“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).
“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.
So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” – Acts 11:2-3
You think I wanted to eat with them? I didn’t want to go at all. I was riding pretty high, you know, elated with a woman’s resurrection. OK, the only place they’d put me up was with a tanner, but a fisherman’s smelled worse.
Yes, I was riding high, and trying not to think about the things that happen when you’re riding high, the way success becomes a series of new challenges, new obligations. I was smelling those amidst the tannery. It came for Jesus; it would come for me.
I didn’t know that I could lie in dreams or visions, waking or asleep. I claimed I’d never eaten food that was unclean, and knew full well I’ve eaten shellfish when the Romans hadn’t purchased all my stock. And let’s ignore the grain I plucked on Sabbath Day.
A vision or a dream; regardless, it would summon me to something new I knew. I did not know what it would be, but who gets visions for a trivial thing? I didn’t know what that dream meant. I knew I’d go where I’d not wish to go.
The house of a centurion was not within my plan. Who knew what I would find when I reached there? Most likely was a naked sword to seek my naked gut. Why trouble with a cross when you can drain a troublemaker’s life without?
I had no plan to speak of Jesus there until they asked, but ask they did, and I pulled in my breath, and breathed it out, and spoke with sometimes trembling voice of Jesus, of his healing touch, his mercy to such fools and failures as I am.
I certainly did not expect the fire of the Spirit in a Roman house, of one who marshals military might against the people of this land. They said that he feared God, but this? The Holy Spirit, lit in him as it had been in me? Who knew?
And now, my friends, I have no plan for you. I didn’t want to go. I went. I didn’t want to speak. I spoke. I didn’t know the Spirit would appear. She did. I didn’t know that God had welcomed them, the Gentiles, just as openly as us. And now, I have no words for you, except
To tell my tale again.
A poem/prayer based on Acts 11:1-18, the Revised Common Lectionary First Reading for Year C, Fifth Sunday of Easter.
“And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.'” – John 2:4
Now if I take a bird’s eye view of the world, or if I try to see the Universe as from the eye of its Creator, I have to ask, What concern are we to You?
“What are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”
Other folk of other faiths discerned their deities to be… not unconcerned, but distant, focused on their own affairs, but pleased by scent of sacrifice.
So when the hosts ran out of wine what person would not ask, “Are we concerned? We brought our contributions to the feast. What more can we do now?”
How many deities would ask, “What prayer is this? Do I make up your deficits, the failures in your plans? Take care of it yourselves, as you can do.”
As deity, as human being, what else could Jesus say but this: “This is not our concern. The things I have to do come later and much larger.”
A mother’s love is such a funny thing. One moment she protects her child from senseless obligation, then the next she thrusts them forward: “Go on, give.”
He said that they were not concerned, but his mother thrust him forth, and then he was concerned. They filled the jars. They served the wondrous wine.
Was he concerned? He was, for host’s embarrassment, but more for human souls who languish in uncertainty and fright, to lead them to a life beyond imagining.
“What are humans that you are mindful of them?” Still we cannot fully clarify the poet’s ancient cry, except to say, that Jesus is concerned, God is concerned, the Holy Spirit is concerned:
For us.
A poem/prayer based on John 2:1-11, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Second Sunday of the Epiphany.
“And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” – Philippians 1:9-11
I am stripped down. I wait my fate. What will it be? Will it be gain? Will it be Christ? I will not choose, except, of course, that I have chosen by the words I’ve spoken, by the things I’ve done.
I am stripped down.
I have been stripped of agency. Another will decide my course. I’ve lived in faith that God has set my way, but set my way through me. A crueler hand now rests upon the tiller of my time. Does it grow short?
I am stripped down.
I struggle to bring influence, to speak good news, for few may hear me now. Is it hubris to believe that they who hold me in this place consider what I’ve said and turn their souls toward Christ?
I am stripped down.
Thank God Epaphroditus has recovered, though for him, like me, to die is gain. For Jesus and for me he’ll carry word to those I love that… well, that I love them from the heart. I am stripped down. What more to say?
Just that I love.
A poem/prayer based on Philippians 1:3-11, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year C, Second Sunday of Advent.
“[Jesus said,] Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” – Luke 21:27
I’m looking, Jesus. I’m looking for those terrible disasters. I’m looking for the sun-signs, moon-signs, star-signs. Where is the earth distressed? Where are the nations fuddled by the roaring of the seas?
I’m looking, Jesus, and I’m finding all those terrible disasters. The sun burns warmer on the sands than once it did. Distressed, the earth would wrap itself in coolness, water rising, inundating coastlines of both continents and islands.
I’m looking, Jesus: where to find you? The clouds still float along without your figure stepping down to earth in glory and in power. Where are you, Jesus, when the seas are salt with tears?
I’m looking, Jesus, as disciples have been looking for two thousand years, to see the reign of God in light and thunderclaps and incense-scented wonder, but… You’re just behind my shoulder, aren’t you?
A poem/prayer based on Luke 21:25-36, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, First Sunday of Advent.
The image is Christ Appears to Two Apostles in Emmaus by Duccio di Buoninsegna – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3799693.
It’s a funny thing. When you hear just part of a conversation, it can be misleading. I mean, you might think you know what folks are talking about, but it turns out you might not.
In this case, it was a kolea, a Pacific Golden Plover, who overheard some people talking about heaven. And yes, he got confused.
He heard enough to learn that the people talking about heaven believed it was a really nice place. He heard enough to learn that the people talking about heaven didn’t expect to go there for some time. He heard enough to learn that the people believed that other creatures could also go to heaven.
He didn’t hear anything about it being a new life and a very different kind of place. He didn’t hear anything about dying as a transition from one kind of life to another kind of life. They just didn’t mention that while he was listening.
But at the end of the conversation, as the people were walking away, one of them said something about heaven being beyond the clouds.
People tend to talk that way about heaven because even though we have telescopes and can look a long way into space, “beyond the clouds” is something most of us don’t know much about, and the life God intends for us beyond our lives here is also something we don’t know much about. But the kolea didn’t know that. He said to himself:
“Those people can’t fly beyond the clouds, but I can. I can get to heaven myself.”
And he launched himself into the sky.
A kolea migrating from Hawai’i to Alaska, or from Alaska to Hawai’i, can get very high indeed. He flew up over the low clouds that were raining on Hilo. Then he flew up over the middle clouds that were spotted about around the slopes of Mauna Kea. Then he flew up even above the high wispy clouds above Mauna Kea.
Each time, he looked about for signs of heaven.
Each time, he didn’t see them.
“I must be close to heaven,” he said.
What he found as he circled higher and higher was that it got colder and colder. He’d felt that before, but as he flew higher than he had before it got colder than he’d ever known. He didn’t like that. He also didn’t like that the air got thinner. Not only was it harder to breathe, he had to flap his wings harder to move enough air to keep flying. In fact, there came a point that he just couldn’t go higher. Gasping, he let himself fall, then circle, and glide back down to the ground.
He landed, still winded, on some grass near another kolea, who hopped over to see what was wrong. “I tried to fly up to heaven,” he said sadly, and told her the story. “I must have been close, but I couldn’t get there.”
“That’s too bad,” she said to him. “Here, take a bite or two. There’s some tasty things here. And you’ll find some good water to drink just over this way.” She led him over to the food, and water, and a safe place to rest.
He ate. He drank. He rested. His breathing settled. His wings regained their strength. He looked at his new friend.
“You know, I flew a long way up to get close to heaven,” he said, “but you’ve been kinder to me than I can remember anyone else being. It might just be that I’ve been closer to heaven here than I ever was up there in the sky.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in advance, then tell them from memory during worship. The story you just read and the story as I told you will not be the same.
Photo of a kolea (a Pacific Golden Plover) by Eric Anderson.
When the birds of the ohi’a forest start to flock together – which tends to happen when the chicks have learned to fly and left the nest – some of those flocks rotate leadership among the birds: an ‘apapane this week, an ‘akepa this week, and who knows? Perhaps an ‘alawi the next.
There came a week when one of the ‘amakihi was chosen to lead, and he was going to lead, by all that was feathered, he was. He had done a lot of watching and a lot of listening to the other leaders, and he knew he’d do a good job. He wouldn’t bully, and he wouldn’t brag, and he would get help from other birds to be sub-leaders, and above all else, he would keep an eye out for food, for shelter, and for danger.
He was, after all, the one in charge.
Things seemed to go just that way for the first couple of days. The other birds followed where he led, they sang cheerfully as they foraged for bugs and nectar, and they avoided both the nuisance of a cranky i’iwi and the dangers of two cats and an ‘io. On the third day, however, something seemed to be going… differently. The birds still followed where he led, but… it almost seemed like some of them were slightly ahead of where he was going. He thought they might just be faster fliers, but as the day went on he noticed that some of them seemed to open their wings just slightly before he did.
What puzzled him about all this was that, as he thought about it, it seemed… perfectly normal. The other flock leaders had also been just slightly behind two or three birds. Which seemed… perfectly normal and perfectly odd.
When the next day came, the same thing was happening, and he kept a close eye on things. Another ‘io came by over the course of the morning, so that a sudden alarm whistle sent everyone deep into the branches. A little while later, the same voice trilled that it was safe again, and the flock took wing for another ohi’a tree – one that he, the leader, hadn’t chosen. He probably would have tried that direction (because the ‘io went the other way), but he hadn’t chosen it. What was going on?
In early afternoon, it happened again. Two or three birds took off just before he did, and later on two or three more took off just before he did, but they were different birds. Still, he spotted what was the same: those birds had been close to another bird, an ‘amakihi, just before they flew.
So he landed right next to that bird when they got to a new tree and found… she was his mother.
“Are you… What are you doing, mother?” he asked. “Are you trying to take over as leader?”
“Not at all,” she said. “I’m following you, just like everyone else.”
“Then how come birds take off ahead of me from around you?”
“Well,” she mused. “I might be mentioning that you’re looking at a tree in a particular direction. They seem to think that’s a reason to go that way. You and I both have been paying attention to what’s safe and what’s in blossom.”
“Isn’t that leading?” he asked.
“It might be,” she said, “if leading is paying attention to what’s good for all the birds of the flock. Which you’re doing. But it’s something that all of us can do along with you. When your leadership time is over, you can do it, too.”
He was a good leader, they all agreed. They were surprised to find, however, that he was an even better follower when another bird’s turn came to lead. He did the best he could to see that all the birds were fed, warm, and safe – and so did his mother.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them in worship from memory. Memory plus a fair amount of improvisation.
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