Category: Interim Ministry

First Congregational Church UCC in Auburn, January 14, 2024

Mark 1: 4-11 — John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

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 day my mother served a new, and delicious, soup.  In those days, I loved soup – I still do – and this soup was really good.  It had a lovely, bright flavor, and lots of veggies and other things.  So I asked her what else was in the soup.

She asked me if I liked it, and I said yes. Then, in her wisdom she said, you don’t really want to know what else is in it; if I tell  you, you won’t want any more.  I trusted my mother, and it was years before I discovered the un-namable ingredient – tripe, which, it seems, is the nice name, the cooking name, for cow stomach.  In other settings, tripe is what gets stuffed with oatmeal, sheep innards and onions, and turns into haggis.  Yum, am I not right?

Well, maybe not so much.  But, trust me, pepper pot soup was great.  If it had been spicy tripe soup, I probably would never have tried it.

The name made a difference.

Think about it.  The book of Genesis tells us that God said, let there be light, and there was light.  Once light had been named, it was real; we could see it.  It was the name that made it visible to us.

Names can make us visible; names can make us invisible. 

Now names can be good things… and sometimes, not so much.  During World War I, hundreds of thousands of German immigrants here in the US found that the name German was dangerous.  They stopped speaking German, stopped eating German food, reading German books, sometimes even changed their names to sound more “English”.  My mother’s German family, even fifty years later, downplayed any connection to Germany. They didn’t speak or read German and when they ate German foods, they said they were Amish foods – which they were, because Amish are German.  But they’re also cute, and so it was more acceptable to be Amish, and somehow Amish didn’t read as German — kinda, sorta.  Yes, I know that’s not factual, not logical, but it was acceptable to eat Amish, but not to eat German, food.

We all know it’s less acceptable to be Black.  One of the most painful parts of our lives today is letting those of us who have the best of intentions understand that, no matter what white people thing, no matter how kind and welcoming we are, it is still less acceptable to be Black. Lots of novels have a character of ambiguous ethnicity and one of the plot lines is “is he or isn’t he”.  Even today, if someone’s background isn’t readily apparent, they will have more opportunity, more social acceptance, if people think they are white.  Being identified as Black, named Black, can be difficult, sometimes dangerous. 

When I baptize a child, just before the baptism, I ask the parents, by what name shall your child be called?  Naming, officially naming, gives that child a new and clearer identity.  

But there’s more — because, and this is the point of my sermon – the act of being baptized gives us another new name – Christian. 

The name Christian, the name all of us share, clarifies and defines our lives.  It names us as people who have agreed to live lives of decency and generosity, love and welcome.  

We follow a God who loves us as we are, where we are, and who gives us a way of life that brings us ever closer.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, the Lutheran pastor, writes:  You know the one thing I love most about the Baptism of our Lord text is not just that God the Father says “This is my son, the beloved with whom I am well pleased”, but that God says this – before Jesus had really done anything. Think about that.  God did not say “this is my son in whom I am well pleased because he has proved to me that he deserves it, he has quiet time with me each morning and always reads his Torah and because boy can he heal a leper.”  Nope. As far as we know Jesus hadn’t even done anything yet and he was called beloved. The one in whom the Father was well pleased.  That’s God for you.  And I mean that literally.  That is God FOR YOU.

There’s more to being a Christian than knowing that God loves us, now, before we’ve done anything.  There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love, but there’s everything we can to in response to that love.  That’s why, sometimes, living up to our name can be challenging.  

Now being known as “Christian” is more than enough, but it can’t hurt to add to that name, to perhaps focus in on one part of living up to the name of Christ.  And that’s why, today, I’m going to give each of you a new name for this year of 2024.  In just a few minutes, after the sermon, the deacons are going to share a basket of words among you. You will be invited to pull out a star, and take the word that’s written on it as a kind of name, a watchword or watch name, for this year.  

I invite you to use this word to help you think about your life.  The words aren’t the names of saints, and they’re not deep theological concepts.  Each word is a facet, a part, of what being Christian is about.  Your word might be joy, or comfort, or peace.  It might be responsibility, or determination, renewal, goodness.  It might turn out to be something you already do, well, or something you wouldn’t normally do at all.  It might be anything, but most of all, it can be a focs for you, a way to think about, reflect on what it means to you, right here and now, to be a Christian.

For we are Christians; we are consecrated by God, and intended to be models of love.  We are supposed to be welcoming, kind, generous.  Sometimes, living up to our name is easy, sometimes it’s difficult.  And sometimes it is dangerous.  As you can imagine, from time to time, ours the sort of behavior that can get angry people, mean people, bigoted people going.  It’s not always a piece of cake to live out our Christian name.

None the less, in our baptism, God claims us and names us.  God gives us a way of life.  God has given us our true name.  That name, Christian, is the name by which we shall be known. . . now and always.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child

December 24, 2023, First Congregational Church UCC, Auburn MA

Luke 2: 1-14      In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room. 

Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 

 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”^,*

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. 

Down my way, we’ve had a month filled with turmoil, what with the closing of I-195 west, and that truly nasty storm early this past week.  Things are going well for us now – the adjustments to 195 east created additional west-bound lanes, we’ve all got our power back, and all the trash blown around town in the storm has been picked up.  195 won’t be fully open until Easter, as repairs commence on the bridge, but except for rush hour, things are really good.

And that seems to be a problem.  My community FB group is filled with criticism of the State Road folks, our Mayor, the police department, and what all else…. Because, it seems, things can’t possibly be good.  

The bridge was inspected in July and was safe.  The damage is representative of a sudden failure = steel bars are snapped, for instance.  All the evidence points to an abrupt failure, possibly caused by, say, an overloaded truck.  When the signs of failure were seen, they were promptly reported, evaluated, and bridge closed.  Most importantly, the bridge didn’t collapse.  And yet, people continue to think the whole thing is the result of mismanagement.  Likewise, the increase in traffic is the fault of the mayor, or a plot he engineered to raise his popularity.

Now think about the kind of mindset that always wants to pull defeat out of victory, that expects that everything is a deliberate attempt to hurt others, and listen to these words from Jesus:

“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

That’s Jesus, the same baby whose birth we’re celebrating.  And it is the truth that he teaches that sets us free.  That’s why we celebrate – this baby grew up to change our world.  And today, this baby continues to offer us a way of life that leads to freedom.

There’s a reason this service is always held after dark, a reason beyond the practical.  This service is at night to help us see and make the connection, that Jesus is a light in the darkness, a guiding star in the murk of everyday life.  When all else is muffled, Jesus can make things clear.

We all have expectations and understandings that help us make order out of chaos, help us make sense of a world which often isn’t fair, that’s filled with threat, pain, and death.  Jesus has brought us a way to live that not only makes sense, it makes joy, it makes happiness; it sets us free.

It’s not necessarily easy, though.  Jesus’ way is one of constant standing up to the day-to-day push to put off being good until tomorrow, or until whenever.  It means standing up to expectation that we’ll go along to get along.  It means standing up to our own tendency to take the easy path.

The first thing most of us do when things go wrong is look for someone to blame, as so many of us did in East Providence.  Jesus doesn’t blind us to the bad, but he does teach us to look for the good and build on that.

The next thing that many of us do when things go wrong is to get angry.  Anger is our first way of dealing with pain.  Jesus doesn’t pretend the pain isn’t there, but he teaches us to respond in ways that name the pain, rather than hiding it with anger.

So much of our world is built on the assumption that since everyone’s out to get us, we might as well get ours first.  Jesus teaches us that the only time we should “get ours first” is when we’re putting on an emergency air mask on an airplane, and then it’s because going first allows us to save others.

This Jesus, this baby, born so long ago, on a cold night, in a stable, this son of God, has taught us that we can make our lives worth living.  He has taught us that we need not be wealthy, educated, good-looking, leaders of the community, to do good, to be good people.  Loving others is within our grasp.  Any one of us, and hopefully all of us, can do it.

There are those in the world who would like us to think that we need to be wealthy to matter.  Jesus says they are wrong.  

There are those in our world who would like us to think that we need to be mean, need to lie, cheat and steal to matter.  But Jesus says they are wrong.

Jesus brings good news to all the people:

We are loved.
We matter.
We can make a difference.

Know that truth, and let it make you free.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church UCC, December 17, 2023

Luke 1:39ff – In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 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. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 

And Mary said,  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.  Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name;  indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  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.  He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”  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.

Why did Jesus come?  Why do we rejoice?

There’s no doubt that, by his coming, he has made a way out of no way, made a way for us to be in right relationship with God and our world, made it possible for us to understand ourselves as saved.  We learn that, not only by hearing and reading the stories, but in our Christmas carols… in the words, for instance, of O Little Town of Bethlehem, when we sing 

. . . so God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven. . . .

or think of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’s lines, 

Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die,
born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth.

And if that were all Christ did by becoming human, being born as a baby, weak and powerless, poor and despised, it would be wonderful.  But we are blessed to know that Jesus’ gift to us is more than that.

Or maybe it would be more accurate to understand that the gift of Jesus in our world, in our lives, is much more, much better than just something for each one of us individually.

Because Jesus creates community.  Jesus gives us a world where people help one another.  Think about it.  If all Jesus were about were our individual destinies, life would be a lonely affair, with each one of us mostly just concerned about ourselves.  But we are not left there, maybe surrounded by all the best stuff, but with no one to be with.

No, Christ saves us, for sure, but saves  us for a purpose, for the building up of the world.  There is no where in the Bible that states this more clearly than in today’s Gospel reading, Mary’s song, the Magnificat.

When Mary and Gabriel spoke together, as Luke tells the story, Gabriel tells her she will bear a son who will rule over the world.  And then when Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, Mary tells us the rest of the story.  Ruling the world is not about political power or wealth, it is about the power to change the world, to transform a world of greed and self-protection into a community where all are important.  Mary says that Jesus is about feeding the hungry, about throwing down those who seek to make the world all about them.

Being saved by Jesus is only the beginning of our lives as Christians – Mary tells us the rest of the story.  We are saved to be actors in creating this new world, this great community.  One of our favorite carols, O Holy Night, tells us the story this way:  

Truly Jesus taught us to love one another:
His law is love and his gospel is peace;
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother,
And in his name, all oppression shall cease.

The carol It Came Upon the Midnight Clear also names this call, in a verse which is omitted from our hymnal:

And you, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and slow;
Look how, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing,
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.

Christmas Joy is so much more than candy canes and family dinners.  It is the gift of a life which has meaning and purpose, even if we ourselves are poor, or struggling, or insignificant.  Because we follow Jesus, we know how to help create goodness wherever we are.

Now, some folks have worldly power and use their faith in wider corridors.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of RI, who attends Central Congregational Church in Providence, is working to fight climate change, to nurture and sustain a livable world in our future.  

Before I went to seminary, I worked for US Senator Robert Stafford of Vermont; a faithful member of Grace UCC in Rutland, Vermont.  Senator Stafford changed the lives of millions when he created the Stafford grants for higher education.  

And in that same church there was a woman who was a checker at a local grocery store.  She used her gift of friendliness to speak a word with every person who came through her line because, she knew, some of those folks spoke to no other person the whole week long.  You don’t have to walk in the halls of power to change the world for one person.

While I will always say that one part of this is practicing simple kindness – holding doors open, taking turns, letting a parent with a toddler go ahead of you at the grocery store – what Jesus calls to is neither simple nor easy.  It means we have to look at our world, look closely and carefully to see the places where justice and community are missing, opportunities for us to practice our faith.  It means spending time to identify the skills and gifts we have to offer.  It’s not just about finding out what a neighboring church is doing well and then copying it.  

Imagine that you know that children in your town do not have food when school’s not in session.  What could the church do?  In one town, they worked with the school to come up with a plan that could work, and began to put together weekend backpacks, filled easy-to-prepare food for kids.  

Another church I worked with looked around and realized that many children in a neighboring city, had no books.  They put together a project to provide a new book for every first grader, just in time for spring break.  That worked for them because they had connections with the school and adults who knew what books to purchase.  

Another church took on two responsibilities at their local elementary school:  they provided a continuous supply of mittens and hats and also a supply of snacks –in recognition that some of the kids did not have mittens, hats or much food  – and in recognition that the church had a busy group of knitters who were looking for a good place to give away their products.

What do people need?  What skills, gifts might we have to help with that need?  That’s the more challenging edge to the call of Jesus to live out our salvation.  It’s filled with promise, with goodness and mercy, running over with the satisfaction of helping God to create a world filled with good.

This is what Jesus calls us to do in response to his great love for us.  We are saved, and saved to be people of love, people of community, people who serve their world and help it to be better, stronger.  If Jesus gives us salvation, we give him in return, the service of our lives.  And the goal of our service is to create communities of love, justice and acceptance.

That is the true gift and purpose of Christmas.  Let us, then, share Christmas Joy with all, this year and always.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church UCC, Auburn MA  November 19, 2023

Mt 15:29-39   Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled, and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.

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.

Most of the time, when we read and study this passage, we want to look at the amazing miracles – the blind, the maimed, the mute, the lame…. All healed.  And there’s no doubt that’s amazing… it’s for sure something we can’t explain, don’t understand, and can’t reproduce here today… not the way Jesus could. 

And sometimes, that inability to make miracles happen today, to cure the sick, restore the maimed, etc., leads us astray… we’ll be saying either “wow, I can’t believe that happened then, because it’s so unscientific, so Jesus must be a fake” or we think, “wow, that church must not be true because they don’t do those miracles”.

I think that no matter which option we choose, when we do that, we miss the underlying story, the one that the miracles illustrate, the one that really matters, the one that can and does happen here and now, maybe even every day.

So, this morning, let’s look beyond the science of those miracles, and think about what the rest of the story has to say to us today.

After the crowds had come and all those people had been healed, everyone was tired and hungry.  Jesus noticed.  And he told the disciples to do something about it.  The disciples were lost for a minute – there were no quick marts, no fast food restaurants, no caterers right down the street.  Then Jesus invited everyone who was staying to sit down.  He blessed the seven loaves, the fish, gave thanks, broke them and shared the food out.  After every one of the thousands there had eaten their fill there were baskets full of leftovers.  Now, that’s a miracle, too.

Jesus gave thanks to God for what they have.  It was the act of giving thanks that made the meal enough.  It was giving thanks that turned a long day and a crowd of tired hungry people into a community.

It is giving thanks, being grateful which is the real miracle of this story.  And it is the practice of giving thanks which can bring joy and satisfaction into our world.

It’s not easy.  

Our world is filled, more than we can remember, with things for which we don’t want to give thanks.  Mean people.  Bullies in school.  General nastiness.  Poor health – even COVID.  Money problems…. The list goes on and on.

Giving thanks is not a fake way to just pretend these bad things are not with us.  They’re here, they’re real, they hurt in all kinds of ways.  What giving thanks in these circumstances can be is a way of declaring that the bad cannot, will not win.  It can be a kind act of defiance.

Defiance, you know, so often is the label we put on that loud “no” or a slammed door.  But that’s not the whole of defiance… and maybe it’s often more like anger that looks like defiance.  This kind of defiance, this kind of saying “thanks” is not about getting back at someone or something; it’s about saying that the bad will not win, that kindness, thanksgiving, love triumphs over all.

Last Thanksgiving my family gathered for a great time together; a few days later, my sister-in-law became ill, and spent most of the winter in and out of the hospital.  Christmas was awful; we didn’t know anything that day, and certainly not how to celebrate with her ill and with an unclear diagnosis.  

She spent something like four days in the UMassMemorial emergency room on one of her admissions, tucked away on one of the side corridors, mostly in dim light, nothing to see, nothing to do, no tv, not even a chair for a visitor – just laying there, waiting for a room to open up.  

It was easy to be angry at UMass for not having a room for her; it was harder to give thanks for that hall space, or for those wonderful nurses, or even for the gruff guy at the entrance who searched our backpacks when we came to visit.  

But we had a choice about which way to look at things.  Most of the time, we chose thanksgiving.  Sometimes we were just angry or frightened, but we found that when we could come up with even one thing (hey the woman at the nametag desk recognized me)…. It was a little better.  And this year, at Thanksgiving, we’ll be glad to all be together once again, glad she’s still with us.

This kind of thanksgiving, I think, is closely related to forgiveness.  It’s not about forgetting the bad.  It’s about not letting the bad control our lives all the time every day.  It’s about recognizing that our world is not perfect, that bad things happen, but good things do as well.  The late Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, wrote:  “In a world without forgiveness, evil begets evil, harm generates harm, and there is no way short of exhaustion or forgetfulness of breaking the sequence.  Forgiveness breaks the chain.  . . . It represents a decision not to do what instinct and passion urge us to do.  It answers hate with a refusal to hate, animosity with generosity.  Few more daring ideas have ever entered the human situation.”

Thanksgiving does the same thing.  It breaks the chain of anger and frustration which so tarnishes our lives.  It puts things into perspective, allowing us to deal with them without their continuing to break us.  We still name the bad, and at the same time, we can name the good in our world.  

When Jesus gave thanks for the measly seven loaves and just a few small fish, it changed his world.  Let us give thanks this season for the good that has happened in this midst of all the bad…not pretending that bad hasn’t happened, or that we’re hurt or struggling from time to time, but remembering that in Jesus’ name, good has overcome evil for all time.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church UCC, Auburn MA  November 12, 2023

2 Cor 5:14 MSG

Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.

Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with 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.

A million years ago, I was on a business trip to central Florida and decided to try meeting an elderly cousin who’d retired there after a career of teaching.  The meeting didn’t go well, for a number of reasons… to begin with, I was late, very late.  And then, at dinner, I mentioned that my father had been an alcoholic, and that had led to his death.  My cousin looked at me with horror, and said “we don’t talk about those things.”

God bless him, he was born more than a hundred years ago, and these days we know that there are some things which benefit from being open about.  My whole family became happier and healthier when we all admitted my dad’s illness, and studied its effect on each of us.  

My family’s not big on change, at least not at first.  My cousins live in a house we’ve occupied since right around 1815; no one has ever suggested it be torn down and something new be built.  On the other hand, they were first in line for electricity and running water, and indoor bathrooms.  Right now, one family occupies the house; but there’ve been times in the last fifty years when there were as many as three families using it… so we’ve learned to change as need calls.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that is that the picture of the cranky, stuck in the mud Yankee, whose motto is “we’ve never done it that way before” is not really true.  We’re glad to change – just not for the sake of change! We want our change to be purposeful, useful.

We live now in a world which is pushing change faster and faster and faster.  Of course, some of that is cosmetic…. Have you seen the cosmetic stuff on HGTV?  White, white walls, shiplap, bookshelves with the books on there backwards, so you can’t see the titles or colors?

Acceptable clothing, hair length or style, tattoos or not, all have changed.  The way people talk, how we interact, the use of the internet… more and more change.

What makes all that change bearable, what helps us differentiate between needed change and cosmetic change, is simply this:  will this change help us share love with our world?

Paul says in today’s lesson, “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself…”  Paul is asking us to see the world differently because of this… and in the light of that difference – after understanding that with God, everyone is accepted, everyone is loved – to see what changes are part of God’s call to us.

Change – change motivated by God’s claim on us – is an on-going process.  It’s not a “oh yes, sure, let’s change everything right now”.  We don’t all agree on what needs to be changed, and how much, how far to go.  At first, maybe we just need to agree that we’re called to measure how we live against God’s guidance.  If you look into chapter 6… the lesson that follows today’s reading, you’ll see that Paul gets pretty specific about the ways he thinks we should live:

People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly … 
in hard times, tough times, bad times; 
when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; 
working hard, working late, working without eating; 
with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we’re telling the truth, and when God’s showing his power; 
when we’re doing our best setting things right; 
when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; 
true to our word, though distrusted; 
ignored by the world, but recognized by God; 
terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; 
beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; 
immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; 
living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

That’s great, though it’s really only the beginning.  Because if we’re doing all those things well, if we’re assuming that we’re ok, if none of this feels in the least challenging, then we’re not putting enough thought into it.  

The author Anne Lamott once said:  “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the people you do.”   And if none of those gifts are challenging us, then we too have formed a picture built on our own likes and dislikes… 

One of the small churches I served in my first parish was totally inaccessible if you had mobility issues.  We knew it, and we wanted to do something about it, because we had a member who used a wheelchair and she could not get into the church.  You’ve probably seen churches constructed the way this one was  – there are ways ours is like it – with a totally accessible first (or basement) floor, and the church built on top of the lower level.  Usually, you can figure a way to do a ramp; sometimes the building has a space into which you can add an elevator.  But in this church neither was possible.  The church was perched on the top of a little rise; the land sloped away from the church in every direction, and fairly steeply.  We looked, and measured, and it couldn’t be done.  So, we asked our one congregant to let us know when she was coming to church, and recruited four strong people to carry her up the stairs.  She didn’t come all that often, but we had done the best we could do.

It would have been easy to just leave it there.  But over the years, the church continued to think about how they could make it truly accessible.  Finally the tech came along that allowed them to build an affordable usable ramp and construct a true handicap parking space.  It’s not fancy, but the worship space is now accessible.

You might think this would be a slam dunk, but it wasn’t; for long periods, there were no wheelchair users in the church, and these days, we’re now hearing that we don’t need to make our spaces accessible because “those people” can just watch the Zoom service…

What are the questions we need to be asking?  I’m guessing it’s probably not building accessibility, but I’d love to hear from you – what is on your hearts?   Where do you think God is calling us to go?  Let’s talk together – bug me at coffee hour, drop into the office, send me an email, invite me to lunch – however we do it, let’s begin to see where we believe God is putting a bug in our ears.

Amen.

© 2023 Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church UCC of Auburn, Massachusetts, November 5, 2023

Psalm 34 — I will extol the Lord at all times.

1 John 3:1-3 — See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

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.

Andover Newton Seminary founding dean, Sarah Drummond, wrote in her blog this week: . . . how are we supposed to respond to the violence that rained down from Gaza and is now raining down upon it? How are we supposed to survive spiritually amidst all the unchecked and unrestrained hatred our siblings are directing at one another without falling into despair? 

. . . Christianity makes no room for hate. As I said at the outset, I have been hated, and let me tell you: it feels dreadful. Most of those who have expressed they hate me did so based on a decision I made, or that they thought I’d made, or that my institution had made. Whatever action led them to hate me had something to do with them feeling I’d taken something important from them. I’ve been a dean of some kind, after all, for 25 or-so years. Deans suspend and expel students. They make institutional changes that require sacrifices. They lay people off. It’s easier for some to hate me than to hate the nebulous but nonetheless painful losses associated with inevitable consequences or unavoidable change.

The hate I’ve experienced toward others has felt even worse than hatred I have received. In almost every case, it has emerged from a stew of love and fear and devotion. My count-on-one-hand hate-filled moments all resulted from rage toward someone who had hurt someone I care about. I remember the first time one of my daughter’s friends did her wrong, and I was startled by the intensity of my emotions; I’d never before felt such burning.

Jesus knew all about loving people and communities, so he probably understood rage. He never, however, justified hateful action. . . . Impulses to act in hate when filled with rage make sense to me, but as a Christian, I understand acting on those impulses to be morally wrong.

The Christian tradition gives us tools for examining hate, much like engineers give us tools for looking into the sun. Hate is too horrible to regard for long periods of time, like staring into the sun with the naked eye. Jesus told us not to hate. He told us to love everyone, even our enemies. The message can’t get any simpler, and yet loving when a cauldron of rage boils within us might be the hardest thing we’ve ever been asked to do. Good thing Jesus didn’t ask. He simply said, “Follow me.”

We live in a hate-filled, hateful time.  It’s a time that is filled with pain, anger, sorrow.  It’s not just in our political life, though that’s pretty nasty.  Whether at work, or home, or even here at church, we find it harder and harder to take in differing opinions, even when they’re about chunky or plain peanut butter.

That’s what happens when you’re in a time where everything we’ve depended on has changed, and not for the better.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time listing everything that’s changed, but I invite you to make a mental list of the things you’ve noticed…. And then to think about how the changes make existing in our world less sure… and when we’re not sure of the future, when our hope is damaged, then, well our anger seeps out into all our world.  

But here in this place we gather to remind ourselves that our Christian faith, our way of living, is an antidote to the anger of our world.  I don’t mean that here we pretend there is no global warming, no war, no political dissention, no book banning, no…. fill in the blank.  No, we must admit all those things are real, are happening.  But what we have is a way of life which calls us to recognize, share and nurture love wherever we go.

Daily reminders that it is love, not anger, that rules our lives, will help us deal with the world we meet.  

Today is both our Memorial Sunday and a Communion Sunday.  It’s both a time to remember the power of the love which is the best of our personal relationships, and the love marked by the gift of bread and cup.

On this day, I remember the love my grandparents had for their family and their home.  I remember the love I felt as a child whenever my parents and I came to visit, how their home was, in some mysterious way, also my home.  I remember the love my fellow Marines had for their country and their willingness to put their bodies on the line for all of us  I remember the love my pastor had for his family, our church, and God, and how that love changed so many lives.  I remember the love John Lewis had for all humanity and how his love changed the way Black and white live together in our land.

The loves we remember may be as personal as my grandparents, or as far away as the actions of someone you never met.  On this Memorial Sunday we remember those loves, the best that they give.

And on this Sunday we join together in sharing this memory meal, a meal which, through the symbols of bread and cup, ties us together in a web of love which not only bind us together here and now, but is a sign of the love which binds us across the centuries.  When we share in the tokens, eat the bread, drink the juice, we’re sharing in a practice that has taken place for all the centuries since Jesus’ time.  It is as if I am eating with my grandparents, my parents, all who know and followed the love Jesus taught.

And over all, this meal is a sign of our hope, that love will yet still bring us to a new and better place.  Our hope is that we will be blessings to our worlds… to our families, our work, our friends, our communities.

Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston once wrote:

Now is the moment for which a lifetime of faith has prepared you. All of those years of prayer and study, all of the worship services, all of the time devoted to a community of faith: it all comes down to this, this sorrowful moment when life seems chaotic and the anarchy of fear haunts the thin borders of reason. Your faith has prepared you for this. It has given you the tools you need to respond: to proclaim justice while standing for peace. Long ago the Spirit called you to commit your life to faith. Now you know why. You are a source of strength for those who have lost hope. You are a voice of calm in the midst of chaos. You are a steady light in days of darkness. The time has come to be what you believe.

His words are as true today as they were when he wrote them in 2020.  Let us go forth with courage, with hope, with love, today and always.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church UCC, Auburn, MA  October 29, 2023

Leviticus 19:1-18 — The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 

 “Speak to all the congregation of the Israelites and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols or make cast images for yourselves: I am the Lord your God. 

“When you offer a sacrifice of well-being to the Lord, offer it in such a way that it is acceptable on your behalf. It shall be eaten on the same day you offer it or on the next day, and anything left over until the third day shall be consumed in fire. If any of it is eaten on the third day, it is an abomination; it will not be acceptable. All who eat it shall be subject to punishment, because they have profaned what is holy to the Lord, and any such person shall be cut off from the people. 

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God. 

“You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.

 “You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord. 

“You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake: I am the Lord. 

“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Matthew 24: 34-40 — When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the 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.

My Facebook feed is filled right now with pictures of leaves…. First, my friends from northern Vermont, then central Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, then Massachusetts, and so on.  I can watch the southward march of fall foliage without moving from my computer screen.   Just yesterday, I saw my first picture from Pennsylvania…. And at the same time, there are new pictures… this time, moving from northern heights… my friend from International Falls, Minnesota, posted the first picture of snow there about two weeks ago.  And it’s been snowing on Mount Washington, here in New England.  Time is marching on, in the lovely ways we’re used to.  It all feels very traditional, very comforting.  Autumn leaves, pumpkins, hay rides, apple cider donuts… even the promise of snowflakes, maybe by Thanksgiving… or even tonight or tomorrow…. Makes it all seem as though we’re in that right, safe places, that all is well, and will be always.

And that’s all true, and good, tho I’ve always preferred for it to snow later and later, and wish we could make it stay on the grass only.  But that’s not the whole of our world, is it?  It’s such a temptation to so focus on the beauty around us that we block from our awareness, the evil that’s here as well.

But the beauty around us is not some sort of super-sweet frosting intended to blind us to the tastelessness of the cake.  We still have a war in Ukraine.  We still have a war in Gaza.  Eighteen people who were well and happy last Sunday were murdered in Lewiston by a man with an automatic firearm, murdered as he dealt with his own demons, and now he is dead as well.   And there was an incident up at Worcester State yesterday, with shots fired…tho not a mass shooting, it locked the campus down for a while.  People right here in our town are still struggling to pay their bills, desperately searching for affordable homes, trying to balance the demands of work with the needs of children, worrying about this, that, and the other thing.

Sometimes life is overwhelming.  And for many of us, those beautiful leaves are absolutely essential to keep going.. just that tiny glimpse can give us a little strength.  

The thing is, God offers more, much more, than the strength or peace we get from gazing on beautiful vistas.  God offers us a way to order and live our lives so that, no matter what happens, our lives will have meaning and purpose.  That’s what God plans for us, that no matter what we’re facing, we can still be a force for good wherever we go.

The reading from Leviticus lines out God’s plan for us.  It tells us that God intends for us to be holy, and then it describes exactly what it means to be holy.  Holiness, it says, is based on respect for one another.  

Sometimes it’s a challenge to understand exactly why a particular example is included, and that’s true with the one about what to do with meat that’s been offered to God in sacrifice.  Practically speaking, it’s easy to say you don’t want to save cooked meet (without refrigeration) for three days… bad things can happen if you try that, right?  So, I’m thinking that the problem here is that if you consecrate something to God, and then don’t use it in the way it should be (in this case, by eating it promptly), that you’ve spoiled something God had made special.  In other words, it’s about being disrespectful to God by wasting God’s good gifts and in some way, having been miserly in not sharing the meat with others.

God, Leviticus says, honors generosity to others almost more than anything else.  Don’t take all the crops from your fields—leads some for the poor.  Don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t make fun of people who can’t hear or see… don’t take vengeance…. Love your neighbor as yourself.

So, when – hundreds of years later – someone tried to put Jesus on the spot, tried to catch him out, what he did was quote this line from Leviticus –  “Teacher,” someone asked him, “what is the greatest commandment”  Jesus answered, He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  

In other words, live your lives with respect for others, with generosity in your hearts, and you will be holy, as God has made us to be holy.

Jesus provides us with fewer specific examples, and that could make it possible to mistake the way to which he’s calling us.  When he talks about loving our neighbors, he’s not talking about “thoughts and prayers”; he’s talking about concrete actions such as dedicating a part of your money to the use of the church, so that we, as a community, might bring active love to others.  For Jesus, salvation was all bound up with generosity.  When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, we have to remember that, for him, “neighbors” meant anyone you met… not just the folks in your neighborhood, but everyone.

This is how we become holy.  

• We love our neighbors.
• We smile at strangers.  
• We admire squalling babies in the checkout line at the store, knowing how much stress their parents are under, shopping with a toddler.
• We don’t tell mean jokes, or racist ones either.
• We stand up for those who are being ignored because they are different.
• We live with generosity, welcome and love to all the world.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church, UCC, Auburn MA, October 15, 2023

Exodus 32:1-8 — When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” ⁶ They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel. 

⁷ The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸ they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

So, here’s where we are today in the story of the flight of the Israelites out of Egypt.  They’ve been on the road too long.  They’re cold, they’re tired, they’re hungry.  It’s as if everyone, all at once, has started whining, “are we there yet?”.  And Moses, their leader, has disappeared. Sure, he said he was going to go talk with God, but who does that?  And it’s been so long.

Everyone is nervous, worried, upset.  Stress is everywhere.  They’re out in the desert, lost, don’t know where they’re going, can’t go back to where they were… and they reach out for what always gave them comfort in the past…. Urging Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them a god, a little statue, a physical representation of all their hopes.  And he does it.

They left Egypt, land of slavery, surrounded by courage.  It was easy to be brave in those first days. It was exciting to get free of that nasty past.  But days passed, and the excitement waned.  The steady walking got old, and boring, and then challenging.  The deep dark of desert nights, so comforting at first, began to be cold, and frightening.  And folks wanted to go home, to the past which no longer existed.

You know what that’s like.  At some level, it happens to all of us.  The excitement of early days turns to routine, and then, boredom.  What happened in the exodus, though, took it a lot further.

The Israelites, for all those understandable reasons, did something that was almost unforgiveable.  They tried to give up their devotion to the God who cannot be seen, is not represented by statues, not even gold statues, for something made in their own image, something easier to live with, something that wouldn’t push them so hard to create a God-formed community.

I got this far before the events of this week, before the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel, before more than a thousand people, men – women – the elderly – babies   — died in the first attack… before Israel retaliated, before war descended on the very region in which the Exodus story took place.

That made me think again, differently, about how easy it is to make this story about little things, like being short-tempered or greedy… and to miss that it’s also about the big things, about the evil of war, and the deaths of ordinary, everyday people who were just going about their lives, until death hit them.

Over and over, throughout my ministry, when I’m talking about the Israelites, I’ve mentioned that the land in which they lived, was a crossroads, that they lived in a semi-perpetual battleground.  In those days, it was the Persians or the Assyrians battling the Egyptians to see who would control this wide spot in the road, to keep the homeland safe from invasion.  These days, that fight is still about control of the land we know as Israel, even as we now name the combatants as Israelis, and – often – Palestinian groups.  And it appears that behind Hamas, the terrorist group in Gaza, are those self-same Persians, now Iranians.  Today, the war is not just about controlling Israel, but about killing Jews.

There are a million reasons for the conflicts; I’m not going to even try to explain it all, though if some of you would like to explore it, we can set up a study group.  For today, it’s enough to know that one of the stated aims of Hamas is to kill all the Jews, and they seem to think they’ve made a good start.

I don’t have any good answers to the questions that lie under this attack.  Why do people hate one another this way?  How can people commit such atrocities?  What on earth is the response when people are trying to kill you and all your family and all your friends?

And, maybe most importantly for us, here in Auburn:  what can we do?

The best that I can say is this:  I can ask us each and all not to be distracted from our calling by the hatred we see around us.  We are a community which practices love and acceptance.  

Outside our doors, there are people condemning Jews for their existence; the Jews of our community are upset.  This feels too much like the Holocaust happening again.  We are called to be a comforting presence in their lives, to recognize their pain, their fear, their anger, to be friends with them.

And outside our doors are Palestinian immigrants, people who had nothing to do with Hamas, and who are also being attacked for who they are.  Let us be their friends as well.

In Gaza a war – a vicious, take-no-prisoners, war – is being fought.  That’s there, but here, we have the opportunity to continue to build a community that turns away from dividing walls of hostility, turns towards the creation of welcoming spaces.

Some have made little golden hand-carved gods of all kinds of happenings, events, loses, deaths.  Our God calls us to remember that God is a a God of acceptance, a God of change, a God love.

Let us follow that God, all our days.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child

First Congregational Church, UCC, Auburn MA, October 1, 2023

Exodus 20
I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery.

No other gods, only me.

No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am God, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.

No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name

Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.

Honor your father and mother so that you’ll live a long time in the land that God, your God, is giving you.

No murder.
No adultery.
No stealing.
No lies about your neighbor.
No lusting after your neighbor’s house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbor’s.   ^{(The Message translation)}

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 Ten Commandments give us a really clear picture of what God thinks a community should look like. 

Except, of course, except that it’s not a drawing but rather words, and with illustrations which made perfect sense two thousand years ago, but are a little obscure today.  So we’re tempted to take those Ten Commandments and make them, actually, into wordy idols, things to be worshipped, carved into stone, words which have no more meaning that anyone can see on the surface. 

When we do that, we miss the entire point of the Commandments.

Because the last thing they are, is some sort of marble monument.  They are, instead, containers of the truth of a life lived with purpose and meaning.  They are a guide, a road map, to that life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of the ethical life this week, after the deaths of two famous baseball players.  Even if you’re not into baseball, these two men were exceptional people, worth remembering, worth honoring.  And each of them lived their lives according to an ethical code, lived their lives so fully that when they died, it was not how well they played the game (and they both were very good at what they did), but how well they lived their lives that everyone is remembering.

The paper said, “people in Baltimore didn’t name their sons Brooks or Robinson because they hoped it would make them world class third basemen, but in the hopes that the model of Brooks Robinson’s way of living would guide them in the same path.

And I think few of us in Massachusetts have not heard about the dedication of Tim Wakefield to the Jimmy Fund, to being a supportive friend to kids with cancer.

We’ve plenty of examples of folks who take their fame to be what makes them worth knowing.  But the Commandments tell us that it’s a way of life that holds the key to real worth.  

The Commandments tell us to be sure we know, name and follow God at the center of our lives.  This isn’t just about showing up here on Sunday morning, but it’s about allowing God to be the balance point in every moment of our lives.  It’s about remembering who we are, about not losing our way in the midst of all the calls upon our time, our power, our presence.

Every other commandment builds on that first one.  It’s all about keeping God in the center of our world.

Don’t let something else sneak in and take over your life.  Today’s translation talks about carved gods because that was a big thing in those days.  But think now about the kinds of things we make into things that distract us from being good, kind, loving, welcoming, honest people – 

Remember that just as the good we do lives long after us, so will the bad.  Let your life be governed by grasping greediness, for whatever – land, money, sex, power – and know that your children, and their children, and sometimes even their children’s children, will pay a price.

Take time off.  Back in the days when this was written, taking any time off was enormously radical; it still is today for many of us.  Now, as then, for some of us we have to work non-stop just to keep even with the bills.  That said, the Commandments tell us that just as the story says God rested after making the world, we also should rest.  If we can’t afford to rest from work for a day, try half a day… or an hour….or, if you’re the parent of toddlers, maybe it’ll only be fifteen minutes in another part of the house… but take some time, rest, and remember that God loves you.

The final commandments lay out the most common ways in which we practice greed or allow anger to take over our lives.  Take care of those who’ve taken care of you.  Don’t let your greed or anger pull you into murder; don’t let yourself slip into illicit relationships, don’t steal, don’t tell lies, don’t get out and outright greedy.

Easy to say, maybe even easy to preach – but you know, and I know, that living this out, fully allowing these values to center our lives is not easy – not to do every day, day in, day out, for the rest of our lives.  The commandments are good news, but challenging news, because they set up a standard that’s not just right, but impossible to live up to all the time.

I can’t speak for you, but I know I can’t do it.  Perfection’s not going to happen in my life.  And that’s why, in addition to the commandments, we have Jesus.  In the letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul calls upon his readers to live their lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.  Repeatedly, he calls upon the members of his churches to live honestly, knowing that when (not if, when) we fall short of the goal, there will we find Christ, ready to welcome us back, ready to help us start again.

The Ten Commandments give us a picture of who God is, what it means to follow God;  the Good News of Jesus Christ also calls us to be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph 5)

The Gospel reassures us that we are loved and accepted, as we are, whether we think we are successes or failures, and that when we aim to live as God has called us, we will find a deepness and value in our lives that is indeed God’s richest blessing.

Live as God would have us live.  

Love one another.  

Share that love with our world. 

Never fear, for God’s love never ends.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child

September 24, 2023  First Congregational Church UCC, Auburn MA

Matthew 20:1-16 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?. So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

(The Message)  “He replied to the one speaking for the rest, ‘Friend, I haven’t been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn’t we? So take it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last the same as you. Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I am generous? Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first.”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

God shows no partiality.  
God shows no partiality.  
God welcomes each of us, as we are, when we come. 

God does not judge us on what we’ve done, or how well we’ve done it.  
God does not welcome us onlyif we’re good enough.
God does not welcomes us only if we’re Red Sox fans.
God shows no partiality.

But we do. We show partiality all the time.

We give raises to those who work harder.  

And we generally think that if we work harder we’ll get more. We think we get what we earn.  

Certainly the vineyard workers thought that way.  It’s pretty clear that they all thought that the longer they worked, the better they’d be paid… or to turn it around… the first ones in knew they’d get a dollar a day, and so they assumed that the workers who came on board later in the day would get less money — start at noon, perhaps make 50 cents, start just before quitting time, well get a dime, or even a nickel.  

But then quitting time comes, and it doesn’t quite turn out the way the workers expected.  They all get the same wage, whether they worked 8 hours or 10 minutes.  Now this is good news, right? If we understand that the master of the vineyard is God, and we are the workers, some early, some late, but all loved and accepted it’s great news.

And at the same time, it’s challenging news.  Because, you know, it looks exactly as if some are getting more than others.  Turns out, the Bible tells us, it’s all in how you look at things.  Because, as it turns out, we don’t all start from the same place.

When I was in high school we lived in south Florida, where my father managed a 1000 cow dairy farm.  Two crews of men worked eight hour shifts to milk the cows twice a day.   The men were from southwest Georgia, from a world where children routinely dropped out of school after the first or second grade to go to work in the peanut fields.  

Their children rode the same school buses that my brother and I rode.  We went to the same schools.  Sometimes, especially in elementary school, we sat next to each other in class.  

But when it came to picturing our futures, we did not start in the same place.  My father had been a school teacher, my mother was a nurse.  They both read books for work and for pleasure.  

Their parents didn’t read at all.  None of the adults had gone beyond third grade.  My parents expected me to go to college.  Their parents expected them to get married by ninth grade.  Though it might look as though we’d had an equal start, and had equal futures, it wasn’t so.

Look back at our Gospel story.  On the face of it, some people were enterprising and came to work bright and early, ready to go.  And some slept late and didn’t show on time, some didn’t make it until late in the day.  So, the obvious thing is that some were honest, hardworking and on time, while the others were lazy, maybe even sleeping it off.  And maybe that’s true.

But maybe it wasn’t, maybe it isn’t.  Maybe our “usual assumption” when we see someone show up late for school, or work, or whatever, is keeping us from seeking the real story.

On my travels between here and home, I’m listening to a memoir by Theresa May, former Prime Minister of England,.  She talks about duty, service, and taking responsibility and one of her examples of this gone wrong happened in 1989, when overcrowding at a sports event in Yorkshire led to the deaths of 97 people, contained in a standing-room only enclosure.  

In subsequent investigations, it became clear that the single most defining expectation of the day was that the fans had to be controlled, that the police expected the fans to cause trouble and any sign of distress would be proof that someone was starting a riot.  

So, when two of the enclosures became so over-crowded that people were being crushed against the fence, the police assumed a riot was starting.  They reacted in fear, not compassion.  When the ambulances finally made it onto the field, some of the attendants  refused to leave their vehicles because they assumed the attendees who were trying to get out of the enclosures would be coming for them.  And 97 people died who should have lived.

An additional 766 people were injured with 300 in the hospital.  Theresa May said there are people who were there that day who have never been able to go back to the stadium, that their memories of the day are horrific. So, probably more than a thousand people had their lives changed in painful ways, because there were people whose assumptions kept them from seeing what was really happening.

It was so hard for anyone to wrap their mind around the idea that the police had let their assumptions govern their response, and were responsible for the deaths that it was 2012 before the truth came out.  And even then, people struggled to believe that the police had lied about what they saw and did.  

Assumptions, incorrect assumptions caused a great miscarriage of justice.

Now – let’s go back to that story of the laborers.  Jesus’ lesson for us – well the first lesson – is that God welcomes everyone, no matter what time of day, what season of their life, they come to follow God.  But in the squawking of those who worked the full day, there’s a gentle push from Jesus to think a little more about the backstory, about where people were coming from, what their lives were like.  

Why did those who came late, come late?  
Why do those who fail, fail?  
When we know the whole story, then we can work to make our world better.  

That’s our calling, to be God’s accepting love in the world.

Today’s lesson is really good news for us and for all the world.  It tells us that not only are we known and loved by God, whether we come to God early or late, but that we are loved no matter where we started our journey, no matter what we’ve lived through, no matter where we come from.  God knows and loves us as we are, where we are.  

And today’s lesson is good news because it helps free us from the assumptions which block our vision, which keep us from seeing the barriers that mar our world.  

Today’s lesson gives our lives meaning and purpose, for this is our work. 
to makes the invisible barriers visible, 
to challenge assumptions that put limitations on some, 
and to share God’s love with our world.

Amen.

© 2023, Virginia H. Child