Month: April 2025

Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

John 20:1-18 — Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ² So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 

³ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.  ⁴ The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 

⁵ He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷ and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸ Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, ⁹ for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰ Then the disciples returned to their homes. 

¹¹ But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, ¹² and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 

¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.  But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”  ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

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.

On that first Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb where Jesus’ body had been hastily laid.  We think she came to complete preparing the body for final burial, the preparations which had been cut short by the beginning of the Sabbath on Friday at sunset.  And we’re pretty sure she was hesitant, dreading the work, but knowing it had to be done.

In John’s telling of the story, Mary comes alone, bringing the focus more sharply on her than in the other versions.  Here the story wants us to see her dragging feet, know her fear, and yet see her determination and courage.

We picture a cave for a tomb, with a stone shaped like a millstone rolled in front of the opening, closed to all who might enter, might steal the body, might cause trouble.  But on this morning, when Mary gets to the tomb the stone has been rolled away and – when she looks in – the body is gone.

Her first, and most logical, reaction is to assume the body’s been stolen, probably by the authorities, to keep them from making the tomb a shrine.  That would mean that the authorities are taking Jesus’ followers  very seriously, so she runs to find Peter and the other disciple.  And in fear and trepidation, they too come and see the empty tomb.

The whole idea of a resurrected Jesus, physically alive, able to eat and drink, not just a projection of the disciples, was easier to comprehend back before rationality took over the world.  Now we hear that story through our own experiences with death and what we’ve learned about the physical processes of dying.  We hear the story that the resurrected Christ was called physically into heaven, and hear it through what we know about the ionosphere, and the unlikeliness that there’s a physical heaven floating above us somewhere.

And we let all that blind us to what the recounting of the Resurrection is really about.  Because, you know, it’s not a patient history.  It’s not a news story.  It’s not science.

Resurrection is defiance.  It is courage.  It is hope.  It is love.   It is new life and change.  It is the power and love of God.

In my childhood, I attended Quaker meeting.  Our kind of Quakers – Hicksite Friends – were not particularly wedded to Christian holidays.  While we personally celebrated Christmas and Easter, neither had much part on our Sunday worship.  Easter alone was remarkable because on that one day, one of the more committed Friends always shared a Children’s Story.  It was all the more remarkable because she told the same story every year.

Every year, she would pull out a potted daffodil plant and carefully explain to us all that this was a metaphor for Easter… that just as the dead-appearing bulb would bring forth a new and glorious bloom in the Spring, so had the dead Jesus come forth as the new and glorious Christ.

It’s a beautiful way of telling the story, tho it’s really quite inadequate.  Resurrection is something different from daffodils rising from their bulbs.  Daffys are always alive, dead people are dead.  Sooner or later, if we’re going to talk about the Resurrection, we’ve got to talk about God.

The poet Mary Oliver wrote:

I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that. And anyway,
     what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or
twice I have seen. I’ll just
     tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
     ever, possibly, see one.
+ Mary Oliver

Resurrection is not so much about believing that a dead Jesus has come back to life.  The story of the dead Jesus coming back to life, and the way that story changed people – that’s the Resurrection we are given.  Because God is all about turning our lives around.  And this Resurrection story turned the power of the world upside down.

The disciples thought they were part of a plan to take over their country, to drive out the oligarchs, the people who made themselves wealthy by taking away the power of the people, so that they could take over and run things the way they thought they ought to be done.  

Resurrection opened their eyes to see that they were not working for themselves but that, through them, God was working to save the whole world.  It wasn’t about what they wanted, but what God had taught them.

Resurrection changes our spirits.  Resurrection bring us to a new kind of power.

You could say resurrection is something like the conversion of our world from the cold, rainy, raw, and depressingly grey days we’ve been experiencing – to the brightness of forsythia, the joy of daffys, the scent of hyacinths and new spring earth, even the spring of the rabbits in our yards…. 

We were people who plodded along in a world where every important thing depended on the whim of a tyrant, whether it was the Emperor in Rome or some more home-grown authority, wanted today.  

Emperors, you know, were something of a mixed bag, some competent, some not so much, most not quite as honest as you’d prefer, some of them right out there when it came to outrageous, impulsive and corrupt behavior… and all of them surrounded by a court which was obsessed with getting and keeping power, no matter what it meant for the Empire.  

It was a world where nothing was stable, where the rules could change on a dime.  Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, ran the country with the goal of having nothing, not one thing, for which he could be criticized, get sent off to Rome.  And he was in constant conflict with the current Herod, who always wanted more and better – and who was always making deals to preserve and grow his own power.   The poor temple authorities, the people Rome tasked with keeping the common folks pacified, were caught in the middle – no matter which way they chose – to give into the powerful or to stand up for their people, they had made the wrong choice.

That was there world, but then came Resurrection.  And with resurrection, the followers of Jesus realized that their loyalty was not to the constant chaos of Judea and Rome, but to the eternal and constant love of God.

The followers of Jesus were raised from a rabble that wanted to re-conquer their own country, to an community that wanted to call everyone to a love-based, justice-oriented way of life, wanted us to live in God’s light.  And that changed everything.

It still changes everything today.  Instead of some belief that is only about whether or not our souls go to heaven after we die, we are held up by a belief that our souls, our being is given value and worth by the way we live right now. 

We are called to be the balance point of relationships in our world.  There are others called to this work; it’s not ours alone, but today and right now, it is the work to which we are called – to be the people who practice love… to be the people who live generosity… who step away from anger and hatred… who welcome the stranger… the people who believe there has to be a better way and who are willing and ready to work towards that end.

This is especially important this year.  As Dean Sarah Drummond, of Andover Newton Seminary, says:  “Everyone, everywhere, is bent out of shape.  We’re all easy targets for getting turned against each other, which is the oldest trick in the Devil’s book.”  It’s no easy thing to be the people who are called to create peace, but that’s us, and there’s no denying the need is great.  

We may never see a sign of success, but we will be successful, because we will live with love for our world.

We may get tired, worn down.  We may be filled with fear for our world, for ourselves, but we will continue, because we will live filled with the powerful love of a resurrected God.

And when it gets too hard, when we get too tired to continue, we will take a moment to remember, that God knows us, love us, knows our strength, knows we will rejoin the struggle as we are able.  We will not fail, for we are not alone.

Let us serve God as Resurrection People, today and always.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

April 5, 2025, First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

When I’d finished going over the slides, a man sitting toward the back of the church said, “Show me those slides again, Reverend.”  I clicked back through them quickly, naming the interlocking issues as they piled up on top of communities like the one where we were sitting (Harlan County WVa).“Well, I’ll be damned,” the man said after I’d finished going through the slides again.  “They’ve been playing us against one another.”   White Poverty, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, page 120

Luke 12:13-21 Cotton Patch Gospel: Somebody in the crowd said to [Jesus], “Preacher, speak to my brother about dividing the inheritance with me.”

Jesus said to him, “Say, fellow, who appointed me as a judge or arbitrator between you two?”

Then he said to them, “You all be careful and stay on your guard against all kinds of greediness. For a person’s life is not for the piling up of possessions.”

He then gave them a Comparison: “A certain rich fellow’s farm produced well. And he held a meeting with himself and he said, ‘What shall I do? I don’t have room enough to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my old barns and build some bigger ones in which I’ll store all my wheat and produce. And I will say to myself, ‘Self, you’ve got enough stuff stashed away to do you a long time. Recline, dine, wine, and shine!’ But God said to him, ‘You nitwit, at this very moment your goods are putting the screws on your soul. All these things you’ve grubbed for, to whom shall they really belong?’ That’s the way it is with a man who piles up stuff for himself without giving God a thought.”^[1]

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 past week I went to the dentist… not my favorite thing, but I’m fortunate; I have a very good dentist with an excellent office staff, and I have dental insurance.  While I was in the waiting room, a patient was talking with the insurance manager – I could hear a little of their conversation – “So, here are your options, sir… your insurance will pay for the extractions, but it doesn’t pay for dentures, and – let’s see – it’s $2750 for the upper denture and $2750 for the lower, so the total will be $5,500.  If you don’t have the cash for that, we offer two different credit plans… and off she went, in the kindest way possible, explaining the differences between plan A and plan B.

And from the stunned look on the man’s face, I could well imagine that he didn’t have almost $6000 sitting around in the bank.  And, if you’re poor, if $6000 is more than you can pay out, the cost of the credit was also going to be a burden.  So all the time the dentist was doing his thing, I was wondering how many time poverty robs people of their teeth… and how losing your teeth changes how you relate to society, what and how you eat.  I’m willing to bet that having no teeth, because you couldn’t afford dental care, makes it harder to get a job, maybe even to hold a job.  It seems to me that dentures, and good dental care, are things we just take for granted, but if we’re poor, they’re just not available.  And at some level, it’s all about the greed in today’s lesson.  Poor people don’t have money, but someone else does, and more than they’ll ever need.

The owner of that farm that Luke tells us about was a man who wanted to corner the market in his neighborhood, corner the market on grain.  He wanted to be the person everyone came to when their own supplies ran short.  He wanted to be rich, he wanted to be –umm- feared, he wanted to be able to take advantage of the poor so he could scoop up their land, he wanted to wreak vengeance on anyone who’d made fun of him in his early days.  In short, he was consumed by greed.

Years ago, Ron Sider, who was a professor at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in suburban Philadelphia, told a story about the rich fool he named Bigger Barnes, and here’s what he said about this guy:

The rich fool is the epitome of the covetous person.  He has a greedy compulsion to acquire more and more possessions, even though he does not need them.  And his phenomenal success at piling up more and more property and wealth leads to the blasphemous conclusion that material possessions can satisfy all his needs.  From the divine perspective, this attitude is sheer madness.  He is a raving fool.

In our own society today, we madly multiply sophisticated gadgets, bigger houses, fancier cars, and fashionable clothes—not because such things truly enrich our lives but because we are driven by an obsession for more and more.  Covetousness, a striving for more and more material possessions, has become a cardinal vice of modern civilization…  (p. 98)

And then Sider makes a qualification.  He says, ‘Possessions are dangerous.  But they are not innately evil.  Biblical revelation begins with creation.  And created things, God said, are good.  (Genesis 1)  p. 99  It is not because food, clothes, wealth and property are inherently evil that Christians today must lower their standard of living.  It is because others are starving.  Creation is good.  But the one who gave us this gorgeous token of affection has asked us to share it with our sisters and brothers. (p. 101)

Greed doesn’t have to be the result of one dominating personality; in New Brunswick, Canada, the Irving family runs what sounds like the whole province.  They’re the Irvings behind Irving Oil, so they have a refinery in Saint John, two paper mills, building supply stores, railways, gas stations…subsidized housing, four radio stations, transport trucks… they make steel and frozen French fries.  They even have their own security firm. Pollution is common.  And if you don’t get along with the Irving companies, it’s hard to find work.

One in every 10 people in NB works for Irving, yet it is the one of the poorest provinces in Canada.  

There was a huge profile of the company and its influence in a recent New York Times article; and I kept wondering where the edge is between being a responsible employer and being the company taking advantage of the people where they are… just what are the signs of corporate greed?  Just what is a reasonable and fair profit?  What does a company owe the community where it’s located?  These are the questions our Christian faith calls us to ask.

The guy with the stuffed-full barns is a reminder to all of us.  Jesus wants everyone to know that greed isn’t a challenge just for us, but also for the wealthiest people in the world.  Greed is a problem for everyone.  

Most of all, this season, because we’ve been spending Lent understanding how an entire economy can trap people in poverty leading to deep and dangerous divisions in our world… because of all that, this time, we want to be clear, that even for the wealthiest, there’s a difference between enough and too much.

It’s not about dollar amounts.  It’s about what we do with the money we have.  Our Christian faith tells us that the moral way to handle abundance is to share what you have, to use your excess to build up our society.  That means planning, thinking about what we want, what we need, how we can share.  It means encouraging companies to do the same, whether we’re the owners, the stockholders, or the neighbors.  

We are called by God to fight against the temptation of greed, of the understandable yearning to have more and more.  We are called to be advocates of generosity, teachers of the religious practice of sharing.  We are called to be love incarnate in our world.  

May it be so.  Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

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^[1] Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Gospel (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Pub., 2004), Lk 12:13–16.