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Rev. Michelle LaGrave
May 18, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Theology, as well as its scriptural sources, tends to come with a lot of baggage, both personal and cultural. How might we unpack, or set aside, this baggage to reclaim lost sources of spiritual wisdom? What new insights might we gain? Let’s bring our sense of imagination out to play in the spiritual realm.

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

GOD RUNS LATE FOR CHURCH
by the Rev. Gretchen Haley, adapted

Today God is running late, trying to find their seat
Scanning the room for someone they know
Or someone they don’t
God’s feeling evangelical, but not in a judgy way
Mysterious, but not manipulative
God can’t stop thinking about the James Webb telescope
And the possibility that time is not linear
Which God might have guessed
From the never-ending urgency of some upcoming legislation
And the likelihood that sometime next week Halloween candy
Will show up in the grocery store.

God is tired.
Tired of grief and white supremacy,
And the warming of the oceans
Not to mention they usually come to the evening Vespers service
And it’s hot. Why haven’t
the public swimming pools been opened yet? God wonders.
And of course we’re all like – No kidding
God, can’t you do something about that?
But God’s hearing aid batteries ran out and
They haven’t had time to order more
Or, that’s what they say when asked
And can hear the question, but really
That last emergency room visit maxed
Their credit cards, and their partner’s been
Working Door Dash for some extra cash,
But it’s just not enough, and really
God just wants to BE PRESENT
STOP WORRYING ABOUT EVERYTHING
SING. BREATHE. LAUGH –

We got you, God, we say.
We’ll settle in, and we’ll be present, and we’ll sing.
We’ll tell stories, and breathe deep
We’ll remember ourselves, and offer whole
Galaxies of gratitude for all this beauty
For still-blooming roses, and newly-hatched owlets
Zucchini bread and the US women’s soccer team,
For protest letters and
Entire villages of people saying
You are safe here

God,
Your creation is not yet done
Creating you.

Come, let us worship, together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

PRAYERS FOR THE COSMOS
by Neil Douglas-Klotz

The reading today comes from Neil Douglas Klotz, a scholar in ancient languages. This is going to be a reading about the Aramaic language. The Bible, in the Bible, in the Christian Old Testament and the Christian New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures, there is a mix of languages, primarily Hebrew and Aramaic. Aramaic is the language that Jesus and all the disciples spoke. The Bible was originally spoken.

The stories were not initially told in either Greek or Latin. It was all Hebrew and Aramaic. So we’re going to be talking about translation a little bit later. So this is what he has to say about the Aramaic language.

 

The Aramaic language is close to the earth, rich in images of planting and harvesting, full of views of the natural wonder of the cosmos. Heaven, in Aramaic, ceases to be a metaphysical concept and presents the image of light and sound shining through all creation. Like its native Middle Eastern predecessors and like other ancient native languages around the planet, Aramaic is rich in sound meaning. That is, one can feel direction, color, movement, and other sensations as certain sacred words resonate in the body. This body resonance was another layer of meaning for the hearers of Jesus’ words and for the native Middle Eastern mystic. In fact, this writer finds similarities between some of the most important words used by Jesus and words used in Native Middle Eastern chants for thousands of years before Jesus’ own time.

 

Sermon

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

I begin with a disclaimer. This sermon was not paid for or sponsored in any way by Beacon Press, the Association of UU Musicians, also known as AUUM. This congregation’s music department or Brent Baldwin.

I found myself in a time of reflection recently, both with the upcoming ends to this interim period which will happen in just two short weeks from now, as well as my having recently celebrated the 15th anniversary of my ordination. So, I’m going to share a story that goes way back to the beginning of when I first became a Unitarian Universalist. I found myself in far northern Maine living on the Canadian border in a very small UU congregation, which might have 12 or 13 people present on a snow day. And I struggled.

Now keep in mind I had made a simple theological shift to the left by showing up at a UU congregation in the beginning. I did not have any kind of history of religious trauma or harm, I was just getting even more liberal than I already was. But I struggled. I struggled to grasp what this Unitarian Universalist theology was, what it was all about. I read the pocket guide and all the introductory books, and it still just wasn’t jelling in my head,

But the music did, so I asked for and was given a UU hymnal for Christmas one year. This was way back in the beginning of the hymnal. It was only maybe four years old or so at the time, and it felt pretty radical to me. I loved it. I sat in my recliner and spent hours just flipping through the pages, reading the lyrics to the hymns and songs, playing the melody I could read music, playing the melodies in my head, focusing on hymns that we had recently sung in church, thinking about new ways to conceptualize God, sin, salvation, evil, heaven, all the big theological words and concepts.

The hymnal, this very hymnal, became my own personal UU scripture. It is filled with bookmarks and notes and scribblings all over the place. And I also used it, not just for growing spiritually and theologically, but also for comfort.

Some of my favorite songs that helped me to re-imagine theology, re-imagine God, included number two, “Down the Ages We Have Trod, Many Pass in Search of God, Seeking Ever to define the eternal and the divine. That’s what we UUs are all about, isn’t it?

In this hymn, I found God described in multiple ways as parenthood, nature, humanity, love. I loved number 23, bring many names. Many names for God, beautiful and good, celebrating in parable and story, God as mother, not just father, not just old, but also young, a young, growing God.

All these things began to break open my mind’s and my heart’s and my spirit’s. And I began to not just reinterpret, not just to grow theologically and spiritually, but to reimagine my faith. Now, I had my own personal UU hymnal and study that I did solo at home. You all have, you’ve all had an amazing experience this past year, and I think there’s still a couple more to go this year of Evening Vespers with Reverend Carrie and Biss. They have been leading Vespers all year and using the hymnal as a source for lectio devina practice. If you haven’t joined in a vesper service yet, I highly encourage you to do so. It is a great way to sort of break open some of those old concepts and come to new understandings.

And I may as well, I mentioned now that yes, it’s not 1997 anymore, and our hymnal is already getting old and already in need of some updates in terms of language, especially around gender, which is still pretty binary in here. But it’s also still pretty radical in a lot of circles.

We as Unitarian Universalists are a tradition of come-outers. Many of us who are raised Unitarian Universalists do remain as UU adults. Some do not. But many, many more come out of other faith traditions and join us as UUs as an adult. What this means for us is that along with our children and youth, our adults are also in many, many different places of spiritual, theological, faith development. We’re all in different stages all at the same time, which can be challenging. It also provides an amazing opportunity where we can support each other as we learn and grow.

Now, I do want to say that unlike my simple theological shift to the left, there are many people, especially queer people, who come out of traditions which have caused significant harm, even trauma, even PTSD or PTSR. That’s important to remember as we go forward, not just in this sermon, but in our shared life together, that there are some sensitivities around that.

That said, we are going to try to have some fun with the Bible and theology today. Someone once said that our UU musicians are some of our best students. I absolutely believe this truth. It makes sense to me, not just because of my own personal history, but also because much of the Bible, in its day, when it was still an oral tradition, was sung, not spoken. We don’t think about that we’re reading lyrics to songs. We think we’re reading a book, right, but much of it was actually shared in song.

So if we are to begin to reimagine theologically and spiritually, we need to begin with some very basic understandings of the Bible. Many of us were not raised in churches or in churches that used a Bible very much. And so we may have vague ideas of some biblical references and some biblical stories, but may not feel quite all there. Others of us are possibly pretty expert in it, depending on what church you came out of.

And yes, by the way, our hymnal is chock-full of biblical references and biblical stories. So if you think you’re going to our very liberal, fun, fun, radical UU gray hymnal to get away from the Bible, you’re not. Sorry. The references might be a little more subtle. They might have been re-imagined somewhat, but they are all there.

So why look at the Bible? Why is the Bible important to us as modern scientific based Unitarian Universalists in the 21st century. Well, for one reason, because both Unitarianism and Universalism were originally Christian. One of the radical aspects, especially of early Unitarianism, was the use of biblical criticism. William Ellery Channing, who some call, rightly or wrongly, the father of Unitarianism, studied the Bible in its original Hebrew. He did not rely on the King’s James or any other version, but went back to Hebrew himself and did his own form of biblical criticism and applied the use of reason to the Bible, which was radical in its time. And unfortunately, it’s radical again. But that was sort of the origin of our Unitarian faith.

And the other reason that I think is important is because of our national culture. We are currently fighting things like keeping church and state separate, keeping the Ten Commandments out of the public schools. We kind of need to know what we’re talking about when we show up and protest this.

Also, it’s filled, the Bible is just saturated throughout our contemporary culture. There are biblical references everywhere all the time, things that we very easily miss if we have not ever had any exposure to the Bible ourselves. So it’s just good for general sort of understanding our own culture.

So why make the effort? I mean figuring out the Bible is a heck of a lot of work. I could dedicate all my time to studying the Bible and still not get all the way there. And yet, it is important so that we can, so that I can grow spiritually as we come into, as I come into, new understandings of old theological language.

We often talk about a certain aspect of Christianity having a very literal interpretation of the Bible. So I want to take a moment to point out that while we, UUs tend to think that we’re very metaphorical when we look at and read the Bible. Lots of times we’re not. And here’s the sign. Here’s how you can tell if you are taking it literally. When we get upset at reading the Bible, we’re taking it literally. That’s our clue. When you start feeling it in your body and in your heart and in your spirit, it’s time to try, if you can, keep it in your mind. There’s possibly some aspect of trauma that’s a little more challenging to work with, to shift into a more metaphorical, more story-based version of the Bible. We can look at it, hopefully, without getting any more upset than when we read Winnie the Pooh getting stuck in that hole in the tree because he ate too much honey.

Ancient people, this is also helpful to know as we try to reclaim and re-imagine some of these old stories, ancient people did not understand history as something factual, objective, unbiased. That’s a 20th century understanding of history. Notice I didn’t say 21st century. They were telling stories and re-telling stories, sharing them around the campfire and passing them down to their children. These stories grew and changed over time, and they probably all had or still have elements of truth, elements of reality, but not 100%.

My favorite example is the story of Jericho. You might have heard of it probably through song about the walls of Jericho tumbling down. If you read the biblical story it’s actually kind of funny because they like circle the city so many times and they blow trumpets and like there’s this whole ritual thing before the newly freed tribes of Israel, fairly recently, newly freed tribes of Israel, come in and take over this magnificent city of Jericho. They blow their horns and those walls just come crumbling down. Well, luckily we also have biblical archeology and from that we know that, Yes, the walls of Jericho did actually crumble down. They crumbled down a couple of millennia before the people arrived to conquer the empty city. Elements of truth. Maybe they even did it all the magical circles, I don’t know. But the walls were already crumbled before they moved in, and apparently had to rebuild, I would imagine.

So to begin to understand the Bible, it’s also important to keep in mind that the oldest stories are between 3,000 and 4,000 years old. Let that soak in for a moment.

We, in 2025, are still telling and talking about stories that are almost 4,000 years old. And in some cultures, that age is even older, but for the Christian and Jewish traditions and Muslim traditions, up to 4,000 years ago. That’s sort of awe-inspiring when I think about it.

When we study the Bible, it’s important to use multiple lenses as we look at it. Now this is just going to be a rocking sort of, we’re going to rock and roll and highlight some biblical things, any one of which we could do an hour-long class on.

So this is more of a teaser. We need to use multiple lenses when studying the Bible. We need to understand the culture of the times, as well as our own culture, because that shifts how we understand the language and the stories. I have a favorite social media meme that helps us keep things in perspective. You ready for this? 2,000 years from now, people will not be able to tell the difference between a butt dial and a booty call.

Let’s not think we don’t have the same problem looking backwards 2,000 years. Now, admittedly, LGBTQ+ issues might be one of the hardest aspects of the Bible for us to wrap our minds around. I know you’ve done some work on that in a couple of classes recently, this year and last year, with AJ Juraska. So some of you may already know this.

But one of my favorite examples is from Leviticus. We are told not to lie with a man as a woman because it is too bah. That’s the Hebrew. In English they translated this into an abomination. In English, abomination sounds pretty horrible, right? To more accurately translate from the Hebrew, it’s probably better to say, it is ritually unclean due to a crossing of boundaries or a mixing of categories. So this isn’t about morality or ethics. This is a priestly term about not mixing categories. It is about ritual.

So, one trick scholars use to better understand ancient words is to look at multiple uses of the same words. So in this case, we can ask, “What else, besides lying with a man as with a woman, is too Ebah? What else is abomination?” And then we can get sort of an idea of the degree of what we’re talking about in terms of ritual uncleanness.

• You can also improperly use incense,
• use a blemished animal in a sacrifice,
• eat unclean animals like shellfish or pigs,
• remarry your former wife,
• or have sex with your own wife during certain times of the month.

Those are all abominations as translated into English in some versions of the Bible. So that can help get us a little bit of perspective about what’s going on. In addition to this idea of ritual purity, part of what was going on during this time was laying out some rules for the Israelites who are moving in maybe or maybe not conquering the empty villages of Canaan to have their own culture, to keep their own culture, to have their own ethnic identity, to be separate in some way or undefinable in some way from the Canaanites.

So one way to do that, to not lie with a man as a woman, really probably had a lot more to do with a prohibition on not visiting or using the sacred male prostitutes that were hanging out in the temples of the Canaanites. So we’re not going to go use sacred prostitutes in the temples that the Canaanites use and go to. We have our own separate faith that tells us not to eat pigs and to use incense in a certain way and to not use male prostitutes.

Furthermore, ideas about sexuality and reproduction and orientation and gender were all vastly different from what we have today. So I’m going to talk a little bit here about, this is the sex-ed part of the sermon.

At the time, ancient Israel’s thought of semen as seed, remember, were very agrarian, very related to the earth. The semen was the seed and the woman’s uterus was the fertile earth. You plant the seed in the earth, stuff grows. You waste seed, if you spill it, it needs to go into fertile earth.

Also later Greco-Roman context had their very different, And we’re talking about a span of thousands of years, so there is not one biblical culture. There was the ancient Israelites who had many cultures evolving over the thousands of years, and then the Greeks, and then the Romans, and that was after the Persians and a whole bunch of other people, all having very different ideas of sexuality and gender.

So this is my favorite New Testament Example, on which I did a paper that really irritated my very conservative professor. Someone wrote a scholarly paper on this.

In the New Testament, you may have heard of or read about women being required to cover their hair, because it’s unseemly to have your hair uncovered. Well, part of this had to do with some, to me, very bizarre idea about how sex works. That there was some kind of like suction pump action that happened between the man and the woman and that the place the semen resided was in the hair. So men kept their hair short so that they wouldn’t hold on to their semen and the suction pump thing would work and it would go into the women in their hair. And they had long hair, nice long hair to hold all that semen. And then if there’s a whole bunch of hair with a whole bunch of semen, you’ve got to cover it up because that is not okay to show in public, okay?

We are not talking about our modern ideas of sexuality when we try to go back to the Bible for our rules about it. Never mind that we have all sorts of translation issues with Hebrew and Aramaic. The Bible was not written in English. And despite my experience in a bookstore a couple of decades ago, in which I visited the religion section as I was very tickled to find a plastic-wrapped Bible with a sticker on it that said, “Autographed copy.”

We don’t actually have any English version autographed copies of the Bible. We’ve had to translate everything from Hebrew and Aramaic, and much of the time, not directly from Hebrew to English or Aramaic to English, but Hebrew or Aramaic through either Greek or Latin and then to English, sometimes through Greek and Latin before English. So, and as we talked about with that soundscape, the ideas of direction and color and sound meaning, It’s very, very different languages. We’re not comparing Italian and Spanish when we compare Hebrew and Aramaic with English.

And by the way, keep in mind how many of you understand Shakespearean English easily? Never mind Beowulf. We have to work at it, right? and that’s like a lot lot lot less time than we’re talking about with Hebrew to English.

So as we begin to re-imagine, as we begin to re-imagine, remember “God is running late”, the future is unwritten, the end is the beginning, Loosen, loosen, loosen. You do not have to carry the weight of the world in your muscles and bones. Let go, let go, let go.

Aramaic is rich in sound meaning. As we Imagine we can look at one word or one phrase at a time, whatever it is that you’re ready for, interested in, whatever tugs at your heart or your spirit.

I love thinking about “Balm of Gilead,” which is one of the songs in our teal hymn, though. And it talks about our sin-sick soul. So many of us have been conditioned to turn that inward that our own souls are sick with and full of sin. What if we simply turn that outward? What if the song is really talking about being sick of all the sin that is out there in the world? What if sin actually means something more like injustice or cruelty. Can we all agree that we might have sin-sick souls if we were to think in those terms? And I’m not telling you to do that. I’m giving you some examples of what I have done.

What about the love of Jesus? What did it mean for Jesus to love people? He was essentially the first liberation theologian. He was on the side of everyone who was marginalized or oppressed in some way, including women and children. What does that kind of love mean? He died to save us all. What does it mean to be saved? What is salvation? Can salvation happen here on earth? Maybe it’s not about the afterlife. How do we as a people save ourselves here on earth as we fight all that injustice and cruelty?

I also love the 23rd song that Bobby McFerrin wrote for his mother in which he changed some of the words in a very poetic way and also changed the gender of God and God all of a sudden feels like a nurturing comforting mother figure. So I encourage you as you hopefully go forward engaging this process of re-imagining on your own with those words and phrases that stick with you, that you want to work on or think differently about. I’ll leave you with a translation of, actually my own translation, of the 23rd Psalm, in which I refer to God as love. And you’ll get some sense of it not being quite poetic but having a little bit like the way that grass is talked about. It’s not just grass or not just meadow there’s a lot there’s a particular kind of grass

Love is my guide, I shall not lack.
Love makes me lie down in beautiful new fresh grass after rain.
Love leads me beside still waters with great care.
Love restores my soul.
Love leads me in well-worn paths of what is right and just for the sake of love’s name.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no misery, for love is with me.
The symbols of Love, they comfort me.
Love sets a table before me, across from those with whom I am in conflict.
Love revives my head with oil, My cup overflows.
Surely, goodness, sweetness, and constant, unconditional, never-ending, steadfast love shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of Love for the length of days.

May it be so for each and every one of you.
Amen and blessed be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

God blesses you and keeps you
God’s face shines upon you and encompasses you with compassion
God’s face lifts up your burdens from upon you and gives to you peace
Go forth blessing all others as you yourselves have now been blessed.
Amen and Blessed Be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 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

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
April 20, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join us as we celebrate Easter. The service includes joyful music, a child dedication, and Rev. Michelle LaGrave’s retelling of the Easter Story.

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

LOVE BRINGS US BACK TO LIFE
by Peggy Clark

Easter is a holiday of miracles. It is life from death, joy from sorrow, celebration from mourning. Easter reminds us that all is never lost, that the story continues as long as we are here to tell it. So gather up your worries. We are going to bury them beneath the ground and watch them transform into flowers of hope. Pushing through the earth, reminding us on Easter morning that love brings us back to life. Calls us from sadness, from grief, from anxiety, into a world renewed and alive and filled with joy once again.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

CHILDREN WILL WIDEN THE CIRCLE OF OUR BEING IN WAYS THAT ARE LIMITLESS
Gary Kowalski

Every baby that’s born connects us to our history, our parents, our grandparents, and unknown forebears who brought new life to the world in each successive generation. Each baby that’s born links us to the future, to a world yet to come that belongs to our descendants and that we hold in trust for our posterity whom we will never know. Each child connects us to nature, to the innocence an exuberance of a world always hatching newborns, kittens, and pups, and lambs, and babes. Each child reminds us of the kinship we share with people and of other lands who love their young as purely and tenderly as we do. Each child connects us to the universe, to the holy mysteries of birth and death, and becoming from which we all emerge. Children widen the circle of our being in ways that are limitless.

Sermon

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

“Oh, I can see clearly now the rain is gone.”

A long time ago, I lost someone very dear to me, my brother, Mark. He died in a rather sudden and shocking kind of way. There were, and there still are, a lot of questions about how and why he died, even though he was in a medical setting. I was at first in shock, of course. I didn’t know what to do with all of the questions, all of the unknowing, all of the loss, all of the grief. I was only 20 years old.

“I can see all obstacles in my way.”

I got through that first summer and the following months, my senior year in college, though I’m not quite sure how. The pain of the loss was intense. My 21st birthday, my college graduation, were celebrated without much joy. They were more like ritual markings than actual celebrations.

“Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.”

The grief was like a dark cloud that followed me everywhere. The following year I knew that I needed a break from academics, a chance to get out of my head. I loved history, had been a double major in history and anthropology, was interested in working in a museum, and found the perfect opportunity. An internship on a 19th century living history farm museum in central Maine. I figured the physical labor would do me and my body good. So I packed up my bags and headed off to Maine.

I lived right on the farm, milked the cow, cooked on the wood stove, made homemade butter, homemade everything, planted the gardens, taught in the one-room schoolhouse, fed the chickens, collected their eggs, led the animals from barn to pasture and back again, helped birth the piglets and a calf, rode horseback, learned how to live interdependently with the land and the animals and my fellow humans became a vegetarian, slowly started to heal.

Then one day, when I was driving my car somewhere, I turned on the radio and a song came on.

“It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sun-shiny day.”

And I noticed how the music made me feel happy, happier than I had felt since before my brother died.

“I think I can make it now, the pain is gone.”

The pain of my grief had transformed from a dark stormy cloud into a shadow, still present but out of my immediate sight.

“All of the bad feelings have disappeared.”

I didn’t just enjoy the music, I reveled in it. I wanted to sing along and dance joy had returned to my life and with it hope

“Here is the rainbow I’ve been praying for.
It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiney day.”

I’m telling you this story because it reminds me of the holiday we are celebrating today. Who knows what holiday it is today? It’s Easter. Easter is the story that I want to tell you today. Do you already know the story how Easter came to be? One of the ways we celebrate holidays is by retelling the story of the holiday Sometimes it’s new for some people. Sometimes people have heard it 50 times already. But we keep retelling the story and bringing people in, welcoming them into the story. Sometimes the story goes the same way. Sometimes we tell it in a little bit different of a way.

So here goes. This is my true story. There once was a man named Jesus. He was Jewish, and he had grown up learning stories from the Hebrew scriptures. As an adult, he became a teacher, and he traveled all around the countryside and in the cities, preaching and teaching the old stories, but sometimes in new ways. He taught people to love your neighbor as yourself, to treat other people as well as you would treat yourself. He taught that people’s lives were more important than religious rules. That you, adults anyway, should stop and help someone who is injured and bleeding on the side of the road, even if religious rules tell you that person is unclean or distasteful in some way. And he taught that children were important.

The more that Jesus traveled and taught, the more followers he gathered. This was in the days long before social media, So, gathering followers was a lot of work. He and his students had to travel from village to village, town-to-town, temple-to-temple, and mostly by foot. It was a lot of work. Even so, crowds gathered to meet him everywhere he went. You could say he went viral.

And there were a lot of officials and very high offices who did not like that one bit. Jesus knew that his ministry, his teaching, was becoming dangerous even though he was only teaching good things. So, one evening he gathered his students who were called apostles together for one last supper and one last lesson to say goodbye. He knew that he would be killed soon.

“I can see all obstacles in my way.”

And he was right. The next day, he was sentenced to death in a horrific way. He was a victim of what you might call the unfair court procedures and excessive sentencing of the criminal injustice system of his day. He was dead by nightfall. Friday, the Sabbath. His followers, His parents, his family, his mother were devastated with grief. They didn’t understand how or why this could happen.

“Gone are the dark clouds that had me fly.”

Dark clouds of grief followed them over the Sabbath and throughout the next night, then on Sunday morning some of the women went to the tomb where they had left his body to prepare it for final burial, only to find it empty. His body was gone and they didn’t know where it went. They, the women and his family and his students, began to see him and hear him in various places they gathered, as if he were still alive.

This is a common experience people have, many people have, in the very first few days and weeks after someone dies. You might think you see someone out of the corner of your eye, or sitting in a favorite place, or think you hear them in the next room or in a crowd. I know this has happened to me and I’ve heard many stories of others experiencing the same.

Eventually the people who loved him realized that they could make it now, that the pain was disappearing or at least easing with time. They came to understand that even though Jesus was no longer with them and they could no longer see or hear him, they could still remember him. And they could still tell the stories that he had told and keep his memory alive in new ways. And they began to have hope.

“Here is the rainbow I’ve been praying for.”

Now here we are, almost 2,000 years later, still telling the stories that Jesus told, still remembering Jesus, still celebrating with joy this holiday that we now call Easter. Still insisting, still insisting that even if some people take Jesus’ words and teachings and twist them so far as to be unrecognizable, no one can take our memories or our joy or our understanding of what his life meant away.

We are gonna celebrate his life and his ministry and his teachings today. Are you ready?

“It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiney day.”

All righty everybody now let’s join in together. Dance, sing, wave your arms.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

Go 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. Amen and blessed be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
March 23, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join us for a restful service full of stories and music about finding Holy Ground. Rev. Michelle LaGrave weaves together a tapestry of stories accompanied by the atmospheric/symphonic stylings of music guests Thor & Friends. Take some time for rest and reflection in the midst of an increasingly chaotic world.

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

by Macrina Wiederkehr (adapted)

My bare feet walk the earth reverently for everything keeps crying.
Take off your shoes.
The ground you stand on is holy.
The ground of your being is holy.

When the wind sings through the pines like a breath of God, awakening you to the sacred present, take off your shoes.

When the sun rises, coloring your world with dawn, put on your garment of adoration, take off your shoes.

When the red maple drops its last leaf of summer, wearing its burning bush robes no longer, read between its barren bushes and take off your shoes.

When a new person comes into your life like a mystery about to unfold, and you find yourself marveling over the frailty and splendor of every human being, take off your shoes.

When, during the wee hours of the night, You drive slowly into the new day and the morning’s fog, like angel wings, hovers mysteriously above you, take off your shoes.

Take off your shoes of distraction.
Take off your shoes of ignorance and blindness.
Take off your shoes of hurry and worry.
Take off anything that prevents you from being a child of wonder.
Take off your shoes.

The ground you stand or sit or walk or roll-on is holy.

Affirming Our Mission

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

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

Story for all ages

“MOSES”

So, I’m going to tell you a story today that is really, really old. People have been telling this story for more than 2 ,000 years, and eventually it got written down in both the Jewish Bible, also known as the Hebrew Scriptures, or the Torah, and the Christian Bible in what is called the Old Testament. It’s a story about someone called Moses.

So Moses was living with his wife and his father-in-law in an area near Mount Horab, and he was taking care of his father-in-law’s sheep. His father-in-law was the priest of Midian, and he was taking care of the sheep, which means that he was sort of following them around and making sure that nothing bad happened to the sheep. He was acting as a shepherd. So he was wandering around in the wilderness with his father-in-law’s sheep, and Then, for whatever reason, he decided to take a little detour and head up on Mount Horab with all the sheep, and that was a mountain that was known as the mountain of God.

And while he was walking on the mountain, all of a sudden he saw a bush that looked like it was on fire. But, Even though it looked like it was on fire, the bush wasn’t burning up. All the leaves were still green. Pretty weird, huh? So Moses said to himself, “I must turn aside and go over and look at this bush that is burning but not burning up.” And you know what he saw when he looked at the bush? It wasn’t really on fire. There was an angel in the bush, and it wasn’t one of those angels that we think of today with a white gown and white wings and a golden halo. It was an angel that looked like it was on fire. It was so bright, it was hard to look at the angel.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, all of a sudden, Moses heard the voice of God. And God said, “Moses, Moses.” And Moses said, “Here I am.” And then God said, “Come no closer. Remove the sandals from your feet because the place you are standing on is holy ground.” So Moses took off his sandals.

And God said, “I am God, the God of your father, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and he had to tell him which God he was because back then they believed that different people had different gods so he had to identify himself and Moses got afraid and hid his face because back then people thought that if you looked at God you might die. So God was, so Moses was really afraid. God is talking to him. This bush is not really on fire. He’s hiding his face. He’s got his sandals off.

So, God then said, “I have seen the misery of my people who are slaves in Egypt, and I am going to send you, Moses, to free them from slavery.”

And Moses said, “What if they don’t believe me? “What if they don’t Think that I’m really coming from you. I don’t I don’t even know who you are, What do I tell them? What is your name? and God said “I am who I am.” which it sounds a little interesting in English. In Hebrew what they wrote down is the four letters, the four consonants of God’s name, which are Yodhe, Vavhe, and which looks kind of like, sounds kind of like YVHV in English.

But you know what, they didn’t write down the vowels. So nobody really knows how to say it anyway. So now we just call God “God”.

But he said, “I am who I am. Tell them, tell those people, my people down in Egypt who are in slavery, I am has sent me to you.” This is my name forever and my title for all generations.

The reason this is important today is Two things. We’re talking about holy ground through the whole rest of the service. But also, do you remember a couple of weeks ago we had a child dedication. And, in a couple of weeks, Easter and Passover are coming up. And so we’re going to have the baby parade that we always have on Easter. But before that, we’re going to have another child dedication for, I don’t know, at least three more kids. I’m not sure how many yet.

Do you remember what we did at the beginning of the child dedication, those of you who are here? before we made the promises to the children, before we told them that we would look out for them and take care of them and help them learn and grow. The first thing we did, We said the child’s name. We asked the parents what is the name of your child and they gave us the child’s full name.

So naming is very important. When Moses learned the name of God, God told him he was standing on holy ground. And when we learn your names, when you are dedicated and then we make promises to you, we are also on holy ground. It’s a really special and sacred moment in the time of your life and we’re gonna promise to take care of you all the way until you’re grown up and then you’re gonna help take care of the kids who come next.

Story

BY Stephen Huyle

A damp chill pervades the air as Amita wends her way down the dark street to the river. For warmth, she pulls her sari about her head and adjusts her light wool shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Then she reaches down with both hands to pull her two young children along with her. They stumble sleepily as she guides them through the narrow passageways. Just above the river, she stops quickly to buy a small lamp made of a curled dry leaf. In its center, a dob of clarified butter holds a wick.

The three sidle through the huddled bodies of unidentifiable figures and down the ancient stone steps that run as far as they can see along the river’s edge. Steps grooved through centuries of use, and then the black expanse of the river fills their gaze and they slip off their sandals and walk down the last steps into the icy cold water.

The children are reluctant, their teeth chattering, their mother is determined, intent on fulfilling this ritual which begins each day of her life. They wash their bodies and their clothes with soap. All the while the sky has been lightening.

Across the river, the promise of sunrise turns the water from deep purple to rich blues tinged with orange, the shivering three steps again into the water, which now seems warm compared to the biting air. Amita is immersed to her knees, Minu and Bablu to their waists. Together they sing prayers to the goddess Ganga, who is also the river.

They visualize her magnificence, her nurturing presence as the purifier and mother of all existence. With a match, Minu lights the small leaf lamp and gently floats it out before them. At that moment, the sun’s first rays peek above the sandy horizon. And they begin singing to the sun god Sarya, the source of all energy, the great provider.

Story

“EMILY”

There once was a cow named Emily, a very frightened cow, who found herself in a slaughterhouse. She was next in line when all of a sudden, the lunch whistle blew and the workers took a break.

Well, Emily saw her chance and made her own break for it, leaping in a very uncow-like manner, right over a five foot high fence and heading for the woods. When she got to the woods, she ran with a herd of deer, all the while eluding capture by both Slaughterhouse workers and the local police.

Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to Emily, Emily’s escape made headlines. People everywhere heard Emily’s story and fell in love with the cow who had rescued herself from imminent death. In the midst of all this hubbub, a group of people came together to try to rescue Emily and after some negotiation, she was purchased for a dollar. Later, when Emily’s saviors pulled up to the edge of the woods with their truck and after having wandered in the wilderness for 40 days. Emily was ready for her ordeal to end. Encouraged with some buckets of grain, Emily walked up the ramp and was brought to her new home on the grounds of the Peace Abbey in a town called Sherborn in Massachusetts.

Emily lived for several more years and was credited by many as a teacher of love and compassion and a source of inspiration for change and growth. When Emily eventually died, she was buried on the grounds of the Peace Abbey, not far from a statue of Gandhi. Her grave is now marked by a bronze life-sized statue and clippings from her hair and a sacred thread from her ear have been released in the Ganges River. People still make pilgrimages to visit her grave.

Story

“FERRY BEACH”

It is summer, and I am spending the week at Ferry Beach, one of our UU camp and conference centers located on the coast of Maine. I awake to a beautiful, bright, sunny, and warm day and head to the beach as soon as I am dressed. I cross the boardwalk, slip out of my flip-flops, and quickly head down to the water’s edge.

There I stand with my feet buried in the sand and the waves lapping at my legs. This is my favorite place to meditate and pray, while standing and gazing out over the vast expanse of the ocean.

This morning, though, the sun is exceptionally bright and since it is early, low on the water. The sun and the sun’s reflection on the water are so bright that I cannot see the ocean before me. When I try, my eyes hurt and water and I am forced to lower my head so that I see only my toes and the water surrounding me. In this posture I remain for a long time, recognizing the humility inherent in the pose, sensing its foreignness to both myself and my culture.

And I wonder, here I am, standing before the sun and the ocean, feeling the immense power of both, forced into an attitude of deference and humility, which I cannot choose to overcome, sure of turning and walking way. And I wonder, is this how Moses would have felt barefoot and face hidden standing before God? And I wonder, is this how Amida feels every morning of her life as she stands in the sacred waters of the river, bending to light and release her lamp. And I feel connected to those who have gone before me and will come after me, to those who also experience awe and wonder and humility. Eventually I turn and slowly climb up the beach, replace my sandals, wash my feet, and return to my daily study of routine and learning.

I return to the beach often. For me, these visits are a reenactment of my own sacred creation story. As I take off my shoes and move lightly and quickly down to the water’s edge, I return to the primordial waters, to the murky origins of myself and my species. As I play and swim, I remember my origins, back when my kind were still fish in the sea.

When I finally emerge from the water and climb back up the beach, I wonder, at this struggle it always is to leave the water behind. And I imagine how difficult those first evolutionary transitions, those first climbs up onto the beach must have been. And I feel awe at those first changes from fish to amphibian. I think, then, that I understand the dolphin, a mammal who once on land chose to return to the sea. I understand for I too feel these urges, for I too feel the call of the deep, and I know. I know the power of this holy ground.

Message

In all of these stories, there is a common experience of standing or walking on holy ground. For Moses it is at Mount Horrib, for Amida in the River Ganges, for Emily and later her pilgrims on the grounds of the Peace Abby, for myself at the ocean’s edge.

At various times and in various ways we all visit holy ground. In doing so, some of us take off our shoes. Some of us come face-to-face with God. Some of us commune with the cosmos. Some of us come face-to-face with our own salvation.

I imagine there are many, many other stories about holy ground which I could tell. People of many faiths walk labyrinths, pagans cast circles, Hindus draw sacred diagrams called kolams near the entryways of their homes. Surgeons place special covers over their shoes before entering operating rooms. Walking, standing, rolling, or simply being on holy ground is a common human experience, one that many of us share.

When we visit holy ground, we experience awe and wonder. We ponder the great mysteries of life. We feel the force of evolution. We sense the power which emerges from our collective humanity, the power of change and growth, of inspiration and creativity and of love. We need not embark on a pilgrimage to far off lands to visit Holy Ground. Holy Ground is available to us at all times and in all places.

Holy Ground is here in this sanctuary; out there in the art gallery; around the corner at Howson Hall where we visit with each other after the service; down that hallway there where the children meet for classes and staff work to fulfill the mission of this congregation; out on the playgrounds and in the youth room; in your homes, and in so many, many places.

It is we who must set an intention to understand the ground we happen upon is holy. It is we who must pay attention. An experience of the sacred of the Holy is available to us at any time, anywhere. When I received my call to ministry, I was not at a pilgrimage to a sacred site or standing at the ocean’s edge. I was sitting at my dining room table reading a magazine. Moving to an Understanding of the ground we find ourselves upon as sacred or holy grounds can feel risky. And it’s not a journey to be undertaken lightly.

When we visit holy grounds, we confront the nature of life and death. We gain insight. We become self-aware. We come face-to-face with those parts of ourselves and others we had not previously known. We realize our human nature. We may even come to know God.

Where is your holy ground? Where do you take off your shoes? When do you bow your head?

As Unitarian Universalists, it is our religious duty to follow the paths each of us finds sacred to ourselves. These paths are incredibly diverse, take many forms and lead in many directions. They are all holy. As together we navigate the triumphs and tribulations of this great mystery we call human life. We are blessed to be able to join together in this community of faith, which honors such divergent understandings of the human, of the divine, of the holy. May we be so blessed evermore.

Amen and blessed be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

Open your eyes, your ears, your hearts, your minds, your spirits. The ground you sit, stand, walk, roll, dance, crawl upon is holy. As you remember, as you leave this place, remember you are blessed. The holy, the sacred, is available to you at all times and in all places. Go forth, blessing all others as you yourselves are now blessed. Amen and blessed be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
March 16, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rest has long been a spiritual practice or even a religious mandate of many people. Yet, life can feel so busy that we imagine there is no time to rest. How might we come to a better sense of balance in our lives that honors the need to rest?

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 NEVER ALONE
by Sharon Wylie

It is okay to be tired of change
It is okay to be tired of everything different
Okay to feel weary of resiliency and wholeness and learning and growth
And okay to yearn simply for rest
It’s okay to be grouchy and unsatisfied
And all the ordinary human ways of being that we are
Let this morning be a reminder that you are loved
Let our time together soothe what is restless in you
May you be comforted in knowing that whatever you are
feeling today and other days
You are not alone. You are never alone.

Come, let us worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

REST IS RESISTANCE: A MANIFESTO (Excerpted)
by Tricia Hersey

Tricia Hersey, also known as The Nap Bishop, is the founder of The Nap Ministry. Hersey makes a historical connection between slavery and contemporary grind culture and views rest as one form of reparations for Black people. She holds a Master of Divinity degree as well as a bachelor’s degree in Public Health.

Everything we know about rest has been tainted by the brainwashing from a white supremacist, capitalist system. As a culture, we don’t know how to rest, and our understanding of rest has been influenced by the toxicity of grind culture. We believe rest is a luxury, privilege, and an extra treat we can give to ourselves after suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Rest isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to survive and thrive. Rest isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human. Rest is a divine right. Rest is a human right. We come into the world prepared to love, care, and rest. The systems kill us slowly via capitalism and white supremacy. Rest must interrupt. Like hope, rest is disruptive, it allows space for us to envision new possibilities. We must reimagine rest within a capitalist system.

Sermon

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

The Torah, the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Bible, whatever it is you call these most ancient of the Jewish and Christian texts, they all begin, as most stories do, bear a sheet and The first story that is told about the creation of the world of our world and How after six days of work? God rested on the seventh God rested. God who some theologians later came to describe as omnipotent, got tired and had to rest.

So I ask if God, Godself, can get tired and need to rest, who are we not to? Who are we to say that we don’t need to rest, that there’s too much to be done that we can rest later. After X, Y, and Z things have been done, of course. Who are we to tie our self -worth, our sense of value, into how much and how quickly we get things done?

Notice the words I’ve used here, self-worth, and value. These are also monetary terms, which is no accident. Our Western Judeo and Christian history of laboring for people other than ourselves or our own communities is long and fraught and goes back to ancient times. When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, God took some extra time to specify exactly what God meant by saying, “On the seventh day, you should rest.” Not just you should rest, but your sons and your daughters, your male and your female slaves, your livestock and alien residents in your community. Everyone must refrain from work. Everyone must rest. No exceptions.

We know why, right? Because people are people, even ancient times, and because we know that somebody was going to try to get away with resting themselves while requiring other people to work.

In more recent history, our track record is no better and likely worse. With the rise of capitalism as it moves through its various stages, much of this nation’s wealth was created by people who were oppressed in many ways, especially blacks who were enslaved, but also indigenous people who were enslaved, white indentured servants, and white people who did not own property and could not vote, which included all women and all children for centuries.

The dominant culture of our nation has valued production, the more, the better, the faster, in terms of creating wealth. And it has done so for centuries, regardless of the cost, the cost, or the toll, the toll, more monetary terms. It has taken on human bodies and human souls. The more wealth, the better. The faster we acquire the wealth, the better.

And this has spilled over into our other aspects of our lives as well. Not just the creation of wealth, but also the arts. Think of ballet, the ballerinas with bleeding feet for our entertainment. Sports, think of any of them, but especially football, even our learning. The more difficult, the better, the higher numerical grade, the better, the faster we move ahead, the better, and our academia. The more journal articles and books published, the better, the more the better. It is all over the place.

So what do we do about all of this?

• The first thing is to acknowledge that this idea, this value, the more the better, is one aspect of the dominant culture in our country.
• Next thing is to acknowledge that this aspect, the more the better, is a problem. It exists and it’s a problem.
• And finally, the work is to dismantle this aspect of our culture. Stop putting such a high value on the more the better.

After all, look at where it’s gotten us. to right here, exactly where we are with billionaires running our country, some of them not even elected.

And for those of you who haven’t picked up on it yet or aren’t familiar with the work of Tima Okun and others, I am talking about dismantling one of the toxins of white supremacy culture. I know that phrase white supremacy culture is really hard. It’s really challenging and difficult. So I talk about dominant culture instead a lot. But it’s the same thing. To do this, it is helpful to look to the leadership of those who have been most adversely impacted by this culture, by toxins like the more, the better, the faster, the better. Enter Trisha Hersey, author of the reading you shared with us earlier today from her book, This is resistance, a manifesto.

Slowing down our grind culture, turning away from the focus on production, dismantling the constant push of the more, the better. It’s not only good for our bodies and our souls, it is also an act of resistance. A bill of reparations owed, an act of allyship, and a deeply theological imperative.

One of the places we have begun this work is right here in our church, because the more the better has been true here, right? We count the number of programs the church offers. we count the number of people who show up to a program at the church. We count the number of minutes there are in a sermon or a worship service. And we make judgments on those. The sermon’s probably the only one which the longer the better might not hold true. (audience laughing) The exception to prove the rule. And by the way, this morning will be shorter than my usual so that you have a little more time to rest on your Sunday.

I know. I know how much there is to be done in all of our lives and in this country and in this world and from so many, many perspectives, I know how easy it is to feel a sense of overwhelm. I feel it, too. I struggle with finding enough rest, too. Sometimes that’s why we preach these sermons, is because we need to preach to ourselves. This is one of those cases.

We all feel the overwhelm, and we should know that we aren’t the first to feel this way. When the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. felt the weight of the struggle for change and justice, and its attendant exhaustion, and the fear for his own life that he lived under. He turned to a particular hymn, his favorite, “Precious Lord, Take My Hands,” which we will sing together shortly.

And as you go forth a little bit later today, after eating some pie, I encourage you to continue to explore. We began with our kids earlier today, the many, many ways of resting. Sleep, yeah. Sure, get plenty of that, but not just sleep. Find other ways to rest, too. And as you do, remember that in your resting and in your insistence upon rest, you are doing the work of the resistance. You are not taking a break from doing the work of the resistance; by resting, you are resisting.

May it be so. Amen and Blessed be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

by Tricia Hersey

You are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn rest. Rest is not a luxury, a privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out … Rest is not a privilege because our bodies are still our own, no matter what the current systems teach us. The more we think of rest as a luxury, the more we buy into the systematic lies of grind culture. Our bodies and Spirits do not belong to capitalism, no matter how it is theorized and presented. Our divinity secures this, and it is our right to claim this boldly

Whether you are a resistor, or an ally, or a little bit of both, … Go, boldly claiming your divine right to rest and in doing so, bless all others as you yourselves are blessed.

Amen and Blessed Be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
March 9 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Trust is an important component of beloved community. How are communities of trust built? kept? restored? What does it look like when a community leads with trust in each other and the greater 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

THE LONGING FOR SOMETHING MORE
by Gretchen Haley

Every little thing that breaks your heart
is welcome here
We’ll make a space for it
Give it its due time
and praise
for the wanting it represents
the longing for something more,
some healing hope that remains
not
yet

We promise no magic
no making it all better
But offer only this circle of trust
This human community
that remembers
Though imperfectly
that sings and prays
though sometimes
awkwardly

This gathering that loves,
though not yet enough
We’re still practicing
After all,
still learning,
still in need of help
and partners
Still becoming
able
to receive
all this beauty
and all these gifts
we each bring

Come, let us worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

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

First Reading

LIFT OUR VOICES #120
by Erica Hewitt

I don’t have anything to say.

Well, I do, but it might not be interesting to anyone.

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

I want to hear what you have to say.

I want to speak of the deepest things together.

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

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

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

I will listen and listen again until my hearing becomes understanding.

What if I can’t find the words to share the world inside of me?

I believe that wise words will emerge from you.

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

By knowing that as I receive part of your story, I will give you part of mine.

How will this work? What will happen? What awaits us?

We can find out anything by beginning.

Let us begin to listen and trust and to deeply know one another.

May it be so.

Second Reading

by adrienne maree brown

trust the people who move towards you and already feel like home.
trust the people to let you rest.
trust the people to do everything better than you could have imagined.
trust the people and they become trustworthy.
trust that the people are doing their work to trust themselves.
trust that each breach of trust can deepen trust or clarify boundaries.
trust the people who revel in pleasure after hard work.
trust the people who let children teach, remind us how to emote,
be still, and laugh.
trust the people who see and hold your heart.
trust the people who listen to the whales.
trust the people and you will become trustworthy.
trust the people and show them your love.
trust the people.

Sermon

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

This morning I Will begin with an assertion Followed by many many questions Which in turn are sprinkled with a few stories and Almost no answers Our topic today is trust, specifically building communities of trust. And it is one that is particularly tender during this time, I think. And we are going to sort of preach this sermon together. So are you ready for something a little different, a little more participatory? We’ve got things for the introverts and for the extroverts today.

My assertion is this. Trust is an essential component of beloved community. If trust is not present, beloved community is not possible. Beloved community or communities are communities of trust, trust like beloved community must be built, created, and when broken restored. The higher the level of trust, the closer we come to true beloved community.

So I’ll repeat my assertion because this is the foundation of what we are going to do together this morning and it was kind of a lot packed into a few sentences. Trust is an essential component of beloved community. If trust is not present, beloved community is not possible. Beloved community, or communities, while we’re working on the greater community, are communities of trust. And trust, like beloved community, must be built, created, and when broken, restored. The higher the level of trust, the closer we come to true beloved community.

So my first questions, these are for the introverts because I’ll say them a couple of times and then I’ll pause for a few moments of quiet reflection. We have ideas about what beloved community might mean that come from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and it has been many decades since we lost Dr. King and so ideas about beloved community have evolved since then.

So what does beloved community mean to you? And what is the role of trust in building Beloved Community? What does Beloved Community mean to you? Now, today. And what is the role of trust?

Next questions. How do we build trust? How do we create it? This is the participatory part where we get some ideas flowing. Reverend Aaron will call on a few people, let’s say maybe three, to share their ideas and then repeat what they’ve said into the microphone so we can all hear both in this room and online.

For those of you who are online, you can type your thoughts into the chat if that’s available to you and your method and begin a parallel discussion to ours here in the sanctuary. So here are the questions again. How do we build trust? In other words, where trust is already present, how do we increase or build our level of trust with each other? And how do we create trust? In other words, when we meet people for the first time or they are new to us, how do we begin the process of trusting each other? How do we build? How do we create trust? Some ideas.

So I think you can create trust with new people by using the platinum rule to treat others the way they want to be treated. And if people see that you treat them the way that they like to be treated, they might trust you more. Awesome.

Okay, Nick said that with new people in particular, but with anyone, right, we can create trust with the platinum rule. And if you haven’t heard of the platinum rule, that’s treat others the way they would like to be treated, right? So that requires us to invite them to tell us and to notice how they’d like to be treated. Thank you, Nick.

LP, who has an amazing bow, said that one way that we can build communal trust is through shared cooking and that sacred process of breaking bread together. Thank you.

Inconveniencing yourself for others so that people know when they really do need to ask that you’ve demonstrated that they won’t be a burden and you’re willing to do things. So did I kind of get that close? Awesome, thank you.

Russell said, “To really sincerely be open when you meet someone to demonstrate that sincerity and openness in your listening.” And I felt that in your responsiveness as well, a quality of presence and openness. Thank you all, thank you.

Thank you. Those are some wonderful ideas to get started.

• So yes, we can allow ourselves to be known. We can share our stories, we can open ourselves to those more vulnerable places inside that go even deeper, help us move even deeper into relationship.
• We can listen deeply without judging, without interrupting, without spending our time while listening, actually planning to say what we’re going to, how we’re going to respond.
• We can hold confidences when they are shared with us.
• We can act with integrity, which is one of our UU values.

And I think we can see, without my saying too much about it, why if my assertion about trust is true, our chalice circles and wellspring groups, which for those of you who are new, are small group ministries where people share deeply about monthly themes like trust, which is this month’s theme, are so important. They’re not just important for our spiritual growth, but also for building trust and building the health of our community.

So, I have a story. Long ago, just before I headed out to seminary, I was a preschool teacher. And one day I was presented with an opportunity to get to know one of the teachers better. I shared with her, confidentially, that I had felt called to ministry and would be going to seminary in the fall. Not long after that conversation, I got called to the office and asked about my future plans. The other teacher had betrayed my trust and shared with the director that I would be leaving.

An uncomfortable conversation ensued and I shared my plans with the director in a way and with a timing that I had not chosen. I was hurt and what I thought of as a newly developing friendship was damaged. I later came to understand that she was operating out of what she thought of as the best interests of the students and the school. She did not want me to wait too long to share my news and risk my position going unfilled. Of course, I would have preferred she come to me with her concern and share that and encourage me to share my news instead of doing it for me.

But I need to honor within myself that she did have good intentions. And what she did not know was that I was considering two options, one that would have required me to move away and live on campus and leave my position as a teacher and the other which was nearby and would have allowed me to take classes in the evening and maintain my job teaching during the day for the next few years. I had not shared my plans with the director because I had not yet decided which path I would take to becoming a minister. And then I felt rushed in making that decision because the director then wanted to know.

At the time, I did not have the skills to address this break in relationship with the other teacher. If I had I would have asked her to share with me why she made the decision she did and listen to what she had to say and then I would have shared my perspective including my feelings of hurt and betrayal and also the missing information she did not have and then to ask if there was a way we could restore our relationship.

So I’m not naive. I think few of us are. We know that every time we choose to trust, we are choosing risk. There is always the possibility that confidences will be broken, that our trust will be betrayed. Trust is broken in ways little and big all the time. We are imperfect humans. The key is to trust each other enough to work to restore trust, to do the work of repair, and to know that sometimes this doesn’t happen, that the work of repair doesn’t happen, that people can and do decline our overtures to restore relationship. And still we must find a way to be at peace with their decision, a decision which is outside of our control. And yet still all remain in beloved community together.

We also want to acknowledge that sometimes in certain very extreme circumstances we really need to shift how we understand trust for our own spiritual and mental health. There are, after all, people who are sociopaths and psychopaths out there in this world. Yes, I’m using the lay terms here.

In these circumstances, when someone is incapable of being trustworthy in the way we usually think of trustworthiness, we can still trust them to be who they actually are. I learned this from speaking with someone recently about the challenge of finding hope within our current political climate. She shared with me that she trusts a particular leader to mess up so badly at some point that he will actually wind up creating an opening for change. She trusts him to be who he actually is instead of who she wishes he would be, and she does it in a way that creates hope. She trusts him to mess up, to create the opening, and therein lies the hope.

By the way, since this is a sermon after all, faith is actually trust, plus an element of the transcendent. Whether that is God or some universal force bigger than ourselves. So it would also be appropriate if you’d like to think of all of this in the terms of the word faith.

So returning to relationships here in this congregation, in this community, with people being people, with people being imperfect, with people being prone to messing up unintentionally or otherwise. Can we trust that when trust is broken, as it will be, that we have a covenant and a team and processes that can help us find a way through to restoring relationships?

Can we trust that when we do the work of restoration, Sometimes we don’t do it as well or as smoothly as we’d like, and yet there still is integrity to engaging that process. Can we trust that this congregation or whatever other setting you may find yourself in is healthy enough to allow for places of discomfort, such as when apologies or olive branches are not immediately accepted. Can we trust this congregation, this community, to still hold and love us all, to know and accept that we all belong even in our imperfection.

There’s a lot to think about and I don’t have all of the answers. I am looking to all of you to help with finding the answers within. Especially since I will be leaving soon and this will remain your community, but not mine. I will say that I do believe you can do this, that I have faith in all of you.

One last story, and then a final challenge. I once worked at a church as an interim. You know that I’ve moved from church to church to church traveling around the country doing this interim work specialized work. And as usual I began with a startup workshop where a consultant from the UUA’s regional office came in and worked with all of us about roles and responsibility and making sure we had clarity about who had the authority and expectation to do what between the minister and the board and the congregation and the RE teacher. So in this case, the consultant asked the assembled group, the congregation, if it was okay for the ministers to speak up on their have. This was meant to be a provocative question that would open a great deal of discussion. Instead, the response was, “Yeah, of course. We trust our ministers to speak up for us.” The consultant was a bit flabbergasted because most of our congregations do not allow for this.

And this is where the challenge comes in. First UU is one of those congregations that prohibits its ministers from speaking up in public on their behalf. Ministers are free only to speak for themselves. It’s a little bit of splitting hairs when you’re out there in public to say I speak only for myself, but I am the minister of this congregation. People don’t really hear it that way anyway. This has been how it has been in most UU congregations. But I wonder, I wonder if it’s time for a change. We are living in a world and in a nation which is rapidly changing. We are living in a time of rising fascism.

The prohibition of ministers speaking up on behalf of their congregations may have served its purpose and its time, and there may have been reasons for it, good, valid reasons. But is it still helpful now? Does this time call for something different? For a new way of being in the world? What would it be like to trust your ministers to speak up with the full weight of the congregation behind them? Out there in the public square while we are fighting authoritarianism and fascism.

What would it be like to trust your ministers to be able to speak up immediately about the wrongs they see in the world and in this nation without having to go through a many months long process of congregational discernment and resolution making. What would it be like to trust your ministers to be able to judge for themselves when a particular issue is too sensitive to speak out about immediately and to trust that the ministers will take you through that process of congregational discernment when necessary. What would it be like to be able to trust on this level?

There are stories in this congregation and in all of our congregations about ministers being human, that’s a rumor, from making relatively minor mistakes to doing serious harm to outright misconduct. What would it look like for a congregation, for this congregation, to fully heal from the past, to accept that mistakes were made, that problems arose, and then to trust that a new way can be made.

This, by the way, especially for those of you visiting with us today, applies just as well to our families and our workplaces as it does our congregation. What would you as a congregation or some other group of people be able to do in this world if your leaders were well and fully trusted? What would you be able to do in this world if you well and fully trusted each other?

I don’t have all the answers for you. Just a few ideas and a lot of questions. What I do know, though, is that whatever you would be able to do with this level of trust would be nothing short of absolutely transformative, just like it says right up there in your mission. Transform lives. And I have faith that this community can find a way.

Amen and blessed be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

May we remember that trust, like love, grows in small moments:
In promises kept and confidences held,
In boundaries respected and amends made,
In showing up again and again.
May we be brave enough to risk trust,
Patient enough to build it slowly,
And gentle with ourselves and others when it breaks.
Amen.

by the Rev. Angeline C. Jackson

SERMON INDEX

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Rev. Michelle LaGrave
February 23, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev. Michelle will reflect on this month’s theme of inclusivity and what this means for our mission of doing justice. So often we think about doing justice so that all will be included. But what might it look like to include all in doing justice?

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 TOGETHER

We arrive
as individuals as couples
as families
as neighbors
as friends

We got here by walking by biking
by riding
by driving
by connecting

We bring with us
our joys and our sorrows
our laughter and our tears
our worries and our fears
our questions and our beliefs
our ethics and our values

A ceramic mug of coffee sits on a table
next to an open laptop,
showing many people in Zoom cells.
Some of us
arrived early this morning
or joined us ten minutes ago
or encountered obstacles on their way
or will arrive just in time for the sermon
or will sign online later this week or even next month

We
are sitting in pews
leaning on walkers or canes
stretching in the aisles
settling in wheelchairs
and relaxing in recliners

We, members, friends, and visitors alike,
come from many paths
and join together as one congregation,
to lift up our highest ideals.

We have gathered.
Now, let us worship.

Affirming Our Mission

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

First Reading

Micah 6: 6-8

Micah asks on behalf of the people: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

Micah answers on behalf of God: He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?

Second Reading

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With Courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon,
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again,
to the dream.

– Maya Angelou

Sermon

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

Micah was a prophet who lived in ancient Israel during the 8th century BCE. His hometown was a small village called Morsheth, not too far from Jerusalem, and he lives in a time of rapid change. Much like we are today.

Commerce was expanding, Trade was increasingly moving away from a barter system and toward a monetary system. Fraudulent weights and measures had become common. Land was being accumulated in large quantities by the hands of wealthy landowners and at the expense of small farmers. And the gap between rich and poor was increasing greatly and rapidly. The powerful dictated what they desired. Judges and other officials are taking bribes, people are lying, and the families, families are falling apart due to lack of trust in each other.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Micah lived during a time of rising power, wealth, and corruption. And so he went out into the marketplace and prophesied. During ancient times, people brought other people to court for breach of covenant and were heard by a judge. In Micah, as elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, God brought the people of ancient Israel to court and indicted them for breach of covenant with the mountains, the hills, and the earth for witnesses, similar to the ways in which human courts worked. In God’s case they were out of covenant, out of right relationship with God. Of what were the people guilty of? Injustice. Injustice in the land was flourishing.

And so the people cried out as we still tend to do during a crisis, atheist or not, and ask, “What does God want from me? What do you want from me, world, universe? What do you want from us? How much would you take from us? Everything we have and more?” And Micah reminded the people that God has already told them what is good, What is required of them? And that is to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with their God.

Micah’s story is an age-old story and one we are in many ways reliving today, though now the threat of our own government comes from within and not from the Assyrian Empire. And Micah’s answer to the people is still a good one, a good lesson for us today. We are to do justice, love, kindness, and walk humbly, which in, you know, 3,000 years ago language meant remain in covenant, walk humbly, remain in covenant with the holy.

So today I’d like to talk just a little bit about why it is we do justice as Unitarian Universalists. At least enough to establish that doing justice is well within our living tradition. Micah is only one of many examples from the Hebrew scriptures, which are sacred to both Judaism and Christianity, of justice-seeking as a requirement of being in right relationship with the divine. Jesus’s ministry as well was a liberatory one and his teachings are foundational to Unitarianism and Universalism which both emerged out of Christianity.

Over time, our theological underpinnings have expanded as more and more people have joined us from more and more faith traditions and backgrounds, and as we have continued to grow in our spiritual and theological understandings. Today, justice is one of Unitarian Universalism’s shared values. We have covenanted with each other, congregation to congregation, to work to be diverse, multicultural, beloved communities where all thrive, to dismantle racism and all forms of systemic oppression, and to support the use of inclusive democratic processes within our congregations, our association, and society at large. That’s right in our bylaws, in our Unitarian Universalist Associations bylaws.

Finally, let us not forget that doing justice is right up there on our wall in this congregation’s mission statement. Together we nourish souls, transform lives and do justice to build the beloved community. So having established that we are indeed a justice-seeking, justice-building, justice-creating, justice-making people, let’s who it is that does or does not do all of this justice-making and how it gets done.

At times, I’m a little sad to say this, it seems that within Unitarian Universalism, and I imagine elsewhere, the loudest voices for justice are all about marches and protests and visiting legislators at the Capitol and sit-ins and die-ins and civil disobedience that results in arrest.

Do you know what all these have in common? Anyone want to guess? They require people to either be able-bodied or to put their disabled bodies on the line at a much higher, higher risk than is generally taken by non-disabled people. Yes, that includes even visiting legislators at the Capitol.

I tried to do this once. Earlier during my time here in Austin, I wanted to visit the Texas State Capitol. So, being physically disabled, I did my usual research into what I would need to know to visit a new place I had never been.

First, I found out that there was a special webpage called Capital Accessibility Services with all of the information that I would need. And right at the top of that page was an assurance that all capital, capital extension and capital visitor center facilities are accessible to persons with disabilities, as well as a link to an accessibility guide. Great, we’re off to a good start here.

Then, with further reading, I discovered that it was actually a considerable distance to walk from the parking garage to the building where I wanted to go and an even farther walk from that garage to the only accessible entrance to that building which was actually on the other farther side from the garage. In other words I’d have to walk all the way around the outside of the building to get inside without using any stairs or very many stairs.

Then I thought, well, I can rent a motorized scooter for the day. Most recently, I often use a rollator, but I have often used motorized scooters at large events and in large stores, though I don’t actually own one myself. No problem, I thought. There are rental places which will deliver a scooter to my destination. I don’t even have to figure out how to transport it there myself.

And then I read, motorized scooters are not allowed on the capital grounds. Okay, now that’s out too. So how am I supposed to get into the capital?

So, I kept reading. A wheelchair was the last option. To get it, I would have to walk from the parking garage to the visitor center, which was in the opposite direction of the Capitol building itself, get the wheelchair, and then wheel myself back past the parking garage and all the way around the Capitol building and to the other side to go in the accessible entrance. There was no way. I don’t have the arm strength for that. That’s why we have motorized scooters in addition to wheelchairs.

And then I realized that the only possible way I or anyone with limited leg mobility and arm strength could go to the Capitol was to be pushed in a wheelchair by someone else. My spouse Micah was unable to take me on that particular day and it was too late at night to call by that time and make arrangements with anyone else. Besides I wondered who could I ask? Who would be willing? I mean it’s a pretty big ask to call someone and ask them to spend the entire day with you pushing you around in a wheelchair. And what do people who don’t have anyone in their life who could help them do? And what about all the people who can only use a motorized scooter? There is no circumstance under which they could make a visit to the Capitol. Despite the website’s promises, this was not and is not accessibility.

I share this story, not, NOT, to get you all fired up and headed down to the capital to demand change on my or any disabled person’s behalf, but to give a glimpse into just a very little slice of only one person’s disabled life on only one evening trying to plan only one outing. There are many, many more stories out there with different or worse or better experiences than mine.

And there are many, many more of my own stories that I could share, but I chose this one because in it I was attempting to do justice while being disabled. People who are disabled need to be more than the subjects of doing justice. We need to also be full participants in justice-making.

The point I want to make today is that there are as many ways of doing justice as there are of being human. So, so many people are living in even greater than usual risk in this country today. Primarily people who are undocumented and people who are transgender and also people who are BIPOC, LGBTQ plus and disabled, as well as anyone who has a uterus and is able to get pregnant. We are living in a time of rising fascism and we are gonna need as many people as possible doing justice.

So it’s time to put away any of the old ideas about what it means to do justice the right way, or the best way, or the only way. We need lots of different kinds of justice-making, and we need justice-making and justice-doing to be as accessible as possible.

Some common justice-making actions are already pretty accessible to a lot, if not all people. Things like writing letters or making phone calls. There was a great example of a letter from one of our congregants, Denise Pierce, going around lately. In it, she called for a company, in a very positive way, to increase the accessibility of their website. She explained that she loved the company, really wanted to shop there, and why she wanted to shop there and then said that she would need them to make it more accessible for her in order for it to work.

There are lots of different ways, new or different ways that we can think about making justice-making more accessible. People can help with digital security or giving rides or digital communication or preparing food for justice organizers and events, and many, many other ways. We need to start thinking outside of the box.

Remember, we don’t have to make the entirety of any action or event fully accessible to everyone. That would be near impossible. But we can make different components of justice actions or events accessible in various ways for various needs so that more and more people are able to engage in a piece of the work. It is a duty, an imperative, doing justice in these times.

Here are just a few tips we can help make this happen just to get started.

• The first thing we need to do is accept that no one can fully know what it is like to live in another person’s body or to live another person’s life. Each of us has the right to determine the level of personal risk we are willing to undertake or not in any justice-making, justice-doing we take on and no one else has the right to make judgments about whether or not someone else should have taken more or less personal risk bodily or otherwise and this goes for everyone not just disabled folks.

• The second thing we need to do is to take care of our spiritual and emotional selves. We are facing tactics that are intentionally meant to overwhelm us or shut us down or cause us to freeze. We have a responsibility, a moral duty, to deal with the overwhelm so we can get unstuck and get moving in whatever ways we can and in whatever ways we do best. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Give each other as much of a chance as possible to get unstuck and get unfrozen and get moving. We need as many of us to join the resistance as is possible. Every person and every action counts. No fake fights about our justice-making or anything else that might serve as a diversion from the moral, ethical, theological and spiritual imperative to do justice.

• The third thing we need to do is pay attention to inclusion in any of the social justice actions or events we are planning. If someone can’t march or sit or stand or hear or see or walk or whatever else it is very well, what can they do? If someone is in a greater risk category because they are undocumented or black or queer or all of the above or some combination of the above, what might they need to better or more fully participate? We might not know, and if we don’t know, let’s make the effort to find out.

So to recap, These are my three getting-started tips.

• Number one, we each get to assess our own level of personal risk, no second guessing by anyone else.
• Number two, we need to take care of ourselves and each other so we can, if possible, get unstuck and live up to our responsibility to do justice.
• And number three, pay attention to inclusion in any social justice events or actions we are planning.

By keeping love at the center, we can continue to widen the circle of concern farther and farther. And by including more and more people in the work of justice-making, we can do more justice.

As Maya Angelou says, “Let us give birth once again to the dream.”

May it be so. Amen and blessed be.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

In all of the ways that our bodies and our minds work, both literal and metaphorical, I say to you, 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.

Amen and blessed be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 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