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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SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11 and John 1:6-8; 19-28
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

Once upon a time, there was a man named John. You may know him as John the Baptist, but in the Fourth Gospel, he is referred to neither as the Baptist (that’s the Gospel of Matthew), nor as the Baptizer (as in the gospel of Mark), nor as John, son of Zachariah and Elizabeth (like in the Gospel of Luke). He is not the ‘one who lived in the wilderness.’ When the temple officials interrogate him, John tells them that he is not the messiah, not Elijah, not the prophet. Not, neither, nor. The Gospel remains coy concerning the identify of this man. The details, it seems, don’t matter. When pressed, John finally answers by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “I am the voice.” He says. “The voice crying out in the wilderness.”

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DATE: November 23, 2014
SCRIPTURE: Luke 17:11-19; Ephesians 3:20-21
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

DATE: November 15, 2014
SCRIPTURE: Luke 12: 32-34; Ephesians 3:16-21
©Alison J. Buttrick Patton

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DATE: November 9, 2014
Temple Israel

This sermon is unavailable.

DATE: November 2, 2014
SCRIPTURE:
Deuteronomy 334:1-12 and Ephesians 3:16-21 – texts printed following the sermon
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

Up Mount Nebo Moses climbed, up the winding path, until the voices of the Israelites faded behind him and an airy silence settled in, punctuated only by the scuffle of his sandaled feet on hard-packed ground and the occasional rustling of small creatures in the underbrush. He reached the summit and the view opened up before him. I wonder whether his heart pounded, just a bit; whether his legs shook. He’d climbed so many times: Mt. Sinai, mostly. But this climb was different. Continue reading →