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Rev. Dr. Leona Stucky-Abbott
February 22, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Infants begin to develop their brains in the context of a mothering matrix, which involves the important relationships of their early years. Internalized relational patterns gradually establish expectations and structures for how babies think. Their novice experiences also distort who mother is and why she exists. These distortions mirror the ways humans construct their relationships with the Divine.

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Black History Moment: Elandria Williams

This morning we are called into worship by taking a moment for Black History by lifting up Elandria Williams. According to the Country Queer podcast Elandria Williams identified as a Black, southern Appalachian, disabled, gender-queer, pansexual, Unitarian Universalist.

They was one of the co-founders of Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism or BLUU They were a leader co-founding many different organizations and movements all with the goal of liberation. Before their death in 2020, Elandria served as a UUA co-Moderator following the Hiring Controversy.

Elandria led a short but powerful life in which their heart, activism, and tireless commitment to ant-racism and anti-oppression has profoundly changed Unitanan Universalist for the better. Here is their poem:

WE ARE WORTHY

We are worthy
Not because of what we produce
But because of who we are
We are divine bodies of light and darkness
You are not worthy because of what you offer
not because of what is in your mind,
not for the support you give others.
not for what you give at all
We are worthy and are whole just because
In this great turning, in this great pandemic,
in this radical readjustment and alignment
We are not disposable, we are needed
we are the very people that have withstood everything that has been thrown at us as a people
and as Maya Angelou would say
Still I Rise
We arise from the pain
We rise from the grief
We arise from the limits people place on us and
the limits we place on ourselves
We rise to be the children and the ancestors
We rise to be our true selves
Our true selves in relationship to our families
and communities
Recognizing our liberating and whole selves
Honoring them and others as we strive for
abundant communities, abundant lives, abundant
relationships, and abundant
values and
cultural manifestations
We are worthiness personified
I, you, and we are worthy and deserve a life
where we are not always fighting for our existence
Imagine what we could create if we were not always in the struggle
Imagine what we could envision if we could just be let to just go there
So tired of always having to resist, to fight, demanding, pushing
To everyone that has the courage, the power, the
ability to co-create what we want and need
while rooting in what we can’t lose and who we are
You are the visionary
You are the hope
You are our ancestors’ dreams
No, you might not ever end up on some list somewhere
But you are on a list in someone’s heart and mind
And if it’s in how you move in the world so people can see by example

You are the embodiment of what we need
Thanks to all that are the embodiment
The embodiment not of productivity but
the embodiment of radical love, care and sanctuary
It’s time
Embodiment time
Embodiment
Living ones values out loud
Let me everyday live my values out loud
Let us everyday live our values out loud
Embodying our values
Not the productivity quotient
Beyond productivity
Past productivity
True embodiment
Life

By Elandria Williams

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

Psalms 139

O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou Knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; Thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit! Or whither shall I flee from thy presence! If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for l am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them – they are more than the sand. I awake in the end – I am still with you.

Sermon

UNVEILING THE MOTHER BEHIND GOD

Thank you for letting me share with you again. I really appreciate the privilege.

It may be difficult for some of you to hear about the mothering matrix. As a therapist, I know how tender the mix of pain and love can be with our very human mothers. And yet, the crucible of healing is often found where hurt and hope meet. So take a deep breath and protect yourself if you need.

Talking about mothering does not mean that fathering is less important or less difficult. Historically, fathers were often cast as the expendable ones, sent into danger and away from daily care, Human history, for all genders, holds both joy and suffering-and plenty of it.

Focus on healing – there is no shortage of mother love or loving mothers and we treasure mothering relationships. They often are our best and most meaningful connections, Profound wisdom lives inside those years of loving each other.

GIVING GOD RELATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

It was probably the Greeks, three or four hundred years before Christ, who can be “blamed” for hooking us into gendered dualism. They wanted to rank characteristics. Somehow the meme got started, and our early Christian fathers picked it right up. We already had Christ as the head of the Church and man as the head of woman. They also dictated that because woman was weaker, she should obey. Likely the Church Fathers didn’t appreciate women’s ways of thinking, so rational vs. emotional got thrown in. Above and below, namer and named, creator and creation, and all the rest of the valued opposites came along.

The intent was to show that, just as Christ is of higher value than the Church, man was then of higher value than those who obey him. And thus gendered dualism became a meme with serious staying power. After 2000 years you can find it, in various forms, in the newly released Heritage document. Remember the people who wrote Project 2025? They produced a new document, Building a Stronger America, with a segment on family.

So now we “know” who God is. He is the one on the esteemed side with Man, and Woman is on the demeaned side. It’s clear, right?

Today, a curve ball is headed right at the gendered dualism list.

Let’s ride that curve for a minute by asking where the Greeks found that idea – Where did people actually experience that dualism list in their daily lives? Did they? To really understand it, we need to become babies and experience life as it came to us from the time we were born.

D. W. Winnicott, a celebrated child psychiatrist and theorist, says that we first learned that reality could relate positively to human beings through feeding. As infants we felt hungry, and mother’s breast or a bottle came to us, helping us transform from a negative feeling state, hunger, to a positive one. Warm milk tasted good and sustained us. Of course, we did not have religious words like “transformation” but we gradually internalized a pattern of experience that became a hope and expectation: when we need something, with the right kind of seemingly magical help, we can get it. You know, the Rolling Stones –

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you might find, you get what you need.”

That’s the spirit we learned from day one.

We cry or fuss, and sure enough, somebody picks us up, brings our cheeks to her lips, rocks us, hugs and holds us, bounces us on her knee, changes our diaper, sings to us, distracts our attention to some better focus – someone figures it out for us and we feel better. And somewhere along the way we begin to understand that this magical reality-shapeshifter person is big while we are little; she is strong while we are weak; she seems rational while we feel emotional; she has wondrous knowledge while we know almost nothing; she is creator and we are creation; she seems to be everywhere at once, like she has our whole world in her hands; and we feel best of all when we are one with her.

In other words, mothers, fathers, and the significant others who assist-the mothering matrix – is our first God. (sometimes also our last God.) But her relationship to us lays the foundation for the falsely gendered opposites that have meemed their way into our conception of who God is and who we are.

Dr. Ahna Maria Rizzuto, who wrote The Psychological Birth of the Living God, claims that by age two and a half, toddlers who live in a Christian culture, even if their parents are atheists, will have a basic internal sense of God. These toddlers think of God as the one who lives in that big house on the street corner. And they know their God-character is really special. Toddlers’ internal God image is typically made up of aspects of their internalized significant others – like mom and dad.

So now we, as young’uns have an internal magical God with whom we can relate, who has some special powers put at our disposal if He likes us. Pretty cool.

In our “Owning Your Religious Past” class a few weeks ago, I remembered an old image of myself, age four, standing in the dark stairwell at night. Before I climbed the stairs I started praying out loud. I wanted that monster in the closet at the top of the stairs to hear that I had God with me. If Mommy or Daddy were with me – little fear. But alone, I only had God, and though I was still afraid with my God at my side, that was much better than no protection. And guess what: my prayers were answered. That monster did not show his face as I ran past the closet and took a flying leap into the bed.

The human imagination of who God might be is deeply embedded in the functions of the mothering matrix. That’s not surprising because the mothering matrix is our first experience of relationship, and a highly dependent, hard-to-describe relationship.

Psalm 139 illustrates quite well how an infant might feel in relationship to mother, but Psalm 139 gives those traits to God. That dearly treasured psalm feels potent to the four-year-old inside us. Plus it has a theological message with wide appeal. First, God is personally involved in the in-utero creation and development of all human beings. Secondly, God loved us personally, before we knew how to love. Therefore every life is sacred. No matter what circumstance we are born into, according to this theology, we have a starting point with God’s love.

Psalm 139’s theology seems quite beautiful in several ways – but falls short in others.

WHERE MOTHER DISAPPEARS

Mommies are not acknowledged for what mommies do. Mommies know when we sit down or rise up. Mommies have magical eyes behind their heads. Before a word is on our tiny tongues, mommies know it. Their knowledge is too wonderful for us, so high that we cannot attain it. Wherever we might try to go, there is mother and therefore we are safe. For it was mothers who formed our inward parts and “knit” them together in their wombs. How weighty for us are mothers’ thoughts. How vast the sum of them.

The credit for this wonderful saving relationship goes straight to God and, via God, is mirrored back to humanity as manly traits. Mother is wiped out of the picture. Her treasured traits seem to belong not I to her but to a male God. Though we consciously know better, we have a tendency to remove her.

Intrapsychically, a similar experience deprives us of full awareness of how mother is there for us day in and day out. Her most intensive caregiving, in our first few years, happens before we have memories. It is surprisingly difficult for us to fill those unremembered years with appreciation. And almost no one publicizes the incredible work of those years.

Perhaps because we don’t consciously remember those years, we don’t have a strong sense of mother being there for us. Our faith pictures of Deity fail to mirror back the reality of her existence and her deeds. She is disempowered by our God images, and – until the feminist movement in the 1970s – also disempowered in our wider world images. When images of women became more ubiquitous, the dissing of Mother began to shift. These tendencies to discredit mother’s work and blame mother for not being there still hold tremendous power in our unconscious minds, even when corrected in our conscious knowing.

With this faith traditions, believers and even nonbelievers have a difficult time finding clarity. What is real or not real in our beliefs about Mother and God? For a number of years, now, that question divides us. If God is the one who creates new life and “knits” together our pieces in mother’s womb, why should mother have any say about it? Her body is God’s tool.

On the other hand, those who comprehend what a woman goes through – when her body and chemistry and psyche make massive changes to create and nurture united cells into human form, and to birth a baby that is huge compared to what her body can reasonably deliver, and then to take on the challenge of caring for and loving, with a mother’s love, which usually involves significant sacrifice all through the growing years from infant into adulthood, and to love this new creation for the rest of her whole life – anyone who understands and lets go of the confusion about who does the creation work, a woman or God, would surely support a woman’s right to choose everything about her circumstances, including when she will nurture and birth a child.

GOD, MOTHER, AND FINAL HOPES

Another place where God and Mother twist into confusing roles is where the faithful count on God to do what mother has done for us in our infancy. We hope against hope that God will have the magical power that once, likely long ago, belonged to mother. On our deathbed, we want God’s mothering – Good enough mothering – that when, like an infant, we must again experience the primary dependence of helplessness-unto-death, we will be saved by a Mothering God who will create us anew, provide for our needs in an alternate home, mirror an identity to us, and love us enough to make life good.

That is who we want: a God who is a good-enough mother, but with supernatural powers that a mother could not have. What we want, and what we get? Who knows?

Our mothers were destined to become human beings in our eyes. Likely not all at once, but her ignorance, her willfulness against ours, her missteps, her exhaustion, her meanness, selfishness, inabilities, laziness, busyness – these were all heavy blasts against our illusion of her greatness as a need-satisfying person.

Gradually, we had to accept that she was just a human with as many imperfections as any other human, and maybe more, because historically she had to make herself real and powerful when much of her world was against her. No one would covet that role. All of her failures registered profoundly with us because she was our savior, the one who got us through, somehow.

Many times it wasn’t pretty. Many times she didn’t have a clue how to be helpful – or she didn’t care. All of that hurts because we weren’t big enough to know what to do. When we got into jams that she couldn’t transform, it really hurt. Much of the time, we experienced our troubles as her failure. Our pain is disproportionately experienced in relation to mother. Often as Mother’s fault.

GRADUATE STORY

I’ll give you a quick illustration and then close. We’re almost done.

In 1988 several friends and I were graduating with our doctoral degrees. Standing in line on this glorious day, waiting to process in, John (not his real name) said he “could just feel his mother sitting out there in the crowd, bearing with pride. She’s soaking up all the credit for everything I did to achieve this degree.” He said.

Marilyn said, “My mother isn’t even here. As is typical for us, there’s always something more important in her life than celebrating me. She is now on a cruise to Europe with her friend. She tried to excuse it, saying the tickets were a much better price for these particular dates.”

And I added that my mom died many years ago. “I’m feeling a kind of emptiness.” I said. “If my mom were here, I’d feel twice as good about graduating. I can’t get the feeling she is sharing this with me. It all seems pretty empty.”

I don’t know. With doctoral graduates like that – what’s a mother to do?

I’m not dismissing our issues with our very human mothers. I know all too well the kind of hurt we carry in relation to them, and when we experience too much injury with our mothers, we are truly broken. And the other way around – when we feel too much injury with our children, we are broken. It takes a long time to heal, and we often need a helpful process for that to happen. These are tender concerns, often impacting our theologies.

Profound love and delight shared with mothers.

CLOSING: FREUDIAN SIPS

Usually we start with show and tell at the beginning, but I’m ending with it. My son gave me this coffee cup a number of years ago. We laughed together because, somehow, who knows how, it was so real for both of us. The front of the cup has a picture of Freud saying, “When you say one thing, but mean your mother.” On the back of the cup it says, “Freudian Sips.”

Needless to say, it’s my favorite coffee cup.

The last thought I’m offering, may be a few Freudian slips combined: Likely our historical Judeo-Christian God – or most any God – wouldn’t mean much without Mother, way out ahead, paving the way for Him.

And the people said, 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

May we expand the generational love we bring to one another and to our world.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 26 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

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Bis Thorton
February 15, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our world is full of so much greed, violence, and hatred. Many of us have begun to wonder: “Is love really enough?” Recently, the Texas UU Justice Ministry (TXUUJM) joined 30 partner organizations in a procession to the ICE family detention center outside of Dilley, Texas. Join TXUUJM Intern Minister Bis Thornton for a journey through the events of that day. Together we will explore what it means to hold love at the center of all things.

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

We are recognizing Black History Month, by learning about and lifting up the amazing Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Harper was a black woman born in 1825 to free parents. She used her life and her talents to work for the abolition of slavery, civil rights, education, and suffrage. She held dual affiliations with both Unitarians and the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. At a time when Christianity was being used to sanction slavery, Harper challenged Unitarians and other Christians to embody the libertarian message of Jesus.

She participated in the Underground Railroad, corresponded with John Brown, lectured across the United States and Canada about the evils of slavery. She wrote both poetry and fiction to help bring about those realities to the reader, as well as a message of liberation. After the abolition of slavery, she put her energy into suffrage, into universal education, and to civil rights.

Speaking to the National Women’s Rights Convention in New York, she said, we are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. Harper is such a beautiful example of a person who used her talents and her value to work for liberation.

She not only spoke out against injustice, but she also painted a beautiful picture of the world we could have. Her poetry and fiction and short stories were both prolific and widely read, and she may have been the most read author, African-American author of the 19th century. But because she was both black and a woman, white supremacy and patriarchy did its best to bury her name after her death in 1911.

That’s until a few decades ago when her work was rediscovered. Her message has been found to be just as empowering today as it was in her time. Professor Melba Joyce Boyd said, Harper’s insight developed during an era rife with violent enforcement of racism, sexism, and classism constitutes a viable ideological framework for contemporary radical thought. She is an amazing Unitarian.

And you can learn more about her on your order of service. Here is a link to learn more about her. ///////////////////////////////

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

From Terrence Dixon’s 1971 documentary titled, MEETING THE MAN, JAMES BALDWIN IN PARIS

“Love has never been a popular movement, and no one’s ever really wanted to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city any afternoon, and look around you. What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster. You could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be.”

– James Baldwin

Sermon

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

It’s Tuesday night, and I am setting out my clothes for the next day. Tomorrow, I will get on a bus with many other people and travel to Dilly, Texas. Those detained inside have been demanding their release, shouting libertad, freedom.

We are coming to demand the same from the outside. I prepare my clothes. My shirt with the minister’s collar, a sweater, blazer, slacks, wool socks for my boots. We are planning to wear blue in solidarity with Liam Ramos, the little boy taken from Minnesota to Texas who was photographed wearing a blue rabbit hat. And every time I look at that now famous photo of him, I cry. He reminds me of my little brother, who sometimes goes by Mr. Cat.

He reminds me of the Palestinian children in photos who are lost or crying or scared, but who have signs of their joy nearby, a toy, a blanket, a shirt given to them by someone who wanted them to be safe. He reminds me of the children taken to Indian schools and the children who were born in internment camps, and he reminds me of the adults that those children grow into. I don’t own any blue clothing. I remember that my spouse Evan has a baby blue keffiyeh with a rainbow olive branches on it. I ask if I can wear it, and of course Evan says yes. I hang it up next to my outfit for tomorrow.

It’s Wednesday morning. It’s not yet dawn. I am greeting people as they arrive at the church to board the bus to Dilley. I ask everyone as they come up to me, are you coming on the bus with us today? People either say yes, or they say no, actually I’m going to carpool.

One woman says, no, but can you help me? I tell her I’m not sure, but she can come inside and have some breakfast and sit with us while we figure it out together.

A tiny fox trots around the church. I see people pointing at it and taking photos and smiling. People are excited for breakfast. A young man holding an iced coffee shakes my hand and we laugh about how cold his hands are.

I have a plastic rosary in my pocket. I call it my emergency rosary because I take it with me when I want a rosary that I’m not going to worry about because it’s not going to break.

The bus is late, but eventually it arrives. I say my morning prayers on the bus. I’m sitting at the front with Texas UUJM Minister Reverend Erin Walter because we are both wearing those minister’s collars. It’s important for visible religious leadership to be at the front of the bus because it often helps decrease harassment from law enforcement.

My morning prayers include words from the Gospel of Luke. I recite the words of the priest Zechariah to his son who will grow up to become John the Baptist, and I am saying them to the entire bus, to all the travelers, and to all the people inside of the detention center. You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you shall go before the Lord to prepare his way.

In my mind, there is love following behind us all, and we are making it possible for love to arrive. John the Baptist lived a strange and beautiful life, and he died a violent death at the hands of the state. I don’t want anyone to die.

We arrive at a place called Watermelon Park to hold a vigil and to hear stories. A man from the Carrizo Camacudo tribe addresses us. He says that this nation has broken treaties with indigenous people. and that it is breaking treaties with all of us now.

He charges us to change the narrative about this country, that no one is illegal on stolen land except those who are stealing it. He tells us about the world that this used to be, a world with clean water and clean air, a world with land that was beloved by all who walked upon it. I look around while he’s talking.

There are many people here who love each other and who love the land, or who are trying to learn how to love each other and to love the land. I love this flat, dry, scrubby Texas earth. I love the mesquite trees and the dusty ground and the yellow grass and the unbelievably enormous sky. I wonder what it will take to love it better.

I wonder what will make us remember this place as a place that grows watermelons instead of a place where the government holds people in cages.

A 13-year-old girl named Kendi speaks, and she is so small. When I was 13, I didn’t know how small I was. Now, whenever I see 13-year-olds, it’s all I can think about. Kendi was detained with her mother when she was just three years old.

She tells us how scared she is of dogs now. She believes that when she sees a dog, it should give her a feeling of joy, but instead she is incredibly frightened. Our relationship with dogs is so ancient. Humans and dogs have been friends for so long. I don’t want her to be scared of them either.

I look at the land and the sky and I think about dogs and I see so much breaking. Families are being broken apart and everyone is being broken away from who we are and what we are connected to. We are being broken away from other people and from the land and from the animals. We begin our walk from the park to the detention center. We pass by a prison on our way there. I feel my heart sink. My body is heavy.

The land and the people are being forced to hold all of these buildings that do nothing but house and cause and perpetuate violence. I wonder how many jobs there are in this area and how many of them are at the prison and the detention center. I wonder what it sounds like to some of the people in this town that we are begging for these places to be shut down.

I feel overwhelmed at the thought of what it will take to extricate everyone in this town from the violence they are being forced into, and I feel overwhelmed at the thought of what it will take to extricate everyone in this whole country from all of the violence we are all being forced into.

Many of us are trying to say no to the violence and do something else. I know it’s true here in Dili, too. Someone in front of me is carrying a huge white paper-mache sculpture of a bird. They’re holding the bird up on a stick like a sign.

I wish everyone were free. I wish the land were free. We walk for two miles, maybe three, and the whole way there I am praying that the cops and the ICE agents and everyone who operates these places will quit their jobs. I am praying that their hearts open up and they stop doing what they’re doing. I am praying so desperately that by the end of our walk, I am saying over and over again, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.

When we reach the detention center, and I see the ICE and DPS agents standing outside of it, I am swept up in despair. Perhaps some part of me really wanted to find monsters, but what I see are human beings, which is worse.

I see precious children of the vast and loving universe who are choosing to do harm. I see people who had once been very small 13-year-olds too, and now they are this.

I feel I am seeing an active rejection of humanity so enormous that my heart and mind and spirit can hardly withstand it. I think of all the families trapped inside of the buildings behind them, and I wonder what these agents see.

In my mind, I see Kendi, who spoke at our vigil. In my mind, I see the photo of Liam Ramos in his blue hat, and I feel we are all so broken. There’s more to tell. If you read the news, You’ve heard the rest.

We came in peace and we were met with violence. I can tell you more about that sometime if you want. But I wanted to bring you along through time into our vigil and our procession because I don’t want those pieces to get lost.

Are you having a hard time lately? Me too. I’m not usually one to feel overwhelmed by the news, but lately I feel like I’ve got a huge heavy stone on top of me.

It’s one thing to know that our world is full of violence. And it’s one thing to step into the systems of that violence and try to stop it so that healing can come. And it is something else entirely to be bombarded with details of that violence in ways that push you into a state of fear and despair.

This feels like an awful Valentine’s Day sermon. Right? It’s the day after Valentine’s Day, and I wanted to come up here and tell you the good news about a love that overcomes obstacles and heals the impossible and reconfigures the world into a more beautiful place.

In a world like this one, trying to talk about love sometimes feels hopeless. It feels like I’m standing in front of the devil, and all I have to protect me is a little pink heart cut out of construction paper. I feel foolish. I feel small. But that is where love lives.

As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm that love is at the center of all things. At the center of all things is something so precious and so powerful and so ephemeral as a little pink heart cut out of construction paper or a little blue bunny hat. The gifts given to us by those who love us and want us to be safe.

The signs that tenderness exists even in suffering that is incomprehensible. There were moments that day where the world felt like it was broken. But I thought back to the words of the Comecrudo tribe speaker. I felt the audacious hope in his words for the people and land to be healed.

He painted a portrait of a beautiful world, and I wanted to live in it so badly that I believed in it. I believed we could love the world back to health. I believed we could love each other so deeply that we could come back together again. In my deep grief, I was also gripped by a kind of sacred foolishness, a belief in something impossible. I believed that love is enough because it is everything.

Before me, I saw human beings who had shaped themselves into tools of violence. When they deployed chemical weapons against peaceful demonstrators, I feared what this chemical would do to the people, and I feared what this chemical would do to the air and to the land as it sunk down into the earth.

But love was there too. I saw it in the defiance of the demonstrators. I saw it in the healers and medics who jumped into action to protect others.

I saw it in the way we gathered people into our bus to protect them and help flush their eyes. I saw it in the nurse on our bus who took charge of this task. I saw it in the way she touched frightened people with gentle calm and helped them breathe through their panic as the water flowed over their faces. When she asked for a towel and no one had one, I gave her the blue keffiyeh that my spouse had given me the night before.

As I watched the scarf catch the flowing chemical water and comfort an injured, frightened person, I felt I was watching this keffiyeh become one with all the others in Palestine and across the world who had protected, healed, and comforted someone in the fight for true liberation.

I felt connected. Beyond all hope or reason, surrounded by violence and panic and fear, I felt connected.

One day, we will all remember who we are. One day, the agents of violence will take off their helmets and lay down their guns, and they will run to unlock the cages they guard, and they will hang their heads in humility as all the prisoners run free. And there will be no more starvation, no more tear gas, no more typhus inside of concentration camps or measles inside of detention centers. There will be no more cages, no more broken treaties, no more children being taken and tortured. I believe it. Against all odds, I believe it.

Against all reason, I believe in pink construction, paper valentines, and blue bunny hats. I believe it is in our sacred nature to love one another. I believe that one day we will all finally remember it.

Please, God. May it 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

May we love the land and one another. May we remember who we are. May we hold love at the center of all things, and in doing so, free the world. May it be so.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 26 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Leona Stucky-Abbott
January 11, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This sermon fosters understanding of erroneous Biblical expectations regarding God’s actions, of the human longing that informs people’s faith, of differences between polar perspectives and where they might coalesce, and of how UU principles may prompt action rather than remain just words. It tells stories that provoke, explore, and suggest.

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

First Thessalonians 4:16-18

“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

From AS I LAY DYING
by William Faulkner

Addie, reflecting on her differences with her neighbor Cora, says: “One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed i was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

Sermon

Rev. Dr. Leona Stucky-Abbott is a Unitarian Universalist community minister and a member of our congregation. A mother and grandmother, she often says that lived experience has been her greatest teacher, shaping her theological and psychological insights. The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God is her memoir chronicling her first 23 years as a Mennonite – a compelling story of how life can irrevocably alter a faith journey.

Welcome. I’m so glad to be here speaking with you, as one of you. What a privilege. Thank you for sharing this time. Hopefully as an old and wise woman.

I’m a plain speaker. I tend to put things right out on the table, and that can unsettle some people. I don’t intend to be provocative for its own sake. While I’m a UU minister, I also carry 18 years of rural Kansas redneck in me and about 500 years of Mennonite coursing in my blood. That’s not an easy combo. Some sermons don’t require much self-care, but this one might. I trust you’ll be wise on your own behalf.

Preaching begins as a one-way conversation. The second half comes from you. I want to learn from you. I’ll be toasting your responses in Howson Hall with a cup of coffee after the service. Please share your thoughts and feelings. And if you’re watching online, feel free to respond digitally.

NOT JUST A MATTER OF WORDS

A couple of days before the Women’s March in January of 2017, I found myself protesting with thousands of others at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC. Afterward – chilled to the bone – I ducked into a bar, ostensibly to warm up. Wine was elegantly priced. Beer would have to do.

The place filled quickly, and a young man – maybe in his early forties – took the seat beside me. We exchanged the usual small talk. I asked what brought him to DC.

He said he had pieced together a couple of extra days off and scraped the funds to attend the inauguration. He had to be there, he said. He had prayed for this day. He wasn’t going to miss the victory he believed would finally set things right. It was too important.

Perhaps my face betrayed my surprise, because he began to explain. He told me about his work back in Connecticut – how he picks up the bloody pieces after tragedy, how he must explain the inexplicable to families, how he must catch the culprits who rarely stay in custody long. The courts do little. The crimes go on and on. The cruelty continues.

He hears horrors every day – stories of what has happened and fears of what will – often from the very people who treat him as the enemy. “What the hell can I do?” he asked, shoulders sinking, voice wavering. He was sick of it all. I tried to take in, not just his words, but the whole of his experience.

He spoke of gruesome cases. He spoke of rage – rage at the “high and mighty liberals” who looked down on him. His body trembled when he described their children taunting him. But when he spoke of the promise of an authoritarian leader – someone who would uphold the law and demand obedience – his face lit up. For him, this was not rhetoric. Not slogans. This was real leadership.

Eventually, silence settled between us. We looked at each other, then down. I nodded in recognition of his predicaments. We both knew that in forty minutes, we had crossed a profound chasm. We shook hands, a gesture too small for the tenderness of that goodbye.

Later, I wondered if I had been too passive. Should I have said, “Let me tell you why I came to DC?”. But no. It was wiser to take in and hold. To let him touch my heart. I have often imagined his spirits soaring during the inauguration. And I still hope our meeting meant something to him. It did to me.

The Apostle Paul came to mind. You can guess I was once a seminary student (who else thinks of Paul at a bar?)

Paul, too, spoke of something that was not just words. He believed that Jesus’ resurrection was the final evidence that God’s power would radically transform life on earth. He proclaimed news that humble, hurting people longed to hear: that God would soon overturn the powers of the world and reveal ultimate justice. There would be care for ordinary human beings in this world after all.

Paul’s apocalyptic vision imagined God returning soon, within their lifetime, with unfathomable glory. The faithful rising to meet God in the sky. The dead lifted from their graves. Every cruel ruler destroyed. Every oppressive system dismantled. The world transformed.

Imagine it: despots gone. Oligarchs stripped of power. Bye-Bye! Every person long trapped in poverty suddenly free to live in peace. Life where love abounds. Death with no sting. However you picture it, Paul’s vision was astonishing. And for him, being a bit rambunctious and over-the-top, the way a Kansas Redneck might be, it was not metaphor. Not poetry. Not just words.

Of course, later interpreters tried to soften Paul’s claims – spiritualizing them, postponing them. But the longing behind Paul’s vision has not disappeared.

After World War I, soldiers returned home traumatized by trenches filled with rotting bodies – human and horses alike. They had been forced to shoot at people who looked and believed like they did. They came home saying, “This world is full of evil. God will not let this stand. The end must be near.” Perhaps that was easier than saying, “God, if he is there, let this happen.”

Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann, teaches that apocalyptic thought arises from people who have lived through too much hell on earth. It is the cry of those who long for decisive help. And he reminds us: if we have not yet experienced that kind of hell, we are no better than those who have.

William Faulkner’s character Addie Bundren, in As I Lay Dying, understood the need for visceral and real spiritual happenings. Addie, lying on her deathbed, reflects on her neighbor Cora’s desire to save her. Addie says: “One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

I have been reflecting on Addie’s thought for fifty years. I resisted it. I forgot it. It returned again and again. But now – at this moment in our history – I finally understand.

If we treat authoritarianism as just a matter of words…

If we treat money flowing to billionaires as just a matter of words…

If we treat a media unwilling to ask hard questions as just a matter of words…

If we treat bribery twisting foreign policy as just a matter of words…

If we treat the tackling, imprisoning, and renditioning of immigrants as just a matter of words…

If we treat corruption of the justice system as just a matter of words…

If we treat missiles fired into fishing boats and government agents shooting innocent victims as just a matter of words…

If we treat sending bombs and other resources that will be used to destroy a people and their homeland as just a matter of words…

If we treat breaking international law by violating the territory and resources of smaller nations, like Putin does against Ukraine, as just a matter of words…

Then we should not be surprised if our salvation turns out to be just words too.

Our Unitarian Universalist tradition rejected the idea that sin is inherited like a genetic trait. We became allergic to words like sin and salvation. But today, sin and salvation need not be abstractions because they are no longer just words.

Without democracy, oligarchy fills the vacuum. These are not just words. Those with power write laws that protect their power. Wealth concentrates. The poor, the unfree, the unheard multiply. The transfer of wealth accelerates – until the governed are governed no more, but ruled.

This now established sin, in our country, has been significantly aided by conservative Supreme Court decisions over the last fifteen years – decisions, like Citizens United, that opened the floodgates for money to buy legislation, later decisions removed caps on political spending, and finally in 2024 the conservative Supreme Court made bribery nearly impossible to prosecute unless a specific quid pro quo is spelled out in advance. Bribery is essentially legal now, another tool that escorts money and power to a select few.

These consequences are real. They are measurable. They devastate our democracy.

If I am wrong in what I have described, and you believe me, then – as Paul said of himself and his own followers – If we are wrong, we are, of all people, most to be pitied. So think hard about what you believe. It is dangerous to assume we know God. Dangerous even to assume God exists. Dangerous to think as Paul did, that God’s actions would save us. Dangerous to trust easy answers that remain just words.

But principles – principles are not doctrines. They are not screeds or creeds. They are not inherited. They are chosen. They are lived.

And our values – our Unitarian Universalist values – are not just a matter of words. They shape us. They guide us. They act in our actions, every day, when we are true to them.

• We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
• Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth.
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
• The right of conscience and the democratic process.
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
• We respect the interdependent web of all existence.

Bribery is not in our lexicon. Cruelty is not in our lexicon. Authoritarianism is not in our lexicon. Our values make us capable of effective loving relationships – even when we fall short. They shape how we show up in the world. They are, quite simply, the way we roll.

They are not just words, if we live them.

Still, like humans everywhere, we live in the murky muddy miasma of daily choices and energy limitations. We can only do and understand so much. And sometimes we are surprised by the effect other people have on us and we on them.

I am surprised to hear myself sounding more and more like my policeman friend these days.

What happened to the law? I keep saying. Why don’t the courts do something that matters? How can we clean up crimes and cruelty when it seems to flow out in so many directions at once? Why do we become the enemy of the people we are trying to support? I can appreciate my policeman’s frustrations and his self-defeating mantras that seem to reflect reality. I feel them too.

Perhaps we are trapped in Paul’s predicament, where we simply misunderstand. Do we have a God? If so, what does that God do? Paul thought he knew, and for Paul, what he knew was not just a matter of words. We’ve waited 2000 years, and we wonder, what did Paul really know?

I admire Paul’s get-up-and-go spirit, his restlessness, and his way of putting out there what he thought was salvation for his whole world. His self-awareness made him openly admit that he couldn’t do the good he wanted but often did the opposite. He wasn’t one to fool himself. He didn’t want to be the one ‘most to be pitied.’ He was trying to track reality, a spirituality that would be reality. He didn’t want just a matter of words.

His assessment of his world is not that different from our own. We know our oligarchs will not create the world we need. We know we have the fight of our lives on our plate right now. Wouldn’t ultimate assistance be great? But we might have learned the lesson that Paul represents, not the lesson he tried to preach.

We know the struggle and the pace. We have many ways to approach it, and we can invent many more. One suggestion that comes to my mind is simply to gather all the phone numbers of our senators and representatives, our school board members, our state leaders, our city council members, mayors, and our national and international leaders.

Get those numbers and add them to your phone’s favorites list. Calling is said to be the most effective way to contact political leaders. It doesn’t matter what party they belong to or whether you resonate with their vision. Simply call and make yourself known. Not just your words, but make them deal with your whole self, the yearnings of your heart, your unswerving principles that must be honored. You can do that.

And one more thing. Try extending yourself to some people who are not saying the same things you say. Listen until you hear the true yearning of their hearts, and try a little tenderness. Listen until you hear more than just their words. Try it. You can do that too.

And another thing. Seek out the group support that is readily available here and beyond.

Sometimes it helps to do everything we know to do and something we have not yet dared to try. Think about it and do something that fits you. You likely already do.

So now we come back to Addie. She is lying there in that old trailer, longing to get back to her kinfolk, her home. To be buried in the ground she trod upon as a child. Her rough and tumble family don’t know how to make happen what they know should happen. They try, and they are trying, but every effort is weighed down, distress, dysfunction, and the general depravity of the human endeavor coalesce against Addie’s soul’s yearning. She is spent. She doesn’t have words, but her mind veers toward her neighbor Cora, who so wants to save her, to get her to pray, to relieve herself of her burdens and turn them over to God. Surely then happiness would follow her beyond the grave into the arms of God.

But Addie knows herself the way Paul knew himself when he said the Good that I would do, I do not do. Sin is not just words to her. Real life tore her from her ideals over and over again. She lived the anguish of the murky, muddy everyday. No longer in possession of the hopes that might have animated her younger self, she knows she is lost and is dying. Words cannot save her. What she needs from God now, is more than just words. A lot more. Perhaps she could be lifted up to the heavens, as Paul thought, or healed on the spot – not just words.

Perhaps for her, like for Paul, God won’t do what must be done. What then? What then? Perhaps that experience of ineptitude, abandonment and death does not shock her the way it shocked Mark’s Jesus when he cried out on the cross, “My God, My God Why have you forsaken me?”. Perhaps Addie knew it all along. Salvation must not be just a matter of words, or death is an ultimate sting, is the final victor. As she lay dying, salvation needed to be More. In the teeth of death, Addie had the little life that was left to her, and she knew that something needed to be more than just words. A spiritual journey is life’s journey and that is a dangerous thing. It was for Paul, for Mark’s Jesus, and for Addie. Is it for us? Does the knowing kill the yearning inside us?

We live in tension. The knowing that often hits through news cycles wants to quell yearning. The yearning hits solidly against any truthful knowing that opposes it. It hits and it bounces off. What a dilemma – this being human.

The yearning in Addie’s heart, as she lay dying, that yearning for more than just words, may live, recognized or not, in our own hearts. The yearning and the knowing. May we hold in our hearts, Addie’s yearning and knowing, and our own yearning and knowing, and try a little tenderness.

Thank you so very much.

And the people say. Amen. 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 go forth from this place with these people and try a little tenderness with ourselves and others who have different answers but live in the same predicament.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 26 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776