No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome at First Congregational Church of Blue Hill.
If you are visiting us for the first time, please allow us to extend our warmest greetings. We are an open and affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ. Sunday Worship services are available in-person, via Zoom and live stream on Facebook. While masks are no longer required, we do ask that everyone mask while singing. We look forward to having you join us in worship.
Grace to you, and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! Just below this message is a reminder of today’s potluck breakfast. I won’t be there to make coffee, unfortunately, but hope others will enjoy fellowship with one another. If there is a better time and day, we welcome input!
Our worship tomorrow is again graced by additional music from our instrumental consort as well as our featured organist, Clair Maxwell. Bring your voices to sing with joy together the hymns that remind us of a familiar expression attributed to St. Augustine: “they who sing pray twice.” We have the opportunity to look closely at Jesus’ own prayers, both with and for his disciples–and for us. Our response to prayer also becomes our ongoing prayer, as we give action to the changes we long for most fervently. In our worship tomorrow, while we sing, speak, and silently offer our words to God who loves us, we gather strength with each other.
Grace to you, and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! In the passage we read from the Gospel of John this week, we hear Jesus’ final words to his disciples. Jesus had returned to walk among them, breaking bread at the table with them and sharing his final reminder of the way to live together: “Love each other as I have loved you.” We remember this command when we break bread together in Communion this first Sunday of the month. Love in action looks a lot like the ministries of this church and in our private lives. Together in worship, we strengthen each other for the journey of loving when loving gets difficult–and it does. In a season of strife, when anxiety about the future of our neighbors abroad and for our nation have tensions stoked, we are called to love. As with everything, we practice in small, personal ways what is played out on a grander scale. I, for one, don’t take for granted that I can know how to live with others in a mutually supportive way when our viewpoints are so different. So, we come together with open hearts and open minds to learn how God steers us toward love and peace. Join us?
A word about worship tomorrow: our printer/copier is being repaired on Monday morning, so we will be trying something new with the bulletin projected on a screen/wall. Some people have asked for this as an option; tomorrow it is a necessity!
Grace to you, and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! Tomorrow is the last Sunday of the month, which means that our worship is geared a bit toward some of our younger families. The aim is to offer some more upbeat, sometimes more contemporary music as well as to engage the congregation more in the central message of the day. So, for tomorrow, I hope that some of you will be willing to mingle with others in quite an active way, while the entire congregation listens and watches with an ear to understanding and to sharing their observations. Is your interest piqued yet? As persons and as a community of faith in a loving God, we are invited to regard our entire lives as gift and blessing–received and also offered to others. In song, in prayer, and in pondering, we will explore and celebrate this blessedness together.
Grace to you, and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! On this rainy weekend when flowers are springing up and days grow noticeably longer, we look to the earth for renewal. The Psalmist proclaimed “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof!” We often proclaim the same, yet find ourselves in an epoch of climate change in which we are increasingly aware of the negative effects of human action on “God’s green Earth.” In honor of Earth Day, which falls on Monday this year, we will be singing our praises of God’s creation in our hymns and anthems, and also reflecting on ways we might alter our behaviors, even in small ways, so that we steward well the gift of creation that sustains us and, we pray, will sustain our children’s children. I look forward to worshiping with you tomorrow.
Dear Blue Hill Congregation, I thank you for inviting me to celebrate the third Sunday of Easter with you. Retired last year from The First Church in Belfast, it is such a gift to continue to share the gospel, especially in such a joyful season. My prayer for us all today is that new life will spring up inside and around us in abundance! Blessings, Rev. Kate Winters
Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! With the marvel of the resurrection behind and within us and the marvel of total eclipse in front of us, we approach this weekend profoundly aware of our place in the universe. Maybe some of you will be venturing north into the “path of totality” of the solar eclipse on Monday; maybe some of you will avoid the predicted crowds. Hearing news of an earthquake centered in New Jersey, there is a lot of speculation and scientific calculation regarding atmospheric and geologic changes, and no wonder. We are wowed by cosmic events. Still, we live in the day-to-day and often wonder how to be. In very direct language and with symbols of light and dark that are wonderfully coordinated with this week’s events, scripture for tomorrow invites us to regard closely how it is that we respond to wonder and to our belief that our good God brings it. How, like the disciples, do we question and how do we move forward in faith? Do we become something or someone new in response to the glory that we see? What does this look like?
With tomorrow being the first Sunday of the month, we will celebrate the sacrament of Communion, in which we celebrate the very present way in which the Spirit moves in us, while remembering what Jesus has done for us. If you are worshipping from home, please join us by setting aside some bread or a cracker and some juice. We are together in love.
