Winthrop Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
No matter who you are. No matter where you are on life's journey. You are welcome here.
 Isaiah 49:1-7 Listen to me, O coastlands; pay attention, you peoples from far away! The Lord called me before I was born; while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. 2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away. 3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” 4 But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord and my reward with my God.” 5 And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, and my God has become my strength-- 6 he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” 7 Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, “Kings shall see and stand up; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” What Has Been Hidden Will Come to Light: Isaiah 49:1-7
“Whenever people ask me ‘Why didn’t you get up when the bus driver asked you?’ I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder.” Shared in 2018, these are the words of Claudette Colvin, who died this week at age 86. Ms. Colvin was 15 years old when she chose to do an act of civil disobedience that, while putting her at the risk of violence, would also be a catalyst for the civil rights movement in the United States. On March 2nd of 1955, Colvin was one of several Black people riding in the back of a Montgomery city bus. By law, Black people had to sit in the back and had to get up and give their seats up to white people if white people got on after them and didn’t have a seat. This was a law that was intended to be humiliating and intended to remind Black people that they were inferior, even in quiet moments commuting to work or going to buy groceries. And, those laws were on the books in this country during the lifetimes of many of the people in this room. Showing the power of a well-rounded education, Colvin had learned of heroes that looked like her: Harriet Tubman, abolitionist, suffragist, and spy, and Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and civil rights activist. Knowing what they had done for freedom and justice made her feel like she could do something powerful, too. When a bus driver attempted to enforce the immoral laws and give her seat to a white person, she opted not to get up. The driver called the police who arrested her. They charged her with, and she was convicted of, breaking segregation laws, disturbing the peace, and assaulting a police office, though her defense attorney would end up getting the first two charges dropped. Ms. Colvin was the first person arrested for defying the segregated busing laws. Three other women, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, would be arrested for challenging these same laws through the spring of that year. The Women’s Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama had already begun discussing the possiblity a boycott when Colvin chose to push back on the immoral busing laws. They were looking for someone to be the face of the boycott. Boycotts are political tactics, and organizers usually make choices about who will be the visual embodiment of a movement very carefully. Colvin, for all of her bravery, was considered too young and too passionate to effectively rally adults. She would also find out that she was pregnant shortly after being arrested. Many would be scandalized enough by an unwed, pregnant teenager that they would not have been able to truly consider the merits of the boycott were she associated with it. Unfortunately, the public often demands perfect victims in order to deliver justice. Nine months after Colvin was arrested, the secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP, Rosa Parks, an experience organizer in her own right, also chose civil disobedience and was arrested for not giving up her seat. One article I read called Parks “unflappable.” That groundedness, along with her respectability within the broader community, made the boycott organizers feel like they had found someone who could be the face of the boycott. Rallying around Parks, organizers began what would become the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr., who was a part of the Montgomery Improvement Association, would come to prominence working with the Women’s Political Council to lead the boycott. Fights for justice rarely rely on one single action. While the public was watching and participating in the boycott, a lawyer named Fred Gray opted to pursue two legal challenges: one, an appeal for Rosa Parks on her arrest and two, a lawsuit on behalf of the four women arrested before Parks, Browder, McDonald, Smith, and Claudette Colvin. Browder would be the lead plaintiff. Colvin would finally have the chance to make a bigger impact by being a part of this lawsuit. One article I read referred to her as a “star witness” in the case. Over the year that the boycott was going on, Browder v. Gayle would make it through the Alabama legal system all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1956, the Supreme Court would rule that bus segregation statues violated the 14th Amendment and were therefore unconstitutional. On June 19th, 1956, The Supreme Court would go on the order Alabama to stop enforcing all Jim Crow laws. After exhausting all appeals, on December 20th, 1956, the city of Montgomery finally complied with the from the highest court in the land. Only then did the boycott organizers officially stop the boycott. It went on for 381 days. According to an article I read about Browder v. Gayle, this case and boycott marked a turning point in the civil rights movement. Civil rights leaders shifted from relying mostly on litigation to push for change to combining litigation with direct action. And, in place where litigation was challenging to even consider given racist systems in place, direct action became a primary method of social change. As the article says, “anyone could participate in a boycott, a march, or a sit-in.” I’d argue that anyone of good conscious can opt not to follow immoral laws. It is perhaps most effective when those doing direct action are doing so with some training and networking undergirding their action. But, sometimes, all it takes is a person’s bravery in a challenging moment to show other people that change is possible. Thank God for Claudette Colvin and her bravery. The nation was better for it. Often, when we hear the phrase, “what has been hidden will come to light,” there is an underlying assumption that if something has been hidden away, it is because it is bad. And, bad things can’t help but be revealed. The phrase is actually a quote with variations in both the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke (Mark 4.22 and Luke 8:17). In both cases, the meaning of the line in the context of the Gospel is a little different than at least how I’ve heard it used colloquially. In the Gospel, it has more to do with the power of Christ’s teachings to be clear to those who really listen to them. It is more about the inevitability of the Gospel Truth to come to light, so to speak. When I read today’s scripture from Isaiah and remembered this line from the Gospels, but thought about it in a different way. You may have noticed that our reading come from the point of view of one who understands themself to be a servant of God with a special mission. “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb God named me.” The servant goes on to describe themself as a sharp sword hidden in the shadow of a hand and as an arrow stored in the darkness of a quiver. The womb, the shadow, and the quiver are all dark places. But, in this reading, they are also places of growth, protection, and preparation. I am grateful for the work of Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney who reminds us in a sermon I’ll share in my notes on this one, that in scripture, life is born from holy, creative, generative darkness. The tools of God are tucked away for safe keeping, for further honing, until the time is right for them to be used. In this case, the servant, who Christians have understood to be Jesus, but whom the oldest hearers of Isaiah might have interpreted to be a servant nation or a specific servant figure, is the one that must be prepared. Initially, the servant feels like they have been working so hard, but has nothing to show for it. I imagine Ms. Colvin might have felt a bit like that as people argued over whether or not she was the one to represent the movement she’d risked her safety for. In the end though, the servant expresses that they know God has something greater in mind for them. And, God absolutely does. “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” God will choose this one to do great things. The time in the struggle was preparation for a bigger mission than they could have first imagined. The one that has been in the dark, learning, growing, training, taking risks, can become the light. In this moment of struggle, I pray for places of protection, growth, and preparation. I pray for what Dr. Gafney refers to as the “swaddling blanket of creation” to envelop us, fortifying us for the work ahead. And, when we feel as though we are failing, may we remember than God resides with God’s servant, in the darkness and the light. May Christ’s light shine through us, through the darkness, into all the ends of the earth. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Some articles about Claudette Colvin: About the legal case Browder v. Gayle: https://civics.supremecourthistory.org/article/browder-v-gayle/ Wil Gafney: https://www.wilgafney.com/2019/12/01/holy-blackness-the-matrix-of-creation/ Julianna Claassens: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-isaiah-491-7-3
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 Xačʿatur. Baptism of Christ, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56383 [retrieved January 13, 2026]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/medmss/8614784984. Matthew 3:13-17 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved,[a] with whom I am well pleased.” Let It Be So Now: Matthew 3:13-17
As Kat Alldredge notes in her commentary on this text, in the book of Matthew, the first time we meet Jesus as an adult is here in the wilderness with John. We don’t know anything of Jesus’ childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood beyond that fact he spent time in Egypt and was raised in Nazareth after his family’s return. Then, there is a big jump in the story from Jesus’ family returning to Nazareth after King Herod’s death to an adult John out in the wilderness urging people to repentance and an adult Jesus going out to see him. There’s not even really a mention of Jesus and John being related. What we do know about John is that he has a vital role in Jesus’ story. Scripture tells us that John’s work in the wilderness fulfills a prophecy from Isaiah. Isaiah describes “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Matthew tells us that John is that voice. He is described as wild, like many of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. His clothes are unusual and his food foraged... honey and locusts. According to J. Andrew Overman, locusts were acceptable for food under Jewish religious law, but not typical provisions for the area. As we know, acceptable and “typical” are very different things. John was not typical, and powerful people would come to find his mission unacceptable. He taught out there in the wilderness, connecting repentance with a particular ritual, baptism. He gave people, people of all genders, of all social background, regardless of how much money they had (though most were probably poor), the opportunity to confess their sins... that is, the things that disconnected them from God... and start anew, reconnected to God and ready to have their lives and behavior shaped by this connection. Scripture tells us thateh welcomed a lot of people into baptism. He also held a lot of powerful and influential people accountable in a way that not many in the community would. His offer of repentance would come with strong critique when necessary. The first time we see him do this is when some Sadducees and Pharisees come to be baptized. Within Judaism of the time, much like within Christianity in our time, not all people agreed on every aspect of their shared faith. There were two influential groups called the Sadducees and the Pharisees. They disagreed about which books were Holy Scripture. The Sadducees only really accepted the first five books of Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And, they did not accept traditions of interpretation of Jewish religious law outside of those books. According to Overman’s notes on Matthew, the Sadducees rejected the idea of resurrection which explains their conflict with both the Pharisees and John and with Jesus and his followers. Jesus and his followers would develop some conflicts with the Pharisees, too, usually about how to apply the wisdom of Jewish law and also manage the authority they’d been granted in community. All of this to say, if Sadducees and Pharisees showed up in the same place, you might expect some arguing, at least between them. There was also a third Jewish group called the Essenes. According to Overman, John might have been a part of the Essene community given his frustration with the Sadducees and Pharisees, and his clear assumption that God’s judgement was soon at hand. As I said earlier, some people from both of these groups were moved by John’s message, and came to him to be baptized. Baptism as a ritual is similar to Jewish rituals embraced by most Jewish people at the time, so it’s not suprised that they would be interested in the ritual. In a commentary on this text, Diane Chen notes that John’s baptism was similar to the Jewish purification ritual that involves immersing oneself in the ritual bath called a mikveh. Where the cleansing in a mikveh would happen at regular intervals in a person’s life, John’s baptism appeared to be a one-time event. Essenes also had regular purification rituals to prepare for God’s impending judgement. John’s practice might have been influenced by them. Knowing the history of conflict among these groups, it might not surprise you that John would be openly critical of Sadducees and Pharisees to who came to him to be baptized. The critique was not without risk. Both the Sadducees and Pharissees had more communal authority than he did as a wild man prophet. It is no small thing to be critical of respected and connected people. And, yet, John was loudly critical. In verses just before today’s reading, he calls the group who came to the wilderness “a brood of vipers!” He warned them that their shared ancestry would not be enough to connected them to God’s hope yet to come. He told them that they must “bear good fruit” in order to be a part of the reign of God. That is, he said that they had to do something, not just be something, in order to demonstrate their faith. He also told them, and everyone listening, that he wasn’t the one, the Messiah, they were waiting for. He said that The One was coming, though, and he said that he is not worthy to tie that one’s sandals: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and fire.” then, just after we hear John’s rebuke and prophecy, we see Jesus come to John to be baptized. John initially refused, deferring to Jesus as the more powerful one. As Chen reminds us, with baptism comes vulnerability. In the culture where they lived, men especially would work to “amass honor.” To present oneself as a sinner, to confess to sins in public, to allow someone hold and move your body was to risk negative social attention and possibly harm your reputation. In today’s story, we can see the first sign that Jesus wasn’t very worried about his reputation. “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Chen and Overman both note that attention to righteousness is a central theme in Matthew. Chen argues that righteousness in Matthew is a “relational concept.” What she means by that is that one’s righteousness is measured in terms of one’s closeness with God. For example, Abraham was far from morally perfect, but he was righteous because he trusted God (Genesis 15:6). One who is righteous tends to their relationship with God. Jesus’ baptism then is best understood as affirmation of his relationship with God. And, given the tenor of that relationship, Jesus does not fear appearing vulnerable or somehow less than John. This baptism isn’t about a hierarchy between John and Jesus. It is about preparing Jesus for the next step in his journey, and reminding him of his particular, special embodiment of the Divine just as he is discerning his mission in the world. In asking John to baptize him, Jesus affirms his connection to both God and humanity in one act of vulnerability. And, from that act, is affirmed by God as “beloved” with whom God is well-pleased. This will set to the tone for the rest of Jesus’ living ministry and the standard for the Body of Christ going forward. Jesus will need this extra dose of connectedness to prepare for what’s next. Shortly after hearing God’s words of love, Jesus will be led by the Spirit into the wilderness. In Matthew, he is described as being alone and fasting until the tempter shows up. The tempter will offer him all possible means of power and comfort that a lonely and hungry man might want. And, Jesus will refuse. You see, he has been fortified by God, through baptism, into a righteous covenant. He has promises to uphold. Even when he is uncomfortable, even when he is hungry, even when presented with what appears to be an easy means to an end, he must not succumb to the temptation to use his power in ways that run counter to God’s demand for love and justice. Ultimately, Jesus will choose to wield his power in a way the reflects his connection with God as affirmed in his baptism. He will act fiercely in love. He will heal. He will invite people to renew their covenantal relationships with God and neighbor. He will make himself vulnerable to the power of others. And, his loyalty to his mission of love will eventually result in his death. We know that death will not be his end... that resurrection is coming... but hard things will happen before Renewed Life. And, right now, we know something about kinds of hard thing that make us wonder if renewed life is possible. This is a season in our country when many are asking questions about what it means to wield power, living relationally, and risk vulnerability. Unlike John and Jesus, not everyone can be trusted to use the power granted to them for good. We watched someone this week who had been granted authority over other’s life and death, use that power to kill someone without cause. He did it because he was angry, and because, even now, he thinks he will be able to get away with it. That was not a Christ-like expression of authority, love, or neighborliness. Today’s reading shows us power used righteously. It is power that connects people, allows people to make amends, and fortifies people for challenging work ahead. When we are wonder about how to discern if an authority figure is using power righteously, we can look to John and Jesus as examples. Authority as John uses it affords him both bravery to call out abusive and ineffective leaders and humility when he recognizes the One he has been waiting for. Authority as Jesus uses it connects him to God and prevents him from abusing the power he has been given. As followers of Christ, joined to the Body of Christ through Baptism, this spirit of loving, risk-taking Authority lives within us. May we wield it wisely, and always to serve the vulnerable as Christ did. The Tempter will tell us we can use it to make us great. Christ will remind us to use it for good. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Karri Alldredge: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/baptism-of-our-lord/commentary-on-matthew-313-17-7 J. Andrew Overman's notes on Matthew in the The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) Diane G. Chen: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/baptism-of-our-lord/commentary-on-matthew-313-17-6 |
AuthorPastor Chrissy is a native of East Tennessee. She and her wife moved to Maine from Illinois. She is a graduate of the Divinity School at Wake Forest University and Chicago Theological Seminary. Archives
June 2026
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