Dear Friends in Christ,
Having been away for two weeks, I haven’t yet attended our Wednesday night study group during Lent. But I have been reading what attendees have been discussing in this year’s UCC Lenten Devotional, “Into the Deep.” Have you?

If you haven’t, you’re missing out on some thoughtful reflections that can help you prepare for Easter. One example is Rev. Vince Amlin’s reflection entitled, “Are you Chicken?” It’s based on Luke 13:31-32 & 34-35. This text describes the moment when some Pharisees informed Jesus that Herod intended to kill him. To them, Jesus said, “Tell that fox, I am casting out demons and performing cures, and in three days I’ll finish my work.” Then, he cries out to all: “Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Of this text, Amlin suggests we’re often so “seduced” by the comforting metaphor of Jesus as a mother hen that we miss his challenge and “take our eye off the fox.” In other words, we don’t name and confront the sources of evil in our lives – evil which sometimes lurks within us and sometimes in others – especially in those to whom we give too much power.

The ultimate point here is this: those who follow Jesus are called to identify and take on evil despite any fears they harbor because they are held securely by Jesus’ – and God’s – love. The Lenten question is: to what degree will we trust in this love and set the stage for Easter’s coming?

Blessings of Faith,
Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ, 

Today, Ash Wednesday, begins the season of Lent.  It’s the season for preparing for Easter.  It begins by our following Jesus into the wilderness to confront our demons just as Jesus confronted the Satan in his life.  

What are our demons?  They are constituted by those aspects of our lives and living that distance us from our best selves – and the hopes and purposes that God has for our lives.   

I can’t tell you what your personal demons are; only you – and those closest to you – know – along with God.  What I can tell you is that because you are human you have demons that require your confronting their power in your life.  And, I can tell you that if you do not consider and confront them, you will not be able to turn from them to move forward in new ways.  Which is sad, because when we are prisoners of our demons, we will not be fully prepared for Easter and its promise of raising us to new life.    

So, I hope you will engage in some form of preparation for Easter during this season of Lent.  If you’re unable or unwilling to join our Wednesday night group that will be reading and discussing the Lenten daily devotions contained in the UCC Devotional entitled Into the Deep, I hope you will obtain and read it – or some other alternative – for yourself.

Whatever you choose to do, Jerusalem awaits.  And, I pray as you make your way there, you will experience giving up some aspect of your life that frees you for receiving the fullness of God’s grace that is resurrection!

Blessings of Lenten Repentance,
Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ,
A change of season is upon us. I’m not thinking of Mother Nature’s progression from Winter to Spring! I’m thinking of the church and Lent. This upcoming Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday of Epiphany.

Epiphany is – and has been – a season for discovering some “a-ha’s” about Jesus. On Transfiguration Sunday, we find Jesus in good company. To three followers who climb a mountain with him, he appears in dazzling white clothes conversing with Elijah and Moses, two Hebrew heroes of old. Then, these followers hear a voice from a bright cloud, presumably God’s, say, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” It’s all a sign of Jesus’ importance.

The question is today, two thousand years later, how important is Jesus to us – and in what ways? We’ve explored various expressions of this question during Epiphany. We’ve asked: What have others said about Jesus? Then, we’ve asked an even more important question about him, a personal one: What do we say about him?

But there’s still one remaining question, this most important one of all: What do we do with – and in – our lives because of Jesus? How do you answer this one?

Blessings of Christ-related, “A-ha!” Moments in Your Life,
Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ, 

This week I received a disturbing e-mail from Church World Service.  It’s a global aid organization I’ve supported for decades as has every UCC Church I’ve served.  (And, I’ve walked in many of its sponsored CROP Walks for Hunger for many years since I was 16.)

The e-mail informed me that due to cuts in its funding from USAID brought on by the implementation of President Trump’s executive orders, all but its essential staff members – defined as those serving the most vulnerable of clients – were being furloughed.  Amongst the many services ended include those to 4200 refugees in the U.S. fleeing war and persecution in their homelands!  (See CWS’ website for details.)

Now multiply this effect thousands of times over.  Church World Service is but one of many agencies that support the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.  

In response to the implementation of the President’s executive orders, variously characterized by Washington observers as unjust,  immoral, and illegal (as well as by Christian leaders as un-Christ-like), Christian Pastor Diana Butler Bass wrote a blog for followers of Jesus entitled, “Love Relentlessly.”  And, when poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer read this blog, she wrote a poem based on its title.  This is it:

What Comes Next

“Love relentlessly.”  – Diana Butler Bass

“Love relentlessly”, she said, and I want to slip these two words
into every cell in my body, not the sound of the words, but the truth of them,
the vital, essential need for them,
until relentless love becomes a cytoplasmic imperative,
the basic building block for every action.
Because anger makes a body clench. Because fear invokes cowering, shrinking, shock.
I know the impulse to run, to turn fist, to hurt back.
I know, too, the warmth of cell-deep love—
how it spreads through the body like ocean wave, how it doesn’t erase anger and fear,
rather seeds itself somehow inside it,
so even as I contract love bids me to open wide as a leaf that unfurls in spring
until fear is not all I feel.
“Love relentlessly.”
Even saying the words aloud invites both softness and ferocity into the chest,
makes the heart throb with simultaneous urgency and willingness.
A radical pulsing of love, pounding love, thumping love,
a rebellion of generous love,
tenacious love, a love so foundational every step of what’s next begins
and continues as an uprising, upwelling, ongoing, infusion of love, tide of love, honest love.

As I struggle with how to respond faithfully to the non-normative, inhumane actions of political leaders in Washington, I find this poem touching and helpful, if not comforting.  How about you?

Blessings of Faithfulness and Peace,
Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ,

Jesus was a Jewish teacher who sometimes employed the Socratic method.  In the four gospels, he asks more than 200 questions!

We’re considering an important question this week.  After asking, “Who do other people say I am?”  Jesus asks his followers, “But who do you say I am?”  This sequence is found all three Synoptic-or similar-gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Jesus wants to know how the disciples’ understandings as close followers compare to those who watch at a distance.  His is, therefore, a great question for church members who follow Jesus.  Who Jesus is for us matters for it may affect the nature and quality of our beliefs and expressions of faith in his name. 

It also matters because there are many understandings about Jesus’ identity.  Probably you’ve learned more than a few along your faith journey because you’ve matured in your thinking, or you’ve studied, or you’ve had a few teachers and listened to a few preachers! 

Some of your understandings may be common, perhaps “orthodox.”  Some may be uncommon, even “non-orthodox.”  By others’ understandings, your understanding may even be labeled heresy.  But, whatever others say, what matters is what you say.  For it’s your life in Christ, we’re talking about. 

On Sunday, you’ll have a chance to reflect on your understandings of Jesus.  I hope you find it a meaningful moment in your life of faith.  For ours is a journey on which, as poet, Robert Frost, reminded us in Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening, “(we Christians) all have promises to keep, and miles to go before (we) sleep!”

Blessings Along the Way, 

Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ,
An important moment during our interim time is coming soon: publication of the church profile by the Designated-Pastor Search Committee. It is, especially for the members of the Search Committee, an exciting moment. They’ve worked long and hard to prepare a profile that represents your history and current qualities as a congregation accurately. They deserve much thanks and prayer as they enter into a new phase of the search process: receiving and reading prospective pastors’ profiles, interviewing, and – ultimately – discerning a recommended candidate for your consideration and vote.

This moment marks a transition for me, as well, in my ministry amongst you. Once the profile is released I will no longer attend Search Committee meetings or directly support its work. A NH Conference UCC Minister will be responsible for this. So, I’ll have more time for other work. How will I spend it? I plan to turn my attention to other tasks we’ve identified. Two of the most important are the VLT’s envisioning ways of reaching out into the community and the Stewardship Team’s discerning ways to increase budgeted revenue.

The first task, reaching out, is important because if a church wants to grow with new people today, it cannot simply be a welcoming congregation whose members sit around waiting for people to walk through the door; it must become a pro-active, inviting congregation in which members build relationships with people outside the church walls and share the good news of what’s going on inside, as well as outside, its walls.

The second task, increasing income, is important because if a church wants to support a staff and an older building it must have sufficient revenue to do so. And when, as is the case here, more than 70% of the pledged income comes from those aged 60 and older, the viability of maintaining current forms and levels of ministry may be at risk.

What can you do to help? Pray for this church, pray for its leaders, pray for their stewardship of its well-being, and participate in the conversations that are sure to come as leaders share new ideas they deem worth trying!

Blessings of Faith in Christ and Faithful Stewardship of Christ’s Church,
Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ,

As a Christian, I believe following the teachings and actions of Jesus for living on earth is more important than beliefs about him with respect to eternal life in heaven. Therefore, I’m interested in the relationship between religion and politics because the latter is one way we put our faith into action.  Fundamentally, I believe my faith ought to be considerate and thoughtful – and inform my political ideology accordingly.  This is what Jesus teaches when he responds to a question about paying taxes to Caesar by saying: “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” 

So, I was interested in Monday’s Inauguration Day.  As a citizen, I harbored some concerns about statements the new President made in his inaugural speech as well as executive actions he signed in the evening.  But as a Christian, there was something that caused me even greater concern. Frank Bruni, professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University captured it in a N.Y. Times  op-ed column entitled, “The Line in Trump’s Speech that Will Echo in Time.”  He wrote:

Recalling the day in Butler, Pa., in July when “an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear,”  Trump said that “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason.  I was saved by God to make America great again.” That’s the keeper this time around — Trump’s trademark narcissism and usual grandiosity, along with an unsettling measure of theocracy, in one profoundly disturbing sentence.  And it’s a signal of the sureness that he feels about all the executive orders that he then went on to promise, all the legislation that he foreshadowed and all the changes, from a militarized border to a war on wokeness, that he vowed.

I’m concerned because when a political leader believes they are saved by God to be a savior, they have a tremendous responsibility to be respectful, caring, and humble – like Jesus.  Now, ask yourself: To what degree does the President demonstrate having these qualities?  Your answer will tell you something about your responsibilities as a Christian – and U.S. citizen – during the time ahead.  And, checking your answer out with other Christians will tell you even more.  

Blessings of Faith in Christ for the Following of Jesus, Pastor Ed  

Dear Members & Friends,
When Barbara and I carried our firstborn out of the hospital where he was delivered, it was by way of an elevator “packed like sardines.” We were jammed against the doors. And, when that crowded elevator’s doors opened onto the hospital lobby floor, Barbara and I simultaneously exclaimed, “Thank God that’s over!”

Now, some might have thought we were referring to that elevator ride, but we weren’t; we were referring to the longer, more difficult three days that we’d spent in the hospital that included a day long delivery. But, no sooner were our words out of our mouths than there came from the back of the elevator a voice saying: “It’s only just beginning!” It was our delivering obstetrician who knew what we’d gone through, and he was referring to the parenting ahead of us!

Following Christmas, many a happy, but relieved, person may be found exclaiming, “Thank God it’s over!” They’re usually referring to their rituals of Christmas celebration. But, if stop to consider carefully, they may hear another voice, one saying: “It’s only just beginning!”

In prose entitled The Work of Christmas, 20th century American author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman captures the spirit of this voice:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost, to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.

For us who belong to Christ’s church, the work of Christmas is just beginning – yet again! And, 2025 will offer plenty of both the usual – and unique – kinds of opportunities. Will we be ready?

Blessings in Christmas work, Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ,
Sometimes, we think and say God is in everyone, everywhere. But, there’s an instructive story of a 19th century Polish Hasidic master and itinerant preacher, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk. One day, he asked some learned men who were visiting him, “Where is God? ” Laughing, they responded, “What a thing to ask! God is everywhere ! “No,” Rabbi Mendel replied, “God is only in the places where we make room for God.”

Now, what do you think of this perspective?

Many Christians believe and say, “God’s love is all-inclusive and unconditional”. Maybe so. But, Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans (8:28), “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Those who LOVE God… It begs the question, “Does God work on behalf of those who don’t love him?” Now, what do you think?

I once worked with a church administrator who had trouble with this idea. One Christmas, she inserted what she thought was an angelic Bible saying into the church newsletter. She wrote: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace and goodwill to all.” When I pointed out Luke’s text (2:14) really read, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”, she was surprised – and a little miffed. She’d learned, thought, and believed God’s love was for all!

Often, we say God’s grace means God’s love is unconditional. But, maybe God’s grace isn’t complete until it has its response in us, in our love and loving! And, maybe, this is what Advent preparation for Christmas is all about…About making room in our busy lives and hearts for Christ Jesus so we can follow him more closely in loving God and others as ourselves! But, what do you think – and believe?

Blessings of Advent for a Merry Christmas!
Pastor Ed

Dear Friends in Christ,

Likely, you’re aware of the diversity of Christianity in our nation.  Perhaps, you’re aware of where we as a progressive Congregational, United Church of Christ congregation sit along its spectrum.  But are you aware of something more fundamental, namely that we are a covenanting rather than a creedal body? (Article II, Section 4 of our by-laws)

What does this mean?  It means that we gather with an understanding that while we hold core beliefs in common that permit us to gather, worship, and serve God together, we also make allowance for our holding of our own personal beliefs – which may differ.  This means that what we don’t, like “creedal churches,” have any faith statement to which we require adherence and use as a test to determine if someone should or shouldn’t be a member of Christ’s Church.  

Instead, churches in our heritage make covenants, generally short purpose statements that unite us before God and with one another.  This includes statements like this old 1629 Salem(MA!) Church covenant:  We covenant with the Lord and one with another; and do bind our selves in the presence of God, to walk together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himselfe unto us in his Blessed word of truth. And, it includes newer statements like this succinct covenant of a church I served in the 1980’s: “In the love of truth and the Spirit of Jesus, we unite for the worship and service of God.”

Typically covenants are “owned” by existing members and newcomers whenever the latter join the church.  But, I wonder what your experience has been here with respect to this common ritual practice. Why?  Because your covenant is a three-part expression of your “basis” for being together that consists of 17 bullet points and is more verbose than a simple one-sentence declaration of agreement regarding your purpose.  

So, as your interim pastor, I wonder if you might benefit from updating your covenant.  I encourage you to review it, and see what you think.  Ask yourself if your covenant could be a more meaningful and useful statement if you could easily remember and share it by heart with one another – as well as with others – when it’s appropriate or helpful to do so.  

Whatever you think, we’ll be reflecting on our heritage and the stewardship of covenanting during our sermon time this upcoming Sunday.  I look forward to worshiping with you, especially after having been away on vacation.

Blessings of Unity in Christ for Divine Purposes, Pastor Ed

From Article II of our church’s by-laws…

Section 4 – COVENANT

The basis of our fellowship is expressed in the following Covenant:

Love God with all our heart, strength, soul and mind by:

• Praying regularly, alone and together, in thankfulness and in times when we need help in our lives
• Seeking our individual and collective relationship with God, and God’s purpose for us as we interpret the scripture in light of that relationship
• Living our daily lives as Jesus did, demonstrating Christian behavior and commitment to our church by our Christian example
• Listening to God’s answers to our requests through prayer, worship and in the words and lives of others

Love our neighbors as ourselves by:

• Realizing that everyone makes mistakes
• Accepting each other with all our differences and faults
• Respecting each other, especially in time of disagreement or conflict
• Accepting that forgiveness is an imperative for Christian life; rebuilding trust can be a long process
• Supporting each other by being honest, caring  and compassionate
• Holding each other accountable to our actions
• Listening to each other without judgment and remaining open
• Speaking respectfully to each other, choosing all our words carefully without intimidation but speaking the truth in love

Love and foster our Christian community by:

• Endeavoring to live our faith both inside and outside our doors
• Supporting our Church pastors, staff, and leaders so that their efforts can be most productive for the church
• Trying to discover what is best for our church as a whole, not what may be best for the individual or for some small group in Church
• Seeking to stay in community with each other even during difficult events and discussions
• Listening and respecting one another’s opinions when making decisions, but once voted upon, the course of actions becomes the whole church’s decision, requiring the full support of the community
• Being open to discovering God’s vision for our role and new faith traditions in our community