In this "Ask Me Anything" summer sermon series message, Pastor Eric responds to THE question that is often most on people's hearts and minds when it comes to God, faith, and life. Our question asker(s) posed it this way: "Why is there so much suffering if a loving God exists? Why are some people spared (like me) and other good people face horrible things--like their child gets cancer? How can I believe in a God like that? Is God a puppet master pulling strings? What are the reasons some people get cancer or other diseases, while others don't?

In this third installment of our summer sermon series, "Ask Me Anything," Pastor Eric takes some time to offer briefer, on-the-spot responses to several different questions people submitted, determining which questions to respond to by pulling them out of a hat.

In this second installment of our summer sermon series, “Ask Me Anything,” Pastor Eric responds to the questions people posed about Jesus:

Pastor Eric began our new summer sermon series, “Ask Me Anything,” by exploring the questions people asked around God.

Here’s what they were: “The thing I struggle most about when it comes to religion (other than how it's been used to harm) is God and Jesus as males. Why are all spiritual deities male? I just don't know if I can think of God as gendered at all. And why should HE choose a man to take human form? Is God a man? And how can God exist beyond space and time?”

In this message, Pastor Eric reflects on Jesus' emphatic injunction: "Unless you become like children, you cannot inherit/enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

In this message on Father's Day, Pastor Eric uses the shortest verse in the entire Bible (at least in English): "Jesus Wept" (John 11:35) to reflect on the kind of masculinity Jesus embodied. Looking at Jesus, he then contrasts these with the ways we imagine what it means to "be a man" in our own society, and asks: how does the socialization process from "boys to men" end up cutting us off from core parts of what it means to be human? If Jesus was fully human--and lived fully into his humanity--then how does the way he embodies his masculinity call us beyond the boundaries of what our society offers us? Are we willing to commit to a masculinity that liberates us into the fullness of our humanity? How can we build such a community here at Federated Church and support such a movement in our wider world?

This message given on Pentecost, known as the “birth of the church” 50 days after Jesus’ death and resurrection, reflects on the famed story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 alongside the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 to explore the vision of community, diversity, and belonging they offer us and our world—and how it contrasts with how our world tends to operate. Is it possible that these ancient texts offer a vision that our world desperately needs and that the church has largely missed entirely? What might it look like for us to open ourselves to this life-giving Spirit individually and collectively; to embody and model a way of being together that heals and restores our fractured world? Are we willing to let go of control and see what this Spirit makes of us?