#faith

Thirty-Six

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 10 Comments

I was ordained in my home church, Union Congregational Church UCC in Rockville, Connecticut, thirty-six years ago today.

A lot of things have changed in the intervening three and six-tenths decades. For one thing, my home congregation left the United Church of Christ, which is a lingering ache. My father retired from a distinguished career as a public school educator, completed a seminary degree, and was ordained himself. My daughter has also graduated from seminary and I look forward to celebrating her ordination. My son has kept his concentration on the writing and creating he wants to do, a quest that has taken him to the heartland of Arthurian stories in Wales.

The UCC has lost members and lost churches every one of these thirty-six years. We’re not alone. Similar things have happened in “mainline” Protestant denominations and in traditions that have rejected the mainline. The church has aged. Even now, as I have entered my sixth decade, I remain younger than a majority of my parishioners.

It seems like I ought to have learned something over all these years, and to have some wisdom to offer to colleagues, friends, church members, and church leaders. I feel like I should. If I do, I wish it were clearer to me.

The time has passed in the blink of an eye, a blink of an eye that has included innumerable endless days.

A couple weeks ago ministers of the Hawai’i Conference gathered for a retreat, which was held just a few miles from my home. On one of the afternoons, we participants could participate in “adventures.” For various reasons, including the vigorous advocacy of a young person in my congregation, I was asked to be the local pastor who accompanied (and joined) those who took part in a zipline adventure.

It wasn’t entirely outside my wheelhouse. While in Connecticut, I sought training as a ropes challenge course facilitator. I really enjoyed the training and the work of guiding people through an experience of testing their boundaries, trying something scary and finding a new sense of accomplishment. As I’ve put it more than once, facilitators spend their time safely on the ground, but in training we spent more time at the heights. The conference’s retreat center didn’t have a zipline, but I did get a chance to try one before moving to Hawai’i.

The simple truth is that I don’t have much fear of heights, and doing that training and that work taught me to trust the equipment.

I still wasn’t sure how I’d feel until I set off on the first zipline that afternoon. Would it be exhilaration? Had I developed a fear of heights without realizing it? Would something else happen that I didn’t anticipate?

It did. I settled into the harness, glided along the cable, and felt about as relaxed as I’ve felt in some time.

Yes. You read that right. I felt relaxed.

I was surprised, too.

Relaxation can be hard to come by in a pastor’s life. Sometimes pastoral duties come with a lot of anxious energy. The other day I received an urgent call to go to the hospital, as someone from another church, someone I have known and worked with, had been rushed there by ambulance. When I got there, nobody had a record. It turns out that they’d died in the ambulance without ever reaching the hospital.

That afternoon brought a lot of concern, anxiety, shock, and grief.

If I have any wisdom to offer on the thirty-sixth anniversary of my ordination, it’s this: Relax into the glide of the zipline. Ministry can feel like an uncontrolled glide over a yawning chasm at times: mercifully, not all the times. When it does, the mechanisms that keep me from falling aren’t readily apparent, or if they are, I may not be convinced of their strength. Those pitfalls look awfully deep.

Relax into the glide.

You’ll get to the other side.

It’s an imperfect metaphor, of course. One of the features of ziplines is that they make straight lines between one place and another. Ministry frequently doesn’t. You set off in one direction, and find yourself landing in a completely different place. Thirty-seven years ago, did I expect that I’d do interim ministry? Play the guitar and ukulele? Manage IT and publications for a Conference? Facilitate on a challenge course? Pastor a church in Hawai’i?

No, no, no, no, and no.

Not all of my transitions have been gentle (far from it) and not all of my landings have been soft (far from that, too). The ground that looked firm has crumbled beneath my feet both at the beginning and the end of the traverse. I still don’t really understand the systems that have kept from out of the crevasse all these times.

But if I have one piece of advice, it is: Relax into the glide.

You’ll get to the other side.

The photo shows me (a gray figure with an orange helmet) gliding down a zipline over a waterfall. Photo by Ben Sheets.

Not Enough Cooks

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 7 Comments

“[Moses said,] ‘I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.’ So the LORD said to Moses, ‘Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel…'”

They wept for food, the wandering people did.
Their palates had grown weary of the miracle,
which sounds ungrateful. I suppose it is.
But who does not grow weary of life’s wonders?

Then Moses was displeased, and not with weeping
people, but with God, whom he accused of treating him
so badly. “Why do you lay the burden of these people
upon me?” For Moses, too, had wearied of the wonder.

And God – the singular, the Trinity not yet
imagined, whose powers had rained flies
and hail and pestilence and death upon
the wailing people of the Pharaoh – said,

“You shall not lead alone. You never have.
Did you forget? We’ve been a team, we have,
with you and me and Miriam and Aaron.
The team will grow by seventy today.

“They say too many cooks will spoil broth.
Sometimes, you know, that’s true, if they
neglect to speak and listen to each other. Now
my Spirit shall be given to these elders.

“They shall prophesy, including those
who missed the memo in the camp.
And you, my harried, whiny Moses, shall
at last be glad for helpers on the road.

“As for these weeping people, now:
Let them eat quail.”

A poem/prayer based on Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29, the Revised Common Lectionary Alternative First Reading for Year B, Proper 21 (26).

The image is Moses elects the Council of Seventy Elders by Jacob de Wit (1737) – AQGtI5P6nkpYyw at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21988106.

The Argument

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment

“Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.” – Mark 9:33-34

Sitting in your house, you catch my eye.
I see the smile play upon the corners of your lips.
“That argument you had along the way. Now tell me:
What were all those snarling words about?”

Now, I don’t want to tell. You see that, right?
Your eyes move on from mine to James, and John,
to Andrew, Philip, Matthew, Simon, James,
Bartholomew and Thaddeus, Thomas, Judas, too.

“So tell me!” you repeat and smile, still.
You know, I know, because my frozen face
declares it. So do all the faces of the twelve.
You shake your head at our embarrassed silence.

“Would you be great?” you ask me, and I need
not answer. Yes, I would! I’d be the warrior
at the side of Christ, to fight and even die
if need be. I would live in glory.

“If you’d be great,” you say, and lift
the ragged cuff of my left sleeve,
“you won’t be first, but last. You’ll be
the servant of the least of these.”

All right, you’ve said such things before,
and we had nodded, for your words were wise.
I somehow never thought that they’d apply to me.
I somehow never thought I’d die in poverty.

I may have held my tongue since your rebuke
of “Get behind me, Satan!” but I do not yet
accept your forecast of betrayal and a cross.
I’d overcome those evils, not embrace them.

I see again, however, you and I
have taken sides in opposition here.
My greatness is not yours. Your greatness is
not mine. I can’t think what to do.

Whatever happens, I will not abandon you.
I’ll wrestle with these things I do not want
to understand, and maybe one of us
will change their mind. In honesty?

I hope it’s you.

A poem/prayer based on Mark 9:30-37, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year B, Proper 20 (25).

The image is The Tears of Saint Peter by El Greco (ca. 1590) – National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (Norway), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98036830.

Weakness Obstructed

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 8 Comments

“…but [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.'” – 2 Corinthians 12:9

In weakness God makes power.
In the stammering speech.
In the thinning skin.
In the cane-assisted stride.

In weakness God makes power.
In the eyes that do not see.
In the ears that do not hear.
In the legs that do not bear.

In weakness God makes power.
In the mind that cannot focus.
In the hand that cannot grasp.
In the appetite that cannot resist.

In weakness God makes power.
But those who are made
in the image of God
make obstacles; and why?

In weakness God makes power.
In the root that makes its soil.
In the child that makes its generation.
In the death that promises eternal life.

In weakness God makes power.

A poem/prayer based on 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year B, Proper 9 (14).

Photo by Eric Anderson

Twelve Years

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 6 Comments
Photo from R.M.N. / R.-G. Ojeda

“Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.” – Mark 5:25

“And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age).” – Mark 5:42

Twelve years is not a long time
to live.

Twelve years is a long time
to live in pain.

Twelve years is an instant
for a parent.

Twelve years is an eternity
for a sufferer.

Twelve years is too short
to welcome the hand of Death.

Twelve years is too long
to welcome the cruelties of Life.

Twelve years is a grief
when it ends.

Twelve years is a joy
when it finally closes.

Twelve years should be a beginning
not an end.

Twelve years is a beginning
and an end.

Twelve years is precious
in a daughter.

Twelve years is precious
in a daughter.

I took up these ideas in the song “Twelve Years and Moment,” also published on this blog.

A poem/prayer based on Mark 5:21-43, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year B, Proper 8 (13).

The image is of the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry. Artwork by the Limbourg brothers (between 1411 and 1416) – Photo. R.M.N. / R.-G. Ojéda, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17443172. Somewhat unusually for images of this text, Jairus’ daughter is visible at right in the upper image.

Forgiveness and the Internet

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

May 30, 2024

I wrote this essay on May 30, 2010, as a Facebook “Note.” Those Notes are getting harder to recover, and so when I’ve found one that I still appreciate, I’ve been adding them to my blog here. The original title was “Forgiving the Internet,” but I’ve revised that. I’ve also made revisions that reflect the intervening fourteen years since its composition.

My career in ministry has been marked with a consistent theme: I repeatedly find myself doing things that I either utterly failed to anticipate, or that I specifically said that I’d never do. I actually said aloud in seminary that I never wanted to serve as an interim pastor; I spent nearly ten years doing just that. For seventeen years I spent the vast majority of my time on electronic publishing and communication media that simply didn’t exist when I graduated from school over twenty years before. Today I serve a church on Hawai’i Island, a place I never imagined I’d visit, let alone live.

With the rise in social networking, I led a number of workshops on the Church’s relationship to social networking phenomena, and how to adapt ‘safe church’ practices to the virtual world. While these utilities were still very young themselves (Facebook was only six years old when I composed this essay), I was obviously just one step ahead of anyone in the workshop groups, and sometimes two or three steps behind…

But there’s a characteristic of the Internet that, I think, cries out for a word from the Church, from Christians, and from people of a wide variety of faiths. The characteristic is the longevity, the durability of information in the Internet. My workshop leadership partner successfully found the text of a paper she’d submitted for a class in the 80’s — somehow, it had been posted to a database, ‘spidered’ by Google, and there it was for anyone to find.

At the same time, we keep hearing of firms and institutions evaluating the applications of potential employees with searches of the Internet and, particularly, of their ‘personal’ social networking profiles. According to a 2009 Proofpoint study, 8% of US companies with over 1,000 employees had fired staff for misbehavior related to social networking. How many weren’t hired in the first place?

In the past, we’ve been able to leave our errors behind us. The indiscretions of youth, the sins of ignorance, and the painfully-overcome failures associated with addictions or with strongly-held, sadly mistaken beliefs. Graduation, change of residence, change of job, new affiliations all brought a New Start.

With the Internet, we’ve probably lost that, and it’s probably gone for good.

So we’re going to have to learn to forgive.

I can’t think of anything more counter-cultural, neither at the time I first composed this reflection or at this moment. This is a judgmental time. The ideological politics we bewail has deep roots in the inability to tolerate or forgive dissent. A political victory in one issue makes collaboration on another issue prohibitively difficult.

In 2008, the United States led the world in the percentage of its population which was behind bars. I strongly suspect that in prior years, and in other countries, at least some of those imprisoned offenders would have been confronted differently than they are today.

With the political mechanisms paralyzed, with huge numbers of citizens released from prisons and anticipating a short stay ‘outside’ before they’re returned, with all of our long-since-forgotten but electronically preserved peccadilloes waiting for us to find them again, we’d better learn to forgive.

Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting, and it never was. Forgiveness does not release anyone from responsibility. I’d argue that until there is repentance, there can be no forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the restoration of relationship; it is the acknowledgement of prior failure and the commitment to a new way of success. Forgiveness reinforces responsibility even as it relieves the offender from the consequences of offending.

Forgiveness has always been a foundational Christian value. It has always strengthened families and communities. It has always been praised when publicly displayed — remember Pope John Paul II and his attempted assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca — while simultaneously dismissed as a virtue with utility in the ‘real world.’

The real world and the virtual world now, I think, demand that we deliberately, systematically, and steadfastly employ this virtue of forgiveness. When forgetfulness will no longer permit new life, then forgiveness must take its place.

I think this is one of the central challenges for the Church of Jesus Christ in this age: to summon society to this new virtue, for its survival and salvation.

Photo by Eric Anderson.

I Fear I am not God

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. – 1 John 4:18

Fear is not just about punishment, John.
Fear is also about being hurt.
Fear is about taking a risk.
Fear is about the unknown.

I fear punishment, of course.
The pain is not just the harsh words,
hard tones, spoken to me.
I punish myself as well.

I fear as well the hurt
that is not punishment,
but comes from accident
or malice done around me.

I fear to take a risk, of course,
because, deserved or not,
if risk turns into failure,
I will feel the pain.

And I fear the unknown
because who knows (I don’t)
what dangers lurk for me,
what hurts I’ll face and feel?

So John, I know that God is love,
rejoice that God loves without fear.
I live in love and fear.
I fear I am not God.

A poem/prayer based on 1 John 4:7-21, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year B, Fifth Sunday of Easter.

Self-portrait by Eric Anderson.

What I’m Singing: Tell Me to Turn Around

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

Cross-posted from holycrosshilo.com.

As in (some) years past, I wrote a new song for Easter to play and perform for the post-Easter Sunday episode of What I’m Thinking, my weekly video program at holycrosshilo.com. It’s a song that refers both to the events of the first Easter and of the Sunday that followed.

Am I thinking this week after Easter Sunday? Well, no, not yet. But I am singing “Tell Me to Turn Around.”

Here’s a transcript:

In the week after Easter Sunday I’m afraid I find it difficult to think about much of anything. That’s sad, because the Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday is the story of Thomas and his doubts (John 20:19-31). Poor Thomas gets less of my thinking than he deserves.

As a result, What I’m Thinking this week is What I’m Singing. This is something I have done a few times at Easter over the years, and so I’m pleased to bring you this song: “Tell Me to Turn Around.”

Where have you brought him? How can I see him?
I want to know why these ugly things happen.
But for now, just tell me.
Tell me to turn around.

[Chorus]

Turn around, look behind, where I haven’t looked before.
Turn around, clear my eyes.
The life is glowing, and I am crowing
That the world has changed since I turned around.

[Verses]

You told me already we’ve lost him completely.
I want to know why these ugly things happen.
Mary, what more can you tell me today?
Tell me to turn around.

You told me, and told me, but what good are your stories?
I want to know why these ugly things happen.
Why are you lying about his wounds, brothers?
And you tell me to turn around.

And that’s what I’m singing.

Follow What I’m Thinking at holycrosshilo.com.

Nicodemus Nods

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

“And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” – John 3:19

Too close to power, Nicodemus,
to be unaware
of what a savage place the palace, or
the council chamber, is.

The finest houses are adorned
with “those retired”
by the coups and calumnies
of those who rule.

Sometimes they’ve stepped across
the corpses slaughtered
on the battlefields of Munda
or the streets of Rome.

By sprays of blood or of dishonor,
Caesar’s heirs and Herod’s
threaten you, poor Nicodemus,
and you know it well.

The light has come into the world
by law and prophets’ words,
and greed has shrouded it in murder, theft,
and royal robes.

So nod, then, Nicodemus, as
you ponder on the snake
which, lifted up, no longer threatened life
but gave it back again.

How strange to find the light at night
as Moses’ people found
their healing in the very form they feared.
So, Nicodemus, nod.

The day approaches when you’ll gaze
upon the lifeless form
of light, and carry it into the dark,
and light will shine once more.

A poem/prayer based on John 3:14-21, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year B, Fourth Sunday in Lent.

The image is Nicodemus by JESUS MAFA, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48385 [retrieved February 28, 2023]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Story: ‘Opukaha’ia

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 5 Comments

February 18, 2024

Genesis 9:8-17
Mark 1:9-15

Usually I tell you stories about birds. Sometimes I tell you stories about other kinds of creatures, like honu. Sometimes I tell you stories about trees and seeds, and once or twice about clouds. And from time to time, I tell you stories about people, young people and older people.

And I make these stories up.

Today I’m going to tell you a story that I didn’t make up, although I’m putting the words together for it. It’s about a real person who lived and died over two hundred years ago, someone whose life made an enormous difference for you and for me. His name was ‘Opukha’ia.

He was born not terribly far from here in Ka’u. His early life was a sad one. There were wars as Kamehameha I sought to rule all the Hawaiian Islands, and in one of those wars ‘Opukaha’ia’s parents and siblings were killed. He was taken in first by one of Kamehameha’s warriors, and later by an uncle, who was a priest of the Hawaiian gods. The uncle raised ‘Opukaha’ia to become a priest as well.

One day ‘Opukaha’ia visited an American ship anchored offshore, and decided that he wanted to leave Hawai’i, feeling like he had lost his connection with his home with the death of his immediate family. His uncle, I should say, didn’t want him to go. There were two young Hawaiians on the ship, as a young man named Thomas Hopu had already signed on as a cabin boy. The ship made a long voyage, first to Alaskan waters to collect cargo, then to China to sell cargo and take on different cargo, and then all the way around the southern tip of Africa before making their way to the east coast of North America. The ship’s captain invited ‘Opukaha’ia to stay with him at his home in New Haven. New Haven, as it happened, was the site of Yale College, which taught math, science, literature, law – and religion.

The story goes that the young man was sitting on the steps of the main college building when a senior named Edwin Dwight came along and asked him if he wanted to learn. ‘Opukaha’ia wanted to learn very badly, and Edwin Dwight became his tutor. I’m not sure when he adopted the English name Henry. When the ship’s captain had to leave for another voyage, Edwin Dwight found Henry ‘Opukaha’ia another host with a relative named Timothy Dwight. He was, at the time, President of Yale College.

It took some years for Henry ‘Opukaha’ia to accept baptism and membership in the Christian Church, but not because he was slow to believe. He devoured study of Christianity just as eagerly as he ate up study of the English language with a series of mentors and tutors. He wasn’t sure of his own soul. He took it very seriously. He didn’t want to sadden God by falling away from his faith.

I don’t think he did make God sad, by the way.

He had a tremendous influence on the brand-new missionary movement in New England. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was founded just a year after Henry ‘Opukaha’ia landed in New Haven. Originally, they planned to send missionaries to India and Sri Lankha. ‘Opukaha’ia made them consider Hawai’i, in great part because he was willing, available, and training to go as a missionary who spoke the language. In 1820, just ten years after the founding of the organization, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions landed its first missionary company here on this island, over in Kona.

Sadly, Henry ‘Opukaha’ia was not with them. He contracted a disease and in those days there was no effective treatment for it. He died at age 26 in Cornwall, Connecticut. Nearly his last words were, “Aloha o’e.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I prepare these stories ahead of time in writing (it’s what you’ve just read). I tell them on Sunday morning from what I remember of what I’ve written and what I create in the moment. They are not the same.

The image of Henry ‘Opukaha’ia was prepared for the publication of his memoirs, Heneri Opukahaia, A Native Hawaiian, 1792-1818, by Edwin Welles Dwight, 1830.