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

March 25, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 130 ¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.  ² Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

³ If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? ⁴ But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. ⁵ I wait for the Lord; my soul waits, and in his word I hope; ⁶ my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. ⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. ⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

John 11:1-44 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. ³ So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴ But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, ⁶ after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 

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.

Today’s Gospel lesson is one of the best known stories in the New Testament…. One of Jesus’ closest friends falls ill.  His sisters, knowing Jesus and knowing what he can do, call on him to save Lazarus’ life.  But Jesus says it’s no big thing, that he’s not going to die, and delays until – much to everyone’s sorrow – Lazarus dies, and is buried.  Only then does Jesus show up.  Four days after the burial.  Martha, Lazarus’ sister, lays into Jesus – if you hadn’t delayed, if you’d come right away, Lazarus wouldn’t have died!!!!!

And you can hear her frustration.  After all, she knows who Jesus is, the son of God, the Savior, the one who will bring new life.  And she knows that Lazarus and Jesus are best of friends, even if Lazarus isn’t one of the twelve.  Lazarus and his family are important people, and Jesus doesn’t rush right alone to save his life.  Mary is so not happy.

And while Jesus then proceeds to bring a living Lazarus forth from his burial cave, and restores him to his family, whole and healthy, I can’t imagine that Mary doesn’t continue at least puzzled… “first he didn’t come promptly, then he put us all through the pain of death, and then… then… uses us as an object lesson to show his power over death!”

So, let’s look a little at Mary’s questions, because there’s a reason this story goes the way it does.

The first thing to know is that this isn’t a story about instant fixes.  It’s a story that reflects the way life happens.

We all know this, tho it’s the sort of thing we’d rather forget.  When bad things happen, we want them to be fixed right away, and we want things to go back to where they were before.  But that’s not what happened to Lazarus, is it?  He got sicker, and died.  We want easy answers and quick diagnoses, but sometimes illness just goes on and on and on.

A colleague of mine retired last week; she wrote that not only were she and her husband now a “retired family”, they were also a Parkinson’s family, since her husband’s recent diagnosis…. And this was for her a real change.. “I don’t know how to be a Parkinson’s family,” she said.  “In my family, everyone gets cancer; I know how to deal with that disease.”  I bet she’s not the only one who’s found themselves in a situation for which they hadn’t planned, and one they weren’t sure how to deal with.

But that’s not the whole of the story, is it?  Jesus did come; he wept at what had happened, he mourned his friend, even as he prepared to bring  him forth out of the grave.  

God does not move on our schedule, come at the instant demand of our hearts, but God does come, and brings relief.  Jesus brought renewed life to Lazarus:  he’s not going to bring that to any of us, but he will bring something.  

Because, you know, it’s part of life that each of us dies.  Dying is not a failure.  It is what happens when our bodies wear out, or when they have been so affected by an illness that we can no longer sustain life.  Of course, that’s easy to say in the abstract.  It’s harder, much harder, when we’re thinking about a loved one – a wife or husband, partner in life – or when we’re thinking about our own future. 

Here’s the thing:  understanding that death is part of the way our world works, gives us a way to see into the future, because it’s not all going to stop when each one of us shuffles off.  Life will continue.  Today’s story promises us that life, our world’s life, our community’s life, continues after our individual lives end.  

And there’s more – so often, we find ourselves in a place where we feel as though we didn’t get it all done – but it turns out our calling as human beings is to be the best we can be, to do the best we can do, and then turn it over to those who come next.  Life isn’t a dash, it’s a relay race. 

Earlier I said that God brings us “something” in the midst of the most difficult of times.  That something is really the most important power in the world – the power of love.  It is love that transcends death.  It is love that rebuilds after disaster.  It is love that brings out the best in our world.

After World War I, the Allies – us, the English, the French, the Italians – were really angry at the Germans and Austrians for starting the war, and decided that the best thing to do was to punish them by imposing reparations – think of them as fines to make up for what they’d done – except that unlike fines, the reparations required actions which destroyed the German economy, and – as it happens – laid the way for another war, one in which the Germans intended to punish the Allies, and to rebuild their country so that it would never fail.  Hatred and anger controlled what our leaders demanded; failure and humiliation, and even deeper hate and anger were the products.

After World War II, it played out differently.  Instead of vengeance, under the leadership of General George C. Marshall, we began a program of economic recovery to bring aid to Western Europe, to help rebuild their infrastructure, to create sound economies where all could prosper.  Instead of hate, we built community.  Instead of destruction, we sowed prosperous, thriving life and it turns out that when everyone prospers, no one wants to go to war.  The last 80 or so years, might well be the longest time since the Romans when there has been no land war in Western Europe.  Love endures; love transforms death into life.

It turns out the last word on death is not death – it is life.  It’s not just about you and me; we are part of a great cloud of witnesses.  When we work to build community, to tie people together in bonds of friendship, we are declaring that death will not win.  When we work to bring up our children to be good human beings, to know the love of Jesus and to share that love in all they do, we are declaring that death will not win.  

Each of us will die someday, but the lives we lived with love will continue to spread love throughout all God’s creation.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

March 15, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;^,* he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord  my whole life long.^,*

Luke 14:7-24  (The Message) [Jesus] went on to tell a story to the guests around the table. Noticing how each had tried to elbow into the place of honor, he said, “When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he’ll come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.’ Red-faced, you’ll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left.

“When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.” That triggered a response from one of the guests: “How fortunate the one who gets to eat dinner in God’s kingdom!” Jesus followed up. “Yes. For there was once a man who threw a great dinner party and invited many. When it was time for dinner, he sent out his servant to the invited guests, saying, ‘Come on in; the food’s on the table.’“Then they all began to beg off, one after another making excuses. The first said, ‘I bought a piece of property and need to look it over. Send my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I just bought five teams of oxen, and I really need to check them out. Send my regrets.’ And yet another said, ‘I just got married and need to get home to my wife.’

“The servant went back and told the master what had happened. He was outraged and told the servant, ‘Quickly, get out into the city streets and alleys. Collect all who look like they need a square meal, all the misfits and homeless and wretched you can lay your hands on, and bring them here.’ “The servant reported back, ‘Master, I did what you commanded—and there’s still room.’  The master said, ‘Then go to the country roads. Whoever you find, drag them in. I want my house full! Let me tell you, not one of those originally invited is going to get so much as a bite at my dinner party.’”

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.

It seemed as though everywhere I went this week, I heard another story about the power of welcome… and so I’m sharing a couple of those stories with you.   

The first comes from a woman who is a chaplain in the US Army.  She’s telling the story of a hospital visit she recently made:

A few months ago, I went to see a retired Army chaplain who had been admitted to our hospital because of a bad fall. His nurses told me that he was in and out of consciousness and it might not be worth a visit, because he wouldn’t even know I was there. Since he was a regular attendee of the small Presbyterian church where I was a substitute preacher, I decided to stop by anyway.

His eyes were closed as I stood over his bed. But as soon as I said his name, he looked directly into my eyes.

“I am so glad you are here,” he said. “We need to get ready for the service. I know everyone has a different opinion about what’s right, but the most important thing is that everyone knows how much he or she is welcome — by us and by God. After that, everything else will fall into place.”

And then he closed his eyes. I stood there dumbfounded. It felt like he had passed the torch to me, one old soldier at the end of his race to a younger one at the beginning of hers.

Just like he said: all are welcome. We can thank a very generous God for that. 

At what sounds like the end of his life, in his last words, the old chaplain makes sure the young one knows that, in God’s world, all are welcome.  We are all welcome.

Another story came from a notice that famed Bible teacher, Beth Moore, is ending her practice of large event teach-ins.  You’ve probably never heard of her, but in the Southern Baptist world, she was a major influence… until she publicly objected to the way Southern Baptist leaders were supporting Donald Trump.  The SBC threw her under the bus.  They stopped publishing her books, refused to sponsor her events, turned their backs on her.  She ended up leaving the denomination, and began publishing her books and sponsoring her events on her own.  Now 70, she’s stepping back from one part of that ministry.  That’s all background… here’s the part of the story that stopped me for a minute:

What happened to Moore was devastating.  Moore left the SBC in 2021 and cut ties with Lifeway,[the SBC publishing house] with her ministry taking over her events. She would later retell the story of her own experience of abuse as a child and how the [welcome of the] church and [of] Jesus had saved her in her 2023 memoir, “All My Knotted-Up Life,” and how she found a new church home after leaving the SBC.  “Never underestimate the power of a welcome,” she [said] in a 2023 interview.

Welcome saved her again.  It was welcome that helped her rebuild her life, her ministry, and her faith.  Welcome.

Everyone is welcome… and welcome changes lives, here and in every other place that practices it.

Now, look again at the reading from the Gospel of Luke:  the whole reading, from verse 7 to 24 is really about who belongs, about living your belonging, being a welcoming person.  This is one of the places in the New Testament where Jesus makes God’s everlasting welcome abundantly clear.  

The point of the story comes home as we hear once again that story of the big dinner party, the wedding banquet.  The host is deeply annoyed that the “good people”, the ones who make the party, well, they’re too busy to come, or – more likely, since all the excuses are flimsy – they just don’t think it’s important enough.  The host offers welcome, and the “in folks” blow the host off.  

It doesn’t end there, though.  The host turns the whole thing around.  Instead of begging the in folks, he reaches out to the folks who never get invited to the big events – hungry folks, the friendless, the homeless, the folks no one notices.  No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.

But notice that the folks who turned the host down, the ones who were fake, who really hurt him with their rejection?  Those folks have lost their place.  Everyone’s welcome, unless you hurt someone.  God’s welcome is never an excuse for bad behavior.

The Gospel lesson reminds us that our welcome doesn’t rise from our personal power, our good looks, our age, race or height.  God loves us as we are, no matter who we are, whether or not we follow God.  Loved and welcomed, we are given the power to reach out to others, to extend that welcome to them, to let them know there is a place where they are welcome.

In a world where it’s becoming clearer and clearer that there are people in power who do not think that everyone is welcome, it’s important to remember that they are wrong.  Some people want to rid the United States of people of color.  Right now, those folks are trying to deport 350,000 Haitians back to the Haiti they left after political and natural disasters.  The Christian belief in welcome means that we have a responsibility to those who we welcomed here in a time of need.  It is immoral for us to simply say, without remediation of the problems that caused them to leave, that their time’s up and pitch them out the door.  We believe that everyone is welcome, and that means everyone deserves compassionate care.

That’s not so common as we might think.  Usually rejection, unwelcome is kinda behind closed doors.  But lately, it’s become much more open.

Out in Kansas, they’ve made a law that effectively says that trans people can’t legally drive cars – by saying that their drivers licenses were immediately cancelled if their gender on the license was their birth assignment rather than their lived gender.  And then, just to make their unwelcome really clear, it became illegal for transpeople to use the bathroom of their lived gender…. Which means, for instance, that someone who is a transwoman, living as a woman, dressing like a woman, maybe wearing makeup, is required by this law to use the men’s room… and transmen, guys with beards, wearing suits, are required to use the ladies room.  You can imagine the ways in which having a guy with a beard using the ladies room might be as disturbing as a woman with a dress in the men’s room.

The bill was passed, over the veto of the governor of Kansas, and took effect immediately.  It’s a law which contradicts everything we know and believe about people.  For we believe that transpeople are people, that God loves and welcomes everyone, and that laws like the ones in Kansas are not just inhumane, but evil.

So, let me go back to the beginning.  God welcomes everyone.  You don’t have to be the “right color” to be welcome.  You don’t have to wear suits and ties, or dresses and heels.  You don’t have to stick with the gender you were assigned at birth.  You don’t have to go to Yale, or even finish eighth grade.  God welcomes us all.   

The bread we celebrate is a visible sign of that welcome.  When we share that bread at Communion, we are sharing with everyone, because all are welcome.  There is no one standing here in the aisle saying, you, but not you.

Everyone is welcome in God’s church.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

March 1, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 121 ¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? 
² My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. 
³ He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 
⁴ He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 
⁵ The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. 
⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. 
⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 
⁸ The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in 
from this time on and forevermore.

John 3:1-17 — Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” ³ Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”^,* 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹ Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 

¹¹ “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.^,* 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.^,*

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 

¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

“I would like to invite you to a very practical and frequently unappreciated form of abstinence: that of refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor.” —  Pope Leo XIV

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with someone about the Super Bowl, and kinda out of nowhere, they said, “well I’m NOT watching that terrible Bad Bunny; I’m watching the good half-time show…”

It was more than a little hard to know how to respond – if only because I generally find the half-time shows to be terminally boring… since then, I’ve found myself thinking about that exchange, working out why I found it puzzling.  It was Pope Leo’s call for a Lenten discipline that helped me understand and led to today’s meditation.

With that intro, I want to turn our eyes to this morning’s readings.  First, Psalm 121 reminds us that it is God who leads us, guides us, is our unfailing source of support.  God is the center from which all else comes. And our second lesson reminds us that God loves the whole world, so that everyone who believes may enjoy a life that’s led by God.

So, think about this…. We, not just you and me, not just all of us in this room or with us on Zoom, but every human being in the world, are all  welcome in God’s eyes.  That’s our starting point with everyone.

That means our first line, our first action with anyone is always going to reflect that they are known by and loved by God, just as we are.  

One of my interims was in a downtown church in a city with a significant unhoused population.  Our doors were open on Sunday, and it wasn’t uncommon for someone to drop in on Sunday, often with their dog.  We had a choice, each time.  Were we going to welcome this person, who hadn’t taken a bath, who was accompanied by a perhaps untrained animal…. Or were we going to stop them at the door?

What did God want of us?

That church welcomed every person who walked in the door.  I don’t want to sugar-coat it; from time to time someone took offence.  I once received a note from someone who said they’d never attend again if we continued to be that place where people were welcome until or unless they caused a problem.  She left; we kept welcoming.  

That’s a dramatic scenario.  For most of us, welcome is more about little things, like holding doors for people with strollers.  But it’s also about starting our conversations with what’s good, rather than starting with anger or hate.  

It’s a hard thing to do, especially when you don’t actually like the person you’re thinking of.  It’s ever so much easier to remember why you don’t like them, or what they’ve said or done that you don’t like, that’s made you angry.  Remember then, that no matter how good your reasons for hatred or anger, God has made us a world where everyone can be loved. Maybe you are thinking of someone who’s turned away from that good world, but even that doesn’t exactly justify our hatred, our anger.

Life’s been a little challenging down my way for the past week, what with three feet of snow arriving in just a few hours last Monday.  And one of the biggest challenges, as you can imagine, is what to do with all that snow.  The first few days, our DPW crews worked round-the-clock, to get at least one lane open on every street in East Providence.  There are 813 streets in East Providence, most have been plowed at least once, and they’re now working to widen every street so we can return to parking cars on the street.

And it’s not been happening fast enough for some people.  Some people are really angry.  “It’s been cleaned up in (fill in city’s name), why are you sleeping on the job here?”  Never mind that the other city got 10 inches of snow.  Or the nasty one I saw, “bet the mayor’s street got plowed”….  Implying that no one else has had their street cleared… The anger and mean comments from just  a small group of residents really ate away at the folks who were working so hard.

It’s been a real-life reminder of how anger can destroy love and hard work.  I don’t mean that the city plows are stopped, but we’ve begun to see blowback from their spouses saying “back off, they’re working as hard as they can,” and it’s clear that the folks who are angry because their street’s not cleared from curb to curb, are beginning to anger the people who are working so hard to help all of us.  Impatience, ignorance, entitlement, all lead to anger, and anger that’s not justified. 

Over and over and over, what we see when we really look at things is that, when our default response to everything is anger, everything falls apart.  

It’s not easy… if only because there are times when anger is the right, maybe even the only effective, response.  But I’m not talking about our anger about corruption, or anger about sexual predators going free, or even anger at seeing our country go to war illegally.  

I’m talking about our everyday relationships with one another.  I’m talking about those times when our leaders, the leaders of this church, have folks come up to them, already furious about something before they every share their concern.  I’m talking about angry people making nasty remarks to the young mother ahead of them in the grocery line, or acting like Bad Bunny was the literal incarnation of the devil.  I’m talking about the kind of anger that builds walls, scares people, destroys community.

It’s not easy to let go of anger; Pope Leo as much as admitted that when he suggested that for a Lenten discipline we abstain from words that offend, words that hurt our neighbors.  But, even the effort is worth the effort.  Even the effort to look for the good changes us, maybe changes our relationships with one another, certainly changes our world. 

This Lent, God calls us to be kind.  To show love.  To turn away from reflexive anger, to turn towards our neighbors, to build community.

It is our call to live out God’s truth – God has made this to be a world built on love, and it is our call to make that happen.

Amen.

©2026, Virginia H. Child

February 15, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Exodus 24:12-24 — ¹² The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there; I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” ¹³ So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up onto the mountain of God. ¹⁴ To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come back to you. Look, Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.” 

¹⁵ Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. ¹⁶ The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. ¹⁷ Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the Israelites. ¹⁸ Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. 

2 Peter 1:16-21 — ¹⁶ For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷ For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” ¹⁸ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. 

¹⁹ So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. ²⁰ First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, ²¹ because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.^,*

Matthew 17:1-9 — Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ² And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. ³ Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. ⁴ Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will set up three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁵ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” ⁶ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷ But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸ And when they raised their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. ⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised 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.

What is the purpose of a football game?  What is the purpose of the super bowl?  Is it to determine the best professional football team in America?  Or is it to make money?  Lots of money?

The cheapest tickets, according to Google, were about $3200.  Average tickets were more like $7000, and those fancy ones in the suites… if you have to ask, you can’t afford them goes the joke, but I read that they ran to about $40K each.  A 30 second commercial cost between 8 and 10 million dollars.  The ad itself might take another 10 to 15 million to make.  Tom Brady doesn’t show up in your Dunkins commercial for free, even if that was the most dreadful wig I’ve ever seen.

A can of Bud (or its equivalent) was about $18, water was $8 a bottle.

Ask again, what was the purpose of the Super Bowl… determining a championship or making money?

It’s money that matters at the Super Bowl.  Winners and losers matter to you and me, but for the people who put it on, it’s the money that matters.  Glitz and air force fly-bys keep us happy, but it’s our money that matters to the people in charge.  If there’s one thing they know, it’s the power of glitz to distract us from what’s really happening.

Distracting glitz isn’t just something that Super Bowl promoters are good at.  It’s just something that humans often do in order to move attention away from one thing to another.  And it’s not that glitz is a bad thing; it’s not, but it’s so easy to focus on the glitz and miss what’s really there.

Which gets us to today’s lessons, about the Transfiguration of Christ.  And here you thought the sermon was going to be a critique of Super Bowls….  Haha

But really, the story of the Transfiguration is often told as a story of Peter, James and John getting distracted by the glitz of bright lights, mysterious tents, and all-around excitement.  We get lost in the descriptions, focusing on whether or not it “really” happened the way it’s described, and we miss the whole point of the story.  

Jesus is changed by the presence of God….and we are all changed too.   

We are, all together now, all changed by being in the presence of God.  We are all transfigured, made into something new, and bright, something that is able to transform all it touches into God’s new creation. 

Here’s what that new thing looks like, a picture of what God’s world is to be:  it’s in the Belhar Confession, a document written by South African Christians, which states their beliefs as seen through the lens of racism.  It’s a glitz-removal device, if you think of glitz as anything that distracts us from what’s really happening.

Their transfiguration, their change, led by people like Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, turned South Africa from a place where white South Africans believed God had given them the country, and given them the work of native Africans, Black people, to be their servants and laborers.  That privilege allowed them to feel ok about cheating and stealing from Black people.  

It allowed them to feel good about creating a world where Black, Colored (that is, mixed race people) and White people were totally separated by law.  They felt ok about the idea that a man like the comedian Trevor Noah’s existence was illegal, because his mom was Black and his dad was white and it was against the law for them to create a child together.

Out of a growing understanding of the ways they’d gone wrong, the Belhar was written by one of the Protestant churches in South Africa, turning it into a glitz-removal device for their church, their country and all the world, a set of worlds to help them see rightly in a world ruled by distraction.

It’s hard these days to know who’s right, who’s wrong.  And it’s way too easy for glitz to distract, for soft, easy answers to keep us from seeing where God is calling us to go.  It’s the modern equivalent of fire on the mountain, or visions of Moses and Elijah.  That makes it time to remember that in 2 Peter, it’s written that the message on the mountain wasn’t the fire, or the glitz, but it was a lamp shining in a dark place, to help us see what needs to be done.

We aren’t much for creeds in our church, at least if you define them as words you have to believe in, but we do use them as something like road maps.  We may each be at different points on the road, but we are all on the same road together.  This Belhar Confession is one such road map, one that reminds us that Jesus called us to a ministry of mutual love and respect.  

It reminds us that we’re called to figure out what is right and do it… not sit by the side of the road until the wrong is gone.

It reminds us that it is the people who have the least who need the most protection.  Rich folks may worry about their electric bills, but they have enough money to pay the bills.  Poor people freeze to death in their cars, because they can’t even afford an apartment, much less electricity.  Jesus calls us to care, to act, for the best interests of the people on the streets.

It reminds us that, “in a world full of injustice and [contempt],” we are to keep our eyes open, to care for not just the poor, but also the wronged.  That’s why it was our Christian responsibility to be upset at that video of the Obamas in an ape suit.  There are no circumstances when it’s acceptable to mock Black people with pictures of apes.  It’s never funny and all good Christians know that.  

That’s why we reject any thing that makes it seem that it’s ok to mock people for their background, or treat them with contempt because they’re not smart, or because they come from some other country.  We reject any actions which make a mockery of the laws of our country, which treat some people as less acceptable than others – for any reason, but most especially because of the color of their skin.

Even in this story today of the Transfiguration, there’s enough glitz to distract us, to entice us to the lights in the sky, to open our ears to the sound of angels.  Thank heavens, we have Jesus to remind us that the point of the story is not the light show, but the way it marks the way the world has been turned upside down.  The French poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince, “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

God loves everyone.  There is no more foundational truth.  No matter how we differ on our political aims and goals, we are – each of us – called to live out those aims and goals with love, respect, and mercy, today and always. 

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

January 18, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Isaiah 49:1-7       I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

John 1:29-42      The next day [John] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.” The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

“Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heasrtbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.” Martin Luther King

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.

Behold the Lamb of God…  It’s the earliest proclamation of Jesus Christ, naming him as the one who will sacrifice all to change the world for us.  For sure, John’s followers heard exactly what he was saying.  You’ve heard me say before that there were folks who followed John and folks who followed Jesus – there was something of a competition between the two camps.  The story today is about a time when people came to John to ask who to follow – was it still John, or was Jesus even more important, closer to God.  

John’s answer was “behold the Lamb of God”, the one who will be so transformed by love that he will change our world.  It’s Jesus who shows us that love is not free, not easy, and sometimes can cost your life.

John often spoke of Jesus.  In the very beginning, the prologue to John’s Gospel, he says, “No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. ^[1]  

From that we learn that one of the things Jesus does is reflect to us God’s love, God’s essence.   The way the theologians describe this is to say that God was incarnate in Jesus – Jesus was both a human being and also God.  And Jesus is now a kind of model, a pattern for us, to help us do our best to live as he did. We are the only visible proof that God exists; people form their ideas of what God is, from seeing how we live and work, talk and act.

And that means reflecting God’s love in our lives. 

I’m not telling you anything new.  You know all this.  Visitors get what kind of God we worship when they not only hear what I say, but experience how you welcome new people.  If, in your interactions, you reflect Jesus’ accepting love, then they feel welcome.  This happens every day in our lives. 

It works the other way, too.  I remember the story I heard years ago that the leader of the local Christian Men’s Fellowship was a man who maintained two families – told to me with contempt by a man who’d left not just the fellowship, but the church he belongs to, where that man was the Head Deacon.  Everyone knew what was happening, and no one would do anything about it.  The guy who told me the story was not the only person who walked away from church.

Think about how many people have left the Roman Catholic Church.  Twenty-five years ago, almost a quarter of all Americans were Catholic; today it’s less than 20%.  Every person in this room probably has friends and family who once were Catholic and some of us are part of the group that left that faith for this way of being Christian.  

Turn it around:  how many people have come to faith, joined a church (of any denomination) because they met someone who so radiated the extravagant welcome of Jesus Christ that they couldn’t not join.  In a former church, for instance, a parishioner told me of her nephew, a Naval officer, who’d become a Mormon because he so appreciated the moral life of Mormon offiers.  Or in another conversation a Marine sergeant told me how, when he’d been in combat, he’d been so affected by the faith/bravery of the Catholic chaplains that he became a Catholic.  That, he said, was how he wanted to live.

When I first walked into a Congregational Church, Grace UCC, in Rutland, VT; the first two people I recognized were my very kind ophthalmologist and the woman who always greeted me with a smile at the grocery store when she was checking my groceries out.  I knew right then that if these two people were representative of the folks in that church, it was a good place.

We are here to reflect God’s love, shown to us in Jesus Christ, to all the world.

Not a squishy, get everything you want, kind of love, indulgent, spoiled, but that love that helps us tell good from bad, name and recognize evil, celebrate the best among us.

Reflecting God’s love is not always easy, not always safe.  Martin Luther King Jr was reflecting God’s love when he said “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.”  And he tried to live that out.. leading the Birmingham Bus Boycott, supporting all kinds of non-violent actions against racism, in the South and the North.  When he was murdered, he was in Memphis to bring light to the way that garbage workers were oppressed.  Bringing light can be dangerous.

We’ve heard so much lately about what’s happening in our country these days.  But just as those who came before us condemned the evil of fire hoses and police dogs attacking Black citizens who fought for equality… people, Christians, are naming evil and standing up against it in many places across our country.  Not just liberal denominations like ours, but conservative Christians as well are troubled by what they see and hear.  It’s our more conservative siblings who remind us that John the Baptist warned the tax collectors not to misuse their power, not to oppress people, that the Bible actually preaches against abusees of those who are poor, weak, or powerless.

In fact you’ll remember that Paul abused the church with the full participation of the law right up to the moment he met Jesus on the Road to Damascus, and realized how wrong he had been.  

The events of the past weeks have shown us that sometimes standing up against evil, truly reflecting God’s love can be dangerous. New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeld spoke out, and was quoted by WMUR, the NPR station in New Hampshire:

In Hirschfeld’s speech, he talks about past martyrs who have died for their cause. He said New Hampshire clergy members should get their affairs in order and their wills written as they defend the vulnerable.

“Now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable,” Hirschfeld said.

He told News 9 that his words reflected a consistent message he has shared: to live without fear and to know that God’s love is stronger than injustice or death. He said he has been surprised by the response to that message.

“But I think the context is everything, that we’re living in a different era now, and that is opening up our ears and our hearts to this message, which is both ancient and new,” he said.

Hirschfeld said he and other members of the clergy are not looking for violence, but he said these are times in which their job of working with the vulnerable comes at a risk.^[2]

Most of the time, however, we’re not being called to lay our literal lives on the line,  Most of the time, what we’re called to is more every-day, less exciting, more subtle:  Wear a “I’m a gay ally” pin.  Help someone stuck by the side of the road.  Sit with someone who is mourning. Ignore that bully.  Walk away from the conversation where folks are making fun of people of color, or queer people.  Be the people that bring people to church because they want to be like you. 

Show God, in all God’s glory, to the world around us.

Amen.

©2026, Virginia H. Child

---

^[1] New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition (Friendship Press, 2021), Jn 1:18.

^[2] https://www.wmur.com/article/ice-shooting-nh-episcopal-bishop-speech-011226/69980984

January 11, 2026  First Congregational Church of Brimfield MA

Acts 10:34-43 Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Matthew 3:13-17 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you,  and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. 

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.

About 25 or so years ago, I was called to serve South Congregational UCC, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I could tell you a lot of stories about South Church, but this morning I want to talk about what it was like to move to Grand Rapids.

The first thing you should know is that Grand Rapids, Michigan, is one of the cleanest cities you might ever live in.  Western Michigan’s European settlers largely came from the Netherlands, and the whole area reflects the values of industry and tidiness from that land.  

Grand Rapids was also one of the most diverse places I’ve ever lived – lots and lots of people who’d emigrated from South and Central America, lots and lots of Black folks who’d moved north to Detroit and then west to our part of the state, lots and lots of Native Americans – or at least more, many more, than I was accustomed to knowing here in southern New England.

And the UCC was not the “First Church” culture… tho we did have “First Churches”; Congregationalists had helped settle Grand Rapids.  But the most influential, most prominent churches in Grand Rapids were Christian Reformed – Dutch churches.  Unlike in New England, we were not the church that made the town happen.  Religious diversity meant, among other things, that we had at least separate school systems – public schools, Roman Catholic schools, Lutheran schools, Christian Reformed schools, and other conservative Protestant schools.

I was lost at first.  All those differences were great, but they were also confusing.  Never mind the theological differences – the food in the grocery stores was different.  What people wore was different. The jokes they told were different.  They had beaches like we do, but the water was fresh, from Lake Michigan – it looked like the ocean, but it didn’t smell right or taste right.

And then there were the theological issues.  And the different ways the churches were organized.  Assumptions I had about how things worked were tested, and I will tell you I came out of the experience with a new and deeper understanding of church leadership and ministry.

My first few months, tho, were a time of wandering, a time when I had to re-think who I was and what I was doing there.  

One of the things I learned there was, if you don’t really know who you are and why you’re there, you’re going to find things really difficult.  

Today’s lessons are all about learning who you are, and living out of that knowledge.  The lessons are all about baptism, what it means for us, what it does to us, and how it helps us grow into what God has intended us to be.

When people all around us are calling us to go here, or do that, it’s the fact of our baptism that guides us to making good choices.

We understand that the story of Jesus’ baptism in Matthew marks the beginning of his public ministry, and so it’s important to remember that the way Matthew tells the story, it’s at that time that God claims Jesus as his son.  The thing is, that’s also what happens when we’re baptized.  Whether we were tiny babies or full adults, whether we were dipped into water and got totally immersed, or it was a small amount of water poured or sprinkled… no matter the method, baptism is the time when God declares that we are each of us God’s beloved child.

So the next thing is to be clear about what it means to be God’s beloved child.  It’s clear, the job description for our life as God’s beloved children, is right there in the Scripture – “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil”  We do what Jesus did.  We go around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.

What might that look like?  Really, you know that already.  

Doing good isn’t complicated; it’s just hard – and well, yes, it can be complicated.  Years ago, I was serving a church that developed a real problem while doing good.  We lived in one of the towns where Massachusetts used to send homeless people to live in our motels. Our churches banded together to help those homeless folks and most of the time that worked about as well as you’d expect.  But once, one of the homeless people came to church, accompanied by a cute kid.  Folks in the church were generous.  They gave her food, clothes, toys for the kid, ride, tried to arrange an apartment for her….   That might seem great, but none of us really understood the dynamics of social work, or the needs and desires of the homeless.  It nearly broke our hearts when we discovered she was selling the stuff we gave her, and selling drugs as well and that almost every good thing we’d tried to do ended up failing.    We do good, but we need to be sure we’re doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

Gathering special gifts for the family turned out to be hard because we didn’t do the real work of studying and learning everything we could before we jumped in with both feet.

In the midst of all the complications, it’s important to remember that we have resources to help us figure out what is out of whack, what needs to be done, what we can bring to the problem, and teach us how to use our resources in the most effective, faithful way.  

It’s important to remember than we, having been baptized, are not left without help.  

Baptism tells us who we are and what we’re called to do.  

It tells us that our work, our calling, is to use our hearts and our minds and all our energies to counter the many and various ways that evil and oppression show up in our world.  

For you and I, we have been baptized, and commissioned in order to love all God’s loved children —  in all this crazy world.

Amen.

January 4, 2026 Epiphany Sunday, First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Isaiah 60:1-6 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. ² For darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. ³ Nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn. ⁴ Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together; they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried in their nurses’ arms. ⁵ Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you; the wealth of the nations shall come to you. ⁶ A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.

Matthew 2:1-12 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the east came to Jerusalem, ² asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east and have come to pay him homage.” ³ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, ⁴ and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet: 

⁶ ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, 
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, 
for from you shall come a ruler 
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ” 

⁷ Then Herod secretly called for the magi and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸ Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” ⁹ When they had heard the king, they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹ On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

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.

Mind the Light.

Not just any lightbulb, but that Light about which our Scripture speaks this morning.  

It’s Epiphany time – even though the official Epiphany Day is the 6^th, we’re celebrating it today – that’s why we read the story of the arrival of the Wise Men this morning.  The Wise Men followed a Star to the baby’s side; and it’s that Light we’re going to explore this morning.

Mind the Light.

Matthew’s story tells us that three scholars came out of the East – that is, from Iran (Persia, in those days), and maybe even from India – to tell the story of what they had learned.  In the story, because this is how they understood scholars, the three men are described as magi, or astrologers, people who today we’d discount considerably, and probably not listen to… but back then, they were enormously important people, who the story said had travelled far distances to honor the newborn king.  

For us, today, the important thing to note is that all this begins with Light.  They say, “we saw a bright star” and so they decided to follow the star… Because they paid attention to this light, they came to Bethlehem and met Jesus.

The reading from Isaiah also points us toward the Light.  It tells us that the glory of the Lord is a Light that will lift darkness from our world.  And it reinforces the lesson from the Magi – when it says “lift up your eyes and look around”.  The Magi looked around and set out on their journey, and Isaiah calls on all God’s followers to do the same.

Sounds simple, right?  But we don’t find it easy to do.  King Herod heard of the light, and instead of instantly following, he sought to blot out that light.  And as the story says, the Magi listened not just to Herod’s words, saw not  just the shadow of his soul, and went home by another way.  They were not going to follow the unseeing eye of the closed mind.

Mind the Light.

Light isn’t always the brightness of the sun or the glow of a lamp.  Sometimes, it’s the warmth of a heart.  It’s God’s Light we’re looking for and when we pay attention to that Light, we find illuminating moments. 

Minding the Light is about paying attention, in love, to the world around us, to our communities, our church, our families, and seeing there not only what is, but what can be, as we do our best to follow that Light.

Sometimes minding the Light is easy… but sometimes it takes real intentionality, real effort to see what is there, what might be there.  

Quaker author Brent Bill tells the story of a favorite necktie he often wears at conferences on “paying attention”.  He asks people to tell him what they see on his tie… and it turns out that when you first look at it, what you see is a solid color tie with little dashes of color. Cute, maybe even Christmas-y, but nothing special.  Then he invites people to come up and check the tie out, close-up, because it’s part of his presentation.  

“Then people look up. Even from across the room, they try to see the tie and figure out what I mean. What they see is a maroon tie with bits of gold, brown, and blue on it. After the presentation, folks will come up to me. Some slyly try to make conversation while checking out the tie. Others just grab it, lift it close to their face, and begin scrutinizing it. “Ah, dogs,” they’ll say and smile. Yes, the tie is filled with all sorts of whimsical dogs.  

“That’s not all,” I reply. 

Many of them frown, sure they’ve paid close attention. They squinch their eyes and look some more. Then, usually a small chuckle: “Fire hydrant.” Yes, toward the bottom of the tie, in midst of all these doggies, is a tiny pink fire hydrant, placed there by the Savannah College of Art & Design alumna Robbi Behr. 

Behr, a textile artist and illustrator, has a full line of these quirky ties—full of cheese and one little happy mouse; toilets and one with the seat up; frogs with one catching a fly. They each require that observers pay attention. It’s not a paying attention to something that obviously needs paying attention to, such as when you see an M.C. Escher print. Rather, it’s that a necktie with dogs is sort of ordinary—so ordinary that we often don’t truly see it.”^[1]

Minding the Light is about paying attention, with love, to the Light around us, active and growing our world.

Here’s another thing for us to learn today:  there are a lot of false lights in our world. And even though we might not realize it, we can be led astray.  

In this coming year, for instance, our church will be making a lot of really important decisions.  And where we go with those decisions is going to depend on what kind of light we see, whether or not we’re looking with intentionality, and maybe even whether or not we’re tired or discouraged or upset.

Light looks different when you expect good things to happen.  It’s harder to see when the world is turning bad.  If you’re already discouraged about your life, a healthy light, one that leads into a strong future, can be so hard to handle that you turn away from it.

One of the reasons we congregationalists make important decisions as a group is that the group is less likely to be led astray by momentary discouragements than any single person,  But that doesn’t mean that a single person can’t have an effect on the group. 

Years ago, a church I was serving was choosing a new carpet for the fellowship hall.  We had narrowed things down to two choices – grey with red flecks or red with grey flecks – and agreed to make the decision after church one Sunday.  The time came, and most everyone wanted grey with red, but then one person, the president of the Women’s Fellowship, made a passionate plea for the red with grey.  No one had realized she cared that much for the color, but . . .   She changed everyone’s mind on the color that day.

And sometimes that one person is too influential.

By the following Sunday, we’d all learned that her husband had discovered her talking to her boyfriend on the church phone just before we made our decision.  That’s why she was so wound up.  We gathered after church, talked it over, and re-did the vote.  This time, the grey carpet won out.

We discovered that day that people who are upset about one thing can work out their feelings in other places… and that’s not always a good thing.  Their anger, their feelings, can lead them, and us, in wrong directions.

In the greater scheme of things, the color of the carpet wasn’t all that important – and it’s long-since been replaced by easy to clean tile – but the principle is still true.  Where we are psychologically can influence what we see, hear, and do.

This will be an important year for us, and what we will see, how we will follow God’s light, will be deeply influenced by our hopes and expectations.  We will need to be aware of all the pressures on us, pressures which might make us mis-read the Light.

I know that all of us are concerned about our future.  We’re smaller than we used to be.  Our money isn’t as abundant.  People do not come to church the way they did fifty, or even twenty, years ago.  The future, for us, is not signed, sealed and delivered the way our parents could assume.

All of that is true, But they are not all that we have before us.  For to pay attention only to those challenges and yet ignore every good sign we have, would be to let the gloom take over the light.  We would not be minding the Light.  

Yes, we face challenges.  Where is the light to be found in these circumstances?  What do we have to hold onto, what gives us hope, in these challenging days?  

We have love.  We have people who continue to care for one another, who care for our community outside our doors.  

We have people.  We have some of the best leaders here that it’s ever been my privilege to work with.  Your leaders know what they’re doing; they’ve paid attention to the world beyond our doors; they’re devoted to discerning our future, minding the Light still to come for us.

We have vision.  Together, we see a way forward.  

Our leaders have opened us up to service to our community in new ways, ways that better fit our strengths and abilities.  

Our church has begun to reach out to improve our offerings for children.  

We’re working to improve getting the word out about what we’re doing to the community around us.  

Later this month, we’re holding the first Parking Lot feedback session, and out of that, we expect to make plans for our Parking Lot management this summer.  

Our Search Committee has prepared, and now shared, a Profile of our church, a task which called forth extended looking for the Light in our world.  

We’re now expecting to see applications from interested candidates.  The Committee has built a strong relationship with the folks at the denomination to make sure that the candidates who apply are qualified, prepared, and ready to work with us.  

Yes, in the year to come, we will face challenges.  I invite you all, us, together, to seek God’s Light together.  And together we aim to Mind the Light which guides this church, bringing us every closer to God.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

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^[1] Excerpt From Mind The Light-Kindle-Final (1) J. Brent Bill  This material may be protected by copyright.

December 28, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

John 1:1-18 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.  ⁶ There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹ The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.^{,* 10} He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. ¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) ¹⁶ From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.^,* 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

¹May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

On Christmas Eve, a service  of Lessons and Carols, like the one we had this year, always ends with the reading of this Gospel lesson from John.  I decided to return to it for today’s service, because – over and above its beauty, it really can be hard to understand… and what it has to say about Jesus is too important to be buried under gorgeous prose.

So, let’s turn to this lesson.  The first thing to remember whenever you hear this, or read it, is that the word WORD always means Jesus here.  So it says “in the beginning was the Word” what it means is that Jesus has existed since the beginning of time.  It’s a kinda hidden way of referring to the idea that Jesus is not only a man born physically in Bethlehem, but also God, and so has always existed.  The belief that Jesus is both God and man is both terribly confusing and our way of explaining how important Jesus is.  

The scripture goes on to say that Jesus was there at the making of everything.  It doesn’t want us to look at this as if we’re talking about making pots out of clay, like they do over at Sturbridge Village, but more so that we would understand that the basic essence of Jesus’ message and the creative power of God has been a part of our world since before the first fish crawled out of the primeval waters and figured out how to walk.  There has never been a time when God the Father and Jesus (God the Son) have not been a part of our world.

It’s important to remember, hold on to, notice, the words that John uses to describe what Jesus does, what the Word does… for John says that Jesus has created life, and light, grace, and truth.  Think about this for a minute… what’s not there?  John doesn’t say that God created rules or shame or hatred; God thru Jesus didn’t create demands or anger.  He created life.  Light.  Grace.  Truth.

Moreover, John says those things have been created for all of us.   From his fulness (that is, from his generosity), we have all received grace upon grace.  

In verse 6, John the author starts talking about another John (actually, it’s John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin).  Our author wants us to see that the highly respected John the Baptist came to point us toward Jesus… that it’s Jesus who is God, who brings what’s real … light that never fails, love that never ends. He doesn’t want us to get confused about which of the two is the leader.  The folks who spend their lives studying this gospel tell us that this is the tag end of a disagreement – that some of the followers of John the Baptist continued to insist that he was the “one”, not Jesus.  That said, here it mostly helps us focus on that Truth that Jesus brings, by pointing out that others recognized that Truth as well.

Around verse 10, there are some clues that tell us when this was written… because it starts saying that some people didn’t accept Jesus.  Because it says things like “his own didn’t receive him”, we know it’s far enough along in the separation from being entirely Jewish that hostility has grown between Jews who follow Jesus, and Jews who don’t follow Jesus.  It sounds like the Jews who follow Jesus have begun to give up converting their families and friends with whom they disagree and have proceeded to the anger stage.  The scholars tell us that John was written maybe sixty to seventy-fire years after the Resurrection – which means that pretty much anyone who had known Jesus in the flesh had now died, and many of their children have died.  It also means that the church is now becoming primarily focused on, and located in, places where there are more non-Jews than Jews.  More and more, those people, Gentiles, will be the leaders of the church.  They don’t have the old family connections, and the separation between followers of Jesus, Jews and Gentiles – and the followers of the Torah, is beginning to harden. Disappointment changes to anger, anger hardens into hatred.  We still struggle today to remember the many connections, the many similarities between us and our Jewish cousins.

Verse 14 is the beginning of the end, the line that summarizes everything John wants us to know:  God has become a man and lived among us.  If God, Jesus was a man, then – like us – he knew pain and sorrow, hunger and fear.  He knew how hard it was to do the right thing; he knew how easy it is to disappoint folks.  He knew what it is to know you’re going to die; he knew what it was to actually die.  He knew temptation.  When we say God knows our pain, we’re not thinking that God has watched us hurt; we’re thinking that God has hurt right along with us. 

John ends by making it clear that the rules of Moses didn’t do the job, because we are incapable of living all those laws, even the most important ones, all the time in every circumstance.  And so Jesus came to show us what God looks like, what living in a Godly way was is like – and to give us the absolute assurance that we are always loved, always accepted, always welcomed in God’s love.

You know, usually we say that the stories of Jesus being born in a stable are the “real” stories, and John’s way of telling it is a metaphor… but really it’s the other way round.  The stable stories are attempts to show us what acceptance of everyone looks like, while John is all about just stating that we are accepted.  

No matter which way you prefer the story – or you like a little bit of each – the important thing to remember is that this is God’s absolute promise to us – we are loved and accepted, in the midst of our struggles.  Keep that in your heart, today and always, and you will always carry a little bit of Christmas wherever you go.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

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