Author: tobelieveistocare

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

February 23, 2025 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Genesis 45:3-11, 15: ³ Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. 

⁴ Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. ⁵ And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. ⁶ For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. ⁷ God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. ⁸ So it was not you who sent me here but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. ⁹ Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me; do not delay. ¹⁰ You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. ¹¹ I will provide for you there, since there are five more years of famine to come, so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.’. . . ¹⁵ And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them, and after that his brothers talked with him.

Luke 6:17-26 ²⁷ “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; ²⁸ bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹ If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰ Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you.

³² “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³ If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴ If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵ Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶ Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. 

³⁷ “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; ³⁸ give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” 

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.

If anyone had reason to be angry, to hold a grudge, it was Joseph.  Now, it’s true that Joseph was an obnoxious kid, always boasting, always getting the best of everything, but still, you remember, his brothers – together, all of them agreeing – sold him into slavery and told his father than he’d been killed.

That’s taking anger too far.  Really, too far.

But his life has changed Joseph; he’s now a man, not an immature twit.  He’s wise, well-respected, and now – because of what happened – he’s in a place to help all his family.  He has the power, and the intent, to bring them all to Egypt, and to give them food and homes, to bring their families back together.

Sure, a lot of bad stuff had happened, and not just to Joseph.  His father, Jacob, had dealt with years of sorrow.  The brothers had lived with the guilt of their actions.  But when the day of reunion came, all that was left behind.  Everyone was welcomed.

This lesson is paired with one from Luke, a lesson that – much more plainly – tells us to leave our grudges behind.  “Do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you….”

Now, I’m all for not holding grudges, but I want to point out that Joseph and his family appear to have had twenty years or more to get over things, and they’re all in better places.  Letting go of a grudge a billion years after the bad thing has happened is much easier, than when you’re right in the midst of that bad thing.

So, let’s think together a little about evil, about how it marks us, about how – when we’re in the midst of bad things – how we’re supposed to behave.

On Friday, I happened to read the obituary of a RAF pilot who was shot down and captured by the Germans in World War II.  In the course of his captivity, he was betrayed by a double agent, tortured, condemned to death in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, starved by the guards there, and saved in the nick of time –  2 days before his scheduled execution – when the German Air Force discovered he was there, and demanded that he be turned over to them because only the German Air Force could hold Royal Air Force captives.  

It was only four months, but for the rest of his life he suffered from the after-effects, both physical and psychological.  After the war, it was his life’s passion to obtain recognition of the airmen who’d been sent to concentration camps and the secret agents who’d been killed in the course of their duties.

The pain never ended.  Healing never really came.  That’s not uncommon.  You don’t need to spend time in a concentration camp. Years ago, I knew a man who – 40 years after the end of World War II – still had such violent nightmares, every night, that he and his wife had to sleep in separate rooms.  He was in combat in Europe for less than a year, but it never went way.

How do you let go of the hatred, the anger, when it’s so deeply imprinted?

Last week, one of my gay friends was telling us about some nasty emails he’d been receiving… they said things like “you can’t be a Christian”, “you’re not a real pastor”, “you and your husband are an abomination”.  I was thinking about what it’s like to get those emails every day.  I know they’re upsetting – I get them, too, because people don’t think women can be pastor, but I only get them once or twice a year.  He get them every week, maybe even every day.  

What are you supposed to do when someone suggests that a plane crash happened only because the pilot was Black?  Or people claim that the only reason Black people have jobs is that they somehow pushed a better qualified White person aside?

How do you handle the fear and the rage when the government says you’re not a real person.  You’re trans, but no, trans doesn’t really exist, so you must be troubled.  It’s not enough for you and me to say “baloney”. How do we handle the hatred, the anger, that lies behind those lies, without destroying our own souls?

Prejudice, the baked in assumptions about people other than ourselves, are part of our world.  It can eat us up, poison our lives.  Another story – from one advice columnist – a woman writes in to say that she’s Hindu, from India, married to a White American.  Before the wedding, he was all in on enjoying her Hindu culture as much as his own.  He didn’t mind the Hindu wedding, enjoyed Hindu food, and so on.  But now that they’re married, he’s demanding that their (so far non-existent) children be raised as Christians, that they eat beef, and that she should step away from the culture of her parents. In other words, he’s backed off on the commitment to respect her background.

Prejudice is driving his actions, just as prejudice is driving the actions of hatred in our world today. 

There are moments in today’s world where it seems as though we are being led by grudge rather than vision, where the slightest difference can lead to revenge wreaked on thousands of, oh FAA workers, or rural organic farmers, or you, or me.  There is no clearer way to see how grudges, how the desire to get our own back, to heap vengeance on the other, destroys a person, destroys a society, than watching the last couple of days on the news.  

Congressional representatives are worried that if they don’t vote the right way, vengeance will mean a primary opponent and they’ll lose their position.  Governors are told that if they don’t go along with the government lie that trans people don’t exist, they’ll lose all the Federal money that has been committed to them.

Our faith in Jesus Christ is intended to help us cope with that kind of hatred without pickling our souls in reciprocal anger.  But it’s not as easy as Joseph and his brothers make it seem.  Things are going to happen that will make us angry, for sure.  Just remember that there’s a difference between being angry, and becoming a perpetually angry person.  Remember that we cannot return their hatred with our own hatred.  We cannot let evil take up residence in our hearts.

Peter Marty, Lutheran pastor and editor of The Christian Century, wrote this week:   My interest in this vengeance trend has little to do with any of us effectively dissuading others from finding pleasure in revenge. It’s rather a reminder that we best counter such behavior by anchoring our own lives more deeply in God.

Shalom Nagar was the prison guard chosen by lottery, against his will, to pull the lever that killed Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann on the gallows. For decades, Nagar lived out the trauma and guilt of that event in secrecy. When his identity was eventually revealed, a German television crew wanted to interview him about his sense of vengeance. He asked them to come to his study, where he devoted his days to the Torah. “I want the German people to know,” he said, “that not only did Jewish people survive physically . . . but also that we are still learning Torah. I want them to see Jews alive and studying Torah . . . for the Torah lives, too.”

To turn more attentively to the kind of life scripture proposes for us is the best antidote I know to America’s growing addiction to revenge. [The Christian Century, March 2025]

Our call as Christians is to build community, and we cannot do that with soul-eating anger as our motivation.  We are a people of love.  Name what’s wrong and work for what is right.  Pay attention to the words in the Bible, to the heart of our faith. 

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

February 16, 2025 First Congregational UCC, Brimfield MA  

Luke 6:17-26

¹⁷ He came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. ¹⁸ They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. ¹⁹ And everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.²⁰ Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  ²¹ “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. ²² “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. ²³ Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets ²⁴ “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  ²⁵ “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. ²⁶ “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. 

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.

OK, here’s my question for you for today.  Are we basically individuals, each our own person, separate from one another?  Or are we basically a community, not just better together, but maybe not made to live completely separate lives?

And why does it matter?

Here’s the thing:  in order to live in the way that makes the most sense to us, we need to understand what’s really important.  

When I was little, my mother made all my clothes.   She enjoyed it, did it well,  made really nice things that I was proud to wear.  And she was clear, she did it primarily not because it was a hobby, but because doing it saved money.  She sewed with her best friend who had a daughter my age.  Often they used the same patterns, but her friend used much better fabric.  She wasn’t sewing to keep within a budget; she was sewing much better clothes than my mother was making.  Neither one was better than the other, it’s just that they had different goals – one wanted to stay within a budget, the other wanted to make better clothes than she could afford to buy.  It’s important to know why we’re making the choices we are.

In order to live in the way God is calling us to, we need to know what’s really important.  Today’s lesson points us towards what God thinks is important.  And what God thinks is important is that we live in community.

God thinks, Jesus says,  that community is what matters.  

The Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf, who teaches at the Yale Divinity School, has written: The singleness of this vision implies more than that everyone ought to live it out. All humans and all life on the planet are interdependent, an interconnected ecology of relatedness. The image of home expresses this vision, perhaps, better than any other in the Bible. For one person to truly flourish, the entire world must flourish; for the entire world to truly flourish, every person in it must flourish; and for every person and the entire world to truly flourish, each in their own way and all together must live in the presence of the life-giving God.

There’s a world out there where people think that what matters is “me first, my family second, my friends third, and maybe that person in need down on the corner, maybe I’ll help them later.”  Those folks are even willing to try to pervert Christian theology to make it sound as tho God wants us to be “me first”, selfish, dismissive of anyone who gets in their way.  That way will build a world of fractured relationships, hostilities, hatred and – eventually – war.

So, listen again to the words Jesus spoke:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 

²¹ “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. 

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 

²² “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 

²³ Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. 

²⁴ “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 

²⁵ “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. 

“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 

²⁶ “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. 

Who matters?  The poor matter.  The hungry matter.  Those who weep for our world matter.  God rejoice when we stand up for the right.

But if you chose to do what was right and easy for  you, well, you got your reward.  That’s it.

And let’s make it clearer.  The people who decided to wipe trans folks out of the history of the Stonewall National Monument Site, well, they’re wrong.  People are people, just like love is love.  You can’t pretend they don’t exist just by wiping them from the web site.

Any claim that some people matter more than others, or that some can simply be wiped out of existence, is a claim that will destroy community, turn us one against the other, and do exactly the opposite of what is described in this lesson.

We are being called to be people of love and grace.  We are offered the opportunity to live together in community, caring for one another as we are, building a network of relationships within which we are one people.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

January 26, 2025 First Congregational Church of Brimfield UCC

Nehemiah: 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 — . . . all the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. ² Accordingly, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. ³ He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. . . .    ⁵ And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people, and when he opened it, all the people stood up. ⁶ Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. . . . . So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31 — For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 

¹⁴ Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. ¹⁵ If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. ¹⁹ If all were a single member, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many members yet one body. ²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ²² On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³ and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, ²⁴ whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, ²⁵ that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. ²⁶ If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 

²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ²⁸ And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. ²⁹ Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work powerful deeds? ³⁰ Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹ But strive for the greater gifts.

Luke 4:14-21 — ¹⁴ Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. ¹⁵ He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 

¹⁶ When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me  to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives  and recovery of sight to the blind,  to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

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 has been a hard week for many of us.  One of my colleagues is wondering what the end of federal support of IEPs will mean for her severely autistic son.  What’s happening with that job I agreed to, but that was suspended this week?  Will that high school friend who’s been in the Army all this time have to leave because he’s trans?  You helped prosecute a January 6 seditionist.  Is he going for retribution?  Will gay marriage continue?  What about gay adoptions?  What about immigrants and refugees?  What about the threat to eliminate citizenship for people born in the USA?  Will Indians – Native Americans–  lose their citizenship because they were born on the reservation?  Without going into a lot of details, a lot of people are frightened…. And on and on and on.  For those who are living in fear, this is exhausting.

This morning I don’t want to get lost in arguing each proposal; instead I only want us to remember one thing – whether or not what’s happening is what you wanted or voted for, or if it makes sense to you — or if it terrifies and keeps you up at night – and the one thing to remember is we are all in this together.  If you thought what’s happening would be a good idea, then you have a responsibility to acknowledge the pain and fear of the people for whom it is total disaster.  And if this is disaster to you, then let’s seek to understand why our sisters and brothers thought the situation was so awful that this would improve things.  We are in this together.

There is no separation of people into the good, the better, and the best – or even into the good and the bad – the deserving and the undeserving.  We are all one family.  And the thing that will bring us through, will sustain us, is the strong sustenance we find in the Bible.

We have three readings this morning; separately they may not make much sense; together they give us tools to create a better way to live

The first clue for us is in that reading from Nehemiah.  The way it’s read, you’ll maybe have noticed that we skip some of the verses – that’s not about substance, it’s just that the missing verses give us the names  of the leaders, each and every one of them difficult to pronounce, so we skip them over.  But we don’t skip over the core of the reading – “So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”  The people sat there and listened because they were desperate to hear some word that would provide meaning to their lives.  And here was the word, and a word that had been explained so they could understand.

Let’s face it.  To think that we need this kind of leadership, these kinds of actions, you have to be pretty desperate.  So, lets listen to Nehemiah as he tells us there is meaning in the words of the Bible, meaning that provides focus, satisfaction, prosperity and love for our lives.

The second clue comes to us from the Gospel, from Luke’s story of that fateful sermon Jesus preached in the synagogue back home in Nazareth.  Here he says, as clearly as possible, that God and faith are all about how we relate to one another, how we build community, how we love, and care, and practice justice and mercy.  Jesus says it this way in the Message translation:

God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”^[1]

Faith in God is about how we live.  And it made people angry… because they’d figured that what made them good was following the rules with no compassion, or making lots of money, or being one of the folks with power in their world.  What Jesus said contradicted everything they’d built their lives on; listening to Jesus brought them face to face with another way of life.

The folks who were angry at Jesus tried to throw him off a local cliff.  They were every bit as happy as the President was last Tuesday when Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde laid before him the Christian call to practice our lives with mercy as well as justice.  No one like to be told they’re wrong, even – or maybe especially when – they have a sneaking suspicion that they are wrong.  Sometimes, however, it’s the job of the preacher to point out that there’s a better way that to throw people out of work, drive them out of the country, destroy their lives, their homes, their families.

There’s one last thing to plug into today’s sermon – the lesson from First Corinthians which tells us that each one of us is a valued part of the whole.  So, that good news from Luke?  It applies to everyone.  Justice is for everyone.  

All the blind, who could not tell right from wrong, all of them were intended by God to see.  

All the oppressed, whether they are undocumented people coming here to work, or motel room cleaners, struggling to get along on $15 an hour… all the people of whatever category, were to live without oppression.  

That’s what God wants for them.  That’s what God wants for us.  And God wants us to notice what’s happening in our world.  God wants us to be aware and that means paying attention to the news, following it well enough to tell truth from fiction.

You could think of the Bible’s teaching as how we’re supposed to live, and then the world around us – newspapers, tv news, media, etc etc – alerts us as to where we can make a difference.  

The Bible tells us we are to help people when disasters strike, when folks are in desperate need; and the news media helps us know where our help is needed.  That’s why the theologian and Swiss pastor, Karl Barth, said, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” (Time Magazine, May 1, 1966.)  We remember this as something like “preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.”

What Barth wants us to be sure of is that we pay attention to our world.  Being a Christian is not some quiet thing that we only pay attention to on Sunday morning.  It’s part of our everyday life.  We need to know what’s going on.  In these days, that means reading, watching tv, doing research, keeping your eyes open.

Following the Christian path is part and parcel of the public life of the world.  It is not just about praying at the kitchen table or reading the Bible before bed, but it is about paying attention to what’s going on around us and allowing our faith to direct how we interact with the world.  We come here on Sundays to worship to give praise to God and to support one another, but we go out the door into a world that desperately needs our commitment to welcome, love, justice and mercy.

Remember our calling when you go out and about this week.  Pay attention.  Know that there are people you will meet who are terrified right now… people who need your kindness, your willingness to listen and to care.  The core and heart of our faith is love.  This week, every week, meet everyone with a welcome, with a love that overflows forever.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

^[1] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005), Lk 4:18–19.