Pastoral Reflection at the Rededication Worship for Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
March 8, 2015

“Celebrate all the good things the Lord your God has done for you.”
“You are here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.”
“Christ is building you into a dwelling place for God.”

Oil the hinges of our hearts’ doors, that they may swing easily open to welcome you.

There they stood on the sandy banks of the Jordan River – the river they’d just crossed over after years of wandering in the wilderness.  Wilderness dust still clung to their feet and ankles; their eyes were wide as they surveyed the beauty before them.  “This is it,” thought the Israelites. “THIS is the land that flows with milk and honey, the land we’ve been dreaming about all these years, the home for which we have yearned with our whole hearts…”
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Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
March 1, 2015

Scripture: Mark 8:31-38

Some of the bravest people I know are recovering alcoholics. The ones who keep showing up for AA meetings. The ones who choose their vacation destinations based on whether there is a twelve-step meeting near-by. The ones who admit, every day that they won’t make it alone, that they need a community and they need God to get them through. What I admire isn’t their ability to stop drinking (although that’s hard enough); it’s the courage with which they acknowledge what is really true for every one of us: that we are flawed; that we screw up, we fumble and fail; that at least some of the time, we all stumble along, weighed down by fear, confusion or doubt. It takes courage – and unrelenting honesty, to admit that we don’t always have it all together, that we can’t make it alone.
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Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Linda Bruce
February 22, 2015

Scriptures: Psalm 25:1-10, Mark 1:9-15

With great joy I stand before you and truly appreciate the gift of walking together on the Lenten path.  A journey of stories.  My first story comes from the book of Mark. In past sermons and Bible studies we have heard about Jesus being baptized by his cousin John although  perhaps John is thinking, my cousin Jesus is special, he actually should be baptizing me;  but I’m John the Baptist and it seems that there may be something else going on here, maybe there is a bigger story about to unfold (and a lot of theology).

Sure enough, as soon as Jesus is baptized he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.

¹¹ And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

¹² And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And for forty days Jesus is tempted by Satan, hanging out with the wild beasts, helped by angels.  He then returns to begin his three year earthly ministry…and crucifixion and Easter and…beyond.

We know this story. I want to re-wind a little bit and go back to that moment when Jesus got the call:  “You’re it!” “You’re the one.”  “You’re beloved.”  “I am well pleased”

…..And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

….What? ….

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Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
February 15, 2015

Scriptures: 2 Kings 2:1-2; 8-12 and Mark 9:2-10

Once upon a time, there lived a man. An ordinary, extraordinary man who carried within him the spark of the universe. He had ears to hear the singing of the stars, and eyes to see their shining. He knew them all by name. His heart beat with the rhythm of the waves that lapped the shores of the Jordan River. His feet got dusty from walking and his sun-brown face was etched by laugh lines. His touch was gentle, electric. And he touched often – always with the effect that a person was forever changed. People were drawn to him like a moth to flame – even before that day up on the mountain.

What made him extraordinary, you might ask? This, it seems: That one afternoon, while standing waist-deep in the chilly waters of the Jordan, he saw the sky torn open and heard a voice declare, “You are my beloved.” And he believed it, felt the truth of it at the core of his being. “You knit me together in my mother’s womb,” writes the Psalmist. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
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Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
February 8, 2015

Scriptures: Mark 1:29-39

A rabbi became troubled that his life had no meaning, that he was somehow on the wrong path.  He went out walking, and lost in thought, he wandered onto a military base that was closed to civilians.  A soldier stopped him and shook him from his reverie.  “Who are you, and what is your purpose here?” asked the soldier.  In response, the rabbi asked:  “Soldier, what do they pay you to guard this base?”  The soldier named his fee. “I will pay you the same, if you will ask me those two questions every day.”

“Who are you and what is your purpose?”
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Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Alexander P. Floyd Marshall
January 25, 2015

Some of you may know that my absolute favorite television show of all time is The West Wing.

Any other West Wing fans here?

So as I was reading and preparing for this Sunday, a particular scene from the show leapt to my mind. In this scene, two of the main characters, Josh and Sam, are talking on a street corner in New York. Josh works, at this point, for a senator who is preparing to run for President and has a good chance of winning. Sam works for a major New York City law firm and is about to make partner. Neither are especially satisfied with what they do. Josh doesn’t really believe in his candidate and Sam has ethical qualms about some of his clients. Josh is on a scouting trip to check out a rival candidate. As the two part ways, he says to Sam, “If I see the real thing, should I tell you about it?” Sam replies: “You won’t have to. You’ve got a really bad poker face.”

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Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
January 11, 2015

Scriptures:Genesis 1:1-5, Mark 1:4-11

What do you know of your baptism, if indeed you’ve been baptized?  If you were baptized as an infant, have you seen pictures or heard the stories?  Is there a baptismal gown that has been passed down through your family?  Or were you old enough to remember your own baptism – at the font, in the river, on the beach or in someone’s backyard?  If you close your eyes, can you recall, or perhaps imagine, the water dripping down your face, the wet smudge of a cross on your forehead, or river water roiling around your knees?  Was the water warm or shockingly cold?   If you have witnessed the baptism of a son or daughter, niece or nephew, God-son or God-daughter tell me: did she or he laugh, or cry, or sleep?  Do you remember seeing the water trickle down that child’s brow, or recall kissing the wet patch of hair after the pastor handed that baby back to you?
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Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J.  Buttrick Patton

Scripture:  Luke 1: 26-41

If you’ve ever been the parent of an infant, you may recall how discombobulating those first days after a baby’s birth can be.  There is joy, yes!  And Wonder.  Tiny toes and soft little apricot ears and the sweet smell of a baby’s head. But there is also worry, and awkwardness…and very little sleep.  There’s the crash course in baby communication, as you try to interpret every silence, each cry.  There’s the changing, feeding, putting down, getting up, feeding again in an endless cycle: twenty-four hours divided up into 30 minute shifts.  There’s the terrifying realization that this tiny living being is vulnerable in a thousand different ways, and entirely dependent on you.  There are those desperate moments when you wonder why children don’t come with an instruction manual.

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9 pm Candlelight Worship, December 24 2014
Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J Buttrick Patton

It’s a lot to take in: Christmas.  Nearly impossible, perhaps, to wrap our minds and hearts around the significance of this season, in between the wrapping, shopping, hanging and baking, to pause and consider the true weight and breadth and wonder of it all:  Christ is born – Emanuel. What does it mean, that we welcome this holy child into a world fraught with pain and upended by violence? What does it mean to sing, “Silent Night, Holy Night” when around the globe live millions for whom there is no safety nor comfort in darkness?  Even as we sing Christmas carols, there are those among us whose hearts are broken, who grieve the death of a loved one, or lament the loss of a job.  Even as we proclaim, ‘Joyful, joyful!’, the headlines cry “Worry and dismay!”  We can name all the troubled places that fill the pages of the papers and overload our Twitter feeds this week:  In our own country:  Minneapolis, Ferguson, Brooklyn, Long Island, Washington D.C. … and around the globe:  Syria, Pakistan, North Korea, West Africa and of course:  Israel-Palestine, that Holy Land…

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SCRIPTURE: Luke 1:26-55
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

Greetings, favored one!  The Lord is with you.

Those are the words with which the angel Gabriel greeted Mary, the young woman destined to become the bearer of God.  Of course, she had no idea, before Gabriel’s appearance, that such plans were in the offing.  At least, not that we can tell.  Mary, a teenaged Middle Eastern woman, was engaged to an older man, Joseph, and preparing to move to his home to become his wife, sometime within the next year.  Whether this filled her with anticipation, or with trepidation, we have no way of knowing.  But I imagine all those emotions paled in comparison with the mix of responses that bubbled up during her encounter with Gabriel, that messenger of God.
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