St. Philip's UCC

St. Philip's UCC Services at 9:30 am every Sunday. St. Philip said, "Come and see!" Service begins at 9:30 am every Sunday. Come, join us!

09/06/2026

Collective Action

09/06/2026

Pecked to Death by Ducks
by Vince Amlin | published on Sep 5, 2026

[Jesus said,] “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Parent feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” – Matthew 6:26-29 (NRSV, adapted)

There are times when I find myself playing Adele’s song, “I Drink Wine,” on repeat. The whole thing is a masterpiece, but mostly I sing the last line of the chorus like a Taizé chant:

“Everybody wants something, you just want me.”

My friend Sandy calls it being “pecked to death by ducks,” that feeling that everyone wants a piece of you, and no one is quite satisfied with the one they get. Those seasons when the well is dry. When the bucket is empty. When the last crumb of stale bread has been devoured and the flock turns its bills on you.

“Everybody wants something, you just want me.”

For years I made Jesus’s words from the Sermon on the Mount into something I needed to do. I turned “Do not worry” into “Stop worrying!” And then worried about my inability to do so. Jesus became another disappointed friend, another unsatisfied customer, another hungry mouth to feed.

But that’s wrong. Jesus is the hen who shelters us beneath her wings. Who clothes us with love. Who feeds us from an inexhaustible store. Jesus is the one to whom we can pray…

Prayer
“Everybody wants something, you just want me.”

09/04/2026

After Matthew
by Mary Luti | published on Sep 4, 2026

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.

Today our Willing Workers bagged up over a hundred pounds of rice and beans and lentils with recipes for our local food ...
09/03/2026

Today our Willing Workers bagged up over a hundred pounds of rice and beans and lentils with recipes for our local food pantry 😅

09/03/2026

Heard
by Matt Laney | published on Sep 3, 2026

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.

09/02/2026

Feasting
by Donna Schaper | published on Sep 2, 2026

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.

09/01/2026

Still Want to Be Free?
by Kenneth L. Samuel | published on Sep 1, 2026

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.

08/31/2026

Unburying Souls
by Molly Baskette | published on Aug 31, 2026

Discussion Questions

Read the parable of the shepherd-king in Matthew 25:31-46; you can find it here. Then read the devotional below, “Unburying Souls.”
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?
Devotional

[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.

08/30/2026

Enough of the Shame
by Kaji Douša | published on Aug 30, 2026

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.

Address

10708 Lavinia Drive
St. Louis, MO
63123

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Thursday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Friday 8:30am - 12:30pm
Sunday 9am - 11:30am

Telephone

(314) 843-5100

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