To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do

December 21, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Matthew 1:18-25 ¹⁸ Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²² All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ²³ “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” ²⁴ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife ²⁵ but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

This has been a terrible week.  It’s the week before Christmas, and we’d like to see everything go well… but not this week, not in our world.  

On December 13, a lone gunman attacked and killed two students at Brown University, right down the road from here, and right across the Seekonk River from my home.  Eleven students were shot, two of them died.  On Friday,, after a search that was haunted by mindless attacks from outsiders, the perpetrator was found dead in New Hampshire.

On December 14, a terrorist opened fire on a crowd of Jews at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, who were there at the beach celebrating the first night of Hanukkah.  Fifteen people were shot dead, including a 10 year old girl.  A brave Muslim man tackled one of the shooters, saving lives – but he was hit by the other shooter and is still in the hospital.

Also on December 14, popular, well-respected film maker and actor, Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered in their home by their son.

Each of these terrible events was haunted by people who deliberately spread lies about the event, the people involved, to make it seem – at least in the Brown University shooting that the Providence mayor, being gay, was incompetent, that the Providence police chief, being an immigrant, was also incompetent, and that the president of Brown University was not just incompetent, but maliciously incompetent.

And that doesn’t even count the regular stresses and anxieties of the season.  

Will we have enough cookies? 
Will the sauerbraten turn out well or be a bust?  
Will that relative, you know the one, keep their mouth shut, or start ranting?  
If I have to hear one more harangue about how an American Teddy Bear is superior to an English Paddington Bear, I will scream… right?

And there’s more: Is my job in jeopardy?  How am I going to make the car payment?  Can anyone help me get to my medical appointment?  What will that test show?  Does my beloved have dementia?

And here it is, just a few days before Christmas, and how are we to be merry, surrounded as we are by so much stress?

Isn’t Christmas all about the joy of a new baby, about the hope he embodies?  It’s when we sing all those joyous carols – Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing – right?

Isn’t Christmas all about the joy of a new baby, about the hope he embodies?  It’s when we sing all those joyous carols – Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing – right?

Well, yes, … but… we also sing quiet ones, songs that go under the joy to recognize the reality of why we’re so joyous in spite of all that’s awful in our world.  Songs that help us remember that all is not sweetness and light, that much of the time we struggle – and that we’re not failures because it’s happening that way.  Christmas re-calibrates our picture of life, adjusts the frame so we can see what’s really happening, instead of living inside a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Songs like O Little Town of Bethlehem, remind us of life’s dark streets, and a world of sin.  The author, Bishop Phillips Brooks, of Boston, knew about the stresses of real life – he’d been a pastor in a number of churches.  Or “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”’s third verse, helps us see the realities of life’s crushing load, calling on us to rest by the weary road and hear the angels sing.

Here’s the bottom line.  Christ isn’t coming as a baby to make the best better.  Christ comes, comes as a baby, in the dire-est of circumstances, to a poor struggling family with no money, no power, no anything much at all, to bring us to God’s unending love, even in the worst of times.  It’s not about sugary icing; it’s about satisfying, life-sustaining, nutritious meals.

This morning’s Gospel reading, from Matthew, is a testimony to that truth.  It’s one of three different ways of telling the story of the birth of Jesus.  We’ll hear the other two on Christmas Eve – the beautiful words from Luke, and then the totally metaphorical words that begin the Gospel of John.  In their differences, they remind us that the story of Jesus is not about facts of his birth, but about the truth of his coming.

What matters most to us is not when or if there were Wisemen, but the truth, the reality, that God came to earth, to live as a human being.

I don’t know but maybe the most important part of the traditional set of birth stories isn’t that, not long after the birth, Jesus and his parents have to take off for Egypt, to hide out from King Herod’s agents, determined to kill him.  It’s important because we see there a family with no power, not even free to live in their own home, but being driven away to save their lives.  Jesus is the companion for all of us who are powerless.  His first memories are of growing up far away from his parents’ families, of scrabbling for scraps to make a living.  Born into a poor family, with no influence and little money, Jesus knows what it is to struggle.

It’s pain, and struggle, disappointment and fear that are the normal ways of our life.  Jesus comes to help us overcome, to bring us to a place where we can rejoice, even when things go wrong, even when there is death and disaster, like this week past.  This is the kind of time for which Jesus came.  The days are short, dark, and mostly bitterly cold.  Anguish is all around us; anger tints even the closest of conversations.  So much seems wrong. 

And then comes Jesus, come to live with us, to bear the same sorrows, to know the same horrors, to feel the same pain, to be here so that we might know that God knows us, stands with us, comforts us, and lovingly brings us home.  

Christmas is not a pointer to eternally happy family celebrations, perfection around the table or living room.  It’s a reminder that God cries when Jews are shot on Bondi Beach, when college students are murdered in a classroom, when parents are stabbed to death by a troubled son. 

Even more – it tells us God is devastated when people are hungry and no one reaches out with food, when people are struggling to pay their health insurance premiums and no one tries to change the way medical costs are calculated; God is devastated when people are mean to one another, deliberately and intentionally.  

For all those reasons, Jesus is born to be among us.  Let us give thanks.

Amen.©2025, Virginia H. Child

December 7, 2025 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Mt 1:1-17 An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab,and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David. 

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. 

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations. 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

I want to tell you about one of my favorite stories – well, really, not just one book, it’s turned into one of those series – but the first book is about a Southern lady, a widow in a small North Carolina town.  Her name is Julia Springer, and in the opening book, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, we meet a lively, sharp-tongued and proud woman in her middle 60s, recently widowed.  Miss Julia is the social leader of her town; she expects that everyone looks to her to know the right thing and to do it.  Decades of marriage to the super-perfect and demanding Wesley Lloyd Springer trained her to be swift, sure and unimaginative in interpreting what the right thing is in any circumstance.  She has built her life on being, and being known as, the most righteous person in town, in the most righteous marriage.

Then her husband died.  He had a fatal heart attack in the front seat of his new car, parked in front of the house late one Thursday night.  He was always late on Thursday, because he was preparing for the board meetings of the bank he owned.  

Gradually, Miss Julia’s world begins to change – not because Wesley Lloyd is dead, but because of what his death reveals.  

She’d always thought they had some money but not enough to not be really careful, but as the sole heir, she discovered that “some” could be counted in millions and her husband had deliberately kept her on a tight budget.  

She’d always thought Wesley Lloyd was one of the good bank owners; but it turned out that he made private loans, at usurious rates and wasn’t above blackmailing people to get more money out of them..  

She learned that he owned a lot more of the town than she’d realized, she learned that he kept his properties in terrible shape; she learned he was a mean-spirited landlord.

And then came the final blow.  It wasn’t enough that she’d learned her husband was cheap, manipulative, dishonest, and unpleasant.  

A little while after the funeral, the full extent of her husband’s activities came home to her, when his mistress knocked on her door, and dropped off the son Miss Julia had not known about.  The mistress was left with nothing but the boy – not even the house Wesley Lloyd had set her up in – and has signed up for a beauty school in the big city so she can earn her living.  While she’s studying, little Lloyd needs a place to stay, and she brings him to Miss Julia.

It was devastating.  Every single thing she’d built her pride on: her husband’s honesty, competence, compassion – and now his basic decency – was gone, and along with it, her social position.  She was humiliated all the more when it turned out that every one of her friends had known about the mistress and the son.

Julia’s picture of herself is destroyed by the truth of her reality.  There’s a whole series of books about her; they’re light reading and pretty funny.  But they are also the story of a woman who, after facing the truth, rebuilds her life.  Her basic honesty about what has happened changes her world. 

Instead of living in the midst of secrets, she takes the mistress and her son in.  She learns to trust, makes stronger friends, and practices a faith which is built on the idea that “no matter who you are, you are welcome here” (though she doesn’t put it quite that way).  It’s not easy; she struggles throughout the series with her habitual assumptions – men are untrustworthy, for instance, or poor people are trashy.  But in book after book, she moves deeper and deeper into a better life.

I hope you’re wondering what Miss Julia has to do with that interminable genealogy I read!  Well how about this:  the genealogy is there to tell us that Jesus is a direct descendant of King David, and through King David, a descendant of Abraham – but it’s also designed to tell us more.  In Hebrew scripture, what’s included – and what’s left out – always has a hidden meaning and this list is no exception.

Every section of the list represents 14 generations, which was an auspicious number.  Any number that’s a multiple of 7 has both literal (it really is 14) and figurative “wow, 14 reminds me of the 7 days between sabbaths,” or the “seven days of creation”, or whatever meanings.  In a world where numbers had mystical meaning these numbers matter.

And there’s one more thing in the list.  That’s because hidden in all those names of dads are four, and only four women.  You all know that the Bible rarely mentions women, right?  Back in the day, we weren’t all that important to history.  It’s important that in this long list of men with hard to pronounce names, there are four women because women are seldom mentions and almost never mentioned by name.  Why were these four women named?  What do they have to say to us?

Usually, you remember the names of the people you’re proud of – they’ve done great things.  Do genealogy, and you’ll learn to tell the story of your immigrant ancestors and their courage in coming here, or you’ll be especially proud of the one who fought at Lexington and Concord.  You’d expect these four women to be like queens of Israel, but that’s not what gets them on the list.  These women were not the public leaders of their generation. They’re not even the biggest female names in the Bible – not Miriam, Moses’ sister and co-leader; not Jael who killed Sisera and saved Israel, not Judith, note Deborah, the famous judge.  No, not great leaders — every one of those women had something “wrong” with her.  Not one of them had an unspotted record, not by the standard of their time, and mostly not by ours either. 

Tamar.  Rahab.  Ruth.  Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.  Four women.  There were other women, of course, but only these four were remembered.  

Tamar’s first husband died and left her childless; her second attempt at marriage left that husband dead as well – and still no child.  Everyone thought she was cursed.  No one would marry her.  But she wanted a child and she wanted that child to be her father-in-law Judah’s heir.  it’s a complicated story, but in the end, she is pregnant, Judah is the father, and there’s lots of scandal.  Tamar was daring and smart and scandalous.  And remembered in this list.

Rahab kept an inn in Jericho.  Our Bible makes it clear she offered more than rooms and bed.  Her reputation was only saved by the way in which she helped Joshua win the battle of Jericho by giving safe space to him and his spies.  And she’s not Jewish; she’s Canaanite, an outsider.  Rahab was daring and smart and of ill-repute.  And remembered in this list.

We all know Ruth.  She’s a fixture of sentimental readings at weddings even though that beautiful passage is about a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law.  Now, unlike the other women in this list, no one suggests that Ruth is immoral, but everyone knows that Ruth is the fullest of outsiders.  We remember that Ruth was daring and smart and hard-working and loyal – but not a Jew.  And yet she’s remembered in this list.

Finally there’s Bathsheba.  I think we all know enough of that story that I don’t need to go into detail.  We know Bathsheba and we know she committed adultery.  Even though today we read back into the story a good deal of blame on King David – it’s hard to say no to a king, right? – we know that in her time, in Jesus’ time, she was a woman of ill-repute.  And yet she’s on the list.

Not one of these women was fully acceptable.  And that’s the point of our conversation today.  Miss Julia thought that her position came because her husband was so impressive.  It was only later, after Wesley Lloyd’s death, that she began to understand that in the sight of God it’s not our money, or our position, or our public acceptability that really matters.  As she begins to move out from behind her husband’s assumptions, she discovers that what really matters is welcoming the stranger, loving those who are unimportant.   

As we study the Scripture, we discover that in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, are embedded the names of four unacceptable women.  That list is not a list of the greatest women of all time, or the greatest men.  It is a list of people who are a mixture of good and bad.  And in there, not one entirely impressive woman; not one woman who, back in the day, would have been easily welcomed in any home.  

Life is hard.  As Wendell Berry writes, “we live the life we’re given, not the life we planned” or expected, or wanted.  Doing everything right, getting to where our goal pointed us – that’s not always going to happen.  

No matter how hard you study, no matter how good your grades, if neither of your parents went to college, it’s going to be harder for you to go and succeed than it will be for someone whose parents went and graduated.  

No matter what your goal in life, if you get addicted to alcohol or drugs, your life will be harder.  If your spouse moves out… if the place where you work goes bankrupt… if, if, if… then …..

And when “then” happens, who are you?  Are you less welcome in God’s world if you’ve been arrested?  Not according to this lesson!  

Are you less welcome in God’s world if you’ve been divorced?  Or if your parents abused you?  Or if you’ve had trouble holding a job?  Or if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all that’s on your table?

What does the Gospel tell us today?  It tells us that we live in a world, a faith-world, where you are welcome, as you are, with all your past.  If those women, immoral and unwelcome, can be celebrated as the ancestors of Jesus Christ, how can you not be welcomed with open arms?

God does not hold back his welcome and save it only for the righteous.  God welcomes everyone to the Table; God welcomes everyone to the family.  

In the dark of December, in the gloom of Advent, we claim once again this welcome.  We light our Advent candles to remind ourselves that the baby who will come will change everything, has changed everything for us.  

It may be dark.  Everything may have gone to pot. It’s likely we’ve done things we’ll regret the rest of our lives, and some days it can be hard to get out of bed.  But no matter where we are on life’s journey, we are welcome here, in God’s house, in God’s family.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

November 23, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

“Thanksgiving is a spiritual exercise, necessary to the building of a healthy soul. It takes us out of the stuffiness of ourselves into the fresh breeze and sunlight of the will of God.” 
― Elisabeth Elliot, Keep a Quiet Heart

“I have just four words to leave with you. Four words that have spoken volumes of truth into my life.’  He wanted the words to stay in the room, to remain long after he had gone. Though no one wished to hear Paul’s radical injunction, it had to be told.  ‘In everything, give thanks.’
This was the lifeboat in any crisis. Over and over again, he had learned this, and over and over again, he had to be reminded.” 
― Jan Karon

First Reading:                  Deuteronomy 8: 7-18 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills,  a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper.  You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you. 

“Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes that I am commanding you today.  When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them and when your herds and flocks have multiplied and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock. He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

Second Reading:              Colossians  1:11-20 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

We are coming on Thanksgiving, and right after that, Advent and Christmas and there is just so much on our hearts that, at some level, it’s hard to even begin to see the heart of this season.  

It’s not enough that we’ve just been through a heart-stopping season of wondering about SNAP, or that it seems like we’ve just jumped from lovely cool weather to nasty cold and wet weather.  But coming up on Thanksgiving, we’re faced with the conflict between the elementary-school explanation of Thanksgiving and the realities of early European settler behaviors.  And a number of us have recently faced serious health challenges, there have been way too many times when it all seems just too much.

Here we are, facing Thanksgiving, and in the backs of our minds, there’s a worry that this is no time to stop and give thanks.  There’s just too much that’s still unsettled, too many fears about our future.  It feels, too often, as though we’re trapped in a living version of that old arcade game, Whack-A-Mole.  No sooner do we put on threat behind us, that another one pops up.

Some challenge our feeling of safety; others challenge our hopes for our country’s future.  Some make us re-think the assumptions we’ve carried with us since second grade.  

And for some of us, this fall has been especially difficult, what with family crises or work troubles, or our own individual health issues.

And yet, we have this Thanksgiving, with the expectation that we should all give thanks… before I go into what we might give thanks for this year, I want to take a moment to talk about the act of thanking.  The ability to thank is one of the most important gifts God has given us.  If you look “thanking” up in the Bible, you’ll find that it happens a lot.  From the beginning to the end of the Bible, thanking is a frequent activity.  And it’s not that things are always going swimmingly.  It’s that thanking is one of the major spiritual practices of our kind of faith.

There’s the story of Judith, which is contained in the Apocrypha, that collection of stories from the times between the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Judith is a beautiful woman, strong and powerful, who urgers her fellow Jews to stand against an invader.  They want to give up and turn themselves over to the enemy; she says, we can still win… and then goes out and makes it happen.  For today’s purposes, the most important thing she does is offer this speech:

Judith 8:20-26. . . we know no other god but him, and so we hope that he will not disdain us or any of our people. ¹ For if we are captured, all Judea will fall, and our sanctuary will be plundered, and he will make us pay for its desecration with our blood. The slaughter of our kindred and the captivity of the land and the desolation of our inheritance—all this he will bring on our heads among the nations, wherever we serve as slaves, and we shall be an offense and a disgrace in the eyes of those who acquire us.  For our slavery will not bring us into favor, but the Lord our God will turn it to dishonor. 

“Therefore, my brothers, let us set an example for our kindred, for their lives depend upon us, and the sanctuary—both the temple and the altar—rests upon us. In spite of everything, let us give thanks to the Lord our God, who is putting us to the test as he did our ancestors.

Facing disaster, she urges them to give thanks.  Giving thanks turns our focus from what we don’t have to what we do have.  In the same way, there are any number of places in the New Testament where we are urged – in the face of difficulties – to turn to giving thanks to God.  Check out the first letter to the Thessalonians, for a number of places where believers are urged to give thanks.

This is not some empty pie in the sky thing – it’s a vital and central belief.  Giving thanks is good for us.  Giving thanks makes us name that which is good, even in the midst of so much that feels like disaster.

So what do we have to be thankful for this year?  

We’re still here.
We have each other.
Our lives have meaning and purpose.
God loves us.
We’re still here.   

Churches all around us have closed.  I remember meeting every year at the First Church in Springfield…when I first started in ministry – there was a huge, maybe 500 person, pastor’s retreat there every February.  And then one day that big, well-financed church was gone.  Big churches, small churches, well-loved churches, arguing churches – gone with the wind.  But we are still here.   That’s our first thanksgiving.

We have each other.

We are still a strong fellowship of people who love and care for one another and for the world where we’ve been placed.  We see each other in any number of different ways – here in this room for worship, on Zoom meetings, and in casual meetings out and about – and wherever we are, we know we are in the presence of companions on the way.  We are not alone.  That is our second thanksgiving.

Our lives have meaning and purpose.

One of the great gifts of our faith is our call to be people of peace, to be builders of community in our world.  We are not without purpose in our lives.  There is always something we can do – not always the great deeds that are celebrated in history books, but always the small kindnesses which are available to us every day, like holding doors open, smiling at our server.  Speaking up when someone mocks people of color or makes vile accusations about Jews.  Refusing to go along to get along.  

There also opportunities to be active, informed participants in our community, serving as town officers, leading meetings, helping people understand what’s happening, and the like.  In our work, being ethical, honest, trust-worthy people; in our private lives being faithful, loving, reliable.  Our lives have meaning and purpose.  That’s our third thanksgiving.

Finally, we know that God loves us.

This isn’t the arrogant “God love me”, but the compassionate “God loves us”.  God loves each of us == as we are, where we are.  When we do our best, God loves us.  When we do our worst, God still loves us, and hopes for us to grow into a better way of living.  

If you grew up in a home filled with hostility, know that God loves you.  

If you have lived in a world of addiction, know that God loves you.  

If folks have scorned you, hated you, just because…. you didn’t look like, sound like,  live like they thought you should, know that God loves you.  

God loves you, today, tomorrow, and forever.   And that’s the fourth and greatest thanksgiving this year.

We’re still here.
We have each other.
Our lives have meaning and purpose.
God loves us.

Amen.

©2025, Virginia H. Child

November 2, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Matthew 25:31-46 (see below)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

I got up yesterday morning, intending to fill out the outline of today’s sermon, which I’d completed on Friday.  It’s a nice outline of the changes the Reformation made in our world.  Not, maybe, the most exciting sermon you’ll ever hear from me, but in a time when we wonder whether what we believe matters, or even wonder exactly what we do believe, it seemed important.

And then, yesterday morning, I opened my Boston Globe.  Yes, I still get a paper paper, delivered to the house.  The main headline read “Hope, Confusion, on SNAP”.  Below the fold, one article said, “Food banks won’t keep up with strong demand”; another was the story of a mother “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

While it’s true that two separate courts have said that refusing to use emergency funds to keep SNAP going is illegal, that doesn’t solve the problem.  If the federal government goes along with the judgment and starts things right up again, it’ll take as much as 2 weeks to get the money flowing again.  But they may appeal; they may drag their feet… after all, if they wanted to feed the hungry, and thought accessing the money put aside for that purpose was illegal, they could have gone to court themselves to get permission.  It makes me wonder whether or not their intent was to leave people without food.  So the lack of SNAP benefits this weekend is still an emergency.

But what does all this have to do with our faith?  Isn’t SNAP a political issue?  And shouldn’t the church stay away from politics?

Now, it turns out, that heads us back to my original plan to speak about the Protestant Reformation.  On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed a list of questions, what we know as the 95 Theses, on the door of the Wittenburg, Germany, cathedral.  507 years ago, more or less, a ground-shaking change began in the way people understood their Christian faith, changes which then influenced what people believed was important for their communities, their world.

Among many other things, people began to believe that everyone had the obligation to read the Bible for themselves.  In order to do that, they had to learn to read – and so, schools for all kids, not just the wealthy and powerful, began.  In order to read, you had to have books, and a Bible of your own.  Suddenly the Gutenberg press became a way to make a living, and so printers sprouted everywhere.  The passion we share here in Massachusetts for schools for all, rises out of that Reformation conviction that it is essential for believers to read the Bible for themselves.

The Reformation caused us to re-think, re-understand, the nature of community and equality.  Before, European society was constructed like a lasagna – layers of power and authority, with more and more power, authority and wealth, as you went higher and higher. 

Serfs were at the bottom of the pile, slaves in all but name, unable to move, unable to marry without permission, required to spend part of the work week toiling for the person who owned the land. That landowner, a knight or baron, then owed service to the next layer up – an earl or a duke, maybe – who, in his turn, owed service to the king.  The church was constructed the same way – ordinary believers listened to their priest, who was under the thumb of a bishop, who was under the authority of an archbishop, who was under the authority of the Pope.

The Reformation changed all that.  It created communities, not just little gatherings of people like clubs, but whole countries, where – over the centuries – everyone began to have a say, a vote, in what happened… not right away, not everywhere all at once, but over time.  Instead of a world where you are born a serf or slave, and stay there all your life, the Reformation started a world where, at least in theory, everyone is born with the opportunity to move ahead.

Everyone has the obligation to read the Bible for themselves, so everyone has to learn to read.  Everyone is equal in the sight of God. Everyone has the right and  obligation to participate in our world.  Those of us who have more – more money, more power, more free time, are obligated to help those who don’t.  We pay attention to the things, like hunger, or instability, which make it hard for kids to learn.  It’s a religious obligation to work on the issues which put up barriers to adequate food and decent housing.  

What does all this have to do with SNAP?  Am I stepping into a political issue by saying that cutting off SNAP benefits is unconscionable, that it is essentially and deeply un-Christian to put 42 million people – one million of whom live here in Massachusetts — in danger of going without food?

In today’s lesson from Luke, Jesus welcomed Zacchaeus, who was unwelcome anywhere else, because he was an agent of the oppressive government.  Maybe, if he told this story in today’s context, he’d have said Zacchaeus was an ICE agent, hiding up that tree from local residents?  Or maybe Zaccheus would be a poor woman, looking for food for her children.   In Jesus’ light, the unacceptable are acceptable; it is our work, the work of Jesus, to call people to accept everyone.  Poor people are part of the community; they matter.

Children are going to go hungry.  Disabled people, unable to work, are going to go hungry.  The elderly, too old to be hired, are going to go hungry.  Not just one or two people here and there, not even just a dozen or so, but more people than you or I can easily imagine.  Here in Massachusetts, it’s more than a million people.  

More than half are in families with children, almost as many are in families with the elderly or disabled.  More than a third are in working families, because it’s not possible to earn enough money to support your family in many jobs in Massachusetts.  It’s not a ton of money, just under $200 per household member, per month. . . $50 per person per week.  

Feeding the hungry is not a political issue; it’s a faith issue.  It’s what we do.  Without SNAP, thousands will go hungry.  What does our faith say about that?

Listen to these words from Matthew 25, the Message translation.  Jesus is talking about what will happen at the end of time.  Listen for what he thinks about letting folks go hungry:

         “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

“Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’

“Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’

“He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’

 “Then those ‘goats’ will be herded to their eternal doom, but the ‘sheep’ to their eternal reward.”^[1]

How will we respond to Jesus’ call?

Amen.

©2025, Virginia H. Child

^[1] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005), Mt 25:31–46.

October 26, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Luke 18:9-14 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

When I was writing this sermon, I found myself listening to an old Bill Gaither video, where folks were singing “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”… you know this old gospel tune.  

I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back…  so beautiful, sung very slowly, very emotional..  

And then I began to listen to the next video.  The same song, this time sung by an African artist.  The tempo was much more vigorous, some of the words in French or Yoruba.   

I found 4 or 5 different versions of this song, each of them slightly different.  In one, everyone there was singing, like a congregation; in another, a soloist used the song as the underlying foundation for an emotional altar call, in a third, the song was played simply and quietly on the harp.

In each, we were focused on the meaning of the words – even the harp solo, when I expect almost everyone heard the words in their heads, even though they weren’t spoken.  And so that’s where we’re starting today.  This is our first answer to the question, what does God expect of us?

God expects us to follow Jesus. 

And there’s more than one right way to do that, just as there’s more than one right way to sing that song.  Moreover, just because a way appeals to me, that doesn’t mean it has to appeal to everyone the same way.  God expects us to follow Jesus in the way that each of us finds bringing us closer to living out Jesus’ way.

That means we’re expected to take following God seriously.  It’s not just a “Sunday only” thing.  We who have made promises, at our baptisms, when we joined this church, have set our feet on the path of going further in, higher up, continuing to learn more, allowing the changes of our lives to change how we follow, but not to erase our commitment.

In one of my churches, I heard the story of one member who – throughout all the years – had been one of the church’s leaders, who’d spent years organizing their food pantry, reaching out to those in need.  But in her later years, she was no longer able to do those things, they told me, and for a while she felt out of it… but then she joined the team who kept track of the folks in the church who lived alone.  Every morning, she phoned people – and for all practical purposes, her work was to make sure they were still alive, or – to call for help if they didn’t answer the phone.  She couldn’t drive, didn’t have much money, but until her own dying day, she could, and did, make phone calls. 

God expects us to be active, to do, according to our gifts, according to our abilities and resources.

God expects us to recognize that we won’t always do the right thing, that we have a tendency to take care of ourselves first, to be greedy about who gets the last slice of cake, to lose our tempers, and sometimes, to be mean.

Because, you know, we can’t do better if we can’t admit where we’re falling short of our goal.  That’d be as if six of us decided to race from here to the Cumbies down the road, but I only made it to the front door, and then said, well that was the real goal, and I’ve won because everyone else ran to another place.  Or it’d be as if I got angry at Deb Christensen because she pointed out that I’d forgotten something, without taking responsibility for not making notes and remembering… or if I got upset with my music teacher because I’m not getting better, when I’m not practicing.  

I can’t get better until I admit where I’m falling short of the goal, whatever that goal is.  And God expects us to face the places where we fall short of God’s ideal, our own goals, with honestly, and forgiveness.

In fact, God gives us a safe place where we can be real, so this expectation is a genuine gift.

God expect us to focus our energies on serving others.  That means we factor in our commitment when planning our lives.  We set aside time to serve, or energy to serve.  We set aside resources to support that service.  We step away from things and activities which limit our ability to respond.  We budget our time, our talents, our financial resources to make the best use of those things as we follow God.

This means we don’t give God what’s left over at the end of the week.  When we plan our days out, we make choices – we have the time for “this thing” or “that thing”, but we can’t do both .  We can no more do everything we want than I can eat all the apple cider donuts I’d like.  

So we set aside time for God, time to pray, time to come to worship and fellowship, time to serve our world in some way or another, each of us according to our abilities.

We set aside time to serve God’s church.  One of my colleagues was telling me the other day that they were travelling to a church we both know, to meet with the church’s moderator, and to resources him and the church as they rewrite their bylaws.  I was struck by the fact that this person she’s going to meet with is a retired successful trial lawyer who, in addition to being the church moderator is also the moderator of the Town Meeting where he lives.  He has made it clear, serving the church is part of his commitment to following Jesus, and plans out his time and energy to make it happen.

In one of my Maine churches, we had a member who – until he retired – had been a baker down in Portland.  He loved people, and one of the ways he lived out his faith was by being the greeter every Sunday, and connecting our visitors with people who were already here – someone one would come, maybe from Washington DC, and Horace would connect him with a member who’d just moved up from that area.  Horace didn’t have a ton of money, but he had an exuberant personality and a great memory for faces.  He was a gift to the church.  

And God expects us to use a portion of our money to help support the church.  There’s a lot of confusion about this, you know.  Some folks think that if they can’t give thousands of dollars, that their gift is meaningless.  That’s just not so.  

God expects us to give out of our resources, but not to beggar ourselves.  If you have a lot of money, then give a lot of money.  If you don’t, then don’t.  Give what works for you.  Just do it, however, as a plan, not something we do with our leftovers, but as something that’s important to us, a sign of our decision to follow Jesus.

There’s one more thing God expects of us.  God expects us to take God seriously, to make this commitment an active part of our lives, to give of our time, our talents and our money, and finally, God expects us to live believing that every person in the world is someone to be loved, welcome and respected.  

Be real, let your deeds be your proclamation.  Don’t think you’re better than others, like that guy in the Gospel reading this morning.  No one’s perfect.  But we can still try.  We can do our best, we can apologize when we hurt others and then we can try again.  That’s how we show God’s love, that’s how we build a strong church community.  That’s how we follow Jesus – all the way, no turning back.

I’m going to close this morning with a prayer written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who was Archbishop of Canterbury almost 500 years ago.  You might know him as the principal author of the Book of Common Prayer.  He was executed under the reign of Queen Mary because he was a leader of the Protestant Reformation.  This prayer was written sometime before 1554 and it does a superb job of describing what God wants of us.  

Let us pray:

“Merciful Father in heaven, give us your grace and help to love our neighbors from the heart, and to always do them good—both in words and deeds. Grant that we may live purely, avoiding offense to others, and provoking no one to unclean living. Help us to encourage others to honesty.  May we help others to save and keep what they have. And if they live in poverty, help us to relieve them as we are able.  May we never hurt others with a false witness, but instead always speak well of our neighbor.  Keep us from evil lusts and desires, never wanting what belongs to others.  For this is your will, and you have commanded us to be obedient. Amen.”

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

October 19, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Luke 18:1-8 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³ In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ ⁴ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” ⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷ And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? ⁸ I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

How does it make  you feel when you hear this story?  Have you ever found yourself mired in a no win situation, where prayer is all that’s left, and it’s not working?  I know I have.  And I have to say, when I’m in that place, reading this particular parable, story, isn’t all that helpful.  It kinda feels like a condemnation of my ability to pray.  Do you know what I mean?  If only I were more persistent, if only I were stronger, then that unjust judge would respond.

Now, all the scholars are united in the idea that when Jesus told this story, what he wanted us to know is that God is ever so much more faithful than the unjust judge, and that God will give us what we ask for.  It’s just that I’m not sure, at least for myself, that his idea works today the way he intended.

And so, I want to turn the story inside out and see if it doesn’t make more sense that way.

Here’s what I mean:

We always hear this as the story of the poor believer begging the mean judge to listen to them, right?  But what happens if we think of it as if the widow is actually God, begging an unbelieving person to listen for God’s love?  What if we’re like the judge and God is like the widow?

It seems to me that when we turn the story inside out, it becomes a story of a loving God who never gives up calling us to be our best selves.  It becomes a story that helps us understand just who we are and who we can be.  And that’s really good news.

Last fall, when I had just come here, I began treatment for type 2 diabetes.  I should have known that it was coming.  My dad was diabetic, his sister was diabetic, my brother is, too, but like many folks (see how I’m excusing my choices?) I chose to ignore those road signs, and continued not only to eat what I wanted, and as much as I wanted, but paid no attention to my weight.  And I knew that, while for some, my weight wouldn’t be a problem, for my health it was… well, I’d certainly heard the doctor say that, but I can’t quite say honestly that I paid it much attention.

So, there I was, closing my ears to the persistent comments of my (very good) primary care physician.  Like the judge in the story, I didn’t want to hear anything that would mean giving up all the foods I loved.  

Mean people like being mean the same way people like me like to eat donuts.  We don’t think about the consequences.  In fact, we really don’t think consequences exist.

But God is like that widow woman.  She saw the consequences of what was going on.  She saw mistreatment, she saw that her world was not operating along God’s principles, but rather along the desires and wants of selfish and greedy people.  And so she kept on knocking at the door, kept on reminding him that there was more to the world than his selfish wants and desires, kept on loving him.

That’s the good news for today.  No matter how hard we work to close our eyes to the parts of life we don’t want to see, no matter how we turn away from the needs of others to satisfy the wants in our own hearts, God will persist.  

What’s wrong will never be right. What’s right will never change.  

Sure, it’s easier to keep on doing what feels good, what satisfies our surface wants. But when we do that, we’re just skimming off the un-nourishing parts of life, making our lives something like living on the icing on the cake.

It’s when we dig in and live a whole life, recognizing the good and the bad, standing up and naming when things are wrong, it’s then that we’re fully nourished, and growing into our real identity as Christians.

It’s not easy.  It’s easy to close your eyes to evil, it’s easy to say there’s nothing to see here.  Being a Christian means keeping your eyes open not just to pretty trees and great cider donuts – it’s means noticing when someone cringes at the sound of a gunshot, or when someone is still wearing a tatty sweater in January – does that mean they don’t have a coat?  

Being a Christian is about not just noticing but also working towards making things better.  So we feed the hungry at Dismas House.  We collected school supplies to help kids and teachers.  We open the doors of this church so that folks can come in and experience unconditional love.  We continue to learn to pay attention, to hear the ways in which people hurt, and to do what we can to build a community where we can love and care for one another. 

It isn’t easy, but it’s the faithful way to go.  Today’s story reminds us that we have choices in our world.  We can be like that unjust judge, ignoring the pain of others and only responding when we begin to get annoyed by their persistence.  We can take that easy path.

Or we can take the hard way, the challenging way, the way that calls us to pay attention, to take action, to be representatives of God’s unfailing love, here in our church, in our families, in our world.

Which will it be – the easy way or the hard way?

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

October 5, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Lamentations 1:1-6

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! 
How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! 
She that was a princess among the provinces has become subject to forced labor. 
² She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; 
among all her lovers, she has no one to comfort her; 
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies. 
³ Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; 
she lives now among the nations; she finds no resting place; 
her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. 
⁴ The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; 
all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; 
her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. 
⁵ Her foes have become the masters; her enemies prosper 
because the Lord has made her suffer 
for the multitude of her transgressions; 
her children have gone away, captives before the foe. 
⁶ From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. 
Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; 
they fled without strength before the pursuer.

Luke 17:5-10 (The Message)
The apostles came up and said to the Master, “Give us more faith.” But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a [mustard seed] poppy seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it.

“Suppose one of you has a servant who comes in from plowing the field or tending the sheep. Would you take his coat, set the table, and say, ‘Sit down and eat’? Wouldn’t you be more likely to say, ‘Prepare dinner; change your clothes and wait table for me until I’ve finished my coffee; then go to the kitchen and have your supper’? Does the servant get special thanks for doing what’s expected of him? It’s the same with you. When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, ‘The work is done. What we were told to do, we did.’ ”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Are you afraid of the dark?  Hmm?  Well, maybe not so much these days, but how about those doctor’s visits where they say “Let’s just check that out, in case”, and you wait on tenterhooks for the results from a test, or two, or three.  Maybe that situation strikes fear in your hearts?

There’s a connection, you know, between those fears we had as kids, the ones our parents tried to tell us weren’t real, and the fears we face as grown-ups, the fears we know are real.  Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King, who also writes horror stories like his dad’s… says that kids instinctively know that evil is real, that bad things can happen.  Hill adds

People believe—want to believe—in a moral universe, a universe that confirms the existence of the human soul, a thing of incalculable worth that can be won or lost. If that heightened moral universe doesn’t exist in reality. . . then we will search for it in fiction. We don’t want to flee “’Salem’s Lot.” We want to live there.

Evil is inflicted upon every life; what a relief it would be if it took an (in)human form and could be dragged out of its coffin and into the sunlight, to die screaming and in flames. 

AIDS, SIDS, pollution, global warming, drug addiction: To be human is to find oneself confronted with vast, terrible forces that lack form, that can’t be fought in any literal sense, hand-to-hand, stake to heart. That doesn’t satisfy us. 

It’s fine if there’s evil, wickedness, cruelty. We just want it to have a point. If we’re in this fight, we want to know there’s an enemy out there — not just bad luck and grinding, impersonal historical forces. 

More than that, though: Once you give evil a face and fangs, once you give it agency, it becomes possible to imagine a force opposed against it, a light that can drive out shadow.]

Once you give evil a face and fangs, once you give it agency, it becomes possible to imagine a force opposed against it, a light that can drive out shadow.

In our reading from Lamentations, Jeremiah wrote:   She that was a princess among the provinces has become subject to forced labor. ² She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers, she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies. 

It seems as though Stephen King and Joe Hill are not the only ones who know that evil exists, and maybe not the only ones who’ve noticed that it is only when we name the existence of evil that we are able to fight against it.

You don’t need to be very old at all to know that unspeakably bad things can happen to the best of people.  Toddlers, first-graders, they’re not too young to know – even if they don’t really know what happened, they’ll know that their parents are suffering and they know that’s bad.  

Here’s the thing:  if we learned as little ones to pretend the bad isn’t there, then how will we know how to deal with the bad as adults?  

This is important, because it’s true that unless we admit that something bad exists, we’ve not a chance in the world of making things better. 

That’s why we read the Bible.  Because it tells us the truth about life.  It’s not about facts and science, and not even really the facts of history.  It’s about truth, about the reality of evil and the power of love.

This is one of the ways we, as Christians, differ from much of our world.  We live in a society which believes that people are good, until they’re not – so that people are either good or despicable, with no in-between.  We live in a world that tells us if we do all the good things, always right, that nothing but good things will happen to us.   And then, when it turns out that’s not true, folks get angry as if they’ve been cheated.  We live in a world where people believe that gods, like our God, exist to protect us from every bad thing, and so when bad happens, it’s all our gods’ faults,… you’ve heard this when someone cries out “How could God have let this happen to me?”

There’s a truth about life that we miss when we expect everything to always be good.  And that truth is simple:  things go bad.  We often struggle.  And it’s all so much harder to deal with if, at the same time, we have to pretend that all is well, or supposed to be well.

Years ago, I went to the hospital to visit an older relative; as it turned out, she not only had pneumonia, but dementia.  I realized that our conversation was going to be different when she began to explain to me that the hospital roof, which she could see from her room, was dotted with rocket ships.  Now, you or I might have thought those were chimneys, but that explanation couldn’t work for her because she’d lost the meaning of chimneys.  So she made do with what she still had and tried to make sense of the world she saw.  But she didn’t know, couldn’t know, and so she created this fantastic world of rockets, and then strange people – all in her attempt to make sense of her world.

Or think of the woman who, after years of back pain, went to the umpteenth doctor to try to figure it out and this time, science had advanced enough that they were able to discover that she had a congenital malformation of her back.  Her head wasn’t really connected well to her back; any hard whack could have turned her into a paraplegic.  Surgery has repaired the problem and now she’s in a much better place – all because then finally really knew what had happened and how to fix it.

Really knowing that evil exists, helps us see our world as it is.  When we think it’s all supposed to be good, and isn’t, we can blame ourselves, our families, our world.  

Today is World Communion Sunday; a day when we remember that Communion is a sign of our unity, not just here in our church, not even just within the United Church of Christ, but unity with all believers all around the world.  Again, it’s an opportunity to see beyond the surface, to learn that reality is not the same as appearance.  We look like – and politically, are – divided on many things, but in reality, those of us who focus on the unity of Communion see a togetherness upon which we can build.

In Luke, we heard the story of some apostles who were asking for “more faith”.  Jesus responded that they already had all the faith they needed, that the challenge for them was that they didn’t understand that faith wasn’t some sort of special gift for special times; instead, faith is sustenance for every day.  They asked for more because they couldn’t see what was already there.  Again, it’s a message to us that we need to pay attention to what’s really happening in order to understand our work, our life.

The lesson for today is clear:  there is a reality to evil which permeates our world; pretending it’s not there is disorienting,  In Jesus, we can live in the reality of a faith that overcomes evil, that brings us together despite our differences.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

September 28, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16 —
You who live in the shelter of the Most High, 
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,^,*
2 will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; 
my God, in whom I trust.” 
³ For he will deliver you from the snare of the hunter 
and from the deadly pestilence; 
⁴ he will cover you with his pinions, 
and under his wings you will find refuge; 
his faithfulness is a shield and defense. 
⁵ You will not fear the terror of the night 
or the arrow that flies by day 
⁶ or the pestilence that stalks in darkness 
or the destruction that wastes at noonday. 
¹⁴ Those who love me, I will deliver; 
I will protect those who know my name. 
¹⁵ When they call to me, I will answer them; 
I will be with them in trouble; 
I will rescue them and honor them. 
¹⁶ With long life I will satisfy them 
and show them my salvation.

1 Timothy 6:6-19 —  ⁶ Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, ⁷ for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, ⁸ but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. ⁹ But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. 

¹¹ But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹² Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³ In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you ¹⁴ to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵ which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. ¹⁶ It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. 

¹⁷ As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸ They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, ¹⁹ thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Luke 16:19-31 — ¹⁹ “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. ²⁰ And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, ²¹ who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. ²² The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³ In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.^,* 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ ²⁵ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. ²⁶ Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ ²⁷ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—²⁸ for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ ²⁹ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ ³⁰ He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ ³¹ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Monsalvat Farm in Barnard VT has been put up for sale.  400 acres. Two ponds. Equestrian facilities, riding trails, a helipad… the main house is custom-designed, 10,000 square feet of living space… with two bedrooms, four full bathrooms, three powder rooms, and eight functioning wood-burning fireplaces.  Oh, and an auxiliary house with more bedrooms, a gazebo, and a horse barn.  Beautiful views, open fields, forests, mountains, the whole package, and all for only $39 million dollars.

The article in the Boston Globe doesn’t mention how many servants you need to keep the house and grounds running, but from the pictures, I’d guess you’re going to need at least one person doing nothing but mowing grass, and with seven bathrooms and eight fireplaces, never mind anything else – another full time person to keep those rooms clean.  Fireplaces make for a lot of soot.  A horse person for the horses… probably a cook, when in residence, and a couple of other groundskeepers… so four to six people at least, and that doesn’t include security.  

The extravagance is mind numbing.  All to purchase something beautiful.

It’s made me think about what makes something beautiful.  Now, I’ve lived in Vermont; like around here, it’s darned hard to make any place “not beautiful”… it’s just not necessary to have a custom-designed $39M house to make that happen.

Today’s scripture lessons are, you see, about beauty, but a different kind of beauty.  It’s not the kind you buy; it’s the kind you live.  It’s the kind of beauty that Timothy is talking about in that first lesson. 

Pretty things are great, but true beauty is something different… pretty is, as pretty does… is the way we in the Christian way understand the beauty that endures.  Timothy writes:  “… the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil… but as for you… pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.”

It’s not so much that wealth is bad, or even that it’s wrong to have a 10,000 square foot house, but that it’s right when – no matter how wealthy or poor we are – we build our lives on living out the values of love, godliness, faith, endurance, gentleness.  

This is particularly important in a world filled with anger and hatred as ours is these days.  These days, it’s as if we’ve all been told that our first reaction to anything is to jump into criticism, to react with contempt.  It doesn’t matter what the subject is – it can be majorly important or totally picayune.  It’s the kind of reaction that just shuts down conversation – maybe when you thought you were just saying that Road Runner cartoons are funny, and someone tries to start an argument about South Park.

In the Gospel reading this morning we heard the story of the rich man and the poor man named Lazarus.  You may have heard this as the story of “Dives and Lazarus” – Dives is a name for a rich man in Latin –  so Lazarus was the homeless guy at the gate to Dives’ estate, begging for crumbs from the table, always hungry, always out in the weather.  In the story, Lazarus dies and goes to heaven.  It turns out that Dives has also died, but he’s gone South, to the Hotter place.  He looks up and sees Abraham up in Heaven and begs him to send Dives down to bring him some water.  Abraham, though, tells him that he got his good stuff while he was alive and now he’s paying the price.  So Dives begs that Abraham send Lazarus to Dives’ family to help them change their ways.  But Abraham says, if they don’t get it from what they hear in church, even someone coming back from the dead won’t change their minds, their behavior.

Whether or not you believe there’s a literal Heaven and Hell, the story is clear – our behaviors have consequences.  Dives didn’t help Lazarus even a little, even tho in his world, that’d been the right thing to do.  He just walked on by. And then he paid the price.  

One of the other things this set of lessons reminds us is that there’s something about “having”, being wealthy, or even just better off than most, that can make it harder to be generous, welcoming, loving of those who don’t have what we do.  And it’s not just about having money.  

Those of us who have better educations sometimes struggle to understand a different way of living that’s not focused around study, those of us with a clearer vision perhaps, of our future, are puzzled with those who don’t automatically agree with them.. the better cooks don’t always understand those who just don’t like to cook, and so on.  So embedded in this lesson is one, not just about money, but about understanding and difference, and God’s welcome of all, no matter their skills or gifts.

No matter who we are, where we’ve come from or where we think we’re going, Gods call is for us and for all. God calls us, doesn’t just offer a passing chance, but calls, ordained, equips and expects us to be kind to all people.  God wants us, even when people think we’re fools for doing it – God wants us to do the right thing, and to do it knowing that we will not always be respected.  God wants us to keep our tempers, to understand that everyone won’t always agree on anything, must less everything; God wants us to share, to be generous, generous with our money, our time, our skills – not so that we’ll be appreciated but so that the work of God will continue.  

That’s the lesson for today.  What we do, how we live, matters.  We have the power to change our world for the better, simply by refusing to participate in contempt, anger, dismissal – and by living as people of love, justice and mercy.  So, let us go forth to live in God’s way.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child