Pastors' Blog
This Sunday we return to summer worship mode and go down to Willett Hall and begin at 10am. We will continue through September 2. Many of us really cherish the summer worship experience: it feels more communally connected, we sing better, we have communion every week, it's a little more relaxed. Frankly I LOVE it. The way we worship reflects more of our sense of the immanent God, that God is right there with us, on...
This Sunday, we will welcome friends from the Islamic Center of Boston (ICB) in Wayland, to lead us in worship. We will hear the beautiful Muslim call to prayer, read from the Quran (Chapter 3, verse 103), and consider what it means to have peace among interfaith siblings and cousins. I have also invited friends from our local Muslim community in Brookline to join us.
For...
Twice a year, we hold an all-parish meeting: once in November and once in June. For some, okay maybe a LOT of us, that may sound really boring. All-parish meeting. Hmm. Meh. I'll grant you, it's not the most exciting thing we do here, but it's a cool thing, a worthwhile thing.
It's a time when we pause and reflect collectively about where we are as a congregation, where we are headed, and most of importantly, where we think God is in the midst of this. And I have to say, from where I...
Greetings to you and peace, from the one who is and was and is to come! I find our scripture reading for Sunday to be a particularly comforting passage:
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for...
You remember the American Civil War, right? A bloody, awful time of deep division in this country: fathers and mothers against sons and daughters, brothers and sisters against one another. That division was already present in our founding as a nation, when the founders couldn’t resolve the issue of slavery.
It was also the deadliest of all our wars, largely because of the amount of disease that spread untreated among soldiers. We continue to feel the...
Dear Beloved Members and Friends of United Parish,
I ask you to please take 2-5 minutes to read and reflect on the following.
This coming Sunday, May 20, is a special day in the life of our parish year. We celebrate the overall ministry of our church, one in which we all share, and we consecrate our pledges of time, talent and treasure for the year ahead (July 1-June 30). I would like for as many of us to...
Since Easter (April 1) we have been looking at various “Co-Workers in God’s Service,” a phrase borrowed from Paul’s letter to the churches of Corinth (1 Corinthians 3:9). We’ve largely chosen people who have been rock stars in the Christian faith: Thecla from the Book of Acts,...
Anyone familiar with the story of Sweeney Todd? He's a character out of a Victorian penny dreadful series, who partnered with a cunning yet financially-struggling pie-shop owner to murder various members of the upper-class and dispose of their bodies by baking them into pies. There's some suspicion that his character could also be based on legends of dubious pie fillings, cannibalistic proletariat, and barber-surgeons...
This week, as we continue our theme of "Co-Workers in God's Service," we welcome Mary Day Miller, Executive Minister of The American Baptist Churches in Massachusetts (TABCOM), one of our three denominations. As a preview, she writes the following:
"Religion is a matter between God and individuals: the religious opinions of men not being the objects of civil...
“When God was creating the Earth, every day he would look at what he had done and would say, ‘And that is good.’ So I ask them, ‘If you look at your land, the way it is decimated, would God look at that and say, “It is good?”’ If God was to look at your rivers when it is raining and see all the good soil he gave you to plant your seeds in the river disappearing, would he say, “This is good?”’"
This Sunday, in honor of Earth Day and as a continuation of our...
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