The Great Unitarian Universalist Climate Justice Revival

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 29, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This month, our church has been participating with our sibling churches throughout the country in the UU Climate Justice Revival. We have had a variety of learning and participation opportunities throughout September, focusing particularly on the climate crisis. This Sunday will be the culmination of those activities, and we will explore how faith can ground us in hope and resilience as we work to save our planet and ourselves.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

THE MOMENT
by Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees
unloose their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper.
You own nothing.
You were a visitor,
time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

HOW THE EARTH TRANSFORMS US
by Thomas Starr King
from an 1863 sermon entitled “Lessons from the Sierra Nevada”

Thomas Starr King was an American Universalist and Unitarian minister. Starr King was a dedicated abolitionist and supporter of black liberation. He was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic. He is sometimes referred to as “the orator who saved the nation”.

I believe that if, on every Sunday morning before going to church, we could be lifted to a mountain peak and see a horizon line of six hundred miles enfolding the copious splendor of the light on such a varied expanse; or if we could look upon a square mile of flowers representing all the species with which the Creative Spirit embroiders a zone; or if we could be made to realize the distance of the earth from the sun, the light of which travels every morning twelve millions of miles a minute to feed and bless us, and which the force of gravitation pervades without intermission to hold our globe calmly in its orbit and on its poise; if we could fairly perceive, through our outward senses, one or two features of the constant order and glory of nature, our materialistic dullness would be broken, surprise and joy would be awakened, we should feel that we live amid the play of Infinite thought; and the devout spirit.

Sermon

This month at the church, we have been participating in the nationwide Unitarian Universalist Climate Justice Revival.

So it is sadly synchronistic that, as we entered this capstone weekend and worship service of our month dedicated to climate justice, we have witnessed the heartbreaking destruction and loss of life caused by Hurricane Helene.

Because of the climate crisis, our existing model for tracking and predicting hurricanes has become woefully inadequate.

The model is based largely on maximum sustained windspeed, and because of warming sea waters, these storms are growing more powerful, with higher winds developing. This has led some scientists to propose adding categories 6 and 7 to our current 5.

Perhaps even more significantly, our storms now can intensify much more rapidly, as Helene did, and they are massive.

So, they can bring greater destruction over a much wider swath of areas and cause much greater damage and loss of life even at lower categories because even with lower wind speeds they now bring such immense tidal surges, rains, and other storm effects

And these ever more threatening hurricanes are just one of the many increasingly severe weather events we are enduring across the globe because of the human caused climate crisis.

Now, I suspect that I don’t need to convince most of you that the climate crisis is real, is a huge threat, and that it is, in fact, being caused by humans.

So, if I have climate crisis deniers listening in this morning, rest easily. I am not going to try to convince you to change your minds.

In fact, the folks who study these things say that would most often be a waste of time – that we are better off talking with folks who are convincible but not yet engaged, as well as talking amongst those of us who already believe the climate crisis science, so that we are moved to hope and action, rather than getting mired in despair over how daunting the climate challenge really is.

Many, many thanks to church members Victoria and Bob Hendricks, for leading so many activities, artistic projects, discussions and more this month that have allowed folks of all ages in this church to do just that!

Each week, Bob and Victoria have led us in a different area of exploration. Their first weekly theme was “personal action to fight climate change”.

As you heard earlier, folks in this church sent over 8,000 postcards to climate engaged, but inconsistent voters, encouraging them to get out and vote in this election.

Further, we’ve discussed that we can all reduce our carbon footprint, vote, and take public action on the climate crisis.

And studies show that the more each of us do that, the more other folks will join in and do so also.

The next theme is on how “a fight for any social justice, is a fight for climate justice”.

(Slide)

Bob send me this picture from one such discussion where folks in this church put magnetic markers on a board to show the justice concerns we address.

First, I am struck by such a wonderful range of justice concerns. Second, they are all so intersectional. Here are just a few examples specifically related to climate justice.

- Immigration – the climate crisis is driving huge increases in migration, as folks are forced to leave their native lands that are becoming uninhabitable.

- We know that LGBTQ+ youth are much more likely to experience housing insecurity and are thus more likely to be extremely endangered by climate events like Hurricane Helene.

- BICPOC folks are disproportionately being displaced by climate gentrification, as extraordinarily wealthy, mostly white folks take over geographic areas less likely to be as susceptible to the ravages of climate change.

Democracy – We know that severe weather events make it much more difficult for low income and poor people to vote.

And, these areas of justice are also interconnected because we have more power when know they intersect, and so we combine our efforts.

Victories in one area of justice so often lead to victories in others. The next theme is that we have to talk about the climate crisis.

Telling our stories is one of the most powerful ways we can encourage one another to join and/or stay in the fight.

Stories like in the film, Cooked: Survival by Zipcode that we showed at the church during the revival.

It tells the heartrending story of a tragic heatwave in Chicago” in which 739 citizens died over the course of a single week, most of them poor, elderly, and African American.

Intersectionality.

In a wonderful Ted Talk, “The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it,” climate scientist Kathryn Hayhoe acknowledges that talking about it can be really hard.

She says that rather than talking about science and facts, we should look for shared values to discuss.

I have a friend who is more conservative, but who loves nature and gardening.

The climate crisis is changing what plants they can choose and altering some of our mutual favorite nature spots, and that has opened up a whole conversation between us that had never been possible before.

Well, our final theme this month is the importance of public policy in combatting the climate crisis.

The truth is, while all of our individual efforts are absolutely vital, they will not be enough to overcome the damage inflicted by large corporations that

are placing short-term profits over people’s lives and even their own, longterm viability.

The only thing that can stop them is public policy, and they are spending billions to make sure their voices are louder than than ours.

And that can be discouraging, I know. But we can vote in greater numbers.

We may have less dollars, but we can make sure we have many, many more voices to amplify.

Bob Hendricks tells the story of how by 2021, climate activists had grown greatly discouraged by how, despite putting pressure on congress for many years, their voices were getting drowned out by the corporate lobbyists.

But then, the Biden Administration introduced the Build Back Better Act, that due in large part to their efforts, included billions in funding to fight the climate crisis.

Through many a battle, even after it looked like we might lose several times, eventually, we got a version passed that included provisions that could reduce carbon pollution by 43 to 48% by 2035.

My beloveds, we can have hope.

We can win the battle to begin reversing this crisis.

Just visit drawdown.org and see the multitude of science-backed ways in which we can do it.

As our call to worship and our reading earlier illustrate, we can find hope by remembering that we are inextricably woven within the web of all existence and letting the beauty of that center us in a great love for it, just as we have centered our UU faith in love.

And one of the ways that we do that is through embodied ritual.

So this morning, I want to invite you to participate in one such ritual.

We have provided you with these sheets of water soluble paper. And yes, it is environmentally friendly, even after dissolved in water.

I am going to play a video featuring just some of that for which we are centering ourselves in love.

I invite you as the video plays to contemplate two things:

- 1. where you find hope and love regarding the climate crisis, and

2. at least one commitment you will make to combat it.

I invite you to either write these on your paper or to simply whisper them into it. If you are online, please feel free to post the same into the comments.

During the music, I invite you to then come forward down the outer aisles and dissolve your paper into the vases of water we have placed up front, exiting down the center aisle.

After the service, we will use the water to nurture our tree of hope and remembrance that we planted on our grounds a few years ago and that has against all odds survived both ice storm and draught, sometimes just barely. May the love and commitment you mingle together in these waters keep hope and remembrance alive and thriving.

All blessings upon these waters. All blessing upon the hope, love and commitment you have blended into them.

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

– Thich Nhat Hanh

This beautiful, bounteous, life-giving planet we call Earth has given birth to each one of us, and each one of us carries the Earth within every cell of our body …

We can all experience a feeling of deep admiration and love when we see the great harmony, elegance and beauty of the Earth. A simple branch of cherry blossom, the shell of a snail or the wing of a bat – all bear witness to the Earth’s masterful creativity … When we can truly see and understand the Earth, love is born in our hearts. We feel connected. That is the meaning of love: to be at one.

Only when we’ve truly fallen back in love with the Earth will our actions spring from reverence and the insight of our interconnectedness.

May we heed his words.

May the congregation say, “Amen”, and “blessed be”. Go in peace.

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