Month: October 2024

First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield, MA    October 27, 2024, Proper 25

Jeremiah 31:7-9: For thus says the Lord: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say,  “Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.”  See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor together; a great company, they shall return here.  With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back; I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path where they shall not stumble, for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

Mark 10:46-52     [Jesus and the disciples] came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

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.

Hasn’t this been a beautiful fall here?  The weather has been gorgeous, and the fall color great.  It almost kinda sorta makes up for all the other stuff.  We’ve hinted about the stresses of this particular fall, what with the presidential election next week….. but add to that the things you know about in your world.  I’ve several friends who’ve had major league health issues this fall, for instance.  Maybe you’ve had a child who’s been struggling, or your family has been passing a cold from person to person for the last six weeks.  Maybe you have struggles at work, like the folks at Hasbro, the game company in Rhode Island, that announced layoffs this week.  Maybe… well, there’s no need to list them all.  It’s just needful to say that each of us, all of us, know what it’s like to have bad stuff on the table in the midst of everything else.  And we know how stressful it is.

God knows how stressful it is.  And the scriptures for today help us see the way in which our faith in God can help us, even in the worst of times, to keep our equilibrium.  

The first text, the one from Jeremiah is written for people who have seen the worst.  Their country had been conquered; the land was no longer a good, safe place to live.  Their leaders had been forced into exile.  They’d always thought they would always have a king who would be a literal descendant of King David.   Think of the situation as being a lot like life in Cambodia in the 1970s when Pol Pot would execute anyone who even wore glasses or was educated.  Except that instead of being executed, the educated leaders where exiled.

In the midst of all that horror, Jeremiah offers hope to his hearers.  The missing people, he says, will return.  The missing will come back.  The city will be re-built, the Temple restored.  

It will not be the same, but it will be good.

Jeremiah’s words are a promise that there will be good in the future.  Maybe it’ll look different than we expect, maybe parts of what’s to come won’t bring us pleasure, but even so, there will be good.

Look again at the Gospel lesson for today, the story of the Blind man who gets healed.  But this time, think about what being healed did for him, how it changed his life.  We usually think that being healed like that is a complete blessing, but what it really is, is a complete change.

His new life is going to be good, but in different ways.  The thing is, blind or seeing, God is with him.

Whatever’s going on in your lives, as you deal with the stress of this election, think about this – God is with us in good times and bad.  I don’t know that we can always absorb that.  Maybe the stress is so hard that you can only take in a couple of minutes of autumn beauty.  But it is always there, somewhere.  God’s presence is always there.

Institutions rise and fall, loved ones are with us, and then they are gone.  Robert Frost wrote in his poem, “nothing gold can stay” and it is the truth.  He knew, though, and we know, that something will come in its place, and that somewhere there will be glimpses of God to sustain us in the days to come.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA  October 20, 2024

John 18:33-39 (The Message) Pilate went back into the palace and called for Jesus. He said, “Are you the ‘King of the Jews’?” Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own, or did others tell you this about me?” Pilate said, “Do I look like a Jew? Your people and your high priests turned you over to me. What did you do?”

 “My kingdom,” said Jesus, “doesn’t consist of what you see around you. If it did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But I’m not that kind of king, not the world’s kind of king.” Then Pilate said, “So, are you a king or not?”

Jesus answered, “You tell me. Because I am King, I was born and entered the world so that I could witness to the truth. Everyone who cares for truth, who has any feeling for the truth, recognizes my voice.”

Pilate said, “What is truth?”

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

I’d had something else on my mind, but early last week, with the choices of the election before us, I began to hear another question emerging… along the lines of “who can you trust, these days?  Who is telling the truth?”

Maybe it was the politician who sent me a begging email, claiming to be short on funds, when other sources said he was rolling in money.  

Or, how about the Providence tv station, an NBC affiliate, who showed a report from “our man in Washington” – and it turned out to be a far-right-wing employee of the corporation that owns the station, not an NBC correspondent.  

It surely wasn’t the colleague who told me she’d call me for a lunch “next week”… but didn’t…. but one way or another, this past week I’ve been pushed to think some more about truth – what it is, and whether or not it’s a necessary part of the lives we build together, necessary to form community.

It reminds me of the first time I enjoyed a Thanksgiving Dinner at my seminary.  Just before the holiday, Andover Newton would put on a feast for all the students and faculty… turkey, stuffing, and all the trimmings.  There was even a steamed pudding and hard sauce.  And that was where I learned that butter was a necessary ingredient for hard sauce.  You cannot substitute lard, or Crisco…it has to be butter, or it’s just not edible.

Without truth, can we have community?  Or do we just have a hard white lump that actually ruins the meal?

What is truth, Pilate asks, and it is not an idle question.  Truth is that which agrees with the facts.  It is true, truth, that our leaves are turning color right now.  That’s a fact.  It’s a fact that Route 20 east of Sturbridge is difficult to drive because of construction. 

Sometimes we confuse fact and opinion.  I have two friends who, right now, are arguing about whether or not the best cheese comes from Oregon, where one friend lives, or Wisconsin, where the other one lives.  I could jump in and say, no its Vermont…but that’s just my opinion.  

But what’s going on these days is not really about confusing fact and opinion…. It’s about offering as fact that which is untrue, turning lies into truth… If a person tells you that there is no problem driving Route 20, or if they tell you that there are no slowdowns on the Mass Pike, and you believe them, those untruths can cause you problems.

What is truth?  It’s not just facts.  Truth is the foundation upon which we build our world.  In Matthew 7, Jesus tells the story of the two carpenters – one built his house on the rock, a solid foundation, trustable, reliable.  The other built on shifting sands… and when the storm came – think of those houses in places like the Outer Banks that are falling into the sea…  Truth is that rocky foundation, unmovable, dependable.  

Without a reliable basis of truth, it is enormously difficult to build community.  We can see this all around right now.  Sure, we all agree, I think, that twelve inches makes one foot, but on other, less-factually-based issues, we find ourselves divided by what we believe to be true or false.  We are divided by our understandings of the meaning of truth.  There is, in short a difference between truth, based on facts, and truthiness, based on nothing much at all

Wikipedia says that:

“Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to  evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.  Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.”

Let’s be clear; we cannot build a good world, a healthy world, on the shifting sands of untruth, or opinions.  We can say we don’t “believe” in climate change, but those houses keep falling into the ocean.  People keep losing their homes.  Hurricanes keep getting more and more powerful. Truthiness destroys lives, people. Communities, and even countries.  Lying cannot change the basic fabric of society.

I wonder if the struggle we’re in isn’t really a struggle between a vision of a community, a world, built on truth – and a world built on assumptions – between truth and truthiness.  It can be difficult to tell the difference sometimes, but we have been given some guidelines on that by Jesus.  

We believe that Jesus was the living embodiment of truth, that truth which is revealed in the active practice of love – love of our world, love of our communities, love of one another.  That is a love which leaps across the wall between peoples and has the capacity to bring together enemies and transform them into friends.  

The ultimate truth of our world is a truth which is built on love, which seeks to build up the community, to make life better for us all, not just good for the top layer.  When Jesus says “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” he is pointing towards a way of life which is built on truth and planned to bring people together, to create a community where all can thrive.

This, then is truth:  facts matter.  People are important.  God is about Love, not just some, but all of us, all the time.

Amen.

©2024, Virginia H. Child

October 13, 2024 First Congregational Church of Brimfield MA

Mark 10:17-31 — As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother.’ ” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. 

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” 

Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news^,*  who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.  But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

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, we get to hear one of the great stories of Jesus.  What a great cast of characters:  Jesus, of course, but that “rich young man”, the boy who has everything, and the disciples, who, as usual, are standing around the edges of the crowd with their mouths hanging open.

Their mouths are hanging open because Jesus has just told this really sharp guy that he has to give away everything he has to the poor if he wants to have treasure in heaven.  

And that was astounding because then – as now – the surest external sign that you are loved by God (or really lucky – too often, people assume it’s the same thing) is that you’ve got lots of money, a big car, great clothes, the latest iPhone, and a really really sleek kitchen. 

And Jesus blows that idea, that picture of success, right out of the water.

Jesus says that the surest sign of God’s love is not what we have, but what we do.  The thing God calls forth from us is not belief is any particular Christian doctrine, but that we love others, with our hearts, our souls, our strength, our minds – with, indeed, all our resources.

You’d think that loving our neighbors would be clear, even if doing it has its own set of challenges, but it’s not always that easy to see what loving our neighbors will mean, and for a reason we might not expect.

You can’t be generous with what you don’t know you have.  You can’t use your power if you don’t know you have power.  And you can’t help people if you can’t see their needs.

I’m willing to guess that the rich young man didn’t think he was rich.  He didn’t realize how much more he had than everyone else, if only because he didn’t know anyone who had less than he did.  And yes, he probably had servants, but he never really saw them as people, apart from their work, so it never occurred to him that they were part of the working poor.

Here’s an example:

Do you remember the movie “Hidden Figures”? . . . the story of three African-American women working at NASA and how they helped send men into space.  Well, that’s the front story, anyway, because there’s another story there. 

Do you remember how Katherine Johnson keeps having to disappear from her desk from time to time to visit the bathroom?  But instead of just going down the hall, and being gone for, say, 15 minutes, she’s forced to go half a mile to the only building at Langley that has a rest room set aside for “colored people”… and it sometimes takes her almost an hour, going and coming.  

All her boss sees is that she’s gone, and one day he gives her a hard time about it.  She loses her temper and tells him exactly why she’s gone for such a long time.  And this white man takes up his power to change the world, and knocks down the sign for the “colored women’s restroom”, making it possible for Johnson to use the women’s room right outside her workstation door.

I don’t think it ever occurred to the boss that he had the power to change Katherine Johnson’s life until he got mad enough to do it.  And even then, what made him mad was probably not the injustice of making her walk a half mile each way to the bathroom, but the time that was wasted by that rule.  None the less, he used his power to make a change, and in the making, changed the lives of every African American woman on the campus, permanently. 

Jesus called to the rich young man to use his power, in his case wealth, to make change for the poor in his area.  We are called to do the same, to use our power to make our world better.  But first, we have to realize that we have power, that we have convictions.  In order for that to happen, we are called to see and understand our world.

Think about it:  what do we see, really see, when we look around?

Years ago, I was the interim in Bethany CT, a teeny little town on the road from New Haven to Naugatuck.  Bethany’s not much different from Brimfield, I guess… except they had more horses than people, and maybe more college professors, because homes there had been inexpensive once upon a time and they were close enough to the many schools in New Haven for an easy commute.

The year I was there, we were celebrating an anniversary, and decided to do a BIG PROJECT.  We wanted something that would be spectacular, that would make a huge pile, that would really impress the Conference Minister when he came to preach – and decided to collect disposable diapers… 

Now, not all our folks were convinced – some worried about the environment and said we should be collecting cloth diapers instead of disposables.  

Some folks really didn’t believe there was that big a need.  And some, of course, thought that collecting diapers for New Haven instead of anything for Bethany was not quite right – take care of ourselves first, right?  And then there was the discovery that, wow, those diapers were expensive… Shouldn’t we concentrate on tuna?  

So we launched an educational event.  We discovered that local day cares insisted that each baby bring in at least 2-3 disposable diapers every day.  And we learned that without reliable child care it was really hard to get and keep a job, any job, even the most menial.

We discovered that poor people can’t, by and large, use cloth diapers.  Really poor people don’t have washers and dryers.  And most public laundromats won’t allow you to wash cloth diapers in their machines.

We got into it to do something that would make a splash because we wanted to show off.  We discovered that ready access to disposable diapers was essential for a mom to be able to work.  Our church was mostly college-educated and hardly any of us had been that poor.  Our diaper campaign opened our eyes to one of the barriers that keeps poor people poor – and to the privilege we enjoyed because we had ready access to washers and dryers, and the money to fix them when they broke.

What are we here in Brimfield seeing?  And what are we missing?  What power, what gifts are we not using because we don’t realize we have them?  Who is missing from the picture?

Can we see the reasons why people who are poor, stay poor?  Can we see how hunger makes it hard for kids to learn?  Can we recognize how hard it is for parents who don’t read easily to read stories to their children?  Can we imagine a world where it’s hard to come up with clean clothes, or even diapers?

Can we see that we have the power to make a difference?  Can we see how much we have been given?  We have money.  We have prestige, stability, a reasonably safe future, where others have no safe place to take a shower or wash their clothes, much less plan for their retirement.

We are called and commissioned by God to use our eyes to see, to use our hearts to love, to use our wealth, our power to change our world, to create with God a world where all are truly welcome.  It is the work God gave us when we pledged our lives to God’s church; it is our thanks for God’s never-ending love that surrounds the whole world wide.

Give your lives, your world, true value.  Go, see truly, love wisely, build God’s community always.  

Amen.