness, leave them behind and walk on the dry ground to the kingdom. That way begins with forgiveness and leads toward a life lived knowing, as Paul said, “We do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord, so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” [Romans 14:7f]

Amen

Crying in the Wilderness

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost/A • June 21, 2026

Genesis 21:9-21

In 2009, the Bloomfield Hills Andover High School held our 40th Class Reunion. There were two remarkable things about this to me. One was that it started with a few of us from the old artsy, sarcastic, theatre group—notably both of us who were elected Class Cynic in 1969—reconnecting over Facebook. That spread until the former Cool Kids did what they always did and took it over, completely changing the event into an expensive dinner at a country club. We were 40 years, but the old dynamics still operated, and I ended up growling to Jacquelyn about it endlessly. The other thing that was remarkable was that we all had changed. My best friend came; he used to be a kind of round guy with his hair in a ponytail; I didn’t recognize the skinny, balding guy with the “Richard” name tag. I think that’s when it dawned on me that I had changed too; I wasn’t 140 lbs. anymore, and there wasn’t much left of my long hair either. Our lives unfold, we change, and yet some of the old stuff always remains. 

That’s one of the things I get out of the story we read this morning. This summer, I want to focus on the story of the patriarchs with you, but we have some catching up to do. Two weeks ago, we heard how God called Abram and Sarai out of their home and sent them on a journey to a promise. The promise was a place to live as God’s people and generations to come after them. Now we heard this story about Sarah and Hagar and their sons and Abraham. Just like with the class reunion, a lot has gone on. So first, let’s catch up. Today is like when you missed a few episodes of a series and you have to binge-watch to catch up. 

When we left Abram and Sarai, they were just packing up and moving. They ended up going all the way to Egypt, a long walk. They get into trouble there; that’s a juicy story I suggest you go read on your own. They get kicked out of Egypt, but perhaps while they are there, they acquire an Egyptian maid for Sarai. Along the way, God comes again and makes a covenant with them and changes their names: they become Abraham and Sarah. It’s like losing your hair: life changes you, and they are changed. Still no child, and honestly? Sarah’s really gotten too old for a child. She must have grieved for this, don’t you think? She must have wondered what happened to that part of God’s promise, and Abraham wondered too, I’m sure. How was the promise ever going to be fulfilled?

So she does what women still do. She decides to use the best technology of the time for a woman who can’t get pregnant. In this time, that means getting a surrogate mother. The custom is to officially send your maid to your husband, have her get pregnant with him; I’m not going into all the details. Because she’s your maid, it’s as if it’s your child; because it’s your husband, it’s his as well. So she sends her maid Hagar to Abraham. Hagar has a baby, and he’s named Ishmael, which means “God hears”. So all is well: Abraham has a son, they move to Canaan, and it looks like the promise is working out.

Except this isn’t God’s plan. They’ve missed an important step: waiting for God to fulfill the promise. Instead, Sarah has decided to hurry things along. Our patience and God’s timing don’t always align, and they didn’t here. That doesn’t mean God’s late; it means we’re early. One day, three mysterious visitors appear; Abraham has a big barbecue in their honor. Even today in the Middle East in traditional culture, women and men don’t eat together, and the host doesn’t eat with the guests; he serves them. So the visitors sit down to eat, Sarah is outside the tent listening in, Abraham is getting the food out, and wow! It turns out one of the visitors is God! This is a thing we miss about God: the way God shows up when least expected. And what God says is that in the spring, Sarah is going to have a baby. 

Now these people aren’t stupid. They certainly know there’s a point in a woman’s life where she’s no longer able to conceive. So when Sarah hears this, she thinks what women think when men say things that show they are totally ignorant about women. And she laughs, she laughs so hard they hear her in the tent. God asks about her laughing; Abraham tries to cover up as husbands sometimes do and says she didn’t laugh, but they all know the truth. God asks the fundamental question all people of faith have to answer: is anything too hard for God? It turns out that having an old woman get pregnant isn’t, and sure enough, in the spring Sarah has a baby, and he’s named ‘Isaac’, which means “one who laughs”. Babies are weaned after about three years back then, so that day comes, and Abraham holds another big feast to celebrate. Ishmael, —remember Ishmael?—is about 15. Now we’re all caught up to the story we read today. 

The story starts with a party; it’s important to remember that these people don’t live alone, they are part of a whole group, herding animals. The boys are playing; it may be that Ishmael is teasing Isaac, the Hebrew is obscure. Sarah doesn’t like it and she doesn’t like the idea that Ishmael might compete with her son. Sarah and Hagar have had a difficult relationship all along. So she goes to Abraham and says, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” Notice that she doesn’t even name Hagar and Ishmael; it’s “this slave woman” and “her son”. This is how we distance ourselves from people, isn’t it? We have an instinctive kindness that operates when we see someone as an individual, even more when we know their name; when we are going to be cruel, we prefer not to use names, we refer to them by some group. Sarah is proud of her son, she’s proud of her role in fulfilling God’s promise and she doesn’t want that muddied up with Ishmael.

Abraham doesn’t like it but he goes along with what she says. Helpfully, he comes up with these ideas of God’s plan: that both boys will become the patriarchs of clans somehow. So he takes a skin of water and some bread, does what Sarah demanded, casts them out into the wilderness. It reminds me of Adam and Eve: Eve takes the fruit from the forbidden tree and gives it to Adam, remember? He just eats what he’s given. Here, Abraham just does what Sarah says. 

It’s meant to lift up a mirror to our lives: how God’s promise weaves through them, how our pride and anger sometimes get in the way. Of course, the water runs out; of course, the bread runs out; anyone who’s ever fed a 15-year-old boy knows food doesn’t last long with them. So before long, Hagar and Ishmael are starving and dying of thirst. Hagar puts him under a tree, goes off a ways, because she can’t stand to see him suffer. She cries; he’s crying too. There, in the parched wilderness, where silence engulfs the world, perhaps the only sound is their cries. Until an angel, a messenger from God, speaks up and answers the cry. Suddenly, she sees an oasis with a well, and they are saved. I love a happy ending, don’t you?

There’s a lot to learn here about how God works in the world, how God works with us. The first thing is that God’s purpose is like the tide; it can’t be resisted, it can’t be hurried. Sarah and Abraham tried to use Hagar to hurry things along; now Hagar is crying in the wilderness because their plan led to anger and spite. 

The second thing is that God hears cries in the wilderness. Hagar is the first person in the whole Bible to weep; later, we’re going to see that God consistently hears cries. This past week included the celebration of Juneteenth, the day when slavery was finally ended in our country. We have all kinds of words to cover up the horror of that Holocaust. We talk about the “antebellum South”, forgetting that it was a place of oppression for most of its people. We call the places where slaves worked “plantations” when they were really slave labor camps. In those camps, people were treated as less than animals; they were whipped and tortured and literally worked to death until finally a great and awful war, one of its battles on our very doorstep, was fought to end that terrible curse. President Lincoln recognized in his Second Inaugural address the connection between the destruction of the Civil War and the sin of slavery.

“Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword. [https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln2.asp]

God heard the cry of those slaves and freed them, and thank God for that.

Now we read this story, and it challenges us to ask: who are we sending into the wilderness? What cries are coming to God? Who have we refused to name? What cares is God hearing, and how does God intend to use us to answer those cries? If we are following Christ, surely he means to lead us to those who hurt in order to heal; if we are following Christ, surely he means to lead us to those who are crying to give hope. 

At the end of the story, Hagar and Ishmael find new life. Hagar gets Ishmael a wife in Egypt; their story will go on. It’s an article of faith in Islam that the Prophet Muhammad, the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, is descended from Ishmael, just as it is an article of faith in Judaism that Jews are descended from Isaac. The Apostle Paul says we are adopted into this family as children of Abraham.

So this is our family story: not everyone acts well all the time. We stumble, but we walk forward. And if we walk forward in faith, following Christ, it can only be that we also learn to hear the cries in the wilderness. For as Paul said, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making an appeal through us. 

Amen

Hello?

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Second Sunday After Pentecost • June 7, 2026

Genesis 12:1-9 * Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

I want to begin today with something that won’t make sense to some younger folks and I apologize for that. I want to take you back to a time when all phones were connected by wires to the wall. Do you remember that? Some were black things with a dial that had numbers and letters; in 1959 AT&T shocked us with the introduction of the Princess Phone, a curving bit of plastic that had a base but held the dialing wheel right on the phone. Back then, when the phone rang you generally picked it up and you had no idea who it was on the other end. It could be a friend, it could be a family member; it could be good news, it could be bad news, it could be someone who just wanted to chat. You let the call interrupt your day. There was no signal that said “likely spam” so you knew not to answer; there was no special ring tone for your best friend. Just the same ring for everyone, and you picked up the phone and said, “Hello?” All calls began the same way: picking up the phone, saying “Hello?” and then hearing the other voice telling you who it was and why they called.

Today, of course, calls are very different. Almost all of the calls I get are from people who want to make money off me; I get a lot of calls every single day from loan companies that want to give me money—so I will pay it back with interest. Some of the calls want me to give to good causes or campaigns for various candidates. All these have in common that they aren’t in my phone book so they first flash a message that says, “Likely spam” and generally I don’t answer, I hit a cancel button. I try not to cancel calls from any of you; those are what I call the “Hello?” calls, people I’m happy to hear from. Calls interrupt us; they ask for attention when we are paying attention to something else, they ask us to respond. That’s what’s happening in two of the stories we read today.

Matthew invites us to imagine Jesus walking along. Where is he going? We aren’t told. He’s not alone; he has some disciples with him, perhaps others, maybe some of the Pharisees who show up later. He sees a tax collector booth, the way we see toll booths on the highway. No one likes paying taxes and in this time, tax payers were especially hated because they were a symbol of Roman oppression. Everything had a tax on it, what you did, what you earned, and every time you crossed a bridge. Tax collectors paid a fee upfront for the right to collect the tax on something so there was a built in incentive to get as much as possible. They were people shunned in their community. Yet here is Jesus, walking by, and simply saying, apparently out of the blue, “Follow me.” 

It’s an interruption, a phone call out of the blue. We aren’t told what happens next but it must have been positive because in the next sentence, Jesus is at Matthew’s house, having dinner with him and other tax collectors and people who are described with the catchall term, “sinners”. Sinners means people who for whatever reason are thought of as not worthy to come before God. It’s shocking and some good church folk ask his disciples about it: Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” [Matt 9:12] Eating tougher is surrounded by customs in this time; no one just sits down with strangers. Yet here Jesus is, with a bunch of the unworthy, sinners, tax collectors, people no one wants. This is his answer: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” [Matt 9:13] It’s a 700 year old quote from the prophet Hosea. Jesus is looking back into the Biblical tradition to remind these Bible teachers of what the tradition truly teaches: God’s mercy for all, no distinction, no one left out, no one left behind.

Before they can say anything, there’s another interruption, another “Hello?” moment. A local leader—Mark calls him a leader of the synagogue—begs Jesus to come resurrect his daughter who has died. So they all leave the dinner and go off to deal with this crisis and on the way yet a third “Hello?” moment occurs. A woman with a woman who has been bleeding for years touches Jesus; in another version of the story, she grabs the fringe of his cloak. Women who are bleeding are definitely among those who are seen as unworthy, in Biblical terms ‘unclean’. No good and righteous man has contact with them but Jesus stops stock still and turns and says, “Take heart daughter, your faith has made you well”. He takes the time to heal her even though he’s apparently in a hurry.

Notice that he doesn’t examine Matthew’s fitness before he calls him; he doesn’t ask that the dinner guests be vetted before he eats with them, he doesn’t tell the woman to prove her goodness, he just heals her. These are all stories of interruption; these are all “Hello?” moments that show Jesus flinging God’s grace into the world as casually as a homeowner watering the lawn. No one waters just one section, or one bit of grass; you water the whole lawn. Jesus comes to save the whole world. He does it one table, one dinner at a time, because eating together is a way we have of connecting to each other. One writer said, 

I have many food-related memories from childhood. Food bank lines stacked with government-issued blocks of processed cheese my scrawny arms could barely carry. Mean lunch ladies who told me that free lunch kids like me could only have the white milk, not the chocolate milk. I learned early that food could divide people or make someone feel excluded. I learned the economic difference between white milk and chocolate.

I have other memories of food, such as my mother’s fried chicken. I remember those rare Sundays when she wasn’t working as a nurse’s aide, when she would invite folks from her church to Sunday dinner. It didn’t really matter who you were—you would lose your sense of etiquette trying to negotiate your favorite piece of that golden brown bird. I learned that food could make one feel welcome. I learned that hospitality—and, symbolically, food—could not only mediate social relationships but even break boundaries. Whom we ate with could be inclusive and recalibrate relationships. It was always powerful to see my mother as host and pastors and parishioners as grateful guests. God’s hello’s interrupt but they also break boundaries; God’s hello’s come out of the blue but lead us to God’s path.

We see the same patten in Genesis. The very word means beginnings and from Chapter 1, which we read last Sunday, until just before today’s reading, we have a series of stories that move from creation through humanity’s fall from grace to Noah and the flood and the rainbow covenant, God’s promise to never again wipe out all life. Then we’re given an explanation in the Tower of Babel of how languages are invented because of human pride followed by a long genealogy that takes us from Noah’s sons to Terah, the father of Abram. Suddenly the progression of legends and myths is interrupted. God speaks to Abram, a man just like any other man, and says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you.” [Gen 12:1] Wow—in a time when your clan was all, when most people lived and died in the same area, this is a tremendous “Hello!”, an interruption of all life.

The section before this contains a long genealogy in which Abram’s wife, Sarai, is noted and we’re given this note: Sarai was unable to have children. Certainly this is significant in the culture where the primary job of a woman was to have children. What makes it even more stunning is that when God promises blessing, part of the blessing is, “I will make you a great nation.” How will this promise be realized with a woman who is barren? What did Sarai think about this call; what does she think about leaving everything? Surely she’s leaving her family and home too. No more visits to see them; no more going home for holidays, just a husband and his calling and his journey. Her life is being interrupted also: she doesn’t object, but it’s not clear she agrees.

Still, they go forward. God’s promises this: 

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:2-3]

Go forth: become a blessing to everyone who will ever be. 

So they go, first to Canaan, which is now Israel, through Shechem. Now the interesting thing about Shechem is that it’s up in the hill country of what will later be Northern Israel and still later Samaria, a part of Israel conquered by the Assyrians and in Jesus’ time, a land of people who are rejected by the Jews themselves. That’s where Abraham builds the first altar to our God. There is where Abraham responds to God with his own hello. 

This is the beginning of our whole faith story. This is how God comes, interrupting lives, sending people to new places and new directions. What happens to Matthew when he follows Jesus? He stays with the disciples after Jesus’ crucifixion; he’s there after the resurrection, he becomes an evangelist. Early church leaders believed he wrote down stories of Jesus that became the Gospel of Matthew. Some legends say he was an preacher in what’s present day Iran where he angered a local king and was killed for his faith, becoming a martyr. The interruption became his life.

What happens to Abram and Sarai is that they continue to journey beyond Canaan. We’re going to hear more of their story this summer. The interruption becomes the foundation of their lives and the fountain that produces three great religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All revere Abram and claim this story of the great interruption of his life as the beginning of their history with God.

These stories invite us to ask where God intends to interrupt our lives. Where is God saying hello to you today? Our church life is like our personal lives: it tends to float along day to day without much change. Where is God trying to interrupt our church? How would accepting that Hello change us?

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Trinity Sunday/A • Mary 31, 2026

Genesis 1:1-2:4a • Matthew 28:16-20

Climbing up the mountain children
I didn’t come here for to stay
If I never more see you again,
Gonna see you on the Judgement Day

You can listen to the song here

Do you know this song? It’s in the style of a spiritual. Spirituals used religious metaphors to signal slaves and call them to take the risks of seeking freedom. It’s striking how often mountains figure in our faith tradition. Ancient people looked up and believed they were looking toward God. So to get higher was to get closer to God, draw nearer divinity. Isn’t that our hope? Isn’t that why we come to worship?—to feel closer to God. Today, let’s listen to these two stories from scripture and let them help us climb the mountain toward God.

Take that long, long story that open Genesis, the book of beginnings. Did you follow it as we read it this morning? When you listen to a song, there are two parts: you listen to the lyrics and you also listen to the music. It’s the same way with this story. The words are the lyrics; the rhythm and balance is the music. It starts out with what our translation calls “the formless void”; in Hebrew, the “Tohu Bohu”, absence of anything and then—light. The light is divided—night and day. There’s a place: now it’s divided, above, below—sky and world. It’s divided: Earth and seas. On the earth, plants, in the sky lights—time and fruitfulness. In the sea, creatures of every kind, in the air, birds of every kind. On the land, animals and cattle, which is to say animals that live mutually with humanity. Finally: us—humankind, gendered and made in the image of God. What we hear if we listen more to the music than the lyrics is an amazing, ultimate ordering, a place for everything, everything in its place. 

Clean Up!

It reminds me of being a boy in the room I shared with my brother. We had closets, desks, and some storage areas. And we had an amazing mess of toys, dirty clothes, books, magazines, half-built plastic models and what I can only describe as “Interesting Stuff”—a special rock, some shell brought back from a beach. My mom would tell us to clean up and we would, in the way boys clean up, which is to say we’d dump stuff into the closets and push it under the bed. But every once in a while, often on a summer day, my mother, in the way of mothers who are never fooled and knew exactly what we’d done, would appear in our room and tell us that today we were going to really clean. We knew what really clean meant: everything came out from under the beds, everything came out from the closet and then, bit by bit, my mother would help us put it all away, dirty clothes to the laundry, beds made without lumps, toys and models on shelves, trash thrown out and Interesting Things examined and put into a box. She brought order and even though we whined about the process, at the end we loved it. She’d stand in the doorway, arms crossed and say, “Now that’s the way this room should be. Try to keep it this way, at least for a little while.”

That’s what this story in Genesis is about. People who want to argue about it as a scientific description of how things came to be are missing the song it means to sing. This isn’t about how things came to be, it’s about how things are meant to be, all in order: night, day, animals, cattle, human beings, ordered by a loving God, everything in its place, everything dancing together to the music of God’s order, just as a choir sings together to the music of the organ. Now there are various names for this order. When it comes to everything, we call it creation; when it comes to human beings, we call it justice. It’s where God is always trying to move us, and the pathway there is the mountain we are meant to climb.

We have to climb it because, just like my brother and I, on the whole we are messy children. We are meant to be caretakers of creation; we wander off and become consumers instead. We are meant to live in the equality of mutually, equally being made in the image of God, recognizing that image in each other. Instead, we create hierarchies, we compete to be better than others and, in our pride, we use our strength to create systems that oppress some and benefit others. Hierarchy always involves coercion and coercion is violence. Violence disorders the balance, the order, God created and like the pressure under a volcano, it gets stored up until finally the coerced erupt against it.

A long time ago, when May was small, she had a problem and needed help. She seriously and carefully explained the problem and then came to what she wanted and said, “That’s where you come in.” Clearly, today we need someone to stand, like a mother at the doorway of a messy room, to clean things up. And that’s where you come in. Yes: we are meant to be part of the solution to putting things back in order. Just like my mother, God has a plan and the plan is in the other story we read this morning. It begins with God seeing the disorder of the world and coming to us, like my mother coming into the room. The signature act of God in Jesus is resurrection. Resurrection is God transcending violence. The cross is all the world’s violence, all the police on someone’s neck, all the politicians refusing to help the needy and helping friends get the benefits of God’s creation. The cross is domination; resurrection is the solution.

Trinity Sunday

The other story we read today pictures Jesus with his disciples on a mountain. “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.” [Matthew 28:16]. Jesus tells them to do three things: make disciples, baptize, teach his commandments. Today is Trinity Sunday and this is the one place in the Bible where the Trinity is explicitly mentioned. I have a history with the Trinity; the history is that when I was 12, I was in Confirmation Class, the old minister, probably not as old as I am now, tried to tell us about the Trinity and I said, “That doesn’t make sense!” Later he called my mother and asked her not to bring me back. Honestly? The Trinity is a way of trying to encapsulate that God comes to us in many ways. Jesus isn’t preaching theology here; he’s giving commands. Matthew says this interesting thing about the audience: “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.” [Matt. 28:17] Believing all the theology doesn’t really matter, apparently; even the doubters are included. So if that’s you, welcome! 

What Jesus is teaching isn’t theology, it’s this: go make disciples. Sometimes we’ve misinterpreted this to mean “force people” but Jesus never forced anyone; he only invites. And what he invites them, what he invites us to do, is to obey what he commanded. It starts with the  power of forgiveness and what is forgiveness? It’s the intentional act of saying, “Let’s start new.” It’s the do-over after a missed opportunity, it’s the refusal to store up grievance and let it become resentment. Baptism is the symbol of this, the symbolic washing that gets rid of the dirt of the past. His ultimate command is love, loving the image of God where ever it’s found, whether in God or in God’s image, the person you meet, the person you haven’t met. To make disciples simply means to help someone else start to live this way, usually because they’ve been inspired by the example you set.

Living Now

This is a disordered moment. The regular rhythms of life are off. We are at war in a distant way that seems to cost mostly other people’s lives and our money. Our politics sounds more like a call to holy war than an invitation to solve problems. We can’t choose whether to live in this time; we can choose how we live. We can’t choose whether we live in a racist culture but we can choose how we live in it. We can use our politics, our money, our social media, our lives to say, to others, “I care about you—you’re a child of God, I’m going to treat you like one.” That’s being a disciple; that’s teaching Jesus way of love by example.

Somewhere, someone is rolling their eyes at this, I’m sure. Somewhere, someone is thinking it will never work. I imagine some days my mother stood in the doorway and thought, “How will they ever clean this up?” Jesus started with 12 disciples; here he is, just a short time later, and already he’s lost one—there are only 11 left to gather in Galilee. But it doesn’t stop him. He knows the truth that our politics always forgets, the one Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so eloquently voiced when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” 

In all the time since that moment in Galilee, there have been plenty of failures. Christians have busily built their own systems of domination and others have had to fight to restore justice. But God never stops trying, never stops coming to clean up. There’s another mountain song that reminds me of this. It’s meant to be a love song but I think of it as God’s love song for us and it begins, “A’int no mountain high enough, a’int no river wide enough, to keep me from you.” That’s the message of the resurrection: there is no power, no principality, nothing that can ultimately overcome God’s hope. When we live in justice, care for creation and each other, appreciate the image of God in creation and and all people, follow Jesus’ commands, then we are part of God’s plan. Isn’t it time to clean up today?

Amen. 

Future Perfect

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Pentecost Sunday/A • May 24, 202

Acts 2:1-21 • 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 or Acts 2:1-21 • John 20:19-23

I grew up in the era of diagramming sentences: did you? Do you remember this? It was how grammar was taught. Since I was a big doodler on notes, I imagine if you could go back and find my old English class notes, they would be an amazing mass of lines parsing a sentence and little drawings of sailboats. I wasn’t very good at grammar then. It wasn’t until I took Ancient Greek in college that I got serious about it. Greek is all about grammar. One of the forms we learned was the future perfect. The perfect means action completed; the future part says it’s happening in the future. So, for example, “When the service is over, I will go home and have breakfast”, means I’m certainly going to have breakfast but not until later. “By 2:00 PM, Jim will be ready for a nap”, is another future perfect. That’s all the grammar I want to do this morning, so you can relax now. But I wanted to make this point: Pentecost is a future perfect of God doing what the prophet Joel said: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people.”

Pentecost is often called the birthday of the church but it has counterparts in other faiths. It occurs on the Feast of Shavuot, a Jewish celebration of the giving of the Torah; the moment God’s people were set aside as a whole community.. In the Muslim world, pilgrims gather for Eid al-Adha marking the end of the Hajj, where differences in wealth, status, and nationality are set aside before God. All these have in common the experience of being a community inspired by God’s Spirit, moved by God’s Word.

Pentecost follows on the story of the Ascension that we read last week. There, Jesus tells the disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” [Acts 1:8] Now we’re told they are gathered and there is a sound, a “Whooooooshhhhhh” throughout the room. Say it with me: “Whooooshhhh”. Pentecost begins with sound. Then there are the tongues of fire. Ministers love to play with this. One of the ministers I listen to laughed this week about using flash paper in a bowl early in his career; the flame whooshed up and he lost his eyebrows. I’ve thought about doing something like that but honestly this building has been here since 1822 and I’m not about to risk being the pastor who burned it down. The members of the building committee can thank me later. So I’m not doing flames today; you can imagine them. 

After the tongues of fire, we get more sounds. The disciples, the followers of Jesus go out into the street. Now perhaps because it’s Shavuot, there are lots of people and miraculously they can understand them and the people can understand the disciples. Have you ever been in a place where no one speaks your language? It’s frustrating. Simple things like going into a store and asking, “Do you have a AA battery?” become complicated. Every once in a while, you run into someone who speaks your language and it’s like a little miracle. 

This bit about the languages is the center of some churches; their services have people doing what’s called ‘speaking in tongues’. But ecstatic speech like that is not Pentecost. Pentecost is about that little miracle of understanding. Genesis tells a story of the building of the Tower of Babel, an effort by people to become God like that becomes the occasion for God to create languages and misunderstanding. So Pentecost is the reversal of the Tower of Babel. It’s a future perfect: suddenly, instead of being divided by language, people are united together, understanding each other. That’s the energy of Pentecost: it isn’t in the whooshing wind, it isn’t in the fiery tongues, it’s in the gathering of all people because, as Joel said, 

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

Pentecost is a vision of a future God has already seen.

John gives us a different account of the arrival of the Spirit among believers. He says that just before Jesus ascends, he tells the disciples,

“Receive the Holy Spirit. f you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” [John 20:22b-23]

So the coming of the Spirit has a purpose: it’s to empower God’s people to do the work of forgiveness. God’s making a future; Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who presided from the dark storms of apartheid in South Africa into the dawn of a new society based on equality said, “Without forgiveness, there is no future.” When we are chained by guilt over past wrongs, we can’t see a way forward; the same is true for others. So our job is to create a future by teaching and practicing forgiveness.

This doesn’t happen in a moment; it isn’t now, it’s a future perfect, it’s where we’re going, it’s where God is going. We recognize it when we say with our lives, “Jesus is Lord”; not our past, not our resume, not our prejudices. We all let these run our lives at times but when the Spirit controls us, then we say with our whole selves, Jesus is Lord and act like it. That’s the point Paul is making in the letter to the Corinthian Christians. Their church is filled with conflict because they are making a hierarchy out of gifts; Paul simply says, many gifts, one Spirit, many gifts, one Lord, many gifts, one purpose by one God who intends to form us into the body of Christ.

This doesn’t happen in a moment; it isn’t now, it’s a future perfect, it’s where we’re going, it’s where God is going. Every time we come to the Table of the Lord, we remember where we are; every time we come to the Table of the Lord, we remember where we’re going. Every time we come to the table of the Lord, we are meant to recognize him in our midst. Every time we come to the table of the Lord, we should come forgiving and knowing we are forgiven. For every time we come to the table of the Lord, it’s meant to be a little Pentecost, a moment when we see again, as a future perfect, how God’s love is gathering, nurturing, inviting, and claiming us. You are not your own: you are a part of this wonderful congregation, some of which meets here today, some is throughout the world, and in the future perfect hope of God, all of which is living out the love of God.

Amen.

This Is the Day

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Ascension Sunday/A • May 17, 2026

Acts 1:1-11 * Psalm 47 or Psalm 93 * Ephesians 1:15-23 * Luke 24:44-53

Imagine two boys. One is born while his parents still live in student housing. His dad starts a new job; mom stays home with him. His parents don’t have a lot but they get by. The move to a new state; his dad gets promoted. He gets a new brother; he’s not very good at the games bo ys play, he prefers books and his mother feeds that, encourages it. They take vacations with an extended family at the beach. It isn’t luxury but it’s fun. He grows up in a turbulent time, goes to college and marries at 20, moves far from family. The other boy is a surprise; his mother is 41 when she has him. She stays at home at first but then she goes back to college; his dad works a lot and he’s going to school too. So he’s mostly on his own. He learns to make friends; he has two older brothers. By the time he’s a few years old, his parents are both working professionally and the family is doing well financially. He’s smart and engaging and his parents take him on vacations to Europe. These two boys are brothers but if you ask them about their history, you’ll never know they come from the same family.

It’s the same with the stories of Jesus after the resurrection. We have about eight accounts. Mark says nothing; Mark ends in the middle of a sentence, some scholars believe there was more that got lost, like a book you find in a “$1.00 pile” missing the last chapter. Matthew tells us the disciples saw Jesus and he told them to go to Galilee and wait; then he appears there and tells them to go baptize the whole world. John tells us Jesus appeared to Mary and a week later to the disciples and then yet another week later to the disciples and Thomas. Paul sees him years later on the road to Damascus and writes to the Corinthian Christians that he was seen by more than 500 people; we don’t have their accounts. Luke says Jesus appeared to some people on the road to Emmaus who didn’t recognize him at first and only did when he broke bread with them; he tells them to wait in Jerusalem. I suppose some people would come away from this confusion of stories and contradictions wondering whether anyone saw anything. What I take from it is that just like the two boys in different families that are the same, Jesus appeared in different ways at different times to different people.

Luke is the one who tells us about Jesus’ ascension. Luke is the author of both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of the Act of the Apostles. He says Jesus appeared over a period of 40 days; apparently he isn’t counting the appearance to Paul. This is the scene he presents. The disciples are gathered by the Risen Christ. Is it a picnic? A meeting? We don’t know what they thought. Maybe they’re just happy to be with him again. He tells them they are going to be baptized by the Holy Spirit; we’ll celebrate that next week on Pentecost.

But the disciples are like children: they’re focused on what they want to know, not what he’s telling them. “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They have in mind the kingdom as a conquest, a reforming of the government. They imagine General Jesus will ride to victory over the Romans and the Herodians and set things right and, oh, by the way, put them in charge. He’s already had to stop them bickering between themselves over who is the best disciple, who will sit at his right and left hands when he reigns in victory. This is like two boys too isn’t it? “Mom loves me best, no she loves ME best!” Jesus has been to Jerusalem, been crucified, died, been raised, just like he said They’re impatient for the next chapter; they want to get on to the good part, where they help him run things. “Will you restore the kingdom now, Lord?”

Jesus, as he always does, forges ahead with his purpose. He tells them in effect that when the kingdom is restored is none of their business: “It is not for to know the times or period that the Father has set by his own authority.” When I was the pastor at Suttons Bay Congregational church, I used to take our youth group to rallies. They were far away and we’d often leave at night. Periodically kids would wake up and say, “Are we there yet?” I’d always say my version of what Jesus says: “In about ten minutes.” It took them a few trip to realize that “about 10 minutes” was the answer regardless of the reality.

Once again, Jesus tells them they are going to receive the Holy Spirit. He tells them they are going to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria. These are places progressively farther away. They’re near Jerusalem; Judea is the larger area. Samaria is next door. “You’re going to be my witnesses in Harrisburg, in Mechanicsburg and Maryland;” something like that. The fundamental point is that they are going to have to go out into the world and tell people about him, about what he taught, about what he did, about who he is. 

Then he’s gone. He ascends to heaven. We are human, we have up and down and sideways, so Luke uses the language of direction to describe this. We get focused on the details: how did he do it? How far up did he go? A confirmation kid asked me once, “Did he sprout wings?” This all misses the point. The point is not that heaven is up there somewhere and he’s on his way. The point is that Jesus is fully revealed as who he is, always has been: the Son of God, Lord, a heavenly one who is now going home.

So one moment they are standing there asking questions, maybe chattering among themselves. Did they hear what Jesus said? Did they understand it? We don’t know. Luke tells us that he gives the command and then ascends and they’re left there, on their own. Oh! Not totally alone: there are a couple of angels. The angels say, “Why are you standing around? Can you imagine this moment? The artist Dali has a wonderful painting depicting just Jesus feet: it’s meant to be what the disciples see as Jesus ascents. I think they must have been stunned; this meeting hasn’t gone like they thought it would. They came prepared to hear the next phase of Jesus’ campaign to take over Jerusalem; they came prepared to be promoted to sit at his right and left hand. Now they are left just standing there, gazing into heaven. And they realize they are not on their own.

Luke says what they did was to worship Jesus and to go back and were in the temple constantly rejoicing. Perhaps they remembered what he’d told them: “I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” [Luke 24:49] In a sense, they are doing exactly what we sang about at the beginning today: “This is the day, I will rejoice”. We’re coming near the end of the season of Easter so it’s a good time to remember this.

Because this IS the day to rejoice.We live in a culture that constantly tells us to worry. We worry about prices: will we be able to afford gas and food and other things. We worry about our country and whether it will be able to sustain the democracy which is its core principle: that all people are created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We worry about our church and its future. I’m sure you have your own list. Now think of those followers of Jesus. They have most of those things to worry about too. They have the looming shadow of powers that have just executed Jesus but they know this IS the day to rejoice because God’s power raised him up. This IS the day.

This IS the day to do what Jesus said and what Jesus said is: wait for the Spirit. It’s hard to wait, we want to do things, make progress, get ahead. But Jesus wants us, to wait for the Spirit. When I was first on my own, my mother gave me one of the most useful books I’ve ever had. It was the Betty Crocker cookbook. Do you have this? It had recipes for everything. I didn’t know how to cook but all I had to do was open Betty Crocker and she’d tell me exactly what I needed and what to do to produce everything from a hamburger to a cake. I could do it on my own: no waiting. Don’t we often treat church like this? I was ordained in 1975 as the mainline churches began to lose members and Christian bookstores were full of recipe books on how to grow; I still have bunches of them. It felt like I could do it on my own. But I couldn’t. The first time I used one of the big recipes and put together a whole church project that was going to transform our little church in Seattle into a big church, it was a total failure. I hadn’t waited for the Spirit.

This is the day to wait for God’s Spirit here. I am done reading recipes and doing it on my own and I hope you are as well. This is the day that the Lord has made: This is the day to be sure God’s Spirit will come if we wait.

This IS the day to seek that Spirit. We have this wonderful platform, this building, our history. This is a place where enemies were loved: once upon a time Salem was filled with wounded Confederate soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg. Once upon a time slaves on their way to freedom were hidden here. Once upon a time a crowd of people filled these pews in the new settlement of Harrisburg. But that was then; this is now This is the day when we should look forward. We live in a city full of lonely people and we ought to be praying every single day on how we can heal them, give hope. They don’t need a recipe: they need the love of God. This is the day to offer that love. Jesus said: “You are witnesses” So this is the day to tell someone what God has done in your life and invite others to that Spirit of gentleness, that spirit of acceptance, that spirit that we share.

Amen.

Knowing God

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Sixth Sunday in Easter/A • May 10, 202 – Mothers Day

Acts 17:22-31 * Psalm 66:8-20 * 1 Peter 3:13-22 * John 14:15-21

We recently went to Spain again; we love vacations there. One of the best parts for me are the way every city has so many open spaces: gardens, plazas, always with pleasant places to sit, frequently with service from small cafés nearby. All cities have open spaces where people gather; we have them here in Harrisburg. It’s common to see a group on the steps of the capital and any nice Saturday brings out crowds at the Broadway Market. What’s true for us was true for ancient cities as well. Athens is a place inhabited since before history. We know that by 508 BCE, a man named Solon had organized a community there and founded the world’s first democracy. They didn’t have voting machines, so citizens would gather in a plaza called an agora in Greek to argue, debate, vote. Perhaps that’s why Athens became known throughout the ancient world for its thinkers, its philosophy. It was home to Socrates, to Plato, to Aristotle and though conquered by Rome around 86 BCE, it remained an intellectual center in the ancient world. We see photos of the city with its towering temples now and they are the surviving white marble but in ancient times, in the time of Jesus, the temples were painted bright colors. At the top of Athens stood the great temple of Athena; down the hill was the agora, where people still met to debate. Beyond that was the Areopagus, sometimes called Mars Hill, a rocky up thrust and that’s where we find Paul in today’s reading.

We’ve jumped over a lot in Acts. Last week, we heard about the stoning of Stephen and perhaps you missed the little detail at the end, that a man named Saul held the coats of the people killing Stephen. That Saul was a lawyer who became a prosecuting attorney but on his way to investigate Christians in Damascus, he was struck by a vision of Christ so powerful it knocked him off his donkey. Seeing the Risen Christ, he is overwhelmed and became blind. He has to be taken into the city to be healed. From that time on, he learns about this new faith and he begins to preach it. By the time we met him here, he’s made a journey up the coast of Asia Minor, founded churches, spoken to people and argued forcefully that the new gatherings called in Greek ekklesia, in English, churches, should include both Gentiles and Jews because God’s grace is more important than human distinctions. 

Now he’s come to Athens and as he looks out over the city from the hill, he sees the great temples that fill the city. For centuries, good Jews, and Paul is certainly one, were horrified by the idolatry of pagans. He’s seen that everywhere; it’s all over the ancient world. Can you imagine him there, on a rocky rise, getting ready to speak to crowds who are curious but not interested? Boston University School of Theology where I graduated seminary is a long, high building; another mirrors it just to the east. In between, is a big chapel building, and in front of that an plaza where often preachers, sometimes professors, sometimes students, would set up a lectern and preach to the passing crowds. The street is a broad divided avenue, Commonwealth Avenue, so there are constantly cars passing, people walking past, hurrying to somewhere. A guy used to set up a drinks cart near the lectern; perhaps he knew preaching is thirsty work. So that’s how I think of this moment. 

He begins like all good preachers by connecting to the experience of the listeners, tells them he’s been walking around and he’s noticed they’re very curious about religion. There are lots of temples and there’s even one called, “To the unknown God”. That’s his take off: this God you don’t know, I know, he says, and I’m going to tell you about him. Now “knowing” is so important to Greek that they have at least three differing words for it: one for knowing a fact, like I know the pulpit is wood, one for knowing by experience, like I know that it’s going to be a little warm here until the heat settles down and it’s fully summer, and one for completely understanding, and having full knowledge. That’s what Paul is offering: to fully experience God.

Of course, people have been trying to do that for a long time and just like us, they have rituals that help give them that feeling. The fundamental ritual is to take something valuable and give it to one of the Gods, who are imaged by huge statues. It’s transactional: you give, God helps. We have that kind of religion still; there are supposedly Christian preachers who will tell you that you will get a blessing if you give to their ministry. Paul is clear: that’s not true. 

The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

From one ancestor he made all people to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him–though indeed he is not far from each one of us [Acts 17:24-27]

This is the hardest Sunday School lesson and the most basic: that God is greater, that God can’t be manipulated like we can. So we often use human images but those ultimately fail. The true God is so much more than human, for as humans, we need things, we need nurture, we need each other; God needs nothing, God is beyond need.

Paul tells them that no matter how wonderful our artful depictions are, God is not made from gold or silver—perhaps today he’d add silicon. There is no image, no picture we can offer that captures God, for God can’t be captured. Finally, Paul tells the Athenians to repent. Now repenting isn’t saying you’re sorry for something bad; repentance means changing your direction. It’s the experience of finally admitting you’re lost, stopping, and getting a new way. Paul calls the Athenians to repent and turn not to an unknown God but to knowing this God who is real and present and always has been. And finally he tells them that the way to know God is through a man who presented God in human form, who was raised from the dead.

That man, Jesus Christ, is the one speaking in today’s Gospel reading. It follows right from last weeks’ reading. The context is still the last supper. Jesus has just said he is giving his followers a new commandment, to love one another, and acted out this love by washing their feet, taking on the role of a servant, comforting them, just hours from his own death on a cross. I’ve seen this kind of love once in my life. My father in the faith, Harry Clark, was in the hospital, just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and complications from it. I knew this meant he didn’t have long to live, and for a few moments we sat just the two of us. We’d both been pastors a long time; we both knew what the diagnosis meant. But my adopted sisters were in denial. Harry and I didn’t talk much, except to acknowledge what was going to happen, that there wouldn’t be a recovery. And then he said quietly, “Don’t tell the girls, they aren’t ready yet.” Here was a man who loved life, loved learning, never stopped living, never stopped thinking, acknowledging his end and in that moment, his one thought was love for his daughters, for all of us.

Jesus knows he’s going to a cross; he knows his time with his friends is about to end. In that moment, his one thought, his one move, is to comfort them. He knows they will fall away, he tells Peter as much. Yet there’s no anger, no pleading to stay faithful. He simply says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. [John 14:15} And then he promises them God’s presence in the person of a Spirit, a Spirit that will let them continue to be with him, will comfort them, advocate for them, lift them. In Aramaic, in Hebrew, in Greek in all the languages these words were first known, the words for spirit and breath and wind are the same. Genesis says that at creation it was the spirit—the ruach YHWH—the moved on the waters to turn chaos into an ordered, fruitful place. It’s the Spirit that divides the sea and lets God’s people escape slavery and it’s the Spirit that brings God’s Word to the prophets. One poet said,

the Air is everywhere.

Holy Air,
Stirring the waters of creation,
Sweeping across the desert.
Breathing life into humans.

Feel the Air, Holy Air,
like the rush of a mighty wind
awakening lost spirits.

Breathe the Air
source of life,
filling a newborn’s first cry.

Breathe deep, the Holy Air,
centring in your Presence.

Breathe on me,
breath of God.
Fill me with your love,
your Holy Air.

[https://worshipwords.co.uk/holy-air-poem-dance-susan-brecht-usa/]

What should we do about such love? Isn’t it precisely what Paul says?—repent. Every week, I sit down on Monday or Tuesday to put together the liturgy we share on Sunday morning. I pick hymns; I insert the scripture readings. But before I get far, I need to think about the Prayer of Confession. It’s a little thing, right there near the beginning and yet it’s the foundation for the whole service. We need that prayer; I need it. I need it because I know that I have not followed Christ’s command to love all the time. I know that I got mad at someone driving; I know I am not loving about the stupid guy who parks his stupid BMW in front of my house in a way that takes up two spaces. I should be more loving; I should be more compassionate. But in the moment, I’m not. So I need to come and say, “Wow, Lord, I hardly got home before I messed up; there are al these times this week when I was off the path, away from the way. Help me get back with you; help me start over right now.” That’s what the Prayer of Confession really is: it’s repenting and choosing to come back to God. It’s determining to know God every day, everywhere, for God is everywhere. It’s the commitment, even though I haven’t succeeded, to walk the way of Christ because he is the way to knowing God.

Amen

Dwelling Well

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Fifth Sunday in Easter/A • May 3, 3036

Acts 7:55-60 * Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 * 1 Peter 2:2-10 * John 14:1-14

“I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”  [Psalm 23:6]

We all live somewhere; we grew up somewhere, perhaps moved, made a home, moved again, and so on. All along we were dwelling somewhere. But what does it mean to dwell in the house of the Lord? Today we’ve heard four different affirmations of faith. “In you, O LORD, I seek refuge…” [Psalm 31:1] the Psalmist says. A refuge is a safe place; it’s not hard to imagine someone in a frightening moment looking for a safe place, is it? We get warnings sometimes: “seek shelter!” —a storm is coming. Michigan, where I mostly grew up, gets tornadoes and you learn early to listen for the sirens and go somewhere safe. When I was in college, the night before a final exam, a tornado was sighted near our dormitory so hundreds of us trooped down to the basement, sprawled on the floors, trying to study but also to keep our fears down. This is the Psalmist telling us that in a time of trouble, his or her refuge is in God. Then we heard the last words of Stephen, perhaps the first Christian martyred for his faith. He’s been speaking out against the authorities of his time and place and for that he’s being stoned to death. This is his prayer: “”Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”” [Acts 7:59]. Then we heard from the writer of First Peter, years after Jesus’ ascension, reminding brothers and sisters in Christ, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” [1 Peter 2:10] Finally, we have this wonderful section from the Gospel of John, where Jesus comforts his disciples. All of these are really an invitation to come dwell with God.

Think about the context behind what Jesus is saying. This is the moment we call Maundy Thursday. They’re in Jerusalem but darkness is gathering. It’s passover; the city is full of currents. Passover is a reminder of how God brought God’s people out of slavery, defeated Pharaoh and gathered them, in Jesus’ words, as a mother hen gathers her chicks. Now those same people are oppressed by the taxes and the laws of the Roman Empire. Extra troops have been brought to Jerusalem because Passover sparks the Jewish memory of freedom and some might act on it. At the same time, Jesus has been speaking and the authorities are angry and authorities always express fear by using power. So I imagine this is a fearful moment, and certainly Jesus must feel the fear in his friends and he speaks to them to quiet their fears. 

He tells them not to let their hearts be troubled, that he’s preparing a place for them and that with the father there are many dwelling places. That, at least, is the translation we read this morning. But perhaps you grew up like I did with an older translation that instead of “many dwelling places” said “many mansions”. This is an old joke in our family. Jacquelyn grew up with that and sometime after we were together I preached on this passage and explained that what Jesus has in mind is not a sort of suburb with lots of individual homes.

But that’s an American cultural idea. What Jesus has in mind is certainly the sort of homes common in Palestine. They looked like those U shaped motels on the Jersey shore; you know what I mean? Lots of rooms, different levels, all curling around an inner court. At the shore, there’s a pool in the court; I’m not sure if Jesus included the pool. What he’s saying is there is space for you, we’re all going to be together, and there’s a place for you. At first, Jacquelyn didn’t like it: she said, “You took away my mansion and you’re replacing it with a motel?” I said it’s not me, it’s Jesus, talk to him. What Jesus has in mind aren’t separate mansions but a community grouped together; what Jesus has in mind is dwelling together with God.

He shows them how relationships work in that community. It’s in the part just before what we read. He takes a towel and a bowl, wets the towel and bends to wash his friend’s feet. People generally wore sandals in those days so feet got really dirty; there’s mud, there’s whatever they’ve stepped in. Washing feet was a courtesy usually performed by slaves. Yet here is their master bending before them, acting like a servant. It’s uncomfortable. Honestly, it is today among us which is one reason that although I’ve conducted may Maundy Thursday services, we almost never, ever, actually do what Jesu did, wash each other’s feet. It’s too intimate; it’s too personal. Once someone asked if we were going to do that at Maundy Thursday because if we were she wanted to get a pedicure beforehand; she didn’t want ugly feet I guess. The thing about Jesus is that he doesn’t care if your feet are ugly, he wants to teach you to serve others and he does it by acting out a love that makes you beautiful. He doesn’t care when you feel worthless, he gives his life to show you how much yours is worth.

We get to overhear two conversations here. The first is with Thomas. Remember Thomas? We talked about Thomas a couple weeks ago. Thomas wants specific, hard answers. So when Jesus says, “I’m making a place for you and you know the way,” Thomas speaks up and says “No we don’t; Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” [John 14:5] The word ‘way’ here translates a word that has multiple meanings. It can mean road or path; it can mean a whole set of directions. It can also mean a spiritual discipline. Thomas is looking for directions: how do we get where you’re going? Jesus answers with what’s become one of the most quoted verses in the whole Bible: “Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [John 14:6] I know you’ve heard this, we all have. But often when it’s quoted, the part at the beginning gets left out: “Jesus said to him…” This isn’t a general teaching for everyone: this is specific to Thomas. 

This gets quoted to make Christians feel superior but the whole context here is humility. Jesus washes the disciples’ feet; Jesus tells them not to be troubled. Jesus says, there are lots of places in my father’s house, I”m getting one for you. There’s no exclusion here if you listen to the whole conversation. Just a little bit before, there’s the part we read last week, about Jesus being an open gate; here, there are many dwelling places, enough for everyone. Jesus is offering to include everyone. His point is that you don’t need directions, you don’t need a map, you have his life, you have him. He embodies the way. And if everyone coming to the Father is going that way, it’s entirely possible they are going that way with someone else. Perhaps with Mohammed, perhaps with the Buddha, perhaps Moses. It doesn’t matter where you come from in Harrisburg, if you’re going to the west shore, you’re going over a bridge. It doesn’t matter where you live, what you believe, if you come to the father, you’re coming by way of love and humility. 

One writer put it this way.

Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).  He didn’t say that any particular ethic, doctrine, or religion was the way, the truth, and the life. He said that he was. He didn’t say that it was by believing or doing anything in particular that you could “come to the Father.” He said that it was only by him—by living, participating in, being caught up by the way of life that he embodied, that was his way.

Thus it is possible to be on Christ’s way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don’t even believe in God.

A Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank. [https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2011/05/lectionary-commentary-“a-progressive-christian-reading-of-john-146”-for-sunday-may-22-2011/]

It’s Jesus himself, his life, that is the way and he welcomes everyone to come along.

The other conversation we get to overhear is with Philip. “Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” [John 14:8] Now, Philips question has a long history. Throughout the Bible, throughout history I imagine, people wanted to see God. Jacob wrestled with an angel and said, “I have seen God face to face yet my life has been spared” [Genesis 32:30] Moses asks to see God’s glory and God passes by. [Exodus 33:18-22] Isaiah sees God seated on a throne. [Isaiah 6:1] The truth is we can only see what our eyes tell us and what we imagine and God is greater than either one. As you know, Jacquelyn and I just came back from a week in Spain. We visit Cathedrals and art museums when we go and they’re both full of wonderful, artistic pictures. They mean to show God but they can’t. You can’t see the ocean, you can only see the surface and it’s the same here.

So Jesus tells Philip the truth, the greatest truth of Christian faith: that God is fully in him, so if you want to see God, look at Jesus. “Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? [John 14:9] Every Sunday we gather here, every Sunday I come here with one mission. I learned it years ago in a little church where I was a supply preacher. The pulpit had a little brass plaque that said, “Sir, we would see Jesus”. That’s my mission: to show Jesus. Because if we see Jesus, we’ve seen the Father. If we know Jesus, we know the Father, who has always known us.

I read a book on preaching once, trying to learn to do it, and it said every sermon should have an easy answer to, “what do you want the congregation to do?” The author meant that there should be a ringing challenge to some great action. I don’t think this is good sermon in that way; I’m not going to challenge you today to do anything except this: pray for us here at Salem to be a place where it’s obvious God is present. Pray for us to be a church where we are dwelling well with the Lord. Pray for us to feel God’s spirit moving so that indeed, we will know the way and the truth of God’s love.

Amen.

Never Too Late

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Second Sunday in Easter/Year A • April 12, 2026

John 20:19-32

When I was in college, and later seminary, a lot of my life was dominated by deadlines to write papers. I had a bad habit of putting off doing these until right before the deadline, so they were often late. My favorite professor was Dennis Duling, a New Testament scholar who taught my last class in seminary. I turned the final paper in a day late as usual; when I got it back, there was a big ‘A’ on the front and a note: “I’m not taking the usual points off for your usual lateness. You are about to learn there is no way to hand a sermon in late.” He was right and for most of my life, I’ve lived with the fact that on Sunday morning there is an absolute deadline. These days it’s 10:30 AM on Sunday. That’s it, no matter what else is going on, I have to be ready to walk in here, look out at all of you and say with conviction, “The peace of the Lord be with you.” There’s no excuse, no matter what else is going on, for being late. It’s not just me, either. Jacquelyn’s work as a flight attendant demands absolute timeliness. If she isn’t ready for a flight, the flight can’t leave. So it’s a very serious matter. She deals with it by being an hour early at the airport; I deal with it by going off to my office about five minutes early. How do you deal with staying on time? I ask because today’s gospel is the story of a man who was late for the most important moment in his life. Today we’re listening to the story of Thomas and the disciples and how Easter came to them.

There’s so much to hear before we get to Thomas. Just imagine the disciples’ situation. For perhaps three years or so, they’ve left their lives and followed Jesus, cared for him, accepted his care for them. He lifted them up in hope of a coming kingdom. Even when they were worried about the journey to Jerusalem, they followed along. They must have been amazed at the crowds entering the city. They must have wondered seeing him in the Temple, trashing the money changers. And they must have been scared when suddenly the soldiers appeared at Gethsemene and arrested Jesus, took him away roughly. They saw he’d been beaten, they saw the blood from the crown of thorns and they saw him gasping out his last breaths on the cross. They saw the death of Jesus; they felt the death of hope. 

Now they’re together and they’ve locked the door, the text says “in fear of the Jews”. This has nothing to do with Jews as a people; they’re afraid of the same authorities who arrested Jesus and sent him to the Romans, the only ones with the authority to execute him. They’re gathered for the funeral luncheon. The woman have told them a crazy story about seeing the Lord and an empty tomb, but they didn’t believe them. They believe in common sense: dead people stay dead. All you can do is grieve and get back to normal.

So there they are: you know how these things go, quiet conversations, food, no one eating much, people hovering around the family. Here there is the locked door; here is certainly the memory of their last supper a few days ago, perhaps a happy seder. Suddenly, Jesus appears. He walks through the door. I always wonder: does that make any noise? Does the door creak when he passes through it? There he is: alive. Wow. Did they all go silent? Did they drop plates they were holding? Imagine if you’d just taken a big bite of something, do you swallow? “Peace be with you,” he says. Shalom aleicham: the common every Friday greeting of shabby, what someone says at the beginning of the service. Yet so much more here.

He shows them his wounds. Isn’t that how we all connect? A long time ago, Jacquelyn gave me the most important advice I’ve ever gotten about sermons; “Don’t be the hero of your own story.” When I want to illustrate something for you, I deliberately show the times I failed, times I got it wrong. I want you to see my wounds because we are all wounded and when we see each other’s wounds, we know each other. They see his wounds: they know it’s him.

Don’t miss this part of the story running on to hear about Thomas, we’ll get to Thomas but stay here and see this. Jesus walks through a door, Jesus is alive, and he comes and the first thing he says is, “”Peace be with you.” I think today a lot of us are locked up in rooms for fear. We are careful talking about our politics, our religion, because it’s easy to give offense. So we lock up the doors but listen here: Jesus walks through doors. Jesus goes where everyone is excluded. Jesus comes even when we’re hopeless and sad and this is what he as to say first: “Peace be with you.”

That’s not all, though. He goes on to say that he’s sending them; he’s sending us. And he’s sending us just like the Father sent him. This is what it means to be the Body of Christ, that we are sent just like him, and our job is to forgive sins. In other words, to give peace to others, just as he gives it to us. You know, the church picked up on the last part, “…if you don’t forgive sins they are retained,” and used it as a fund raising tool. The only way to get forgiven is to come to us! But that’s not the gospel, that’s not the command; the command is to go out and forgive sins. The command is to go out and be Jesus to others.

We’ll talk more about this another time but I want to get on to Thomas. Remember Thomas? This is a story about Thomas. So the story is the whole group gathers a week after the crucifixion. Maybe they’re celebrating shabbat, maybe they’re just grieving. They’re scared of the authorities; they lock the door. But Jesus walks right in, says Peace be to you and then gives them a mission. But Thomas was late; Thomas wasn’t there. So a week later when he does show up, they all tell him, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas pouts. Maybe he looks around, sees this group he’s spent so much time with, sees that nothing has changed. They’re still the same folks, the door is still locked. Thomas doesn’t believe them about seeing the Lord. Why would he? They aren’t out forgiving, they aren’t out being Jesus. They’re still in a locked room.

So once again Jesus walks through the door, once again Jesus says, “Shalom alchem—peace be unto you”. Once again he shows his wounds. Thomas touches them. And finally, Thomas says, what we all say finally: “My Lord and my God.” Thomas believes; Thomas receives the Spirit. 

We had a fine service last Sunday celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. Caleb and Joe and Carmen provided wonderful music. We got to sing those old familiar hymns, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”, and a newer one, “Pass It On”. We heard the story, we listened to God’s Word. Now, what’s different? What did we do this week to show someone we know the love of God in Jesus Christ? Think for a minute: what did you do to show someone Jesus?

It’s a hard question, isn’t it? The simple humility of Jesus doesn’t match the angry moment in which we’re living. Many of you know we have a boat down in Baltimore. A few days ago, I was down there, staying overnight. There’s wifi in the lounge, I had a sermon to write, so I was there in the lounge, working away, alone and a guy came in and sat down, turned on the TV. 

Now all of us at the marina have boats in common, so there’s always something to talk about. But that night President Trump was speaking about the war he had started in Iran and he put that on. There was this long uncomfortable time while we watched silently, both of us afraid to say anything, to comment; we all know how angry conversations about politics can get. Finally, he said something not too off base, I replied, and we both relaxed and realized we were on the same side and then the conversation flowed. But we had to make sure we were ok first. 

That’s common today, I think. I didn’t show off Jesus that night. I just found a comfortable conversation. How do we move beyond those? We start with compassion. I have a favorite flight attendant story that doesn’t involve Jacquelyn, my personal flight attendant. It’s about a plane that lands late in Salt Lake City one night. You can imagine the situation: everyone’s tired, everyone just wants off the plane, arrangements have been disrupted, people are anxious. As the plane was rolling toward the gate, one of the flight attendants got on the PA. 

The flight attendant asked passengers to raise their hand if they were ending their journey in Salt Lake City, the flight’s destination. After most of the hands in the cabin went up, he continued.“Now, everyone who has their hands up: Imagine the anxiety you’d feel if you had to catch another flight tonight and weren’t sure you’d make it. Put your hands down. And now, those connecting to Palm Springs, and Denver, raise yours!” “Everyone, look around,” the flight attendant requested. “These are the people who’ll be sprinting off the plane tonight as soon as we land. Look at them, and imagine this was you.”

The flight attendant then implored everyone in the cabin who didn’t have a connecting flight to stay seated and give the other passengers space to get out as quickly as possible.

“If we all play our part, they can make it,” the flight attendant said. “Thank you so much for your consideration and help. Every one of those guys appreciates you for it.”The energy in the cabin completely shifted.

Everyone suddenly shared the same mission,” “We all knew who the people were that needed to hustle now. And we were all in it with them, feeling their adrenaline in our veins.”

When the plane landed only connecting passengers stood up. Others helped them with their bags. Afterwards, the remaining passengers patiently got up, grabbed their things, and exited calmly.

“The whole plane was rooting for them,” one passenger said.

It’s not much, is it? One plane, one group of people. But think how that compassion changed the moment for everyone there. Everyone landing on that plane wanted off as soon as possible; that flight attendant took their wants and transformed them into compassion.

That’s our job every day: to be the people who turn desire into compassion, who take pride and turn it into humility, who take guilt and forgive it and turn it into a new life. Last week, and the week before, I asked you to imagine asking Jesus, “What now?” Today we have the answer: go out and be Jesus, go out and forgive, go out and show the love of God every day. People are angry because they’re wounded; it’s our job to be the healers, the hopers, the helpers. At the very end of that reading in John, when he’s closing out the story, there’s one more thing we shouldn’t miss: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That’s us.

The women go to the tomb, find it empty, tell the disciples the Lord has risen. The disciples don’t believe them. So Jesus comes to them in person to show them he’s alive. Thomas doesn’t believe it when they tell him, so Jesus again, says the same things, does the same thing. It’s the same for us: it’s never too late, Jesus just keeps coming, Jesus just keeps hoping that we will be his body, carry his Spirit, live the new life he means to give. 

Amen.

Lost and Found

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Easter Sunday Year A • April 5, 2026

Matthew 28:1-10

A few years ago, our family was driving from Omaha to Kansas City to attend a convention. When we got to the hotel, we settled in. For Jacquelyn, that means unpacking clothes; for me it means setting up the computer, getting online, setting up my iPod for music. I had one of the first iPod and it was a prized possession. So you can imagine how I felt when I discovered it wasn’t there—not there in the bag, not there in the car.  What do you do when you don’t know what to do? You do what you know. I knew I’d had it on my belt in the car and I searched and searched, moved the seat back and forth until finally it dawned on me that somehow my iPod was gone. Then I remembered something. At a rest area where we’d stopped, there was an odd little thunk noise I’d ignored. With a sick realization, I suddenly knew the iPod was gone: left an hour or more up the road, gone for good. It was lost and all I could do was rant at my thoughtlessness and sputter in anger. I didn’t know what to do so that’s what I did.

What do you do when you don’t know what to do? You do what you did last time. You do it whether it worked or not; you do it whether it makes sense or not. Most of our life is cooked up from a series of recipes. What should we do? Look at your handbook; look at your cookbook. But there’s no handbook for Easter, no cookbook for resurrection. We’ve just heard the story of two women in the midst of something unimaginable; one of those stories you read in the newspaper and wince about, one of those tales you hear and think, “thank God that’s not me”. Their friend, their leader, the man who guided their lives and gave those lives light has been crucified. They don’t know what to do so they do what they did the last time someone died: they’re on the way to bury him properly. But they’re about to experience an earthquake, they’re about to come face to face with the real Easter. This is the Easter story: you start out to bury Jesus and end up proclaiming his life. You lose your friend and find the Lord.

Can you see them on the way to the tomb? Like a group preparing a funeral lunch, like people setting up the tables and chairs, they’ve come to properly bury Jesus. They wonder about the difficulty; they’ve brought the things they’ll need. Ancient Palestinian tombs were places where families gathered for picnics, where they went to remember and they are going to get everything ready. They are following a map, as we do, the map of grief. We look at its ways, we check off its steps. They are not prepared for Jesus’ death; nothing prepares us for death. But they are prepared for him to be dead. They know what to do: they do what they did last time. Matthew tells the story with care. Everything is just as expected. It’s early, just after dawn; the soldiers are guarding the tomb, the world is quiet, Jesus is dead and buried. They are doing what they did last time.

But at the tomb, everything changes. Matthew says there is a kind of earthquake; perhaps the true earthquake is the stunning surprise when their map suddenly disappears, when last time is no guide to this moment. For Jesus isn’t there. None of the gospel accounts tell the details of the resurrection; all the accounts agree on this stunning surprise: that the women went to a tomb, expecting the dead Jesus and found he wasn’t there. What they did last time, what they believed from their past, what they knew about things staying the same suddenly didn’t apply. Instead, they meet this strange angelic figure; instead, they are told three things: go, tell, see. Go tell his disciples he is going to Galilee, going home, and there you will see him. The surprise of Easter is that Jesus is not done with them; Jesus is not done with us.

It was, we are told, in the breaking of the bread that Jesus was seen. It is when we together believe and act from the faith that Jesus is not done with us that we will see him. Today, this day; tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, may you see him with you. For he is not buried long ago and if we seek him there, we will not find him. Instead, we should look where he said: going ahead of us, inviting us to follow, where he is going next.

One of the great bedrock proverbs of our culture, a saying we hear in our heads and recite to each other is, “People don’t change.” But in fact people do change, people change every day and that is resurrection. In his book, New Mercies I See Stan Purdum tells about a little baby that would not have survived if he had not had the right people in the nick of time.

Lucille Brennan had lived a hard life, but found faith in Christ in her mid-fifties and turned her life around. As a way of making up for being such a poor parent to her own illegitimate son, Lucille became a foster parent. The director of the Department of Children’s Services considered Lucille one of their best foster parents and asked her to take one of their sadder cases.

Little Jimmy, five months old, had been beaten unmercifully by his mother’s live in boyfriend whenever he cried. Jimmy had been so emotionally damaged that now he wouldn’t cry even when he was hungry or wet or cold. Everyone was afraid that the damage was permanent. Lucille determined that Jimmy needed to be held, and held a lot. So for weeks, Lucille did everything one-handed. Her other arm was busy cradling Jimmy, who remained silent as ever.

Jimmy wouldn’t cry to tell her he was hungry, so Lucille made it a point to feed him on a regular schedule. Lucille would get up in the middle of the night and check on him. Sometimes he was asleep, but other times he just lay there awake and quiet. When she found him like that, she picked him up and rocked him until he drifted back to sleep.

Of course Jimmy went to church with Lucille and the entire congregation heard the sad story of this baby who was too afraid to cry. On the fifth Sunday after Jimmy had been placed in Lucille’s home, the pastor was well into his sermon when he heard something and stopped talking. It was a little cry. And when people turned to look, they saw Lucille with a big smile on her face and tears pouring out of her eyes. But the crying sound wasn’t coming from her, it came from the bundle she held in her arms.

Eileen, who was sitting next to Lucille, stared as the little boy took a deep breath and started crying louder. Finally, Eileen couldn’t contain herself and in an action unusual for a bunch of quiet Lutherans, she exclaimed, “Praise the Lord.” At that same time the entire congregation broke into an enthusiastic applause – probably the first time in history that worshipers had applauded because a child cried in church.

Do you see that this story is the Easter story? A woman, a person, finds resurrection and lives her life from it, giving life to others. She embraces a baby who’s silent and dying. Through her embrace, Jimmy learns to cry. Now if you search the scripture, you will find this ever present reality: God hears cries. Whether it’s Hagar in the wilderness, or Jimmy in church, God hears cries and makes them the occasion for grace. Someone changed: someone loved, someone was saved by which we mean able to grow up into the person God hoped. 

We come to the tomb today. It’s important to recognize where we are today. It’s important to know this place. This is the tomb. This is the cemetery. This is the world. It may be pretty. It may be familiar. It may look nice and smell sweet but this is the tomb. The world is a tomb and our call is not of this world, our call is not in this world. We are called like the women of this story to get up and get going. Jesus is not here; Jesus is gone, Jesus is gone to Galilee, Jesus is gone to glory. Where is Galilee? It’s back where he came from; it’s back where we come from, it’s home. Resurrection is where we are, not some other time or place. So get up: don’t be afraid, if he could escape the tomb so can you. Get up: you’re not done, you’re not finished but you aren’t here to do what you thought, he has a new purpose and a different mission for you. Get up: go where he told you. Get up: go find him.  

It was, we are told, in the breaking of the bread that Jesus was seen. It is when we together believe and act from the faith that Jesus is not done with us that we will see him. This is why we’re here together. It’s not just Lucille that taught Jimmy to cry; it was a whole congregation who loved and nurtured. Jesus never works alone; he always gathers people together. We are among the people he gathers. So in our going, we go together, helping each other, nurturing each other. 

Today, this day; tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, may you see him with you. For he is not buried long ago and if we seek him there, we will not find him. Instead, we should look where he said: going ahead of us, inviting us to follow, where he is going next.

We will find him where he said: in the eyes of the homeless, in the service of the hungry. “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,” he says. We will find him when we make the resurrection of those around us as important the decoration of our tables. We will find him when we are more interested in following him than finding our own way. We will find him when, as Paul says, we have the mind of Christ in our own mind. Then,, then indeed, Easter will come not only for us, but from us. Then, our church, our lives, will proclaim this glad news, “He is risen!” for he will be risen, risen in us, and we will have found him. 

We’ve been thinking about conversations with Jesus for six weeks. We’ve heard them, I’ve preached about them, we’ve imagined them. It’s time for our own conversation with Jesus. For if we believe he is alive, wouldn’t he still be talking with us, sharing with us, meeting with us? And here is the question we ought to be asking, all of us, every day: what now, Lord?

Amen.