How to stop being a Good Person

January 27, 2025 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt
January 26, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We are a people who value transformation but so often, we tie ourselves to the fixed state of “good.” Join Rev. Carrie as she explores transformation and how it plays into our goal of a more just, loving, and compassionate world.

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

I SIDE WITH THE PEOPLE
by Reverend Drew Patton

If they ever ask you which side are you on,
tell them plainly,
I sighed with the people.
With the precious ones, all,
the integral, the soft and the fierce,
irreplaceable, the beloved,
if only by garden trees
who were born who breathe and survive.
Say I sighed with
those who keep watch beneath
the bright screaming arc of bombs,
With those who hide in dark doorways
or who through the moonlight flee,
with those who stay and fight
and with those who keep kept up all night
by hunger and grief and terror and rage
by desperate unruly hope.
Who are good and green at the root
who are more than the worst that they’ve done,
who do their best to love
and still pass on the hurt in themselves
that they hate.
But what when takes sides against each other,
the people, against even themselves,
side with whatever is human in them,
what is fragile and feeling and flesh.
Side with the truth of our stories.
Side with the fact of our pain.
Side with defiant insistence on freedom.
Side there again and again.
Side there today and tomorrow.
Side there the rest of your life.
Side there together until we belong each one to every other.
If ever they ask you
which side are you on
say it doesn’t work like that.
Tell them you side with the people
and abide where the people are at.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE WILD GEESE
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours,
and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile, the sun
and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile, the wild geese
high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.

Whoever you are,
No matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you
like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting,
over and over
announcing your place in the family of things.

Sermon

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.

So, during the Texas legislative session of 2021, probably in March, I found myself suited up and in an overflow room, waiting to testify against one of the many, many bills that day that we’re attacking the LGBTQIA plus community. I was perfecting my testimony, making sure it was respectful and even full of logical arguments.

And across the aisle was a large group of mostly young queer people who were sitting together and chatting. I was feeling so uncomfortable for them. I was thinking, “Y ‘all, be serious. they’re not going to take us seriously if you are not serious.” And then, theres a huge explosion of laughter from that side of the room and I turned kind of in exaperation. But, very quicky two things are revealed to me.

The first is that the person testifying at that moment was someone from a religious organization who was using God’s name to dehumanize and support a dehumanizing bill.
The second was that laughter was coming from the group because Rev. Johnston, who with great mercy and great love pulled their attention away from all that hate and onto her so she could fill them with love.

And that’s when it hit me. All this time I thought it was important for me to be “good enough,” to look presentable, to sound presentable, to play the part so that I could, what, beg for justice? But why was I trying to appeal to the egos of those in power who were causing harm when the people who needed love, attention, care, and solidarity were the people in that room having to fight for their humanity.

This was a major breaking point in my life. You see I spent so much of my life and so much of my energy trying to be good. Be a good girl, sweet, don’t bother anyone, be a good little born-again Christian, couldn’t have anyone going to hell on my watch. Be a good worker, a good student, a good friend, a good partner, a good mother, you get it. I pretzeled, and I pretzeled myself into being what I was told was good by all the powers that be.

Y ‘all, I am a recovering civ, having poured out all of my energy in an attempt to be affirmed in my goodness to those powers. And I don’t think I’m the only one. Because systems of supremacy, like white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, for example, spends a lot of energy trying to rob us and others of our humanity. And it often does so by wielding good like a weapon.

Even those who carry the most privilege in the supremacy system, y ‘all aren’t free. And if you don’t believe me, you cis-men, tomorrow go out in a dress. I guarantee you your male privilege will drop just like that.

Privilege and freedom, Those aren’t the same. And so the system does its best to keep us, all of us, pretzeling to stay in bounds of good. And this pretzeling takes us right out of our humanity. I can only conclude that’s because true liberation starts with the liberation of self.

There is so much liberation in seeing the humanity in ourselves, to embrace who we really are, our whole messy wholeness, to allow ourselves to be colored outside of the lines of what supremacy culture allows.

When we honor the humanity in ourselves, we honor the humanity in others. It’s much harder to other someone or demonize someone when we are working to see their full humanity. We stop judging them against impossible and dehumanizing standards and start allowing grace and compassion to come into our relationships.

Being good by squeezing ourselves in the acceptable boxes of supremacy thinking is incompatible with liberation because it’s incompatible with our humanity. Being good is also a fixed position. You attain it and then you got to stay there, which means growing is out of the question. And often you have to use all your energy just to stay in defense of growth.

This past summer at General Assembly, a time when When UUs from all over the place come together to decide on the direction of our faith, we had the opportunity to vote on the business resolution titled “Embracing Transgender Non-Binary Intersex and Gender Diverse People as a Fundamental Expression of Our UU Religious Values.” Now, spoiler, it passed. Which is great news. But during that debate, Some people spoke against the resolution using what has been a widely debunked report called the CAS report – No surprise.

But my reaction to that wasn’t very generous. Very affirmed in my own goodness actually as a social justice warrior I had all sorts of thoughts and opinions about those UUs. And then I had a conversation with my wise friend and yours, Biz, who said, “They’re trying to rationally justify their disgust through something that they think holds authority, like the CAS report. Instead of just being like, whoa, I am reacting to another human being with disgust. Is that okay with me?”

Now I do not think that anyone who cited that report did so because they were trying to hurt people. Though, let me be clear – they did. No, I think they were desperately trying to protect themselves – to protect their identity as a good person. And as much as it pains me, this realization led me to see all the times that I had done the same.

When I feel uncomfortable, instead of saying, “I’m uncomfortable, let me sit with this. Does this align with my values? What’s going on?” Instead, I often interpret it as danger.

And when you interpret something as danger, it leads to a fight response. I have to defend myself or whether I have to protect my good person status and the fight response makes a lot of sense because discomfort is actually dangerous.

It’s dangerous to those ideas and thoughts we hold that are not aligned with our core self, that are not aligned with our core values are not aligned with what we are working towards, which is the beloved community.

So that fight you feel when you are uncomfortable, it’s legitimate, but it’s not helpful.

To fight our discomfort is to keep us stuck. It is to hold tight to the image we are trying to project, which keeps us cut off from growth. Therapist Iris McKellen Garrett writes,

“The more tightly we cling to our identity as a good person, the more skilled we become at rationalizing our behavior. And the less available we are to examining the ways we cause harm.

Holding tightly to your identity as good will undermine your growth because it doesn’t make room for this discomfort. And I don’t want my growth undermined. There is too much harm in this world. There is too much suffering happening right now for me to stay static. I don’t want to stop the necessary growth and transformation that is needed in order for me to do my part.

And as a people who are committed to the building the beloved community, I don’t want us to pretzel ourselves either. I don’t want us to cut off ourselves from humanity. I don’t want us to appeal to the powers that be begging for scraps of our humanity, for morsels of justice. They’re never going to give it, not in any real and tangible way, and certainly not in any way that leads us to the beloved community.

Now, I didn’t write this down, but let me be clear, this does not mean you’ll need to not go to the legislature this session. Show up. Show up in your full humanity for others, full humanity.

I want a bigger, more connected life for myself and for everyone. Being good requires a level of control that just doesn’t allow that. Looking back, I can see all the ways that I tried to control every situation and attempt to control how people perceive me and that’s just plain exhausting. If we want to work for equity and inclusion but we haven’t liberated ourselves from good, we can get stuck on learning the rules for the rules sake. Like learning what is racist and ableist and sexist language and moving it out of our vocabulary, but just kind of ending there.

Writers Sadie Smith says,

“I’m always happy when people use the right words around me and others. But it is nothing compared to decent wages, decent housing, health care, and human rights.”

Yes, We should try to make sure not to cause harm or further harm with our language, but it is just a part of the bigger landscape of what we are trying to do in a liberating space, which means we have to act, and to act is to risk.

UU ethicist Sharon Welch wrote a book called “The Feminist Ethic of Risk.” And she wrote that the work we are called to do or the work that we call ourself to do requires risk. She writes,

“What improbable task with what unpredictable results shall we undertake today in trading an ethic of control for an ethic of risk? And in living out that ethos, we can neither undo the past nor control the future, but we can learn from the past, and we can live creatively and responsibly and compassionately in the present.”

Living creatively and responsibly and compassionately are the building blocks of liberation, Are the building blocks of the beloved community in our religion provides us a foundation for that kind of risk.

One of the new values is transformation Which is pretty cool because First UU has been on it for a while. Exhibit A. In Article to the transformation value reads,

“We adapt to the changing world. We covenant to collectively transform growth spiritually and ethically. Openness to change is fundamental to our Unitarian Universalist heritage. Never complete and never perfect.”

To me this says that our religion encourages us in our humanity, encourage us in our growth and in our change to continuously learn so that we might do better over and over again, to discard old beliefs as we gain deeper understanding of the world and of one another, for the liberation of ourselves and for the liberation of others.

But what I love most is how this value acknowledges what this looks like when we show up in our full humanity. Never complete, never perfect.

I don’t know about y ‘all but that’s a pretty powerful path for me. So if we’re going to do away with good, What are we gonna do? We strive to be in our humanity To embrace this whole messiness that is being human and to do it with creativity, Responsibility and as much compassion as we can. We strive to stop pretzeling ourselves into some ideal that was written by supremacy culture to keep us small and manageable. I don’t want to be small, and I certainly do not want to be manageable to dehumanizing systems like white supremacy and patriarchy. Do you?

We also strive to see the humanity in others, and to be so tuned in to their humanity If it is under attack, even when we don’t have stakes in the game, we stand in solidarity and push back against that dehumanizing way that they are being attacked. Because we remember that we are beholden to one another and not systems.

And like Bishop Budde this week, We speak truth to those systems of power as many times as necessary. We also get good at repair. We get good at coming back when we have caused harm and asking for forgiveness.

Not to make sure that we’re okay, everybody’s Okay but it is an actual concern for the person that was harmed. And we strive to hold our values so closely while allowing for growth, allowing for the evolution of thought and opinion we need as we move throughout this life and throughout building the beloved community. And in this way we strive to be like our living tradition, constantly changing and evolving, growing through risk, through relationship, and through repair.

This is going to be imperative during this legislative session, and I think it goes without saying at least the next four years.

Lewis Fisher, a universalist theologian around a century ago wrote these words.

“Universalists are often asked to tell where they stand. The only true answer to give to this question is that we do not stand at all. We move. We do not stand still, nor do we defend any immovable position. We grow, as all living things forever must do.”

So, let’s hold on to our humanity. Let’s get normal. Normalize learning from our discomfort. Let us be good with one another. Let us be relentlessly fighting for one another. And let’s get comfortable with the never complete and never perfect part of it all. Because we are no longer begging for scraps of justice. We are demanding liberation.

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 you leave the sacred time of being with one another, may you leave knowing that you are held. May you leave feeling grounded. May you leave feeling loved, Knowing that you are not alone, not today or ever. Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 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

Holding on to the Dream

January 22, 2025 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 19, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously laid out a dream of justice and Beloved Community. January 20 will be both MLK Day and inauguration day. We’ll examine how we might develop the spiritual resilience to keep the dream alive through a time when it seems so threatened.

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

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some circles today and I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love.

I’m talking about a strong demanding love for I’ve seen too much hate and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love.

And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it. Because John was right. God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

Sermon

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.

(Opening film-clip of 1963 MLK’s March on Washington)

That was footage from the 1963 march on Washington. The marchers were singing a spiritual which has become iconic. “We shall overcome,” sung throughout the world for years since by human rights movements of many kinds. The march culminated with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s now also more than iconic speech. “I have a dream,” he called it, a speech. I have to tell you that if I ever give a sermon that magnificent, I think I’ll just retire while ahead right then.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. It is Also the inauguration to a second term of office for a man and an ideology so hostile to and threatening toward Dr. King’s dream of beloved community, that it has many of us holding our heads like this for fear that the dissonance will otherwise cause them to explode. Go ahead, try it. I find it helps.

I know a lot of you are afraid because you’ve told me that. I am too. Afraid for our democracy and whether it will withstand the coming assault. Afraid for the people we love who are being targeted by the onslaught. Some of us are afraid because we’re among those who have already been singled out for the assault. We don’t know what will happen starting tomorrow. We do know that the incoming president, his supporters, and proposed administration are promising what they themselves call a shock and awe campaign. A campaign designed to keep us frightened and feeling powerless.

So today I want to talk a bit about how we might soothe our fears, Claim our power, and resist even turn the assault against the very ideology of separation, division, and scapegoating from which it springs. And that power, our power, is contained in the very words that Dr. King himself spoke,

“Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality, a strong, demanding love, the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.”

As Unitarian Universalists, we have recently centered our faith in that strong demanding love, perhaps starting to catch up with Dr. King after all these years.

Ten years ago, in 2015, I stood in this pulpit on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day and told the story of how in March 1965, over 500 Unitarian Universalists lay people and 250 of our ministers responded to a call from Dr. King nationally for people of faith to join him in a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

The call was in response to what is now sometimes called “Bloody Sunday,” when law enforcement in Selma had brutally attacked peaceful protesters with billy clubs and tear gas. I want to share with you a couple of those Unitarian Universalist folks’ stories today because it’s been long enough that many of you may not have heard them and because I believe that they can inform us of the challenges or about the challenges we face ahead of us.

Reverend Dr. James Reeb was among the first of our ministers to arrive in Selma. His first evening there, Reeb and two other white Unitarian Universalist ministers dined at an African-American restaurant called Walker’s Cafe because they had been told they wouldn’t be safe at a whites-only restaurant.

But as they left Walker’s Cafe, they were attacked by a group of four or five white locals, at least one of whom was carrying a large club of some kind. He struck James Reeb on the head with it, knocking him to the ground. They beat and kicked the other two ministers to the ground also. Soon afterward, James Reeb fell into an unconscious state from which he never awoke. Two days later, Marie Reeb, his wife, made the painful and difficult decision to turn off the artificial support that was the only thing that was keeping his body alive.

Reeb became a national martyr. He was even paid homage to by then president Lyndon B. Johnson and his murder galvanized white Americans, and particularly Unitarian Universalists, to join the effort in Selma even more.

One such Unitarian Universalists who joined the effort and who also did not come back from Selma alive was Viola Luizzo, but she wasn’t lionied in the way that James Reeve was. For many years, her story was rarely, if ever, told because (A) she was a woman. And (B) she was a woman and not a minister. At a time, not a minister because (A) she was a woman. Viola Luizzo was a member of First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit and worked for the NAACP. She was married, had five children. She answered the call to Selma by getting in her car and driving there despite the objections of her family.

She helped out by giving marchers a ride back to Selma from Montgomery after the march. On one of her return trips, a car full of KKK men pulled up beside her and fired shots directly at her, hitting her twice in the head, killing her instantly. Her car careened into a ditch and came to a stop when it struck a fence. After her death, one of her sons described his father’s dark hair turning gray overnight. Her family endured crosses being burnt in their front yard. Her children were beat up at school. They were told their mother deserved what she got because as a white woman, she had no business being there in the first place.

I tell you these stories because I believe that like Viola Luizzo and James Reeb were in their time, we are being called to live our faith even if the cost may be high. And if they could show up despite the environment and risk of their times, despite paying the ultimate price for it, we can answer that call in our times.

We are being called by a divine, strong and demanding river of love that moves us to offer shelter, support, and safe haven to those most targeted by the coming assault against human rights and dignity. Called to speak love and justice to a state government that threatens to defile the very concept of beloved community. Called by a strong demanding river of divine love to resist, revolt against and ultimately repel the ideology of hate and division that has captured our federal government. Called back to love and justice over and over again until the end. We shall indeed overcome.

Back in 2015, I joined some Unitarian Universalists and other folks from across the country in Selma for the 50th anniversary commemoration of those events back in 1965. At one point while we were there, they gathered us in a large fellowship hall and we sang, “We shall overcome” together. And there was so much love and hope and solidarity generated through singing that together that I don’t think a single one of us left that fellowship hall afterwards with eyes that were dry.

Now there are several different stories of the origins of that song, but ultimately they all conclude with what a gift the African-American community has given the world through it. Or better yet, perhaps a loan. A loan with a promissory note that we will join in solidarity to overcome racism and bigotry wherever we find it.

Let us remember that when we sing it together today, later in our service. And speaking of together, we can in the days to come, further develop and talk about the specifics of our social justice efforts as we face this daunting challenge. For now though, before we can answer that call from love in the public square, we are going to need one another right here in the days to come.

We will need to build the beloved community within these church walls more than ever before so that we can then bring even more of it into our world, join in solidarity with others and follow the lead of those most affected by that ideology of division so counter to Dr. King’s dream of beloved community and that means being careful that we don’t turn our fears and anxieties toward one another. Through unnecessary fighting or unkind words and deeds It means loving each other through this. Being even more attentive to offering words and acts of caring, kindness, and support to one another.

Please include your church staff and ministers in all of the above.

And it means getting more creative than ever about finding new ways to offer love, support, and a shelter of as much safety as possible for beloveds who are being targeted.

My beautiful people, do not despair, I love you. We will get through this together, and with the many others with whom we’ll join in solidarity to answer that call from such a strong and demanding love. When we think back to all that has changed since Viola Luizzo and James Reeve answered that call and met their fate all those years ago, we must know that the arc of the universe we are trying to bend toward justice has never really been a smooth and perfect arc. At Yes, it is a jagged and only slowly climbing line, and we dream. We dream of drawing the arc that goes through the center of it. My beloveds, We can keep that dream alive. Hold on to it. Hold on to it together in the ways of love tomorrow and in the days to follow.

I will be with you answering that call from a strong demanding love that Dr. King said is God. I want to close by offering you some of Dr. King’s word about that dream of his all those years ago spoken by Dr. King himself. A bit of it is laced with the male-centeredness of his time, so let us remember the arc we are upon has that jagged trajectory. I offer his voice with his text overlaid so that you can both hear and see their great beauty at the same time. I offer his dreams and his words as the last word today.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friend, So, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the Red Hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama with its vicious racist, With its governor, having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification. One day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope.

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

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Power without love is reckless and abusive. And love without power is sentimental and anemic, power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

May the congregations say amen and blessed be.
Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 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

Living the Creative, Non-fiction Life

January 14, 2025 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 12, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As humans, we make sense of our world by creating stories. Essentially, both as individuals and as groups, we construct ourselves through constructing narratives about ourselves. And those stories not only determine how we feel about ourselves and our world, but they also drive who we are, what we do, and who we are becoming. In effect, they are self-perpetuating. But what if the story we are telling ourselves is harmful and untrue? Can we rewrite or at least reinterpret it in order to create a more life-fulfilling, whole-hearted narrative?

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

EVERYTHING THAT WAS BROKEN
by Mary Oliver Everything that was broken
has forgotten its brokenness. I live
now in a sky-house, through every
window, the sun. Also your presence.
Our touching, our stories. Earthy
and holy both. How can this be, but
it is. Every day has something in
it whose name is forever.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

HOW INVISIBLE STORIES HOLD YOU BACK
by Ozan Virol

We all have stories that we live by that aren’t fixed truths. They’re just old scripts we’ve been following without realizing it. If you tell yourself travel is exhausting, you’ll only notice the hassles, the delayed flights, the cramped seats, and you’ll miss the little joys along the way. If you tell yourself you’re awkward in social settings, you’ll tense up before conversations even begin, missing moments that could have been easy and fun.

The point isn’t to force yourself to love every rainy day or magically turn into an extrovert. It’s about creating space. Space to question the stories you’ve been living by and experiment with something new. You’re not committing to anything forever, you’re just saying, “What if?” When you play with the stories you’ve been telling yourself, you realize they’re just that. They’re stories. And if you don’t like the story, you can change the story.

Sermon

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.

There’s at least one story you tell yourself about yourself that isn’t helpful. May even be harmful and probably isn’t even true.” At least if you’re like the vast majority of folks, that’s the case, that’s how the story goes.

What title would you give your not helpful, maybe even harmful, probably fictional story?
If you could change or reinterpret the story, what would you like the new title to be?

I’ll let you ponder all that as we explore the power that the stories we tell ourselves have over our lives, our emotions, behaviors, even our futures.

A field called narrative psychology has found that we humans make meaning of our lives and our world. In essence, we construct ourselves, our very personalities and our perspectives on the world through creating these narratives. And what’s fascinating is that we construct these self-stories with the structure of a novel. We give them chapters, birth, school, first love, et cetera. And we give them a beginning, middle, and end. This helps explain their power to affect not only our present, but also our future. If we’re always trying to give our stories an end even while we’re still in the middle of them, we’re likely to work toward an end that fits with the current story, even if that story is inaccurate, limiting, or harmful.

And the research has shown that our stories even affect the very neurochemistry of our brains. So if, for instance, I read about someone kicking a soccer ball. I don’t just create an image of that in my mind. It actually activates the motor cortex area of my brain as if I were actually kicking the soccer ball myself. The same is true for stories we tell ourselves involving our emotions, values, self-worth, capacity in life and on and on and on. Our stories are actually molding our brains to fit the very stories our brains are telling us. That’s why they can be so hard to change sometimes. So in a way we live as stories. They have this huge power in our lives.

Even religion and spiritual practices are filled with ways of creating narrative metaphor that allows us to explore ultimate understandings that are sometimes inaccessible through everyday language and the current limits of scientific inquiry.

Here is how one narrative psychologist puts it. Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone. Instead, they’re shaped by story. The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives therefore make all the difference. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell our stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and ease our sorrows.

Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell ourselves can make an enormous difference in the way that we live our lives. And I would submit that this is not just psychological, it is also what spirituality is all about.

As I mentioned earlier in the service I’ll share how this has played out very powerfully in my life recently. Again what I share may be may bring up difficult circumstances and feelings. Tony and I are available after the service should you need to process something.

I’ve written the story out in case I need the words to hang onto emotionally while I tell it. Many of you know that my spouse of over 30 years, Wayne, died last year after an extended period of time on home hospice. In his final days, Wayne’s disease process resulted in some cognitive decline, he would get confused. And out of that confusion, the panic attacks that had plagued him when he was much younger, but that he had worked to resolve, began to come back sometimes. I ended up needing to manage his medical and hospice appointments, as well as his pain and other necessary medication, of which there were many on a large variety of different schedules, I would sit with him through the panic until it subsided.

Eventually his disease progressed to where he weakened and began to fall a lot. He was no longer strong enough to make it to the bathroom or to shower by himself So I had to learn to lift them without injuring myself. I would help them with these basic necessities of life. And though we brought in some home care help so that I could continue to perform a few church function and take care of household needs like getting groceries, most afternoons and evenings they would leave as soon as I returned. and it would be just the two of us and our pups for the rest of the day and evening. I’d set alarms each night so that I could get up and give him his medications on schedule and put on his mask for the breathing treatment that opened his airways and helped him to respirate more easily.

Eventually, Wayne declined to the point where he began to think about going into an institutional hospice setting called Christopher House, where he would receive the trained nursing care I couldn’t provide and which couldn’t be provided around the clock through home hospice.

We set up an appointment with this hospice doctor for Tuesday, September 3 to discuss that On the Friday before that, while I was making a run to the grocery store, he had a bad fall and couldn’t get back up. I returned to find him that way. I got him back into bed and called for help from the hospice nurses who came right away. They helped me clean up everything where he had fallen and they bandaged the wounds that I didn’t have the knowledge to know how to tend. They told us though that there might be internal bleeding.

Wayne opted to continue only pain management and palliative care. Soon though, He discovered he was no longer able to swallow anything solid, so another hospice nurse came over and showed me how to grind up his medications, dissolve them in water, and then give them to him slowly by flowing the medicated water into his mouth from a syringe. She also had me increase his pain medication and his treatments for anxiety and panic attacks. The nurses offered to go ahead and move him to Christopher House, but Wayne panicked at the idea of not having me and his pups, and so he never went.

The rest of that weekend is still kind of a blur in my memory. I remember having to pick him up and carry him several times. I remember getting up throughout the night to dissolve the medications and administer them to him and give him his breathing treatments. I remember home care workers coming a couple of times so I could take care of some duties here at the church or some household needs and wondering whether I should leave it all, even though they were there. I can remember bringing him the phone several times because he wanted to talk to the hospice folks himself about his own care needs. That Sunday evening he had another panic attack and they increased his meds even more. I remember getting up throughout the night in the early morning hours to check on him and give him his meds.

Early Labor Day morning, Monday, September 2, I got up and put on the mask to start his breathing treatment and went upstairs to make a cup of coffee. When I came back to check on the breathing treatment, he had died.

At first, the story I told myself about those final days was one of difficulty and trauma and self-doubt. I wasn’t trained to provide that level and kind of care, I told myself. Should I have been more insistent that he go to Christopher house, did not going, mean he went through more pain or discomfort. Should I have stayed with him, even when home care was there? The moments of administering his drugs with that syringe or lifting him to go to the bathroom played over and over through my mind as a story of trauma, caught in that story of trauma at first there was no way I could process my grief.

With time and work though, a lot of therapy, help from some wonderful, wonderful professionals and friends, the God of my understanding. I was eventually able to recast the story to one that I think is not only more healthy, I think it is more true.

Here’s how I understand our story of those times now. What a blessing that it was me who picked him up when he fell or needed to go to the restroom that I was the last one who held him that way, that I was the one who loved him through the moments of panic and fear. What a holy act I got to engage in with him, giving him his medications through the syringe, that most intimate of acts of holding it to his lips. It was me who came back to check on his breathing treatment only to discover that he no longer needed it because he had drawn his last breath. I didn’t get a phone call telling me he was gone. I was there for that hallowed moment, and I am so grateful. Wayne didn’t want to die at Christopher House. He wanted to die in the house that he shared with Christopher, and he did.

And so the story has moved from one of trauma and doubt to a story about sacred love that endures all and that is with me always and everywhere. My beloveds, we can rewrite, recast, reinterpret our self-stories.

Now, I wanted to share some tips from narrative psychology about how we might go about doing all that, but my sermon got so long that I had to give you those handouts that you have on the pews.

To summarize very briefly, though, when reviewing yourself’s story, unlike I just did, Get on with it. Be willing to question it and test it with others. Journal about it. See if you can recast it as a story of ongoing redemption. Seeking counseling and treatment when the story is just too strong and won’t let go is more than okay.

I’ll close with inviting you two during the postlude or after the service. Right down on the index cards, we’ve given you the answers to the two questions with which we began. What title would you give an unhelpful, maybe even harmful, probably fictional self-story? If you could change or reinterpret that self -story, what would you like the new title to be? Then I encourage you to spend some time in the days to come on how you might rewrite the story from one of trauma to one that is holy. Or at least from drama to something wholly more heart-centered and life-fulfilling. Rewrite it, then – Go tell it on the mountain.

Amen.

CHANGING OUR STORY HANDOUT

Ask, is it true? Is it the whole truth or only part of it? Is it a story that helps you live a fulfilled life or does it hold you back? Might it even be harmful?
What is your emotional state? For instance, depression can strongly influence the stories we tell ourselves, most often turning them toward the negative and self-criticizing. This of course, can further deepen the depression! Studies have found Un!: simply asking ourselves, “is this the depression talking”, can help us halt our negative stories. Therapies for the depression or other negative emotions can help also. Treatments such as ketamine, may help us ‘rewire” our brains with more affirming stories.
Daily Journaling as a practice can help us uncover self-stories about which we may not have been fully aware. Then, writing down, journaling a story we think is more accurate and/or more helpful can help us activate it within the neurobiology of our minds.
Rewrite it as story of Redemption. Research has shown that folks who call formulate their stories in ways that are redemptive tend to lead more generative, self-fulfilled lives – for instance, someone who was bullied as child and comes to view the story as about how they learned to set boundaries and protect themselves.
Cast the self-negative aspects as the villains of the story. The person who was told they were clumsy and unathletic as a child might cast the “clumsy and unathletic” label as the “Clumsy Monster” – “I am going to capture the Clumsy Monster and make it go to the gym with me, where I’ll show that monster exactly what I’m made of!”
Venting isn’t helpful. Studies have shown that venting about our story with a friend or loved one may actually amp up our nervous system, which in turn may only “further neurologically harden whatever story we are telling ourselves. Asking our loved one to help us process our story instead may be more helpful. Processing involves, rather than retelling the content of our story over and over again (venting), expressing our feelings and judgments about it. Processing also means asking others to help us question our assumptions about our stories.
Test self-stories only with those whom you know you can trust. This is tricky because it means we need loved ones who we can trust to both be honest and have our best interests at heart. They cannot be invested in our continuing a self-story in some way themselves. With such folks and/or professionals though, testing the accuracy of the stories we are telling ourselves by seeking another perspective can be very helpful and powerful.

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

Fairytales are true not because they tell us monsters exist, But because they tell us monsters can be vanquished.
Amen.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

2025 Sermon Index

January 6, 2025 by tom Posted in Indexes

2025 Sermons

Sermon Topic	Speaker	Date
The Power of a Good Story	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	2-28-25
2025 Christmas Pageant	Rev Chris Jimmerson and Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	12-21-25
Peace in the Chaos	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	12-14-25
Hopeful Heretics	Rev Chris Jimmerson	12-7-25
Transcendence and Transformation	Rev Chris Jimmerson	11-30-25
Not Just Counting our Blessings	Rev Chris Jimmerson	11-23-25
The Spiritual Practice of Solidarity	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	11-16-25
Courage and Community	Rev Chris Jimmerson	11-9-25
Grief as a Friend	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	11-2-25
The Spiritual Practice of Play	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	10-26-25
2025 Celebration Sunday	Rev Chris Jimmerson	10-19-25
I’m Just so Angry	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	10-12-25>
Called to Compassion	Rev Chris Jimmerson	10-5-25
It’s Us	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	9-28-25
Living Love	Rev Chris Jimmerson	9-21-25
Building Belonging	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	9-14-25
2025 Water Communion	Rev Chris Jimmerson and Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	9-7-25
Don’t Miss the Next Chalice	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	8-31-25
Question Box	Rev Chris Jimmerson and Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	8-24-25
Spiritual Legacies	Rev Chris Jimmerson	8-17-25
There is More…	Rev Chris Jimmerson	8-10-25
The Transforming Power of Pride	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	8-3-25
The Blessings of Small Group Ministries	Rev Chris Jimmerson and Small Group Ministry Participants	7-27-25
Revolution Began/Begins with a Dream	Rev Chris Jimmerson and Rev Dr Nicole Kirk	7-20-25
Faithful Sanctuary	Rev Chris Jimmerson	7-13-25
Standing by Our UU Values: The Case for Palestine	AJ Juraska	7-6-25
Love's Call to Risk	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	6-29-25
Love at the Center	Nancy Mohn Bernard	6-22-25
Something Larger than Ourselves	Rev Chris Jimmerson	6-15-25
Soul Freedom	Rev Chris Jimmerson Chalice Camp Youth	6-8-25
Goodbye, So Long, Farewell	Rev Chris Jimmerson Rev Michelle LaGrave	6-1-25
2025 Question Box	Rev Chris Jimmerson Rev Michelle LaGrave	5-25-25
A Thea/ological Re-imagining	Rev Michelle LaGrave	5-18-25
2025 Flower Communion	Rev Chris Jimmerson Rev Michelle LaGrave	5-11-25
Fierce Love; Revolutionary Love	Rev Chris Jimmerson	5-4-25
Climate Hope and the Joy of Earth	Rev Erin Walter	4-27-25
2025 Easter Service	Rev Michelle LaGrave	4-20-25
Ode to Joy (and how to save room for it)	Rev Erin Walter	4-13-25
2025 Youth Service	First UU High School Youth Group	4-6-25
Joy, Hope and Visibility	Rev Erin Walter	3-30-25
Holy Ground	Rev Michelle LaGrave	3-23-25
Rest	Rev Michelle LaGrave	3-16-25
Building Communities of Trust	Rev Michelle LaGrave	3-9-25
Joy is Resistance	Rev Kiya Heartwood	3-2-25
Justice for All and All for Justice	Rev Michelle LaGrave	2-23-25
That’s Amore	Rev Chris Jimmerson	2-16-25
Revolutionary Inclusion in the way of Rabbi Jesus	Rev Chris Jimmerson	2-9-25
2025 Pet Blessing	Rev Chris Jimmerson	2-2-25
How to stop being a Good Person	Rev Carrie Holley-Hurt	1-26-25
Holding on to the Dream	Rev Chris Jimmerson	1-19-25
Living the Creative, Non-Fiction Life	Rev Chris Jimmerson	1-12-25
2025 Burning Bowl	Rev Chris Jimmerson and Rev Michelle LaGrange	1-5-25

Sermon Archives Index

Sermon Indexes by Year	Principal Speakers
2024 Sermon Index	Chris Jimmerson, Michelle LaGrave, Erin Walter
2023 Sermon Index	Chris Jimmerson, Michelle LaGrave, Erin Walter, Jonalu Johnstone
2022 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson, Erin Walter, Jonalu Johnstone, Lee Legault, John Buehrens
2021 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson
2020 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson
2019 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson, Lee Legault
2018 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson
2017 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson, Susan Yarbrough
2016 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Chris Jimmerson, Marisol Caballero
2015 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
2014 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
2013 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
2012 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Marisol Caballero
2011 Sermon Index	Meg Barnhouse, Ed Brock
2010 Sermon Index	Janet Newman, Ed Brock,
2009 Sermon Index	Janet Newman
2008 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr, Aaron White, Brian Ferguson
2007 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr, Jack Harris Bonham
2006 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr, Jack Harris Bonham
2005 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr, Jack Harris Bonham
2004 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr, Victoria Shepherd Rao
The Jesus Seminar	Davidson Loehr
2003 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr, Hannah Wells
2002 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr, Cathy Herrington
2001 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr
2000 Sermon Index	Davidson Loehr

2025 Burning Bowl

January 6, 2025 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Michelle LaGrave, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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.

SERMON INDEX

PODCASTS

Joy for Justice

January 3, 2025 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Uncategorized

Another legislative session starts in January 2025 and it can be hard for UUs to get through this season without feeling discouraged. Yet one of the ways we give up our power is by letting hopeless take over. Join UU seminary student AJ Juraska on Sunday, January 12th from 1 – 2:30 p.m. at the church in room 13 to learn ways to not only survive but thrive while doing justice work. If you are burnt out or worried you will be, this workshop is for you! Register in Church Center to join us!

The End

January 3, 2025 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Bis Thornton
December 29, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As 2024 enters its final few days, many of us are thinking about endings. How do we keep loving when loving is what makes saying goodbye so hard? And how can we stay focused on joy in the present when we fear the suffering the future holds? Join guest preacher Bis Thornton on a journey into the Gospel of John to see what its stories can tell us about love and loss in our lives today.

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 CONTAIN THE HOLY
by Gwen Matthews

Whomever you are, Wherever you are from, whomever you love, whatever it is you have done, you are welcome here. You are welcome to this time, this space, this moment that we carve out of often busy and chaotic weeks. You are welcome to this time for collective breaths, for words, for music, for lighting candles, and for us to simply exist here together.

The essence that is you, that spark of life, is in your body, is of your body, and it is you are divine. In other words, you contain the holy within you right now.

And now, I invite you to take a breath as we enter into this time of worship in body, mind, and spirit.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WHILE EVERYTHING ELSE WAS FALLING APART
Ada Limón

In the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen
years ago now, the L train came clanking by
where someone had fat-Sharpied a black heart
on the yellow pillar you leaned on during a bleak day,
(brittle and no notes from anyone you crushed upon).
Above ground, the spring sun was the saddest one,
(doing work but also none). What were you wearing?
Something hopeful to show the world you hoped?
A tall man was learning from a vendor how to pronounce
churro. High in the sticky clouds of time, he kept
repeating churro while eating a churro. How to say
this made you want to live? No hand to hold
still hear it was: Someone giving someone comfort
and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.

Sermon

NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.

Good morning again. And I’m still this, and it’s still wonderful to see you. We’re heading for the end of the year, and I think We’re all heading towards a lot of endings, and we are experiencing them at the same time as we’re heading towards other ones.

Here in the congregation, we just got hit pretty hard together. And we are at the end of Kinsey’s time with us. Ends are all around us in the world too. However, we may feel about it in the particularities, we are all facing the end of our current presidential administration. I also know a lot of people who are experiencing the end of their old physical capacity, the end of a loved one’s life, the end of their own. Many of us are watching our friends move out of state, maybe even out of the country. There are a lot of endings right now for many of us, all around us, and it’s true that those endings may come with some new beginnings, but they’re still endings. And that’s what I want to spend some time with today.

If you’ve heard me preach before, this probably will not surprise you, but I’m here in the pulpit today to tell you some stories. First, I’m going to start with something from one of the sacred texts that’s nearest to my heart, which is the Bible. Specifically, I want to tell you a story from the end of the Gospel of John, which is one of the four versions of the life of Jesus Christ that you can find in your typical Christian Bible.

Before I start, I want to say that I feel a little bad telling a story from this part of Jesus’ life because it was just his birthday. He’s still a baby. So glad that got a laugh. I got to be real with y ‘all. Thank you. He’s still a baby, and I’m up here like, Okay, it’s time to talk about how he died and then some other stuff happened and it sucked and it was really sad That seems crummy. I Love Christmas and I really love celebrating his birthday. So how could I do this to him? How could I jump to the end? That’s crummy of me.

I Wondered about this a lot. I chose this sermon weeks ago to preach it and it was hounding me It felt like it was calling out to me to tell it to y ‘all today. And I think the answer to that question is this, I’m worried and I’m scared and I’m sad. I think about the coming months and the coming years and I feel dread. I look at new things and I feel like I can already see the terrible end that they’re hurtling towards, or in other words, Even new things these days throw me towards an anticipatory grief. That’s the dread that I feel, and maybe you feel a little bit of that too. And if we’re stuck here together, I figure why won’t we get together in the sanctuary that we love and move towards that feeling and take off our shoes and see what holy things we might find there.

The other thing I want to say is this. This is like an unnecessary, I feel like caveat, but I’ll say it anyway. I’m not asking you to believe anything in particular about this story. I’m also not asking you to know anything in particular about this story. I just want to tell it to you as I know it, and I hope you’ll enjoy the telling.

So let’s try sitting down, inside of the story, and feeling around. Feel free to close your eyes If it helps, sometimes when I’m at church, I close my eyes throughout the entire sermon. It helps me concentrate. So please feel free to do that if it helps you.

And if you’re gonna be inside of this story, you might be wondering who you are. For now, imagine this. Jesus is your teacher and you love him very much. You are his disciple, you learn from him. He has been teaching you freedom and love. And so you follow him because he has given you this gift and you want to learn more and maybe even make the world into a place where everyone finds the freedom and the love that you did. So he travels around teaching and wherever he goes, you go and you’ve left your life as a fisherman behind to come join him.

He is not a stained glass window or an idea in a book. He is a man who lives in the world. He has eyes and a smile and hair that he keeps in a particular way. You’ve watched him eat bread. You saw him trip on a rock, one time. One time. Yes, just the one. You’ve heard his voice belting out over a crowd or speaking softly at a table. You’ve had the same sand on your legs and stood beneath the same oppressive sunbeam He’s maybe one of the strangest people you’ve ever met in your life He has a funny way of speaking that’s very distinctive and it’s so distinctive in fact that you can imitate it Sometimes before he says something really important. He says truly truly I say to you You know you imagine Being with your friends and imitating this when you’re imitating him you’re like remember that time truly truly I’d say to you You know this man You’ve built your life around him and around your friends who also follow him everywhere He goes.

And one day this man that you knew and loved died. It seemed like he knew he was gonna go You looked at him one day, and he seemed to be a sailor, standing on the deck of a ship that you couldn’t board, facing away from you and towards the sea, towards the horizon. And he didn’t pass away gently. He died by a violence so present and so unspeakable that you can hardly bear to think of it at all. It was an act of violence by the state that surrounds you at every moment, and yet somehow you always slipped out of its fingers until you didn’t. And it cut down your friend, your strange, lovely, wise, funny friend.

And then you saw him again after he died, and you thought that maybe he was visiting you to say goodbye the way that ghosts sometimes do. But then your friend saw him too, and he told you to tell each other that you had seen him. And then he appeared before one of you with all of his wounds on display. And when you reached for him, your arms didn’t swing through the air, they met his familiar frame, his warm body, that body that you know because you know him. You can’t believe what’s happening, he’s back. But he still has that look like he’s going away that you had assumed was about his death He looks at you sometimes now that he’s back and he sees you so hard. It’s like he’s holding you with his eyes and Then he turns away and there’s that look again and he becomes distant And after a while none of you see him for longer and longer periods of time and you can’t bear to lose him again but somehow you know it’s ending and he has to go.

So one day you’re out with your friends on a boat fishing like the old days. The water is sloshing up against the boat. You feel the gentle rocking and the wet nets against your palms. Your outer clothes are folded in the boat so that you don’t get them wet And so the sunbeams are hitting you directly, you feel their heat. The old familiar sensations of your life. You used to do this before you knew Jesus, but it’s different now. You’ve been changed. A hero can never go home again, and fishing doesn’t feel like it used to. But still, you have to eat. And you do love your friends. You are always good at fishing, so you might as well fish together.

Here’s a reveal. You are someone specific in this story. Maybe you wanna know who you are? I do, I feel like I’m asking it constantly. Well, you could be anyone in this story, but for now, you are a disciple whose name is Peter. You’re in the boat with six other people. You’re in the boat with six of your friends. You’re in the boat with Thomas, who demanded to see Jesus’ wounds when he returned from his death. And you’re in the boat with Nathaniel, who initially laughed when he heard where Jesus was from, saying, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But he agreed to find out. And you’re also with the sons of Zebedee and two other disciples. And one of the disciples in the boat is a man who the gospel never names. It only calls him the beloved disciple.

So you’re Peter and you’re with your friends and you’re all throwing your nets over the side of the boat and you aren’t catching a thing. The day turns into night and there’s still no fish. Maybe fishing is too different now. Maybe everything’s too different. How do you get into the flow when you know that your dead friend is back but he’s fading like the light of this wasted day and Soon he’ll be going somewhere that you can’t go. The dark oppresses you, like those sunbeams you shared with him, but this time he isn’t here.

Dawn starts breaking over the hills. On the shore, someone shouts at you, “Children, you haven’t caught anything, have you?” One of you, maybe a little mad, shouts back, “No, we haven’t.” And the stranger on the shore says, “Try the right side of the boat.” So since nothing’s going right anyway, and you might as well listen to a stranger who is maybe making fun of you, you all throw your nets over the right side of the boat. And you can’t believe it. A flurry of splashes, the sea is boiling over in just one spot. Your net is too heavy to lift into the boat. Your day was not wasted at all. The net is full of fish. And before your heart is completely sure, you hear the beloved disciple begin to speak and his confidence lights you on fire as he says “It’s him.”

In a burst of confused energy you put all your clothes back on and you throw yourself into the sea splashing wildly as you scramble for the shore while everyone else pulls the net into the boat. You don’t care about the fish, this is the end. You know it is and in your heart you’re so happy and you’re so scared. You can’t wait for the boat to reach him. You can’t waste the time. You have to throw yourself towards him instead. And as you swim, you can see him. Each time your head comes back up into the air, something sparkles on the beach. He’s lit a fire. Scrambling onto the shore, you see him smiling at you and your ridiculous behavior and your clothes completely soaked, and he’s so radiant like the dawn, maybe more like sunset. You realize he’s already cooked some fish, and he’s already got some bread. He’s always feeding you, and you love him more than you can stand, and you hate it a little bit, because loving him is what’s going to make this next part hurt so bad.

He has always seemed to know what you were thinking, and this time it’s no different. While everyone is on shore with you. Jesus says to you, “Do you love me more than these?” And he gestures at all of your friends and without hesitation or stopping to wonder what he might have meant by that, you blurt out, “Yes, you know I love you.” And he seems to think that’s a little funny. And he says, “Feed my lamps.” He waits a while sitting quietly by the crackling fire, the crackling fire. And then he turns to you again and says, “Do you love me?” With less shock, you respond in a more measured tone. “Yes, you know that I love you.” He nods and says, “Tend to my shoe.”

You’re trying to enjoy the dawn, which has turned into the day. You’re staring at him, trying to make sure you remember for the rest of your life what he looks like right now. And then he turns to you and he says, “Do you love me?” You’re wounded. You can’t believe it. Of course, of course, you’re already mourning. You already know how this is going to go. You jumped into the sea for him. You shared everything with him and he’s still asking you this? You look him in the eye heart quaking and you say “My friend, you know everything You know that I love you.”

He seems satisfied in his mysterious way and he says “Feed my sheep” and then as you wonder how you’re going to find the strength to feed his sheep when he leaves, he says, “truly, truly, I say to you,” and your heart snaps to attention, you’re ready for this. He says, “when you were new, you would dress yourself and go where you wanted. When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you, and you will go where you do not want to go.”

You know that he’s describing your aging and your death. And as you’ve been staring at him, trying to memorize every line of his face and movement of his hands, because you know he’s leaving, he has been holding the shape of your death close to his heart, like a child, like a lamb, carrying it to and fro until the time comes to set it down and let it walk on its own.

He has been mourning you too, you are both creatures with endings and you love him more than anything and you love your friends who love him and love you and love each other. Your death is coming behind you and one day you will die and you will love him the whole time and you will light fires on the shore and when your friends reach you, you will have already started cooking them breakfast.

You turn and see the beloved disciple. Sometimes he looks so fragile to you and you say to Jesus, “What about him? What about that guy?” The beloved disciple? He seems like the wind might take him away. He seems like sometimes he stares far away too, like he and Jesus are two travelers going the same place.

Jesus looks at the beloved disciple and then he looks back at you and he smiles at you and he says, “If it is my will that he remain until I come back, what is it to you? What do you care? You follow me.” And that’s the last thing he ever says to you. And you die before you see him again.

What does it mean to see the end before it comes and somehow withstand it. How can we see the end and stay without buckling under the grief and fleeing? How can we survive when things around us end?

I want to tell you all about my grandmothers. Just before my maternal grandmother died, I spoke to her on the phone. I knew it was the end. I hated that I was on the phone instead of beside her, but those were the cards that we were dealt. She didn’t ask me, “Do you love me?” But everything I said, I felt like I was telling her over and over again, “I love you. I love you. I love you. You know that I love you.” I was so scared I would forget to tell her something I was grateful for, but I knew that she already knew. We loved each other. It didn’t matter if I forgot to say something. We both knew.

Before my paternal grandmother died, I visited her in the hospital. There was a lot of difficulty between us, but when we saw each other, it didn’t go away, but it changed. It was the end. I remember When I came into her hospital room and stood next to her bed, and she opened her eyes and saw me for the first time in six or seven years. The first thing she said to me was, “Am I dead?” That’s how surprised she was to see me.

In life, she loved to go on adventures. And after she died, I had a dream. We were on vacation together by the sea. The water was so beautiful I begged her to come swimming with me, and eventually she did, but the waves got choppy and I got scared. As I swam back to shore she was swimming out into the sea and we passed each other, and for one moment we locked eyes. I wondered if I should tell her to come back, but I didn’t. When she swam out into the sea never to return, a traveler going somewhere I couldn’t follow. Maybe like Peter, she jumped into the sea with all her clothes on, just went towards someone she loved, someone who taught her freedom long ago.

After my maternal grandmother died, I saw her in a dream too. I was standing inside of her house and looking out the window. In life, she loved to host holiday meals, and she was an incredible cook. And in my dream, as I looked out the window, I saw a long table glowing with golden light, and all along it were seated countless people, and my grandmother was walking up and down it, serving everyone something to eat. When I think of Jesus on the shore waiting for the disciples, a fire already lit, I think of her.

Endings recur and echo into one another. They are unique and common all at once. I too am a traveler and someday I will go where my loved ones cannot follow. Before I go, I hope I too will light a fire and feed them breakfast. Because of my love for my grandmothers, I carry something of them with me into my life. And perhaps I will carry something of them too into my death. Perhaps it can’t be helped as humans living on this earth death is something we have in common. Endings are something we have in common.

Walking into this story I have searched for what is holy. I’d love to hear what you might have found there but I’ll tell you what I did. The sea. Dark and infinite. Life bubbles up in one location or another. A ship sails across it and on the shore a fire. The sea is more vast than any of us. Surrounding us, creating us, calling us up into the air into existence, calling us down into the darkness again. We emerge and we dissolve and everything that we love, ebbs and flows and the waves of the sea, but the sea never goes away.

And so the endings come and come and come. And I will try not to be hurt when the voice rises up from the depths to ask me again and again, “Do you love me?” All I have to do is tell the truth. Thank you.

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

BLESSING FOR THE BROKEN-HEARTED
by Jan Richardson

“There is no remedy for love, but to love more.”
Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger
or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love.
Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound
when every day our waking opens it anew.

Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery
of how a heart so broken can go on beating,
as if it were made for precisely this.
As if it knows the only cure for love is more of it,
as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse
is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom,
but will save us nonetheless.

Amen, Thank you. Blessed be.

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

January Monthly Service Offering- TXUUJM

January 2, 2025 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Uncategorized

The Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry (TXUUJM) is our UU state action network, which brings 40 UU congregations and justice partners together from around the state, online and in person, to bring UU values and voices to the public square. We know Texas needs that — and we know what happens in Texas doesn’t just stay in Texas either! TXUUJM is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit led by Executive Director Rev. Erin Walter and also including Intern Minister Bis Thornton, a First UU member.

Since 2012, TXUUJM has also been organizing and educating UUs around crucial issues, from trans inclusion to democracy, all year long. TXUUJM is part of the nationwide Coalition of UU State Action Networks (CUUSAN) and the Teach the Truth Coalition, which advocates from schools board to the State Board of Education to the Legislature for accurate and inclusive curriculum, public school funding, and the separation of church and state.

Every Thursday night in Zoom Action Hour, TXUUJM members take action together around climate, immigration, the death penalty, and more.

TXUUJM is a grassroots justice nonprofit made possible by people power and the generosity of congregational dues and individual donations. By sharing the plate, we join with fellow UUs around the state in the lifelong work of Bending Texas Toward Justice.

At First UU, we are the justice ministry — a founding congregation and the largest UU congregation in the capital city. TXUUJM cannot do this work without us – without you. Thank you for making First UU’s generous support of TXUUJM possible!

January Public Affairs Forum

January 2, 2025 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Uncategorized

James Harrington – Civil Rights Attorney

Public Affairs Forum – January 12, 2025

An ordained Episcopalial Priest, James Harringtonis has fought all of his adult life for the rights and lives of marginalized people.

From 1973 to 1990 he worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as an attorney and established what became the Texas Civil Rights Project where he focused on racial justice issues. He worked closely with Cesar Chazez and the United Farm Workers, along with other groups. He retired in 2015 and became an ordained Episcopalian Priest, serving as Director of Proyecto Santiago based out of St. James Episcopal Church here in Austin.

He remains an active advocate for civil rights for all people.