Fear and Flourishing

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 29, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

So often, we think of fear as a feeling to avoid. Why then, do we also sometimes revel in it – like during this time of Halloween or through horror movies, extreme sports, or scary amusement park rides? We will examine how fear is probably necessary for our survival and how our response to it can either sabotage our well-being or enrich it. In a world that can so often seem frightening, how might a spiritual practice of listening to our fear turn that fear toward flourishing?


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

I WILL NOT DIE AN UNLIVED LIFE
Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

BELOVED IS WHERE WE BEGIN
– Jan Richardson (from Circle of Grace)

If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
In your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching of sun
or the fall
of the night.

But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.

I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

Sermon

Well, here we are, just a plain ole regular Sunday service. Nothing unusual happening.

Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. What?

Oh, right. It’s the Sunday before Halloween. We have little ones dressed as ghosts and goblins running around. As well as a few adults. But, other than some irregular attire, nothing else major going on.

Well, there is that whole vote thing happening this afternoon.

If you are visiting with us this morning, I should explain that the members of the church will gather after the service today to vote on whether to call a new settle minister. The candidate for that being me.

Now, some folks have shared that they are feeling at least a bit apprehensive this morning. And that’s OK.

I’m right there with you.

I love this church, and I love this ministry.

We can let that apprehension inform us though that something of consequence is happening in the life of this church and our faith.

And knowing that, if we go into this afternoon informed by our love for this church and this faith, no matter what happens, we will all be OK.

“There will be an answer.”

I wanted to start by getting that out there, because ya’ll need to know that I am TERRIBLE at the elephant in the room thing.

Maybe because I grew up in a culture that discouraged verbalizing uncomfortable issues, these days, I am no good any more at leaving important matters left unspoken, even if speaking them can sometimes be scary.

Our topic today is fear and flourishing, so it felt only fitting to go ahead and get that out there.

So, now let’s talk some about fear on this Sunday before Halloween.

In his inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself … “

Now, even though I personally am a great fan of FDR, my hope this morning is to convince you that FDR was wrong about that.

I know, blasphemy, right? Bear with me.

You see, while I agree that depending upon our response to it, fear can either paralyze us or lead us down perilous pathways, I also think that paying attention to our fear in a centered, mindful way, can set us on a journey toward flourishing.

Fear serves an evolutionary (and perhaps, thereby spiritual) purpose in our lives. Ignoring or suppressing it can lead us into harm’s way.

Fear is centered in the older parts of our brain, from long ago days when we humans were much more subject to predators and environmental extremes. It helped us protect ourselves by generating an automatic and autonomic response.

When we feel fear, that older, subconscious part of our brain, largely the amygdala, causes a number of stress hormones to be released into our body, our heart rate and breathing to quicken, our blood pressure to increase, our blood flow to supercharge our limbs.

In other words, without even thinking about it, we are ready to start throwing punches or run for our lives!

The problem is that in today’s world these automatic responses that got embedded into our unconscious so long ago – fight, flight, freeze or fawn – these responses can work against us these days if we just engage in them reactively, without thinking about them, without choosing how we respond.

Here’s something that happened to me that both illustrates how fear can be extremely valuable, perhaps even lifesaving, and that contains examples of how I went through every one of those four fear responses!

When I was about 19 years old, I went to dinner one evening with a group of my friends from the Lamar University theatre department in Beaumont, TX.

We went to Bennigan’s – gourmet eatin’ in Beaumont back in those days.

All of the guys in our group except one were gay. We were theatre students.

I don’t think we were particularly inappropriate that evening, though we may have gotten loud and obnoxious. We were college aged theatre students.

When we walked out to the parking lot to go back to our cars, a group of guys who were several years older than us and much bigger than most of us followed us out and quickly surrounded us. They were yelling gay slurs at us. They accused one of my friends of having flirted with them.

My first instinct was to try to run to the car, the flight instinct, but we were surrounded.

One of them grabbed my friend’s shirt and raised a clenched fist in the air as if to strike my friend.

Without even thinking, I moved toward them, the fight response. A couple of them grabbed me and pushed me down over the hood of car. I started to struggle, but then I remember thinking that we needed to try to calm this down or thing might get really bad.

I stopped struggling and froze – the freeze response.

The guy who had grabbed my friend snarled at him, “Apologize you … and called him another gay slur I will not repeat”.

My friend said quietly, “I’m sorry”.

After a moment, I said, “We didn’t mean anything.”

That was really hard. That fawning. It felt terrible and humiliating because we hadn’t done anything wrong.

It seemed to calm them a bit though.

More people were coming out of the restaurant, and they finally released us with a few more grumbled warnings and slurs.

Later, as they drove away, I saw rifles mounted in the back window of one of their pickup trucks.

Oh, and my friend they had accused of flirting with them was the one straight guy.

Fear may have served its purpose and saved us that evening.

Now, it may also be instructive to think about common childhood fears, some which may be innate. Loud noises. Large animals. Monsters under the bed. Or the common phobias. Fear of heights. Fear of spiders or snakes. Claustrophobia.

It is fascinating that so many of these represent things that actually could cause us harm – loud noises can mean a storm is coming or a locomotive bearing down us; large animals, spiders and snakes can sometimes be dangerous; we can get hurt if we fall from a large height or get trapped in an enclosed space.

Those monsters under the bed might be warning of threats lurking just outside of our awareness.

So we need these fears, even though there is also this risk of them becoming exaggerated and taking over.

In fact, being without fear is dangerous itself, as a group of scientists who have been studying a woman I will call Samantha have documented.

Samantha has a rare condition which causes calcium deposits in her amygdala so that she no longer has a fear response, though she still feels other emotions.

Samantha has been held at knifepoint twice, gunpoint twice and was nearly beaten to death as result of not have our built in danger warning system called fear. She has had to be restrained from playing with poisonous snakes.

Samantha tells the story of walking to the store one time when a man beckoned her to sit beside him on park bench.

Having no fear response, she did.

He grabbed her, held a knife to her throat and said, “I am going to cut you.”

Absent any fear, she replIed, “Go ahead. I’ll be coming back, and I’ll haunt your ass.”

Samantha’s lack of fear has gotten her into dangerous circumstances. It has also sometimes helped her survive those circumstances, similar to how being able to manage and channel our fear might benefit all of us.

In fact, scientists have discovered that Samantha also does not experience trauma, which in some ways might be thought of as a tremendous fear response that fails to turn back off.

This has led to using alternative therapies for trauma that help diminish ongoing fear, like the meditation we did earlier.

Which matters, because not being able to manage our fear responses can be dangerous to us also, as writer Shel Silverstein described in his poem called “Fear”:

Barnabus Browning
Was scared of drowning,
So he never would swim
Or get into a boat
Or take a bath
Or cross a moat.
He just sat day and night
With his door locked tight
And the windows nailed down,
Shaking with fear
That a wave might appear,
And cried so many tears
That they filled up the room
And he drowned.

We can’t allow ourselves to drown in our fears AND neither can we deny our fears or try to heedlessly just fight our way through them.

A Buddhist Wisdom parable tells of a young warrior who has been told by her instructor she must go into battle with fear.

When the day comes, she approaches fear with respect and asks permission for the battle and asks how she might stand a chance against him.

Fear replies, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.”

In that way, the student warrior learned how to dance with fear rather than try to defeat it.

I love that image of dancing with fear not trying to battle it.

I think that sometimes that’s why we find ways to revel in our fear responses like extreme sports, horror movies, scary amusement park rides – Halloween!

We are learning to dance with fear in smaller steps with less risk involved, similar to how we often treat phobias by starting with small doses of exposure to them.

And so much of what we do together as a religious community also helps us dance through our fears communally.

Our rituals, our rites, our spiritual practices, the community of care and support we nurture.

I love that in our story for all ages, the witch asked for help. They ran off the dragon together.

We are not alone. We can ask one another for help. We can lean on each other.

Let’s face it, on top of all that we encounter in our individual lives, we face some very legitimate communal fears these days.

A climate crisis that seems to accelerate with every sunrise. Mass shootings. Two simultaneous wars, one of which threatens to engulf an entire region and potentially spawn violence well beyond it. Another waged on one side by a malevolent narcissist with nuclear weapons.

A U.S. political system plagued with an ever growing strain of authoritarianism – a quarter of our public now believing violence to achieve their political ends is justified.

And don’t get me started on the short sighted, mean spirited, theocratic harm and injustice we are witnessing here in our own state.

Well, I could go on. And probably will sometime very soon.

There is a lot in our world right now that is harrowing because it is telling us that something important, something consequential is going on.

And so together, we can help each other listen to what that fear is telling us without letting it tell us what to do.

Together, we can counter the dragons of war, greed, injustice, oppression and hate, with courage, solidarity, and love.

Together we can dance through our fear and show up over and over again for justice.

Together, we can meld our story for all ages and our anthem from earlier, proclaiming to those dragons, Iggety, ziggety, zaggety, zoom – We won’t back down.

Together, we need not fear even fear itself.

My beloveds, we do not journey through the valley of the shadow alone. We have one another. We have an entire religious community.

We are rooted in a sacred web of all existence, nourished by a great river of love which flows through it.

We are Beloved.

And from within that interconnectedness, something divine emanates. On this, just a plain ole regular Sunday.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

History, Heritage, Hope

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 22, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In life, we inherit so much of who we are and who we may become, just as we do in our Unitarian Universalist faith and in our church. And that heritage can be a mixed blessing. Hope may be found in knowing that we can find ways to let go of that which denies our collective liberation and build upon that which opens us to life-giving, creative possibilities.


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

I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forebearers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.

– Carl Jung

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

There is a saying that has been popular in the past few years: “I am my ancestors’ wildest dream.” I love this idea, and I have put seeds in that soil… But there are also, in my lineage, ancestors for whom I am likely their worst nightmare. A Black, queer, pansexual, poly-curious, unmarried, childless, defiant, feminist, post-capitalist, Earth lover, constantly thinking about what might be the most revolutionary next step I could take. Yes, I know there are ancestors who would feel they had failed in their work because I exist.

But what I know, which maybe these ancestors have some sense of now, is that the impulse to dominate, and control, and harm, and deny the truth of divergent human experiences is rooted in self-loathing … I have to honor that those ancestors lived in a time of less knowing, less connectedness, and less possibility. I have to honor that their lives are crucial to my callings. I pass my current experiences of freedom and delight back to the ancestors who did not have access to rest, or agency over their time. I pass my current experiences of self-love and radical self-acceptance back to my ancestorsÉ

– adrienne maree brown

Sermon

History

Heritage.

They play such strong roles in who we become and how we act in the world.

His-story. His. Already a heritage of patriarchy shows up within our very word for the story of what built us.

Our heritage, like our DNA, provides building blocks from which we construct ourselves.

Here’s an example from my own his-story.

I’ve shared the story before of how my maternal grandparents were a great source of love and care in my life and how they welcomed my spouse Wayne as a much loved member of the family.

And yet,
they were Southern Baptist and of a different generation.

They were from, as our reading earlier noted, “a time of less knowing… “

So, when Wayne and I were with my grandparents, they and we never openly discussed that we were a couple, and of course, back then, legal marriage equality was only a distant dream.

Even though they loved us both greatly, and we them, this vital aspect of our lives was left unspoken.

Until my grandmother was nearing the end of her life, and we were visiting her for what turned out to be the last time she would let herself to be put into a hospital.

As we said our goodbyes and prepared to leave, she took us both by the hand, locked her eyes with mine and said, “Take care of each other.”

In that brief moment, her love broke through what had been left implicit and made it explicit.

She gave to me and to Wayne an inheritance of limitless loving given to her by her ancestors. She broke through that heritage of “less knowing”.

And so I come from a heritage of taking care of one another and one where love was demonstrated, both verbally and physically.

I think that may be at least in part a source of my calling to ministry and before that an adulthood spent mostly in non-profit work and anti-oppression anti-racism, social justice activism.

Yet,
I also come from a heritage wherein my grandfather was a deacon in a southern baptist church, and there were norms against expressing uncomfortable truths aloud.

Significant aspects of our lives had to be left unacknowledged. And, though it has often been hard for me to reconcile myself with emotionally, I also hold a heritage of patriarchy and racism and anti-LGBTQism and so many other isms handed down from within my family, as well as the community, and, indeed, the country in which I grew up.

So, while my family story involved a legacy of offering care, that care sometimes came with unspoken requirements – like when they would invite anyone to Christmas dinner if they found out they were spending the holiday alone, and yet a silent code required everyone stay in their place according to race, gender, orientation, etc.

As I have gone about the work of social justice and ministry, I have had to persistently unlearn an inheritance of privilege hierarchies, supremacy cultures.

I suspect it is this way for most if not all of us.

We all have to deal with “impersonal karma”, the “things left unfinished” that Carl Jung referenced in our call to worship; “the impulse to deny the truth of diverse human experiences” that Adrienne Maree Brown highlighted in our reading.

We all come from a long story that runs through multiple generations, and our story is a large part of who we are.

We can change the plot though.

We can draw from our heritage that which creates more love, more justice, more fulfillment in our lives and in our world. We can choose to leave behind legacies of pain and harm.

This same dichotomy of inheritances has also been handed down to us by our Unitarian Universalist ancestors, as well as those of this church.

Just as a few examples, here in the U.S., both our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors were early supporters of abolition, women’s suffrage and rights, new ways of educating our children, and a host of social services for people in need.

They were among the first predominantly white denominations to ordain women and African American Ministers.

Yet,
the book “The Iowa Sisterhood” tells the stories of Unitarian and Universalist women who forged difficult but ultimately successful ministries in the great plains states of the 19th century but were never accepted by many of their male colleagues.

In fact, they entered these small struggling, then frontier parishes to begin with because they could not get placements in the more established churches of New England.

Likewise, “Black Pioneers in a White Denomination” reveals the tale of the Unitarian minister Ethelred Brown, who left Jamaica to attend our Meadville Unitarian seminary in the early 20th century, even though he had been told by that seminary that he would be unlikely to find a placement in any of their virtually all white churches.

That turned out to be true.

So, Brown founded an African American Unitarian church in Harlem that came to be highly successful, only to find himself kicked out by the Unitarian Association because he was too radical – which meant he was a socialist who dared to demand true equality for black folks.

He was only reinstated after he threatened a lawsuit.

Our great Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, was an abolitionist, even at a time when some other Unitarians and Universalists supported slavery.

He kept a gun in his pulpit because he and his church were helping slaves escape to the North and Canada.

He preached thunderously against slavery and said that “Slavery tramples on the constitution… “

Yet
he also said some terribly racist things that I will not repeat here today.

A legacy of less knowing.

More recently, after the the Unitarians and the Universalists merged, we UUs have been at the forefront of civil rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, LGBTQ rights and so many other movements for social justice.

And yet,
we have suffered repeated incidences of racism, misogyny, and the like within our own institutions.

In 1968, a group of black Unitarians and their white supporters walked out of our Unitarian Universalist national General Assembly over disagreements about whether the Black Affairs Council would be funded and structured in a way that empowered them to manage their own affairs.

While this became known as the “Black Empowerment Controversy”, perhaps it might be better remembered as the “White Supremacy Culture Affair”.

More recently, in 2017, the president of our unitarian universalist association and other upper staff resigned after a controversy surrounding a BIPOC final candidate for one of our regional lead positions having been told she was “not a good fit” for the position.

A white male hired another white male for the position instead.

These are just a few examples of a dichotomy within our UU heritage.

Likewise the story of our church contains tales of great commitment to our faith and our values, as well as some challenges along the way.

Going all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century, this church was active in women’s suffrage, feminism, and civil rights.

We helped fight for the desegregation of Barton Springs pool and eventually all pools in Austin.

Throughout its history, the church has supported numerous charities.

We have been active in LGBTQ rights from very early on.

From its beginnings, we were active in the struggle against AIDS. We helped launch two of the other UU churches in our area, as well our U-Bar-U retreat center in the hill country.

Over the years, our church members have carried our values into leadership roles they have played in the arts, higher education, music, medicine, poetry, theology, politics, well, you name it.

One of our resident historians, church member Luther Elmore, discovered that former Texas Governor, Ann Richards, was a member of this church. She served as either board secretary or board treasurer, no one can seem to remember which, but we have inarguable proof that she signed the membership book in 1969.

Philosopher Charles Harthshorne, one of the major contributors to process theology, which has become a sustaining worldview for many UUs, including me, was also a longterm member of this church.

So we are rooted in an ancestry of justice making, honest theology, and human equality.

Yet,
just for example, the church only called its first female settled minister, Meg Barnhouse, in 2011 (we’d had a couple of female interim ministers before that).

But hey, at least after that the church went big – bringing on several more female ministers and two more LGBTQ ministers besides Meg since then.

And like our larger UU faith, we also have had our fair share of controversies over the years.

I had the pleasure of visiting one of our long-term church members who lived to over 100 years old not long before she died.

She got to recounting church stories while we visited.

At one point she stopped, looked at me and said, “Take it from me. I’ve been with that church for a long time and it is one of the best religious communities anywhere, and I argued with those people more than anyone else in my life.”

Anyway, again, these are just a few examples.

If you want to know more about your church heritage, our other resident historian, Leo Collas, has posted QR codes like the one on that column throughout the church.

Look for small signs with an Easter egg printed on them.

And again, like me with my family, we can learn from when our heritage has sometimes failed to live up to our professed values.

And at the same time, we can also receive with great gratitude the commitment to progress, justice and human dignity our ancestors bequeathed to us.

I’ll close by noting that, of course, we live in a country in which our ancestors have also left us this dichotomy of inheritances.

A country about which attorney, activist, and commentator Van Jones wrote, “From the very beginning of this country, America has been two things, not one. We have our founding reality and our founding dream. And the two are not the same.”

So, our heritage includes slavery, racism, violence, subjugation of native Americans and the theft of their lands, voting disenfranchisement, imperialism, and the denial of the very existence of LGBTQ folks, to name just a very few.

A his-story told not to just center males, but that has also tried to erase the contributions and perspectives of those with different heritages – again, women, BIPOC folks, LGBTQ folks, and more erased these from the formative stories of our country.

And yet,
our heritage also includes that founding dream articulated by our ancestors – that beautiful vision of the self-evident truth that we are all created equal.

So, once again, we can draw from our heritage that which creates more love and more justice and leave behind legacies of pain and harm.

We inherit a heritage of racism. We inherit a heritage of patriarchy.

We inherit a heritage of hetero-supremacy and gender orthodoxy. We inherit a heritage of enforced and reinforced income and wealth inequality and so many other inequalities upon inequalities.

We inherit a heritage of often violent and even lethal oppression and injustice.

And yet,
we also inherent a heritage of “all people are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

We inherit a heritage of “we shall overcome” and “I have a dream.”

We inherit a heritage of suffragettes and Stonewall and “make love not war” and feminism and ACT-UP and womanism and Occupy Wall Street and “Save Our Planet” and Black Lives Matter and Me Too and Rock the Vote and on and on and on.

We inherit a heritage of love and justice and inherent worth and dignity for all.

So the question becomes, what parts of our heritage shall we pick up and pass on?

What of our heritage shall we amplify and what shall we leave behind?

Right now,
in this moment,
and in all of our days,
for some future someones,
we are the ancestors.

What heritage will leave them? What inheritance shall we become?

Our choices can create seeds of hope for future generations. May that be our-story.

A-women. Amen. Blessed be.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Celebration Sunday

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
October 15, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Generosity shows up in our lives in so many places and so many ways. Today we celebrate the generosity that is present in this church and which enables us to do the work of nourishing souls, transforming lives, and doing justice.


Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice for all who are here, and all who are not:
For all who have ever walked through our doors,
for those who may yet find this spiritual home,
and for those, we can’t even yet imagine.
For each of us and for usalll, may this flame burn warm and bright.

Call to Worship

LETTING GO
Jay Wolin

Are we a people of holding on or of letting go?
Holding on to rigid ideas or
Letting go and opening our minds and our hearts, to something new;
Holding on to certainty of how things should be or
Letting go and living with the uncertainty of new ways of being in the world;
Holding on to what makes us comfortable or
Letting go so we may grow which can be uncomfortable;
Holding on to what makes us safe or
Letting go to make room to help others feel safe?
With this flame, this symbol of our religion,
let it be a symbol of burning up the ties that hold us back from being our true self and reaching our true potential;
let it be a symbol of lighting a new way for us into a better tomorrow;
and let it be a symbol of letting go
Because holding on too long and too tightly is never good for the soul.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

The story goes of an old woman who found a precious gem in the river…
by Rev. Gretchen Haley

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Hearts Broken Open

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
October 8, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our lives are filled with moments of amazing grace, which break our hearts wide open with compassion for our fellow beings. We may not know why these moments come and go; even so we can meet them with gratitude together.


Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice to affirm that new light is ever waiting to break through to enlighten our ways. New truth is ever waiting to break through to illuminate our minds. New love is ever waiting to break through to warm our hearts. May we be open to this light and to the rich possibilities that it brings us.

Call to Worship

Come into this space, this sacred space, this sanctuary. Whether your sanctuary is here or at home or some other on-line space. Draw in its beauty as if drawing in a deep breath. Draw in its peace as if drawing in a deep breath and come, come into this space with hearts open, hearts ready to receive, hearts ready to give. Let us begin.

– Rev. Michelle LaGrave

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE SOUND OF THE GENUINE
By Howard Thurman

If I were to ask you what is the thing that you desire most in life this afternoon, you would say a lot of things off the top of your head, most of which you wouldn’t believe but you would think that you were saying the things that I thought you ought to think that you should say.

But I think that if you were stripped to whatever there is in you that is literal and irreducible, and you tried to answer that question, the answer may be something like this: I want to feel that I am thoroughly and completely understood so that now and then I can take my guard down and look out around me and not feel that I will be destroyed with my defenses down. I want to feel completely vulnerable, completely naked, completely exposed and absolutely secure.

This is what you look for in your children when you have them, this is what you look for in your husband if you get one. That I can run the risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my vulnerability will not step on me. That I can feel secure in my awareness of the active presence of my own idiom in me.

So as I live my life then, this is what I am trying to fulfill. It doesn’t matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife. I’m secure because I hear the sound of the genuine in myself and having learned to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the sound of the genuine in you.

Sermon

I enter the trauma room and stand off to the side, watching. A young man, barely a man, lies before me on a stretcher. He is combative, fighting with the medical staff about having his pants taken off, demanding the two police officers in the room be removed, and refusing to give his name or any information about what happened to him. I watch as he alternates between fighting and yelling with the staff and curling over on his side and crying about how much it hurts. He was found, by police, lying in a snowbank; a victim of assault. Not much is known, yet, though he is clearly injured on one side. His appearance; young, male, ears and tongue pierced, arm tattooed; and his manner; refusing to give his name or story in front of the police, his anger and combativeness toward the medical staff; give rise to a myriad of possible labels and stories, none of them flattering. Then he turns on his side once more, curls up into a ball, and cries about the pain. My heart breaks open. A part of me knows this young man could be … a gangbanger, a person accustomed to being in trouble with the law, an innocent victim, or a thousand other things.

But none of that matters now. The possible labels and stories have fallen away. All I can see now is a young boy; crying, in pain, and needing comfort. My heart has broken open. I move closer, encourage him to breathe, and rub his head in comfort. His chaplain is there. Someone who cares, not just about his body and its broken condition; but about his feelings and his spirit, which have also been broken. He has been seen and his need for emotional comfort and spiritual healing has been acknowledged.

Years ago, I worked as a chaplain resident in an intensive clinical pastoral education program. The hospital where I served is a Level 1 trauma center and contains the state’s only burn unit. It is located in a city filled with violent crime and gang activity. Patients seen cover a wide range of diagnoses; from gunshot wounds and stabbings to appendicitis; from cancer treatments and life-threatening burns to dehydration or frostbite and they cover all ages, from the not-yet-born to elders dying in hospice suites. The program itself is demanding even, at times, grueling. Residents are there to learn how to do pastoral care, in all of its forms, well. Eventually, they move on to churches and hospices, hospitals and synagogues; wherever they are called and feel the call. Meanwhile, the most is made of their time in the program; work-weeks range from 60 to 64 hours; some shifts lasting as long as 28 hours at a time. Written work and assignments are in addition to those hours. My aim in telling you all of this is to explain how easy it is to become jaded in such a setting. It takes a significant amount of dedication and commitment from anyone who chooses to do a residency. And I will admit, there were times when I questioned my own levels of dedication and commitment, especially after a long and sleep-deprived night. But … this night and this patient I just spoke of was not one of those times.

Though I eventually found out his name and that he had been beaten by several guys who he is going to “get” someday; I never did get the chance to talk with him and find out who he really is as a person and what his story was about. The next hour or so had been spent alternating between resisting staff and their attempts at medical care and allowing himself to be comforted and soothed by the chaplain. Eventually, he fell asleep, from sheer exhaustion, and for several hours. I did not see him again, though his presence remains with me still, for my heart had been broken open.

I do not know how or why these moments of broken-openness come and go, just that they do. I consider these moments of broken-openness to be moments of seeing, of truly seeing, or “essentially seeing” as Mark Nepo has termed it or “the sound of the genuine” as Howard Thurman has so eloquently described. I consider these moments of heart-broken-openness to be moments of amazing grace.

Amazing Grace. There is a story behind the song; one which you have probably heard. It goes like this … John Newton was a slave trader, who after surviving a horrific storm, became suddenly wracked with guilt about his chosen profession. Newton immediately turned his ship back to Africa, freed all his slaves, and, as a newly-converted Christian, wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”. Now, as heart-warming as that story sounds, it is unlikely to be a story Newton himself would recognize. That story is really the legend behind the song. It does not reflect the sound of the genuine John Newton.

So today, I am going to tell you a different story; a different story about the same person and one, hopefully, John Newton would better recognize. This one is a story about a young boy frequently in trouble for disobeying his father, who grew into a young man impressed in the British navy. Of a deserter who was caught, publicly stripped and beaten, then demoted to the lowest rank. Of a slave trader brought back to life – by slaves sneaking him food from their own small allowance. Of a slave trader locked up by his own master – who went without food, shelter, or clothing – for many hours at a time; yet, still continued to trade slaves after he was rescued.

It is the story of a man who drank and swore too much, who derided Christians, who was disliked by his fellow crew yet was saved by them when he nearly went overboard in a drunken stupor. It is the story of a man who twice, by two different captains on two different ships, avoided drowning when he was sent on a last-minute errand. It is the story of a man who got shot in the hat, lived through at least two tropical diseases, one mutiny, and three slave revolts.

It is also the story of a 23 year old who converted to Christianity- yet continued to trade slaves. Of a 39 year old who became a priest, of a 47 year old who wrote a hymn, of a 60 year old who finally began to speak out against slavery – and continued to do so for 22 more years. John Newton’s story is NOT an easily-reducible story (as no one’s really is); and it is NOT the story of legend. John Newton’s story IS the story of a human life, of painfully slow growth, and change, and finally, transformation. This John Newton story reflects “the sound of the genuine” in one former slave-trader come priest. His story is a story of amazing grace. His story is a story of a heart broken open.

Knowing this story, the longer, deeper, fuller, though still-not-complete story, brings richer and deeper meaning to the words of this famous hymn. Listen, once more, with eyes and ears and hearts open, if you will …

 

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.
Twas grace which taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils, and storms I have already come.
Twas grace which brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.

 

When John Newton penned the words “through many dangers, toils, and storms, I have already come” he wasn’t exaggerating; not by a long shot. Like all of us, his life was full of its own dangers and challenges and near misses. His life was replete with its own tragedies and sorrows. As my life is … and your life is … and all of my patients’ lives were … As Unitarian Universalists it is from our lives; from our direct, lived experiences that we build our thea/olgies and philosophies about what is sacred; about what is holy; about what gives meaning to our lives and what our lives mean.

This journey of meaning-making and discovery and, hopefully, self-growth is never-ending. William Ellery Channing, one of our early and most famous forebears, believed that this process (which he and other 19th century Unitarians termed self-culture) continued even past death and into the afterlife. Either way, we all continue, throughout our lives, to make meaning and to discover anew, as did I, during the time I spent working as a chaplain. Here are a few of the things I learned:

All of us, and any of us, can and do feel lonely and isolated at times and it is not a matter how many people we are surrounded by. Each of us, any of us, can get wrapped up in our own pain and suffering and when this happens we are often unable to see the loneliness and pain and suffering of others who surround us. I have often walked into a hospital room and discovered a person who is sitting, or lying, in isolation and loneliness and who is suffering. Though the hospital is 430 beds full, and almost all of the people who fill those beds are experiencing some kind of pain or suffering, each person feels alone. Alone, in the middle of four hundred and thirty other people, also feeling alone. And I daresay, there may be people right here, there probably are people right here, sitting in this room, amongst all these people, who feel lonely; at least sometimes. It can be as if each person is blind to the suffering of others and cannot see through their own pain. This is a natural phenomenon, inherent to the experience of being human, and can easily happen to any of us when we are hurting deeply.

So please hear me well. I do not mean any of this as criticism of any person or even as a critique of the human condition. Rather, I see these moments as opportunities; opportunities for grace; maybe even for amazing grace.

“Grace”, as a theological concept, traditionally refers to the grace of God. Though there are multiple definitions of exactly what grace is within Christianity, I like to explain it as a gift, neatly packaged and tied with a divine bow. Christians, may or may not believe grace is deserved, and they may differ on ideas about how grace is earned, or even if it is earned; but it seems that no matter what, by anyone’s definition, grace is always unexpected. When John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” he certainly was referring to a Christian concept of the divine grace of God. Today, though, I’d like to argue that there is such a thing as human grace; a grace that, like divine grace, may or may not be earned, but is certainly always unexpected.

I believe that each of us needs to be seen, heard, known, affirmed, and validated in our pain and in our suffering and even in our joy. I believe this needs to happen whether we are lying in a hospital bed or sitting in a pew on Sunday morning; whether we are at a gathering of friends or standing by the grave of a loved one. No one’s life is just like another’s, even when we are experiencing similar life circumstances. Each person’s experience is unique and must be seen for what it is. And when someone comes along and sees another’s pain, or joy, or sorrow, sees it’s essential truth, and sees the person behind the emotion; whether that someone is your chaplain or your minister, your friend or a stranger to you; you have been a recipient of grace. Human grace; extended from one human to another; yet no less holy than any kind of divine grace.

I believe that when we can see, when we can essentially see, the truth of another’s life through their own eyes and hearts, then our hearts are broken open and our lives are filled with amazing grace.

May it be so. Amen and Blessed Be.

Benediction:

With hearts open, and with a love which knows no bounds, may your spirits be filled with amazing grace.

 


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Commitment Sunday

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 1, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our commitment to supporting this church and its mission are making real differences in our lives and in our world. We will look back on some of those differences this religious community has made and re-commit our time, treasure, and talent toward nourishing souls, transforming lives, and doing justice to build the Beloved Community.


Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

Stewardship is this crazy idea that we should treat other people’s stuff better than our own. To me, stewardship is the act of taking care of something you were given whether or not you could acquire it for yourself in the first place. It’s less of an environmental idea and more of a common courtesy, which is exactly what stewardship should be, common.

– Eli Sowry

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

Every act of kindness, generosity, or love overflows its original bounds. Our acts of kindness, generosity, and love multiply. Stewardship is a call to transformation.

Stewardship is an invitation to do new things in relationship with people in this community and beyond our walls. Generously giving of our time, talents, and treasure to this church community is a radical act of hope that has ripple effects that continue to multiply in people’s lives and in the world. We give because we are invested in the creation of a truly Beloved Community for all.

– Tina DeYoe
Director of Lifespan Religious Exploration
Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, NM

Sermon

Research shows that two of the things people dislike talking about the very most are money and commitment.

Welcome to Commitment Sunday – when we talk about church members committing to how much money they will pledge to support this church and its mission next year!

So let’s just start by getting THAT out there.

People most often dislike talking about commitment because we’re afraid that something might happen that will make us unable to live up to our commitments.

That’s OK, we know such things can happen, and we adjust if needed.

We often dislike talking about money out of fear of transgressing cultural taboos -like for those of us who grew up oh-so-white protestant, where talking about money was considered gauche.

Like talking about politics at the dinner table. Or religion.

We will probably talk about both of those this morning too though.

So, let’s try to set these fears aside and engage in the spiritual practice of embracing commitment to our religious values and mission.

So, how about we get the money part out of the way first? Unitarian Universalist Churches are mainly funded by the pledges of our members. We do not receive support from a larger denominational body or the like.

For our stewardship campaign this time, we will need to secure $825,000 in pledges to support a 2024 budget of just under 1.3 million dollars.

That’s not an extravagant budget. It does not add anything to our church operational infrastructure. It keeps everything, including staffing levels the same.

That $825,000 is about the same as was pledged last time.

The good news is some wonderful folks in the church have already pledged about $175,000 toward 2024 already.

So, that’s enough about the money part, let’s talk about commitment, because I want you to know- what your commitment has already made possible for this religious community and the lives it touches.

During the previous stewardship campaign, the members of this church committed the greatest amount of support in the church’s history.

Your pledges to support the church, especially given all that we had recently been through – the church closure because of the pandemic; the retirement of a much loved minister; the loss of a longterm, also greatly loved staff member to cancer – your commitment and resilience after all of that and more was and is simply amazing.

Our stewardship theme is “Rebuild, Renew, Rise Up”, and we truly have done that – and continue to do so!

I remember that around this time last year, we were talking about how coming out of the pandemic, there was this real hunger for spirituality and greater meaning out there.

After so much isolation, people were also feeling a real need for community.

And in Austin, TX, because of your commitment, this church was there for over 75 folks who have found community and a spiritual home here since then.

And that is unusual. Very few churches are growing and thriving coming out of those pandemic isolation times.

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is growing and thriving.

Because of your commitment and that of our wonderful religious education (RE) staff, our RE program is also one of the only such programs across the country that is growing and vibrant.

We have added numerous adult RE offerings. Kelly, our Director ofRE, has reimagined the program in ways that have kept it robust.

We trained facilitators from across this country on how to offer Our Whole Lives, the age appropriate sexuality education program that enhances and perhaps even saves lives.

We offered a summer camp for children, steeped in Unitarian Universalist history and theology to help deepen their growing spirituality and faith.

This religious community exudes an energy, a vitality that is rare these days and worth celebrating.

If you are one of the folks who have joined us relatively recently, thank you for your commitment. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for belonging within this community of faithful vitality. Because this church committed to its stewardship needs, we have also been able to offer so many ministries to all who cross our threshold either physically or virtually.

Ministries that provide ways to find and explore that hunger for spirituality – that longing for community.

We offer so many that I cannot possibly mention them all here, but I do want to mention a few that we either newly began or that we revitalized over the past several months.

A recently revitalized First UU Pagan Alliance group is going strong.

A wonderful bunch of folks, several of them Unitarian Universalist seminarians, offered an alternative, Vespers, worship service one Tuesday evening per month. The group is looking at possibly expanding these in this church year.

We have a wealth of spiritual direction, spirituality, and spiritual practices groups that are going strong, some of them also newly formed.

Some great folks have rekindled our healthy relations team to support us in fulfilling our covenantal promises that bind us together in the ways of love.

Our wonderful First UU Cares team has done so much to expand a culture of caring within the church – to make sure we are there to support one another and feel comfortable reaching out for support.

Our memorial services team has expanded their support for folks going through one of life’s most difficult times – the loss of a loved one.

At one point this year, this team and our staff provided four memorial services in one week.

I cannot tell you how many people have told me that this team and this church have helped them make it through when they were afraid they might not.

We also began a peer grief support group in the church.

Fun, fellowship and the arts are also key to our sense of spirituality and community, and your commitment has allowed our terrific fellowship team to thrive, our Sharon and Brian Moore Gallery to provide some truly outstanding exhibitions, and our amazing director of music, Brent Baldwin, to launch a new concert series.

And speaking of music, our music program and choir are just beyond first rate. They truly do nourish our souls.

Your commitment also allowed us to bring in a diverse group of guest worship leaders so that we could benefit from experiencing a wide range of life-perspectives and styles.

I can’t tell you how complimentary our guests were of this church’s staff- how the staff’s professionalism made appearing at our church such a pleasure for these guests.

We have what has to be one of the finest church staffs anywhere, made possible by the financial support of the religious community.

Well, I could go on and on about the wonderful things this church is doing, and I have not even come close to covering all of them.

I’ll wrap up though by talking about how your commitment to this community has allowed us to live out our values.

Folks have formed a new Vegan group.

The Earthkeepers group is helping us be in right relationship with our land.

Our social action council now has well over 100 members and a brilliant group of social justice pillars doing great work to bring our mission into the world – Reproductive Justice, Racial Justice, Environmental Justice, LGBTQ+ Rights, Democracy, Immigrant Rights – we continue to play an active role with Austin Sanctuary Network, which we helped found.

Our fantastic reproductive rights group just issued an impressive report on their much needed work.

Did you know we are partnering with a non-profit organization to be a distribution site for reproductive health kits?

Our environmental action folks were a part of efforts that stopped radioactive waste from being brought to West Texas by rail and dumped there.

We’ve engaged in trans inclusion work and are hosting support workshops for trans and other gender diverse folks and their loved ones.

This church brought a huge presence to the recent session of the Texas Legislature, speaking out on a number of issues, especially some involving the rights and dignity of LGBTQ folks.

We were there to show we care. We were there to follow the lead of those most affected. We showed up to proclaim our religious values in the public arena.

We put the denizens of our Texas State Capital on notice that the struggle for human rights, dignity and justice is far from over.

We will show up for love and justice over and over and over again. OK, I made it most of the way without talking about politics!

A church member recently told me that given the meanness of spirit in our state politics, not to mention our ever hotter Austin summers, this church is what makes it possible for them to keep living here.

I think that is true for me too.

So, though the research says we don’t like talking about money and commitment, research has also found that committing to generosity can benefit our mental and physical well-being.

It can even lower our blood pressure.

So this Commitment Sunday, let’s all lower our blood pressure and commit or recommit to this church.

 

  • Commit to nourishing souls.
  • Commit to transforming lives.
  • Commit to justice.
  • Commit to the Beloved Community.
  • Commit to building new ways that within our midst and in our world, bring that Beloved Community alive.

 

Amen.

I invite you to reflect upon the commitment you may wish to make to the values, mission, and ministries of this church.

Please consider what might be meaningful and spiritually nourishing for you.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Belonging

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
September 24, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong – somewhere, somehow, sometime in your life? Probably, if you’re like most people. What makes the difference in feeling like you do or do not belong? How can we help ourselves, each other, and people we haven’t even met yet cultivate that oh-so-important sense of belonging? And how does all of this relate to our Unitarian Universalist Principles?


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

Lifting Our Voices #36

We are all longing to go home to some place
we have never been – a place, half- remembered, and haIf-envisioned
we can only catch glimpses of from time to time.
Community.
Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion
without having the words catch in our throats.
Somewhere a circle of hands
will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power.
Community means strength
that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done.
Arms to hold us when we falter.
A circle of healing.
A circle of friends.
Someplace where we can be free.

– Starhawk

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

YOU BELONG: A CALL FOR CONNECTION
by Sebene Selassie

“When you don’t like the joke, you belong. When you’re the “only one” of your race, disability, or sexuality, you belong. When you’re terrified to speak in public, you belong. When you feel hurt or when you have hurt someone else you belong. When you are down to your last dollars and the rent is due, you belong. When you feel overwhelmed by the horrors of human beings, you belong. When you have a debilitating illness, you belong. When everyone else is getting married, you belong. When you don’t know what you’re doing with your life, you belong. When the world feels like it’s falling apart, you belong. When you feel you don’t belong, you belong.”

Sermon

I remember well the moment I knew that I belonged in a UU congregation. I was in the meetinghouse, standing at the kitchen sink to wash my hands, when I saw this … a bottle of Seventh Generation dish soap. And then I saw that the paper towels were unbleached, brown, recycled paper towels.

This was many years ago, long before you could go to the regular grocery store and buy all sorts of cruelty-free, environmentally friendly, vegan much of anything. Instead, you had to go to a natural foods store or order what you wanted online. That meant that in many areas of my life, like at work, I felt different from most other people. I was a vegetarian, with vegan tendencies, and had been for many years. And most folk, even in the liberal areas, just … weren’t.

So, back to the sink. There I stood, looking at dish soap and paper towels, and a feeling overcame me that here were a people who would understand me, all of me. Here, I could be free. Here, I wouldn’t feel so different, so separate. I felt my body relax, as if I had been holding my breath and could finally breathe. A missing piece of the puzzle, that thing I had been longing for, without even knowing it, had been found. Here, I was at home. Here, I belonged.

If Sebene Selassie, the author of this morning’s reading, were here, I think she would tell me, tell all of us, that this experience of mine wasn’t really about finding a place I belonged, so much as it was about experiencing a feeling of belonging. Because I already belonged. I belong. And so do you. Selassie would say, and has said, that the key to belonging comes from within. We all already belong to everything – to ourselves, to each other, to the cosmos. That the feeling of not belonging comes from a “delusion of separation” – a false belief that we are separate. That if we don’t feel like we belong, we can learn to feel it, because belonging is wired within us. Feelings of belonging come from within.

Let’s sit with that for a moment. Everyone of you, whether you are here in person, or watching online, or watching on television, belongs. You already belong. Whether you feel it or not, and I hope you can, you belong.

Selassie, among other things, is a meditation teacher and a student of Buddhism. She explains it this way: There is a paradox in Buddhism called the Doctrine of Two Truths

“the absolute or ultimate truth of interconnection and the relative or conventional truth of difference. The absolute and the relative seem to contradict each other … but they describe only one reality. Belonging flourishes within this paradox: everything is connected, yet everything is experienced as separate.”

Within our own Unitarian Universalist tradition, we know this as “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part”. We are interconnected. Interdependent. We cannot separate ourselves from the web of existence, from all of life here on earth, or from the cosmos itself.

Let me say more about this interdependent web of all existence and where it comes from. As a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association of congregations, we have covenanted to affirm and promote several Principles. These are found within Article II of our UUA’s bylaws and, because of their importance, are printed many other places, including in the front of our gray hymnals.

The interdependent web is the 7th Principle. All Unitarian Universalists, all UU congregations, have covenanted to affirm and promote the interdependent web of all existence. This is not a belief statement, but an action statement. Though it may be helpful to understand that many of us have incorporated the Principles into our personal belief systems.

Now, bear with me for a moment, because here comes the part where we need to catch everybody up all together. As we are a non-creedal faith, we rely on covenant and because we are a living tradition, we require of ourselves to review our covenant and, therefore, our Principles, every so many years. We are currently in one of those review periods and so we are living, for a year, with a new format, based on shared values, which will then come up for a final vote in the General Assembly in June of 2024.

These are our (proposed) shared values. Love is at the center, along with a flaming chalice. The remaining six values are pictured in a circle around the chalice. Starting at 12:00, there is:

  • Interdependence, in a swirl of orange;
  • Equity, in a swirl of red;
  • Transformation, in a swirl of purple;
  • Pluralism, in a swirl of blue;
  • Generosity, in a swirl of teal.
  • Justice, in a swirl of yellow;
(The image and discussion of the proposed change can be found HERE.)

If you listen or read carefully, you will find the familiar language of all of our Principles reincorporated into these shared values. The proposed language, which goes with the value of Interdependence, is this:

 

“Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. With humility and reverence, we covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation, creating and nurturing sustainable relationships of repair, mutuality, and justice.”

 

We are interconnected, interdependent with all of existence. We cannot remove ourselves from it, therefore, we belong. By the very nature of our existence, we belong. We belong to the interdependent web, we belong to the earth, the rocks, the trees, the oceans, the mountains, the creeks and rivers, the forests, the deserts, the animals, the birds, the volcanos, the lands where we have never been. The parts we like and the parts we don’t. We belong to all of it. And we belong to each other. Whether we want to belong or not, whether we try to belong or not. We belong because we are. Whether we see it, or hear it, or feel it, or sense it, or experience it, or not – we belong because we are.

(Story about cafeteria table in seminary)

My friend belonged, but did not experience feelings of belonging, did not experience feeling welcomed at the table. No matter our intentions of radical welcome, no matter our efforts at radical welcome, no matter whether we were the cool kids or not. My friend perceived us as separate, as disconnected. Sometimes, the best laid plans simply go awry. And that’s okay. We learn something from it and then we try again.

Welcoming is the Soul Matters theme for this month for some of the small groups (chalice circles). So, I’ve been thinking a lot about welcoming and belonging, how they are similar and how they are different and where they overlap. To my mind, belonging is something that just is, whether we want it or not, and whether we can feel it or not. This is new thinking for me, to which I greatly credit Sebene Selassie after reading and reflecting deeply upon her work and how it converges with my own life and experiences.

Welcoming, on the other hand, is about actions we can take. We can practice welcoming. We can even practice Radical Welcoming. And these practices can, potentially, increase feelings of belonging in those we are welcoming. Here, this congregation practices welcoming in a lot of ways: there is a welcome table, there are name tags, cough drops, and Kleenex, there are gender neutral single stall bathrooms, there is a membership coordinator, there are classes about membership, there is a group that helps people connect to the various church ministry teams, there is a BIPOC group, there is an LGBTQ group, there are classes on antiracism and trans inclusion, and so, so much more.

I see welcoming, or radical welcoming, as actions we can choose to take, and which highlight the strands of the interdependent web of all existence. It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we are separate, disconnected, or don’t belong. It is easy to get busy with our lives and not notice the connections. the strands of the web, which are there all the time. Welcoming practices help ourselves and each other to see, or hear, or sense, or otherwise experience the strands of connection inherent in our interdependent web. It’s kind of like in one of those action movies where someone is trying to break into a high security area crisscrossed by invisible lasers. The would-be intruder, who is also often the heroic figure, pulls out a can of something, sprays it all around, and the laser beams suddenly become visible. I like to imagine engaging in welcoming practices as something like spraying that can. We can make the strands of the interdependent web, which connects all of us, and to which we all belong, visible by spraying that can. Just like spraying a room to find all the hidden laser beams, we welcome people to highlight the strands of belonging.

While speaking of belonging, and of welcoming, I want to highlight another important aspect of our living tradition. We are not a faith where anything goes, where you can believe anything you want, or do anything you want. Our beliefs and actions are all meant to be oriented toward the good, for the building of a better world, for the creation of beloved community. While people of all identities, or combination of identities, marginalized or privileged, are welcome here, not all behaviors are. This is why covenanting is so critical to our faith.

When we are at our best, we have good, strong, healthy boundaries. In this congregation, that means being a people of goodwill. And, by the way, the Healthy Relations Team is currently working on some proposed changes to the church covenant to make it more inclusive. If you’d like to participate in this process, go see them at their table at social hour.

All people of goodwill – Whoever you are, wherever you come from, wherever you find yourself on your life’s journey, whichever your pronouns, whether you’ve walked in or rolled in or dialed in, whomever you love, you are welcome here. You belong here.

May it be so evermore. Amen and Blessed Be.

Benediction

All know, that you are welcome here.
Know that you belong.
Know this deep down in the center of your soul:
Each and everyone of you belongs,
All the time, everywhere, to everyone, to everything. May the interdependent web shimmer and shine, hum and thrum,
for all your days and for all of your nights.

Amen, Amen, and Blessed Be.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

The Promises We Make

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 17, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As a religion without creed, without a set of beliefs to which we must all adhere, our UU spirituality is rooted in relationship. We create religious community though sacred promises we make with one another about how we will be together in the ways of love. We will examine the ancient tradition of covenant making and how we practice it today at First UU Church of Austin.


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

UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST PRINCIPLES

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

  • The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
  • Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
  • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
  • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
  • The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
  • The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
  • Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
  • journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

FIRST UU CHURCH OF AUSTIN COVENANT OF HEALTHY RELATIONS

As a religious community, we promise:

To Welcome and Serve

  • By being intentionally hospitable to all people of good will
  • By being present with one another through life’s transitions
  • By encouraging the spiritual growth of people of all ages

To Nurture and Protect

  • By communicating with one another directly in a spirit of compassion and good will
  • By speaking when silence would inhibit progress
  • By disagreeing from a place of curiosity and respect
  • By interrupting hurtful interactions when we witness them
  • By expressing our appreciation to each other

To Sustain and Build

  • By affirming our gratitude with generous gifts of time, talent and money for our beloved community
  • By honoring our commitments to ourselves and one another for the sake of our own integrity and that of our congregation
  • By forgiving ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward

Thus do we covenant with one another.

Sermon

In May of 2009, same sex marriage was only legal in a hand full of states in the US.

My now spouse Wayne and I had already been together for 18 years. We were already spouses in all but the legal sense.

Still, we really wanted to make that commitment to one another. We wanted to speak our promises to one another about making a life together. We’ve been together 32 years now, so I guess that’s going to happen.

But, we wanted to make it legal, even if that had to be in some place other than this, our home state of Texas.

At that time, gay marriage was only legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa. Iowa?

We decided it would be more fun to get married in Vancouver, Canada instead, where it would also be legal.

We boarded a plane, flew to Denver International Airport, where we then board our connecting flight to Vancouver. A short time later, our plane caught on fire. Just a little electrical fire with smoke coming out of the passenger air vents.

After an emergency landing in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where our plane was larger than the terminal, they put us on buses back to Denver, where we would board a new plane to Vancouver very early the next morning, this time minus the onboard smoke and burning smell we hoped.

Now, this was early on a Saturday morning, and our wedding in Vancouver was scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

BUT, to make it legal, we had to fill out a wedding certificate application, which for some reason in Canada at the time you could only do at this drug store chain which closed for the weekend at noon on Saturday. So, we were in a bit of a hurry when our flight finally arrived at the Vancouver airport.

We rushed to customs, only to find ourselves in line behind a large group of heavy set men and women with grey hair, the men with full beards, many of them wearing Harley tee-shirts and one with a shirt that asked, “Have you been naughty or nice?”

They were there to attend a convention for people who play Santa Claus and were in no hurry to move through customs.

We finally made it through, rushed to pick up our luggage and the rental car and screeched our way to the closest drug store we could find. For some reason, the marriage application process was located in the photo department, where we finally arrived at 11 :45 a.m.

The man behind the counter was an elderly immigrant and did not speak English very well, and he was lovely determined to get us legal. He even made another store employee help him get it done. We signed the certificate at 11 :59 a.m.

That would become only the first time we both cried on our trip to Vancouver to get married.

The next day we were married in a beautiful old Victorian home just across from Vancouver Bay by a wonderful woman, who had to have been a Unitarian Universalist, whether she consciously knew it or not.

It was a glorious, sunny cool spring day. Flowers were in bloom everywhere.

Since we had been together 18 years at that point, so we had thought this would be simple – fly into Vancouver, say our vows, spend an afternoon in the mountains outside the city afterwards, and then fly back home all legally wed.

So we were stunned when we got to the part where we would say our vows to one another, and we both got so choked up that neither of us could speak.

Fortunately, our wedding officiant had been dog sitting a full-size Schnauzer named Marley, who she thought she had locked away in another room.

Just at that moment, Marley broke free and came bounding into the wedding, a squeaky toy between his jaws, which he was loudly engagIng.

She apologized profusely, but we urged her to let him stay. OK, we practically begged for Marley to stay. He did.

He sat right between us, our little “best guy”, periodically punctuating our promises to one another with a squeak. That helped us make it through the rest of the ceremony with great humor and joy.

I am still wearing the ring from when we bought each other wedding rings in those mountains outside of Vancouver.

This morning, we are exploring the concept of covenant, sacred promises we make with one another about how we will dwell together in right relationship – in the ways of love.

Covenant making is an ancient tradition within the Abrahamic religions, and, in fact, a concept of sacred promise making is present within most world religions.

So even in a modern, more secular world, this long history of promise making may help explain why covenanting can hold such a powerful place within our psyches.

Like when Wayne and I got so emotional over making our wedding vows to one another. After all, marriage vows are covenants.

Apparently, these sacred vows or so vital to me and Wayne that we have gotten married again twice since that fateful trip to Vancouver.

Once at the Travis County Clerk’s office after the Supreme Court legalized it across the country and again here at this church when we renewed our vows for our 25th anniversary.

Hey, at least if Wayne and I are going to keep getting married over and over again, we’re doing it with each other!

And covenant is a vital part of our Unitarian Universalist tradition also.

We are a religion without a prescribed set of beliefs, so relationship that call us all toward collective liberation through a set of loving promises we make with one another and our world is what binds together our varied theological perspectives.

We can share loving promises even if we do not always share the exact same beliefs.

If you are new to Unitarian Universalism and/or this church, our call to worship earlier was a set of principles that our UU congregations covenant to affirm and promote together.

The covenant that we all read together is the current version of the promises that participants in this religious community make to one another.

So, this ancient tradition of covenant is what instills it so deeply within our collective unconscious and makes the idea of promise making so holy to us.

And yet, I also think that tradition may contain warnings for us about how we construct our covenants and live them out.

For instance, the Hebrew scriptures are filled with covenants made between God and God’s people.

One of them is a covenant God makes with Noah, after deciding the people of the world had been very wicked and therefore the only choice was to flood the entire planet, drowning all life except for those that Noah had brought aboard a huge floating ark.

After the flood though, God sends a giant rainbow as a symbol of God’s promise never to flood the entire planet again, though God does go on to do a lot of other terrible things to humans.

All of which raises the question: is covenant possible when one side is all powerful and a tad bit temperamental?

This may be best illustrated by the story of Job, a pious and goodfearing man. God makes a bet with one of the angels that Job will remain faithful no matter what happens to him. So, they send many plagues upon Job, killing his entire family and destroying everything he has.

Eventually, Job accuses God of a serious breach of covenant, to which God essentially replies, “Yeah, well, I’m God, so too bad.”

Now God does eventually restore Job to his prior status, and I am having a bit of fun with an overly literal interpretation of these biblical stories, but still, there is a warning here for us about approaching covenant making within relationships of unequal power.

So, for instance, when white culture is dominant, we must be exceedingly careful that our covenants do not just enshrine the mores of that white culture.

In the Movie, History of the World Part 1, Mel Brooks retells the biblical story of when Moses went up to the mountain top and heard the voice of God.

God burned onto stone tablets commandments that the Israelites were to obey as their part of their covenant with God. In Mel Brooks telling, Moses comes down from the mountain top with three such stone tablets of five commandments each.

“My people”, Moses declares, “Hear me. The Lord has given unto you these 15 …” At which point he drops one of the tablets and it shatters into pieces. “Ten. Ten commandments for all to obey.”

Now, that is a humorous take on it, yet I think it also contains a kernel of truth about our promises we make with one another. They must be sacred. They cannot be frivolous to us. They cannot be just words on paper – or stone tablets.

And, again, they are more likely to seem that way if dictated by one person or group to another.

Our promises must be mutually held and encompass that which is most vital to us for living out love together.

They must inspire us to hold ourselves to these promises, and when we inevitably fall short of them because we are human, provide us guideposts for how to come back into covenant, get back into right relationship – like in our Pinkalicious story earlier.

I’ll close with one more story.

When my grandmother was in the last days of her life, she went to my mom’s house after she left the hospital for the last time. My grandmother had end stage congestive heart failure and had decided to go on hospice care. They could only come by my mom’s house periodically though, so the vast majority of caring for grandma fell to my mom.

And that became more and more difficult as my grandmother grew closer and closer to death. She became unable to dress herself, bathe herself or go to the restroom alone.

If you have ever been with someone who is in the final stages of life, they can sometimes seem to be existing between this reality and some other.

My grandmother began speaking the language of her childhood Czech – even though she had not spoken it for many years before that.

She became disoriented and confused and begin crying out of what seemed like frustration. She would sometimes show up in my mom’s living room only partially dressed. She at times became non-responsive and would not eat.

Not knowing how difficult things had become, I called my mom one day during this time just to check on them. As soon as she answered, I could tell things were not good. I asked her how she was. She told me all of the things that were going on with trying to care. After a long silence, she told me that she had been lying on her bed cryIng for my grandmother.

She didn’t know how to keep going. She didn’t know how to keep doing it. I hesitated and then asked, “Do you have to be the one to do it?” After another silence she said, “I promised her I would take care of her.”

My beloveds, that’s a powerful promise made out of the deepest sense of love. Taking care of each other is profoundly bound up within the very heart and soul of our covenants. And so we had to find a way for my mom to both fulfill that promise and reimagine it in a way that was humanly possible. She got help. She came to realize that she did not have to take care of my grandmother alone.

We moved my grandmother back into her own home, where she was immediately more comfortable and less confused. We hired people to stay with her overnight so that my mother could go home to her own house sometimes.

I truly believe reimagining and renewing that promise both saved my mom and brought my grandmother much greater peace during her final days.

And we renew our religious covenants like this too. They are living promises.

We learn. We change. We evolve. And so too then must our covenants.

That covenant among our churches is currently undergoing a review, which our faith does periodically to make sure we are still living into love in the best ways we know how.

Our healthy relations team here at the church is reviewing the church covenant, based upon feedback they have received from some of you and at least in part to address some of the potential issues discussed today. We want you to participate.

It is your covenant and has helped this church remain healthy through so many challenging times.

Tomas Medina from the healthy relations team will be at a table in Howson Hall after the service today.

Please feel free to visit with him and discuss how to keep this set of promises we share alive – how together we can continue to bring the ways of love into full and magnificent being.

Our great Unitarian Universalist Theologian, James Luther Adams wrote, “Human beings, individually and collectively, become human by making commitment, by making promise. The human being as such … is the promise-making, promise- keeping, promise-breaking, promise renewing creature.”

And so our religious vocation as Unitarian Universalists becomes continually renewing the promise of unity and universal love.

What a glorious promise we keep. Amen.

Benediction

Now, as we go out into our world;

May the mission that we share inspire your thoughts and light your way,

May the covenant that binds us together dwell in your heart and nourish your days,

May the spirit of this beloved community go with you until next we are gathered again.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Covenantal Beginnings

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
and Rev. Michelle LaGrave
September 10, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

New ministry, new church year, new programming, new members – with so many new beginnings it is time to call ourselves into covenant with each other and with the community as a whole. Rev. Michelle and Rev. Chris will explore with each other and with all of us their perspectives on the covenantal foundations of shared ministry.


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

LIFTING OUR VOICES #108

Do more than simply keep the promises made in your vow.
Do something more: keep promising.
As time passes, keep promising new things,
deeper things, vaster things, yet unimagined things.
Promises that will be needed to fill the expanses of time and of love.
Keep promising.

– David Blanchard

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

LIFTING OUR VOICES #112

Our church exists to proclaim the gospel
that each human being is infinitely precious,
that the meaning of our lives lies hidden in our interactions with each other.

We wish to be a church
where we encounter each other with wonder, appreciation, and expectation,
where we call out of each other strengths, wisdom, and compassion
that we never knew we had.

– Beverly and David Bumbaugh

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

2023 Water Communion Service

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 3, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We come together to begin our new church year with the Annual Water Communion Ritual. We share with one another water that symbolizes something meaningful to us as we blend and mingle the waters that remind us of our shared faith.


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

“You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop”.

– Rumi

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
by Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Getting to know you

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
August 27, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev. Michelle LaGrave will share her theology of interim ministry, some of her hopes for this coming year, and a little bit about herself too.


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

WE GATHER HERE TO WORSHIP
By Gary Kowalski

We gather here to worship:
to seek the truth, to grow in love, to join in service;
to celebrate life’s beauty and find healing for its pain;
to honor our kinship with each other and with the earth;
to create a more compassionate world,
beginning with ourselves;
to wonder at the mystery that gave us birth;
to find courage for the journey’s end;
and to listen for the wisdom that guides us
in the quietness of this moment.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

READING # 120 FROM “LIFTING OUR VOICES”
By Erika Hewitt

READER 1: I don’t have anything to say.

READER 2: Well, I do – but it might not be interesting to anyone.

READER 1: I have secrets inside of me, and struggles, and I don’t know if I’m ready to share them.

READER 2: I want to hear what you have to say.

READER 1: I want to speak of the deepest things together.

READER 2: I want to hear what you dream about, what you hope for.

READER 1: I want to know how you have come to arrive at this resting point along your journey.

READER 2: What if I speak and you don’t understand me?

READER 1: I will listen, and listen again, until my hearing becomes understanding.

READER 2: What if can’t find the words to share the world inside of me?

READER 1: I believe that wise words will emerge from you.

READER 2: How can I trust you to hold my life’s stories? You, who I may not even know?

Reader 2: How will this work? What will happen? What awaits us?

Reader 1: We can find out anything by beginning.

Sermon

“Let us begin to listen, and trust, and to know one another more deeply.” (from the reading)

Let us begin to listen, to know one another more deeply, and to trust. Let us begin by sharing our stories. Mine begins like this …

I was born under a cross. This might seem like an odd beginning for a Unitarian Universalist minister, but it is true, both literally and figuratively. Not only was there a lighted cross on the hospital itself, there was a giant lighted cross that sat upon the top of a hill and loomed over the city, beneath which, on the side of the hill, in large white letters, were the words “Holy Land”.

I was born a liberal Protestant into a world dominated by Catholicism, a world that, upon later reflection, seemed to be re-living the Protestant Reformation. As a Congregationalist, I was part of a numerical minority and experienced my small world as such. I was taught everything we believed in contrast to what Catholics believed. We kept things simple. Crosses instead of crucifixes. No idols. That was a big one. Not a single painting or drawing or image of Jesus anywhere. Which was fine, when I was in my home church, but quickly became a moral dilemma every time I was in a Catholic Church, and there were many times – for weddings or funerals or Girl Scout events or while sleeping over a friend’s house. The problem was I didn’t know where to rest my eyes there were statues everywhere, so I mostly wound up looking at the floor. It was safe there. I didn’t want to get in trouble with G_d for accidentally committing idolatry.

I was, in some ways, a serious child, at least when it came to my faith. While I didn’t always love Sunday School, I did love being in church. I loved the joyful entrance songs and the long processional of robed choir members and ministers. Sometimes I daydreamed about what it might like to be a minister, though I thought it wouldn’t be a good match for me – too much writing, which I didn’t like, plus people were always telling me I was shy.

Well, as you can see, I eventually did become a minister, a transformational process which began when I was in my 30s. I sat down at the dining room table one day and began to read an inspirational article about Ghandi. In it, they talked about how someone had once asked Ghandi if he had a mission or a motto in life. His answer was: “My life is my message.” In less than an instant, I knew that I needed to become a minister. By then, I was a Unitarian Universalist. I knew that I wanted my life to be my message and in order for that to be true, I needed to become a UU minister. This was a deeply spiritual experience.

One I didn’t completely trust at first. So, I went through a process of logically confirming that becoming a minister would be a good match for me. I found out it was. I had received my call.

Years later, and early in my ministry, I candidated for a position as a settled minister in a church. It turned out to be one of life’s most heartbreaking, and best, experiences. The vote to call did not pass, and when people talked about it with me afterwards, they explained that the discussion was all about my identities, that I was queer, and disabled, and had a service dog, and was married to a person who was transgender, and was … large. My heart broke. These people, my people, had broken faith with me, with all of us. That these discussions had happened, so openly and explicitly, was exactly what we UUs were not supposed to be. I was shocked.

And I, rather quickly, become determined. I had already done one transitional ministry, so I turned right around and applied for another. My mission became clear. I would travel around the country, teaching congregations, through my presence, that it was okay to have a minister like me. My initial call was affirmed. My life would continue to be my message.

And so, here I am, your Interim Co-Lead Minister. Over my time as a minister, I have served congregations in Texas, Nebraska, Illinois, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. I know, that’s a lot of moving around! Some of it has been hard, much of it has been rewarding. I have met many wonderful people along the way and done some good, I think.

On the micro level, my mission is to support congregations in becoming stronger and healthier.

On the macro level, my mission is to build a better world.

We will begin, or continue, as you have already done some interim ministry, with a practice of self-reflection. My role is to, symbolically, hold up a mirror, reflecting what I see, so that you might better see yourselves, who you are as a congregation, how you function, so that, together, we might discern some patterns in who you are now as a congregation and how you have been. This is all done so that you might thoughtfully and intentionally choose which patterns you would like to continue and which patterns you are ready to let go. I will support and guide you through this process, and I won’t let you fall off any cliffs I see coming. But I want to be clear, and I want you to be clear, that this is your congregation. It is not your ministers’ congregation. It is not Rev. Meg’s congregation, though she will remain your honored emerita. It is your congregation. Who you are and how you are in this world, is up to you.

You are a strong, vital, healthy, growing congregation and you have much to be proud of. That will not change. And, this interim time can be a rich and rewarding time in the life of your congregation, a time when you become even stronger, even healthier, even more vital. The way this happens is by engaging in the hard work of cultural change, maybe even, of transformation. I will be here to guide you and support you on the way through, even as it is your congregation and your work.

Why do I do this work, this ministry? Why should you do this work? This is the crux of the issue, isn’t it? Underlying all of this cultural change work, underlying all of this potential transformation, is the work of antiracism and antioppression, or, if you prefer newer language, the work of belonging and inclusion. As our congregations work, as this congregation works, to dismantle oppression, to widen the circle of concern, to become even more inclusive, to build on feelings of belonging, we, you, are building a better world, we, you are creating beloved community. This is our, yours and mine, thea/ological work. This is the way we move our thea/ology from our minds, our intellect, from our hearts, our compassion, into action.

May it be so. Amen and Blessed Be.

Benediction

Go now in Peace, with Love in your hearts, kindness on your lips, and compassion at your fingertips, blessing all others as you yourselves are now blessed. Our worship has ended, now our service begins.

Please join me in saying: Amen and Blessed Be.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Question Box Service 2023

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
and Rev. Chris Jimmerson
August 20, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev. Michelle and Rev. Chris will answer your submitted questions about the church, life, the universe, and everything else (time permitting.)


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

Understand that the task is to shift the demand from the right answer to search for the right question.

– Peter Block

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Post-Pandemic Ponderings

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
August 13, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The pandemic and the necessary isolation that accompanied it changed us and our world in ways we are still trying to understand. As we move through this time, when we hope that Covid may be becoming endemic, it is important that we appreciate all that we have experienced together, as we assess how we approach life, the life of our church, and what we hope to manifest in this new world in which we find ourselves.


Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

– Alfred North Whitehead

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE BODY IS NOT AN APOLOGY
Sonya Renee Taylor

The body is not an apology.
Let it not be forget-me-not fixed to mattress when night threatens
to leave the room empty as the belly of a crow.
The body is not an apology. Do not present it as a disassembled rifle
when he has yet to prove himself more than common intruder.
The body is not an apology. Let it not be common as oil, ash or toilet.
Let it not be small as gravel, stain or teeth.
Let it not be mountain when it is sand.
Let it not be ocean when it is grass.
Let it not be shaken, flattened or razed in contrition.
The body is not an apology. Do not give the body as confession,
communion. Do not ask for it to be pardoned as criminal.
The body is not a crime, is not a gun.
The body is not a spill to be contained. It is not
a lost set of keys or wrong number dialled. It is not
the orange burst of blood to shame white dresses.
The body is not an apology. It is not the unintended granules
of bone beneath will. The body is not kill.
It is not unkempt car.
It is not a forgotten appointment.
Do not speak it vulgar.
The body is not soiled, it is not filth to be forgiven.
The body is not an apology. It is not a father’s backhand,
is not mother’s dinner late again, wrecked jaw, howl.
It is not the drunken sorcery of contorting steel round tree.

The body is not calamity.
The body is not a math test.
The body is not a wrong answer.
The body is not a failed class.
You are not failing.
The body is not a cavity, is not hole to be filled, to be yanked out.
It is not a broken thing to be mended, be tossed.
The body is not prison, is not sentence to be served.
It is not pavement, is not prayer.
The body is not an apology.
Do not give the body as gift. Only receive it as such.
The body is not to be prayed for, is to be prayed to.
So, for the evermore tortile tenth grade nose,
Hallelujah.
For the shower song throat that crackles like a grandfather’s Victrola, Hallelujah.
For the spine that never healed, for the lambent heart that didn’t either, Hallelujah.
For the sloping pulp of back, hip, belly,
Hosanna.
For the errant hairs that rove the face like a pack of Acheronian wolves.

Hosanna,
for the parts we have endeavored to excise.
Blessed be
the cancer, the palsy, the womb that opens like a trap door.
Praise the body in its blackjack magic, even in this.
For the razor wire mouth.
For the sweet god ribbon within it.
Praise.
For the mistake that never was.
Praise.
For the bend, twist, fall, and rise again,
fall and rise again. For the raising like an obstinate Christ.
For the salvation of a body that bends like a baptismal bowl.
For those who will worship at the lip of this sanctuary.
Praise the body, for the body is not an apology.
The body is deity. The body is God. The body is God:
the only righteous love that never need repent.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Faithful and Proud

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
E. Ciszek and Christina Raymond
Art Carter and Tom Shindell
Evan Mahony and Bis Thornton
August 6, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As this year’s LGBTQI+ Pride week begins in Austin, we will continue our annual tradition of inviting members of our church community to share their experiences with the intersectionality of identity and faith.


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

JESUS AT THE GAY BAR
by Jay Hulme

He’s here in the midst of it —
right at the centre of the dance floor,
robes hitched up to His knees
to make it easy to spin.
At some point in the evening
a boy will touch the hem of His robe
and beg to be healed, beg to be
anything other than this;
and He will reach His arms out,
sweat-damp, and weary from dance.
He’ll cup the boy’s face in His hand
and say,
my beautiful child
there is nothing in this heart of yours
that ever needs to be healed.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

RUMINATIONS ON THE DEATH OF PAT ROBERTSON
by KC

I don’t like to think
About Pat Robertson going to hell.
That lets him off too easy.
I like to think about Pat Robertson finding himself
In a heaven he never believed
Would exist.
Where Divine is reading in drag
To the children murdered at
Sandy Hook and Ulvalde.
While Edie Windsor
And Gertrude Stein drink coffee
In the breakfast nook
talking politics with Harvey Milk.
Where Matthew Shepard relaxes by
A stream, reading poetry to
A nameless young man whose family
Never claimed his body
when he died Of AIDS.
Where the music plays loudly
Welcoming dancers from the Pulse
And Club Q to the floor where they
Twirl and vogue with
All the murdered trans women of color
Whose names we never knew.
Where Jesus puts his arm around
Pat Robertson’s shoulders and
Drapes them with a rainbow feather boa.
And, gesturing around him says
Come, meet my disciples.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

The speakers are:

E. Ciszek and Christina Raymond
Art Carter and Tom Shindell
Evan Mahony and Bis Thornton


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Blessings for the next chapter

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Erin Walter
July 30, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In her last service as our interim Minister for Joy and Justice, Rev. Erin Walter will reflect on the congregation’s learning and spiritual growth in the past year, and offer blessings for the church’s future. Rev. Jonalu Johnstone will also join the service by video.


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

WE ARRIVE TOGETHER HERE
By Andrew Pakula

We arrive together here
Travellers on life’s journey
Seekers of meaning, of love, of healing, of justice, of truth
The journey is long, and joy and woe accompany us at every step
None is born that does not die
None feels pleasure that does not also feel pain.
The tear has not yet dried on the cheek but the lips curve sweetly in a smile
Numerous are our origins, our paths, and our destinations
And yet, happily, our ways have joined together here today
Spirit of life. Source of love.
May our joining be a blessing
May it bring comfort to those who are in pain
May it bring hope to those who despair
May it bring peace to those who tremble in fear
May it bring wisdom and guidance for our journeys
And though this joining may be for just a moment in time
The moment is all we can ever be certain of
May we embrace this and every instant of our lives.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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

Nurturing Spiritual Wholeness

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 23, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Did you know that the church offers several small group ministries where people gather in groups of around 10 to share deeply, explore personal and collective spiritual growth, and develop sustaining, nurturing practices? Join us to hear from fellow congregants who have helped lead such groups and, in doing so, discovered new spiritual horizons that already existed within themselves.


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 HIDDEN WHOLENESS
Parker Palmer

Philosophers haggle about what to call this core of our humanity, but I am no stickler for precision. Thomas Merton called it true self. Buddhists call it original nature or big self. Quakers call it the inner teacher or the inner light. Jews call it a spark of the devine. Humanists call it identity and integrity. In popular parlance, people often call it soul.

What we name it matters little to me, but that we name it matters a great deal….

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

From HIDDEN WHOLENESS
Parker Palmer

No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight. The rule is simple…

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.


SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 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