6th Sunday after Pentecost                

 Jeremiah 33:14-18

The days are surely coming, says our God, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “God is our righteousness.”

For thus says our God: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to make grain offerings, and to make sacrifices for all time.

 

Jeremiah 31:31-34

The days are surely coming, says our God, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says our God. But, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says our God: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know God,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says our God, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

 

General Synod

As you all know, I was in Kansas City, MO at General Synod last week, as a delegate for the Montana Northern Wyoming Conference. Because we have the smallest conference, we only had three delegates, the other two were Rev. Lisa Harmon, pastor of First Congregational UCC in Billings, and Carol Shipley, a lay leader at First Congregational Church of Great Falls. Our conference minister, the Rev. Dr. Tony Clark, and Rev. Laura Folkwein, the pastor of Pilgrim Congregational UCC in Bozeman, served as alternates in case one of the three of us were unable to vote.

2025 is the beginning of the new three-year cycle that General Synod voted on in 2023. Our denomination used to meet every two years for General Synod, but because of the cost, especially for the smaller conferences, we decided to meet every three years instead. The reason the national church meets is not just to reconnect with our peers, and have a good time, though the hope is that will happen. We meet so that the delegates can pass resolutions and do the business of the church. Often, the resolutions are ones of witness, that allow representatives of the United Church of Christ to say that the denomination stands behind a certain statement or point of view, when they’re doing public relations or dealing with politicians.

Resolutions are brought to General Synod by people within the church, typically a conference, but it could be a group of delegates or a group of churches, an association, or even the UCC Board itself. Each resolution is sent to a committee of the General Synod, comprised of the delegates, who have to work on it until they feel comfortable bringing it to the floor to be voted on.

My committee worked on the resolutions to call on the presidential administration to restore funding to USAID, or the United States Agency for International Development, and Voice of America. I was one of about 60 people on this committee, most of them pastors who were used to being in charge of things. Our job was to come up with wording that we all had to agree on for exactly what we wanted this document to say. The history of USAID and Voice of America is colored with troubling activities, and so, they don’t have the most pristine reputations. I think you can imagine how these discussions went.

We had two days to accomplish our goals. Committees usually only have to work on one resolution, but the two that we were given initially started out as one resolution that they had split into two, so they gave them both to us. There was a lot of arguing on that first day. We talked about how USAID had been used in the past as a sort of soft propaganda to bolster the reputation of the United States, and not always for altruistic reasons. We carefully reviewed the text of the document and discussed how lawmakers might quibble over words like “most in need” and “wise investment,” because who’s to say what is “most” and what is “wise”? But, most of all, we had to keep reminding ourselves that people were dying. Despite USAID’s shady past, millions of people depend on USAID for food, medicine, and water. Every day that USAID goes without its full funding, means that people will die, and it was our job as a committee to get the resolution onto the floor so that the delegates could vote on it.

As we’ve gone through the book of Jeremiah the past few months, we’ve seen what God expects of us, and the prophetic warnings that come when we don’t live up to those expectations. The Israelites were in exile in Babylon because they did not do what God wanted them to do. They didn’t “know God” in their hearts, and broke the covenant between them and God.

In our readings for today, God talks about these covenants and promises. God says there will be “justice and righteousness in the land,” and that the people will have God’s “law within then, and [that God would] write it on their hearts.” We know God’s law: to take care of the least of these, to love the foreigner, to love our enemy, to heal the sick, and set the captives free. Conscience is God’s law written on our hearts. When we feel that twinge of guilt because we’re not doing what God wants us to do, that’s God’s law written on our hearts. We know when we’re doing something that we’re not supposed to do, and we know when we’re not doing something that we are supposed to do. USAID is how we express these values, as a country. We might not have always had the best of intentions with it, but we have done a lot of good around the world because of it. USAID is the part of our government that helps other countries deal with poverty, starvation, and disease. It’s how we help to provide clean water, HIV treatment, and malaria prevention. Heal the sick, feed the hungry, love the foreigner.

So, this was all in the back of our minds as we were debating the USAID resolution in our committee. Everyone had their opinions on various aspects of the resolution, and it really seemed like we wouldn’t be able to come to a consensus on it. By the end of the first day, I was truly worried that we weren’t going to come up with something that we could bring to the floor, let alone our second resolution. But, we knew how important it was, and we recognized that part of the problem was that there were just too many people working on it. There were sixty people in that room! Sixty smart, opinionated, outspoken people. So, we decided, as a committee, to authorize a smaller group of about ten people to work on the wording of it that night, and then bring the revised resolution back to the committee to approve.

And, it worked! The next morning, they present the modified resolution, and after a little more tweaking by the committee, I would say, about an hour, we approved it to go to the floor. Then we moved on to the second resolution, which was to demand that full funding be restored to Voice of America, one of the few alternative sources of information in places where there is no freedom of the press. We quickly realized that we would encounter the same stumbling blocks that we did for the first resolution, so we took a half-hour break, and let a smaller group revise it, and then reconvened to see what they came up with. With a little more tweaking by the full committee, that resolution was ready to go to the floor, as well.

When it was all said and done, I think we were all a little bit stunned by what we had accomplished. It really seemed after that first day that we weren’t going to be able to do what we needed to do. But, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and by being patient with each other, and remembering what was really important in that moment, the people who depended on USAID and Voice of America, we came together, found a solution, and got the job done. There are just too many people around the world who need us to be their voice, to advocate for them because they can’t advocate for themselves. This is what it means to be the church.

We covered a lot of ground at the 2025 General Synod of the United Church of Christ. Some of the other resolutions we voted on were to declare support for human rights in the Philippines, condemn violence against religious minorities in India, denounce our own government’s attempts to violate the rights of immigrants, migrants, and refugees, and to call for an end to the genocide in Palestine. This could not have been any more different from the previous General Synod that I went to in 2023, when the most contentious issue was whether or not to recommend that we should have vegan options at all of our gatherings.

It is our job to look at the ugliness in the world and do something about it. We are called to ask the hard questions, to be brave, to find solutions, and make the world a better place. That is what we are called to do as the people of God. We cannot ignore all of these things that are happening around us, and hope that someone else is going to take care of it. It’s up to us. This is what God is asking us to do.

Before every plenary session of General Synod, there was this video that played on the big screen at the front, kind of just to fill the space while we were waiting for everyone to arrive so that we could get started. Mostly it was just a slideshow of pictures with music playing in the background; one part was a message from the General Minister and President of the denomination. There was this song that was part of it that really stuck with me, because it wraps all of these ideas into a neat little package. There weren’t any new ideas in the song; it’s what we talk about all the time, but I just really like the poetry of the lyrics, so I’m going to read them to you. It’s called “Let’s Do the Work” by Kevon Carter.

We are the church,

We are God’s hands and feet,

The church,

Called to deliver and set free,

The spirit of the Lord is upon you and me.

We are the church,

We have been called to hear,

Called to serve,

Called to give,

Let’s do the work,

Let’s live out the purpose of the church.

Amen.

~  Rev. Charles Wei