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

The winter solstice has been observed through a variety of rituals, celebrations, and spiritual beliefs across multiple cultures and throughout the ages. We will explore some of these traditions, many of which still manifest within our current practices. The winter solstice has often been associated with the return of the light. Might it just strongly transport us into an embrace of the “divine darkness”?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

YOU DARKNESS
– Rainer Maria Rilke
  translated by David Whyte

You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.
But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight –
and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.

I have faith in the night.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WINTER SOLSTICE
By Rebecca Ann Parker

Perhaps
for a moment
the typewriters will stop clicking,
the wheels stop rolling
the computers desist from computing,
and a hush will fall over the city.

For an instant,
in the stillness,
the chiming of the celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs poised
in the crystalline darkness,
and then
gracefully
tilts.

Let there be a season
when holiness is heard, and
the splendor of living is revealed.

Stunned to stillness by beauty
we remember who we are and why we are here.

There are inexplicable mysteries.

We are not alone.

In the universe there moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter earth’s axis
toward love.

In the immense darkness
everything spins with joy.
The cosmos enfolds us.
We are caught in a web of stars,
cradled in a swaying embrace,
rocked by the holy night,
babes of the universe.
Let this be the time
we wake to life,
like spring wakes, in the moment
of winter solstice.

Sermon

British author, journalist, and activist George Monbiot said of the December holidays, “The Christians stole the winter solstice from the Pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians.”

The winter solstice is December 22 this year, so I thought we might get an early start exploring what of our Christmas traditions are at least borrowed from these pre and non-Christian solstice practices and what spiritual wisdom we might find from those practices.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. It occurs in December in the Northern hemisphere and June in the Southern. The earth’s axis tilts to the point where one region of the globe is the farthest it gets away from the sun.

Various ancient traditions, rituals, and beliefs around this occurrence have developed throughout the world.

Not surprisingly, many of these center around:

• winter,
• fire and warmth,
• agriculture in anticipation of planting and the spring that will come,
• the return of the light (after the shortest day of the year, the days will gradually get longer again)

Cultures in the Northern hemisphere, especially, observed that for three days the sun would appear to be in the same place on the horizon, after which it would seem to begin rising again.

Hmmm. After three days, the sun rises again. That seems vaguely familiar.

As I was researching all of this though, the most striking element to me is that these ancient spiritual observations of the winter solstice, this darkest day and longest night of the year, have also been about finding holiness in that darkness.

But to get to that, let’s start with some of what we in the north have borrowed from these oftentimes ancient winter solstice traditions.

So, let’s start with the ancient Roman tradition of Saturnalia – a weeks long celebration of their agriculture God, Saturn, leading up to the winter solstice.

Saturnalia was a raucous and carnal time of heavy drinking and partying, when the social order was reversed, and the servants and slaves were not only temporarily given freedom but could demand gifts from their masters.

During the festivities, all Romans would also exchange small gifts with one another. And from this our Christmas tradition of drinking way too much and demanding presents was born.

Though in all fairness, heavy drinking and exchanging gifts was also common to the winter solstice observations of many European cultures.I have to wonder if all the drinking was how they too coped with spending way too much time with extended family.

Now, I have been joking about the long tradition of drinking alcohol during this time of the year. There is a far from humorous side to it also though. In the U.S., the days right after the Christmas and New Years holidays are when the highest number of folks seek treatment for alcohol withdrawal. And if you want an example of how capitalism has colonized Christmas, just think about how many liquor advertisements we see this time of the year.

Well, Germanic, Nordic and other peoples celebrated what has widely become combined into we call “Yuletide”, when they would bring home large yule logs and light one end to bum for several days of feasting and festivities.

The Germanic people would also roast a wild boar to appease their God of fertility. This is likely the source of our holiday ham tradition. They also hung stockings on their chimney’s to leave for their God, Odin and the 8-legged horse he rode.

Near the time of winter solstice, several of the so-called Pagan societies would also gather mistletoe, which symbolized fertility, romance, peace, and joy depending upon the group.

Under sprigs of mistletoe, some of them would even engage in elaborate fertility rituals (a-hem). Today, we leave it at a simple kiss – probably because that extended family always seems to be around.

For the Romans, holly was also a sacred plant, connected with the God Saturn. They would make holly wreaths to exchange as gifts for good luck.

When Christianity was still forbidden within the Roman empire, early Christians avoided detection by hanging holly wreaths around their homes to make it look like they were celebrating Saturnalia.

Our Christmas Caroling tradition likely comes from the AngloSaxon winter wassailing celebration, which involved, you guessed it, drinking lots of an alcohol based traditional wassail beverage, sort of similar to eggnog, and going door to door, singing to the neighbors to wish them good health and banish evil spirits.

This was also sometimes done in fruit tree orchards, also to banish evil spirits and wish for a good harvest.

Well, one last example among far more than we can cover today, is our perhaps most famous symbol of the Christmas season, the Christmas tree.

During the time near winter solstice, Romans hung small metal ornaments on trees around their homes, representing their Gods. Other cultures would decorate trees with fruits and candles, either outside or after bringing them into their homes.

The bringing in of evergreens, likely symbolized new or even eternal life in the midst of the cold and darkness of winter. And that brings me back to this idea that these winter solstice practices, yes, were rituals about holding onto to life and the return of the sun and the light.

As importantly though, they were also about, not so much driving away the dark, but of embracing being in the darkness.

The candles, the fires, the evergreens, the associated celebrations and rituals and singing and gift giving were also about finding a way through, even rejoicing in the darkness – finding the holy in the nighttime.

And I think this is an important concept that has too often gotten lost to us in more modern times. We have come to celebrate that which is good only with light and white and bright – and to associate darkness with that which is bad and painful and evil. And this can damage us spiritually.

It leads us to value only the so called “bright” emotions such as joy and love and avoid the “dark” emotions such as sorrow and grief. Any yet, we need all of these emotions and more to be psychologically healthy sometimes. And these connotations have found their way into racist tropes involving lighter complected skin versus darker.

Retired Unitarian Universalist religious educator Jacqui James captured all of this when she wrote:

“Blackmail, blacklist, black mark. Black Monday, black mood, black-hearted. Black plague, black mass, black market. Good guys wear white, bad guys wear black … Angels and brides wear white. Devil’s food cake is chocolate; angel’s food cake is white!

 

We shape language and we are shaped by it. In our culture, white is esteemed … At the same time, black is evil, wicked, gloomy, depressing, angry, sullen. Ascribing negative and positive values to black and white enhances the institutionalization of this culture’s racism.”

And this valuing of the light and shunning of the dark has further theological implications. Author, Episcopal Priest and spiritual teacher, Barbara Taylor Brown addresses these in her book on this subject, “Learning to Walk in the Dark”.

She writes,

“At the theological level, however, this language creates all sorts of problems. It divides every day in two, pitting the light part against the dark part. It tucks all the sinister stuff into the dark part, identifying God with the sunny part and leaving you to deal with the rest on your own time. It implies things about dark-skinned people and sight-impaired people that are not true. Worst of all, it offers people of faith a giant closet in which they can store everything that threatens or frightens them without thinking too much about those things.”

But, we need both the light and the dark. After all, the seed germinates in the darkness of soil. The caterpillar goes through metamorphosis into a butterfly in the darkness of the chrysalis. We develop initially within the darkness of the womb.

And in fact, it may be in the darkness that we connect most deeply with the divine, or, if you prefer, that sense of awe and mystery within which we are given an ineffable awareness that we we are an integral part of something much greater than ourselves.

The Uzbek have a concept of the “divine dark” – the darkness from which all things come – the darkness from when the world was first made, when it was like a gentle night, peaceful, quiet and pitch-black. The night is when creation started, and the night is when you’re closest to sensing what it was like at the very start of the world”.

And this idea of the divine darkness has begun to emerge within Christian and other theologies also. We often close our eyes to pray or meditate, perhaps as a way to enter into the darkness where a sense of the sacred may more easily be found.

In the bible, Genesis describes how God created the world not from light but from the darkness.

Exodus describes how “The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”

The Psalms quote God’s response to darkness: “Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”

These are just a few examples. Similarly, we have come to associate being in the dark with a lack of knowing.

Yet, religious mystics speak of the “dark night of the soul” – that we must experience unknowing, the absence of God, in order to gain even a minute sense of a divine presence so vast and never fully comprehensible.

We experience the holy in the mystery.

I love this time of the year, because I experience the holy at night, when we turn off all of the lights except those on the Christmas tree, and we light the fireplace, if it cold enough, which in Texas is about 60 degree Fahrenheit or less.

And there in those Yuletide shadows, it’s just me and Wayne and our our two pups. The Christmas lights and the fire are not there to push out the darkness and the night, just to let us settle into their mysterious magic.

Here is another example.

If you have never experienced a total eclipse of the sun, go out to the central Texas hill country this coming April 8th, when one will occur in our area.

There is a brief moment of magical darkness at the height of such an eclipse that can truly touch our hearts with a sense of the sacred vastness of this universe of which we are a part.

In her book, Barbara Taylor Brown describes research that has been done where they asked volunteers to live without artificial light in order to replicate the amount of time our ancestors would have lived in relative darkness.

They were exploring sleep patterns in such a setting. At first, the volunteers slept 11 hours at a time rather than about 8, perhaps catching up on sleep after leaving the pace of the modern world and the influence of artificial light.

Soon though, they began to sleep about 8 hours again, but not consecutively. They slept a total of around 8 hours, but in separate segments of a few hours each.

What surprised the researchers most though was what happened between some of these sleep segments. Between sleeping, the research participants would sometimes enter into this “resting state” for about a couple of hours in which they were neither actively awake nor soundly asleep. And, their body chemistry and brainwaves during such altered consciousness were very much like that of people in deep states of meditation or prayer.

The director of the study said that it was like finding a fossil of human consciousness, a state of awareness that had largely withered away.

Perhaps by banishing the darkness, we have also lost a part of ourselves that quiet naturally connected with the spiritual. Maybe, we have forgotten that the darkness is sacred; the nights are holy.

Oh, by the way, I titled this service, “Oh, Holy Night” after the Christmas hymn with the same title. I discovered that the hymn was originally written in 1843 by a French poet named Placide Cappeau. When it was later discovered that Cappeau was an atheist with strongly anti-cleric views, the Catholic church banned the hymn. And, Oh, Holy Night was translated into English by American Unitarian and Transcendentalist minister, John Dwight, who lived in a commune and was a music critic. Somehow, that all makes Oh, Holy Night even holier to me!

Maybe I have a dark sense of humor.

As we approach the winter solstice this year, may we remember that we must travel far from our centers of artificial light for it to be dark enough to truly see the stars in the heavens at night.

May we reverence the darkness.

May we make holy the night.

Amen.

Benediction

– by Henry Beston

“Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night … there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity …

For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars – pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time.”

May the congregation say, Amen and blessed be.

Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
Novmber 26, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Sometimes, we mainly tend to think of generosity as the giving of our time, talent, and treasure, and usually treasure. And it can be all of these things. Spiritual generosity may be more about a way of being in our world though; a deep sense of and grateful appreciation for our true interconnectedness; moving through life with attention to kindness and compassion. As author Ami Campbell writes, “Radical generosity is a way of living, not an act of giving.”

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

“We need to compose our lives in such a way that we both give and receive, learning to do both with grace, seeing both as parts of a single pattern rather than as antithetical alternatives.”

– Mary Catherine Bateson

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

AT THE MARKET
– Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Now when I walk through the market,
I think of how someone else here
beside the stir-fry cart and the tie-dye tent
has just lost a beloved
and is hiding tears behind sunglasses.
Not knowing who they are,
I try to treat everyone with kindness.
Meanwhile the day is beautiful
for everyone, no matter how broken,
how whole our hearts. It gathers us all
in a grand blue embrace.
Part of me resists calling it a miracle.
The other part calls it what it is
and strolls through the miracle
of Friday morning surrounded by arugula
and strawberries, muffins, lilies,
and all these other fragile hearts,
all of us saying excuse me, good morning,
how are you, I’m fine.

Sermon

“Radical generosity is a way of living, not of giving.”

I love that statement from author and philanthropy specialist, Ami Campbell. I think it captures how, at its most quintessential level, generosity is essential to our very spirit. It’s greater than a feeling of obligation to simply give of our time and treasure though those are really important too and part of it, just so I don’t get myself in trouble with our stewardship folks!

Spiritual generosity is about a way of being and of wellbeing. In fact, numerous studies have shown that it can improve our physical and mental health and even extend our lifespan. Now, I’ll talk more about this idea that generosity is such a vital element of our spirituality.

First though, recently, I was looking back through some of the reports from our interim ministers last year and thinking about some of the conversations I’ve had with our current interim minister, Rev. Michelle, and I was stuck by what a generosity of spirit the folks in this church have already shown, as we have been moving through this interim transition period.

Now, if you are new with the church, I should explain that since the summer of 2022, the church has been in what is called an interim ministry period. Normally, our churches have one or more what are called “settled ministers” ministers who are intended to be with the church over the longer term.

Here at First UU Austin, a much-loved such settled minister, Meg Barnhouse, had to retire in 2022 due to health reasons. Well, between settled ministers, specially trained interim ministers who are not intended to stay with the church long-term, help the church through a process of discerning its own identity, goals, and ministerial needs before the next settled minister is called – called means invited into a longer-term ministerial relationship by an extra-super-majority of the congregation.

This congregation recently called me as their next settled minister. However, we’re still in an interim ministry period, at least in part, because the church is large enough to need two longer-term ministers. So, Rev. Michelle will be helping the congregation discern what is else needed and how that second ministerial position might be structured and filled.

Now, in addition to all of that, our interim ministers have also been helping us work through the challenges all churches are facing, as we attempt to determine how best to offer spiritual community in this new world in which we find ourselves after the stay at home days of the pandemic.

Whew – I’m feeling exhausted and in need of a little of that generosity of spirit already! So, let me just repeat, the folks in this church have already offered up such generosity during this transition period! And, I want to be sure to recognize our newer members who have joined right in during the transition with such generous spirits.

Likewise, we can’t offer enough gratitude to our church staff, who have generously given of themselves, as the transition added additional tasks and responsibilities.

The transition has asked more of everyone in the church. You were asked into numerous interim ministry sessions, discussions with the board and transitions team, the ministerial search committee, me!

Coming back in person after the pandemic created a lot of work reinvigorating and reimagining so many of our programs and ministries that had gone at least partially dormant. And raise your hand if you have lost count of how many surveys you were asked to fill out?

I can’t tell you that we will not have any more surveys – they are one way we are able to gauge our aspirations and progress as a religious community. I CAN promise you that the need for surveys has been higher than in more normative times. Thank you for your generosity of spirit in responding them.

An interim period is also one of experimentation. It is a time of trying on new ways of doing things and new ways of being. This is at least in part to help congregations experience that there may be multiple perspectives on any given area of church life and many ways of living out transformative religion.

So, for instance, you have experienced experimenting with the elements of our services and the ways in which they are ordered.

You have experienced differing voices in our pulpit – the centering of voices other than white guys like me. After all, we’ve had the microphone for a while now!

Really, you have experienced at least some level of change or experimentation in so many areas of the church, and all that change can be disconcerting, can’t it? And it can also be transforming. Some things will work. Some will not, but we will learn from them all. And once again, you have approached this change with extraordinarily generous spirits.

Oh, and who’s noticed that some of our services have gone longer than usual?

The interim period has often created the need for the board, transition team, search team and others to communicate more information of consequence than usual during the worship service.

Now, even in non-transition times, our services have sometimes gone longer than an hour, during especially busy times of church life or when the religious topic requires a little more time to explore in enough depth.

During this continuing interim transition time, services of about one hour will remain what we plan for typically. The work of the transition itself can just sometimes cause variances to happen more often than usual though.

Thank you once again for the spirit of generosity you have been exercising.

My favorite generous comment about this came from someone who said to me one Sunday, “Well, I guess in the not so distant past, just the sermon in a Unitarian church could go for well over an hour. At least you shut up a lot sooner than that, Rev. Chris.”

May we also remember, as we think about diversity, that for many cultures, “making the trains run exactly on time” is just not that big a deal.

And looking back at the interim ministry report from last year, there is already a wide range of diversity among us in so many areas. As one example, we already have a variety of preferences for different styles of worship.

For instance, we have a number among us much prefer, quieter, more classical musical pieces during worship. Others, not so much. Conversely, we have many folks who love it when we rock out for our music. Others, not so much.

And yet, we are finding the spiritual generosity to do both and more under one roof, sometimes during just one service, and we have the director of music and the music team talented enough to do it all.

We can be generous enough to keep talking and keep exploring so that we find ways for each and all of us to continue to experience spiritual transformation in worship and throughout the church – maybe not despite these differences but because of them if we continue to keep our hearts in a holy place with one another.

In those many surveys I mentioned earlier, we often said that we want diversity. Diversity requires valuing our differences and allowing them to encounter one another with a generosity of spirit within which all of us accept some change so that all of us might also be transformed.

Now, I want to give you a personnel example about all of this, but in doing so, I want to emphasize that though my examples have involved music, this spiritual generosity that emerges through experiencing our differences is possible for us throughout religious life here at the church.

So, I will confess that I have this involuntary, deep-seated aversion to music being played on an organ. I think it may go back to my childhood in the tiny Southern Baptist church, where a church volunteer would play our Sunday hymns on a cheap organ, poorly. Hymns with lyrics expressing a theology I find grotesque.

I’m just guessing that might be the source. Anyway, back before the pandemic, the church used to bring in this wonderful, versatile, and talented musician. One of his many virtuoso abilities was playing the organ. And when he would play it here, I could tell how talented he was. And I could hear how soaring the music he produced. And I still couldn’t help myself. Part of me still wanted to cry out, “please don’t kill Jesus.”

But, I would watch the faces of so many folks here in the sanctuary. And I could see the emotional and transformative impact that very same music was having for them. And in that way, I could find some degree of transformation myself and muster the generosity of spirit to keep my aversion at bay. We so often discover transcendence through one another.

Well, that was more than I had thought I would talk about the church and our interim transition process. I do think it is important though, to pause every once in a while and review where we have been, where we are, and where we may be going. Even more so, I wanted you to know that you already hold within you that generosity of spirit about which we are talking about today.

So, what is this spiritual generosity of which I speak and from where does it arise? Well, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I do know that some concept of generosity of spirit is present in virtually all religions. Buddhism, for example, has the concept of dana, the letting go of attachment, which is the source of all suffering, through giving to others. In fact, for buddhism, dana is the first and prerequisite step in spiritual training or development.

A commission of our own Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches has recently recommended an update to the covenant we Unitarian Universalists within our broader faith make with one another. That recommended update is rooted in a set of spiritual values, one of which is stated,

“Generosity: We cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. We covenant to freely and compassionately share our faith, presence, and resources. Our generosity connects us to one another in relationships of interdependence and mutuality.”

So, spiritual generosity arises when we get this strong, expansive sense of our true interconnectedness. And I believe that sense of mutuality is based at least in part on an understanding of our shared vulnerability.

I love that our call to worship earlier spoke of learning to find grace in being able to give and to receive as part of a single pattern. We need one another. We cannot develop a truly generous spirit unless we are also able to ask for help ourselves when we need it. From this perspective, generosity of spirit arises out of saying “yes” to all of life; truth; love. “Yes” to the eternal truth that our interrelationships are what is vital.

Small acts of kindness, helping one another find peace even during the hard times, like as in our story for all ages earlier or the beautiful poem Gretchen read for us, become paramount. I believe all acts of charity, to be spiritually generous, must arise from this sense of interconnectedness and shared vulnerability.

Let me close with this story I ran across of Peruvian novelist Isabel Allende, who cared for her 28 year-old daughter, Paula, who had become ill and fallen into a coma. Isabel cared for Paula for over a year. Paula eventually died in Isabel’s arms.

Isabel says that during that time, she “had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.” She had to learn to receive her own love for her daughter, even when she couldn’t know if Paula was receiving that love. And having learned to claim her love for others as a gift to herself, she now centers her life in the ways of generosity, both large and small.

She writes, “Paralyzed and silent in her bed, my daughter Paula taught me a lesson that is now my mantra: You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.”

In this “season of giving”, may our hearts be in such a holy place.

Benediction

by Rebecca Ann Parker

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.
The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will…
It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

I WILL NOT DIE AN UNLIVED LIFE
Dawna Markova

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

Sermon

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

Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. What?

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

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

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

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

I’m right there with you.

I love this church, and I love this ministry.

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

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

“There will be an answer.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know, blasphemy, right? Bear with me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I stopped struggling and froze – the freeze response.

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

My friend said quietly, “I’m sorry”.

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

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

It seemed to calm them a bit though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Having no fear response, she did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Together, we need not fear even fear itself.

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

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

We are Beloved.

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

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Carl Jung

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

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

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

– adrienne maree brown

Sermon

History

Heritage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can change the plot though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That turned out to be true.

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

He was only reinstated after he threatened a lawsuit.

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

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

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

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

A legacy of less knowing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Throughout its history, the church has supported numerous charities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She got to recounting church stories while we visited.

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

Anyway, again, these are just a few examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A-women. Amen. Blessed be.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Eli Sowry

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

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

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

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

Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is growing and thriving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Folks have formed a new Vegan group.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think that is true for me too.

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

It can even lower our blood pressure.

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

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

Amen.

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

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

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST PRINCIPLES

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

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

FIRST UU CHURCH OF AUSTIN COVENANT OF HEALTHY RELATIONS

As a religious community, we promise:

To Welcome and Serve

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

To Nurture and Protect

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

To Sustain and Build

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

Thus do we covenant with one another.

Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll close with one more story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a glorious promise we keep. Amen.

Benediction

Now, as we go out into our world;

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

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

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

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Rumi

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
by Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

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

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Sermon

Text of this sermon is not yet available.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 23 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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