Monthly Archives: February 2025

The Facts of Life

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Sixth Sunday After Epiphany/C • February 16, 2025

Jeremiah 17:5-10 * Luke 6:17-26

We shall not, We shall not be moved,
We shall not, We shall not be moved.
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water,
we shall not be moved.

This song is so resonant for me. Mavis Staples is a gospel and R&B singer who sings a version of this song and tells a story with it. When she was young, she was one of those brave young people who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham. She talks about going with a group to a café in the still segregated city, sitting down, hungry, waiting for the server. The server told them to leave and called the police. Can you imagine being a black kid in Birmingham, hearing police sirens, knowing the long history of violence against black people there by police? Can you imagine how scared they were? What do you do when you’re scared? What these people did was to sing this song: “We shall not, we shall not, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree, that’s planted by the water, we shall not be moved.” What they did was simple: they turned at that moment of fear to faith in God. They trusted God and their faith and the faith of others moved an entire nation that summer. The song was a prayer, and they ran to God in that prayer. Where do you run when you’re afraid? 

Jeremiah was a prophet in a troubled time. God’s people were being led by kings who ignored God’s way. They believed God would always rescue them from powerful foreign armies. Jeremiah said no: that their faithlessness would lead to disaster. Just like the kids in Birmingham, he goes to a familiar form to make his point. In his time, a kind of preaching called Wisdom was well known. Wisdom preaching often sets out two different ways, one is faithless, one is faithful. That’s what Jeremiah is doing in the portion we read this morning. Those who trust in mortals, he says, are trusting the wrong thing. He compares them to a familiar scene: shrubs in the desert who get blown away because they aren’t rooted deeply. It must have been a common sight; it is today out west in Montana, in some parts of Texas and New Mexico. Whole bushes can be seen tumbling.

But those who put their faith in God, Jeremiah says, are like tough trees who put down deep roots. Anyone who’s ever tried to remove a tree knows what he means. Cut down the trunk, and you’re not even halfway done. You’re left with a stump and under it perhaps a dozen big, thick taproots that lead to hundreds of smaller roots. Some of them go deep; some go horizontally. Removing them is a long, tough job. Trees planted by water are sustained by underground streams and stand up even in drought. They are sure, they are certain. They are something to cling to when the wind blows, when fear comes. Jeremiah announces this choice not as a set of options, not as possibilities but simply as facts, the facts of spiritual life. Put your faith in human things, and you’ll become like a tumbleweed; put your faith in God and you have something sure to hold on to even in tough times. It’s the meaning in the song: “We shall not be moved, just like a tree that’s planted by the water.”

Jesus is also announcing facts of spiritual life. Matthew also has a version of this story; some scholars believe this version in Luke is the oldest, the closest to Jesus’ original words. He’s in a level place and Luke tells us that people from all over have come to him. Tyre and Sidon are up north, outside the country; it’s like saying, “People from Toronto”. People from all over Judea are there; those are locals. And there are the urban folks from Jerusalem. They press close and try to touch him. Today, they’d be trying to get selfies with him. But here in this place what they want is healing and exorcism. This is the three-fold ministry we read about over and over in Jesus’ life: teaching, healing, freeing people from demons. Just before this reading, he has named a group of 12 disciples; now he gathers them close, and he teaches them the facts of spiritual life. 

I imagine they were surprised, don’t you? Blessing isn’t something anyone thinks of for the poor, the hungry, those weeping in grief. Blessing isn’t something anyone thinks of for those who are ostracized, who are excluded, who are hated. Matthew took this teaching and softens it by adding “in spirit” to poor; He makes the hunger about righteousness. But I wonder if the scholars aren’t right; nothing is soft in the teaching of Jesus. That’s why people get mad. So let’s take him on his own terms, how is it possible to see blessing in these conditions?

Annie Dillard is a writer who has a wonderful thought about what she calls, “a healthy poverty”. She says,

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason, I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions.

After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But — and this is the point — who gets excited by a mere penny?

It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. [https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2312]

Just like Jesus, we live in a culture that has put enormous stress on wealth and connected it to power. But where does faith in wealth lead? We’ve seen so many times from the Great Depression in the 1930s to the Housing Bust of the 2000s to know that faith in wealth makes us tumbleweeds. A healthy poverty is to focus on what we need, not what we want; on what is enough, not always more.

There is a blessing sometimes found in hunger, too. When I was young and in seminary, I managed for the one and only time in my life to buy a new car, a Ford Pinto in that weird, fluorescent blue. I had the car two days and then, pulling away from a curb, someone plowed into it and crushed the driver side. The car operated, but the door didn’t, so I had to crawl into the driver seat from the right. I had insurance, but I didn’t have the money for the deductible. So I stopped having lunch for a summer to save that up. It was hard, but eventually I got there and fixed the car. Some years later, my dad and I were talking about hard times; he was a depression kid who had lots of stories. I told him my story. Now, my dad had a rule he had announced for years when I was young: once you get married, and you’re on your own, don’t come back looking for help. I’d taken him at his word. When I told the story, he was upset. “I would never have had you go hungry,” he said; “Why didn’t you tell me?” I reminded him about his rule and I saw something I recognize now, as a father myself, and mumbled, “I never meant you to go hungry.” That moment changed our relationship. My father was one of those guys whose first adult experience was as a soldier in World War II; he was focused on work, he frequently told us the family was like the army, mom was the sergeant, he was the officer. But after that moment, he began to be more interested in my life, less directive; less about rules, more about caring. That summer of hunger turned out to be a blessing because it drew us together.

No one seeks poverty, no one seeks hunger, no one seeks grief, yet there are moments that can come from these occasions that do bless our lives. A penny isn’t much. It’s so little that they are going away, but as Annie Dillard says, if finding a penny will make your day, you are in for a lot of good days because the world is strewn with pennies. There’s a depression era song, “Pennies from heaven”. The song says,

Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven
Don’t you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven?
You’ll find your fortune’s fallin’ all over the town
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down

The facts of spiritual life are that God has sprinkled life with blessings—if we are looking for them. Looking for them means trusting God, not human institutions and persons. Looking for blessings means being alive to God in every occasion. If we live this way, the light of God’s presence becomes clearer and clearer. And we become indeed, like trees planted by the water, strong and secure, growing in God’s way. Amen.

Here I Am

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Fifth Sunday After Epiphany/Year C • February 9, 2025

Isaiah 6:1-8 * 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 * Luke 5:1-11

My favorite place in Spain is a little fishing village named Cambrils. Now, all fishing villages have a common layout, so imagine this scene being like that. There are the houses and churches and plazas to gather and then closer to the water various shops and cafés. In a working village, there would be the smell of seaweed and rotting fish from the bits and pieces that fall off. You know what the shore smells like. Then there is a road, an open area, just in from the sea itself. Then there are the docks and the boats. There are gulls wheeling in the air over it the road and the docks, diving occasionally to find some speck of food. And then, of course, endlessly moving, always changing, there is the water. Jesus has gone to a fishing village to teach and heal and exorcize demons. Just like the story we read last week, people gather to hear him and marvel at his teaching. What they don’t know is that something incredible is about to happen. Did you see it? 

Today we’ve read three stories of how people just like us came to be called by God. There’s Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets of Israel. We think he was a priest in the temple, and he tells this fearful story of monstrous looking seraphim and a brazier from which a coal is plucked to touch his lips and purify his speaking. Wow: at my ordination a bunch of ministers, some of them so old they could barely get up after they knelt, laid their hands on me while a prayer was offered—I’m glad I didn’t have Isaiah’s initiation. Yet there is the same interplay, the same Lord asking, “Who will go?” And one person, Isaiah in this story, me at that ordination, saying “Here am I, send me.”

The portion of First Corinthians is also a call story, although it may not seem so at first glance. Paul has been dealing with the divisions in that congregation, divisions caused in part by others coming and perhaps teaching them something different from what they’d heard from Paul. So he quotes to them the bedrock of Christian faith. Scholars tell us that this looks like something already familiar, like the lords’ prayer. If that’s true, clearly it settled down early, because this letter was probably written about 20 years after Jesus. 

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. [1 Corinthians 15:3-8]

The striking thing about this is that it mixes things we hear other places, like the appearance of the resurrected Christ to Cephas, another name for Peter and then to the twelve. But it also mentions 500 brothers and sisters and James; we don’t hear about those appearances anywhere else. At the same time, he doesn’t seem to know about the appearance to Mary Magdalene that John mentions. He says at the end, “Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.” [1 Cor 15:11] So he’s reminding them of their call in Christ.

That brings us back to Luke and the fishing village. Can you see it? Can you smell it? There’s a crowd and frankly? Not all of them showered this morning. There are fishing guys working on nets. Most of a fisherman’s time is actually spent cleaning and mending nets, not fishing. In Spain, that work was often done by women but here it seems to be Peter and Andrew and James and John and presumably others doing it. And there’s Jesus. He’s not new in town. The gospels tell this story a bit differently but in Luke’s version, he’s been there long enough to have gone to Peter’s house, where he miraculously heals Peter’s mother-in-law. Her response to this miracle is to get up and serve dinner. It’s an interesting side note that the Greek word used for this—diakonis—gives us the word ‘Deacon’. Peter’s mother-in-law was the first Deacon. The crowd is doing what crowds do, pressing in to hear and get closer. There’s no sound system, just voice, and the thing about a fishing village is that it has an edge: step back too far, and you’re in the water. I imagine Peter’s boat being side tied to the dock, and Jesus asks to use that as a pulpit; Peter shrugs and says sure, so they get in, Jesus sits down, which is the position rabbi’s used for teaching, and he talks to the crowd. None of the gospels tell us what he said.

Then there is this remarkable moment. He turns to Peter and says, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Peter replies the way churches always reply when Jesus tells us to do something: “We already tried that, and it didn’t work.” It makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, Peter and the others have been fishing these waters for a long time and most recently all night. I bet Peter grew up fishing; some people just take to it when they are small. My son did. And this is corporate fishing, it’s not a rod and reel and a worm; you have to get ready, load bait, arrange the nets, get set. Peter and his crew are exhausted, they’re ready to finish fixing the nets and go home and get some sleep. But here’s this guy who may know a lot about the Torah but knows nothing about fishing calmly telling them to go fish. They know better; there just aren’t any fish right there, right then. 

I’ve seen this play out in churches. Some new member is all excited about their new faith and new church, they get on a board and start suggesting things. The long time members quietly tell them, “We tried that ten years ago, and it was a failure” or “We can’t afford that” or “That’s not how we do it here.” Thank God that this time, Peter and the others shrug and decide to go along with the new preacher. So they set out, let down the nets and there’s a miracle: the nets fill up. Can you imagine what that would look like? Silvery, slippery fish jumping all over, the nets bulging, weighing down the boat. These are open boats, pull the side down far enough and they’ll sink. The first time we took our sailboat out on our own, I forgot to detach something from the engine shaft. The result was that when I went below as we were starting back, there was water already up over the floor boards. I’ve been sailing since I was 12 and in my whole life, that was one of the scariest moments. So I get what they are feeling. “This is too much!” No wonder Peter says, “Go away from me Lord!” I wanted a big catch, but this is too big; I didn’t want a miracle, I just wanted to get by.

They make it back to shore, apparently. We never hear what happened to all the fish; hopefully someone took care of them cleaned them sold them. Jesus just laughs; he tells them not to worry about it all because they’re going to become fishers of men. Now if you grew up with that line like I did, you probably think this is where this turns into a sermon telling you to out and evangelize, get people to come to church with you. That would be a fine thing to do, but I don’t think that’s the message here. “Fishers of men” has a particular meaning in the Bible. In Jeremiah (16:16) it’s a description of God sending people to find evildoers and idolaters; in Amos 4:2, it’s connected to being conquered and exiled because of the sins of the people and Ezekiel has a similar message. Becoming fishers of men isn’t evangelism; it’s confronting injustice. It’s proclaiming the year of favor for the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to captives. 

Peter hears this call and responds first with repentance, then with obedience. He’s already called Jesus Lord; now he puts that word into action. He’s gotten a glimpse of the miraculous abundance Jesus reveals. We call it eternal life sometimes; in the gospels it’s a miraculous catch of fish, it’s feeding thousands of people from a few donations. What is it here?

The musical Rent is about a group of Bohemian young people in New York in the plague years of AIDS. It begins with a song about abundance: “525, 600 minutes”, the minutes in a year. Stunning, isn’t it? Isn’t that a miraculous catch, to have 525, 600 minutes laid out this year waiting for us to fill them? Each of these stories offers us a perspective on God’s call to someone, each is a question: who will go? Isaiah says “here am I”; Paul says, remember that Christ is risen. Peter says, go away from me Lord, but he follows Jesus, leaves the boat and the fish and his mother-in-law and presumably his wife and family behind. There are still 482,400 minutes left in this year. How will you fill them with your call? Oh, there’s one other line from Rent I want to share: it’s a refrain at the end: no day but today. When is God calling you? No day but today.

Amen.