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!

06/23/2026

Fearless Suffering
by Kenneth L. Samuel | published on Jun 23, 2026

Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. – Revelation 2:10a (NIV)

I think most of us are quite content with theologies of grace that cost us nothing. Crowns without crosses; empowerment without investment; salvation without sacrifice. These popular perspectives define the order of the day.

Yet in Revelation, the Lord – to whom many only look for deliverance from suffering – the Lord says to believers at the church in Smyna (present day Turkey), “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer.”

Here again, the one who bore our sins on the cross will not allow us to escape the painful consequences of bearing our own crosses for the sake of the gospel. Despite all efforts to remove the offenses of the cross and to conflate Christianity with capitalism, we cannot reign with Christ unless we suffer with Christ.

We know the negative associations of suffering. But when someone chooses to suffer as a witness for righteousness, even that pain is filled with profound purpose.

There is no victory without the suffering involved in a battle. There is no building of what’s next without the suffering that comes in dismantling what has dominated the past. There is no stepping into the light without the suffering we place upon eyes that have only strained to see in the dark.

We suffer with purpose that reaches beyond our pain, and with faith that our sacrifices are not in vain. Thus, we are fearless sufferers.

Isn’t it just like Jesus to infuse the negative experience of suffering with power that gives us purpose and perseverance?

Prayer
“In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever.”

06/22/2026

Resurrection Inside Ruin
by Samantha Houser | published on Jun 22, 2026

Discussion Questions

Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-11; you can find it here. Then read the devotional below, “Resurrection Inside Ruin.”
Check in with your body, then with your spirit, then with your emotions and mental bandwidth. How is each part of you feeling? Where is pain being felt by each part?
Take stock of your community—your loved ones, your faith community, your colleagues, your neighborhood. In what ways are folks feeling crushed? How are folks being exhausted?
What is your testimony of God these days? In what ways do the world’s stresses focus your heart on God’s goodness?
Devotional

We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself … so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. – 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 (NRSVUE)

Paul wrote this from the wreckage of something he couldn’t fully explain—some affliction so crushing, beyond the body’s ability to carry it, that death seemed less like an ending and more like a door. And he named it with the precision of someone who’s has stopped caring what they look like while they’re drowning:

“We despaired of life itself.”

This sentence belongs to us right now. Not as metaphor. As testimony. Because something is pressing down on this generation with a weight that has no single source and no simple name. It is an accumulation: the wars and the votes and the headlines and the glaciers and the cruelty normalized by repetition until we stop flinching. It is the particular exhaustion of people who are paying attention and cannot stop.

What I know to be true is that God is not above this weight, watching from a safe distance. God is in it—the divine presence that absorbs every suffering, carries every grief, holds every child lost, every species gone, every justice quietly dismantled while we were paying rent.

The lure toward life is still sounding. Faintly, maybe. Underneath everything. But Paul did not write “We despaired of life itself” as a confession of defeat. He wrote it as the beginning of a testimony: “So that we would not rely on ourselves, but on the God who raises the dead.”

Not the God who prevents the crushing. The God who is present inside it. The God who makes resurrection a verb, not just a doctrine.

We are crushed. We are not finished. Both are true. Simultaneously. Hold them both.

Prayer
Ancient Ruach, hovering still over every void we have made and every void that has been made of us—breathe into this.

06/21/2026

The God Who Sees
by Matt Laney | published on Jun 21, 2026

[Hagar] named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” – Genesis 16:13 (NRSV)

Hagar’s story is rough.

Enslaved to Abraham and Sarah, Hagar is used, mistreated, and cast out into the wilderness with her child.

When Hagar runs out of water, she places her child at a distance because she cannot bear to watch him die. Then God shows up, provides water … and sends Hagar back to her abusers.

That is hard to square. A God who sees but does not immediately fix everything, starting with the dehumanizing realities of patriarchy? A God who gives water but not justice? Hard pass.

No one should use this story to tell the vulnerable to return to danger. This story does not ask us to bless suffering as God’s plan. It reveals where God is located when suffering happens. Tellingly, not with the abusers.

Hagar’s story suggests that salvation is the experience of being seen even within horrific circumstances. Better yet, it is seeing God seeing us.

Jesus reveals the same God: the one who sees the woman accused of adultery, the sick, the shamed, the cast aside. Love that refuses to look away.

Our work, then, is clear: distance ourselves from anything that normalizes abuse and draw closer to those who suffer. Bring water. Believe survivors. Refuse easy explanations.

Stand where God stands: with the ones the world would rather not see.

Prayer
God Who Sees, help us refuse everything that looks away from harm and become people of compassion and courage.

06/21/2026

Do Not Be Afraid

06/20/2026

God Rot
by Quinn G. Caldwell | published on Jun 20, 2026

And [God] will destroy… the covering that is spread over all nations; [God] will swallow up death forever. – Isaiah 25:7-8 (NRSVUE)

For 60 or 65 million years, something like 350 million years ago, a totally bonkers thing happened. These tall woody plants called trees had developed, with the lignin and cellulose in their cells necessary to hold them up nice and tall as they reached for sunlight.

But while trees had evolved, things that could effectively biodegrade them had not. No bacteria, no fungi were yet on the scene that could eat all that lignin and cellulose. Which means that when the trees died, they just … stayed. Forever. Trees grew, died, fell, and stayed. Grew, died, fell, and stayed, piling up and up with all their nutrients locked in tight, no way to release them, no way to reuse them unless a wildfire happened along. For 60 million years, whole swathes of the planet were covered with this death, slowly sinking down into bogs, there to become coal.

Eventually, fungi and bacteria evolved that could eat the dead wood effectively, freeing its component parts for use. Suddenly, the wood could become all manner of new things. Suddenly, the wood could rot. Rotting is the process that turns fatality to vitality, that allows new life to proceed from what has lived before.

Rotting is the thing that swallows death. Rotting is the thing that transforms it. Rotting is why pretty much every ecosystem you’re familiar with today exists. Rotting is why you can exist. Without it, death covers everything.

We always look skyward for our new life. I really can’t imagine why we don’t look down more often, into the rot that makes us possible.

Prayer
Our Fungus who art underground, rot all that is dead within me and turn it to new life. Amen.

06/19/2026

Ungubani?

by Phiwa Langeni | published on Jun 19, 2026

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.” – Luke 9:20 (ESV)

If you watched the 2018 Marvel movie, Black Panther, you may recognize the Xhosa question, “Ungubani?” meaning “Who are you?”

During introductions in fictional Wakanda and real-life South Africa, people often ask each other who they are. Here in the U.S., people might respond to the question with their names, identities, professions, and whatnot. There, people respond with a litany of family names and relationships that situate them as one person connected to many. The response never stops at the individual.

When Jesus asks his closest friends the reverse question, “Who do you say that I am?” he’s already heard how the crowds misidentify him as John the Baptist or even Elijah. Much like ungubani wouldn’t be asked of people you already know well, Jesus’s question lands curiously in this context. He hasn’t had a bout of amnesia needing assistance remembering who he is. Nor is Peter a newcomer in this circle needing to be quizzed on who’s who among the closest friends of Jesus. So why ask the question?

Perhaps Jesus’s inquiry has less to do with his curiosity about who others think he is and more about helping us properly identify ourselves. Who Jesus is aids us in uncovering critical truths about who we are—beyond our individual selves. Who Jesus is supports us in recognizing our inextricable interconnectivity, one created being to innumerable others. Who Jesus is (re)orients us in everything we do and all of who we are.

And so, I ask you, dear one: Ungubani?

Prayer
When we’re tempted to stray from our truest identities, remind us of who we are so that we might never forget Whose we are. Amen.

06/18/2026

Are We There Yet?

by Kenneth L. Samuel | published on Jun 18, 2026

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. – Genesis 12:1-2a (NLT)

God’s call on the life of Abram/Abraham was essentially a call to disengage from the domiciles of dying paradigms and set out on a journey of faith to an unknown land. With no identifiable destination, no specific directions, and no estimated time of arrival, Abram was instructed to uproot himself from the confines his familiarity and embark upon a journey of promise.

In his quest toward the promised land, the Holy Spirit served as Abram’s GPS. Maps and landmarks couldn’t help him, because Abram’s destination was actually a revelation. His destination was God’s plan for human community, which God said, “I will show you.”

The places to which God calls us in life are not found in maps but in courage to follow Holy Spirit imagination. The places to which God leads us are not geographic regions but jurisdictions of love and justice. These are not destinations for self-aggrandizement; these are destinations through which all nations of the world will be blessed.

Abram followed the calling of God, but the fullness of God’s promise to Abram has not yet been found or realized. The modern land of Israel is ravaged by blood and bombs between Israelis and Palestinians. Meanwhile, global nations are being blistered, not blessed, by ongoing hostilities between rival descendants of Abram.

But let’s not forget the promises of God only become reality with a willingness to divest ourselves from the familiar patterns that lock us into competing provinces and follow God’s revelation to the promised land of love and justice for all.

Prayer
Lord, help us to live in the spiritual lineage to Abraham by our willingness to divest from the confines of familiarity and faithfully pursue your promise of salvation. Amen.

06/17/2026

Recipe for Desperate Times

by Jennifer Garrison | published on Jun 17, 2026

The king commanded all the people, “Keep the passover to the Lord your God as prescribed in this book of the covenant.” No such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, even during all the days of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah; but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem. – 2 Kings 23:21-23 (NRSV)

We gathered out of desperation, because we did not know what else to do. The news was bad, and getting worse. We could not see a way forward. The damage we had kept locked inside for so many years had come seeping out in ways that felt dangerous, debilitating.

So, one evening we came together. We sat in a circle of chairs. We sang an old song and a new one. We heard laments and stories about strong women and a fable that made us, unexpectedly, laugh. We lit candles. We dipped our fingers in a bowl of water. We prayed. And then someone found some leftover cupcakes covered in orange frosting, so we ate. The times are still desperate, but we are navigating better now.

It was desperate times for King Josiah’s people, and because he did not know what else to do, he reminded them of the simplicity and strength of the rituals of their ancestors. Josiah’s resurrected passover was different than our little ritual, but it was also the same: Circle. Song. Scripture. Fire. Water. Prayer. Food shared.

Now, as then, these things do not make desperate times less desperate, but they do shine a light so we can see a path through them.

Prayer
Dear God—Give us circles, song, scriptures, fire, water, prayers and food shared in your Name. Amen.

06/16/2026

Check Before You Wreck Yourself

by Kaji Douša | published on Jun 16, 2026

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and you remember that your sister or brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your sister or brother, and then come and offer your gift. – Matthew 5:23-24 (as translated by Wilda C. Gafney in A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year B)

A mentor once gave me advice I very much didn’t want to hear:

Often, it’s not about being right. It’s about being effective.

Annoying counsel. I kinda hate that it’s true.

My mentor was echoing Jesus’s wisdom … except Jesus raises the stakes, as he often does.

This passage is from the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus is talking about the conditions that can lead to murder.

Often, people imagine violence starting at the far edge of human behavior. It’s someone else’s problem, the kind of person most of us are sure we’re not. But Jesus traces a continuum. Anger, contempt, name-calling, avoidance, unresolved rupture. Violence always comes from somewhere.

That’s what gets me. I’d prefer to focus on how right I am, while ignoring what my anger is doing, what my grievance is becoming. What rehearsing the story over and over is shaping in me.

Then Jesus says something even more inconvenient: If you’re getting ready to offer the holiest act of your devotion and your conscience interrupts you, listen up. Leave your gift. Go deal with it. Try to repair what you can.

That pause matters. That interruption is a blessing.

Of course, you cannot control how somebody else responds. But you can do your part. You can check yourself. You can stop carrying what God is telling you to put down. You can listen to the voice that says: Face it. It’s too dangerous to let it grow. There’s still time for repair.

For Jesus, I think the blessing is trusting in the voice calling you to repair what you can. Leave everything else at the altar.

Prayer
Holy One, interrupt me when anger hardens in me. Give me courage to face what I have avoided, wisdom to repair what I can, and grace to leave behind what I no longer need to carry. Amen.

06/15/2026

Robot Soft Exorcism

by Molly Baskette | published on Jun 15, 2026

Discussion Questions

Read Luke 8:22-40, as Jesus travel across the Sea of Galilee to the southeastern shore and then back again; you can find it here. Then read the devotional below, “Robot Soft Exorcism.”
Are demons, and demonic possession, real?
What “robots of oppression” do you find yourself trapped inside (a kind of reversal of the traditional idea of possession)? What keeps you from leaving those systems?
Imagine that the violent robot of anti-immigrant enforcement has been dismantled so that it can’t cause pain or fear anymore. Instead, the resources that went into the robot now flow to the communities they once terrorized. What needs are there?
Devotional

On the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. – Luke 8:32-33 (NRSVUE)

Does anybody ever feel empathy for the pigs when they read this exorcism story? After all, they didn’t ask to be taken over by demons, then plummet off a cliff to their deaths.

I was present at a modern exorcism recently. Honestly, it gave me empathy for everybody, too. About 50 of us gathered early one morning in the parking lot of an ICE substation. We carried large photographs of everyone who had died in ICE custody so far this year, placing them on the ground among candles.

Then we turned our prayers toward the squat beige office building, utterly banal in presentation (what was that Hannah Arendt said about the banality of evil?). A pastor led the liturgy, inspired by “Robot Soft Exorcism” by Thrice, including the lyrics: You don’t have to stay inside of that machine.

We called directly to ICE that morning: “You don’t have to stay in a job and a system that is making people’s lives hell on earth. Maybe the need to pay your bills and feed your kids has felt too strong. But we want you to know, it’s not too late to reclaim your humanity by leaving. We are here to love you and support you as you do the right thing.”

I detected no spirits moving out of the building and into the nearby wildlife that day. No federal workers falling on their knees in repentance. The beige building kept beiging.

But I want to believe that our words dented those walls, one soft blow toward breaking open the machinery. I want to believe the spirits of the dead heard us and took heart. I know that we did.

Prayer
Until every robot of oppression has disgorged our human kin, we will pray. Amen.

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10708 Lavinia Drive
St. Louis, MO
63123

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