September 20 - “The Usual”

The Usual

Matthew 20:1-16

20 September 2026

Rev. Mary Nelson – First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA

                  You know about the community for which Matthew wrote his gospel by now. They were a community of Jews living probably in Antioch in Syria, a minority group living in a diverse, cosmopolitan city under Roman occupation. They were not poor, but they were also not powerful. Matthew’s gospel was written somewhere around 5-15 years after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed: Jews across the Empire were experiencing persecution for being Jewish, but Matthew’s community also wasn’t so sure they could fully identify with the Jewish experience and faith anymore; and they were intrigued by what they were hearing about this Jesus guy, but they weren’t fully on board with him, either. Christians were also being persecuted across the Roman Empire, so it’s not like becoming part of that movement was going to benefit them somehow. They were somewhere in the middle, trying to discern who they were becoming.

                  Today we read a parable that only appears in Matthew’s gospel. And usually the texts that only appear in one gospel are assumed by scholars to have been created (or at least significantly embellished) by the gospel-writer himself. But this is one of those rare cases where scholars believe that this parable does come from Jesus and was not made up by Matthew. In fact, scholars believe that Matthew added the sort-of tagline at the end, “the last shall be first and the first shall be last” as an editorial choice, because that tagline does appear widely in other gospels and even elsewhere in Matthew. But it doesn’t actually make sense as a conclusion of the parable. The parable isn’t about the great overturning of the social order that Jesus and his followers hope will take place—it’s about how God is generous with everyone, regardless of the human social order. This is not a “the last shall be first” parable, it’s an “everyone is equal” parable.

                  A vineyard owner goes out to the marketplace and hires laborers to work in his vineyard. He agrees with them on a set price for a day’s labor, the usual amount of pay, and brings them back to work for the day. He keeps going back all day, multiple times, to hire more and more laborers. Even just an hour before the day should end, he hires more workers for his vineyard. And when the work day is done, he pays each of them the usual, set price for their labor. He starts with the last people he hired, and the workers who’ve been there all day assume they will be paid more, because they worked more. So when the vineyard owner pays them, they are upset to see that they have been paid the usual, set amount that they agreed to in the first place. The laborers grumble, and the vineyard owner says to them, “I’m giving you exactly what we agreed. I can be generous with what is mine, and that’s my choice to make. Are you envious because I am generous?” 

                  We didn’t talk about parables as much as I thought we were going to this summer. So you may or may not remember that a parable is a story that is based on a metaphor, using imagery from nature or everyday life, and there’s always some kind of twist that is meant to surprise us or make us understand something differently, often leaving us with more questions than answers. The images used in the story are sometimes obscure to us modern folk, though we still have vineyards and day laborers, so this parable’s twist is not as difficult for us to understand as many other parables.

In this parable, Jesus opens the story telling us that “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early looking for laborers for his vineyard.” So we are meant to hear that the landowner is God, and the laborers are us, and we can imagine feeling the resentment that the first set of laborers feel toward the folks who came along later. We can imagine making the assumption that we would be paid more for doing more work. It’s easy to identify with those workers who showed up early and then watched as the folks who showed up later were still paid the same, and paid first. That vineyard owner kept going out all day and bringing back more workers, whether he needed them or not. Why were those people needed, weren’t we doing a good enough job in the first place? What if the vineyard owner ran out of coins to pay everyone before he got to us, what then? What if we’ve been cheated out of our work and our wage?

It becomes easy to catastrophize when we put ourselves in the shoes of the workers who came early.

But let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the people who were invited to work at 10 a.m., at noon. What about the ones who came at 3:00? At 5:00? The vineyard owner didn’t negotiate with them, he just said “I’ll pay you what’s fair.” For a partial day’s work, that’s not enough to live on, to feed a family. Were they just grateful to be given a chance to work at all? Were they afraid they would work as much as possible, and the vineyard owner would decide that “fair” was something less than they deserved? Were they afraid they were going to be cheated, in the end? How grateful were they, at the end of the day, to be given a whole day’s wages? How much did they hope they would be hired back the next day, and how eager were they to work for an owner who would show such kindness? How many of their friends, their relatives, could they tell about the owner’s generosity, so that their loved ones might try to work in that vineyard as well? 

And the vineyard owner didn’t cheat anyone. He paid the usual wage for a day’s labor. He kept his word to the first workers who came, and to everyone else. How weird it is, how broken a system we live in—even today—that we assume that an employer will NOT pay a fair wage, expect that they will NOT treat the workers justly, fear that scarcity will be inevitable?

The kingdom of heaven is different than the kingdoms and governments of people.  

Socially speaking, Matthew’s community was not in the batch of early laborers, nor in the batch of folks who came late in the day. They were in the middle: not from the place where they were living, but not strangers or refugees or “displaced persons”; not in the top of the social classes, but not at the bottom; not sure they were who they used to be, but not sure who they were becoming. They, too, would have been surprised at the vineyard owner’s generosity. They, too, needed an example of another way to be, an idea of how a community could operate that was not what they’d always known. They needed their paradigms broken, and their fears dispelled. And Matthew knew they needed this story, even if other gospel writers didn’t see a need for it for their communities. In the kingdom of heaven, God is generous and kind and full of grace, and we live differently because of it.

When I came here to Williamstown you were feeling pretty beat up, pretty tired, pretty sad. You felt inadequate, unloved. And that’s not …true. Your feelings were true, but there is another way to be. God’s love, God’s generosity, God’s grace is real and here and waiting for you to receive it! You just needed to be reminded of that. There is another way to be.

I haven’t done nearly as much for you as you think I have, as your pastor. But I’ve loved you—more than I thought I was going to! I reminded you of your behavioral covenant. I’ve helped you walk with each other in a discernment process. We hired a new music director. We came up with a new plan for caring for our building. We came up with a new policy for inclement weather. You supported me in the final days of my father’s life. 

This has always been a temporary arrangement, and we knew that. We didn’t know how long I would be here, and I didn’t know how much I would come to love you. We have had the chance to create a new beginning together, to see that grace that it’s possible to have for one another, to see the ways that it’s possible to be together differently from how we are in the rest of the world. We’ve seen new opportunities, new ways to be, and we’ve learned that we are not bound by what has been.

What you do, what you give, what you expect, is not all that God has to work with. And God will always be generous with you, and loving with you, and gracious with you. No matter when you show up. No matter how hard you work. You are loved, and that is the most important thing.

I have loved being your pastor, and I am glad that you have learned how to receive love again. And I hope that you continue showing that love and grace and generosity to each other. You can be part of the new way of the vineyard owner, not the way of the people who live in fear. You do not have to be bound by that. You are becoming who God is calling you to be—and I am grateful to have been part of that journey.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

September 6 - “ If They Listen to You”

If They Listen to You

Matthew 18:15-20

6 September 2026

Rev. Mary Nelson – First Congregational Church, UCC, of Williamstown MA

            There is not, and never really has been, one monolithic “American” culture. But it is safe to say, I think, that Americans have largely lost the art and skill of singing in public together as a normal and reasonable practice that a community sometimes engages. It used to be the case that communities would sing together at some kinds of public gatherings—a town Memorial Day observance, say, where everyone sang the National Anthem—but now singing the National Anthem has become a solo performance by a so-called “good singer,” and everyone else is expected to keep silent and watch the “good singer” perform. For a generation or so, there have been only two places where it’s normal and customary for ordinary people sing together as a group, not as a performance but just as an activity that is part of the events of the day: those two places are (1) houses of worship, and (2) baseball games. 

But fewer and fewer people attend religious services anymore, and in many churches (surely not here!) half the congregation stands politely for the hymns and doesn’t actually sing. And let’s be honest, baseball games have a pathetically limited repertoire. There are only so many choruses of Sweet Caroline that one can belt out with enthusiasm. Some communities, including Williamstown, are adding back the practice of singing at protests, but in many places this is still spoken of as a performance by a few, rather than a corporate act binding together the general public.

We have forgotten that the point of singing together is not to sound good—although if you can get people singing, it usually does sound good, and even folks who claim they “can’t sing” might discover that they actually can. The point of singing together is not to create a performance, it’s to create a unifying experience. Our bodies know this: singers in a choir breathe together, they move their bodies subtly to keep the beat together, and their hearts even tend to adopt the same rhythm. The point of singing together is not to be heard, it’s to listen to each other, and try to create something together that we could not create on our own. We cannot create anything together if we do not listen to each other.

The world in which we live does not teach us how to listen very well. The world in which we live often rewards (or concedes to) the loudest voice, the first to blurt out a response, the one who is most insistent that they are right (whether or not they actually are right). To survive in this world, we have to compete for attention, compete for the microphone (or make a show of demonstrating that we can talk loudly), speak first and faster and louder and with more authority than everyone else. And the only reason to listen to anyone is to debate them, to tell them they’re wrong, and to start talking again as soon as they’ve finished (or as soon as you’ve decided they’re finished and you interrupt them). That’s not really listening! If you approach conversations with anyone this way, then you are not listening.

Being in community is hard work. Getting along with other people is hard work. Church is hard work. Church is a place where we are challenged to live together with people who may fundamentally disagree with us about the way the world should work. Church is a place where we are sometimes reminded of our roles and responsibilities with the famines in Gaza and Sudan, and the rebuilding efforts in Venezuela, and the violence in Ukraine, and the homelessness of children in our own county, and the ways that climate change impacts the whole planet. Church is often the only place anymore where community members may have to be in intentional relationship with people who disagree or who hold different perspectives on life. Church is a place where we sometimes have to be vulnerable and share with others the things we’d rather not speak out loud to anyone. Church is a place where we encounter our own emptiness and maybe work on filling it a little bit, or helping to fill each other. Church is a place where we behave badly sometimes, and where we trust one another enough to call us on our bad behavior when it happens.

             That’s what Jesus was talking about in our passage from Matthew.  Matthew’s church knew something about bad behavior, and outright conflict, and just-plain schism. Matthew’s congregation was in the process of figuring out who they were, because they were a religious community that was evolving differently from the orthodoxy of their parent religion, and they definitely didn’t all agree on how to be whatever they were becoming. Some scholars believe that Matthew’s community had been kicked out of the other synagogues in Antioch. Disagreement and distress in this new community was right there on the surface for all to see. So it’s no wonder that Matthew includes this guide for how to deal with people who are causing conflict in the church. The unity of the community was of the utmost importance to Matthew. Matthew’s guidance for how to handle conflict is geared toward a slow, deliberate process that promotes peace. If someone sins against you, go talk to him. If he doesn’t want to talk, bring another one or two people to witness your conversation, and try again. If that still doesn’t change the situation, talk with your church community about it and enlist their help. If he still won’t listen, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

            Now, some hear this tax collector part and think it means that the person in question should be ostracized. That’s not what it means. Gentiles and tax collectors were shunned from mainstream Jewish society, but we have to remember that Matthew’s community was probably shunned by some Jewish groups, too, and they knew what that was like and how hurtful and counterproductive that practice is. Jesus was the one who ate with tax collectors, and reached out to the Gentiles. Jesus was the one who broke the rules when it came to who was in and who was out. In this new Christian movement, Gentiles and tax collectors and prostitutes and widows and all kinds of marginalized folks were encouraged to participate fully, welcome where they would not have been welcome in other communities of faith. In any faith community, some people are new, and need orientation and education. The Gentiles and the tax collectors had a lot to learn, and the Jewish-born maybe-becoming-Christians took seriously their responsibility to teach newcomers about the laws and stories by which they lived. “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” meant that the community should stick with the recalcitrant person and work to educate and enlighten him. The community should offer remediation, opportunities for restorative justice, opportunities to try again to build up relationship. This passage is about seeking peace and reconciliation and transformation, not about separating the sheep from the goats. Gentiles and tax collectors were not punished for being who they were, they were shown grace and forgiveness.

            One unspoken thing we need to remember here is that this passage is about disagreement between two rational people. It’s a program of healthy interaction between two healthy people. It’s an ideal program for an ideal situation, and not all situations reflect this ideal. Jesus’s program is not about tough love, or mental illness, or excusing destructive or abusive behavior. Jesus urged patience with those who needed correction, but didn’t allow violence or unhealthy behavior to destroy his community, and we shouldn’t either. That’s why we have a Behavioral Covenant, for example, to help clarify for everyone the norms and guardrails that keep us from hurting one another.

            The other unspoken thing we need to remember is that sometimes you may be the person who has wronged your neighbor. You may be the person who is not listening. You may be the person who is working so hard to get the first word and the last word and the loudest word, to explain your intentions, to justify your behavior, that you are not able to assess the impact of your actions or acknowledge that you have hurt a fellow church member—someone who is working for the same goals you are, someone who is on your team. You may be the tax collector or the sinner who needs remediation. When that’s the case, admit it! Stop doing whatever it is that is hurting your fellow member. Apologize. Then be quiet and listen, so you can learn something you clearly need to learn, and do better next time. If you want your fellow members to listen to you, you also have to listen to them. Hopefully, you’ll do this before the person needs to invite others to come with them to explain to you how your actions have impacted them. 

            Matthew 18 is where the idea of grace is applied in a real and everyday way. Matthew’s plan gives us a blueprint for healthy reconciliation when harm is done, as it sometimes is, because humans mess up and hurt each other sometimes. But that harm doesn’t have to be the end of the relationship, splitting off members of the body one by one. We are all given the promise of renewal through God’s grace, and the reconciliation and transformation that are offered with new life – and we’re all human, so we’re all given chances to practice showing that grace to each other and receiving that grace from one another. So at times when we do not live up to this ideal or our situation is not applicable, God still works with us to establish among us God’s beloved community. God still calls us to be companions who will sing together, and will listen to one another, so that God’s will may be done, in Jesus’ name.

            Thanks be to God.  Amen.

August 30 - “Divine Things, Human Things”

Divine Things, Human Things

Matthew 16:21-28

Romans 12:9-21

30 August 2026

Rev. Mary Nelson – First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA

         Matthew’s community is a little different from the other gospel writers’ communities. They’re a minority group (Jews) living probably in Antioch in Syria, a huge city in the Roman Empire, but outside of the traditional Jewish homeland of Judea (what we know as Israel-Palestine), somewhere around 75 to 85 CE – or 5-15 years after the Romans sacked Jerusalem. Matthew’s community were really wrestling with their identity in that context – they were a persecuted minority in this multicultural context, considering what they were hearing about the events shaping Jewish identity in Jerusalem and feeling removed from those experiences, but not wanting to assimilate into the wider Syrian scene, and they’re hearing stories about this Jesus guy, too, and he sounds pretty good, but they’re undecided about him, too.

         So Matthew has written up for his community the stories of Jesus, and we’re about halfway through those stories today. Jesus’s life and ministry have made some pretty significant shifts around this point, and the narrative is making a shift, too. Jesus had been talking with his disciples, and they expressed their belief that Jesus is the Messiah, the Jewish figure who is supposed to save the Jewish people from an oppressive ruler or regime… and the text tells us, “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes.” The disciples have confessed their faith in Jesus, and he tells them what it really means to be this figure—it ain’t the glitz and glamour they thought it was going to be. 

         We know that Jesus’s story involves his horrible death at the hands of the Empire; we also know that his story doesn’t end with that death. We know his resurrection is coming, we know the emergence of the Early Church will follow, and so on and so forth throughout history. Matthew’s community knows some of that, too. They are part of the Early Church, although they have not yet fully decided that they want to be. Still, they know what’s coming. 

Over the centuries, the traditions associated with the Messiah in Judaism included an element of apocalypticism. Thanks to terrible theology infusing itself into popular culture, when our modern ears hear the word “apocalypse” we think it is referring to the end of the world, the destruction of Creation, but it’s not: “apocalypse” means “revelation” or “unveiling” – that is, an apocalypse is when some hidden or unknown truth will be revealed. In particular, it was hoped that the Messiah would reveal (or cause the revealing of) this hidden truth, and that revelation would upend the social order somehow—the last would be first and the first would be last. And in the Early Church, there was a hope that the death and resurrection of Jesus would be the event that would kick off this social upheaval, and it would be accomplished within the lifetimes of the people who saw and heard and walked with him. 

They weren’t hoping for this upheaval because they were “on the bottom” and they wanted to dominate or punish those in power, the weren’t after retribution. But in the Jewish tradition (and we have inherited this as well), there is an awareness of the brokenness of Creation, and a brokenness especially in humans’ relationship to power. We were commanded by God to be stewards of Creation, and to be in covenant with one another, and these relationships have gotten distorted, out of whack: they yearned for a rebalancing, a restoration of right relationship. And the apocalyptic hope of the Early Church was a desire to see that restoration of right relationship come about in their lifetimes. For some, the hope was that Jesus’s death and resurrection would cause that restoration; for others, the hope was that his death and resurrection would be the first sign of that restoration. Either way, this yearning for restoration to right relationship was present in the ongoing conversation of the followers of Jesus as they came to grips with his death and resurrection… and with the passage of time as the years went on and life in the Roman Empire went from bad to worse. The assurance that “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” was more needed than ever, after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and as persecutions of both Jews and Christians escalated in the first century Empire. This persecution has got to end sometime. The rebalancing has got to come soon. Restoration of right relationship will happen in our lifetimes, or at least be more attainable. It’s got to get better.

Don’t we all need that assurance sometimes?

Eventually things did get better, though the first hearers of the gospel in Matthew’s community in Syrian Antioch may not have seen much relief from persecution in their lifetimes. Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity (some would call it a cooptation of Christianity) came nearly 250 years after Matthew wrote down the stories of Jesus for his church family. For some 1800 years, almost, Christianity has been the dominant religion (or at least the dominant cultural influence) in the Global North and West. And the imbalance of relationship has not tended much toward restoration with our ancestors in the faith wielding power, we must confess. Christianity has been twisted into a tool of Empire and oppression, colonization and white supremacy, sometimes just as harmful as Caesar’s oppression of the Jews and other minorities had been. 

Today, we are far from being a “persecuted minority” (although there are times when it seems that Progressive Christianity could be a target for some), and we still yearn – and work, where we can – for the restoration of right relationship among all Creation. There is more work to do! But I want to believe, and I am sure you do, too: we want to believe that things will get better, and that they will get better in our lifetimes. We seek the restoration of clean water, clean air, clean soil. We seek the restoration of human rights, human dignity, locally and globally. We seek the restoration of peace and justice and equity for all… and we seek these things NOW. We seek them wholeheartedly. We seek them even at our own expense. Not because we’re hoping for the end of Creation, but because we’re hoping for its continuation!

We pray that this restoration of right relationship WILL happen in our lifetimes! And we pray that we can be a part of making it happen. And if it doesn’t, may we still be driven by that hope, and do all we can to reconcile what we can. So that we may be part of that restoration. This is the invitation of Matthew’s teaching, and the invitation of Jesus the Christ himself, that we may be part of restoring what is broken, repairing and healing and creating right relationship. May we do this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

August 23 - “People Say”

People Say

Matthew 16:13-20

Romans 12:1-8

23 August 2026

Rev. Mary Nelson – First Congregational Church UCC of Williamstown MA

By now you all know that scriptural interpretation is sometimes art, sometimes science, sometimes craft… sometimes a little bit of all three. For every reader, there are multiple readings. For every interpreter, there are multiple interpretations. For every question, there are multiple answers, and often more questions. So when you encounter a story with a question at the heart of it, you know to pay attention and keep pursuing that line of thought. How did the question get answered then, and how would we answer it now?

Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And Peter has answers—soooo many answers! But when Jesus asks Peter, “Who do YOU say that I am?” Peter has one answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” And we could go down the rabbit hole of theological history to unpack Peter’s response, but that’s not the journey we’re going to take today. Because the next question we need to ask today doesn’t have anything to do with unpacking 3000 years of Jewish theological tradition about what the Messiah is supposed to be or do, or why we might use the terminology of “the Living God,” or what it signifies that the Living God has a Son.

            The question that we’re supposed to ask today is, conveniently, one of the unspoken questions that undergirds our discernment sessions this fall: Who do we say that Jesus is? As we think about the ministry of this church and we ask ourselves to imagine the future that God might have in store for us, this question sits at the very core of our quest to figure out who we are and what we’re doing here. Who do we say that Jesus is? Who do we say that we are?

            Some people say that he is John the Baptist; some people say that he is a prophet – Elijah, or maybe Jeremiah. But who do you say that Jesus is? Ultimately, that’s what matters. Who Jesus is to us impacts how we understand ourselves and our ministry. If we say that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, then we are called to work for an end to all war; if we say that Jesus is the Great Teacher, then we are called to be students and to teach others what we have learned; if we say that Jesus is the King of Kings, then we are called to live as his subjects, loyal first to him above all other loyalties. If we, like Simon Peter, say that Jesus is the Messiah, the One who is sent by God to save all humankind, then we need to take seriously the truth that our lives are fundamentally different because of the salvation that he offers. The world is fundamentally different because of the life of this one man, and we are invited to live with this truth in mind.

            And if we say that he is all of those things and more, then we have a lot of work to do! Who do we say that Jesus is? What does that mean for who we are and what we do with that?

            The thing to note here is, Jesus wasn’t seeking Peter’s approval when he asked that question. He wasn’t asking, “Who do people want me to be? Who do you want me to be?” He wasn’t asking for performance feedback, he was asking if Peter understood the program.

            Jesus isn’t seeking Peter’s endorsement, or anyone else’s. So often, we hear commentators in the cultural zeitgeist (particularly in Churchy circles) talk about the Church’s need to be “relevant” to the people we hope to attract, the people we hope might join us, to sit on our committees and put money in the plate and repopulate our depleted numbers in the pews. (We are terrible about asking how we can be “relevant” to the people we hope to serve, but that’s a soapbox for another day.) The problem with the language of “relevance” is that in trying to be “relevant” we end up chasing after somebody’s approval, begging them to love us, desperate for acceptance. That’s not attractive, and it’s borderline idolatrous, because we’re asking somebody other than God to tell us who to be. In striving for “relevance,” we end up abdicating our identity, neglecting our responsibility to our call, shutting out who God is asking us to be. 

            In Paul’s letter to the Romans – and we haven’t really looked at any of the letters in my time here, but we’re jumping in to the middle of Romans today – in Paul’s letter, he tells us not to conform to the expectations of the world (that is, not to chase this slippery “relevance,”) but instead to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” He’s talking about discernment! He wants us to “discern the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And then Paul talks about spiritual gifts. We each have gifts, he says: abilities, talents, instincts, that make each of us special or good or faithful somehow. Paul says, sure, you each have gifts, but (a) you didn’t earn them or make them, they’re from the Holy Spirit; and (b) the gifts are fine on their own, but they are more powerful, more meaningful, when we put them to use collectively. My gifts are not just for my own enjoyment, and your gifts are not just for your own enjoyment—they go together. My teaching is only as good as your ability to implement what you learn. Your generosity is only as good as our ability to steward your contributions and use them for a positive impact. Use your gifts well, together, and we’ll be able to do far more with them than you could do on your own. 

            That’s not about relevance, that’s about authenticity. Don’t be who you think your desired audience wants you to be, be who God calls you to be—and the other people who share your calling will see your authenticity and join you in the work.

            Ultimately, that’s what Jesus did with the disciples, and they carried on and grew his work exponentially. Simon recognizes Jesus as the Messiah because he encountered Jesus’s authenticity in pursuing his call. Simon knows that Jesus is not just any one of these other titles that people have ascribed to him: he’s not trying to be like Elijah or Jeremiah or any of those other important figures. Jesus is simply being himself, true to his calling from God, and Simon realizes that Jesus is truly God’s Messiah, God’s Chosen Savior. Jesus in turn knows that Simon has learned this because God revealed it to him—that is, Simon has had an encounter with the living God. And Simon came out of this encounter with a new name, Peter. Just like Abram became Abraham, and Jacob became Israel, now Simon becomes Peter because he has been changed by his encounter with the true and living God. In Greek, the name Peter is a play on the word petros, rock. “You are Peter, and on this petros I will build my church.” The translation of the Bible that calls itself “the Message” refers to Peter as “Rocky,” so we don’t lose wordplay that happens in this passage. You are Rocky, and on this rock I will build my church. Simon Peter is thought to be the solid one, the petros, the rock.

            And Simon Peter was not as solid as Jesus appeared to think he would be.  None of us are. None of us alone can bear the weight of a thoroughly human institution as if we ourselves are not also human. We are not rock, but flesh. But Jesus passed this church on to his followers with full responsibility for its—and our—authenticity and integrity and well-being. “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” What we do now impacts what is to come. Who we are impacts who we are becoming. How we live impacts the world as it gets shaped by our actions. If the kingdom of God is among us, and we are building it, then how we live impacts God’s kingdom as it comes more fully into being. If we let somebody else tell us what that looks like, we’ll be building up their kingdom, not God’s kingdom.

Our authenticity matters. Whatever we do here is done in God’s kingdom, because we are the foundation on which that kingdom is built. We make the rules of this kingdom, so we’d better be careful about how we do it – whatever we bind will be bound, and whatever we loose will be loosed. We are building God’s kingdom all the time. So it matters who we say that Jesus is. It matters because who we say Jesus is impacts who we ourselves are, who we as a church are.  

Who do we say Jesus is? This, more than any other question, is central to who we are and how we live together as Christ’s body and Christ’s people. Jesus is who we pattern our lives upon, the teacher of our call. If he brings good news to the poor, then we bring good news to the poor. If he proclaims release to the captive, then we proclaim release to the captive. If he restores sight to the blind, then we restore sight to the blind. If we, like Peter, declare Jesus to be the Messiah, then we are a people who have been saved for the building up of God’s kingdom come on earth.  

Who Jesus is is who we are, and what we do reflects on his church and builds up his kingdom. Let us be mindful of this as we move forward. Who do you say that I am? Who does God say that we are? Let us listen for this calling, that we may be faithful and authentic in following that call, in Jesus’s name.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

August 16 - “Learning New Ways”

Learning New Ways

Genesis 45:1-15

Matthew 15:21-28

16 August 2026

Rev. Mary Nelson – First Congregational Church UCC of Williamstown, MA

            Welcome to the story of Jesus at his worst. 

            A handful of weeks ago, we heard a scripture that made reference to comparisons between Jesus and John the Baptist. Some scholars think they were rivals of sorts, maybe their groups of followers argued over who was better, something along those lines. And the lectionary skipped over the story of John’s death this year so we didn’t hear it, but it’s relevant today to know that in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’s story, this rivalry between Jesus and John becomes bad news for Jesus. John was beheaded at the command of Herod Antipas, who was the ruler of Galilee, and after that happened, the next several stories involve Jesus trying to get away from the public eye for a while. He’s kind of on the run, he keeps “going to a deserted place by himself” and the crowds keep following him. The Pharisees and scribes come from Jerusalem to Galilee to seek him out and challenge him publicly. He leaves Galilee and goes all the way to the district of Tyre and Sidon… Distance-wise, this is like if Jesus were trying to get out of Boston so he went to Greenfield, but then that wasn’t enough to stay incognito so he came to northern Berkshire County. Or maybe just over the border into Southern Vermont might be a more accurate analogy—he’s trying to get to a new province, away from the territory that Herod Antipas oversees, because it’s very possible that Jesus could be next on Herod’s hit list.

Of course, Jesus is traveling with his disciples, which probably makes it hard to stay incognito for very long. A Canaanite woman begins following Jesus and his posse, calling out to him. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon!” Jesus tries to ignore her for a while, but she keeps pressing, and finally the disciples ask him to do something about this woman. Just send her away, they say. Just get her to leave us alone. We’re here to lay low, and she’s bringing us a lot of unwanted attention.

            She’s a woman, and she’s a Gentile: Jesus really shouldn’t be talking to her at all. But she just won’t stop, so he turns to her and says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

            “The lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That’s a phrase that only appears in Matthew’s gospel, and we’ve run across it before: when Jesus is first sending out his disciples for mission, he tells them not to go to the Gentiles, not to go out traveling beyond the borders of their homeland, but to stay and minister to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That’s a very limited group of people, given the diversity of the Roman Empire in the first century. And although Jesus has now left the territory of Israel in this passage today, he hasn’t lost focus on his ministry to Israel’s people.

            But this Canaanite woman will not take no for an answer. She knows that Jesus can help her daughter, and she is going to do whatever it takes to get his attention and convince him to help her. Even though Jesus has effectively said “my ministry is not for you,” she comes up to him and kneels down on the ground, insistent: “Lord, help me.”

            And Jesus again rejects her, saying, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” And he really means to be cruel here – the word we hear so nicely translated as “dog” is intended as a very specific kind of dog: a very specific kind of female dog. This is Jesus at his lowest, meanest point. He’s resorting to abusive language in order to exert control over this woman, trying to make her stop making him uncomfortable, calling attention to who he is and what he can do. He’s trying to stay incognito, after all! And she’s not having it. She takes Jesus’s attempt to control her and shoves it right back at him: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table.” You are Jesus, and I need help. Help me.

            That woman’s strength impresses Jesus, and catches his attention. With her words of challenge – “even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table” – she snaps him out of his fear, and she reorients Jesus’ understanding of his own ministry. Her pushback challenges the scope of what he is called to do. This is the moment when the switch flips: Jesus has been ministering to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” but now he realizes that he is called to a new chapter in his ministry. Suddenly his perspective has widened. He is called to minister to everyone, not just to Israel. This experience marks a significant turning point in Jesus’s ministry, and everything changes for his approach from here on out.

            This story is Jesus at his worst – the most human, we might say – turning away someone who has asked for his help, using derogatory language for her, discriminating against her on the basis of her tribal ancestry. When we talk (or sing) about wanting to be like Jesus, it’s not this version of Jesus that we mean!

            But Jesus is capable of learning. Jesus is capable of admitting when he’s in the wrong, when he’s behaved shamefully. Jesus is capable of accepting accountability, of changing his behavior. THAT is a version of Jesus we should emulate. 

It took an outsider – a woman, a Gentile – to make Jesus see himself and his ministry in a new light. And in the face of this woman’s challenge, he heals her daughter, and commends her for standing up to him. “Woman, great is your faith!” I don’t think he means belief here. The Canaanites have a whole different set of gods; she almost certainly wouldn’t have known or cared about Jesus as the Messiah, with the understanding and reverence a Jew would hold for that title. But this woman acts in good faith with Jesus, and shows that she has faith in herself, and in the goodness of her fellow human beings. When she recognizes someone who can help her, she demonstrates that faith. So Jesus, in acknowledging the woman’s great faith, acknowledges that she was faithful to the values that undergird all human decency—even when he wasn’t. But she helped him get there.

            Jesus needed a wake-up call, someone to get him out of his own head, someone to push him beyond what was familiar—the disciples weren’t going to do it! From time to time, we all need this kind of a wake-up call, don’t we? It is a very human phenomenon to seek comfort but fall into complacency—to become narrow-minded in our goals, habitual in our living, overly-reliant our own assumptions about what we can and cannot do. It’s easy to stick with what we know, and who we know, and never to push ourselves, never to go outside those boundaries and try anything new or anything ambitious—never even to think about it, to ask the question, what if? 

            From time to time, we need to rethink, reexamine, maybe even re-order our ways of thinking and living—not to make change for change’s sake, but to ensure that we are actively participating in our own faith and faithfulness, actively pursuing God’s call. So we can be at our best, not at our worst. We are not called only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. We are not called only to the “way we’ve always done things.” We are called to be like Jesus – to challenge ourselves, to examine our ministry, to widen the scope of what we think the church is called to do.

We don’t exist merely for ourselves, so we have something to do with our Sunday mornings and our Thursday mornings and a decent helping of our annual income. We don’t exist to be a social club or a community service organization, although we certainly do our fair share of socializing and service.  We don’t exist to sit around and think and pray and worship and read the Bible – although we do all of those things as well, I hope. We are called to so much more than that!  

I don’t mean for this sermon to be a plug for our discernment sessions, though that’s a convenient side-benefit—come to those! We’re figuring out how our ministry is evolving in this season! It’s fun! I do mean for this sermon to be a reminder that our ministry as a congregation has evolved over time, and it will continue to do so, and faithfulness means actively checking in to make sure we’re still pursuing God’s call. How is our view of ministry expanding? How is our own sense of call growing and changing and stretching us to be better people, better Christians? How are we pushing ourselves to be less narrow-minded, less habit-based, and more gracious to those in need? How are we challenging ourselves to expect more from ourselves?  

            And are we pushing one another toward that kind of growth?

We are called to minister to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and to the Gentiles. We are called by the Holy Spirit to be greater than the sum of our parts, through the grace of God. So we need to rise to the challenge that this Canaanite woman presents, to learn new ways to imagine our ministry. And we, the church, are uniquely equipped to do this because we are not alone: we have the Holy Spirit gathering us and enlivening us, and we have each other. 

All of our individual calls are an invitation to participate in something bigger than we as individuals can be. Ministry is a team effort, a project that involves the whole church, calling us to look at both what is best for the whole church and what is best for the world beyond the church. Are we really listening for the Canaanite woman’s challenge to us? Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table – are we making sure that our crumbs aren’t being thrown away?

We need to figure out a way to challenge ourselves to be better people, and to be a better church. We’ve got to challenge one another to be faithful in our living and expansive in our ministry; we’ve also got to hold one another accountable in that ministry. We should never make one another feel guilty for not doing enough; we should never put one another down for not measuring up. But in the same way that Olympic athletes challenge one another to work harder and push the limits and take big risks, we as the church have got to challenge ourselves to be as giving as we possibly can, as open as we possibly can, as loving as we possibly can, as hardworking as we possibly can, as honest as we possibly can – in every area of our lives, not just in the church. We’ve got to put as much faith in one another as possible. The Canaanite woman who challenged Jesus had enough faith in him not to let him be complacent in his ministry. God issues that same challenge to us every day, and gives us the strength and the community to rise to that challenge.

Thanks be to God!  Amen.

August 2 - “Wrestling with Vision”

Wrestling with Vision

Genesis 32:22-31

Matthew 14:13-21

August 2, 2026

Rev. Mary Nelson - First Congregational Church UCC of Williamstown, MA

            We haven’t looked at the Hebrew scriptures passages very much this summer, overall. We’ve been hearing the story of Abraham and his descendants alongside our primary gospel lessons, but we haven’t focused on that saga very much because the big-picture epic generational tale of Genesis has not been as resonant for us in this season as the raw, specific experience of Matthew’s community in first-century Syrian Antioch. But today, we’ve got a story from Genesis and a story from Matthew that, together, might be more compelling than either one is separately in this time.

            Jacob is the third generation of the family of “Patriarchs” whose story shapes the traditional focus of the Hebrew scriptures. There’s Abraham, and he has two sons, Isaac and Ishmael—Isaac is the favored son, and Ishmael, though the elder, is cast out and his story unfolds in the off-stage area of this epic drama. Then Isaac also has two sons, Jacob and Esau (they are twins, but technically Esau is older), and, once again, younger Jacob is the favored son. It’s clear from an early age that there is just not psychological and emotional room for both boys to coexist in this household, and Esau goes away to the land of Canaan, partly because of some trickery on Jacob’s part. Jacob steals the parental blessing that is due to the firstborn son, and Esau leaves their father’s household to strike out on his own, unblessed (he, too, has a life that unfolds offstage). In today’s story, both sons are adults, and Jacob has realized that he needs to reconcile with his brother. That’s the backstory we need to know for today’s scripture. 

Jacob packs up his household, which includes a considerable number of wives and children and servants and livestock, and travels with this enormous retinue toward Canaan, determined to make peace with his brother, but uncertain what he will encounter when he finds him. And he and his entourage come to a river, the Jabbok, with a ford-able point, as night draws near: he takes his wives and children and servants and livestock across the river and helps them to set up camp, but then he returns to the other side of the Jabbok for the night by himself. 

            There are context cues that appear in parts of the story that we didn’t read today: Jacob is afraid of meeting his brother. He knows he has to do it, he is in a vulnerable position and needs to ask his brother for help, but he is afraid that his brother is going to hold a grudge because of that stolen blessing, and enact revenge somehow… Jacob isn’t sure, but he doesn’t expect to find kindness or goodwill when he finally reunites with Esau. Jacob expects Esau to meet him with armies. So when Jacob takes his entire household across the river to camp for the night, and then returns to the other side to camp alone, he is acting out of cowardice. Jacob has placed his entire household—his wives and children and servants and livestock, PLUS a whole river(!)—as a buffer between himself and his brother. He would rather be alone and vulnerable, and make his entire household vulnerable as well, in order for Jacob to be as far away from Esau as he can possibly get.

            That night, we are told, Jacob wrestles with a strange, unidentified man, all night long. He’s one of those ambiguous, unnamed figures who sometimes appear in the story of the Patriarchs: maybe he’s an angel, maybe the man is God-in-physical-form, maybe he’s just a man, we don’t ever quite know. But Jacob realizes that this man is important, and he refuses to concede the match, insisting that the man bless Jacob. The man blesses Jacob and gives him a new name, Israel, and then he vanishes. Jacob returns across the river, but he is changed—with a new name,  which is a new identity, and also with a new limp, a physical reminder of the night he wrestled with…whoever that was. After this passage we read today, Jacob does resume his place at the head of the procession of wives and children and servants and livestock, and when Jacob meets his brother Esau, and Esau’s armies, their reunion is one of love and forgiveness and brotherhood. They make peace, they exchange gifts, they catch up, and Jacob settles his household in his brother’s territory.

            Jacob wants to be the big strong leader of his household. He knows that he is the favorite son of the favorite son of a man who was promised land and progeny by God directly. He feels the weight of legacy and perhaps even calling or destiny. He likes the idea of leadership, of power. But when the time comes for Jacob to do the hard work of claiming that legacy for his own—not through trickery, not through riding on daddy’s coattails or relying on favorite-son status… when it comes time for Jacob to step forward and do the really hard work of claiming the promise for his generation and securing it for the generation that comes after him, Jacob gets scared! He risks everything he owns, every relationship he has, every bit of security he has built up to sustain his household, his wife and his children and his servants and his livestock. He puts that all out in front, between himself and his perceived enemy, and he runs away, back across the river. He’s afraid of what might be coming. He wants someone else to do the work for him. 

            Sure, maybe he needed that wrestling match on the bank of the Jabbok to prepare him to meet his brother Esau. Maybe he needed a fairly-earned blessing to give him the confidence to face his brother. Maybe he needed the new name, Israel, the new identity, to be able to say “I have wrestled with God and with humans, and I have prevailed; I have seen God face-to-face and lived, I can do this next hard thing, too.” Maybe God knew that about him, and came to the riverside to give him that moment. But what Jacob knew about himself, before that wrestling match took place, was that he was willing to risk everything in order to avoid doing the thing he needed to do. He chose to give it all up to avoid doing the work. Let my household meet Esau’s armies. Let them perish. I will hear their cries, I will hear the army splashing across the river, and that will be my warning to run as far as I can in the opposite direction. Anything to avoid the hard task I need to do.

            We do this too sometimes, don’t we? Take the disciples in Matthew’s story today. Often, Jesus’s disciples are stand-ins for us, his modern disciples, right? They say out loud the things we are thinking, they ask the dumb question we would ask, they make the wrong choice in a moment of panic; and Jesus chastises them, and teaches them (uh, teaches US) the lesson we’re supposed to learn about how to be in this world. Today, Jesus tries to find a quiet place to be by himself and breathe for a minute, and the crowds follow him. (Presumably, the crowds include the disciples.) So Jesus has compassion for the people and heals them, teaches them, and at the end of the day, the disciples say, “Hey, Jesus, send all these people away, it’s time for dinner and they should go back to their towns so they can get something to eat.” But Jesus, who values radical hospitality, who practices welcome and inclusion for all people, knows exactly whose job it is to make sure the crowds can eat: “They don’t need to go away; you feed them,” he says. And the disciples are confused: “Um, we don’t have enough food to give them, all we have are two loaves and five fish.” So Jesus takes the loaves and fishes, blesses them, and then gives them back to the disciples to distribute among the crowd. “No, seriously, you feed them.” You have one job. This is the work.

            They don’t want to do the work! But Jesus won’t let them shirk their calling, their responsibility. You give them something to eat. They’re out here because of the ministry we do, and I’m not feeding them on my own: you have to help me. Together, they end up feeding 5000 people “besides women and children.” (insert eyeroll here)

When we look around and see the hungry crowds, see the sun getting low, don’t we also try to send the people away so someone else can feed them? Don’t we look at our two loaves and five fish and say “there’s no way this will feed the thousands who hunger”? Don’t we like to know that the people got fed somehow, and feel relief that we didn’t have to solve the problem ourselves?

We cannot do everything ourselves, it’s true. We have human limits, we have resources we need to steward with care and creativity. But we also have a calling, and we have to do the work: listening to understand what that calling truly is, and working together to transform our two loaves and five fishes into the ministry that our community, our world, actually needs. Jesus wants his disciples to participate in doing the ministry with him—that’s US, that’s our task. And from time to time, we have to stop and listen, check in together about what our calling is and is not, and how we’re going to do the work we need to do. 

That’s why we’re having these 4 discernment sessions this month and next. We need to make an effort to claim a coherent vision and understanding of our call. We have to figure out how we’re going to do the work—rather than thinking up ideas that we actually expect someone else to carry out for us. We are not the consumers of Jesus’s ministry, we are the doers of his ministry.

We want our church to be “appealing” to others – potential new members, a potential new pastor – but what is “appealing” is authenticity, self-knowledge, integrity. We have to be who God calls us to be, not who we think others want us to be. We have to serve the community that is, not the community that we imagine. We have to meet the needs of today, not the needs we remember from another time. We have to figure out what our calling is, and stand firm in it, and do the work. 

Jacob had to wrestle with a stranger all night. The disciples had to go into the crowd and distribute food they thought was scarce. We have to listen and learn how to respond to the reality of the need that exists today, not rest in our fantasies of what the needs should be or what someone else should be doing to solve the problems (or face the armies) we have imagined we might encounter. 

Our ancestors in faith saw the face of God and lived, wrestled with God and humans and prevailed, took two loaves and five fish and fed unknown thousands. We do not have to make the miracle happen—God does that. We have to do the work that God calls us to do, to make the miracle possible.

So let’s spend some time figuring out together what our work is, and how we’re going to do it, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

July 19 - “Invisibility”

July 19, 2026

Kyle Tong

Invisibility

Today’s reading from Genesis tempts me to climb into a time machine—to place myself in the shoes of Jacob in a modern context. Hypothetically, young Kyle has eyes for the beautiful Deborah and wishes to marry her, one of the four Varnum girls. Her father says that I must work for the family business for a period of time before he would consent to the marriage. After the requisite period the father says only the third child is available—take it or leave it. I go into a loveless marriage and we subsequently divorce because I only see Deb. Her father says this is not possible unless you continue to work in the company with loss of all assets if you leave. You must also show your loyalty for a period of five years—what a chain around my neck!!!

What is wrong with my telling of this story and the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel. The issue is the absolute invisibility of the central characters of the stories—the women. We know nothing about the perspectives, the aspirations, the wants, and the beliefs of the daughters. In both stories—the fathers treated their daughters as chattel and we the reader are conditioned to not bat an eye.

This is standard operating procedure in the text of the Judeo-Christian Bible as we read it today in English in the Protestant tradition. Women are largely absent in the Bible and when we do see them, they are primarily invisible, objectified, or presented as a cautionary tale

If the Bible is a recording of the journey of the Judeo-Christian faith you would expect a reflection in the tales of the humanity present. Women, using a metaphoric phrase, represent “Half the Sky” and therefore should be seen in the Good Book on nearly equal footing as men. If one was to do a quantitative study of gender references in the Bible we would find it heavily skewed towards the masculine both in content and in its choice traditionally to give pronouns to God—such as He, Him, Lord, and Father.

Objectification is most clearly seen in the portrayal of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is deified as the vessel of Christ—the Virgin Mary. Upon the birth of the baby Jesus she then becomes invisible—her job is done. The mother who raised Christ from infancy to young adulthood is unheard of. She is venerated, then objectified, and unknown, and ultimately dehumanized.

The most common portrayal of women in the Bible is ascribing negative attributes to them. There is Eve who is the temptress with the apple who creates the fall of man. Lot’s wife who was not even named, lacks the self-discipline and will to not look back and turns into a pillar of salt. And the fallen women who litter the Bible such as Mary Magdalene.

How then did this invisibility in text translate into cultural invisibility within the construction of the western Christian Church?

It started early on with the institutionalization of the story that we now know as the Gospels and the New Testament. In the Early Centuries of the Church there were several competing perspectives of the Gospels and the works of the people spreading the Good News. They were not exclusively male. Prominent among them was the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene.

In this gospel, that survived in Coptic and Greek texts, Mary was central to the leadership of the apostles following Jesus’ death, comforting them through their grieving and redirecting their focus forward. In the gospel Mary recalls conversations with the risen Jesus who teaches her about ultimate reality and the ascent of the soul spiritually. The soul, according to Mary, must navigate hostile tests to reach its spiritual peace.

This was reacted to negatively by many of the apostles who doubted that Jesus would share the ultimate mysteries with a woman. As a result, in the subsequent politics that followed as the years passed, her voice was lost.

With the elimination of women from the telling of the story came the elimination of women from the structure of Church Leadership. In the Western (Roman Catholic) Church women had no role outside of total service. And that could be done only if they gave up their roles as women within familial society

Men had total control over women’s lives and if women exerted independence the penalty was often fierce and brutal.

An example of this was the young and vibrant military leader Jean D’Arc, Joan of Arc. Joan was a supporter of King Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years War. She had visions that angels had told her that she was to save France from English incursions. She was the hero of the Battle of Orleans and Patay. Her support at court withered as a siege failed and she was captured by the enemy. She was put on trial by an English Bishop for the crime of heresy and demonic visions. She was found guilty and burned at the stake. Her soul’s goodness was based on her military success for her male leaders.

Anne Hutchinson was a pious woman who moved with her husband and 15 children to Boston in the early 1630’s, following the Rev. Cotton. She believed, as did Cotton, in the principle of salvation by grace alone and felt that the religious leadership in the Bay Colony was drifting to a philosophy of faith by good works. She held prayer groups and spoke out against the tenets of the leadership. She was placed on trial for her voice and was exiled and excommunicated. Cotton was not punished. She moved to Rhode Island, where she miscarried after months in detention, and then to Long Island where she and her family were killed in an Indian attack. The leadership in Boston was satisfied that these events were retribution for her heresies.

This putative relationship with women who attempt to be change agents has in many ways continued to the present day. The majority of Church institutions forbid or strongly discourage women in the ministry. The language of the Bible continues to be male dominant, though there have been great efforts to rectify the text by reexamining the originals and not assuming it is a male perspective or pronoun. Scholars are looking at the wealth of the early Greek and Coptic texts to get a richer and fuller picture of the early church and the Gospel.

Why does this matter?

Invisibility.

We can see it in the words of this young girl’s yearning to be heard.

They shut me up in Prose—

As when a little Girl

They put me in the Closet—

Because they like me “Still”—    

The poet--Emily Dickinson.

We see it legally, ET UX on a property deed. We see it economically. Women get paid .71 on the dollar for the same job with the same experience as their male counterparts. We see it socially. Violence against women, mansplaining, the perpetual secretary.

How do we break the cycle?  As is said in the Chinese Proverb, women hold up Half the Sky. This is true but historically the dominant group chooses not to look and listen to the landscape that is being held up by the efforts of half of humanity. If we stop look and listen, think what we could accomplish. And it’s not only being safer!!!

In cultures and countries where women have ascended to leadership, we have seen a change in the paradigm. Jacinda Arden, former Prime Minister in New Zealand, confronted a mass shooting driven by religious hatred. Her response: Compassion and love which helped to envelop a nation to heal and not to divide. Ultimately, New Zealanders coalesced around sensible, enforceable gun laws that had the support of the people.

Jane Goodall was a woman who was most comfortable in the rain forest with her beloved mountain gorillas. But from that fragile ecosystem platform, this soft-spoken biologist showed us a new way to lead. Her example of fiercely caring for the one’s most in need was the most Christian of Acts. Her communicating these good works by simply being, quietly telling her story, and sharing her expertise brought the world closer to the inner workings of our ecosystem and our intricate climate. She taught us through her love of her work and the contact she had with life to care. This is the opposite of the callous distancing that we are conditioned to do when digesting the world.

A different way of looking at the world by merely lifting the curtain to reveal Half the Sky. What a difference this could make practically, morally, ethically, and, spiritually 

July 12 - “Teaching in Parables”

Teaching in Parables

Matthew 13:1-8, 18-23

July 12, 2026

Rev. Mary W. Nelson – First Congregational Church UCC of Williamstown MA

Jesus often used storytelling as a teaching method. Some of his stories are just one or two sentences long; some, like today’s, are more drawn-out. When we dissect his stories, we can see that most of them have four specific characteristics in common, and we call that group of stories “parables.”  

The word parable basically means metaphor. All parables are images of comparison, metaphors in story-form, and that element of comparison is the primary characteristic of a parable. Jesus would start off by saying, “the kingdom of God is like an old woman… or a mustard seed… or a shepherd… or a treasure…” And then he’d make some statement about what that person or object does that illustrates how God’s kingdom works. He doesn’t always make the comparison quite that obvious – today’s parable doesn’t start “the kingdom is like…” – but the idea is always there, implied somewhere in the telling. When the story has a central Actor (a master, a shepherd, a farmer, an old woman), that central Actor is a metaphor for God, and Jesus is telling us “this is how God operates.” If there’s not a comparison, a metaphor, somewhere in there, it isn’t a parable.

The second characteristic of a parable is that the image is drawn from nature or everyday life. Now, we have to remember that “everyday life” in the first century was not the same as our everyday life. So to really understand a parable we need to think about what it would have been like to live back then. The images are primarily agrarian, non-mechanized, and local. In a world where people made their own bread on a daily basis, labored in vineyards, tended sheep and goats, and apparently ate a lot of mustard, stories using these images would have been highly relevant to the people Jesus was trying to reach. A modern-day equivalent parable would claim that the kingdom of God is like a spam email filter that breaks down and floods your inbox; or tell of a man who trades in his diesel-powered truck for a hybrid car and gives little old ladies a ride to the grocery store. You know, things that happen every day.

The third characteristic of a parable is one that is often not very obvious to us because the images are not so familiar to us anymore… but a parable is supposed to capture your attention through something in the story that is strange and unexpected, a little off-kilter, not-quite-right. There’s a twist of some kind, which our modern ears don’t always catch right away, but we can get there with a little imagination and empathy. If you consider our modern-day equivalent story: You may not think you want your spam filter to fail, but how else are you going to find out that your email provider has been blocking your long-lost brother’s messages to you? If you think about today’s parable from Matthew, why in the world is someone planting seeds in ground that hasn’t been aerated, cultivated, weeded, fertilized, irrigated, and carefully tended so as to maximize the return on the planting? What kind of Sower would spread seeds on the trampled-down path, and among the rocks, and in the weeds? Seeds would have been precious, not something to be treated wastefully.

And the fourth-and-final characteristic of a parable is the most frustrating: the storyteller leaves the hearers with just enough doubt about the parable’s precise application that you really have to think about it. A parable makes you sit down and wonder what the heck it is supposed to mean. There are no easy answers with parables – often they leave you with more questions than you had when you began.

We should have left out the verses that explain the Parable of the Sower this morning. The explanation that Matthew gives us (and Mark and Luke do the same thing) was added later. It’s almost certain that Jesus didn’t actually tell his disciples an explanation of the parable—the early church writers would have included the explanation as a teaching tool for their communities. But this explanation over-simplifies the process of understanding a parable. It’s a really clunky attempt to answer the question, “what is the Parable of the Sower really supposed to mean?” Jesus would not have wrapped up his story with a bow like Matthew says he did. Remember that a parable is supposed to leave you with more questions than answers.

You see, Jesus’ sower spreads seed abundantly, randomly, on rocky soil, on the hard-packed path, on fields covered with brambles and thorns. There’s no way that the scattering of this seed is supposed to have a purpose. God does not have a plan for this seed, and that’s the twist: this sower is reckless! This sower is foolish! This sower is completely indiscriminate in his abundance!

And that’s exactly the point of this parable: the abundance of the Sower.

Despite the explanation given later on, we don’t actually know what the seed is supposed to represent: God’s word? God’s love? God’s kingdom? God’s presence? God’s disciples? We don’t know. It could be any and all of those, or something else entirely. The twist is the activity of the Sower, not the identity of the Sower, and that activity gives us an entry point to discovering the point of the parable. The point is not the seed itself, but the hope that its growth will have a purpose; the point is not where the seed fell, but that it went everywhere; the point is not who planted the seed, but that it was planted in abundance. 

Here is another angle we might explore: we know that God is the Sower—what if WE are the seed? Might we, like God, plant the seeds of God’s love – or God’s presence – or God’s kingdom – recklessly and indiscriminately and abundantly? Or might we be the seed, sent out to grow where we are planted, with hope that our planting will produce some kind of fruit?

There can be more than one answer when it comes to learning the parable’s lessons. We may be both the seed and the beneficiaries of the seed. We are ones who send out God’s love into the world, and we are also seeds of that love waiting to take root. And maybe we’re supposed to emulate the Sower: We must be abundant in our living, indiscriminate in our sharing, and reckless in our loving. We must spread the seeds of God’s kingdom everywhere – not just in the soil that has been weeded and turned over and fertilized and watered, but on the hard path so that the birds, too, may be fed; and in the rocky soil so that it, too, may bear witness to God’s love; and among the weeds so that they, too, may grow near to God’s kingdom. We must trust that we have been planted where we are – even if only for a moment – so that we can reach out to those around us who need the spiritual fruit that we alone can grow, with God’s grace.

We might be both the Sower and the seed. Thanks be to God. Amen.

July 5 - “Heavy Burdens”

Heavy Burdens

5 July 2026

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Rev. Mary W. Nelson, First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown, MA

            At this point, we’re familiar with Matthew’s community’s situation: they’re a minority community of Jews living probably in Antioch, in Syria, a big multicultural metropolitan area. The Jewish authorities centered in Jerusalem, an increasingly-dominant sect called the Pharisees, are beginning to insist on very particular rules of observance for Jews, and because of this, Matthew’s community is not really sure that they can think of themselves as Jews anymore—but they’re also not totally sure that they’re ready to commit to following this Jesus guy, either. And in the context of the Roman Empire, both Jews and Christians are persecuted and traumatized minorities. It’s a time of great cultural upheaval in general, which the Roman Empire is trying mightily to subdue.

            One of the enduring questions of the early Church that communities like Matthew’s were also contending with was the role of another prominent street preacher who was operating at the same time that Jesus was: John the Baptist. Who was he? What was his deal? Now as we read the gospel stories, John is (to us) this background character who functions as a kind of foil for Jesus in all four gospels. Different gospels highlight different aspects of the legends that have been told about John: he’s a weirdo ascetic mystic-type wearing a hair shirt and eating bugs and baptizing people in the Jordan River; he’s enough of a threat to the Empire that Herod Antipas happily serves up his head on a silver platter when asked; he’s Jesus’s cousin; he’s a new Elijah the prophet, but also the answer to a prophecy; he has come to “prepare the way” for Jesus. 

All of the gospels downplay this bit, but John was actually a rival to Jesus. In the landscape of first-century Jerusalem, there were a lot of street preachers, and both John and Jesus emerged from the “compelling preachers tournament” with some serious street cred. They’ve definitely progressed to the quarterfinals, at least.

All of the gospels mention John in particular because all of their communities have to respond to someone genuinely asking the question, “But what about this John the Baptist guy? He sounds pretty good, too.” So all of the gospels have to address that question somehow. Didn’t he, like, baptize Jesus? Doesn’t that confer some kind of authority on him that makes him better than Jesus, actually? John was there first, right? So why wouldn’t we just follow the teacher instead of the student?

The response of the gospel writers, for the most part, is to dismiss John somehow—he’s a Far Side cartoon. He’s a kook straight out of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. He eats BUGS, for cryin’ out loud! He and Jesus came to an agreement, a truce. In one of the gospels, John even tells his followers, “that Jesus guy is the real deal, I’m not as good,” and they leave John and go follow Jesus. 

Here, in Matthew, as Jesus is teaching a crowd of people (he’d been talking to the disciples only for a while, but now his audience has grown), he brings up John—it’s a way for Matthew to illustrate the impossible position that his community finds themselves in, caught between the overly-strict rules of the Pharisees in Jerusalem and the cosmopolitan anything-is-possible crossroads-of-the-Empire atmosphere in Antioch. No matter what, Jesus says, somebody’s going to be unhappy with how you choose to worship, how you choose to order your community. Look at John, he didn’t eat or drink and hid himself away, and people said he was demon-possessed; but here I am, eating and drinking and connecting with people, and everyone says I’m a glutton and a drunk, keeping company with the wrong folks! There is no satisfying the people who are determined to be dissatisfied. They’re like children who won’t dance when we play pretend wedding, and won’t cry when we play pretend funeral. 

But then Jesus prays in front of the crowd, and invites them to a place of clarity where they can make up their own minds: don’t worry so much about the rules that other religious leaders want to impose on you for inclusion in their little clubs. It’s a reminder, through this oblique reference to things that are hidden and things that are revealed, that the Kingdom of God is among you. The rules of the power-hungry leaders will always be burdensome by design, but the Kingdom of God is among you, and the rules of the Kingdom are really pretty simple: treat others the way you want to be treated. Put God’s principles first, and let everything else you do extend from that. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Come into the Kingdom, and find rest from those heavy burdens that they want you to carry. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. Come to me, you who are weary, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

It’s the invitation that we also want America to make, right? The promise that we thought was wrapped up in all our rhetoric of liberty: Freedom from the imposition of inscrutable and arbitrary rules that determine identities and belonging. Rest from the hamster wheel that demands proof of loyalty and obedience to a leader or a system. Gentleness and humility that empower the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of dominance or adulation.

It’s a helluva time to celebrate the 250th anniversary of an ideal, when it feels like we’re rapidly moving away from living up to it. All week, this invitation from Jesus has played on repeat in my mind, in conversation with the poem by Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, most readily known as the poem that was added, in part, to the Statue of Liberty in 1903: 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

And then to contrast both Jesus’s invitation and Lady Liberty’s invitation with the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on birthright citizenship, barely hanging on to the protections and promises of the Constitution itself – when anything less than a unanimous decision to uphold the Constitution provides a roadmap to overturning what it means to be an American. Contrast these invitations with the news that a Christian Nationalist neo-Nazi group marched in Washington DC yesterday, waving Confederate flags and chanting their call to “reclaim America.” What is the imagined America these white supremacists want to reclaim?

            America is not, and never has been, a “Christian nation.” We have a foundational law prohibiting the establishment of religion by the government, in fact, and it is one of the greatest protections of that much-vaunted freedom we claim to hold so dear. People of multiple faiths and of no faith, including some from this town, members of this church, fought to bring about the reality of a different kind of governing system here, free from, among other things, the imposition of a state religion. And that system, “of the people, by the people, for the people,” was built on a set of ideals that were debated and contested and strengthened through compromise: Nobody who signed the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago got everything they wanted in that document, they all walked away disappointed somehow. No matter what, somebody’s going to be unhappy with how you choose to order your community, but we live in it and make it what it is together. The system was also built on promises that are compatible with Jesus’s invitation, with Lady Liberty’s invitation. The Kingdom of God is no empire of human kings! And as we celebrate 250 years of those promises still in our sights, it’s hard to know how we might move forward from here as that vision becomes increasingly clouded. That same law prohibiting the establishment of religion does also protect the rights of those neo-Nazis to protest and speak. 

            But we can speak louder our conviction that they are wrong. We can disagree, as Jesus and John did, and know that the arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice in the long run. We can speak louder that invitation of Lady Liberty, to “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and we can work to make good on the promise of that invitation for those who take us up on it. We can speak the invitation of Jesus, to opt out of the nonsense rules that are designed to exclude, and instead to bear the yoke of gentleness and humility that offers rest for the weary. We can work to make good on that promise, as we offer welcome and rest in our ministry, too. We can decry the raising of false idols, the misuse and corruption of the language of our faith, and refuse to capitulate in the face of Empire’s false claims to power. 

We can live as children of God, heirs of a Kingdom that is already among us, widening the welcome and securing safety for the vulnerable—and we can find rest for our souls, too, in the knowledge that we are doing all we can to be faithful to Christ who invites us to take his yoke upon us, and learn from him. We will not be alone in this effort, thanks be to God. Amen.