Recent Sermon Videos
Listen again...or "take us for a test drive"

We know life is busy, so if you have to miss a Sunday but don't want to miss a sermon, check out the videos of recent sermons posted below. And if you're looking to find out more about what and how we believe at The Congregational Church of Needham, UCC, here's an easy and risk-free way to do just that. Take a listen and then think about joining us LIVE! via Zoom some Sunday soon.  Check out our complete catalog of sermon videos on YouTube here.
Resurrection is for Everyone
​​April 20, 2025
At last we arrive at Easter Sunday. But oddly enough, Matthew's version of the story of the resurrection begins on Good Friday, with what sounds at first like a ghost story about tombs being opened and the dead walking. But it's a reminder that Easter doesn't belong just to the church and resurrection doesn't belong only to Jesus. Resurrection is for everyone, for the whole wide world, all the dry bones, all the walking dead, all the helpless and hopeless, even for us.
​(Matthew 27:45, 50-54) ​
Holy Saturday: The Last Step
​April 13, 2025
Our purpose in this Lenten series has been to slow down and spend significant time reflecting on each step of the story of Jesus’ last days during what we call Holy Week. But he dies on Good Friday. So what happens, if anything, on Holy Saturday? What even can happen? Or should we just jump ahead to the Easter we know, 2000 years later, is coming on Sunday? Our special guest preacher, The Rev. Dr. Mary Luti, will help us sit with those questions and those feelings.
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This service is part of our "Step by Step: A Slow Walk Through Holy Week" series for Lent where we're spending an entire Sunday with each of the days of Holy Week, listening not just for the "what" happens to Jesus by the "whys" that take him there. ​
Holy Wednesday: Prepared
​March 23, 2025
A guided meditation:  Did you know that before there was a Last Supper, there was a First Supper, when Jesus was prepared to endure the terrible events of the rest of Holy Week by the love of his friends. In particular, one woman anointed him with costly perfume, tears and laughter, intimacy and grief mingling together as it ran down, and the house was filled with the odor of holiness, of love. It's good to remember as we face our own hard choices, our struggle for justice is fueled best not just by righteousness but by love. Who do you love so much? (Mark 14:3-9)

This service is part of our "Step by Step: A Slow Walk Through Holy Week" series for Lent where we're spending an entire Sunday with each of the days of Holy Week, listening not just for the "what" happens to Jesus by the "whys" that take him there. 
Holy Tuesday: Controversies
​March 16, 2025
Jesus continues to wear out his welcome in Jerusalem. The various power blocs within the religious leadership of the day pepper him with questions, often trick questions, hoping to discredit him and his disciples in the eyes of the faithful without drawing the attention of the occupying Romans. But Jesus is never one to shy away from controversy for the sake of a larger and more loving Gospel, which angers those powers enough they begin to look for a way to shuffle him off the public stage, permanently. (Mark 11:27-12:40)

This service is part of our "Step by Step: A Slow Walk Through Holy Week" series for Lent where we're spending an entire Sunday with each of the days of Holy Week, listening not just for the "what" happens to Jesus by the "whys" that take him there. 
Hope: We Make the Road by Walking
​November 17, 2024
In the wake of this election's seismic shift, we’re spending time grounding ourselves once more in the core message of 1 Corinthians 13:13—“Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three”—in ways that speak to our current situation, beginning with faith. This week it's hope. 

We talk about having hope, which sounds lovely... until you lose it. Then what are we supposed to do? But as peoples who've lived through the end of their own worlds--and still are--remind us, hope is something we do, something we make. What's revealed in apocalyptic moments (apocalypse means "revealing") is that the hope we forge, the vision we cast, together, into the future is what gives the present meaning and purpose beyond our present troubles. In a very real way, hope has us, not the other way around. 
Faith: Trust & Truth
​November 10, 2024
In the wake of this election week’s seismic shift, we’re going to spend the next three Sundays looking to ground ourselves once more in 1 Corinthians 13:13—“Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three”—in ways that speak to our current situation.

Faith isn’t a laundry list of six impossible things we have to believe before breakfast. Faith is trust (literally, in the New Testament Greek), and the basis of trust is truth. The Church has to be willing to embrace the truth of our and our neighbors’ pain, fear, anger, and grief in this moment, our why should anyone trust us or the hope we preach? Saccharine may be sweet, but it’s artificial. (1 Corinthians 13:13)
My Body is Not a Prayer Request
​October 27, 2024
The gospels are full of miraculous stories of Jesus healing people, but they’re never told from the point of view of the people he heals. The (temporarily) able-bodied Church today is only beginning to understand how problematic that really is, whether we take these stories literally or metaphorically. Because nobody’s body is just a metaphor, and, as disability justice advocates like author Amy Kenny remind us, nobody’s body is just a prayer request. Our disabled God loves all our bodies just as they are. (Mark 10:46-52)
Stitched Together
​October 13, 2024
*With apologies for the poorer than usual audio quality. In Mark 10:17-31, an insider--the rich young ruler--and an outsider--Simon Peter--both ask Jesus essentially the same question: "What must we do to be saved?" Jesus' answer disappoints them both. He's not interested in what will set either man apart in God's eyes but what will bring them together here on earth. While the would wants to divide and subtract, the Gospel is all about addition and multiplication. God's will is to take all our pieces and stitches us up together in one "seamless garment of destiny" (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
You Are Light
​September 29, 2024
“God’s love and kindness will shine upon us like the sun that rises in the sky” (Luke 1:78-9, CEV). A celebration more than a decade in the making! Come join us for a special worship service dedicating the new solar panel array on our sanctuary roof. This giant leap forward was made that much more possible through donations given in loving memory of Deb Baldwin, a founding member of our Environmental Ministries Team and a prophetic voice for climate action, following her death in the spring of 2023. Rev. Maddie Foster, preacher. (Matthew 5:13-16)
Be Careful Which God You Do or Don't Believe In
​September 15, 2024
Shalom Auslander’s book, Beware of God, is full of cautionary tales about faith, including the short story “Waiting for Joe,” in which two hamsters from very different theological viewpoints try to cope with the absence of their owner. It may seem farcical on the surface, it’s a powerful call to interrogate our own faith (or lack thereof) and our image of God and remember that the God somebody hands you is never the only option.
Join, or Die
​September 8, 2024
To combat the current epidemic of isolation, loneliness, disaffiliation, and division destroying our physical, mental, and political health, experts prescribe a dose of social connection. Joining, sharing, learning to trust... and to be trustworthy... helps repair our social fabric, and our souls. Because, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, human beings are made for community. So, given how we've failed in the past, how can we make joining church good news for people again? (Romans 12:4-5)
At Home
​August 25, 2024
“Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.” Every creature, all of creation, has a home in the heart of our Creator. Why is it often so hard for us to feel we do, too? (Psalm 84)
Fractal Faith 
​July 28, 2024
In mathematics, a fractal is “a visual expression of a repeating pattern or formula that starts out simple and gets progressively more complex.” We see fractals in nature, in the patterns of pinecones and the spirals of sea shells, where, when we look closely, we see the signature of those basic building blocks repeating themselves throughout the whole. For us, God is that basic building block. If we look closely, in faith, at the “breadth and length and height and depth” of all creation, we can see the fingerprints of God on everything, from single-cell organisms to entire ecosystems to our neighbors to our enemies. Now if only we would. (Ephesians 3:14-21)
Edifice Complex
July 21, 2024
Even since the time of King David, church buildings have been a mixed blessing–well, not exactly, but you get the idea. Religious communities, churches, need places to gather for worship, but all too often, we can end up worshiping the building, when really it’s just a tool, a gathering place and a base of operations for the broader ministries to our neighbors to which God calls us. So how do churches like ours who possess buildings keep them from possessing us? How do we use this tool well for the glory of God in the support of our community? (2 Samuel 7:1-11
Captivity
July 14, 2024
The Church of Jesus Christ started out as a counter-cultural movement, a vision of how things ought to be to challenge the way things were, particularly for the people the powers of this world consider “the least of these.” But thanks to its adoption by the Roman Emperor Constantine, the church became one of those powers, kicking off the “captivity of the church,” the subjugation of the Gospel of liberation to the very domination system it was created to critique. So under whose sign does the Church gather today? The cross of Christ? Or the flag of the United States? (Matthew 5:13-16; 13:33
The Perfectly Credible Tale of St. Marinos the Monk, or "We Have Always Been Here"
June 30, 2024
Marina was born in 5th Century Lebanon and assigned female at birth. When, after their mother died, their dad decided to enter a monastery, Marina went with him—as a man, Brother Marinos. But one day, he was unjustly accused of a crime he could not have committed and expelled from the community. It was only upon his death that the world learned the truth about Marinos: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual, queer, transgender and non-binary folk have always been here and always will, part of God’s marvelously diverse design for life. Now wouldn't it be amazing if we recognized their inherent worth before they die?

...Now Available as a Podcast!

In an attempt to make our weekly sermons more accessible and more useful to you, we're now posting them as an audio-only podcast we're calling "Yes, We're Open! Living Faith with Needham UCC." You can find the podcast and subscribe to it on all your favorite podcast services including iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and others. (If you can't find it on your favorite service, let us know and we'll put it there.) So now it's even easier to listen around the house or in the car and even share a favorite sermon with someone you think might like to hear it. 

"Grounded"

A sermon series from Spring 2021 (re)considering some core concepts in our faith that shape what and how we believe... and how we live.
"Grounded" Series 8/8
The Holy Spirit's More
April 11, 2021

Christians sometimes give the impression we are backward-leaning people, that God and everything good are in the past, and we're just trying to turn back the clock. But the truth is God leans forward, toward us and toward a world not restored but resurrected. Through inspiration, imagination, and innovation, the Holy Spirit show us the best is yet to come. (2 Corinthians 3:4-6, 12, 17-18)
"Grounded" Series 7/8
Death & Hope: An Easter Story
April 4, 2021

"They hung on the stranger's every word. As the day and their journey drew to a close, they couldn’t stand to let him go, so they asked him to stay for dinner. But still they didn’t recognize him. They felt the presence of the holy with them, reframing their questions, shifting their thinking, drawing them out of their old lives and opening the door to another, better way, but they didn’t have a name for it. 'Were not our hearts burning inside us?'" (Luke 24:13-35)
"Grounded" Series 6/8
Hosanna!:Justice, Peace, Salvation & the Kingdom of God
March 28, 2021

In his first sermon Jesus declared "The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news," the same message he embodies as he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. But what is the point of this preaching, really? Personal salvation? Political reform? Some say it's got to be one or other. But what if it's both? What if the Kingdom of God is justice and peace and salvation, personal and political? As we head into Holy Week, it's a good time to ask again: What governs your life? (Isaiah 65::17-25)
"Grounded" Series 5/8
Prayer: Making the Connection
March 21, 2021
People often think of monastics as people who've retreated away from life into the church. But that wasn't the case for Julian of Norwich a 14th Century English anchorite, whose confinement opened her heart to the whole world--and not in some abstract way, but in an experience as small and hard and concrete as a hazelnut. So we'll talk about hazelnuts, the world, and the infinite love of God, and how sharing the nitty-gritty of our lives in prayer connects us to them all, and one another
"Grounded" Series 4/8
Incarnation: God is in the House
March 14, 2021
At Christmas we ask "What Child is This?" and sing about God being "pleased as man [sic] with man to dwell"--in other words, we reflect on The Incarnation, the enflesh-ment of God in Jesus. But this isn't just another "Prince and the Pauper," king-in-disguise story. The mystery of the incarnation--that God is found in our humanity and our humanity in God--is an everyday mystery, but no less mind-blowing and life-changing for being so common; in fact, that's kinda the point. (John 1:1-14)


"Grounded" Series 3/8
Sin: Not Just the Dots But the Whole Picture
March 7, 2021
Sin is a strong word with a lot of baggage. Many of us have internalized the idea that a sin is a demerit, a ding on our permanent record that, if we earn enough of them, will keep us out of heaven when we die. But if we back up a bit, those individual dots may form a very different picture. If we recalibrate our thinking about sin--and forgiveness--focusing on our relationships rather than our spiritual report card, maybe we won't have to wait till we die to live abundantly. Which is the whole point. (1 John 1:2-5)

"Grounded" Series 2/8
Creation: A Family History
February 28, 2021
The Bible is full of dysfunctional family histories: Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, David and Bathsheba. But behind them all is the story of the conflict between humanity and the rest of creation. Because animal, mineral, vegetable, we are one family, children of the same God. What if we saw the rest of the creation as neighbors, friends, siblings, rather than competitors or property? If this pandemic season has taught us anything, it's that we're a part of creation and not apart from. (Acts 17:22-28)
"Grounded" Series 1/8
What is Church for?
February 21, 2021
​Lent is a season in the life of the church for reflection, when we intentionally sift our lives, all that we do and leave undone, looking to build upon all that is life-giving, for ourselves and our neighbors, and leave behind all that is not. It's a time to sink our roots deeper into God's good soil and grow from there. This Lent, to help us get grounded again, we'll re-examine some core concepts in our faith and ask how they may lead us to that abundant life which is God's intention for all creation--or not. First up, this week we'll talk about the call of the Church, especially in relation to our call as individual Christians, and ask What is Church for, anyway?