Sermons
May 10 - “In a Little While”
In a Little While
John 14:15-21
Acts 17:22-31
May 10, 2026 – First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
In John’s gospel, Jesus talks a lot – we looked at that last week. In the midst of all that talking, sometimes there is a brief respite for doing. We are in a section of John’s gospel known as the “Farewell Discourses,” where Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples, preparing them for that imminent time when they will need to carry on the ministry of their movement without Jesus to guide them. He’s trying to pack in as much as he can, and they become confused and overwhelmed, and they don’t really understand why he’s saying what he’s saying. This is the time when he is talking about what they will be doing.
It’s John’s Jesus, so there are a lot of words. But John’s Jesus tells his disciples to do just one thing – three times – in three different ways: to love. “If you love me,” he says to them in our passage today, “you will keep my commandment.” And in our reading of this passage, uprooted from everything else in the gospel, this sounds like a conditional statement, some kind of coercion, maybe a clumsy attempt at a bargain. We can imagine Jesus as a petulant teenager: If you love me, you’ll let me stay out late with the car. We can imagine Jesus as an anxious parent: If you love me, you’ll settle down and give me grandchildren! But that’s not the kind of if that Jesus is saying here.
There are only two other times in John’s gospel that Jesus talks about “his commandment,” and they are like parentheses around our passage today. In John 13, Jesus says to his disciples: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” And then in John 15, Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus’s commandment is a commandment to love – and if you love me, he says, you will keep my commandment. To love Jesus, to love one another, is to fulfill the commandment that he gives his disciples. He’s speaking in the future tense, explaining how to be his followers after he’s gone: I will do this, I will do that, and if you love me, you will be keeping my commandment.
Jesus then tells the disciples that they will not be alone in their endeavors. “I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth.” The Advocate that Jesus mentions, whom we now understand as the Holy Spirit, is described using the word “paraclete,” which means “one who comes alongside.” A companion, a partner. In different eras, the word has been translated differently – so what we read now as the Advocate has also been translated as the Comforter, the Helper, or the Counselor. And that person will always be with the disciples forever, Jesus says.
As the Farewell Discourses unfold, the language sometimes feels more and more jumbled up – but the role of love, companionship, community, becomes more and more central to who Jesus is telling his disciples to be. All that abiding in each other, all that believing in this and therefore in that, all that knowing God because we know Jesus and knowing Jesus because we know what his followers do… all of that is about belonging to one another, belonging to the Christian community. If we love one another, we love Jesus. If we love one another, we’re keeping his commandment. If we are companions for one another in life, then we will know the companionship of the Holy Spirit alongside us. He says it again, “Those who keep my commandments are those who love me.” What’s the commandment? The only one John’s Jesus gives us? Love one another. Love one another as I have loved you.
These days it feels like it’s getting harder and harder to follow Jesus’s commandment to love one another. We may be able to do it in small doses, in contained settings and particular groups. In our families, hopefully. In our church, perhaps. In our workplaces or other places where we volunteer or spend a great deal of committed time and energy… maybe? We are in a cultural moment where every action (and every inaction) feels imbued with a declaration of identity, of side-choosing. I shop at this store, not at that one. I drive this kind of car, not that. I visit these places, not those. I watch this TV channel, not that. I read these books, not those. Each choice, hour by hour, moment by moment, a declaration of who you are, who you love—and who you hate.
It all feels like a trap. So un-Christlike. So un-Christian. Time was, not long ago, when we could love our neighbors AND love our enemies, as Jesus taught us to do. When we could believe that we were being loving toward others even if we didn’t like them.
And part of this cultural moment we are in does involve learning differently—that what we thought was loving our neighbors may still have caused harm. We may be grateful for that learning along the way. I give thanks for my friends who taught me that “hate the sin, love the sinner” is a damaging approach to inclusion. I give thanks for my friends who taught me that to claim “I don’t see color” is to say, “I don’t acknowledge that your experience has been different than mine, and those differences have hurt you.”
But how do we love one another in ways that offer both healing and accountability?
That is why we need the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, as our companion on this journey: so that we have a guide, a partner, to help us to find our way to Christlike love. We don’t have to make it up as we go! We don’t have to stumble in the dark in search of a way forward. Whatever name we give it today, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit is with us: “our Keeper, helping us to maintain our balance, to stay on sure footing,” as we heard in the Call to Worship based on Psalm 66 this morning.
Love is hard. It’s complicated! It’s not the pink-tinted, rose-scented sentimentality that the greeting card industry would sell us. It’s not warm fuzzy feelings all the time, and a nice warm supper waiting for you when you get home. It’s work. It’s challenge. Love is saying, “I don’t agree with you, but I’m going to stay here and we’re going to work it out.” Love is saying, “This hurt me, but I’m not giving up… on this friendship, this relationship, this covenant we share.” I’m not giving up on the idea and the ideals that we share–but maybe I have more to learn. I will listen more carefully; I will speak more carefully. I will learn from you, and I hope you can learn from me. Love is saying, “I’m not going anywhere, but I will give you distance if you need it.” And love is saying, “Welcome back, I’m glad you’re home.”
“If you love me, keep my commandment” is not about conditional love. It’s about the most unconditional love the world has ever known. This is all it takes, this is all we are asked to do: to love, to be loved, to welcome and receive the healing, the imperfection, the beauty of being known, and of having companions on the journey. Thanks be to God. Amen.
May 3 - “The Father Who Dwells in Me”
The Father Who Dwells in Me
John 14:1-14
1 Peter 2:2-10
3 May 2026 – First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
Jesus is a talker in John’s gospel. He talks a LOT. John’s Jesus teaches in big long dialogues, some of which last entire chapters or longer. He does not bother to present these lessons in a format that is easily memorable or applicable or consumable. The Gospel According to John is divided into five sections, and each of these sections contains two parts: the Talking, and the Doing. Really, the Doing parts are mostly just there to break up the Talking parts a bit. There’s a lot more Talking than Doing in John. Today’s passage is from the fourth section of John’s Gospel – and it’s one little-bitty sliver of a really big Talking part.
Today’s passage is part of what scholars call the “Farewell Discourses,” a series of lessons that Jesus imparts to his disciples in the few days leading up to his crucifixion. We have, today, the first half of a lesson about God’s presence among the community of believers (we’ll look at the other half next week) – and that lesson is one small piece of this multi-chapter “Farewell Discourses” section just before Jesus’ crucifixion, explaining how the community of believers will function after Jesus’ death. John is writing 60 or so years after Jesus’s death, and he uses these lessons from Jesus to give guidance and comfort to John’s own community, strengthening them in what they saw as a coming time of uncertainty.
We have now reached the part of the Easter Season when we have heard all the resurrection stories we’re going to hear, and now we are reminded that Christ’s resurrection is STILL true today, and we are part of the story of what the resurrection MEANS. Even now.
Our text today takes place on the night before the Last Supper, as John tells the story. Jesus has just washed his disciples’ feet, and is now trying to explain what is about to happen to him – the betrayal, the crucifixion, the Resurrection, the ascension… and, because it’s pretty much always the disciples’ job “not to get it,” the disciples don’t get it. The disciples serve as foils for Jesus, literary tools that set up this pattern of dialogue: Jesus says something, the disciples misunderstand him, and then Jesus must clarify.
Our passage begins with Jesus telling the disciples not to be troubled, because he is going ahead of them to prepare their places in his Father’s house, and they know the way and will follow later. But Thomas pipes up and says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?” And Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” It’s one of those famous “I AM” statements that John is so fond of using – using language to connect Jesus to Yahweh, the Great “I AM.” The whole response is longer, though: “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on, you do know him, and have seen him.”
But Philip doesn’t get it, of course, because the disciples haven’t literally seen God – not like Moses did, or one of the prophets, or Jesus. So how can Jesus say that they have seen the Father? “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus replies. “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” He’s telling them that God is present in him, and really, this is the simplest thing he could say. It’s the bare-bones truth, in this case at least, that to know the Son is to know the Father. Not all fathers and sons have that kind of relationship, but these two do. But… not all fathers and sons have that kind of relationship, which makes it hard for some people to look at Jesus and see God. So Jesus continues: “If you don’t believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, then believe in me because of the works I do. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”
This is how we are part of the resurrection story even now. We are part of passing on not just the words, but the ACTIONS of Jesus. If we do what Jesus does, then others will see what we do, and know that we do what Jesus did–and then they will also know Jesus. It’s like the transitive property of equations, but for God.
At the very heart of things, Jesus has shown the disciples how to live. He has eaten and healed and prayed and served. He has followed God’ will – not the letter of the law, necessarily, but the will behind it. And he has taught the disciples to do the same. That is the way, that is the truth, that is the life: a life of justice and service and humility. A life of questioning the status quo and seeking to do God’s will. A life of good works: that is the way.
Whether you follow Christ because you believe he is God, or you follow Christ because you believe he has done good things… the point is that you are following Christ Who Is The Way. This conversation was happening in a time when it was thought that there was NO way to reconcile sinful, fallen humanity to holy and perfect divinity. So when we, with our modern ears in our pluralistic society, hear that “Christ is the way” or “no one comes to the Father except through me,” and we think it must be some kind of call for exclusion or exclusivity. But, the first-century listeners for whom this gospel was written would have heard the good news that THERE IS A WAY to bring humankind together with God, when they thought there was no way. Jesus the Christ is that way. This is good news! There IS a way!
The way that Jesus taught the disciples is not about self-righteousness or judgment or domination, and it’s not about passive acceptance of one’s lot in life. The way that Jesus taught is about making choices – choices that work toward the greater good, choices that turn the love of God outward so that others may receive it, choices that witness to God’s justice and work toward bringing God’s kingdom ever nearer on this earth, choices rooted in the recognition that you are part of something bigger than yourself. We make our own choices, and we can choose whether or not we want to live like Christ.
“The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact, will do greater works than these.”
John’s is a Gospel where there’s so much more Talking than Doing, but we’re told and we’re shown that the Doing is far more important than the Talking.
When Jesus refers to God as his “Father,” that really grates on some people’s nerves at times. Not everyone has had loving, positive, affirming relationships with male parent figures; some people have had decidedly negative encounters with persons playing that role in their life. It’s important to remember that, when Jesus calls God “Father,” he’s making a metaphorical statement about his relationship with God, not his relationship with his own parents, or the biological configuration of a God’s body (he’s not saying that God is literally a man). When Jesus calls God “Father,” he’s leaning on an idealized vision of who a father is supposed to be, and claims that he relates to God in that way – and we can, too.
He’s also making a political statement, although that gets lost with time and translation. The name that Jesus calls God is abba, and despite the tradition of translating abba to mean “Father,” a word infused with formality and respect and distance, a more accurate meaning is “Daddy” or “Papa.” To say that God is my Father has a very different feel than to call God “Dad.” There’s a closeness, an accessibility, an ease to that relationship. And the Pharisees felt this difference. How dare you be so familiar with Yahweh? Yahweh is so powerful that he must be feared. Yahweh is so holy that you cannot speak or even write his name without being struck dead. And yet you dare to refer to the Almighty Creator as Daddy?!?!?! Disrespect! Blasphemy! Crucify him!
Jesus dared to relate to God in a new way – a way, as it turns out, that was also the truth and the life. It was his relationship with his abba-daddy-God that gave us an important new way to understand and relate to God: a personal way, a loving way, a way that teaches that God is in us, in our thoughts, in our hearts, in our actions. And if we choose to relate to God through Jesus the Christ, then we understand God as this idealized vision of fatherhood who is ultimately loving, and positive, and affirming, and accessible.
There is value in grounding your faith in some kind of personal experience of God’s grace or love or truth, but a so-called “personal relationship with Jesus” is not the be-all-end-all of a life of faith. And Jesus never says that it is. Jesus calls God his “Dad,” so that we may access this new way of relating to God – not based in fear, but in familiarity. But if your relationship with God does not extend outward from yourself, then you are missing something. None of us owns God, none of us holds a monopoly on relating to God, and we need our community to give us that reality check sometimes. There is a danger in thinking that your personal relationship with God bests God’s relationship with anybody else, or any other group: you risk coming to believe that it’s all about you, and what you want, and what you need, …and your faith becomes an idolatry of the Self. But to follow The Way that Jesus sets forth, to be Christ-like, is to live an outwardly-directed life according to God’s will, caring for others, helping those who need help, extending the hand of Christian fellowship to the people around you, joining in community with other Christians, focusing your energy into the community of faith, so that the community of faith can go out and be the Body of Christ in the world, following his teaching and example. Instead of Talking, we can do more Doing.
In the end, this passage is about the importance of community, not about developing a personal relationship with God. And it’s about what we do in this life, not what the next life might hold. God isn’t present with just one faith community, God isn’t owned only by those who call him abba. God is present in all those who seek to follow God’s will, to walk in God’s way. God dwells in us, and we dwell in God. Abba-God is present in us all because we are the Body of Christ. And because, as the Body of Christ, we do his works.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
April 26 - “ An Unbroken Chain of Garlands, Cherry Blossoms, and Grape Arbors”
An Unbroken Chain of Garlands, Cherry Blossoms, and Grape Arbors
April 26, 2026
Kyle Tong
as we look to the hills
our hearts a.empt to li1 as well
with a promise of a cleansing
of the earthly clu.er of our
fallibility
this is a dark place
spurred on by events and callous
decisions
made by individuals who view self over
stewardship
greed over goodness
selfishness over service
cronyism over the common good
false idols over faith
when I despair I take
an internal journey
to seek council in my mind’s eye
breaking bread with fellow seekers
who have searched to find peace
in their world—both secular
and religious
these folk some insiders, some outsiders
share a common trait
they are not people who deconstruct
rather they are synthesizers
as Gandhi sits he pushes away the chair
and se.le on the floor
an angular gentle man in comfort
how do we face these trying Cmes
I ask
He looked at me and gestured—spreading
His hands
A truth is a truth and a wrong is a wrong
One must not accept a wrong—but
Not correct it with a wrong
The power of your conduct and your faith
Will be a beacon—for others to see and
Draw strength
but at some point we must protect
the most vulnerable
Dorothy Day strode to the table
the bohemian suffrage.e turned catholic
champion for the impoverished
had seen suffering
suffering of the hungry, the disenfranchised
and the violence against women
Dorothy, I agree said a robust cleric
ssLng at the tables end
Reinhold Neibuhr, ChrisCan theologian
and acCvist held that faith and its rigor
turned into secular acCon
chrisCan truth morphed into the poliCcal
common good
hence fundamental change in society
FDR wheels to the table
cigare.e holder clamped firmly in his mouth
pure ChrisCan faith is a power for good
twisted faith is a weapon for evil
I’ve seen it used to divide races and creeds
exclusive not inclusive—be careful of the soothsayer
at the edge of the room a deep voice
boomed
their will be false prophets, said MarCn
but for the oppressed that is not a reason
to concede
we need to humanize hatred
hatred is most o1en conducted in isolaCon
directed to fear and what one knows not
if you demand closeness you become part of
the family of humankind
and with that inCmacy comes the roots
of caring
a man stood up towering over all
with a laconic smile
that engaged, disarmed, and pulled in
Mandela knew of twisted faith
he was imprisoned for being
one of the people of Ham
who dared to be equal in apartheid
twenty-seven years of pounding rocks
he never le1 the Cller of his ship nor blamed
others for his lot
persistence in search of the truth led to
a new South Africa
a.ained peaceably through persistence, reconciliaCon, and---
love
love is the word you want Nelson
the diminuCve Mother Theresa gently
touched his hand and said again
love—uncondiConal love of all living things
life is a sacred journey to be celebrated
and supported by all
the last to the table is a LaCna woman
a woman of presence, Dolores Huerta
I ask all of you what to do with
anger and shame
I have fought the good fight for the common good
but I was betrayed and violated
in the most heinous of ways
forgiveness and grace will get me so far
how can I –and others
have peace
many have answers
some raise even more quesCons
such is the fate of the human quest
--the pursuit for meaning—in someCmes meaningless pursuits
--the search for faith—in a world of cynicism and faithlessness
--the quest for uncondiConal love—amongst many who demand to have
strings a.ached
our diners provided in unbroken chain
in this need for understanding
glimmers of hope, courage, meaning, and cauCon
to add a link of life and love
to the chain
April 19 - “What Should We Do?”
“What Should We Do?”
Acts 2:14a, 36-42
19 April 2026
First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
Easter isn’t just one day, it’s a whole season. Fifty days. And in this season, we tend to hear basically every resurrection story the four gospels have to offer – and it makes it seem like, in those first days and weeks after the Original Easter Event, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting the risen Christ. And there are several reasons for this:
First, no two gospels share the same resurrection stories. And second, they’re geographically all over the place. Mark just ends with an empty tomb, and somebody attempted to add some resurrection appearance stories to Mark’s gospel later, but we know it’s not original material and the stories are pretty generic, so we don’t really bother with those. Matthew tells us that the apostles are all told that the Risen Jesus is going to Galilee, and they should go meet him there. Luke, who usually shares a lot of material in common with Matthew, tells a completely different set of stories, indicating that the Risen Jesus mostly stayed in and around Jerusalem for 40 days or so, and then ascended to heaven from Jerusalem. John’s gospel shows the Risen Jesus in both Galilee and Jerusalem, but John’s Risen Jesus also has this more mystical/mysterious quality where he can walk through locked doors and things like that. They’re all very careful and insistent to tell us that the Risen Jesus was a real, physical person, not a spirit or a comforting imaginative apparition brought on by their grief. But they all put him in different places, often at the same time. So it seems like he’s everywhere, all at once.
But really, it’s that the gospel writers were using their unique resurrection stories to connect with the specific communities for whom they are writing. Matthew’s community probably lives in Antioch, in modern-day Syria: it makes sense that Matthew’s Risen Jesus would encourage his disciples to get out of Jerusalem and go north and keep going. Matthew is reassuring his people that their participation in the Kingdom of God isn’t somehow less-than by virtue of living elsewhere. Meanwhile, Luke’s community lived in Jerusalem, so of course Luke would keep the Risen Jesus and the apostles there for as long as possible. In the “Walk to Emmaus” story, there’s this little throwaway line at the very end, after the two disciples walked all the way back to Jerusalem because they were so excited to have seen the Risen Jesus: when they get there, the other disciples have also seen the Risen Jesus in Jerusalem at the same time Cleopas and his unnamed friend saw him in Emmaus – he really WAS everywhere, all at once!
Luke also went above and beyond, and wrote a whole second book, a sequel of sorts: the Acts of the Apostles. It picks up exactly where the gospel left off, with the apostles in Jerusalem and the Risen Jesus ascending to heaven. Acts is the story of the development of the Early Church. The establishment of what became, eventually, The Establishment.
When the founder of your movement, when the Head of the Church, isn’t there anymore to tell you how the movement is supposed to work, you’ve got to figure it out on your own. Acts is that story: How the movement becomes formalized, becomes institutional. This is why I love the book of Acts! Acts shows the process of wrestling with and forming church identity and governance and politics!
Acts isn’t the whole of that story – Acts mostly follows James, Peter, and then Paul through the early years of figuring out how this movement that Jesus started can carry on after his death and resurrection. We know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that the other apostles of Jesus eventually spread out across the ancient world: Thomas goes to what is now India; Peter ends up in Rome; Andrew goes to Greece; they travel to what is now Turkey, Armenia, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Spain—there are claims of their travels as far as England and the western parts of Russia. We western Christians aren’t familiar with all those stories of all those places. We have the book of Acts, this community’s perspective on the early years of the Jesus Movement.
Before the apostles spread out, they’re still centered in Jerusalem, reeling from, dealing with, the enormous upheaval they have experienced in the wake of Jesus’s crucifixion: the resurrection, and then Pentecost, have completely upended their whole conception of how God works, how they relate to the world around them. They stick together, as a community of people who have shared this profoundly destabilizing and reorienting series of experiences. And when we see them here, in Acts 2, they’re starting to figure it out. They’re just settling into a new rhythm. Peter is preaching in the square—he does that a lot in Acts—and what we heard today is the end of, and really the response to, his Pentecost sermon that we’ll hear the beginning of in a few weeks, when it’s Pentecost Sunday. Peter gives an incredibly compelling testimony, and the people ask, “What should we do?” And that day, the story tells us, three thousand people are baptized and want to join the Jesus Movement.
But baptisms aren’t what make the church the church. I mean, baptisms are what make the church the church, but they’re not the only thing. Baptism welcomes an individual into the life of the church. But the life of the church isn’t something an individual can do alone. You cannot be a Christian by yourself.
We’re told that three thousand people were baptized and joined the company of Jesus’s followers. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and prayers.” This one verse right here is the first purpose statement, mission statement, definition of what it means to be a follower of Jesus after Jesus isn’t physically with them anymore.
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and prayers.” This is what followers of Jesus do. This is what their community life consists of, these four things: teaching, fellowship, ritual communion, and prayer. The prescriptive implication is, followers of Jesus do these four things. Teaching, fellowship, communion, prayer. Those actions, with Jesus as the head of the church, are the hallmarks of Christian community.
“The Apostles’ teaching” is, of course, the good news of Jesus Christ—passing on what Jesus taught, the parables, the miracles, and telling the story of his death and resurrection, demonstrating God’s power over death and Empire. Fellowship is the abstract concept in this list, a state of being in relationship with one another; “koinonia” is the word used here, and it’s sometimes translated as “participation” or “sharing” – it’s committing to mutual care in the context of a community. “The breaking of the bread” is communion, the Lord’s Supper. And the only two times this phrase shows up in all of the Bible is here, and in the story of the Walk to Emmaus. He is made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
This Acts usage is a direct reference to that communion and recognition experience. Prayer is nonspecific prayer – the act of praying, and the prayer itself – and it’s unclear if that’s a reference to using The Lord’s Prayer or not. It might just be worship, prayer, or it might be “The prayer Jesus taught us.” It’s unclear.
But we’ve got these four things we do: teaching, fellowship, communion, prayer. These four things constitute the earliest definition that we have of what it means to be Christian. It’s not a list of beliefs, not saying a particular formula of confession, it’s these four actions, in the context of community. That’s the definition of how to be followers of Christ—it’s a community activity. You cannot be a Christian by yourself.
This past week on NPR’s Science Friday program[i], Sociologist Dr. Tracy Scott, who studies the families of astronauts – who is herself the daughter of an astronaut – gave a brief, fascinating interview about the impact of space travel on astronauts’ families. (I commend it to you, if you didn’t hear it already, and I’ll include a link to it in my sermon on our website.) The thing that struck me in the interview was the note that, yes, it’s documented that astronauts come back to earth and profess a stronger sense of awareness of the connectedness of humankind, our obligation to one another, this sense that “we’re not in this alone, and nobody does anything alone or accomplishes anything alone. We’re in it together.” Astronauts share this sense, but so do their families. She spoke about the wife of an astronaut expressing a sense that “we’re trying to put a man on the moon” – not that her husband was going the moon, or NASA is sending people to the moon, but that she was part of this collective effort, and “we” were all in it together. One of the functions, the after-effects of going to the moon, is this sense of belonging, the heightened awareness of something greater than ourselves. “how we relate to other people and how you come together and accomplish a lot more together than alone.”
Peter’s gospel witness, telling of the good news of Christ’s resurrection to the people in Jerusalem, with 3000 people responding by being baptized, joining the movement – that moment in Acts is a “going to the moon” moment, an awareness that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, we can do more together than we can do alone. Peter’s speech galvanized thousands of people who were not there to witness the resurrection themselves first-hand, but who nevertheless grew in their awareness of connection and belonging. And they dedicated themselves to the mission of the church – they didn’t coopt the mission of the church for their own personal aims! But they dedicated themselves to “the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and prayers.”
This is, at its heart, what the church is, and is called to do. In this time when individualism is a stronger cultural norm than it has been in in decades, in this time when the language of Christianity has been twisted to serve purposes that are not at all Christian or Christlike, let us dedicate ourselves to this countercultural awareness of our collective belonging to one another and to Christ. Let us, too, devote ourselves to these common purposes, “teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.” Let us do in the name of the Risen Christ, who is everywhere, all at once. Amen.
[i] https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/inside-the-lives-of-astronauts-families/
April 5 - “Get Out of Town”
Get Out of Town!
Matthew 28:1-10
5 April 2026 – Easter Sunday
First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
Will you pray with me, please? May the words of my mouth…
Happy Easter! It’s a joy to be together this blessed and chilly morning!
The thing nobody thinks to mention about Matthew’s gospel is how hilarious his telling of the Resurrection is. Most of the book of Matthew isn’t particularly full of humor—it’s not boring, it’s just not that funny—but if this Resurrection story were a short film, critics would call it “a raucous slapstick romp!” I’ve tried imagining which comic actors would play which part in the story, and there are so many great options to consider: like, having some of the old Monty Python guys be the guards at the tomb would be a great reference. Or maybe the guards should be the current lineup of late night hosts, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and John Oliver and Seth Meyers… Matthew doesn’t give a specific number of guards, so we could pick as many as we want!
The humor that Matthew injects into this scene is such an unexpected twist after two full chapters of Jesus’s betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. After twenty-plus chapters of Jesus’s teaching and miracle-working and community-building. There is so much serious business in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’s story, so many spiritual lessons, so many questions about community identity, so much political subversion! Matthew’s main goal through the whole of the Gospel is to convince his audience (us!) that Jesus is the Son of God. And the Resurrection is THE ultimate proof of that point. The Resurrection the single-most important moment of revelation that there is in the whole of human history! The Resurrection verifies the claims that Jesus has made about God, and the claims that humans have made about Jesus as the Son of God.
And Matthew chooses that moment to make us laugh, with the angel rolling away the stone and then cheekily sitting on top of it. Pontius Pilate’s big tough guards fainting in fear (they’re supposed to be guarding the dead man, but they “become like dead men” themselves instead), while the two Marys remain watching. (Which one is which? Who the heck is “the other Mary”? There could be two or three possibilities!) The angel says to them, “Do not be afraid,” which is what angels always say to humans, but the women don’t seem like they’re afraid because only the guards fainted! And, of course, in the moment the earth quakes and the stone rolls away, it just seems absurd that there are guards at the tomb at all. Silly Pilate, don’t you know that no human force can keep God contained?
God is laughing, and Matthew is letting us in on the joke!
What we didn’t read in our scripture passage today was a little subplot that only appears in Matthew’s gospel: the chief priests and Pharisees go to Pilate the day after Jesus is buried and they tell him about something Jesus was said to have taught, that after three days he would rise again. They expressed concern that Jesus’s disciples would try to steal his body and claim that Jesus had risen. Sure, there was already a big stone rolled in front of the opening, but that just didn’t seem secure enough. So Pilate told them to take a guard of soldiers and “make the tomb as secure as you can.”
This is why God is laughing. Make the tomb as secure as you can: ha! Secure against an earthquake? Secure against an angel? Secure against God’s resurrecting power? Sure, make that tomb as secure as you can! No matter how many soldiers you post, they will faint and they will fail. And that angel will sit on that rolled-away stone and talk with the women.
“You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth,” the angel says, “He’s not here, see for yourselves. He has been raised from the dead.” The very thing the chief priests and Pharisees were afraid the disciples would say fraudulently—it turns out to be true! The joke’s on them.
Now, what the angel says to the women next is interesting-funny, not ha-ha-funny. The angel says, “Go tell the other disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee, and you’ll see him there.” We’ll come back to this in a moment…
In the bit after our passage today, the guards who had been at the tomb go back into the city and they tell the chief priests what had happened. The priests then instruct the guards to spread the rumor that it WAS the disciples who’d stolen Jesus’s body. They would rather lie and make themselves look weak, as if they’d been overpowered by Jesus’s disciples, than acknowledge the truth and admit that they’d been overpowered by God. They would rather commit the very fraud they went to Pilate to “prevent.” Now we’re not in ha-ha-funny or even interesting-funny territory, we’ve crossed into sad-funny. The lengths some people will go to, not to admit they were wrong! The mental gymnastics and moral lapses they will commit, just to maintain their sense of power—which is false!
Matthew’s community in first-century Syria, it appears, is a place where such rumors undermining the resurrection story had found a foothold. Today we might think of them as conspiracy theories. The people in Matthew’s community had limited ability to trust what their leaders were saying, what the news reports told, and they didn’t know who to believe. And sure, it’s hard to know, with a story as fantastical as the Resurrection. It’s pretty hard to wrap our heads around it. It’s much easier to buy the story that Jesus’s disciples broke into the tomb and stole the body and just said that he’d been resurrected.
Matthew goes to great lengths to dispel that rumor. The whole book of Matthew, the entire Gospel, is really pointing to this moment: we know it’s improbable, we know it’s hard to believe. But we also know that Resurrection isn’t something humans can do, it’s something only God can do. There are stories of resuscitation in the gospels. There are stories of revival. Jesus himself brings back to life the daughter of Jairus, a leader in the community where Jesus is healing one day—it’s one of his first big miracles in Matthew’s gospel, he hasn’t even called all of his disciples yet. And he foretells his own death and resurrection multiple times in the course of his ministry. Jesus can heal folks who are dead or nearly-dead, bringing them back to life, but resurrection is different: only God can raise someone to new life. And if Jesus has been raised, then he must be God’s Son. Matthew has been building his case for truth and faith this whole time. It’s hilarious, and deeply serious, at the same time.
So, back to the angel’s message: “Go and tell the disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of them to Galilee, he’ll meet them there.” The women believe the angel, and they obey – they take off that very minute, heading to find the disciples and give them the message. And on the way, Jesus himself appears to them and repeats the same message: “Tell the disciples to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
Galilee is the region where Jesus’s ministry began, where he chose to live as an adult. But Galilee isn’t just a random place up north where Jesus started his preaching career. For Matthew, Galilee has theological and social significance. There is a sense, for the disciples, of rootedness and returning home, perhaps for some respite and regrouping after a traumatic event. But for Matthew’s community in Antioch, the importance of Galilee is also that it’s a diversely-peopled land, and differently-diverse from cosmopolitan, pilgrimage-heavy Jerusalem. Like Antioch, Galilee isn’t a place lots of people visit for a week or two, it’s an unglamorous place where people choose to live alongside one another and make community in the ordinary day-to-day. Jerusalem may be the big city where exciting things happen, but Galilee is where the disciplines of daily life shape who we are, and we all live with our differences and diversities in common. It’s where we practice being in God’s kingdom come on earth. Galilee is where OUR ministries begin, as well.
When the Risen Jesus does meet the disciples in Galilee, he speaks only briefly before the gospel ends entirely. We are left with the closing instruction we now call the Great Commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations… I am with you always, to the end of the age.” To make disciples has gotten twisted over the years, imbued with implications of conversion, sometimes manipulation, even violence – think the Crusades, the Inquisition, forced baptisms and the wiping out of cultures. But the word “disciple” means “student,” and has nothing to do with converting or even convincing someone to believe anything. To make disciples is really about studying, learning alongside one another, asking questions, exploring, experimenting. To make disciples is to dwell together in humility and uncertainty and openness. The angel tells the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee; Jesus tells them the same thing. It’s in Galilee, their home, their community, that they begin the ministry of discipleship all over again, and spread the good news of the Risen Christ.
That news is still true, and still good, today. Go home and start there–be students, wrestle with the revelations of God, and share your questions with one another. Inject your lives with a little humor to balance what is serious. And know, above all, that the Risen Christ is with you always, to the end of the age.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
March 29 - “Only One King”
Only One King
29 March 2026 – Palm Sunday
Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29; Matthew 21:1-11
Rev. Mary Nelson
First Congregational Church UCC of Williamstown, MA
It’s no accident that yesterday’s No Kings protest was scheduled for the day before Palm Sunday. I don’t know who made that call, but they knew what they were doing: The original Palm Sunday is a political demonstration. Two thousand years ago in Jerusalem, the disciples of Jesus staged a political protest against the Roman Empire. And this protest happened at the beginning of the Passover week, the holiest week of the year—the week of a festival celebrating the people’s liberation from the oppression of Pharaoh’s empire. And here we are, in America in the 21st century, protesting Empire yet again. Ain’t that just the way life goes? Everything old is new again: skinny jeans, baking your own bread, protesting against a tyrannical government.
Back in Jesus’s day, the Roman Empire had established a practice of filling the city of Jerusalem with extra reminders of the Empire’s power before and during the week of the annual Passover celebration. Those “reminders” mostly came in the form of soldiers. But a few days before Passover itself, the Governor, Pontius Pilate, would stage a big processional march across the city, a big military parade, entering through the western gate, and crossing Jerusalem all the way up to the Temple Mount. He did this parade mostly to intimidate, to assert control, and let people know that he was present in the city and he was watching them.
What we now call Jesus’s “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem was likely a counter-protest to Pilate’s procession, entering from the eastern side of the city near the Temple. In Matthew’s telling of the story, Jesus went directly to the Temple and turned over the tables of the moneylenders, driving them out of the Temple. This would have caused mass chaos in the Temple, just in time for Pilate to arrive and pretend to have control. Jesus’s “triumphal entry” was a brazen political and economic disruption of Pilate’s show of power. A provocation, a non-violent protest against the empire of Rome and Caesar Tiberius himself. Jesus probably did not have the massive crowd size that we likely imagine, it wasn’t the size of the No Kings attendance we saw yesterday. His disciples would have staged the demonstration and stirred up the street people to join, rallying them against the powers of oppression and domination, the powers of Empire. Their numbers would have been counted in tens or maybe hundreds, not in thousands. But the people participated with their palm branches and their cloaks on the ground. They clearly understood the symbolism at play in this demonstration, and so did the Roman authorities.
When Jesus enters Jerusalem, Matthew tells us, the whole city is “in turmoil.” The translation is a little bit inaccurate here: the word that Matthew uses is better translated as “shaken,” disturbed. Notably, it’s the same word that Matthew uses to describe Herod’s feeling at the news of Jesus’ birth. Herod is “frightened, and all Jerusalem with him,” and sends the Magi to bring him word of the baby’s whereabouts. Jesus is a guy who threatens the political leadership of Empire from day one, and the whole point of his triumphal entry into the city is to challenge and undermine the Roman authorities. Jerusalem is “shaken,” in turmoil, because of Jesus’s provocative civic action.
Jesus is a peasant who has constructed for himself the procession of a king, with the donkey and the branches and the cheering crowds. He stages this procession on the same day at the same time that Pontius Pilate, representing the Caesar, has a similar procession on the other side of town. And we have to keep in mind that the Caesar himself claims to be descended from the god Apollo. Caesar calls himself the “Son of God,” “Savior,” “Lord,” and, through conquering nation after nation, asserts that he has brought “peace on earth.”
Jesus is riding into town, giving Caesar and the people an alternative political message. Who is the king? Jesus is the king in this procession. But if Jesus is king, then Caesar is not.
It’s a political claim, a symbolic claim, AND a theological claim: There can be only one king. And it’s Jesus. It’s not Saul, it’s not Herod, it’s not Tiberius, it’s not [fill in the blank]. Jesus is king, therefore Caesar is not.
The people recognize the symbolism that Jesus and his disciples have set up, and they respond to his procession with shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” The word “Hosanna” means “save us!” Save us from the oppression of Empire. Save us from the political and economic nightmare we’re living. Save us from a corrupt and dangerous pretender-King. Save us, Jesus! Save us from Caesar! Hosanna in the highest!
We know, don’t we, that in the course of putting down a rebellion, the oppressing forces will retaliate against the leaders of the rebellion and try to execute them. In the Roman Empire, denying the authority of the Empire was the only crime that was punishable by crucifixion. Crucifixion is the punishment assigned to those who commit treason against the Empire. Today’s procession leads beyond the city on Sunday to the cross on Friday.
Jesus loved his people, and loved his faith, enough to take this enormous risk. Whether or not he knew that he would be killed and raised again is legitimately subject to debate, but his actions on Palm Sunday were not just for the fun of playing “devil’s advocate,” or for the caprice of getting a rise out of Pilate’s guards. He loved his people and his faith enough to stand up to the Empire, and risk the death of traitors. Let us all pray we won’t ever have to know what that’s really like.
We have one final item in our behavioral covenant to discuss: Accepting Disagreement and Conflict–and what a perfect day to cover it. I will speak for myself and own what I say. I accept with an open posture that disagreements arise because they are another expression of someone’s love for this congregation. I will trust our resolution to the Holy Spirit’s movement. At times we will look for guidance through prayer.
We have only one King in this church, and that is Jesus. And from time to time, we will disagree about how best to serve him, how best to worship him, and what it means to follow him. No one is going to crucify you for disagreeing with each other. But the key to disagreeing with each other is remembering that each person holds the viewpoint they do because they love their church. You don’t disagree with me because you dislike me, you disagree with me because your love for the church and my love for the church are sometimes not in alignment with each other. We have to figure out how to live together in the church anyway. I speak for myself, and don’t tell other people’s stories – no, “well, some people are saying…” or “I heard that someone was upset about…” Tell your story, own your perspective, and let others tell their stories and own their perspectives. Trust that the Holy Spirit will work it out, helping us communicate with one another effectively. See the love that we each offer for the church, the church as it is and the church as it could be, and then go from there. Provoking for the sake of provoking, for the fun of stirring the pot, isn’t actually loving the church, it’s loving your own ego, and that’s not Christlike. Faith community is not about winning an argument, but about discerning together God’s call, and living out that call. None of us is called to be the King—that position is filled already—so this work is not about establishing or exercising dominance. Faithfulness is not a zero-sum game. There is more than enough of God’s love to go around. And also, there is enough conflict in this world, more than enough: we don’t have to create more for ourselves. Let’s remember that each of us loves the church, and begin there.
We have only one King here, and the very first thing he taught is that the Kingdom is among us. It is here and now: in the way we treat one another, in the way we communicate with one another, in the way we live our lives together in community, in the way we serve others. We do build that kingdom, every time we account for the consequences of our choices, every time we consider the impact of our actions – on the environment, on the economy, on our community, on our children, on our future, on our world. And our impact on one another, especially. The kingdom of God is among us right now. It is in our shouts of Hosanna, and our waving of palms. It is in our listening to one another, our sharing our stories, our love for this congregation. The Kingdom of God is among you, and we have only one King.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest! Thanks be to God.
March 22 - “Then You Shall Know”
Then You Shall Know 3/22/26
Psalm 130
Ezekiel 37:1-14
First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
The life of a prophet is a life of risk. In any era – whether in the modern age when we think of a prophet as a kind of fortune teller, or back in the days of Ezekiel when the prophet was someone who was appointed by God to speak to God’s people about current events – to be a prophet is to assume some significant risk. You never quite know how or when the message you bear will unfold in events that validate what you have been saying. At the very least, your personal credibility is at stake. And then what if the message you bear is one that causes pain or discomfort or fear for the people you are trying to help? What if the message brings you afoul of human authorities who might want to hurt or even kill you, or your people? What if the message you tell actually prompts the people to change their ways, and then God changes God’s mind about the message and doesn’t follow through?
All of those things happened to various prophets in the Bible. It’s an unpredictable line of work. (Pun intended.) It is not a role for someone who is uncomfortable with ambiguity. To be a prophet requires an immense amount of vulnerability and trust. We forget about the risk a prophet takes, the trust that a prophet places in God.
“Prophesy to the bones,” God says, “say to them, I will lay sinews on you, and I will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you will live.” What if Ezekiel had said all that, and then nothing had happened? He trusted God’s command, trusted that God would follow through on the words God gave him to say.
From the other angle, we also forget that God places a great deal of trust in prophets. God gives them words to say, and they say them. God tells them to go places, and they go. God sometimes gives them bizarre instructions for symbolic actions – name your child something outlandish, abandon all personal hygiene, wear strange clothing, only eat bugs – and prophets do those bizarre symbolic actions. God places a great deal of trust in them, and some reluctant prophets may try to protest or avoid a task once or twice, but they always do follow through in the end.
Ezekiel tends to have these visions, like this valley of dry bones, that mean something symbolic for the people of Israel (they’re in exile in Babylon when Ezekiel is operating), and he has to bring the story of the visions and the message of the visions to the people. “I saw this valley of dry bones and God told me to tell the bones that God would put them back together and make them live again, and then God did exactly that.” It’s a message for the dispersed people of Israel not to give up, but to look toward the day when God will bring them back together with their kindred and put life in them again. God trusted Ezekiel to see the vision, interpret the message, and then carry the message back to the people.
This mutual trust, between prophet and God, is critical for the relationship between God and the people–and for the well-being of the community. The prophetic leadership of Ezekiel and others (there is a wealth of prophetic literature from the period of the Babylonian exile)... this prophetic work is how God connects and communicates with humans in this period of Israel’s story. The strength of the relationship depends on trust. That mutual trust between God and prophet, as well as the trust that the people place in their prophets, is a risk. Every time. And collectively, the prophet, God, and the people take that risk together. Every time.
It’s bone connecting to bone, and then the muscles, and then the skin, and then the breath of life–every step involves risk. Every step requires trust.
Our Behavioral Covenant talks about trust as a behavior that we want to exhibit with one another. We have framed it specifically as a mutual expectation. It won’t work if we aren’t all acting in good faith with one another. But it’s a risk, every time. Even with hundreds of years of history in ministry together, there is no tomorrow without risk, without trust.
And our Covenant is not just “to trust one another,” but to trust in each other’s commitment to service, and to trust in each other’s intentions for the good of the church. I trust the people who serve this congregation accepted the responsibility to speak and act for the benefit of all of us. It’s only one sentence, but it says so much! We trust that those who act on behalf of the congregation (and that’s everyone, at one point or another) accepts responsibility for the well-being of the congregation. We are a congregational church–we make our own decisions, we elect our own leaders, we steward our own finances and property, we are active participants in our common life–that all comes with risk! That all demands trust.
And we trust, above all else, that everyone speaks and acts with the good of our common life at heart.
We’re coming to the end of Lent – only one more Sunday to go, only one more point in the behavioral covenant left after this one. And we’ve got a roundtable discussion after worship, when we can practice and be mindful of the commitments we have made to one another as members of this church, bearers of this covenant. Let’s remember those commitments today, and every day, and trust one another (and trust God!) to speak and act with the good of the whole church at heart. Let’s risk that, and participate with God in breathing life into the bones and sinews and flesh of this community together, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
March 15 - “The Lord Looks on the Heart”
The Lord Looks on the Heart
1 Samuel 16:1-13
15 March 2026
First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
We’re going to back up for a little context here before we jump in to this week’s reading from 1 Samuel. The downside of the lectionary is that these brief passages can float out there on their own and we can lose some of the bigger importance of the story if we’re not careful.
The Israelites are settled in the land of promise, and have been for several generations now. In that time they have spread out across the hills and have gained considerable territory, they’ve developed a system of self-governance involving judges who settle disputes among people, and priests who make sacrifices to God on the people’s behalf in order to keep the relationship alive between God and God’s people. And occasionally, someone arises from the priesthood who is recognized as a prophet, a person who speaks to the people on God’s behalf (not merely someone who speaks to God on the people’s behalf). The prophet role develops as a more direct go-between than a priest can be. Eli was this prophet, and he nurtures Samuel’s gift from childhood, so Samuel succeeds Eli after his death, becoming the great prophet for this particular time in the story of Israel.
The Israelites find themselves embattled with the other peoples in the land, primarily the Philistines but also the Ammonites and others. The Israelites see that each of these groups they are fighting with have a king, a single human leader with the authority to lead them into battle and also to govern them in other matters, and the Israelites say “Hey, that seems like a good idea; we want that, too. We want a king.” There’s a lot of back and forth here between God and the people, God says “You really don’t want a king, it’s not all unity and structure and good governance on the inside,” but the people insist that they really do want a king—and eventually, God relents and says “Fine! Have a king! But I’m telling you, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be!”
God tells Samuel to go anoint a king, and picks someone who is exactly the kind of guy the people would want: Saul is young and tall and handsome, he comes from a wealthy family, he’s strong and devout and driven. Saul’s got all the outward characteristics necessary to win any high school popularity contest. Samuel anoints him king, Saul leads the Israelite army into battle against the Ammonites, and they win… but just barely. Because it turns out, Saul’s not actually a very good leader. He looks good on paper, but he’s immature and impulsive and a bully. Immediately the people start saying, “Who wanted this guy to be king? What were they thinking?” and for some years, Saul is a terrible, corrupt king, and there’s all this business with battles and deceit and abuses of power, and finally God says to Saul, “Look, go and attack the Amalekites, and utterly destroy them. Kill them all, do not even let their livestock live.” (We can get into why God wanted the Amalekites killed another time.) So Saul leads the Israelites into battle against the Amalekites, vanquishes them completely, but he keeps the good livestock for himself, and he keeps the Amalekite king alive, and he sets up a monument to himself in celebration of his victory. When Saul comes to Samuel and says “Okay, I did what God told me to do, I destroyed the Amalekites,” Samuel catches him in the lie. Saul plays it off like he had kept the livestock to make a sacrifice to God, and Samuel says, “God wanted your obedience more than God wanted your animal sacrifices. Now God says you aren’t the king anymore.” Samuel, ever obedient, kills the Amalekite king himself. Saul is rendered insignificant: God withdraws support from Saul and promises to replace him with another king. And Samuel, poor guy, is sad about the whole thing. He’s deeply grieved. It’s a complicated, multilayered grief. He’d borne witness to Saul’s many faults, but also knew that Saul had been exactly what the people wanted in the beginning. Saul had let them down, and Samuel, as God’s prophet to Israel, had been by Saul’s side the whole time, trying to steer him on a different path that Saul had no interest in following, and cleaning up Saul’s messes when things went awry.
That’s where our story picks up today. God says, “Why are you grieving over Saul? That guy was a bad king! Pick yourself up and let’s go find another one. This time in Bethlehem.” So Samuel, ever obedient, heads to Bethlehem and goes to the house of Jesse. He sees Jesse’s sons and thinks, “Oh yeah, this is promising!” But God cautions Samuel, “Don’t look on his outward appearance. Being tall and handsome is not a qualification for leadership. That’s not what’s going to make a good king.” And that’s when Samuel learns this key lesson: The Lord looks on the heart.
You’ve heard the rest of the story, seven sons parade before Samuel and God says “None of these guys are the next king,” so Samuel asks if Jesse has any other sons, and Jesse sends for his youngest son, who’s still out in the pasture tending the sheep. Nobody ever expects the youngest child to be the leader. He’s just a boy, and contrasted with his giant brothers, he’s boyish and small and easy to overlook. But he did have beautiful eyes and a healthy, sun-kissed complexion! And Samuel, too, was young when God called him, so he knows what can be possible when leadership potential is nurtured early. Samuel anoints the boy, David, then and there. Samuel leaves David in his father’s house to keep growing. Eventually, David ends up going to serve in Saul’s house as a musician, so Saul unwittingly raises up his successor, until the boy grows into his potential and Saul perceives that David is a rival and a threat to him. Eventually, David does become the king, and his reign becomes legendary.
Now, throughout the story of Samuel’s ministry, there is this theme of wisdom and insight, and the difference between what God sees and values versus what humans see and value. Here, in the story of David’s anointing, this theme is very in-your-face, and you don’t really have to know all that backstory to pick up the key insight that “The Lord looks on the heart,” and a person’s outward appearance is no indicator of their value, their calling, their abilities. But knowing this context adds depth to our insight as the story progresses, adding to the emotional weight of Samuel’s experience, illuminating God’s patience with the people and eagerness for Samuel to learn.
This story is also a reminder, almost an admonishment, not to rely on the surface judgments that humans so love to privilege when we are trying to discern God’s will. Looking good in a suit, or looking good on paper, is no indicator of one’s ability, or faithfulness, or calling. But we love a good stuffed suit, don’t we? We love to swap credentials and bona fides, to name-drop our schools or our family connections or our fame-adjacent fabulousness, but too often we intend to offer them as a possibility for connection with others, and end up wielding them to assert status over others instead. “I win, I know better, I have the answer.”
When it comes to our Behavioral Covenant, this story points us to the behavior of Active Listening, which we say we want to adopt but we so rarely put into practice. Our Covenant states: I believe that listening is critical for our work together. I believe that listening is both verbal and nonverbal. I will let the speaker finish their thought before developing a response, and I will ask clarifying questions when I am not clear. I will stay attentive to the topic at hand by refraining from making comments or raising questions which can shift the discussion.
Active Listening is one of those behaviors we think we do way more often than we actually do it. We learn the importance of listening from an early age, right? A kindergarten teacher or a parent today might remind a child to “put on your listening ears.” Ego, hubris, get in the way here: when I am not listening actively, I usually am pretty certain that I am [listening]. I’m a great listener! Let me tell you how great a listener I am!
Our Covenant holds up the intention of “listening to understand” rather than listening to formulate a response. I will let the speaker finish their thought before developing a response. Because you don’t actually know the point the other person is trying to make, even if you think you do, before they’ve made it. I will ask clarifying questions when I am not clear. In an environment where there is low trust, clarifying questions can feel like confrontation. Interrupting people, rebutting what you think they’re saying, do not help build trust. Genuine curiosity, real effort to understand fully another person’s perspective… when you make that effort, the Kingdom of God is among you.
Active Listening should be so easy, but it’s not. We are far better at noticing when others aren’t listening to us. When someone is not listening to me, I can tell: I feel diminished, dismissed, unseen. “No, that’s not what I meant, that’s not what I’m saying.” But take care, because ego and hubris can get in the way from this direction, too: sometimes when someone says they don’t feel like the other party is listening, it’s because the other party isn’t obeying them. Listening and obeying are two different things.
This story in 1 Samuel today illustrates not just that first impressions aren’t always correct, but that God’s eyes see more than our eyes do, and God’s discernment is greater than ours is. We must strive to “listen to understand” more than we strive to have the most answers or the fastest response time or the most thorough rebuttal. Active Listening is about developing and strengthening relationship with each other, trying to listen to the words behind the words, listening to what God may be speaking.
So we take context into account, keeping in mind not just the ideas our fellow church members are expressing, but also the context we know about them that gives rise to those ideas, and we recognize that there may be elements of that person’s story that we don’t yet know. We seek to understand each others’ perspectives, we show curiosity and care about who each other is and why they feel the way they do. We seek to learn from one another, to expand our thinking and scope, to entertain new ideas rather than retrenching old ones.
It’s this behavior that will help us grow as people, as Christians. And it’s this behavior that will grow our church. Charging in to claim we have all the answers won’t work (and, if you haven’t noticed, we tend to rehash the same answer-ideas again and again–clearly, they aren’t working, because they’re not taking effect!), and getting louder and more insistent about our own position won’t work either. We have to listen to one another, and we have to look past the surface we can see, into the heart of any matter. We have to listen as God listens, and look as God looks – not on the surface, but on the heart. When we listen to understand, we will know God’s Kingdom is near. Thanks be to God. Amen.
March 8 - “Give Me a Drink”
Give Me a Drink
Exodus 17:1-7
John 4:5-42
First Congregational Church of Williamstown MA
3/8/26
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
Will you pray with me please: May the words of my mouth…
The Lenten season gives us some long scripture readings! But I’m grateful that it does, because these longer passages enable us to understand our faith in a broader context. Modern American culture loves a sound byte, not so much a story. Attention spans have decreased measurably—down to sixty percent or even thirty percent of what they were 25 years ago! It’s hard to fathom a story that lasts 3500 years, but there is a line from the Hebrews complaining of thirst in the Sinai desert to Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, and then from that well to us here in Williamstown. We’re part of the lengthy story of God’s people slaking their thirst. We’re part of the covenant that God establishes with God’s people, again and again and again.
You may recall that we’re talking about our Behavioral Covenant throughout the season of Lent this year, and today we’ve got two behaviors we’re looking at, since I wasn’t here last week. This week we’re talking about kindness and safe space. It’s all wrapped up together, I assure you.
Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew people, revealed to Moses, has led the people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and into the wilderness of what we now call the Sinai Desert. We who have the benefit of historical hindsight know that these people wandered in the desert for 40 years, but at the time today’s story happens, the people are complaining mightily about being out in that desert—and they’ve been there less than three months. They have escaped a life of slavery in Egypt, survived ten plagues, crossed through the Red Sea, they complained once about finding water that was too bitter to drink (and God turned the water sweet), then they complained again about hunger (and God gave them quails to eat and later manna from heaven), and so here they are again complaining of their thirst—and Moses is SO FED UP with them! What am I supposed to do with these people, he asks God in frustration! You’ve brought us out here, I’m trying my best, and all they do is complain!
Moses doesn’t know yet that this desert wandering is going to take forty years. But if they’re only three months in, everybody’s going to have to take a deep breath to keep from killing each other out there in the desert. And God models for Moses what that looks like. God listens to Moses and gives him the space to express what he’s feeling. God hears Moses’s frustration with the people’s frustration, and responds with infinite kindness for Moses and for the people. Ultimately, God provides the people with the water they need. But first, God listens to Moses, and God says, “I hear you, Moses.”
Likewise, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the ancient well of Jacob. Jesus is the outsider here, he’s in Samaritan territory, and he approaches the woman (strictly taboo!) and asks her for a drink, a simple kindness. The woman seems to be taken aback, but her response sparks a dialogue between them that changes them both—she feels seen, safe enough with him that she ends up going back to her friends and family and telling them all about this Jesus man she met. But he feels seen, too, and safe enough to share for the first time ever that he is the Messiah. And he goes back home, and begins performing miracles publicly, turning water into wine at Cana.
Both of these exchanges show how kindness and safe space are intertwined. Kindness creates safe space, safe space creates room for more kindness. One party takes a risk—to complain, or to ask a favor, to share a deep and sacred truth—and the other responds with validation: I see you, I hear you, I understand you, even if I’m not sure I agree with you. We see in both of these stories that when kindness and safe space are intertwined, there is a culture established in that moment that allows people to live more fully into who God calls them to be. Moses learns important lessons about leadership; the Samaritan woman becomes an evangelist and truth-teller; Jesus, too, takes a brave step forward in his ministry; even God is more fully knowable through this experience.
Your Behavioral Covenant describes safe space this way:
I am a participant in this space. I accept that with my participation I am responsible to have humility and patience with myself and with those who are with me. I will be attentive to the words I use and the way I present myself.
It’s interesting that your definition of safe space is more inwardly-focused, claiming your own responsibility for how you show up and participate, rather than outwardly focusing on the environment you want to create for others. But taking responsibility for yourself is, ultimately, what makes any space safe. And when we take responsibility for ourselves–when we acknowledge that we only have control over ourselves, and accept that responsibility–we establish that safe space, but we also establish what some thought leaders today call “brave space”: that is, we make it possible for people to be brave enough to be themselves.
But safe space can only be safe, we can only be brave, if we can trust that our truth will be met with a response that acknowledges our belovedness, our personhood.
You also talk about kindness this way:
Kindness will guide my actions. I will extend that kindness to people in all my interactions and even when I disagree with their perspective knowing that they offered it with their best intention for this congregation. Empathy and respect are foundations to build a culture of kindness in this congregation.
Being kind is not the same thing as being nice. Kindness is rooted in empathy and respect. Niceness is rooted in avoidance of discomfort. Sometimes kindness can cause discomfort, but when that discomfort is cushioned in empathy and respect, relationships can grow deeper.
When they’re done right, kindness and safe space go together.
So with our two stories and our two behaviors we’re lifting up today, I want to share two observations about you.
The first comes from the feedback from the roundtable conversations (given to us in anonymized form): a significant number of people express something like, “I don’t feel able to share what I would like to say. When someone is loud, or certain, about their viewpoint, I shut down. Especially if I disagree with them.” That says to me there is a lack of safe space: when someone feels unable to disagree, fearing they will not be met with empathy and respect, they don’t lift up their voice. We don’t establish the culture that allows people to live more fully into who God is calling them to be. It doesn’t allow us to become the church that God is calling us to be.
My second observation is that this is a church full of people who are very smart! And people who are very smart are often used to being right. People who are very smart often confuse being very smart with being right. It is possible for more than one person to be right! It is possible for all of you to be smart, and for all of you to have some little piece of truth–but no one person has all the truth. Not me, not you. You have some bit right, but no one is completely right, without needing anyone else.
We want to be a culture based in safe space and kindness, and we are holding ourselves back from that. The goal is to establish a culture that allows people to live more fully into who God calls them to be. God is calling you to be something in this community, to share a piece of truth in this community, to move this community forward to become who God is calling us to become. And right now, we are a place where not everyone feels able to share the piece of truth that God is calling them to bring forward.
Safe space and kindness are necessary. We need to practice! Practice kindness and safe space. Practice the curiosity that the Samaritan woman shows. Practice the frustration and bravery that Moses shows in saying “I’ve had it!” Practice hearing one another, truly listening to understand–not to respond, not to be more right, but to understand–and learn something more about who God is calling us to be.
If you are one of the people who said that you don’t feel safe sharing your piece of truth, I invite you to dip your toe in that living water, to ask for help. Come forward and take the risk: “I need water. Give me a drink.”
Let us all practice receiving that request and meeting that need. So that we all may, together, become the church God is calling us to be, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
March 1 - “Shall the Judge of Earth Do What Is Just?”
2nd Sunday in Lent, March 1, 2026, Genesis 18:20-32, Luke 11:1-13 The Reverend Dr. Arnold Isidore Thomas
A story is told about a famous captain of a great transatlantic ocean liner who started out as a cabin boy, but through gradual and disciplined guidance from master seafarers, eventually evolved into one of the most revered mariners of the sea. His second-in-command, who had served under him for years, watched an emulated his every move. But there was one thing about the captain that puzzled her. Every morning, he went to his cabin, opened the drawer of his desk, took out a slip of paper, read it over and over again with great concentration, then returned it to his desk, and locked the drawer.
Finally the day arrived when the captain retired, and she assumed command of this renowned vessel. The first thing she did was to enter the cabin, unlock and open the drawer of the desk to find out what was on that slip of paper her mentor studied so carefully every day. Upon finding the paper, she discovered only a single sentence that read, “Left side port, right side starboard.”
Like the sea captain’s slip of paper, we should never forget the fundamental lessons and bearings of behavior that will successfully steer the course of our lives.
In biblical terms, such bearings are simply delineated in the words of the great commandments: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 6:5, Mark 12:29-31)
These commandments undergird the entirety of Hebrew and Christian testimony in the Bible. Rabbi Hillel said that beyond these commandments, everything else is mere commentary. And Jesus acknowledged them as the means to eternal life (Luke 10:28). They are inextricably twined. You can’t have one without the other, because when we allow ourselves – heart, soul, mind, and strength – to be totally one with God, we, in essence, lose ourselves and become extensions, embodiments, incarnations of God. This means that all we do in relation to others and the world becomes a reflection of the divine; the Word made flesh.
However, the reader remains puzzled as to what is God’s Word. The commandments will not be mentioned until the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. But we’re still stuck in Genesis with a God who hasn’t clearly indicated what’s expected of us, except unquestioned obedience.
And when we disobey, there is hell to pay. In the chapters leading up to this story, God excommunicates the original human couple and curses all creation because of their disobedience. God destroys all life except the family of Noah and the animals he rescued in the ark. And God confuses the language of humans who try to build a tower to get close to God. But this God prefers to remain transcendent; that we keep our distance and not get too close; that we do as we’re told with unquestioned obedience. But in this story Abraham dares to question the Lord.
In a posture of fear and trembling, Abraham seems like a prospective buyer haggling the divine street merchant, God, to lower the price of an item he hopes to buy.
The item is the salvation of Sodom, and Abraham manages to haggle God down to the price of saving the city if there are but ten faithful souls within.
Now, I often wonder why Abraham stopped at ten. He certainly was on a roll with God obliging his inquiry because, unlike previous biblical characters, Abraham challenges God to a divine ethic of being saying: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25)
Why did Abraham stop at ten? Biblical scholar Terrence Fretheim suggests that the number ten (not to be taken literally) represents the smallest possible group in ancient configurations, and that a smaller number would render God’s involvement no longer with groups but individuals, which may have been what ultimately occurred with his nephew Lot and his household.1
More crucial to the dialogue between Abraham and God is the issue concerning the relationship of a particular group to the moral fiber of the wider society in which they live. Fretheim further suggests that “the righteousness of a few can so permeate a wicked society that they can save it from the destructive effects of its own evil ways. However, a buildup of wickedness can become so deep and broad that nothing can turn the potential for judgment around.”2
Is there a God ethic? Jesus believed there is and that the sin of Sodom was its gross inhospitality to others. He considered the inhospitality of communities that rejected his message comparable to conditions that contributed to the destruction of Sodom. The gospels couch his condemnation in words of divine judgment.
I tell you that on the Day of Judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you. (Matthew 11:24)
Now, while I reject the belief that God destroys entire civilizations for their ungodly behavior (which is what God eventually did to Sodom), I do accept that a society’s callous disregard of God’s greatest commandments will contribute to its ultimate demise and destruction.
The growing chasm between the rich and poor of this nation and world, with no apparent remedy in sight, exposes the gaping and festering wounds of a global plutocracy consumed by earthy wealth over heavenly rewards.
I’m reminded of what, at times, seem like lone prophetic voices crying out in a hostile wilderness; voices such as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg announcing before the World Economic Summit concerning the environmental crisis of the world that “Our house is on fire… I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if your house is on fire. Because it is.”
To what extent does her prophetic voice differ from that of John the Baptist who warned: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:11)
Again, we may interpret this as a warning of God’s impending wrath against an uncaring, inhospitable world, or as impending punishment caused by our own negligence.
The gospel lesson pursues the God ethic of neighborly love further involving the night visitation of a neighbor who asks bread from his friend to feed a guest in his household. The reluctant provider first refuses, but eventually relents to his neighbor’s needs because of his persistence.
As a former pastor, this story reminds me of times I too felt disturbed by the nightly desperate calls of neighbors facing eviction, medical emergencies, food shortage, utility termination, if I couldn’t assist in supplying some means of support and relief.
The far more desperate example of neighborly love returns us to the scene of Sodom, where Lot resorts to extreme ungodly measures that include the possible rape of his daughters to the men of Sodom to protect the heavenly guests of his household from the night intrusion of that city’s mob
People of God, as Sodom was allegedly destroyed by its gross inhospitality, the God ethic of our churches, communities, nation, and world is now being tested by national and world leaders who confine neighborly love to those who serve their financial agenda and needs. The rest of the world is desperately banging on our doors and disturbing us at all hours of the day and night, asking, “Shall you who follow the Judge of all the earth do what is right?”
“If we do not act,” says Martin Luther King, Jr., “we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
Left side port, right side starboard. What are the fundamental bearings that steer the course of your lives? We are not helpless, we are people of God.
People of God, “even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Our house is on fire. Shall we who follow the Judge of all the earth do what is right?
We must. We shall. Amen.
Endnotes
1 Terence E. Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol.1, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994) p. 469
2 Ibid, pp. 469-470
February 22 - “Covenant of Grace”
A Covenant of Grace
Psalm 32
Matthew 18:15-21
22 February 2026
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
Traditionally, the scripture reading for the first Sunday in Lent is a different reading from Matthew, when Jesus is tempted three times by Satan and withstands the challenge. Lent is a time when we consider the temptations and challenges that we face, and we engage in acts of discipline in order to try, like Jesus, to resist. It’s a time for mindfulness, for intentionality, to develop habits that (we hope) will bring us closer to God. In Lent, we may try the classic approach of giving-up-something like chocolate or alcohol or social media; or we may take on a new practice we hope will become a habit, like daily journaling or walking.
As a church community, we have just adopted a new Behavioral Covenant at our Annual Meeting a few weeks ago… And the best way to ensure that it becomes a meaningful covenant in our common life, a set of shared practices we want to be habitual (rather than another list of good ideas that we stick in a drawer), is to talk about it. So for these six weeks of Lent, we’re going to focus on the six behaviors in the Covenant that we want to adopt with one another.
This week, we begin with the scripture reading that undergirds most covenants and conversations about how we want to be a church community together: Matthew 18. Jesus, talking with the disciples, draws out a clear process for handling conflict in the church.
Now I know, I know: we are all nice polite New Englanders, and we would never admit to ourselves that there might sometimes be conflict in the church. But we also know that wherever two or three are gathered, there are at least four opinions! We are going to encounter conflict sometimes. For all our desire to think of ourselves as above all that, striving for some noble ideal of community—we are the Body of Christ, we are all children of God, we are called together by the Holy Spirit—the truth is that we are a group of humans. A little bit inconsistent, a little bit contradictory, a little bit proud, a little bit stubborn… any relationship between two people necessarily involves energy, and that energy sometimes includes tension, or friction, or difference. Conflict is a natural part of all relationships, and if there’s sometimes natural conflict just between two people, of course there will naturally be conflict among groups of people. Conflict isn’t bad, conflict is healthy—when you handle it in healthy ways. Which is what a Behavioral Covenant is supposed to help us to do.
Because, really, church is hard. Getting along with other people is hard. The divisions we encounter in our daily lives, in the wider community, have grown so much that we have less and less ability to be in community with those who think differently or hold different perspectives than we do. And for a long, long time, church has been the main place in our society where we can be in relationship with people who don’t agree with us. We commit to joining, belonging to a church community and staying in relationship with people who may have different opinions or experiences. We stay at the table together. 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 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. Church is a place where we behave badly sometimes, and where we trust one another enough to let them 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 even schism. Matthew’s congregation was in the process of figuring out who they were in the midst of an identity crisis in Judaism—some scholars think Matthew’s community may have been kicked out of the synagogues. 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 critically important to Matthew. This plan for how to handle conflict is geared toward a slow, deliberate process that promotes peace long-term. It’s about skill-building and resilience to get through difficult times. If someone sins against you, go talk to him. If he doesn’t want to talk, bring another one or two people to witness the conversation. 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 so was Matthew’s community. 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 down-and-out folks were encouraged to participate fully. Some people were new: the Gentiles and the tax collectors had a lot to learn, and the Jewish-born 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. This passage is about seeking peace and reconciliation and transformation, not about separating the sheep from the goats.
Your Behavioral Covenant includes “grace” as one of your shared values that will guide your behavior together: “I have an obligation to offer grace to everyone in this congregation. It entails sensitivity to the situation at hand. I will listen with understanding and acceptance because we do not always make clear our perspective as we intended. I will honor silence as another expression of perspective.” “Offering grace” includes assuming that everyone has positive intentions for our behavior toward one another, and remembering that we are all here because we love our church. And when, for whatever reason, our words or our actions don’t have the impact that we intended, we strive together to seek understanding and clarity, to heal the harm, and close the gap between intention and impact. When you hurt me, I have to give you the grace to believe that you did not intend to hurt me; when I hurt you, I hope you will do the same—and in order to heal that hurt, we have to talk about it with one another. Hopefully we can do that in a way that doesn’t escalate the situation and perpetuate the harm, and that’s part of why we bring in our church community to help us have those healing conversations in good faith.
The thing that Matthew doesn’t make explicit here, but that we need to remember, is that this passage is about disagreement between two rational people. It’s a program for healthy interaction between two healthy people. It’s an ideal program for an ideal situation – and not all situations reflect this ideal. Jesus is not setting forth a program to deal with abuse, or mental illness, or destructive behavior. Jesus urged patience with those who needed correction, but didn’t allow violence or unhealthy behavior to destroy his community. He tells Peter to forgive seventy-seven times, but forgiveness doesn’t excuse or ignore or tolerate harm. If only one party can behave with grace but the other party can’t, then we’ve got to find a different way forward—that’s a different part of the Behavioral Covenant, for a different day.
But when we are engaging with our community in healthy ways, we still can make mistakes, we still can disagree or misunderstand one another. That’s where grace comes in. We are all given the promise of renewal through God’s grace, and we can and must extend that grace to one another in Christian community. It’s something we have to practice with ourselves and with one another. If we can practice grace among ourselves, then we will be able to take it out into the world, too.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
February 15 - “Dazzling!”
Dazzling!
Matthew 17:1-9
15 February 2026
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
First Congregational Church of Williamstown, UCC
The Transfiguration is one of the key stories signifying Jesus’s divinity. It shows up in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and some people think that John’s gospel alludes to it as well—and whether or not you think that it does, the fact that we want it to be in all four gospels is an indication of its importance.
The story is really this brief and simple: Jesus goes up to the top of an unnamed mountain, with Peter, James, and John, and while they’re up there, his face changes, his clothes become dazzling white, and Moses and Elijah appear as well, and they’re talking with Jesus. The three disciples hear a voice from a cloud saying, “This is my son, listen to him!” As this is happening, Peter—who is kind of the perpetual fall guy who says the boneheaded thing we’re all probably thinking but is clearly wrong—Peter says “hey, Jesus, I know! We’ll build some booths up here on this mountain, for you and Moses and Elijah!” That’s when the voice from the cloud interrupts Peter and the booths are graciously forgotten. The three disciples hear the voice from the cloud and they fall down on their faces, overcome with fear. After all, mere mortals cannot look God in the face and live, right? So they hit the dirt for safety’s sake, and Jesus comes and tells them to get up. They do, and things have returned to normal up there—no white robes, no Moses and Elijah, no cloud with a voice. And Jesus starts to lead them back down the mountain, saying to them that they shouldn’t tell anyone what they’ve just experienced. We’re just all supposed to know what a big deal this moment is. And sure enough, when they come down from the mountain, the Transfiguration is not discussed again. The story of Jesus and his disciples moves on.
As a theological event, the Transfiguration is more important in Eastern Orthodox Christianity than it is in western Christian traditions, but even so, it’s an important day for us. This is only one of two episodes in the story of Jesus when a voice from the clouds, presumably God, speaks directly and audibly to a gathered crowd of people (the other one is Jesus’s baptism). And in this event, the presence of Moses and Elijah cements Jesus’s place in the canon of key religious figures. A couple of weeks ago, we read a passage in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus mentions that he will fulfill the law and the prophets—and this moment with Moses, representing the law, and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets, is seen by some as the symbolic fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Moses and Elijah are, presumably, saying something like “Great job, bud, you’ve got this from here,” and fully passing the torch to Jesus. But that’s just speculation.
This is the last Sunday in the liturgical calendar before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. And so what we’re really doing here today is juxtaposing an experience of Jesus’s divinity and an encounter with our own humanity. The word “Transfiguration” means transformation, but more literally it means to cross the face—that is, Jesus’s face was changed, his appearance was changed. This was the moment that his followers came to know that he was not just a teacher, not just a human. And Peter’s very human instinct was to build a monument to that discovery. The “booths” he suggests would be a place of worship, but mostly they would be something of permanence, to capture the fleeting moment. Peter’s instinct is to DO something. Do something that will last.
And Peter is all of us, isn’t he? When we encounter the holy, or we have an idea we think is inspired, we have this urge to make it permanent, to hang on to the feeling, the memory, the sensation of awe and excitement—by translating our experience into something we can touch, hold, put in our pocket, keep on a shelf, walk past and remember. Something tangible. And maybe we do build a building to mark the spot. A triumphal arch. A column. Maybe we do stack some rocks into a cairn, or put together a little pyramid of sticks or a pile of dirt.
But just at the moment Peter expresses this desire out loud, “Lord, let us make three booths, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah” – just as the words come out of his mouth, the voice from the cloud booms out an altogether different idea: “This is my son, the beloved: listen to him!”
We know now that the Transfiguration was the middle of Jesus’s ministry, but when it was unfolding in real time, of course the disciples had no idea what was still to come. Peter was dazzled by the change in Jesus himself, the bright white clothes, the historic figures who just appeared. He was, the text says, overwhelmed with fear in one moment, and probably quite stunned and confused in the next, as all that dazzling chaos was just …gone. It makes sense that Peter would think this moment was some kind of pinnacle of Jesus’s ministry. A moment of divine revelation that direct and world-changing hadn’t been experienced in hundreds of years, and he was there for it! He has to get the word out! He has to do something to mark this event!
Sometimes this very human impulse we have to DO SOMETHING, to make this moment permanent, to transform the numinous into the tangible—sometimes that instinct makes us miss the point of the holy thing that’s happening. We want it to last forever, and we lose the holiness of the fleeting moment. Don’t DO ANYTHING, just listen. Don’t try to manage, don’t try to control, don’t try to capture what God is doing. Just listen. Just witness the moment. Just be grateful you’re there to witness it. Stop trying to fix, stop trying to leverage, stop trying to produce. JUST LISTEN.
Peter, this moment isn’t about you and what you want. It’s about God, and what God wants. What you are doing is not as important as what God is doing. Your instinct to do something is going to get in the way of God’s doing something, so stop it. JUST LISTEN.
And sure enough, the moment passes, the light in Jesus’s face fades, his clothes go back to being their normal dusty whatever-color, Moses and Elijah are nowhere to be seen, and Jesus begins leading the Three back down the mountain. He makes them promise NOT to tell anyone. Don’t make this a permanent thing. Don’t hang on to it. Don’t try to convince anyone else that it was real, don’t try force your human impulses onto a divine revelation.
Peter, this moment wasn’t about you. Shut up! JUST LISTEN. Because what happened up on that mountain, yes, was a holy moment of God’s inbreaking into the world—the exact thing that the people have been praying for for a thousand years—but it’s part of a bigger picture that God is shaping, a bigger action that God is taking. And if you give in to your human instinct to make this one moment permanent and focus on it, you’ll miss the bigger thing God is doing in our midst. Your excitement and awe are a distraction: there is strategy here, Peter, and your impulse is serving your whim, not serving God’s strategy.
There is a reason we plunge so deeply every year off the top of the Transfiguration mountain into the depths of Lenten humility: we need to be reminded to listen to God’s voice, to check our impulse to center ourselves and our own experiences and reactions. Lent is a time to listen to what God is doing, and figure out how we might be a part of it more effectively. It’s a time to recognize that our will is usually separate from God’s will, and make sure we’re really trying to follow God’s will. It’s a time to make sure that we are not letting what dazzles us distract us… when we should be paying attention.
Lent is also a time to make sure that we’re listening to the right voices. Not listening to the voice inside me that says, “I want to Do the Thing. I want the attention, I want the points, I want the satisfaction, I want to be right.” When we take the time to listen, to stop talking and listen, stop doing and listen, we hear the voices of the people God is calling us to serve. The people God is calling us to serve! We hear them telling us what they need, instead of us doing for them what we think they need. We hear them telling us their stories, instead of the narratives made up for us by someone else. We hear them telling us their aspirations, instead of us crafting our own assumptions.
When we listen to their voices, instead of the voices we substitute paternalistically for them, we hear how God is calling us to serve. When we stop doing, and start listening, we become more like the Jesus we meet at the end of Lent: “Not my will, but yours be done, O Lord.”
So this is my invitation to you for Lent: The word “fear” in this passage can also be translated as “awe” (they’re actually the same word in Greek) – let yourself be overcome with awe, humble yourself face down in the dirt, forget your ideas for what you should do, and instead: just listen. Ask more questions than you answer. Listen for God’s voice, and make sure it is louder in your ear than your own voice is. Listen for how you can serve, not for how you can do. And wait for Jesus to guide you down the mountain and back into your ministry with a new sense of priorities–not your will, but God’s be done. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
February 8 - “Repairers of the Breach”
Repairers of the Breach
Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20
February 8, 2026
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
Have you ever stopped to wonder what could make salt lose its saltiness? What we know as good ol’ table salt, sea salt, sidewalk salt. has a molecular makeup we know as NaCl: sodium chloride. There are other salts (baking soda is NaHC03, sodium bicarbonate), but the salt that would have been extracted from the Dead Sea or the Mediterranean back in Jesus’s day is also that same NaCl that we know. The chemical composition of salt isn’t going to change. NaCl is NaCl. Dissolve it in water, you have salty water: it doesn’t stop being NaCl, and you could evaporate the water and restore the salt into crystal form.
It would have to become something else chemically if it’s going to stop being salt. But chemically, NaCl can’t “lose its saltiness” and still be sodium chloride. Even if Jesus had had the periodic table of elements back in his day, he couldn’t talk about “salt losing its saltiness” as a chemical change. Salt that is not salty cannot exist. Saltiness is the essence of salt.
As far as the science of salt goes, the only way to make salt be less salty is to mix it with other non-salt materials. If you think about the salt we put on our driveways and steps in the winter… sometimes we’ll mix it with sand, right? in order to achieve a higher level of grittiness on the ground without using so much actual salt. It’s not that the salt is less salty, on a chemical level, but it’s no longer pure salt. Salt loses its saltiness by impurity. You could put so much sand into your sidewalk mix that the salt’s efficacy becomes negligible.
And forget about trying to separate the salt out from the sand once they’re mixed. You can’t do it. Once salt has lost its saltiness, Jesus says, it’s good for nothing, and must be thrown away, trampled underfoot. There’s no going back. Salt that has become impure cannot be restored.
Much of this part of the sermon on the mount is written by Matthew for his community, and doesn’t appear in any other gospels or first-century sources. Matthew was writing for a congregation probably in Antioch, in Syria. This congregation was made up of Jews who were struggling with their Jewish identity: This was a time of significant cultural upheaval in many religious traditions, and Jesus wasn’t the only street preacher around. Jesus, the early formation of what became Christianity, was a symptom of this cultural upheaval, not a cause. There was a shift happening in Judaism that had nothing to do with Jesus, and Matthew’s community was feeling it. Who are we, as a diasporic people, an ethnic AND religious minority, when we’re having doubts about how we live out our faith and teach it to our children in this multiethnic, multireligious, cosmopolitan environment? How can we be faithful to our heritage and traditions, our community, our GOD… and also live with authenticity and integrity and truth? Matthew pulls together snippets of things Jesus has said, but also adds interpretive elements that help his congregation relate to Jesus’s words. All four of our gospels do this, to varying extents.
In fact, what we know as “The Sermon on the Mount” is not a sermon at all, it’s a bunch of random sayings of Jesus that Matthew strung together in whatever order he thought his congregation needed to hear them. Plus a little extra, to make it make sense. Matthew’s community is experiencing a multi-layered existential crisis. And to that crisis, Matthew brings this saying about salt’s saltiness. And a lamp on a lampstand. And a city on a hill. And the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. The gist is simple—be true to your purpose. Don’t let your purpose be diluted, impure. Don’t let your light be hidden, dimmed. Don’t hold to some of the law but not all of the law, don’t expect Jesus to fulfill some prophetic teaching but not all prophetic teaching. The law and the prophets were guides to staying true to the purpose of righteousness—that is, being in right relationship with God and with each other. And either we’re in relationship with God, or we aren’t. Either we’re working on it, or we aren’t.
If you’re salt, be salt. If you’re light, be light. Let everyone see you and know who you are and what you do. The purpose of a community of faith is, in part, to live out our faith together. How we live out our faith is about how we are in relationship with God and with one another, but being in relationship with God or with anyone is not a static activity—there’s no checklist, no formula, no finish line. It’s an ongoing process. A process that depends on God being who God is, and us being who we are in response to who God is. As we learn more, that relationship shifts.
Matthew’s community was struggling with knowing who they were in the midst of enormous cultural change. They were changing, and the world around them was changing, and the old ways of being weren’t really serving them or serving God anymore. They had to figure out who they were becoming, so they could understand and claim their new purpose. How can we be a community of faith when our faith is challenged, and may be changing? How do we live in right relationship with our neighbors when we don’t know who we are, or who our neighbors are, and how to share our gifts with them, and receive what they have to offer as well?
We have more in common with Matthew’s congregation than we really think we do. Like those first-century Jews in Antioch, the culture around us is changing, and our faith community is changing, too—and we don’t really understand all of those changes, or what they mean for us, but we know that the ways we’ve always done things aren’t working anymore. We know there’s some kind of disconnect between us and our neighbors. We know there are challenges within, disagreements or miscommunications or incorrect assumptions that expose the ways we are not always on the same page. We need a renewed sense of purpose, a shared vision. If we’re salt, we need to be salt, and stop adding a bunch of extra stuff that just pollutes our saltiness. If we’re light, we need to be light, and make sure we’re up on a lampstand rather than under a bushel basket, so that we can offer our light to the whole house.
This is where Isaiah’s words today can help us. Last week, I talked about Isaiah a little bit—how he was probably an aristocrat serving in the king’s household, how he tended to emphasize God’s favor for Jerusalem in a way that was probably biased by Isaiah’s love for Jerusalem. What I didn’t need to explain then, but now I do, is that the book of Isaiah is actually thought to have been written by multiple authors, probably three different people, And the author of the first 39 chapters, related to last week’s Micah passage, is not the author of Isaiah 58, what we’re reading today. The book of Isaiah spans about 150 years of history, and Isaiah 58 is part of what scholars consider “Third Isaiah,” at the end of that 150 years. Third Isaiah is much more direct about the ways the king of Judah has been a bad leader, and the ways that God wants the people to be more faithful.
Isaiah says, the people want to know God, they want to be in right relationship with God, but they’re going about it all wrong. They fast and pray and make a big display of their sacrifice and humility—but it’s a self-serving show, more about propaganda and image-making than about living faithfully. And then they use their fasting as an excuse for bad behavior—classic “hangry” meanness, picking fights and punching down on those who are weaker, being harsh with their employees, indulging in anger and defensiveness instead of taking responsibility for the harm they cause. That, Isaiah says, is not going to win them any attention or favor from God.
No, God says through Isaiah, the fasting that I want to see, the fasting that will satisfy my desires, is a fast, a discipline, a practice, that brings about justice. The fast that God chooses is a breaking of yokes—the farming device that harnesses two oxen together to pull a plow or a wagon. When the oxen are tied together that way, they can more than double their strength, equipping them to work effectively as a team—but when humans are tied together that way, they are more likely to be oppressed, abused, forced to injure themselves or each other in the course of their labor. A yoke is a tool, and a symbol of injustice, God wants them broken. The fast God wants us to follow, the discipline God wants us to adopt, results in the liberation of the oppressed, the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the naked, the breaking of tools and systems of injustice.
If we follow that fast, Isaiah says, then God will take care of our needs and be present and attentive to us when we ask for God’s help. “The LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong… Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”
It was as true 2600 years ago as it is today: God wants God’s people, God’s followers, God’s children, to pursue justice and work to end injustice. If we do that, we will be called “Repairers of the Breach, Restorer of Streets to live in.” That is, we will be known as people who have a purpose (ending injustice), and who actually met that purpose. We will be salt, pure and untrammeled, sparkling with the essence of saltiness. We will be light, set on a lampstand and shining throughout the house. If we work to end injustice, we will be part of the healing of the world, the repair of what has been broken.
THAT is a purpose worthy to pursue. Not so that we may be glorified, but so that God may be known and glorified. Let’s be salt. Let’s be light. Let’s be repairers of the breach. Let’s be a people of purpose, in Jesus’ name. Amen.