Catherine Kidder, from Help Kids India, will be speaking to our congregation on Sunday, May 14 about her trip to India this past fall. We will learn about the work of HKI to help impoverished children and mothers.
In addition she and her husband Tom will be at Tenney Library for a slide show “Love at the Creches: Education, Health and Hope for Impoverished Children in South India” on Sunday, April 30, 6-7 pm.
Holy Week begins on Sunday, April 9th, with the Palm/Passion Sunday service at 10:00 AM and the Choir Festival at 7:00 PM. It continues with the beautiful Maundy Thursday service on April 13th at 7:00 PM in our sanctuary and a Good Friday service on April 14th at Grace United Methodist Church at 7:00 PM. It concludes with two services and a breakfast on Easter morning, April 16. For more details and some Palm Sunday music and art, Continue reading Upcoming Service Notes, Holy Week, April 9-16, 2017
The Maundy Thursday service is one of the most beautiful and moving of the entire year, right up there with Christmas Eve.
It is a joint service again this year in our sanctuary with our Grace United Methodist neighbors participating.
During the service we reflect on the last hours of Christ’s life with all its drama, emotion and meaning, and we partake in the Last Supper. We sing two beloved spirituals, “Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley” and “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” The highpoint of the service is the Tenebrae, with nine readers at a table with thirteen candles representing Jesus and the twelve disciples. We hear the story read in stages as the candles are snuffed out until Jesus is alone in the darkness. The service ends with the one Christ candle relit as we pray and then depart in silence. It is a powerful way to enter the darkness and grief of Good Friday and prepare for the joy and brilliant light of Easter.
Jesus Wept, and Then He Did What He Could to Help
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
April 2, 2017 Fifth Sunday in Lent
Psalm 130; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
We heard two stories today about the power of God that flowed through Ezekiel and Jesus and brought people back to life. We heard Paul say, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”
Here in the depths of Lent, death is close at hand. We think of Jesus starving in the wilderness, or drawing nearer to the cross.
Here in the depths of Lent shoots may be rising from bulbs toward the light, but earth is buried beneath new snow. Turkeys are desperately digging through icy crust for acorns in deep woods. Cars go off the roads, people slip and break their hips, depression descends on gray, muddy days in this cruelest month.
Here in the depths of Lent we reach the time in the church year that is most like the moment of transition in childbirth when a woman feels as if she will not survive. Transition is the body going through the agony of opening wide to let the birth happen. During Lent we pass through a season of death in order to bring new life into being.
Women want to give up during transition, but birth doulas coach women to focus on their breath and let go. Lent doulas coach us to focus on the Spirit and let go and open wide to the higher power that is trying to bring new life to birth in us.
Here in the depths of Lent, death and new life hang in the balance, and our choice of how to respond makes all the difference.
Continue reading Sermon, June 2, 2017
Open and Affirming Covenant
We, the members of the Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ, Bradford, Vermont, regard all people as beloved children of God. We give thanks for the many and diverse gifts of God among us.
Jesus welcomed all. As First John says, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them…. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”
We declare ourselves to be an Open and Affirming congregation, welcoming and accepting into full membership and participation people of every age, gender, race, national origin, faith background, marital status and family structure, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, mental and physical ability, addiction, economic and social status, and educational background.
We affirm all lives and all relationships founded on the principles of God’s love and justice. We pledge to work to end oppression and discrimination whenever we encounter them, and, guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit, to help create the beloved community of God’s realm.
Whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.
adopted on March 26, 2017
The Fifth Sunday in Lent takes us into the depths of the suffering and danger that Lent represents. Jesus has been in the wilderness without food or water, exposed to the brutal elements, for a month. He is getting weaker and more vulnerable. Succumbing to temptation or death is an increasing possibility. The lectionary scripture passages have been leading us on a parallel journey toward the cross, with tension increasing around Jesus as he confronts the religious and political establishment with actions that threaten to overturn them. They are plotting his death even as he heals and raises people from the dead and lifts the hopes of the poor and oppressed.
Next week, on April 9th, we will follow the Passion Story from Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the arrest, betrayal, desertion and crucifixion on Good Friday. Here in the depths of Lent with all that coming ahead, Easter can seem impossible. How can the light shine in this darkness without the darkness overcoming it? The amazing thing is that even asking that question can raise a small, fragile but defiant candle in our hearts. Continue reading Service Notes, April 2, 2017, Deep in Lent
Please mark your calendars and extend invitations to family, friends and neighbors to these services.
Palm/Passion Sunday, April 9th at 10:00 AM, a profoundly moving service that begins with jubilant children distributing palms and then travels with its readings and hymns all the way through the week to Gethsemane, the cross and the tomb.
Palm Sunday evening, April 9th at 7:00 PM, we will continue a tradition of 51 years and host the annual Palm Sunday Choir Festival for area choral groups and musicians. Choirs from Bradford and surrounding towns will present anthems, our own John Atwood will play the prelude and postlude and you will have five glorious opportunities to sing hymns. All donations go to the work of the Inter Church Council.
Maundy Thursday Tenebrae Service, April 13th at 7:00 PM in our sanctuary–this service rivals Christmas Eve in drama and beauty, with beloved hymns, readings and candlelight. It is a joint service with Grace Methodist.
Easter Sunrise Outdoor Service, April 16th at 6:00 AM at 219 Summer Street, the home of the Buttons–a little singing, a little reading and reflecting, and a whole great big vista of God’s resurrecting Creation!
Easter Service, April 16th at 10:00 AM in the sanctuary, full of the traditional joyous readings and music.
We will be having a warned congregational meeting immediately following worship this Sunday for our final vote in our Open and Affirming process. We need as much as possible to act from our truest, most Spirit-connected self and show one another Christ-like love and compassion as we make this decision that will shape the future of the congregation. The service will be designed to help us do that. It will give us the opportunity to open wide to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and to remember who we have been as a congregation at our best in the past and what we feel God is calling us to be and do in our time.
We will surround ourselves with the comfort and inspiration of words and music, some from the Judeo-Christian tradition and some from this particular congregation’s tradition. Continue reading Service Notes, March 26, 2017, Service of Preparation for O&A Vote
This Sunday will be a Service of Compassion. We will seek to open our hearts in compassion not only to the victims of oppression, discrimination and hardship, but also to those who struggle to help them. We know the heartbreak we feel when someone in our family is suffering and we are helpless to fix the problem–this is the heartbreak Christ calls us into for the whole world, a compassion we feel that makes us deserving of compassion for our own empathic pain. It is the heartbreak of the cross. It is the wilderness of Lent. Yet we know that there is resurrection, there is emerging from the wilderness full of the Spirit’s power. This Sunday’s service will explore where we can find faith and hope within the struggle to love a suffering world.
We will take our One Great Hour of Sharing offering, and we will again try on the proposed Open and Affirming Covenant to experience how it feels within the prayerful context of worship. We will hear three scriptures about finding the hidden spring of God’s mercy and love within our messy struggles: Continue reading Service Notes, March 19, 2017, One Great Hour of Sharing, Service of Compassion