• Content

  • Pages

  • Upcoming Events

    • Sunday service - Holy Communion December 28, 2025 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…
    • Sunday service - Morning Prayer January 4, 2026 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…
    • Sunday service - Holy Communion January 11, 2026 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT As of January 16, 2022 our service online only (via Zoom). Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.orgTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) …

Ash Wednesday February 17, 2021

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Beth Crane

Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ashes are a symbol of mortality. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. It is good to be reminded of our mortality and our weakness. Yet within these ashes is a paradox, because these ashes are made from the palms we waved on Palm Sunday, palms we would have placed on the road in front of our Lord to welcome him as our King. We are on a journey to grow into the likeness of Christ our King. We are on a journey to grow from brokenness to wholeness. This Ash Wednesday we will be putting the ashes on our own foreheads. We will be fasting from the sensation of having the ashes placed on our foreheads by a fellow-journeyer in Christ. Some us do not have ashes to place on our foreheads, but we can still be aware of our mortality by tracing the sign of the cross on our foreheads. All of us are here because we want to observe a holy and life-giving Lent. The word Lent, after all, comes from the Middle English word lente, meaning “spring.”

We are beginning a time of prayer, fasting, self-examination, and spiritual growth. Some of us are also participating in the Social Justice Bible Challenge and Lent Madness.

Our opening reading comes from the person we call the Third Isaiah. God’s people have come home from their exile in Babylon and have begun to rebuild the temple and the city wall. They have become discouraged at the huge task before them. They fast and pray, but they argue and treat each other badly. They oppress their workers. The summary of the law calls us to love God and to treat others as we would have then treat us. Their behavior does not match their profession of faith.

God calls them to an authentic fast that includes social justice. And God calls them and us to “Loose the bonds of injustice,…to let the oppressed go free”…to share our bread with the hungry, to give shelter to the homeless, to clothe the naked—in other words, to extend the love of God to our brothers and sisters of all colors and creeds.

In our epistle, Paul calls us to “be reconciled to God,” In order to do that, we need to take the words of God spoken through Isaiah very seriously. As Christians, we are called to love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

In our gospel, our Lord reminds us that our spiritual growth is between us and God. We are not focusing on earthly treasure, but on the precious heavenly treasure of God’s love and grace. We are fasting, praying, and giving to deepen our love for God and others.

This year, we have been through so much with Covid and everything else. Bishop Shannon is inviting us to focus on social justice issues, and I think that is a wonderful idea. We need to heal our nation, just as Isaiah’s community needed to heal their nation twenty-five hundred years ago. God is calling us to treat each other as beloved children of our loving God.

During this liturgy for Ash Wednesday, we would normally celebrate Holy Eucharist. We will not be doing that. We have been fasting from Holy Communion for eleven months, except for one Distanced Communion. We have not been together in person inside our church building for a very long time. We have much in common with God’s people who spent several decades in exile in Babylon.

My point is that we have already been engaged in a very long fast from singing together in person, celebrating Holy Communion, talking to each other face to face, hugging each other, gathering for coffee hour and conversation in person. So, as we follow our Lenten discipline, I ask that we try to be especially aware of God’s love for us, God’s love that cannot be stopped or diminished. And then let us be aware our love for God and each other, our love for all our brothers and sisters, and let us work, fast, and pray to increase and deepen that love. Let us work and pray that we may become “repairers of the breach” and “restorers of streets to live in.” Amen.

Meditation and A Prayer of Self-Offering

We have just exchanged the Peace and sung the Offertory Hymn. As we all know, we will not be celebrating Holy Eucharist. This is a huge loss. It has been an extended exile, a wandering in the wilderness. Nothing can replace sharing Holy Eucharist. Nothing can replace greeting and hugging each other at the Peace. But rather than simply reverting to the ending for Morning Prayer to conclude the service, I wanted to acknowledge the fast we have been in and the exile we have been experiencing.

We are not able literally to stand before the altar at Grace and place bread, wine, and money on the altar, to represent our offering of our God-given time, talent and treasure to God, but, at this time of offering when we would normally move into the Eucharistic Prayer, we offer to you, our loving God, our feelings of sadness, frustration, anger, hopelessness, powerlessness, all the feelings that are welling up during this time of exile and pandemic.

Loving and forgiving and healing God, we thank you for keeping us together, for giving us strength to keep gathering virtually. Thank you for your gift of faith, for those glimmers of hope, for the gift of perseverance. Thank you for binding us together with your love.

Lord Jesus, we are not celebrating Communion, but we know that you are here with us, You told us that where two or three are gathered, you would be with us and you would hear our prayers. We cannot literally receive your Body and Blood today, but we know that you are giving us spiritual food and energy. 

We know that you are walking the Way of Love, the Way of the Cross, with us. Thank you for your presence and for your love. Thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit leading and guiding us. Because of you, we are here. You have called us together.

With all our heart, we thank you, and we offer our selves and our lives to your service. Lead us and guide us, that we may observe a Holy Lent, that we may love and serve you with singleness of heart, and that we may share your love with others. In your Holy Name, the Name of Jesus.  Amen.

Filed under: Reverend Janet Brown, Sermons | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Ash Wednesday February 10, 2016

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Beth Crane

Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6.16-21

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice; to undo the thongs of the yoke; to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” These words which God spoke through the  prophet Isaiah remind us that we are called to help God to free every person from any kind of slavery which binds them.

The people of God in Isaiah’s time were performing the outward rituals of worship, but they were not living the spirit of their faith. Because of this, they were not in harmony with God. They wondered why God was not answering their prayers, but their prayers were not in harmony with God’s vision. God’s vision is that we free our brothers and sisters from oppression and that we take care of each other.

In our gospel, Jesus is giving us a powerful illustration of how to come into God’s presence. The Pharisee is full of narcissistic self-congratulation. He, too, follows every aspect of the Law, but he is so full of himself that there is no room for God. Whereas the tax collector, someone who is hated by all because he collects money for the Roman oppressors, realizes that he is a sinner and that he needs God’s help. His heart and his life are wide open to God;s healing, forgiveness, and grace.

One of the tasks of Lent is to go into God’s presence, take a look at ourselves, and come to a realistic assessment of where we are and who we are. Yes, we are all sinners. We do the things we do not want to do, and we fail to do the things that we want to do and are called by God to do.  We are frail, fallible humans, yet we also know that God’s love and grace are at work in our lives.

Another of our tasks in Lent is to ask God’s help in finding out where we need to grow spiritually, and then ask that God give us the grace to do that growing.

Where do we need to be freed? What aspects of our lives imprison us or bind us? In what ways are we called by God to free others, those who are near and those who are far away?  Recently, we felt called to help to free refugees halfway around the world who are being driven from their homes by unspeakable acts of military aggression.

Now, we are being called to help God to free someone who is very near to us; someone we love; someone who is one of us. Everyone here at Grace has responded to this call from God.

One of us has had to do some very difficult work to see that she is indeed oppressed and in captivity. She has done much of that work and will continue to do that work. The work of seeing that we are imprisoned is the most difficult work we will ever have to do. The resolution to ask God’s help and the help of others in order to get free takes a great deal of courage and grace.

This Lent, we are all responding to God’s call to “break every yoke” and “to let the oppressed go free.”  This is a very special Lent for us because we are actually living this reading from Isaiah. Frail and fallible as we are, broken and imperfect sinners that we are, we are still answering this call because of what our Lord has done for us.

May God bless each of us and all of us. May God’s protection and grace be with us and with all who are helping in this ministry. May we grow closer and closer to God and to each other this Lent, and may God bless us with the fresh green shoots of new growth.  Amen.

Filed under: Sermons, Summer Music | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Ash Wednesday February 13, 2013

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Beth Crane

Isaiah 58: 1-12
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

In our first reading today, the people of God have returned from exile in Babylon and they are doing the work of rebuilding the temple. Scholars tell us that the people were getting into controversies about the details of how to worship. They were frustrated because God did not seem to be answering their prayers.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God is calling the people and us to show our faith in the way that we treat other people.  Isaiah writes, “Is this not the fast that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” Isaiah reminds us that God calls us to share our food with the hungry, to shelter the homeless.

When we do these things, Isaiah says, “Your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly.”  If our prayer and worship lead us to be compassionate toward our brothers and sisters, God’s light shines upon us and we are made whole. This is in harmony with our Lord’s summary of the law.  “Love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

As someone once said, the Christian life is cross-shaped. The vertical part reaches up to God. The horizontal part reaches out to others,

Paul is calling the Corinthians and us to be reconciled to God. “Now is the acceptable time,” Paul writes. This is the season during which we ask God’s help to remove anything that gets in the way between us and God. This is the season in which we focus on allowing God to help us to align our lives with God’s will for us.

In our gospel, we have another angle on this matter of prayer and spiritual discipline. Whatever we do as our Lenten discipline or as our general spiritual discipline, we are called to do it in order to grow closer to God, not in order to impress people, or for any other reason.

I know that we all take our faith seriously and we will all be giving up some thing or things and/or taking on some spiritual disciplines that we will do in order to be closer to God and more in harmony with God’s will. And yet, I think we also know that, even as we fast and pray, we are not going to go around looking glum or advertising that we are fasting and praying.

Yes, on this day, our foreheads are marked with the sign of the cross in ashes. This symbol goes back thousands of years. Centuries ago, people would wear sackcloth and ashes as a sign of penitence. We wear these cross-shaped smudges of ashes as a sign of our mortality, our weakness, our frailty and fallibility. These ashes remind us that we indeed are dust and we will return to dust.

This is a time and a season when we look inside ourselves and we acknowledge our sinfulness and our profound need for God. We remember being on the mountain just a few days ago, seeing our Lord transfigured, and we know he has called us to grow more and more into his likeness, and we also know that, if we are going to make that journey with him, we are going to need his grace, his guidance, his help in so many ways.

And yet, as we set out on this journey to the cross, we are going to put oil on our heads and we are going to wash our faces precisely because we have seen him on the mountain, we know the direction in which we are going, and we know he is walking right beside us. We are walking with him. He is walking with us. And that makes the journey much easier. Even as we fully acknowledge our sinfulness and ask for God’s help, the light begins to dawn and we feel God’s healing already and ever with us.

Lent comes from the root word for spring. May we have a Lent full of growth and light. May we  faithfully walk the way of the cross with you, O Lord. May we grow more and more into your likeness. In your holy Name we pray.

Amen.

Filed under: Reverend Janet Brown, Sermons | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »