Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.
Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 21, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Our church and our faith have a long history of doing justice in our world. We will explore our current efforts to build the Beloved Community and how you can get involved. Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to do justice, as does our church’s mission. Our spiritual practices sustain us in that work. In turn, building Beloved Community can be a vital source of our own experience of spiritual nourishment and transcendence.
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
BELOVED COMMUNITY
“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”
– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (Adapted)
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
Exerpt from MARTIN LUTHER KING JR’S WARE LECTURE to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in 1966
I’m sure that each of you has read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle. One thing that we usually remember about the story of Rip Van Winkle is that he slept twenty years. But there is another point in that story which is almost always completely overlooked: it is the sign on the inn of the little town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the mountains for his long sleep. When he went up, the sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States.
When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington he was amazed, he was completely lost. He knew not who he was. This incident reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that he slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution.
While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountains a revolution was taking place in the world, that would alter the face of human history. Yet Rip knew nothing about it; he was asleep. One of the great misfortunes of history is that all too many individuals and institutions find themselves in a great period of change and yet fail to achieve the new attitudes and outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.
And there can be no gainsaying of the fact that a social revolution is taking place in our world today. We see it in other nations in the demise of colonialism. We see it in our own nation, in the struggle against racial segregation and discrimination, and as we notice this struggle we are aware of the fact that a social revolution is taking place in our midst. Victor Hugo once said that there is nothing more powerful in all the world than an idea whose time has come. The idea whose time has come today is the idea of freedom and human dignity, and so allover the world we see something of freedom explosion, and this reveals to us that we are in the midst of revolutionary times. An older order is passing away and a new order is coming into being.
Sermon
Chris Jimmerson
I’d like to start this morning with a story that I first told many years ago, I think the first time I shared this pulpit with our minister emerita, Meg Barnhouse, right after she had promoted to full-time minister with the church.
I also shared it at the installation service of a dear friend.
To offer some context, I’ll start with another quote from the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, “Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”
And, of course, Dr. King also made popular the term “Beloved Community”.
I think that, especially for Unitarian Universalists, we often experience the spiritual or religious when the two meet, those experiences of unutterable fulfillment, of which Dr. King spoke and the creation of Beloved Community – the bringing of love into our larger world as justice and liberation for all.
So, back in 2013, a Texas state senator named Wendy Davis became nationally famous when she held a long filibuster against a proposed bill that at the time we thought imposed unbelievably draconian restrictions on women’s reproductive freedom in Texas.
My spouse Wayne and I joined a group of Unitarian Universalists from across the state to support a large rally held on the steps of the Texas State Capital to protest the bill, as well as other attacks on women’s rights.
We all showed up in our bright yellow Unitarian Universalist tee shirts, and folks from our church gathered around our big, bright yellow First UU Church of Austin banner.
The women’s rights groups that had organized the rally absolutely loved it, so they put us right behind the speakers for the rally.
The event drew a huge crowd, and near the end of it, we noticed that all eight of us holding up the banner at the women’s rights rally were men.
That didn’t seem so unusual for UUs, so we just shared some amusement about it.
After the rally though, as I was walking to my car, a woman I had never met touched my shoulder. I turned to her. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “I just want you to know how moving it was for me to see a group of all men holding up your church banner.”
Then she looked away briefly, turned back to me and said, “You know, I don’t think of myself as religious, but I’m going to have to find out more about you folks.”
I guess we were both stunned by the movement of something sacred that was occurring between us in that moment, because neither of us said anything for a while.
I don’t remember how long we just stood there or which of us broke the silence first, but I do remember that at some point she asked where she could get one of our bright yellow Tee Shirts, so I gave her the web address for that and some information about our local churches.
I don’t even think if we exchanged our names.
I will tell you though – I still have never been happier to call myself a Unitarian Universalist than I was in that moment.
I have never been more grateful to be reminded that the religious&; can happen anywhere and at any moment and that we are called to be there for it.
“Unutterable fulfillment” and doing justice, building the beloved community are inseparably linked, and it is in this interrelationship between the two that I believe our Unitarian Universalist faith flourishes.
That event was over 10 years ago, and if anything, I have come to believe this even more now and to believe it is even more vital now that our Unitarian Universalist faith flourish like never before.
The bill which Wendy Davis filibustered eventually got passed in a special session of the Texas Legislature.
We thought it was so horrible at the time because it did things like banning abortion beyond 20 weeks and imposing stringent requirements on physicians and clinics, making it much more difficult for them to continue providing abortions services.
Little did we imagine then, how much worse it would get by now. And of course, it’s not only reproductive justice that is at risk these days.
Which is why we so critically need all of the social action pillars you heard about earlier:
- Reproductive Justice
- Racial Justice
- Environmental Justice
- LGBTQ Plus Rights
- Immigration Rights
Our very democracy itself are all under seige.
I’ve got some news for the forces of bigotry and oppression though Wendy Davis’s filibuster has never really ended. More and more of us have just picked it up and are expressing it in a multitude of ways.
It is not over.
This is not over.
You have awakened the sleeping giant. There is a great rumbling across the land. We are seeing it in elections and voting and public action over and over agaIn.
We are coming for justice and liberation. And we will not be sleeping though this revolution – a revolution that will once again alter the face of human history – a revolution that has already begun.
This is our moment for unutterable fulfillment. We shall overcome. We shall all be free. We shall live in peace.
That dream of Beloved Community lies just upon our horizon.
And love – love will guide us there.
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
As we go out into our world today, may we know the spiritual fulfillment of working together to do justice.
May we find solidarity beyond these church walls with the many, many folks in our community and our world, who like us, are striving to build the Beloved Community.
Guided by love, may we remain ever awakened to the revolution.
And in doing so, nourish souls and transform lives, including our own.
May the congregation say, “amen” and “blessed be”.
Go in peace.
Most sermons during the past 24 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 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