First Parish Church
   Unitarian Universalist
   of Duxbury, Massachusetts

     Catherine Cullen, minister
     Sunsue Fleming, director of religious education
     Carie Johnsen, ministerial intern
     Edwin Swanborn, music director

  

842 Tremont St. (Rte. 3A)
(Directions here)

P.O. Box 1764
Duxbury, MA 02331
 
uuduxbury@verizon.net
781-934-6532

Harvard's Rev. Peter Gomes preaches
at FPC’s 375th anniversary service

All-Bach concert conducted by Music Director Edwin Swanborn was a highlight of our 375th anniversary celebration. Concert details here
Plymouth resident, one of the nation's most distinguished preachers,
draws parallel between Pilgrims' experience and the present

The Rev. Prof. Peter J. Gomes, minister of Harvard University’s Memorial Church and a past president of The Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, was the guest preacher at a special worship service celebrating the 375th anniversary of First Parish Church in Duxbury on Sunday, Oct. 14, 2007.

One of America’s most distinguished preachers, the Reverend Gomes grew up and was ordained in Plymouth, from which the first Duxbury settlers migrated in 1628. His sermon, titled “Crossing the Bay,” drew parallels between "the great adventure in faith" which brought the Pilgrims to the New World and the situation of the church in the contemporary world.

 “You have more than fulfilled the hopes and the expectations of your ancestors and your founders," he told the congregation. "It is right at 375 years that we should pause to celebrate and thank the God whom they worshipped who gave them the courage and the imagination to cross the bay and settle on this distant shore. The great Brewster, and Alden and Standish and all that company now long dead…famous as they are, they are in their great adventure incomplete without us.  The story's not over... The adventure is still alive

and inviting.  And you and I, though perhaps far removed from the Mayflower, are nevertheless a part of that story…
This is an exercise about the continuity of a great adventure in faith. And it pleases me to know that this church, for as long as I have known it, has chosen not to live off the interest of somebody else’s deposit, that you are a living, vital engaged congregation…honoring your ancestors but not worshipping them…taking something of their great, adventurous spirit and moving forward with all the talent and skill that you possess.  It is not the memory of what once was but the hope of what can and ought to be that will make your church worthy of its past, as it embraces its future.”
          The Oct. 14 celebration began at 10 a.m. in Plymouth, as about 40 members of the church, led by minister Catherine Cullen, gathered at the First Parish Church there, the home of the original Pilgrim congregation, and walked the 9 miles to Duxbury, symbolically recreating the journey their forebears made. They stopped for lunch at the Unitarian Universalist church in Kingston, and again at the site of the first Duxbury meetinghouse, on Chestnut Street, before arriving at the present meetinghouse in time for the 4 p.m. service addressed by the Rev. Gomes.
           Also attending the service were FPC minister emeritus the Rev. Robert R. Walsh, the Rev. John Buehrens representing the Unitarian Universalist Association, and Andre Martecchini, chairman of the Duxbury Board of Selectmen, who spoke on behalf of the town.

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