Month: March 2026

March 25, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 130 ¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.  ² Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

³ If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? ⁴ But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. ⁵ I wait for the Lord; my soul waits, and in his word I hope; ⁶ my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. ⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. ⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

John 11:1-44 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. ³ So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴ But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, ⁶ after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 

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.

Today’s Gospel lesson is one of the best known stories in the New Testament…. One of Jesus’ closest friends falls ill.  His sisters, knowing Jesus and knowing what he can do, call on him to save Lazarus’ life.  But Jesus says it’s no big thing, that he’s not going to die, and delays until – much to everyone’s sorrow – Lazarus dies, and is buried.  Only then does Jesus show up.  Four days after the burial.  Martha, Lazarus’ sister, lays into Jesus – if you hadn’t delayed, if you’d come right away, Lazarus wouldn’t have died!!!!!

And you can hear her frustration.  After all, she knows who Jesus is, the son of God, the Savior, the one who will bring new life.  And she knows that Lazarus and Jesus are best of friends, even if Lazarus isn’t one of the twelve.  Lazarus and his family are important people, and Jesus doesn’t rush right alone to save his life.  Mary is so not happy.

And while Jesus then proceeds to bring a living Lazarus forth from his burial cave, and restores him to his family, whole and healthy, I can’t imagine that Mary doesn’t continue at least puzzled… “first he didn’t come promptly, then he put us all through the pain of death, and then… then… uses us as an object lesson to show his power over death!”

So, let’s look a little at Mary’s questions, because there’s a reason this story goes the way it does.

The first thing to know is that this isn’t a story about instant fixes.  It’s a story that reflects the way life happens.

We all know this, tho it’s the sort of thing we’d rather forget.  When bad things happen, we want them to be fixed right away, and we want things to go back to where they were before.  But that’s not what happened to Lazarus, is it?  He got sicker, and died.  We want easy answers and quick diagnoses, but sometimes illness just goes on and on and on.

A colleague of mine retired last week; she wrote that not only were she and her husband now a “retired family”, they were also a Parkinson’s family, since her husband’s recent diagnosis…. And this was for her a real change.. “I don’t know how to be a Parkinson’s family,” she said.  “In my family, everyone gets cancer; I know how to deal with that disease.”  I bet she’s not the only one who’s found themselves in a situation for which they hadn’t planned, and one they weren’t sure how to deal with.

But that’s not the whole of the story, is it?  Jesus did come; he wept at what had happened, he mourned his friend, even as he prepared to bring  him forth out of the grave.  

God does not move on our schedule, come at the instant demand of our hearts, but God does come, and brings relief.  Jesus brought renewed life to Lazarus:  he’s not going to bring that to any of us, but he will bring something.  

Because, you know, it’s part of life that each of us dies.  Dying is not a failure.  It is what happens when our bodies wear out, or when they have been so affected by an illness that we can no longer sustain life.  Of course, that’s easy to say in the abstract.  It’s harder, much harder, when we’re thinking about a loved one – a wife or husband, partner in life – or when we’re thinking about our own future. 

Here’s the thing:  understanding that death is part of the way our world works, gives us a way to see into the future, because it’s not all going to stop when each one of us shuffles off.  Life will continue.  Today’s story promises us that life, our world’s life, our community’s life, continues after our individual lives end.  

And there’s more – so often, we find ourselves in a place where we feel as though we didn’t get it all done – but it turns out our calling as human beings is to be the best we can be, to do the best we can do, and then turn it over to those who come next.  Life isn’t a dash, it’s a relay race. 

Earlier I said that God brings us “something” in the midst of the most difficult of times.  That something is really the most important power in the world – the power of love.  It is love that transcends death.  It is love that rebuilds after disaster.  It is love that brings out the best in our world.

After World War I, the Allies – us, the English, the French, the Italians – were really angry at the Germans and Austrians for starting the war, and decided that the best thing to do was to punish them by imposing reparations – think of them as fines to make up for what they’d done – except that unlike fines, the reparations required actions which destroyed the German economy, and – as it happens – laid the way for another war, one in which the Germans intended to punish the Allies, and to rebuild their country so that it would never fail.  Hatred and anger controlled what our leaders demanded; failure and humiliation, and even deeper hate and anger were the products.

After World War II, it played out differently.  Instead of vengeance, under the leadership of General George C. Marshall, we began a program of economic recovery to bring aid to Western Europe, to help rebuild their infrastructure, to create sound economies where all could prosper.  Instead of hate, we built community.  Instead of destruction, we sowed prosperous, thriving life and it turns out that when everyone prospers, no one wants to go to war.  The last 80 or so years, might well be the longest time since the Romans when there has been no land war in Western Europe.  Love endures; love transforms death into life.

It turns out the last word on death is not death – it is life.  It’s not just about you and me; we are part of a great cloud of witnesses.  When we work to build community, to tie people together in bonds of friendship, we are declaring that death will not win.  When we work to bring up our children to be good human beings, to know the love of Jesus and to share that love in all they do, we are declaring that death will not win.  

Each of us will die someday, but the lives we lived with love will continue to spread love throughout all God’s creation.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

March 15, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;^,* he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord  my whole life long.^,*

Luke 14:7-24  (The Message) [Jesus] went on to tell a story to the guests around the table. Noticing how each had tried to elbow into the place of honor, he said, “When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he’ll come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.’ Red-faced, you’ll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left.

“When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.” That triggered a response from one of the guests: “How fortunate the one who gets to eat dinner in God’s kingdom!” Jesus followed up. “Yes. For there was once a man who threw a great dinner party and invited many. When it was time for dinner, he sent out his servant to the invited guests, saying, ‘Come on in; the food’s on the table.’“Then they all began to beg off, one after another making excuses. The first said, ‘I bought a piece of property and need to look it over. Send my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I just bought five teams of oxen, and I really need to check them out. Send my regrets.’ And yet another said, ‘I just got married and need to get home to my wife.’

“The servant went back and told the master what had happened. He was outraged and told the servant, ‘Quickly, get out into the city streets and alleys. Collect all who look like they need a square meal, all the misfits and homeless and wretched you can lay your hands on, and bring them here.’ “The servant reported back, ‘Master, I did what you commanded—and there’s still room.’  The master said, ‘Then go to the country roads. Whoever you find, drag them in. I want my house full! Let me tell you, not one of those originally invited is going to get so much as a bite at my dinner party.’”

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.

It seemed as though everywhere I went this week, I heard another story about the power of welcome… and so I’m sharing a couple of those stories with you.   

The first comes from a woman who is a chaplain in the US Army.  She’s telling the story of a hospital visit she recently made:

A few months ago, I went to see a retired Army chaplain who had been admitted to our hospital because of a bad fall. His nurses told me that he was in and out of consciousness and it might not be worth a visit, because he wouldn’t even know I was there. Since he was a regular attendee of the small Presbyterian church where I was a substitute preacher, I decided to stop by anyway.

His eyes were closed as I stood over his bed. But as soon as I said his name, he looked directly into my eyes.

“I am so glad you are here,” he said. “We need to get ready for the service. I know everyone has a different opinion about what’s right, but the most important thing is that everyone knows how much he or she is welcome — by us and by God. After that, everything else will fall into place.”

And then he closed his eyes. I stood there dumbfounded. It felt like he had passed the torch to me, one old soldier at the end of his race to a younger one at the beginning of hers.

Just like he said: all are welcome. We can thank a very generous God for that. 

At what sounds like the end of his life, in his last words, the old chaplain makes sure the young one knows that, in God’s world, all are welcome.  We are all welcome.

Another story came from a notice that famed Bible teacher, Beth Moore, is ending her practice of large event teach-ins.  You’ve probably never heard of her, but in the Southern Baptist world, she was a major influence… until she publicly objected to the way Southern Baptist leaders were supporting Donald Trump.  The SBC threw her under the bus.  They stopped publishing her books, refused to sponsor her events, turned their backs on her.  She ended up leaving the denomination, and began publishing her books and sponsoring her events on her own.  Now 70, she’s stepping back from one part of that ministry.  That’s all background… here’s the part of the story that stopped me for a minute:

What happened to Moore was devastating.  Moore left the SBC in 2021 and cut ties with Lifeway,[the SBC publishing house] with her ministry taking over her events. She would later retell the story of her own experience of abuse as a child and how the [welcome of the] church and [of] Jesus had saved her in her 2023 memoir, “All My Knotted-Up Life,” and how she found a new church home after leaving the SBC.  “Never underestimate the power of a welcome,” she [said] in a 2023 interview.

Welcome saved her again.  It was welcome that helped her rebuild her life, her ministry, and her faith.  Welcome.

Everyone is welcome… and welcome changes lives, here and in every other place that practices it.

Now, look again at the reading from the Gospel of Luke:  the whole reading, from verse 7 to 24 is really about who belongs, about living your belonging, being a welcoming person.  This is one of the places in the New Testament where Jesus makes God’s everlasting welcome abundantly clear.  

The point of the story comes home as we hear once again that story of the big dinner party, the wedding banquet.  The host is deeply annoyed that the “good people”, the ones who make the party, well, they’re too busy to come, or – more likely, since all the excuses are flimsy – they just don’t think it’s important enough.  The host offers welcome, and the “in folks” blow the host off.  

It doesn’t end there, though.  The host turns the whole thing around.  Instead of begging the in folks, he reaches out to the folks who never get invited to the big events – hungry folks, the friendless, the homeless, the folks no one notices.  No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.

But notice that the folks who turned the host down, the ones who were fake, who really hurt him with their rejection?  Those folks have lost their place.  Everyone’s welcome, unless you hurt someone.  God’s welcome is never an excuse for bad behavior.

The Gospel lesson reminds us that our welcome doesn’t rise from our personal power, our good looks, our age, race or height.  God loves us as we are, no matter who we are, whether or not we follow God.  Loved and welcomed, we are given the power to reach out to others, to extend that welcome to them, to let them know there is a place where they are welcome.

In a world where it’s becoming clearer and clearer that there are people in power who do not think that everyone is welcome, it’s important to remember that they are wrong.  Some people want to rid the United States of people of color.  Right now, those folks are trying to deport 350,000 Haitians back to the Haiti they left after political and natural disasters.  The Christian belief in welcome means that we have a responsibility to those who we welcomed here in a time of need.  It is immoral for us to simply say, without remediation of the problems that caused them to leave, that their time’s up and pitch them out the door.  We believe that everyone is welcome, and that means everyone deserves compassionate care.

That’s not so common as we might think.  Usually rejection, unwelcome is kinda behind closed doors.  But lately, it’s become much more open.

Out in Kansas, they’ve made a law that effectively says that trans people can’t legally drive cars – by saying that their drivers licenses were immediately cancelled if their gender on the license was their birth assignment rather than their lived gender.  And then, just to make their unwelcome really clear, it became illegal for transpeople to use the bathroom of their lived gender…. Which means, for instance, that someone who is a transwoman, living as a woman, dressing like a woman, maybe wearing makeup, is required by this law to use the men’s room… and transmen, guys with beards, wearing suits, are required to use the ladies room.  You can imagine the ways in which having a guy with a beard using the ladies room might be as disturbing as a woman with a dress in the men’s room.

The bill was passed, over the veto of the governor of Kansas, and took effect immediately.  It’s a law which contradicts everything we know and believe about people.  For we believe that transpeople are people, that God loves and welcomes everyone, and that laws like the ones in Kansas are not just inhumane, but evil.

So, let me go back to the beginning.  God welcomes everyone.  You don’t have to be the “right color” to be welcome.  You don’t have to wear suits and ties, or dresses and heels.  You don’t have to stick with the gender you were assigned at birth.  You don’t have to go to Yale, or even finish eighth grade.  God welcomes us all.   

The bread we celebrate is a visible sign of that welcome.  When we share that bread at Communion, we are sharing with everyone, because all are welcome.  There is no one standing here in the aisle saying, you, but not you.

Everyone is welcome in God’s church.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

March 1, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 121 ¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? 
² My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. 
³ He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 
⁴ He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 
⁵ The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. 
⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. 
⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 
⁸ The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in 
from this time on and forevermore.

John 3:1-17 — Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” ³ Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”^,* 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹ Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 

¹¹ “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.^,* 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.^,*

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 

¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

“I would like to invite you to a very practical and frequently unappreciated form of abstinence: that of refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor.” —  Pope Leo XIV

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with someone about the Super Bowl, and kinda out of nowhere, they said, “well I’m NOT watching that terrible Bad Bunny; I’m watching the good half-time show…”

It was more than a little hard to know how to respond – if only because I generally find the half-time shows to be terminally boring… since then, I’ve found myself thinking about that exchange, working out why I found it puzzling.  It was Pope Leo’s call for a Lenten discipline that helped me understand and led to today’s meditation.

With that intro, I want to turn our eyes to this morning’s readings.  First, Psalm 121 reminds us that it is God who leads us, guides us, is our unfailing source of support.  God is the center from which all else comes. And our second lesson reminds us that God loves the whole world, so that everyone who believes may enjoy a life that’s led by God.

So, think about this…. We, not just you and me, not just all of us in this room or with us on Zoom, but every human being in the world, are all  welcome in God’s eyes.  That’s our starting point with everyone.

That means our first line, our first action with anyone is always going to reflect that they are known by and loved by God, just as we are.  

One of my interims was in a downtown church in a city with a significant unhoused population.  Our doors were open on Sunday, and it wasn’t uncommon for someone to drop in on Sunday, often with their dog.  We had a choice, each time.  Were we going to welcome this person, who hadn’t taken a bath, who was accompanied by a perhaps untrained animal…. Or were we going to stop them at the door?

What did God want of us?

That church welcomed every person who walked in the door.  I don’t want to sugar-coat it; from time to time someone took offence.  I once received a note from someone who said they’d never attend again if we continued to be that place where people were welcome until or unless they caused a problem.  She left; we kept welcoming.  

That’s a dramatic scenario.  For most of us, welcome is more about little things, like holding doors for people with strollers.  But it’s also about starting our conversations with what’s good, rather than starting with anger or hate.  

It’s a hard thing to do, especially when you don’t actually like the person you’re thinking of.  It’s ever so much easier to remember why you don’t like them, or what they’ve said or done that you don’t like, that’s made you angry.  Remember then, that no matter how good your reasons for hatred or anger, God has made us a world where everyone can be loved. Maybe you are thinking of someone who’s turned away from that good world, but even that doesn’t exactly justify our hatred, our anger.

Life’s been a little challenging down my way for the past week, what with three feet of snow arriving in just a few hours last Monday.  And one of the biggest challenges, as you can imagine, is what to do with all that snow.  The first few days, our DPW crews worked round-the-clock, to get at least one lane open on every street in East Providence.  There are 813 streets in East Providence, most have been plowed at least once, and they’re now working to widen every street so we can return to parking cars on the street.

And it’s not been happening fast enough for some people.  Some people are really angry.  “It’s been cleaned up in (fill in city’s name), why are you sleeping on the job here?”  Never mind that the other city got 10 inches of snow.  Or the nasty one I saw, “bet the mayor’s street got plowed”….  Implying that no one else has had their street cleared… The anger and mean comments from just  a small group of residents really ate away at the folks who were working so hard.

It’s been a real-life reminder of how anger can destroy love and hard work.  I don’t mean that the city plows are stopped, but we’ve begun to see blowback from their spouses saying “back off, they’re working as hard as they can,” and it’s clear that the folks who are angry because their street’s not cleared from curb to curb, are beginning to anger the people who are working so hard to help all of us.  Impatience, ignorance, entitlement, all lead to anger, and anger that’s not justified. 

Over and over and over, what we see when we really look at things is that, when our default response to everything is anger, everything falls apart.  

It’s not easy… if only because there are times when anger is the right, maybe even the only effective, response.  But I’m not talking about our anger about corruption, or anger about sexual predators going free, or even anger at seeing our country go to war illegally.  

I’m talking about our everyday relationships with one another.  I’m talking about those times when our leaders, the leaders of this church, have folks come up to them, already furious about something before they every share their concern.  I’m talking about angry people making nasty remarks to the young mother ahead of them in the grocery line, or acting like Bad Bunny was the literal incarnation of the devil.  I’m talking about the kind of anger that builds walls, scares people, destroys community.

It’s not easy to let go of anger; Pope Leo as much as admitted that when he suggested that for a Lenten discipline we abstain from words that offend, words that hurt our neighbors.  But, even the effort is worth the effort.  Even the effort to look for the good changes us, maybe changes our relationships with one another, certainly changes our world. 

This Lent, God calls us to be kind.  To show love.  To turn away from reflexive anger, to turn towards our neighbors, to build community.

It is our call to live out God’s truth – God has made this to be a world built on love, and it is our call to make that happen.

Amen.

©2026, Virginia H. Child