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Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Michelle LeGrave
June 2, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
This Sunday we will hold our annual Flower Communion Service. Please join us for this much-loved Unitarian Universalist ritual exchange of flowers. During the service you will have the opportunity to add your flower(s) to large bouquets we will create in the sanctuary and to take a different flower with you, symbolizing both the unique, sacred beauty of each of us and the even greater beauty we create when we share that sacred uniqueness with one another.
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 who have an eye for miracles regard the bud now appearing on the bare branch of the fragile young tree. It’s a mere dot, a nothing. But already it’s a flower, already a fruit, already its own death and resurrection.”
– Diego Valeri
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
FLOWER COMMUNION
Lynn UngerWhat a gathering-the purple
tongues of iris licking out
at spikes of lupine, the orange
crepe skirts of poppies lifting
over buttercup and daisy.
Who can be grim
in the face of such abundance?
There is nothing to compare,
no need for beauty to compete.
The voluptuous rhododendron
and the plain grass
are equally filled with themselves,
equally declare the miracles
of color and form.
This is what community looks like-
this vibrant jostle, stem by stem
declaring the marvelous joining.
This is the face of communion,
the incarnation once more
gracefully resurrected from winter.
Hold these things together
in your sight-purple, crimson,
magenta, blue. You will
be feasting on this long after
the flowers are gone.
Sermon
On June 4, 1923, Rev. Norbert Capek, the minister of Prague Liberal Religious Fellowship, a Unitarian church, created what has become our flower communion.
Rev. Capek needed a symbolic ritual that would bind people together as they faced the impending threats from Nazism in neighboring Germany ..
Capek turned to the beauty of the surrounding countryside and created a communion where congregants would bring flowers from their gardens, fields or the roadside and share them with one another – symbolizing that just as no two flowers are exactly alike, so each of us has an inherent and unique beauty.
Capek’s wife, Maja, also an ordained minister, came to the United States in 1940 and introduced the ritual to U.S. Unitarians while she was here.
Unfortunately, she was unable to return to Prague at the time, because World War II had broken out.
It was only after the war that she learned that the Nazi’s had sent Capek to a concentration camp.
However, even in the concentration camp, he held a flower ceremony with his fellow prisoners, using whatever flowering weeds they could find, testifying to a love larger than themselves and that would outlive them – a ritual we still practice today – a ritual still symbolizing both the unique, sacred beauty of each of us and the even greater beauty we create when we share that sacred uniqueness with one another.
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
As we go out into our world now, let us continue to share our unique gifts.
May we flourish and flower in communion with one another and all that is.
May we bring one another and our world delight.
May the congregation say, “Amen” and “Blessed Be”.
Go in peace.
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