Five travelers, a little nervous, very excited, left the First Congregational Church parking lot at 7:00 p.m.
on Thursday night not quite knowing what to expect over the next five days. We would meet the sixth
traveler in our group at the airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador, one much more experienced in mission and
service work, and the adventure would begin. We were on our way to visit Fundacion Sor Dominga
Bocca, a foundation that provides services for neglected, abused, and abandoned girls in Ecuador’s
largest city, a foundation supported by the generosity of members and friends of First Congregational
Church for many years now.

We finally arrived at the Guayaquil airport 18 hours later, weary, but still excited and a bit nervous about
what the next 4 days would hold. After showers, a brief walk around Guayaquil, and dinner we finally
had the chance to sleep, and prepare through rest for what God had in store for us in the morning.

As is always the case when teams of pilgrims visit our soon to be friends at the foundation, the first day
would be a trip to the beach. Sponsored by a generous donation from a friend of FCC and FSDB, the
beach trip provides an opportunity to get to know the girls and the staff of FSDB in a fun and friendly
environment.

We arrived at the gates of FSDB’s aging building, and nervous but excited faces peered out
the door and through the locked gates. The girls were a bit reluctant at first, but we were greeted with
kisses on the cheek and many hugs. We boarded the bus and the adventure had now truly begun.
We arrived at the beach and before long the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean had washed away our
reluctance and many of the barriers that stood between us. We couldn’t communicate very effectively
with words—our Spanish is bad, their English only a little better—but laughter and shouted warnings
that the next wave was about to break began to build a bond, a friendship across a chasm of difference.

We returned to our hotel, once again tired, but filled with hope and excitement for what the next three
days would hold. We will work with our new friends to improve the building they call home, but also to
make it our home as well by hearing their stories and telling and our own. And I’m pretty sure we will
discover what we knew all along, that God is in our midst.

​The prophet Jeremiah once wrote in a letter to people who found themselves in a very difficult
situation, ͞For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for
harm, to give you a future with hope.͟ We live in faith that God’s purpose for us in Ecuador is part of a
future filled with hope, not only for the girls of Fundacion Sor Dominga Bocca, but also for 6 nervous,
but excited travelers whose lives will be changed by their encounter with 19 young girls. In their faces
we have already seen the face of God.

Just before our Ash Wednesday service last night, notifications starting exploding on my phone of yet another mass shooting in a school in southern Florida.  My heart breaks as I consider the mind-numbing frequency of these horrifically violent events.

It is my first instinct, in the wake of such horror, to talk of hope and love.  But how can a preacher like me talk about the way of love today when we witnessed so many innocent teenagers, and several adults whose only purpose for being in that school was to teach and care for those kids, lose their lives so senselessly, so tragically. 

It is absolutely foolish for me to talk about love today—but I have to.

That’s really the only word we have from God in the midst of this tragedy.

Let me be clear.  Much more needs to be said.  It is our responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure that these frequent tragedies—from Sandy Hook, to Orlando, to Las Vegas, to Sutherland Springs, Texas, to Parkland, Florida—stop.  We must work to eradicate everything that makes such senseless violence possible.  It is OK to be angry and brokenhearted and scared. 

I am.

But today, we also remember that God loves us and that nothing can overcome that love.  Love wins…love always wins.
​
William Sloane Coffin once said, “the world is too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love.”  Yesterday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School we were reminded yet again of how dangerous the world is, and our complicity in that danger.  Perhaps today, love will motivate us to join hands, and, with courageous faith, work for a world where all God’s children may live in safety and peace.
 
Blessings,
Pastor Ron

My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?”...For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people! 
--Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Only 16 months ago we were grieving the deaths of 49 beautiful children of God in a shooting at an Orlando night club, and now we grieve for 58 more beautiful children of God taken from their families by more violence in Las Vegas. I say with Jeremiah, "My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick." And we grieve--we must grieve--but I will not give up hope. I will never give up hope. Even Jeremiah gets there eventually when he preaches, "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope." (Jeremiah 29:11)
​
Today I grieve, but I continually pray for the day when we will all find the courage to embrace God's plans for us, plans for a future with hope.

For the summer months, the Board of Deacons and I decided to try something new with our worship schedule.  Beginning on July 2, we will hold two worship services on Sunday mornings, one at 8:00 a.m. and another at 10:00 a.m.  The 8:00 a.m. service will continue as it always has, brief worship which includes a hymn, sermon and communion.  The 10:00 a.m. service will vary from week to week.  On the first Sunday of each month, (July 2, August 6, and September 3) there will be a traditional communion service with traditional hymns.  The worship services on July 16 and August 20 will also use traditional hymns and feature either the Gallery Singers (our traditional choir) or other special music.  The remaining services (July 9, 23 and 30, and August 13 and 27) will be in our contemporary style with music leadership provided by our contemporary worship group, Branches. Except for the first Sundays of the month when we will have a traditional communion service, we will celebrate communion by intinction each week.

We will gather at Camp Sloper for our wonderful Rally Day celebration and picnic on September 10 at 11:00 a.m. and return to our normal worship schedule on September 17, as we celebrate the First Day of Church School.

The Board of Deacons and I hope that this more relaxed approach to services during the summer will allow more people to participate in worship each week.  We look forward to all that God has in store for us.

During Lent, our midweek worship services have been reflections on the seven last words from the the cross. Here is a portion the final installment, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!"
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“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

It is Jesus’ final word.

The last thing he would say before his death.

But it is not a word of despair…

not a word of hopelessness…

not a word of fear…

not even a word of desperation

It is a word of hope.

A word spoken loudly and confidently.

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

But here’s the thing about Jesus’ final word that we hear today.  It wasn’t just in this final hour that Jesus put his life in God’s hands.  Jesus had been practicing for this moment since the day he was born.  It’s something he learned from his mother, who put herself in God’s hands when an angel told her that as an unmarried young woman she was going to have a child and she responded, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” It’s something Jesus learned from Joseph, the man who raised him, who listened to an angel and did not send his pregnant fiancé away, but cared for her, and raised the child as his own.

Read the rest of this week's meditation here.

During Lent, our midweek worship services will include reflections on the seven last words from the the cross. Here is a portion the fourth installment, "It is finished."

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So what can an unworthy preacher say at this funeral for Jesus?  What words capture his life; provide comfort for those of us who will gather over the next week to mourn?

As I pondered these things sitting at my desk yesterday afternoon, my grandmother kept peering around the corner of my mind.  We always called her “Grandmother.”  That’s who she was.  My mother’s mother was always Grandmother to us.  She died on Palm Sunday in 1993.  Through floods and blizzards, through the premature deaths of her husband and her oldest child, my mother, she turned to her deep faith—relied on her family and her unshakable love for Jesus.

When I stood to speak the eulogy at her funeral, it was her words that I said.  She always told me, you preach your own funeral before you die.  “What that preacher says over your casket doesn’t mean a hill of beans.  What matters is what you did before you got there.”

As Jesus utters, “it is finished,” the eulogy has already been said.  His life has been lived, short as it was—it is finished.  He taught, he loved; he laughed; he lived.  He stood up to the principalities and powers.  He fed the hungry, provided healing to all the sick and infirm who came to him.

So what is the preacher to say about this Jesus?  He preached his own funeral.  It is finished.

You can read the rest of the midweek meditation here.

During Lent, our midweek worship services will include reflections on the seven last words from the the cross. Here is a portion the third installment, "Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise"

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How many crosses does a church need?

As someone with great interest in the history of Congregational Church I can tell you that it hasn't been that long since many Congregational churches displayed no crosses in their worship spaces. The Congregationalists that fled Europe in the seventeenth century to come to New England rejected the iconography of their Anglican forebears, even crosses. They built simple worship spaces, with a high pulpit in the center symbolizing the supremacy of God's word, the Bible. That’s all that would have up here back then, a Bible, with a couple of candles so the preacher could see the words. 

Our Congregationalist ancestors did not adorn their worship spaces with crosses or statues or anything else that might distract them from a focus on God’s word. They wouldn’t even have put a cross on the top of the steeple.  Instead there would be a rooster to remind them of Peter’s betrayal or a weathervane like the one our beautiful steeple. They called their church buildings meetinghouses, not sanctuaries. They saw God present in all they did, and they didn't need a cross or a sanctuary to remind them that God was there.

That has changed over the years.  Even most meetinghouses, like ours next door, have a cross that reminds us of Easter.  

But how many crosses does a church need?
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The Gospels tell us that there wasn't just one cross on that dark Friday long ago that we call good. No, there were three. Two criminals were crucified next to Jesus, one on his left and one on his right. 

Read the rest of the meditation here.

During Lent, our midweek worship services will include reflections on the seven last words from the the cross. Here is a portion the first installment, "Father, forgive them."

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One of our former pastors here at First Congregational Church, Pastor Dawn Karlson, whose ministry focused on our youth, and, who, like her successor, Pastor Rachel, is much younger and cooler that I, at least according to my teenage daughters, used to have a cartoon on her door—I think from the New Yorker magazine.  In the cartoon a grandfather walks down the street hand-in-hand with his grandson.  The older man says to the boy.  “Back in my day we didn’t have Google—we had unanswered questions.”

Lent has begun again, and through these forty days we tell the story of pain and death, and there are so many unanswered questions.  During our midweek services this Lent we will explore some of those questions through the last words Jesus spoke from the cross.  Traditionally the church has recognized seven last words that Jesus uttered, or in one case, shouted, from the cross.  Today we begin with the first: “Father, forgive them.”

Forgiveness It is probably the question I am most often asked as a pastor: “How do I forgive this person who did this terrible wrong to me?”  It may be a question you bring this afternoon as well.  And I have to confess, I really don’t know the answer to that question.  It can be the most difficult thing in the world to forgive.  Sometimes it is about petty things, things you just have to get over, a forgotten birthday, a hurtful comment.  But forgiveness can also be extremely complicated, for I believe that forgiveness never means staying in relationships or situations that are abusive or dangerous...

Jesus, from the cross, looks down on us and sees exactly who we are, exactly where we are broken and misguided and hateful.  And beloved, Jesus response to all that he sees at the foot of cross is what forgiveness is about, is what Lent is about.  Lent is about knowing that even when life is all chaos and pain and struggle, the only note that God will slip under your door, even at your very worst moment, will say,

“I love you.”
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Read the rest of the meditation here.

It’s one of my favorite Bible verses and I return to it often, especially when I need perspective on what the church should look like—not the building we sometimes call the church, but the real church: all of you who are reading this.

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”—Acts 10:34-35

Peter, the leader of Jesus’ disciples, had been struggling with what the church should look like.  Should it just be the Jews, or the people who just ate certain foods, or followed certain rules?  Is that what the Bible says?

Peter loved his Bible and he thought he knew his Bible, and bless his heart for it.  But he didn’t truly understand his Bible yet.  He thought his Bible said that only one kind of people is acceptable to God.  He had forgotten that passage from Deuteronomy that says,

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. — Deuteronomy 10:17-18

During our Lenten program, Our Lenten Table, we are going to explore what the church looks like.  Our Open and Affirming statement announces that our church embraces differences in age, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, ethnicity, nationality, socio-economic status, and physical, emotional, and mental capability.  Throughout Lent we will explore that diversity.  We will host programs on disabilities, aging, mental health, sexual identity, and embracing people of other faiths.  The programs will be either on Sundays or Wednesdays and will usually include sharing a meal. I hope you will join your church at Our Lenten Table.