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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 4, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Unitarian Universalism recently centered our faith in love. But this is not an abstract, overly sentimental love that allows us to linger in a liminal space, feeling it only from the sidelines. It is a love that calls us to action – to engage in our world, grounded in a self-love that empowers us to boldly create and demand even more love and justice. It is a fierce love that has the power to bring about the revolution our world so desperately needs.
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
SEE NO STRANGER:
A MEMOIR AND MANIFESTO OF REVOLUTIONARY LOVE
by Valerie KaurIn our tears and agony, we hold our children close and confront the truth: The future is dark.
But my faith dares me to ask: What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
What if our America is not dead but a country still waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor?
What if all the mothers who came before us, who survived genocide and occupation, slavery and Jim Crow, racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia, political oppression and sexual assault, are standing behind us now, whispering in our ear: You are brave? What if this is our Great Contraction before we birth a new future?
Remember the wisdom of the midwife: “Breathe,” she says. Then: “Push.”
Let us make an oath to fight for the soul of America – “The land that never has been yet – and yet must be” (Langston Hughes) – with Revolutionary Love and relentless optimism.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
FIERCE LOVE, A BOLD PATH TO FEROCIOUS COURAGE
AND RULE-BREAKING KINDNESS THAT CAN HEAL THE WORLD
by Rev Dr Jacqui LewisI invite you to believe assiduously in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us because, actually, believing is seeing. Believing is seeing our connection; we are one.
This is the kind of fierce love to which we are called. This kind of love is not a feeling or sentiment; it’s radical transformative action that takes risks to seek the common good. It sees our neighbor better than they see themselves. It makes sacrifices, it creates a way out of no-way. It’s the Black folk religion I grew up with – for all of the people. It’s the fiercest love of all. This fierce love is not for the faint, the indolent, or the idle! We can’t just feel love, we must give love, we must do love, we must be love ourselves. Our calling is to see something, and, seeing it, to call it out and do everything we know is good and just and vital to heal our souls and the world.
Sermon
NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.
I wasn’t supposed to be preaching this morning. As many of you know, the plan was that a candidate to become our other called co-lead minister would preach today. We didn’t find a suitable candidate during our search, and so here we are. You get me.
Three days after returning from a two-month sabbatical. Anyone ever notice how things don’t always go as planned? That’s okay. We have now instead brought in Reverend Carie Holly-Hurt to be our assistant minister. Anyone ever notice how sometimes things go better than planned?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how long this church has been in somewhat of a liminal space, a time during which there has been much transition and change and uncertainty. If you’re new to the church, here is a little bit of that recent liminal church history.
Back in 2018, after a successful capital campaign, we ended up tearing up large portions of our church building to complete some renovations and an expansion. And while the result of that is Wonderful and beautiful, it did put us in a somewhat liminal space for a while, literally. And of course, not long at all after that, in 2020, we were forced to close our beautiful, newly renovated church for almost two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And after we were finally able to return to the building in early 2022, our much-beloved lead minister at the time, Reverend Meg Barnhouse, was forced to announce her retirement because of health issues. And so we entered into yet another liminal space, an interim transitional ministry period and a search to call a new lead minister.
I appear before you this morning still grateful to be the one who received that call in late 2023, but not done with living in a liminal, uncertain space. In 2024, the church continued interim ministry after deciding upon a second search, the one I mentioned earlier to consider the possibility of calling a second co-lead minister. Oh, and in the midst of that there was this thingy called an election, which has resulted in a time of great anxiety and uncertainty in our nation, which brings this back to this morning and my not-according-to-plan appearance in this pulpit.
I want you all to know how much it thrills my spirit, nourishes my soul, that this religious community through all of that liminal space, all of that uncertainty, has kept the church and that mission we say together every Sunday alive.
As a result of that election that I just mentioned, though, we find ourselves in a different and almost infinitely more dangerous world where the very core of our faith, the love and sense of interconnectedness that is the essence of our humanity is being threatened like never before. And so, though not entirely according to plan, I also appear before you this morning to offer what IS, I believe the calling of our Unitarian Universalist faith, the calling of this church like never before.
Being in a liminal space by necessity requires a certain amount of internal focus and reassessment And we have done that work admirably, as I said, all the while, also keeping our faith alive in the world.
Now, though, now forces that would desecrate love and interconnectedness have seized power. So we must leave behind that liminal space, even in this time of such uncertainty, we must answer a clear and certain clarion call from the very core of our religious faith.
Love. Yes, really, it is that simple. And that complicated. Because this is not not a sentimental sit on the sidelines feeling all gushy kind of a love. No, it is a fierce love that calls us to first love ourselves and then to turn our attention beyond ourselves and confront actions that subvert love and justice anywhere that we find them. It is a fierce love that calls us to create a love revolution in our world.
Here is how Valerie Kaur, as Margaret said, founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, the source of an adult religious education series the church will be offering. Here is how she describes this kind of love.
Love has been so abused in our culture. Love has been mistaken as a sentimental emotion, a feeling that comes and goes, ebbs and flows, but love is more than a rush of feeling. Think of your deepest relationships. Love is what you do for one another, how you care for each other. I define love as sweet labor, fierce, demanding, imperfect, life-giving, a choice we make again and again. And if love is labor, then love contains all of our emotions. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that we harness to protect that which we love.
When we choose to love like that beyond what evolution requires, When we love beyond our inner sphere, then love becomes revolutionary. I define revolutionary love as the choice to enter into labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves.
Revolutionary love begins with the choice to look upon the face of anyone and say, “You are a part of me I do not yet know.” When we do that we expand our circle of care so that we leave no one behind.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that God is love and in order for us to bring that divine love that revolutionary love into our world, we must first recognize the divine within ourselves. We must love ourselves up against the many, many messages we get in our world that can lead us to question our own worth.
Listen. Please listen. You, each and every one of you, you are worthy. You are deserving of love just as you are.
So, practice self-love.
• Stop several times a day to think to yourself just how worthy of love you really are.
• Put a reminder in your calendar.
• Surround yourself with folks who support you and recognize your worth.
• Find what brings you joy and engage in it often.
Now self-love can, and soon will be, a whole other sermon. For now, though, know that self-love is where answering the call to fierce love starts and make self-love a verb, an ongoing spiritual practice.
So next, I think we can answer the call of love, foster it in our world through consciously engaging in small acts of kindness and compassion on a daily basis. My maternal grandparents kept romantic love alive in their relationship throughout the 60 years they were married by doing just this. In fact, the only time I ever saw them argue was over who got to do the next loving thing for the other. My grandfather brought my grandmother coffee in bed every day over all of those years. My current beau and I text each other what are sometimes called sweet nothings throughout the day. We text good morning each day and night night every night.
The thing is, sweet nothings are not at all nothing. They help keep love alive as our story earlier showed us those words matter. And we can offer such loving words and actions to all of the loved ones in our lives, maybe even to our fellow churchgoers.
And out in our daily world we can offer this loving kindness to all those we encounter. We can engage with co-workers, the cashier at the grocery store, restaurant workers, complete strangers. Too often we go about our world completely ignoring and barely acknowledging one another. Maybe if we put our phones down and actually talk to folks as we move through our world, we will create more love in that world.
Once again, sometimes it really is that simple.
Now, here is where it can get more complicated. Fierce love calls us to confront those who have strayed from the path of love, who would use their power to commit grave injustices, thwart love, divide us into those they say are worthy of love, and those who they believe are not.
I don’t have to tell you all the war against basic human dignity and rights. People’s very autonomy over their own minds and bodies being waged in our state legislature right now. Fierce love calls us to confront such anti-love legislative proposals and say no. No in the name of love, as so many of you have already been doing. And far, far too many actions of the Trump administration in their first hundred days defile the very idea of love. And once again, fierce love is calling us, each of us, our Unitarian Universalist religion, this church to confront these actions, to cry “No” in the name of love, to say “These things you will not do in our name.” Fierce love calls us to speak the truth, even when it is hard.
The removal of people, often without any access to even basic legal rights and processes, to place them into a prison in El Salvador, which is nothing short of a concentration camp, is such a violation of divine love that we cannot, we cannot allow this to be done in the name of our country and thereby condone the existence of a concentration camp anywhere in our world.
The forced deportation of a citizen, a four-year-old child with stage 4 cancer without even the medications necessary to sustain their life violates the very idea of love. Fierce love calls us to cry out “No, No, No.”
The administration is aggressively dismantling any and all efforts toward diversity, equity and inclusion as if those are dirty words rather than love and justice in action. Even further, they are systematically attempting to remove the history and accomplishments of BIPOC folks, LGBTQ folks, women, and so many others, they deem less desirable from websites, textbooks, the very historical records of this country. This is an attempt at erasure. It casts certain people as less than. It is domination and abuse and domination and abuse are not love.
The administration recently destroyed a Center for Disease Control program that shared education and data regarding HIV disease that has helped so many, Advanced our knowledge about the disease saved lives. They destroyed that program because they thought it was too truthful about HIV disease and LGBTQ folks, HIV disease, and people of color.
My spouse of 33 years, Wayne, who died last year, was on an advisory group that helped the CDC create that program many years ago. So it feels like they have erased him. And thereby, a part of me.
Our services go out over television and the internet so folks that I love closely may well see this sermon at some point. To those whom I love, who may still support a government that does these things, fierce love calls me to say, “I love you, and I will not be abused. I will not be made less than – I will not be erased.”
Truth-telling, even with or maybe especially with those we love most closely is no longer optional because this is no longer just politics. This is authoritarianism. This is subjugation, xenophobic cruelty, a sacrilege against what makes us human.
What is happening desecrates love and is therefore a blasphemy toward God. It is the very opposite of the divine love toward which Jesus Christ and all of the great religious leaders of our world have called us.
Recently, I have been blessed by romantic love coming into my life again. His name is Woodrow, and I know that he wants our love to support me. Be the impetus and the spiritual practicing ground through which I strive to become the fullest, most creative, best, and purest self and soul I can possibly hope to become. And I know he knows I want the exact same for him. This is the essence of love. This is the essence of the God love we are called to bring into our world and to actively offer to all of humanity and creation.
Sometimes it really is this simple.
We are called as a church to bring into our world divine love, love that only wishes for all of us to thrive, and we are called to confront any forces that would subvert that love. I am so proud of the work for love and justice so many of you are already doing at the state and national levels. I encourage everyone to join in with this religious community to do justice in our world. I’ve posted some information on how you can join in at www.austinuu.org Of course, feel free to talk with me after the service also.
So my beloveds, a fierce love is calling us. The time is here. The time is now. It is our time as a religious community to answer that call, like never before to show up more mightily than ever before, to allow ourselves to be swept into an ocean of love that is the creative source of our universe, to wade in those holy waters, to cry out, even to those who have wandered so far away from love. Come, join us, dive right in, the water’s fine. This water is divine.
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
by Rev. Dr. Jackie Lewis
You want to know what fierce love is? Fierce love is ferocious courage and rule-breaking kindness that can heal the world. Fierce love understands that we are inextricably connected one to the other. Whatever affects you affects me. I’m responsible to make sure that we fix that together. Fierce love will go across the line, all the way to the edge of what’s comfortable, to make sure that we improve the lives of everyone, together.
Here’s what fierce love looks like. It’s buying a ticket and going to the border to stand up for immigrants. It’s marching down Fifth Avenue on Pride Sunday, even if you’re straight. It’s standing up for Black Lives Matter, that are what your ethnicity is. That’s what it looks like.
All the world’s major religions have some teaching about love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you want done unto you. But you can’t love the other unless you love yourself. You’ve got to start with loving yourself. Start there. That’s the beginning of the love and we need to heal the world.
Can you imagine a life where we all show fierce love? I can. When a child is hungry, my stomach growls. If an Asian auntie is being abused on the street, it’s not like she’s kind of like my grandmother, she is my grandmother, so I must stand up against that injustice. When someone is being treated unjustly, my job is to bring justice to the fore. That’s what it looks like. That’s what it feels like. That’s the kind of love that is fierce enough, courageous enough, audacious enough to heal us and the world.
Go with fierce love. Go in peace.
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