Rev. Don Erickson

POEM: Rumi Quotes (dedicated to Sufis killed in Egypt this week) 1. “Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?” 2. “You are so weak. Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.”  3. “Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.”  4. “Brother, Sister, stand the pain. Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose.”  READING: Philippians 4: 4-9 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will ...

LOOK FOR THE HELPERS Maybe you saw it on the news, but a couple months ago legendary American musician Tom Petty died. Petty was one of my favorites and has been for a while. Knowing this, last week, Holly came home from the grocery store with a “Special Tribute Edition” of Rolling Stone remembering Tom Petty. I have been reading through it since then. One of the last essays about Petty in the edition discusses his last tour, the one he finished just before he had a heart event that took his life. It focuses on the friendship and brotherhood of Petty and his bandmates. It begins with these words: “Bassist Ron Blair has battled stage fright for years since rejoining the Heartbreakers in 2002, after a 20-year sanity break. He wanders into Petty and cops to something you're not likely to admit to your bandleader unless you've known him for 40 years. ‘I'm kinda nervous, you know,’ says Blair in a quiet voice. Petty rarely describes himself as the leader of his band, ...

Do you know what the most frequent story in the Gospels is? Well, the answer is it is a story that has 6 examples of being told. Can you guess what that story is? Here’s a hint: all six stories tell a tale of the distribution of resources. Yes, the resource we are talking about is food. That’s right.  Its the story of Jesus Feeding Multitudes. It is told 6 times, the most frequent story told in the gospels. Here is story from Matthew 14: 13  Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.  14  When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.  15  When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”  16  Jesus said to them, “They need n...

This morning I wanted to focus on the current healthcare debate. The text we will focus on in discussing our topic this morning is one that has always intrigued me. It comes from Mark 12 but the same story is told in Luke and Matthew. It is the story of Jesus providing healthcare to a paralyzed man lowered down from a house’s roof.  Here is the story: When Jesus returned to Capernaum several days later, the news spread quickly that he was back home.  2  Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room, even outside the door. While he was preaching God’s word to them,  3  four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat.  4  They couldn’t bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus.  5  Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven.”...

For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father,     a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—   a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."    -  (Matthew 10:35-38) Jesus’ take on the family in Matthew 10 seems from an initial reading as rather harsh, doesn’t it? Remember hearing a lot about family values in our politics? Interestingly, you don’t hear as much about it anymore. I wonder why? But Jesus seems to be dismissing family values. In fact, he seems to be condemning family values. He seems out to destroy families. In the least, he seems out to divide families. What is this about? Well, let’s look a little deeper at what Jesus is really criticizing. It’s something he criticizes a lot in the gospels. Do you all know what a pyr...

Maybe the most pivotal moment in my life, the point in time that had the clearest before and after reality to it for me, came when I was in Seoul, South Korea. It was this time of year in 2005, in fact. I was a couple months into a 6 month long language fellowship studying Korean at Yonsei University. A professor of mine at Columbia University helped me obtain the paid fellowship. The plan was for me to bulk up on my Korean language skills in preparation for my upcoming applications to PhD study programs in Asian Religions with a focus on Korea. Doing research in primary languages is rather important for PhD work. But things were not going well. Despite a semester of Korean at Columbia and informal studies for more than a year, I simply wasn’t getting a feel for the language. And reading Korean, what I needed to be best at, proved most difficult. I could never get the hang of the subject object verb sentence structure. Instead of I am studying Korean language and it is hard. It is i...

Leviticus 19:33-34 If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not do wrong to him. You should act toward the stranger who lives among you as you would toward one born among you. Love him as you love yourself. For you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. You’ve all seen the deeply, deeply tragic photo of the 4 year-old Syrian boy who drowned trying to flee that war-torn country with his family. His tiny, vulnerable frame on the sandy shore lifeless, waves ebbing and flowing – it is heartbreaking, soul-breaking. A child refugee in a family of refugees fleeing a madman and a mad war, a victim of humankind’s destructiveness. This image is an iconic reminder that, like some of our Universalist brothers and sisters teach, hell is here on earth. Especially in places like Syria. When I saw that photo, my breath was taken away for a few moments and then tears joined breaths' return. As I thought about all of it, and as I think about it now just a few weeks fr...