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Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Rev. Michelle LaGrave
August 25, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Rev. Michelle and Rev. Chris will answer your questions about the church, life, the universe, and everything (though neither will pretend to have the answers to all that).
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 marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by asking the question as it does by the answering.
– David Whyte
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
Courageous people willing to admit ignorance and raise difficult questions is usually not just more prosperous, but also more peaceful than societies in which everyone must unquestioningly accept a single answer. People afraid of losing their truth tend to be more violent. Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.
– Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Sermon
NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive the omissions and/or errors.
Michelle
So today is our question box sermon. This is a time when we attempt to offer an answer to some of your questions. It may not be the only answer or the right answer or the best answer, but we will offer some answers, some potential answers and I also want to and we will do our best to get all of these questions I want so much to answer everyone they are so precious today we may not get to all of them but we will try and realizing each one could be a sermon in its own right. You’re asking two preachers. So double the trouble.
First question that we received ahead of time is a two-part question.
HOW SHOULD YOU RESPOND WHEN SOMEONE SINCERELY SAYS THEY WILL PRAY FOR YOU?
Michelle
My answer is most of the time to look them in the eyes with kindness and gratitude and say thank you because it is about them and their spirituality and they are offering you a gift in the best way that they know how. Some of the time that may not be appropriate. What I’m thinking about are instances relating to oppression, such as when someone offers to pray the gay away, or offers to fix your disabled body, or things like that. In those cases, I would not respond in those ways.
But if you’re in some time of crisis in your life, facing a hospitalization or surgery or grieving a loss, then gratitude is what I would offer as the best response to an offer of prayer.
The other half of that question is:
HOW ABOUT WHEN THEY ARE SARCASTIC OR NASTY ABOUT IT, SAYING, FOR EXAMPLE, YOU SURE NEED THESE PRAYERS?
Michelle
A simple ouch. Or, wow, is fine. You can call them on it and say, you know, that’s a really hurtful comment. It’s okay to name it and say it. Prayer is not and should not be a weapon.
Chris
Thanks, Michelle. I wouldn’t add a lot to that except I try to also remember that we don’t know what they think of as prayer when they say this to us. So for Since I do pray, but it’s not to a higher power, it’s kind of just putting my wishes for the universe out there. So if I say I’m praying for you, I’m sending you well wishes, is what I mean by that. If they’re sarcastic or nasty, I just tend to say, well, and I’m going to pray your hairdo gets better too. I don’t actually. I think that what I do consider sometimes with something like that is do I need to set boundaries and or is this a person I need to continue to have in my life?
The next question,
DID GOD CREATE HUMANS IN GOD’S IMAGE OR DID HUMANS CREATE A GOD IN THEIR IMAGE?
Chris
Yes.
Actually, that was a joke, but I’m going to talk in a minute about a theology that I hold that I think would answer that, yes, or both. And I also, though, want to get to what I think this question may be getting at, which is that when we create an idea of God that reflects ourselves, that we humanize, it’s too easy to cast our own selves into that God and to cast our own prejudices and our own hatreds and our own behavior into that God and thereby to excuse those things about ourselves. So I think that’s the danger of creating a God in our own image.
A theology that really supports me these days is called process relational theology and the idea behind it is though we think of ourselves and this pulpit as solid objects – we’re really not. We are processes of evolution or becoming so the very fact that we’re having this conversation today is changing us. As we have it the Buddhists would say, “That flame in our chalice seems to be a solid object but it’s really not.” It’s a process of fuel and oxygen repeatedly being burned….
…its tributaries is calling us to live in the ways of love. And so from that perspective, that river of love that I call God is both creating us and we are contributing to God and creating God at the same time. So I think that’s a lovely theology and it calls us by the very nature that we’re all processes to engage in liberation together because none of us can become…
Michelle
… so you may recognize that this question refers to an early line in Genesis about God creating humans in God’s image. And the interesting thing about the Hebrew is that it is actually plural, Elohim, in our images, that there are a multitude, a multiplicity of gods, not just the one monotheistic God that we have been taught to believe in.
The Hebrew Bible came into creation over at least 1,400 years, depending on how you do the math, possibly a few hundred more years than that, depending on which academic scholar you follow. And it took all of that time to come into what most Christians consider to be a solid monotheistic perspective that they have today. In the meantime, if we were to think about the ancient Israelites, such as those who the story is told about wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, they believed that there were other gods out there and that the God that we now call simply God was their God. And they imagined when they were fighting with other groups, with other cultures, other peoples, as in wartime, not simple conflict, that while the humans were battling on the field here on earth, their God leaders were also battling up in heaven. And it was the stronger God who would win.
So when we talk about God’s rod and staff, we’re really talking about the symbols of God that are carried in and before a people, especially during wartime, not instruments used to beat people, their symbols. That’s a complete misunderstanding of the Hebrew.
So long answer is, interestingly enough, now that we are U.S. who believe in a multiplicity of theologies and philosophies, we can go right back to the beginning of the Hebrew Bible that also believes in a multiplicity of gods. Hopefully ours won’t like go to war, though. Oh, and then the next question I have is:
I DO HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT THE DISCUSSION OF GOD AT THE UNITARIAN CHURCH. I WOULD IMAGINE THAT IF WE TOOK A SURVEY OF OUR CONGREGANTS AND ASKED IF THEY BELIEVED IN GOD, MOST WOULD SAY YES. NOW, OF COURSE, INDIVIDUAL BELIEFS IN GOD WOULD VARY TREMENDOUSLY. MY QUESTION IS: WHY DON’T UNITARIANS EVER DISCUSS THE SUBJECT OF GOD, EITHER FROM THE PULPIT OR IN SMALL GROUPS? I IMAGINE IT IS BECAUSE IT WOULD MAKE SOME UNCOMFORTABLE AND OTHERS FELT IT WOULD BE TOO CLOSE TO PRESSING A DOGMA. BUT IT SEEMS A BELIEF WOULD HAVE A BIG PART OF SPIRITUALITY WHICH I FEEL IS LACKING IN UU.
Michelle
This could totally be a sermon in response. That’s a very long question. So I have so much I would love to say about this.
One is that as Unitarian Universalists, we are a faith tradition of people who are come-outers. We do have our children that we raise in our faith and grow up and remain UUs. We also have many, many new people who are constantly leaving other faith traditions and coming into our faith traditions. They are bringing so much of their religious hurt with them that as a community in order to support them, we are often in the position of supporting people who are feeling really hurt and broken over concepts of God and religion…
…I’m not sure I want to call it standard Christianity, but mainline Christianity believes in this Greco-Hebrew amalgamation of a monotheistic god with all sorts of omnis attached to it doesn’t mean that’s the only definition of God.
We UUs have as much power and privilege to define God in the way that we see God as they do. So we can say that we believe in a God and define that God for ourselves, whether it is as a river of love or a force in the universe or the power behind evolution, all sorts of different kinds of ways. So yes, we often default to terms like eternal, sacred, divine, holy, universe, earth.
But we also have this opportunity to learn to translate in and amongst each other and with other faith traditions to make the theology work for ourselves. This is where it comes in of not being you, easy to be a UU. We have to work to be UUs, right? Amen. That’ll move us along. Next question.
WHAT IS YOUR SECRET FOR CREATING SUCH A POSITIVE, ENGAGING, EXCITING ATMOSPHERE FOR ALL AGES AT FIRST UU, BOTH IN THE SERVICE, ESPECIALLY IN THE SERMON, AND ALL AROUND THE CHURCH, IN SPITE OF ALL THE WORRIES THAT SURROUND US AND OUR DAILY LIFE, POLITICS, CLIMATE, VIOLENCE, ET CETERA.
Chris
Wow. There’s a whole other sermon here. So first, thank you. Questions like this help me keep that positive outlook. I think that for Michelle and I as spiritual leaders of the church, or at least speaking for myself, in order to do that, I have to know how to do that for myself. Where do I sustain myself? How do I find that positive energy even when things are hard?
And for me, I go back to that sustaining theology, process theology, that I was just talking about and try to make that real in my life, even when things are hard….
… I’m doing a whole sermon here. One of the professors, Sharon Welch, where I went to seminary, talked about when things are really hard, letting go of the outcome is so important and thinking about what are we going to do? How do we live? Can we find the joy regardless of the outcome? So, for instance, I think with the climate crisis, we do work toward an outcome that we hope for. And I think that outcome is possible. And I think we’re also seeing that we may not get the outcome we hope for. We’re seeing some really scary stuff. And if we only look at that outcome, it’s hard to fill the joy in what we’re doing now. And so living according to our values in the moment and working for what we dream about in the world, whether or not we know that’s going to happen, helps us maintain that joy.
The final thing I’ll say, many of you know what I’m going through in my personal life right now. As a young Southern Texas male I was taught that the way you deal with those negative things is to not feel anything at all. And let me tell you that is not the answer because feeling nothing at all I can tell you is worse than feeling grief and hurt and pain. We need those things because without those things, we also don’t feel love and joy. So let me tell you, the hurt is worth, the love is worth the hurt. It absolutely is. And please don’t try not to feel. Feeling, you have to feel. And that’s the whole gamut of things because if you anesthetize the pain, you anesthetize the joy and love.
Michelle
And I would just put that right back on all of you when I can walk in here on Sunday morning and pick up on so much energy and life and vitality and joy. It feeds my spirit so much. It’s the best part of the entire week for me is when I arrive here at church on Sunday morning. And I don’t know if any of you online can pick up on that or feel it at all. I hope that you can. And I assure you that it is here. And that is from all of you.
And on top of that, I walk into working with this great staff team with Kinsey and Shannon and Brent and Aubrey and everyone else and they are just amazing to work with and you are so lucky to have them and I feel so lucky and blessed to work with Rev Chris to minister with him I am just having the best time doing that. So, that really feeds my joy. Next question.
I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A MINISTER GOES ON SABBATICAL OR OTHER LONGER TERM LEAVE HOW IS THE WORK OF THE CHURCH CONTINUED. WHO COVERS FOR THEM.
Michelle
This is a very relevant question right now. So as many of you know, Chris’s husband is in hospice. So he will be facing bereavement leave at some point. And we are going to hold and support him through that whenever that happens. Also, Chris is due for some sabbatical time this year and I will let him share in a moment about what he might do on his sabbatical.
I am also facing some surgeries this year. So as a congregation that has a form of policy governance which requires us to have a continuous operation plan. The basic plan is basically you are going to have one minister all year with periods of two ministers for maybe a couple of weeks at a time here and there.
So this is a joy today to actually be with Chris before he goes out for another couple of weeks. So Chris will be out for two weeks in September, for sure. He will be out for sabbatical in November and December. I will be going out for a total knee replacement in January and February, Chris will be going out for sabbatical in March and April. I will be saying goodbye to all of you in mid-June and then taking another opportunity for my other knee, total knee replacement and moving to wherever I go next. So between the two of us, we are planning to have a calm, stable, sustaining year. We’re probably not going to do a whole bunch of brand new, huge initiatives. It’ll be more like little tweaks and improvements here and there, and also just keep one of the reasons I chose to come to this church is because you are vital and alive and thriving post-pandemic. So we want to keep that going and that’s basically the plan.
Chris
Great. I wouldn’t add a lot except just to let you know that I was actually due for my sabbatical and then the pandemic happened. And then I was talking about taking it and then our minister Meg retired. So it’s been a while coming. I look forward to it. The reason we do sabbatical is to refresh ourselves a little bit and to get some time that we can think about, what in the world am I going to preach about next?
Right now, what sounds good to me for sabbatical is to load my two pups in the car with me and have a general idea where I’m going and then just drive. So I would love to do that for a little bit. I will also mention that we will bring in some help, some coverage part-time. We have talked with Aaron Walter, who you’ll remember was one of our interim ministers last year, and she will be helping us out. So I do want to get to a couple of these, and we’re running out of time. So one of the questions that just got asked is:
WHY DID MICHAEL SERVETUS GO TO GENEVA WHEN EVERYBODY TOLD HIM NOT TO?
Chris
Because he was a Unitarian. Just kidding.
WHAT DO YOU FIND MOST FULFILLING IN YOUR WORK AS A UU MINISTER?
Michelle
Oh my gosh. So much. Like I already said, the joy and vitality of coming in here and being with you in person on Sunday morning. But the things that touch my heart the most are when you share your stories about how you are going through life and what you are learning and how you are growing and changing from it, how you are transforming.
Chris
So I think we’re running out of time. I agree with all that. I think the only thing I might add is that I want to be a part of a faith that makes a real difference for us and for other people in the world. I believe this church does that. It certainly does that in my life. Being with you’all makes a real difference. That is the thing I love the most. Our faith makes a difference in the world for the better.
Michelle
All right. Actually, I’ll close with a little story, and then we’ll sing. We just had a board retreat, and at the close of that board retreat, we came to a place where I felt like the entire board was on-board with really doing the work of dismantling white supremacy culture, and really turning in the way that they’re thinking about how to do the work of governing this church in a new way. And so I am so excited and fulfilled by having heard what they had to say.
And Chris and I were talking this morning about apologies for the past. For the first time, we’re excited about writing our monthly monitoring reports. Because a whole new world has opened up, and we’re going to be able to do it in such a better way. And I just love that.
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, may we continue to explore questions more profound than answers. And may we also find some really good answers every now and then. May the congregation say amen. And blessed be. Go in peace.
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