Rev. Frank Hall Services Archive

 We’ve entered the complicated season.  The Christian Church calls it Advent—the four Sundays preceding Christmas.  Advent is about the arrival of Jesus as the Incarnation.  The  Catholic Encyclopedia defines it as,  “The doctrine that the Son of God was conceived in the womb of Mary and that Jesus is true God and true man; a […]

“Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.  When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”  But Jacob replied, […]

INTRODUCTION Our seventh-grade Neighboring Faiths class is one of the most popular, well-attended classes.  They visit various religious houses of worship:  Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Native American and others; they have a chance to witness, to get the feel of it, and to ask questions. I’m reminded of the old saying:   “I hear and […]

When I read Lynn Truss’s book about punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I knew there was a sermon in it; a Unitarian-style sermon, to be sure, but an important sermon, nonetheless. In the forward to Truss’s book, Frank McCourt, who became rich and famous by writing Angela’s Ashes, says:  “If Lynne Truss were Catholic I’d nominate […]

A week before our wedding I accompanied Lory to the Yom Kippur service at Temple Israel.  She was raised in a Reform Temple in Cleveland, having grown up in a suburban Beachwood, which was about 95% Jewish.  As a child she didn’t realize that this wasn’t the norm—she was surprised to learn that most people […]

Cultural literacy in our corner of the world requires at least some knowledge of the Biblical story of Job:  the saga of one man’s suffering—representing the struggles of everyperson; the story of Job’s patience, and the limits of patience! The story implies that there are good, appropriate ways to respond to another person’s grief and […]

“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.” Alexander Pope, in his famous, Essay on Man, put this philosophical-theological truth in poetic form: each of us is part of something larger than we can imagine; we’re part of Nature, the natural world. He uses the word stupendous, whose synonyms […]

  The sermon title was written long before Katrina hit New Orleans, and I make no claim to prescience.  I like coincidence, however. I chose the title because Noah’s ark was built for survival, not for sailing, not for exploring, not for making a big journey.  Sometimes we need an ark—a safe, dry place to […]

Lecture 1 – “Through the Fire of Thought” Lecture 2 – The Anatomy of a Religious Liberal Lecture 3 – “The Evolution of God” Lecture 4 – “Struggle of the Two Natures in Man” Lecture 5 – The Hero in American Culture: The Legacy of Christopher Reeve These lectures were delivered at Chautauqua from July […]

This is the service that caps off the calendar year leading into the summer session. When we gather in September, the first Sunday after Labor Day, we look ahead to a new church year; we rededicate ourselves to the purposes, plans and hopes we share as a religious community.  We hold up our sacred objects:  […]