Scripture: Genesis 39:1-6 & Matthew 5:10-12
This weekend, several members of Newman Church traveled to Worcester, Massachusetts for the annual meeting of the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ. George Peters, Jan Peters, and Caroline Pippert are still there this morning, worshiping with the Senator from Georgia, the Rev. Dr. Rafael Warnock who is preaching at the annual meeting gathering this morning.
As many of you know, the United Church of Christ is the denomination of which Newman Church has been part of for the past 70 years — when Congregational churches merged with German evangelical and Reformed churches to form a new denomination made up of many thousands of congregations like ours all around the United States.
And all the UCC congregations around the country are gathered into groups of 20, or 30, or 40, or more churches called Associations, and Associations are grouped into Conferences.
This weekend, the Southern New England Conference of the UCC — made up of churches from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut gathered for the 7th time since these three states began the process of joining together as one big Southern New England Conference seven years ago.
As Caroline Pippert and I drove up to the DCU Center in Worcester yesterday morning through rain, and wind, and ominous skies, there were a lot of memories coming back to us along the way — we passed through towns where years ago Caroline and her wife PJ had gone looking for places associated with their ancestors; we passed by the College of the Holy Cross where I had served as a chaplain from 2017 to 2020, and just before we arrived at the annual meeting downtown, we passed by Worcester City Hall.
Back when I worked in Worcester, I volunteered with a church called Worcester Fellowship that met outside at Worcester City Hall on Sunday afternoons. It is an outdoor church that continues to this day that, according to their mission statement, seeks to end isolation by serving homeless and at-risk adults. At Worcester Fellowship, we worshiped and sang and prayed in the outdoor plaza, before sharing bagged lunches that had been prepared and donated by local community groups.
The other ministers who led worship with Worcester Fellowship were talented musicians and incredible worship leaders — they took the leading roles. My chosen role at the Worcester Fellowship worship services was a ministry of presence. I would go talk with and comfort those folks in worship who were feeling overwhelmed by their emotions or who were navigating a mental health challenge — often it was most helpful to spin off with someone from the main service into our own quiet service of prayer and conversation on the periphery.
Worcester Fellowship was a creative and dynamic Christian community directly meeting the sacred needs of a hundred people with clear and direct vision and purpose.
I was thinking about all this as we arrived at the Annual Meeting this weekend. About a thousand people representing over 500 Southern New England churches took time this weekend to openly work through a series of conflict about whether the vision and purpose of our Southern New England Conference is clear and shared among many.
In many ways, it’s easier to make and carry out a vision for something like an outdoor church in a single city.
It’s much harder for 500 churches to make and carry out a shared vision with each other.
The vote to formally combine all of the property and money and resources of what used to be the Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island Conferences into one Southern New England Conference failed to pass yesterday.
A majority of delegates approved this final step of the merger, but it did not garner a necessary two-thirds majority. And so the creative work of setting up the conditions for approving a new Conference will continue for at least another year.
It’s one of the lessons of Genesis that we have learned over the last few weeks — every time God’s promise to be in relationship with Abraham and Sarah’s descendants passes from one generation to the next, God also changes. So it is with God and the Southern New England conference — we are in a time of change aligning with a God who also changes to adapt to the needs of those who God is in covenant with.
God’s relationship with Abraham and Sarah is very different from God’s relationship with Joseph.
On of the first things we heard today about Joseph in Egypt was that God was with him. Joseph is the second youngest of twelve brothers and many sisters, but God goes with him into Egypt. And whatever happens to Jospeh, God makes sure that even in the hard times, everything is okay for him.
In God’s preferential treatment for the poor and unfairly persecuted, and God’s love of Abraham’s family, God stays close to Joseph.
I imagine that Joseph had a hard time imagining what his future life would be like as he approached Egypt. He had been sold by his brothers to a group of nomadic traders who were on their way to Egypt, where they sell him to a government official who sees the greatness in Joseph and puts him in charge of his whole household — today we might call Joseph Potiphar’s “chief of staff.” Instantly, Joseph’s days tending flocks and gathering grain are over. A much bigger calling and responsibility has been placed on his shoulders.
Sometimes change happens gradually, but sometimes it’s an earthquake.
One of the refrains at the Annual Meeting yesterday in Worcester as the delegates debated the future of the Southern New England Conference was that change can be really hard when you’re inside of it, and the new place where you are changing toward is unknown.
Some of the tension I was sensing came from the fact that many people were seeking gradual changes to the Conference, but who also want the Conference to be capable of a profound social impact like a spiritual earthquake in the world —
- standing up for the love and Justice of Jesus in the public square,
- developing effective disciples for transformative service,
- commissioning teams to support community access to nutrition and healthcare,
- creating spiritual homes for children who are the next generation of spiritual leaders,
- cultivating radical prayer to change the constructs of society,
- and serving as an effective community partner to those in need.
This vision of gradual change and seismic impact is a valid desire, but these two goals naturally live in tension with each other. And this tension is not unique to just churches.
It was the words of our Conference Minister Rev. Darrell Goodwin that came shining into this tension and added a long-term vision with an immediate purpose; he said that in the times that we live, where the financial, bodily, and spiritual needs of the people are so great, people deserve a chance to experience a future that our gospel faith makes possible . . . and that people with their backs against the wall in our society should know that the church stood behind them in their time of need and persecution. This is spiritual work, he said, one that needs prayer and an ongoing covenant with God to bring into being.
And so the work of the church in Southern New England continues in a season of change, and our part of it at Newman Church continues…
The spiritual earthquake vision is our vision too at Newman Church, that through an ever-widening circle of service, prayer, discipleship, support of children, advocacy, and community engagement . . . the spirit of the living God might fall afresh on us. May it be true for us, today and always.
Amen.
