Love's Call to Risk

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Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt
June 29, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join Rev. Carrie as she explores how our UU history and values help us meet the moment we find ourselves in.

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

SISTER OUTSIDER (excerpt)
by Audre Lorde

Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down, and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last, you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth, and that is not speaking.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

LOVE AND ACTION (excerpt)
by Reverend Dr. Crystal Silva-McCormick.

To live out love and action, we must reject comfort and conformity. We must embrace the controversial and sacrificial way of Jesus. Love and action means refusing to rest until our neighbors, whether down the street or across the globe, have the same rights and opportunities as those with privilege. It demands that we speak hard truths about the systems that exploit and destroy. It requires us to disrupt, to step out of line, and to make people uncomfortable.

This kind of love goes beyond symbolic gestures, beyond yard signs and statements. It takes creativity, moral imagination, and the courage to challenge systems that depend on the suffering of others. We cannot truly practice love and action until we demand from others what we wish for ourselves and those we love. And that will cost us our comfort, resources, perhaps even our relationships. It may look like redirecting our money, pressuring lawmakers, or engaging in civil disobedience. These times and all times have called for this kind of love.

Sermon

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

I believe that Jesus died for us.

Now before you leave or you start to write me a really nasty email, I’m gonna remind you that the sermon is about risk.

That I love you, that I am a trustworthy person, that this is not an elaborate bait or switch, the weirdest long game that there ever was.

And if none of that works for you, just hear me out first and then we’ll talk.

So yes, I believe that Jesus died for us.

And when I say that, I mean, I believe the man that historians believed walked the hills of Galilee 2,000 years ago, teaching to people of all genders died for us.

Not in a metaphysical way, not because you were born evil and needed to be freed by cosmic sacrifice.

NOPE, we’re not going to do that original sin trauma. OK, we’re good. No, that’s not for us. Thank you very much.

The reason I say it is because of what he modeled for us. His message was one of solidarity and compassion and love.

He said, “Blessed are the poor and the meek.”

He taught that the most important thing is to love our neighbor, and then he did this really cool thing by radically challenging us to expand who our neighbor is by the story of The Good Samaritan, a profound message of life affirming solidarity if ever there was one.

His message was an indictment of the empire and the systems of supremacy of his time because he had to speak against their cruelty and repression and violence. He spoke even though it was dangerous to speak. And I don’t believe that he did it because death was the goal, but rather that because there was no other option for him.

What he was experiencing, what he was witnessing compelled him to do it. His faith in his study of the Hebrew scriptures compelled him to speak. And in doing so, he demonstrated what it means to live for one another.
What it looks like to live into the fullness of our values.
What it looks like when we bow not to power, but live for one another.
What it looks like when we show up in love.

This is what I mean when I say he died for us.

And while Jesus is the original for both Unitarians and Universalists, he isn’t our only model.

We have Norbert Chapek, the Unitarian minister who gave us the Flower Communion, who was murdered in Dachau because his message of the beauty of diversity was so terrifying to the Nazis.

We have Reverend James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, whose commitment to a more just world was seen as a threat by white supremacists who were so threatened that they had to kill them in Selma.

To center love in our actions, in our words, and in our choices, especially when there are powerful forces set against us, that’s inherent to our religion. That is the natural conclusion of our principles and our values because they don’t just live on paper, or at least they shouldn’t.

I know for me, when I am aligned with my values, When I am in solidarity with others, I am in awe of the purpose that I feel in my life. I’m in awe of the life that I’ve been given.

And to be in alignment with our values, it doesn’t always result in death. I just feel like I have to say that, OK? In fact, I would say most of the time it doesn’t, right? Which, you know, being killed by supremacy is a little heavy. So I’m going to give you some other examples of people who didn’t die.

We have Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who spoke for women’s rights, who funded John Brown, who was seen as a heretic by fellow Unitarians. He risked so much, but he still spoke up.

We have Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a free black woman, who was a household name for abolition in the very dangerous time leading up to the Civil War.

We have Unitarian Minister Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp, who physically helped many people escape Nazi-occupied Europe.

These are just a few people in our religion who have put their values into action. And there are so, so many UUs that we will never know that showed up for abolition and suffrage and civil rights and gay rights and women’s rights and voting rights and disability rights that have and do and will continue to speak up for immigration and immigrants for bodily autonomy for everyone, for voting rights and all of the other things that we need to work for true liberation.

Many many people in this room right now I know have shown up and spoken up, centered love and fought for one another.

That’s our history.
That’s our theology.
And that’s what we do as a religious people.

And today, when we find ourselves in the middle of fascism, our call remains the same.

Yes, things are scary.

Some of us, mostly those of us who identify as white and straight and able-bodied, are experiencing a level of fear that is new and different.

Things are scary. And voices of resistance are needed just as much as they always have been under soul-crushing supremacy. Whether it was the Roman Empire of Jesus’ times or the fascism of our own. Actions of love are needed just as much as they ever have.

Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams, after having a really terrifying run with Nazis in Germany in the 1930s, left that experience with a core question. Does our liberal theology, our liberal church, have enough substance to defeat fascism? It is a pertinent question for us I think. Are our values enough? And are we willilng to live in them in a way that can stand up to Fascism? For me, that answer is yes.

The values that we hold as a religious people, justice, and equity, and interdependence, and pluralism, and generosity, and democracy are the solutions to authoritarianism, to manufactured wars, the dehumanization that is happening at all levels of government. Values and action bred out of love for ourselves and for one another are terrifying to systems of supremacy because they undermine their powers.

In bell hook’s book, All About Love, she writes,

“Fear is the primary force of holding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference of any kind will appeaar as a threat. When we choose love we choose to move against fear – against alienation and searation. The choice to love is a choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other.”

So when we hold these values, our values, and more importantly when we live them out in our actions like continuously calling out injustice and oppression. By refusing to participate in unjust laws – By finding fun little opportunities to resist wherever we can. When we do those things. And whatever else might come in the months and years ahead, We are living into our liberal religion with substance.

But it’s gonna take some work because, let’s be fair, centering love when times are relatively easy or good is easy. It’s much harder to do this when the stakes are so high and so we must speak as Audre Lorde instructs us. We also have to fall in love with our own vision of what we are creating, of this beloved community that we are creating.

But I think we’re also going to need some tools to do that. First, I think we have to attune ourselves to what is uncomfortable versus what is dangerous. For example, we, this church, have slowly started having more formal conversations and learning opportunities around what’s been happening in Gaza. The ongoing attack through bombing and snipers and starvation of Gazans over the last 629 days.

While I have personally been somewhat vocal, I have been hesitant to take this on because it seems scary. In fact, the rhetoric around what has been happening has been shaped in a way that scares people away from engaging with it in a meaningful way, especially when being against genocide and condemning the actions of a nation-state have been labeled (incorrectly) as anti-semitic.

But that’s just discomfort. I am uncomfortable with the idea that I will falsely be accused of being anti-semitic, that I will offend someone, that someone will say something mean or hurtful to me. That’s really uncomfortable, But it is not danger. I am not in any real danger.

An uncomfortable conversation, or an unfavorable opinion of me, that doesn’t harm me. The two million people living in the 141 square miles of Gaza, those people aren’t danger. That’s real danger. And so I must speak even when I’m afraid and even when my voice shakes and I have to remember that this discomfort is not the same as danger.

I have to put my hands on my heart and remind my body, this body that is so attuned to look for the proverbial tiger – that there is no tiger. This just feels like living into your values. This is what centering love can feel like when the stakes are high.

And then I speak Imperfectly but I do it. And when we do that the hope is that we raise the consciousness of those around us. And with great hope bring about real change. And then we must remember that we cannot isolate ourselves, that we cannot forget that we have one another, and never forget bell hooks told us that domination requires us to be in isolation.

And I feel pretty good about our chances because I believe that the most beautiful part of our religion is our ability to be with and for one another. Because we accomplish beautiful things together. None of us are alone unless we allow fear to keep us isolated. Staying together is one of our strengths. We show up for each other again and again.

As Reverend Julian Soto tells us, “All of us need all of us to make it.” Like the way that our social action team shows up for us and our values again and again.

I just want to take a brief moment to acknowledge the work that they have done. Thank you David Overton. Thank you Peggy Morton. Thank you Elizabeth Gray and Bob and Victoria Hendricks and Leo Collas and Jenny Fredericks and Melanie Cofield and Wendy Erisman and anyone I must have met and must have missed. And of course thank you all of you that have shown up and participated in social action.

I bet if we took time to identify ourselves, most of us would find ourselves raising our hand. And if that’s not you, that’s okay, ’cause there’s gonna be a lot of opportunities ahead. Don’t you worry about that.

And what a life-affirming way to live this one precious life we’ve been given, to be with and to be for one another, to live and to speak up and risk for one another. Isn’t that what we mean when we say “Our Struggle Becomes Our Salvation”.

The struggle we see in the life of Jesus, and in all of those that came before us, who have been guided by their values. All of those who have rejected personal comfort for the life-affirming work of solidarity. To center love in our actions and in our words and in our choices is inherent to our religion, especially when powerful forces are set against us. Being brave and answering love’s call to risk is the natural conclusion of our principles and values. Because they just don’t live on paper, they live in us. They live in our words and in our actions.

May it always be so.

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 we leave this sacred time together, as our lives go back to their normal rhythm with all the distractions that that entails. May you feel connected. May you feel connected to your faith and to one another. And may you be held as equally as you are motivated. May you feel brave in answering love’s call to risk.

Go in love.

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