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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
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