SUMMER READS ISSUE 2021 CRIER 2021 - Issue No. 6 The First Church in Marlborough, (Congregational), UCC 37 High Street, Marlborough, Massachusetts www.firstchurchmarlborough.org Dear Saints of God at First Church, As usual we are sending your way our fourth annual “Summer Reads” issue of the Crier. It comes together by me collecting throughout the year articles I found worth reading – in the hope that when you are on the beach, in your backyard, or in a mountain lodge, you might want to peruse them. Would love you to drop me a note about them! The first one is about the virtue of forgiveness and the second a book review about a small Christian pacifist sect that migrated in the early 20th Century to Canada. It is all about the way of Christian living. We tend to forget, but the word “Christian” was initially a slur – the early followers of Christ called themselves “People of the way.” What then, is our “way” calling us to do? How shall we live to give witness to our faith? The third article is about the joys – and pitfalls of translating the Bible. You may not know this, but as late as in the 1950’s, Bible translations were a subject of great controversies and not just in the United States. The article is long but do read it! It is not just well written, but it will also help you understand why I sometimes tell you in my sermons about the quirks in Hebrew or Greek. Finally, the last one is by a UCC pastor who discovered the beauty of church buildings and a rich theological legacy they carry. Given the pandemic, and that some of you have not been inside our meetinghouse for over 16 months, I think you may be able to relate. And in that spirit, I’d like to whet your appetite and tell you that after I get back from my holiday I will preach a short four- Sunday sermon series on OUR stained glass windows, and how they relate to our Christian faith. I hope you all have a great summer! Please do come to our 5:30PM Vespers services and listen to our great summer preachers, and by God’s grace I shall see you in August! Yours in Christ, Pastor Kaz 1 INSIDE THIS ISSUE JULY & AUGUST SERVICES ARE AT Thanks, Prayers, Special Summer Hours 2 5:30PM IN THE SANCTUARY Theology 3 (join us in person or via Facebook live stream) UCC Roots, Justice ~ Book Review 5 Translating the Bible 6 July 4 Sunday Worship 5:30pm A Sweet Sanctuary 11 Guest Preacher Domenik Ackermann Diaconate, Women’s Fellowship 14 July 11 Sunday Worship 5:30pm Guest Preacher Rev. Jon Wortmann Confirmation/Sunday School, Help July 18 Sunday Worship 5:30pm Wanted, Our Father’s Table 15 Guest Preacher Rev. Jon Wortmann July 25 Sunday Worship 5:30pm NOTES OF THANKS Guest Preacher Nathan Leach Aug 1 Sunday Worship 5:30pm The Hollis family would like to thank all of Guest Preacher Rev. Jon Wortmann our church family for their prayers, cards, Aug 8 Sunday Worship 5:30pm-Pastor Kaz calls and visits during Gary’s four years with cancer. We have felt your love for Gary and it (we return to 10:00am Worship Sept 5th) will always be with us. We want to especially thank Pastor Kaz and the Deacons for their OUR PRAYERS support. Your love has given us strength. The loss of our dear friend and life long church The Hollis Family member, Gary Hollis deeply hurt the hearts of ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ all of us, and his larger than life presence at Thank you from Hedy Berry for your kind First Church will be missed by all. Our prayers cards and calls after the passing of her son of healing and love go out to the Hollis family Mark. Special thanks to Pastor Kaz for his and all of Gary’s friends. support. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our prayers to Liz Mahoney on the June 16th Dear First Church Members, passing of her beloved husband Michael from I write to you with deep appreciation for complications of Frontal Temporal Dementia. considering me for the Alice Blakeley Scholar- ship. The members of First Church have con- sistently given to me very generously. It was PASTOR KAZ VACATION in the very walls of your church that I fell in Pastor Kaz will be away on vacation from love with playing the organ and started my July 1st through August 6th. career. It was in the very walls of your church that I had my first opportunity to work as a CHURCH OFFICE CLOSURE church musician and began to tap into my po- Office will be closed from tential. Since August of 2020, I have had the July 1st through July 20th. Sue will be check- pleasure of working as the organist and choir- master at Enfield Congregational Church in ing the phones during this time period. Enfield, CT. I would never be here today with- Reopens on July 21st & 28th Hours 9am—3pm out the opportunities that were given to me at August Hours First Church in Marlborough. With this sum Tuesdays 9am-3pm & Wednesdays 8am-2pm of money, I plan to continue my studies of Music Education at UMass Amherst. As I PASTORAL CARE head into my third year of undergrad, I will For any personal concerns, illnesses, deaths or face many licensure tests such as the Music to arrange homebound Communion: and literacy MTELs. This money will un- doubtedly relieve some of the extracurricular July 1 through July 13 expenses that will arise in the coming school Contact Rev. Sarah Hubbell at 978-460-3275 year. I thank you again for your generosity July 14 through August 6 and support as I continue my education. I Rev. Kate Carlisle at 502-797-1554 hope to be able to come back to Marlborough After August 6 soon to say thank you in person. Pastor Kaz (203-781-6372) All my thanks, Timothy Goliger 2 THEOLOGY CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKING AND THE ROLE OF FORGIVENESS Reprinted from The Christian Century ~ April 10, 2021 by Johnathan C. Richardson As I have watched the political skies shift since the election, I’ve had the nagging feeling that there is something that Christians are not saying, or not saying loudly enough. We affirm and proclaim the importance of justice, but are we falling short of our full witness? Christians engaged in justice work must first and foremost be peacemakers. But Christian peace- making begins with forgiveness. Forgiveness is essential to being the church, being in the world but not of it. It is also essential that we bring this witness to the public sphere. Justice seeking alone, without a Christian orientation to peacemaking, will not be sufficient. But before forgiveness can do its peacemak- ing work, it must first be rescued from definitions that make it irrelevant. There is a passage in Between the World and Me where Ta-Nehisi Coates remembers the funeral of his classmate Prince Jones, who was killed by a police officer. Sitting in Rankin Chapel on the campus of Howard University, under the stained-glass gaze of former dean Howard Thurman, Coates confesses, “I have always felt great distance from the grieving rituals of my people.” Coates attributes his inability to connect with Christian grieving rituals to his rejection of Chris- tian understandings of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not something he is able to offer, so he feels that he stands apart from what is happening in that chapel. “The need to forgive the officer [who killed Prince] would not have moved me,” he writes. “I knew that Prince was not killed by a single officer so much as he was murdered by his country and all the fears that have marked it from birth.” For Coates, this makes forgiveness of the killer “irrelevant.” Nor can he bring himself to ascribe any higher purpose to Prince’s death. He can mourn, yes, but not with trust that Prince’s death served some yet-to-be-seen purpose. Forgiveness and purpose are two things he attributes to Christian grief, on display in the chapel, and he rejects both. Coates’s description of his thoughts and experiences in that chapel moved me, in part because I too have met my limit for understanding and acceptance at the funerals of two men whose murders came at the hands of this country’s beliefs and fears. My friends Derek and Wayne were killed by the same system that produced the police officer who killed Prince. Derek Jackson was killed by a drug addict. Wayne Simpson was shot outside his father’s ice cream shop. While neither was killed by a police of- ficer, both were killed by a system that puts Black bodies at risk and weaponizes their very existence. A few years before Between the World and Me came out, Coates expressed his problem with ultimate purpose in an essay in the Atlantic. “I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice,” he wrote. “I don’t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos.” If anything good will be done, he argued, it will be done by humans. “I think that those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can’t guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us.” Forgiveness, as Coates understood it in the chapel, is irrelevant because it appears as an isolated incident in a universe that moves toward chaos, not justice.