All posts by Bridget Peters

Sermon, March 26, 2017

March 30, 2017 Bridget Peters

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 →

Church News, Music News & Recordings

Holy Week 2017 Services

March 28, 2017 Bridget Peters

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.

Church News

Service Notes, March 26, 2017, Service of Preparation for O&A Vote

March 24, 2017 Bridget Peters

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 →

Past Sermons

Sermon, March 19, 2017

March 24, 2017 Bridget Peters

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, Music News & Recordings

Service Notes, March 19, 2017, One Great Hour of Sharing, Service of Compassion

March 16, 2017 Bridget Peters

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 →

Church News, Past Sermons

Sermon, March 12, 2017

March 16, 2017 Bridget Peters

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 →

Church News

Service Notes, March 12, 2017

March 9, 2017 Bridget Peters

Few things make us appreciate the warmth of our homes more than the kind of frigid windchill we’ve been experiencing off and on recently. Few things make us appreciate the warmth, light, peace and beauty of our sanctuary more than a Lenten wilderness, whatever may be making us feel lost or tempted or tried. A pastor who did hard labor in Chinese communist prisons for decades said after his release that any Christian who has not truly suffered is an infant and cannot possibly know the true meaning of God’s love and grace. One of the reasons 12 Step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous gain the loyalty of addicts is that they come there from rock bottom and find just the home and community and help they need to climb back into the light.

The church is that way, too, at its best. This congregation has a history of welcoming people that other churches might have rejected and surrounding them with loving support. This Sunday we will read scriptures where God and Jesus open wide the door of their salvation for all people who have the yearning and faith to seek it. We will celebrate that in the midst of all our Lenten wildernesses we always have this loving welcome waiting to comfort and nurture us. Continue reading Service Notes, March 12, 2017 →

Past Sermons

Sermon, March 5, 2017

March 8, 2017 Bridget Peters

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 →

Church News, Music News & Recordings

Service notes, March 5, 2017, First Sunday in Lent

March 2, 2017 Bridget Peters

Lent does not deserve the reputation that it has for deprivation. It can be a beautiful, spiritually rich, powerfully moving season. This Sunday we will sing four beloved hymn tunes, we will read one of the most reassuring Psalms, we will hear the old familiar story of Jesus suffering real temptations just as we do and showing us a way to respond that brings angels to our aid. Yes, Lent leads us into a wilderness, but it is a lovely and love-filled and fruitful one.

Here one of the wisest perspectives on Lent that I know. After it I will give more details about the service and share three extraordinary recordings. This is an excerpt from the great Lenten book of daily readings, A Season for the Spirit, by Martin Smith:

“Perhaps the word surrender should be enough for my prayer on this Ash Wednesday. Not the surrender of submission to an enemy, but the opposite, the laying down of resistance to the One who loves me infinitely more than I can guess, the One who is more on my side than I am myself. Continue reading Service notes, March 5, 2017, First Sunday in Lent →

Church News, Mission News

Join the Book Discussion!

March 2, 2017 Bridget Peters

It is not too late to join the Board of Mission and Social Action’s upcoming book group for adults. We are reading Little Bee by Chris Cleave. It is a novel about a refugee girl fleeing Africa and trying to build a new life in London. The Boston Globe said Little Bee is “one of the most vividly memorable and provocative characters in recent contemporary fiction…. Cleave paces the story beautifully, lacing it with wit, compassion, and even at the darkest moments, a searing ray of hope.” We will have a book discussion and brunch on Saturday, March 18 at 10:00. Please let Lucia, Patrick, Holly or Ginny know if you would like to borrow a book, or email them at bradfordvtucc@gmail.com. Click here to see the book’s page on Amazon.

Little Bee Book Cover