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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
August 17, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
On this very special music Sunday, we’ll pay tribute to some of the musical greats and examine the spiritual messages and legacies they have given us.
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
From DEEP IS THE HUNGER
by Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman“So you do not expect to live to see the trees reach sufficient maturity to bear fruit?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “But is that important? All my life I have eaten fruit from trees that I did not plant, why should I not plant trees to bear fruit for those who may enjoy them long after I am gone? Besides, the man who only plants because he will reap the harvest has no faith in life.”
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
adapted from A HOUSE CALLED TOMORROW
by Alberto RiosYou are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen – You are a hundred wild centuries… bringing with you In every breath and in every step Everyone who has come before you, All the yous that you have been… Look back only for as long as you must, Then go forward into the history you will make. Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease… And those who came before you? When you hear thunder, Hear it as their applause.
Sermon
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the ancestors for those who will follow. We are the hope of dreams made manifest for those who came before. We are legacies in the making – inheritances emerging- imaginings unfurling. We are the messengers of a world yet becoming – the priesthood of a spiritual awakening still dawning.
Today, we’re paying tribute to some of the musical greats that we have recently lost: David Lynch, Brian Wilson, Ozzy Osbourne, Marianne Faithful, Sly Stone.
When our director music, Brent, told me he wanted to do this tribute, it got me thinking about, as I would argue that each of these musical artists did during their lives, what enduring messages to the future, what spiritual legacies I, and we, might want to create with our own lives. What examples of how to do so have they left us?
As I researched their lives and careers, I was struck by their musical differences and the gifts such differences created, and yet how each of them, despite working in such disparate genres, had in common that they brought great innovation to the musical genres within which they worked. Sly Stone with funk and Ozzy Osbourne with heavy metal, just for example.
Likewise, they shared many musical themes in common, left us many very similar messages of great value through their music. One of the biggest ones being our unity, our interconnectedness – that we are all in this together and that there is both great value in our differences and at the same time that we hold so much in common with one another.
Others important and extremely useful themes they shared within their work included:
- The need for love. It’s power. That love is worth it even though loving means we will also experience loss.
- The multifaceted nature of being human – that we all have the capacity for good and for doing harm and must work toward the good.
- The juxtaposition between simplicity and the complex within our world, and how we must see the interplay between them to better understand that world.
- That change is possible. We’ll come back to that.
Yet once again, I also found great value in the fact that they each explored different themes and have left their own unique messages for us also, such as Marianne Faithful’s and Sly Stone’s social critiques or Osborne’s reflections on dealing with existential dread and mortality.
And despite, or perhaps because of the personal struggles that each of them dealt with at times during their lives, from drug, alcohol and other addictions, to other mental health issues, to marital and relationship difficulties, to physical health problems, to encountering discrimination, each of them expressed a desire for their music to make a difference.
Each of them overcame their individual life challenges and, in fact, wove their struggles into their musical and life legacies. And given that we all also experiences struggles in our lives, I wonder if we might learn from their examples.
In an interview near the end of his life, Sly Stone expressed a desire for his music to be a force for unity and celebrating diversity. He said, “I know music can make a difference.”
Marianne Faithful believed that music has the power to transform people – to connect people, to heal, and to allow the expression of the deepest human emotions.
Brian Wilson stated of his music, “I consider myself to be a crusader of love. I try to spread love around the world as best I can…” He also said, “I believe that music is God’s voice.”
Ozzy Osbourne expressed hopes for his music to center the voices of those who felt unheard or marginalized.
David Lynch stated that his art expressed his desire for people to know that, quote, “This world is supposed to be beautiful. We’re supposed to love each other as a family.”
Goodness gracious” They all sound like Unitarian Universalists”
And I think that desire to believe that we might leave the world a better place, that our lives might have some legacy beyond our physical time here on earth may be universal or at the very least extremely common.
An anonymous poet writes,
I have tried to leave my mark-
Pressed my name into the trees,
only for the bark to scar
and swallow my touch.Spoken into open air,
only for the words to fade
and sink into wind.Let ink bleed into paper,
only for the page to thin
and crumble to dust.The world is good at forgetting-
The rivers scatter my reflection,
the mountains shed my step in landslides,
even stars do not pause to mark my loss.And yet-
Somewhere, the laughter I gave
finds its way back in memory.Somewhere, the kindness I gave
lives in the hands of another.And somewhere, the love I gave
spreads unseen beneath the surface-
Like a stone slipping through water,
its ripples never truly gone.
Not all of us can be musicians and songwriters, poets, playwrights, great artists, powerful politicians, wealthy enough to leave a legacy gift that results in a building with our name on it.
So Federowski’s words ring so true to me. Our lives can be the legacy we leave, the inheritance we bestow. The laughter, fun, and joy we bring to and share with others, radiates outward through space and time in ways we will likely never comprehend.
The kindness we show to some stranger whom we have never met may in some small way we cannot know, change them, and they in turn interact with others, whom they then change for the better in some small way, and so the manner in which we choose to live our life might very well leave an inheritance of a world slowly evolving for the better the more creative, the more kind and loving.
The love we share and express helps divine love become manifest in our world and creates even more love. That river of fierce love that flows through our universe becomes a torrent of love that surges and flows creating oceans of love emergent.
We will to the future whatever wealth we may have, both material wealth, whether small or expansive, but more vitally, the spiritual wealth we create through the ways in which we live our lives and touch the lives of others.
In his final days in hospice care, my spouse Wayne thought and talked a lot about the legacy his life would leave. And after his death, part of my work became helping to make sure that inheritance he wanted to leave became reality.
And I am so proud of all that he left this world, materially yes, and through how he lived his life and the amazing ways in which he gave and did so much for others.
I am a part of that legacy because I am different and better because he was in my life.
He also wanted to leave an inheritance to the church, and I have arranged for most of that. Well, except for the multi-door, doorbell system he wanted to fund for when most of the doors at the church must be kept locked. You see, he said that he wanted it to make the Adam’s Family doorbell sound (make sound) and then to have a recording when we opened the door of Lurch saying “You rang”.
He really did tell me he wanted this, though there may have been a sly grin behind it when he expressed this wish. We’re still working upon how to fulfill the general spirit of that one.
Anyway, my point is, as our poet describes, and Wayne demonstrated, we can make the humor, the kindness, the love we live out our gift to our current world and the world we will leave behind.
I think that is especially important now, in this dangerous time in which we find ourselves. The humor, the kindness, the love are an even greater part of the wealth we so desire to bestow upon the future than any material or financial wealth.
Because you see, the President who wants to be king has seized and taken over a major US city. And make no mistake, though it is easier for him to do that with Washington DC, this is only the beginning – a test run on the highway to autocracy of which he dreams.
It is no accident that this, and the other cities he has threatened are largely progressive and governed in almost every case by folks who are not Cis, heterosexual, white males.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
His words seem if anything even more relevant now.
Will we stand up? Will we fight? Will we engage in that vigorous and positive action and confront the fierce urgency of now?
Will we like Brian and Marianne and David and Ozzy and Sly continue to believe that change is is still possible.
Will we leave to those whose ancestors we are becoming the democracy, freedom, and justice we cherish? Though we may not all be poets or songwriters, we can think of our spiritual legacy as a song that has been handed down to us from those who came before.
And we, we get to write and sing the next verse, keeping the good from what we have inherited and creating the change that is needed to set the next movement of the music for those who follow us to pick up and continue it in their own verse and their own direction. Like the musicians to whom we pay tribute today, we can treat that music as the voice of God.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
We are the ancestors for those who will follow.
We are the hope of dreams made manifest for those who came before.
We are legacies in the making – inheritances emerging- imaginings unfurling.
We are the messengers of a world yet becoming – the priesthood of a spiritual awakening still dawning.
May we sing it forward. May the voice of God play on.
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
As we go out into our world today, may the music of our lives play on. May the verse we sing move us and our world toward compassion, justice and the realization of the Beloved Community.
May love be our song and our legacy
May the congregation say, ‘Amen” and “blessed be” Go in peace.
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