Month: June 2024

June 30, 2024 First Congregational Church at Auburn UCC

2 Corinthians 8:7-15 Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.^,

⁸ I do not say this as a command, but I am, by mentioning the eagerness of others, testing the genuineness of your love. ⁹ For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. ¹⁰ And in this matter I am giving my opinion: it is beneficial for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something. ¹¹ Now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. ¹² For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. ¹³ For I do not mean that there should be relief for others and hardship for you, but it is a question of equality between ¹⁴ your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may also supply your need, in order that there may be equality. ¹⁵ As it is written, 

“The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

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 today’s lesson, from Second Corinthians, Paul calls all of us to faith lives of excellence.  He calls us, in God’s name, to do our best.  He says it’s not a command, but rather that it is good for us to do the best we’re able to do.

It not only pleases God, but it is good for us, to do good.

Now it’s one thing to hear, or read, or even know that this is God’s call for us – to be the people who do good – but it’s something else to respond to that call.

Today is a special Sunday, a day in which we are baptizing and taking in new members.  Now, there are many reasons for celebration, but one – today’s focus – is this:  baptism and membership are the most important parts of responding to God’s invitation to be people who do good.

We baptized Ryleigh, not because we believe she’s capable of knowing God’s call yet, but because we believe that God’s call comes to each of us even before we are capable of choosing between good and evil.  We believe that children who are baptized can grow up as people who do good.  We believe that their baptism shows that God loves them even before they have done anything to earn that love.

And we will receive our new members because they have found here a way to live into that way – to support their callings to bring good into our world.

Baptism, and membership in a local church, are two sides of the same thing – a publicly declared intention to follow the way of welcoming and inclusive love.

There’s some sense in which saying that is the really simple part of the process.  The easiest thing about being baptized, even if we were to practice full immersion baptism in icy cold lakes in winter, is the baptism itself.  The easiest thing about being a new member, even if you’re terribly shy, is standing up in front of the church and saying the words.

The hard part, the fun part, of being baptized, being a church member, is figuring out how to live it out.  Being baptized, being a member, means we get to think about what we do, and why we do it.  We get to figure out what kind of person God wants us to be, and discern how to get there.  

Once we join up, we don’t have to figure out all this stuff for ourselves.  We’ve adopted a way of living, joined a community where everyone has a voice, because God says everyone matters.  We’ve set our faces towards a practice of generosity, because God teaches that everyone should have homes, adequate clothes, enough food, and opportunities to make useful lives.  We’ve agreed to think things through, to see if what’s being proposed will make for a stronger community, will create a place of love and acceptance — because that’s what God is all about – accepting love.  

Baptism gives a foundation to our lives.  It’s said that the great reformer, Martin Luther, wrote the words “I AM BAPTIZED” on his desk in chalk, so that when he felt anxious or overwhelmed by his world, he could look at and remember God’s love, freely offered to him.  Love is what it’s all about.

It’s harder and harder to live in peace these days.  We look back at years gone by and think “we all got along so much better then,” but that memory is something of an illusion.  Back in those wonderful days we remember, we worked hard to keep from seeing how the assumptions of that world kept people in boxes.  Today we’ve opened the boxes, and we’re in a struggle to dissolve those dividing walls of ignorance and assumption.  A recent essay on baptism put it this way:

We practice our baptism by sharing in the reconciling mission of God, reaching across racial biases, cultural traditions, political parties, economic status, and gender identity. We cross boundaries by following Jesus in service. We transcend divisions by trusting in the transforming power of the Spirit, poured out upon all flesh. (Baptize:  David Gambrell, Follow Me – Baptize, Foundational Essay, 2021)

We set our hearts to live as honest people, kind people, thoughtful people, generous people, ethical people, because that’s the model we see in the Bible.

Yes, we know that’s hard to do.  It means giving up our old assumptions, it may mean reaching out to people we learned to shun in years gone by.  Changing ourselves is never easy.  Neither is changing our world.  Sometimes we hesitate to step out on this journey because we’re sure we will fail.  And isn’t it better to not try if doing it is over our heads?  

But here’s the good news.  God loves us, win or lose, succeed or fail.  God loves us absolutely, continually.  We cannot lose that most important center of our lives, and so trying – reaching out in love to our world – is the clearest and best response to God’s everlasting love.

So let us rejoice that today we are declaring that we want to belong to God, to follow God’s way and to be God’s people.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church in Auburn (UCC), June 9, 2024

2 Corinthians 4:13‒5:1 ¹³ But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and therefore we also speak, ¹⁴ because we know that the one who raised Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and will present us with you in his presence. ¹⁵ Indeed, everything is for your sake, so that grace, when it has extended to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. 

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.

There is an old story about a disciple and his teacher, a story [the apostle] Paul might have liked.  “Where shall I find God?” a disciple once asked. “Here,” the teacher said. “Then why can’t I see God?” “Because you do not look.” “But what should I look for?” the disciple continued. “Nothing. Just look,” the teacher said. 

“But at what?” “At anything your eyes alight upon,” the teacher said. “But must I look in a special kind of way?” “No, the ordinary way will do.” “But don’t I always look the ordinary way?” “No, you don’t,” the teacher said. “But why ever not?” the disciple pressed. “Because to look, you must be here. You’re mostly somewhere else,” the teacher said…^[1]

The prophet Jeremiah once said:  ²¹ Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear. ²² Do you not fear me? says the Lord; Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail; though they roar, they cannot pass over it. ²³ But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away. 

They are people who go to Sturbridge Village and see the pretty houses, the lovely green, and look at the Freeman Farm and admire the proportions of the Salem Towne House, but they do not see the reality of the lives portrayed there.  They don’t see the hard work required to grow crops, or prepare food, or make cloth.  They don’t see the satisfaction of a day’s work done, or the sorrow of a child’s life cut short by diphtheria.  They look at the fields and watch the demonstrations but never have a moment’s wonder about the people.

I’ve spent the last week doing my yearly continuing education, taking a 5 day course in the Gospel of John, led by Professor Harold Attridge of the Yale Divinity School.  I tell you his name because I’m so impressed by him, and kinda in awe of the idea that I can study with one of the most important, most highly respected scholars of the Bible into English in the entire world.  It was a hard week, but a good one, and I hope to do it again.

All throughout the week, he kept emphasizing something that led me to this sermon, something I want to share with you, and it’s this:

There’s more to life than what we see on the surface.  When John the Baptist calls people to repentance, he’s really calling them to dedicate themselves to paying attention.  When Jesus steps up, in John’s Gospel, he’s taking that call and doubling down on it.

We are called to pay attention.  We are called to notice what’s deeply going on.  And the biggest reason we don’t, is that it’s really hard to see all the pain and stress in the world.

We don’t want to see it because it’s hard to imagine we can do anything about it.  We do not see, or turn our eyes and ears away from things, because it’s so frustrating to feel useless.  So, sure there are poor people. What can we do? And, yes, Black people are not treated fairly, but we have no power.  And it’s so hard to believe that they put that (oh, let’s say a) dump for worthless tires over there because no one who lives there has the power to complain, and the land was cheap.

Or, maybe we don’t want to recognize the fissures which divide us as a people, or acknowledge that our side has problems…. because it feels like giving up.  

You know, better than I, probably, how meanly people can think.  And we all know how hard it is to talk about things right now, for fear of a terrible argument.

Here’s the thing, though.  It’s right at those points where the greatest pain is, the greatest anger bubbles up, the hardest problems to acknowledge – it’s right there that God is.  And it is when we focus on God’s way, when we take up God’s humility, that we are able to see what really is there.

With God, when we focus, what we see is the humanity of the other.

Back when I lived down in Putnam, I was often visited by a Jehovah’s Witness missionary.  Well, I’ve been visited by them most everywhere I’ve lived, but this woman was different.  We grew to be friends because somehow we were able to recognize in each other common concerns about our world.  We had different answers to those problems, of course, but the more we talked, the more we also began to realize that even those answers were not so different.  They weren’t the same, either, but most of all they didn’t need to be barriers.

In today’s lesson, the apostle Paul writes that because he believes, he speaks… speaks up, speaks out, engages in conversation, talks with others.  And he believes, according to the Gospel of John, because, he now sees the world differently.  It’s no meaningless detail that Paul is blinded on the road to Damascus, and his vision is restored by faith in Jesus.  

Jesus says God is love.

Love is lived out when we take one another seriously, really see each other.

When we see one another, we care about one another.

And when we care about one another, we are driven to action,

It is when we mind, pay attention to, the light of God in our lives, in the lives of those we meet, that we truly are saved, saved to the work of redeeming the world in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child

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^[1] Mark Barger Elliott, “Homiletical Perspective on 2 Corinthians 4:13‒5:1,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, vol. 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 115.

First Congregational Church in Auburn UCC, June 2, 2024

2 Corinthians 4:5-12 (NRSV)

⁵ For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’s sake. ⁶ For it is the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. ⁸ We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, ⁹ persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, ¹⁰ always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. ¹¹ For we who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh. ¹² So death is at work in us but life 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.

It was years and years ago, back when I was a pastor in rural Maine.  My churches – there were three of them – were in one of the most beautiful parts of that beautiful state, and surrounded by kids’ camps.  Between the beauty of the area, and the numbers of young adults who’d learned to love our area, my summers were always busy with weddings – sometimes as many as three on a weekend.

The one I want to tell you about today was one of the best.  The weather was great.  The bride was beautiful, the groom, handsome, the attendants lovely.  Everyone was happy, the families were excited to see these two young people, who’d dated all through college, finally begin their lives together.  They had planned the service down to the last detail, wanting everything to be right.  The year before the wedding, they’d discovered that in the late afternoon, the setting sun’s rays made the interior of the church turn a lovely pink, just for a few moments.  And so they timed the wedding for that moment.  And it all went as they’d planned, the perfect wedding, bathed in perfect pink light.

About a year later, I got a phone call from the groom.  He and his wife had gone to live up in Millinocket, where he was working for one of the paper plants.  Their first child had been born, but now the baby was in the Maine Medical Center and they wanted, needed, me to come and pray for him, because it wasn’t clear he was going to make it.

I went, of course, and ended up baptizing the child there in the ICU.  As I visited with the parents, it became clear that they were very angry… yes, they were frightened for their son; it was clear that, if he survived, he was going to have some obstacles to overcome.  But there was more.

They were angry with God.  They told me, “we made a deal with God. We would do everything right for our wedding, and God would bless us. We didn’t even live together, like everyone else, because we believed that would protect our future family.  And now God has gone back on the bargain.  Our son – even if he makes it, they’re telling us he’ll have problems.  Why did this happen to us when we did the right thing?!”

Their son made it.  And yes, he ended up having to have rehabilitative therapy.  Not long after he got out of the hospital, the whole family moved to upstate New York, and I never heard from them again, except once, to let me know he was making progress.

But I’ve never forgot that little boy and his parents’ wrenching question.  Why did this happen to us?

Now, you might thing that this is an odd story for Confirmation Sunday.  It’s not really, because Confirmation is a time when you’re saying yes to life, and life is not just good stuff, sometimes it’s really bad.  You need to know that joining this church, saying “yes” to God is not going to automatically protect you from things going wrong.

What it’s going to do is give you the way to survive, to find joy in the midst of sorrow.  It’s going to give you help in making decisions that are complicated, it’s going to guide you on God’s path.

In our lesson for today, the Apostle Paul wrote:  we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted by not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed…”  Even in the midst of the worst that can happen, you will still have the presence of Jesus in your lives.  Even if you do not feel that presence, it will be there.  God never fails us.

Now, that’s not easy, and as I said, you may not always feel it.  That’s why we’re here, why we want you to continue building friendships in this church, or in the church where you go to college, or where you eventually live.  You need the rest of us, and we need you.  When it’s tough, we’re here for each other.  We become the spirit of Jesus for you when you’re in need, and you do the same for us.   

Local churches exist to be community, friends, maybe even family for one another.  There is no other group you can be a part of that welcomes everyone as they are.  If you walk into a place that says it’s a church but you do not find welcome there, go find a better church.  We’re not all perfect, we’re human, and we have to be honest, some churches are better at being church than others.

One last story for you to remember and hold onto when life gets challenging.  

Alexander Coffin was driving home one night, coming home from a tennis game. It was a terribly stormy night, very dark, and he missed a curve and went into the ocean in South Boston.  He was trapped and couldn’t get out of the car. 

Alex’s father was then the pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City, one of the biggest of the big churches.  People asked him how God could have done that, why God had killed Alex, just as he was about to graduate from college…. and this was his response:

The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is “It is the will of God.” Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.

. . . And of course I know, even when pain is deep, that God is good. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Yes, but at least, “My God, my God”; and the psalm only begins that way, it doesn’t end that way. As the grief that once seemed unbearable begins to turn now to bearable sorrow, the truths in the “right” biblical passages are beginning, once again, to take hold: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall strengthen thee”; “Weeping may endure for the night but joy cometh in the morning”; “Lord, by thy favor thou hast made my mountain to stand strong”; “For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling”; “In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world”; “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

And finally I know that when Alex beat me to the grave, the finish line was not Boston Harbor in the middle of the night. If a week ago last Monday, a lamp went out, it was because, for him at least, the Dawn had come.

So I shall — so let us all — seek consolation in that love which never dies, and find peace in the dazzling grace that always is.

So, on this beautiful day when you will pledge yourself to the Christian way and become members of this church, remember that we are here for you in good and in bad, that here you are loved and welcomed without measure, that here, and in every church that follows Christ’s way, you will always have a place to ask questions, a place to feel joy, a place to share sorrows, a place to know love.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child