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

July 19, 2026  Proper 11  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Romans 8:12-25   So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 

For in hope we were saved. 

Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

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.

Last week, I tried to explain how Paul understands our relationship with God, and then afterwards, in conversations with folks who heard me, I realized that I needed to be clearer about what’s going on here and why it’s good news for us all.

This can be complicated, so if you’re confused afterwards, let’s talk.  

First off, remember that Paul pretty much always things in terms of off or on, right or wrong, this or that.  He’s really into those kinds of choices, and really really uninterested in gray areas.  So he says that human beings like us are either good or not good, and he uses the words flesh and spirit to illustrate his dichotomy.

This is a problem, because over the centuries, it’s come to mean that flesh, the body, is bad, and spirituality, spirit, is good.  That’s led to thinking that pleasure is a bad thing; back in the olden days, it led to rules about dancing, or reading books for fun on Sunday, or going to the movies, and indeed it still does lead to those kinds of body-denying choices.  

But that’s wrong.  When Paul says “flesh”, what he means is “all that’s under our control.”  He’s not saying, don’t dance.  He’s not even saying don’t dance on Sundays.  What he’s saying is that we are, even at our best, not capable of always turning down an extra cookie, that we will (not “might”, but “will”) from time to time choose to satisfy ourselves rather than taking care of the other.  And again, he’s not talking about those times when we had to step back to care for ourselves or our family.  Care for self and others is a good, but we are not able, not capable of balancing our needs, our family’s needs and the world’s needs, not all the time, not in every circumstance.

Now I’ve always thought of Paul as one of those people who wake up at 2am thinking again about that time he cheated his friend in third grade, or the time he accidentally hurt the feelings of the kindest person in the synagogue.  You know those kinds of things; they happen to all of us.

Paul reminds us that God deserves our best, and yet we are not capable of giving our best, not consistently.  Not that we’re mean, or cheesy, or that we don’t care, but that it’s just not in our nature to always do the right thing.

The other night I was watching the Indiana Fever play the Golden State Valkyries in WNBA basketball.  Caitlin Clark, that amazing guard out of Iowa — that woman who’s always making 3-pointers?  She couldn’t make a shot that night, not if they’d put the basket down so low I could have dunked.  She’s one of the best basketball players in the world, and she couldn’t make a shot.  

That’s the kind of not perfect that Paul is talking about.  That’s the “flesh”, not able this time to make a basket, not able some other time to reach out in kindness, for whatever reason.

Paul calls this inability sin.  We don’t use the3 word sin in quite that way anymore.  We don’t say we’re sinful because we’re made this way, for instance.  These days, we reserve “sin” for those acts we deliberately choose, for those times we deliberately or negligently act in an evil way, or even times when we irresponsibly forget to do the right.

However you define sin, what Paul is talking about is the very human propensity to do less, eat more, slack off, choose the easier way, and so on.

Now whether you think that God is waiting for you to make a mistake, or choose the lazy path, or whether you yourself get upset when you’ve done something wrong, the good news here is that God is not actually looking for, expecting, or really even wanting perfection from us.

We make up those tough rules about what’s right and what’s wrong to help us remember that what God is really after is that we treat one another with decency and respect, not rigid perfectionism.

Have I told you about the choirs (that’s right, more than one) in my first parish.  We had three choirs, because the parish had three churches.  It was as if we shared a pastor with Southbridge and Charlton, and each church had a choir.  And each choir had a personality.  And yes, in the summers, I led three worship services each Sunday — 8:30, 9:45 and 11:15.   I never nattered on for hours, and couldn’t do coffee hour, but at least each church was only about 15 minutes from the next….

My first church had a superb choir, stocked with people who also sang in the Portland City Opera — really good voices who were expert sight readers.  And we had a modern digital electronic organ, played by a guy who knew how to get good music out of it.  Their music program was super.

My second church also had a great choir, led by a music teacher from a neighboring school — and he played trumpet, so we always had a trumpeter for our Easter sunrise service.  The organist was really good and understood our Hammond B3 (tho they’re not really designed for churches).  She played in a bar on Saturday nights, and sometimes those jazzy rhythms showed up on Sunday morning, especially when she hadn’t yet been home!

And then there was the third church — it was a summer only church — primitive by most standards — we didn’t even have running water, just electricity.  The church chancel (the space down front) was covered with inexpensive bathroom carpeting, the flowers were Woolworth’s grade plastic, and for an instrument we had an old upright piano.  Every spring they had to clear the deceased mice out of the piano before the season began.  The choir director was a violin teacher who was going deaf.  And the choir was composed of half a dozen folks whose best vocal days were way behind them, and one man who, in the winter, was the head of the music program for the schools over in Newton MA.  

If what God wanted out of us was technical perfection, I guess it might have been the first church that came closest… because they had the most natural talent.  But you know, they took their gifts for granted.  Because they were all good sight readers, they didn’t bother to rehearse.  They didn’t even plan much in advance, but the first person who showed up on Sunday would browse through their file of anthems and pick one out.  They’d sing through it once or twice, and that was it.  A lick and a promise got the job done.

It was that third church that came to impress me.  They didn’t have the talent, or the quality instrument.  They worked with a lot of shortcomings — and every Sunday did their darndest to present to God and the congregation their very best.  It wasn’t, to be honest, very good.  But it was the best they had.  Every thing they did in that church was about love of neighbor and extravagant welcome.  

Paul is reminding us that all too often, we judge our worth by the things we have, by outward signs of success  — the newest this, or the best that — but what God is really pleased by, what God hopes we look to, is not things, not stuff, but trying hard, doing our best. showing love, speaking up for justice.  He believes that the day is coming when the whole world will be governed by that kind of welcome, where everyone will have a place at the table, where people will not be judged differently by the color of their skin, or by their physical abilities.

He says the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved.

It’s that hope that sustains us when the lack of not just perfection but even basic decency smacks us in the face.  It’s that hope which allows us to get up in the morning to do it all again.  God loves us now.  God is not waiting for us to “get it” or get better at whatever.  God loves us today, tomorrow, and always, and that gives us that oomph to keep on going.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

July 12, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Romans 8:1-11 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.^,* 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.^,* 6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, ⁸ and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

⁹ But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. 

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’ve been working our way through Paul’s letter to the Romans for the past few weeks, and now we’ve come to the payoff.  Chapter after chapter, verse after verse, Paul has been basically saying two things:  first, that there’s no point in thinking of ourselves as unacceptable because we can’t be perfect, and second, that God loves us as we are, without, before we do anything.

You’ll remember that the scholars think this letter is the closest Paul ever came to writing out what be believed in any sort of systematic fashion.  Usually the letters we read from him are just that, letters.  Letters to various and sundry communities all around what’s now Turkey, to churches he’d started, helping them, giving them advice.  They’re the first century equivalent of a meeting with our Associate Conference Minister, Carol Steinbrecher.  And that’s great, but the Letter to the Romans is different.

For one things, this isn’t a letter to a church Paul established.  He’s never been to Rome and isn’t sure they want him there.  So this letter was written to help them understand who he is and why he says the things he does.  That said, while Paul has never been to Rome, he does know a fair amount about the Christian community there, especially that it’s mostly composed of struggling Jewish believers, and more established Roman converts – and they don’t exactly get along.  In fact, it seems they were constantly struggling to control each other, which is why, throughout this letter, Paul keeps saying both groups are important, each has their own issues, and so on.

So, today, this letter which has been trying to nurture peace between the two groups, moves to the center of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel which is for everyone, whether we think we belong or not.  This is the Gospel for people whose ancestors were passengers on the Mayflower.  And it’s the Gospel for those of us whose ancestors came here in the hold of a triangle-trade ship, sold into slavery.  And it’s the Gospel for those of us who hide from ICE because our skin is brown, or we have an accent.  It proclaims love and peace for all the world.

… there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…

The reading from Matthew says basically the same thing:  ²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

This is what Paul was trying to say to those folks in Rome.  He’d heard it from Jesus and from the other disciples, and wanted them, wants us to hear the same thing.  You are loved.  You are loved as you are.

Mark this chapter 8 in your Bible.  When you are discouraged, underline the first verse again to remind yourself that God loves you.  Remember that when we follow God, follow Jesus, listen to the Spirit, we’ll be on the way to focusing on love and peace, more than anger and frustration.  And remember also those words from Matthew, because they’re right.  It’s not that hard stuff becomes easy, because hard things are always going to be hard… but with God, the hard stuff becomes possible.  With God, we’re able to see beyond the bad, beyond our angers… able to see love, able to recognize beauty, able to practice kindness.  

Bad things will still happen, we will still face trials, but we will not be alone.  We will have this fellowship, and we will have the unending love of the God who has made us, made us to be messengers of love throughout the world.

We are not alone.  We are loved.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

We’re gathered here today to read the Declaration of Independence, adopted 200 years and one day ago, in Philadelphia, signed by delegates from the thirteen original colonies and sent out, by horseback, to all the land.

It arrived here in Massachusetts sometime after July 13, and before the 17th, when it was printed in Worcester by the presses of the Massachusetts Spy, owned by Isaiah Thomas — whose printing office now resides in Old Sturbridge Village just down the road.  

The website <revolution250.org> tells us that….  Tradition states that Isaiah Thomas, the “Patriot-Printer” read the broadside form the front steps of the First Parish Church on Worcester Common.  

The Provincial Congress considered how best to publicize the arrival of the Declaration and on the 17th of July, 1776 they reported to the House:

“In Council, Ordered, That the Declaration of Independence be printed; and a Copy sent to the Ministers of each Parish, of every Denomination, within this State; and that they severally be required to read the same to their respective Congregations, as soon as divine Service is ended, in the Afternoon, on the first Lord’s-Day after they shall have received it  . . . 

We’re reading this Document today, because this is the time and the place where it was read in 1776 – on the steps of the church building that stood here in those days (and under the trees because it’s too darned hot to actually stand out on the steps today)

It’s important to remember, that what you are hearing is not a description of how things were in 1776, not a description of how things are in 2026.  What the Declaration is, is the declaration of an American Dream.  This is what our ancestors wanted; it’s what we want our world to be too, this is the goal towards which we always work.

It was never perfect — The Boston Globe noted this week that there were changes in the text of the Declaration right up to the last minute.

There are 27 detailed grievances against the king outlined in the Declaration — but there was meant to be a 28th. Thomas Jefferson’s scathing indictment of the slave trade was struck from the document on the eve of the signing, after protests by southern and northern delegates alike.

Slavery then, racism now, help us see the distance between the dream and the reality.  So we read to remind ourselves of the task we join in as citizens of this country — to acknowledge the gaps and to work for the dream.

You’ll be invited, at the end of the reading, to join us in pledging your lives, your fortunes, your sacred honor to this dream, this American dream, just as our ancestors did on that first Independence Day.

Let the reading begin!

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

July 5, 2026  Independence Day   First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA  

Romans 7:15-25 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.  But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.  For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Wretched person that I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?   Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

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.

Back in the day, Maine storyteller Jo Radner tells us, every meal includes pie — well, that’s what her dad believed, and her mom made a new pie every day so that he could have pie at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

One day, her mom died, and the family gathered.  As the day progressed, with horror they realized that none of them were pie makers, and their dad expected, needed, a pie to be there for dinner.  Jo’s aunt might have tried, but she was a terrible cook, and so Jo’s parents jumped in — her dad would fix a steak dinner and her mom —- who hated baking — would make a pie.

You need to understand,  her mom had never made a pie before.  She persevered, gave it her best, whacked the daylights out some recalcitrant pie crust, and ended up with a pie that could have been bounced on the floor without breaking… not to mention that it hadn’t occurred to her to mix the ingredients up when she assembled the filling — producing a pie that had layers of apples, then sugar, then flour, then lemon, and then the various spices.

Eating the pie was an experience – she says that to this day, you can break the family up by saying, “have you tasted the lemon yet”…. but each of them ate their slice and their stalwart Maine Yankee farmer father, praised it.  Everyone knew it was terrible, but they all thanked Jo’s mom, who then said, she’d make another pie the next day.

And over the days, her mom’s pies got, not just better, but really good.  

Today’s lesson doesn’t look as though it’s about pie making, any more than it looks like it’s about being a citizen on this Independence Day weekend, but it is both, and more.

St. Paul wants us to stop and take some time to think about what it means that we so often fail in our endeavors…. What does it mean that we are not perfect?  And on this day, so close to the official two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, what he writes applies to our responsibilities as citizens of a country, of this country in particular, though we believe the responsibilities apply to all nations.

What does it mean to be a Christian and a citizen of a country that is not perfect?  Are we, as Christians, supposed to unquestionably support everything our country does?  Or is it our responsibility to ask questions?

And what does it mean that the church itself is no more perfect than we are?  So, does the fact that we are broken mean we have no standing?  Or can/must we speak, even in spite of the ways we’ve fallen short of God’s vision for us?

The most important thing to remember today is that it is our job to stand up for what our faith tells us is right —- that love is the operating principle of the world, that honesty matters, that justice leavened with mercy creates good community.  It tells us that means children need to be loved, housed and fed.  It tells us that everyone is supposed to be welcome.  We build hospitals, create and support public schools, enact laws to help establish safety.

And it doesn’t all work out the way we hoped, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try.

Paul’s lesson encourages us to not stop just because we’ve not yet managed to do it right, not to get discouraged at the failures of others, or even the failures of our country.  We are engaged in a life-long journey of making the world better, one step at a time.  Sometimes, it has to start with us, in our personal lives.  Sometimes, we’re able to go further, to work on issues that cross town or even state boundaries, like establishing the Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor.  And sometimes, we stand up for national issues —- like in the years when we called for truth about what was really happening in our war in Vietnam.

Being a Christian and a citizen is something like being a Christian and a parent.  You’re never going to get everything perfect, but you’re going to continue to work at it, hoping that every day is a little better than the day before.  And just as parents are expected to speak up when their children need guidance, so also are citizens expected to speak up when their country needs their feedback.

That’s what we did in the years before the War for Independence.  Conscious of our own imperfections, humble about our vision for tomorrow, we spoke up, and so we do today as well.

God has called us, in spite of our failures, to be followers on the Christian path.  Strengthened by our faith, let us continue on this way.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

June 28, 2026  Proper 8  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

⁴⁰ “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. ⁴¹ Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, ⁴² and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”  (The Message Bible)

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.

The single most important part of our Christian commitment is our focus on “welcome”.  Jesus said, “whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  It is in the practice of welcoming that we recognize Jesus in the hearts of those around us.  

When I was in fourth grade, our family moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.  It was not a pleasant experience.  There was a sense at my new school that I was an annoyance because they didn’t have many tranfers – they weren’t used to what that meant.

Five years later, we move to south Florida, to a school where almost every classmate had moved there from somewhere else.  There was only one kid in my ninth grade who had been born in Florida.  They were a lot better at welcoming newbies, and when we moved again two years later, we even moved to a school that had yet to graduate anyone (I became a member of the first graduating class).. the building wasn’t finished when we moved in.  The good folks of McArthur High School had lots of practice in welcoming and they were really good at it.  And it brought all the students together.

Welcoming is not always easy.  I’ve lived in places, and I bet you have as well, where you weren’t really welcome if you came from away, or if you hadn’t gone to the local high school.  And we all have heard the stories about the foolish people who dare to sit in the wrong pew, and are never going to be welcome.

That kind of welcome – the welcome of a new person to our fellowship is important, so important that it could be that coffee hour is just as important as Communion, and maybe even more important in our spiritual life…. But that kind of welcome, being welcome here in this room, with these people, is just one place, not the only place, where welcome matters.

Because, you see, as important as it is to welcome people here, this is really just practice for our ability to welcome out in the world.

Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to [someone in need] will receive the reward of knowing God.  

As I said, it’s not just about giving water to the thirsty, but about giving people what they need when they need it.  It’s about giving everyone in our community the education they need, for instance… not just providing an education to the children of the wealthy.  

That fourth grade classroom into which I moved, for instance, assigned seats for us on the basis of the importance of our fathers.  The more money your family had, the closer to the teacher you sat.  (I was not displeased… from the teacher’s point of view, the worst seats, the ones further from her, were also the ones closest to the windows…)  But there’s no doubt that the wealthy children got the largest portion of the teacher’s attention.  And to the extent that having her attention was good, useful, valuable… those of us who were poorer were really not welcome in the class.

Welcome is not just first choice of the coffee hour goodies.  It’s about giving everyone equal opportunity.

There’s no doubt, tho, that it’s not just my fourth grade school that sometimes struggles with welcome.  It can be hard to open things up to really welcome people who are new, different, maybe even odd…. It takes intentional effort to notice when our practices exclude others.  It takes even more effort when welcoming means spending money, raising taxes, installing a chair lift or hiring special ed teachers. 

Our world has a lot of incentive to close our eyes to the needs of the world… and if we don’t see it, it doesn’t really exist.  The church I served when we first began to talk about making the building handicapped accessible swore no one in town used a wheelchair.  After all, as Paul says, we tend to say, oh well, if we missed it, God will still forgive us.  And there’s a way that’s an accurate statement.  But the thing is, in the process of not paying attention to the needs of our world, not working intentionally to be welcoming, to see people as they are, to notice problems, we irreparably harm our own souls.  Every time we close our eyes, close our ears to pain, we build up calluses that make it more and more difficult to be caring.  Yes, God still loves us, but it’s harder and harder for us to know that love.  Being unwelcoming hardens our hearts.

God, however, has given us eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to ask questions.  And God has given us the gift of welcome, so that we would use our gifts to pay attention, to make sure that everyone is included.  So let us take up the challenge and grow into God’s call to be a welcoming people.

Amen.

©2026, Virginia H. Child

June 21, 2026  Proper 7  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield, MA

Romans 6:1-11 (The Message)  So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!

That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus 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.

Friday was the new federal holiday, Juneteenth.  Like the fourth of July, it commemorates freedom.  Our ancestors liked to say we were slaves to England, but they were exaggerating for effect.  Juneteenth, on the other hand, is a holiday that celebrates the end of legal slavery in our country – real slavery, the kind where your children are born slaves and can be sold away from you, even when they’re toddlers.  

Juneteenth is also a nod to the greedy, grasping way that slaveholders held onto their slaves just as long as they could – in this case, by “forgetting” to tell them that slavery had been ended and they were free.  So, Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19, because that’s the day that Union soldiers arrived in Galveston TX and told the slaves there that they were free, that they had been free now for more than two years, according to the Emancipation Proclamation.  Now that the Civil War was over, their theoretical freedom had become real.  And so Black Americans celebrated.

We celebrate too but in a different way.  For us, Juneteenth is not about our gaining our freedom.  We celebrate by remembering the sin of those long-ago days, and paying attention to how the dregs of the sin of slavery still streak the realities of our lives today.

Back then, white people, maybe not our ancestors, but people our ancestors lived with, worked with, were related to, bought and sold human beings, separated parents from children, destroyed families.  When slavery was ended, white people, against maybe not our personal ancestors, set up a world that kept former slaves in economic bondage.  

Many of us remember the struggles for black people to vote; we remember watching Ruby Bridges walk to her school, past the lines of good, white, Christians, who shouted at her, threatened her, hated her, because this little first-grader was now attending their whites-only school.  I can remember the stories of the Pennsylvania elementary school I attended, where the black kids sat in the back of the room, and my astonishment when I realized that up until the year I transferred in, those black kids, all 8 grades of them, were taught in a basement classroom.  

Paul asked,  should we Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? Of course not…. do we ignore the ways discrimination cripples our world because it feels so good when you realize how wrong it is?  And then he says, If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!

So, what he’s saying is this:  once you know something is wrong, something is sinful, and once you’ve made a public declaration that you want to be on God’s side, on the side of the good, you can’t turn back and pretend “you didn’t know”.  Once we know, once we realize == something as hidden in plain sight as all our black classmates sitting in one corner of the classroom == we can never pretend we don’t know, haven’t seen it anymore.

This is true of all kinds of sinful behavior.  Recognizing sin is life-changing.  Once you realize that your best friend’s spouse is abusing her (or him), you can’t pretend that everything’s all right.  Once you learn how copyright law works, you can never again freely post a movie or song without making sure you pay the creator.  Abuse is wrong; stealing someone’s creative work is wrong.  And knowing right from wrong changes us permanently.

This weekend, so near to Juneteenth, the message is this:  as the heirs of the costs of slavery, as those who have to live with the way it warped our world, we are called to turn away from all sin that grows out of the idea that white people are better, cleaner, smarter, safer.  We are called to dedicate ourselves to God’s community, where all are welcome, all are known, all are loved.  That’s why Juneteenth is important to us.  That’s how we Christians celebrate it.  

We turn away from sin because we’ve left that country where discrimination is just part of the scenery.  Now we live in the world of grace and welcome, colorful and loving, at home with God.

Amen.  

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

June 14, 2026  Proper 6  First Congregational UCC, Brimfield, MA

Romans 5:1-8 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³ And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. ⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

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 many of us here have read at least the first of the Harry Potter stories?  Do you remember how the books began – with the story of a neglected little boy, forced to sleep in the closet under the stairs, hated and feared by his family?  

His aunt and uncle hated the scar on his forehead, hated the way his hair grew, hated. . .  hated his innate ability to do magic.  No matter where he was or what he did, he was never good enough, always treated with contempt.  It was a miserable life.

If  you’ve read enough of the stories, you know that Harry finds a new life, one where he’s known, respected, and loved – for the very things his family hated.  And you probably also noticed that his journey to love and acceptance wasn’t easy.  Being mistreated for the first dozen years of his life marked him in ways that made it hard for him to trust adults, sometimes made it hard for him to stay out of trouble, sometimes put his life in danger, sometimes put others’ lives in danger as well.

Now most of us weren’t raised in a closet under the stairs by people who hated and feared us.  But many of us still knew the kind of “I’m not welcome for who I am” rejection he knew.  

Maybe you couldn’t get all “A”s?  Or you couldn’t play sports for love nor money?  Maybe your hair was straight when it should have been curly, or curly when it should have been straight.  Maybe you just weren’t interested in the same things as everyone else.  Maybe a parent was an addict, or gone from the house.  Maybe you knew, even then, that you were gay/lesbian/trans/ and knew that could not be talked about…  

Maybe it was as basic as you thought you had to do everything correctly, and you never could.  You could never keep up with the list of right things, right behaviors….

Paul has a story for us, a story to counteract the poison of the idea that we have to be perfect to be acceptable, the story that we have to fit the common assumptions or expectations of our world, the story that there’s no such thing as good enough.

Paul says it’s trying that matters, because no one ever succeeds.  Paul says that it’s our trying that God loves, because trying to do good, trying to choose the right, is how we show our love for God to the world.  

Paul says that when we build our lives on being always good, always right, we build on quicksand – and when the sand gets saturated with the water of our failures, it collapses and so do we. But when we build our lives on the power of our efforts in overcoming our failures, we build strong lives, firm foundations.

When I was eighteen, I flunked out of the University of Florida.  I had gone to Florida as an AP student, recognized for my intelligence, with the high expectations of my parents.  Three semesters later, I was expelled for violation of academic probation, with a GPA of 1.0….  low enough that it would have been impossible for me to ever go back to Florida and re-build my academic career.  I turned my back on my failure; it was years before I tried again.  

It wasn’t until I came to a place where I knew that my failures didn’t matter as much as my willingness to try again that I came back to school.  It wasn’t until I met – at church – a college administrator who explained that I could be admitted, that I finally applied again.  And I graduated, having done the better part of three years’ work in two years, and graduated with highest honors.  I then went on to seminary, and did two masters’ degrees and a doctorate.  

If I had never learned that I was still acceptable, I would never have been able to do that.  

That’s Paul’s lesson for each of us today. He’s talking about our relationship with God, not our relationship with school, but the principle is the same.  

In our lesson for today, he says we are justified (that is, accepted) because of our faith, not because we’ve done such great things.  We don’t have to “earn” acceptance; it’s God’s free gift to each of us.  Once we know we are loved, know we are acceptable, we’re able to step beyond our faults, our failures, able to use them to help us grow into God’s love, able to help us become more and more loving, more and more able to build community.

Paul says not only that we are acceptable (or justified) by faith, but that instead of boasting about what has gone so well for us, we can boast about our failures, because it’s our failures which have lead to the real goals of life.  

So, failure teaches us endurance.  Endurance teaches us character.  Character gives us hope.  And hope helps us love, because in hope, God’s love is poured into our hearts.

Fools boast about what they’ve done well, not knowing, not caring, that you can never been good enough, can’t keep it up forever…but it’s the real thing when we realize that God came to love and accept us, to take whatever we are able to do and make it all good enough. 

Their god is the god of success, of perfection; our God is the God of love and acceptance.

Fool’s gold? Or Real Gold?  Fool’s god?  Our God?  Which way shall we go?

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

June 7, 2026  Proper 5  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Romans 4:1-5; 13-25

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? ² For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³ For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ⁴ Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. ⁵ But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. ¹³ For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵ For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression. 

¹⁶ For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷ as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

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.

Early this past week I was browsing through Facebook when I came upon a post from a young man who’s running to be an Assemblyman in northeastern Connecticut.  It began this way:

Happy Straight Month! It’s American to be Anti-Pride Month, this is America’s 250th Anniversary!  

In unfortunate recent history, Pride Month recognition began with Bill Clinton in 1999!  

Take a stand like George Washington. In 1778, during the Revolutionary War, while serving as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, Washington approved the court-martial and dismissal of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin. Enslin was charged with “attempting to commit sodomy.”

As your State Representative, I, Jadon MacCormack, would stand firmly against the Transgender and LGBT movement that has for too long corrupted our families, undermined parental authority, and eroded the foundational values of our society. This ideology promotes confusion over clarity, prioritizes feelings over biological reality, and seeks to redefine the natural order of marriage, family, and human identity in ways that directly contradict God-given rights and common sense.

I will fight relentlessly in the state legislature to protect our children from premature medical interventions, indoctrination in schools, and the normalization of perverse ideologies that threaten the innocence of the next generation.^[1]

Then I looked down, and the candidate’s mom had also re-posted a post he’d originally put up in 2025 – a picture of a noose, with the caption “The Bible has a better idea”. 

A man who believes that the Bible encourages the execution of gay people is running for election to the Connecticut Assembly.

I was shocked.  And I hope you are as well.  Don’t get lost in the little typos or errors of fact.  Pay attention to the hatred and fear instead.  See that this is being said, out in public, by someone running for elected office, just down the road and over the state line from us.

Reading it sure made it clear why we need times like June, Pride Month, to make it clear that God welcomes everyone.  It tells us there’s a reason why we need to have times like this to make it clear that LGBTQ people do not stand by themselves while this kind of vileness is thrown at them.  

When we became an Open and Affirming Church we pledged ourselves to stand with those who were hated for who they are.  

Today I want to talk about why we believe that God loves everyone, about that belief that underlies just about everything we do, so that when you meet hatred, especially hatred that says it’s the Christian way, you’ll be able to stand up for the Gospel.  And at the end, I’ll tell you what’s happening over in Connecticut, at least so far.

You know, we don’t just make this up out of whole cloth.   Everything we preach and believe has its foundation in the Bible.  We take the ideas of the Bible seriously, looking for the basic principles in stories, and studying how those principles can guide us in today’s problems and challenges.

We don’t take it literally, because if we did, we’d be locking ourselves into what the original authors talked about 2000 or more years ago, locking ourselves into their ideas about science, or history.  And the Bible was never written to be a cookbook or a history book or even a science text.  It was written to be a guidebook for life.

So, let’s begin with just a short quote from chapter 9 of Matthew’s gospel:  

⁹ As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. 

¹⁰ And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. ¹¹ When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹² But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³ Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

The first thing to see is that this is the story of how Jesus called Matthew to be one of the disciples.  But it has more to tell us….  Matthew was a tax collector, and Jesus called him… but tax collectors were the scum of the earth.  Jesus sat down to eat with people no one trusted or liked, people who weren’t going to get the best seat at the restaurant.  So, it’s not just a simple story about how Matthew turned into St. Matthew; it’s a story about how even the people who are most feared, most despised are welcomed by God.  No matter who you are or where you are on your life’s journey, you are welcome at God’s table.  Jesus has made that clear.

Matthew’s story isn’t our only lesson for today.  So, let’s turn to the Letter to the Romans.   In the lesson we read today, Paul is explaining why it is that Abraham is important to everyone, gentile or Jew.  When you read it closely – or have a class in Romans, as I did last week – it begins to be clear that what he’s saying is that Abraham’s life is a picture of how God relates to human beings. 

God didn’t choose Abraham, Paul says, because Abraham was the best person on the block, (or in his world, had the most, best, sheep flocks).  Abraham was good, for sure, but not that good.  Remember, he not only has a wife, Sarah, but a maidservant named Hagar with whom he has a son, Ishmael…. And when Sarah is jealous of Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham threw them out.  Not the actions of a consistently good man, for sure.  And yet, God invites Abraham to follow God and Abraham says yes. 

Paul says, “now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift, but as something due, but to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly….the promises that Abraham would inherit the world…” didn’t come through works, but through Abraham’s faith in following God.  Abraham didn’t earn God’s love with good deeds; he was givenGod’s love through grace.

It is not our ability to be consistently good people  — though we certainly work on that – but our willingness to try, our love of God, our intention to follow God’s way that makes us God’s beloved children.  

Now some might argue, sure they’re right, that Paul himself says – both in Romans and in 2 Corinthians – that having gay sex is wrong.  We’ll be showing a movie in the fall about this particular translation, but for today all we need to know is that whenever Paul gives a list of “bad behaviors” he’s not writing a report on bad behaviors, he’s describing things that people in his time thought were bad.  It’s not surprising that people 2000 and more years ago thought being gay was wrong; we thought being gay was wrong just a few years ago.  Heck, when I was a kid, teachers tried to talk my parents into making me right-handed, because being left-handed meant I was untrustworthy and awkward.  Science and psychology have made a lot of progress in the last hundred years.

Today we have better science, better psychology, and we understand that there’s nothing wrong with being left-handed, and there’s nothing wrong with being gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, or any other way of describing how we relate to one another.  Today we know that what matters is love, is the quality of a relationship.  

We see that same love in God’s arms reached out to all of us, even that poor young man down in Connecticut who so fears gay people.  Paul gives us the theological reasons for why that’s true; being here in this congregation, a place where all are welcome, gives us the experience of God’s welcoming love.  And being fed at God’s table, with this tangible sign of everlasting welcome is the final proof.  

Over this past week, since that first vile post went up, the outrage has grown down in Connecticut.  The candidate has been repudiated by his Party, his views condemned by area legislators in his party (as well as the opposite party), and he is constantly being asked to step down.  Now, some members of his party, over in Eastford, are petitioning to add a new candidate to the election, so that there will have to be a primary.  Yes, he has some supporters, but not many.  Right now, it doesn’t look as though his campaign will succeed.  

Remember this always:  God loves us all, each and every one, as we are, where we are, every day all the time.  So  come to this table and know you are loved.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

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^[1] Jadon E. MacCormack. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122115089558951847&set=a.122104237298951847

May 24, 2026  Pentecost  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

From Numbers 11:24-30  . . . . a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” ²⁸ And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” ²⁹ But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”

Acts 2:1-21… When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ² And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 

⁵ Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹ Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹² All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³ But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” 

¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵ Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 

¹⁷ ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹ And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰ The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

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.

In 1845, our country was mired in a never-ending crisis around the expansion of human slavery. Slavery itself was its own crisis, of course, and people were working to end it… but there was also the question as to whether or not it could spread to new states, especially lands newly entering the Union.  For some people this was a purely practical question; if a new state came in as a slave state, then they could make tons of money.  For others, it was a question of political power.  But for an increasingly vocal third group, this was a moral question, a religious question, a question of faith.

Texas wanted to join the Union, but it wanted to come in as a slave state.  That was one moral question. Another was, were we stealing Texas from Mexico.  Because, you see, Texas seceded from Mexico because Mexico had abolished slavery, and Mexico thought their secession was illegal.  

So, would receiving Texas as a slave state upset the balance of powers?

Would receiving Texas as a slave state be a miscarriage of our stated principles of liberty for all?  Could we morally admit a slave state?

Would receiving Texas, slave or free, start a war with Mexico?  Were we, in effect, stealing another country’s land?

As it turned out, the right answer is “all of the above”.  It changed the balance of powers.  It expanded the immoral practice of slavery.  And it started a war with Mexico.

James Russell Lowell wrote the poem “The Present Crisis” in 1845 to rouse people to object to the reception of Texas and the oncoming war with Mexico.  It was wildly successful in many ways – we even still sing parts of it as the hymn “Once to Every Man and Nation”.  And, tho it didn’t stop the oncoming war, it still helps us see the moral questions for our day.  The plea he made then still rings out today.  Listen to the last few verses, written right here in Massachusetts:

Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers’ graves,
Worshipers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that made Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,     
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past’s; 
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,      
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee       
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.          

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,         
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;            
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away     
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?   

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;          
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;      
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,            
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,  
Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key.

Lowell wrote a Pentecostal poem, bringing us to a new and clearer understanding of two things – reminding us how we default to looking back and worshipping yesterday, and second, that God is not calling us to yesterday, but to tomorrow, to see each day new.

God is still speaking.

Today is the day we traditionally celebrate the beginnings of the Christian Church.  It’s a subtle reminder to us that Jesus didn’t found the Christian church; in the stories, this new beginning only happens after he is gone.  Jesus was a Jew; it was after the Resurrection that his followers began to realize that what they had been taught was going to make major changes in the way they understood their world and their relationships with one another.

That’s what happens when major change comes along.

First we know that something different is happening.  Then we fight with each other about whether to fight it or join it.  A good deal of the history of the first years of the Christian organization is the story of the fight or join part of things.  Today is no different.  In the world outside our doors these days, great, massive change is happening, and we’ve come to a place where we’re going to fight or join up.

And, no, I’m not talking about Republicans and Democrats.  I’m talking about something which this weekend is also about.  161 years ago, a great war, fought on this country’s land, ended.  That war was intended to hold the Union together; it was intended to end the pernicious evil of human slavery.

Wikipedia tells us that between 620,000 and 750,000, roughly 2% of the population of the United States, died in that war.  It was the deadliest conflict in our history.  Fewer than 10,000 people died in the American Revolution, not even 2000 in the Mexican War.  Over 50,000 died in World War I, almost 300,000 in World War II, just over 33,000 in Korea and almost 50,000 in Vietnam.  If 2% of today’s population died, that’d be all the people in Massachusetts.  That’s a lot of people; their deaths are why Memorial Day was established.

This year and every year, on Memorial Day, we remember those who died in the service of our country, but especially those who died on our land to save the union and free the slaves.

The fight for freedom and equality didn’t end with their sacrifice.  If you’ve followed our history, you know the struggle, that even after the Civil War, those who believed that anyone who wasn’t northern European white, who didn’t worship the right way (Protestants, not Roman Catholics, then my church, not yours…)… anyone who didn’t fit their picture of the right way to live… anyone, but especially Black people, shouldn’t have any rights in society…. 

….shouldn’t vote, 
shouldn’t own their own businesses, 
own their own land, 
shouldn’t expect to get good schooling for their children –
in fact, it’d be better if “those folks” didn’t have schools.  
Double it if we’re talking about Africans rather than Catholics.

And they believed that men controlled women, that it was better if women didn’t work… and if they did, they should be teachers, or child-minders, maybe cooks or laundresses.

We’ve made a lot of progress.  We all go to school together.  We prided ourselves on welcoming immigrants from all over the world.  Women work all over, LGBT+ create families and build community.  God is still speaking, and we are still listening.

The war for freedom and equality is still going on.  Right now the people who are fighting to destroy the rights of all are hiding behind the name of the Republican Party, but the name of the party is a diversion.  They want us to focus our attention on the party name, not the unchristian beliefs they are promoting.  They’d have been Democrats if that gave them a fast track to power.  In fact, in the 50s, they were Democrats.  

So, don’t get distracted; this isn’t about party labels; it’s about hatred and God’s extravagant welcome.

The Old Testament lesson for today tells us about the time that Moses was trying to teach and organize his people and took the leaders out for a special session with God.  While they were gone, while everyone who was “supposed” to know what’s what was out, two men with no special training began to talk about God, because they were led by God’s spirit.  New ideas were coming forth in new ways.  New occasions taught new duties, and Moses said not to stop them.

We read the lesson from Acts every year – about how all the disciples were gathered in one place, that there was a sound like a wind, tongues of fire, and everyone began to speak in foreign languages, usually reading all the way to where the observers think all the disciples are drunk.  And we pretend that the lesson is about literal tongues of fire, and people speaking all those languages, when it’s really a metaphorical picture of how the faith was spreading throughout the Mediterranean basin, and even over to India.  In fact, this story is the first testimony to the radically inclusive expanded message of God.  No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are a part of this church.

More than 2000 years ago, our ancestors in faith realized that Jesus was leading them to a world where differences no longer mattered.  Where it didn’t matter in God’s eyes where we came from, or what color our skin was.  The Christian church was established by people who believed in radical, inclusive language, who stretched the welcome Jews had lived beyond the borders they’d seen, brought it out of the Middle East and spread that welcome all over the world.  We gradually came to understand there are no circumstances where slavery or peonage can be right; we came to understand that differences of color, culture, faith, or situation in life do not matter to God and should not matter to us.

The traditional ways we celebrate Pentecost are to have a birthday cake , wear red shirts and maybe have red geraniums all over the place.  

But a better way, this year, a way that lives out the spirit of Pentecost, is to stand up for racial equality, for inclusivity, for radical welcome of all people in God’s world, and to stand against those who want to shove us forcefully back into a world where there are second, third and last class residents, not even citizens, whose only purpose is to serve the white folks at the top of the heap.  In other worlds, this year, observe Pentecost by standing against evil.  

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

May 10, 2026 Easter 6  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

“Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. ²³ For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:22-31)

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 do we know there is a God?  There’s generally three different responses to that question:

First, I know there’s a God because I can see the evidence in the world around us.

Or, I know there’s a God, because the Bible says it’s so.

Or… I don’t know; I trust, I hope…

Knowing about God just from reading the Bible can be hard (difficult) if only because reading the Bible is hard… the Bible is a translation of a series of book that are between two and five thousand years old.  They were written for people who did not know about modern science, and who mostly were shepherds, traders and farmers.  Because it was written for a different way of life, getting more than surface meanings requires us to study it – and that’s not always easy.

All too often, we mis-read it, thinking that if there’s a story about Jonah and a Whale, it must be a new story, like it had been originally written for the Boston Globe.  The thing is, it – and many other stories like it – are more akin to fairy tales… the important thing is not the facts, but the lesson the facts are there to help us “get it”.  (maybe use Androcles and the Lion??)

It’s easy to see why many of us see God more clearly out on the golf course, or on a hike in the woods, sailing on the lake, or visiting the Bridge of Flowers up in Shelburne.  The beauty of a flower is unmistakable.  And there are other ways people feel that they see God in the world…ways like observing the Fibonnaci sequence – not just in math, where it shows that each number in the sequence is the sum of the two preceding numbers, but it shows up also in nature in the arrangement of tree branches, pineapple sprouts, artichoke flowers and on and on…. You can see why, when folks discover there’s an actual order to the way trees grow their branches, that they might see that as a sign of the existence of God.

But that’s not all there is to God… neat and orderly math sequences, or ways of growing trees.  Let’s look a little more closely at Paul’s story.

Today’s story tells of the first visit of Paul to the city of Athens, in Greece.  The Greeks were known all over the world for their interest in philosophy, their devotion to working out questions like who made the world, why are there human beings.  They were a people who made sure to cover their bases, so they put up statues – devotional centers, worship spaces – for every conceivable option.  They even had a statue to an “unknown god” – and that’s the god that Paul works from.

In those days, the Greeks, indeed most people, believed that there were little, local gods, maybe like a spirit that watched over a spring – and you honored that spring and its spirit, by pouring out a little of the water on the ground before you drank.

The scholars call that “pouring out a libation”; even today, you’ll occasionally see someone pour out a little of what they’re about to drink on the ground, or pour out a beverage at a new grave.  I doubt they have any sense as to how old that practice is!

Folks believed that those gods took on the attributes of whatever they stood for – so the spirit of the spring needed to be kept happy, so that the spring wouldn’t go dry in high summer.  And the major gods, the ones like Zeus, or Hera, were understood to be just like humans, only bigger, braggier, sometimes trickier, and always needing their worshippers to keep them happy – or things wouldn’t go well.

That’s the bitter edge of those kinds of human-derived understandings of gods.  They are, as a group, beautiful, powerful, and unreliable.  They do not love humans, they use humans to satisfy their needs and desires.

You can imagine, therefore, just how astounding it was when Paul came to Athens and told them that their “unknown god” was a god of sustaining love, a person who wanted us to be happy, safe, prosperous…. This god wanted peace and justice for all.

It’s just that amazing today, you know.  That’s what’s important now.  We follow a God who love us, who is not capricious, doesn’t demand our unthinking submission.  Our God, the God we follow wants us to be the best we can be, and helps us get there by showing us a way that doesn’t just build us up, but creates and nourishes good community for all.

Sometimes, it doesn’t work.

Sometimes, that community turns into an “everyone for themselves” wreck.  I’m not just talking about current events.  You might have read the book “Lord of the Flies”, about a group which tries to form a community and fails miserably – written right around 75 years ago. 

Some communities aren’t formed to make everyone better; some communities are formed to support the leaders, and everything else is designed to keep the leaders wealthy, healthy, and strong.

But that’s not Christian community.  Our kind of community is always struggling against the self-centered kind, because we are willing to give up our personal power so that everyone will have enough.  Christian community is not just about personal stuff – not just our own happiness, prosperity and power.  

In fact, Christian community places our personal success in the context of what makes our world, our community stronger.  It helps us shares our wealth so that we will all  have decent schools, child protective services, immigrant education, and other things that just make life better.  

It’s also about less obvious problems —  like making sure that people don’t struggle to find and afford food because there are no grocery stores, or because the prices in your area are twice what they are across town.  I didn’t realize this was an issue in my area until I realized that prices at the Stop and Shop near me were higher than the one 3 miles away, in a more prosperous suburb.  That’s right, food costs less for people who have more money.

That’s our call…. To care about people who struggle to survive, to stand up for those who need help, to live as kind, generous, decent people.  Our God, known through Jesus Christ, provides the pattern for our living… every day, all the time.

Come and be a part of the family.

Amen.

©2026, Virginia H. Child