That Was Fast

February 19, 2026 / Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

Clouds in the sky with sunlight illuminating from behind and to the side.

Having selected my Lenten discipline of giving up judgmentalism (and writing about it), I was promptly challenged to keep that discipline. I hadn’t even finished the first essay about the project when I encountered this story on Religion News Service by a reporter I follow on the BlueSky social network, Jack Jenkins: “400 Christian leaders urge resistance to Trump administration on Ash Wednesday.”

One of the reasons I chose to examine judgment and judgmentalism this Lent is that I’ve been challenged for judgmentalism. I’ve been taken to task for criticizing some behaviors while excusing others. I’ve been told that some of the things I protest in some have been done by others – did I protest them?

The critique has sometimes been fair. I can’t say I was aware of all the examples that I didn’t protest (which makes it harder to protest them), but it’s also true that those wouldn’t have circulated in places where I pay attention. Limit your attention; limit your awareness. That’s something to consider as I continue this Lenten reflection on judgmentalism.

There on the very first day I had to discern and judge, because the statement invited religious leaders to sign on. Whether I signed or not, I would be making a judgment.

I hadn’t expected it to happen so fast. I hadn’t expected to face a significant decision before I’d laid up some intellectual foundations. Ah, well. As Robert Burns wrote to a mouse:

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Robert Burns, from “To a Mouse”

So what to use to discern?

When I first considered this question over pork chops and mashed potato, the first thing I thought of as a feature of discernment was time. Before choosing, give it time. Before deciding, give it time. Before acting, give it time. I expect to spend more time on this element (see what I did there?) through the next six weeks, but even as I thought it over I realized that we make a number of decisions in the moment and rightly so. When I finished my meal I drove home. I made decision after decision in those few minutes without reflecting on it for more than an instant. If I hadn’t, I’d have run the front of my car into a car in front of me.

Likewise, I have to admit that I have spent long periods of time considering my actions and ended up deeply regretting what I’d chosen. Time is no panacea.

Nevertheless, I decided I would consider the decision over a day.

(I decided I would decide. See what I did there?)

I read the statement “A Call to Christians in a Crisis of Faith and Democracy” several times. It’s not a subtle piece. “We are facing a cruel and oppressive government,” it claims. “This political crisis is driven by people who have fallen for the temptation of absolute power,” it asserts. “Governance is being hollowed out and replaced with corruption, loyalty tests, intimidation, and the normalization of lawlessness,” it states. Strong words. Strong judgments. The authors of the statement have looked at the acts of the administration and made conclusions about the character of those acts: cruel, oppressive, corrupt, and lawless. Further, they have asserted that the temptation of absolute power is a driving factor for those who direct those acts.

I face the question: Do I concur with those judgments? Do I agree with their characterization of these acts? Do I accept the diagnosis of the motives?

Further, I read the list of signatories. Although I’ve been in ministry a long time, I didn’t recognize all the names. I saw many that were familiar, including quite a few whose words and work I’ve greatly admired. I also saw a number of people from organizations I’ve never heard of. I saw that representatives of the “mainline” Protestant churches clearly predominated, with a lot of leaders from ecumenical settings. A number of the people who signed come from my own denomination, the United Church of Christ, including our General Minister and President. Some of the signers are colleagues I deeply respect. Some are dear friends.

I face the question: Are these people whose discernment I trust? While I still have to do my own work, can I trust the work they have done?

The statement is not simply a diagnosis of our condition. It is also a call to action. Those who signed made eight commitments. The authors expanded more on them than I have here:

Protect and stand with vulnerable people,
Love our neighbors,
Speak truth to power,
Seek peace,
Do justice,
Strengthen democracy,
Practice hope, and
Ground our discipleship in prayer and inward journey.

I face the question: Are these commitments I can make? Are they consistent with my understanding of Christianity? Are they things I have the power to do? Are they things I have the will to do?

I slept on it. I read the statement again (and again). I reviewed the names. I found more names I knew. I considered the commitments.

Here’s the thing: I knew I was inclined to add my name to the list when I read Jack Jenkins’ headline. That was my first judgment, my off-the-cuff discernment. But was it judgmental? Particularly given the strong language about the political and spiritual condition of the nation?

Also, was I (am I) merely reinforcing my own pre-established conclusions? On the Sunday after the election, I said, “The United States has re-elected as President a devourer of widows’ houses. Plain and simple. Already his followers have sent messages to African American children telling them to report for sale as slaves. Already his followers have sent messages to women: ‘Your body. My choice.’”

Of the three areas of discernment I’ve named here, I had no problems with the commitments. I’ve held those as virtues consistent with Christianity for many years (which raises the problem of reinforcing my conclusions again). There were more than enough people whose judgment I trust in the list to make their willingness to sign compelling. The sticking point was: Do I agree enough with the diagnosis section to sign on to it? Do I need to learn more that either confirms or refutes that characterization of the administration’s acts?

This morning I sat with it again, considered it again. And I came to the same conclusion with which I’d started: I believe I know enough. I agree with the characterization. I need to make the commitment.

I signed.

Angels Hovering ‘Round

February 18, 2026 / Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

In the center of a large dramatic landscape of mountains and clouds, two smaller figures speak to one another. One, in pink, is Jesus. The other, in brown, is Satan.

“Then the devil left [Jesus], and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” – Matthew 4:11

He challenged you, Jesus.
Summon the angels! They won’t let you fall.
You won’t have a bruise on your heel,
Nor a strike from a snake.

You said no. No to bread.
No to flight. No to glory
(that fails to transcend
all the kingdoms of earth).

Then he left. And who came?
Yes, the angels. The angels.
They were hovering ’round,
And they brought you relief.

Well, Jesus, I’m tempted.
So tempted, you know,
so hungry and weary,
confused and distressed.

Where are the angels?
Will they tend my bruises?
Will they feed my hungers?
Where are the angels, Jesus the Christ?

“There are angels hov’ring ’round.”

A poem/prayer based on Matthew 4:1-11, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, First Sunday in Lent.

The image is Weite Gebirgslandschaft mit der Versuchung Christi (Vast Mountain Landscape with the Temptation of Christ) by Jan Brueghel the Elder – dorotheum.com heruntergeladen am 30. September 2012, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21801997.

Story: Finding Sweetness

February 15, 2026 / Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

February 15, 2026

Exodus 24:12-18
Matthew 17:1-9

Last week it was saltiness. This week it’s sweetness. We’re making our way around the taste buds, I guess. I don’t actually have plans to visit sourness or bitterness, but who knows?

An i’iwi was having a hard time. They’re used to sipping nectar from ohi’a flowers and koa flowers and mamane flowers and lots of other flowers, and nectar is basically flower sugar. It’s pretty sweet. It does change, though, a little like the way that some oranges are sweeter than others. It’s got to do with the rainfall or lack of it, and the soil nourishment, and lots of other things that I don’t know about and the i’iwi doesn’t know about and the tree might know about but trees don’t talk about that sort of thing very much.

In any case, the i’iwi wasn’t finding much in the way of sweet nectar. Nectar, yes. Enough to keep her from getting hungry, yes. Sweetness that satisfied: not so much.

So she went looking for sweetness.

It’s not uncommon for the nectar-feeding birds of the mountains to fly about looking for nectar. She had a somewhat different agenda, though: sweeter nectar, and not just nectar. For whatever reasons, though, the nectars she sampled tasted much the same: a little dry, a little bland. She could eat it, but she really wanted something better. It was the difference between your grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie, and the cookie you ate the reminds you how much better grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies are.

She didn’t find it.

She was sitting grumpily on a branch complaining about this to her mother. I’iwi can be pretty good at being grumpy birds, and she was putting in the practice to get really good at it. Her mother, I must say, wasn’t a particularly grumpy bird and didn’t want to be.

“So you want to find sweetness?” she asked her daughter. “Where have you looked?”

Her daughter described her flights up the mountain, and down the mountain, and along the slopes of the mountain, and how the nectar just wasn’t what she wanted or hoped for.

“Those are the only places you checked?” said mother.

“Where else?” said the daughter. “I could fly farther but will that work out any better?”

“I don’t know,” said her mother, “especially because I think you can find sweetness much closer to home.”

“Where?” demanded her daughter. “Where is there sweetness here?”

“There’s the warmth of the sun on your feathers,” said her mother, “and the sound of the rain on the leaves. There’s the scent of mamane on the wind, the great blue of the clear sky, and the dramatic greys of the cloudy sky.”

“Those are ordinary things!” her daughter protested.

“Well, there’s also the way your father loves you, and your grandparents love you, and the way I love you,” mother said. “Is that ordinary?”

“It is,” said the daughter, “but it’s special, too.”

“Best of all,” said mother, “is the sweetness that’s inside you. It goes with you wherever you fly. You never have to worry that it will run out. Even when no one is around, even in the coldest, darkest night, even when none of the trees are in blossom, there is sweetness in your heart.”

“You helped put it there,” said her daughter.

“Sip that sweetness when you need to, daughter,” said her mother. “Sip it and be refreshed.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. The story as you have read it is not identical to the way I told it.

Photo of an i’iwi by Eric Anderson.

Transfigured by the Mountaintop

February 12, 2026 / Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light.” – Matthew 17:1-2

Bright with light, walking with the prophets, hailed
by holy voice that stunned the clouds
and silenced even Simon Peter:
Jesus the Beloved Son of God.

Transfigured on the mountaintop.

At mountain’s foot, however, trouble lay,
because a demon would not be rebuked
by any of the nine disciples there. “Where can
I find the mustard seed of faith?” they asked.

I grant you they had missed the mountaintop.

But Peter, James, and John, who’d seen the sight,
had heard the voice, been silenced clean:
how had they been transfigured? Were they changed?
Did they bring nourishment to their own mustard seeds?

For they had known the mountaintop.

Yet Peter asked if there were limits on
forgiveness. He wondered what he’d gain
from following his Lord. While James and John
coopted their own mother to secure a place of power.

Though they had been upon the mountaintop.

When Jesus brought the three apart again,
this time into a corner of Gethsemane,
their bodies ruled their spirits, and they slept,
while Jesus wept the bitter tears of grief and fear.

Had they forgotten about the mountaintop?

Approaching soldiers woke them. Weariness
no longer slowed them. As blood streamed from
a stricken servant’s ear, the three who’d seen
and heard the most took to their heels and fled.

Had they been changed upon the mountaintop?

One found his courage and his way back to
the courtyard of the trial, but did not bring
his name. Three times they asked, three times
he cried, “I do not know the man!”

He’d known him on the mountaintop.

So Jesus, here I stand, at best an image
in a mirror darkly of those first disciples. I
am not the person I would like to be,
say nothing of the follower whom you expect.

And I was never on that mountaintop.

Yet truly, you have summoned me by less
dramatic means than brilliant clouds
and stunning voices on the wind, to be
your follower, your servant, and your friend.

But have I been transfigured by the mountaintop?

A poem/prayer based on Matthew 17:1-9, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Transfiguration Sunday.

The image is “Studies for the Transfiguration” by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbin) ca. 1519 – https://collections.ashmolean.org/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96040396.

Story: The Salty Koa’e ‘Ula

February 8, 2026 / Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

February 8, 2026

Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20

Salt is a funny thing. Your body, my body, pretty much every body of every person and every creature needs some salt. Without salt, we get sick. On the other hand, if we have too much salt, we also get sick. Not too much, not too little. That’s the way to do it.

Most of the birds, including yellow-billed cardinals, manage to get the right amount of salt just by what they eat. Seeds have a little salt. So do berries. But every once in a while things don’t go the same way, and one yellow-billed cardinal found himself feeling hungry in a very odd way.

He was hungry for salt.

Personally, I’m rarely hungry for salt itself. I’m not likely to go find a salt shaker and sprinkle some on my tongue. I mean, yuck. Put salt on fried potatoes, though, or popcorn, or…

Well. Let’s just say I’ll eat those up.

Nobody was going to make popcorn or French fries for a yellow-billed cardinal, especially one who couldn’t cook. He hopped around the shore looking for salt, and although there was plenty of it in the ocean, he wasn’t about to drink salt water. He already knew from painful experience that he’d get sick from that.

To his amazement, as he looked, he saw white crystals glistening on the rocks, and even on some of the leaves of the bushes. He thought at first it might be salt left by ocean spray, but it was too far from the breaking waves. Regardless, he pecked a couple of those crystals, and felt much better, even if he did feel pretty thirsty from it.

He didn’t know where it came from, but from time to time when he got hungry for salt again, it was there.

In the meantime, overhead flew the koa’e ‘ula, who spend much of their time far out to sea where there’s too much salt in the water and, for that matter, in the fish that they eat. One of them, in fact, had just had a good long drink of sea water with more salt in it than was good for her.

Unlike the yellow-billed cardinal on the shore below, she could take in more salt because her body could get rid of the excess. Something like tears, salt crystals formed along her beak and sprinkled down on the ground below, where a salt-hungry bird might pick them up.

Neither the koa’e ‘ula nor the yellow-billed cardinal knew anything about the other. Neither of them thought much about it, in fact, but one of them was doing something really important for the other, and didn’t know it.

The same is true of us. Jesus called us the salt of the earth, and he meant that we help other people live and thrive. Sometimes we know we’re doing it, but sometimes we don’t. Just like the koa’e ‘ula, we do ordinary things in our ordinary lives, and someone else lives better because of it.

May we always be the salt of the earth.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from a combination of memory and improvisation. As a result, the story as I wrote it does not match the story as I told it.

Photos of a yellow-billed cardinal and a koa’e ‘ula by Eric Anderson.

Flickering Light

February 4, 2026 / Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.

“[Jesus said,] ‘People do not light a lamp put it under the bushel basket; rather they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.'” Matthew 5:15-16

You sure do build on Scripture, Jesus. God
told Abraham that he and Sarah would
become a blessing to the nations of
the world, to all the families of Earth.

A pity that he promptly lied and said
his wife was not his wife, and gave her up
to Pharaoh for a concubine, which cursed
the land, afflicted every family.

Isaiah comforted survivors of
a great destruction after years had passed,
declaring that the people, soon renewed,
would shine a beacon to the aching world.

A pity that so many kept the ways
that frustrated the prophets years before,
preferring their own wealth and potency
and damming justice’ waters lest they flow.

Well, Jesus, to fulfill the broken Law
and bring to life the prophets’ promised call
will call for more than human frailty,
unseasoned salt, or lamp without a flame.

Can we fulfill what you came to fulfill?
Can we preserve and season all the Earth?
Can we be candles brilliant in the dark?
Can we be great in Heaven’s realm of life?

A poem/prayer based on Matthew 5:13-20, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.

The image is “The Candle,” an etching by Jan Luyken illustrating Matthew 5:15 in the Bowyer Bible, Bolton, England (1795). Bowyer Bible photos contributed to Wikimedia Commons by Phillip Medhurst – Photo by Harry Kossuth, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7550068.

That’s Not How It Works

January 29, 2026 / Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

“And he began to speak and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'” – Matthew 5:2-3

By God, you’ve got it so wrong, Jesus.
Do you really not know?
That’s not how it works.

The poor in spirit won’t receive the kingdom of heaven.
The poor in spirit are poor by their own negligence.
They could be rich, you know, if they made the right choice,
invested in the things that bring them gain, ignored the claims
of other obligations, engaged in fraud, then they’d be rich…