Past Sermons
Did you miss a recent sermon? Or want to share one with a friend? Would you like to get a flavor of the kind of messages you might hear at First Parish? Click one of the sermons below, or browse our video archive on YouTube.
17th century Japanese pot Matsuo Basho writes:
Deep into autumn
and this caterpillar
still not a butterfly.
As we find ourselves deep into autumn - deep into this long, tender transition of our lives and our world - let us come together amid the uncertainty of what comes next, holding one another in possibility. Sophia Doescher preaches.
Pema Chodron writes: “To. live is to be willing to die over and over again.” As we grow and change, we are constantly “dying” to our old selves and being “born” anew. Perhaps, then, we know more than we think we do about the border between life and death. Perhaps we’ve already glimpsed our lives from both sides. This All Souls Sunday we remember our dear, departed loved ones, and consider how accepting our mortality can be a source of power and strength in our lives. Rev. Rob Hardies preaches.
As the days grow cooler and shorter, we find ourselves turning to our community for a sense of warmth. With the autumn holiday of Samhain just around the corner, we take this time to reflect on all the things that hold us together, from the solemn and serious to the light-hearted, joy-filled and serendipitous. Valentin Frank preaches.
Video Recording
There is within each of us a place of inner peace and strength. In a time when we so often feel buffeted and worn down by the world, how do we re-discover and regularly return to this place? How can we move through the world from this place of peace and strength? Rev. Rob Hardies preaches.
Video Recording
What is lost when we place the "objective” above lived experience, memory, or the truth of our interconnected lives? Join Sophia Doescher and our Indigenous Justice Working Group as we gather the threads of perfectionism, urgency, and objectivity to practice truth-telling that resists erasure and reclaims our shared humanity. Sophia Doescher preaches
After the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two communities—one American, one Japanese—sought to forge a relationship based on peace and reconciliation. In honor of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Rev. Rob will share perspectives on forgiveness and atonement from his involvement in a decades-long relationship with Japanese Buddhists and survivors of the atomic bomb. Rev. Rob Hardies preaches.
The poem "Outwitted" by Edwin Markham tells us what to do:
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Join us so we can draw the circle together, with The Rev. Dr. Thandeka guest preaching.
These days, it feels like many of the causes and institutions we believe in are facing devastating setbacks; the values we cherish and the people we love are threatened. How do we find the spiritual and emotional fortitude to persevere in our struggle for the good, when so much we care about seems ‘lost’? Rev. Rob Hardies preaching.
