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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 5, 2015

The beginning of our Declaration of Independence lays out a set of values to which we aspire but have not always fulfilled. As our “Standing on the Side of Love” campaign and the recent Supreme Court decision establishing marriage equality demonstrate, our Unitarian and Universalist religious traditions have always been and continue to be intertwined with our social mores and our political system. Celebrate equality and contemplate our nation’s progress with Rev. Chris Jimmerson in “Independence and Interdependence.”

So, all three of your ministers here at First UU Austin were in Portland, Oregon week before last, including last Sunday, to attend the annual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly.

As the first of us to be back in the pulpit, I thought I should start by asking, “Anything very significant happen while we were out?”

Oh yeah, the whole Supreme Court legalizing same sex marriage across the country thing happened.

And let me tell you, there was some celebrating going on in Portland (and that was in addition to their annual nude bicycling festival).

When the news came out, it electrified the atmosphere where thousands of Unitarian Universalists from across the country had gathered for our assembly, and I think rightly so. I think we can rightly claim that, though small in number, we have long been strong advocates for LGBT persons, culminating in our Standing on the Side of Love advocacy campaign, which has publicly and vocally supported marriage equality.

Love won, we were a part of making it happen, and that is certainly worth celebrating.

Once again this year, a theme that emerged repeatedly at general Assembly was how storytelling can both help us work for social change and nourish our own spirits. Telling our own stories and hearing those of others, sharing our stories, can be such a powerful way of reaching across borders and lines of otherness, raising social consciousness and creating religious experence.

So, in the light of all this, 1’d like to shift a little from what had planned for this Sunday and share with you a part of my own marriage equality story. I call it, “The New X-Files: Chris and Wayne Got Married.”

Wayne and I have been together 24 years now, and several years back, we decided to get legally married. Back then, only a small handful of states in the U.S. recognized same sex marriage. We decided to go to Vancouver, Canada instead because, well, it’s a fun place.

I was fairly new to lay leadership here at First UU Church of Austin, and my call to ministry was then a very faint voice only beginning to emerge (or actually reemerge, but more on that later). Having left the Southern Baptist religion of my childhood far behind and embraced a very rationalistic, science-based worldview, I was, at the time, struggling with how or even whether I could find a way to redefine and re-embrace terms like God, even metaphorically.

On the Friday we were supposed to start our trip to Canada, Wayne got a call that his sister, who we have since lost, was in the hospital with heart failure. We decided to go ahead and go to the airport not knowing whether we would get on the plane or have to cancel our flights. Wayne was on and off his cell phone the whole time we were making our way their. As we got to the airport, he got a call. She had stabilized.

We boarded our plane and started on our journey to get married. Surely, nothing could stop us now.

We made a connecting flight in Denver, but shortly after taking off for Vancouver, the smell of something electrical burning filled the plane and it started getting very hot in the cabin.

The pilot came over the P.A. system and told us that the plane was going to return to the Denver airport due to an electrical malfunction in the air-conditioning and heating system.

In other words, it was on fire or at least about to be.

A young woman named Tiffany, who was sitting in the seat between us, gave me a very worried look, and downed the vodka-seven she had just ordered.

And then, the pilot came back on and announced that we were going to make an emergency landing in Cheyenne, Wyoming instead. By now, it had gotten so hot in the cabin that a woman near the front of the plane had passed out and fallen into the aisle way.

I thought, “So, I was right along. There is no God, and we’re never going to get married. Instead, we’re about to die in a fiery crash in some cornfield in Wyoming.”

I’m not even sure there are cornfields in Wyoming but that was the vivid image that sprang into my mind.

We started a very bumpy and very scary descent. Tiffany asked if I would hold her hand. I did. She gripped my hand so hard that the pain at least temporarily knocked me out of my existential crisis.

As we neared the ground, Tiffany noticed that her cell phone had a signal, so she let go of my hand and dialed her fiance.

“We’re making an emergency landing. I think the plane is on fire and I’m not sure if we are going to make it. I’m living a nightmare! This is Tiffany, call me later.”

We landed. The plane was bigger than the hangar at the airport. They pulled up some metal stairs to the exit door and hurried us off of it, asking us to please pick up any rolling bags as we went past the woman still sprawled across the aisle way. She was OK – they got her out safely too.

There was a bar in the little tiny airport hangar. It was still open.

“There is a great and merciful God, and she provides comfort in our times of great difficulty.” I thought.

Eventually, they gave us our luggage, loaded us in buses and took us back to Denver, where we would board a new flight to Vancouver very early the next morning.

Now, we were faced with a new challenge. The marriage-licensing agents in Canada closed at noon on Saturdays, so we were going to have to rush to make it to one on time to get our license, so that the person who would marry us on Sunday could sign it and make it legal.

Our flight to Vancouver was uneventful, and we rushed through the airport, trying to make it through customs, get our luggage and pick up a rental car in time to get to the closest licensing agent.

We hit customs, only to find that there was a large group of rather heavy-set men with grey hair and full grey beards wearing a variety of red and white outfits or tee shirts with Christmas themes. Apparently, we had arrived in Vancouver just in time for the people who play Santa Clause each Christmas annual convention. Most of them were accompanied by plump, rosy cheeked, Mrs. Clauses, one of whom was wearing a tee-shirt with red lettering that said, “biker chick,” while her Santa’s shirt asked, “Naughty or Nice?”

Wayne gave me a look that said, “If there is a God or some kind of divine presence in the universe, it has a sick sense of humor.”

We made it through customs, grabbed our luggage and a rental car and made it to a licensing location with just barely enough time left. I parked the car, threw a coin in the meter, and we practically sprinted to the place.

We both signed where required on the paperwork, and then all that was left was to fill out the rest of the required information and pay the fee. We agreed that Wayne would do that part; while I would make sure there was enough time on the meter for us to have lunch nearby. I went back outside and walked over to the car.

And then unexpectedly, as I was glancing at my watch to see how much time I would need to add to the meter, my eyes suddenly filled with tears. I couldn’t stop it. I was so overwhelmed with joy.

As we were having lunch later, Wayne started telling me about how he had looked up at the clock as they were finishing the paperwork. “We’re really going to get married,” he had said out loud, his eyes filling with tears.

I asked him what time that had been.

It was the exact same moment as when I had experienced the exact same thing.

Perhaps the divine exists in an interconnectedness that is so much more complex and vast and powerful than we can fully understand. Maybe the divine is what happens when we love each other beyond our ability to express it in words.

The next day, in a beautiful historic home on the Vancouver bay, a wonderful woman conducted our wedding service for us. An adorable dog named Marley broke into the room and sat right beside us, our little best man with a squeaky toy in his mouth, which he occasionally chomped down on, causing it to punctuate key elements of the ceremony with a loud squeak followed by lots of laughter.

It was perfect, and beautiful and it still fills my soul with an indescribable joy to remember it.

I think that like our struggle to go get married, in the larger struggle for marriage equality, and indeed, any social justice movement, we have to keep at the journey. We have to know that the struggle for justice itself has inherit value. It is worth it, even though sometimes we will lose people who were on the journey with us. We have to keep going, even when it seems like this world upon which we travel in life is burning, and we are not sure we will ever get to the destination.

And sometimes the absurdities in life will throw Santa Clause conventions in our path that will slow us down. So too though, will we find comfort in our connections with each other. We will cry together, and we will laugh together when angels like Marley bring joy into our lives.

Yesterday was Independence Day, and it feels like the words in that Declaration of Independence, the values expressed all those years ago have come one step closer to actually being realized – that all of us are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights.

Wayne and I, as well as married, same sex couples across the country, are now legally protected in the same way that any other married couple would be. We can’t be thrown out of the hospital room if one of us gets sick. We now have the same inheritance rights as other married couples. We have the same benefits, such as access to one another’s social security after the loss of one of the spouses.

Perhaps more importantly, for me, it feels like we have made a giant step forward toward being recognized as full citizens, as full human beings.

And yet, my friends, there is still much to be done. In 28 states, it is still legal to fire someone simply for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Trans-lives and their rights and dignity are still under assault, both figuratively and literally.

If Wayne and I were to drive less than hour in most any direction from here, stop at a restaurant and, while there, publicly display the same affection toward one another any married, heterosexual couple might, we would likely be placing ourselves in danger.

While we have been celebrating the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, eight African American churches in the South have been burned down, police have assaulted and killed more unarmed African Americans, including two children run over during a high speed chase through a residential African American neighborhood.

So our work is not done. We have to find ways to sustain it, and I think our successes with marriage equality contain the seeds of how we may do so.

When I was only five years old, I told my mother I was going to be a minister when I grew up. I used to record sermons on the little cassette tape recorder my parents had given me. Later though, after rejecting the religion of my childhood, I no longer had a context within which to imagine a call to the ministry. I have since realized that the non-profit and theatre work I did most of my adult life was a way of trying to construct a secular ministry of sorts.

It wasn’t until I found this church, and this religion, that I was able to rediscover that call. A church and a religion that, unlike the one I had left those many years ago, recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of all people. A church and a religion where a gay man can offer what gifts he may have to its ministry, and those gifts will be accepted in a spirit of love.

This church and this religion gave me back my calling in life. Reimagined, this church and this religion gave me God back.

And in doing so, it transformed my life.

And I want ours to be a faith that is transformative for so many other people, especially those who still suffer oppressions and need a church that will welcome them with open arms and a great love for all of humanity. Folks like a young African American woman that I met at General Assembly.

Our wonderful youth group had put together an Action of Immediate Witness – a call for Unitarian Universalist support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Such actions require debate and a vote by the delegates attending the assembly.

We had a long and at times painful debate with a group of us standing in solidarity with the youth and representatives from the Black Lives Matter movement to pass the action of immediate witness worded as they had presented it. A number of amendments to the wording had been offered that in our view would have watered it down to make it more comfortable for white people.

In the end, it passed overwhelming with only minor amendments.

As we stood together, chanting, “black lives matter,” I noticed that the young woman was crying.

I hadn’t really met her, though we had been standing together in a group of folks throughout the debate, but I put my hand on her shoulder to try to provide some comfort. She threw both of her arms around me, pulled me into a hug, and holding onto me started really weeping. I placed an arm around her.

She said, “I was so scared they weren’t going to pass it.” And suddenly, I found myself placing my other arm around her and crying now myself, saying, “I was scared too.”

And though I had not known it until that moment, I had been afraid – afraid because had it had not passed, my religion would have so greatly disappointed, so greatly hurt our youth, our allies from Black Lives Matter. It would have so greatly fallen short of the religion I believe we can be.

It would have hurt and disappointed me.

I had reached out to minster to her, and instead, by being so authentic with a total stranger, by opening a space where I could get in touch with my own vulnerability, she had ministered to me.

And I think maybe it starts there – two strangers, standing in that great big assembly hall, holding each other and telling each other our truths, our fears, being fully human with each other.

I think this is the love that we can cultivate in this church and this religion by sharing our fears, our stories, our fragilities that make us human and let us see each other as human. I think this is the love that we then carry outward into our world and that transforms itself into justice – just as it did with marriage equality and the standing on the side of love campaign.

So, may our well-deserved and much-needed celebration also renew our commitment to standing on the side of love for all people. May it rekindle and refuel a burning fire for doing justice.

Amen

Benediction

Transcendence – To connect with wonder and awe at the unity of life

Community – To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch

Compassion – To treat ourselves and others with love

Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

Transformation – To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world

These are the religious values this church has expressed and that underlie our mission that we say together every Sunday.

May you carry these values with you into your daily lives and live them out in a world that so badly needs you right now.

Many, many blessings upon you.

May the congregation say, “Amen” and “Blessed Be.”

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 10, 2015

On this Mother’s Day, not far from here, hundreds of immigrant mothers are being held in a detention facility, separated from their children and loved ones. Just a little farther away, immigrant women and their children — some as young as three — are also being held in detention, many of them for months at a time. How do we view this ethically and religiously, especially through the lens of our religious values and our mission? Join Rev. Chris Jimmerson as we examine “Inhospitality to Strangers.”

Sermon

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Hebrews Chapter 13, Verse 2.

This morning, I want to recall a story some of you may have heard me tell before – a story from several years ago when I was working for a non-profit that provides immigration legal services called American Gateways. It’s the story of an asylum seeker who I will call Mykel, though that is not his real name. Mykel fled his home country with a family member because they were being persecuted, even receiving death threats, due to their religious beliefs.

When they arrived in the US, they immediately contacted immigration officials and asked for asylum.

Immigration officials immediately locked them up in an immigrant detention center.

That’s where we first Mykel, at the T. Don Hutto immigrant detention facility in Taylor, Texas.

He was two years old at the time. He turned three during the 7 months he and his mother were held in this facility, which at the time was used to imprison entire immigrant families.

Just after Mykel turned three, we represented them before the San Antonio immigration court, and the judge granted them asylum.

We did not get to celebrate though. The attorney for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) promptly appealed the judge’s decision.

They locked shackles on Mykel’s mother’s wrists and ankles, as he sobbed in terror, not understanding what they were doing to his mom, and took them back to the prison for immigrants.

Mykel’s mom refused to give up and accept being deported, so we decided to try something different.

A few days later, we had a conference call with that ICE attorney, and all of the sudden, he decided to withdraw the appeal and admitted that their request for asylum was likely valid.

We think part of his change of heart might have had something to do with the call he had gotten from a national reporter earlier that day.

How that reporter found about Mykel’s story, and how she got that attorney’s direct office phone number remains shrouded in mystery.

Several years later, Mykel was living in a large city on the east coast, where his mother had gotten a good job. He had become very proficient with English and was doing well in school.

We know this, because Mykel’ s mom sent American Gateways a letter with an update on how they were doing. “

Enclosed with the letter was a photograph of a bright, smiling Mykel. Paper clipped to the photograph was a check for a thousand dollars, a contribution to, as Mykel’ s mom put it, help the organization help others like her Mykel.

“Thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Today is Mother’s Day. And while we celebrate the many terrific moms in this congregation and beyond it, as the reading you heard earlier describes, there are folks who are also hurting for a variety of reasons on this Mother’s Day.

I am painfully aware of my own mom and how she must be hurting because it is the first Mother’s Day since we lost my step dad, Ty.

I wanted to start with Mykel’ s story today, because it was one that was a part of a public relations and legal battle that a broad coalition of human rights advocates fought several years ago to force ICE to discontinue family detention at T. Don Hutto.

And they did. We won that one.

On this Mother’s Day though, the victory has turned out to be short lived. We have not only come full circle, it has gotten much worse now.

Today, hundreds of immigrant women and their children, some of them infants, are spending Mother’s Day imprisoned in a detention facility in Karnes City, about an hour southeast of San Antonio. Many of these women and children have been held there for eight months or more. Many of them, like Mykel and his mom, fled persecution and death threats in their home country, only to be re-traumatized when they came to the U.S. seeking asylum, asking for our help.

As if that’s not enough, a little over an hour to the southwest of San Antonio in Dilley, Texas, ICE has just opened another detention facility, which will eventually imprison up to 2,400 immigrants, most of whom will also be women and children. Just last Saturday, several members of this church participated in a rally to protest this facility and call for and end to all immigrant family detention.

The T. Don Hutto Center now houses up to 400 immigrant women, again many of them asylum seekers, who will be spending this Mother’s Day separated from their children and families. It’s hard for me to even imagine which would be worse – being separated from your children or knowing that they will be locked up with you for some unknown period of time.

People who come to the U.S. and ask for asylum have done nothing illegal- in fact, what is illegal according to U.S. law and international human rights treaties is this prolonged detention of asylum seekers while their cases are processed.

And even in the vast majority of instances where immigrants have come for other reasons, such as harsh economic conditions in their countries of origin, they have at most committed an immigration law misdemeanor, the equivalent of getting a traffic ticket. I wonder what would happen if they started holding white people in prison for eight months while their speeding ticket cases got processed.

Excellent research shows that supervised, community-based alternatives to immigrant detention work extremely well. Immigrants comply with the law, showing up for their immigration court and other appointments. These alternatives are also far less expensive than the over 2 billion in U.S. tax dollars we are spending each year on immigration detention.

Yet, for-profit prison companies, like the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, who run Karnes City and Dilley respectively, have discovered that the millions they spend on lobbying at the local, state and federal level to make sure the United States remains the prison capital of the world has been a great investlnent in light of the billions in our tax dollars they rake in every year. Their efforts have resulted in a U.S. incarceration rate nearly 5 times greater than most other countries. They have successfully lobbied, for instance, for congress to require that over 34,000 immigrants Inust be imprisoned at any given time. They were also involved in ICE declaring that the women and children in Karnes and Dilley are national security threats.

Strange how often the people we label as dangerous felons and national security threats happen to have brown and black skin, isn’t it?

Felicia Kongable, one of several of our church members who visit immigrant women and children in local detention facilities, described the following to me about the Karnes City Facility:

– Women who have risked everything to follow their maternal instincts and get their children out of life-threatening situations only to find themselves locked up with up to three other women and all of their children in a room about the size of my office here at the church.

– Infants not being allowed to crawl past the doorway of such rooms.

– Water that tastes like salt and chlorine

– Food that the children do not like and that does not provide proper nutrition for them at this important developmental stage.

– Mothers having to spend the tiny amount they earn doing work for the prison to buy their kids other food from the commissary and bottled water at $1.75 per bottle.

– When many of the women went on a hunger strike to protest their prolonged confinement, they made sure their children still ate. Still, the guards told them, if you don’t eat, we’ll say that it proves you are an unfit mother and we’ll take your children away from you.

– Children depressed. Children distraught over seeing their mothers treated like criminals, subjected to numerous cell counts throughout the day.

– An interior courtyard surround on all four sides by two story building walls as the only outside area for children, where they cannot even see trees or the horizon.

– Children talking about committing suicide by jumping off the second story balcony.

And in fact, Felicia and the others I talked with for this sermon told me of so many horrors that these women and their children had experienced, first in their home countries and then at the hands of our government and these private prison contractors, that I cannot possibly fit them all in one sermon. Even worse, immigration official are denying most asylum cases and issuing deportation orders for entire families, despite the fact that these families are clearly facing severe threats and possible murder if returned to their home countries.

I wish I could let these immigrants speak for themselves today also. They have shown such great courage. I can share with you, with their permission, the words of one of them wrote down.

“My name is Bobbie (not his real name-I changed it) and I am eleven years old. I have been threatened and taunted because I have a language problem. Children at school have teased me, bullied me, hit me and taken my money.

At times I would come home from school with my clothes torn and dirty and I would be so depressed that I didn’t want to leave the house and never wanted to go back to school.

These schoolmates are part of a gang who were also extorting money from my mother. Even the neighbors (believed to be members of the same gang) threatened to harm me and my family. They have said they would kill me because they think I am a homosexual. When my sister tried to defend me, she too became the target of mistreatment and threats.

As children with a woman alone, there is no one to protect us. If I have to go back, we believe that the gangs will follow through on their threats and harm us – because they can. The police are either unwilling or unable to assist us and so we are defenseless in our country.”

When Bobbie’s mother brought him and his sister here to ask for asylum, we locked them up in the Karnes City detention center, despite the fact that they had been issued an initial finding of a credible fear of being harmed or killed if they return to their home country.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

And yet we do the opposite. We bind the angels, and we clip their wings and far too often we toss them back into a torturous hell on earth.

When I was a kid in school, we were taught about episodes in U.S. history that had come to be thought of as stains on the soul of the nation.

– The slaughter and subjugation of natives.
– Slavery, of course.
– Jim Crowe.
– Lynching.
– Imperialism
– McCarthyism
– The Japanese internment camps.

And in our time, I fear that the polluting of our national soul is escalating, a cancer spreading through our very core. The disproportionate execution of black lives by law enforcement, a criminal justice and corrections system gone wild and these modern day internment camps imposed upon immigrant women and their children, these are all just different manifestations of that same cancer – a cancer rooted in racist and classist systems that in turn support an excessively unequal distribution of wealth and power.

But on this Mother’s Day, in this, our time, I think we have a choice. After all, we are still living in our time.

And we can rise up together, a chorus of voices crying out in harmony, “This is not the history we will allow to be written. This is not the story we will allow to be told about our time.”

This will not continue in our name. This will not be done with our taxes.

This makes a mockery of the values we were taught are at the core of our nation.

This violates the principals that we affirm and promote as Unitarian Universalists.

We have a different vision – a vision of beloved community wherein all people are enabled to live lives of dignity, where we act from a spirit that there is enough for each of us rather than out of a culture of scarcity.

We have a vision of offering hospitality to strangers, treating them as if they might well be angels among us.

Now, I know that challenges like these can seem so huge and overwhelming. It is easy to loose hope. It easy to feel that one person cannot possibly make a difference.

I will tell you there is hope. We have won against family detention before. A federal district judge has recently issued a preliminary ruling that immigrant family detention must stop. The final ruling is in less than 30 days, and no doubt the private prison contractors and the forces that fear the stranger will be working hard to appeal or find other ways around this ruling. So now is the time to make our voices heard.

At the social action table today after the service, you can meet a representative of Grassroots Leadership, one of our partners fighting against family detention, and get information about how you can get involved in their efforts, as well as those of many of our other partners. While you’re there, be sure to find out about the immigration action group “Inside Amigos” we are forming right here at the church.

From participating in campaigns to call for an end to family detention, to visiting these women and children, to supporting their legal costs, to providing backpacks with supplies for the kids if they do get released, our many al1d varying efforts all added together really can make a difference.

On this Mother’s Day, in this, our time, in the history that is yet to be written, we have never had a greater opportunity, never been called more to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice. May this be so. May this be the story that we write together. See you at the social action table.

Benediction

Now, as we go out into our world;
May the covenant that binds us together dwell in your heart and nourish your days,
May the mission that we share inspire your thoughts and light your way,
May the spirit of this beloved community go with you until next we are gathered again.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Chris Jimmerson
January 18, 2015

As we as UUs continue the struggle for racial justice, it is important that we know from whence we come.

Call to Worship
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality.

Reading 
Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from his Eulogy for Rev. James Reeb

So I can say to you this afternoon, my friends, that in spite of the tensions and uncertainties of this period, something profoundly meaningful is taking place. Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away. Out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. Doors of opportunity are gradually being opened. Those at the bottom of society, shirtless and barefoot people of the land, are developing a new sense of somebody-ness, carving a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of despair. “People who stand in darkness have seen a great light.” Here and there an individual or group dares to love and rises to the majestic heights of moral maturity.

Sermon

Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, Selma, Alabama. In reaction to the footage you just watched being broadcast on the evening news, people across America were horrified. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior dispatched a telegram calling on clergy of all faiths to join him in the struggle in Selma.

And religious people, both clergy and lay people, from all around the country responded. They went to Selma, and they stood in witness and solidarity, following the leadership of the African Americans in whose struggle they had joined. Eventually, 500 Unitarian Universalist lay people and 250 of our ministers would march with Dr. King.

And doing so changed them. It transformed them.

As Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed puts it in his new book, The Selma Awakening, they experienced in a visceral, emotional way the melding of their espoused religious values with their values in practice.

Rev. James Reeb was among the first Unitarian Universalist ministers to arrive in Selma, and he participated in the next March across that very same bridge you saw in the opening video. This time, Dr. King himself led the march. They started from the Selma African Methodist Episcopal Brown Chapel where they had gathered. When they reached the other side of the bridge, they kneeled to pray, and then Dr. King surprised everyone by leading them back to the chapel. He later explained that a judge had temporarily put a restraining order on the march, and that he feared for the lives of his followers if they continued the march without a court order to protect them. He pleaded with those gathered to stay a few days until the judge might rule in favor of allowing the march to go forward. Most of them did.

That evening, Reeb and two other UU ministers, Orloff Miller and Clark Olsen, had dined at Walker’s Cafe, an African American establishment because they had been told wouldn’t be safe at a whites only restaurant. As they left the cafe to walk back to Brown Chapel, they were attacked by a group of four or five white locals, at least one of whom was carrying a large club of some kind. He struck James Reeb on the head with it, knocking him to the ground. Eventually, they had all three ministers on the ground, kicking them and screaming, “You want to know what it’s like to be a nigger around here?”

Soon afterwards, James Reeb fell into an unconscious state from which he never awoke. Two days later, on March 11, 1965, Marie Reeb, his wife, made the painful and difficult decision to turn off the artificial support that was the only thing keeping his body alive.

The murder of this white minister galvanized white Americans and Unitarian Universalists even further. It did so in a way that the shooting of Jimmy Lee Jackson, the young black man who had been shot by an Alabama state trooper a few days earlier had not.

President Lyndon Johnson called Reeb’s widow. The Unitarian Universalist Association board adjourned a meeting it was holding so board members could journey to Selma to attend Reeb’s memorial service held at Brown Chapel on March 15. Dr. King delivered the eulogy.

That same evening, President Johnson appeared before a joint session of Congress and introduced the bill that would in a few months become the Voting Rights Act. In doing so, he spoke of the suffering endured by the peaceful protestors in Selma. He said, “Many were brutally assaulted, one good man, a man of God, was killed.”

A few days later, the judge ruled the march could go forward and ordered government protection for it. On March 21 the march began, protected by troops sent by President Johnson.

No doubt, Dr. King’s and his leadership’s organizing and rhetorical skills were the primary factors that brought about these changes. Still there is an irony in the fact that, as Rev. Bill Sinkford, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association has written, ” …racism was at work even in the way the victory in Selma was achieved. The death of Jimmy Lee Jackson, a black man, did not receive widespread press attention. It did not result in hundreds of white clergy coming to stand in solidarity. It did not produce support from the federal government or the president. It took the death of James Reeb, a white man, to do that”.

In The Selma Awakening, Mark Morrison-Reed notes that the clergy and the lay folks who had been viscerally and emotionally awakened by their experiences in Selma returned to churches and a religious denomination ill prepared to move beyond an intellectual commitment to religious values such as equal opportunity, integration and facial justice, all rooted in a belief in universal brotherhood (such was the male-centered language of their time).

They returned to encounter fellow Unitarian Universalists who could not understand what those who had gone to Selma now did – that true integration could not entail assimilation – that what was needed was a melding among equals, and that this required black empowerment. A few years, what has become known as the “Black Empowerment Controversy” would erupt within Unitarian Universalism. And that could be and has been the topic for a whole other sermon.

Reed notes that for both the Universalists and the Unitarians before the merger, as well as after they merged in 1961, there was a disconnect between these espoused religious values and their values in practice. He cites the following as evidence of this dichotomy:

– Worship devoid of hymns and liturgy reflecting the African American experience and their desire for more emotive, embodied spirituality.

– Religious education materials that very rarely reflected African Americans at all.

– Resistance to training, fellowshipping and calling African American ministers.

– Congregations and fellowships that tended to be fervidly intellectual, individualistic, and humanistic. And that most often located themselves in suburban areas, away from black population centers – often at the end of dead end streets where it would be hard for anyone not specifically invited to find them.

– Very few African Americans serving on governing bodies, both at the denominational and individual church levels.

And, yes, some of these continue to be a struggle for us. Though we have made great strides, our march out of Selma continues even today.

Another Unitarian Universalist also did not come back from Selma. However, she was not honored or lionized in the way that James Reeb was. For many years her story was rarely if ever told, because (a) she was a woman and (b) she was a woman. That this is so is another example of values in practice failing to uphold our espoused values.

Viola Liuzzo was a member of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit and worked with the NAACP. She was married and had five children. She answered the call to Selma by getting in her car and driving there against the objections of her family.

On the day that the march triumphantly entered Montgomery to end in a joyous rally at the Alabama state capital, she was helping by driving marchers back to Selma. On a return trip to Montgomery, a car full of Ku Klux Klansmen pulled up beside her and fired shots directly at her, hitting her twice in the head, killing her instantly. Her car careened into a ditch and came to a stop when it struck a fence.

One of her sons later spoke of how his fathers hair turned from black to gray seemingly overnight; of how, after her death, her family endured crosses being burnt in their front yard; of how he and his siblings were beaten up at school and told their mother deserved what she got because, as a white woman, she had no business being there in the first place.

I am pleased to say that today, she is honored in a memorial at our new Unitarian Universalist headquarters building, alongside the males who also died at Selma.

All white juries in Alabama acquitted the Klansmen who killed Viola Liuzzo of murder charges.

Likewise, all white juries acquitted the men who murdered James Reeb.

A grand jury failed to even indict the state trooper who murdered Jimmy Lee Jackson. In 2007, charges against the trooper, James Fowler, were revived. He pled guilty to manslaughter and spent a whole five months in jail.

And these failures within our criminal justice system seem a little too much like what we have seen across our country in the past months. I want to show you another video.

Not 1965 Alabama. 2014, the streets of cities across America. And though much HAS changed, still, we live in a time when the prosecutor in the Michael Brown shooting allows grand jury testimony from an eyewitness that’s key to backing up the story of the officer who shot him, even though the prosecutor knows that the witness has made racist statements and likely was not even at the site of the shooting when it occurred. And there was no indictment.

We live in a time when the coroner rules Eric Garner’s death a homicide, and yet a grand jury fails to indict the officer we have all seen holding Garner in a chokehold as he cries, “I can’t breathe”.

We live in a time when police shoot and kill a 12 year old African American boy for holding a pellet gun in a city park, and a 22 year old African American young man for holding a toy rifle in a Walmart, and yet white, open carry advocates can roam the aisles of our stores and parade through our streets carrying actual semi-automatic weapons and absolutely nothing happens to them.

We live in a time when even son1e peaceful protests have been met with military equipment, billy clubs and tear gas.

We live in a time where our criminal justice system is much more likely to search, arrest, charge, convict and sentence to prison people of color than white people who commit the very same crimes. Then, once convicted of a felony, we live in a system that often prevents these same people of color from being able to access federal benefits, find employment and housing, and, yes, often bars them from voting.

We live in a time when the Supreme Court has gutted a key element of that very same Voting Rights Act that people in Selma struggled, suffered and sometimes died for.

We live in a time when states across the country are passing laws clearly intended to disproportionately prevent people of color from voting.

We live in a time when lynching and Jim Crow have never completely left us. They’ve just morphed into new institutional forms.

I think that we Unitarian Universalists, we are receiving telegrams beckoning us to rejoin and redouble our efforts in the struggle again. And like those Unitarian Universalists that went to Selma, we are being called to show up, to put our espoused religious values into living practice. I believe this congregation has the means and a mission that requires us to do so.

On Sunday, March 8 of this year, Unitarian Universalists from around the country will cross that bridge in Selma again to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original march. I hope a sizable contingent from this church will be able to be with them.

If you are not already participating, the church has a number of social action and interfaith activities related to combatting racism. I hope you’ll consider visiting the social action table today to find out how you can get involved.

Over the coming months, we will have several opportunities to participate in religious education and discussions about multiculturalism and working against racism and oppression. Please, join in!

I believe that ultimately we are called to do this because engaging together as allies in the struggle for racial equity is part of how we, all of us, can be transformed. Systems of oppression and silos of “otherness” prevent us all from realizing our full human potentiality. Breaking them down is how we can know fully the interconnectedness and love and unbridled community that are luring us toward a world that is more life giving and loving. It is how we reach for our greatest creative possibilities.

Benediction

“We are bound together in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a singly garment of destiny”.

Martin Luther King’s words still ring true and powerful today. And that means that even as we leave this sanctuary today, our work together as a beloved community goes on as we do justice that can transform both the lives of others and our own.

Likewise, the courage, community and compassion we experience here go with us also.

Go in peace. Go in love. Blessed be.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Chris Jimmerson
January 4, 2015

We greet the new year with our annual Burning Bowl service! It is good to begin the new year by clearing out old regrets and resentments. We toss those things into the fire and get a fresh start.

Call to Worship

by Sylvia L. Howe

We bid you welcome on this first Sunday of the new year.

Like Janus we gather with part of us looking backward
and part of us looking forward.

We gather on the edge of the new year
saddened by our losses,
cherishing our joys,
aware of our failures,
mindful of days gone by.

We gather on the cusp of this new year
eager to begin anew,
hopeful for what lies ahead,
promising to make changes,
anticipating tomorrows and tomorrows.

We invite you to join our celebration of life,
knowing that life includes good and bad,
endings and beginnings.

We bid you welcome!

Reading

For The New Year
by Barbara Rohde

We gather together at the beginning of a new time.
We stand on the edge of a wilderness that is a true wilderness.
No one has entered it before us.
Yet there is also that in us which causes us to face the unknown territory –cautiously and anxiously.
Now, in this place, we take time out of time, to look back,
to see where we have been and what we have been,
to reflect upon what we have learned thus far on our journey.
We gather together to remind each other to seek for our True North,
and to encourage — to place courage in – one another.
When we leave this place, we must each find our true path.
We must walk alone.
But now and then we may meet.
When we meet, may we offer each other the bread of our being.
And oh, my brothers, and oh, my sisters, if you hear me
plunging wildly, despairingly, through the thicket, call out to me.
Calm me.
And if you find me sleeping in the snow, awaken me,
lest my heart turn to ice.
And if you hear my music, praising the mornings of the world,
then in that other time, in the blackness of my night,
sing it back to me.

Sermon

In one of the first few classes I took in seminary, the instructors led us through this exercise called, “The Big Assumption”. “Big Assumptions” are beliefs we hold about ourselves that may be outside of our explicit awareness of them:

– Messages we got as kids

– Unconscious expectations or evaluations of ourselves that we absorb through our culture

– Internalized judgments we can get from friends, family and others in our lives.

The exercise we went through to discover our big assumptions involved identifying a key life goal that was a struggle for us. Then, they led us through a process that helped us to determine:

1. What we were doing or not doing that was undermining our goal,

2. What hidden, competing commitments were causing us to behave in this way,

3. What underlying, big assumption was leading to these hidden commitments

To get started, they gave as an example involving someone who says, “I am committed to stand up for myself more often when people make unreasonable demands of me, but instead I say ‘yes’ to people even when I know I am too busy, and I take on projects when others are really responsible for doing them”. That’s the goal and what they are doing that undermines it.

The hidden, competing commitments in this case might be, “I try to avoid conflict. I try to get others to think well of me”. The big assumption might be something like, “If I didn’t do these things, no one would like me”. It might simply be, “I don’t deserve respect”.

After we did the exercise ourselves, we went around the room, and those who were willing to do so shared the assumptions they had unearthed. It was a revealing and powerful experience. People, sometimes near tears, said things like:

“I don’t deserve to be loved.”

“I’ll never be attractive enough.”

“I’ll never be a good enough parent to my daughter”

Our instructors told us that they had done this same exercise in a number of our churches with both religious leaders and lay people, and the results were always very similar. The assumptions almost always involved some version of “not enough” and “don’t deserve”.

“I’ll never be successful enough. I don’t deserve to be”.

“I’ll never do well enough to satisfy my parents”.

“I’ll never have enough house, the right car, the expensive stuff my television keeps telling me I am supposed to acquire”.

If we consider some of the messages we are all constantly receiving, it’s easy to see how such assumptions could develop.

For me, it was simply, “I’m not good enough.”

Looking back on it now, it’s not surprising that I might have had that assumption. Growing up as a gay kid in a small, conservative town, I got a lot of that message.

As a minister in formation, the value for me in identifying it was that this assumption could lead to a kind of perfectionism: reluctance to admitting to vulnerability. I had to do the work of letting the assumption go, because a big part of doing ministry is to accept and even embrace vulnerability – to model appropriately expressing vulnerability – to create a sacred space where others may feel more comfortable doing so too.

Brene Brown, a researcher in the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, has studied people who have a strong sense of purpose and meaning in life, who feel worthy of being loved and have a sense of belonging. What she has found is that one of the things they share in common is that they not only accept their vulnerability, they believe that their vulnerability is part of what makes them beautiful.

The real problem with the big assumption is, it’s a lie.

You are enough. You are worthy – you are deserving – just as you are, imperfections and vulnerabilities included.

That doesn’t mean we stop working to more fully become our best selves. It just helps us be in a place where we already know a deep sense our own inherent worth and dignity.

In a moment, we are going to light our burning bowl to begin our annual ritual about letting go of the things that hold us back, so I invite you now to think about about something you would like to let go. Is there a big assumption you have discovered today that you would like to release?

If not, maybe there a habit or something you’ve been doing that works against you, or a competing commitment you’d like to let go. Maybe letting these go will reveal an assumption underneath them.

Here are some examples of what you might want to let go: – What other people think of you.

– Hoping to finally win an argument with Mom, Dad, a spouse, partner, brother, sister.

– The need to win arguments at all.

– Fixing other people.

– Trying to control things that can’t be controlled.

– Needing to be the perfect spouse, parent, son, daughter, partner, friend or whatever occupational role you fill.

– Any sound file that keeps running in your head saying, “not enough”, “don’t deserve”

One of the values of ritual is that it allows us to embody our thoughts and intentions, to make them concrete. It allows us to hold them in a much deeper place inside – or to release something from that same deep place.

What will you release during our burning bowl ritual this year? We begin with a poem.

“Burning the Old Year”
Naomi Shihab Nye

“Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies”.

We will now light our burning bowl.

(— We ritually burn our slips of paper —)

May your life, your spirit be unburdened of that which you have burned here today. May you experience a lightness and a joy from having released it from a place deep within. May you move into the New Year with a deep and an abiding sense that you are enough. Inherently, you have worth.

Benediction

Now that you have let go of the things that needed releasing, hold on to the knowledge that you carry a spark of the divine within you.

Carry with you the love and sense of community we share in this sacred place.

Carry with you a mind open to continuous revelation, a heart strong enough to break wide open and a peace that passes all understanding.

All blessings go with you until we gather here again. Amen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Chris Jimmerson
December 28, 2014

Each time we approach the coming of a new year, we tend to be more open to new possibilities. We are more likely to embrace change and even make resolutions about what we would like to change. What if we were to view life this way all year? What if we thought of everything as continuous change – as ever-unfolding possibilities? We explore limitless “Ch-ch-ch-changes.”

Is it just me or is this a very strange time of the year? To me, it always feels like the year should have ended with Christmas, and yet here we are with several days of the year left before New Years Day, and even at that, the New Year will not really get started until everyone gets back to daily life somewhere around January fifth.

It is an in between time – a liminal time. A time when it is still darker for more hours, and we are reminded that like it or not, change, it will come – a year closes out and a new one springs forth, and sometimes, in this liminal space each year, perhaps we are more open to change, more willing, even, to initiate it.

How many of you plan to make New Year’s resolutions or have made them in the past? That wasn’t a rhetorical question. Raise your hand if you have. Now, how many of us have made such a resolution and broken it within a few weeks or months? It’s OK to raise your hand. There’ll be no shaming here this morning. See, my hand is way up.

Change can be difficult. Old habits can be cantankerous. And this is true not just for us as individuals, but also for families, groups and institutions.

And churches.

Sometimes, we just don’t like change, and we don’t always even know why or even realize that we’re resisting it. Haven’t you ever heard someone, when someone else was trying to change something, even if it might be for the better, haven’t you heard someone say, “but that’s the way we’ve always done it”? Have you ever said it yourself (or at least caught yourself thinking it)? (Hand up) My hand goes way up again.

And yet, as I said, change will come. This morning, there are likely many folks here who are going through some sort of change in their lives. Others may be thinking about initiating some sort of a change. Our world around us is both changing rapidly and in need of changes that would bring about more justice, more love and compassion.

Often, our church is one of the resources we look to help motivate and sustain us in such times, and yet the church too is ever changing. Our voting membership list this month included 621 people. That’s growth of about 200 in just 3 years. If we add to that folks who are who don’t meet all of the requirements for voting, which is more difficult to quantify, the rate of growth has probably been even greater.

On top of that, we just completed a highly successful three million dollar capital campaign. All of that is great – it means we’re living that mission we put on our wall and say together every Sunday, AND it also will mean that our building will change and some of the ways we do things will likely have to be adjusted along with it. At some point we’ll be coping with construction and the disruption that goes with it for a while.

And if that makes some of you feel a little nervous, a little queasy inside, that’s OK. It’s human. I feel that way sometimes too.

So this morning, since we are in that liminal space in so many ways, I thought I would share with you some ways of thinking about change – even of finding spirituality within uncertainty – which I have found particularly helpful.

It turns out that there may be some truth to the old adage that we can experience greater difficulty adapting to change as we grow older. Until sometime in our thirties, our brains are highly malleable. We easily lay down new neural pathways that allow us to learn and to adjust to change. As we age, we can start to lose some of this “neuroplasticity” as it’s called. That’s why, for instance, as we get older we may experience more difficulty adjusting to moving to a new residence. Our brains want to keep looking for things where they were at our former residence.

Now, losing some neuroplasticity is not entirely a bad thing. Laying down new neural pathways uses a lot of energy that the body could otherwise use for other purposes. And, it doesn’t mean there’s no hope for those of us who may be a bit past our thirties; it just means we may find ourselves more challenged by new life situations sometimes.

And it turns out that challenging ourselves by intentionally experiencing difference through multicultural interactions, travel, and varied forms of music, for instance, can help. Some studies also found that meditation, ritual and other spiritual practices can help keep our brains remain more open to change as well.

And if you are in your thirties or younger, – these types of experience can also be advantageous for you because they allow you to build up a sort of plasticity reserve, so to speak, that will help you stay more neurologically flexible as you age.

Now, the neuroscience is a bit more complicated than my quick summary, and the research is ongoing, so our understandings of how the brain functions are changing at a rapid pace. We are offering a five session adult faith formation course on the subject beginning on the first Sunday in January. It’s fascinating stuff, so I encourage you to attend and learn more. Plus, then you can come back later and tell me what I didn’t get right!

The book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, borrows a metaphor for how our brain works from psychologist Jonathan Haidt and uses it to develop some really useful advice on how to deal with change.

In this metaphor, the rational part of our brain, the part that uses reason, is a small rider sitting atop a giant elephant. The elephant is the emotional part of our brain and the part that contains our innate desires and survival instincts. The problem when it comes to change is that we tend to rely too heavily on the rider. We think we can use our reason, our rider, much more so than is actually possible. The thing is – the elephant is so much larger and stronger than the rider, that when the elephant wants to go a different way, the rider can only keep it going in the reasonable direction for so long. The rider wears out. The elephant takes over.

The book says that to create change we can do three things: direct the rider; motivate the elephant; and shape the path. My favorite example they give is of “Clocky,” an invention by an MIT student. Clocky is an alarm clock with wheels designed to address the scenario wherein the alarm clock goes off but our elephant really wants to keep snoozing under our nice warm covers.

And our rider uses our reason to rationalize hitting the snooze button or just shutting the alarm off by thinking things like, “I can sleep a few more minutes if I just skip breakfast” or “It really makes more since to go to the gym before work tomorrow morning anyway.”

Clocky short-circuits this process by rolling off our nightstand when the alarm goes off and proceeding to scurry around the bedroom floor, alarm still blaring.

Clocky lets us direct the rider by providing a way to set up the whole scenario before snuggling underneath the covers and by leaving no other logical choice the next morning but to get out of bed, capture the thing and shut it off.

It motivates the elephant by being so annoying that it overrides the strong desire to keep snoozing.

It shapes the path because, well, now that you’ve gotten up to catch it and shut it off, you might as well stay up.

Now, I’ll admit that my elephant might be tempted to stomp Clocky into a gazillion pieces, so I’ll never own one, but hopefully you get the idea anyway!

Another book, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading, adds what I think is an important conceptual framework by distinguishing between technical change and adaptive change. Technical changes involve altering things like the technology we use or our policies and procedures. They usually can be solved using knowledge that already exists. Adaptive changes on the other hand involve changing how we do things at a more fundamental level. They require examining our values and purpose. They require experimenting and learning.

The problem is, we have a tendency to concentrate on the more tangible technical change when what is called for is really adaptive change. Adaptive change can be harder, and oftentimes, a little of both are required.

I think the relatively recent history of this church provides a great example of people working to make change on both levels. In the just over a couple of years before the church called Meg Barnhouse as Senior Minister, the interim ministers and church leadership worked with the congregation to begin a new form of governance and to create the policies and procedures that would support it. The church also wrote a covenant of healthy relations and went through a process of discerning its values and mission.

The establishing and writing of all of this involved a good deal of technical work; however, it also began the adaptive work of examining our values and purpose and how we wanted to be together as a religious community. And then, Meg and the church leadership expanded the adaptive work even more by making the mission central to all church decision making and activities, as well as by creating a culture of mutual accountability and covenantal relationship.

Leadership on the Line also points out something else important about change. We often talk about how people are resistant to change itself. We can gain more empathy and understanding, including for ourselves, if we understand that we are really resisting is loss. If you think about it, any transformative change, any creative act, involves the destruction of something existing in order to create something new.

And this is closely related to a way of viewing the world that, for me has fundamentally altered the way in which I view change – process-relational philosophy or process-relational theology when applied to religion.

Process theology grew out of the philosophical work of a British mathematician named Alfred North Whitehead. Later, others, including Charles Hartshorne, a professor at the University of Texas here in Austin and a longtime member of this church, developed this theology further. I am currently reading a book by Dr. Hartshorne titled, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. Don’t you just love that? Doesn’t it just sound like a Unitarian? “Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes” He lists six of them, by the way.

Anyway, process theology views humans, and indeed everything in the world and universe, not as discrete, unchanging, static things, but as processes that are always becoming, experiences that are always unfolding and evolving, so to speak.

In this way of viewing the world, right now, in this moment, I am not a being or an object, but a series of events unfolding – my experiences of the past, the possibilities available to me in this moment and the choices I make of those possibilities.

But even as you have been listening to this, I made choices and became something new, and the Chris that spoke that prior sentence perished within the continual process of becoming, and so did the “you” who heard it! The physical world is like this also for process theory. The cells in our bodies, the molecules, atoms and particles in all things are themselves ever changing processes – mixing, dividing, perishing and being replaced.

Buddhism has a similar concept called “no-self” or “no thing” which says that what we think of as the self is really an unfolding series of conscious experiences and events. There is no actual object there, just as the flame in our chalice appears to be a thing but is in reality an ongoing process of fuel being burnt.

Likewise, some Hindus hold that Brahman, the ultimate, divine reality, is expressed through three Gods: Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu the Maintainer; and Shiva the Destroyer. Again, all is ever changing in this continuing cycle of creation, change over time, destruction and new creation. Birth, life, death, new birth.

In these world views, change is not something outside of ourselves or our reality; it is the essence of reality. Our task, then, becomes to choose wisely among the creative possibilities, the change that will come.

And for some process-relational thinkers, this is where we encounter the divine.

Several times each week, I go to a park or natural area and take a meditative hike. It’s a spiritual practice that I find particularly sustains me and reinvigorates me.

Sometimes, though certainly not every time, the meditation takes me into an experience that some psychologists would call a peak experience. It’s what the first of our six Unitarian Universalist sources calls the “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”

They are extremely difficult to describe with words, but here’s a try.

A couple of summers ago, I went for a meditative hike at Mayfield Park. It is one of my favorite nature spots, and I had earphones on so I could listen to some music that I find particularly moving and beautiful.

At some point during the hike, I found myself simply standing in this lush valley with a creek running between two limestone hills. I had no idea how long I had been just standing there. Time seemed to have stood still, or perhaps to have somehow blended all times into one moment.

I felt somehow spread out, connected with and a part of all of the beautiful life and creation around me – paradoxically, standing there alone in the wilderness, the experience was as if I was interconnected, in ways that are normally beyond understanding, with all of humanity and all of creation’s continuous unfolding.

These experiences, these glimpses of the enormity of that continuous unfolding of our universe – the ever changing, always becoming nature of all creation – they can drive a sense of awe and humility that we are such a small part of it. And yet, they can also bring that sense of spreading out, of ever expanding connectedness, a sense that our own becoming is an integral part of the ultimate becoming.

For me, they are also a reminder that change is how we know we are living – that we are fully alive – both literally and metaphorically.

Benediction

May your heart sail on warming winds to new heights of exhilaration.
May your thoughts embrace all that is ever unfolding within and around you.
May your spirit discover new depths, new understandings, an ever-growing sense of peace and right place in the world.
May you know that this beloved community holds you and is with you not just today but throughout your days.

Blessed be. Amen

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 14 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Chris Jimmerson
November 30, 2014

December first is World AIDS Day. As the world pauses each year to remember the losses and recommit to the struggle against HIV, it’s important to also remember what community responses to HIV can teach us about working for social change.

I have always been kind of a science and technology nerd. Knowing that, it may not surprise you to hear that many, many years ago, I found myself so excited to test out my new handheld digital organizer that you could plug this accessory into and turn it into a cell phone and wireless internet enabled device. It was sort of a prehistoric precursor to today’s smart phones. The whole thing assembled together was about the size of my head. I dutifully entered the contact information for my friends and coworkers from out of the paper address book I had previously been using.

In those days, I had been working for several years in HIV / AIDS research, treatment and advocacy. In those days, we only had a few approved treatments for the disease, and they didn’t work very well.

Fast-forward about five years, and thanks to the efforts of lots and lots of people, we were beginning to have drug combinations that were working and were keeping people alive.

I was synching my contacts onto a new device, by this point, an early actual smartphone, called a Treo, and I realized there were a bunch of them I needed to remove because the people they represented were no longer alive.

I deleted 37 names that day. Thirty-seven friends and coworkers for whom 5 years had been too long to wait – for whom the new drugs hadn’t come soon enough. Only one of them had been over 40 years old when he died.

In the years since, every so often I have looked back on that time and wondered how people in HIV -related work kept going. Amongst all the sickness and death, how did we sustain the fight and stay in the struggle, when at times it seemed it might never end, never get better?

Ultimately, I think it was because, even in the midst of all the dying, we chose life. We tried our best not to withdraw, not to look away from the suffering, not to sanitize the messiness or anesthetize the pain because to do so would not be living – not really, not fully.

We stayed in the struggle and let ourselves experience and remember the losses, even as they accumulated, because it was the only way to keep fully living; to keep the ability to love without limits; to wholly experience joy; to keep being able to see beauty.

Tomorrow is Word AIDS Day, a day when we are asked to stop and remember. We pause to recognize the real and often unspoken heroes who have stayed in the struggle and helped bring about vast improvements in our ability to prevent HIV infection and to offer treatment to those who are infected. We recommit to the ongoing, worldwide struggle against a disease that still affects far too many.

This morning I think, also, it is a moment to look back on those difficult earlier times of which I just spoke because they may contain lessons that can inform how we fulfill our mission, especially that part of it that compels us to do justice – to work for social change in so many different areas – certainly, given the events of the past week, to work against systemic racism and structural oppression.

Let us begin then by taking a moment now to pause and remember – a time of silent reflection – a time of meditation or prayer if you wish – or simply to focus on your breathing, as we join together in the silence.

___________________

Today, there are an estimated 35 million people living with HIV worldwide and 2.1 million new infections every year. And while we now have the ability to manage the disease and keep HIV -infected people healthy, there are still tens of millions of people worldwide without access to these life-saving treatments, and far too many we have not reached with HIV prevention education. Here in,Texas, the rate of new infections among young gay and bisexual men has more than doubled in recent years, due at least partially, I think, to a reduction in prevention messages resulting from our current political climate.

I think it is important always to remember though, that behind all of those statistics are actual, individual human lives. One of the lessons we learned in the early days of the struggle against HIV is the power of telling and remembering stories from those lives. Storytelling is an essential element of any social change effort. It is a powerful way to raise consciousness, especially in the face of ingrained prejudice and systemic oppression.

So I would like to share with you briefly part of the story of just a couple of those 37 folks I mentioned earlier.

Raul was a friend and co-worker who had moved to Houston from Puerto Rico as a young adult. He was a wiz at all things computer related; a relative rarity in the days when having a computer on every desk was still a fairly new part of office life.

I had hired Raul to work with me on maintaining the human ethics documentation the government required of us for the HIV -treatment studies we were conducting at a non-profit organization in Houston.

Raul was also a DJ, so in his off time, he was working with a vocal coach and English-language instructor because he wanted to be better understood when he got gigs as a DJ. A few blocks away from where Raul and I shared an office, we had a clinical space where our research nurses and volunteer physicians actually saw the people participating in the research studies. Our head research nurse’s name was James.

How shall I describe James for you?

James was in his early 30s. He somehow managed to get his hair to stand up to about here and then fold it back in a kind of semi tidal wave. He wore a ring on every finger of his right hand and had been known to show up for work in a full-length fur coat, even when it really wasn’t very cold out. James could be, oh, how can I say it nicely … flighty.

He was also the best research nurse we ever had, and our patients loved him.

One day, we had just gotten James a computer and printer for his office, and he was trying to get them set up. Raul and I were working on some particularly difficult and detailed ethics paperwork. Every few minutes, the phone would ring, and it would be James calling because he couldn’t get his printer to work. This went on for a good half of the day, until I finally asked Raul to go over and help James get the printer going.

A few minutes later, James called again, about something else this time, and as we were was talking, in the background, suddenly, I heard Raul say in perfect English, “You silly queen. You have to plug it in.”

This elicited a giggle from James who went on to acknowledge that indeed the printer did work much better when connected to a source of electricity.

Six months later, Raul started getting sick.

He fought until the very end. Even after he had been placed in a hospice, he never really accepted that he was dying. I guess very few 27 year olds would.

A couple of years later, James was gone too.

These are difficult and painful stories, and yet they are a part of much larger narrative – a story that while encompassing great loss and sorrow also reveals a defiant sense of hope among a growing community of people who refused to allow disease, discrimination and irrational fear to triumph – refused to accept the notion that it was somehow our own fault for being who we were – refused to accept that our lives didn’t matter. That people of color have had to raise their voices once again and proclaim very similar sentiments over the last weeks has seemed so eerily familiar.

Raul and James were a part of a community of folks who came together to struggle against what at the time seemed to be almost impossible odds. In those early days of the epidemic, it was primarily what we called the gay community – but it was broader than just the gay men being so devastated by the disease. I will always be go grateful to the gay women who joined in the fight and took care of their ailing brothers, even when they themselves were at relatively low risk for the disease. Likewise, I will always be grateful to the folks who were not gay but who joined in this community of hope and struggle out of compassion and a sense that we are all in this together, even though they risked being ostracized themselves when they did. In Houston, it was a bunch of folks from the Unitarian Universalist church who often volunteered with us at the research clinic. I remember one young woman was actually let go from her job because she did. It may seem hard to believe now, but then I just look at the hysteria and prejudice surrounding just a few Ebola cases in the U.S., and, again, it all seems so eerily familiar.

Recent scholarship on how successful social movements occur asserts that creating real social change requires us to do at least three things:

1. Provide services and support to help those harmed by social problems until the change can be made.

2. Raise our prophetic voices – speak truth to power and dismantle oppressive structures and institutions.

3. Realize that those first two things are necessary but not sufficient. That to bring about real and lasting change we have to build new institutions and social policies to replace those we have critiqued.

And we have to do all of this at all levels, from local community organizing to building powerful institutions at the national and worldwide level.

As we have seen in Ferguson, Missouri, and indeed across our nation in the past weeks, sometimes the very institutions meant to provide justice, to protect and serve, have themselves been permeated with racism and injustice, so we have to envision new institutional forms and policies. We have to build a new way.

That early community that joined together in the struggle against HIV disease did exactly that.

When the government was not providing adequate HIV prevention messages, they created them.

When there were far too few clinics for HIV testing, counseling and treatment, they built them. When the existing research institutions were too slow to test promising new therapies and get them to folks who had run out of treatment options, they created community-based research organizations.

When the disease spread to new populations, they were the first to adapt and to invite new people into leadership.

When there was no voice in the halls of power in Washington DC for those suffering from the disease, they stormed the barricades and built institutions with real political power. They built new ways, and I think that this idea of creating institutions, building new ways that may not yet exist, can inform how we do justice regarding a variety of social challenges, whether it is dismantling systemic racism or our struggle to save a severely threatened environment.

So let us now dwell for a moment in the spirit of this idea by rising in body or spirit and singing together hmn number 1017 in the teal hymnal, “Building a New Way”.

________________________

During the first Bush presidency, a group of us had gone to Washington DC to participate in a March on the Capital to demand greater support for HIV prevention, treatment and research. On the day before the march, we went to see a display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which had been laid out on the National Mall across from the capital. The quilt was built of rectangular panels sewn by the loved ones of persons who had died of AIDS. Often, they had sewn in photos and used fabric from something their loved one had worn to commemorate them.

The crowd that day was a patchwork of people much like the quilt itself – gay, straight; a variety of nationalities and ethnicities; men and women who had lost partners and spouses; parents who had lost children.

As we walked around the panels, above the noise of our murmured conversations, a group assembled on an outdoor stage that they had put up nearby, and one by one, they stood at a microphone and began reading names – the names of the dead represented by each of the panels of the quilt.

And after only a short moment, a quite fell over the crowd, we became very still, standing in silence and a sense of timelessness until only the sound of the names being read remained.

I did not consider myself religious at the time, but looking back on it now, I can sure understand where a concept like the Holy Spirit may have come from.

It was as if a spirit began moving among us during the reading of those names, and together we somehow all knew, each of us, that we had to keep going. We had to sustain the fight. We had to stay in the struggle until there were no more panels to be sewn – no more names to be read.

No more contacts to be deleted.

And even in our sorrow, maybe even because we were allowing ourselves to fully feel it, there was a beauty we could still see.

Looking back on it now, it was a moment of clarity that informs me even today. To do justice and to make community and nurture the spirit, far from being opposing dualities, these efforts, they need each other. Together, they form spiritual experience. They sustain us and help us stay fully engaged.

And though, as I outlined earlier, there is still much work to be done, people stayed in the struggle against HIV disease, many of them for 30 years now, and they have made huge differences throughout the world, even up against what at one time seemed impossible odds.

They built new ways, and so can we, whether we are doing justice in our world or facing the challenges of our daily lives. Even when the way forward seems long and difficult, as it has for many of us this past week, we must not give in to despair. In fact, these may be the times when it is most vital to:

Stay in the struggle. To live fully. To love without limits. To wholly experience joy. To keep finding ways to see beauty.

I think that is what religious community is for. We help each other live in these ways.

These are the ways that will move us toward creating institutions of compassion and justice. These are the ways through which we nurture our spirits. These are the foundations upon which we build.

Amen.

Benediction

Know that, as you go back out into the world now, there is a love that you carry with you beyond these church walls.

Know that the great mystery of our interconnectedness cultivates seeds of hope for justice and compassion.

Know that nearly boundless possibilities are still ours to create.

Go in peace. Go in love. Go knowing that this beloved community awaits you and holds you until we are together again.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 14 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Chris Jimmerson
August 10, 2014

Unitarian Universalism is a religion without creed. We do not have a prescribed set of beliefs with which we must all express agreement. So how is it that we are bound together?

Reading: Grace

When she was a young girl, they told her that Grace was only available to her, the child of original sin, through the forgiveness and whim of a benevolent God. Then she sat with her Grandfather as he was dying. She held his hand, and she and the ones she loved stayed with him through his great passage, and she felt Grace arise among them.

Later, during her college years, she volunteered for the local refugee shelter. And one day she witnessed the counselor work with young children traumatized by war.

She heard the children begin to speak their truths with one another, in that language that is only fully understood by such children, and she watched the counselor put his plans aside and let the children heal one another, and she felt Grace radiate between them.

And as over and over again through her year, she witnessed this same emergence between and among people, she came to understand Grace as something we create, and, sometimes, something we allow to happen by simply getting out of the way.

Sermon:

I was standing on an outdoor train platform in Chicago, waiting for the train that would take me to my seminary class that morning. The platform was located under a street that ran across a bridge overhead, partially blocking the morning sun. Still, one, wide ray of sun was shining though, and it was snowing very, very lightly. Tiny, fragile snowflakes were being held aloft by a brisk wind, swirling in circles in the air. They danced through the bright ray of sunlight, reflecting it in dazzling patterns, as if thousands of miniature mirrors were whirling and casting their own small rays of light in almost infinite directions – tiny spirits dancing and floating and spreading light into their world.

Needless to say, I was captivated, standing transfixed until the sound of my train approaching drew my attention. I turned toward the sound of the train. As I did, I made eye contact with an elderly, a woman who was leaning on a carved wooden cane for support.

She smiled – a joyful glint in her eyes. I smiled back. Without even exchanging a word, we both knew that we had both been mesmerized by the beautiful ballet of sunlight and snowfall. We both knew that we had somehow been profoundly moved by and connected through the experience.

Riding in the train a few moments later, I could not help thinking that the potential for transformation exists within any moment, each encounter. In that small, fragmentary sliver of time on a cold train platform in Chicago, I understood that this person whose life experiences had no doubt been different than my own, this person I had never met and would likely never see again, was, none-the-less, like me, enmeshed in all the beauty and fragility and wonder and suffering and joy that life has to offer.

I had understood that we are connected in ways we only are rarely able to truly glimpse, and these experiences of the vastness and complexity of our interconnectedness are a source of empathy and compassion and love. And this idea, this experience of the possibility for transformation present within any moment, in each encounter, for me, is a key element of our Unitarian Universalist, covenantal tradition. It is part of what drew me to our faith and sustains me as I go about living it.

It is central to a worldview known as process-relational theology, from which I draw great meaning. Process-relational thought sees all of us as part of an interconnected web or matrix that is continually unfolding. It sees within that web of relationships the creative potential for transformation bursting forth in each new moment.

For me, this idea also grounds and sustains our anti-racism, anti-oppression and multi-cultural work, our work for justice, by insisting that to realize the greatest potential for us all, we must go beyond finding common ground to do the often more difficult and challenging work of embracing difference – encountering, experiencing and respecting difference.

For a religious movement without creed, without a statement of prescribed beliefs to which we all must agree – for such a religious movement, covenantal relationship forms the core for practicing our faith. The way that we are together becomes paramount. The how we interact takes precedence. The method is the message, as our great Unitarian Universalist forbearer in religious education, Angus McLean, so famously put it. And I think this idea can continuously inform the ways in which we think about and go about doing congregational and denominational life.

If there is transformative potential in every fragment of time, busting forth in every encounter – and if we also take the work of the church to be at least in part about spiritual or maturational growth for our members, then everything we do in our churches can be seen as faith development. Faith formation, spiritual transformation, is occurring not just in worship, not just in our religious education classrooms, but also throughout the life of the church. Every community or small group gathering, every committee meeting, every conversation during the fellowship hour has the potential to transform us, as well as to provide comfort in times of need and to sustain us through life’s difficult and challenging times.

I wonder, if we take this view, how might we approach each other differently? How much more bound by our covenants of right relations, the promises we make to one another, might we feel? In what ways might we become even more connected with our fellow Unitarian Universalist churches and our larger Unitarian Universalist movement?

I wonder if we might even more passionately strive for a pluralistic, multi-cultural faith – a people in deep relationship, a people emerging out of a full and vibrant matrix of cultures and identities, bound together in promises to both hold each other accountable to our greater ideals and at the same time hold each other in compassion, love, shared vulnerability and deep respect. The method is the message.

The very way we do church life begins to burst forth with new creative possibilities. Worshipped can be transformed when there are more and more styles and perspectives to be included. Congregational meetings and gatherings spend more and more time reflecting with each other on the world we dream about and how as a religious community we can work together to bring it into being! The method is the message.

Maybe our interfaith and social justice activities become a vital part of our spiritual practices throughout the religious community as a whole. Perhaps we stop during board meetings for a reflective period or to sing a hymn together that captures a vision for creating that better world. How about some time for liturgical dancing during that finance committee meeting! OK, maybe not. I got a little carried away.

Anyway, as another example, I think that the capital campaign in which we are currently engaged here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is likewise deeply rooted in this idea that positive change is possible through each encounter. Our building is part of our method, and it sends a message about our values and our desire to create a welcoming table and transformative experience for all who enter this holy place.

I’m told that members of this congregation have already pledged over two point one million dollars toward the campaign, and that demonstrates that this congregation walks in the ways of generosity and stewardship and commitment to the future of this beloved religious community.

Likewise, the fact that First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is a covenantal and mission-focused congregation greatly moves us into living out that vital religious faith I have been describing. The beautiful covenant we read together earlier describes a transformational way of being together: Welcome and serve. Nurture and protect. Sustain and build. Thus we do covenant with one another.

These are methods. They are ways of being together, and they emanate a strong message about who we are as a religious people.

The mission we have emblazoned onto our wall and into our memories and hearts compels us toward creative and transcendent possibilities.

Now, I know we just said it together a few minutes ago, but I am feeling a little low energy after all this talking I have been doing up here on my own, so I wonder if you might indulge me in reciting it together again? And, yes, a preacher is really going to encourage other people to talk during his sermon! At First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin…

We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice.

Thanks. I feel better now. I just love that!

Gather. Nourish. Transform. Do Justice.

These may imply goals and ends; however, first and foremost they are actions. They are verbs. They describe ways of doing and being together. They are each a method, and the method matters.

It matters because it help us maintain an awareness of that capacity to transform one another. It opens up a space for creative potentialities – what I like to call “Grace that we co-create” and it does so in sometimes surprising and unexpected ways. This happened during a powerful and moving experience at the church where I served as ministerial intern.

For the holidays in the first year of my internship, we had been putting together a multigenerational Christmas Pageant. The pageant was a Unitarian Universalist version of the biblical nativity story. Our cast and crew included folks ranging in age from four or five to this beautiful woman in her eighties who ran circles around me and kept our rehearsals on track.

Putting together a pageant, complete with costumes, props, songs, a little platform that served as our imaginary stable and children dressed up as the stable animals had been quite the challenge sometimes but lots of fun too. Alongside the human characters, we had camels, cows, a donkey, some doves and at least a couple of kitty cats. An ongoing challenge was helping the youngest of the children to remember that there were imaginary stable walls around the edges of our little platform. More than once during rehearsals, a cow or camel would walk right through one of the imaginary walls, and we would have to stop, go back and remind them not to do that!

On the Friday before we were to present the pageant, the news broke about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary.

I talked with my supervising minister. We had to decide whether to go forward with the pageant or whether it would be too light hearted given the circumstances. We decided to go forward. On Sunday morning though, we first stood together before the congregation, and she offered a prayer for the victims and their families.

There was a pervasive tone of grief among our church members that morning – a sense of shock and emotional paralysis. We started the pageant.

About halfway through it, one of the children costumed as an animal in our imaginary stable, one of our cats, I believe, got so wrapped up in the pageant song we were singing, that she stood up and started dancing. She pirouetted right through one of our imaginary stable walls, whirling and swirling in balletic circles in front of our carefully set up nativity scene. She was about the same age as the youngest children who had been killed at Sandy Hook.

The woman who had helped keep our rehearsals on track and I were sitting together, and we looked at each other, both wondering if we should get up and lead our little dancing cat back into the scene. As soon as our eyes met though, we both knew that we had to let her continue.

And she was dancing, and the music was playing and the congregation was singing. At one point the song almost faltered. The children were mesmerized by the little girl’s impromptu ballet and the adults were nearly overcome with emotion. I looked around the sanctuary, and the adult’s eyes were glistening, their tears reflecting tiny pinpoints of light in almost infinite directions. We kept on singing, and the little girl kept her ballet afloat, and our spirits were dancing through joy and sorrow and back again in small, fragmentary slivers of time. The music and the singing and the dancing were the method. That we must continue our part within the struggle and the creative co-telling of life’s ongoing pageant was the message. A young girl’s dancing had spread Grace throughout our sanctuary and transformed a congregation that morning.

A minister who I consider one of my mentors says that a key element of spiritual growth is to be always mindful of and open to this possibility of Grace. I learned that morning that she is right. And, I believe our faith and our churches can go even a step further – actively creating that potential for Grace through the ways in which we do congregational and denominational life – cultivating an ever-present awareness of our capacity to transform one another.

And speaking of grace, I am so blessed and so filled with gratitude that, with Meg’s wisdom and guidance, my ministry now involves walking with all of you, as we build beloved community, as we nourish and transform one another and our world, as we engage in the vital and life-giving work of doing justice. Together, may we reach for the transformative potential, bursting forth in each new moment.

So may we be. Amen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 14 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.