Monday, February 2, 2026
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Friday, January 30, 2026
Thursday, January 29, 2026
PRESS CONFERENCE: "ICE Out of NH!"
NH Faith Leaders Press Conference
Granite State Organizing Project (GSOP)
Thursday, January 29 @ 2 pm
Granite State Organizing Project (GSOP)
Thursday, January 29 @ 2 pm
Manchester, NH
Today among these beloved leaders, in this beloved place, in this beloved city: we stand on the traditional ancestral homeland of Pennacook, Abenaki and Wabanaki Peoples of past and present. We acknowledge and honor with gratitude the aki (land), nibi (water), and alnobak (people) who have stewarded the N’dakinna (homeland) throughout the generations and continue to be a vital voice for the good among us.
Today among these beloved leaders, in this beloved place, in this beloved city: we stand on the traditional ancestral homeland of Pennacook, Abenaki and Wabanaki Peoples of past and present. We acknowledge and honor with gratitude the aki (land), nibi (water), and alnobak (people) who have stewarded the N’dakinna (homeland) throughout the generations and continue to be a vital voice for the good among us.
Opening/Framing:
Good afternoon. I am the Reverend Dave Grishaw-Jones and I am glad to stand today with clergy and leaders from many wonderful New Hampshire faith communities and the Granite State Organizing Project. I am myself the Pastor and Teacher of the Community Church of Durham, a Sanctuary Congregation of the United Church of Christ.
We stand together this afternoon just a stone’s throw from West High in Manchester to cry out for our children’s futures, for our families’ futures, for our teachers’ futures, and for our country’s soul. At its best, at our best, we Americans are as safe and as strong as a public high school. We are as confident as its students, and as dedicated as their parents and teachers. What makes America truly great are schools like West High where students from many cultures and nations study together and grow together and develop a sense of community and civic commitment together.
When ICE terrorizes our streets and schools, as they’ve done this year in Minneapolis and Manchester and a hundred other cities, ICE strikes violently at the heart of our American community and the spirit of our democracy. When students have to ask parents over dinner whether they’ll be ambushed next, or taken next, or even killed next, ICE has sown fear and panic in our children and their dreams.
We stand together—leaders, clergy, believers from many traditions—to speak to our elected officials and to our neighbors with one voice today. In our America, from Manchester to Minneapolis, there is a plumb line—straight and true—that falls clearly and unmistakably in our midst and holds us all to account. Who will we be? To terrorize our neighborhoods and deport neighbors and friends is to commit a kind of civil and moral blasphemy, a crime that diminishes our democracy and tears at the ties that bind us. Who will we be? To kill advocates for immigrants, champions of human rights, in our own city streets, is to pervert the cause of righteousness in plain sight. Who will we be? To sow fear and panic in our children is to abuse the power entrusted to our leaders by the will of the people. Who will we be?
Today we will bring our many traditions to bear on this American crisis. Today we will speak of ICE’s cruelty and crimes. Today we will insist on rigorous accountability for the madness our own government has set loose in our streets. Today we will insist on congressional oversight for everything ICE is doing and every dollar ICE is spending. Today we will call out the courage of communities resisting together, in solidarity, in Minneapolis, Manchester and across the country. And today we will speak with one voice of a plumb line—straight and true—that does not tolerate hatred, that does not accept state-sponsored violence and weaponized occupation, that does not in any way acquiesce to fascism and racism in this good land.
Because we love the children of New Hampshire, today we say “No more!” Because we love our cities, our neighborhoods and schools like West High in Manchester, today we say “No more!” Because we love this country and are committed to a better future, today we say “No more!”
And because we love one another, one people from many faiths and cultures and nations; because we love one another not only in word, but in deed, we say—with the Prophet Amos and the Prophet Martin and so many others throughout history—“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
We stand together this afternoon just a stone’s throw from West High in Manchester to cry out for our children’s futures, for our families’ futures, for our teachers’ futures, and for our country’s soul. At its best, at our best, we Americans are as safe and as strong as a public high school. We are as confident as its students, and as dedicated as their parents and teachers. What makes America truly great are schools like West High where students from many cultures and nations study together and grow together and develop a sense of community and civic commitment together.
When ICE terrorizes our streets and schools, as they’ve done this year in Minneapolis and Manchester and a hundred other cities, ICE strikes violently at the heart of our American community and the spirit of our democracy. When students have to ask parents over dinner whether they’ll be ambushed next, or taken next, or even killed next, ICE has sown fear and panic in our children and their dreams.
We stand together—leaders, clergy, believers from many traditions—to speak to our elected officials and to our neighbors with one voice today. In our America, from Manchester to Minneapolis, there is a plumb line—straight and true—that falls clearly and unmistakably in our midst and holds us all to account. Who will we be? To terrorize our neighborhoods and deport neighbors and friends is to commit a kind of civil and moral blasphemy, a crime that diminishes our democracy and tears at the ties that bind us. Who will we be? To kill advocates for immigrants, champions of human rights, in our own city streets, is to pervert the cause of righteousness in plain sight. Who will we be? To sow fear and panic in our children is to abuse the power entrusted to our leaders by the will of the people. Who will we be?
Because we love the children of New Hampshire, today we say “No more!” Because we love our cities, our neighborhoods and schools like West High in Manchester, today we say “No more!” Because we love this country and are committed to a better future, today we say “No more!”
And because we love one another, one people from many faiths and cultures and nations; because we love one another not only in word, but in deed, we say—with the Prophet Amos and the Prophet Martin and so many others throughout history—“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Monday, January 26, 2026
Monday, January 19, 2026
Sunday, January 18, 2026
HOMILY: "Yahweh in the Desert"
Matthew 3:1-17
1.
It’s the last line in today’s reading, the very last one, that seizes my attention this morning and almost seems to drag me into this scene, into this life, into this particular gospel. After all his wandering, after all his visioning, after all the soaking in of his own wild and marvelous baptism in the Jordan: “Jesus was led even further into the desert…” Jesus was led even further into the desert. By the Spirit.
I watch the news out of Minneapolis this week, the menacing confrontation of government vigilantes with immigrants and their advocates. And aren’t we all being drawn, further into the desert now? And the President’s talking about invoking the Insurrection Act. In Minnesota. A military move against activists like you and me. And aren’t we all being drawn, further in the desert now? I get a notification on my own phone, as so many of you did on Friday, that ICE agents are showing up here on the Seacoast now, in unmarked cars in shopping center lots. I’m asked to pay attention, take videos, report what I see. And aren’t we all being drawn, further, further into the desert now? A geography of unknowing. A landscape of unnerving vulnerability.
But in our tradition and (let’s be honest) so many other indigenous traditions, also a place of repentance and renewal, of shedding worn-out habits and grounding ourselves in wisdom, of testing one another and risking new patterns of communal care and solidarity. The desert is in so many ways God’s greatest sanctuary. Where frightened souls learn to trust a Higher Power. Where fleeing people become a covenant community. So Jesus was led even further into the desert. By the Spirit.
You’ll remember, of course, that the Hebrews met Yahweh in the desert. This is the foundational biblical story and found in the book of Exodus. Liberated from Pharaoh’s pyramid economy, Pharaoh’s grinding, inhuman economy. Set free from their oppression for new life in new places.. Chased out when they too had been accused of insurrection.
But liberation, they discover, isn’t transactional, nor is it in any way quick. There’s a desert out there, a desert to be faced, to be embraced, to be welcomed in awe and wonder; a desert in which the Hebrews will be tested and tempted and thrilled and re-tooled for the projects and promise ahead. Yawheh in the desert!
The rabbis of old liked to say that it might have taken just a few days to get the people out of Egypt; but it took all of forty years to get Egypt out of the people. The desert. Where old habits are shed, and old expectations purged, and new practices implemented, new joys embraced, new commitments made. A fleeing people becomes, in time, a covenant community. It took just a few days to get the people out of Egypt; but it took all of forty years to get Egypt out of the people. Yes, a geography of unknowing. Yes, a landscape of vulnerability. But a sacred space. A sanctuary space. A space where the Spirit does her most impressive and consequential work. As do we.
2.
So we can talk a bit about our own desert moment: this unnerving moment in American life, and global society in general. And how we might find in all this something beyond despair, something like holy opportunity and radical renewal, and a spiritual challenge that aims to remake us. Maybe that’s our calling in moments like this one: to resist catastrophizing the news and remain open and available to grace and transformation.
But it’s worth noting first how Jesus—at the very dawn of his adult life, his mature ministry—how Jesus is moved to align his spirit, his life, his purpose with that same Hebrew journey out of Egypt, that same communal experience of un-learning and re-imagining and embracing anew God’s ways of communal care and mutual liberation. Again, we have to see that Jesus is not out to establish a new and better religion, not at all. He is out to fully and radically live into the traditions and lessons and practices and insights of his people’s faith. Yahweh in the desert. And that means going out from Egypt, accepting the call to repentance and unlearning and receptivity in strange and godly places. Yahweh in the desert.
Jesus knows that he’s loved. And loved a lot and forever. And Jesus’s seen the Dove of Peace hovering over him. And claiming him as God’s own. Jesus has faced the fears that may have scared him from loving and caring. And he has cast off the cords of shame, the tangled angst that may have clung too tightly to his dear and beloved soul. What a moment out there in the river! That voice! “This is my Own, my Beloved, on whom my favor rests!” And still he goes even deeper into the desert, further into the unknown, deeper into the wild places of his tradition and heart. Because that’s what we do. Liberation isn’t transactional. It tests and transforms us, and whole communities are reborn. If we go. Further into the desert.
And, of course, what happens to Jesus in the wilderness, in the desert, is much like what happens to the Hebrews in their own forty-year sojourn. He is indeed tested. He is surely and even sorely tempted. And it’s out there—in the desert—that he finds his people’s deepest truth, his people’s theological tradition, the radical edge that says no to violence and yes to peace, that says no to magic and yes to compassion, that says no to patriarchy and power trips and yes to covenant and collaboration. It’s out there in the desert that Jesus owns his tradition, his faith and what it requires of him. Love has bathed his imagination in wonder. The river has flooded his shame with grace. The desert has tested his faith and prepared him for a particular kind of ministry. He’s ready to speak about repentance and renewal. He’s ready to risk new patterns of communal care and mutual liberation.
3.
In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. came out against the Vietnam War in a hugely important speech in New York called “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” The speech, by the way, was delivered at the Riverside Church which holds dual membership in the American Baptist tradition and our own United Church of Christ.
In that seminal moment, Doctor King spoke to a spiritual crisis that seems terribly familiar and deeply related to our own moment in time.
“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” This is our chance, my friends. And it’s a holy opportunity, a sacred obligation and our desert moment. To reject together the giant triplets King speaks of: racism, materialism and militarism. To reject together White Christian Nationalism as an American ideal, or even an American tradition, and certainly as an American future. To wrestle together with the ways these triplets infect our institutions, our faith, our fears, even sometimes our habits and dreams. And to choose instead Yahweh’s way: the way of communal care, human rights, economic equity, and mutual liberation.
What if this is our calling? To wrestle in this desert with temptation. To embrace in this desert God’s promise of sufficiency and community and grace. To choose in this desert the Hebrew ways of bold economic sharing, and brave neighborly love, and sweet hospitality for the immigrant and stranger. What if this is our calling in 2026? As communities of faith? As people of faith? As a church right here in New Hampshire? Isn’t it true that the joy of our baptismal identity, the great gift of the baptismal promise—is that we can face the past with courage, and meet the present with irrepressible creativity and grace? Like Jesus in the Jordan. Beloved!
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend, January 18, 2026
Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend, January 18, 2026
1.
It’s the last line in today’s reading, the very last one, that seizes my attention this morning and almost seems to drag me into this scene, into this life, into this particular gospel. After all his wandering, after all his visioning, after all the soaking in of his own wild and marvelous baptism in the Jordan: “Jesus was led even further into the desert…” Jesus was led even further into the desert. By the Spirit.
I watch the news out of Minneapolis this week, the menacing confrontation of government vigilantes with immigrants and their advocates. And aren’t we all being drawn, further into the desert now? And the President’s talking about invoking the Insurrection Act. In Minnesota. A military move against activists like you and me. And aren’t we all being drawn, further in the desert now? I get a notification on my own phone, as so many of you did on Friday, that ICE agents are showing up here on the Seacoast now, in unmarked cars in shopping center lots. I’m asked to pay attention, take videos, report what I see. And aren’t we all being drawn, further, further into the desert now? A geography of unknowing. A landscape of unnerving vulnerability.
You’ll remember, of course, that the Hebrews met Yahweh in the desert. This is the foundational biblical story and found in the book of Exodus. Liberated from Pharaoh’s pyramid economy, Pharaoh’s grinding, inhuman economy. Set free from their oppression for new life in new places.. Chased out when they too had been accused of insurrection.
But liberation, they discover, isn’t transactional, nor is it in any way quick. There’s a desert out there, a desert to be faced, to be embraced, to be welcomed in awe and wonder; a desert in which the Hebrews will be tested and tempted and thrilled and re-tooled for the projects and promise ahead. Yawheh in the desert!
The rabbis of old liked to say that it might have taken just a few days to get the people out of Egypt; but it took all of forty years to get Egypt out of the people. The desert. Where old habits are shed, and old expectations purged, and new practices implemented, new joys embraced, new commitments made. A fleeing people becomes, in time, a covenant community. It took just a few days to get the people out of Egypt; but it took all of forty years to get Egypt out of the people. Yes, a geography of unknowing. Yes, a landscape of vulnerability. But a sacred space. A sanctuary space. A space where the Spirit does her most impressive and consequential work. As do we.
2.
So we can talk a bit about our own desert moment: this unnerving moment in American life, and global society in general. And how we might find in all this something beyond despair, something like holy opportunity and radical renewal, and a spiritual challenge that aims to remake us. Maybe that’s our calling in moments like this one: to resist catastrophizing the news and remain open and available to grace and transformation.
But it’s worth noting first how Jesus—at the very dawn of his adult life, his mature ministry—how Jesus is moved to align his spirit, his life, his purpose with that same Hebrew journey out of Egypt, that same communal experience of un-learning and re-imagining and embracing anew God’s ways of communal care and mutual liberation. Again, we have to see that Jesus is not out to establish a new and better religion, not at all. He is out to fully and radically live into the traditions and lessons and practices and insights of his people’s faith. Yahweh in the desert. And that means going out from Egypt, accepting the call to repentance and unlearning and receptivity in strange and godly places. Yahweh in the desert.
Jesus knows that he’s loved. And loved a lot and forever. And Jesus’s seen the Dove of Peace hovering over him. And claiming him as God’s own. Jesus has faced the fears that may have scared him from loving and caring. And he has cast off the cords of shame, the tangled angst that may have clung too tightly to his dear and beloved soul. What a moment out there in the river! That voice! “This is my Own, my Beloved, on whom my favor rests!” And still he goes even deeper into the desert, further into the unknown, deeper into the wild places of his tradition and heart. Because that’s what we do. Liberation isn’t transactional. It tests and transforms us, and whole communities are reborn. If we go. Further into the desert.
And, of course, what happens to Jesus in the wilderness, in the desert, is much like what happens to the Hebrews in their own forty-year sojourn. He is indeed tested. He is surely and even sorely tempted. And it’s out there—in the desert—that he finds his people’s deepest truth, his people’s theological tradition, the radical edge that says no to violence and yes to peace, that says no to magic and yes to compassion, that says no to patriarchy and power trips and yes to covenant and collaboration. It’s out there in the desert that Jesus owns his tradition, his faith and what it requires of him. Love has bathed his imagination in wonder. The river has flooded his shame with grace. The desert has tested his faith and prepared him for a particular kind of ministry. He’s ready to speak about repentance and renewal. He’s ready to risk new patterns of communal care and mutual liberation.
3.
In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. came out against the Vietnam War in a hugely important speech in New York called “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” The speech, by the way, was delivered at the Riverside Church which holds dual membership in the American Baptist tradition and our own United Church of Christ.
In that seminal moment, Doctor King spoke to a spiritual crisis that seems terribly familiar and deeply related to our own moment in time.
Increasingly, he said, by choice or by accident, our nation has taken the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.And I’m moved then to say this. That in our own desert moment, in this strange and unnerving season of American culture, when democracy itself seems as vulnerable to despots and despair as it ever has been—we too are being tempted, tested like Jesus. That in the streets of Minneapolis and now it seems Portsmouth and Rochester, we too are faced with choices that will define our children’s futures and indeed our commitments to faith, discipleship and democracy itself.
And then he said, I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
And doesn’t that hit home this week: We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society; from a gas-and-oil-oriented society to a person-oriented society; from a Wall-Street-oriented society to a person-oriented society; from a body-armor-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
And then Dr. King said this: When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Wow. 1967.
What if this is our calling? To wrestle in this desert with temptation. To embrace in this desert God’s promise of sufficiency and community and grace. To choose in this desert the Hebrew ways of bold economic sharing, and brave neighborly love, and sweet hospitality for the immigrant and stranger. What if this is our calling in 2026? As communities of faith? As people of faith? As a church right here in New Hampshire? Isn’t it true that the joy of our baptismal identity, the great gift of the baptismal promise—is that we can face the past with courage, and meet the present with irrepressible creativity and grace? Like Jesus in the Jordan. Beloved!
Sunday, January 11, 2026
HOMILY: "This Supper of the Suffering Servant"
Isaiah 42:1-9
1.
I was handed this long-stemmed white rose on Thursday night at a huge and raucous protest in Merrimack, by a bright-eyed old woman wearing a neon vest that said PEACEKEEPER across the back. And it’s a plastic rose, of course, but its purpose served the cause. When outrage runs deep—as it does again this week, across the country—dissent stays true to a higher calling. Human dignity. Sweet liberation. True justice. When resistance coalesces quickly—as it does this week, around the martyrdom of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis—leadership draws from the deepest wells of compassion and grace. That Thursday night protest in Merrimack was angry and defiant, and I was angry and defiant too. Still am. But I took the old woman’s rose as an invitation to communion in a secular space, as an offer of wisdom in another moment charged with rage and grief and perhaps even a dose of despair.
Renee Good’s murder in Minneapolis, by a poorly-prepared and sadly emboldened ICE agent, has shaken us all to the core this week. And Thursday’s protest amplified the outrage of all kinds of New Hampshire folk, from all generations and backgrounds, who also worry for the government’s plans to build new warehouses, detention and deportation outposts, in communities like Merrimack. No, no, no, we said. The madness of racism has not only infected the spirit of America, it has now proven dangerous to communities simply standing together in love and solidarity; it has now proven lethal for mothers, fathers, students simply acting in good conscience to protect neighbors from armed vigilantes with government IDs.
But I had this rose in my hand, and I had today’s ‘servant song’ from Isaiah in my mind. And it makes we wonder how it is we couple outrage and compassion in moments like this one; or how it is we yoke the gentle spirit of the ‘suffering servant’ in Isaiah with the resolute, even tenacious commitment I felt in that determined community of protest Thursday night. There was such anger among us, outside that Town Hall; we have been pushed together to some kind of limit, even some kind of breaking point, by a government of such cruelty and callousness it defies all imagination and decency.
And yet this morning the Holy One calls out the servant to bring true justice to the nations, true justice, consequential justice, not by crying out or raising her voice; not by breaking tender reeds or bellowing such bluster as to quench a wavering flame. But by offering light in the darkness. And by opening the eyes of all who struggle to see. And by freeing captives from their prisons, and opening the doors of detention so the frightened can go free again.
Did you catch that in the text? It’s subtle, but it’s deep and provocative, I think. Even that one verse at the end of that first stanza. “So gentle that you do not break a bruised reed, or quench a wavering flame, faithfully you will bring forth true justice.” I wrote this one verse on a scrap of paper and folded it into my coat pocket Thursday night. It’s the first of four defining poems in what’s known as the Second Book of Isaiah, or Second Isaiah, and together they’re called “Servant Songs.”
And this first suggests a kind of faithfulness, a kind of engagement, a kind of advocacy that is nurtured not in defiance and anger, but in trust and prayer; not in outrage, but in tenderness and humility; not only in righteousness over and against evil, but in sacrificial commitment to one another’s liberation. “So gentle that you do not break a bruised reed.”
I was struck yesterday by the statement released by Renee Good’s grieving wife Becca, who said that her wife lived by an overarching belief that there is “kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow.” She was a Christian, Renee was, who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: “that we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.” Many will imply that she was an anarchist or a zealot; but she was indeed a Christian, Renee Nicole Good, a follower of Jesus. And like him, she carried the cross to the very end.
2.
Over the centuries, some have interpreted the Servant Songs of Isaiah merely as foreshadowing Jesus’ own messianic arrival. But I prefer to believe that Jesus read this poetry early and often, and that he took it to heart as he grew and matured in faith and conscience. And like many faithful Jewish believers and many devoted communities since, Jesus integrated these same Songs into his spirituality and self-understanding. What it means to be God’s servant in the world. What it means to love sacrificially among the brokenhearted of the world. And more importantly, I prefer to believe that Jesus integrated these Songs into his sense of community vocation, congregational mission and discipleship. Let’s not miss this.
Because this first Servant Song, at least, is clearly intended not as a clarion call to individual service, but as a ringing invitation to congregational, even covenantal mission. And as we look forward to our own Annual Meeting in a couple of weeks, it’s significant I think, that we hear in this poetry, God’s “appointment” of a covenant people—not just a superstar messiah, not just a heroic champion, and not one or two amazing souls, but a covenant people, “a light to the nations.” And here, again, is our calling, ours in community: “to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who sit in darkness from dungeon and detention.” Our covenant calling.
Toward the end of Thursday’s protest, organizers assembled at the door of Merrimack’s Town Hall—where residents of Merrimack would soon file into a town council meeting. There, to register their wholehearted opposition to any kind of ICE warehouse in Merrimack or anywhere else in New Hampshire. Some non-Merrimack folk were understandably disappointed not to be invited in, not to have their own opportunity to speak and express all kinds of outrage for what’s happened across the country of late.
And that’s when our friend, Grace Kindeke took the bullhorn and spoke to the murmuring crowd. Grace has spoken here at the Community Church several times, worked for many years with Maggie Fogarty and the American Friends Service Committee, and serves now as Program Director with the New Hampshire Center for Justice and Equity. She’s a proud advocate for New Hampshire’s immigrant communities and a brave voice for oppressed peoples everywhere. And with that bullhorn in hand, Grace channeled the wisdom of Isaiah, the spirit of the servant and the grace of God. Surrounded by a restless community, a sad and mad community, she found a way to fuse anger to tenderness, and outrage to hope, and despair to lovingkindness. Her voice did not waver. She was strong and loud. Her invitation was not demur. She was insistent and uncompromising.
But I could see tears in her eyes, and then rolling down her face. And I could hear love in every encouraging word she said. And between thoughts, she’d look around at the crowd on all sides with such kindness and such purpose: “We have to move forward together,” she said. “We have to move forward together, because we are so much stronger and wiser together than when we are apart.” And even as she said these words, I could feel the crowd leaning in towards her, straining to see that power in her eyes, aching to feel what she was feeling, eager to soak up the determination that Grace had gathered like a warm winter shawl around her shoulders. She found a way. To fuse anger to tenderness. To wed outrage and hope. To inspire broken hearts with lovingkindness. And that, my friends, is leadership. Servant leadership of the highest order. I found myself mouthing another line from today’s text: “You will neither waver nor be crushed!” “You will neither waver nor be crushed until justice is established on earth, for the islands await your teaching!” Wow. That was Grace Kindeke Thursday night; but not just her, it was a whole community, a beloved community, right here in New Hampshire, speaking truth to power, with love and gentle hope.
3.
We are wise, my friends, to remember that communion, our sacrament today, is the supper of a suffering servant. It’s not magic, but it surely is transformational. It requires no ‘hocus pocus,’ but it absolutely requires embodiment and intention. This kind of communion does not save us from sadness, but delivers us from isolation, for resilience and living hope and even a kind of imperfect yet holy salvation. I’m thinking about the occasional sandwich I share with Antony at his table downstairs. And I’m thinking about baked pigeon at a family table in Bethlehem last summer, and the laughter around that table as Palestinian friends imagined a future of justice, and liberation, and harvests, and joy. This kind of communion is simple and bountiful. It’s global and it’s not ours alone. It’s God’s greatest gift.
The First Sunday after the Epiphany
Communion Sunday, January 11, 2026
Communion Sunday, January 11, 2026
1.
Renee Good’s murder in Minneapolis, by a poorly-prepared and sadly emboldened ICE agent, has shaken us all to the core this week. And Thursday’s protest amplified the outrage of all kinds of New Hampshire folk, from all generations and backgrounds, who also worry for the government’s plans to build new warehouses, detention and deportation outposts, in communities like Merrimack. No, no, no, we said. The madness of racism has not only infected the spirit of America, it has now proven dangerous to communities simply standing together in love and solidarity; it has now proven lethal for mothers, fathers, students simply acting in good conscience to protect neighbors from armed vigilantes with government IDs.
But I had this rose in my hand, and I had today’s ‘servant song’ from Isaiah in my mind. And it makes we wonder how it is we couple outrage and compassion in moments like this one; or how it is we yoke the gentle spirit of the ‘suffering servant’ in Isaiah with the resolute, even tenacious commitment I felt in that determined community of protest Thursday night. There was such anger among us, outside that Town Hall; we have been pushed together to some kind of limit, even some kind of breaking point, by a government of such cruelty and callousness it defies all imagination and decency.
And yet this morning the Holy One calls out the servant to bring true justice to the nations, true justice, consequential justice, not by crying out or raising her voice; not by breaking tender reeds or bellowing such bluster as to quench a wavering flame. But by offering light in the darkness. And by opening the eyes of all who struggle to see. And by freeing captives from their prisons, and opening the doors of detention so the frightened can go free again.
Did you catch that in the text? It’s subtle, but it’s deep and provocative, I think. Even that one verse at the end of that first stanza. “So gentle that you do not break a bruised reed, or quench a wavering flame, faithfully you will bring forth true justice.” I wrote this one verse on a scrap of paper and folded it into my coat pocket Thursday night. It’s the first of four defining poems in what’s known as the Second Book of Isaiah, or Second Isaiah, and together they’re called “Servant Songs.”
And this first suggests a kind of faithfulness, a kind of engagement, a kind of advocacy that is nurtured not in defiance and anger, but in trust and prayer; not in outrage, but in tenderness and humility; not only in righteousness over and against evil, but in sacrificial commitment to one another’s liberation. “So gentle that you do not break a bruised reed.”
 |
| Becca and Renee Good |
2.
Over the centuries, some have interpreted the Servant Songs of Isaiah merely as foreshadowing Jesus’ own messianic arrival. But I prefer to believe that Jesus read this poetry early and often, and that he took it to heart as he grew and matured in faith and conscience. And like many faithful Jewish believers and many devoted communities since, Jesus integrated these same Songs into his spirituality and self-understanding. What it means to be God’s servant in the world. What it means to love sacrificially among the brokenhearted of the world. And more importantly, I prefer to believe that Jesus integrated these Songs into his sense of community vocation, congregational mission and discipleship. Let’s not miss this.
Because this first Servant Song, at least, is clearly intended not as a clarion call to individual service, but as a ringing invitation to congregational, even covenantal mission. And as we look forward to our own Annual Meeting in a couple of weeks, it’s significant I think, that we hear in this poetry, God’s “appointment” of a covenant people—not just a superstar messiah, not just a heroic champion, and not one or two amazing souls, but a covenant people, “a light to the nations.” And here, again, is our calling, ours in community: “to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who sit in darkness from dungeon and detention.” Our covenant calling.
Toward the end of Thursday’s protest, organizers assembled at the door of Merrimack’s Town Hall—where residents of Merrimack would soon file into a town council meeting. There, to register their wholehearted opposition to any kind of ICE warehouse in Merrimack or anywhere else in New Hampshire. Some non-Merrimack folk were understandably disappointed not to be invited in, not to have their own opportunity to speak and express all kinds of outrage for what’s happened across the country of late.
And that’s when our friend, Grace Kindeke took the bullhorn and spoke to the murmuring crowd. Grace has spoken here at the Community Church several times, worked for many years with Maggie Fogarty and the American Friends Service Committee, and serves now as Program Director with the New Hampshire Center for Justice and Equity. She’s a proud advocate for New Hampshire’s immigrant communities and a brave voice for oppressed peoples everywhere. And with that bullhorn in hand, Grace channeled the wisdom of Isaiah, the spirit of the servant and the grace of God. Surrounded by a restless community, a sad and mad community, she found a way to fuse anger to tenderness, and outrage to hope, and despair to lovingkindness. Her voice did not waver. She was strong and loud. Her invitation was not demur. She was insistent and uncompromising.
3.
We are wise, my friends, to remember that communion, our sacrament today, is the supper of a suffering servant. It’s not magic, but it surely is transformational. It requires no ‘hocus pocus,’ but it absolutely requires embodiment and intention. This kind of communion does not save us from sadness, but delivers us from isolation, for resilience and living hope and even a kind of imperfect yet holy salvation. I’m thinking about the occasional sandwich I share with Antony at his table downstairs. And I’m thinking about baked pigeon at a family table in Bethlehem last summer, and the laughter around that table as Palestinian friends imagined a future of justice, and liberation, and harvests, and joy. This kind of communion is simple and bountiful. It’s global and it’s not ours alone. It’s God’s greatest gift.
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