Building Communities of Trust

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Rev. Michelle LaGrave
March 9 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Trust is an important component of beloved community. How are communities of trust built? kept? restored? What does it look like when a community leads with trust in each other and the greater community?

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 LONGING FOR SOMETHING MORE
by Gretchen Haley

Every little thing that breaks your heart
is welcome here
We’ll make a space for it
Give it its due time
and praise
for the wanting it represents
the longing for something more,
some healing hope that remains
not
yet

We promise no magic
no making it all better
But offer only this circle of trust
This human community
that remembers
Though imperfectly
that sings and prays
though sometimes
awkwardly

This gathering that loves,
though not yet enough
We’re still practicing
After all,
still learning,
still in need of help
and partners
Still becoming
able
to receive
all this beauty
and all these gifts
we each bring

Come, let us worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

First Reading

LIFT OUR VOICES #120
by Erica Hewitt

I don’t have anything to say.

Well, I do, but it might not be interesting to anyone.

I have secrets inside of me and struggles, and I don’t know if I’m ready to share them.

I want to hear what you have to say.

I want to speak of the deepest things together.

I want to hear what you dream about, what you hope for.

I want to know how you have come to arrive at this resting point along your journey.

What if I speak and you don’t understand me?

I will listen and listen again until my hearing becomes understanding.

What if I can’t find the words to share the world inside of me?

I believe that wise words will emerge from you.

How can I trust you to hold my life’s stories? You, who I may not even know.

By knowing that as I receive part of your story, I will give you part of mine.

How will this work? What will happen? What awaits us?

We can find out anything by beginning.

Let us begin to listen and trust and to deeply know one another.

May it be so.

Second Reading

by adrienne maree brown

trust the people who move towards you and already feel like home.
trust the people to let you rest.
trust the people to do everything better than you could have imagined.
trust the people and they become trustworthy.
trust that the people are doing their work to trust themselves.
trust that each breach of trust can deepen trust or clarify boundaries.
trust the people who revel in pleasure after hard work.
trust the people who let children teach, remind us how to emote,
be still, and laugh.
trust the people who see and hold your heart.
trust the people who listen to the whales.
trust the people and you will become trustworthy.
trust the people and show them your love.
trust the people.

Sermon

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

This morning I Will begin with an assertion Followed by many many questions Which in turn are sprinkled with a few stories and Almost no answers Our topic today is trust, specifically building communities of trust. And it is one that is particularly tender during this time, I think. And we are going to sort of preach this sermon together. So are you ready for something a little different, a little more participatory? We’ve got things for the introverts and for the extroverts today.

My assertion is this. Trust is an essential component of beloved community. If trust is not present, beloved community is not possible. Beloved community or communities are communities of trust, trust like beloved community must be built, created, and when broken restored. The higher the level of trust, the closer we come to true beloved community.

So I’ll repeat my assertion because this is the foundation of what we are going to do together this morning and it was kind of a lot packed into a few sentences. Trust is an essential component of beloved community. If trust is not present, beloved community is not possible. Beloved community, or communities, while we’re working on the greater community, are communities of trust. And trust, like beloved community, must be built, created, and when broken, restored. The higher the level of trust, the closer we come to true beloved community.

So my first questions, these are for the introverts because I’ll say them a couple of times and then I’ll pause for a few moments of quiet reflection. We have ideas about what beloved community might mean that come from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and it has been many decades since we lost Dr. King and so ideas about beloved community have evolved since then.

So what does beloved community mean to you? And what is the role of trust in building Beloved Community? What does Beloved Community mean to you? Now, today. And what is the role of trust?

Next questions. How do we build trust? How do we create it? This is the participatory part where we get some ideas flowing. Reverend Aaron will call on a few people, let’s say maybe three, to share their ideas and then repeat what they’ve said into the microphone so we can all hear both in this room and online.

For those of you who are online, you can type your thoughts into the chat if that’s available to you and your method and begin a parallel discussion to ours here in the sanctuary. So here are the questions again. How do we build trust? In other words, where trust is already present, how do we increase or build our level of trust with each other? And how do we create trust? In other words, when we meet people for the first time or they are new to us, how do we begin the process of trusting each other? How do we build? How do we create trust? Some ideas.

So I think you can create trust with new people by using the platinum rule to treat others the way they want to be treated. And if people see that you treat them the way that they like to be treated, they might trust you more. Awesome.

Okay, Nick said that with new people in particular, but with anyone, right, we can create trust with the platinum rule. And if you haven’t heard of the platinum rule, that’s treat others the way they would like to be treated, right? So that requires us to invite them to tell us and to notice how they’d like to be treated. Thank you, Nick.

LP, who has an amazing bow, said that one way that we can build communal trust is through shared cooking and that sacred process of breaking bread together. Thank you.

Inconveniencing yourself for others so that people know when they really do need to ask that you’ve demonstrated that they won’t be a burden and you’re willing to do things. So did I kind of get that close? Awesome, thank you.

Russell said, “To really sincerely be open when you meet someone to demonstrate that sincerity and openness in your listening.” And I felt that in your responsiveness as well, a quality of presence and openness. Thank you all, thank you.

Thank you. Those are some wonderful ideas to get started.

So yes, we can allow ourselves to be known. We can share our stories, we can open ourselves to those more vulnerable places inside that go even deeper, help us move even deeper into relationship.
We can listen deeply without judging, without interrupting, without spending our time while listening, actually planning to say what we’re going to, how we’re going to respond.
We can hold confidences when they are shared with us.
We can act with integrity, which is one of our UU values.

And I think we can see, without my saying too much about it, why if my assertion about trust is true, our chalice circles and wellspring groups, which for those of you who are new, are small group ministries where people share deeply about monthly themes like trust, which is this month’s theme, are so important. They’re not just important for our spiritual growth, but also for building trust and building the health of our community.

So, I have a story. Long ago, just before I headed out to seminary, I was a preschool teacher. And one day I was presented with an opportunity to get to know one of the teachers better. I shared with her, confidentially, that I had felt called to ministry and would be going to seminary in the fall. Not long after that conversation, I got called to the office and asked about my future plans. The other teacher had betrayed my trust and shared with the director that I would be leaving.

An uncomfortable conversation ensued and I shared my plans with the director in a way and with a timing that I had not chosen. I was hurt and what I thought of as a newly developing friendship was damaged. I later came to understand that she was operating out of what she thought of as the best interests of the students and the school. She did not want me to wait too long to share my news and risk my position going unfilled. Of course, I would have preferred she come to me with her concern and share that and encourage me to share my news instead of doing it for me.

But I need to honor within myself that she did have good intentions. And what she did not know was that I was considering two options, one that would have required me to move away and live on campus and leave my position as a teacher and the other which was nearby and would have allowed me to take classes in the evening and maintain my job teaching during the day for the next few years. I had not shared my plans with the director because I had not yet decided which path I would take to becoming a minister. And then I felt rushed in making that decision because the director then wanted to know.

At the time, I did not have the skills to address this break in relationship with the other teacher. If I had I would have asked her to share with me why she made the decision she did and listen to what she had to say and then I would have shared my perspective including my feelings of hurt and betrayal and also the missing information she did not have and then to ask if there was a way we could restore our relationship.

So I’m not naive. I think few of us are. We know that every time we choose to trust, we are choosing risk. There is always the possibility that confidences will be broken, that our trust will be betrayed. Trust is broken in ways little and big all the time. We are imperfect humans. The key is to trust each other enough to work to restore trust, to do the work of repair, and to know that sometimes this doesn’t happen, that the work of repair doesn’t happen, that people can and do decline our overtures to restore relationship. And still we must find a way to be at peace with their decision, a decision which is outside of our control. And yet still all remain in beloved community together.

We also want to acknowledge that sometimes in certain very extreme circumstances we really need to shift how we understand trust for our own spiritual and mental health. There are, after all, people who are sociopaths and psychopaths out there in this world. Yes, I’m using the lay terms here.

In these circumstances, when someone is incapable of being trustworthy in the way we usually think of trustworthiness, we can still trust them to be who they actually are. I learned this from speaking with someone recently about the challenge of finding hope within our current political climate. She shared with me that she trusts a particular leader to mess up so badly at some point that he will actually wind up creating an opening for change. She trusts him to be who he actually is instead of who she wishes he would be, and she does it in a way that creates hope. She trusts him to mess up, to create the opening, and therein lies the hope.

By the way, since this is a sermon after all, faith is actually trust, plus an element of the transcendent. Whether that is God or some universal force bigger than ourselves. So it would also be appropriate if you’d like to think of all of this in the terms of the word faith.

So returning to relationships here in this congregation, in this community, with people being people, with people being imperfect, with people being prone to messing up unintentionally or otherwise. Can we trust that when trust is broken, as it will be, that we have a covenant and a team and processes that can help us find a way through to restoring relationships?

Can we trust that when we do the work of restoration, Sometimes we don’t do it as well or as smoothly as we’d like, and yet there still is integrity to engaging that process. Can we trust that this congregation or whatever other setting you may find yourself in is healthy enough to allow for places of discomfort, such as when apologies or olive branches are not immediately accepted. Can we trust this congregation, this community, to still hold and love us all, to know and accept that we all belong even in our imperfection.

There’s a lot to think about and I don’t have all of the answers. I am looking to all of you to help with finding the answers within. Especially since I will be leaving soon and this will remain your community, but not mine. I will say that I do believe you can do this, that I have faith in all of you.

One last story, and then a final challenge. I once worked at a church as an interim. You know that I’ve moved from church to church to church traveling around the country doing this interim work specialized work. And as usual I began with a startup workshop where a consultant from the UUA’s regional office came in and worked with all of us about roles and responsibility and making sure we had clarity about who had the authority and expectation to do what between the minister and the board and the congregation and the RE teacher. So in this case, the consultant asked the assembled group, the congregation, if it was okay for the ministers to speak up on their have. This was meant to be a provocative question that would open a great deal of discussion. Instead, the response was, “Yeah, of course. We trust our ministers to speak up for us.” The consultant was a bit flabbergasted because most of our congregations do not allow for this.

And this is where the challenge comes in. First UU is one of those congregations that prohibits its ministers from speaking up in public on their behalf. Ministers are free only to speak for themselves. It’s a little bit of splitting hairs when you’re out there in public to say I speak only for myself, but I am the minister of this congregation. People don’t really hear it that way anyway. This has been how it has been in most UU congregations. But I wonder, I wonder if it’s time for a change. We are living in a world and in a nation which is rapidly changing. We are living in a time of rising fascism.

The prohibition of ministers speaking up on behalf of their congregations may have served its purpose and its time, and there may have been reasons for it, good, valid reasons. But is it still helpful now? Does this time call for something different? For a new way of being in the world? What would it be like to trust your ministers to speak up with the full weight of the congregation behind them? Out there in the public square while we are fighting authoritarianism and fascism.

What would it be like to trust your ministers to be able to speak up immediately about the wrongs they see in the world and in this nation without having to go through a many months long process of congregational discernment and resolution making. What would it be like to trust your ministers to be able to judge for themselves when a particular issue is too sensitive to speak out about immediately and to trust that the ministers will take you through that process of congregational discernment when necessary. What would it be like to be able to trust on this level?

There are stories in this congregation and in all of our congregations about ministers being human, that’s a rumor, from making relatively minor mistakes to doing serious harm to outright misconduct. What would it look like for a congregation, for this congregation, to fully heal from the past, to accept that mistakes were made, that problems arose, and then to trust that a new way can be made.

This, by the way, especially for those of you visiting with us today, applies just as well to our families and our workplaces as it does our congregation. What would you as a congregation or some other group of people be able to do in this world if your leaders were well and fully trusted? What would you be able to do in this world if you well and fully trusted each other?

I don’t have all the answers for you. Just a few ideas and a lot of questions. What I do know, though, is that whatever you would be able to do with this level of trust would be nothing short of absolutely transformative, just like it says right up there in your mission. Transform lives. And I have faith that this community can find a way.

Amen and blessed be.

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

May we remember that trust, like love, grows in small moments:
In promises kept and confidences held,
In boundaries respected and amends made,
In showing up again and again.
May we be brave enough to risk trust,
Patient enough to build it slowly,
And gentle with ourselves and others when it breaks.
Amen.
by the Rev. Angeline C. Jackson

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