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]
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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 AndersonIsaiah 25:6-9 † Psalm 118 † 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 † Mark 16:1-8
A video version of this sermon can be found here. When I was young, we’d often go to the Saturday night races at the Tri-Cities raceway. We’d have a big group from the church that would gather in the stands of the unique 3-corner half-mile, high-bank track that would come roaring to life those summer evenings. Every now and then the late-model NASCAR circuit would come to town, with their powerful cars and big sponsors. You could tell the difference between them and the local racers that raced most Saturdays because they had those wide, sticky racing tires all around the car. The local racers, on the other hand, only had one of the big tires—on the front, right wheel, the outside wheel as the cars were always turning left around the track. You could tell the difference because of the tire, and the chaos that was much more common with these local racers. Now, this was especially true when, on some nights, the raceway held a special heat, just for the mechanics. This was the only time the mechanics would replace the regular drivers behind the wheel, and that was probably for the best. The mechanic heats were, well, chaos. Pandemonium. They were all over the track, and off the track. The bumps and scrapes and spin outs that often occurred with the aggressive driving on those nights was multiplied exponentially when the mechanics got behind the wheel. You might have thought it would have been just the opposite—that these mechanics who spent all their time fixing these vehicles would be the most careful, but, let me assure you, this was not the case! Not in the least. Did I use the word pandemonium already? How about chaos? Bedlam? Well, I’ve developed a theory about this that I think plays out in other areas of life as well. Let’s see what you think. I suspect that these mechanics were just, plain and simple, terrible drivers. I mean terrible—at least compared to the racers who rightly belonged behind the wheel. But that’s not the part of the theory I wanted to run by you. This is the part: Scott AndersonPsalm 118:1-2, 19-29 † Mark 11:1-11
A video version of this sermon can be found here. We have been marching for a long time. I was a cold war baby. I remember as a young boy having it seared into my head that the Soviet Union was a ruthless, godless nation that brainwashed its people into believing crazy things that I, as a privileged child of a true and free democracy was safe from. It was a powerful message that shaped me. In fact, it took me until college to begin to realize that I just may have been played, that it was entirely possible that I too had been brainwashed—that messages of supremacy and themes of otherness and images of power had been reinforced in my life and my own culture that shaped me toward some understandings and soured me to others. I began to suspect when I got to know people who thought differently, who shaped their lives around values and priorities that authoritative voices in my own life had learned to fear or reject. I began to suspect when I traveled to places that I understood from my childhood formation had little value or interest and discovered that I learned, that I grew, that my eyes were opened. 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 AndersonNumbers 21:4-9 † Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 † Ephesians 2:1-10 † John 3:14-20
A video version of this sermon can be found here. I’m sure you’ve noted in the news that we have passed another important milestone this week. We have now spent a full year with this pandemic, with its limitations on our movement and interaction with one another. Our last in-person worship was March 8th, 2020. On that date the US had marked 22 deaths from Covid-19. None of us have been unaffected by the strains of this past year. Few of us have been untouched by the sting of death. What would we have thought, what would we have done differently if we knew at that moment that just a year later well over half a million of us would be dead from the disease in the United States and 2.6 million souls world-wide? How would we have acted differently? I suppose we in the Seattle area have a unique perspective on this having been hit first and hardest. I’m sure you’ve seen the article first published in the New York Times noting that had the rest of the country followed the lead of Washington as many as 300,000 of our neighbors—grandparents and farmworkers and health professionals—might still be alive.[i] 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 AndersonGenesis 9:8-17 † Psalm 25:1-10 † 1 Peter 3:18-22 † Mark 1:9-15 A video version of this sermon can be found here. Here’s a pro tip for you. When it comes to learning, repetition is less important than struggle. This is the insight of what is known as the generation effect according to David Epstein in his book Range.  Struggling to generate an answer on your own, even a wrong one, enhances subsequent learning.[i] It helps learning over the long-term in at least two ways—it makes it stick and it enhances our ability to apply our learning broadly. The struggle—doing the work—is the key. Epstein explains, “for learning that is both durable (it sticks) and flexible (it can be applied broadly), fast and easy is precisely the problem.”[ii]
Scott Anderson2 Kings 2:1-12 † Psalm 50† 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 † Mark 9:2-9
A video version of this sermon can be found here. In her timeless book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard recalls that when she was six or so she would take a penny—a precious penny of her own” and she would hide it for someone else to find—always along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. If she had any regrets, about this, it was that the compulsion was short-lived. “I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore” she writes, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe.[i] Dillard is thinking here about seeing, about being aware of what is around us. She is making the point that “free surprises” and “unwrapped gifts” lay all about us in the world. |
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