Day: January 11, 2026

January 11, 2026  First Congregational Church of Brimfield MA

Acts 10:34-43 Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Matthew 3:13-17 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you,  and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. 

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.

About 25 or so years ago, I was called to serve South Congregational UCC, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I could tell you a lot of stories about South Church, but this morning I want to talk about what it was like to move to Grand Rapids.

The first thing you should know is that Grand Rapids, Michigan, is one of the cleanest cities you might ever live in.  Western Michigan’s European settlers largely came from the Netherlands, and the whole area reflects the values of industry and tidiness from that land.  

Grand Rapids was also one of the most diverse places I’ve ever lived – lots and lots of people who’d emigrated from South and Central America, lots and lots of Black folks who’d moved north to Detroit and then west to our part of the state, lots and lots of Native Americans – or at least more, many more, than I was accustomed to knowing here in southern New England.

And the UCC was not the “First Church” culture… tho we did have “First Churches”; Congregationalists had helped settle Grand Rapids.  But the most influential, most prominent churches in Grand Rapids were Christian Reformed – Dutch churches.  Unlike in New England, we were not the church that made the town happen.  Religious diversity meant, among other things, that we had at least separate school systems – public schools, Roman Catholic schools, Lutheran schools, Christian Reformed schools, and other conservative Protestant schools.

I was lost at first.  All those differences were great, but they were also confusing.  Never mind the theological differences – the food in the grocery stores was different.  What people wore was different. The jokes they told were different.  They had beaches like we do, but the water was fresh, from Lake Michigan – it looked like the ocean, but it didn’t smell right or taste right.

And then there were the theological issues.  And the different ways the churches were organized.  Assumptions I had about how things worked were tested, and I will tell you I came out of the experience with a new and deeper understanding of church leadership and ministry.

My first few months, tho, were a time of wandering, a time when I had to re-think who I was and what I was doing there.  

One of the things I learned there was, if you don’t really know who you are and why you’re there, you’re going to find things really difficult.  

Today’s lessons are all about learning who you are, and living out of that knowledge.  The lessons are all about baptism, what it means for us, what it does to us, and how it helps us grow into what God has intended us to be.

When people all around us are calling us to go here, or do that, it’s the fact of our baptism that guides us to making good choices.

We understand that the story of Jesus’ baptism in Matthew marks the beginning of his public ministry, and so it’s important to remember that the way Matthew tells the story, it’s at that time that God claims Jesus as his son.  The thing is, that’s also what happens when we’re baptized.  Whether we were tiny babies or full adults, whether we were dipped into water and got totally immersed, or it was a small amount of water poured or sprinkled… no matter the method, baptism is the time when God declares that we are each of us God’s beloved child.

So the next thing is to be clear about what it means to be God’s beloved child.  It’s clear, the job description for our life as God’s beloved children, is right there in the Scripture – “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil”  We do what Jesus did.  We go around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.

What might that look like?  Really, you know that already.  

Doing good isn’t complicated; it’s just hard – and well, yes, it can be complicated.  Years ago, I was serving a church that developed a real problem while doing good.  We lived in one of the towns where Massachusetts used to send homeless people to live in our motels. Our churches banded together to help those homeless folks and most of the time that worked about as well as you’d expect.  But once, one of the homeless people came to church, accompanied by a cute kid.  Folks in the church were generous.  They gave her food, clothes, toys for the kid, ride, tried to arrange an apartment for her….   That might seem great, but none of us really understood the dynamics of social work, or the needs and desires of the homeless.  It nearly broke our hearts when we discovered she was selling the stuff we gave her, and selling drugs as well and that almost every good thing we’d tried to do ended up failing.    We do good, but we need to be sure we’re doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

Gathering special gifts for the family turned out to be hard because we didn’t do the real work of studying and learning everything we could before we jumped in with both feet.

In the midst of all the complications, it’s important to remember that we have resources to help us figure out what is out of whack, what needs to be done, what we can bring to the problem, and teach us how to use our resources in the most effective, faithful way.  

It’s important to remember than we, having been baptized, are not left without help.  

Baptism tells us who we are and what we’re called to do.  

It tells us that our work, our calling, is to use our hearts and our minds and all our energies to counter the many and various ways that evil and oppression show up in our world.  

For you and I, we have been baptized, and commissioned in order to love all God’s loved children —  in all this crazy world.

Amen.