Month: April 2026

April 12, 2026  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

1 Peter 1:3–9 ³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ⁴ and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, ⁷ so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

John 20:19-31 ¹⁹ When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  ²⁴ But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  ²⁶ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  ³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

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 is hard to proclaim Easter in a Good Friday world . . . but it is now an Easter world.

Jesus has risen

Life is still hard

You’d think that if Jesus has risen, if he’s conquered sin and death, that we’d see more of a difference in our world.  Sin should have ended, right?  And death, too?  But that’s not how this works.  

Jesus was raised from the dead; his Resurrection marks a radical re-direction of life, but it’s more like the major battle in a war that changes the direction of everything… 

After the battle of Guadalcanal in the Pacific in World War 2, the defeat of Japan was inevitable, but there was still a lot of fighting to take place.  So, yes, from one angle the war is won, but from another, closer to the ground, there’s still a lot to get through before we arrive at permanent peace.  And that’s where we are now…. Assured that the war will be won, that it’s all going to be better, but still in the midst of real life, where things don’t go well at all.

We are not going to live in some sort of la-la land where we pretend that all is well when anyone with eyes and a heart knows that it’s not so.  Years ago, when my father died – way too young, he was only 54 – people kept coming up to me after the funeral, saying, “there, there, it’s all for the best…. He was suffering, you know…”  Well, so he was; he was a desperate alcoholic, dying from liver failure… but honestly, him being dead wasn’t “best”; him being healthy again, that would have been best.  That kind of best wasn’t in his future; he was a captive to his addiction.  

Sometimes, maybe, among the available options, death is a blessing, but it’s never honest to pretend that it’s a good thing.  Life is filled with things we like to pretend are good because we know they’re inevitable, but there’s a way in which that’s a painful misrepresentation of the truth – a lie – because we all know that, resurrection or not, our lives are filled with stuff that’s hard, stuff that’s painful, stuff that’s bad.  We know that in this world there are no easy answers.

Resurrection helps us get beyond the bad stuff, not by pretending it isn’t there, or even pretending that it’s good, but by showing us that good in life exists.  It helps us get beyond the bad by putting it in its proper place…. Real, sometimes devastating, but never the whole of our reality.  

What makes all this bearable is the way that we are bound together by our belief that Good will triumph over evil, that there is more than just our lives, that love creates something beautiful right here on earth, even in the midst of the absolute worst that can happen.  

John Winthrop, one of the founders and leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote – at the beginning of their settlement of Boston, about how they would create something good, despite all the bad in our world – despite the temptations to put each one first and let the devil take the hindmost.  Here’s what Winthrop wrote:

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God.  For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.  

The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the Lord make it like that of New England.” 

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whither we are a going.

We overcome death by working together for the good of our world.  We overcome greed by putting the good of the community ahead of our individual desires.  We welcome the stranger who’s sitting in “our seat” in church… and give up our seat to make things better for the community.  

Winthrop says it in old-fashioned seventeenth century speak – We must entertain each other in brotherly affection.  We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities.   We must put aside our greed, in other words, so that the world’s needs can be met.  Building a world where everyone has enough, where everyone is safe, where everyone is loved, is the work of Resurrection.

Jesus died.  He was really dead.

And then he rose from the dead, and changed the world….

Changed the Roman Empire from a place where meanness and self-centeredness was the ultimate end, to a world where Love, welcome, inclusion, justice, mercy were the watchwords.

Jesus changed the world into a Resurrection life, and we are called to follow that path today.

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

April 5, 2026 Easter Sunday, First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

John 20:1-18 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ² So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴ The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷ and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸ Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, ⁹ for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰ Then the disciples returned to their homes. 

¹¹ But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, ¹² and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

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.

There’s just no doubt about it.  On Friday, Jesus died.  He’d suffered a torturous death, wracked with pain, and his death was a blessing – insofar as it’s ever a blessing when someone you love dies – it was a blessing that he died so quickly.  Some crucified victims lingered for days.  But Jesus had died.  And he’d been buried.  True, it was in a borrowed tomb, but it was a tomb, and there was a great big rock, a boulder, rolled in front of the tomb’s entrance.  Some of the stories even say there were guards making sure no one stole Jesus’ body.  He was dead and buried.

On Sunday morning, the women came to anoint his body with spices – they’d been in a hurry to bury his body before the Sabbath began at sunset on Friday, so this was the first chance they’d had to do what was right. There’s different versions of what happened then – the stories weren’t written down for decades and so the details were a little fuzzy – but the central point is clear as a bell.  In today’s version, when Mary gets to the tomb, Jesus’ body is gone.  He is not there; someone appears to have stolen his body.

The astonishment, the fear of the disciples when they realize Jesus’ body is gone is the clearest testimony that they weren’t plotting a fake story.  And when they first see Jesus, they all have pretty much the same reaction – they think he’s a ghost and they are terrified.

These days, people who hear the story for the first time also wonder if we’re not following a zombie God.  That points us toward today’s big question – just what is the Jesus that Mary, and then the disciples, see?  Is it all a con?  Was he a ghost, a zombie? A real person???

We all know that people don’t come back from the dead.  Modern medicine can bring people back from pretty close to dead, but if your brain is dead, or if  you’ve lost all your blood, you’re dead in a really final way.  Jesus was dead, so it’s not surprising that many people think there’s something fishy about this story.

It’s true that if you look at, listen to, this story from an absolutely factual, totally scientific way, our modern minds come up with more questions than answers.  So, we’re not going there this morning.  This is not a modern algebra problem with a “one right answer”.  It is not an anatomy and physiology lesson.  Jesus’ Resurrection was a miracle; miracles, by definition, are unexplainable.  This is, instead, a story about love and how love conquers death.

Last week we talked about the way in which the Last Week’s events told us what was really important in Jesus’ ministry, that he wasn’t trying to overthrow an earthly authority, but rather to re-set our understanding of what really matters.

It can be argued that ghosts are spirits without bodies, and zombies are bodies without a spirit… Russell Moore suggests that we wander through this world as ghosts, unconnected with our neighbors, but at the same time, we feel like zombies, pushed this way and that by algorithms.  We are unconnected with ourselves and unconnected with our communities.  The Resurrection of Jesus re-connects us, body and soul.

Here’s another way to head in the same direction.  There’s a video going around from former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in which he says Jesus didn’t come so that we’d be happy.  It’s kinda shocking when you hear him say it – after all, happiness is a good thing, right?  Who doesn’t want to be happy.  But Williams says that happiness is all about personal indulgence, getting what we want whenever we want it, no matter how it affects anyone else.  He draws a difference between the cheesiness of happiness and the solidity of joy.  

He goes on to say, what God wants for us is joy – the deep joy that comes from building everything we want on a foundation of love – not just for our personal selves – but for all the world.  Sometimes, often, that means putting aside what we want, for what others need, and in the end, creating something better for everyone.  In other words, we bring together our souls and our bodies.  No more zombie-like mindless consumption.  No more ghost-like lack of connection.

When we focus on being happy, of fulfilling our personal desires, we put ourselves first, and it ends up destroying community.  If my goal, if my desire, is to have a cookie, when there are 5 cookies for 6 people, then someone – not me – is going to go without.  This is the hardest lesson for little kids to learn and some of us struggle with it all our lives.  In fact most of us struggle with some variation of it all our lives.  Greed is poison to community.

This is what Jesus’ Resurrection is really about.  It’s about the death of death, the death of the greed that kills community.  It’s about the life that carries good on beyond the individual deaths of people.  It tells us that when we work for good, that good does not die with us, but continues, just that the good the founders of this church started in 1721 still carries on.  

Greed is all about me and mine; love is all about we and us.  Greed separates us, soul from body.  Love brings us back together.  Today we celebrate that Love came back from Death and we celebrate that for us, it is love that rules the world.  

Death is dead today; Love reigns forever.  Happy Easter!

Amen. 

© 2026, Virginia H. Child