First Parish Bedford UU

Join us on Sunday morning!  

Services at 9am & 11am most Sundays View schedule

Bedford Lyceum at 10am most Sundays View schedule

Our entire building is accessible – 
use the elevator at the Elm St. entrance

 

Home Archive
Sunday, May 13 at 10:00am

 

Rev. John Gibbons will preach at First Parish;
Rev. Megan Lynes will lead worship at Ferry Beach
 
It’s looking like the weather will be great for Ferry Beach! Of course, it’s always possible that there will be unanticipated hurricanes, power outages, flash floods and snow squalls. As usual. Whatever the weather, Megan and Joe will pull together a worship experience on Sunday morning at Ferry Beach. Good luck to them.
 
For those of us playing it safe here in Bedford, there will be worship in the meetinghouse at 10am on Sunday. I’ll be preaching on the topic, “It All Depends on What the Meaning of the Word ‘It’ Is.” Steve Sussman will be our musician.
 
Basically, I’m thinking about the well-known UU hymn, composed by William Channing Gannett, titled “It Sounds Along the Ages”:
1. It sounds along the ages,
soul answering to soul;
It kindles on the pages
of every Bible scroll;
The psalmist heard and sang it,
from martyr lips it broke,
and prophet tongues out-rang it
till sleeping nations woke.
2. From Sinai's cliffs in echoed, 
it breathed from Buddha's tree,
it charmed in Athen's market, 
it hallowed Galilee;
The hammer stroke of Luther, 
the Pilgrims' sea-side prayer,
the oracles of Con-cord: 
one holy Word declare.
3. It calls, and lo, new Justice!
It speaks, and lo, new Truth!
In ever nobler stature
and unexhausted youth.
Forever on it sound-eth,
knows naught it-self of time,
our laws but catch the music
of its eternal chime.
 
Of course we'll sing this hymn on Sunday. But the devilish question raised by this hymn is “What the heck is IT?”  I will attempt to address this question, accompanied by sundry musings about the religious enterprise, metaphor and probably, too, I suppose...Mother's Day.
 
I look forward to gathering with the Great Non-Ferry Beach Congregation!
 
--John
 

Information

75 Great Rd. Bedford, MA 01730
(781) 275-7994
Office hours: Mon-Fri 9am to 5pm
Contact our office
Contact the webmaster

Get Directions

Site Credits

© 2009 First Parish Bedford UU.
All Rights Reserved.
Site map
Designed by Revoluution Media.
Photography by Carlton SooHoo.

Registered Users