Category: Interim Ministry

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

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

January 19, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Is 62:1-5; 1 Cor 12:1-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

There are moments, these days, when I feel lost between the choices of yes and no – where both options, or neither, appeals.  And I’m not thinking particularly of what to have for lunch… that’s an easy, even pleasant, problem… shall I have this or that.  I’m thinking more of the big challenges of life.  

In 2026, we in Rhode Island will be electing a governor.  Now, as it happens, I think my current governor’s best characteristics are that he’s tall and has curly hair…. And his worst characteristic is that he doesn’t seem to be concerned that the eastbound 195 bridge through Providence and East Providence, the gateway to Cape Cod, has been closed, re-routed, since December of 2023, and there’s no timetable for re-construction.  

One of the probable candidates running against him is the former head of CVS… well, she sounds good, but CVS was heavily involved in the opioid epidemic, it’s a terrible place to work – or so I hear – the stores are really tatty, and of course, CVS receipts are famous for their length.  But if CVS  is in trouble, what does that say about her potential as governor?  Choices, choices…

Now, Rhode Island’s a small state where every vote, at least statewide, can make a difference.  It’s a place where I can feel as though I have some power. But that’s not always true, we’re in Massachusetts, and way too often, it can feel as though we have no power at all.  We are in an in-between time, a liminal time, where, no matter where we are, we often feel powerless.  Our world feels broken and we don’t think we can make a difference.

It’s a funny place to be on this weekend dedicated to the memory of a man who — starting from a position of absolute powerlessness – unable to vote, barred from public facilities like rest rooms or water fountains, required to use the back door if he was welcome to enter, at constant risk of public humiliation  or physical attack, even death.  If anyone were every powerless in the US it was a Black man in 1950, north or south.  And yet, this man found the lever to change our world.  He found the courage to wield the power of moral indignation.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was not a perfect person.  He wasn’t even a perfect pastor.  But perfection is not one of the requirements to make a difference.  What he was, was a man who dared to exercise the moral power he had, the power of his faith, the power of the church, the power of being in the right.

Yes, Dr. King changed laws but in a deeper way, a more important way for lasting change, he made it impossible for white people to close their eyes to the realities of the world.  Now, that kind of change doesn’t happen overnight.  But it happens, slowly, substantially…. When I was a high school senior in a segregated school system, all my friends knew that segregation was wrong, stupid, immoral.  But what we didn’t know was that it was possible to name it, to make the wrongness public – mostly, I think, what we knew for sure was that it would be dangerous to name our beliefs in public.  Dr. King changed things.  He ripped the curtain down, and yes, like the wizard behind the curtain in Oz, showing for all the world to see how desperately fake the whole structure of racism was.

What he showed us in the 1960s turned out to be only the upper layer of a deeply embedded sickness.  It turns out that you can unsegregate a school without changing the basic mindset of the people in the system.  Unsegregating – which we white people thought was the beginning of the end, turns out to only be the end of the beginning.

Now, these days, we are engaged in the work of digging deeper, of coming to understand the ways in which our unexamined assumptions contain thoughts and actions that are evil.  They used to be jokes, but now they’re not funny any more.  

That’s hard work, and there’s slow progress and it’s times like this weekend, where we have Dr. King before us, and unsettling times to come, when it’s helpful to look again at that foundation on which Dr. King stood.  Because he built his way on the foundation of his faith in God and Jesus Christ.  So will we, if we are to build in a way that brings folks closer to the moral values of our faith.

Dr. King quoted Unitarian pastor Theodore Parker when he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  We are not yet where we are going, but we are definitely on the road.

What do our Scripture lessons for today offer us?  Isaiah the prophet wrote in today’s lesson that God will not keep silent, will not rest until the vindication of Zion’s way shines out like the dawn.  It reminds us that we have been at this for a long time.  The path is challenging, sometimes we find ourselves doubling back, re-taking that same path again because we’ve gotten lost, or forgotten the way.   But God is always there, offering us a way, giving us courage, showing us what is to come.  

The lesson from First Corinthians is about not getting lost because we think we’re the only ones.  Remember how I said that back in my high school years, we knew segregation was wrong?  We thought we were alone; it wasn’t until we understood that we weren’t, thanks to the heroism of Dr. King and those who stood with him, that ordinary people were empowered to stand up too.  We are each an important part of the whole, and the whole doesn’t work as well if we are not all on board.

And the gospel lesson, about turning water into wine, reminds us that sometimes we need to make big statements.  Personally, I’m a big fan of small statements, holding doors open, treating everyone I meet with love and generosity, but just as Jesus announced his ministry at a big feast, sometimes there’s a need for that demonstration at the State House, or a march down Main Street.  If we can’t stand up together in public, how will others know we are there?

It looks these days as though the road may be more difficult in the days to come.  That was true in Isaiah’s time, just as it is now.  We are able to stay the course because we are focused on that moral universe.  And we are able to stay the course because we are in this together.

What ties us into union isn’t the uniformity of our political opinions, but rather the uniformity of our moral commitments.  When we’re united in our commitment to kindness, generosity, welcome, mercy, justice, love —  then we can work together on what is best for our church, community, our world.  

It is love which is our power… love lived out every day of our lives, love that quietly keeps going, whether or not it looks like it’s making a difference.  

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

January 12, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

In the lectionary, the master calendar of Bible readings we follow, this is the time each year when we remember the beginning of Jesus’ ministry – his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist.  And at the same time, we remember our own baptisms, and think together about what it means that we, too, have been set apart for service to God.

The lessons we’ve just heard are attempt to describe the meaning of baptism.  They’re not literal descriptions, of course… the waters we pass through, the fires which consume are the trials of everyday life – wars or peace, trials of family life, work challenges, election results – whether good or bad, and all those other things that can fill our hearts with pain.

Baptism starts with water; in its most literal understanding, it is as if we are buried in the water and then brought out of that water into a new life…. We have been “saved” for a purpose.

I have to add that it is true that we, like many Christians, have – over the centuries – abbreviated the amount of water considerably.  There have been many reasons for this, and this isn’t the time and place to go over them – it’s better done as a coffee hour conversation, I think – but I want us to be clear, when it comes to the meaning of baptism, or its effects, or how we can understand it in the light of our lives – the amount of water doesn’t matter.  In our baptisms, we have been dedicated to God’s service.

On Thursday, here in this space, we honored the memory of John Hilker.  At almost the same time, down in Washington DC, they were honoring the late President, Jimmy Carter.  President Carter is for us an example of one life dedicated to living out a baptismal call to be a good person.  President Carter may not have been the greatest President the US has ever had, but there has never been a President more dedicated to doing good for as many people as possible, or a President less impressed with himself and his glory. 

A day or two after the service, I had an opportunity to read the eulogy President Carter’s grandson, Jason, shared.  Jason told folks his grandfather, a nuclear engineer by training, struggled to learn how to use a cell phone, that he still lived in a normal-sized house where the phone was connected by wire to the wall… but just listen to what Jason said:

Maybe this is unbelievable to you, but in my 49 years, I never perceived a difference between his public face and his private one. He was the same person, no matter who he was with or where he was. And for me, that’s the definition of integrity.

That honesty was matched by love. It was matched by faith. And in both public and private, my grandparents did fundamentally live their lives in effort, as the Bible says, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.

Sometimes I feel and felt like I shared my grandfather with the world. Today is one of those days. But really, he shared the world with me. The power of an atom. The beauty and complexity of a south Georgia forest. When we fished, he celebrated the majesty of everything from the smallest minnow to that grand circulation of waters. And he shared this love with my boys, taking these Atlanta public school kids out into the fields to show them about row crops and wild plums.

In the end, his life is a love story. And of course, it’s a love story about Jimmy and Rosalynn and their 77 years of marriage and service. As the song says, they were the flagship of the fleet. And rest assured that in these last weeks, he told us that he was ready to see her again.

But his life was also a broader love story about love for his fellow humans, and about living out the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. I believe that that love is what taught him and told him to preach the power of human rights, not just for some people, but for all people. It focused him on the power and the promise of democracy, its love for freedom, its requirement and founding belief in the wisdom of regular people raising their voices and the requirement that you respect all of those voices, not just some.

That’s the way of the baptized, to be love wherever we are.  And you don’t have to step aside for the famous or powerful, like Jimmy Carter.  There’s a place for each of us in God’s vision of the world; so here’s a story of a woman I knew and admired greatly: 

When I first moved to Rutland, Vermont, I wasn’t any kind of church person. My husband and I were looking for a new place to set down roots after his retirement from the Marine Corps and Rutland was the place for us.  And then life interfered.  My marriage broke up and one Sunday I found myself sitting in a church, Grace Congregational UCC.  As I looked around I recognized a number of the people I saw there – particularly the kind, sensible ophthalmologist I’d been to when I failed the DMV’s vision test… and that woman from the First National Grocery Store, the one whose line was always the longest in the store.

Dot wasn’t a slow checker, not by any means.  In fact, the reason her line was always so long is that people wanted to go through that line – because when you brought your groceries to her, she took you seriously.  When she said hi and asked how your day had gone, she really wanted to know.  It wasn’t empty words.  After I got to know her she told me that she’d early figured out that for many of the people who came to that store, she was the only human being they knew, the only person they talked to in the week.  It was Dot who taught me about the hidden poor of Vermont, the men and women who lived alone, who survived on cat food tuna.  Dot paid attention to the people who came through her line; she lived out her baptismal call.

On this day, when we remember that we are baptized followers of the way of love, the challenge laid out before us is clear.  How can we live out our lives so that we are, like Jimmy Carter and Dot Potter, people who radiate God’s love to all?  What will we do, today, this week, this year, so that our world knows that it is the power of love that will  create a better world?

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

January 5, 2025, First Congregational Church of Brimfield MA UCC

Jeremiah 31: 7-14 — For thus says the LORD: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, “Save, O LORD, your people, the remnant of Israel.”

See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor together; a great company, they shall return here.

With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back; I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path where they shall not stumble, for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away; say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd does a flock.”

For the LORD has ransomed Jacob and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.

They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the LORD, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.

John 1: 10-18 — He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

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 prophet Jeremiah wrote to his fellow Jews in the years around 570BCE, just about 2600 years ago, in a time when his land was constantly being overrun by enemies.  He wrote in a time when there was constant dissention and a continual stream of less-than-competent, honest or courageous leaders for the kingdom of Judah.  And, of course, this got him in trouble = he was arrested, people tried to kill him, and he likely ended his life in exile in Egypt.

Jeremiah wasn’t just a political columnist, though.  He saw his people in a religious crisis, being in a place where it was maybe better to step away from active faith, who were maybe going to conform to the religion of the winners just to get ahead… like the people I read about in Saturday’s NY Times, who were converting to Catholicism from Islam, to better express their Albanian identity.  It’s not about faith, it’s about political fighting.  Jeremiah wanted something better, something more faithful, more God-focused for the people of Judah.

And so do we want something better for people here and now as well.

That’s why his description of God’s intention for us is so important.  He doesn’t say, this political party or that party will win.  He doesn’t say get rich because that’s what God wants.  He says God welcomes the people who cannot see, the ones who have difficulty in walking.  God welcomes those who are expecting children == in his world, the least productive people are the most welcome.  God welcomes those who are most left behind.  God reaches out to those who are scattered, and brings them back together into community.  That’s the goal of faith – to have us all living in community, welcoming one another, recognizing the importance of every individual.

But it’s one thing to say we welcome everyone, in spite of whatever makes them different than what we think is usual or normal or every day.  That’s because really welcoming people means really recognizing them as good, as people whose differences are something our community needs to be fulfilled.

Now, I’m not talking about being excited about the local member of the Governor’s Council joining the church because now we will have governmental influence.  I’m talking about becoming, growing into a true reflection of God’s intention for us.  

Here’s what I mean:  I am not completely naïve; I expect that even before the UCC became Open and Affirming at the national level around 1985, there were LGBT+ members.  In fact, I know there were, and I know they were rare enough that we remember the names of the few who found it possible to be open….  Bill Johnson, and Anne Holmes, and up in New Hampshire, Bob Wood. They were there, but they were quiet, not silent, but not entirely welcome… Then in 1985, the Synod voted to be ONA.  The next Synod was different… LGBT+ people were there, and clearly felt as though now they belonged, that this was _their_ place, that they were no longer guests, there on sufferance.  And the Synod itself was different, more vibrant, more colorful, more relaxed, more just what God is calling us to be.  

Every time the Synod has acted to explicitly welcome another group, the whole Synod has changed in exciting new ways.  I remember when they started formally arranging for 12 step meetings every day, instead of expecting our AA people to create something after they arrived.   It didn’t change the outward appearance of the group, but it removed the tint of shame from a condition so many of us try to manage.  And when one color of shame is taken away, it frees us to re-examine other ways of making people feel unwelcome and then welcome.

God is calling us to be a community where people can bring their whole selves, where they don’t have to hide who they are, where those of us who are already here let go of that “but this is my church” kind of feeling, because it’s not, you know.  It’s God’s church.

It’s not that we don’t already do that; the chair lift is one sign of our welcome, our ONA stand is another, for sure…. Here, tho, I want us to be clear that we are doing this because it’s what God has called us to do and to be.  Where is God calling us today?  Is our welcome true?  What is our work today?

From time to time we get to spend some time talking together about who we are right now, and about who might not feel welcome here.  That’s one of the conversations we always have during the interim period, and we’re going to be starting that process next Sunday after church, eating together and exploring who we are and how we’re following God.  Put it on your calendar, make it an important date, and help us begin discerning where God is calling us.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

December 15, 2024  First Congregational Church of Brimfield UCC

Zephaniah 3:14-20 Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The LORD has taken away the judgments against you; he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.” I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD.

Luke 1:39-45  In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰ where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴² and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³ And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴ For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵ And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 

⁴⁶ And Mary said,  “My soul magnifies the Lord,  ⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,  ⁴⁸ for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.  Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,  ⁴⁹ for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name; ⁵⁰ indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. ⁵² He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴ He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵ according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” ⁵⁶ And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home. 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

It all started with a question.  At Bible study last Tuesday, we asked ourselves “was Mary the first chosen one the Angel Gabriel approached?  Would it make a difference if thirty-one other women had said “no” first?”

What if the first woman had said yes, but she wasn’t really the right person?  What if Gabriel came to Mary not because he was sure she was “the one”, but because she was the last one, at the end of the list?

Over the week, I kept coming back to the question – what difference did it make that Mary said “yes”?

You know, as an interim pastor, I see a lot of churches in the process of choosing pastors.  Most have a pretty clear idea, by the time the profile is finished, of what they’d like to have.  And most have no idea who’s out there looking for a new church.  Often, the person they end up calling is not the person they went out looking for, and sometimes it’s because the first two or so candidates said “no”.  Like Gabriel, who – we imagine – might have ended up with the Virgin Louise, we might well find ourselves with someone we never thought of at first.

But it’s not just about the process of searching for a new pastor.  It’s really about life.  We make lists, check them twice, planning as well as we can (knowing that some of us just really don’t plan much at all)… 

We go off to college planning to major in history, but by the time we graduate, we have a BS in accounting.  It’s not what the plan was; it’s what life is.

Now, as it happens, I believe that Mary was God’s choice from the beginning.  Give how self-important some of us feel (and who more than one of God’s chief angels??), I can imagine that Gabriel looked Mary over and thought God had made a mistake.  

Why choose a poor girl from a nowhere town, when God could have chosen one of the daughters of the high priest? Someone from the right side of the tracks, someone who knew how to welcome rich folks??

Well, here’s my suggestion.  What God wanted in the way of a mother of the Messiah was not someone who was up to date on the latest social trends, but someone who knew pain when she saw it.  God didn’t want someone who thought looking good was better than being good.  

God wanted the kind of woman who would sing that Magnificat we heard… who would loudly and persistently proclaim that God would pull down the powerful from their thrones. 

I read this story yesterday, and as you listen to it, ask yourself what that long-ago Mary said… 

Eli McCann told this story about his great-grandfather…… He was around 13 years old, meaning this happened, I guess, right after World War I. Constantly on the verge of homelessness, he was living with his mother and siblings in a run-down hotel room, helping to scrape together enough pennies each week to keep the family somewhat fed and warm. This was a particularly frigid winter in Iowa, per his telling.

Members of his family didn’t really celebrate Christmas because they didn’t have money for gifts. It was easier to try to ignore the day and its annual reminders of their poverty.

That Christmas morning, his mother gave him whatever change she had and asked him to go down to the corner market to buy an item — in repeating the story, he never could remember what the item was. He set off to the store, passing the homes of families keeping warm and exchanging presents.

He arrived at the corner shop, bought the item he was sent to retrieve, and then stepped back onto the icy street wearing whatever rags for clothes he had used to bundle up. As he began to walk away, the store owner came outside and called for him. “He knew our situation,” great-grandpa used to say as tears filled his eyes. “He knew what it was like at home.”

Great-grandpa turned around and paced back to the shopkeeper, who reached out and dropped a handful of nuts into his little palms. “Merry Christmas,” the man said, before turning around and retreating into his store.

Great-grandpa would sometimes say the handful of nuts was the only Christmas gift he ever remembered receiving, and the kindness from the shopkeeper, who apparently had little to spare himself, always stuck with him.

We tend to think about poverty, about homelessness, around this time of year more often than any other time. People struggle outside of the holiday season, of course, but, for some reason, that struggle is more on our collective minds as the snow falls and the wreaths appear on front doors.

Maybe the changing season and the dropping temperatures make it harder to not imagine what it might be like to have nowhere warm to go. Maybe the opulence of the commercial aspects of the holiday celebrations shine a subconscious light on the unfairness of relative privilege and the cruelty in the way it tends to skip a lot of people. Or perhaps the general spirit of giving that permeates December naturally causes us to think about who most needs to receive. I don’t know.

Mary sang:

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; 

he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. 

Mary knew God would feed the hungry.  

Mary knew God would help the lost.  

Mary knew God would be merciful to those who had no way to buy themselves a place at the table.

Maybe Gabriel really did have a list of prospects, and maybe he went to the ones he thought best first.  Maybe he skipped Mary at first because she was poor, and a little angry.  Maybe Gabriel was messing up big time because he didn’t listen to God.

But God chose Mary because it was time to turn the expectations of a greedy and power-hungry world upside down.  And we still remember Mary and her song today because she is such a great example of how we are to live and because we, too, live in a greedy and power-hungry world that desperately needs to be turned upside down.

Our first job, our real calling, is to build a world where love is the only answer.  Let us live out Mary’s picture of God’s world.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child

December 8, 2024  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Malachi 3:1 -4  See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the LORD whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like washers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD, as in the days of old and as in former years.

Luke 1:26-38  The Birth of Jesus Foretold ²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”^,* 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³ He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴ Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵ The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶ And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷ For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸ Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from 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.

What is our world coming to?  Just a few weeks ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury was forced to resign because he’d ignored a damning report [that] concluded that he had failed to pursue a proper investigation into claims of widespread abuse of boys and young men decades ago at Christian summer camps. (NY Times)

Scams abound – emails from (supposedly) your pastor asking you to purchase, say, five $100 Apple gift cards for me to give to people in need….

An insurance company puts a time limit on the amount of anesthesia that can be used for a specific surgery – and when the time runs out, well, I imagine that means the patient starts paying the entire cost – …  well, that last one was real,, but right after the head of United Health Care was murdered in NYC, the company changed its mind and will now cover the entire cost of the anesthesia.

<deep sigh>  And then there’s the story, from yesterday’s NYT, about the woman in Mississippi who got so frustrated as an elementary teacher that she quit her job and started up a teeny private school for kids in her area, kids who’d found the public school filled with bullies, kids who were slipping through the cracks.

She rented an empty storefront, found desks and equipment in trash piles and discard dumpsters, and she now has 50 children, pre-k to high schoolers, who are studying and learning in this new setting.  Tuition is $300 a year, the staff, such as it is, gets paid, but the woman who started the school has not yet taken a salary.    Her pay is watching the children learn.

Yes, there’s a lot that’s bad in our world, but we are not here today to focus entirely on that.  We are here to remember that in the midst of the worst the world can send us, God is sending us something entirely good.

Today’s Gospel lesson tells the story when it reports Mary saying to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵ The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

The story, at least on the surface, is about how Mary became pregnant, and yes, that’s important.  More than that, however, it’s the explanation for how it is, in the midst of absolute awfulness, God’s love breaks through.  When we are in need, the Holy Spirit will come upon us and change things.  

Now this isn’t one of those instantaneous miracles.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t force a change upon us; it prepares a way we may choose to follow.  That’s the way of love… love offers opportunities, it does not compel.  

Sometimes, things are so tough that it’s hard to see beyond the pain, the fear, the costs of life.  God’s love, the story of God’s advent in the midst of turmoil, gives us the strength to lift our vision beyond that pain, into the possibilities of our future.

We thought we’d signed up to follow a clear path, one well-marked, where our intention to follow would make the following easy.  It turns out that’s not the way it goes.  

The way is often difficult, sometimes almost impossible, but what will never change is the steadfast companionship of our loving God, who comes to us as an infant, the living embodiment of God’s love.

Amen.

© 2024 Virginia H. Child