First Congregational Church
Change Happens
God is always making things new – again.
(Posted April 3, 2024)
Probably one of the most important lessons that comes into focus for those of us who’ve been on the planet for some years is that life is all about change.
Impermanence is a sign that growth is taking place. However when we’re young, we’re convinced that things will last forever. Our parents will be by our side forever. The crush on that boy or girl in our school will last forever. Our youthful strength and beauty will be ours forever. After all, why wouldn’t they?
If You’re Fighting Change, Choose Your Battles Carefully
But it also seems that our obsession with permanence isn’t restricted to our youth. Just spend ten minutes watching TV these days. We spend huge amounts of our money for products and procedures to keep things the way we think they should be, forever. We erase eye bags that tell our age. We try to combat wrinkles as if they were some dangerous form of cancer. And Gray hair? God forbid that those white strands show up in public.
When recently two of the NASA astronauts ended up stuck on the International Space Station for nine months longer than their original hitch, Astronaut Suni Williams gained criticism from the world below her when her jet black hair slowly turned white. It was as if people on earth thought a beautician and hair dye were kept in space. Oddly enough, her flying partner Butch Wilmore didn’t face the same kind of criticism, since his hair was natural. Also, he was a guy. She is 62. He is 59.
Change: An Invitation to Be a New Person
The truth is, God is quite proud of the ability to make things new. Through the prophet Isaiah this week we hear God’s voice:
“Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
As we seemingly speed through this Lenten season, we realize that these disciples we’ve read about have been given the invitation to become new people.
They’ve quite literally left the old, familiar, comforting objects of their past and leapt into the sea of the unknown. They followed a young Rabbi who dangerously disturbs the comfortable with his interpretation of the law, and who he befriends:
- The fishermen have left their nets.
- The Samaritan woman has left her water jug.
They have been transformed into proclaimers of “a new thing.”
Here, in this week’s Gospel, Jesus’ friend Mary ominously foresees the future, and washes his feet with the costly ointment meant for death and embalming. Judas, with his opposing motives of avarice and admiration of Jesus, objects.
Come join us as we continue on the road into Jerusalem, from horror to Halleluiah.
A Meditation in The Dust
Follow the footprints.
(Posted April 16, 2024)
I wonder how you see it in your mind’s eye. What do you see when you imagine the dusty road that led from where the donkey brought Jesus into Jerusalem. There will be footprints on that route.
Footprints Though Holy Week
First, of course, Jesus’ prints and that of his little beast. Then a clamor of footprints left by the crowd that followed, perhaps over to the Temple vestibule. And then, the street dust might have recorded people fleeing in panic, as Jesus emptied the tables there of the money changers.
Footprints to an Upper Room
A little farther down the road, those footprints gather just outside a household, where steps lead to an upper room and a Passover feast. There are dusty prints going in, but clean prints leaving. I wonder what transformation happened inside that room?
Footprints in the Garden
In the gathering gloom of evening, the crowd of footprints lead toward the olive trees and Gethsemane. To a place where the grass tells us people had laid down and slept after dinner. But then there was that spot on the ground where the dust was caked with blood and you could tell there had been a fight. Gashes in the dust showed where swords had been dragged along the stampede of people. And then there was nothing.
Footprints on Golgotha
Days later brings us to the foot of the road to Golgotha – The Place of The Skull, where the Roman Empire put on display for humiliation the people who didn’t play by their rules. If ever there was a plot of earth stained with blood and tears, this was it. There weren’t too many footprints here. And at the base of a cross, only two – a man and woman. It was a lonely patch of ground, punctuated only (some would said they saw them) by some donkey tracks.
And then came the rains, the torrents that sped down the hill, washing Jerusalem in watery blood, obliterating the prints of people who cared.
Back to the Garden
So then we fast forward to that Garden – just after the dawn, as the light slowly cascades down the outer stone walls of an empty tomb.
A glass jar of ointment lies overturned in the earth. Just a few footprints here – two men side by side, the tiny prints of a small woman, and then – the bold prints of Him… each bearing the vacant hole where the nails had held him. And where his prints and the woman’s prints end, there is a cascade of human prints, multiply and bringing more of them along with each step.
He is risen and so have we.
Join us for Easter rejoicing and an egg hunt!
Are You Sure About That?
Doubt can be a blessing.
(Posted April 24, 2025)
These days, there’s probably no better proof of the truth in Bertrand Russell’s statement than watching the news every day. It sometimes can be mind-boggling how somebody who’s defending an indefensible point of view can invent such bizarre “facts” to “prove”
it’s true. They cannot live with doubt, so they invent an ironclad explanation.
If we’re honest with ourselves, though, we “people of faith” have as much of a problem with doubt as the cocksure people Bertrand mentioned.
‘Pretty Sure About That’
When we were kids, life was so much easier because our parents told us what we believed about God and life. Then as we steamed into our adolescence, we began to suspect something: our parents aren’t very smart. In fact with our youth and clear vision, we know better. At this stage, we may cast off parental “truths” and, through trial and error, come up with our own.
‘Umm, Not So Much’
We may even arrive at this point with some of the beliefs we had in the past. However, most of our beliefs support the concept that what feels good doesn’t obligate us to do things that interfere with our own enjoyment. Many people in our contemporary world never let go of this adolescent mindset. “God and church are useful when they make us feel good.” This is a main reason that church seats are so empty in our houses of worship- except for Christmas and Easter, when we not only feel good, we think we’re holy.
‘I Really Doubt That’
But then, there is the inevitable third phase in our lives: the moment of crisis; when we’ve done things right and still we come face-to-face with raw reality: the dissolution of a supposedly permanent relationship. Failure. The death of those we love. Our own serious or possibly terminal illness. These things bring us up short in front of that awful word: DOUBT.
This Sunday we are witness to the way doubt derails the life of Thomas the Apostle. John’s Gospel doesn’t say exactly what threw Thomas into such doubt that he didn’t believe his fellow apostles that they had seen the Lord. However it was probably enough when Thomas watched from a distance as Jesus died on the cross.
Thomas is every man, hating and dreading his own doubt and the dying of faith. But doubt can be a blessing. Paul Tillich said:
“Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.… Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.”
It’s the truth. Most of us, even those of us who wear the collar, experience doubt, and not just one time in our lives. Join us and Thomas this Sunday as we live though our doubts.
Information
First Congregational Church
164 Deer Hill Ave.
Danbury, CT 06810
Est. 1696
Phone: (203) 744-6177
Email: office@danburychurch.org
Office Hours:
Monday Closed
Tuesday 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Wednesday 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Thursday 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Friday Closed
Thrift Shop Hours:
Saturday 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Sunday Worship:
Sunday 10:00 a.m.–11 a.m.