Federated Church Sycamore Sermon Podcast

In this week’s sermon Pastor Eric gives a sermon “in character” as Moshe, or Moses, and offers a contemporary take on the biblical Exodus story. Moshe explains the difficult transition from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the wilderness, focusing on the people's anxiety and subsequent longing for the perceived security of enslavement. He emphasizes that true liberation is mental and spiritual, not...

The sermon emphasizes the enduring and revolutionary nature of the Exodus story in both Jewish and African-American traditions. It explores the Jewish custom of using the Haggadah during the Passover Seder to make the journey from slavery to freedom a present experience, suggesting that history and time collapse during the ritual. Pastor Eric explains that the Exodus is a "north star" th...

In this sermon, Pastor Eric reflects on the story of God calling Moses to act as God’s representative in the world. In doing so, God calls Moses from the comfort of his privilege and security to risk returning to his kin in Egypt who are suffering under pharaoh’s brutal rule. As they cry out for deliverance, God chooses to act—to liberate them by partnering with ordinary, complicated, wounded peop...

This week’s sermon explores the story of the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah, who defied Pharaoh's orders to kill newborn Hebrew boys, and connects it to Jesus's compassion and the role of community in nurturing life. Pastor Eric emphasizes the importance of being "midwives" in today's world, actively participating in bringing forth new life and hope amidst chaos and injustice, rather than being...

Pastor Eric invites us to imagine what the world might look like fifty years from now, and to hold it alongside God's dream--our hope--for what the world would look like. How do we bridge that divide? Listen in and reflect with us.

This is the second installment of our annual "Ask Me Anything" series where Pastor Eric answers the questions that are most on people's hearts and minds. The questions were submitted anonymously and then drawn from a bowl during the "sermon" time. Listen in and hear what people asked and how Pastor Eric responded!

In this final message in our series exploring sabbath rest, Pastor Eric challenges us to consider the ways that our common wisdom of "self-care" fails to adequately respond to the magnitude of the crises in our lives and world. Instead, he calls us to imagine and live into an ethic of "community care." As much as it feels safer to try and heal alone--what with all the frustrati...

In this message, Pastor Eric continues reflecting on the meaning of sabbath and both its challenge and transformational power for our lives and world. In particular, he calls us to reflect on how the lack of sabbath, of deep rest that actually restores us, de-humanizes us--cuts us off from core parts of what it means to be human: to give space to our grief or anger, our joy and gratitude, to cry,...

In this message, Pastor Eric reflects on the enduring--and liberating--challenge of "practicing the sabbath." From the debates Jesus had in his own time to our own struggles with exhaustion and burnout, Pastor Eric reflects on his sabbatical and how sabbath invites both a new vision of our world and calls us to inhabit it differently. At the core of this vision is the reminder that you are human;...

In this message, Pastor Eric continues reflecting on resurrection. In Christian faith, Easter is not merely a day, but a season; and resurrection is not merely an event we remember, but a reality we are called to participate in. Listen in as Pastor Eric invites us to go beyond merely "believing" in the resurrection to living it with our whole lives. This seemingly small shift makes a wor...

In this Easter message, Pastor Eric concludes our Lenten sermon series exploring how to live an integrated and whole life beyond simplistic binaries and dichotomies by reflecting on grief AND hope. With this reframing, we realize that the first Easter began not with joy, but grief; not with hope, but despair. In fact, it was only in moving toward the site of their grief--Jesus's tomb--that the...

In this Palm Sunday message, Pastor Eric explores themes of "silence" and "shouting" in Jesus' dramatic entrance into Jerusalem for the Passover festival celebrating their ancestor's liberation from bondage in Egypt, and his disruptive actions immediately afterward in the Temple. Often missed is how intentional, deliberate, and organized his actions were; Jesus is engaged in street theater, in a p...

In this sermon, Pastor Eric continues our Lenten series exploring binaries that our world often divides the world into and pushes us to choose between. This week, we explore "Righteousness" (and, similarly, justice) vs. "mercy."Rather than seeing these as opposites, in this story, Jesus calls us to pursue mercy as the pathway to building a world of justice and righteousness. If...

In this message, Pastor Eric explores the dichotomy of “lost” vs. “found.” How often does our world separate out those who are "in" as "found," and those who are not as "lost." And how often, we then give these a value: to be lost is "bad"--and one who is lost is somehow deficient--and to be found is "good," as is the one who is found. But what if...

In this Lenten message, Pastor Eric explores the tensions we often feel around the dichotomy of "rest" vs. "growth." So often, rest is seen as the opposite of growth, and we value rest only inasmuch as it enables us to get back to work. Through the Parable of the Fig Tree, this message explores how this dichotomy makes us feel guilt for resting and keeps us from allowing oursel...

In this Lenten message, Pastor Eric explores the common dichotomy of spirituality vs. social justice, contemplation vs. action. Many of us feel pulled to identify with one vs. the other, and to place value judgments on which one is better. Some churches emphasize "faith alone," and thus see any influence of social justice as separate from faith--and, sometimes, dangerous to "true" faith. In reacti...

In this message on the First Sunday of Lent, Pastor Eric invites us to consider how our world's tendency to categorize the world into binaries leads us to miss out on so much of the glory of God and creation. It also makes it difficult for us to honor the fullness of others and ourselves. Using the "Parable of the Good Samaritan" and the story of "would-be followers of Jesus," we explore the tensi...

In this final message of our series exploring “The Lord’s Prayer,” Pastor Eric ties together the final line in the version Jesus gave us as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew (“lead us not into the time of trial, but deliver us from the evil one”) with the final lines added later by the church (“for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever”). This final exploration also falls on Tra...

In this message, Pastor Eric invites us to consider what it would mean to take Jesus's words here seriously: Is it significant that Jesus uses economic terms to describe forgiveness? Are these simply metaphorical, or are they meant to be taken at face value? What would have led him to use this kind of language? To explore these questions, we go on a journey both into the turbulent times in whi...

In this message, Pastor Eric continues exploring "the Lord's Prayer" with the line: "Give us today our daily bread." By exploring the economic instability of Jesus' day--95% or more of people in Galilee were poor or destitute--especially for those who relied on fishing in the Sea of Galilee for income, like many of Jesus' disciples, this simple prayer takes on whole new meaning. As we begin to ima...

In this message, Pastor Eric continues exploring the prayer that Jesus taught us, this time with the phrases: "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done--as in heaven, so on the earth." As he explores the meaning behind these words, he shares some surprising historical facts about how the Bible--or parts of it--have been banned by authoritarian rulers around the world throughout history. Why? you ask....

In this message, Pastor Eric continues our sermon series exploring the meaning behind "the Lord's Prayer." This message explores the larger story behind the traditional phrase: "Hallowed by thy name;" or, as we're re-translating it: "May your name be recognized as holy." What do we mean by God's "name"? What IS God's name? What does it mean f...

This is the first message in Pastor Eric's sermon series, "The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the World-Altering Message of the Prayer Jesus Gave Us." Why, of all the names and metaphors used for God in the Bible, did Jesus choose to use Father? What larger tradition, history, and values would this have evoked for its original hearers? Is it just about seeing God as male? Or can we pray in the way...

In this message--an addendum to our Advent-Epiphany sermon series--Pastor Eric adds one more "reminder for new seasons": Beloved is where we begin—and end. It's as simple as it is difficult to trust and live within. God loves you. Reflecting on the baptism of Jesus and the meaning of baptism for us, Pastor Eric reminds us that the foundation of our faith is the insistence that Love is after you--a...

In this message Pastor Eric explores the "reminder for new seasons" that "the road is not straight." We all know that life is two steps forward, one step back, a step to the left, then to the right, and so on; still, especially at the beginning of a new year, we plot and we plan for how we are going to get from "here" to "there" as if life will in fact unfold in this way. So, what does this final...