Day: May 18, 2025

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