Calling all who may be interested in a day for sewing.  If you are not a sewing person, and want to be, join us!  We will make some simple projects (drawstring bags, origami sewn bags, and runaround bags) to share at the McFarland HS Food Pantry and the McFarland Village Food Pantry. If there is another service project you are sewing for, feel free to bring it along. If there is another resource for the bags we'll be making, you are welcome to make bags for another organization. We will have some fabric and patterns available, but you are more than welcome to bring patterns you like, and fabric that’s been waiting to be used.  

After you finish a bag or two, we support you in using the sewing time for YOU. Sewists sew, because it's good for our souls – and we are often trying to finish up projects to give in our own circles of loved ones.

On Sunday, January 15 in worship we blessed individuals going to Washington DC over inauguration weekend to witness to our Gospel values, where they joined others holding forth a vision of a more just and generous world for all people.  Below is the online journal of several MUCC members who participated in the Listening & Witnessing trip: Kristin Gorton, Joan Jacobsen, and Maddie Loss.  

Want to see more pictures and stories?  Visit facebook.com/mcfarlanducc.  

And if you're curious about the ministry trip as a whole, CLICK HERE to learn more
​from the United Church of Christ.

The bus is packed and ready for the trip to D.C. with the Wisconsin Conference United Church of Christ.

#tellthestory  #bethechurch

MORNING: We arrived in the Washington DC area just after midnight yesterday.  Today dawns with a quiet morning of reflection and prayer.  This afternoon our sisters and brothers at Emmaus UCC will be hosting us for a day of sacred conversations around issues of interfaith and inter-race engagement.  An inter-religious worship service...and...of course...a community meal, will end the day.

You are invited with us in this digital sacred place to experience God's transformative love.  Blessings this day, and in the months and years ahead. You are a beloved child of God.

This morning's moment of faith included a scavenger hunt for copies of We the People posters.

MID-DAY:  An afternoon in community.  Reflecting on the faith tools we carry as followers of Jesus... tools that can transform.  Food. Community. Christ.

#loveoverfear
#Godisstillspeaking

We have spent the day talking and listening and learning.  The day ends with a shared worship with 6 different faith communities.  Praying for Peace and Understanding.

Visit facebook.com/mcfarlanducc to see more!

What’s a preacher to do when the scripture for the day – several weeks in a row - cuts a little too close to what’s going on in the world?  The same thing one does any other Sunday:  preach the text.  Preach the Gospel. We are people of faith.  And if we shy away from our sacred stories because they bear an uncomfortable word, then we are no better than the king who fed a scroll bearing forty years’ worth of prophetic words into the flames.
 
This is the Word the Spirit has brought to the church this day:  a perilous time, when the nation is under threat.  The Prophet Jeremiah under house arrest, confined, prevented from gathering with God’s people. God’s word snatched from Baruch’s hand - and in a section we skipped over for length today - God’s prophets had to go into hiding.  The scroll with these holy, subversive words taken to the palace and read in private quarters amid the king’s closest advisers, and then deliberately, section by section, consigned to the fire.  Burned because the king did not like what he was hearing.  Because he wanted to suppress the message being spread by the prophet.
 
What we have in today’s scripture is tantamount to a book burning.  We’re not talking about a single speech here. We are talking about a scroll containing forty years of Jeremiah’s life’s work - his heart and soul, everything God had given him for the good of the nation of Israel, the shining days and the terrible days and everything in between.  A masterwork, destroyed.
 
It would be easy, after such a disaster, to give up. It would be natural — particularly for Jeremiah, who was already prone to depression, and lived in difficult times — to give in to the inner voice of doom.  To stand there in judgment, shaking one’s head, saying, “I told you so.”  Worse: to entertain fantasies of revenge, as if salvation is to be found there. 
 
But the prophet doesn’t give up, although it would have been so easy to do so.   Instead, he stayed rooted in his call, offering us a model of faithful resistance to a world that just wants to get back to normal when it’s everything but business as usual:  
 
First, the prophet speaks the word given by God.  Over and over again, the prophet spoke the words.  Sometimes it offended people.  But he kept going.   Then, the prophet passes the word on to others, so they are equipped to share it.  When Jeremiah couldn’t go himself, Jeremiah taught Baruch.  Baruch wrote it down so it could be shared.  And Baruch spoke it in the temple. 
 
And then - I love this part - when the powers of this world try to shut down the transmission of God’s word (because when does that ever work, people?) - the prophet steps up again.  This is when God germinates the seeds of the Word that are planted in the weary heart of the prophet, and it cracks wide open again.  You may think you have seen it all and done it all and by all that is holy you are tired, but the word of the Lord comes to you and here it comes again:
 
“Write down all the words that were in the first scroll that was burned.”

Write down all of the words...and more.   The scroll was burned.  The powerful ones shut it down.  Has the message been lost? No. Just delayed. Write the revised and expanded edition, God says.[1] They're not going to like hearing this one any better, but it’s still worth saying.  Justice is justice. Write it. Speak it.  Send My Word forth, instructs God — so the prophet continues to raise the uncomfortable questions before the nation as a whole, not neglecting to confront the powerful, not neglecting to speak in the public square:
 
Do you treat each other justly? Do you follow the Lord’s ways?
Stop taking advantage of the immigrant, orphan, or widow.
Stop shedding the blood of the innocent,…
going after other gods to your own ruin…[2]
 
And are you caring for God’s creation?
 
“I will weep and wail for the mountains,
and lament for the grazing lands in the wilderness.
They are dried up and deserted;
no sound of the flocks is heard;
no sign of birds or animals is seen;
all have vanished.”[3]
 
Are the rich and powerful growing fat and sleek,
prospering, indifferent to the plight of the orphan, the rights of the poor?[4]
 
From the least to the greatest, all are eager to profit.
From prophet to priest, all trade in falsehood.
they treat the wound of my people as if were nothing:
“All is well, all is well,” they insist, when in fact nothing is well.”[5]
 
Do you treat the worker with justice?
And do you allow room, in your economic life
for rest, as God commanded?[6]
 
And to whom do you give supremacy?
 
“The Lord is the true God!
He’s the living God and the everlasting King!”[7]
 
“God made the earth by his might;
he shaped the world by his wisdom,
crafted the skies by his knowledge.”[8]
 
“Stop at the crossroads and look around; ask for the ancient paths. 
Where is the good way? Then walk in it.”[9]
 
It is words such as these the prophet carried to the nation, which had him banned from the temple, confined, his words burned, and eventually killed in exile.  It is words such as these which Jesus used to confront the powers of his time, words that got him killed.
 
Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, when we remember who rules supreme.  When we remember the kingdom - or kindom - to which we belong.   
 
We are in the middle of a challenging time in the life of our nation, and a challenging run of texts from the Hebrew Prophets, to be followed by a challenging run of texts about the imminent arrival of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us.  We may come to church looking for comfort.  But the comfort in the Gospel is inseparable from its challenge, inseparable from Christ’s claim upon our lives. 
 
Our Christian life leads from font, to table, to cross:  We baptized a baby last week, and set her on the road to discipleship.  Remember all the things we said about the water:  water is washing, and soothing, and slaking thirst, and drowning.  It is death and it is life.  Remember all the things we say at the communion table:  it is a meal, where we nourish our bodies, where we celebrate the great banquet where none are excluded, where there is always enough, and it is also a funeral meal, where we remember that it is a gift offered to those Christ already knows will abandon him before he dies.  Even the first resurrection story is filled with challenge, more than comfort.
 
King Jehoiakim wants to enjoy his comfortable winter chambers by the firepit.  The nation would like it very much if things could get back to normal.  It’s a lovely dream; but that’s all “normal” ever was, a dream.  Because “comfort” was only comfortable for some, and “peace” only “peace” for some.  To abandon them for our own comfort is to abandon the Gospel.
 
Prophets, attend!  We have been given a Word for our time.  Though there may be those in our nation who say, "Hush! Your Word disturbs our peace," and urge us to quiet ourselves, we are called to proclaim it again, more boldly.  
 
For here is the way our God works: never settling for a retread of the past, but going beyond, calling us to speak and work for the revised, expansive vision of human community, a community ruled according to kindness, justice, and righteousness.
 
“I am the Lord who acts with kindness,
justice, and righteousness 
in the world,
and I delight in these things,
declares the Lord.”[10]
 
God is writing the revised and expansive edition.

​It’s gonna take a while. There’s still time to get involved.  Prophets, are you in?
 
Amen.

Preached November 13, 2016, the Sunday after the US Presidential Election
Text:  Isaiah 6:1-8 (Isaiah's Call and Sending)

The One Great Hour of Sharing offering this year focuses on refugees and displaced persons.  There is no better biblical story to accompany this work than that of Ruth and Naomi.

Brief yet profound, in the passage of Ruth we encounter the resilience of two women who have been widowed, as well as ravaged by the natural disaster of famine.  These ecological and socio-political events rendered Naomi and Ruth the most vulnerable in their society.  Just like refugees today, Ruth and Naomi did not have the privilege of choosing to stay in their homes, but were forced to relocate.  Yet when the system failed them, Ruth chose solidarity with Naomi over despair and accompanies her to pursue a livelihood for both of them.

​This Christmas, Christa Fisher, the interim chaplain for the Dane County Jail, inspired us ​to send Christmas Cards to those in prison.   She writes...

Several members recently proposed a new ministry team.  Their goal is to provide resources for children with visible and invisible special needs to participate in church activities successfully, and to educate the congregation about special needs differences.  Thank you to Trish Bailey, Lisa Fernan, Amy Hanneman, and Megan Marten, for your leadership in bringing these issues forward.  Here's a word from the team:

Coming soon…  
Coffee break for parents. This will be likely held once per month at MUCC with childcare available. This will offer parents a forum to share, ask questions, and learn from others. Some months we will have a speaker from the community join us to share about a particular topic of interest.  Stay tuned for details.  Let us know if you're interested and we'll put you on our list.