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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 21, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our church and our faith have a long history of doing justice in our world. We will explore our current efforts to build the Beloved Community and how you can get involved. Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to do justice, as does our church’s mission. Our spiritual practices sustain us in that work. In turn, building Beloved Community can be a vital source of our own experience of spiritual nourishment and transcendence.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

BELOVED COMMUNITY

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (Adapted)

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

Exerpt from MARTIN LUTHER KING JR’S WARE LECTURE to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in 1966

I’m sure that each of you has read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle. One thing that we usually remember about the story of Rip Van Winkle is that he slept twenty years. But there is another point in that story which is almost always completely overlooked: it is the sign on the inn of the little town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the mountains for his long sleep. When he went up, the sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States.

When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington he was amazed, he was completely lost. He knew not who he was. This incident reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that he slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution.

While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountains a revolution was taking place in the world, that would alter the face of human history. Yet Rip knew nothing about it; he was asleep. One of the great misfortunes of history is that all too many individuals and institutions find themselves in a great period of change and yet fail to achieve the new attitudes and outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.

And there can be no gainsaying of the fact that a social revolution is taking place in our world today. We see it in other nations in the demise of colonialism. We see it in our own nation, in the struggle against racial segregation and discrimination, and as we notice this struggle we are aware of the fact that a social revolution is taking place in our midst. Victor Hugo once said that there is nothing more powerful in all the world than an idea whose time has come. The idea whose time has come today is the idea of freedom and human dignity, and so allover the world we see something of freedom explosion, and this reveals to us that we are in the midst of revolutionary times. An older order is passing away and a new order is coming into being.

Sermon

Sarah Frankie Summers

I always thought of the flame in the chalice as representing the spark of the divine within each of us. I guess that I came up with that as a kid because sparks, fire, yeah it made sense. I knew the story about the Austrian artist and fighting the Nazis and just figured it made a cool origin story but didn’t think about how that affected my life in the present day.

I also figured the chalice was vague enough to be open to interpretation, since a “free and equal search for truth and meaning” is a core of our religion, so people were going to have their own interpretations of it, and that’s a good thing.

Interestingly, a pamphlet about the flaming chalice by Susan Ritchie says this about it:

When we light the chalice in worship, we illuminate a world that we feel called upon to serve with love and a sense of justice. The flame is what one of our beloved congregational hymns terms “The Fire of Commitment.”

Well, now that resonates with me too. Especially because the story I was told while interning at the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office was that the Unitarians and the Universalists started working together at the UN before the organizations even finished merging. So I have been describing this religion as a “social justice faith” since I was nineteen.

At least from this perspective (and of course we can tell our stories from many perspectives that shed different lights depending on what we want to convey) – so at least from this perspective, the present day iteration of Unitarian Universalism is largely predicated on our work for justice and making the world a better place. But I always framed it as work the church was doing – again, not necessarily thinking beyond my own passion for recycling and ethical eating. But thinking of this flaming chalice as the Fire of Commitment also recognizes the significance of our own First UU chalice lighting, particularly the part that goes: “As our struggle becomes our salvation.” and here is where I was finally moved to action.

I admit when I first came to this church, two things stuck out to me that I wasn’t too sure about. I don’t know that they rubbed me the wrong way per se, but they were new and therefore uncomfortable. They were also confusing because they seemed a little too connected to a Christian theology with which I had no connection.

The first thing was that part of the chalice lighting “as our struggle becomes our salvation.” And the second thing was this bit of the mission about Beloved Community.

I guess I’ll be completely honest. I thought something along the lines of what the heck are these people on about? Beloved Community sounded exclusive. And why was it capitalized?

I stuck around, trusting it would make sense in time. Sure enough, Meg and Chris took to explaining this idea from time to time during the Moment for Beloved Community. They would often point to the King Center for more information on Beloved Community, so I turn there now for some of Dr. King’s words.

King said that

“Agape [love] does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people…It begins by loving others for their sakes” and “makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both…Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.”

He felt that justice could not be parceled out to individuals or groups, but was the birthright of every human being in the Beloved Community. “I have fought too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concerns,” he said. “Justice is indivisible.”

There is so much more information about Beloved Community on the King Center website – I encourage you to check it out for yourselves. This radical idea of Beloved Community makes sense to me. And it was during one of these moments for beloved community, when Meg had taken to driving home the ways white supremacy thrives on inaction – the relative comfort of a status quo that keeps the power structures stable – that the chalice lighting finally clicked.

How does our struggle become our salvation in the Unitarian Universalist faith? For me, that “struggle” is to stop turning away from the discomfort of looking in the mirror and seeing how I still carry the invisible backpack of white privilege. For me, that struggle is to overcome the inertia of inaction and to get up and do what I can to create change. For me, that struggle is meeting others whose ideas and values differ vastly from mine and listening with compassion, the work of finding common ground.

Recall the reading that Ani did a few minutes ago. This was Dr. King speaking directly to the Unitarian Universalists. Directly to us! He could tell we were inclined toward justice, but perhaps a little lazy about it. “Don’t sleep through the revolution!” he said.

Well, I’d been sleeping. I’d been resting on my UU upbringing, thinking that just being a part of this church was enough. That the church was doing the work of justice. But of course WE are the church. And we are the ones who have to do the work.

But do not despair in the overwhelm of all there is to be done. There are so many awesome ways to get involved here!

First UU has an amazing history of social action work, which I know was promised we would discuss, but in the interest of galvanizing you to take your own actions, I will tell you instead about the work that is being done at present. Our pillar leaders will be in Howson Hall after service with resources and ways to get involved, as well as microactions you can take TODAY. A microaction is a small step you can take with the potential for big impact, especially when many people take part.

Peggy Morton is our point person for Immigrant Rights. Visit the Immigrant rights table to sign-up to receive a link to sign a petition from Austin Sanctuary Network that calls for everyone in Travis County to have an attorney at their first appearance before a magistrate judge, including individuals targeted under the controversial SB-4 law.

Elizabeth Grey spearheads the team working for Reproductive Justice. Stop by the Reproductive Justice table to learn about the anti-abortion clinics posing as resources for pregnant persons and how to get the word out about these places known as crisis pregnancy centers that target vulnerable teens in particular with unscientific information.

Richard and Beki Halpin are the fearless leaders of the Environmental Justice arm, with many thriving programs aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Stop by their table for tools to reduce your carbon footprint. The time is critical and celebratory! Earth Day is tomorrow. A blessed day for many of us here to remember the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part.

Ginny Fredericks leads the Racial Justice group in tandem with Scott Bukti. Stop by their table to pick up a list of Black Owned Businesses and head over to one this week. We want this year to be First UU’s first ever Juneteenth service, so sign up if you want to lend your support to our BIPOC group who is working hard to plan this in tandem with TXUUJM.

Vanessa McDougal is our resident Voting Rights and Democracy expert. Stop by her table today to pick up a sample ballot for Austin’s upcoming election and make your plan to vote. For the first time, Travis County is electing 3 TCAD appraisers. Early voting starts tomorrow and runs through April 30th; election day is May 4th.

Leo Collas is our LGBTQIA+ Rights Pillar Leader (as well as one of our congregation’s TXUUJM reps). He has invited you all to join the Community Heart Circle today at 2pm in Room 13. They follow a format similar to Chalice Circles, so if you’d like to get a feeling for UU spiritual discussion groups, please join us and make new friends!

Each of these groups represents a pillar of social action here at First UU. We formed the current pillars after conducting a survey and analyzing the data to see where people were presently galvanized and where we already had leadership, but there is always more room for work to be done! For example, we had an awesome team of First UUers at iACT’s Hands on Housing event earlier this month. This is an interfaith action group that supports low income Austin homeowners. Any way you want to get involved and share your time, we could use your talents! I look forward to talking with you all after church at the tables in Howson about staying awake through the struggle of how you can help with the work of building the Beloved Community.

Chris Jimmerson

I’d like to start this morning with a story that I first told many years ago, I think the first time I shared this pulpit with our minister emerita, Meg Barnhouse, right after she had promoted to full-time minister with the church.

I also shared it at the installation service of a dear friend.

To offer some context, I’ll start with another quote from the Rev.

Dr. Martin Luther King, “Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

And, of course, Dr. King also made popular the term “Beloved Community”.

I think that, especially for Unitarian Universalists, we often experience the spiritual or religious when the two meet, those experiences of unutterable fulfillment, of which Dr. King spoke and the creation of Beloved Community – the bringing of love into our larger world as justice and liberation for all.

So, back in 2013, a Texas state senator named Wendy Davis became nationally famous when she held a long filibuster against a proposed bill that at the time we thought imposed unbelievably draconian restrictions on women’s reproductive freedom in Texas.

My spouse Wayne and I joined a group of Unitarian Universalists from across the state to support a large rally held on the steps of the Texas State Capital to protest the bill, as well as other attacks on women’s rights.

We all showed up in our bright yellow Unitarian Universalist tee shirts, and folks from our church gathered around our big, bright yellow First UU Church of Austin banner.

The women’s rights groups that had organized the rally absolutely loved it, so they put us right behind the speakers for the rally.

The event drew a huge crowd, and near the end of it, we noticed that all eight of us holding up the banner at the women’s rights rally were men.

That didn’t seem so unusual for UUs, so we just shared some amusement about it.

After the rally though, as I was walking to my car, a woman I had never met touched my shoulder. I turned to her. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “I just want you to know how moving it was for me to see a group of all men holding up your church banner.”

Then she looked away briefly, turned back to me and said, “You know, I don’t think of myself as religious, but I’m going to have to find out more about you folks.”

I guess we were both stunned by the movement of something sacred that was occurring between us in that moment, because neither of us said anything for a while.

I don’t remember how long we just stood there or which of us broke the silence first, but I do remember that at some point she asked where she could get one of our bright yellow Tee Shirts, so I gave her the web address for that and some information about our local churches.

I don’t even think if we exchanged our names.

I will tell you though – I still have never been happier to call myself a Unitarian Universalist than I was in that moment.

I have never been more grateful to be reminded that the religious&; can happen anywhere and at any moment and that we are called to be there for it.

“Unutterable fulfillment” and doing justice, building the beloved community are inseparably linked, and it is in this interrelationship between the two that I believe our Unitarian Universalist faith flourishes.

That event was over 10 years ago, and if anything, I have come to believe this even more now and to believe it is even more vital now that our Unitarian Universalist faith flourish like never before.

The bill which Wendy Davis filibustered eventually got passed in a special session of the Texas Legislature.

We thought it was so horrible at the time because it did things like banning abortion beyond 20 weeks and imposing stringent requirements on physicians and clinics, making it much more difficult for them to continue providing abortions services.

Little did we imagine then, how much worse it would get by now. And of course, it’s not only reproductive justice that is at risk these days.

Which is why we so critically need all of the social action pillars you heard about earlier:

• Reproductive Justice
• Racial Justice
• Environmental Justice
• LGBTQ Plus Rights
• Immigration Rights

Our very democracy itself are all under seige. 

I’ve got some news for the forces of bigotry and oppression though Wendy Davis’s filibuster has never really ended. More and more of us have just picked it up and are expressing it in a multitude of ways.

It is not over.

This is not over.

You have awakened the sleeping giant. There is a great rumbling across the land. We are seeing it in elections and voting and public action over and over agaIn.

We are coming for justice and liberation. And we will not be sleeping though this revolution – a revolution that will once again alter the face of human history – a revolution that has already begun.

This is our moment for unutterable fulfillment. We shall overcome. We shall all be free. We shall live in peace.

That dream of Beloved Community lies just upon our horizon.

And love – love will guide us there.

Amen.

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

As we go out into our world today, may we know the spiritual fulfillment of working together to do justice.
May we find solidarity beyond these church walls with the many, many folks in our community and our world, who like us, are striving to build the Beloved Community.
Guided by love, may we remain ever awakened to the revolution.
And in doing so, nourish souls and transform lives, including our own.
May the congregation say, “amen” and “blessed be”.
Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 11, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In our mission, we say that we “do justice”. What if truly doing justice requires not just new ways of thinking but new ways of being? Equity instead of equality? Liberation versus liberalism? Proximity rather than paternalism? What if we moved beyond charitable compassion to a love that is revolutionary?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! – and listens to their testimony. – James Baldwin

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

– Howard Zinn

Sermon

I want to share something with you.

VIDEO

That’s Danez Smith, award winning poet, writer, and performer who identifies as queer, non-binary, and HIV positive.

It is part of their poem “Principles”.

If you get the chance, it is well worth watching the rest of their performance, which you can find on YouTube. Their words demand to be heard.

Because Danez Smith isn’t calling for incremental fixes to a country filled with so many systems of oppression and denial that we can no longer believe that those systems are “broken”.

When year after year, we witness the continued killing of unarmed BIPoe folks by law enforcement – When one out of every seven police interventions results in bodily injury – When we know that one out of every eight black person in the U.S. will be sent to prison –

When year after year after year, despite both so called liberal and so called conservative interventions, inequities by race, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation and more continue to persist in employment, income, wealth, housing, healthcare, education, food and nutrition, well just about every facet of life in the U.S., every system and sector of our society, we have to face the reality that these systems are not broken.

They are functioning exactly as they are intended.

They are concentrating more and more wealth and power within the control of fewer and fewer folks.

And still, most of them white. Most of them male. Most of them heterosexual. Most of them Cis. Most of them already born into power and wealth to begin with.

That’s the system.

So, Danez Smith is crying out not to repair America around the edges, but to replace our fundamental societal structures with something entirely new that lives up to the values of justice, liberty, and the potential for human dignity and fulfillment we claim to hold.

Here is more of what they have to say:

i want to be a citizen of something new.
i want a country for the immigrant hero.
i want a country where joy is indigenous as the people.
i want a country that keeps its word.
i want to not be scared to drink the water …
i want a country not trying to cure itself of me …
I want a nation under a kinder god.
I want justice the verb not justice the dream.”

Danez Smith is “talkin bout a revolution”. My words, not theirs.

Well, those of Traci Chapman in the lyrics of her song we heard earlier.

And so, if are to make justice a verb, to do justice as we say in our mission, if we are to tear down the systems of injustice we have now and build new ones – build The Beloved community – we need a revolution in our ways of thinking and being in our world.

Folks as diverse as Bryan Stevenson, social justice activist and law professor to faith activist Rev. William Barber, provide what I think are at least fours ways in which we can create that revolution.

The first is to root our work for justice in a theology that moves and sustains us.

Now that word theology can sometimes freak out some Unitarian Universalists (UUs for short) because it can imply a creedal belief system involving a God or Gods.

But it does not have to involve these things.

Rev. Dr. Elias Ortega, of our UU Meadville Lombard Theological School describes how theology can be “practices of being, thinking, and acting in the world” that move us toward that which we hold most vital.

For Unitarian Universalism, our theology grows out of traditions embracing the unity of all life and creation and a universal love that flows through our universe and our lives.

Our is a living, ever evolving theology of collective liberation, that values all people and beings, especially lifting up those of us who experience marginalization and inequity.

It is a relational theology that recognizes that each of us can only reach for our fullest creative potential when all of us are able to do so.

In the famous words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

We need one another.

The revolution, the Beloved community, can only become when it is co-created by us all.

And such a theology moves us to the second way we might build a justice revolution.

In the late 80s and early 90s, I was involved in non-profit HIV / AIDS research, education, treatment and humans services.

All greatly needed because so many people were suffering and dying from the disease.

And even though I could see every day how much this charitable work was necessary, I started to grow more and more depressed and disillusioned, as more and more people I had come to know and love died, one after the other.

I remember at one point looking through my contact list and realizing that at least a third of the people in it had died of the disease.

And so I began to realize that only providing charitable support, as much as it was needed, was doing nothing to address the systemic racism and anti-LGBTQ bigotry that were blocking people from learning how to keep from getting the disease in the first place and accessing treatment once exposed.

I began to see the complete lack of humanity in a healthcare system and drug development process that exist to worship the Gods of profit at the expense human life and wellbeing.

And so I knew I had to also get involved in activism and building new systems to replace those that were quite literally killing people.

Research from Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation reveals that the vast majority of charity in the U.S. actually goes from the wealthy to the wealthy – to healthcare facilities, institutions of higher education and the like that serve mainly the very rich.

And as I had discovered with HIV/AIDS, charity, wherein most often the powerful determine what and how to give to the less powerful, can frequently serve to uphold systems of inequity by alleviating just enough pressure to prevent the rebellion against them that might otherwise arise.

As educator and philanthropic innovation researcher Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen says, “Charity is about helping people survive. Justice is about helping people thrive.”

A theology of collective liberation moves us beyond charitable compassion toward a revolutionary love that dismantles the unjust systems creating the need for charity in the first place.

And this leads us to a third and corresponding way we can revolutionize how we do justice.

A relational theology requires us to be in proximity to those with whom we are trying to be in solidarity.

Mother Teresa once said, ” … it is fashionable to talk about the poor, it is not so fashionable to talk with them.”

We call for justice, yet we don’t want the multi-family, low cost housing project in our neighborhood.

We prefer to drive across town to volunteer for the charity health clinic.

And don’t put that homeless shelter in the old hotel down the street.

And lest we think this is a conservative versus liberal issue, research indicates that liberal enclaves are some of the most segregated in the country.

As our call to worship pointed out earlier though, to change systems, we have to be in conversation with those who are most affected by those systems.

And, further, collective liberation theology calls us to follow their lead.

In 2015, I joined a group ofUU’s from across the country in Selma, Alabama at the 50th anniversary commemoration of the march for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Several of the mostly white UU s there had to be told that, no, they would not be at the front of the commemorative march across that bridge.

The black folks who had organized the event and whose lives had after all been most affected by the history being remembered were perfectly capable of leading their own march.

Here’s an example of when we’ve done better.

First UU helped to form the Austin Sanctuary Network, and from the beginning the sanctuary network has centered in its leadership folks most affected by our inhumane immigration system.

Collective liberation theology moves us from paternalism to proximity.

Finally, I believe that our faith is strong enough, our underlying theology powerful enough, that it can sustain us through the discomfort in which we will have to dwell at times in our journey toward transformation.

Discomfort?

What in the world is Rev. Chris on about now?

Go with me for just a moment into some discomfort that exists right here within this here very church.

We have had a lot of surveys, listening sessions, and the like in the church over the last couple of years, haven’t we?

Well, some themes around where we feel discomfort have occasionally emerged.

For instance, we want First UU to be a strong force for justice in our world.

And there is some discomfort talking about politics in church.

But you know, a lot of what happens regarding justice or injustice, is enacted through legislation or through court rulings, both of which are driven by politics.

So, while we are prohibited from supporting political candidates or parties, we must move through any discomfort around justice-related political issues, whether in church or in the public arena.

I can assure you our fundamentalist faith counterparts have no such discomfort.

And further, given the need for revolutionary change that Danez Smith proclaims in their poem …

And given that far too often our political choices these days seem to be between regressivism at worst and painfully slow incrementalism at best, we will need even more than political engagement.

We will need more than protests and marches.

We will be required to dream of new societal systems and structures and to begin living out them out, sometimes in rebellious ways, within our daily lives.

And that can be extremely uncomfortable for those of us for whom the current systems provide privilege.

As author and activist Arundhati Roy says of war, “Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.”

UU theologian (and one of my favorite people), Sharon Welch, applies this to the many aspects of our lives in her book, “After the Protests are Heard“.

She writes that we must notice “the ways ways our everyday decisions already create more justice.”

And though that awareness may sometimes bring discomfort, changing even small acts in our daily lives, as our reading earlier described, germinates seeds of hope and transformation.

Here are some of Danez Smith’s thoughts on that hope.

VIDEO

My beloveds, rooted in faith, we can move the mountain. Sustained by a theology of liberation for all of us, every single one of us, now, now, we’re talkin’ bout a revolution.

Benediction

As we go out into our world now, may you carry with you a sense of the great river of love that flows through our universe and through each of us.

A revolutionary love that moves us toward equity, justice, and the realization of the Beloved Community.

May you also carry with you the love of this religious community, until next we are gathered again.

May the congregation say, “Amen”, and “blessed be”.

Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 21, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our Universalist heritage professed that God is love and would save everyone – “universal salvation”. No one would be condemned to hell. We have come to think of this as a universal love that calls us to “love the hell out of this!world” (thank you, Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford). Universal love calls us to create universal salvation in this world and in this time.

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.”

– bell hooks

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

IF BELL HOOKS WROTE FIRST CORINTHIANS
Rev. Sr. Tess Baumberger

Love is caring, affectionate, and loyal
It recognizes, knows, and respects the other.
Love is committed and trusting.
Love takes the risk of loving
Love is never hurtful, abusive, or neglectful. It does not coerce or dominate, Neither does it spoil or over-indulge.
Love is ethical, accountable and responsible.
Love does not lie to avoid conflict or to manipulate.
Love does not lie to trick or deceive.
Love is open and honest, but with a positive slant.
Love lives with integrity that wills cooperation
Though it is satisfying to love, Love is not about getting one’s needs met, nor solely about meetings others’ needs. True love is made of mutuality.
Love is a generous giver, and in giving it learns to receive.
Love places another’s interest on the same footing as our own.
Love is not so much a feeling as an action, A continuing active choice to nurture another’s wellbeing.
There can be no love without justice and equality. Therefore love requires that we subvert patriarchy, white supremacy, consumerism, ableism, anti-queerness, and all other forms of oppression.

Sermon

“Love is the doctrine of our church: The quest of truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace, To seek knowledge in freedom, To serve humanity in fellowship, To the end that all souls shall grow in harmony with the divine Thus do we covenant with each other.”

Those words are from a covenant written by early 20th century Universalist minister, Rev. L. Griswold Williams that many our our fellow Unitarian Universalist congregations still affirm during their worship service each Sunday, including our Texas sibling, First Unitarian Church of Dallas.

Actually, it originally ended with “Thus do we covenant with each other AND WITH GOD, but the God part got removed in many later versions because, rather than reclaiming the term, we seem to have sometimes developed an allergy to the word “God”. In fact some of our churches use a similar version of it, written by a Unitarian Minister, that begins with “Love is the SPIRIT of this church”, instead of “doctrine. Rather than reclaiming it, we also seem to have developed an allergy to the word “doctrine”.

But I digress. Anyway, I wanted to start with this heritage of centering our faith in covenant, the promises that we make to one another about how we will be together in the ways of love, which we inherit from both our Unitarian and Universalist forbearers.

Today we’ll be particularly considering how our Unitarian Universalist or UU faith has begun to much more explicitly reclaim also centering our faith in a theology of universal love, bequeathed to us by that second U, Universalism.

Now, this religious community, our church, has a covenant that we call our “Covenant of Healthy Relations”, which I think is wonderful, because it acknowledges that love is not just a feeling.

It is also a verb.

We have to know what actions we will take, how we can live out love as a religious community on an ongoing basis.

At our December congregational meeting, we adopted a new version of our covenant, as a result of the great work of our healthy relations team, Julie Paasche, Tomas Medina, and our lay leader this morning, Margaret Borden.

They listened carefully to you all, folks from the congregation and engaged with another in some great discussions to discern how our covenant might better help us embrace things like our UU 8th principle and its call for us to dismantle racism and oppression.

So to begin, I would like to invite Julie, Tomas, and Margaret to lead us in a unison reading of the result of their great work – the new version of our covenant.

As a religious community, we promise:

To Welcome and Serve by:

 

• Being intentionally hospitable to all people of goodwill Celebrating all aspects of diversity
• Treating others as they wish to be treated
• Being present with one another through life’s transitions Encouraging the spiritual growth of people of all ages

 

To Nurture and Protect by:

 

• Communicating with one another directly in a spirit of compassion and goodwill
• Ensuring those who wish to communicate are heard and understood
• Speaking when silence would inhibit progress Disagreeing from a place of curiosity and respect Interrupting hurtful interactions when we witness them Expressing our appreciation to each other

 

To Sustain and Build by:

 

• Affirming our gratitude with generous gifts of time, talent, and money for our beloved community
• Honoring our commitments to ourselves and one another for the sake of our own integrity and that of our congregation
• Forgiving ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward Thus, do we covenant with one another.

 

Many thanks to our wonderful healthy relations team! “Thus, do we covenant with one another.”

Thus, do we promise to dwell together in the ways of love.

And that love is love with a capital L – a Universal Love that we draw theologically from our Universalist heritage.

Now, differing variations of Christian Universalism go all the way back to the very earliest days of Christianity.

Universalism was, and for some still is, a belief that God is all loving and would never condemn any of us to an eternity of damnation in hell – that God would eventually offer salvation to all souls.

This is why the term All Souls often shows up in the names of some of our UU churches.

This idea that God’s love is pervasive and includes everyoneGod’s love is universal- shows up over and over again in some form throughout the history of Christian religion.

And the idea that God’s universal love leads inevitably to universal salvation has been extremely controversial, also throughout Christian history.

It turns out, a lot of people really hate it when you get rid of hell. More on that shortly.

It was here in America though that the IDEA of Universalism actually came to take the institutional form of churches and societies of churches.

Now, our origin myth and miracle story for how universalism came to America (and eventually our UU faith) involves John Murray, a Methodist preacher from England who had converted to Universalist beliefs there.

After the death of his first wife and their infant son, as well as then being thrown into debtors prison, a dispirited Murray, his faith in doubt, gave up preaching and immigrated to America in 1770.

Upon arriving on the American coast, Murray’s ship got grounded on a sandbar.

While waiting for his ship to get freed, Murray went ashore, where he met a farmer named Thomas Potter, who had built a chapel on his land to accommodate itinerant preachers.

Upon learning that Murray was a preacher, Potter was convinced that Murray had been sent by God to proclaim the gospel in his chapel.

Murray resisted, but Potter convinced him to preach if the ship was still not free by that Sunday.

God kept the ship stranded past Sunday (at least from Potter’s point of view), so Murray preached. He made such a great impression that he ended up getting invited to spread the good news of Universalism up and down the East coast of the American colonies, eventually founding a Universalist church in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

And like many if not most origin myths and miracle stories, this one is not entirely true.

It was more likely a seasonal lack of wind than God that got and kept Murray’s ship stranded.

Universalism had already taken root in several other religious sects in the colonies.

And, in fact, Murray didn’t even focus on Universal Love and Salvation in his preaching at first. It was more likely his charisma that got him invited to preach throughout the area, at least in the beginning.

So the story is more complicated than the way in which we often tell it. But complicated stories don’t make for very good miraculous origin myths!

Incidentally, it is absolutely true that we get a strong heritage of feminism from American Universalism.

Murray’s second wife, Judith Sargent Murray, was an essayist, poet, and playwright – in the 1700s.

She advocated for women’s progress, and, under pseudonyms, sometimes male, she published such articles as “Desultory Thoughts Upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-Complacency, especially in Female Bosoms” and “On the Equality of the Sexes” in the 1700s!

In 1863, Olympia Brown became the first woman to gain full ministerial standing from any denomination in America when she was ordained by the Universalist Church.

Perhaps the most influential force in the development of Universalism though, was the self-educated minister, orator, debater and writer Hosea Ballou.

He espoused ultra-universalism, the idea that God would not condemn humans to hell for any period of time at all, which led to much controversy and conflict with more traditional Universalists who believed God would temporarily condemn the wicked to hell for some unspecified period of time before eventually saving all souls.

The leaders of other denominations that were firmly committed to hell as a means for controlling human behavior, REALLY hated the idea.

Ballou firmly asserted that God was the embodiment of eternal love and seeks the happiness of all humans. He was convinced that once people knew this, they would take pleasure in living a moral life and doing good works.

In a famous story, Ballou was traveling with a Baptist minister one afternoon. The Baptist minister looked at him and said, “Brother Ballou, if I were a Universalist and feared not the fires of hell, I could hit you over the head, steal your horse and saddle, and ride away, and I’d still go to heaven.”

To which Ballou replied, “If you were a Universalist, the idea would never occur to you.”

Another time, an elderly woman, firmly committed to religious beliefs involving the depravity of human nature queried Ballou on whether he frequently asked his parishioners, “0, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”

Hosea Ballou responded, “No Madam. That class do not attend my church.”

I kind of feel that way about this church!

So, here is why I have given you this extremely brief and thoroughly incomplete taste, this smattering of stories from our Universalist inheritance.

As I mentioned earlier, our UU faith is reclaiming the relational, love-centered legacy of our Universalist heritage that has sometimes been overshadowed by the also extremely important focus on reason and individual autonomy of our Unitarian roots.

Though again, it is more completed than that. Both of our traditions contained elements of all of this and more.

Anyway in the time since our two Us merged in 1961, we have translated the Universalist concept of an all loving God, offering universal salvation after death, into a Universal Love that offers salvation in this world, in this life, in the here and now.

A Universal Love that like that big umbrella from our story earlier shelters us all under a shield of justice -love that when practiced moves us all toward liberation and freedom, as bell hooks wrote about.

The early 20th century Universalist minister and scholar Clarence Skinner wrote that Universalism answers the primal question of how we can “transform this old earth into the kingdom of heaven”.

My friend, the Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford, lead minister of LiveOak UU church, just says it calls us to “love the hell out of this world”.

Our UU theologian, Rev. Dr. Rebecca Ann Parker refers to what I am calling Universal Love as being “alive and afoot in the cosmos … ” In this church, we sometimes call it as a river of love that flows through our Universe.

We began the sermon today with exploring how our UU faith is centered in covenant.

The covenant that we make with our fellow UUs throughout our faith is contained in Article II of our Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws.

These are the promises that all UUs make with one another about how we will dwell together in the ways of love.

Well, for over 5 years, our larger UU faith has been engaging in a process to update that covenant between all UUs, just as we did for our church covenant, though we didn’t take nearly as long.

Now, I do not have time to go into the details today. You can find more information at www.uua.org

Here though, is a graphic representation of the values we would covenant to affirm and promote under this proposed update.

Now being UUs, some of our folks affectionately refer to this graphic as “the love flower.” And some of our folks derisively refer to this graphic as “that love flower.”

However, you feel about the graphic, it does illustrate how we might center our covenant in love.

Universal Love practiced through the values of Generosity, Pluralism, Transformation, Equity, Interdependence, and Justice.

Universal Love that, when lived through these values, moves us “towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”

My beloveds, as we face the many challenges of this election year – the frankly terrifying wave of authoritarianism flowing through our country – the war and violence in our world – the rampant injustices – the ongoing violations of the inherit worth and dignity of so many – centering ourselves in Universal Love is going to be more vital than ever.

And perhaps, just maybe, by centering ourselves in that Universal Love – we can take George Harrison’s words from our anthem earlier and make them universal:

Give us, ourselves, one another, and our world, love Give us love
Give us peace on earth Give us light
Give us life
Keep us all free from birth.

Who knew George Harrison might be a Universalist?

Amen.

Benediction

TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL
by Maya Angelou:

 

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson & Rev. Michelle LaGrange
December 24th, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

On Christmas Eve we hold our annual Lessons and Carols service featuring beautiful, holiday-related readings and singing carols together. We join together for this magical day of celebrating love, joy, and peace.

Chalice Lighting

On this night of anticipation, we raise our voices in story and song to greet Christmas. May the lessons of compassion, trust, and generosity alight within us and lead us into the new day, renewed.

Opening Words

CHRISTMAS EVE
by Rev. Mary Wellemeyer (adapted)

Like those shepherds who were on the hillsides with their flocks,
like those wise ones in their observatories with their telescopes and astronomical charts,
we find our daily work interrupted by these holy days.

And like them, we cannot keep on working, we must stop and listen to the
singing of the angels, and feel the call of that special star,

The little town of Bethlehem is thronged with people who have come to be taxed,
crowding streets and shops, and we must wind our way to an unknown place
where a wonderful new beginning awaits.

What precious new beginning are you seeking this night?
For what do you push through the crowds?
What message do the angels sing to you?
What is the call of your star?

Anthem:

“Cantique de Noel” (Adolphe Adam)
Katrina Saporsantos & Gabriel Liboiron-Cohen, vocals;
Benjamin Dia, piano

Reading

COME INTO CHRISTMAS
by Ellen Fay

It is the winter season of the year
Dark and chilly
Perhaps it is a winter season in your life.
Dark and chilly there, too
Come in to Christmas here,
Let the light and warmth of Christmas brighten our
lives and the world.
Let us find in the dark corners of our souls the
light of hope,
A vision of the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Let us find rest in the quiet of a holy moment to
find promise and renewal.
Let us find the child in each of us, the new hope,
the new light, born in us.
Then will Christmas come
Then will magic return to the world.

Carol “O Come All Ye Faithful” 

Reading

THE SHORTEST DAY
by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Carol “Joy to the World”

Reading

CHRISTMAS IS SUBVERSIVE
by Rev. Kendyl Gibbons

One of the great things about Christmas is that it is a sturdy holiday. Christmas doesn’t wimp out when times are hard – it comes anyway, even if there are hardly any presents, even when there isn’t much food to make a feast with, even if you’re sad, even if the world around you is at war, even if you are living in fear and danger and oppression, Christmas still comes.

And when it comes, Christmas is subversive. Christmas, with its story of an unwed mother and a doubtful father; with its legend of a helpless baby, born in a stable, who was worshipped by some of the wisest, richest men in the world; with its tale of the child pursued by the deadly wrath of kings, who escaped as a refugee to a foreign land far from home.

Christmas, with its ancient, enduring summons of peace on earth, good will to all people, everywhere. You can’t stop a day like that with a little hardship, or greed, or injustice. It will show up anyway, shining the light of a midnight star into the darkest places of our collective lives.

Do not underestimate the power of the manger, and the hope it holds. The Christmas song of the angels is not as innocent as it sounds. It has turned the world upside down before now. It still can.

Carol “Angels We Have Heard on High”

Reading

Luke 2:1-7

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

Reading

A CAUTIONARY CHRISTMAS TALE
by Rev. Frank Rivas (adapted)

My little sister, Renee, was ten years younger than I. When she was in kindergarten, I considered her to be the most obnoxious child on this planet.

So I decided to get her a lump of coal for Christmas. I know that people generally consider it Santa’s responsibility to give lumps of coal to kids who misbehave, but I had learned over the years not to trust Santa’s judgment. I’d seen it over and over again; the old man went easy on little kids.

So the responsibility fell to me. I searched the yellow pages, went to the nearest coal yard, picked out an exceptionally large chunk, wrapped it nicely in a box with a bow and placed it under the Christmas tree.

Our family encouraged recipients to lift, shake, and guess at the contents as soon as a gift was under the tree. Renee was fascinated. What gift could weigh so much?

By our Christmas morning tradition, the gifts were sorted into five piles; then one at a time, going around the circle as many times as necessary, we opened our gifts for everyone to see.

Renee opened mine first. As she unwrapped ribbon, paper and box, her excitement grew. My excitement grew too; the moment of reckoning was at hand. From her first glance at the coal she loved it. She screamed with delight and hugged me profusely.

How was I to know that only a week earlier, in her kindergarten class, she had learned to grow colorful crystals on coal. How was I to know that this would be her favorite gift?

There’s a moral to this story, my friends. Watch out for this season. There’s a spirit in the air that can turn even the most vindictive thoughts into good deeds.

Reading

Luke 2:8-14

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

Hymn #244: “It Came upon a Midnight Clear”

Reading

Luke 2:15-20

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Reading

EACH NIGHT A CHILD IS BORN
Sophia Lyon Fahs (adapted)

For so the children come
and so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they came-
Born of the seed of life.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
no wise ones see a star to show where to find
The babe that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night.
Parents
Sitting beside their children’s cribs-
Feel glory in the sight of a new beginning.
They ask “Where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?”
Each night a child is born is a holy night-
A time for singing-
A time for wondering
A time for worshiping.

Carol No. 245: “Joy to the World”

Reading

THE CAMELS SPEAK
by Lynn Ungar

Of course they never consulted us. They were wise men, kings, starreaders, and we merely transportation.

They simply loaded us with gifts and turned us toward the star.

I ask you, what would a king know of choosing presents for a child?

Had they ever even seen a baby born to such simple folks, so naked of pretension, so open to the wind?

What would such a child care for perfumes and gold?

Far better to have asked one born in the desert, tested by wind and sand.

We saw what he would need: the gift of perseverance, of continuing on the hard way, making do with what there is, living on what you have inside.s

The gift of holding up under a burden, of lifting another with grace, of kneeling to accept the weight of what you must bear.

Our footsteps could have rocked him with the rhythm of the road, shown him comfort in a harsh land, the dignity of continually moving forward. But the wise men were not wise enough to ask.

They simply left their trinkets and admired the rustic view. Before you knew it, we were turned again toward home, carrying men only half-willing to be amazed.

But never mind.

We saw the baby, felt him reach for the bright tassels of our gear. We desert amblers have our ways of seeing what you chatterers must miss. That child at heart knows something about following a star.

Our gifts are given.

Offering

“Carol of the Bells” (Mykola Leontovych; arr. Margaret Goldstone)
Benjamin Dia, piano

Reading

A RITUAL OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE FIRE
Rev. Michelle LaGraveand Rev. Chris Jimmerson

Let us take into our hands a Christmas candle, a Solstice candle
this is a night of ancient joy and ancient fear
those who have gone before us were fearful of what lurked
outside the ring of fire, of light and warmth.

As we light this fire we ask that the fullness of its flame
protect each of us from what we fear most
and guide us towards our perfect light and joy.

May we each be encircled by the fire and warmth of love
and by the flame of our friendship with one another.

On this night, it was the ancient custom to exchange gifts
of light, symbolic of the new light of the sun.

Therefore make ready for the light!
Light of star, light of candle,
Firelight, lamplight, love light
Let us share the gift of light.

Candle Lighting: “Silent Night, Holy Night” (Instrumental)

Carol “Silent Night, Holy Night”

Reading

THE WORK OF CHRISTMAS
by Howard Thurman

When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are
home,
When shepherds are back with
their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the brothers,
to make music in the heart.

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Closing Words

KNEELING IN BETHLEHEM by Ann Weems

It is not over, this birthing.
There are always newer skies
into which God can throw stars.
When we begin to think
that we can predict the Advent of God,
that we can box the Christ in a stable in Bethlehem,
that’s just the time that God will be born
in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe.
Those who wait for God
watch with their hearts and not their eyes,
listening, always listening for angel words.

Singing Together

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year
Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
And bring it right here

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
So bring it right here

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

We all like our figgy pudding
We all like our figgy pudding
We all like our figgy pudding
With all its good cheers

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

YOU DARKNESS
– Rainer Maria Rilke
  translated by David Whyte

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

I have faith in the night.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WINTER SOLSTICE
By Rebecca Ann Parker

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

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

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

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

There are inexplicable mysteries.

We are not alone.

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

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

Sermon

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

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

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

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

Not surprisingly, many of these center around:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

She writes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We experience the holy in the mystery.

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

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

Here is another example.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe I have a dark sense of humor.

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

May we reverence the darkness.

May we make holy the night.

Amen.

Benediction

– by Henry Beston

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

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

May the congregation say, Amen and blessed be.

Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Mary Catherine Bateson

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

AT THE MARKET
– Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

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

Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benediction

by Rebecca Ann Parker

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

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

I WILL NOT DIE AN UNLIVED LIFE
Dawna Markova

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

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

Sermon

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

Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. What?

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

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

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

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

I’m right there with you.

I love this church, and I love this ministry.

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

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

“There will be an answer.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know, blasphemy, right? Bear with me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I stopped struggling and froze – the freeze response.

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

My friend said quietly, “I’m sorry”.

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

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

It seemed to calm them a bit though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Having no fear response, she did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Together, we need not fear even fear itself.

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

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

We are Beloved.

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

SERMON INDEX

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

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

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

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

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

– Carl Jung

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

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

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

– adrienne maree brown

Sermon

History

Heritage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can change the plot though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That turned out to be true.

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

He was only reinstated after he threatened a lawsuit.

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

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

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

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

A legacy of less knowing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Throughout its history, the church has supported numerous charities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She got to recounting church stories while we visited.

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

Anyway, again, these are just a few examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A-women. Amen. Blessed be.

SERMON INDEX

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

PODCASTS

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