Month: May 2026

May 24, 2026  Pentecost  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

From Numbers 11:24-30  . . . . a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” ²⁸ And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” ²⁹ But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”

Acts 2:1-21… When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ² And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 

⁵ Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹ Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹² All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³ But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” 

¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵ Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 

¹⁷ ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹ And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰ The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

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.

In 1845, our country was mired in a never-ending crisis around the expansion of human slavery. Slavery itself was its own crisis, of course, and people were working to end it… but there was also the question as to whether or not it could spread to new states, especially lands newly entering the Union.  For some people this was a purely practical question; if a new state came in as a slave state, then they could make tons of money.  For others, it was a question of political power.  But for an increasingly vocal third group, this was a moral question, a religious question, a question of faith.

Texas wanted to join the Union, but it wanted to come in as a slave state.  That was one moral question. Another was, were we stealing Texas from Mexico.  Because, you see, Texas seceded from Mexico because Mexico had abolished slavery, and Mexico thought their secession was illegal.  

So, would receiving Texas as a slave state upset the balance of powers?

Would receiving Texas as a slave state be a miscarriage of our stated principles of liberty for all?  Could we morally admit a slave state?

Would receiving Texas, slave or free, start a war with Mexico?  Were we, in effect, stealing another country’s land?

As it turned out, the right answer is “all of the above”.  It changed the balance of powers.  It expanded the immoral practice of slavery.  And it started a war with Mexico.

James Russell Lowell wrote the poem “The Present Crisis” in 1845 to rouse people to object to the reception of Texas and the oncoming war with Mexico.  It was wildly successful in many ways – we even still sing parts of it as the hymn “Once to Every Man and Nation”.  And, tho it didn’t stop the oncoming war, it still helps us see the moral questions for our day.  The plea he made then still rings out today.  Listen to the last few verses, written right here in Massachusetts:

Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers’ graves,
Worshipers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that made Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,     
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past’s; 
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,      
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee       
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.          

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,         
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;            
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away     
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?   

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;          
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;      
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,            
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,  
Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key.

Lowell wrote a Pentecostal poem, bringing us to a new and clearer understanding of two things – reminding us how we default to looking back and worshipping yesterday, and second, that God is not calling us to yesterday, but to tomorrow, to see each day new.

God is still speaking.

Today is the day we traditionally celebrate the beginnings of the Christian Church.  It’s a subtle reminder to us that Jesus didn’t found the Christian church; in the stories, this new beginning only happens after he is gone.  Jesus was a Jew; it was after the Resurrection that his followers began to realize that what they had been taught was going to make major changes in the way they understood their world and their relationships with one another.

That’s what happens when major change comes along.

First we know that something different is happening.  Then we fight with each other about whether to fight it or join it.  A good deal of the history of the first years of the Christian organization is the story of the fight or join part of things.  Today is no different.  In the world outside our doors these days, great, massive change is happening, and we’ve come to a place where we’re going to fight or join up.

And, no, I’m not talking about Republicans and Democrats.  I’m talking about something which this weekend is also about.  161 years ago, a great war, fought on this country’s land, ended.  That war was intended to hold the Union together; it was intended to end the pernicious evil of human slavery.

Wikipedia tells us that between 620,000 and 750,000, roughly 2% of the population of the United States, died in that war.  It was the deadliest conflict in our history.  Fewer than 10,000 people died in the American Revolution, not even 2000 in the Mexican War.  Over 50,000 died in World War I, almost 300,000 in World War II, just over 33,000 in Korea and almost 50,000 in Vietnam.  If 2% of today’s population died, that’d be all the people in Massachusetts.  That’s a lot of people; their deaths are why Memorial Day was established.

This year and every year, on Memorial Day, we remember those who died in the service of our country, but especially those who died on our land to save the union and free the slaves.

The fight for freedom and equality didn’t end with their sacrifice.  If you’ve followed our history, you know the struggle, that even after the Civil War, those who believed that anyone who wasn’t northern European white, who didn’t worship the right way (Protestants, not Roman Catholics, then my church, not yours…)… anyone who didn’t fit their picture of the right way to live… anyone, but especially Black people, shouldn’t have any rights in society…. 

….shouldn’t vote, 
shouldn’t own their own businesses, 
own their own land, 
shouldn’t expect to get good schooling for their children –
in fact, it’d be better if “those folks” didn’t have schools.  
Double it if we’re talking about Africans rather than Catholics.

And they believed that men controlled women, that it was better if women didn’t work… and if they did, they should be teachers, or child-minders, maybe cooks or laundresses.

We’ve made a lot of progress.  We all go to school together.  We prided ourselves on welcoming immigrants from all over the world.  Women work all over, LGBT+ create families and build community.  God is still speaking, and we are still listening.

The war for freedom and equality is still going on.  Right now the people who are fighting to destroy the rights of all are hiding behind the name of the Republican Party, but the name of the party is a diversion.  They want us to focus our attention on the party name, not the unchristian beliefs they are promoting.  They’d have been Democrats if that gave them a fast track to power.  In fact, in the 50s, they were Democrats.  

So, don’t get distracted; this isn’t about party labels; it’s about hatred and God’s extravagant welcome.

The Old Testament lesson for today tells us about the time that Moses was trying to teach and organize his people and took the leaders out for a special session with God.  While they were gone, while everyone who was “supposed” to know what’s what was out, two men with no special training began to talk about God, because they were led by God’s spirit.  New ideas were coming forth in new ways.  New occasions taught new duties, and Moses said not to stop them.

We read the lesson from Acts every year – about how all the disciples were gathered in one place, that there was a sound like a wind, tongues of fire, and everyone began to speak in foreign languages, usually reading all the way to where the observers think all the disciples are drunk.  And we pretend that the lesson is about literal tongues of fire, and people speaking all those languages, when it’s really a metaphorical picture of how the faith was spreading throughout the Mediterranean basin, and even over to India.  In fact, this story is the first testimony to the radically inclusive expanded message of God.  No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are a part of this church.

More than 2000 years ago, our ancestors in faith realized that Jesus was leading them to a world where differences no longer mattered.  Where it didn’t matter in God’s eyes where we came from, or what color our skin was.  The Christian church was established by people who believed in radical, inclusive language, who stretched the welcome Jews had lived beyond the borders they’d seen, brought it out of the Middle East and spread that welcome all over the world.  We gradually came to understand there are no circumstances where slavery or peonage can be right; we came to understand that differences of color, culture, faith, or situation in life do not matter to God and should not matter to us.

The traditional ways we celebrate Pentecost are to have a birthday cake , wear red shirts and maybe have red geraniums all over the place.  

But a better way, this year, a way that lives out the spirit of Pentecost, is to stand up for racial equality, for inclusivity, for radical welcome of all people in God’s world, and to stand against those who want to shove us forcefully back into a world where there are second, third and last class residents, not even citizens, whose only purpose is to serve the white folks at the top of the heap.  In other worlds, this year, observe Pentecost by standing against evil.  

Amen.

© 2026, Virginia H. Child

May 10, 2026 Easter 6  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

“Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. ²³ For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:22-31)

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.

How do we know there is a God?  There’s generally three different responses to that question:

First, I know there’s a God because I can see the evidence in the world around us.

Or, I know there’s a God, because the Bible says it’s so.

Or… I don’t know; I trust, I hope…

Knowing about God just from reading the Bible can be hard (difficult) if only because reading the Bible is hard… the Bible is a translation of a series of book that are between two and five thousand years old.  They were written for people who did not know about modern science, and who mostly were shepherds, traders and farmers.  Because it was written for a different way of life, getting more than surface meanings requires us to study it – and that’s not always easy.

All too often, we mis-read it, thinking that if there’s a story about Jonah and a Whale, it must be a new story, like it had been originally written for the Boston Globe.  The thing is, it – and many other stories like it – are more akin to fairy tales… the important thing is not the facts, but the lesson the facts are there to help us “get it”.  (maybe use Androcles and the Lion??)

It’s easy to see why many of us see God more clearly out on the golf course, or on a hike in the woods, sailing on the lake, or visiting the Bridge of Flowers up in Shelburne.  The beauty of a flower is unmistakable.  And there are other ways people feel that they see God in the world…ways like observing the Fibonnaci sequence – not just in math, where it shows that each number in the sequence is the sum of the two preceding numbers, but it shows up also in nature in the arrangement of tree branches, pineapple sprouts, artichoke flowers and on and on…. You can see why, when folks discover there’s an actual order to the way trees grow their branches, that they might see that as a sign of the existence of God.

But that’s not all there is to God… neat and orderly math sequences, or ways of growing trees.  Let’s look a little more closely at Paul’s story.

Today’s story tells of the first visit of Paul to the city of Athens, in Greece.  The Greeks were known all over the world for their interest in philosophy, their devotion to working out questions like who made the world, why are there human beings.  They were a people who made sure to cover their bases, so they put up statues – devotional centers, worship spaces – for every conceivable option.  They even had a statue to an “unknown god” – and that’s the god that Paul works from.

In those days, the Greeks, indeed most people, believed that there were little, local gods, maybe like a spirit that watched over a spring – and you honored that spring and its spirit, by pouring out a little of the water on the ground before you drank.

The scholars call that “pouring out a libation”; even today, you’ll occasionally see someone pour out a little of what they’re about to drink on the ground, or pour out a beverage at a new grave.  I doubt they have any sense as to how old that practice is!

Folks believed that those gods took on the attributes of whatever they stood for – so the spirit of the spring needed to be kept happy, so that the spring wouldn’t go dry in high summer.  And the major gods, the ones like Zeus, or Hera, were understood to be just like humans, only bigger, braggier, sometimes trickier, and always needing their worshippers to keep them happy – or things wouldn’t go well.

That’s the bitter edge of those kinds of human-derived understandings of gods.  They are, as a group, beautiful, powerful, and unreliable.  They do not love humans, they use humans to satisfy their needs and desires.

You can imagine, therefore, just how astounding it was when Paul came to Athens and told them that their “unknown god” was a god of sustaining love, a person who wanted us to be happy, safe, prosperous…. This god wanted peace and justice for all.

It’s just that amazing today, you know.  That’s what’s important now.  We follow a God who love us, who is not capricious, doesn’t demand our unthinking submission.  Our God, the God we follow wants us to be the best we can be, and helps us get there by showing us a way that doesn’t just build us up, but creates and nourishes good community for all.

Sometimes, it doesn’t work.

Sometimes, that community turns into an “everyone for themselves” wreck.  I’m not just talking about current events.  You might have read the book “Lord of the Flies”, about a group which tries to form a community and fails miserably – written right around 75 years ago. 

Some communities aren’t formed to make everyone better; some communities are formed to support the leaders, and everything else is designed to keep the leaders wealthy, healthy, and strong.

But that’s not Christian community.  Our kind of community is always struggling against the self-centered kind, because we are willing to give up our personal power so that everyone will have enough.  Christian community is not just about personal stuff – not just our own happiness, prosperity and power.  

In fact, Christian community places our personal success in the context of what makes our world, our community stronger.  It helps us shares our wealth so that we will all  have decent schools, child protective services, immigrant education, and other things that just make life better.  

It’s also about less obvious problems —  like making sure that people don’t struggle to find and afford food because there are no grocery stores, or because the prices in your area are twice what they are across town.  I didn’t realize this was an issue in my area until I realized that prices at the Stop and Shop near me were higher than the one 3 miles away, in a more prosperous suburb.  That’s right, food costs less for people who have more money.

That’s our call…. To care about people who struggle to survive, to stand up for those who need help, to live as kind, generous, decent people.  Our God, known through Jesus Christ, provides the pattern for our living… every day, all the time.

Come and be a part of the family.

Amen.

©2026, Virginia H. Child