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 →

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 →

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 20^th 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 →