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Rev. Chris Jimmerson & Rev. Michelle LaGrange
December 24th, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

On Christmas Eve we hold our annual Lessons and Carols service featuring beautiful, holiday-related readings and singing carols together. We join together for this magical day of celebrating love, joy, and peace.

Chalice Lighting

On this night of anticipation, we raise our voices in story and song to greet Christmas. May the lessons of compassion, trust, and generosity alight within us and lead us into the new day, renewed.

Opening Words

CHRISTMAS EVE
by Rev. Mary Wellemeyer (adapted)

Like those shepherds who were on the hillsides with their flocks,
like those wise ones in their observatories with their telescopes and astronomical charts,
we find our daily work interrupted by these holy days.

And like them, we cannot keep on working, we must stop and listen to the
singing of the angels, and feel the call of that special star,

The little town of Bethlehem is thronged with people who have come to be taxed,
crowding streets and shops, and we must wind our way to an unknown place
where a wonderful new beginning awaits.

What precious new beginning are you seeking this night?
For what do you push through the crowds?
What message do the angels sing to you?
What is the call of your star?

Anthem:

“Cantique de Noel” (Adolphe Adam)
Katrina Saporsantos & Gabriel Liboiron-Cohen, vocals;
Benjamin Dia, piano

Reading

COME INTO CHRISTMAS
by Ellen Fay

It is the winter season of the year
Dark and chilly
Perhaps it is a winter season in your life.
Dark and chilly there, too
Come in to Christmas here,
Let the light and warmth of Christmas brighten our
lives and the world.
Let us find in the dark corners of our souls the
light of hope,
A vision of the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Let us find rest in the quiet of a holy moment to
find promise and renewal.
Let us find the child in each of us, the new hope,
the new light, born in us.
Then will Christmas come
Then will magic return to the world.

Carol “O Come All Ye Faithful” 

Reading

THE SHORTEST DAY
by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Carol “Joy to the World”

Reading

CHRISTMAS IS SUBVERSIVE
by Rev. Kendyl Gibbons

One of the great things about Christmas is that it is a sturdy holiday. Christmas doesn’t wimp out when times are hard – it comes anyway, even if there are hardly any presents, even when there isn’t much food to make a feast with, even if you’re sad, even if the world around you is at war, even if you are living in fear and danger and oppression, Christmas still comes.

And when it comes, Christmas is subversive. Christmas, with its story of an unwed mother and a doubtful father; with its legend of a helpless baby, born in a stable, who was worshipped by some of the wisest, richest men in the world; with its tale of the child pursued by the deadly wrath of kings, who escaped as a refugee to a foreign land far from home.

Christmas, with its ancient, enduring summons of peace on earth, good will to all people, everywhere. You can’t stop a day like that with a little hardship, or greed, or injustice. It will show up anyway, shining the light of a midnight star into the darkest places of our collective lives.

Do not underestimate the power of the manger, and the hope it holds. The Christmas song of the angels is not as innocent as it sounds. It has turned the world upside down before now. It still can.

Carol “Angels We Have Heard on High”

Reading

Luke 2:1-7

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

Reading

A CAUTIONARY CHRISTMAS TALE
by Rev. Frank Rivas (adapted)

My little sister, Renee, was ten years younger than I. When she was in kindergarten, I considered her to be the most obnoxious child on this planet.

So I decided to get her a lump of coal for Christmas. I know that people generally consider it Santa’s responsibility to give lumps of coal to kids who misbehave, but I had learned over the years not to trust Santa’s judgment. I’d seen it over and over again; the old man went easy on little kids.

So the responsibility fell to me. I searched the yellow pages, went to the nearest coal yard, picked out an exceptionally large chunk, wrapped it nicely in a box with a bow and placed it under the Christmas tree.

Our family encouraged recipients to lift, shake, and guess at the contents as soon as a gift was under the tree. Renee was fascinated. What gift could weigh so much?

By our Christmas morning tradition, the gifts were sorted into five piles; then one at a time, going around the circle as many times as necessary, we opened our gifts for everyone to see.

Renee opened mine first. As she unwrapped ribbon, paper and box, her excitement grew. My excitement grew too; the moment of reckoning was at hand. From her first glance at the coal she loved it. She screamed with delight and hugged me profusely.

How was I to know that only a week earlier, in her kindergarten class, she had learned to grow colorful crystals on coal. How was I to know that this would be her favorite gift?

There’s a moral to this story, my friends. Watch out for this season. There’s a spirit in the air that can turn even the most vindictive thoughts into good deeds.

Reading

Luke 2:8-14

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

Hymn #244: “It Came upon a Midnight Clear”

Reading

Luke 2:15-20

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Reading

EACH NIGHT A CHILD IS BORN
Sophia Lyon Fahs (adapted)

For so the children come
and so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they came-
Born of the seed of life.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
no wise ones see a star to show where to find
The babe that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night.
Parents
Sitting beside their children’s cribs-
Feel glory in the sight of a new beginning.
They ask “Where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?”
Each night a child is born is a holy night-
A time for singing-
A time for wondering
A time for worshiping.

Carol No. 245: “Joy to the World”

Reading

THE CAMELS SPEAK
by Lynn Ungar

Of course they never consulted us. They were wise men, kings, starreaders, and we merely transportation.

They simply loaded us with gifts and turned us toward the star.

I ask you, what would a king know of choosing presents for a child?

Had they ever even seen a baby born to such simple folks, so naked of pretension, so open to the wind?

What would such a child care for perfumes and gold?

Far better to have asked one born in the desert, tested by wind and sand.

We saw what he would need: the gift of perseverance, of continuing on the hard way, making do with what there is, living on what you have inside.s

The gift of holding up under a burden, of lifting another with grace, of kneeling to accept the weight of what you must bear.

Our footsteps could have rocked him with the rhythm of the road, shown him comfort in a harsh land, the dignity of continually moving forward. But the wise men were not wise enough to ask.

They simply left their trinkets and admired the rustic view. Before you knew it, we were turned again toward home, carrying men only half-willing to be amazed.

But never mind.

We saw the baby, felt him reach for the bright tassels of our gear. We desert amblers have our ways of seeing what you chatterers must miss. That child at heart knows something about following a star.

Our gifts are given.

Offering

“Carol of the Bells” (Mykola Leontovych; arr. Margaret Goldstone)
Benjamin Dia, piano

Reading

A RITUAL OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE FIRE
Rev. Michelle LaGraveand Rev. Chris Jimmerson

Let us take into our hands a Christmas candle, a Solstice candle
this is a night of ancient joy and ancient fear
those who have gone before us were fearful of what lurked
outside the ring of fire, of light and warmth.

As we light this fire we ask that the fullness of its flame
protect each of us from what we fear most
and guide us towards our perfect light and joy.

May we each be encircled by the fire and warmth of love
and by the flame of our friendship with one another.

On this night, it was the ancient custom to exchange gifts
of light, symbolic of the new light of the sun.

Therefore make ready for the light!
Light of star, light of candle,
Firelight, lamplight, love light
Let us share the gift of light.

Candle Lighting: “Silent Night, Holy Night” (Instrumental)

Carol “Silent Night, Holy Night”

Reading

THE WORK OF CHRISTMAS
by Howard Thurman

When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are
home,
When shepherds are back with
their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the brothers,
to make music in the heart.

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.

Closing Words

KNEELING IN BETHLEHEM by Ann Weems

It is not over, this birthing.
There are always newer skies
into which God can throw stars.
When we begin to think
that we can predict the Advent of God,
that we can box the Christ in a stable in Bethlehem,
that’s just the time that God will be born
in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe.
Those who wait for God
watch with their hearts and not their eyes,
listening, always listening for angel words.

Singing Together

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year
Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
And bring it right here

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
So bring it right here

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

We all like our figgy pudding
We all like our figgy pudding
We all like our figgy pudding
With all its good cheers

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

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 Jimmerson
December 3, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The winter solstice has been observed through a variety of rituals, celebrations, and spiritual beliefs across multiple cultures and throughout the ages. We will explore some of these traditions, many of which still manifest within our current practices. The winter solstice has often been associated with the return of the light. Might it just strongly transport us into an embrace of the “divine darkness”?

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

YOU DARKNESS
– Rainer Maria Rilke
  translated by David Whyte

You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.
But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight –
and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.

I have faith in the night.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WINTER SOLSTICE
By Rebecca Ann Parker

Perhaps
for a moment
the typewriters will stop clicking,
the wheels stop rolling
the computers desist from computing,
and a hush will fall over the city.

For an instant,
in the stillness,
the chiming of the celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs poised
in the crystalline darkness,
and then
gracefully
tilts.

Let there be a season
when holiness is heard, and
the splendor of living is revealed.

Stunned to stillness by beauty
we remember who we are and why we are here.

There are inexplicable mysteries.

We are not alone.

In the universe there moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter earth’s axis
toward love.

In the immense darkness
everything spins with joy.
The cosmos enfolds us.
We are caught in a web of stars,
cradled in a swaying embrace,
rocked by the holy night,
babes of the universe.
Let this be the time
we wake to life,
like spring wakes, in the moment
of winter solstice.

Sermon

British author, journalist, and activist George Monbiot said of the December holidays, “The Christians stole the winter solstice from the Pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians.”

The winter solstice is December 22 this year, so I thought we might get an early start exploring what of our Christmas traditions are at least borrowed from these pre and non-Christian solstice practices and what spiritual wisdom we might find from those practices.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. It occurs in December in the Northern hemisphere and June in the Southern. The earth’s axis tilts to the point where one region of the globe is the farthest it gets away from the sun.

Various ancient traditions, rituals, and beliefs around this occurrence have developed throughout the world.

Not surprisingly, many of these center around:

• winter,
• fire and warmth,
• agriculture in anticipation of planting and the spring that will come,
• the return of the light (after the shortest day of the year, the days will gradually get longer again)

Cultures in the Northern hemisphere, especially, observed that for three days the sun would appear to be in the same place on the horizon, after which it would seem to begin rising again.

Hmmm. After three days, the sun rises again. That seems vaguely familiar.

As I was researching all of this though, the most striking element to me is that these ancient spiritual observations of the winter solstice, this darkest day and longest night of the year, have also been about finding holiness in that darkness.

But to get to that, let’s start with some of what we in the north have borrowed from these oftentimes ancient winter solstice traditions.

So, let’s start with the ancient Roman tradition of Saturnalia – a weeks long celebration of their agriculture God, Saturn, leading up to the winter solstice.

Saturnalia was a raucous and carnal time of heavy drinking and partying, when the social order was reversed, and the servants and slaves were not only temporarily given freedom but could demand gifts from their masters.

During the festivities, all Romans would also exchange small gifts with one another. And from this our Christmas tradition of drinking way too much and demanding presents was born.

Though in all fairness, heavy drinking and exchanging gifts was also common to the winter solstice observations of many European cultures.I have to wonder if all the drinking was how they too coped with spending way too much time with extended family.

Now, I have been joking about the long tradition of drinking alcohol during this time of the year. There is a far from humorous side to it also though. In the U.S., the days right after the Christmas and New Years holidays are when the highest number of folks seek treatment for alcohol withdrawal. And if you want an example of how capitalism has colonized Christmas, just think about how many liquor advertisements we see this time of the year.

Well, Germanic, Nordic and other peoples celebrated what has widely become combined into we call “Yuletide”, when they would bring home large yule logs and light one end to bum for several days of feasting and festivities.

The Germanic people would also roast a wild boar to appease their God of fertility. This is likely the source of our holiday ham tradition. They also hung stockings on their chimney’s to leave for their God, Odin and the 8-legged horse he rode.

Near the time of winter solstice, several of the so-called Pagan societies would also gather mistletoe, which symbolized fertility, romance, peace, and joy depending upon the group.

Under sprigs of mistletoe, some of them would even engage in elaborate fertility rituals (a-hem). Today, we leave it at a simple kiss – probably because that extended family always seems to be around.

For the Romans, holly was also a sacred plant, connected with the God Saturn. They would make holly wreaths to exchange as gifts for good luck.

When Christianity was still forbidden within the Roman empire, early Christians avoided detection by hanging holly wreaths around their homes to make it look like they were celebrating Saturnalia.

Our Christmas Caroling tradition likely comes from the AngloSaxon winter wassailing celebration, which involved, you guessed it, drinking lots of an alcohol based traditional wassail beverage, sort of similar to eggnog, and going door to door, singing to the neighbors to wish them good health and banish evil spirits.

This was also sometimes done in fruit tree orchards, also to banish evil spirits and wish for a good harvest.

Well, one last example among far more than we can cover today, is our perhaps most famous symbol of the Christmas season, the Christmas tree.

During the time near winter solstice, Romans hung small metal ornaments on trees around their homes, representing their Gods. Other cultures would decorate trees with fruits and candles, either outside or after bringing them into their homes.

The bringing in of evergreens, likely symbolized new or even eternal life in the midst of the cold and darkness of winter. And that brings me back to this idea that these winter solstice practices, yes, were rituals about holding onto to life and the return of the sun and the light.

As importantly though, they were also about, not so much driving away the dark, but of embracing being in the darkness.

The candles, the fires, the evergreens, the associated celebrations and rituals and singing and gift giving were also about finding a way through, even rejoicing in the darkness – finding the holy in the nighttime.

And I think this is an important concept that has too often gotten lost to us in more modern times. We have come to celebrate that which is good only with light and white and bright – and to associate darkness with that which is bad and painful and evil. And this can damage us spiritually.

It leads us to value only the so called “bright” emotions such as joy and love and avoid the “dark” emotions such as sorrow and grief. Any yet, we need all of these emotions and more to be psychologically healthy sometimes. And these connotations have found their way into racist tropes involving lighter complected skin versus darker.

Retired Unitarian Universalist religious educator Jacqui James captured all of this when she wrote:

“Blackmail, blacklist, black mark. Black Monday, black mood, black-hearted. Black plague, black mass, black market. Good guys wear white, bad guys wear black … Angels and brides wear white. Devil’s food cake is chocolate; angel’s food cake is white!

 

We shape language and we are shaped by it. In our culture, white is esteemed … At the same time, black is evil, wicked, gloomy, depressing, angry, sullen. Ascribing negative and positive values to black and white enhances the institutionalization of this culture’s racism.”

And this valuing of the light and shunning of the dark has further theological implications. Author, Episcopal Priest and spiritual teacher, Barbara Taylor Brown addresses these in her book on this subject, “Learning to Walk in the Dark”.

She writes,

“At the theological level, however, this language creates all sorts of problems. It divides every day in two, pitting the light part against the dark part. It tucks all the sinister stuff into the dark part, identifying God with the sunny part and leaving you to deal with the rest on your own time. It implies things about dark-skinned people and sight-impaired people that are not true. Worst of all, it offers people of faith a giant closet in which they can store everything that threatens or frightens them without thinking too much about those things.”

But, we need both the light and the dark. After all, the seed germinates in the darkness of soil. The caterpillar goes through metamorphosis into a butterfly in the darkness of the chrysalis. We develop initially within the darkness of the womb.

And in fact, it may be in the darkness that we connect most deeply with the divine, or, if you prefer, that sense of awe and mystery within which we are given an ineffable awareness that we we are an integral part of something much greater than ourselves.

The Uzbek have a concept of the “divine dark” – the darkness from which all things come – the darkness from when the world was first made, when it was like a gentle night, peaceful, quiet and pitch-black. The night is when creation started, and the night is when you’re closest to sensing what it was like at the very start of the world”.

And this idea of the divine darkness has begun to emerge within Christian and other theologies also. We often close our eyes to pray or meditate, perhaps as a way to enter into the darkness where a sense of the sacred may more easily be found.

In the bible, Genesis describes how God created the world not from light but from the darkness.

Exodus describes how “The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”

The Psalms quote God’s response to darkness: “Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”

These are just a few examples. Similarly, we have come to associate being in the dark with a lack of knowing.

Yet, religious mystics speak of the “dark night of the soul” – that we must experience unknowing, the absence of God, in order to gain even a minute sense of a divine presence so vast and never fully comprehensible.

We experience the holy in the mystery.

I love this time of the year, because I experience the holy at night, when we turn off all of the lights except those on the Christmas tree, and we light the fireplace, if it cold enough, which in Texas is about 60 degree Fahrenheit or less.

And there in those Yuletide shadows, it’s just me and Wayne and our our two pups. The Christmas lights and the fire are not there to push out the darkness and the night, just to let us settle into their mysterious magic.

Here is another example.

If you have never experienced a total eclipse of the sun, go out to the central Texas hill country this coming April 8th, when one will occur in our area.

There is a brief moment of magical darkness at the height of such an eclipse that can truly touch our hearts with a sense of the sacred vastness of this universe of which we are a part.

In her book, Barbara Taylor Brown describes research that has been done where they asked volunteers to live without artificial light in order to replicate the amount of time our ancestors would have lived in relative darkness.

They were exploring sleep patterns in such a setting. At first, the volunteers slept 11 hours at a time rather than about 8, perhaps catching up on sleep after leaving the pace of the modern world and the influence of artificial light.

Soon though, they began to sleep about 8 hours again, but not consecutively. They slept a total of around 8 hours, but in separate segments of a few hours each.

What surprised the researchers most though was what happened between some of these sleep segments. Between sleeping, the research participants would sometimes enter into this “resting state” for about a couple of hours in which they were neither actively awake nor soundly asleep. And, their body chemistry and brainwaves during such altered consciousness were very much like that of people in deep states of meditation or prayer.

The director of the study said that it was like finding a fossil of human consciousness, a state of awareness that had largely withered away.

Perhaps by banishing the darkness, we have also lost a part of ourselves that quiet naturally connected with the spiritual. Maybe, we have forgotten that the darkness is sacred; the nights are holy.

Oh, by the way, I titled this service, “Oh, Holy Night” after the Christmas hymn with the same title. I discovered that the hymn was originally written in 1843 by a French poet named Placide Cappeau. When it was later discovered that Cappeau was an atheist with strongly anti-cleric views, the Catholic church banned the hymn. And, Oh, Holy Night was translated into English by American Unitarian and Transcendentalist minister, John Dwight, who lived in a commune and was a music critic. Somehow, that all makes Oh, Holy Night even holier to me!

Maybe I have a dark sense of humor.

As we approach the winter solstice this year, may we remember that we must travel far from our centers of artificial light for it to be dark enough to truly see the stars in the heavens at night.

May we reverence the darkness.

May we make holy the night.

Amen.

Benediction

– by Henry Beston

“Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night … there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity …

For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars – pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time.”

May the congregation say, Amen and blessed be.

Go in peace.

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 Jimmerson
Novmber 26, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes, we mainly tend to think of generosity as the giving of our time, talent, and treasure, and usually treasure. And it can be all of these things. Spiritual generosity may be more about a way of being in our world though; a deep sense of and grateful appreciation for our true interconnectedness; moving through life with attention to kindness and compassion. As author Ami Campbell writes, “Radical generosity is a way of living, not an act of giving.”

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 need to compose our lives in such a way that we both give and receive, learning to do both with grace, seeing both as parts of a single pattern rather than as antithetical alternatives.”

– Mary Catherine Bateson

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

AT THE MARKET
– Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Now when I walk through the market,
I think of how someone else here
beside the stir-fry cart and the tie-dye tent
has just lost a beloved
and is hiding tears behind sunglasses.
Not knowing who they are,
I try to treat everyone with kindness.
Meanwhile the day is beautiful
for everyone, no matter how broken,
how whole our hearts. It gathers us all
in a grand blue embrace.
Part of me resists calling it a miracle.
The other part calls it what it is
and strolls through the miracle
of Friday morning surrounded by arugula
and strawberries, muffins, lilies,
and all these other fragile hearts,
all of us saying excuse me, good morning,
how are you, I’m fine.

Sermon

“Radical generosity is a way of living, not of giving.”

I love that statement from author and philanthropy specialist, Ami Campbell. I think it captures how, at its most quintessential level, generosity is essential to our very spirit. It’s greater than a feeling of obligation to simply give of our time and treasure though those are really important too and part of it, just so I don’t get myself in trouble with our stewardship folks!

Spiritual generosity is about a way of being and of wellbeing. In fact, numerous studies have shown that it can improve our physical and mental health and even extend our lifespan. Now, I’ll talk more about this idea that generosity is such a vital element of our spirituality.

First though, recently, I was looking back through some of the reports from our interim ministers last year and thinking about some of the conversations I’ve had with our current interim minister, Rev. Michelle, and I was stuck by what a generosity of spirit the folks in this church have already shown, as we have been moving through this interim transition period.

Now, if you are new with the church, I should explain that since the summer of 2022, the church has been in what is called an interim ministry period. Normally, our churches have one or more what are called “settled ministers” ministers who are intended to be with the church over the longer term.

Here at First UU Austin, a much-loved such settled minister, Meg Barnhouse, had to retire in 2022 due to health reasons. Well, between settled ministers, specially trained interim ministers who are not intended to stay with the church long-term, help the church through a process of discerning its own identity, goals, and ministerial needs before the next settled minister is called – called means invited into a longer-term ministerial relationship by an extra-super-majority of the congregation.

This congregation recently called me as their next settled minister. However, we’re still in an interim ministry period, at least in part, because the church is large enough to need two longer-term ministers. So, Rev. Michelle will be helping the congregation discern what is else needed and how that second ministerial position might be structured and filled.

Now, in addition to all of that, our interim ministers have also been helping us work through the challenges all churches are facing, as we attempt to determine how best to offer spiritual community in this new world in which we find ourselves after the stay at home days of the pandemic.

Whew – I’m feeling exhausted and in need of a little of that generosity of spirit already! So, let me just repeat, the folks in this church have already offered up such generosity during this transition period! And, I want to be sure to recognize our newer members who have joined right in during the transition with such generous spirits.

Likewise, we can’t offer enough gratitude to our church staff, who have generously given of themselves, as the transition added additional tasks and responsibilities.

The transition has asked more of everyone in the church. You were asked into numerous interim ministry sessions, discussions with the board and transitions team, the ministerial search committee, me!

Coming back in person after the pandemic created a lot of work reinvigorating and reimagining so many of our programs and ministries that had gone at least partially dormant. And raise your hand if you have lost count of how many surveys you were asked to fill out?

I can’t tell you that we will not have any more surveys – they are one way we are able to gauge our aspirations and progress as a religious community. I CAN promise you that the need for surveys has been higher than in more normative times. Thank you for your generosity of spirit in responding them.

An interim period is also one of experimentation. It is a time of trying on new ways of doing things and new ways of being. This is at least in part to help congregations experience that there may be multiple perspectives on any given area of church life and many ways of living out transformative religion.

So, for instance, you have experienced experimenting with the elements of our services and the ways in which they are ordered.

You have experienced differing voices in our pulpit – the centering of voices other than white guys like me. After all, we’ve had the microphone for a while now!

Really, you have experienced at least some level of change or experimentation in so many areas of the church, and all that change can be disconcerting, can’t it? And it can also be transforming. Some things will work. Some will not, but we will learn from them all. And once again, you have approached this change with extraordinarily generous spirits.

Oh, and who’s noticed that some of our services have gone longer than usual?

The interim period has often created the need for the board, transition team, search team and others to communicate more information of consequence than usual during the worship service.

Now, even in non-transition times, our services have sometimes gone longer than an hour, during especially busy times of church life or when the religious topic requires a little more time to explore in enough depth.

During this continuing interim transition time, services of about one hour will remain what we plan for typically. The work of the transition itself can just sometimes cause variances to happen more often than usual though.

Thank you once again for the spirit of generosity you have been exercising.

My favorite generous comment about this came from someone who said to me one Sunday, “Well, I guess in the not so distant past, just the sermon in a Unitarian church could go for well over an hour. At least you shut up a lot sooner than that, Rev. Chris.”

May we also remember, as we think about diversity, that for many cultures, “making the trains run exactly on time” is just not that big a deal.

And looking back at the interim ministry report from last year, there is already a wide range of diversity among us in so many areas. As one example, we already have a variety of preferences for different styles of worship.

For instance, we have a number among us much prefer, quieter, more classical musical pieces during worship. Others, not so much. Conversely, we have many folks who love it when we rock out for our music. Others, not so much.

And yet, we are finding the spiritual generosity to do both and more under one roof, sometimes during just one service, and we have the director of music and the music team talented enough to do it all.

We can be generous enough to keep talking and keep exploring so that we find ways for each and all of us to continue to experience spiritual transformation in worship and throughout the church – maybe not despite these differences but because of them if we continue to keep our hearts in a holy place with one another.

In those many surveys I mentioned earlier, we often said that we want diversity. Diversity requires valuing our differences and allowing them to encounter one another with a generosity of spirit within which all of us accept some change so that all of us might also be transformed.

Now, I want to give you a personnel example about all of this, but in doing so, I want to emphasize that though my examples have involved music, this spiritual generosity that emerges through experiencing our differences is possible for us throughout religious life here at the church.

So, I will confess that I have this involuntary, deep-seated aversion to music being played on an organ. I think it may go back to my childhood in the tiny Southern Baptist church, where a church volunteer would play our Sunday hymns on a cheap organ, poorly. Hymns with lyrics expressing a theology I find grotesque.

I’m just guessing that might be the source. Anyway, back before the pandemic, the church used to bring in this wonderful, versatile, and talented musician. One of his many virtuoso abilities was playing the organ. And when he would play it here, I could tell how talented he was. And I could hear how soaring the music he produced. And I still couldn’t help myself. Part of me still wanted to cry out, “please don’t kill Jesus.”

But, I would watch the faces of so many folks here in the sanctuary. And I could see the emotional and transformative impact that very same music was having for them. And in that way, I could find some degree of transformation myself and muster the generosity of spirit to keep my aversion at bay. We so often discover transcendence through one another.

Well, that was more than I had thought I would talk about the church and our interim transition process. I do think it is important though, to pause every once in a while and review where we have been, where we are, and where we may be going. Even more so, I wanted you to know that you already hold within you that generosity of spirit about which we are talking about today.

So, what is this spiritual generosity of which I speak and from where does it arise? Well, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I do know that some concept of generosity of spirit is present in virtually all religions. Buddhism, for example, has the concept of dana, the letting go of attachment, which is the source of all suffering, through giving to others. In fact, for buddhism, dana is the first and prerequisite step in spiritual training or development.

A commission of our own Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches has recently recommended an update to the covenant we Unitarian Universalists within our broader faith make with one another. That recommended update is rooted in a set of spiritual values, one of which is stated,

“Generosity: We cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. We covenant to freely and compassionately share our faith, presence, and resources. Our generosity connects us to one another in relationships of interdependence and mutuality.”

So, spiritual generosity arises when we get this strong, expansive sense of our true interconnectedness. And I believe that sense of mutuality is based at least in part on an understanding of our shared vulnerability.

I love that our call to worship earlier spoke of learning to find grace in being able to give and to receive as part of a single pattern. We need one another. We cannot develop a truly generous spirit unless we are also able to ask for help ourselves when we need it. From this perspective, generosity of spirit arises out of saying “yes” to all of life; truth; love. “Yes” to the eternal truth that our interrelationships are what is vital.

Small acts of kindness, helping one another find peace even during the hard times, like as in our story for all ages earlier or the beautiful poem Gretchen read for us, become paramount. I believe all acts of charity, to be spiritually generous, must arise from this sense of interconnectedness and shared vulnerability.

Let me close with this story I ran across of Peruvian novelist Isabel Allende, who cared for her 28 year-old daughter, Paula, who had become ill and fallen into a coma. Isabel cared for Paula for over a year. Paula eventually died in Isabel’s arms.

Isabel says that during that time, she “had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.” She had to learn to receive her own love for her daughter, even when she couldn’t know if Paula was receiving that love. And having learned to claim her love for others as a gift to herself, she now centers her life in the ways of generosity, both large and small.

She writes, “Paralyzed and silent in her bed, my daughter Paula taught me a lesson that is now my mantra: You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.”

In this “season of giving”, may our hearts be in such a holy place.

Benediction

by Rebecca Ann Parker

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.
The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will…
It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.

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