Milbridge Congregational Church, UCC

09/04/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL- September 4, 2026
After Matthew by Mary Luti

Jesus said, “If a sibling sins against you, point out the fault when you two are alone. If they listen, you’ve regained them. But if they don’t, take one or two others with you. If they still won’t listen, tell the whole church. If they won’t listen to the church, treat them like a gentile and a tax collector.” - Matthew 18:15-17 (adapted)

My Bible notes say that in this passage, Matthew is laying out a process for “church discipline.” That feels judgy, way too much like keeping people in line. It’s not something I associate with progressive congregations.

Which isn’t to say that mutual accountability in church isn’t important. It is. But it’s also tricky, and when we’re clumsy or careless about it, or use it as a little power trip, we often end up doing more hurtful, condemning harm than good. No wonder the idea of “disciplining” each other makes us cringe.

But notice this: Matthew places this instruction right after the parable of the lost sheep and the searching shepherd. The immediate context of discipline turns out to be a vast mercy. In that light, discipline feels more tender and less judgy, like bringing someone home, not setting someone right.

Even that final instruction to treat a resistant sibling like a tax collector lands differently. It’s Matthew who’s writing this Gospel, after all. Our forebears believed he was the same Matthew Jesus called from his tax collector’s booth to follow him. After Matthew, no one is beyond the reach of grace.

The practice of discipline doesn’t condemn the wayward. It acknowledges a need to start over. It doesn’t despair of anyone. It assumes a graced capacity for responding and repair. It doesn’t run out of chances. It assumes that when you’re finally ready, Mercy will be, too.

Prayer
Help us approach each other like shepherds eager to restore, not judges eager to condemn.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.

09/03/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL - September 3, 2026
Heard by Matt Laney

Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. - Romans 10:17 (NRSV)

That’s a bold statement for someone who never met Jesus or heard him teach in the flesh.

Paul was not a disciple. In fact, Paul was a fierce opponent of the Jesus movement before he became its foremost promoter in Gentile territory.

However, Paul’s status as a “promoter of the Jesus movement” needs a mountain-sized asterisk.

The Christ he preached grew from a vision he never describes in his letters. The famous scene of Paul blinded by the light comes from Acts, written decades later by Luke.

Think about that. The most influential theologian in Christian history based his understanding of Jesus on a private experience, one he did not submit for peer review by Jesus’s appointed successors for three years. He intentionally avoided them. He said his spiritual experience outranked their human experience, so why bother?

Imagine someone claiming to have received a vision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King that outranks the lived experience of those in Dr. King’s inner circle. Unlike King, Jesus left behind nothing but students—exactly who Paul dodged.

Because Paul answered only to his experience of Christ, Christ-ianity does the same by viewing Jesus through Paul rather than the other way around.

Yeah, I’m not exactly Paul’s biggest fan. But I’ll give him this: He had chutzpah, which is why you are reading this and why we have a church at all. Whatever my qualms with Paul, I’ll be forever grateful for his legacy: the Church that protects and proclaims the words of Jesus.

Paul got us here. The Gospels point us to Jesus.

Prayer
Help me balance my vision of Christ by attending to his words.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Laney is Co-Pastor of Virginia Highland Church UCC in Atlanta, GA. If you enjoy Matt’s writing, check out his new book, The Second Arrow from MacMillan.

09/02/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL- September 2, 2026
Feasting by Donna Schaper

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?” - Luke 13:15 (NIV)

Mark Twain once wrote, “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

Jesus seems to suggest a similar idea: we should play at work and work at play. Choose to be happy at work, choose to play at it. Choose to work on the Sabbath if your ox or donkey needs a drink. Choose to understand your animals as holy and your worship practice as holy too. Don’t go phony or hypocritical about spirituality. Get real.

Laurie Santos teaches a popular course at Yale University, “Psychology and the Good Life,” on the science of well-being. Before taking a one-year sabbatical from the school several years ago, Santos said:

“I teach my students about the importance of time affluence—feeling like you have some free time—and I simply wasn’t prioritizing that in my own life. If one of my Sillimanders [referring to Silliman College at Yale] had told me that they were feeling as time-famished as I have been these days, I would have demanded that they take something off their plate ASAP.”

Jesus seems to think that we may work on the Sabbath and rest at work. You might call it time feast, instead of time famine. You might call it taking a sabbatical because you don’t want to live starved any more. Give yourself a drink.

Prayer
Grant us the gift of time affluence and time feast, Eternal God, and help us to turn off our alarm clocks. Amen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donna Schaper is the Pastor of the Congregational Church of Austin (COA). Her book Rooted in Resurrection is a garden memoir and includes spiritual and horticultural advice in its meditations.

09/01/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL- September 1, 2026
Still Want to Be Free?
by Kenneth L. Samuel

Moses went back to the Lord and protested, “Why have you brought all this trouble on your own people Lord? ... Ever since I came to Pharaoh as your spokesman, he has been more brutal to your people. And you have done nothing to rescue them! - Exodus 5:22-23 (NLT)

The children of Israel’s desperate cries to God for freedom from Egyptian bo***ge were soon diluted when the Israelites discovered what freedom required.

Moses went before the Pharaoh with a divine directive: “Let my people go, so they can worship God in the wilderness.” In direct response, the Pharaoh issued a direct punishment: “Force the lazy Israelites to make bricks without straw, but do not decrease their labor production requirement.”

The Pharaoh then had the Israelite foremen they put in charge of the work crews beaten for failing to meet their daily production quotas. The Israelite foremen consequently turned on Moses and declared, “May the Lord punish you for making us detestable before Pharaoh and his officials. You have put a sword in their hands to kill us.”

The cost of freedom is often a significant deterrent to those who claim to want it.

In our society, being “woke” to the intricacies of injustice comes with a cost of social stigmatism.

And if, like Dolly Parton, you are a proponent of intellectual curiosity and unfettered imagination, be prepared to have literacy initiatives dismantled and defunded by socially conservative vigilantes with the backing of the U.S. government.

And if you desire to build economies that serve the needs of workers instead of feeding the greed of gluttonous corporations and private interests, get ready to be vilified as a communist.

The greatest obstacle to people’s freedom is often the people’s reluctance and refusal to pay for what they want.

Prayer
Lord, let faith move us to freedom when fears cause us to falter. Amen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kenneth L. Samuel is Pastor of Victory for the World Church, Decatur, Georgia.

08/31/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL-August 31, 2026
Unburying Souls by Molly Baskette

[Jesus said,] “I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” - Matthew 25:36b (NRSV)

Bea Elton, a young British woman, is covered head-to-toe in PPE (personal protective equipment). She’s literally shoveling p**p out of the bathtub of a woman whose depression, anxiety and PTSD had gotten so bad, she wouldn’t let a plumber in to fix her toilet.

House after house, Bea unburies people from years of accumulated trash, effluence, and vermin that have made a home in spaces now imprisoning their humans.

She doesn’t do this job because she has to. She does it because she wants to. She herself was once depressed: sacked from her job, living in an apartment filled with mold. She documented her DIY mold removal on YouTube, hoping to get her security deposit back from an intransigent landlord and a grip on her own life. She was surprised to find the public interested.

As her platform grew and began generating income, she started cleaning other people’s houses for free. She even paid for their hotel stays while she cleaned. What she found as she unburied layers of grime, grease, and grief was the life that had once been theirs. Signs of self-care and beauty, homemade art and teakettles and family furniture at the bottom-most layer of the archeological dig. Before Mum had died. Before the sexual assault. Before it all fell apart.

When her clients move back into their now-functional homes, Bea also helps them find mental health support and other helps so their souls can be swept out, too. On the relatively infrequent occasions when people allow the detritus to build up again, she goes back and cleans again without judgment.

She thinks you don’t have to have experienced this kind of burying to have empathy. “All of us are only one or two events away from that reality,” she says.

Prayer
Jesus, when I am buried, take away my shame so I can ask for the help I need to begin again. And give me empathy to help unbury others you put in my path. Amen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Molly Baskette is a UCC minister, psychedelic facilitator and author of books about church renewal, parenting, post-traumatic joy and more. Learn more at mollybaskette.com.

Discussion Questions

Read the parable of the shepherd-king in Matthew 25:31-40

When has someone stepped in to help you, without judgment or shame?

What opportunities do you have to support someone who is feeling buried by life?

Think especially about hands-on opportunities to be supportive, no matter how small.

When has shame—the fear of judgment, or the weight of your own self-judgment—kept you from connecting with God in meaningful ways?

Molly Baskette ​​ Progressive Christian pastor. Incorrigible optimist, despite all the facts. ​Church renewal cheerleader. Transformation ju**ie and psychedelic-assisted provider. Cancer...

08/30/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL- August 30, 2026
Enough of the Shame by Kaji Douša

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the first humans hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. - Genesis 3:8 (NRSV, edited)

Shame is a powerful tool in religious life. It is a hook designed to bring people back into bounds. It is built to stop us in our tracks and to look to the religious power for relief. Shame is meant to change us. To whip us into submission.

Shaming is a violent deterrent.

Which is why it’s such a shame that we employ it so often.

This passage from Genesis has been used throughout the ages to justify shaming and violence against pretty much anyone but cis hetero men.

Which is, in itself, a shame, too. Because it didn’t have to be that way.

The story opens gently. God walks the garden in the cool of the day. God seeks God’s people – as God always does – and finds them feeling ashamed.

God actually grieves their shame. Do you notice this? God didn’t want the first humans to have to experience shame. God tried to protect them from it!

They had some curiosity about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and decided to bite. But God had wanted to protect them from it. To shield them from information God believed they could not bear. To shelter them from the violence of shame.

I believe God to be telling us, even now:

Enough of the shame. You are my beloved. In you I am well pleased.

Prayer
Make now the cool of the day. See me, God, in my nakedness and love every part of me. Embrace us as we are, not as we might be. Amen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kaji Douša is the Senior Pastor of The Park Avenue Christian Church, a congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, in New York City.

08/29/2026

Worship Service
10 am Sunday

08/29/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL- August 29, 2026
Everywhere a Sign by Rachel Hackenberg

God spoke to King Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” When Ahaz refused, God said, “Then I myself will choose the sign: See this young woman who is pregnant? By the time her child is old enough to know right from wrong, the threat of war will be over.” - Isaiah 7:10-16 (adapted)

If you’re longing for a divine sign that all will be well, a holy omen that God’s goodness will work out a way, you’re not alone.

King Ahaz wanted a divine sign of assurance in the face of rising political threats. God offered a sign as lofty as the stars. “It’s too much,” Ahaz protested. God offered a sign as certain as death’s door. “I don’t want you to go to any great lengths,” Ahaz demurred.

Give me comfort that is right-sized, please and thank you. And surely God sighed such a mighty sigh that olive trees bent in the wind and crows startled into the sky.

“Fine, I’ll give you a practical sign,” God told Ahaz. “Count this young woman’s months of pregnancy and her son’s early childhood. That’s how much time will pass before the threats have ceased. On that day, everyone will eat curds and honey.” On that day, God’s sign of comfort will become God’s fulfillment of goodness.

God gave Ahaz a right-sized sign: a tangible measure he could count on his fingers, a growing measure he could watch unfold before him, a flesh-and-blood measure he could recognize. A divine sign for human understanding.

If you’re waiting for a divine sign that all will be well, a holy portent of comfort that God’s justice will be realized and evil will be vanquished, there’s no shortage of signs … but maybe tune your heart most particularly to the flesh-and-blood signs you witness every day. The ones that grow and strive and change. The ones that love and break and love again. The ones that extend grace and don’t give up hope.

Prayer
Lord, make a sign out of my life, even as I watch for a sign in the world around me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel Hackenberg serves as the publisher for The Pilgrim Press.

08/28/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL- August 28, 2026
Feast of Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE)
by Mary Luti

O God, you are my God; I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. - Psalm 63:1 (NRSV)

St. Augustine is one of the Church’s greatest theologians. But many Christians think Christianity took a bad turn in him, mostly because he saddled us with original sin, predestination, a pathological sexual ethic, and a rationale for using state violence to compel orthodoxy.

He wasn’t all bad, of course. Nobody is. Some of the doctrines we most dislike weren’t original to him, nor was he alone in teaching them. And he made towering positive contributions to Christian life and faith as well.

But what some Christians find compelling about him is less about theology and more about soul. This brilliant, impassioned, prolific, driven, arrogant, defensive, pastorally wise, Christ-haunted African bishop went public with his private sins, laying bare in his introspective writings the sordid history of a base and irresolute heart.

Driven by ambition, he wrote, he’d repeatedly gone astray, almost deliberately wounding himself and people he loved. He’d desperately desired to surrender to Christ but was so trapped in destructive habits that he couldn’t. And when he prayed for God to change him, he always hedged, “but not yet.”

Loathe him or love him, you might recognize that heart. It’s not all that unlike our own, with their shames, hurtful habits, myopias, moral hedging, ego traps, and inexpressible longings for God.

Maybe we can meet Augustine there, in soul poverty, in the pain of desire, in the howl for grace. And maybe we could warm a little to a man who, after that grace finally fell hard upon him, could pray like this:

Prayer
“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new! You were within me, but I was outside. You were with me, but I was not with you. You called, you shouted, you broke through. You flashed, you shone, you opened my eyes. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath, and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger for more.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.

08/27/2026

DAILY DEVOTIONAL- August 27, 2026
Healing Stories by Talitha Arnold

That evening they brought to [Jesus] many who were possessed by demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and cured all who were sick. - Matthew 8:16 (NRSV)

The Gospel accounts of Jesus healing people who are described as “possessed by demons”—or “an unclean” or “evil “spirit”—can be very problematic. I know the Gospels were written long before brain science and modern psychiatry, but these first-century descriptions of what may have been epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, or some other neurological condition, or possibly a mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, have stigmatized persons with such conditions down through the ages.

So, should we ignore or avoid such scriptures? No, because these first-century stories of Jesus healing those who were “possessed” outnumber all the other healing miracles (sight, hearing, leprosy, etc.) combined. If Jesus cared so deeply and broadly for persons with neurological or mental health conditions, what does that say to us and to our churches?

For starters, it says that in our preaching and teaching, we need to engage such stories—put them in context, unpack the terms, and interpret them for our time. It also says that, like Jesus, caring for persons with mental illnesses and neurological conditions is central to our ministries. So, too, is caring for their families and loved ones. (Remember the Syro-Phoenician woman who appealed to Jesus to heal her daughter of “a demon,” or the father who pleaded for his son with seizures?)

Finally, many of these stories underscore the vulnerability of persons with mental illnesses or neurological conditions—such as the man forced to live “in the tombs” outside the wealthy imperial city of Gadara.

Jesus didn’t just heal individuals. He called even the empire to be healed of its “demons” of neglect and fear.

Prayer
Compassionate One, thank you for these healing stories. Open us to their wisdom and challenge. Amen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Talitha Arnold is Senior Minister of the United Church of Santa Fe (UCC), Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the author of Mark Parts 1 and 2 of the Listen Up! Bible Study series and Worship for Vital Congregations.