Author: tobelieveistocare

October 5, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Lamentations 1:1-6

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! 
How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! 
She that was a princess among the provinces has become subject to forced labor. 
² She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; 
among all her lovers, she has no one to comfort her; 
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies. 
³ Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; 
she lives now among the nations; she finds no resting place; 
her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. 
⁴ The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; 
all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; 
her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. 
⁵ Her foes have become the masters; her enemies prosper 
because the Lord has made her suffer 
for the multitude of her transgressions; 
her children have gone away, captives before the foe. 
⁶ From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. 
Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; 
they fled without strength before the pursuer.

Luke 17:5-10 (The Message)
The apostles came up and said to the Master, “Give us more faith.” But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a [mustard seed] poppy seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it.

“Suppose one of you has a servant who comes in from plowing the field or tending the sheep. Would you take his coat, set the table, and say, ‘Sit down and eat’? Wouldn’t you be more likely to say, ‘Prepare dinner; change your clothes and wait table for me until I’ve finished my coffee; then go to the kitchen and have your supper’? Does the servant get special thanks for doing what’s expected of him? It’s the same with you. When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, ‘The work is done. What we were told to do, we did.’ ”

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.

Are you afraid of the dark?  Hmm?  Well, maybe not so much these days, but how about those doctor’s visits where they say “Let’s just check that out, in case”, and you wait on tenterhooks for the results from a test, or two, or three.  Maybe that situation strikes fear in your hearts?

There’s a connection, you know, between those fears we had as kids, the ones our parents tried to tell us weren’t real, and the fears we face as grown-ups, the fears we know are real.  Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King, who also writes horror stories like his dad’s… says that kids instinctively know that evil is real, that bad things can happen.  Hill adds

People believe—want to believe—in a moral universe, a universe that confirms the existence of the human soul, a thing of incalculable worth that can be won or lost. If that heightened moral universe doesn’t exist in reality. . . then we will search for it in fiction. We don’t want to flee “’Salem’s Lot.” We want to live there.

Evil is inflicted upon every life; what a relief it would be if it took an (in)human form and could be dragged out of its coffin and into the sunlight, to die screaming and in flames. 

AIDS, SIDS, pollution, global warming, drug addiction: To be human is to find oneself confronted with vast, terrible forces that lack form, that can’t be fought in any literal sense, hand-to-hand, stake to heart. That doesn’t satisfy us. 

It’s fine if there’s evil, wickedness, cruelty. We just want it to have a point. If we’re in this fight, we want to know there’s an enemy out there — not just bad luck and grinding, impersonal historical forces. 

More than that, though: Once you give evil a face and fangs, once you give it agency, it becomes possible to imagine a force opposed against it, a light that can drive out shadow.]

Once you give evil a face and fangs, once you give it agency, it becomes possible to imagine a force opposed against it, a light that can drive out shadow.

In our reading from Lamentations, Jeremiah wrote:   She that was a princess among the provinces has become subject to forced labor. ² She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers, she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies. 

It seems as though Stephen King and Joe Hill are not the only ones who know that evil exists, and maybe not the only ones who’ve noticed that it is only when we name the existence of evil that we are able to fight against it.

You don’t need to be very old at all to know that unspeakably bad things can happen to the best of people.  Toddlers, first-graders, they’re not too young to know – even if they don’t really know what happened, they’ll know that their parents are suffering and they know that’s bad.  

Here’s the thing:  if we learned as little ones to pretend the bad isn’t there, then how will we know how to deal with the bad as adults?  

This is important, because it’s true that unless we admit that something bad exists, we’ve not a chance in the world of making things better. 

That’s why we read the Bible.  Because it tells us the truth about life.  It’s not about facts and science, and not even really the facts of history.  It’s about truth, about the reality of evil and the power of love.

This is one of the ways we, as Christians, differ from much of our world.  We live in a society which believes that people are good, until they’re not – so that people are either good or despicable, with no in-between.  We live in a world that tells us if we do all the good things, always right, that nothing but good things will happen to us.   And then, when it turns out that’s not true, folks get angry as if they’ve been cheated.  We live in a world where people believe that gods, like our God, exist to protect us from every bad thing, and so when bad happens, it’s all our gods’ faults,… you’ve heard this when someone cries out “How could God have let this happen to me?”

There’s a truth about life that we miss when we expect everything to always be good.  And that truth is simple:  things go bad.  We often struggle.  And it’s all so much harder to deal with if, at the same time, we have to pretend that all is well, or supposed to be well.

Years ago, I went to the hospital to visit an older relative; as it turned out, she not only had pneumonia, but dementia.  I realized that our conversation was going to be different when she began to explain to me that the hospital roof, which she could see from her room, was dotted with rocket ships.  Now, you or I might have thought those were chimneys, but that explanation couldn’t work for her because she’d lost the meaning of chimneys.  So she made do with what she still had and tried to make sense of the world she saw.  But she didn’t know, couldn’t know, and so she created this fantastic world of rockets, and then strange people – all in her attempt to make sense of her world.

Or think of the woman who, after years of back pain, went to the umpteenth doctor to try to figure it out and this time, science had advanced enough that they were able to discover that she had a congenital malformation of her back.  Her head wasn’t really connected well to her back; any hard whack could have turned her into a paraplegic.  Surgery has repaired the problem and now she’s in a much better place – all because then finally really knew what had happened and how to fix it.

Really knowing that evil exists, helps us see our world as it is.  When we think it’s all supposed to be good, and isn’t, we can blame ourselves, our families, our world.  

Today is World Communion Sunday; a day when we remember that Communion is a sign of our unity, not just here in our church, not even just within the United Church of Christ, but unity with all believers all around the world.  Again, it’s an opportunity to see beyond the surface, to learn that reality is not the same as appearance.  We look like – and politically, are – divided on many things, but in reality, those of us who focus on the unity of Communion see a togetherness upon which we can build.

In Luke, we heard the story of some apostles who were asking for “more faith”.  Jesus responded that they already had all the faith they needed, that the challenge for them was that they didn’t understand that faith wasn’t some sort of special gift for special times; instead, faith is sustenance for every day.  They asked for more because they couldn’t see what was already there.  Again, it’s a message to us that we need to pay attention to what’s really happening in order to understand our work, our life.

The lesson for today is clear:  there is a reality to evil which permeates our world; pretending it’s not there is disorienting,  In Jesus, we can live in the reality of a faith that overcomes evil, that brings us together despite our differences.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

September 28, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16 —
You who live in the shelter of the Most High, 
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,^,*
2 will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; 
my God, in whom I trust.” 
³ For he will deliver you from the snare of the hunter 
and from the deadly pestilence; 
⁴ he will cover you with his pinions, 
and under his wings you will find refuge; 
his faithfulness is a shield and defense. 
⁵ You will not fear the terror of the night 
or the arrow that flies by day 
⁶ or the pestilence that stalks in darkness 
or the destruction that wastes at noonday. 
¹⁴ Those who love me, I will deliver; 
I will protect those who know my name. 
¹⁵ When they call to me, I will answer them; 
I will be with them in trouble; 
I will rescue them and honor them. 
¹⁶ With long life I will satisfy them 
and show them my salvation.

1 Timothy 6:6-19 —  ⁶ Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, ⁷ for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, ⁸ but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. ⁹ But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. 

¹¹ But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹² Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³ In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you ¹⁴ to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵ which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. ¹⁶ It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. 

¹⁷ As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸ They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, ¹⁹ thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Luke 16:19-31 — ¹⁹ “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. ²⁰ And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, ²¹ who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. ²² The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³ In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.^,* 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ ²⁵ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. ²⁶ Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ ²⁷ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—²⁸ for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ ²⁹ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ ³⁰ He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ ³¹ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

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.

Monsalvat Farm in Barnard VT has been put up for sale.  400 acres. Two ponds. Equestrian facilities, riding trails, a helipad… the main house is custom-designed, 10,000 square feet of living space… with two bedrooms, four full bathrooms, three powder rooms, and eight functioning wood-burning fireplaces.  Oh, and an auxiliary house with more bedrooms, a gazebo, and a horse barn.  Beautiful views, open fields, forests, mountains, the whole package, and all for only $39 million dollars.

The article in the Boston Globe doesn’t mention how many servants you need to keep the house and grounds running, but from the pictures, I’d guess you’re going to need at least one person doing nothing but mowing grass, and with seven bathrooms and eight fireplaces, never mind anything else – another full time person to keep those rooms clean.  Fireplaces make for a lot of soot.  A horse person for the horses… probably a cook, when in residence, and a couple of other groundskeepers… so four to six people at least, and that doesn’t include security.  

The extravagance is mind numbing.  All to purchase something beautiful.

It’s made me think about what makes something beautiful.  Now, I’ve lived in Vermont; like around here, it’s darned hard to make any place “not beautiful”… it’s just not necessary to have a custom-designed $39M house to make that happen.

Today’s scripture lessons are, you see, about beauty, but a different kind of beauty.  It’s not the kind you buy; it’s the kind you live.  It’s the kind of beauty that Timothy is talking about in that first lesson. 

Pretty things are great, but true beauty is something different… pretty is, as pretty does… is the way we in the Christian way understand the beauty that endures.  Timothy writes:  “… the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil… but as for you… pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.”

It’s not so much that wealth is bad, or even that it’s wrong to have a 10,000 square foot house, but that it’s right when – no matter how wealthy or poor we are – we build our lives on living out the values of love, godliness, faith, endurance, gentleness.  

This is particularly important in a world filled with anger and hatred as ours is these days.  These days, it’s as if we’ve all been told that our first reaction to anything is to jump into criticism, to react with contempt.  It doesn’t matter what the subject is – it can be majorly important or totally picayune.  It’s the kind of reaction that just shuts down conversation – maybe when you thought you were just saying that Road Runner cartoons are funny, and someone tries to start an argument about South Park.

In the Gospel reading this morning we heard the story of the rich man and the poor man named Lazarus.  You may have heard this as the story of “Dives and Lazarus” – Dives is a name for a rich man in Latin –  so Lazarus was the homeless guy at the gate to Dives’ estate, begging for crumbs from the table, always hungry, always out in the weather.  In the story, Lazarus dies and goes to heaven.  It turns out that Dives has also died, but he’s gone South, to the Hotter place.  He looks up and sees Abraham up in Heaven and begs him to send Dives down to bring him some water.  Abraham, though, tells him that he got his good stuff while he was alive and now he’s paying the price.  So Dives begs that Abraham send Lazarus to Dives’ family to help them change their ways.  But Abraham says, if they don’t get it from what they hear in church, even someone coming back from the dead won’t change their minds, their behavior.

Whether or not you believe there’s a literal Heaven and Hell, the story is clear – our behaviors have consequences.  Dives didn’t help Lazarus even a little, even tho in his world, that’d been the right thing to do.  He just walked on by. And then he paid the price.  

One of the other things this set of lessons reminds us is that there’s something about “having”, being wealthy, or even just better off than most, that can make it harder to be generous, welcoming, loving of those who don’t have what we do.  And it’s not just about having money.  

Those of us who have better educations sometimes struggle to understand a different way of living that’s not focused around study, those of us with a clearer vision perhaps, of our future, are puzzled with those who don’t automatically agree with them.. the better cooks don’t always understand those who just don’t like to cook, and so on.  So embedded in this lesson is one, not just about money, but about understanding and difference, and God’s welcome of all, no matter their skills or gifts.

No matter who we are, where we’ve come from or where we think we’re going, Gods call is for us and for all. God calls us, doesn’t just offer a passing chance, but calls, ordained, equips and expects us to be kind to all people.  God wants us, even when people think we’re fools for doing it – God wants us to do the right thing, and to do it knowing that we will not always be respected.  God wants us to keep our tempers, to understand that everyone won’t always agree on anything, must less everything; God wants us to share, to be generous, generous with our money, our time, our skills – not so that we’ll be appreciated but so that the work of God will continue.  

That’s the lesson for today.  What we do, how we live, matters.  We have the power to change our world for the better, simply by refusing to participate in contempt, anger, dismissal – and by living as people of love, justice and mercy.  So, let us go forth to live in God’s way.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

September 14, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Romans 8:28-39: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.^,* And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, 

“For your sake we are being killed all day long; 
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” 
No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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.

Pain is a present part of our lives these days.  Maybe it’s the pain of a broken leg, or some other physical ill.  Maybe it’s the pain of a broken heart, or a broken dream.  One of the things that makes pain hard to bear is how, so often, there’s some sense of betrayal there.  We didn’t expect to be sick, we didn’t expect a marriage to break up, we didn’t expect this or that piece of destruction.  Betrayal is right at the core of pain, and this has been a week of betrayals.

It was the 24^th anniversary of 9-11 this past week.  I doubt there’s anyone here who couldn’t tell you where they were when they heard about those horrific attacks.  I was living in Grand Rapids MI, where I’d just permanently closed the church I’d been serving, when I got an email from a friend in Australia who told me to turn on my tv….  It was a day of horror.  

For many of us, 9-11 always brings back our memories of other shootings, especially Sandy Hook and the death of children.  There’s been a lot of that lately… and then on the eleventh, along with the recollections of 9=11, there were two more  betrayals – a shooting at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado – and the murder of Charlie Kirk, live on tv.

That’s a lot of pain.  That’s a lot of betrayal.

Add that pain to our usual lives – frustrations, illnesses, angers… struggles to stay even…

It’s been a hard week for many of us.

When it all gets too hard, we come here.  When it all gets too bad, we come to God.

Together we comfort one another, name this space as one clear open to God.  Together we rage at the injustices of the world, share our grief, our anger, our pain with God.  Together we live out our faith that life has meaning and purpose, that God intends love to triumph over evil, that  as the hymn says, “though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” 

Why, though, do we hold on to that hope?  If God has any power, why can’t we make the shootings stop?  If God is in charge, why are people so mean to each other these days?  We hold onto our hope that God is in charge, that pain is not pointless, that evil will not triumph because, in the first place, God promises that it is true, and in the second place, we see signs that good does make change happen.

God promises that good will triumph.  In the letter to the Romans, Paul wrote:

²⁸ We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.^,* 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ³⁶ As it is written, 

“For your sake we are being killed all day long; 

we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” 

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ^[1]

And if that’s not enough, there’s more.  Paul lists a whole set of bad things – and then says that not one of those has enough power to totally destroy us.  Nothing has the power to break our connection with Christ, the power of Love made a living human being.  Nothing – not sickness.  Nothing – not distress.  Nothing – not false accusations, not poverty, not danger, not the evil aggressions of enemies.  Nothing.

As Paul says:  I am convinced that neither death, lor life, no angels, nor rulers, no things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

My morning reading these days has been Rick Atkinson’s excellent new history of the American Revolution.  The fighting was hard, we lost battle after battle, especially in the early years.  More than once our Founding leaders thought the jig was up and that they would all, at best, end their lives on Tower Hill in London, executed for treason.

But looking back on the entirely of the struggle, it was almost certain from the very beginning, even before maybe the first person died, that it was just about impossible for England to keep us as colonies if we persisted in the fight.  Even the English leaders who thought the war unwinnable didn’t really believe they were right enough to speak out, even when it was clear that the war was destroying the English economy.

As hard as that was for them, it’s even harder to hold onto faith that even when you’re on your fourth trip to the emergency room in the last 2 months, when you know that each trip brings you a little closer to that final trip when your heart stops.  It’s hard to hold onto faith when you realize that one of your 3^rd grade students is almost certainly being abused and you know it’s not going to be easy to do something.  It’s hard to hold onto faith when it feels like the world is falling apart, when one more public shooting happens – at a speech, at a school… wherever.

And yet, we endure. God promises that love will win.  So prepare to share in that heavenly meal we will soon celebrate, knowing that it is a tangible expression of God’s love, food and drink to nourish body and soul.  And know when you leave here, you will be sustained by God’s love.

Amen.

^[1] New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition (Friendship Press, 2021), Ro 8:28–39.

September 7, 2025 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Jeremiah 18:1-11  The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ² “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” ³ So I went down to the potter’s hous, and there he was working at his wheel. ⁴ The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. 

⁵ Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁶ Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. ⁷ At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, ⁸ but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. ⁹ And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, ¹⁰ but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. ¹¹ Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you, from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.

Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18
¹ O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up; 
you discern my thoughts from far away. 
³ You search out my path and my lying down 
and are acquainted with all my ways. 
⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue, 
O Lord, you know it completely. 
⁵ You hem me in, behind and before, 
and lay your hand upon me. 
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; 
it is so high that I cannot attain it. 
for darkness is as light to you. . . .
¹³ For it was you who formed my inward parts; 
you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 
Wonderful are your works; 
that I know very well. 
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you, 
when I was being made in secret, 
intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 
¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. 
In your book were written 
all the days that were formed for me, 
when none of them as yet existed. 
¹⁷ How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! 
How vast is the sum of them! 
¹⁸ I try to count them—they are more than the sand; 
I come to the end—I am still with you.

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.

God makes us.
God knows us.
God loves us.
God protects us.
God is with us to the end.

For the past month I’ve been talking each Sunday about where we are – about the challenges we face, about the opportunities we have, about how we can proceed.  Today, we’re going to change focus.  Instead of what we can do, or should do, or don’t have to do, I want to talk a little about why we do this, why the time and effort and — let’s be clear — the money we put into keeping this church on the path is worth it all.

There’s no doubt that we’ve been putting a lot into this work. And there’s little doubt that the busyness of all we do can sometimes make it hard to remember why we do it.  So, let’s take a pause and think together about our “why”.

We are here this morning because we have chosen to follow God.  Back in the days when this church was called together, everyone knew there was God, and that it was good to follow God. Today, that’s more of an individual decision, but we have that determination in common with our religious ancestors.  We follow God.

We follow God because we believe that God is the ultimate source of all things.  That doesn’t have to mean that we think God is some sort of master carpenter, who literally makes everything.  That would just reduce God to a functionary, like the person who gives me my driver’s license.  And if there’s one thing we’re sure of God — and heaven — are nothing like the Registry of Motor Vehicles!  No, what I’m talking about is that creativity is one way to see God.  The ability to make things is a gift from God.  That human beings can make more human beings is a way of understanding God’s creative power.  That human beings can tell stories, is part of God’s creative power.

Stand before an amazing painting and you will be standing in the presence of God’s creative power, as understood by the artist.

This creative God is who we follow.

God not only is creative, God knows us. 

Years ago, I had a friend who was struggling with our classes at college.  He’d often come to me and ask me what I thought the textbook said, because to him it just didn’t make sense.  We went through this for a couple of semesters, until I began to feel used, and finally pushed him on why he always did this.  Turned out he was dyslexic.  He’d hidden his problem because he thought that since I read so easily I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who couldn’t read much at all.  But, you know, we didn’t really become friends until the day he felt free to admit his challenge and I had the opportunity to really understand what was going on.  

I don’t know how many places most of us find we can’t be who we really are…. Even when we don’t realize that’s what’s going on.  But parents learn to say they know what’s what when their first child learns to ask “why”…. At work we have to act as if we really know everything.  We have to seem honest, and kind, and considerate.. all kinds of things.  The constant need to present our best side is exhausting.  

But here, in God’s presence, we are who we are.  We don’t need to hide from God.  Here, with God, we can be honest with ourselves about where we are, and with that freedom comes the freedom to grow into a better person.  It’s a friendship that just gets better and better.  My college friend and I never saw each other after we graduated, but God’s friendship never ends.

God’s friendship never ends because it’s based on God’s love for us and for the world.  God knows us and because God loves us, that knowledge is good and can help us grow in love for all the world.

When I was a little kid, I thought all grownups were happy, free to follow their hopes and dreams.  If I’d thought about it, I’d have assumed that when you grew up, you got a job you loved, married someone who loved you, had good children, and in your old age, were surrounded by happy, loving children and grandchildren. 

This despite the fact that I was in constant ill health, in and out of the hospital; despite the fact that my mother was not allowed to work as a registered nurse because she was married, that my best friend’s parents were not only divorced but distanced – she didn’t know her father at all…. In other words, even as a kid, I should have known that my dream was an illusion.

And when we’re little and we hear that God cares for us, I suspect most of us think that means that if we follow God we’ll never have to deal with hurt or pain, that our children will be good, our parents healthy, our jobs successful.  

Now, we all know that’s not true.  In fact, the more attention we pay to our world, the more pain we see.  It shows up in our own lives, in the lives of those whom we love.  We do our best and still fail.  Life, it turns out, is hard, sometimes painful, often disappointing.  And in the midst of all that, one thing upon which we can depend is God’s protection.  Not protection against bad things happening, protection against those things robbing our world of all that is good.

It’s a protection that helps you see in the midst of that which might blind you to so much.  You’ll remember, for instance, that last fall my back went out and I was in terrible pain for a while.  In the midst of all that I had to go to Charlton Hospital in Fall River for a scan, and I got lost, trying to find the closest parking lot.  I tried to enter the hospital through the emergency room, and fell into the hands of the tallest security guard I’ve ever seen.  It was the beginning of a great visit.  And I’m convinced it was God’s presence that helped me look beyond my pain and see his effort to help me as help.  It was God who helped me recognize the love in the care the medical folks took to get me back to my car and, for a needed return visit, find a better place to park.  

God didn’t get me exercising so my back wouldn’t go out.  God didn’t make the pain go away, but God helped me see help as help, to respond with kindness to kindness when irritability would have been far more likely.  And that’s why I say God protects us.

Finally, God is always with us, till the end.  No matter how that goes, we will not be left alone, abandoned by God.  On our deathbed, God will be with us.  

So – God makes, us, knows us, loves us, protects us, stays with us to the end.  It is the knowledge of this, and the way it brings worth and value to our lives that we have to share with our neighbors.  This is what makes our work as a church so important.  This isn’t just a gift for us; it’s a gift for everyone.

We matter.
God matters.
This church matters.

Amen.

c 2025, Virginia H. Child

August 24, 2025  First Congregational Church, Brimfield MA

Lk 13:10-17 ¹⁰ Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. ¹¹ And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. ¹² When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. ¹⁴ But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.” ¹⁵ But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? ¹⁶ And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” ¹⁷ When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.

“In times of war and in times of peace, the greatest weapons of all are not the arms you bear, but the arms you link.”  (from a UK observance of VJ Day )

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.

One of the quirks of Rhode Island life, one you might not have heard of, is that we observe the end of World War II with a state holiday named Victory Day.  State offices close, as do many towns and cities… but we still get mail.  It’s a little mixed, but it’s a time for us to remember and give thanks for the end of that terrible, all-consuming war.

This year I happened to come across a VJ Day celebration in England, and I heard one of the speakers say, “in times of war and in times of peace, the greatest weapons of all are not the arms you bear, but the arms you link.”  

That really struck me.  What makes for victory is not so much how powerful our weapons are, but how well we can stand together.  If you’ve ever served in the military, you’ve experienced how this plays out – all kinds of unit activities are designed, not just to keep us in good shape, but to help build a sense of solidarity.

With the importance of working together on my mind, I read today’s Gospel lesson.  You just heard it – the story of the healing of the bent-over woman.  The healing is a great story, but what struck me this time as I read it, was how it almost fell apart because the leaders of the local religious establishment got upset because Jesus healed on the sabbath.

Now, we all know that this isn’t a story about how Jews complained about violating the sabbath, while the good Christians would never have done such a thing.  Whining about breaking the rules is the sort of thing that transcends the walls that divide.  Everyone does it, from time to time.  But, at our best, and when we’re following Jesus’ example, we let the need for a different way transcend our love of the “way it’s always been”, and we move ahead in God’s way.

And that’s what today is about.  Moving ahead, in God’s way, as best we understand that way.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been talking about how our world has changed, and how those changes are changing us, how we do things, and even what things we do.  One of those changes began to affect us today – we are doing music differently, and doing that for at least two reasons:

First, no one responded to our ads for an organist.

And second, with all that needs to be done, our leaders decided to suspend the search for a new musician temporarily.  

Where we are now is temporary; we’ve not turned away from having a musician, but we need time to figure out what that’s going to look like, and how to search for that person.

In the meantime, we are moving ahead.  But I don’t want to talk about the ways we’re moving ahead today.  Today I want us to think about how hard it is to deal with the changes that happen when our world changes.

Dealing with change is a real challenge… even when everyone agrees that a change is necessary, important, and good.  

Some years ago, my cousins down on the farm in Woodstock changed the location of the main driveway into the farm.  For centuries (the farm’s been there for close to 300 years), the drive had come up from the road, right past the farmhouse, and then onto the barns, milk house and so on.  Cars came up the drive to visit at the house, feed truck came up the drive, bringing food for the cows, and milk tank trucks came up the drive to pick up milk… there was dust everywhere.  The house was the first thing you saw, and people stopped in all the time, looking for my uncle, dropping stuff off, and so on.

So, my cousins moved the drive, maybe 100 feet over.  Now when you drive in, the first thing you see is the Woodstock Creamery building, where they sell milk and other dairy products.  You can still see the house, but you have to make an intentional turn to go to it… so there’s a lot less traffic by the house, lots less dust, lots more privacy.  It’ makes all the sense in the world.  I’m sure I’m not the only family member who wonders why on earth our ancestors didn’t put the drive there in the first place.

It’s the right thing in the right place, right?  And yet, every time I drive by, it feels wrong.  I went up that drive with my grandparents, and with my parents, and then my aunt, when she and her husband ran the farm.  I know in my heart what the crunch of the gravel sounds like, and how the lilac my great-grandmother planted when she married and came over from Pomfret, would brush the roofs of cars – and how it had to be cut back periodically to keep from blocking the drive.  The trip up the drive was the end of the long drive from New Jersey to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family… it’s just packed full of memories, and it no longer exists.  That’s hard.

It’s always hard when change comes.  And it’s perfectly reasonable to miss what used to be.  And it’s ok to mourn the things in the past that we loved.

That religious leader who snapped at Jesus because he was violating the Sabbath had lost sight of what his rule, his practice was supposed to be about.  

Everything we do here has to do with being in the presence of God, has to do with helping others find value in their lives, with helping people be good and do good.  Our practices are not our goals, they are the means to our goals.  No matter how much we loved what we did in the past, if it no longer works to help us meet our goals, then it’s time to look around and see what might be a better way for this current time.

And it’ll be time to let go of complaining because the past no longer exists.  There is very little that is more discouraging than working hard to create a sustainable future and having people pick away at the work because their favorite “whatever” is no longer happening, or is now different.  It’s time to take what we have and figure out how to make it better, rather than getting upset that yesterday’s practice no longer works.

As we grow and evolve into our future, we’re going to hold on tight to what matters – God, love, community, service.  We’re going to keep our hearts, our minds, our eyes open to how that works in today’s world.  

We will let go of what has us bent over, and seek the things that will allow us to stand up and serve God, all our days.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

August 3, 2025 Joint Worship Service in Southbridge MA

Luke 18:1–8 

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³ In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ ⁴ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” ⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷ And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? ⁸ I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

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.

We are the luckiest people in the world.

Look all around us… look at this beautiful day, this beautiful place… see that we’re here with friends new and long-standing, gathered to worship God and to have fun together.  

It could have been 95, right?

It could have been raining.

This is New England; it could just as easily be 62… and raining….

Being together, sharing food, playing games, caring for one another, listening to stories about God, this is as close to heaven as we can get.

And that’s important to remember, because so much of our world stinks.

Sometimes life is so hard it’s almost unendurable.

Maybe for you the hard part is going on out in the world.  Maybe it’s a challenge at home.  

Maybe part of it is that it seems as though you ought to be handling this better – after all you’re a church-going person!  Maybe it feels as though you’re making too much of what’s happening, other people pooh-pooh your concerns?

But here, in this place, in this company we are committed to naming the truth of our world.

If you’re seeing challenges, know they are real.  We don’t need to agree on what those problems are to know that they are real problems. 

We can be on different sides of arguments and still know that arguing hurts.  

The Gospel lesson today is the story of a woman who knows she has a problem — and a judge who wants to pretend the problem doesn’t exist, so he won’t have to do anything.  He’s got all the power; she has none.  And her complaining, her petitioning, doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

You can see how this might fit in with today.  We see bad things happening.  And though we go to God in prayer, we don’t see changes – just like the woman, it’s as if no one cares.

Maybe a hundred years ago, a little girl got the measles.  She was a bright little thing, the apple of her family’s eye, the last of five children.  But she got the measles, and – as sometimes happens even now – her measles turned into encephalitis.  And encephalitis meant irreversible damage to her brain.  She was no longer a bright, happy little child.  She wasn’t bright at all, and more and more frequently was taken by uncontrollable bursts of temper.  Her family was horrified, and then they were terrified.  In tears and defeat, their beloved daughter went to live at a state school and there she died when she was six.

Some twenty years later, her oldest sister had a baby who turned out to have cognitive limitations.  When the medical folks said she and her husband should put the baby away at the state school, she remembered her sister, and said . . No.  We can do this hard thing. And they did.  They kept their daughter home, educated her to her fullest capacity, taught her to be a loving and responsible member of society.

More than that, she worked to make life better for all the other children born with cognitive limitations.  She fought to educate people so they wouldn’t be afraid of kids with challenges, fought to create a system of dispersed residences, so children who needed that kind of care would not have to go so far away.  She fought to create respectable jobs, and then to create homes in smaller, more family-sized groups.  (She didn’t do this alone; there was a whole team.  But she was a sparkplug who made things happen.)

Someone once urged her to go to one of those faith healing crusades, saying that with prayer, God would heal her daughter, make her whole.  The parents both said, our daughter is whole; this is who she is, and healing her, changing her, just isn’t going to happen.  We aren’t going to make her think we don’t love her as she is.  Besides, she would never understand when nothing changed.  It would break her heart.

But every day, with God’s guidance, those parents did heal their daughter.

They healed her from society’s contempt.  

They healed her from the expectation that she couldn’t learn, couldn’t contribute to society.  

They even healed her from the expectation that her physical problems would see her dead before she was twenty.  

Instead she lived out a full life.  And at the same time, their efforts healed the world for others – other young people didn’t have to leave home when they were little kids, other affected people were able to get jobs.  I just looked it up the other day – reports say that there are almost 15,000 people under the care of her state; every one of them, and every family member, has a better life because of the efforts of that young woman beset with tragedy as a teen, and then again as a young mother.  Healing isn’t about fixing the broken thing; it’s about making good out of tragedy.

So, here’s the thing to remember today:  God is not an unjust judge, only responding because we’ve annoyed him for too long.  God loves us, creates us out of love, leads and guides and comforts us, out of love. We know God is going to be standing right beside us, no matter how terrible the day.

God stands with us.

God isn’t our creature, doesn’t make “everything all right” like some kind of cheap magic trick, as if we’ve bought healing from God.

God doesn’t remake the world to our specifications.  

God has put us in a world that has infinite possibility for good, and an equally infinite possibility of horror or evil.  We have been given the potential; it is our work to make good, to create love, to live in joy, out of the day-to-day realities of our world.  And we do all that work knowing that God is at our side, offering the gifts of patience, persistence, vision, courage, companionship and love.

If I’m not clear yet, we are the most fortunate of people because God has given each of us a life worth living, given each of us ways to make our world better, no so much for ourselves, but for our communities, our neighbors, our families, ourselves.  And when the worst happens, our God will not leave us alone.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

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