Author: tobelieveistocare

June 29, 2025  Open and Affirming Sunday  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Gal 3:28-29  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. ²⁹ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Acts 8:26-39 Common English Bible  ²⁶ 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

May 25, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Luke 18:9-14  

⁹ He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

I John 4:16b-21 –

¹⁶ So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷ Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

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.

Last week, Dean Sarah Drummond, of Andover Newton Seminary wrote this:

In his very fine graduation sermon this past weekend, Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School graduate Spencer Law. . . meditated on [the] words “Christ has broken down the wall”,  from a hymn by Mark A. Miller: 

Spencer argued that, even when we’re feeling like we can’t make a difference in our increasingly fractured world, there’s always another wall we can break down. We can detect where the words “they” and “them” prevail and focus our attention on breaking barriers that lead to “we” and “us.”

When I was about eight, we moved from living in town in South Jersey, to living on a farm in Pennsylvania, about halfway between Philly and Wilmington.

I quickly realized that I was living in a strange place…. For instance, my elementary school in Chadds Ford, wasn’t just on a bluff above the banks of the Brandywine Creek. (which was more like a small, slow-moving river)….  It was also a recovering battlefield from the Revolutionary War.  At recess time, kids would go down and play on the banks of the creek and come back up the bluff with bullets, old-fashioned round bullets, and sometimes other pieces of made metal.  Battlefields, for us, weren’t something we read about; they were where we lived and played.

My Quaker meeting, up the road a few miles, had been used as a hospital during the battle.  Instead of bullets, however, we had bodies.  Out behind the meeting house there was a mass grave, mixed American and British dead, buried together for eternity… and we had dark stains on our benches in the room where we worshipped.  The kids all thought those were blood stains.

The existence of war was a part of my childhood in a way that it isn’t up here in New England.  Sure, we have Patriot’s Day but unless you are part of that vanishingly small group of descendants of the men who fought at Lexington and Concord, it’s more of a play, a reproduction, a once-a-year event than living on the battlefield, with the daily reminders that produced.

I didn’t see the glamor of the uniforms, or hear the beat of the marching soldiers.  I saw the bullets and the blood and the deaths of both “us” and “them”.

When I was a Marine, I worked with a number of men who’d fought in the south Pacific, in places like Guadalcanal, or Iwo Jima or Okinawa and as a pastor I’ve met and known a number of men and women who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.  They, of course, were the survivors, and this weekend our world remembers those who gave their all.  But the folks I knew were the witnesses to the truth that war, even when fought for the very best purposes – freeing the slaves, breaking away from England, driving a stake into the heart of fascism – is massively destructive.  

War is not just destructive to the land – if you go to France, you can still trace the lines of the World War I trenches – over a hundred years and the land is not yet healed – war does not just kill the fighters, not just break the survivors, but it hurts, damages every thing it touches.  

General William T. Sherman wrote:  “all war is hell”, and he was not exaggerating.  

Jesus told the story of the two men who went to worship one day – one of them coming with a broken heart, ready to admit to his problems, and the other, so sure of his perfection.  When I read that story, along with the lesson from 1 John.. that those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also… it seems to me that I’m reading about how wars begin, and – hopefully – how they end.

Wars begin when we focus more on what divides than what unites, when we’re more about how much better “I” am, than how much better it is when it’s “we” that we envision.  And wars end, and end well, when we are able to replace our self-importance with the practice of inclusive, welcoming love. 

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said:  We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.  

Without love, we are no more than an unrelated pile of individual branches, none of them connected to another.  But with love, we become a strong tree, able to withstand the buffets and blows of life.  Living out our love is a constant struggle, because the natural tendency of human beings is towards greed and selfishness, for me first, and you only if there’s enough left over.

For centuries one of the major dividing lines in western Christianity has been the church – Protestants against Catholics, Catholics against Protestants…. And different kinds of Protestants against one another.  We lost focus on that call to love, and let the war mindset take over. 

Today, the United Church of Christ, our denominational family, has re-set our priorities and declares that all the church is one, that no part of the church is better or closer to God, than another.  We stand against the kind of dismissal that divides.

In the same way, we stand against the dismissals that divide in our public lives. 

You know, not all wars involve actually shooting people.  We’re engaged in a war right now, a war between those who believe that some people naturally deserve more and those who believe that everyone deserves a place at the table.  Some folks would say it’s a war between Republicans and Democrats, but I don’t think that’s true now, if it ever were.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats believe that some folks are better than others.  But there are people, people who maybe hide behind acceptable labels, who do think that we’d be better off with fewer people getting Medicaid, or food assistance, better off with lower taxes for the wealthy, and so on.  

That kind of attitude has always been a part of life.  The person who, down my way, tries to block access to the beach for their town, thinks they’re better, that they have more rights, and is a cousin to the one who thinks that because they have lots and lots of money that they matter more than anyone else.

You can see them now, coming to their church, sitting in “the best seat”, and expecting that the church is blessed by their presence, seeing no need to be the least bit humble.  And  you can see the folks next to them, the ones who’ve heard the story of love, who follow that path, welcoming everyone, treating all with love, refusing to go along to get along.

That’s who God is calling us to be, people who believe that everyone matters, people who know that hatred leads to destruction, people who let their love shine out.

Amen.

 © 2025, Virginia H. Child

May 18, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Isaiah 43:18-21 ¹⁸ Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. ¹⁹ I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. ²⁰ The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, ²¹ the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Acts 15:1-12 Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” ² And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. 

³ So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters. ⁴ When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. ⁵ But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.” 

⁶ The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. ⁷ After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. ⁸ And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us, ⁹ and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us.

¹⁰ Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? ¹¹ On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” 

¹² The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the gentiles.

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.

Some years ago, Barbara Brown Zikmund, one of the great voices of the United Church of Christ over the past fifty years, sketched out a list of things that make the UCC different.  These beliefs are not individually unique to us, but as a whole, describe a way of being church, being human that is “us”….  

Last week, I started sharing this list with you.  As I began to work on this week’s sermon, I realized that I had omitted any introduction or explanation, and consequently, you had little chance to hear the list as a whole or to understand how it can help us understand how God guide us in our living.

So, first, let me share the entire list with you.  You don’t need to take notes!  I still expect we’ll explore each of these characteristics on a Sunday.. I just want us to remember that each of them is part of a whole.  

Think about it this way:  many of us have a fixed menu we always have at Thanksgiving, right?  While most of us have turkey, and some of us have something like enchiladas, whatever is the “usual” can vary widely… though each of them makes up a Thanksgiving feast.  This list is our “Thanksgiving feast menu”.  Other ways of describing faith in Christ are good, too, but this one is ours.

What makes the UCC different?

A view that Jesus is the head of the church.
A vision that the church is called to be ONE.
An insistence that God is still speaking.
A belief that Statements of Faith are testimonies.
A sense of calling to seek a Just World for all.
A conviction that the basic unit is the local church.
A desire to cultivate autonomy and mutuality.
A commitment to honor covenantal relationships.
A belief that all members are called to ministry.
A trust that the Holy Spirit will guide the church.

Last week, we learned that we believe that Jesus Christ is the head of the church – that is, no human is in charge, all of us lead under the guidance of Jesus. We learned that because each of us is capable of hearing Jesus, all of us have a voice in the life of the church.  You’ll live that equality out in a few months when each one of you will have a vote in the calling of your new pastor.  While pretty much all Christian churches say that Jesus is the head of the church, only those with a congregational style of government, expect every member to have a vote in the work of the church.  In many other Christian systems of government, either a bishop, or a board of elders, or some other limited group, makes all decisions.  But we believe that because Jesus speaks to all, all have a voice, each is free to speak, and all must be heard.  That’s why the belief that Jesus is the head of the church is so important to us.

Picture the apostles in the story I read from Acts.  It’s early in the life of the church, and there are a lot of major issues that haven’t been settled yet.  Today’s story is one of them.  The immediate concern is circumcision, and behind that lies the question as to just how much of the Jewish law do Gentiles have to follow.  As time goes on, Christian leaders will begin to see that they are being led beyond being Jewish; our roots are in Judaism, but we are not Jews.  This is the beginning of that exploration, that discovery.  So, how does the process go?  People bring up the question.  They all discuss it, and then bring it to the major leaders in Jerusalem.  They looked closely at what this rule meant to the new believers who were joining them, and then they chose the more inclusive way.  From that point on, the church in Jerusalem would not require new believers to follow the law of Moses, to be Jews as well as Christ-followers. 

The words from Isaiah reassure us that this new thing, this new understanding that we receive will be good, that it will bring refreshment to those who suffer, water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.  When God speaks, good happens.

Today, therefore, I want us to look at our insistence that God is still speaking.  This is one of our distinctive beliefs.  It marks us particularly, in a way we don’t share with all Christians.  We believe that just because we thought we understood what God was saying yesterday, that doesn’t mean that we won’t hear more, hear more clearly, understand better, recognize new in the changing conditions of our world.  We will not be captured by yesterday’s understandings.

We expect that new occasions will call forth new understandings.  Most churches do respond to changing ways… although I know of a church back in my home town that still sings without instruments because someone decided in the 1600s that when Jesus Christ came, he ended any need for instruments….  

But we do not wait to be forced into allowing new understandings of our world; we look at, live in the world as it is today, and we expect that we will need to expand our understanding of the world.  The reality of this means that we are often on the leading edge of expanding understanding.

When the English ancestors of the Congregational Churches came here, they came intent on re-inventing how church worked.  They’d seen the misuses of power in the English church, the pastors who were appointed despite their inadequacies, the ways that different voices were silenced.  When they came here, they re-created how church worked.  They even re-designed church buildings to help us more clearly see God.  

Over the centuries, we’ve continued to re-think what church is, what following Jesus requires.  That’s meant that we were often the first group of churches to do new things:  

• We were the first denomination to ordain a woman to Christian ministry in 1853.  
• Our local churches were some of the earliest Christian congregations to make a stand against slavery.  
• In 1972, the Golden Gate Association of the California Norther Conference, ordained a gay man to ministry.  
• In 1976, we elected the first African-American leader of the denomination.  
• We endorsed gay marriage at a General Synod (national meeting) in 2005.  
• We created the first foreign mission society, here in Massachusetts, back in 1810.  
• Congregationalist started the American School for the Deaf in Hartford in 1817.

It goes on and on. It’s all about a built-in propensity when we meet new occasions,

• to see the people who are affected by what’s going on
• to wonder why this is the way it is
• to ask questions about what can be done, about how we can best follow God,
• and to move into new ways, even when they challenge us.

Think about the changes we’ve seen in the way that children relate to the church over the last 25 years… it used to be that we expected our children to attend Sunday school every week, and expected that within that area, they’d learn the stories of Jesus and would come to love and serve God when they became adults.  Just about every church had some version of a graded school, complete with teachers and curriculum, led by wonderful people who often gave up the gift of Sunday worship in devotion to our children.  

Then, in the late 1980s, the children stopped coming.  Every year, there were fewer and fewer children.  

Sure, some churches didn’t wonder; they just kept expecting that “next year will be different.” But other churches started asking what was going on.  We looked around and realized how much children were separated from our actual worship life.  We realized it had become possible, even likely, that our young people might attend Sunday school every week, and yet not attend church itself, ever.  We wondered if that was a good way to introduce them to worship and the life of faith.  We recognized that, with the abuse of children in some churches, parents were increasingly nervous about allowing their youngest to be out of their oversight.  

Out of the changes in our world, and our own concern for our children, we began to make changes.  More and more churches are doing what we are – establishing a place for our youngest children to be themselves, Our children’s corner is one of the best responses I’ve seen.  It brings children into church, allows them to take part in the service to the extent that works for them.  It protects them from unhealthy situations.  And our older children are invited to be a part of the worship itself, that they might grow into a faith that sustains them throughout their lives. 

All this started with our clear-eyed recognition of a change happening, our curiosity about what was really going on, and our courage in trying something new.  God is still speaking.

We went through the same process when it came to welcoming women to ordained leadership in the church, and when we began to explicitly welcome LGBT+ people to participation in the church and to ordination.  In each case, we began with a change in our understanding of what it meant to be a part of God’s community.  

Could we be whole, could we live into God’s vision, if some of us were – by the structure of our church – kept outside, prevented from full participation?  And you know, that same question is now driving us to recognize the way our structure, habits and assumptions have built invisible barriers for Black people, for poor people, for immigrants, for all those who are met with scorn by our society.   God is still speaking.

This is God’s gift to us, that we might fulfill our call.  We are gifted with a God who arouses in us curiosity, who calls forth our compassion, and who leads us to be people of compassion and love.

God is still speaking. 

Amen.

 ©2025, Virginia H. Child

May 11, 2025  First Congregational UCC, Brimfield MA

Psalm 113 — ⁵ Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, ⁶ who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? ⁷ He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, ⁸ to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. ⁹ He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.  Praise the Lord

Colossians 1:15-20 — ¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, ¹⁶ for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

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.

So, the big news this week is that there’s a new Pope in Rome, right?  And the big news about the new Pope is that he’s from Chicago?  He roots for the White Sox, poor man, loves deep dish pizza, plays Wordle with his brother. 

The new Pope is an Augustinian friar, unlike Pope Francis, who was a Jesuit.  Now, I’m not going to go through all the differences between Augustinians and Jesuits – all I want us to notice is that there’s clearly more than one right way to be a Roman Catholic priest.

And now an Augustinian bishop from Chicago by way of Peru is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. 

There’s a lot more that could be reported about the new Leo XIV, but I want to stop there.  Because, you seek, technically, what I just said is wrong.  He’s  not the head of the Roman Catholic Church.  His title is Vicar of Christ; he’s the assistant to Jesus, who is the real head of the Church.

That’s one of the places where we are actually in the same place as the Catholic Church.  Like them, we believe Jesus is the Head of the Church.  Now, we don’t believe that anyone is God’s assistant pastor and in charge of everyone else – that’s where we differ.

What I want to share with you today is why saying Jesus is the head of the church is important, and what it means for who we are and how we do ministry.  Unlike the Catholic church, where one man stands in for Jesus, we insist that we best hear what Jesus is saying to the church when we all participate, when we listen to one another, and then follow the group’s sense of direction.

Let’s start with this truth:  it is Jesus who is the head of the church.  It’s not me, it’s not the Moderator, the biggest giver, the longest tenured member, or anyone else who has power, strength, or passion.  It’s so very clear in the letter to the people who lived in the city of Colossae, where the author writes: “ [Jesus] is the head of the body, the church”… and goes on to say that, in that role, Jesus brings us all together, reconciling us to God, and making peace.

Jesus is the head of the church, so that we will be brought together as one community.  God doesn’t make any ordinary person the head, because that would set that person up as more important, and God believes that every person matters.  

And because every person matters in God’s eyes, we organize ourselves so that every person has a part, a vote, in our discussions and meetings.  And beyond that, we believe that every person in our community matters.  Every person. 

If you’ve ever wondered why it is that Congregationalists are always so involved in the lives of their communities, their world, in the politics of our time, it is that basic belief that every person matters.’’

One of the reasons the Puritans came to Massachusetts and Connecticut, back in the 1600s, was to build a church and community where they could bake in the idea of equality in the eyes of God.  They didn’t succeed, of course, but they laid the foundation for how our faith community has continued on.  

They didn’t succeed, because they were so used to someone being in charge.  It took generations for their thought and practice to conform to their beliefs.  True equality is challenging.  For instance, their clergy leaders naturally thought that because they had a university education, they knew more and better than others the right way to do things.  Gradually they learned that if they shared their learning, and when they encouraged all voices – even women – to speak out, that they had a clearer path to God’s will.

But even at the beginning, they believed that every person mattered.  Other Europeans thought the Natives were a joke, fit only to be servants or slaves.  Our Puritan ancestors likewise thought Natives were limited, but they also believed they could be redeemed, baptized, made equal.  Looking backwards now, it sounds terribly patronizing, by their own standards, it was a radically inclusive step in a new direction.  

Over the decades, our way of being church, of needing every voice at the table in order to hear God’s will clearly, has drawn us – over and over – into the issues of the day.  

We weren’t always there, but we kept going back to the Bible, to readings like Psalm 113 that we heard this morning, and we would debate with each other what that meant in our world.  How does God raise the poor from the dust, lift the needy from the ash heap?  How does God bring us all together?  And, more and more clearly, we came to see that…

If God wants everyone to have a place at the table, then everyone has to have a seat at the table.  The men in charge didn’t necessarily like it, but they learned that women have to be included.  Black people have to be included.  Poor people have to be included.  Gay people have to be included.  Trans people have to be included.  

Why do we work towards physical accessibility?  Because everyone has  a place at the table.  Why do we broadcast our worship services?  So that everyone can participate, even if they can’t leave their homes.  

One of the ways to see what’s happening in our world today is that we’re in the midst of a struggle between those who believe – for whatever reason – that some people are  better than others, and those who believe that all people matter.  We who organize our churches so that everyone has a voice come at the question of equality from that point of view.  

Now, ours is not the only way to be church, tho – so far as I know – all Christians believe that Jesus is the head of the church.  But after that agreement, there are many paths.  Each of them nurtures their own understanding of humanity.  For us, the way we organize reflects and teaches us that every person matters because it makes us listen for every voice.

The next time someone asks, why do you make such a big thing of – listening to every voice, welcoming every person, speaking out for the oppressed, standing up for trans people – remember this:  we believe that every person matters and it is our call to make that welcome real in our world.

Amen.

©2025, Virginia H. Child

Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025  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.

On that first Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb where Jesus’ body had been hastily laid.  We think she came to complete preparing the body for final burial, the preparations which had been cut short by the beginning of the Sabbath on Friday at sunset.  And we’re pretty sure she was hesitant, dreading the work, but knowing it had to be done.

In John’s telling of the story, Mary comes alone, bringing the focus more sharply on her than in the other versions.  Here the story wants us to see her dragging feet, know her fear, and yet see her determination and courage.

We picture a cave for a tomb, with a stone shaped like a millstone rolled in front of the opening, closed to all who might enter, might steal the body, might cause trouble.  But on this morning, when Mary gets to the tomb the stone has been rolled away and – when she looks in – the body is gone.

Her first, and most logical, reaction is to assume the body’s been stolen, probably by the authorities, to keep them from making the tomb a shrine.  That would mean that the authorities are taking Jesus’ followers  very seriously, so she runs to find Peter and the other disciple.  And in fear and trepidation, they too come and see the empty tomb.

The whole idea of a resurrected Jesus, physically alive, able to eat and drink, not just a projection of the disciples, was easier to comprehend back before rationality took over the world.  Now we hear that story through our own experiences with death and what we’ve learned about the physical processes of dying.  We hear the story that the resurrected Christ was called physically into heaven, and hear it through what we know about the ionosphere, and the unlikeliness that there’s a physical heaven floating above us somewhere.

And we let all that blind us to what the recounting of the Resurrection is really about.  Because, you know, it’s not a patient history.  It’s not a news story.  It’s not science.

Resurrection is defiance.  It is courage.  It is hope.  It is love.   It is new life and change.  It is the power and love of God.

In my childhood, I attended Quaker meeting.  Our kind of Quakers – Hicksite Friends – were not particularly wedded to Christian holidays.  While we personally celebrated Christmas and Easter, neither had much part on our Sunday worship.  Easter alone was remarkable because on that one day, one of the more committed Friends always shared a Children’s Story.  It was all the more remarkable because she told the same story every year.

Every year, she would pull out a potted daffodil plant and carefully explain to us all that this was a metaphor for Easter… that just as the dead-appearing bulb would bring forth a new and glorious bloom in the Spring, so had the dead Jesus come forth as the new and glorious Christ.

It’s a beautiful way of telling the story, tho it’s really quite inadequate.  Resurrection is something different from daffodils rising from their bulbs.  Daffys are always alive, dead people are dead.  Sooner or later, if we’re going to talk about the Resurrection, we’ve got to talk about God.

The poet Mary Oliver wrote:

I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that. And anyway,
     what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or
twice I have seen. I’ll just
     tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
     ever, possibly, see one.
+ Mary Oliver

Resurrection is not so much about believing that a dead Jesus has come back to life.  The story of the dead Jesus coming back to life, and the way that story changed people – that’s the Resurrection we are given.  Because God is all about turning our lives around.  And this Resurrection story turned the power of the world upside down.

The disciples thought they were part of a plan to take over their country, to drive out the oligarchs, the people who made themselves wealthy by taking away the power of the people, so that they could take over and run things the way they thought they ought to be done.  

Resurrection opened their eyes to see that they were not working for themselves but that, through them, God was working to save the whole world.  It wasn’t about what they wanted, but what God had taught them.

Resurrection changes our spirits.  Resurrection bring us to a new kind of power.

You could say resurrection is something like the conversion of our world from the cold, rainy, raw, and depressingly grey days we’ve been experiencing – to the brightness of forsythia, the joy of daffys, the scent of hyacinths and new spring earth, even the spring of the rabbits in our yards…. 

We were people who plodded along in a world where every important thing depended on the whim of a tyrant, whether it was the Emperor in Rome or some more home-grown authority, wanted today.  

Emperors, you know, were something of a mixed bag, some competent, some not so much, most not quite as honest as you’d prefer, some of them right out there when it came to outrageous, impulsive and corrupt behavior… and all of them surrounded by a court which was obsessed with getting and keeping power, no matter what it meant for the Empire.  

It was a world where nothing was stable, where the rules could change on a dime.  Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, ran the country with the goal of having nothing, not one thing, for which he could be criticized, get sent off to Rome.  And he was in constant conflict with the current Herod, who always wanted more and better – and who was always making deals to preserve and grow his own power.   The poor temple authorities, the people Rome tasked with keeping the common folks pacified, were caught in the middle – no matter which way they chose – to give into the powerful or to stand up for their people, they had made the wrong choice.

That was there world, but then came Resurrection.  And with resurrection, the followers of Jesus realized that their loyalty was not to the constant chaos of Judea and Rome, but to the eternal and constant love of God.

The followers of Jesus were raised from a rabble that wanted to re-conquer their own country, to an community that wanted to call everyone to a love-based, justice-oriented way of life, wanted us to live in God’s light.  And that changed everything.

It still changes everything today.  Instead of some belief that is only about whether or not our souls go to heaven after we die, we are held up by a belief that our souls, our being is given value and worth by the way we live right now. 

We are called to be the balance point of relationships in our world.  There are others called to this work; it’s not ours alone, but today and right now, it is the work to which we are called – to be the people who practice love… to be the people who live generosity… who step away from anger and hatred… who welcome the stranger… the people who believe there has to be a better way and who are willing and ready to work towards that end.

This is especially important this year.  As Dean Sarah Drummond, of Andover Newton Seminary, says:  “Everyone, everywhere, is bent out of shape.  We’re all easy targets for getting turned against each other, which is the oldest trick in the Devil’s book.”  It’s no easy thing to be the people who are called to create peace, but that’s us, and there’s no denying the need is great.  

We may never see a sign of success, but we will be successful, because we will live with love for our world.

We may get tired, worn down.  We may be filled with fear for our world, for ourselves, but we will continue, because we will live filled with the powerful love of a resurrected God.

And when it gets too hard, when we get too tired to continue, we will take a moment to remember, that God knows us, love us, knows our strength, knows we will rejoin the struggle as we are able.  We will not fail, for we are not alone.

Let us serve God as Resurrection People, today and always.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

April 5, 2025, First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

When I’d finished going over the slides, a man sitting toward the back of the church said, “Show me those slides again, Reverend.”  I clicked back through them quickly, naming the interlocking issues as they piled up on top of communities like the one where we were sitting (Harlan County WVa).“Well, I’ll be damned,” the man said after I’d finished going through the slides again.  “They’ve been playing us against one another.”   White Poverty, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, page 120

Luke 12:13-21 Cotton Patch Gospel: Somebody in the crowd said to [Jesus], “Preacher, speak to my brother about dividing the inheritance with me.”

Jesus said to him, “Say, fellow, who appointed me as a judge or arbitrator between you two?”

Then he said to them, “You all be careful and stay on your guard against all kinds of greediness. For a person’s life is not for the piling up of possessions.”

He then gave them a Comparison: “A certain rich fellow’s farm produced well. And he held a meeting with himself and he said, ‘What shall I do? I don’t have room enough to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my old barns and build some bigger ones in which I’ll store all my wheat and produce. And I will say to myself, ‘Self, you’ve got enough stuff stashed away to do you a long time. Recline, dine, wine, and shine!’ But God said to him, ‘You nitwit, at this very moment your goods are putting the screws on your soul. All these things you’ve grubbed for, to whom shall they really belong?’ That’s the way it is with a man who piles up stuff for himself without giving God a thought.”^[1]

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.

This past week I went to the dentist… not my favorite thing, but I’m fortunate; I have a very good dentist with an excellent office staff, and I have dental insurance.  While I was in the waiting room, a patient was talking with the insurance manager – I could hear a little of their conversation – “So, here are your options, sir… your insurance will pay for the extractions, but it doesn’t pay for dentures, and – let’s see – it’s $2750 for the upper denture and $2750 for the lower, so the total will be $5,500.  If you don’t have the cash for that, we offer two different credit plans… and off she went, in the kindest way possible, explaining the differences between plan A and plan B.

And from the stunned look on the man’s face, I could well imagine that he didn’t have almost $6000 sitting around in the bank.  And, if you’re poor, if $6000 is more than you can pay out, the cost of the credit was also going to be a burden.  So all the time the dentist was doing his thing, I was wondering how many time poverty robs people of their teeth… and how losing your teeth changes how you relate to society, what and how you eat.  I’m willing to bet that having no teeth, because you couldn’t afford dental care, makes it harder to get a job, maybe even to hold a job.  It seems to me that dentures, and good dental care, are things we just take for granted, but if we’re poor, they’re just not available.  And at some level, it’s all about the greed in today’s lesson.  Poor people don’t have money, but someone else does, and more than they’ll ever need.

The owner of that farm that Luke tells us about was a man who wanted to corner the market in his neighborhood, corner the market on grain.  He wanted to be the person everyone came to when their own supplies ran short.  He wanted to be rich, he wanted to be –umm- feared, he wanted to be able to take advantage of the poor so he could scoop up their land, he wanted to wreak vengeance on anyone who’d made fun of him in his early days.  In short, he was consumed by greed.

Years ago, Ron Sider, who was a professor at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in suburban Philadelphia, told a story about the rich fool he named Bigger Barnes, and here’s what he said about this guy:

The rich fool is the epitome of the covetous person.  He has a greedy compulsion to acquire more and more possessions, even though he does not need them.  And his phenomenal success at piling up more and more property and wealth leads to the blasphemous conclusion that material possessions can satisfy all his needs.  From the divine perspective, this attitude is sheer madness.  He is a raving fool.

In our own society today, we madly multiply sophisticated gadgets, bigger houses, fancier cars, and fashionable clothes—not because such things truly enrich our lives but because we are driven by an obsession for more and more.  Covetousness, a striving for more and more material possessions, has become a cardinal vice of modern civilization…  (p. 98)

And then Sider makes a qualification.  He says, ‘Possessions are dangerous.  But they are not innately evil.  Biblical revelation begins with creation.  And created things, God said, are good.  (Genesis 1)  p. 99  It is not because food, clothes, wealth and property are inherently evil that Christians today must lower their standard of living.  It is because others are starving.  Creation is good.  But the one who gave us this gorgeous token of affection has asked us to share it with our sisters and brothers. (p. 101)

Greed doesn’t have to be the result of one dominating personality; in New Brunswick, Canada, the Irving family runs what sounds like the whole province.  They’re the Irvings behind Irving Oil, so they have a refinery in Saint John, two paper mills, building supply stores, railways, gas stations…subsidized housing, four radio stations, transport trucks… they make steel and frozen French fries.  They even have their own security firm. Pollution is common.  And if you don’t get along with the Irving companies, it’s hard to find work.

One in every 10 people in NB works for Irving, yet it is the one of the poorest provinces in Canada.  

There was a huge profile of the company and its influence in a recent New York Times article; and I kept wondering where the edge is between being a responsible employer and being the company taking advantage of the people where they are… just what are the signs of corporate greed?  Just what is a reasonable and fair profit?  What does a company owe the community where it’s located?  These are the questions our Christian faith calls us to ask.

The guy with the stuffed-full barns is a reminder to all of us.  Jesus wants everyone to know that greed isn’t a challenge just for us, but also for the wealthiest people in the world.  Greed is a problem for everyone.  

Most of all, this season, because we’ve been spending Lent understanding how an entire economy can trap people in poverty leading to deep and dangerous divisions in our world… because of all that, this time, we want to be clear, that even for the wealthiest, there’s a difference between enough and too much.

It’s not about dollar amounts.  It’s about what we do with the money we have.  Our Christian faith tells us that the moral way to handle abundance is to share what you have, to use your excess to build up our society.  That means planning, thinking about what we want, what we need, how we can share.  It means encouraging companies to do the same, whether we’re the owners, the stockholders, or the neighbors.  

We are called by God to fight against the temptation of greed, of the understandable yearning to have more and more.  We are called to be advocates of generosity, teachers of the religious practice of sharing.  We are called to be love incarnate in our world.  

May it be so.  Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

^[1] Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Gospel (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Pub., 2004), Lk 12:13–16.

March 30, 2025   First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Acts 4:32-5:11

³² Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ³³ With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. ³⁴ There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. ³⁵ They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. ³⁶ There was a Levite from Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”). ³⁷ He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. 

But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; ² with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. ³ “Ananias,” Peter asked, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? ⁴ While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!” ⁵ Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. ⁶ The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him. 

⁷ After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. ⁸ Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price.” And she said, “Yes, that was the price.” ⁹ Then Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” ¹⁰ Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. ¹¹ And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.

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.

I’ve been thinking this week of the time a church I was leading decided to lay carpet in their reception room.  It was a great idea – the room had been tiled, maybe before World War II, and the tiling had long since hit its use-by date.  We used the room for a million things, but it was the week where we did three funeral receptions in five days that finally made us get going.

There’s a whole other story about what we did to that room, once we got clear about how we wanted to focus one welcoming others, but today’s story is about what happened when we had to choose the color of the carpet… was it going to be light grey with red flecks?  …or dark grey with red flecks.

Yes, I’m sure you’re wondering why that was a hard decision and, in fact, it really wasn’t, except that it was.  You see, we were mostly set on one color, but on the morning we were to make the decision one of our most respected women leaders came into the meeting, all jazzed up, and passionately plead for the other color… and she persuaded everyone to go for it.

Then we all went home and heard the rest of the story. Between church and our meeting, our leader’s husband had discovered her on the church’s phone talking to her lover.  They had the kind of unpleasant conversation you can all imagine, and then she came to the meeting and talked us into her favorite color.  She had then left the church, her husband and their toddler son, to go off with the love of her life.

Parenthetically, I can report that the following week, the women of the church met again, and this time, chose the other color…. But this story isn’t about the color, it’s about the woman.  Because, you see, even though every one there thought she’d done the wrong thing in leaving her husband and son, no one quite knew what to do about it.

We didn’t want to say anything because we didn’t know the ins and outs of her marriage.

We didn’t want to say anything because we had all done wrong things ourselves.

We didn’t want to say anything because we too had been hurt; we’d lost a friend, a leader, felt betrayed.

I imagine the same thing happening to the people of that early church when they heard about Ananias and Sapphira.  I imagine that they were leaders, that they were liked, trusted, admired… and then it turned out they weren’t what folks had expected, and the folks gulped and stood in the shadows wondering what to do.

The story tells us that being seen as important was so central to Ananias and Sapphira that when Peter named their deception, the shock of being exposed caused them to die.  Maybe that’s another reason we hesitate to name the wrong when we see it – we’re cautious about what being exposed will mean for the perpetrator and the family?

And yet, in there, is a truth we need to realize.  It is not good for a community to close its eyes to wrong that’s being done, whether that’s within the community or in the world outside the door.

If God is in charge, we have a responsibility to name wrong as wrong, to say the truth we see.

Here’s another church story, this time from a reliable friend.  My friend once pastored a church that was losing members – and this was before that was true of so many churches.  Their church regularly brought in new people, who usually stayed maybe as long as six months before they quietly dropped out.  It didn’t take long to realize, once they saw the problem, that they had a member who would capture those newbies, tell them mean stories about other members, and eventually would start to make mean remarks to them.  The healthiest new folks left first, but over a period of time, just about all the new people walked back out the door.  Then the mean member started in on the church’s leaders.  Again, leaders began to leave the church.  Over a period of two to three years, they lost every leader under 50 but one and attendance on Sundays dropped from over 80 to right around 30. 

They tried every thing they could think of… quiet chats with those who had left, kind letters, even sitting down with the mean member.  Every deacon’s meeting was consumed with dealing with this person and the aftereffects of the continual attacks.  It became clear that if things continued in this path, the pastor would leave and the church would close.  Finally, the mean member attacked the one person who’d been most actively mounting her defense; losing that support, the church was freed to name and take seriously the viciousness of the attacks and they expelled her from the church.

It’s been more than twenty years since that happened… it took a long time for the church to recover, because those folks who’d left didn’t come back.  

Now, here in Massachusetts we’ve seen what happens in churches when we don’t name evil.  The Roman Catholic Church in this area may never recover from the betrayals of their lay members to save the reputations of evil priests.  

There are, I believe, no times, no places where closing our eyes to the wrong is good for an organization or good for people.  Pretending the bad is not happening, or telling lies to cover it up only makes things worse.

Closing our eyes to evil not only destroys trust, but it warps reality.  If God is God, and if we have decided to follow Jesus, then it is our work to stand up for the good, to be people who can teach the difference between good and evil.  We have been called, raised up and trained to stand up for kindness, compassion, justice, fairness.  

When we see the values of diversity, equity and inclusion trashed as cons which promote injustice, we have an absolute obligation to speak up, to say that it is always and in every case wrong to build communities where all the people cannot participate.

Years ago, when I first joined the church, up in Vermont, I remember asking one time, if Jesus’s death and resurrection had conquered evil, why did evil still exist?  Our pastor said that while the final conquest of evil was assured, the day-to-day struggle continues.  That is as true today as it was when he first said it.

We who believe that God is in charge have accepted the call to name evil, to work for good.  Let us continue to build a world where love is found.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

March 23, 2025           First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

The problem in American politics isn’t that poor white people vote against their interests so much as it is that poor people don’t have anyone to represent their interests. The Rev. Dr. William Barber II, White Poverty, P76

James 4:11-17:  ¹¹ Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another speaks evil against the law and judges the law, but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. ¹² There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor? 

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” ¹⁴ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it commits sin.

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 hardest things for us to figure out these days is just how to live among each other.  I don’t think I need to describe the challenges to you.  So, let’s be clear; we are divided politically and those political divisions are biting deep into our personal relationships.

That’s why, during Lent, I felt led to spend the season talking about the deepest problems of our land…. Not to promote a particular set of political expectations, but to say, again and again, that there is a particularly Christian way of dealing with those differences.

You see, right now it’s not just ideas about the best way to manage the federal government that divide us, or even beliefs about the most appropriate allies we should have, or whether or not to start a shooting war with Canada… those are all political decisions, and we have our ideas… but underlying those political opinions are beliefs about the nature of human beings, and that is our business.  

Here’s the thing:  Christians believe that every person is important.  Every person.  That’s because we believe that every person is made in the image of God.  God did not choose the tall blond Dutch folks to be the image of God (and Dutch people _are_ tall, and blond). God doesn’t just choose the wealthy.  God chose everyone.  You can be short, fat, ugly and poor, and God loves you.

Because God loves everyone, and everyone is made in God’s image, we Christians believe it is essential for us to care – not just theoretically, but actively – for everyone everywhere.  Sure, that’s impossible if I’m the only one in the world doing it, but it’s not impossible when you think of all of us together, each figuring out how to reach out in our locality and how to band together to meet needs across the world.

During Lent we’ve been listening to two voices – that of the Rev. Dr. William Barber, a pastor and professor, ordained in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and a man whose passion throughout his life has been the challenge of racism and poverty – and the second voice has been that of the Letter of James.

Probably written about fifty years after the Resurrection, by followers of James the brother of Jesus, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem, it speaks to a continuing challenge for the followers of Jesus as we struggle with just how and why we live out our faith in the ways we do.  This letter is a wonderful counterbalance to the idea that all we need to do to follow Christ is say that’s what we’re doing and, optimally, get baptized.  

James believes and teaches that words without deeds are meaningless.  Pastor Barber believes and teaches that the least among us matter.

And I also believe that living with, recognizing, supporting, and honoring those who are the least among us is an absolutely foundational piece of our faith.  Our political beliefs do not allow us to step aside from our Christian convictions.  

You could put it this way.  Jesus Christ teaches us, and his brother James reinforces that teaching – that every person matters, that it is an absolute requirement of our faith to have empathy for others, and to move that empathy from “I feel your pain” to some kind of response.

Sometimes the response that’s needed is one that involves the whole congregation.  We made that kind of response when as a church, we voted to become an Open and Affirming Church.  We continue that response by having pins available for individuals who are called to do so to wear them in public, to share the commitment to equal support and recognition of the LGBT+ community.

Last Sunday, like many of you, I picked up one of the pins and put it on.  After church, on the way home, I stopped for lunch at the Applebees in the Blackstone Valley Mall in Millbury.  My waiter thanked me for wearing the pin.  I’ll probably never see him again, but for that short time, he saw someone who was willing to see him as a full human being.  It was a little thing, but powerful.

Sometimes, we show our compassion for others, our willingness to learn what’s going on by reading a book like White Poverty. It’s an easy read, well-written, clear – and it’s a hard read, because it makes you think anew – do we really know what’s going on in our world?   Barber believes that the powerful among us use racism as bait to divide poor whites from poor blacks so as to keep them from uniting and demanding fairer treatment. 

In today’s quote, he says “The problem in American politics isn’t that poor white people vote against their interests so much as it is that poor people don’t have anyone to represent their interests. P76

Because poor people are divided, they are invisible.  This past week, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, suggested that the Social Security Administration could stop sending checks and no one would complain except the fraudsters.  He said his mother in law wouldn’t complain; she’d just assume it’d come next month.  

There are a couple of problems here:  Lutnick is a multi-billionaire; I think it’s fair to assume that his m-i-l won’t run out of money if her check doesn’t arrive.  So, apparently he thinks that no one on SS needs the money.  But the Social Security Administration says that 12% of men and 15% of women depend on SS for at least 90% of their income.  I know that for me, when I’m not working, it’s 50% of my monthly income.  But Lutnick can’t see the poor among us; he thinks everyone has the financial resources he has.  And he’s not alone.

As Christians, we are called to pay attention to our world.  That might mean noticing the neighbor who buys a lot of cat tuna – when you know she doesn’t have cats – but cat grade tuna is a lot cheaper.  Friskies Cat tuna is $2.56 a pound at my Shaws this week, while the cheapest human tuna, StarKist chunk is $4.00.  It might mean realizing that a neighbor is home bound because their car died, or because they can’t drive anymore.  It might mean realizing that those 2 job families are doing because they can’t make ends meet without both jobs.

Both James and Dr. Barber want us to see the poor among us, and to recognize that they are as much a part of God’s world as those of us who have resources are.  This is the Christian way, whether we are Republicans, Democrats or independents.  

We are people of love, empathy, and action.  May we continue to live up to our faith.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

March 16, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

The Virginia Slave Code of 1705 fully consolidated the system of racial and hereditary bondage.  The story that said people with darker skin are essentially different from people with lighter skin was codified in law and turned into a myth that would tell white people in a new land who they really were.  .  . . When we take race as a given, it’s possible to bemoan the death machine of the Atlantic slave trade … in the same way we mourn a tornado—without a twinge of remorse.   White Poverty, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, p 46

James 2:1-13  — My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality. ² For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³ and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here in a good place, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit by my footstool,” ⁴ have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵ Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? ⁶ But you have dishonored the poor person. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into the courts? ⁷ Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? 

⁸ If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well. ⁹ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹ For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹² So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³ For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

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.

Have you noticed?  Have you noticed how quick we all are to be angry these days?  And angry over things that don’t really matter?  

The store is out of fudge ripple ice cream, and people yell at the stocking clerk, as if the world will come to an end for them if they can’t have their preferred flavor.

Or  —  More seriously, someone writes into Dear Abby (or one of the thousand versions) and every commenter asserts angrily that the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s totally misunderstood the situation, and they know the right answer…  I’m right, you’re wrong.

Or – more painfully, your son finally gathers himself and tells you he’s gay, and the response is to be angry at him that he didn’t tell you sooner.

Over and over and over, I see people jumping right into anger, deep criticism, dismissal, as the first (and often, last) step in a conversation, whether it’s in person or online or some other media.

We don’t trust each other right now.

And I’m going to suggest that not only is that mistrust evil in the sight of God, but it is the deliberate and inevitable end of choices that have been made over the centuries right here in our land.

Our opening quote today marks the starting minute when we began to be separated.  In some ways, it’s the American version of the story of Cain and Abel, which was the original “farmers versus cattle ranchers” story…. Who’s more loved by God, the man who plants or the man who hunts?

In this case, tho, the underlying question is financial.  It seems pretty clear that the reason people invented chattel slavery – holding another human being in perpetual servitude – was to get cheap labor.  Slaves don’t need to be paid.  And the easiest way to do that was to say there was something so terrible about Black people that they owed white folks their lives, their labor.  And the lie went further – it said that it was ok to enslave Black people because that meant that the poor white people would remain free.

It turns out that if you really push this you can divide people six ways from Sunday, and when they’re divided, they’re also powerless.  

Not just by race, whatever that is, but also by gender (who gets to decide, men or women?), nationality – aren’t people whose ancestors came from England better than those whose ancestors came from, say, France or Hungary? Or even by what they do – whose more respected in the town – the farmer or the accountant, who doesn’t smell of cow manure?

The people who invented this mockery may not have realize that they were laying the groundwork for poisonous relationships, but that they did.   It turns out that while the politicians worked to establish our land on the basis of e pluribus unum, the planters and manufacturers were building on the basis of divide and conquer.  And those two theories, two ideas, are still at war with one another, still grappling like Cain and Abel, to control the direction of our community.

It’s no wonder we struggle to trust one another.  It’s no wonder we fail.  

Here’s the thing, though.  James says it’s all wrong.  How did today’s lesson begin?  My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality…  James claims that Jesus calls us to be a community of equality, mutual welcome, universal acceptance.

Right now, it’s clear that we’re in a world where acceptance is conditional.  If you come from “somewhere else”, you’re not going to be accepted easily.  If you look like you come “from away”… you’re not welcome.  

Last week, the US Army removed the history of the World War II unit, the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team from its web site.  The 442^nd was the most decorated combat unity in history, for its size and length of service.  And it was mostly made up of second generation Japanese-Americans, many of whom had family in American internment camps for fear they were secret Japanese spies.  US Senator Daniel Inouye, of Hawaii, served in that unit, losing an arm in combat.  

Lest you think this a one-off, maybe a mistake, the Washington Post reports that Arlington Cemetery has removed links from their web site that pointed visitors to famous Black people, famous women, famous Hispanic folks who are buried there.  Yes, the bios are still there, but if you are a Black person, wanting to visit and show your children famous Black veterans, you’re out of luck.  The bios don’t mention race, so you’d have to know all that before you visited.

It looks like it doesn’t matter how brave you are, how willing to die that democracy might survive, if you are not a white man, you don’t count.  

James says that’s wrong.  We all matter.

When you try to pretend that some of us are more acceptable than others, a life of endless competition is created.  It’s competition not just for a blue ribbon, but for a decent life for you and your children, and so it’s no wonder that it leads to anger, hatred, and – eventually – physical harm.

And James says, clearly, that it is not God’s way, not the Jesus way.  Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom… he writes.  Is it not the rich who oppress you?, thus proving that some things have not changed in the last 2000 years.  Those who have, want to hold on to what they have, want to get more, because they never have enough.  And those who don’t have, they scrap among one another for survival.

But that’s not who we are.  We are committed to working together, to creating community where all are welcome.  We believe that whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.  We live that out within this building, by our acceptance of the Open and Affirming Covenant.  We live it out in the world by the way we interact with those whom we meet.

We stand up against this constant battle with love.

We stand up against this constant battle with kindness, generosity, welcome.

We stand up against this constant battle with all the patience we can muster.

It’s not easy; sometimes it may not even be safe, but it is our calling, to live out the love and justice of Jesus Christ, here and wherever we may go.

May it be so.  Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

March 9, 2025, First Sunday of Lent                                                                 
First Congregational Church of Brimfield MA

Proverbs 19:17 – Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and will be repaid in full.

James  1: 19-27   ¹⁹ You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, ²⁰ for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹ Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. 

²² But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³ For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴ for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵ But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. 

²⁶ If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷ Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

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.

Do you remember, was it last week?, when Elon Musk asked all government employees to email his office with a list of five things they’d done in the past week?  Well, it led to a lot of us making similar lists, and I want to share one such list with you, written by a fellow pastor.

Has everyone composed their “what I did last week” report?

• I helped offer warmth and safety to 48 people who otherwise would have been out in the bitter cold. Someone who didn’t come in froze to death. This ministry is the most important thing we do.
• Helped feed a couple hundred meals. Our good partners do most of the work; I’m just there to offer an ear or a prayer or a coat or wool blanket or warm socks, a bag of shelf-stable food for the homeless, or a quart of frozen leftovers to the housed. 
• Taught a Bible study. We’re beginning Thessalonians: Paul is telling them to persevere, even when the world around you values different things than you do. My favorite part so far is when he tells them they used to be imitators of their teachers, but now they’re a shining example for others to imitate: the gospel is echoing throughout their region because of their faithfulness.
• Preached a sermon on the sermon on the plain, in which Jesus finds blessings in the darndest places, in poverty and in hunger and in shed tears, before telling us to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us. 
• Talked to so many people who were scared or hurt or angry or grieving. I don’t know if a single one is less scared or hurt or angry or grief-stricken now, but hopefully at least they know they’re loved.

Jamie Spriggs 2/26/25

That list didn’t go to Elon Musk; it was shared among friends on Facebook, by the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fall River.   Fall River is one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, just a step or two healthier than Springfield.  In some lists it #3, with New Bedford #2, and Springfield as #1, the poorest city in this commonwealth..

Now, later on in Lent, we’ll do some conversation about poverty, but today what I want to look at with you is a more foundational question.  Just why did Pastor Jamie Spriggs spend her week preaching, teaching the Bible, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and housing the homeless at a very cold time of the year?

Her church is one of the big, old, beautiful buildings in downtown Fall River.  It has a gorgeous interior, but when you look it up on Google, what you see is notice after notice of free meals, clothing ministry and so on.  

Why do they do it?  There aren’t a lot of people there any more; it’s no longer THE prominent church in the city.  You don’t go there to be seen.  Why do people, and not just the Baptists, but people from churches in the surrounding communities, come into First Baptist to serve the struggling population of Fall River?

Why do we do what we do?

Because, you know, what we do here is not all that different from the good folks of Fall River.  We don’t have the poor population they do, so we’re more like the outlying churches that come into the city to run a dinner, but we’re feeding people.  And if we knew of a need for warm clothes, we’d answer that call.

But why?  I think it’s really important for us to be clear about our motivations, to talk together from time to time about why we do what we do.

There are all kinds of special reasons that people do these kinds of things – it’s a way of maybe honoring a parent or grandparent, maybe a way of saying thanks for help received, maybe you need community service hours for high school, or you’re going for Eagle Scout?  That’s why someone might do this, but why does the church sponsor the program in the first place?  Why does doing those good things honor someone, or please them?

And now we’ve gotten to why you heard a reading from Proverbs, that said Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and will be repaid in full.  

We do good because it pleases God.

That’s all there is to it.  God has given us life, community, purpose – and all we have to offer in return, in gratitude, in love, is our ability to be people of love, generosity, compassion, in God’s name, for the glory of God.

We do good because it pleases God.

I’ve been reading the new autobiography of the Christian teacher, Tony Campolo, who died earlier this year.  Campolo, who was an American Baptist teacher, pastor, church leader, wrote that God extends to us the gift of salvation, and then we reach out, hoping to help our world grow closer to God’s intention for us.  Being a Christian is not just about being baptized, or being saved, but about growing into people who build better communities.

We do good because it pleases God.  

During Lent this year, we’re going to be looking at some of the pressures in our world that make it hard to do good. . . not just things like a short temper, but the way our society is organized, how our world nurtures hate.  Each week, starting today, we will have some intentional time after the service, right here in this room, to talk about what I’ve said.  The forces which drive us apart are subtle, hard to see, and it is in our conversation that we can begin to see more clearly.   

I hope you’ll grab a cup of coffee and a cookie (or 2 or 3), and stay to talk together.  Let’s talk together about why we do good, and what kinds of good might best help Brimfield and surroundings be healthy and thriving.

For our final words today, let me read James again, verse 22:  …be doers of the word and merely hearers who deceive themselves…  Don’t just say yes, yes, and then crickets.

Love God, serve your world, be Christian.

Amen.

©  2025, Virginia H. Child