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Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt
December 28, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Storytelling is a powerful way to connect with one another, to understand ourselves and the world around us, and it just feels really good. Rev. Carrie explores the power of a good 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

A story communicates fear, hope, and anxiety, and because we can feel it, we get the moral not just as a concept, but as a teaching of our hearts. That’s the power of story. That’s why most of our faith traditions interpret themselves as stories, because they are teaching our hearts how to live as choiceful human beings capable of embracing hope over fear, self-worth and self-love over self-doubt, and love over isolation and alienation.

– Marshall Ganz

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

Matthew 2:1-12

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “in Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet: And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.”

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star appeared; and he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” When they had heard the king they went their way; and lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

Sermon

I love a good story, don’t you? Stories are fun and entertaining. And because they are fun and entertaining, they can be used as powerful tools.

Tools to help us connect to other people, other cultures, and other ways of understanding the world Because they help us to understand things from a different perspective And can help us to strengthen or even develop our values.

That is because stories engage our brains in a completely different way. When we hear stories, our thinking shifts from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex.

Meaning stories make it possible for us to move out of the part of our brain that is mostly concerned about our survival, which tends to shrink our world into a part of our brain that is open and creative and empathetic.

From this place, when we hear or read about another being’s experience, our brains are flooded with feel-good hormones like oxytocin and dopamine. Leading us to connect to them, even if they are fictional.

Does anyone have a favorite fiction character? Me too.

Storytelling is such a powerful tool because it expands our understanding of what it can look like to be a person on this planet. Which is why some people find them dangerous Dangerous enough to try to ban them.

Stories are just that powerful!

One person who saw the power of storytelling to connect us and develop life-changing empathy was the Unitarian writer Rod Sterling. Rod Sterling had seen and experienced a lot of horrible things during World War 2. When he left the military, he turned to writing to help him process his anger and all he was feeling. That got him into writing for television. When Emmitt Till, a black boy, was killed by white supremacists, he wanted to write TV scripts about racism and the atrocity of what happened to Emmitt Till.

The TV producers and censors did not like that.

So eventually he figured out that the way to do what he wanted, write TV shows that would tell a powerful story and make people think about big issues in our society, was to make it science fiction.

This is how he created the TV show The Twilight Zone, a popular, powerful, and often still relevant TV show. The beauty of the Twilight Zone is that both the oppressed and oppressors liked to watch it even though there were important messages about oppression. Because it was a story, it helped people enter a creative, empathetic space to examine larger issues, like prejudice. Even if they didn’t realize that was what was happening.

Stories are also way to communicate many important messages in an entertaining way. It’s often easier to grasp a big ideas through a story than through a list of facts because a story can squish in a bunch of concepts while you are in an open space.

For instance, the story that Margaret just read for us about the Magi is a pretty good one It’s a little weird.

Maybe it left you wanting to hear more or just left you confused. Maybe it was so familiar that you kind of tuned it out.

What if I told you that that story would have been way more powerful to you if you were a Jewish person who lived 2000 years ago?

The story of the Magi, sometimes called the three kings or the three Wise Men, was in a book in the Bible called Matthew. This book was about Jesus, and it was probably written about 50ish years after Jesus died.

The primary purpose of the book was to share Jesus teaching and to make an argument that Jesus was the rightful king, the Son of God, and that his death meant something.

The audience for this book were the Jewish people who were following the path of Jesus or who might come to follow it.

When this book was written, these people had been run out of their homeland by Rome, the empire who had been oppressing them for a long time had destroyed their temple and all of Jerusalem, and enslaved many people and other horrible things.

So if you are a Jewish person in the first century and you heard or read Matthew’s account of the Magi it would have probably been very exciting.

First of all, you would have grown up knowing about the Parthian Empire, and the religion Zoroastrianism. And you would have known that the Parthian empire was bigger and more powerful than Rome at the time.

So when the story says that the Magi come from the east, those early readers or hearers would have understood that Matthew was trying to say that an empire even more powerful than the Roman Empire saw the importance of Jesus.

And not only that, they would have understood that the magi were Zoroastrian priest, which meant they knew the truth, because their religion was about receiving the truth. The truth, they told Herod, that the King of the Jews had been born.

These important details mean that for these ancient readers and now us, these aren’t just men who seem vaguely important coming to give strange gifts to a baby.

Rather, they are symbols that say this baby is as important as Matthew says he is and he is bigger than Rome, and really any empire.

This would have been a powerful message to people who had endured the pain of living under an empire. And is still powerful for many people living under empire today.

Secondly, in the story we learn that the Magi are coming because of a star. If you were living in the 1st century you would have known that these men were coming from a part of the world that had the best astronomers. – People who watched and tracked the night sky and could interpret what they saw – and they could do it better than anyone… even the Romans. Having the star be a part of the story would have probably said to them two things.

First, it would have made you think of the story of the prophecy of Balaam, In that story it is said that the star would signal that the Messiah or Christ had come.

The Messiah is the person many Jewish people had been and still are waiting to come and bring salvation and liberation. And Matthew believed and wanted others to believe that Jesus was that Messiah.

But not only that, Matthew wanted people to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Which was a title that the Roman Emperor Augusta had claimed for himself after seeing a comet. Augusta had a comet, but Jesus had a star, A star so powerful and steady that it could lead a group of important priest to his home….

And of course there are those weird gifts. I mean who brings myrrh to a baby. What is myrrh anyways?

If you lived in the ancient world those gifts would have signaled to you the whole of what Matthew was arguing.

Those ancient people would have associated Gold with Kingship Frankincense Gods and Goddess because that is what was burned in the temples.

And finally myrrh was to remind people of Jesus death. Myrrh is a very strong smelling oil that was used throughout that area on a body after someone had died.

There are tons and tons of thing that those early readers and hearers would have caught that we don’t catch, but when we give stories, especially stories that aren’t from our time or our culture the respect they deserve, we can get a greater insight than if we just insist on viewing things through our own lens. Because stories can expand our world.

When I try to look at this story through the lens of the people it was intended for I have a deeper understanding of the story and I understand why the story was told the way it was told. I don’t have to believe it as fact, but I do develop empathy for that ancient audience.

But we know that not all stories are meant for our good. For example, we know that the bible, where this story came from, has been used to do all sorts of harm.

The story of Noah in the Hebrew Bible was used my many Christian ministers to justify slavery in this country. It was used to justify colonization, misogyny, segregation, homophobia, and so much more.

Those things could be justified because there were already stories out there that said men were better than women, that Europeans were better than others, that Christians were better than others, that able-bodied people are better than disabled people and on and on.

These stories are old and have done so much damage and they are still around.

So what do we do when stories are such powerful tools AND can be used to do harm?

Well, I think we have to be wise when we listen to stories. For me this looks like holding my values close. Like the Equity value that we have in Unitarian Universalism, that says:

“every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.”

So if I hear a story that pits one group against another, I can step back, apply my values to it, and see how it holds up.

Stories are such powerful tools that we need to make sure we use our wisdom when we hear them, and if something sits wrong with us, it’s a sign to investigate that.

It might be that you are picking up a lesson from a story that is harmful…. or it could be that you are having to evaluate your own values and beliefs.

Unlike those ancient people reading Matthew, we have access to so many stories… every single day. Often told in less than a minute.

We have to make sure that what we let in, helps us grow and live more deeply into our values.

Storytelling can expand our world by helping us to see outside our limited experience and understanding.

Stories allows us to literally let out brains relax making it easier for us to step into another person’s shoes, to experience things that we ourselves haven’t and might never will. It makes us more empathetic and more connected.

And when we listen with wisdom, it can help us to understand ourselves and our values in a deeper way. So this is your call to action:

• Tell your stories
• And ask each other for stories
• Fill your world with stories from other people, other times, and other places So that you might be more connected
• More empathetic
• And have a more expansive life.

And make sure that whoever’s story you are listening to… even if they are the ones you tell yourself, that they are stories that are seeking the truth and beauty and wisdom of what it means to be a human on this planet.

Because storytelling is a powerful tool.

May we listen well.

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

As we leave this sacred time of community,
of fun,
of comfy cozy togetherness,
May you feel inspired to tell your story,
May you feel eager to hear others,
with wisdom,
and may the telling and the hearing connect us.

Go with a good story!

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. Carrie Holley-Hurt
December 14, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

It’s the season of peace or so they say. What does peace mean when there is so little of it in the world? Where do we find our peace? Rev. Carrie explores peace and how we might think about it in times of chaos.

Prelude

“Cantata 140: Wenn Kommst Du, Mein Heil & Zion Hort Die Wachter Singen” (J.S. Bach) – Jihee Han (soprano), Robert Harlan (bass & Beth Blackerby (violin); The First UU Adult Vocal Ensemble & Orchestra; Brent Baldwin, conductor

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

RIVER CALL
by Rev. Manish K. Mishra-Marzetti

Between rocking the boat
and sitting down;
between stirring things up,
and peaceably going along, We find ourselves here,
in community.

Each called
from many different journeys,
Many different life paths,
onto this river road.

Some are here because the rocking of the boat has been too much: too much tumult,
too much uncertainty,
too much pain.

Some are here with questions about where the boat is going;
how best to steer it;
where this journey ends.
Others are here,
as lovers of the journey, lovers of life itself.

Here in front
beside,
Behind each a passenger;
each a captain;
doing the best we can.

“Rest here, in your boat,
with me,” the river calls;
“Listen to how I flow,
the sound of life coursing all around you.” Let the current hold you,
let the current guide you;
the river that gently flows through your soul,
Whispers:

“Come, let us worship.”

Affirming Our Mission

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

Music

“Cantata 140: Mein Freund ist Mein” (J.S. Bach) – Jihee Han (soprano), Kelan Latimer (bass) & Julianne Webner (oboe)

Reading

THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
by Rev. Addae A. Kraba

Let this holiday season be a time for engaging heart to heart.
For those who, like the innkeeper, turned us away;
For holidays that didn’t live up to our expectations.
For ghosts of Christmas past that haunt us;
For those who gave us gifts, but never their presence.
For gifts we yearned for, but did not receive;
For things we received, but never wanted.
For those who offered us cheer when we needed comfort;
For those who offered us love that we could not accept.
For those we rejected, offering no room in our homes or hearts;
For ourselves, who could not give through fear.
For the times we saw a star in the East. but failed to follow it;
For times we followed the star, but it did not lead where we hoped.
For miracles gone unnoticed,
For wise men and women, whose gifts we rejected.
All these we remember, we forgive, we love.
In doing so, may we be granted an abiding peace.

Meditation Music

“Sunrise on the Hills” (Brent Baldwin) – The First UU Orchestra & Brent Baldwin (pedal steel)

Sermon

Peace, peace; when there is no peace. We are in the season of advent, which invites us to spend time thinking about hope, faith. joy, and PEACE.

Which is why back in September I picked peace to preach on today. Honestly, at the time it seemed like an easy lift.

“But, NO!” the universe said.

You see every time I’ve thought about this sermon my brain went right to this scripture from the Hebrew Bible:

“Peace, peace; when there is no peace.”

This is from the book of Jeremiah. You see Poor Jeremiah has the misfortune of being the prophet who has to tell Judah “Change your ways, or the Babylonians are coming for ya”…Which does end up happening.. For 70 years there is an exile, The temple is destroyed.

Of course because Jeremiah is a prophet no one is listening to him which makes him cranky. Or maybe he is cranky so no one is listening to him. I love prophets but they do have a reputation.

But, of course, we can’t really blame him for his crankiness. A prophet is just someone who is standing around observing the world, Putting two and two together and speaking the uncomfortable truths.

So I totally get cranky.

I think a lot of us are watching Project 2025 roll out when they said it never would… are feeling pretty cranky. So, here I am cranky and having to preach about peace!

My cranky is heightened by the holiday, because of the whiplash of the season. One minute I’m reading and seeing images of violence and destruction, of people being stolen off our streets by the government and the next moment Mariah Carey is crooning her Christmas list at me.

She wants you, by the way.

There is tinsel and holiday ads and the state is kidnapping people and separating families, at such a rate that they have had to create three “tender age” detention centers in South Texas alone. Those are detention centers for babies and children under 13.

Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

Now I do have a part of me that has gladly taken on my annual, seasonal, part-time job of creating Christmas magic for my children. The same part that is getting giddy about our no-reversal christmas pageant next week.

And There is a part of me that wants to have a full on melt down and scream back at Mariah “stop gaslighting me.”

“All is not holy and jolly, in fact.”

It’s the disconnect between the reality of what is happening to people and the yearly pressure to perform the trappings of the holidays.

It is whiplash and it makes me cranky.

And maybe I think that must nave been now Henry Wadsworth Longfellow felt when he wrote this poem we sang- “I heard the belis on Christmas day.” He wrote that poem on Christmas day 1863. He was grieving his wife who died horribly. He was worried about his son who had been horribly wounded in battle. And he was living in a country that was two years into a brutal and bloody civil war.

And so when he heard those bells, ringing like they always rang before he had his own melt down. “There is no peace on earth, hate is strong and mocks the notion of peace.” He calls it out. He was lamenting. He is pointing out that things are not okay and pretending otherwise is wild.

Yes, Longfellow and I am with you! I feel that lament. I feel the urge to call it all out. And am thankful my faith and my religion supports me in that.

One of the most beautiful and humanizing aspect of Unitarian Universalism is our ability to be human and the encouragement to do so with eyes wide open. Our religion encourages us, to look past the illusion and delusion of the times we live in look past our own limited experience of the world so that we can understand what is happening. So that we can fully embody what it means to be interdependent. So that we can embody transformative justice. So that we can lament the pain, the violence, and the hurt. And by doing that we might build our hope on the vision of the world we are working towards. Not the one we are being sold.

i love that about us. I can’t imagine being more aligned to stay awake to all the world, to have empathy for those suffering, and then to allow our values to flow into action in response.

But lets be honest, that’s hard.

To open ourselves up to the pain of the world. To open ourselves up to caring about others. It’s hard.

And in a society so tailored to individualism it can be isolating.

For some of us, we feel attacked by pop stars.

But I think it is in this struggle, this struggle to stay aware that inevitably leads to lament, which allows us to move more deeply into our own spirituality, and to the peace it brings.

In Longfellow’s poem, we see a condensed version of this moving from lament to peace. First, he allows himself the lament. To say, “No, christmas you will not gaslight me I know things are bad. The world is on fire and your bells are ringing.”

But then, as the 19th Century Unitarian that he was, he finds peace in his faith. He asserts his belief that the “wrong shall fail, the right prevail. That peace will come.” For him this hope is that God is acting in this world.

Some of you might really resonate with that sentiment. Its the perfect time of year for it.

When I put my UU translator on, I resonate with it.

Part of the connective tissue that ties our pluralist community together, is that there is something. And that something holds us, guides us and is a source of our peace.

For Christians this peace in the salvation that Jesus brings. For me it is the message that is told over and over again and contained in this story of Jesus that gives me this peace. That love cannot be killed, and that when we act out of love, that when we are in solidarity, we can move mountains.

It is the peace that the beloved community is something that we work, because it is the way forward and when we work for it we bring it into the lives of each other in the here and the now.

Maybe that’s orchestrated by a God or Goddess, The Universe Spirit Or maybe it just us. Maybe its the assurance that comes because of the prayers we make with our own hands and our own feet. The prayers we make with our action.

The beautiful and sometimes baffling thing about our religion is that we don’t have to agree on the force behind it, but it is a part of our DNA to believe that there is something. And that something will enable us to bend that arch towards justice. Something that tells us that evil will not long endure. It is something that gives us this knowing and that is what helps to bring us peace. A peace that can and does exist, even in the chaos, even when “there is no peace.” It is the peace in the center of us. So deep that the storms can’t touch it. But close enough to our heart to guide us and move us to action. To make us brave enough to keep our eyes open to the suffering.

What is that something for you? And how does it hold you to both be awaken to the world And have the peaceful assurance, the hope that we do not work or hold our values in vain? What gives you peace, even when “there is no peace”?

For me there is peace in living in alignment with my values. There is peace in staying aware of what is happening. There is even peace in the lament because it means I am connected. And my peace comes from an assurance that the arch will bend. And It will bend towards justice.

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

– Rev. Abhi Jamamanchi:

May all beings be safe and free from harm.
May all live in peace and in wholeness of body, mind, and spirit.
May courage arise where there is fear,
and compassion where there is pain,
May those behind walls know they are not forgotten,
and may the work of justice be guided by love.
Peace within, peace among us, peace for all,
Peace within, peace among us, peace for all,

Go in peace

Postlude

“Cantata 140: Gloria sei dir Gesungen” (J.S. Bach) – The First UU Adult Vocal Ensemble & Orchestra; Brent Baldwin, conductor; Orchestra: Julianne Webner, oboe; Suzanne Segredo, oboe; Jennifer Bernard, English Horn; Beth Blackerby, violin; Christabel Lin, violin; Ames Asbell. viola: Anna Park, cello: Andrew Potter, bass: Valeria Diaz. organ & harpsichord

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. Carrie Holley-Hurt
November 16, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We are people who have beautifully joined ourselves to the work of building the Beloved Community, but what does that look like in a fractured world where some have more than they will ever need and some will never have enough? Rev. Carrie explores the role of solidarity in our work and in our lives.

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

Let me tell you why I come to church. I come to church and would, whether I was a preacher or not, because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. I’m afraid of becoming selfish and indulgent, and my church, my church of the free spirit, brings me back to what I want to be. I could easily despair. Doubt and dismay could overwhelm me.

My church renews my courage and my hope. It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or magazine discussion. It could too soon become too low a level. I must have my conscience sharpened, sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe to others. I must not only hear about it, but feel it. In church, I do. I am brought toward my best in every way toward my best.

– A. Powell Davies.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation, you may hate it or defy it. But in either case, you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship and thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.

– Ursula K. Le Guin

Sermon

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

You may have noticed that on my forearm, I have this hormone neuropeptide, it’s oxytocin. I find it fascinating because it helps me to think about love.

Oxytocin plays many roles in our body and in our relationship. It’s released when we hug or when we’re intimate. It’s released when you stare into your dog’s eyes. It’s released in both of you when you stare into your dog’s eyes. It is about bonding and building trust. It even helps to lessen pain. It’s called the cuddle hormone, which is adorable.

But the best example of love for me is when it does its job at birth. Oxytocin is what causes contractions. Now, if you’ve ever experienced those, or have you ever seen someone experience those, you know that this is not feel-good times. This is not cuddle time. The role of oxytocin at that point is taking you into a place that you’re not sure you want to go, quite honestly. And that’s what love does. It pushes us to do things that we are scared to do. Love makes us brave. And because it bonds us, love makes us brave in community, which is exactly what Reverend Chris preached about last week. Bravery comes from community.

Love is powerful and it is actionable, and it is only right and good that we have now articulated it as what is at the center of our work and our faith. It’s the only thing that’s going to get us to beloved community, because it’s the only thing that’s going to make us brave enough to do that work, which is to love the hell out of this world, as Reverend Joanne Fontaine Crawford told us.

The hells of racism and sexism and ableism and all those other horrible isms, the hells of hunger and war and constant fear, the hells of disconnection and marginalization and incarceration.

If the beloved community is the mission of our church, then love must be what we rely on to do the work. And that’s good because love is powerful stuff. Love is what can meet this time of so much cruelty and so much violence. And honestly, it’s what keeps me coming back, even if I wasn’t preaching.

Just as A. Powell Davies told us:

The church is where I come to remind myself to be centered in love. It’s where I come to sharpen my own conscious and redouble my commitment to the collective liberation.

It’s beautiful because there’s so many wonderful things that we can do in community. And systems of supremacy have gotten us so messed up. Just as I can get motivated at what we can do together, I can also get really overwhelmed at the vast gulf that exists between where we are and where love calls us to be.

As we’ve heard over the last four or a few weeks, over 40 million Americans are on food assistance, a program that has recently been used as a cruel political tool, as if people don’t need to eat, as if food isn’t a basic human right, as if we aren’t all just spinning on the same blue planet with the same basic needs.

But instead of remembering that, that we do live on the same planet with the same needs, we have a system that allows people to go unhoused and unsheltered. 18 out of every 10,000 people in the U.S. go unhoused. And to add insult to injury in Texas, that can become a crime, and it has the full backing of the Supreme Court. We have the most medical debt. We have the highest maturnal mortality rate, we have the highest incarceration rate compared to other rich nations. I could go on and on, but y ‘all, y ‘all know this. You all know that the state of things is far from love. The gulf between where we are and love is huge. It’s huge.

And yet it’s that brave making love that calls us to do the work, calls us to narrow that gulf until it doesn’t exist anymore. That’s the beloved community.

Let’s ask us to stop participating in hierarchies that keep systems in place. And one way to do that is to unlearn our charity mindset and move to a solidarity mindset.

Charity mindset is how we’ve been taught to address unmet needs. Now meeting unmet needs is a really good thing. I would never say to stop doing that. But if we’re doing it with a charity mindset, the problem is that that mindset perpetuates the status quo. Because it is designed to exist within systems that perpetuate the problem without critically addressing the reasons those problems exist in the first place.

Matthew Desmond in his book, Poverty by America, writes:

When we don’t own property, or we can’t access credit, we become dependent on people who do and can, which in turn invites exploitation because, hey, it’s capitalism and in capitalism, a bad deal for you is a good deal for me.

This comes, has come into sharp relief this last few weeks as the nation has been talking about SNAP and how we have learned that the majority, three quarters of the people who receive SNAP, are in full-time employment.

Now, I don’t think that you should have to work to be worthy of food. You are worthy for food because you are living. But what the statistic tells us is that our system is about exploitation. That big corporations can hire people and become incomprehensibly rich, while the people whose labor is making them rich are struggling to meet their most basic human needs.

When we have a charity mindset, we don’t do that drilling down. We don’t look at the systems of exploitation, but rather we do what we’ve been taught to do, which is to put the focus on the individual. And they’re pitiful or tragic reasons that they are the way they are. We’ve taught to see them as the problem.

But if we unlearn this, if we take a solidarity approach, we look past the individual into the larger systems.

This is captured so beautifully by Bishop Desmond Tutu when he said there comes a point when you need to stop pulling people out of the river and you need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in in the first place.

Now it is a good point in the sermon to say. I am not saying to stop providing for people’s basic needs. We must go upstream and find out while people are falling into the river and we must challenge those systems and change those systems to stop the problem from even happening.

And in the meantime, we also need to keep pulling those people out of the river. Because people still need safety. People still need warm clothes, people still need to eat. Please continue to donate to the Capital Food Bank and your local free fridge and or your neighborhood buy nothing group. And if you’re someone that needs food, rely on your neighbors for it.

While we are working to tear down these systems so that beloved community can be built, we need to join with each other and take care of each other. This is mutual aid. This is us in solidarity. A shift to a solidarity mindset that says, I am not beholden to systems, I’m beholden to you.

And it breaks down those hierarchies and inequalities because solidarity operates on the same premise that we do, which is the inherent worth and dignity of all people.

A charity mindset is intertwined with systems of supremacy, which mean that it gives more weight to those that systems of supremacy say are most important, are deemed most worthy.

A solidarity mindset breaks those hierarchies down and says
Everybody should eat.
Everyone should have access to shelter.
Everybody should be safe.

It also says that those are most impacted are the ones that know best how to change those systems. A very powerful example of this are the 12 black women who created the reproductive justice framework back in 1994. They were fed up with how the issue of reproductive rights was framed. They said that black women in this country had never since 1619 had a real choice about when it came to and if and how they were going to bring children into this world.

With this shift, they gave us a deeper and more beautiful framework in which we could think about bodily autonomy and child bearing and child rearing. And up until then, reproductive rights have been framed mostly by financially secure, able-bodied, white women who assumed that everyone else had the same choice. They weren’t wrong, they were only operating in their narrow lens. But it ignored the systemic issues that made real choice for so many people impossible.

Moving from a charity mindset to a solidarity mindset is critical to the work of liberation because it gets more people involved. And when we get more people involved, we can have a fuller understanding of what we need to do to change. What we are growing towards.

Solidarity is centered in love, and it is the foundation of liberation. It is the foundation of the Beloved Community. And we get there by shifting. We get there by shifting away from seeing our work as charity to one of solidarity.

But to do it, we must believe that change is possible. We must stop accepting defeatist attitudes that tell us stupid things like the poor will always be with us. I hate that saying so much. Rather, we must believe that another world is possible and work like it is. And we have to examine the way that we are contributing to exploitation. Poverty benefits most of us.

Matthew Desmond writes:

The duality of American life can make it difficult for some of us who benefit from the current arrangement to remember that the poor are exploited laborers, exploited consumers, and exploited borrowers precisely because we are not. After all, how do we get filthy rich corporations that can pass down low, low prices if that’s not the arrangement?

But these things are sneaky, because we are not usually having a nationwide conversation about SNAP, because we usually are not looking at images of genocide in the Congo, a genocide that is directly related to the cobalt in our phones and in our electric cars.

And we don’t have to feel shame about that. We do not have to get defensive about that. Shame is a massive impediment to our growth. But if you’re feeling uncomfortable, believe me, I feel uncomfortable too. But you know what? That’s okay. Love’s goddess.

Like our living tradition, we are allowed to grow and change. We are allowed to unlearn and do better going forward.

This afternoon, we have the opportunity to learn about the boycott, divest, and sanction movement that allows us to stand in solidarity with Palestinians who are being crushed under the weight of apartheid. I hope you’ll join me. It’s actionable, just like love. When we center solidarity, we have to tear down the false walls between us and them.

And it’s a very human thing to build those walls in the first place. Just try to say, you know, we’re not like them. That would never happen to me. I would never be in that situation because, you know, just never could.

How many have you all done that thing where you hear about someone’s horrible tragedy and you almost immediately start asking questions to try to distance yourself from them? I’ve done it. I’m very guilty of it. Like, what piece of information am I going to receive that’s going to allow me to feel safe from what they’re experiencing?

It’s such a human thing to do. Many of us have never learned to be comfortable with other people’s pain or suffering. And many of us have taught rugged individualism. And so we rush to distance ourselves from the other person. It’s completely understandable. We’re trying to conjure up a sense of security. But y ‘all, it’s an illusion. There is no difference from the person with the tragedy than me. There is no difference.

In 1886, Tolstoy wrote: We imagine that their suffering are one thing and our life another.

The truth is that we are part of the web of existence, that our lives, whether lived in comfort or a war zone or under a highway, are all woven together, which means that our lives and our liberations are completely interlocked. There is nothing. There is nothing that separates me from the person holding a sign on the side of the road. There is nothing that separates me from the person going bankrupt or going hungry or unhoused or running from bombs. There is nothing, but maybe, therefore the luck of the draw, go I, that separates me from another human being on this planet.

We shift into a solidarity mindset when we break down those false walls that separate us.

When those walls start to break, we can act. We act with the convention that things can be different. We believe people and we start to act on what they are telling us. We begin to live in community with all sorts of people, relying on them.

We work hard to break our addiction to individualism and start to see what we do as mutual aid, breathing into our bones that it is okay and right and absolutely necessary to ask for help. In a healthy community, we ask and we ask for help and we give help. Because we are all spinning on the same blue planet with the same basic needs. We give and we receive.

Next Sunday, at 2:00, we’re going to do what we can to figure out how to work more in solidarity. We’re going to do some asset mapping so that we can be a part of building the beloved community in a more actionable way. It’s going to be revolutionary work, and only the coolest revolutionary people will be there.

Can’t wait to see you all.

Y’all love is not being centered in our world. Cruelty is, supremacy is, and the gulf between the beloved community and where we are right now, it is huge.

We know this, but that powerful, brave-making love calls us. It calls us out of our comfort. It calls us out of our fear, and it calls us into the work. It calls us into solidarity. It points us to one another. It bonds us and builds trust and puts us together so that we can build something more beautiful.

May we let her in.

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

As we leave the sacred time of holding and being in community, I want to leave you with a blessing of sorts from adrian marie brown.

You aren’t the first,
You won’t be the last,
and you are not alone.

Go in love.
Thank you.

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. Carrie Holley-Hurt
November 2, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Loss is an inevitable part of the human experience, and yet we often give ourselves so little time to acknowledge it or to spend time with our grief. This Sunday, we will spend some time acknowledging the loss we have experienced and the grief that has shown up in its place. Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt leads us through a ritual of acknowledgement. She will mention many forms of loss, from the climate crisis to the loss of a loved one.

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

“BE NOT AFRAID OF LOVE: LESSONS ON FEAR, INTIMACY, AND CONNECTION”
– by Mimi Zhu

“I do not believe that grief ever disappears. Grief morphs and shape-shifts as we honor it, as it begins to entwine with the contours of love. At times, it can tug at your heart and break it, especially on days when you feel vulnerable and tender. On other days, it can fill your spirit with immense gratitude for a life that was shared and a life that continues…. Our grief transforms […] into an energy of love.”

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE CURE FOR SORROW
by Jan Richardson

Because I do not know
Any medicine for grief,
But to let ourselves
Grieve.

Because I do not know
Any cure for sorrow,
But to let ourselves
Sorrow

Because I do not know
Any remedy,
But to let the heart break,
To let it fall open, then
To let it fall open
Still more.

Because I do not know
How to mend
The unmendable,
Unfixable,
Unhealable wound
That keeps finding
Itself healed
As we tend it,
As we follow
The line of it,
As we let it lead us
On the path
It knows

Because I do not know
Any solace
But to give ourselves
Into the love
That will never cease
To find us,
That will never loose
Its hold on us,
That will never abandon us
To the sorrow
For which it holds the cure.

Sermon

For the ancient Aztec and Celtic people, this time of the year was a time to acknowledge the loss of their loved ones. These ancient people created rituals and rich systems of beliefs that have evolved into the traditions of Dias Dia de los Muertos and Samhain. And today, November 2nd, many Christians around the world will observe a tradition dating back to the early Middle Ages called All Souls’ Day. Also, a practice of acknowledging lost loved ones. I am sure there are people in this room or online that are participating in one of these traditions.

Spending time acknowledging ancestors can be found in many traditions all over the world and throughout the year. Each tradition unique to its specific culture and people but all with the focus on stoping. On acknowledging our loss.

This is such a powerful and beautiful way of giving grief some of our intentional attention. Something that is hard to do in a society where productivity is the highest values. Where our lives feel like one full on run from one task to another.

In my experience, Grief comes into our lives and it hands us a package of all the deepest human emotions, joy, gratitude, sadness, anger… all of it But in our busy world we don’t often feel safe enough to sit with these emotions. We don’t feel safe to go inside with grief and allow it to nourish us.

And so grief gets pushed down. We repress it. We ignore it. We judge ourselves for having it.

But it’s never really gone. It comes out in all sorts of strange ways. Seemly out of nowhere, while we are walking down the grocery store aisle. While we are brushing our teeth. And sometimes it can come and completely knocking us off our feet.

Most, if not all of us, are carrying around some level of grief.

Grief is inevitable because loss is inevitable. And it isn’t just people that we grieve. We grieve the climate, we grieve lost opportunities, or ways in which we thought our lives would unfold. We grieve the safety, security, and protection that we should have been given but weren’t. And we have the grief we inherited, our ancestral grief that shows up in our bodies even when we didn’t know the ancestors or their stories.

To be human is to have grief. It is to be given this packet of all human emotion as a way of connecting us to our love, to help us understand our loss, to teach us in a thousand different ways how to be here right now on this planet with those we love. And those things we care about. It grows us and stretches us, it might even humble us.

After a long time of trying hard to repress it, I see grief as my friend. And because of that I know I need to be intentional about spending time with my friend.

Not to try to “heal” Not to try to “get over it” but to let it be. To let it reaffirm my humanity. What better way to affirm my connection with myself, my values, and those that I love. My friend grief brings so many gifts.

But so often we miss out on this aspect of grief because it doesn’t fit into the fast pace of our lives, and it certainly doesn’t fit into the larger narrative that is so grief-adverse.

So today is a day to ritualize and practice giving our grief some intentional attention in a safe community of love and support.

I do want to note that some people experience complex grief, that kind of grief needs more support. If this is you, please reach out for help. Both myself and Rev. Chris are available as are many qualified professionals.

Here is this place, where we are working towards the beloved community We can practice turning toward our grief through a time of reflection and ritual.

As we enter into this ritual of acknowledgment…. I want you to know that I am not asking you to go to any place in your heart that would feel unsafe. You can go as deeply or as shallowly as you like. As you feel safe.

The goal is to practice being intentional. To practice turning towards our grief with the confidence that it has something to offer us. To remind ourselves that because we are human we experience grief.

Please take your small slip of dissolvable paper. We will enter into a time of reflection as the music begins to play.

If you have joined us online, now would be a good time to grab paper and pen so that we can turn towards our grief and give it some attention.

Maybe its showing you a memory or an image

Maybe its showing up as a feeling in your body

Maybe it’s tears or a lump in your throat

Maybe it’s something else entirely.

Whatever it is there is no judgment, just attention.

(Music begins)

And now you can either transfer some of what you are holding onto the paper symbolically by pressing it to your heart or by writing a word or phrase on it.

And when you are so moved make your way down the aisle to release your paper into one of these containers of water.

As the music continues we will hold sacred silence as we move through the ritual.

As the paper hits the water, it will dissolve.
It reminds us that no feeling is forever.
That when we sit with our emotions, they will come, they will rise, and they will dissolve.

(Music and Ritual)

PRAYER

That which calls us home to ourselves, that calls us to one another, that calls us to deep love.

Bless the grief that has come up. Bless us as we continue to turn intentionally towards it.

May we be able to return to ourselves. May we be able to make space for our grief. May we allow the gifts and lessons that grief has to offer us.

Bless this water that is showing us how we are held. Bless this water that is showing us that no emotion last forever and that is showing us that all of us – our joy, our sadness… our grief are held. By life itself.

May we allow it.

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 a few moments, we will leave this sacred time together And I will return this water to the earth.

May you leave this place feeling held.
May you leave this place feeling connected.

As Jan Richardson wrote…
“And may you know that love holds you,
A love that will never cease.
To find us, That will never loose
Its hold on us,
That will never abandon us
To the sorrow”

Go in peace

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. Carrie Holley-Hurt
October 26 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Play is the most natural state for children, but it somehow disappears from our lives along the way. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Rev. Carrie explores the power of play.

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

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

– 17th century proverb

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

SUMMER DAY
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
The one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Sermon

Happy almost Halloween!

I love this time of year. Halloween is my favorite holiday. It doesn’t have the stress and commercialism of Christmas. It doesn’t make me feel ethically weird like Thanksgiving.

And its way more fun than trying to fall asleep while listening to fireworks.

And … You get to dress up.

And… You get to give candy to people who are dressed up.

All the cute costumes, the funny costumes, the handmade costumes….the scary costumes.

I love it!

And don’t even get me started on all the movies, the books, and podcasts that are perfect for getting you into the season.

But I think that the number one reason I love Halloween is that is about play.

Its a use-your-imagination-and-get-into-your-joy-kind of night, and we need that. We need play.

Play is pressure relief valve and who isn’t feeling pressure right now.

Whether its school, relationships, or the daily deluge of news, things are a lot right now.

Playing can help us manage how we respond to the world And it connects us. It connects us to ourselves, to one another, and to a what we want.

And because of this play is a powerful spiritual practice.

A powerful spiritual practice for everyone! – because it heips relieve stress and build resilience.

When we play we release endorphins, which are hormones that make us feel good. Play also helps to reduce our cortisol levels, which is a hormone our body makes when we are stressed …and when our cortisol levels are really high for a long time, that starts to hurt our bodies and our brain.

Play, like the breathing which just did, helps regulate our nervous system. Helps us to calm down.

And that improves our overall well-being and makes us more resilient. Unicef found that Play even protects children “from the negative impacts of prolonged exposure to stress”

And Lynn Barnett found that “Highly playful adults feel the same stressors as anyone else, but they appear to experience and react to them differently, allowing stressors to roll off more easily than those who are less playful,”

Stress regulation and resilience is so important to our spiritual well-being.

If we aren’t regulating ourselves. If we aren’t making time to boost our mood and decrease our stress levels then we are essentially just ping ponging back and forth from one news item or one stressful event to the other.

That is a recipe for burnout. Which makes it harder to live in alignment with your values. And it certainly doesn’t help you answer that question Mary Oliver asks us, about what we will do with our “one wild and precious life.”

I mean I guess the answer is that “I allowed all the sad in the world to jerk me around” but …. do we really want to do that?

This is why play is a spiritual practice. Our spiritual practices are those things that help us to feel centered, that help us slow down so that we aren’t just reacting in life but rather being intentional. Play’s stress-relieving properties also helps us to put things into perspective.

Play does that and so much more.

Like to connect.

When we play we are connecting to ourselves. What do I like, what don’t I like” Does this work for me or not” What does it feel like to dress up like this and feel powerful, or scary, or sweet” What does it feel like when my body moves this way or that way.

Listening to all the musicians today, I can imagine that finding the sounds that felt good or interesting to them required some level of play.

When we play we are learning what we like to do and who we are. And this process happens throughout our lives if we let it.

When i was a kid, I would spin forever and ever and it was just the best thing. Now, that feels more like a punishment.

We learn about ourselves when we engage with play. Even if we learn, thats not a fun thing for us any more.

We also connect with others when we play.

We have a big impact on each other’s emotional state. If I’m stressed, its probably going to stress out my kids and vis versa. But when we play together,

• we are bonding with each other,
• experiencing joy and building trust with one another,
• releasing endorphin together…

And all that leads to co-regulate. Meaning we can work together to bring ourselves into a more positive and joyful place.

Finally, play helps us connect to those things that are bigger than ourselves, like our vision of the future.

I’m thinking about how we spend time dreaming up the world we want and how that can be a form of play. Marsha P Johnson, a trans and queer activist who may have thrown the first brick at Stonewall used to gather up her friends, and they would pull their money together so they could rent a room just for a little while so they could dream about the future they wanted. A future that was full of joy and freedom. They were playing together and in their playing together they were dreaming.

And of course lately there are the frogs. Or at least the people in the frog costumes that have been protesting in Portland. These people in big silly blow-up costumes standing in front of very intimidating-looking people in riot gear.

Their use of play and playfulness is doing so many things.

• First, its giving all of us a sense of joy and hope.
• Secondly, it highlights how weird this all is.

The juxtaposition, the way that the silly frog costume is so opposite of the intimidating federal agents, is a way to use play and whimsy to highlight that the federal govemments response is absurd. According to L.M. Bogdan 

“These outfits are just the latest iteration in a long history of using whimsy and humor in political protests, known as “tactical frivolity.”

But what I find really beautiful about this playful form of protest is how it brings the world we are hoping for, 

• a world where our nervous systems are regulated.
• where joy is abundant.
• Where humor is easy to come by.

All because we are living in a just and beautiful world So when those people don their frog costumes or their axoloti costumes, they are bringing a vision of that world, that one we are working so hard for, to come to us in the here and the now. All through their “tactical frivolity.”

Connecting us to one another and pointing us to the higher thing we are working for – A more beautiful – A more just – And a more playlul world.

Now I hope I have convinced you of the power of play and that is indeed a spiritual practice. But I know that some of you are probably feeling a bit uncomfortable, especially if you are like me and find play really challenging.

I was so good at it as a kid but as work and responsibilities filled more and more of my day, play started fading away.

But I don’t think its gone, I think that play is just different throughout your life and I think, we have to be more intentional about carving out space for it as we get older.

My least favorite question is when someone asks me what I do for fun. Because, I feel a lot of pressure to say something that will sound acceptably fun to them. Luckily, I like to rollerskate, so I got that going for me. But its often very hot so l don’t do it very much. So I hate that question because it reminds me of how little I do the one thing that people might actually identity as fun.

But here is the thing, play is just anything that, according to the National Institute for Play ….and no, I did not make that institute up.

The National Institute of Play says,

“Play is a state of mind that one has when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of the sense of time. …and (that it) is self-motivated so you want to do it again and again.”

So play is anything that feels good, brings joy, helps you to focus on that joy, and something you want to do.

So while I do love skating…. I also find sense of joy, pleasure, and I will lose sense of time when I am reading a good book, or letting myself think about big questions like “Do we have UU saints? – And if so – Who? – and if not – Why?”

I feel joyful and motivated when I am spending time with certain friends. And very often, I get in the zone of focus and joy when I am writing sermons. Not always – but often. So even sermon writing can be play to me.

Aren’t I lucky!?

Play is powerful and it’s personal. One girl’s fun spinning is another woman’s terror, so to speak.

So find what works for you so you can gain all these beautiful stress-relieving, resilience-making, connection-creating benefits.

And do it often.

Because your nervous system needs it.

And you need it.

As People who are committed to a more just and more beautiful world, we need it.

We need it to imbue our lives with what we are trying to create.

May we find ways to bring play it into our lives so that we might live our one wild and precious life to the fullest.

Amen

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

May you, even in the midst of so much stress, stop to play.

And may your play bring you back to yourself.

May it fill your cup, and may it give you strength and resolve in spades.

And may it remind you of all that you are working for.

Go and play.

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. Carrie Holley-Hurt
October 12, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Anger, like all our emotions, can be a powerful tool for awareness, motivation, and value creation, but it has also been misused and abused. So what do we do with all this anger, and how do we disentangle it from all its baggage? Rev. Carrie explores anger and how we can cultivate a healthier relationship with it.

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

“But anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification. For it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies and those with whom we have grave differences. Anger is loaded with information and energy.”

– Audre Lorde

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

BLESSING IN THE ANGER
by Jan Richardson

Let it be no stranger.
Let it be visitor, teacher, guide.
Let it be messenger.
Come to tell us what we most need to know,
hard though its words may be to hear.
Trust Even when you cannot believe it,
that it will carry its own constellations,
that it knows what to do with what has shattered.
Trust that the other face of anger is courage,
that it holds the key to your secret strength,
that the fire it offers will light your way.

Sermon

Before I begin this sermon, I want to let you know that I am going to be talking about anger and some of that includes a discussion of abuse. I want to encourage you to take care of yourself. If you need to get up and walk around, leave, come back, not not come back…Please do not hesitate to tend to yourself.

I also want to remind you about our caring companions and that both Rev. Chris and I are here for you if you need pastoral care.

Now with that said, How many of you have uttered “I am just so angry.”

I have said this so many times lately and I have heard it so many times lately “I’m just so angry.”

When I hear this, I affirm and bless that anger.

I’ll say, “Yes it makes a lot of sense that you would be angry.” “Yes, anger is the appropriate response to the dismantling of our democracy.”

• To the scapegoating.
• To all the oppression, violence, marginalisation, and erasure.
• To the absurdity of calling good things bad and bad things good.

Yes, to your anger! 

And because of that I wish that this sermon could just be…. Your anger is holy because it is pointing you to action, its helping you hone and refining your values and skills, and it means you still have hope.
Blessings on you.
Blessing on your day.
Let’s go have some coffee.

But while anger is holy, and it does those things It also carries a lot of baggage and we have to acknowledge that baggage before we get to blessings and coffee.

Anger is holy …except when its policed.

The Harvard Kennedy Center did a study that showed that, and I quote,

“expressing anger decreases influence for women and African Americans but does not decrease the influence of white men.”

First off – duh!

Secondly, this is a pretty milk toast way to say that for marginalized groups… and I’m going to say that this includes most anyone who isn’t a white, cis, hetro, male … for those of us, anger is policed, it is policed differently depending on our set of identities, but it is policed and that can lead to real world ramifications.

For example, Bryan Stevenson, who by all measures is successful. Harvard Law Graduate, won cases before the supreme court, has received award after award often has judges assume he is the defendant because he is black. And when he corrects them, he has to be polite and not show his anger.

He said of one particular horrible encounter when the judge and prosecutor were mocking him he had to tell himself “you can’t get angry, you are going to have to smile” because he knew if he got angry, which would be a reasonable response. If he got angry it could impact the outcome for his client, which is exactly what the Harvard study showed.

Anger is policed differently depending on your unique identities but all of this policing is about power and control. Its about keeping you in your place – often with a threat attached to it.

Anger is holy but not everyone can express it freely and safely. And when we can’t express we trap our anger. It gets stuck.

Lama Rod Owens, wrote “If I am afraid of my anger and not dealing with the energy of anger, …that energy keeps cycling in our experience with no way for it to be expressed or metabolized.” It builds up and as we know what we push down, what we repress hurts us. It causes mental health issues like depression or even physical health issues like autoimmune disease.

And because white supremacy and patriarchy hurt everyone.

For white men, anger is often the only emotion that is socially acceptable to express. Not sadness, not hurt, not fear but anger. Thats what’s allowed. What awful feeling that must be.

Which brings me to my next point. Anger is holy… unless it’s protecting the wrong thing.

A few months ago I was doing that horrible ritual of doom scrolling when I came across a post from a relative that said “Y’all need proverbs not pronouns.”

My first thought was “Y’all is a pronoun”…kind of famously.

My next thought was… I’m going to comment that. That’s funny and its going to make this person look so stupid….

Y’all, my anger can make me mean and trust I was angry! And then, mercifully, the angels of my better nature closed my laptop.

Sometimes its easier to be angry then hurt, or scared, or sad. I wanted to lash out, to take this energy that came with the anger – blame that person for my feeling but something deeper knew that wasn’t going to help. I need to, as Lama Owens teaches, turn towards my woundedness. Or as Rev. Chris preached so beautifully last week, I needed to meet myself with compassion.

While anger can often be protective, it might actually be protecting us from something a bit deeper. Something we need access so that we can metabolize and process it.

For me that something a bit deeper was my sadness and grief. Grief over not getting a loving and supportive extended family. Grief over the state of the world. And the sadness and fear that I feel about how trans, non-binary, and intersex people are treated in our society.

I have a lot of sadness and grief that I am dealing with these days… and I know I am not the only one.

Anger is holy but sometimes it’s protecting the wrong thing. It’s preventing us from those other emotions that might feel too big or too scary to face.

Finally, anger is holy… except when it is used as an excuse for abuse.

For many people and probably some in this room, the anger of a parent, a partner, or even a random stranger has led to abuse. To pain, to violence both emotional and physical.

For those of us in this room who have had to shrink, had to do the impossible task of controlling everything so that their parents or partner wouldn’t get angry, wouldn’t hurt you. I am so sorry.

That should have never happened to you.

If you have complicated feelings around anger, yourself, or others, I completely understand.

I can understand how anger can be scary and unstable. I can understand how you might have felt the need to suppress your own anger and/or how you would have really complicated feelings around it.

But abuse isn’t about anger. Anger is often the excuse used but abuse is using behaviors in order to maintain power and control in a relationship. Abuse is about power and control.

Abusers weaponize anger as an excuse to exert their power and control. They take anger, which is an innate emotion and they weaponize it.

If you have experienced or are experiencing this, please know we are here for you. And If you are the person who has or is committing the abuse, please know we are here for you as well. You can reach out to a caring companion after service, or to me or Rev. Chris. We are here for you.

Anger is holy, but not when it has been weaponized for abuse.

If anger has been weaponized, it can be difficult to feel safe in yours or others feelings of anger. I get that.

And I still believe anger is holy.

I believe it is holy because it is an innate emotion and our emotions – all of them – pleasant and unpleasant are there to tell us something.

If we come to a place with our anger. If we can recognize all the ways anger has been misused and abused and start to separate that from what we are experiencing, I believe we can begin to listen to what it is telling us and use it as a tool.

One of the things that anger tells us, is that what is happening goes against my values. When we find ourselves faced with atrocities and we feel our anger rise, that is a powerful thing.

Because It helps us to hone in what we believe. As, our call to worship from Audre Lorde told us: “Anger is loaded with information and energy.” And right now, having a strong and clear understanding of your values is of the utmost importance because our values guide our actions and actions are what are needed right now.

Anger can help us activate to help others or even to protect ourselves and our loved ones… Like standing up for someone who is being harassed.

But I think that the reason we are sitting with so much uncomfortable anger these days is that there aren’t any immediate actions we can take.

Like when we watch videos of families being ripped from each other hundreds of miles away or we read dehumanizing proclamations about ourselves or our loved ones.

So what do with that anger then?

I don’t have all the answers – I have way more questions than answers, but I think that these instances, this activating anger, can be a way to motivate us into either the actions we can take.

For those big instances of injustices like what is happening with ICE or the dismantling of democracy, there is always something we can do, but there probably isn’t anything you can do alone.

I believe our anger calls us into community. Calling us to take our energy and our focus and place it with others. Whether through donating or volunteering, its calling us to join something bigger than ourselves that is holy work. This is the work of this church!

But let’s be honest, there are a lot of atrocities and donating to an organization isn’t exactly going to expel all that energy.

Which is why we need to, as our kids taught us, work to become aware of our anger. When we can listen to our bodies and name our anger we start to have agency over it. This skill, this building a relationship of agency with our anger is such an important skill for us to have.

And maybe, like our kids taught us, once we identify what’s going on we choose to move that energy throughout by moving our body or tearing up some paper. or another action.

And sometimes, anger might be calling us to learn to sit with our discomfort.

The work of transforming lives, doing justice to build the beloved community, isn’t going to be comfortable work, especially if we are doing it right. Sometimes we are going to have to sit with our anger.

And the good news is that if we acknowledge it then its not going to get stuck in us, cycling with no way to metabolize. When we acknowledge our emotions we can watch them like we would a wave, rise, peak and fall.

And from a place of agency we can learn from our anger. We can ask it- “Is it that there is a deep woundedness and I need to address? Is there some action i need to take?”

Or could it be that I am just human, having a human experience and my heart is open and because of that this is what I am feeling at this moment.

Finally, your anger means you still have hope. Because, even if you don’t feel hopeful, anger is a sign that you do believe that change is both necessary and possible.

Right now, we are experiencing a barrage of injustices. I believe the all the actions and messaging are to make you feel helpless and in despair. But I will not comply with despair. And we are not helpless.

Not a single word of the future has been written.

And so to remain hopeful when everything else is trying to make you give up, is to take back the narrative and act in a way that will write a different future than the one they are so desperately trying to sell us.

My friends, Your anger is holy, It is pointing you to action, It is honing and refining your values and skills, and it is full of hope.

May the fires it offers light our way.

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

 

Our benediction today comes from Robert Monson.

I pray that love finds you today.
Love that reminds you that there is more than enough room in this world for nuance, for beauty, for grace overflowing.
And I pray that unconditional love and care and support be the anchor that holds you when the cruelty comes.
I pray that beauty and love show you how to be brave.

Go in peace.

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. Carrie Holley-Hurt
September 28, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This church has so often stood against the societal tides of dehumanization and marginalization. We have been a soft place to land for those of us who did not fit in and have felt alone in our opposition to the dominant messaging of oppression. This church has been and will continue to be needed by those here now and by those to come. But what does that say about our role and responsibility to one another and to those we will never meet? Rev. Carrie explores who we are, what we are about, and how Living Love can help us.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

COMMUNITY MEANS STRENGTH
by Starhawk

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been, a place half-remembered and half-envisioned. We can only catch glimpses from time to time, community.

Somewhere there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere, a circle of hands will open to receive us. Eyes will light up as we enter. Voices will celebrate us whenever we come into our own power.

Community means strength. That joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends, some place where we can be free.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WE HOLD HOPE CLOSE
by Reverend Julianne Jamaica Soto

In this community, we hold hope close. We don’t always know what comes next, but that cannot dissuade us. We don’t always know just what to do, but that will not mean that we are lost in the wilderness. We rely on the certainty beneath, the foundation of our values and ethics. We are the people who return to love like a North Star and to the truth that we are greater together than we are alone.

Our hope does not live in some glimmer of an indistinct future. Rather, we know the way to the world of which we dream, and by covenant and the movement forward of one right action. And the next, we know that one day we will arrive at home.

Sermon

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

I think this church is a miracle. Not a miracle in parting the Red Seas or Buddha levitating over a river, but rather a miracle in that after years of people in this country tending towards isolation and disconnection and loneliness. At a time when we use the word epidemic for loneliness, this community exists.

This community bucks the trend by staying strong and growing. To me this is a miracle and it’s deeply needed. This church has always been a place That’s been needed and it will always be a place that’s needed. A community. And not just a community, but a community with an ethos of being about what is right. About opposing the harmful status quo.

Now we might not do that right perfectly and we definitely don’t always get it perfect. We are still growing and we have a lot to go until we are safe space for everyone who could come and find comfort here. But from what I understand of our recent history, we have been a place where many people who feel a deep resistance to the dominant culture or who have experienced marginalization because of the dominant culture could come and find community.

For example, this church has supported queer people since the 1970s by either providing space for things like the National Conference of Gay Liberation in 1971, providing dances for lesbians, my favorite, for partnering without you so that queer kids could have a safe and fun prom.

This community has done the right thing. It might have taken some coaxing every once in a while, but it did do the right thing. And it did it at a time, which feels a lot like this time, when homophobia was celebrated, encouraged throughout society and into the highest levels of power, where queer people face violence, where our government allowed AIDS to ravage the community when discrimination was the reality for so many people. It wasn’t popular and it wasn’t what most churches were doing, but then again that’s not what we’re about.

We aren’t about what most churches are doing. We aren’t about, or at least we try hard not to be about, those this close that harm, hurt and dehumanize. Instead, our mission is about one another, about humanity, it’s about liberation.

This church has taken a firm stance for the rights and dignities of people. We have a commitment to dismantling systems of supremacy in ourselves and in our church. Right now, Our values and commitments are in direct opposition to the powers that be.

Because of that, this church is positioned to be a community for those of us whose souls and hearts grate against the pervasive dehumanization that are the structures of this society. A place for those who have been deeply hurt by their spiritual houses of worship.

For so many people in this church we can be a place of belonging and healing. Now has it always done that perfectly? Nope. That’s because this church isn’t some removed magical thing. When I say this church or when I say this community I want you to hear you.

It’s you, church is you, and it’s me, it’s we. And it is the people that came before us, and it is the people that will come after us. All of us throughout time are this church. And because we are all people, we are not perfect. We are human, we have faults, but we seek to be better, we come together to be better.

My prayer is always that may we have more clarity than our ancestors, and may our descendants have more clarity than us, may it always be so.

So our religion has a polity, and it’s just a word that means organizing philosophy. It stretches way back to the 17th century, it’s called the congregationalist polity. Which just means that we, the members of this church, create and we maintain and we direct what we do as a body. So we don’t have a presbytery or a bishop or a pope that sets over us that dictates what we should do or how we should believe.

This is why we say we come together not by creed but by Covenant. We try to make good promises and have good boundaries so that we can create the kind of church that will set out to do the important work of our mission. And through living into these promises and commitments to one another, we keep this church alive.

We press against the marginalization and dehumanization out there. We make sure that those who need us can find us, and hopefully start to feel as though they have found their way home, or at least are on the right path. It’s us. We do this. And it’s the beautiful interplay of the individual and the communal.

It’s Leo Collas who’s created Easter eggs all over this church so that we can be inspired by those who came before us. People like Paul Kirby, who bought the poster that’s just right outside the sanctuary. It has the seven principles when the seven principles were first passed in the 1980s. Paul Kirby, who also, while being sick himself, helped organized doctors and nurses in this church to get vital and life extending medication to AIDS patients. To take the medication from those that have passed and to give them to those that were still alive.

To me, this story exemplifies how we, with our beautiful and precious inherent dignity, bring our hearts and our talents and our resources to this place and then we do the work with others to make beautiful and wonderful things happen. Those doctors and nurses they were at great risk for what they did but what they did was beautiful.

They weren’t supposed to be helping people with AIDS the way they did but it was the right thing to do. It was a compassionate and humane thing to do even though what they did would have been considered a crime but they understood that the bigger crime was to let people die when medication was available.

They acted justly and they acted at great personal risk and they were able to do it because they acted in community. Together, they ensure that people who needed medication got medication. And decades later, Leo is sharing their story with all of us, beautifully moving the past and to the present as a way to model and fortify us for the work that’s ahead of us. A beautiful dance between the individual and the collective. It shows just how much we need one another, how much we need each other to show up in all of our fullness.

When we bring ourself to this place, when we bring our talents and our hearts, our commitment and our resources to the collective, we do important and needed things, Things that will impact lives now and reverberate well into the future, just like those doctors and nurses. And because of this, we have a great responsibility to this place, to this community, to this church, to one another.

As Mary told you, today is Commitment Sunday. It’s the official kickoff to our pledge drive, and we are going to be hearing a lot about it between now and October 19th, about committing our pledges to this place. We do this every year and I bet for some of you it might be a little off-putting. I’m looking at you people who stream when NPR is doing their fundraiser.

How about some of you have been taught that talking about money is crass or rude? It’s not. It’s just a necessary tool to doing the work of living love.

There was a time in our country for our proto-Unitarian churches where there wasn’t a need for pledge drives. The state would just sponsor the churches. And while that seems way easier than what we’re doing right now? It wasn’t very UU. The separation of church and state are such a fundamental value to us, and rightfully so.

But the part about that separation is that it becomes our responsibility to keep this beautiful community that gives us so much going. It’s our responsibility to nourish those things that grow us that help us to live into our values so that they can continue to exist for us for each other and for those that we haven’t even met yet.

And money, because that is the way of the world is a major part of how we do this. Money is the reason that we have a building That even occasionally has air-conditioning. Money is the reason that we can buy curriculum and food and pay musicians so that we can nourish souls. Money is the reason that we can transform lives through things like supporting amazing work of the Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry or the Austin Sanctuary network. And it allows us to provide spaces to life-saving organizations like PFLAG.

And money is the reason we can meet week after week and we can stream week after week. It is the reason we have a computer program that is frankly very useful to reach people and share news and opportunity and rapid responses all in an effort to do our part of building the beloved community.

Money is also part of our values. And I wouldn’t say it’s even part of our shared theology. As Unitarian Universalists, we are committed to distributive justice, meaning we believe that people should be paid fairly for their work, paid a wage which allows them to live without struggling. We have been working hard to pay our staff up to the UUA’s standard, just like Mary told you. And my hope is that we can make it happen. I would love to see it happen this go around.

Because I want our staff, who do the everyday, sometimes challenging and often mundane work necessary to keep this place going, to be paid equitably. Money matters because it’s how the world operates, but most importantly, it matters because it’s how we make our missions happen.

And ultimately, living into our mission is what it means to live love. To live love is to do the very real and very tangible work of nourishing souls, transforming lives, and doing justice to build the beloved community. To live love means we put our focus and our resources on those things that will benefit each other and those we haven’t even met yet, or may never meet.

As these next few weeks unfold, I hope that you will not numb out, I hope that you will not start streaming your podcasts, but rather that you’ll think about the ways that you’ve been impacted by this place, the ways that you want to impact the world, and the ways that this community, this church, makes it possible. And then think about what makes sense for you based on your life and your other responsibilities.

Because we are needed. We’ve always been needed, and we will always be needed. The work we do is built on a foundation of those who’ve come before who felt responsibility to this place.

And the work that we do now, the contributions that we make of our time, and our talents, and yes, our treasure, will be the foundation that those who come after us will build from.

All of us, throughout time, dreaming of a more beautiful and just world, and all of us doing the tangible work to bring it into reality, so that, as Reverend Soto says in our reading, by covenant and movement forward of one right action and the next, we know that one day we will arrive at home.

May it always be so.

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

As we leave this sacred time of community, know that you are loved, know that you are held in love, and know that what you do matters, and know that we are needed. May we always remember that. Go in peace.

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. Carrie Holley-Hurt
September 14, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

When we work towards justice, we are building a world of belonging. But what does that look like in our community, and what do we need to do? Rev. Carrie explores how we might build belonging and how our religious roots can help us.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

IN TROUBLED TIMES
by Reverend Stephen Schick

From the loneliness of troubled times we come,
to discover that we are not alone.

Into the dwelling place of togetherness we come,
to collect remnants of hope.

From fear that all is lost we come,
to discover what will save us.

Into the comfort of each others arms we come,
to build a strength that is not yet vanished.

From darkness we come,
to wait until our eyes begin to see.

Into the refuge of fading dreams we come,
to remove illusions and focus new visions.

From despair that walks alone we come,
to travel together.

Into the dwelling place of generations we come,
to pledge allegiance to being peace and doing justice.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

 

EVERYTHING IS STILL ON FIRE
by Reverend Julian Jamaica Soto

Everything is still on fire, despite your best efforts. In addition to living, it is clear that fire or not, you must level up in what it means to thrive. Right now, that means wrestling with the truth and the fact that everything is not all your fault.

I am sorry that everything is still on fire. Once hate catches the winds of “not my problem” blow, and the blaze is hard to stop. But hard is not impossible. Not yet is different than never.

You and community have an answer. You have a response to systems of power and control and to the cost of suffering. You and your community together are the answer.

You are not only a people of flame, but also a people of cold, clear truth. You know both where you fall short and where you flourish and where you still reach. Everything is still on fire but all is not lost.

You remain more nimble than steadfast, more unshakable than swayed by the latest rage. You are here to put out the ravenous flames and heal the world. Enough is enough.

Sermon

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

So we’re gonna go back to the 19th century for a few moments. In the 19th century Universalist minister Hosea Ballou was out riding the circuit in New Hampshire. Now the circuit was when ministers would go from town-to-town preaching at different churches, on horseback, of course.

On this occasion he’s riding with the Baptist minister. And of course, they’re debating theology. And at one point, the Baptist says, “Brother Balllou.”

Now, I don’t know New Hampshire accent, so we’re just going to imagine New Hampshire’s in the South.

“Brother Balllou, if I were a universalist and feared not the fires of hell, I could hit you over the head, steal your horse, and saddle, and ride away, and I’d still go to heaven, because I believe it.”

Ballou looks over at him and says, “If you were a Universalist that idea would have never occurred to you.”

I love that story because it’s funny and it’s witty and I can just imagine the Baptist minister getting turning red and like having no response at all. And, let’s be honest, as a Unitarian Universalist that scratches my ego quite a bit.

But what does that mean? Does my religious affiliation really mean that I wouldn’t have such a violent thought? And if that’s true, is it a chicken or the egg situation? Is it that peaceful and kind people are drawn to this religion? People who would never think about stealing someone’s horse. Are those the ones that show up at this church? Or is that the teachings of this religion lead us to be people who would get all those horrible ideas just right out of our head?

I think a case could be made for both. We definitely are a self-selecting people. When I decided to come back to Texas, Austin was my non-negotiable. But there’s also something to be said about how our communities, religious, or others shape us and our actions.

For example, growing up, I had a front row seat to what we now, or what we called at the time the religious right movement, and I saw how it played out in people’s lives. I experienced people who loved their kid, they expressed levels of empathy for other people’s suffering and other people’s kids, and they would consistently vote for candidates who would vote against free and reduced lunch and vote against gun reform and vote against systems of support for parents.

But those candidates also promised to do away with Roe versus Wade. And as we know now years and years of those candidates getting the support of those single issue voters has led us to where we are now.

Now I can’t speak for those people who did that. I am sure that at least some of them, had they had their way, would not have wanted to the slow erosion of policies that protected children. Or maybe not. I can’t speak for them.

But what I do know is that often these kind and empathetic people were voting with the belief that the ends justifies the means. Yes, this person goes against everything I say I believe, but they said the magic words. And so I’m gonna vote for him.

And the fruits of those ends have not worked out for most anyone, but especially those in our society who are most vulnerable and are less likely to fit into the controllable blocks of white supremacy hetero-patriarchy, those that have been and continue to be marginalized.

The outcome of the religious right, backed by the ends justify the means, has resulted in who belongs in this country and who belongs in power getting narrower and narrower by the day. This week’s Supreme Court recent ruling in favor of racial profiling is a prime example of that.

Now many books have been written about how the religious right movement used those single issue voters for nefarious ends. We know that Jerry Falwell and others were upset that their tax exempt status was going to be taken away unless they integrated their white-only academies. They wanted a world that existed before the civil rights movement, and so they used an issue they thought would motivate people. They used abortion to get what they wanted. They grew their desires for a pre-civil rights America right into the Christian nationalist movement that we are living in today.

Now, I simplified that a lot, but I use that example because it’s a good one. We are in a place in our history where we can see this fully, we can see how this philosophy has played out, but mostly I brought it up because it has a lot of rich lessons for us right now.

And while I don’t mind exposing what’s happening, and I think it’s really good to take a historical look to see how we got where we are. I’m more concerned about what we’re going to do about it than anything else.

So one thing I want us to take away from this example is that the purpose and the impact of Christian nationalism is to narrow down belonging. They want and are making great headway in having a protective in-group and a vulnerable out-group.

Which means our call as a justice-loving and justice-seeking people is to do whatever we can to push against laws that have this at their heart. Like the bathroom bill that was recently passed here in Texas that is a blatant attempt to remove and erase trans and non-binary people. Or the Supreme Court ruling and all the ICE raids that are trying to further instill this idea that to be American, to deserve protection, is to be white. Or the many many attacks on reproductive rights that seek to control people’s body and put cis men in authority over everyone else.

Now of course this isn’t anything new. White supremacy heteropatriarchy has always existed in this country and has always shaped legislation. It has always been protected. There’s always been an in-group and there’s always been out-groups, but right now we find ourselves in a time when a concerted effort is underway to roll back all progress that has been made. And not just that, it’s a time when racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia are celebrated.

So the good news is this isn’t new, right? This isn’t new, we know what to do. But we have to be louder than we have been and we have to fight harder against the normalization of it. We have to condemn it when we talk to our friends and our family, we have to condemn it. When we talk to the city councilors or school board members or the legislature or any person in any position of power, we have to condemn it with consistency and frequency pointing out what is happening and say wholeheartedly that we condemn it.

When we do this, when we use our voice and when we take actions, we plant seeds for a more just world. For the beloved community that we’re always talking about. And we do it with the sort of stamina that comes from knowing we are not going to see the fruits of our labor. At least not most of us.

What we are seeking to do external to this community is a long game, and we keep doing it. But here in this building, in this community, we act to see those fruits now. We do the work of growing ourselves and making sure to see where we see our own barriers of belonging, and we dismantle them now because while the work of building the beloved community will take generations, the work of building belonging in our community won’t.

And this is where we get back to Reverend Ballou. In order to be a community where we are building belonging, a community that honors and respects and supports the full expression of humanity, We must also be a people to do the work. The work that will make sure we aren’t the guy who would hit the other guy over the head and take his horse. To do the work to understand that the means, they don’t justify the end, they condition the end.

What we pour into ourselves, what we pour into our community, and what we pour into the people around us will shape what happens and will shape the ends. And this comes from the work of educating ourselves and then doing the spiritual work of taking what we learned from head knowledge to heart knowledge so that we live it. This is the spiritual practice of anti-racism, anti-oppression, and multiculturalism. It doesn’t just stay in books we read, we must embody it. We have to let what we learn be embodied so that we and the way we operate is fundamentally changed.

For those of us who are white, this means examining the way that white supremacy has shaped our world-view, how it has shaped how we view the global majority, what actions we take to uphold the systems, because systems cannot work unless we comply. And then we do the hard and the very sacred work of dismantling white supremacy in ourselves.

For those of us who are cis, we need to do the hard work of seeing how patriarchy has shaped our notion of gender, and how we comply, How possibly we weaponize it and then we do the hard and the sacred work of dismantling it in ourselves.

For those of us who are straight or able-bodied or have citizenship status or who have class privilege, those of us who hold any privileges, we must examine how we are complying to these systems that hold up so much oppression. We must examine the ways that we uphold those structures that seek to narrow belonging, because that’s what they are doing. And then we do the hard and very difficult work of dismantling them in ourselves and in our community. Because we just don’t become the person who wouldn’t knock someone off their horse. We have to work to be those people.

Reverend Ballou said,

“It is well known and will be acknowledged by every candid person that the human heart is capable of becoming soft or hard, kind or unkind, merciful or unmerciful, by education and habit.”

It takes work. It takes education and action. It takes learning from books, yes, and learning from each other. It takes empathy and risk and failure. It takes stepping outside of our comfort zone and growing ourselves. It takes education and habit.

This type of growth of spiritual practice and transformation is embedded into our religious tradition. Both Unitarians and Universalists believed it was important to work on personal growth. Of course, sometimes they missed the mark, especially the Unitarians, okay? They were often more individualistic than was helpful at times.

But the idea that we can learn and we can grow and we can be different from the larger system around us. That’s inherent to our faith. Our religious foundation is about finding that third way, not ping-ponging back and forth, not just doing the opposite of what those causing harm are doing, but breaking out of the paradigm of oppression altogether and doing things differently so that we can have more meaningful, more beautiful, and more inclusive outcomes.

I believe that justice, real justice, where everyone has a place, where everyone is protected, where everyone is represented, happens because those working to justice have worked to transform themselves. Have worked to dismantle systems of supremacy in their own heart. Have allowed themselves to break from the larger system. And that’s the liberation that flows into the community so that we can be a place of belonging. A place where our whole selves and where everyone’s whole self can come and find belonging.

And that work toward personal and collective liberation will imbue our work. It will create beautiful and fertile soil to nourish what will be born out of our work and the fruits of which will be expansive and beautiful and it will happen in the here and then now, all the work we do, all the movement towards widening our circle in this community, when we stretch our notion of belonging will benefit us all in this community, in the here and now, all of us, all of us, in the here and the now.

May it always be so.

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

As you leave this place and return to the normal rhythms of life May you feel held. May you feel held by this community and may you feel held by love. May you know belonging, and may you be the reason that someone else feels that they belong. Go in love.

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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