Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Joanna Fontaine-Crawford
March 24, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Across the United States, people are showing up at school board meetings to protest books and knowledge they deem inappropriate, especially concerning education around diversity. Here in Texas, the governor called the legislature back into session in an attempt to divert public school funding to vouchers for private schools. But there is an underlying battle that has been waged since 1848 when Unitarian Horace Mann said, “Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” What is the real outcome we are fighting over?

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

WE MEET TOGETHER
Ann Arthur

We meet together to celebate who we are,
to share the insights which give meaning and hope to our lives,
to learn from the wisdom of others
that their truth may contribute to our understanding.
We meet,
We share,
We learn,
We celebrate our coming together.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

CAN YOU SAY HERO?
Tom Junod

Mister Rogers had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are … Ten seconds of silence.”

And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, “I’ll watch the time,” and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked … and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds … and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, “May God be with you” to all his vanquished children.

Sermon

Do you believe in publicly funded education that is common to all? My dad was born in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression, and he grew up in East Texas in a small town called Center (because it was the center of the county, not real poetic, but there you go).

He came from a family that did not have money, but he loved school and he worked hard in school. After High School, he went to Texas A&M, which at that time was a military school and it was known as the school where all the poor kids went. And by kids, I mean white males. Texas A&M would not let in female or black students until the 1960s. So my dad was able to graduate with a degree in petroleum engineering. After that, he paid his debt to Uncle Sam, serving in the Army; this was during the Korean War, and eventually, he was able to provide a middle-class lifestyle for his family in a way that his father had never been able to-and this is what we call social mobility, and it was made possible because of that education system.

Now the system that benefited my father was working the way it was designed to. It was designed for smart, hardworking white boys.

But then in 1954, the Supreme Court had the Brown versus the Board of Education decision, and things changed. Now there was at least the possibility that this public education system that led to social mobility was now accessible to those who were not white and male. And ever since that time, there has been a concerted organized movement to damage that public education system because there are people who do not believe that it should be, in fact, common to all. If you feel like in the last few years that this movement has gone into overdrive, it is not your imagination. It absolutely has. But this is not something new – this has been a long time coming from the people who got our society to this point. They understood (and I will say it was an evil plan) … they understood that it was going to be a marathon, not a sprint, and so they set up different things so that we could be where we are now, which in my mind is a fight for our whole public education system. And for us, as Unitarian Universalists, this is not political. This is hitting at our core religious values, our beliefs about what it means to be a person: inherent worth and dignity, and the idea that every person deserves to be able to try and fulfill their potential. And this also hits at our history.

In 1796, Unitarian Horace Mann was born, and he also grew up in an extremely poor family; his father was a poor farmer, there were many kids, and Horace was never even able to go out and get a complete school year. It was usually only six weeks out of every year that he could go to school, but he made the most of it. He loved to learn; he soaked it all up. They did have in his town a library; he read everything that he could get his hands on. So eventually, he was able to go to Brown University, where he became the valedictorian. After that, he went on to law school, he became a lawyer, and then he became a Massachusetts legislator.

And you know, it’s really interesting, there seemed to be two kinds of people, as the saying goes — those people who had to go through a lot of hardship, had to really struggle to make their way in the world, and some of those people say, “I made it, so can you, you can do it the hard way too.”

And then there are the people like Mann who say, “I don’t want anyone else to ever have to go through what I went through,” and so education to him was one of the big passions of his life. In Massachusetts, while he was a legislator, the governor created a new thing, a state board of education, and he became the Secretary of it, and it was in that role that he was able to take all of these visions he had about creating a system so that everyone could reach their potential, or at least had the opportunity to do so. He created what is called the Common School movement. Now, common doesn’t refer to like commoners, common as in “for everyone.” His vision was that we would have a publicly funded system of education that was common to all. It was a radical idea.

In his vision, all American students would go to these schools, they would sit side by side. He firmly, — he was a Unitarian — he did firmly believe in the equality of all people, and his vision was one where whether you were the child of a wealthy landowner or the child of a family that was in poverty, you would all receive the exact same education. Another thing that Horace Mann really believed in — this was, you know, mid-1800s – he really believed in all of this stuff about the United States of America, and all that it could be, a place where, unlike England, it did not matter, it should not matter the circumstances of your birth. He really believed in it, and he knew that the key to that was education, and he even said,

“Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of people, the balance wheel of the social machinery.”

It is a radical idea now, and it was a radical idea at that time, even many of the people who we look back at the start of this country, people who considered themselves to be the great modern Progressive thinkers. They weren’t there yet. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson also supported the idea of a public education system, but he felt that there should be two tiers to it, one for the laboring class and one for the learned class, he did say that he thought that there should be enough, you know, room in it that it could rake, his exact words, “rake a few geniuses from the rubbish.” Thomas Jefferson, boy, and that’s a sermon for another day.

Do you support publicly funded education that is common to all?

This was and is today a very radical idea, there are many people who do not want it, good publicly funded education common to all leads to social mobility and with that comes a real opportunity for a reallocation of power.

Underneath this idea of public education that is common to all is this idea of social mobility. Do you truly believe in social mobility, the vision of a society where a child is not confined to the circumstances in which they were born? We can look at other countries and we can see where there is no possibility for this kind of social mobility.

My spouse and I sponsored a student from his private school education (just wait just wait for a moment) from about Middle School through college, he was in Nepal. Do we have anyone else here who has sponsored a student from Nepal? Amazing program by the way. Education, even college, over there is more like Community College here and it is private education is way more affordable, I think it was like 5 or $600 a year. The person who runs it, Earle Canfield, is a Unitarian Universalist and he is very clear about the ultimate goal of this program. It is not so much about helping individual students, but rather, the bigger goal – one that is always kept in sight – is to overcome the caste system of Nepal, because this is the only way it can happen. You see, they do have public education, but it is so inferior that if you are in a lower caste, you will never be able to move out of that caste. The only way for you to move into a different caste is through private education.

I believe that this is the real vision for some of the people in our country.

I don’t think we often say things like this when we hear about vouchers and stuff like that. We’ll often talk about how it’s just a way for the wealthy, who are already paying for private education, to have a little more money in their pockets. Then sometimes we’ll go all the way the other way and say, “No, no, the whole goal here is to absolutely kill public education and get rid of it.”

I don’t think so. I think their vision is to have something like Nepal. A public education system that will support the existing caste system in the United States. We all know there is a caste system in the United States, right? To take that existing system and cement it in place.

And this has been a long time coming. You really can’t talk about the war on public education without talking about the Koch brothers. They’ve been part of this for a very, very long time. There was pushback to public education right after Brown versus the Board of Education, and we saw it. There were schools that literally would prefer to close their schools rather than integrate. But ultimately, that was not a long-term solution, and so there were brains that were trying to come up with, “Well, how do we make this happen?”

In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the libertarian platform, and that platform said, “We advocate the complete separation of education and state. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.” That was 1980.

Charles and David Koch created a political machine that operates on the strategy of astroturfing. Do we have some people here who are familiar with this term, astroturfing? Well, I’m actually going to use the Merriam-Webster definition because it’s really good:

Astroturfing – “organized activity that is intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising grassroots movement in support of or in opposition to something but that is in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organization, such as a corporation.”

There are so many different names, there are so many- it’s just overwhelming how many different little spontaneous grassroots organizations or think tanks are all either started by or funded by the Koch Brothers. This is just a handful: Americans for Prosperity, Koch Institute, Mercatus Center, The Federalist Society, The Institute for Humane Studies, Institute for Justice, FreedomWorks, Freedom Partners, Concerned Women for America, Young Americans for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and of course, Moms for Liberty.

Here’s the sad thing: astroturfing often works. It worked just this past week, I think it was, in Lake Travis ISD, because of a complaint, banned another book. It’s happening in Houston now. This is where the system has -because, again, there’s not just one way to try and solve this problem of good public education-the state has taken over Houston ISD.

Here in Austin, y’all have also been fighting that. But astroturfing often works. You take anxiety and fear, and you combine it with bigotry, and it especially works in this fight on public education, because evolution has wired our poor little human brains that when we think of our kids, we often go to the amygdala and anxiety rather than the prefrontal cortex and our best thinking.

So when you combine anxiety and fear with bigotry, then that gets everyone stirred up. And then you have people, and this, again, is an organized concerted effort-they provide terms for those who are on the ground, and they tell them to repeatedly use these terms. It’s a way to bring in bigotry without having to admit that you don’t believe in treating everyone equally.

Used to, some of you will remember in the ’70s, it was busing, right? That was the code for, “Oh, I’m not against integration, I just don’t think that children should be bused to somewhere else or neighborhood schools.” Does anyone remember that one? “Oh, we just want our kids to be able to go to their neighborhood school.” It’s the fact that it was in an all-white neighborhood was just incidental.

More recently, in the last few years, it has been CRT (Critical Race Theory), DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and most recently, the one that I have heard the most is safety, especially safety for girls. Not safety from shooters or anything that might actually help-safety for girls is the code word for anti-trans rhetoric.

You get people revved up and give them the talking points. You can go find the talking points. None of this is hidden. You can go right now and Google it — There is a school board guide produced by the Tea Party Patriots, funded by FreedomWorks, which came out of Americans for Prosperity, aka the Koch Brothers’ political advocacy group. Forty-six pages on a how-to guide for activists combating anti-American CRT. Thirty-four pages on combating critical race theory in your community. An A-to- Z guide on “how to stop critical race theory and reclaim your local school board.”

I want to read you one line from that one: “It is important to note that whether CRT is currently in your school system is mostly irrelevant to the purpose of this document.”

Do you support public funding education that is common to all?

Now look, we never came anywhere close to realizing Horace Mann’s vision, especially in terms of a common education. I don’t believe that we ever will. People are always going to want a leg up, l(ike Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin) for their kids.

But the vision is more relevant than ever: public-funded education common to all, that equips children to fulfill their potential, to break the prison of generational poverty. It is not only better for them, it is better for our entire society.

In Nepal, the only way that you are able to break out of your caste is through being picked for a program that sends you to a private school. I believe that for some in the United States, that is the vision: a world with clear and rigid class boundaries that disproportionately correlate with race.

Right now, you know this thing that you’re hearing in the news-the difficulty to find unskilled laborers, right? Of course, they’re not unskilled, but if you call them that, you can pay them less. Do you really think that none of the people with the top economic privilege, those billionaires out in West Texas who have been trying to manipulate things around vouchers and around public education-do you not think that they are wondering about the question of how do you come up with an unlimited source of laborers whom you can underpay and oppress?

And this isn’t just a matter for those who have kids or grandkids in school; it’s for all of us. I ask you to support your school boards, find out what area you are in. If you don’t already know, you can go on the internet and read the agenda for school board meetings. Practically all of them are live streaming. Turn it on, see what is happening. When you start seeing hordes that are showing up there, trying to attack good teachers, attack the school board members, get books banned, show up. You don’t even have to talk; it’s great when you do during those citizen comments. But if you see that there are big crowds pouring into that room, trying to damage our public education, take one seat away from them just by sitting in it. And of course, vote at every school-related election as though it were a presidential election.

Do you support publicly funded education that is common to all? Real nice public education system you got here. It would be a real shame if something were to happen to it.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

– Horace Mann

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Carrie Holley-Hurt
March 17, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Things feel very bleak right now. There is so much violence, so much political corruption, and so much inequality that it can feel overwhelming. But our religion is not one of despair but hope and that hope is tied to our ability to imagine a more just and compassionate world for everyone. Utopian thinking is our superpower! Let’s explore our superpower and how we can tap into it even when we feel overwhelmed by the world’s pain.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

HISTORY’S ROAD
by Clyde Grubbs and Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley

The road of history is long, full of both hope and disappointment. In times past, there have been wars and rumors of wars, violence and exploitation, hunger and homelessness, and destruction of this earth, your creation.

We have become a global village, with a growing realization of how fragile this earth is, and how interconnected we are to each other and to all creation.

We cannot continue to live in the old way. We must make a change, seek a new way. A way toward peace with justice and a healthy planet.

O Great Creative Spirit: You have given a vision of the good, and we yearn for a new way. But where are we to find the courage to begin this work? We know that a different tomorrow is possible, but how can we build it?

We think of the prophets, women and men, who voiced unpopular opinions, who made personal sacrifices, and sometimes lost their lives, for the sake of justice.

We think of Isaiah, who called out to let those who are held in captivity go free, to give solace to the poor and homeless. Let us be inspired by all who work to overcome misery, poverty, and exploitation.

We think of Harriet Tubman, who called out to people of good will to join her on an underground railroad, to lift a dehumanized people from the bondage of slavery to the promise of freedom, even when it meant challenging unjust laws. Let us be inspired by those who are outlaws for freedom.

We think of Gandhi, whose belief in “Soul Force” – the witness to Love’s Truth – helped to overthrow the oppression of an empire and gave witness to the way of nonviolent action. Let us be inspired to become witnesses for peace.

We think of Chief Seattle, who reminded us that we belong to the earth, not the earth to us. Let us be inspired by all those who work for the healing of creation, of Mother Earth and all her creatures.

Who are the prophets who inspire you? They may be well known, or known only to you, offering personal inspiration. courage, and hope.

May they join a great cloud of witnesses to a new way of life-the way of peace and justice, the way of justice lived according to the way of peace, the beloved community.

So may it be. Amen.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

V’AHAVTA
By Aurora Levins Morales

Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,

when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts, embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,

teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies, recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:

Another world is possible.

Imagine winning. This is your sacred task. This is your power.

Imagine every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets in which no one has been shot,

the muscles you have never unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin, the sparkling taste of food when we know that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed, that the old man under the bridge and the woman wrapping herself in thin sheets in the backseat of a car,

and the children who suck on stones, nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.

Lean with all your being towards that day when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.

Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child. It is your child. Defend it as if it were your lover. It is your lover.

When you inhale and when you exhale breathe the possibility of another world into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body until it shines with hope.

Then imagine more. Imagine [violence] is unimaginable. Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor.

That the crimes of our age, the grotesque inhumanities of greed, the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it, the vast fortunes made by stealing lives, the horrible normalcy it came to have, is unimaginable to our heirs, the generations of the free. Don’t waver.

Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth into the throat with which you sing.

Escalate your dreams. Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way. Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.

Hold hands. Share water.

Keep imagining. So that we, and the children of our children’s children may live.

Sermon

I went a long time sleeping-in on Sundays, not calculating annual pledges, or attending a congregational meeting. And then I became a UU

and all that changed.

And it’s good. I get to be a part of this beautiful community of like-hearted people.

I’m connected to amazing people all over the place doing good work And in this crazy mixed-up social-political landscape we have, I am way more hopeful than I was when I was on my own.

I’m so grateful,

But
But what makes us different than a social club?

I could find meaning and connection at a social club and probably sleep in on Sundays.

I want, and I think we should all expect, more from our religion than what a social club can offer

I believe that we have that

I’m a firm believer that we should allow our religion to do two things for us.

First, it should motivate us to do the important work of love. With beloved community at our core, this looks like working to get ourselves free and helping to remove barriers so others can be free too.

Secondly, our religion should hold us. Through tough and scary times, our religion should hold us. It should comfort us and renew us.

That is what our religion can do for us, but so often I think we can get out of balance. I know I often feel very motivated to act but very rarely allow this beautiful religion to comfort me.

And I need that – that comfort and that renewal – because y’all things are not great and often they are pretty overwhelming.

We have many tools in our religion that help us to feel both motivated and held, but the one I’m connecting to most right now is Utopian thinking.

But first let’s establish what that means and what I don’t mean.

I don’t mean … the utopian thinking that led to 19th-century communes. You know, those ones that pop up on the History Channel from time to time, occasionally led by Unitarians.

The ones that inevitably failed because of some scandal to do with sex or money or sex and money.

Yeah, thats not what I mean.

What I mean is the way of thinking that says “the way it is, isn’t the way it has to be.” And in fact, as Aurora Levins Morales wrote in our reading, “Another world is possible.”

A world that is more just, more compassionate, and more loving.

That world is possible. The way things are, isn’t the way things have to be.

This kind of thinking is at the very core of our religion.

And it makes sense, after all, we are a very contrarian people.

And we have been for our entire history.

Just think about it.

Early Unitarians in the 16th century said in a sea of Trinitarians, often at great risk to themselves, I don’t find that in my text.

Universalists said, I know hell is a really effective marketing tool but how could a loving god ever ….

At a time when the entire economy of the US was fueled by trafficking, imprisonment and forced labor of human beings, unitarian and universalist abolitionists said- it doesn’t have to be this way.

The fight for universal suffrage – it doesn’t have to be this way
Those fighting Jim Crow said – it doesn’t have to be this way.
Those fighting for queer rights- it doesn’t have to be this way

When we speak of the Beloved community, we tap into that core, we are practicing Utopian thinking.

The beloved community –

when no one is starving or being murdered in Gaza,
no one is getting cut up by razor wire at the border,
no trans kid is being murdered.
No boys are having to bear the cost of anti-blackness and ableism,
No one unhoused.
No one abused.
No one neglected.
No one abandoned.

That is Utopian thinking

And it is a beautiful thing that is the core of our religion.

And certainly many would tell us we are absurd or naive

but I would just say to those people ….

Try being a Unitarian Universalist in Texans

It is not naive to believe that how things are is not how it has to be.

Rutger Bregman a Dutch historian said:

“I’ve always believed in the power of utopian thinking. Every milestone of civilization – the end of slavery, (the creation of) democracy, (the attainment of) equal rights – these were all utopian fantasies once until they happened. That’s why I think that history is actually the most subversive discipline of all the social sciences because history shows us that things can be different. They don’t have to be this way. We can change them.”

“We can change them” this is heart of our religion and it does so much for us! 

It allows us a different way of looking at time, at our purpose, and our actions by placing them in the larger scheme of things.

For example. When it comes to the Beloved Community, we know that we are mostly planting seeds for a forest we will never see. But when we do that work of building the beloved community, we are bringing some of that utopia into the here and the now.

When we go down to witness what is happening at the border, When we use our sacred spaces as a sanctuary for asylum seekers

When we make our churches open and loving spaces for people who are targeted for oppression and marginalization.

When we show up to places of power and tell them “another world is possible”

We are bringing that Utopian thinking down into the lives of those being harmed in the here and now.

It is powerful stuff!

And it is core to who we are as people in a liberating faith.

But in order to utilize this beautiful, life-giving aspect of our faith, we have to make it a spiritual practice.

First, we do this by spending time in the community envisioning what is possible.

What would it actually look like if we treated everyone as if they had inherent dignity and worthiness? If we lived, worked, spoke, like everyone and everything is interconnected.

Learning from one another opens us up to the diversity of lived experience and needs, allowing us, in community, to envision a much deeper and richer future. We can envision a reality that expands past our individual needs.

Secondly, we nourish our vision so that we counteract the pervasive messages of the status quo that says “that how things are is just the nature of things.”

Bregman says

“There’s nothing inherent about our current political, economic and social realities; people made these systems and can make them anew. To envision something novel, read more history and less news. “There’s nothing as anti-utopian as the product that we call the news,”

He says that when we allow ourselves to get caught up in the “sensationalistic daily news cycle” it “can constrict your ability to see the world as anything but dangerous, violent and mean.” 

So as we nourish our vision, by being intentional about where we are placing our focus. What are we doing to combat those pervasive messages of sameness?

What art are we interacting with? Are we making?

Art opens us up to possibilities and different way of seeing and experiencing the world.

Are we reading poetry?

Are we letting Amanda Gordan, Mary Oliver, Maya Angelo mirror our humanity while inspiring us to hope.

Are we writing our own poetry.

Our we taking our pain, our hope, our vision for the future and turning it into art on the page?

What music are you allowing to flow into and out of you?

Who are we spending our time with or listening to ?

Nothing will help to pull me out of my Hobbesian notion of human nature being only nasty, brutish, and short faster than a 5-year-old asking me what my third favorite dinosaur is. Or the way high schoolers use their voices to speak up for one another and protest injustice.

Are we doom-scrolling or are we intentionally being awakened to the beauty, joy, and love in the people and creatures all around us?

We will not nurture utopian thinking by living on a constant diet of the status quo. Seeing it as a spiritual practice, means we are intentional and disciplined about what we are focusing our energy on.

And finally, we let Utopian thinking nourish us!

So often I think that we UUs feel as if we are suppose to just do it. Just go fight the good fight.

And while, yes, please do that.

We have to let it do more. We have to let it nourish us.

Because if we are only fighting the good fight without replenishing ourselves we are vulnerable to burnout.

To apathy.

We have to let it nourish us!

Let it nourish us in the ways that it anchors our hope.

Let it nourish us in the way it anchors us to the past, present, and the future.

The whole arc of the moral universe.

In this it will help us to stop seeing every election and every bill as the next apocalypse because we can see the full expanse of the work.

We can see the ways our actions are connected to the larger web that holds us all.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

And now as we go to leave this place, may you feel the warmth of this beautiful community.

May you feel motivated, supported, and held by this beautiful religion. May you hold yourself and others with love and compassion

Just as you are held.

Let it comfort us, strengthen us, and give us energy for this beautiful work we are called to do and this precious life we are given.

May it remind us that we are a people not of despair but of hope.

May it always be so

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Bis Thorton
March 3, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

What is sacred about transformation? Does the divine change alongside us? What is our relationship to the interconnected web of all existence when we transform? Do we still have ancestors if we change? And do we ever stay the same? Join Bis Thornton in a journey through sacred stories of transformation as we imagine answers to these questions and more.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

THE PROMISE AND THE PRACTICE: BENEDICTION #2
Rev. Kimberlly Quinn Johnson

Hush:
Somebody’s calling your name-
Can you hear it!
Calling you to a past not quite forgotten,
Calling us to a future not fully imagined!
Hush, hush:
Somebody’s calling our name.
What shall we do!

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

CARRY ME INTO THE DARK
Jess Reynolds

Orion rises in the winter dark: shoulders and knees: a bell, a bow held taut before the charging bull. My father calls each star by its name, draws lines from hunter to quarry to the seven sisters huddled together in the night. I am not afraid of the dark. I do not need an arrow nocked on the archer’s bow to call myself safe here, my eyes untouched by the glare of passing headlights. God must watch Her universe like this: standing on a driveway, wrapped in a soft quilt, old hands in Her pockets. feet tingling with cold and wonder at the stars and the stories and all else the darkness holds.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson and a Host of Invited Clergy
February 17, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We come together as a church family with clergy and guests to joyfully celebrate Rev Chris Jimmerson’s formal intallation as our setted minister.

WELCOME: Gretchen Riehl

GREETINGS: Natalie Briscoe

CHALICE LIGHTING – Rev. Neil Newton

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

CALL TO WORSHIP: Rev. Kathleen Ellis

READING: Rev Jonalu Johnstone

“THAT WHICH HOLDS ALL”
by Nancy Shaffer

Because she wanted everyone to feel included
in her prayer,
she said right at the beginning
several names for the Holy:
Spirit, she said, Holy One, Mystery, God.

But then thinking these weren’t enough ways of addressing
that which cannot fully be addressed, she added
particularities, saying,
Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love,
Ancient Holy One, Mystery We Will Not Ever Fully Know,
Gracious God, and also Spirit of this Earth,
God of Sarah, Gaia, Thou.

And then, tongue loosened, she fell to naming
superlatives as well: Most Creative One,
Greatest Source, Closest Hope –
even though superlatives for the Sacred seemed to her
probably redundant, but then she couldn’t stop:

One who Made the Stars, she said, although she knew
technically a number of those present didn’t believe
the stars had been made by anyone or thing
but just luckily happened.

One Who Is an Entire Ocean of Compassion,
she said, and no one laughed.
That Which Has Been Present Since Before the Beginning,
she said, and the room was silent.

Then, although she hadn’t imagined it this way,
others began to offer names.

Peace, said one.
One My Mother Knew, said another.
Ancestor, said a third.
Wind.
Rain.
Breath, said one near the back.
Refuge.
That Which Holds All.
A child said, Water.
Someone said, Kuan Yin.
Then: Womb.
Witness.
Great Kindness.
Great Eagle.
Eternal Stillness.

And then, there wasn’t any need to say the things
she’d thought would be important to say,
and everyone sat hushed, until someone said

Amen.

PRAYER – MEDITATION – INVOCATION: Rev. Michelle LaGrave

ANTHEM: Brent Baldwin, voice, and guitar

“I STILL BELIEVE”
Dolly Parton

SERMON: “Exercises in Attention” – Rev. Dr. Nicole Kirk

ACT OF INSTALLATION

Gretchen Riehl:
No right is more precious to a free congregation than that of choosing its own minister. By the same token, no right is more precious to a Unitarian Universalist minister than that of choosing the congregation they will serve. This is fundamental to our sacred tradition of shared leadership.

 

It is with profound feeling, therefore, that we formally recognize the covenantal relationship now existing between the people of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin and the Reverend Chris Jimmerson, whom we have freely chosen and who has freely chosen us.

Our choice is based not only on heritage but also on the hopes and aspirations we have for the future. This service symbolizes our dedication to new efforts.

We affirm by this act the goals toward which we strive and the ideals by which we are sustained and strengthened. Will the members of The First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin please rise and join me in the following words.

Members:
We cherish our church for its historic achievements and for its dedication to our living traditions in which revelation is ever unfolding.

We celebrate its devotion to freedom and its commitment to building the Beloved Community.

We, the members of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, do hereby install you, Reverend Chris Jimmerson, as our settled minister.

For our part, we pledge to walk with you in the ways of truth, justice, and the spirit of love. We offer you a free pulpit, the cooperation of our hearts and hands, and our resolute goodwill as you take up your new path among us.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson:
With joy and a deep sense of responsibility, and with gratitude for your confidence, I take up the ministry to which you have called me.

I pledge to maintain the freedom of the pulpit, to speak truth in love, and to fulfill the many duties of ministry. Above all, I will cherish and cultivate the ways of love, justice, spiritual nourishment, and growth, working with you toward transformation within these church walls and beyond them.

I humbly and joyfully accept your offer of covenantal relationship and shared ministry.

Gretchen Riehl:
Will all who have not yet risen – colleagues, family, and friends please rise in spirit or in body to bear witness to this act of installation?

All:
We do hereby affirm this installation and this ministry. May congregation and minister both be blessed with strength and wisdom in the years of holy work ahead.

 

PRESENTATION OF GIFTS: Gretchen Riehl and Susan Thomson

CHARGE TO THE MINISTER Rev. Joanna Crawford

CHARGE TO THE CONGREGATION Rev. Dr. John A. Buehrens

CLOSING MUSIC Introduced by Rev. Michelle LaGrave

“ALL WILL BE WELL”
Rev. Meg Barnhouse and Kiya Heartwood

EXTINGUISHING THE CHALICE Rev. Lee Legault

BENEDICTION: Rev. Chris Jimmerson

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Bis Thorton
December 31, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

For New Year’s Day, we will hold our annual burning bowl service. We contemplate what we would like to let go so that we may more easily find our center. Then we whisper that which we would like to let go into pieces of flash paper, toss them into a fire and watch them burn away.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

BURNING THE OLD YEAR
Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

LOVE LETTER Nathalie Handel

I’d like to be a shrine, so I can learn from peoples’ prayers the story of hearts. I’d like to be a scarf so I can place it over my hair and understand other worlds. I’d like to be the voice of a soprano singer so I can move through all borders and see them vanish with every spell-binding note. I’d like to be light so I illuminate the dark. I’d like to be water to fill bodies so we can gently float together indefinitely. I’d like to be a lemon, to be zest all the time, or an olive tree to shimmer silver on the earth. Most of all, I’d like to be a poem, to reach your heart and stay.

Sermon

Before we really get going, I want to address our friends who are in church online today. Today is our Burning Bowl ceremony, which involves taking pieces of flash paper and putting them into a fire. I would like to invite all those in church this morning who are not in the physical building to participate and be both CREATIVE…and SAFE. You might toss an imaginary piece of paper into a candle. You might use your powers of visualization and imagination to put a piece of flash paper into a bonfire in your mind. I would love to know what you decide to do, so feel free to let the church know about it in a Facebook comment or an email or a carrier pigeon or whatever. Whatever you decide to do, I will be carrying one piece of flash paper to the fire to represent what you are letting go of today.

Alright, let’s get going. I want to ask you a strange question this morning. Who is fire? I know what fire is. But who is fire? How do you know it in your life? When I think of fire, I see a series of images and scenes. The knight of wands from the Rider- Waite-Smith Tarot, a young adult in silver armor and yellow clothing astride a red horse galloping across a desert. The gas heater in my first apartment and the way I had to lie down on the floor and then perilously light its pilot light with a match every single time I wanted to use it…and then, the accompanying smell of burning dust, as I didn’t use the heater very often.

Prometheus chained to a rock in the sea, punished for giving fire to humanity. Standing with my friends in a backyard at night, the black sky above us, the darkness holding us, shovels in our hands, laughing and chanting as we dig into the earth to make a fire pit. Christ resurrected, roasting fish on the shore as Peter swims frantically towards his beloved teacher with all his clothes on. Holding a single candle in my hands and lifting it up towards the ceiling of a chapel as we read the name of a beloved soul for another Trans Day of Remembrance.

And, of course, the chalice. We light it at least once a weekÐsometimes more often. The chalice holds more meanings than I can count, which is its power and beautyÐit is the spark of the divine within each of us; it is the light of truth; it is the fire of commitment; it is the warmth of community; it is a torch to the light the way; it is the fire we tend that was lit long before each of us; it is the gift we give to all those who seek it; it is an image from the 1940s; it is timeless; it is an object in our sanctuary; it is passion; it is reason; it is the flaming chalice, symbol of our faith.

Today, I want to do two things. I want to explore fire as a recurring symbol in our faith and our lives, and I want to guide us through our ritual of the Burning Bowl.

So: fire.

Fires must be fed. Like us, they eat. When I think of this, I see myself on my back porch, standing over a little black grill. I accidentally drop a ring of onion between the bars of a grill and into the coals, and I say what I always say when this happens, “That one is a sacrifice to the little god of the fire.” Fire must be fed. The fire in our church’s chalice eats oil; there’s an oil lamp inside of it. And the fire of our burning bowl eats…something more complicated than that.

In a literal sense, it eats accelerant and flash paper. But it also eats gifts from all of us.

The Burning Bowl or Fire Communion is a New Year’s service held by many Unitarian Universalists. This service is our chance as a community to consider our year, and consider our attitudes and behaviors, and then keep what was good, and let go of what was not.

What shall we each give the bowl this year? What is it that we are ready to leave behind? There is always a lot of advice flying around, especially this time of year, regarding exactly where we’ve all fallen short. Some of it may even be good advice. But I worry.

Because I want us to find our joy and our truth by what resonates as true within each of us, not by listening to shame. I want to speak from the heart about this. I think we all have something to let go of today. We all do things that hurt people. We all do things that hurt ourselves. And we all do things that do both, and we hurt others WHILE we hurt ourselves.

And many of us cling to these behaviors for reasons that are sometimes simple and sometimes complicated and hard to understand. In their misguided way, these behaviors protect or serve us. We lash out to push people away before they hurt us. We isolate ourselves to protect ourselves from the possibility of rejection. We say hurtful things to feel strong instead of weak. We judge because we are afraid of the danger others may be putting themselves in. We replicate cycles of abuse and oppression to maintain our power. … And we know we have to stop. But we get stuck. When someone else points it out, we start to panic. We feel ashamed. We spiral. And my friends, I don’t want you to let anything go today just because you are ashamed. You deserve to live a beautiful life free of whatever it is that has hurt you or those around you. We all deserve this, and we can build this life together. As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm that all people have inherent worth and dignity, and that includes you.

We can let go with a spirit of love, a spirit of care, a spirit of joy. And we can grieve whatever must be grieved with open hearts, unburdened by shame. Shame demands we shove whatever repulses us into a box and fight to keep it hidden. But with compassion, we can see that even our worst behaviors were trying to serve us, protect us, and show us love in a misguided and harmful way. And we can hold this part of ourselves close to our hearts, thank it for all it has tried to do and all that it has taught us, and then, finally, we can say goodbye, knowing that the sacred fire will transform it.

So let the fire shine its light upon you. Listen for the still small voice insideÐthe divine spark, which guides you towards a life of love and joy. And together we will feed this fire. For indeed, whatever you give the fire is a gift.

For the fire of the burning bowl will live by eating what you feed it, and will transform what it is fed, and it will feed you, too. And…I believe that by feeding the burning bowl, you also feed the chalice. What might you feed the fire today that will give fuel to the light that shines upon systems of oppression until they are no more? What might you feed the fire today that will cause the light of truth, the warmth of community, and the fire of commitment to burn even more brightly than before? What might you feed the fire today that will tend to your own divine spark and the divine spark of others? What might you feed the fire today that will honor and care for the flaming chalice, symbol of our faith, rich with infinite meaning?

So, with all of that in our minds and hearts, let us light the burning bowl and begin this ritual. We will consider the year together before bringing our gifts to the fire.

In a moment, I will invite Carolyn to carry a flame from the chalice into the bowl. As she does so, let us sit in prayer and contemplation of our own special relationships with the chalice. What values does it hold for you today? Which flames dance most beautifully within you this morning? If you are joining this ritual online, I invite you to light a candle, imagine the bowl vividly in your mind, or do whatever it is you would like to do to participate. I will hold this piece of flash paper for all of you and carry it into the fire last.

Carolyn, please light the fire. [Carolyn lights the bowl]

The fire of the chalice, which is now the fire of the burning bowl, welcomes you. Love, beauty, joy, and compassion live within it. The fire accepts all of who you are, and all of what you will give it. As you consider this past year, you may feel a sting of shame. You may recoil from something you wish you had not done. Please know that you are safe here. No one desires for you to feel any shame. You need not hide anything from this sacred fire. You are already held by what is sacred and counted among the beloved of the world. You are a creature of inherent worth and dignity, and nothing can change that fact. This truth lives within you, and you can return to it at any time.

Now, as the fire burns, let us take a moment to take stock of the past year: 2023. I invite you now to close your eyes if it will be helpful to you. Let the memories of this year flow through you, as much as you can. Say hello to your joys. Say hello to your sorrows. What did you do this year that brought you joy? And what did you do this year that did not? Let’s take a moment to hold each memory of our thoughts and actions, to see which brings joy and which does not. If shame comes, you need not fear it. You are safe here.

Now, let us hold our flash papers (or simply our thoughts) near to ourselves. You can hold this paper in any number of ways. Hold it against your heart so that it can feel what most longs to be free. Hold it against your head so that it can hear the thoughts which wheel within you. Hold it against the part of your body which feels most tense so that it can meet your body’s pain with compassion. Or hold it in a way that your heart, mind, body, or other guide asks you to. If you feel a mysterious communication, follow its guidance. You are safe here. Let us take a holy quiet moment to listen to whatever still small voice might speak to us now.

What shall you let go of today? There are many ways to know. You may know it by a word or phrase: fear, anger, bigotry, reliance on the opinion of others, self-doubt. You may know it by an image in your mind: a closed fist, a dying plant, a dusty stack of papers, an old book, an empty glass. You may know it by a feeling in your body: a tightness, a hot face, a sore throat, a restless urge to run. You may know it by a color, a face, a voice, a sound, or even a disorganized thought. These things go by many names. You may not be entirely sure what your gift to the fire will be today, and that is alright, too. You are safe here, and no one here desires that you feel any shame.

Whatever you will be letting go of today, hold its identity, its name, its image or thought or sound as you hold your paper. If you wish, you may whisper its name into your paper now.

Now, as you hold this thing in your hands, you might see that it is not what you first thought. Perhaps it is much larger than you realized; perhaps it is much smaller. It has done something for you, perhaps in a misguided way. It has tried to protect you, or tried to teach you. It may have harmed you, or it may have harmed others, or maybe both. But in its imperfect way, it has tried. Now comes its time for it to transform in the fire and find a new life, supporting the values you hold in the flame of the chalice.

If you are ready, or if you feel able, outloud or in your mind, I invite us now to thank these parts of ourselves for all they have taught us, by saying: “Thank you; I wish you well.” Thank you, I wish you well.

Now let’s cast them into the fire so they can begin their new existence! Friends in the sanctuary, please line up.

Friends who are online, please take this time to perform the remainder of this ritual however you have chosen to do so.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt
November 12, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As Unitarian Universalists, we work towards building the Beloved Community, a community in which everyone’s needs are centered and met and where equity is enshrined in all we do. As we work towards this larger and universal goal we also do the work of practicing the Beloved Community in our own space. Let’s explore the role of relationships in our practice of the Beloved Community and how those relationships have the power to transform us both individually and collectively.

Chalice Lighting

As we kindle this the flame, we honor and remember
Those who have passed into the mystery.
Their brightness lives on in our vision;
their courage lives on in our commitments;
and their love continues to bless the world through us.

Call to Worship

ANYONE’S MINISTRY
Rev. Gordon McKeeman

Ministry is

• a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities;
• inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and with one another;
• carrying forward a long heritage of hope and liberation that has dignified and informed the human venture over many centuries;
• being present with, to, and for others in their terrors and torments; in their grief, misery and pain; knowing that those feelings are our feelings, too;
• celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit, the miracles of birth and life, the wonders of devotion and sacrifice;
• witnessing to life-enhancing values;
• speaking truth to power;
• speaking for human dignity and equity, for compassion and aspiration;
• believing in life in the presence of death;
• struggling for human responsibility against principalities and structures that ignore humaneness and become instruments of death.

 

It is all these and much, much more than all of them, present in the wordless, the unspoken, the ineffable.

It is speaking and living the highest we know and living with the knowledge that it is never as deep, or as wide or a high as we wish. Whenever there is a meeting that summons us to our better selves, wherever

• our lostness is found,
• our fragments are united,
• our wounds begin healing,
• our spines stiffen and
• our muscles grow strong for the task,

there is ministry.

 

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

ONE LOVE
Rev. Dr. Hope Johnson

We are one,
A diverse group
Of proudly kindred spirits
Here not by coincidence–
But because we choose to journey-together.

We are active and proactive
We care deeply
We live our love, as best we can.

We ARE one
Working, Eating, Laughing,
Playing, Singing, Storytelling, Sharing and Rejoicing.
Getting to know each other,
Taking risks
Opening up.
Questioning, Seeking, Searching…
Trying to understand…
Struggling…
Making Mistakes
Paying Attention…
Asking Questions
Listening…
Living our Answers
Learning to love our neighbors
Learning to love ourselves.

Apologizing and forgiving with humility
Being forgiven, through Grace.

Creating the Beloved Community-Together
We are ONE.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Julicia Hermann de la Fuente
July 2, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

There are so many things vying for our attention and energy. How do we manage it all? How do we find joy and satisfaction? How do we fit our commitment to justice among the many other things that need doing? Let’s explore the possibility of sustainable and joyful liberation and transformation, in our lives and our communities.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

By no means are we Unitarian Universalists perfect. We often fail as much as we succeed. Yet even when we have broken our vows a thousand times we return to this essential work of justice and liberation for all. We do the work best when we remember what the church is and what it is not.

Church is not a place to hide. It is not the place to get away from the world. It is not place shere we get to pretend that the lives we live and our particular situations are not terribly complex, often confusing, and sometimes depressing.

Church is the place where we stand with one another, look the world in the eye, attempt to see clearly, and gather strength to face what we see with courage and yes, with joy. Come, let us worship together.

– Rosemary McKnight

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

V’AHAVTA
by Aurora Levins Morales

Say these words
when you lie down and
when you rise up,
when you go out and
when you return,
in times of mourning and
times of joy.

Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments,
tattoo them on your shoulder,
teach them to your children,
your neighbors,
your enemies.

Recite them in your streets.
Here, in the cruel shadow of empire.

Another world is possible.

Thus spoke the prophet Roque Dalton:
All together they have more death than we,
but all together, we have more life than they.
There is more bloody death in their hands
than we could ever wield, unless
we lay down our souls to become them,
and then we will lose everything.
So instead,

imagine winning. This is your
sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell
of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the
muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as
newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the
beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and
the woman wrapping herself in thin sheets in the
back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep
multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a
rain of good fortune out of the heavy clouds, and justice
rolls down like waters.

Defend the world in which we win as if
it were your child.
It is your child.
Defend it as if it were your lover.
It is your lover.

When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.

Imagine rape is unimaginable. Imagine
war is a scarcely credible rumor
That the crimes of our age, the
grotesque inhumanities of greed,
the sheer and astounding shamelessness
of it, the vast fortunes
made by stealing lives, the horrible
normalcy it came to have,
is unimaginable to our heirs, the
generations of the free.

Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its
sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you
sing. Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn
so fiercely that you can
follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not
lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry
drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and
keep walking.

Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our
children’s children may live

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Buice
June 25, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We bring a very special worship service from our annual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, where UUs from from far and wide have gathered in Pittsburgh this week. Our Director of Religious Education, Kelly Stokes, leads our service as we join our larger faith in worship. Rev Buice is minister of the Tennessee Valley UU Church in Knoxville, Tenn.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

PUSHING FORWARD
By Elandria Williams

If we believe in the promise of our faith, we must continue pushing forward, even if the reality makes us want to give up. There is no one-size-fits-all solution or model, but there are many paths forward based on context, relationships, and place.

Ideology sparks movements, but relationships are what changes organizations and sustain movements. It takes one relationship at a time. In the end changes to the leadership of the institution happen because of relationships, people pushing. We must place value on the relationships and the need to not leave folks behind in our quest for transformation.

I live in a small city, and living in that small city helps me understand what community means. Community doesn’t only include the people who agree with you or those with whom you want to be friends. Our Unitarian Universalist faith is similar in the sense that we are a small religious community of people who are not bound by creed but instead are bound by principles, values, and a covenant with a need for intellectual rigor combined with spiritual depth or humanist love. Everything comes back to our congregations and covenanted communities. That is where the faith starts and ends. We must embody the changes we wish to see and not just say that we believe in the changes. We must actually live the changes with every fabric of our being. If we believe in the promise of our faith, we must continue pushing forward.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Chaplain Anthony Jenkins
April 2, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Chaplain Anthony Jenkins will lead a worship service exploring the interfaith intersection of the modern Easter holiday – through an ancient (and Divine Feminine) prism. This morning will be a hearing of sorts, a trial for the rightful ownership of Easter. You will be the jury.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reflection #1 – Ostara

Reflection #2 – Ishtar

Reflection #3 – Shifra

Reflection #4 – Mary Magdalene

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Sara Green
March 26, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

There are many interpretations about what we are supposed to be doing as a church – rituals, building community and justice, are just a few. Liturgy, sometimes interpreted as the work of the people, calls us to make micro experiments in beloved community creation. Let’s explore how our care of land and collaboration with the planet helps us to dig deeper into our mission in our communities.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Excerp from “Evidence”
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Meditation Reading

Excerpt for “Being Black”
by Angel Kyodo Williams

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Ed Proulx
March 19, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We have seen the unspeakable become commonplace. It’s become more and more common and unspeakable. How do we, as religious people address our societal breakdown? One conversation at a time.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

OUR LIVES INTERSECT AND INTERTWINE
By Tania Marquez

It is a wonder and mystery that our paths have crossed;
That in the immensity of time, in the vastness of space,
we coincide here.
I am in awe at the ways in which our lives intersect and intertwine,
at the beauty we create when we gather.
May our coming together make us more compassionate,
more just, more caring, and more loving.
May our hearts and minds be open to this offering.
I am so glad you are here.
Let us worship, let us marvel at the miracle of being here, right now,
and the Mystery that has brought us together.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Meditation Reading

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

– William Arthur Ward

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Addae Kraba
February 19, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Since time immemorial love has been the topic of conversations. We are endowed with a boundless capacity to love, but when we are filled with emotions like fear and anger we shield love’s pulsating rays. – Addae Kraba

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

WE ARE ONE
By Hope Johnson

We are one, a diverse group of proudly kindred spirits, here not by coincidence but because we choose to journey together. We are active and proactive. We care deeply. We live our love as best we can.

We are one, working, eating, laughing, playing, singing, storytelling, sharing, and rejoicing, getting to know each other, taking risks, opening up, questioning, seeking, searching, trying to understand, struggling, making mistakes, paying attention, asking questions, listening, living our answers, learning to love our neighbors, learning to love ourselves, apologizing and forgiving with humility, and being forgiven through grace, creating the beloved community together. We are one.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Meditation Reading

NO ONE IS OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE OF LOVE
By Susan Frederick-Gray, Erika Hewitt

We know that hurt moves through the world, perpetrated by action, inaction, and indifference. Our values call us to live in the reality of the heartbreak of our world, remembering that:

“No one is outside the circle of love.”

We who are Unitarian Universalist not only affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person; we also affirm the inherent wholeness of every beingÑdespite apparent brokenness.

“No one is outside the circle of love.”

We know that things break, or break down: promises, friendship, sobriety, hope, communication. This breaking happens because our human hearts and our very institutions are frail and imperfect. We make mistakes. Life is messy.

“No one is outside the circle of love.”

With compassion as our guide, we seek the well-being of all people. We seek to dismantle systems of oppression that undermine our collective humanity. We believe that weÕre here to guide one another toward Love.

“No one is outside the circle of love.”

No matter how fractured we are or once were, we can make whole people of ourselves. We are whole at our core, because of the great, unnameable, sometimes inconceivable Love in which we live.

“No one is outside the circle of love.”

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776