Scott Anderson1 Samuel 1:4-20 † 1 Samuel 2:1-10 † Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 † Mark 13:1-8 You can view a video of the service and sermon here. Franz Dolp was a professor of economics at Oregon State University when he began, perhaps, the greatest work of his life. As a young father and professor, his marriage had eroded, and his dream of creating an Oregon homestead with it. When he drove away from the farm intended for “till death do us part,” it was with the good-bye blessing, “I hope that your next dream turns out better than your last.”[i] He eventually found his way to forty acres on Shotpouch Creek. This logged-out, chaotic hot mess of vine maples, leggy hardwoods, and thorns was in the same Oregon coast mountains where his grandfather had made a hardscrabble homestead. In his journal, Franz wrote that he had “made the mistake of visiting the farm after it was sold. The new owners had cut it all.” I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust, and I cried. When I moved to Shotpouch after leaving the farm, I realized that making a new home required more than building a cabin or planting an apple tree. It required some healing for me and for the land.”[ii] “My work [at Shotpouch] grew out of a deeply experienced sense of loss,” he wrote, “the loss of what should be here.”[iii] Robin Wall Kimmerer tells the story of how Franz Dolp, a wounded man, moved to live on wounded land at Shotpouch Creek in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, in a chapter she titles “Old Growth Children.” Franz wrote in his journal, “These forty acres were to be my retreat, my escape to the wild. But this was no pristine wilderness.” The land was razed by a series of clear-cuts over the years—first the venerable old-growth forest and then its children. No sooner had the Doug firs grown back than the loggers came for them again.[iv] Everything is different after land is clear-cut. Sunshine is abundant, the soil is broken open and unstable, temperatures rise, the humus blanket gives way to exposed minerals. Forest ecosystems have tools for dealing with disturbances, of course. Early plants get to work on damage control, quickly.
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Scott AndersonRuth 3:1-5, 4:13-17 † Psalm 127 † Hebrews 9:24-28 † Mark 12:38-44
You can view a video of the service and sermon here. Robin Wall Kimmerer tells of an ancient ceremonial tradition among the indigenous coastal people in the Northwest. It always happened about this time of the year. If you’ve been out and about on the rivers in the past month or so, paying attention to what’s been happening in our waters, it may not surprise you. Kimmerer spotlights the story this way: Far out beyond the surf they felt it. Beyond the reach of any canoe, half a sea away, something stirred inside them, an ancient clock of bone and blood that said, “It’s time.” Silver-scaled body its own sort of compass needle spinning in the sea, the floating arrow turned toward home. From all directions they came, the sea a funnel of fish, narrowing their path as they gathered closer and closer, until their silver bodies lit up the water, redd-mates sent to sea, prodigal salmon coming home.[i] Scott Anderson1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 10-16 † Psalm 133 † 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 † Mark 4:35-41 You can view a video recording of this sermon here. I had never before noticed the cushion. Did you catch it? Jesus was in the back of the boat, asleep on the cushion before they woke him up. That’s a peculiar detail that is included only in Mark. I mean, what are we talking about here? Was it some kind of flotation device or seat pad? Maybe it was something more practical for the skipper. I mean, how luxurious was this setup?
I did have to laugh though when I read this detail in my research: “… it is important to avoid a translation which would suggest that Jesus was so small or coiled up as to be able to sleep on a single pillow.”[i] Scott AndersonActs 1:15-17, 21-26 † Psalm 1 † 1 John 5:9-13 † John 17:6-9 A video version of this sermon can be found here. Perhaps you are aware that the US is the only developed country in which pregnancy-related mortality—deaths of women in childbirth—is actually going up rather than down. And while rates of infant mortality have generally gone down over the years, infant mortality remains a big problem among some populations—this in a country that has demonstrated such astonishing scientific capabilities when it comes to things like rapidly developing vaccines in a crisis that we are able to anticipate being back together next week. As of 2020, American women were far more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than women in other wealthy countries.[i] There is an important, and startling caveat to all this, though. These numbers are not trending across the board. Both of these rates are driven by what is going on with Black women and babies.
Scott Anderson Acts 10:44-48 † Psalm 98 † 1 John 5:1-6 † John 15:9-17 A video version of this sermon can be found here. You likely read the quote from the Robin Wall Kimmerer we included in the invitation to worship. Here it is again, from her book Braiding Sweetgrass: “It’s funny,” she writes, “how the nature of an object—let’s say a strawberry or a pair of socks—is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or as a commodity. The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store, red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting machine. I hope so. But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as a commodity, as private property. There is no bond beyond the politely exchanged “thank yous” with the clerk. I have paid for them and our reciprocity ended the minute I handed her the money. The exchange ends once parity has been established, an equal exchange. They become my property. I don’t write a thank-you note to JCPenney.[i]
Scott AndersonActs 8:26-40 † Psalm 22:25-31 † 1 John 4:7-21 † John 15:1-8
A video version of this sermon can be found www.standrewpc.org/sermons/5th-sunday-of-easter-year-bhere. It is important to notice, when we look at this Acts story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch that it is a story with three characters not just two. Great detail is provided about the first two—unusually detailed information, in fact. This isn’t like some of Luke’s other stories where people are left in mystery. We know a great deal about Philip from other texts in Acts—he is a deacon: one of seven Greek-speaking Jewish Christians appointed by the Twelve to tend to the needs of others, especially widows in the Greek-speaking portion of the fledgling Christian community. He is known as Philip the evangelist. He eventually settled in Caesarea, a government seat in first-century Palestine. He had four daughters who were considered prophets.[i] We know perhaps more than we want to know about the Ethiopian. They are in charge of the treasury of the Candace, which is the official title of the queen mother who is head of the Ethiopian government. We know by their chariot that they have status. We know by their scroll that they can afford rare things. We know by their Greek that they are educated. We know by their reading Isaiah that they are devout. We know by their invitation that this Ethiopian is humble enough to know what they don’t understand and to ask for help, and hospitable enough to respond to Philip when he approaches. And we know, because the author of the two volume Luke-Acts story tells us five times, that they are a eunuch. Scott AndersonActs 4:5-12 † Psalm 23 † 1 John 3:16-24 † John 10:11-18
A video version of this sermon can be found here. Robin DiAngelo’s family was struggling. She and her two sisters were raised in poverty in the 1960s by their single mom: “…we were flat out.” She says. “We lived in our car. We were not bathed.” DiAngelo is the author of White Fragility, I suspect, one of the most important books of our time. It was clear DiAngelo’s mother was helpless and at her wits end. They had no resources and no help. They were hungry, but here’s the kicker: if she would reach out to take, for example, some food someone had left out, DiAngelo’s mother would stop her: ‘Don’t touch that. You don’t know who touched it, it could have been a colored person.’ ‘Don’t sit there. You don’t know who sat there, it could have been a colored person.’ That moment crystalized something for DiAngelo: The message was clear: If a colored person touched it, it would be dirty. But I was dirty. Yet in those moments, the shame of poverty was lifted. I wasn’t poor anymore. I was white.” Scott AndersonJeremiah 31:31-34 † Psalm 119:9-16 † Hebrews 5:5-10 † John 12:20-33
A video version of this sermon can be found here. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Here is the crux, the turning point of John’s gospel. It marks the major turn in the structure of the book. The hour has indeed come, even though we are only halfway through the gospel. “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”[i] We should not miss this. And if we do not understand, we are wise to listen and open ourselves to it until we do. To accentuate the point, we hear not only the voice of Jesus, but the voice of heaven affirm it. In the other gospels—in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—the voice of God is also heard, but at Jesus’ baptism. In John, it is heard here and here only. “I have glorified it—God’s name, that is—and I will glorify it again.” Why here? And what does it mean? This is a strange affirmation to a strange fruit. Perhaps it seems counterintuitive to believe that death breeds life. We do know, though, the truth of this text so central to our Christian faith. We have seen again and again the power of self-giving and sacrifice. Martyrs through history have given themselves so that life would change for the many. Scott AndersonGenesis 17:1-7, 15-16 † Psalm 22:23-31 † Romans 4:13-25 † Mark 8:31-9:1 A video of this sermon is available here. In the 1920s and 30s, towns and cities across the United States tried to outdo one another in building thousands of magnificent public swimming pools for their communities. They were often enormous and elaborate—community gathering places built for a rapidly expanding middle class to enjoy together. There was the Big Pool in Garden City, Kansas. Dug by hand and opened in 1922, the bath house and wading pool were added by the WPA in the 1930s. Elephants from nearby Lee Richardson Zoo swam in it after it closed for the season. In the 1980s in a promotional stunt, two Garden City youth skied on the pool to promote Finnup Park, Lee Richardson Zoo, and the world’s largest outdoor free concrete municipal swimming pool. The pool is currently closed for another face-lift with plans to reopen for a grand centennial celebration.
Scott AndersonDeuteronomy 18:15-20 † Psalm 111 † 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 † Mark 1:21-28
A video form of this meditation can be found here. We know the old adage about first impressions and how deeply they imprint an expectation. Such is the case here, I suspect. This is, after all, the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry—the first impression. It is his inaugural act on the heels of assembling his leadership team. Inaugurations say a lot, I suspect, about our leaders. And each of the gospels underline something a little different about Jesus. Matthew begins with the Sermon on the Mount, presenting us with a version of Jesus who is a definitive teacher. Luke offers a vision statement of social renewal—Jesus as the one to bring good news to the poor. John skips the ceremony and goes straight to the wedding party at Cana and a sudden abundance of good wine to show us a savior who came for life abundant. Mark’s Jesus is a little like Marshawn Lynch was back in the day, I suppose—he’s all about that action, boss. He leaps into the fray. He starts where we are today, in the synagogue—at church, if you like—with a new teaching, with authority. But it isn’t just about words, certainly not empty words, not words alone. These words evoke something big. They have power. They change everything. You know. It’s pretty standard stuff when it comes to what we’ve come to expect in worship, I suppose. A teaching that leads to a loud encounter with an unclean spirit. Screaming. Convulsions. Pews flying. An exorcism. You know Tuesday, or, I guess, Sunday, as it were. |
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