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Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Rev. Michelle LaGrave
January 5, 2025
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
We bid you welcome on this first Sunday of the new year.
Like Janus, we gather with part of us looking backward and part of us looking forward. We gather on the edge of the new year, saddened by our losses, cherishing our joys, aware of our failures, mindful of days gone by.
We gather on the cusp of this new year, eager to begin a new, hopeful for what lies ahead, promising to make changes, anticipating tomorrows and tomorrows.
We invite you to join our celebration of life, knowing that life includes both good and bad endings and beginnings.
We bid you welcome.
– Sylvia L Howe
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
Now the work of Christmas begins.
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
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 people
to make music in the heart.– Howard Thurman
Sermon
NOTE: This is an edited, AI generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.
Rev. Michelle’s Homily
LOOKING BACK
Here we are on the first Sunday of the new year 2025. We’ve celebrated the winter solstice and Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and probably a few other things. We’ve sung fast away the old year passes and now we find ourselves preparing for the annual Burning Bowl ritual.
This is a season of ritual and celebration and a time of sorting, a time of sorting our feelings, our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams, thinking about the things we want to leave behind and the things we want to bring with us. So before we say goodbye finally, to the old year.
Before we let go of whatever it is that needs letting go, I have a few thoughts to share about why we do what we do and why it’s important. The first one comes from the Hebrew Bible and the book of Psalms. I tend to be a little bit of a Bible geek. I studied Hebrew in seminary even though it was optional. I’m not at all an expert about it. However, enough to have learned some really interesting things about the Bible. And from the book of Psalms, there is a verse which I suspect most of you will have heard and find familiar. It is “Be still and know that I am God.” Be still and know that I am God.
So the Bible was originally spoken and then written down in Hebrew. In English, when we read and hear this verse, we hear “be still,” which has a connotation of stopping action, relaxing, being quiet. It’s a passive verb, the way that it’s been translated. So be passive, be still, be quiet, and know that I am God. However, in Hebrew, the word, the verb that we use is actually an active verb, and it means something probably closer to unclench. So imagine that your hands are clenched, grasped around something that you’re holding onto, your body is tense, you’re thinking about whatever it is that makes you a little stressed out, right? So to unclench, take some action. You have to let go of those muscles. You have to open your hands. Unclench and know. Let go of those old ideas about who and what God is or isn’t. Open yourselves to new ideas. Open yourselves to knowing.
And the second thought comes from Buddhism and the first three of the four noble truths. Buddhism teaches us that attachment is the root of all suffering, right? When we are attached to things too much, too strongly, that is when and how we suffer. So when we’re looking back at the old year and we’re thinking about the things that were attached to you, the way we wished things were, the way we wished the world was, the way we wished things had happened or not happened, and we’re attached to what we had wanted, what our desires were, right?
So in order to end the suffering, we have to let go of those attachments to what it is that we had wanted or wished for. We have to detach and let go of what it is that we wish our lives should have been or would have been.
And so, whatever it is that your theological or philosophical perspective is, Whether it’s Judaism or Christianity or Buddhism or something completely different, I invite you to take a few moments to ponder what it is in your life, your world, your reality that needs sorting, unclenching, detaching, or letting go.
May it be so. Amen and bless it be.
Rev. Chris’ Homily
LOOKING FORWARD
All blessings on all that we have just released this morning.
One of the reasons that we do this ritual at the beginning of each year is that by letting go of that which may not be serving us well or is just not necessary in our lives, we open up a spaciousness within an openness to all that life has to offer. And this we hope will allow us to live more fully into our highest values and our greatest creative potential. And we are going to need that spaciousness in the weeks and months to come.
Tomorrow is January 6th, the day that Congress will likely certify the electoral vote making Donald Trump our president once again. Of course, it’s also the anniversary of when four years ago a violent mob overran our capital in an attempt to overturn, prevent the certification of that duly and fairly held election.
Now the person who incited that insurrection will be returning to the White House and we do not yet know what will happen. We do know that we will be called to counter an ideology of division and harm with a public-facing theology of love and radical interconnectedness. We’ll talk more about exactly how we might do that in the days to come.
I know that this morning, though, so many of us are feeling fear about what is to come and particularly for those among us who are immigrants or who follow the spiritual call to love the stranger among us, those who are LGBTQ, particularly our trans-siblings, those who make up the over 50% of our populations that call themselves female.
For all of these folks and more, that fear is unfortunately well-founded. And those forces of division and harm are quite successfully using fear to succeed in driving their ideology forward in public life, and we, we will never counter fear with more fear. So we are going to need to let our fear warn and inform us about what may be required of us and then we’re gonna have to let it go. Let it burn away in the flames of love and justice to create the spaciousness we will need to think and act in new ways that can ignite even more love and joy and justice in our lives and in our world.
So, for instance this morning I whispered into my paper that I am letting go of the fake fights we sometimes have amongst ourselves. I’m not engaging anymore over whether the church newsletter should be digital to save on paper or printed on paper to save on energy. An actual argument that has occurred in this and other churches. I’m not invested in arguing over what musical styles are suitable for worship or whether we start at 10:45 or 11:00.
I am invested in creating the beloved community of care and support among us so that we can go out and join with others to create even more of the same, and I am letting go of any and all allergies that I might still have around Bible or God language so that I can proclaim in the public square that which Jesus actually said, which offers up a God of inclusion, love and justice, not the white Christian Nationalist God, the false idol, the anti-Christ being offered up by that ideology of division and harm that is currently ascendant and is winning the political God war. We’re going to talk about that more too.
So, starting this morning, now, in this very moment in place, may we burn away all that is false and frightens and distracts us so that we can open up such spaciousness that love may truly overcome emergent and ascendant instead.
Amen.
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
Having let go, set our intentions, named our curiosity, committed our energies, and given ourselves over to lives of balance, purpose, and meaning. Let us begin again in love. May the congregation say amen.
Amen and blessed be. Go in peace.
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