Month: July 2025

Truth Forever On the Scaffold

July 6, 2025 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Ephesians 2:11-22 — So remember that once you were Gentiles by physical descent, who were called “uncircumcised” by Jews who are physically circumcised. 12 At that time you were without Christ. You were aliens rather than citizens of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of God’s promise. In this world you had no hope and no God. 13 But now, thanks to Christ Jesus, you who once were so far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 

14 Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us. 15 He canceled the detailed rules of the Law so that he could create one new person out of the two groups, making peace. 16 He reconciled them both as one body to God by the cross, which ended the hostility to God. 

17 When he came, he announced the good news of peace to you who were far away from God and to those who were near. 18 We both have access to the Father through Christ by the one Spirit. 19 So now you are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather, you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household. 20 As God’s household, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated to the Lord. 22 Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.

Luke 20:20-26 —  The legal experts and chief priests were watching Jesus closely and sent spies who pretended to be sincere. They wanted to trap him in his words so they could hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor. 21 They asked him, “Teacher, we know that you are correct in what you say and teach. You don’t show favoritism but teach God’s way as it really is. 22 Does the Law allow people to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 

23 Since Jesus recognized their deception, he said to them, 24 “Show me a coin. Whose image and inscription does it have on it?” 

“Caesar’s,” they replied. 

25 He said to them, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” 26 They couldn’t trap him in his words in front of the people. Astonished by his answer, they were speechless.

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 July 4, 1776, on one of those patented Philadelphia summer days (there’s just nothing like the combination of heat and humidity Philly has, perched between the Schuylkill and the Delaware Rivers) hot, stuffy, and world changing – on that day, the delegates of the Second Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of Independence.

It’s hard for us to really get how radical the delegates’ vision was, and still is.  Historian Heather Cox Richardson pointed out in her daily newsletter this week that “America was founded on the radical idea that all men were created equal”.  In their world, remember, everyone believed that God specially chose certain people to be kings, that God gave them certain inalienable (that is, unremovable) rights, that it was kings who could expect good things and everyone else existed to serve the king in a greater or lesser extent.

To this day, in England, when people join the Royal Navy, they swear an oath to the King, not to the country.  When we join the armed forces here in the US, you know, we swear to “support and defend the Constitution”.  We promise to obey the lawful orders of those appointed over us, but we do not swear to support and defend the President.  We have no kings here.

Our political ancestors were radicals, they were the woke leaders of their time, they began by issuing a powerful critique of the government they’d been taught that God had put over them.  Here’s some what they claimed:

  • The king has interfered with the duties of our governors and kept them from approving needed laws
  • The king has made is more and more difficult to participate in government
  • The king has tried to keep people from emigrating to the colonies, trying to keep them from becoming citizens.
  • The king has obstructed justice.
  • The king has made the judges dependent on his will alone.
  • The king has kept troops among us.
  • The king has destroyed trade with the world.
  • The king has deprived us of trial by jury.
  • The king has incited rebellion among us.

The full list is sobering, and so is the realization that what they’re claiming is that no king has the right to exert their will on the people without their consent.

Our ancestors believed, taught, lived and died for the principle that power rises up from the people, from the governed, to the leaders.  They taught, and we believe, that rulers only have the power we give them. 

From time to time we hear claims that the United States was founded to be an expressly Christian land.  That is so not true.  Those political ancestors of ours knew exactly what a Christian country would look like.  Most of them had come from lands that had an established Christian church of one variety or another – Episcopalian in England, Roman Catholic in France and Spain.  In England, for instance, you could not attend university if you were a Quaker

And most of the colonies had established churches  We had colonies where you could not be Roman Catholic, or not be Baptist, or Quaker, or whatever, but only whatever the establishment was… or you might be imprisoned, exiled, or pay double taxes.  Our ancestors knew that there was no place in our world for one right way of being church and so the Bill of Rights makes it clear that we will not have an established church; 

But that does not mean that there aren’t Christian principles that are foundational to who we are as a country.  It doesn’t mean that those principles aren’t important.  They are; they are like the mortar that holds the brick wall together.

So, think about these two principles; and how we are or are not living them out today – because the 4th of July is the best day to see where we are in living up to our principles.

First, we believe in that Christian idea that all people are equal.  You’ve heard the quote from Galatians 3:28:  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  That idea, that all people are essentially equal before God, woke people up to the idea that in the same way, all people are essentially equal in the eyes of our government.

And second, we believe in the Christian principle that our government is not yet perfect.  The Constitution of the United States calls us to a “more perfect union” – and as it was still being approved, delegates were already working on what became known as the Bill of Rights – changes or explanations of principles to make it better.  

The Fourth of July is a wonderful celebration of a great experiment – whether a nation could be founded and sustain itself on the principles that all people are essentially equal and that we can acknowledge the ways in which we fall short of our own expectations.

It’s the role of the church to continually remind us of what those expectations are, of how we live out that commitment to essential equality.

In Isaiah 10, as reported in the Common English Bible translation, the prophet Isaiah wrote:

10 Doom to those  who pronounce wicked decrees,  and keep writing harmful laws  2 to deprive the needy of their rights  and to rob the poor among my people of justice;  to make widows their loot;  to steal from orphans!  3 What will you do on the day of punishment when disaster comes from far away? 

To whom will you flee for help;  where will you stash your wealth? 4 How will you avoid crouching among the prisoners and falling among the slain? Even so, God’s anger hasn’t turned away; God’s hand is still extended.

As Christians, it is our duty to ask what’s going on when we see laws being passed that will harm people,  It’s our duty to bring our concerns to the attention of our representatives and senators. It’s our duty to stand with those who will be hungry, who will lose access to health care, to stand with the families of those who will die in the time to come, because laws have been passed which privilege those who have buckets of money over those who have nothing.

As Christians, it is our duty to ask what’s going on when we see people, brown-skinned people but not white-skinned people, being dragged off the streets by law enforcement people whose actions are intended to intimidate and terrify.  

As Christians, it is our duty to ask what’s going on when we see government officials joking that detained immigrants will be housed in tents in tropical Florida, in danger of their lives because the alligators are waiting to eat them.  Even if detention is necessary, there is no excuse for inhumane housing or heavy-handed, vile jokes.

In Revolutionary days, one of the roles of the church was to offer radical critique of the way the King was governing (or not governing) us.  Our church predecessors asked questions of the authorities:  where is justice in this action?  

In the Mexican War, we once again took on the role of questioner:  just why were we inciting a war with Mexico?  When it became clear that the expansion of slave territories was a primary reason for the war, we protested the immorality of that war.

And our essential belief in the equality of all humans drove us inevitably to understand that slavery is incompatible with Christian belief.  Most of us weren’t there at the founding of the US, but we got there, first struggling politically, then fighting a war…. And over the years, those of us with power grew to understand more and more clearly that when we teach that Jesus makes all people equal, he means all people, not just the ones who look like us.

Over and over and over, it has been the role of the Church to weigh the actions of our government against our understanding of the basic principles on which we stand.  It is our work to call our governments to our “better angels”, to live out those principles for which our political ancestors fought and died.

As we have begun, let us continue to be faithful Christians who love our country and call it to be its best self.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

What Would Keep Me from being Baptized?

June 29, 2025  Open and Affirming Sunday  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Gal 3:23-29 There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Acts 8:26-39 Common English Bible — An angel from the Lord spoke to Philip, “At noon, take the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert road.) 27 So he did. Meanwhile, an Ethiopian man was on his way home from Jerusalem, where he had come to worship. He was a eunuch and an official responsible for the entire treasury of Candace. (Candace is the title given to the Ethiopian queen.) 28 He was reading the prophet Isaiah while sitting in his carriage. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Approach this carriage and stay with it.” 

30 Running up to the carriage, Philip heard the man reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you really understand what you are reading?” 

31 The man replied, “Without someone to guide me, how could I?” Then he invited Philip to climb up and sit with him. 32 This was the passage of scripture he was reading:  Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent so he didn’t open his mouth. 33 In his humiliation justice was taken away from him. Who can tell the story of his descendants because his life was taken from the earth

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, about whom does the prophet say this? Is he talking about himself or someone else?” 35 Starting with that passage, Philip proclaimed the good news about Jesus to him. 36 As they went down the road, they came to some water. 

The eunuch said, “Look! Water! What would keep me from being baptized?” 38 He ordered that the carriage halt. Both Philip and the eunuch went down to the water, where Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Lord’s Spirit suddenly took Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again but went on his way rejoicing.

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.

The Apostle Philip headed down the road from Jerusalem to Gaza and on the way he met a man who wanted to know about God.  But the man was a foreigner, an alien, even though he was important in his home, he was not quite acceptable in Philip’s land.  It wasn’t so much that he was Black but that he was a eunuch, a man who had been castrated.  

In that time, in that world, it was not uncommon for the parents of younger sons of a family to have this done to their sons because it made them more employable, gave them a better future, and hopefully would make them more able to help their siblings.  But it was a great sin in the Jewish world view; an “incomplete” man was not able to worship God.  So this man, who belonged to a group which followed the Jewish religion, had found that he was not welcome in the Temple when he came to Jerusalem.

Philip joined him, helped him understand the scroll of Isaiah that he was reading, and then told him about Jesus.  The man was convinced, but he wasn’t sure his worship would be welcome, and so he asked “what would keep me from being baptized?”  In this new world, Philip said there was nothing to keep that from happening, and so the man was baptized.  One of the very first baptisms recorded in the New Testament is the baptism of a Black man who was ritually unacceptable.

He was welcomed by God, welcomed into the church.  If this early in the story conversion is important… then what does it mean to us?  

It makes us ask…

Who’s welcome in our church?

Who’s welcome at the baptismal font?

Who’s welcome at God’s table?

Everyone, that’s who.

That’s what it means to be an open and affirming church.  That’s who we are.  And it’s the special gift we bring to our world.  We welcome everyone.

Do we really mean everyone?  Yes – with one important exception.  The only people who are not welcome here are those who come to hurt us, or who do hurt members.  Physical, mental, spiritual safety matter.  But other than that, everyone is welcome.

Tall?  Short?  Fat? Thin?

Struggling to stay sober?  Holding on to your sanity with a clenched hand?

Can’t see?  Can’t hear?  Can’t make it up the stairs?

We’ve got your back.

And especially, we say, we welcome those who are not welcome elsewhere.  We welcome lesbians here.  We welcome gay men.  We welcome trans- people.  We welcome little boys who wear tutus and old women who wear overalls and plaid shirts.  We welcome every variety, every shade of difference along the spectrum – LGBTQIA+  There’s a great article on Wikipedia about what all those initials stand for – read it and rejoice in the amazing diversity of human beings God has created.

Why do we do this?  Because we believe God has told us to do so.

In the letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul states the Christian view on inclusivity and diversity just about as clearly as it can be said:  “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  

Now the first thing to understand about what Paul wrote is that he uses a way of writing that, by naming the two ends of a spectrum, included every variation possible in between.  

It’s as if he’s written “I love cookies, from Oreos to snickerdoodles”… we wouldn’t hear that as saying the only two kinds of cookies Paul liked were Oreos and snickerdoodles, but rather that he really liked all kinds of cookies.  

In the same way, when he says God welcomes Jews and Greeks, he’s also including Africans and Scots, Asians and every other variety of human reality we can think of.  And when he says “male and female”, he’s also including everything in between.  

This is really important because a lot of people try to say that there’s only two ways to be human.  Not just that there are only men and only women, but that those men and those women each have one right way to be:  either you’re a man or you’re a woman.  And if you’re a man, then you must want to love women, and if a woman, you must want to love a man.  And everyone must want to get married and have children.  Men must love suits and ties, women must love dresses and high heels. 

I spent last week in a camp on a height of land above one of the northern reaches of Casco Bay in Maine.  Every day I watched the boats go out and come in… small boats, large boats, boats with open sterns, boats with closed sterns, boats hauling a full-sized dory, boats hauling a skiff, lobster boats, fishing boats, pleasure boats, motor boats, sail boats.  I learned that the set ups of the lobster boats differs according to where they come from…every harbor has a slightly different way of setting things up.  

We’re not all that different from boats in this one way – just as there are many different kinds of boats, so are there many different ways to be human.  That’s how God made us, God loves as we are made, and so we, here in this church, have accepted the responsibility to be a place of love, acceptance, safety and sanity for people who don’t fit that old-fashioned, only two ways to be, understanding of human existence.

We’re an Open and Affirming Congregation.  It’s a daring position; it means we’re willing to run the risk of being taunted as a “gay church”.  And it’s particularly brave in today’s world, where it is less and less safe to be “different”, to be gay and out, or clearly, openly trans. 

Today many of the institutions we thought accepted the reality of many different ways of being are backing off their commitments, sometimes to save their business or school, sometimes because they’ve changed their mind, or because it looks like it’s bad for business.  Today, people who understood themselves to be trans- people, folks whose reality, sense of self differs from their physical appearance, those folks are being discriminated against, kicked out of the military despite their excellent service, only because their way of living differs from the gender on their birth certificate.  Today our witness that God loves everyone and we welcome everybody can literally save lives.

We don’t proclaim God’s love for everyone because it’s good for business, or in order to win a popularity contest.  We stand here witnessing to God’s radical inclusivity because God teaches us to love everyone.  

God loves everyone and so do we.

Amen.

©2025, Virginia H. Child