Category Archives: Past Sermons

Church News, Mission News, Past Sermons

Sermon, May 14, 2017, Help Kids India

Help Kids India and Extravagant Hospitality
Catherine Kidder and the Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
May 14, 2017
Fifth Sunday of Easter, Help Kids India Sunday
Psalm 31; John 14:1-14

help kids india IMG_5070

help kids india IMG_4773

Top: Hilda Isaac, Executive Director, and Angel, a crèche child.  Below: Beulah, Jasminepriya, and Benjamin.

Part I, by Catherine Kidder, Vice President, Help Kids India, Inc.

We know what the crèches do for the children but there are mother stories, too.  I’d like to tell you two of them in honor of Mother’s Day.  One story belongs to Hilda Isaac, the woman whose vision, dedication and boundless love drives the whole crèche project.  The other is about a crèche cook, Beulah, who credits Hilda and her job at the crèche with transforming her life.

Hilda is the executive director of the Betsy Elizabeth Trust, which Help Kids India and your church support.  She manages five crèches, two sewing centers for poor women, and a community health center.  She oversees thirty staff members, two rickety jeeps, seven properties, and the education, health, and care of 270 children.

Hilda grew up poor in a small coastal village, Porayar, where two of the crèches are now located.   Her parents were Dalit, or untouchables, but could read and write. Continue reading Sermon, May 14, 2017, Help Kids India →

Church News, Past Sermons

Sermon, April 30, 2017

United and Uniting
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
April 30, 2017 Third Sunday of Easter,
Celebrating the United Church of Christ
Psalm 133; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 24:13-35

We need to begin with a little review.
In last week’s gospel Jesus came through a locked door
into the room where the disciples were hiding in fear,
and it changed the world almost as dramatically
as the day billions of years before
when the first life form appeared on Earth.
And in a real sense, it was the same event,
it was the same force, the same intention,
the same new thing coming into being
as in bluebirds and daffodils and green blades rising,
the same thing coming into being over and over,
in an infinite variety of forms:
the force of light and life and love
that takes the raw materials of basic elements
and combines them into living things
which then find within themselves
the desire to live and make more life
and adapt and create around them a habitat
conducive to more and better life.

Jesus came to the disciples through that locked door
and helped them overcome
their fear and confusion.
Then he sent them out as instruments
of light and life and love
to serve and create the realm of God on Earth.

Today we are hearing about one of the essential qualities
by which we know God’s realm when we see it.
The Psalm says, “How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!”
And Paul says in Galatians, “As many of you
as were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus in his life broke down walls that shut anyone out.
He had women and children in his movement,
he had Jews and Greeks, he had sinners
and tax collectors, he welcomed all those
his society excluded or oppressed just because
they were different or poor or considered impure.
The movement he led was a united and uniting force.

Jesus showed that the realm of God
was a place where all would be one.
To be in Christ and have Christ in us
is to be one with God and one with all God’s creation,
because God is the same force of light, life and love
flowing through us as through all the universe.
Continue reading Sermon, April 30, 2017 →

Past Sermons

Sermon, April 23, 2017

Now the Green Blade Rises
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
April 23, 2017
Second Sunday of Easter
Psalm 16; Acts 2:22-24; John 20:19-31

The gospel passage takes place on Easter night.
That day two disciples had seen the empty tomb.
They believed Jesus had risen from the dead
but still did not understand what it meant.
Mary Magdalene had seen Jesus,
but he had told her not to hold onto him,
and sent her back to tell the disciples.
When it was evening on that day,
the first day of the week,
and the doors of the house where the disciples had gathered
were locked for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood among them
and said, “Peace be with you.”
They needed peace,
their world was turning upside down
and now suddenly here was Jesus
passing through locked doors and solid walls.
The house he appeared in was stifling with the fumes of oil lamps
and the scent of anxious human sweat.
The disciples were sleep deprived, terrified, traumatized,
and ashamed of what they had done or not done.
There were tears and raised voices and tense silences.
Jesus passed through those locked doors like a ghost,
but instead of bringing heightened terror,
he brought peace. Instead of sending them out
screaming, questioning their sanity,
never wanting to go anywhere near each other
or any reminder of Christ again,
he sent them out with the power of his love,
he formed them into an orderly beloved community
to do the same good works he did
and bring his message of light and life and love
into the hard, dark world that had killed him.
He breathed into them the Holy Spirit
to guide and empower them,
to give them the courage and sense of purpose
that they needed to unlock those doors from the inside
and go out among the Jews and Romans they feared,
boldly doing and saying the same things
that got Jesus killed.
Continue reading Sermon, April 23, 2017 →

Lenten & Holy Week Resources, Past Sermons

Sermon, April 16, 2017 Easter 10 AM Service

Love So Amazing, So Divine, Part II
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
April 16, 2017    Easter
Psalm 118; Isaiah 65:17-19, 25; John 20:1-18

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”

Jesus rising from the dead; wolves and lambs feeding together; no one hurting or destroying on all this holy earth: Easter is about a magic, a love so amazing, so divine that it leads to miraculous peace and joy.  You would think the world would see this beautiful, harmonious vision and feel this amazing, divine power and give its soul, its life, its all, and follow its way.

The problem is that Easter’s path is in competition with other paths that seem just as magical in their ends but more conventional in their means.  Easter’s path is the reverse of violence, it is the path of nonviolence, but our culture’s violent path is so often the magic we choose.

Children discover at an early age that violence works like magic.  Two pre-school brothers were at a family gathering.  The four-year-old saw his three-year-old brother playing on the floor with a few wooden blocks.  He walked over, plopped down, and grabbed the blocks.  Then he turned his back and began playing with them while his little brother sat stunned.

The little boy looked as if he might cry, but instead after reflecting for a few seconds, he turned, picked up the entire box of blocks and dumped them on his brother’s head.  Then he began happily playing with something else, as his brother plotted his next attack.

As if by magic, violence got the older boy what he wanted.  He wanted the blocks, and maybe he wanted to annoy his little brother, and violence got him both.  Then the younger boy did his own magic trick—he made all his frustration and humiliation disappear with a simple flick of violent revenge.

The deep magic of violence goes all the way back to the dawn of time.  Adam and Eve ate the illegal apple in the Garden of Eden and then hid from God, doing violence to their relationships and the harmony of the world.  One of their sons killed the other out of greed and pride.  The human race began a spiral of violence that seems to have no escape.

But if we go farther back in the Genesis story we find a deeper magic from before the dawn of time. Continue reading Sermon, April 16, 2017 Easter 10 AM Service →

Lenten & Holy Week Resources, Past Sermons

Sermon, April 16, 2017 Easter Sunrise

Something Happened
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
April 16, 2017
Easter Sunrise Service
Matthew 28:1-10

Something happened
at the beginning of the universe.
We call it the Big Bang.
We have no photographs,
no eye witnesses,
we have only the echo,
only the ripples of energy
still crossing space.

Something happened
at the beginning of Christianity.
We call it the resurrection.
It was around this time,
around this day,
around two thousand years ago,
and what happened exactly
we are not sure—
there was an empty tomb,
some say there was an earthquake
and lightning,
there were visions of
radiant beings of light,
there were appearances
to various people in various places
of the dead alive again—
all mysteries, all uncertain,
all recorded only
decades after whatever
happened happened,
and we may wish
we had fingerprints
and lie detector tests
and live footage, but
we don’t, and we never
will have all the facts
except this one:
the fact is that
something happened
that convinced a community
of people just like us
that something had happened. Continue reading Sermon, April 16, 2017 Easter Sunrise →

Past Sermons

Sermon, March 26, 2017

The Light of the World
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
March 26, 2017
Fourth Sunday in Lent, A Service of Preparation
Psalm 23; John 9:1-41

We are preparing spiritually for our meeting today where we will decide whether or not to become an Open and Affirming congregation. I wrote in my description of this service on the website:

“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…. The service will…give us the opportunity to open wide to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and to remember who we have been…at our best in the past and what we feel God is calling us to be and do in our time.”

I have been trying to accomplish that, beginning with the bulletin’s Silent Meditation that recognizes this congregation as “a loving church family where everyone feels welcome and at home, appreciated and supported…where we take the love we find here out into the world around us.” The Meditation continues with an aspiration that is crucial to what we are doing today: “We will seek to maintain healthy communication and a positive, hopeful attitude as we face inevitable challenges.” It says, “We dream of being a church that shines like a lighted window into the community,” referencing the Lighted Window poem and these gorgeous windows and all the love and faith and generosity of spirit that they represent. Continue reading Sermon, March 26, 2017 →

Past Sermons

Sermon, March 19, 2017

Love Has Been Poured into Our Hearts, A Spring of Water
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
March 19, 2017   Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-5; John 4:5-29

Today’s scripture passages are complicated. In fact, you could call them a mess.

God frees the children of Israel from slavery and helps them escape Pharaoh’s army. God gives them Moses to perform miracles and guide them. All that is just what you would expect from a loving and merciful God. But then God leads them into the wilderness where they can find no water and are afraid they will die of thirst. They cry out for help and it is counted against them. It is very messy, very confusing.

Paul’s letter to the Romans starts by affirming that faith is all we need to enter into God’s grace and peace, but then it says that suffering plays a role, too, for “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Buddhism was founded as a way to escape suffering, but Christianity tells us to take up our cross, go into our suffering and be grateful for it. How can we make sense of that? Continue reading Sermon, March 19, 2017 →

Church News, Past Sermons

Sermon, March 12, 2017

Everyone Who Believes
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
March 12, 2017   Second Sunday in Lent
Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

It may be the most famous passage in the whole Bible. Bumper stickers do not even quote it or say what book it is from, they just list the number 3:16. It says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

That verse is often used to define who is in and who is out of God’s love. I was shocked once at a gathering of people who were training to become pastors of various denominations when one seminarian claimed that he was the only Christian there. His church insisted that Christians had to believe its particular very narrow set of doctrines. He condemned every other seminarian even though they were giving their entire lives for the love of serving Christ. To him, the phrase “everyone who believes” in John 3:16 was a high border wall his church built to shut illegal aliens out of God’s realm.

And yet the next verse says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” God was not shutting a border, God was opening it. God loved the world before there were any Christians. He sent Jesus so that we could see more clearly what it looks like to live as a child of God on earth, and how God’s realm of love and life and light works when we establish it around us.

One of the ways it works is that everyone who believes is free to enter, and “everyone who believes” does not mean everyone who signs on to a certain narrow set of beliefs, it does not mean everyone who performs rituals just the right way, it does not even mean everyone who obeys the ten commandments or any set of rules. Paul dispelled the idea of a rigid legalism two thousand years ago, and yet many churches still condemn and exclude some people who believe.
Continue reading Sermon, March 12, 2017 →

Past Sermons

Sermon, March 5, 2017

I Will Teach You the Way You Should Go
Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
March 5, 2017   First Sunday in Lent
Psalm 32; Exodus 13:17-22; Matthew 4:1-11

We need to believe that God is capable of creating a new church that carries forward the best of the old, a future church we will love just as much as the church of the past.

“God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness,” the book of Exodus says. It is so easy to think we have gone wrong when times get hard or we get lost. Think how reassuring it would be if in those times we thought, “Ah, God is leading me by the roundabout way of the wilderness toward the Promised Land!”

But how can we know that it is God who is leading? God went in front of the children of Israel as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, guiding and lighting their way. We long for such clear signs. We want skywriting, like “Surrender Dorothy” in the Wizard of Oz. How can we tell the difference between being led by a roundabout way and being hopelessly lost?

The Psalm and Gospel passage both give the same answer to that question. The Psalm says, “Let all who are faithful offer prayer to you.” The Gospel shows Jesus following the Spirit and turning to God in every temptation. Our children will tell you that the answer to every question is “Pray!”

God speaks in the Psalm saying, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go.” God pleads with us not to be stubborn “like a horse or mule…whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.” The Psalm says that people suffer many torments when they do not let God teach them the way, “but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in God.”

Jesus suffered many torments even though he let God lead him, just as the children of Israel suffered in the wilderness, yet because he kept turning to God, worshipping and serving only God, the temptations eventually subsided and “angels came and waited on him.”

Part of how we can make sure God is leading us is to keep looking to God to teach us the way. Continuous metanoia is the spiritual practice of turning back to God in prayer in every moment when we catch ourselves getting distracted.

Praying, studying sacred writings and seeking spiritual direction from a wise counselor are the classic ways to discern if we are hearing God’s guidance correctly, but the Psalm says that torments are another thing that will tell us if we go wrong. How can this be if Jesus suffered torments while innocently following the Spirit? Continue reading Sermon, March 5, 2017 →

Past Sermons

Sermon, February 26, 2017

The Beloved and The Beloved Community   Rev. Thomas Cary Kinder
The Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ,
Bradford, Vermont
February 26, 2017
Last Sunday after Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday
Verses from Psalms 50, 104, 36 & 139 and II Corinthians 4;
II Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 16:21-17:7

The Transfiguration Story comes at the center and turning point of the gospel. The teaching leading into it is at the heart of Jesus’ entire message. Jesus began his ministry saying, “Repent, for the realm of God is at hand.” In today’s passage in Matthew we see what that means.

Remember that the word repentance is an inadequate translation of the Greek word metanoia. Jesus is talking about metanoia when he urges Peter to set his mind not on human things, but on divine things. He is talking about metanoia as the way into the realm of God when he says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

Metanoia means to give up the life we live with our heart and mind and soul set on human things, and choose to lose it all for the sake of the way that Christ is showing us to live, a life that fills our heart, mind and soul with the love of God and neighbor, a life that loses itself in that love. Setting our mind on human things we may gain the whole world but we forfeit the life that truly is life, and there is nothing we can give other than our whole life in order to gain that life.

The way to enter the realm of God is to allow our heart, mind and soul to be changed by setting them on God’s love and life and light—that is the essence of what Jesus meant by his message of metanoia or repentance.

This is not about dying and going to heaven, or leaving our home and work and entering a monastery. Jesus said, “There are some standing here who will not taste death” before they see the realm of God on earth. Metanoia opens the door to God’s realm within and around us. It is here right now. The world is waiting for us to see it transfigured, with the light and love of God shining through it. Jesus is waiting for us to see him as he truly is, as he lives today in this world, in the hearts of those around us, in nature, in ourselves.

The 20th Century Catholic monk and best selling author, Thomas Merton, had an experience of seeing the world transfigured. He described it this way: Continue reading Sermon, February 26, 2017 →