Month: May 2025

May 25, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Luke 18:9-14  

⁹ He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

I John 4:16b-21 –

¹⁶ So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷ Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

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

Last week, Dean Sarah Drummond, of Andover Newton Seminary wrote this:

In his very fine graduation sermon this past weekend, Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School graduate Spencer Law. . . meditated on [the] words “Christ has broken down the wall”,  from a hymn by Mark A. Miller: 

Spencer argued that, even when we’re feeling like we can’t make a difference in our increasingly fractured world, there’s always another wall we can break down. We can detect where the words “they” and “them” prevail and focus our attention on breaking barriers that lead to “we” and “us.”

When I was about eight, we moved from living in town in South Jersey, to living on a farm in Pennsylvania, about halfway between Philly and Wilmington.

I quickly realized that I was living in a strange place…. For instance, my elementary school in Chadds Ford, wasn’t just on a bluff above the banks of the Brandywine Creek. (which was more like a small, slow-moving river)….  It was also a recovering battlefield from the Revolutionary War.  At recess time, kids would go down and play on the banks of the creek and come back up the bluff with bullets, old-fashioned round bullets, and sometimes other pieces of made metal.  Battlefields, for us, weren’t something we read about; they were where we lived and played.

My Quaker meeting, up the road a few miles, had been used as a hospital during the battle.  Instead of bullets, however, we had bodies.  Out behind the meeting house there was a mass grave, mixed American and British dead, buried together for eternity… and we had dark stains on our benches in the room where we worshipped.  The kids all thought those were blood stains.

The existence of war was a part of my childhood in a way that it isn’t up here in New England.  Sure, we have Patriot’s Day but unless you are part of that vanishingly small group of descendants of the men who fought at Lexington and Concord, it’s more of a play, a reproduction, a once-a-year event than living on the battlefield, with the daily reminders that produced.

I didn’t see the glamor of the uniforms, or hear the beat of the marching soldiers.  I saw the bullets and the blood and the deaths of both “us” and “them”.

When I was a Marine, I worked with a number of men who’d fought in the south Pacific, in places like Guadalcanal, or Iwo Jima or Okinawa and as a pastor I’ve met and known a number of men and women who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.  They, of course, were the survivors, and this weekend our world remembers those who gave their all.  But the folks I knew were the witnesses to the truth that war, even when fought for the very best purposes – freeing the slaves, breaking away from England, driving a stake into the heart of fascism – is massively destructive.  

War is not just destructive to the land – if you go to France, you can still trace the lines of the World War I trenches – over a hundred years and the land is not yet healed – war does not just kill the fighters, not just break the survivors, but it hurts, damages every thing it touches.  

General William T. Sherman wrote:  “all war is hell”, and he was not exaggerating.  

Jesus told the story of the two men who went to worship one day – one of them coming with a broken heart, ready to admit to his problems, and the other, so sure of his perfection.  When I read that story, along with the lesson from 1 John.. that those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also… it seems to me that I’m reading about how wars begin, and – hopefully – how they end.

Wars begin when we focus more on what divides than what unites, when we’re more about how much better “I” am, than how much better it is when it’s “we” that we envision.  And wars end, and end well, when we are able to replace our self-importance with the practice of inclusive, welcoming love. 

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said:  We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.  

Without love, we are no more than an unrelated pile of individual branches, none of them connected to another.  But with love, we become a strong tree, able to withstand the buffets and blows of life.  Living out our love is a constant struggle, because the natural tendency of human beings is towards greed and selfishness, for me first, and you only if there’s enough left over.

For centuries one of the major dividing lines in western Christianity has been the church – Protestants against Catholics, Catholics against Protestants…. And different kinds of Protestants against one another.  We lost focus on that call to love, and let the war mindset take over. 

Today, the United Church of Christ, our denominational family, has re-set our priorities and declares that all the church is one, that no part of the church is better or closer to God, than another.  We stand against the kind of dismissal that divides.

In the same way, we stand against the dismissals that divide in our public lives. 

You know, not all wars involve actually shooting people.  We’re engaged in a war right now, a war between those who believe that some people naturally deserve more and those who believe that everyone deserves a place at the table.  Some folks would say it’s a war between Republicans and Democrats, but I don’t think that’s true now, if it ever were.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats believe that some folks are better than others.  But there are people, people who maybe hide behind acceptable labels, who do think that we’d be better off with fewer people getting Medicaid, or food assistance, better off with lower taxes for the wealthy, and so on.  

That kind of attitude has always been a part of life.  The person who, down my way, tries to block access to the beach for their town, thinks they’re better, that they have more rights, and is a cousin to the one who thinks that because they have lots and lots of money that they matter more than anyone else.

You can see them now, coming to their church, sitting in “the best seat”, and expecting that the church is blessed by their presence, seeing no need to be the least bit humble.  And  you can see the folks next to them, the ones who’ve heard the story of love, who follow that path, welcoming everyone, treating all with love, refusing to go along to get along.

That’s who God is calling us to be, people who believe that everyone matters, people who know that hatred leads to destruction, people who let their love shine out.

Amen.

 © 2025, Virginia H. Child

May 18, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Isaiah 43:18-21 ¹⁸ Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. ¹⁹ I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. ²⁰ The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, ²¹ the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Acts 15:1-12 Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” ² And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. 

³ So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters. ⁴ When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. ⁵ But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.” 

⁶ The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. ⁷ After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. ⁸ And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us, ⁹ and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us.

¹⁰ Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? ¹¹ On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” 

¹² The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the gentiles.

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.

Some years ago, Barbara Brown Zikmund, one of the great voices of the United Church of Christ over the past fifty years, sketched out a list of things that make the UCC different.  These beliefs are not individually unique to us, but as a whole, describe a way of being church, being human that is “us”….  

Last week, I started sharing this list with you.  As I began to work on this week’s sermon, I realized that I had omitted any introduction or explanation, and consequently, you had little chance to hear the list as a whole or to understand how it can help us understand how God guide us in our living.

So, first, let me share the entire list with you.  You don’t need to take notes!  I still expect we’ll explore each of these characteristics on a Sunday.. I just want us to remember that each of them is part of a whole.  

Think about it this way:  many of us have a fixed menu we always have at Thanksgiving, right?  While most of us have turkey, and some of us have something like enchiladas, whatever is the “usual” can vary widely… though each of them makes up a Thanksgiving feast.  This list is our “Thanksgiving feast menu”.  Other ways of describing faith in Christ are good, too, but this one is ours.

What makes the UCC different?

A view that Jesus is the head of the church.
A vision that the church is called to be ONE.
An insistence that God is still speaking.
A belief that Statements of Faith are testimonies.
A sense of calling to seek a Just World for all.
A conviction that the basic unit is the local church.
A desire to cultivate autonomy and mutuality.
A commitment to honor covenantal relationships.
A belief that all members are called to ministry.
A trust that the Holy Spirit will guide the church.

Last week, we learned that we believe that Jesus Christ is the head of the church – that is, no human is in charge, all of us lead under the guidance of Jesus. We learned that because each of us is capable of hearing Jesus, all of us have a voice in the life of the church.  You’ll live that equality out in a few months when each one of you will have a vote in the calling of your new pastor.  While pretty much all Christian churches say that Jesus is the head of the church, only those with a congregational style of government, expect every member to have a vote in the work of the church.  In many other Christian systems of government, either a bishop, or a board of elders, or some other limited group, makes all decisions.  But we believe that because Jesus speaks to all, all have a voice, each is free to speak, and all must be heard.  That’s why the belief that Jesus is the head of the church is so important to us.

Picture the apostles in the story I read from Acts.  It’s early in the life of the church, and there are a lot of major issues that haven’t been settled yet.  Today’s story is one of them.  The immediate concern is circumcision, and behind that lies the question as to just how much of the Jewish law do Gentiles have to follow.  As time goes on, Christian leaders will begin to see that they are being led beyond being Jewish; our roots are in Judaism, but we are not Jews.  This is the beginning of that exploration, that discovery.  So, how does the process go?  People bring up the question.  They all discuss it, and then bring it to the major leaders in Jerusalem.  They looked closely at what this rule meant to the new believers who were joining them, and then they chose the more inclusive way.  From that point on, the church in Jerusalem would not require new believers to follow the law of Moses, to be Jews as well as Christ-followers. 

The words from Isaiah reassure us that this new thing, this new understanding that we receive will be good, that it will bring refreshment to those who suffer, water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.  When God speaks, good happens.

Today, therefore, I want us to look at our insistence that God is still speaking.  This is one of our distinctive beliefs.  It marks us particularly, in a way we don’t share with all Christians.  We believe that just because we thought we understood what God was saying yesterday, that doesn’t mean that we won’t hear more, hear more clearly, understand better, recognize new in the changing conditions of our world.  We will not be captured by yesterday’s understandings.

We expect that new occasions will call forth new understandings.  Most churches do respond to changing ways… although I know of a church back in my home town that still sings without instruments because someone decided in the 1600s that when Jesus Christ came, he ended any need for instruments….  

But we do not wait to be forced into allowing new understandings of our world; we look at, live in the world as it is today, and we expect that we will need to expand our understanding of the world.  The reality of this means that we are often on the leading edge of expanding understanding.

When the English ancestors of the Congregational Churches came here, they came intent on re-inventing how church worked.  They’d seen the misuses of power in the English church, the pastors who were appointed despite their inadequacies, the ways that different voices were silenced.  When they came here, they re-created how church worked.  They even re-designed church buildings to help us more clearly see God.  

Over the centuries, we’ve continued to re-think what church is, what following Jesus requires.  That’s meant that we were often the first group of churches to do new things:  

• We were the first denomination to ordain a woman to Christian ministry in 1853.  
• Our local churches were some of the earliest Christian congregations to make a stand against slavery.  
• In 1972, the Golden Gate Association of the California Norther Conference, ordained a gay man to ministry.  
• In 1976, we elected the first African-American leader of the denomination.  
• We endorsed gay marriage at a General Synod (national meeting) in 2005.  
• We created the first foreign mission society, here in Massachusetts, back in 1810.  
• Congregationalist started the American School for the Deaf in Hartford in 1817.

It goes on and on. It’s all about a built-in propensity when we meet new occasions,

• to see the people who are affected by what’s going on
• to wonder why this is the way it is
• to ask questions about what can be done, about how we can best follow God,
• and to move into new ways, even when they challenge us.

Think about the changes we’ve seen in the way that children relate to the church over the last 25 years… it used to be that we expected our children to attend Sunday school every week, and expected that within that area, they’d learn the stories of Jesus and would come to love and serve God when they became adults.  Just about every church had some version of a graded school, complete with teachers and curriculum, led by wonderful people who often gave up the gift of Sunday worship in devotion to our children.  

Then, in the late 1980s, the children stopped coming.  Every year, there were fewer and fewer children.  

Sure, some churches didn’t wonder; they just kept expecting that “next year will be different.” But other churches started asking what was going on.  We looked around and realized how much children were separated from our actual worship life.  We realized it had become possible, even likely, that our young people might attend Sunday school every week, and yet not attend church itself, ever.  We wondered if that was a good way to introduce them to worship and the life of faith.  We recognized that, with the abuse of children in some churches, parents were increasingly nervous about allowing their youngest to be out of their oversight.  

Out of the changes in our world, and our own concern for our children, we began to make changes.  More and more churches are doing what we are – establishing a place for our youngest children to be themselves, Our children’s corner is one of the best responses I’ve seen.  It brings children into church, allows them to take part in the service to the extent that works for them.  It protects them from unhealthy situations.  And our older children are invited to be a part of the worship itself, that they might grow into a faith that sustains them throughout their lives. 

All this started with our clear-eyed recognition of a change happening, our curiosity about what was really going on, and our courage in trying something new.  God is still speaking.

We went through the same process when it came to welcoming women to ordained leadership in the church, and when we began to explicitly welcome LGBT+ people to participation in the church and to ordination.  In each case, we began with a change in our understanding of what it meant to be a part of God’s community.  

Could we be whole, could we live into God’s vision, if some of us were – by the structure of our church – kept outside, prevented from full participation?  And you know, that same question is now driving us to recognize the way our structure, habits and assumptions have built invisible barriers for Black people, for poor people, for immigrants, for all those who are met with scorn by our society.   God is still speaking.

This is God’s gift to us, that we might fulfill our call.  We are gifted with a God who arouses in us curiosity, who calls forth our compassion, and who leads us to be people of compassion and love.

God is still speaking. 

Amen.

 ©2025, Virginia H. Child

May 11, 2025  First Congregational UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 113 — ⁵ Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, ⁶ who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? ⁷ He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, ⁸ to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. ⁹ He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.  Praise the Lord

Colossians 1:15-20 — ¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, ¹⁶ for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

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.

So, the big news this week is that there’s a new Pope in Rome, right?  And the big news about the new Pope is that he’s from Chicago?  He roots for the White Sox, poor man, loves deep dish pizza, plays Wordle with his brother. 

The new Pope is an Augustinian friar, unlike Pope Francis, who was a Jesuit.  Now, I’m not going to go through all the differences between Augustinians and Jesuits – all I want us to notice is that there’s clearly more than one right way to be a Roman Catholic priest.

And now an Augustinian bishop from Chicago by way of Peru is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. 

There’s a lot more that could be reported about the new Leo XIV, but I want to stop there.  Because, you seek, technically, what I just said is wrong.  He’s  not the head of the Roman Catholic Church.  His title is Vicar of Christ; he’s the assistant to Jesus, who is the real head of the Church.

That’s one of the places where we are actually in the same place as the Catholic Church.  Like them, we believe Jesus is the Head of the Church.  Now, we don’t believe that anyone is God’s assistant pastor and in charge of everyone else – that’s where we differ.

What I want to share with you today is why saying Jesus is the head of the church is important, and what it means for who we are and how we do ministry.  Unlike the Catholic church, where one man stands in for Jesus, we insist that we best hear what Jesus is saying to the church when we all participate, when we listen to one another, and then follow the group’s sense of direction.

Let’s start with this truth:  it is Jesus who is the head of the church.  It’s not me, it’s not the Moderator, the biggest giver, the longest tenured member, or anyone else who has power, strength, or passion.  It’s so very clear in the letter to the people who lived in the city of Colossae, where the author writes: “ [Jesus] is the head of the body, the church”… and goes on to say that, in that role, Jesus brings us all together, reconciling us to God, and making peace.

Jesus is the head of the church, so that we will be brought together as one community.  God doesn’t make any ordinary person the head, because that would set that person up as more important, and God believes that every person matters.  

And because every person matters in God’s eyes, we organize ourselves so that every person has a part, a vote, in our discussions and meetings.  And beyond that, we believe that every person in our community matters.  Every person. 

If you’ve ever wondered why it is that Congregationalists are always so involved in the lives of their communities, their world, in the politics of our time, it is that basic belief that every person matters.’’

One of the reasons the Puritans came to Massachusetts and Connecticut, back in the 1600s, was to build a church and community where they could bake in the idea of equality in the eyes of God.  They didn’t succeed, of course, but they laid the foundation for how our faith community has continued on.  

They didn’t succeed, because they were so used to someone being in charge.  It took generations for their thought and practice to conform to their beliefs.  True equality is challenging.  For instance, their clergy leaders naturally thought that because they had a university education, they knew more and better than others the right way to do things.  Gradually they learned that if they shared their learning, and when they encouraged all voices – even women – to speak out, that they had a clearer path to God’s will.

But even at the beginning, they believed that every person mattered.  Other Europeans thought the Natives were a joke, fit only to be servants or slaves.  Our Puritan ancestors likewise thought Natives were limited, but they also believed they could be redeemed, baptized, made equal.  Looking backwards now, it sounds terribly patronizing, by their own standards, it was a radically inclusive step in a new direction.  

Over the decades, our way of being church, of needing every voice at the table in order to hear God’s will clearly, has drawn us – over and over – into the issues of the day.  

We weren’t always there, but we kept going back to the Bible, to readings like Psalm 113 that we heard this morning, and we would debate with each other what that meant in our world.  How does God raise the poor from the dust, lift the needy from the ash heap?  How does God bring us all together?  And, more and more clearly, we came to see that…

If God wants everyone to have a place at the table, then everyone has to have a seat at the table.  The men in charge didn’t necessarily like it, but they learned that women have to be included.  Black people have to be included.  Poor people have to be included.  Gay people have to be included.  Trans people have to be included.  

Why do we work towards physical accessibility?  Because everyone has  a place at the table.  Why do we broadcast our worship services?  So that everyone can participate, even if they can’t leave their homes.  

One of the ways to see what’s happening in our world today is that we’re in the midst of a struggle between those who believe – for whatever reason – that some people are  better than others, and those who believe that all people matter.  We who organize our churches so that everyone has a voice come at the question of equality from that point of view.  

Now, ours is not the only way to be church, tho – so far as I know – all Christians believe that Jesus is the head of the church.  But after that agreement, there are many paths.  Each of them nurtures their own understanding of humanity.  For us, the way we organize reflects and teaches us that every person matters because it makes us listen for every voice.

The next time someone asks, why do you make such a big thing of – listening to every voice, welcoming every person, speaking out for the oppressed, standing up for trans people – remember this:  we believe that every person matters and it is our call to make that welcome real in our world.

Amen.

©2025, Virginia H. Child