Rev. Don Erickson

We’ve already met Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin. Now we meet Mary through a visit from Gabriel. Mary’s a young woman betrothed to Joseph, meaning they are legally a unit, but do not yet live together. Both Mary and Joseph are descendants of David. But most would have deemed them nobody. First of all, they are from Nazareth. What kind of town is Nazareth? Well, a verse from John 1 gives us a hint. In the last part of John 1, Jesus is calling his disciples. He’s already brought Andrew and Peter on board. He then recruits Philip. Philip wants his friend Nathaniel to join, too. He tells Nathaniel about this Jesus from Nazareth. Verse 46: Nathaniel quips, what good comes out of Nazareth? In other words, Nazareth is a nothing town. Gabriel has come to Nazareth to tell Mary universe changing news. His first words to Mary (v. 28): “Favored one! The Lord is with you.” It’s nice to feel favored, isn’t it? Or to know the Lord is with you. Bu...

This may sound like a strange topic. What did the Jewish priesthood of the day have to do with Jesus’ birth? Why do they matter to us? Well, the priesthood matters to the story and to us in very interesting and meaningful ways. The Christmas story found in Luke begins with a priest. And not just any priest. This priest will be Jesus’ uncle. John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin. And John the Baptist’s dad was Zechariah. We meet Zechariah in the book of Luke, chapter 1. Verses 5-10 helps us understand the role of the priest a bit as well as Zechariah. 5  In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6  They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord.  7  And yet they had no child, because Elizabeth was infertile, and they were b...

  “I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." What is the truth Jesus testifies to?  The truth of Love! A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  35  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Pilate doesn’t know this truth. Maybe in the end he learns it. But right now, he doesn’t understand what Jesus is getting.  If I am a king, Jesus seems to tell Pilate, I am not a king in the worldly sense. I lead and guide in a much deeper sense. I reign in the spiritual sense. My kingdom is made up of those born of the spirit. I’m king of the heart. What Pilate doesn’t get, and what so many ever since haven’t gotten, is that the revolution Jesus forges is a revolution of the heart! If hearts are changed, people are changed, communities are changed, nations are changed, the world is changed. Jesus’ revolution is a ...

Politically, we are a purplish church. There’s a mix of red and blue here. I don’t know the shade of purple exactly. I don’t monitor how you vote. I don’t look for red and blue. I look at the Jesus in you. Whatever the makeup, Democrats, Republicans, independents unite in Christ here. This to me is a beautiful thing.  That said, for some this Sunday after the election Tuesday is not so beautiful. For some, this election was especially difficult. Some are heartbroken. Really heartbroken.  However, others are heartened. And some are somewhere in between. Knowing this, how would you as a pastor here approach this meditation? How do I speak to these rather different groups of Christians at Plainville Congregational? It’s not so easy. Well, the idea that makes the most sense to me this morning is to do just that, speak both to those feeling heartbroken and to those feeling heartened.  To the heartbroken – your pain is real and difficult. I have no easy answers to give. I have...

Sarah dies at the age of 127. We read about this at the beginning of Genesis 23. She dies in Canaan, away from home. The loss is profound for Abraham. Genesis 23:2 offers such a tender description. Abraham goes to her to mourn and weep over her. He sits shiva, in other words. This tender picture of individual grief and loss comes amid the often-hard story of Genesis, full of falls, failures, folly, and forsakenness in the wilderness. This kind of grief, it can’t be stopped. Yes, there are different kinds of losses we experience. The loss of a sense of safety, the loss of a job, the loss of hopes coming true, the loss of our preferred political campaign, the loss of a good vacation. But there are levels of grief. Losing a child, losing a parent, losing a spouse – that is next level grief, and it must be especially honored. The rest of the chapter focuses on the task of burying Sarah. A beloved husband, Abraham wants the perfect spot for his wife’s burial land and landscape. He speci...

In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson responded to a question  written to him by the Danbury Baptist Association, asking him why he doesn’t “proclaim national days of fasting and thanksiving, as had been done by Washington and Adams before him.” Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists wrote this: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” In the 1644, more than 160 years before Jefferson, Roger Williams, one of the most important early Americans in U.S. history and America’s first Baptist, wrote this in a letter to John Cotton: “When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the ...

This meditation is going to be heavy on Bible verses. Often, I read the lectionary scriptures and simply go from there, maybe quoting a scripture or two in the process. But this meditation will be quoting scripture a lot. The reason this is true is that we’re looking at a very important topic, and the scripture has a lot to say about it.  The topic is this – Conscience.  In researching this topic last week, I came upon something that’s been going on since 1811 that I’ve only just heard about. The IRS has a fund that folks can donate to. It is called the Conscience fund. It’s meant for those who’ve defrauded the government in some way and because of their guilty conscience want to make it right. Clergy have often been mediators of monies given to the fund. Deathbed confessions to clergy led to donations to the Conscience fund. That said, it isn’t just religious people who are endowed with human conscience. Everyone is endowed with conscience. Yes, that conscience can become bro...