“[Jesus said,] ‘Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.'” – Luke 10:20
Jesus – May I call you Jesus? “Mister of Nazareth” doesn’t glide from the tongue. Jesus – yes, Jesus – can I offer some help? Your marketing skills are frankly first century.
You’ve got seventy people who are all on a high! What things they accomplished! What heights they’ve attained! They may not have seen the fall of a devil,
But then, who has?
Now, Jesus – yes, Jesus – let’s get to brass tacks. They’re open. They’re glowing. They’re all fired up. That’s the time when the iron is hot. So strike! Whatever it is that you’re selling, they’ll buy.
But Jesus – oh, Jesus, may I call you Jesus? – why throw cold water on bright red-hot steel? They’d follow you anywhere, until that sad moment you quenched their enthusiasm at the power they’d found.
C’mon, Jesus, why?
So try it again. This is a disaster, but you can recover. I know that you can. Praise them for their power. I tell you, they’ll love it. And then, O and then, what they’ll buy! What they’ll buy!
Oh, yes. What they’ll buy.
A poem/prayer based on Luke 10:1-11, 16-20, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Proper 9 (14).
The image is “Christ Came into Galilee” by Phillip Vere. From “An illustrated commentary on the Gospel of Mark” by Phillip Medhurst, between 1791 and 1795. FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34448342. This isn’t an illustration of the return of the Seventy, but I really like the way Jesus’ extended hands seem to be pushing down on the emotional level.
It had been hot and dry. Most creatures, including people, don’t get too surprised by warm weather in East Hawai’i. We get upset if the trade winds subside for very long, but let’s face it. We’re in the tropics. Hot weather comes with that.
Dry, however, was strange and uncomfortable. The grasses didn’t grow as well, so there weren’t as many seeds around. Bugs went looking in different places for their meals, so they were harder to find. As for the worms, well. They dug deeper into the soil, making it harder and harder for the birds to find a meal.
Some of the birds started getting anxious.
“We have to do something,” announced a myna as they hopped around a lawn, picking over the picked-over grasses for a seed somebody had missed, or a careless spider, or a worm that had, for no reason anyone could think of, taken a wrong turn and emerged on the surface.
“Yes, we do!” agreed the other mynas.
“What do we do?” asked one after it became clear that the first myna had said all he was going to say.
“We need to find more worms,” said one.
“We need to find more seeds,” said another.
“We need to keep the worms and seeds we find for ourselves,” said a third. And now, everybody listened.
“Yes!” said another myna. “We’ll drive other birds away and we’ll have all the food.”
“Great!” said yet another myna. “And who will do the driving away?”
“The biggest ones,” said a smaller myna. “They’ll scare the finches away.”
“And while we’re driving them away,” said a big myna, “what will you smaller ones be doing?”
“Waiting for you,” said a smaller myna innocently.
“Yeah, right,” said a big myna, and suddenly the whole flock erupted into an argument about who would guard, and who would eat, and who would wait to eat.
While they argued, a pair of house sparrows landed on the lawn nearby and started hunting for seeds and bugs. They didn’t find a lot, but they did find some.
“What are the mynas arguing about?” said one of the sparrows to the other.
“Who gets to eat,” said the second.
“Why?” asked the first. “While they’re arguing nobody gets to eat.”
“I don’t know,” said the second. “It seems like a distraction to me.”
“That’s what it is,” said the first. “It’s a myna distraction.”
The two of them ate together for a while, then flew off to another place, while the myna distraction went on.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and with a certain amount of improvisation, so what you have just read will not match how I told it on Sunday.
“And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for his arrival, but they did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them.” – Luke 9:52-55
Did I not ask you, not so long ago, who you say I am? James? John? Do you remember that? I guess you thought I was Elijah, after all (or that you were?), to call down fire on the captains and the fifties, or onto their Samaritan descendants in this village.
Did I not say that those who’ll follow me will bear a cross, and lose their life to save it? And were you listening to me, or to your glorious dreams? No wonder that the heavenly voice which called me “Son” demanded that you listen to me – since you weren’t. And now you want to destroy lives with heavenly fire.
Well, no, my friends, we won’t do that. We’ll make our way on by, and take our rest where people offer welcome out of grace, not out of threat, and we will tread a Via Dolorosa, you and I and all our friends, to show God’s love will not be bounded by
rejection much more thorough, drenched in blood’s finality, a breath unfinished, body broken, and forsaken by my friends. No, James and John, the world is filled with fires; no need to summon them from heaven’s vault. What’s needed is to love, and love, and love.
A poem/prayer based on Luke 9:51-62, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Proper 8 (13).
Photo of lava fountains on Kilauea by Eric Anderson (May 25, 2025).
Birds are pretty honest creatures. They sing when they’re happy, and they screech when they’re mad. They give alarm calls when they’re scared, and they make hungry noises when they’re hungry.
An ‘akiapola’au used to follow ‘elepaio through the forest to find food. The funny thing is that ‘elepaio and ‘akiapola’au don’t eat the same things. ‘Elepaio like bugs and spiders, which I don’t, to be honest. ‘Akiapola’au will eat those, it’s true, but they prefer the worms, caterpillars, and bugs that burrow into the wood of koa trees. It’s been noticed that a tree full of bugs and spiders is probably also one that’s full of burrowing insects, too. The Hawaiian canoe makers knew that, and the ‘akiapola’au knows it, too.
The ’elepaio could be trusted to tell the truth.
This one ‘akiapola’au, however, came up with a new idea one day. You see, while he was following the ‘elepaio, other birds were following him. He worried that they’d eat all the food before he did. The fact that none of them ever left the trees hungry didn’t seem to make a difference. He had to protect his food.
He thought.
Not that it was his food before he ate it, but anyway.
So he developed the habit of tapping at tree branches that didn’t have bugs in them. ‘Akiapola’au do that to find where things have burrowed into a tree, but he started doing it, and then digging where he hadn’t found any. It attracted other birds. They’d come in to see.
And he’d fly off to some other tree where he’d try to find something he could actually eat.
The result was a fair number of frustrated birds, who’d look around where he’d been tapping and find fewer spiders and insects than they expected. They went to bed somewhat hungry.
He was pretty satisfied with his trick when his auntie turned up after a day of tapping on insect-free trees. “Nephew, why are you spending so much time hunting in trees without food?” she asked.
“Don’t tell anyone, but I’m drawing the other birds away from the good trees,” he said. “I don’t want to run out of food and be hungry.”
“So you’re lying to them?” she asked. “And before you say, ‘No,’ don’t think about lying to me.”
“I don’t think I’m lying to them,” he said.
“You’re acting as if there’s food where there isn’t. You don’t have to say a word. It’s still a lie. It’s a lie that’s bringing hunger to our forest when it isn’t necessary. There’s plenty to eat. Isn’t there?”
“I guess so,” he said.
“As for you, you’re spending so much time in trees without food: how hungry are you when you go to sleep?” she asked.
He realized that, in fact, he spent so much time in trees without caterpillars that he was hungry at the end of most days. His lie meant that he wasn’t eating enough.
“No lying, nephew,” said auntie. “It’s not worth it and it never was. Go find the trees with food in them, and share the word with the other birds around us. We’ll all be better for the truth.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and inspiration. On this particular day, I’d happened to speak to one of the young people the night before on a video call, where I told him that I’d be telling him a story the next day.
Photo of an ‘akiapola’au (adult male) by Eric Anderson.
“[Jesus said,] ‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.'” – John 16:13
May the Spirit of Truth visit me, O Holy One, for I live squinting into trees, struggling to discern the movements of the Spirit’s wings from the motions of the tossing wind, a wind which might reflect the Spirit, too.
I strain to disentangle fern and feather, branch and beak, blossoming lehua from the nectar-feeder there. Through magnifying glass and brightening screens you’d think I’d recognize the truth above, but still I struggle to keep focus on the Truth.
Perhaps I should lay down the lenses and the sensors that record the light, set my ears to listen to the Spirit’s various calls, and find the Truth in other medium than sight.
A poem/prayer based on John 16:12-15, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Trinity Sunday.
Blurry photo of an i’iwi in juvenile plumage by Eric Anderson.
The ae’o shouldn’t have had any doubt about the question. But she felt awkward and ungainly, which isn’t unusual when you’ve done a lot of growing in a very short time. She was only about four weeks old, but that was time enough to learn a few things about the world.
For one thing, she’d learned that she had very long legs as compared to the size of her body. The ae’o, it’s said, has the second longest legs for the size of their body of any bird. That’s a lot of leg, or not a lot of body, depending on how you want to think of it. She’d also learned that those legs were very useful for walking around in the calm waters of a fishpond, and she learned that she could use her long beak to pull food out of the water. She’d learned that in English she was called a “black-necked stilt,” which seemed fair enough, because she had long stilt-like legs and the feathers on her neck were definitely turning black as they changed with her age.
But she’d also learned that other birds were very different. The ‘Alae Ke’oke’o were sort of similar in size, but they had much shorter legs. In fact, they swam across the top of the water. She’d seen kolea and akekeke pecking for bugs and such along the shorelines before they left for Alaska. All of those birds seemed a lot more compact than she did, with her smallish body and long neck and long long legs. She’d watch the kolea wheel about the sky.
And she grew to believe that she could not fly.
I don’t know how she missed the fact that her parents flew quite well. I don’t know how she failed to notice that she, herself, had been taking wing-aided hops for a week. I don’t know how she missed all that. But she did. “I’m not going to be able to fly,” she said sadly one day, thinking that nobody was there to hear her.
“Really?” said a voice. “Why not?”
When she looked over, she saw another bird’s face with a long beak looking at her. It was a cattle egret, one of the many who liked the area of her fishpond.
“Just look at me,” she said. “Look at these long legs. Look at this long neck. Look at these wings. They can’t possibly get me off the ground and into the sky.”
The cattle egret looked her over carefully and said, “I’ve got long legs.”
She took a good look and realized that he did. “And I’ve got a long neck,” he continued.
“So you do,” she said.
“And have you noticed?” he asked. “I can fly.” And to prove it, he took to the air and flew twice around the fishpond before he landed near her again.
“I can’t be sure, but I think you can fly,” he said. “Have you tried?”
She didn’t bother to say, “No,” because they both knew she hadn’t. She didn’t say anything at all, in fact, but she did spread her wings. She looked at him sharply to make sure he wasn’t teasing her, but there was no trace of laughter in his face.
She took off. She flew.
She took three turns around the fishpond – she’d meant to do the same two turns he had, but she miscalculated the landing and had to come back and try it again.
“I can fly!” she said.
“You can,” he said. “I’m glad you tried. And I’m glad you fly.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from a combination of memory, improvisation, and of course in conversation with the young people I tell them to.
Photo of an Ae’o (Hawaiian Black-necked Stilt) in flight by Eric Anderson.
“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.” – Acts 2:17, quoting Joel 2:28
Assembling for the feast of Shavuot, the Spirit roared. No gentle breeze for us; a tempest howled there among our trembling circle, through our trembling souls. The flickering light upon our foreheads did not shed illumination, no. I saw it as a portent of our immolation. Not since the angel told me not to fear have I been so afraid.
My limbs have dragged my shivering frame into the streets, which teem with goggling worshipers. They fight their way upstream along the way my son last trod beneath the burden of a cross. How many know, how many care, that Jesus died abandoned by his follower-friends, attended by these women who, like me, recall dear Miriam, who danced before the Law.
The raucous streets resound with Babel sound, with accents I know well, and languages I don’t. To my astonishment, one voice is mine, another comes from Mary here, and Mary there, and from a hundred other throats. We praise our God, because when Jesus had been laid into his tomb, the Holy One rejected our rejection, called him back to life.
They scoff, of course, that we are drunk (how drunk, they do not know, for I am filled with Spirit I have never known). I draw my breath in deep. I plant my feet upon the unforgiving stones. I start to lift my arm to summon all to hear my words, and then I hear it: Simon’s voice, my son’s beloved Rock, against all expectation quoting from the prophet Joel. Who would have thought it? I rejoice, except: I wonder, when will faithful people hear a woman’s voice again?
A poem/prayer based on Acts 2:1-21, the Revised Common Lectionary First Reading for Year C, Pentecost Sunday.
The image is The Virgin surrounded by twelve apostles or Pentecost, by Master of the Crucifix of Pesaro (ca. 1380). Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11148957.
Many artists included Mary among the Twelve in their depictions of Pentecost.
Full inclusion of God’s people does not stop at men and women.
He was young, which may explain why he tried something that an older bird would know didn’t work. He was also pretty anxious about things, which explains more. In the end, though, it was his tutu who saw the biggest reason, which was…
I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should start the story at the beginning.
The ‘amakihi was young. And, as I mentioned, he could get anxious about things. If it was sunny, he worried about whether rain would come again. If it was raining, he worried about whether it would ever stop. If he was surrounded by other birds, he worried about whether it would ever be quiet with all these birds singing. If he was by himself, he worried that he’d be lonely forever.
Mostly, though, he worried about being hungry.
As a young and growing bird, he’d driven his parents to distraction by his constant calls for food. Some birds, and people for that matter, eat when they’re hungry. He’d call for food when he was full, because he knew he’d be hungry again soon. That can be pretty unhealthy for people and for birds, but frankly his parents couldn’t keep up with his demands, so they fed him more or less the right amount of food.
When he left the nest, he kept it up. If he was hungry, he’d head for the nearest flower, snap up the bugs, and drink the nectar. If he was still hungry, it was time for the next flower and the next bug. And if he wasn’t hungry, he’d still move on to the next flower.
What kept him from getting sick from overeating is that he had to do enough flying between trees that he couldn’t quite eat more than was good for him. Not quite.
One day, though, he was watching some bugs instead of trying to eat them. They were bees in their hive, and they were gathering nectar and storing it away. Suddenly it struck him.
“I can gather flowers and store them away like the bees,” he said. “Then I’ll never have to worry about finding flowers, and I’ll never be hungry.”
Off he flew.
He started snipping blossoms from the trees: Ohi’a, Mamane, anything he could find. He tucked them into an abandoned nest he found, then flew out in search again. If there were other birds around, he’d chase them off first so he could get the flowers. He had gotten rather big with eating, so other birds tended to fly away. The forest filled with squawking, protesting birds as he flew about with flowers in his beak.
He’d made quite a few trips and the forest was in an uproar when he found his grandmother perched next to his store of flowers.
“Aloha, Tutu,” he told her.
“Aloha, grandson,” she said to him. “What are you doing?”
“Storing flowers,” he said, “so I’ll never be hungry.”
“Really?” she said. “Who gave you that idea?”
“The bees,” he said. “They store nectar and pollen and they’re never hungry.”
“Grandson,” said Tutu, “would you look carefully at your flowers?”
For the first time since he started collecting them, he looked. No longer connected to their branches, they’d wilted and faded. Their nectar had dried and disappeared. A few bugs were crawling on them, of course, but even the bugs preferred the liquid nectar of a living flower.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. “Did you really think it would work?”
“I thought that I needed food for myself,” said her grandson, “that the other birds couldn’t take away from me.”
“The forest is for everyone,” said Tutu, “for every one of us. We’re not bees, who have ways of storing things, and they share what they store with the entire hive. We are forest birds. We don’t hoard. We don’t keep things away from others, not from ‘amakihi, not from ‘apapane, not from i’iwi. We share.”
She looked at him closely. “What do we do, grandson?”
“We share, Tutu.”
“Good. Let’s go have lunch.”
They left the sorry hoard behind for the living flowers they shared with all the creatures of the forest.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory (and inspiration).
“One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.'” – Acts 16:16-17
My soul was heaped with chains.
A demon claimed my eyes, my mind, my tongue, to speak of things beyond a mortal’s ken. Or possibly to fill the air with lies.
Some businessmen had claimed my freedom. For as long as people paid to hear the demon’s truth or lies, the money went to them, and chains to me.
I still don’t know who claimed my legs and tongue those days. The demon knew, as I could not, that these strange men were also chained, but to the healing power of a god.
I followed, but I don’t know how. The demon’s words leapt from my lips, but would it risk its power in the face of God? Regardless, my legs pushed me after them.
I saw the look upon the speaker’s face, a look of one whose patience had been tried beyond its limited capacity. Beyond my hope, he spoke the words that broke the demon’s chains on me.
I fell into the street and saw the businessmen seize him and his companions, chain them for the magistrates’ displeasure. I looked down and found their chains bound me.
I am not fully free, but I am freer than before, and even though it cost them chains like mine, I would be pleased to wear the chains of God.
A poem/prayer based on Acts 16:16-34, the Revised Common Lectionary First Reading for Year C, Seventh Sunday of Easter.
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