Yes! We're Open: Living Faith with Needham UCC

"Holy Humor Sunday" sounds like a modern invention, but actually it’s a practice with deep roots, particularly in the Eastern Churches. In those traditions, the joy of Easter is extended to the Sunday after Easter Sunday with a celebration called “Bright Sunday” or “Smile Sunday" or Holy Humor” Sunday. It’s a way of understanding Christ’s Easter resurrection as God’s own last laugh,...

We’re taught that Jesus’ Easter resurrection is a good thing–that, in fact, it’s the very best thing: the death of death, the springtime of souls, the divine affirmation of Jesus’ Gospel ministry of justice, peace, and compassion. But the guards who witnessed it firsthand were so frightened they “shook and became like dead men.” That doesn’t sound good. How do we let go of whatever may be keeping...

The first Palm Sunday wasn't just a parade. It was a protest. The  crowds that took to the streets with Jesus were there to lift their "Just no!" against the life-stealing, death-dealing powers of imperial politics and religion. And when their frightened leaders told them to quiet down, they only became more unruly. Now it's our turn to become unruly and lift up our own just no...

ou·​bli·​ette (ˌü-blē-ˈet) noun, a dungeon with an opening only at the top; from the French, oublier, to forget (related to oblivion) When their brother Lazarus died, it may have seemed to Mary and Martha that God didn’t care, that Jesus had forgotten him, and them. But Jesus never forgets anyone, and God’s eye isn’t just on the sparrow but on each of us, particularly those the world might prefer...

Jesus heals a lot of people, but the story usually called “Jesus and the Man Born Blind” is one of the longest and most detailed meditations on illness, disability, and healing. And it’s one of the few times where the experience of the disabled person–in this case, the “man born blind”--is centered in the text. So it’s fitting that our guest preacher, a person who lives with disability themselves...

In the Sunday school classic story from Matthew's Gospel, Jesus approaches Peter and Andrew, James and John along the lakeshore and offers them a choice: To follow him, or not. But there's definitely more than just a Sunday school context to that invitation: Jesus' prophetic mentor John the Baptizer has been arrested and soon will be executed by the state, and Jesus is headed deeper...

It's the end of the world... at least the end of the world as we've known it. How can we have hope with everything falling down around our ears? We can't. Because hope isn't something we have (or don't). Prophets and poets and our neighbors in communities who've already witnessed the end of their worlds show us us that hope is something we make, together, one step at...

As followers of Jesus, our ultimate allegiance is to the God Who Is Love, and we are called to manifest that love in justice and peace for our neighbors. But that commitment is being sorely tested these days with the rise of fascist ideology and violence supported by Christian nationalism in our country. This Sunday, we will reflect how we can meet this challenge with faith and courage. We will sh...

Enjoy a guided meditation reflecting on the story of Anna and Simeon, the elderly prophets who greeted Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus in the temple in Luke 2:22-40. Remember: YOU are a child of God, gifted, and a gift.  Join us for worship Sundays @ 10am Eastern Time, on-site & online via Zoom. Connect at www. NeedhamUCC.org —- The Congregational Church of Needham strives to be a justice-see...

Somewhere along the way, Christianity become professionalized. All too often these days we look to clergy to tell us all about God--most particularly, about where and how God is allowed to show up in our lives. And those "allowed appearances" have become more strictly filtered through the church: "A 'God moment" must look like this but never that , here but never there .&q...

We're pivoting this Sunday to address what's shaped up to be a pretty stressful and painful week (in the midst of a stressful and painful season) for a lot of folks, what with the occupation of Washington, DC by federal law enforcement, a formal request to the Supreme Court to overturn marriage equality, the ongoing starvation of Gaza, etc. etc. etc. and God only knows what's going...

"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity," sings the Psalmist (Psalm 133:1). Sure, it can be, but it's also really hard. In fact, sometimes the closer we are with our family, the harder it can be to "live together." But finding ways to live together in unity--not uniformity-- with our wider church family is an important part of following Jesus...

The political conflict between the state of Israel and Hamas is complicated by history, religion, anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred, the entangling alliances with both parties, and, not least, the special place the state of Israel holds in the theological fantasies of American Evangelical Christians. But the moral calculus is much simpler. Israel isn't just conducting a war against Hamas but...

The ancient city of Sodom has been synonymous with sin and the consequences of sin for thousands of years. These days it’s sexual sin they’re most associated with and infamous for, specifically homosexuality. But that’s a modern development and not what the Hebrew prophets or even Jesus meant when they considered the city. For most of history, Sodom’s sin was understood to be the hoarding of resou...

Since at least the time of the ancient psalmists, God has been described as a king... and kings described as gods... and the rest of humanity (and, let's be real: men) as "a little lower than God," and called by God to exercise dominion--power over--creation by "divine right." But with the Spirit's help and Jesus' example, we can imagine a "more excellent wa...

This Earth Sunday, we celebrate not God’s gift of the earth to us , but God’s gift to us of our interconnected relationship with the earth, God’s wider, deeper, higher, and altogether “very good” creation of which we are a part. Our guest preacher will be The Rev. Dr. Chris Davies, one of the executive ministers of our Southern New England Conference of our United Church of Christ denominational f...

At last we arrive at Easter Sunday. But oddly enough, Matthew's version of the story of the resurrection begins on Good Friday, with what sounds at first like a ghost story about tombs being opened and the dead walking. But it's a reminder that Easter doesn't belong just to the church and resurrection doesn't belong only to Jesus. Resurrection is for everyone, for the whole wid...

Our purpose in this Lenten series has been to slow down and spend significant time reflecting on each step of the story of Jesus’ last days during what we call Holy Week. But he dies on Good Friday. So what happens, if anything, on Holy Saturday? What even can happen? Or should we just jump ahead to the Easter we know, 2000 years later, is coming on Sunday? Our special guest preacher, The Rev. Dr....

A guided meditation:  Did you know that before there was a Last Supper, there was a First Supper, when Jesus was prepared to endure the terrible events of the rest of Holy Week by the love of his friends. In particular, one woman anointed him with costly perfume, tears and laughter, intimacy and grief mingling together as it ran down, and the house was filled with the odor of holiness, of love. It...

Jesus continues to wear out his welcome in Jerusalem. The various power blocs within the religious leadership of the day pepper him with questions, often trick questions, hoping to discredit him and his disciples in the eyes of the faithful without drawing the attention of the occupying Romans. But Jesus is never one to shy away from controversy for the sake of a larger and more loving Gospel, whi...

In the wake of this election's seismic shift, we’re spending time grounding ourselves once more in the core message of 1 Corinthians 13:13—“Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three”—in ways that speak to our current situation, beginning with faith. This week it's hope.  We talk about having hope, which sounds lovely... until you lose it. Then what are we supposed to do? But as people...

*With apologies for the poorer than usual audio quality. A subtitled video is available at https://youtu.be/QOpgyCGCVf8 In Mark 10:17-31, an insider--the rich young ruler--and an outsider--Simon Peter--both ask Jesus essentially the same question: "What must we do to be saved?" Jesus' answer disappoints them both. He's not interested in what will set either man apart in God&apo...

The gospels are full of miraculous stories of  Jesus healing people, but they’re never told from the point of view of the people he heals. The (temporarily) able-bodied Church today is only beginning to understand how problematic that really is, whether we take these stories literally or metaphorically. Because nobody’s body is just a metaphor, and, as disability justice advocates like author Amy...

“God’s love and kindness will shine upon us like the sun that rises in the sky” (Luke 1:78-9, CEV). A celebration more than a decade in the making! Come join us for a special worship service dedicating the new solar panel array on our sanctuary roof. This giant leap forward was made that much more possible through donations given in loving memory of Deb Baldwin, a founding member of our Environmen...

In the wake of this election week’s seismic shift, we’re going to spend the next three Sundays looking to ground ourselves once more in 1 Corinthians 13:13—“Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three”—in ways that speak to our current situation. Faith isn’t a laundry list of six impossible things we have to believe before breakfast. Faith is trust (literally, in the New Testament Greek), and the...