First Church in Boston

Come Home For the Holidays!

admin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:41:08 +0000

Winter Solstice
Wednesday, December 21, 6 PM
Featuring the Celtic music of Áine Minogue

Christmas Eve
Candlelight Celebration With Lessons and Carols
Saturday, December 24, 5:30 PM

Sunday, December 25, 11 AM, “The Paradox of Christmas,” Linda Simmons

“The Value of Hard Virtues”- Schuyler Vogel May 26 at 11 AM

admin — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:13:40 +0000

“Most of our national holidays are celebrations, and this is true for our faith too. Flower Communion, and even Christmas and Easter tell stories of hope, light and love. Memorial Day is different. We are asked not to celebrate, but to honor sacrifice and courage, to acknowledge loss and to face a world still far from our ideals. The virtues of Memorial Day challenge us and they ask us to confront some uncomfortable realities. It is important that we have this kind of holiday too. It allows us not just to recognize the sunny side of life, but also its fog, winters and storms, all of which we must learn to meet with grace, fortitude and love.”

-Schuyler Vogel

“Stuff Everybody Knows”- Rev. Stephen Kendrick, May 19 at 11 AM

admin — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:17:08 +0000

“This is one of my favorite weekends of the year, and always a lot of fun. Now, you may think I am a little insane to enjoy Annual Meetings–but honestly, ours tend to be enjoyable, with humor, good grace, and large amounts of gratitude sprinkled into the reports and democratic process. Several years ago, we decided to ‘amp up’ the meeting with special service awards to long-time members, and to integrate the preceding service smoothly into the meeting itself. This has proved to be a winner–and the suspense each year about which member(s) will be recognized is almost too much!

The sermon now serves as an introduction to the meeting, as a kind of yearly ‘State of the Union’ speech. Lately, I have been thinking about what makes what we do each week special and unique. It is no great news flash that attitudes to organized religion in America are changing, and not for the better. And if we need to change to adapt to the times, then we also have to recognize what it is we do that is essential, and cannot be changed–our birthright, if you will. This all comes under the category of ‘stuff everybody knows,’ except that we may have forgotten or learned to overlook the core importance of what we do and who we are to one another. As my mother once said, ‘There’s nothing so rare as common sense.’ ”

-Stephen

“Mother Courage”- Rev. Rosemary Lloyd May 12 at 11 AM

admin — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:34:43 +0000

“Mother’s Day offers a preacher a wide open field of topics to contemplate–as long as one comes around to the subject of mothers. This Sunday, I draw inspiration from the words of Unitarian feminist and pacifist, Julia Ward Howe, who called on ’all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears’ to unite for peace. Having a mother heart is not gender or role specific; it beats in every being. Let’s talk about what might be possible when we tap into the courage of our mother hearts.”

-Rev. Rosemary Lloyd

“Dark Energy”- Rev. Stephen Kendrick, May 5 at 11 AM

admin — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:14:56 +0000

“At the huge interfaith service, where local clergy joined with our Governor and the President after the bombings, I was startled to hear one minister speak of the ‘dark spasm of energy’ that God allowed into the world so that good things might eventually happen. As I sat there (agreeing with 99.9 percent of the sentiments expressed that day), I realized that phrase about ‘dark energy’ was something that I profoundly disagreed with–and in fact, was a prime reason I became a UU to begin with.

Does God ‘allow’ evil, or even generate it, to higher good purposes? This is a classic orthodox position, and it’s actually a pastorally important, not abstract, consideration–how many times have you heard someone say, ‘Why did God punish me/us this way?’ ’Why did God allow this horrible thing?’… It’s time to look into this dark energy.”

IT’S A BANNER WEEKEND AT FIRST CHURCH

In addition to our service on Sunday, all members are invited to share the joy of our former Intern Linda Simmon’s ordination into the Unitarian Universalist ministry. Join the celebration at 2 pm on Saturday, May 4th for a special service and reception to follow. This is our chance to greet Linda and Gary as they prepare their move to Nantucket, where she has been selected as the new UU minister on the island. Let’s give them a mainland celebration and farewell they will always remember!

-Stephen

“Saying Grace”- Rev. Rosemary Lloyd, April 28 at 11 AM

admin — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:11:13 +0000

Rosemary writes: “As a child, I shared in our family’s practice of saying grace before a meal. This pause before eating was a rare moment of stillness is our busy, active family life, but the words, learned by heart and recited by rote, held little meaning for me as a child. The practice of expressing gratitude, of “blessing” the moments and activities of daily life is found in many rich spiritual traditions. How do we “bless” the world with our words and actions? What use is setting an intention? Where is grace in a broken world? These are some of the question I will be mining for the sermon on Sunday. I hope to see you in church!”

“And Not Grow Weary”- Rev. Stephen Kendrick, April 21 at 11 AM

admin — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:30:40 +0000

“We will never have a better reminder of why we need to go forward with our New Member service and lunch this weekend than the events of this Monday–we need a place, all of us, to bring our bruised hearts, our questions, our need to bless and to pray. This is the kind of a week that reminds us of why we joined this church in the first place, and in the wake of the combined Interfaith services that we will be participating in, this Sunday will be an opportunity to be with our own faith community, in love and need. We need positive inspiration as well as a shared life which certainly includes pain. We cannot run the race of life without the support and love of others–that’s the truth. We learned it again this week.”

-Stephen

“Learning to Swim”- Rev. Stephen Kendrick April 14 at 11 AM

admin — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:32:33 +0000

“Pretty simple sermon: we face humanity’s most pressing challenge in recorded history with the accelerating pace of climate change–and we are failing. I won’t be preaching to depress or completely bum you out, nor to convince you that the challenge is real–you already know that it’s real. The question is–with our politics completely failing to address the problem, can world religions help at last–and can our own faith of Unitarian Universalism step up?”

“Dive Deeper”- Rev. Stephen Kendrick April 7 at 11 AM

admin — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:09:00 +0000

In reading a biography of Herman Melville, a member of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York, I discovered a quote from him about the need to “dive deeper” in our lives.

Well, if anyone ever understood the ways of the sea, and how being on the water can test us to the limit, it was surely the author of Moby Dick! I’m no sailor, nor am I a person who is a thrill seeker by nature–but I have learned that there are greater risks in life than taking that deeper dive: living on the surface of things, accepting whatever presents itself, sleepwalking through our days. If our faith teaches us anything, it is to prepare that dive.

-Stephen

“The Gardener” by Rev. Stephen Kendrick, Easter Sunday, March 31 at 11 AM

admin — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:24:12 +0000

Maybe it’s because winter has been so stubbornly persistent, but I’ve seldom looked forward to an Easter service like this one. We’ve added a song so that we can sing Spring in through the glorious hymns of Easter, and in the sermon, I will be looking at the experience of Mary Magdalene as a way into the mystery of Easter. When she confronts a young gardener standing outside the tomb, she is living the generative pattern of the garden, a powerful spiritual theme from Eden to our time…

The words that they speak to each other reflect that mystery, not solve it–but it is an experience we can still enter into today.

Easter Communion Service, 10:00 a.m. Hale Chapel

If you go back and study the first years after Jesus’ death, you find that the ritual passing of bread and wine by his early followers was their way of saying, “We’re all in this together.” It was about remembrance and telling stories and giving thanks for an amazing life lived in their midst. They chose bread and wine because they were inexpensive and easy to find. This is and was always meant to be an egalitarian sacrament: a table set for all of us, and for all of who we are, without question or condition.

On Easter Sunday—once a year—we offer this communion tradition. Please join us as we mindfully share these common elements and remember an uncommon life.

-Stephen