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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 13, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Over the past decade, First UU Church of Austin has twice offered immigration sanctuary to immigrants fearing unjust detention and deportation. What might being a sanctuary church look like, given the racist, police state tactics we are currently witnessing under the intentionally deceptive guise of national security and immigration enforcement?

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

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

– Hebrews 13:2

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WHAT DO RELIGIONS TEACH ABOUT IMMIGRANTS
by Alonzo Gaskill

The majority of religious traditions teach their adherents the importance of respecting life. Many, such as the dharmic faiths, have a central teaching, the need to practice ahimsa, or non-violence in actions, but also in words and thoughts. Thus, most major faith traditions will take the position that if someone from another country or community visits your own, you have a duty to treat them with love, respect, dignity, and honor.

…the command to embrace love and even help those who immigrate or visit is consistent. Indeed, most religions teach that there are spiritual or salvific consequences for negating this sacred commandment.

Sermon

Valerie Kaur’s Movie Clip:

She clung to a jacaranda tree. When I was little, my father said to me, “If you ever get lost in the woods, hug a tree.” That’s what they teach us when we are children, that the trees will calm us, protect us, love us when we are scared and alone.

She clung to a jacaranda tree. They took her anyway, pried her fingers from the silver trunk, dragged her into an unmarked van. Bystanders shouted and cursed and cried for them to stop, but they did not stop. Masked men threw tear gas canisters behind them as they drove away, disappearing into a cloud of gas like villains in a poorly written movie script.

I can’t get the images out of my head. The masked men, the bystanders, the cloud of gas, the young woman, and the tree.

Who do I want to be in the story? Who do you want to be in the story? I want to be the jacaranda. I want to make myself so strong, so steady, so rooted that my neighbors can hold on to me, the neighbors I know, and the ones I do not know. I want to find the courage inside of me to transfigure myself, to be braver with my love than I ever have before.

You might say, “What’s the use? They took her anyway.” Here’s what I see. One jacaranda is not enough. We need hundreds of jacarandas, millions of jacarandas, so that no matter how hard they pry her away, another one of us is right there ready for her to take hold. We must all become jacarandas.

This is not pretty poetry. This is a life-and-death call to risk ourselves for others, to become that strong, that rooted, that powerful, that beautiful, to become jacarandas.

In May of 2015, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin offered immigration sanctuary to Sulma Franco, whose life would be endangered if Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE were to deport her to her home country of Guatemala.

If you don’t know Sulma or her story, we will be celebrating her here at the church on this coming Saturday evening, July 19.

In the summer of 2017, we again offered immigration sanctuary to a young man named Alirio, whose life would also be at threat if ICE were to deport him to El Salvador.

Back then, providing church immigration sanctuary involved setting up a private, apartment-like area of the church in which Sulma and then later Alirio could live.

At the time, ICE had an internal memorandum dictating that their agents would not enter a church building to detain an immigrant and place them into the deportation process.

Because Sulma and then Alirio might have been at risk if they left the church grounds, church members also provided for meals, groceries, laundry and the like.

Along with a number of other churches and organizations, some of which have joined together to become the Austin Sanctuary Network, we also worked with Sulma and, again, then Alirio, to conduct a public advocacy campaign.

The campaign was designed to gain their freedom from the threat of detainment and deportation, as well as to shed light on a broken immigration system.

Sulma’s status is now such that she no longer requires church sanctuary.

Alirio remains in a kind of extended sanctuary, wherein he is able to spend more time with family and loved ones, while still accessing whatever safe haven the church can still provide, which I will talk more about shortly.

We have remained a part of the Austin Sanctuary Network and still consider ourselves a sanctuary church.

But then came the second Trump administration, and they rescinded that ICE memorandum about not entering, not desecrating, church spaces.

Then came the second Trump administration and the implementation of the extremist, White Christian Nationalist plan called Project 2025, and suddenly – suddenly, we find ourselves in a new and far more threatening environment in which our government is using immigrants and other vulnerable folks as targets to test how far we will allow them go toward establishing an authoritarian police state.

And if we are tempted think this is an exaggeration, we need only study the history of authoritarian states to understand that this is the playbook aspiring despots have so often used.

We need only look out how the administration co-opted the California national guard and sent them along with marines into the streets of Los Angeles on trumped up claims of riots that were in fact mostly peaceful protests in reaction to ICE raids destroying so many lives in that city.

We need only look at these photos posted by my friend, Lawrence Ingalls in Santa Ana, CA, several miles from where the supposed riots in Los Angeles were supposedly occurring.

Lawrence and his husband, my friend and colleague, Rev. Dr. Jason Cook, live just one mile from where these military personnel were deployed, fingers on the triggers of their automatic weapons, no explanation provided for their presence on the streets of an American city.

Under the false guise of national security and law enforcement, they are denying due process, violating humanitarian norms, separating families, including children from their parents, kidnapping people and flying them off to countries where they have never been and that are known internationally as the most egregious violators of human rights and dignity.

In those countries and now here in the U.S. in facilities such as the recently opened, so called “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, the Trump administration is placing people into what can only truthfully be called concentration camps.

Trump and his supporters, including some in our government, have even made jokes literally celebrating alligators eating people who might try to escape that facility in Florida, one of them posting “Alligator Lives Matter”.

And this language is no accident. This is a racist throwback to the early 1900s when black people, especially black babies were often referred to as “alligator bait.”

The language is on purpose. It is a blatant racist appeal.

And because our government and ICE are doing all of this under the cover of lies and secrecy, behind the cowardice of wearing facial masks like the KKK of old, racists vigilantes across the country are adding to the terrorism and victimization by posing as ICE agents themselves.

Here is just one extremely disturbing example, though this fool didn’t even bother with a mask.

ICE impersonator video

So, given this racist, government sanctioned environment, what do we do?

How do we as a church continue to provide faithful sanctuary?

And make no mistake, we must continue to do this.

At the very least, we must continue to do it to halt the authoritarians from expanding their reign of terror upon even more folks.

More vitally though, we continue to do it because our values centering us in love demand this of us – because that mission we say together every Sunday demands this of us – because our humanity – the preservation of our very own souls demand this of us.

We cannot know and be a part of the divine love that flows through our universe and allow this to go on.

So, how do we continue to do it?

What does faithful church sanctuary look like in this age in which we find ourselves?

Well, I’m not sure we know all for the answers to that yet. I know I don’t. We’re still learning even as we resist the new evils being perpetrated. I began with the video from Valarie Kaur though because I think that metaphor of us all becoming jacaranda trees is so powerful and so useful.

We must all become those trees, and, as a church, we will also be called to provide more branches for more folks to hang onto.

So, for instance, there may be circumstance in which we are still called to provide a literal, physical place for someone to stay within the church.

But even when physical sanctuary is not a viable solution, we will be called to try to metaphorically shelter those whose legal and human rights, indeed their very life and wellbeing are at risk by joining in pubic advocacy campaigns – we are called to let our rogue government know we are watching and resisting – called to protest – called to demand information on the whereabouts of folks taken into ICE custody and due process for them, such as the 49 people in our community that ICE “disappeared” recently – and, yes, some of us may be called to civil disobedience and personal risk.

We are called to demand local law enforcement disengage with ICE and provide proper due process, access to legal representation, including for immigrants.

We will be called to accompany folks to court and immigration visits – leveraging our own privilege to take sanctuary into the places where ICE abuses are regularly happening.

Faithful church sanctuary may also involve detention visits when and if possible, supporting legal expenses, assisting with day to day errands of life so that folks have less exposure risk, supporting know your rights and legal presentations, and helping to set up safe havens and care for children separated from parents.

And I believe, because these gross violations of human rights are being committed within a grotesque ideology of White Christian Nationalism, we must be willing to publicly counter this by loudly proclaiming this is not religious – this is not Christian.

We have to be willing to know and use scripture from the world’s religions, especially the Christian bible, that demands the just and compassionate treatment of immigrants.

These are just a few examples. We will learn more as we go. We are fortunate to have Peggy from our Inside Amigos church immigration justice group and Austin Sanctuary Network.

Please talk with Peggy to find out how you can get involved and what you can do to help your church be that faithful sanctuary to which we are called.

My Beloveds, for me, this is personal, and it is spiritual. It is a religious calling from the very core of our Unitarian Universalist faith.

I return to where I started this sermon.

Over the years, I have gotten to know Sulma and Alirio and have come to love them both.

I love Sulma’s fieriness and her humor and compassion – her willingness to be that jacaranda tree for others even as she herself was at great personal risk.

I love Alirio’s gentle kindness and the steely strength he harbors within – his willingness to be that jacaranda tree for others even as he himself was at great personal risk.

I cannot truthfully and faithfully live out my own story without recognizing that it is inextricably interwoven with their stories and those of so many others.

And so I must try to live their example and do my best to become that jacaranda tree too – to declare in the name of that fierce love that I call God – “I will not remain silent. I will not hide away within my own privilege. I will do whatever I can to join with my beloveds and replace the injury to God that is being perpetrated by an ideology of spiritual and religious deceit with a faithful sanctuary within which all are loved, welcomed, and supported in their fullest flourishing.

That is the true fulfillment of the divine in our world.

We will close with Valarie Kaur’s closing words:

“We must all become jacarandas.
This is not pretty poetry.
This is a life and death call to risk ourselves for others.
To become that strong.
That rooted.
That powerful.
That beautiful.
To become jacarandas.”

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

Leviticus 19:33-34

“If a foreigner stays with you in your land, do not do them wrong. Rather, treat the foreigner staying with you like the native born among you. You are to love them as yourself.”

May the congregation say amen and blessed be. Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
June 15, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

For individuals, feeling a part of something larger than oneself can increase happiness, enhance well-being, create a greater sense of purpose and meaning in life, give us a sense of belonging, and improve mental health in a variety of areas. First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is a part of our larger UU faith and an even larger effort to build Beloved Community. Might fully engaging this larger belonging confer these same benefits to us a religious community?

Chalice Lighting

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

Call to Worship

SOMETHING A BIT LARGER

Scientists estimate that there are at least a septillion stars out there. That’s a one, followed by 24 zeros. Imagine then, how much star dust there may be. I am but one tiny configuration of star dust. That’s so infinitesimal. Any yet, I am an integral part of something much greater than a septillion! And that’s immeasurable! What a difference I might make.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

BELONGING
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And if it’s true we are alone,
we are alone together,
the way blades of grass
are alone, but exist as a field.
Sometimes I feel it,
the green fuse that ignites us,
the wild thrum that unites us,
an inner hum that reminds us
of our shared humanity.

Just as thirty-five trillion
red blood cells join in one body
to become one blood.
Just as one hundred thirty-six thousand
notes make up one symphony.
Alone as we are, our small voices
weave into the one big conversation.
Our actions are essential
to the one infinite story of what it is
to be alive.

When we feel alone,
we belong to the grand communion
of those who sometimes feel alone –
we are the dust, the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world.

Sermon

At the turn of the 19th century, 23 year old Joseph Tuckerman was asked to be the minister of what would become the Unitarian church in the town of Chelsea Massachusetts.

He had recently graduated from from Harvard (you know, that place that is under attack by the taco tyrant all of these years later), where one of his classmates was another aspiring minister, William Ellery Channing, who would go on to give a famous sermon he titled, “Unitarian Christianity” that would catalyze the formalization of Unitarian religion in the United States and lead to Channing and others forming the American Unitarian Association six years later.

Tuckerman, though, struggled at Harvard. It’s said Channing had even told him, “You should study harder.”

But Tuckerman felt something was missing from his studies. He didn’t want to just read books all the time. He felt like he could also learn from talking with other people.

Something was incomplete. He need more to be feel whole.

He did graduate though and went on to serve that church in Chelsea for 25 years, preaching twice on Sundays and serving the spiritual needs of the people in his congregation.

Still, he continued to feel something was missing – a dissatisfaction. That his ministry and calling were not entirely complete.

And so he began to also serve the greater community in Chelsea, where many sailors and their families lived.

The sailors were often away for months and years, so their families often faced periods where they had little money.

Tuckerman would help them with food, clothing or whatever else they might need.

In 1826, still feeling a need to connect with something larger and facing ill health, Tuckerman resigned from his church.

He went to Boston, where he immersed himself among the sailors and others who lived with financial challenges, as well as difficulties like alcoholism.

Tuckerman listened to their stories about how they had come to face these challenges and what their needs were. He studied his bible and concluded that Jesus had called us to love everyone and to assist the poor, the hungry, the sick, including the illness of addiction. And there he found his greater calling.

He worked with his college classmate’s American Unitarian Association to create an organization that coordinated with each of the Unitarian churches throughout the Boston area to provide support and assistance to help meet the needs of folks in their neighborhoods and communities.

Joseph Tuckerman had found his purpose and now felt complete, and in doing so, he founded what we have come to know as “community ministry” – ministers who primarily serve the needs of communities beyond our church walls.

Tuckerman found his purpose in life by connecting with something much larger than himself and what had traditionally been the role of a minister.

Author and scholar of mythology and religion, Joseph Campbell said, “A hero is someone who has given their life to something bigger than oneself.”

And I suppose by that definition he means we all have the capacity to be heroes in on our own way.

He believed we all have a purpose – a calling from and toward something larger than ourselves that when followed will bring us bliss.

He said, “Follow your bliss.”

Our religious education manager, Sol, spoke eloquently of this last Sunday when they talked about the sense of calling they have found through Sol’s wonderful work with our children.

And, there is evidence that, like our Unitarian ancestor Joseph Tuckerman, we all need that sense of being a part of something greater to feel complete and fulfilled.

Studies have found that having a sense of being a part of something larger benefits us in a variety of ways, especially when that sense is that though we may be a tiny part of that something larger, we are also an integral part it.

So, embrace humility and hero potential all at the same time! Now, some of those potential benefits of doing so seem to be:

• positive psychological effects, such as reduced stress and anxiety, less depression, and a greater sense of wholeness, happiness and life-fulfillment.
• a bigger sense of connection and belonging, moving us toward greater compassion, empathy and prosocial behavior.
• it can make us more resilient in the face of life challenges.
• provide us with greater meaning and purpose in our lives, and when shared with other folks can deepen our emotional bonds.

And that’s just to name a few! 

Now, it’s important to note that feeling we are a part of something larger can take many different forms.

That “something larger” could be a belief in a deity or a sense of transcendent or divine forces at play in our universe.

But, it can also take so many other forms:

• Joining a church can feel like connecting with something larger.
• Playing a piano duet such that the combined talent produces something of even greater beauty!
• Prayer, meditation, and other forms of religious or spiritual experiences whether or not they involve a supernatural belief system.
• It can be dedication to a cause or working for justice
• It could be a vocation that fulfills us, but it could also be the volunteer work we do during our time off.
• It could be an art, music, a sport or athletic endeavor, connecting with nature, a science, learning, reading, gardening, our family and loved ones, a community or some combination of all of these and more!

Whatever gives us this profound sense of vast interconnectedness and belonging, can be the something larger through which we find that sense of purpose in life. 

It is this feeling of interconnectedness and belonging so immense it is beyond words, regardless of the specific sources that drive it within us, that has the potential to transform us.

There is currently a lot of research showing the potential benefits of psychedelics such as ketamine, psilocybin (the active agent in magic mushrooms), LSD and the like as treatments for conditions such as depression, addiction, grief and trauma.

A theory behind why these compounds may have such benefits is that they almost universally bring about this sense of vast interconnectedness.

Well, I was amused recently to read that a study in London found that people treated with psilocybin tended to switch from a highly individualistic, materialistic, every person for themself personal and political philosophy, to a more altruistic, communal, we’re all in this together mindset.

I thought, “Maybe we should create magic mushrooms for MAGA spiritual retreats.

Speaking of spiritual gatherings, this coming week, several us from First Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church of Austin will be attending our annual UU General Assembly.

General Assembly or GA is where UUs from across the country and indeed the world gather to learn together, do the business of our association of UU Congregations and organizations, and to build communal power for doing justice.

Interestingly enough, this year GA will be in Baltimore, the city where William Ellery Channing preached the sermon I mentioned earlier that launched American Unitarianism and is often referred to as the “Baltimore sermon”.

And so we return to the birthplace of something greater than us as individual congregations but of which we are still an integral part to immerse ourselves in our larger faith movement.

I can still remember the first GA I ever attended. It was at the Salt Lake City convention center right next to the Mormon Tabernacle and complex, so you had UUs and Mormons intermingling on those Salt lake city sidewalks, which made for some interesting juxtapositions.

We UUs tended to sport many more tattoos, body piercings, slogan buttons, and practical if not very attractive footwear.

We were, though, almost as white.

I remember feeling awestruck when I first joined with those thousands of other UU s at that GA, somewhat humbled by the realization that our church and we are not nearly as unique as we may sometimes think, but also feeling so empowered to discover that we are not alone.

We are not isolated, but instead a part of a much larger religious movement that is in turn interconnected in solidarity with many other faith traditions and social movements dedicated to building the Beloved Community on a national and even global level.

And my beloveds, we, as a religious community need this connection with something larger than ourselves now more than ever.

With what had been happening in Los Angeles and across our country:

• the use of the military against our own citizens,
• the threats and even violence against government officials with whom the Trump administration disagrees, and now even assassinations,
• the demonization of LTBTQ+ folks,
• spending millions on a military parade for the taco tyrant while he pushes through policies to make the wealthy and powerful even more powerful at the. expense of everyone else – dismantling things like medicaid, medicare, social security, health research and care, FEMA, and so much more.
• the use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not to protect anyone or anything, but to intimidate – instill terror into anyone who would resist this racist, misogynistic, white Christian Nationalist, authoritarian agenda.

With these and so many other threats to justice and equity, with the absolute disregard and disdain for checks and balances and the fundamental structures and norms required for functional democracy, both nationally and here in our state, we, as one church, no matter how wonderful and engaged we may be, cannot be a lone hero. 

We need our connection with our fellow UU churches, locally, throughout the state through our Texas UU Justice Ministry, and more broadly through our UU Southern region offices and our national Unitarian Universalist Association.

We need the solidarity they bring with other faiths and secular organizations that share our values and our commitment to building the Beloved Community even up against these threats to it we are currently witnessing.

Just like with individuals, as a religious community, we can benefit from being a part of something larger than ourselves: greater social and political power; increased resiliency in this time of such great difficulty in our state and our country.

And who here when witnessing the news these days can easily fall prey to anxiety, or even despair and depression?

Me!

Connecting to our greater faith movement as a religious community can help alleviate these stressors for us, as both the community as a whole and as individuals.

It can further increase our sense of belonging, give us support and encouragement and remind us of our shared mission to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Something larger.

Hope. Meaning. Purpose.

In the months to come, your ministers, along with your board of trustees, your church staff and volunteers, and with each of you who want to participate will be exploring ways of becoming even more a part of our larger UU faith and the larger movement for justice that is rising up across our country and our world.

I encourage each of you individually to explore how you can connect with our greater faith also. You can find several ways to get started by going to austinuu.org, and I would be happy to set up a time to talk with you about it also if you would like.

And, allow me to bear witness and give testimony.

I am so lucky, so blessed to get serve as your minister within this greater UU faith of ours.

Along with a fierce love, it is such a source of what gives me that sense of being a part of something greater.

Hope. Meaning. Purpose.

I wish the very same for each of you and for this religious community as a whole.

Joseph Campbell was right. I have no doubt there is a hero within each of you – a calling from something immense and powerful from both within and beyond. Keep answering that call. As Campbell said, “follow your bliss.”

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

“We are the dust,
the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world.”

Let us go out now and make and remake our world.
May the congregation say, “Amen”, and “Blessed be”.
Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson & Chalice Camp Youth
June 8 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We often think of freedom as an individualistic act of escaping that which limits us. And that may be a part of the whole. What if a more complete understanding of freedom involves a communal embrace of our interdependence and the choices we make in order to live love?

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

There is something in the very nature of my freedom that inclines me to love, to do good, to dedicate myself to others. I have an instinct that tells me I am less free when I am living for myself alone. The reason for this is that I cannot be completely independent. Since I am not self-sufficient, I depend on someone else for my fulfillment. My freedom is not fully free when left to itself. It becomes so when it is brought into the right relation with freedom of another.

– Thomas Merton

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

I am learning that getting well in community is liberation. We are interdependent. When one of us attains freedom, it elicits/rekindles that longing in each of us. When we learn to feel, when we learn to stand with each other in feeling, when we learn to tune into the wisdom of our bodies, to love ourselves, to love each other, we are doing the unthinkable, we are creating new worlds of possibility… We must love each other and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

– adrienne marie brown

Sermon

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

Rosie:

In Chalice Camp this week, we learned our camp creed and learned about a different line of it each day. It goes,

“It’s a Blessing we were born.
It matters what we do.
It matters what we do together.
What we know about God as a piece of the truth.
We don’t have to do it alone.”

I think maybe adults should be learning this creed too. A lot of people forget these things or never learn them in the first place. We all deserve the freedom to search for our truth, to know we are born worthy and to connect with the people around us. I hope maybe we can remind you.

Sol Cornell:

Thank you Rosie.

Hello. My names are Sol and Shanti. I am a small white human with short blue hair and I’m also the manager of religious education here at First UU Austin.

Over The past week, I got to plan, direct, and run our chalice camp, a week-long summer day camp for kids in kindergarten through sixth with counselors from seventh through twelfth. It focuses on introducing the beginnings of spiritual development, practicing presence and grounding, and asking some really big questions in between crafts, games, and various levels of joyful chaos.

Let me tell you, this has possibly been the most intensive, demanding and exhausting project I have ever taken on, and I am so, so glad that I did. I’ve wanted to work with kids for a long time, but I hadn’t considered working with them in this particular capacity, helping them explore spirit and meaning and self until pretty recently. And I’m finding it to be a calling that fills my soul beyond any work that I’ve done before.

There’s something sacred about the way that kids move through the world. They’re honest. They’ll tell you exactly what they think and feel. Sometimes while sitting quietly in communal reverence and sometimes while running in circles, demolishing a bag of cheez-its.

Kids ask fantastic questions, Some big and some small. I heard a broad array over the past week from, “How old is that Eye of the tiger song?” All the way up to “How is God real, but also not real?” I learned some of the most interesting facts from Googling a curiosity that someone had, and I sat with some of the deepest questions that Google simply can’t answer.

At one point, a camper asked me, “Why do you like working with kids? They’re really loud.” She’s not wrong, but I answered honestly and I said, “I think it’s the coolest thing in the world to watch you all become who you are.” Working with kids gifts me a sense of joy, curiosity, and peace.

Children are unburdened by the spiritual baggage that many of us carry and they invite us to put some of it down just for a little bit. It’s an honor to teach our newest humans about something so big and personal as spirituality. And in doing so, they teach me too.

In the midst of all the chaos, the paint and the pipe cleaners and the occasional bout of tears, I found something quietly blooming in my soul, a deep sense of freedom, the freedom that comes from having a passion instead of just a job, the freedom that comes from doing something that feels right, that fits, that brings me home to myself. I get to wake up every day and do something that truly fills my heart and soul. I never knew I could have this life.

And I want to be clear. That kind of freedom, that kind of joy, isn’t just for me. We all deserve it. You deserve it. And sure, maybe it won’t come in the form of directing a children’s camp but there’s something out there that will make your heart sing. I promise you. Seek it, find it, grab it with both hands, and pull it from the ether if you have to. Because when we do that, when we find and bring the whole of ourselves into community, we create something powerful. Not just a group or a congregation, but a living, breathing, deeply human kind of togetherness.

So thank you for being part of that. Thank you for letting me be a part of it too and for trusting me with something so important. Let’s keep chasing the things that fill us up. Let’s keep asking the big questions. And let’s remember that we’re all still growing as long as we live and that that’s a beautiful thing. As the Camp Creed tells us, “We don’t have to do it alone.”

Blessed be and amen.

Chris Jimmerson:

I think I’ll grant myself the freedom this morning to not sermonize a lot about the taco tyrant in the White House and his enablers, nor the Texas tyrants in control of our state government.

French philosopher and author Albert Camus said that,

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

I think Camus is expressing there what I call “soul freedom,” a sense of deep internal freedom that can’t be taken from us and that we need to sustain ourselves to persevere when we must rebel against tyrants who would rob us of our societal freedom. 

Indeed, this soul freedom is what allows us to flourish, to live our lives most fully and fearlessly. It is what has empowered people throughout the ages to thrive, even when forced to endure the harshest of repressive conditions, concentration camps, slavery, colonization, racism, ongoing systemic oppression.

Our children at Camp UU this past week, as you’ve heard, have been learning about our Unitarian Universalist Theological Heritage and Identity, an identity that is deeply rooted in this soul freedom from the early Unitarians that claim the freedom to reject religious dogma and to form their own personal relationship with the God of their understanding to our universalist forebearers that freed us from fearing a judgmental and punishing God centered us instead in liberatory universal and communal love now.

One of the things that we you use have discovered along the way is that there is a potential paradox in developing soul freedom a tension between individualism and communalism. Communities can sometimes stifle our personal freedom, the expression of our true selves, can’t they?

And yet, as both of our readings highlighted this morning, we are interdependent. We need one another. We need love and support to fully become who we are meant to be, to find the sense of fierce love and belonging that sets our hearts and souls free.

So we have to form communities that accept and support each of our individual whole and fully creative selves, while at the same time each of us as individuals must choose to accept constraints, obligations that actually free us to contribute toward the love relationships and communal belonging we so desire.

Here’s another seeming paradox. Soul freedom requires surrendering. Surrendering to the fact that we are only the co-authors of our life stories, that much of the plot involves events that are well beyond our control. Our freedom lies in creating the narrative about how we interpret and respond to these events, Surrendering all that isn’t really important to us so that we are left with only the needs and boundaries that really matter to us, and this again frees us to then fiercely and fearlessly immerse ourselves in love and belonging.

So what we surrender is really only that which we have been telling ourselves mattered to us that really didn’t. And so often these things are things we absorbed and internalized from misguided, repressive societal norms that subjected our true selves in the first place.

Author Virginia Woof once put it:

“The eyes of others are prisons, their thoughts, our cages.”

Here’s a part of my own personal narrative that I think might illustrate much of all of this.

When I was seven, my dad developed severe depression that required repeated hospitalizations. By the time I was 12, he had divorced my mom. And because of all this, I became a sort of child parent to my younger siblings, a sort of child co-head of household with my struggling single mom. I had to learn to give love, to help, support, nurture, parent, protect. And some of that has become a valuable part of who I am. It’s a big part of what led me to become an activist for justice, to work in social support organizations, eventually to become a minister.

What it didn’t allow me to see as a part of my story nearly as much, though, is that I also need to be nurtured, helped, supported, protected to let myself want, accept, and ask for these things to enjoy and recognize being loved. Add to that a small-town culture in which I grew up that derided males for admitting a need for things like help and protection, and the eyes of others became a prison of sorts.

Flash forward to last year when my spouse of 33 years died. I grieved the loss of me loving him. I even felt gratitude for having loved him all those years.

But somehow I was still stuck. I was having trouble moving forward. I was just going through the motions of life without the joy that it used to bring me, unable to even entertain the idea of romantic love again.

It was only after several months of reexamining that self-story I had learned as that seven-year-old with lots of counseling and lots of support from loved ones, that I realized I was stuck because I hadn’t been able to let myself grieve the love, support, nurturing, and protection he had given me.

It was only then after I began to surrender that nearly lifelong self-narrative to allow for a more full, whole self-image that accepts being loved and nurtured, that I found the freedom To open myself to new love and to life again.

My beloveds, we will all sometimes fall into the traps that life can put in front of us.

Our soul freedom comes from allowing ourselves love and belonging accepting our interdependence because that, that is what helps us to rewrite our narrative and steer our story in a new direction more of our own choosing.

And sometimes we have to allow ourselves some time, some freedom to learn, And to unlearn some of those cages, the thoughts of others and/or our own, have trapped us within. The learned habits that can be so very hard to surrender.

I leave you with a poem by singer, songwriter, actress and author, Portia Nelson that I think illustrates this last idea in a kind of fun way. It’s called:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS.

Chapter 1
I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place, but it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It’s a habit, but my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my responsibility. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down a different street.
The end.

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

Go now into daily life free, not only of that which holds you back, but also free to choose that which ignites your mind, body, and soul.

Choose to revel in our interdependence.

Choose community. Choose to love fiercely, fearlessly.

This is our revolution. This is our journey toward freedom.

May the congregation say amen and blessed be.

Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
May 4, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Unitarian Universalism recently centered our faith in love. But this is not an abstract, overly sentimental love that allows us to linger in a liminal space, feeling it only from the sidelines. It is a love that calls us to action – to engage in our world, grounded in a self-love that empowers us to boldly create and demand even more love and justice. It is a fierce love that has the power to bring about the revolution our world so desperately needs.

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

SEE NO STRANGER:
A MEMOIR AND MANIFESTO OF REVOLUTIONARY LOVE
by Valerie Kaur

In our tears and agony, we hold our children close and confront the truth: The future is dark.

But my faith dares me to ask: What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?

What if our America is not dead but a country still waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor?

What if all the mothers who came before us, who survived genocide and occupation, slavery and Jim Crow, racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia, political oppression and sexual assault, are standing behind us now, whispering in our ear: You are brave? What if this is our Great Contraction before we birth a new future?

Remember the wisdom of the midwife: “Breathe,” she says. Then: “Push.”

Let us make an oath to fight for the soul of America – “The land that never has been yet – and yet must be” (Langston Hughes) – with Revolutionary Love and relentless optimism.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

FIERCE LOVE, A BOLD PATH TO FEROCIOUS COURAGE
AND RULE-BREAKING KINDNESS THAT CAN HEAL THE WORLD
by Rev Dr Jacqui Lewis

I invite you to believe assiduously in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us because, actually, believing is seeing. Believing is seeing our connection; we are one.

This is the kind of fierce love to which we are called. This kind of love is not a feeling or sentiment; it’s radical transformative action that takes risks to seek the common good. It sees our neighbor better than they see themselves. It makes sacrifices, it creates a way out of no-way. It’s the Black folk religion I grew up with – for all of the people. It’s the fiercest love of all. This fierce love is not for the faint, the indolent, or the idle! We can’t just feel love, we must give love, we must do love, we must be love ourselves. Our calling is to see something, and, seeing it, to call it out and do everything we know is good and just and vital to heal our souls and the world.

Sermon

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

I wasn’t supposed to be preaching this morning. As many of you know, the plan was that a candidate to become our other called co-lead minister would preach today. We didn’t find a suitable candidate during our search, and so here we are. You get me.

Three days after returning from a two-month sabbatical. Anyone ever notice how things don’t always go as planned? That’s okay. We have now instead brought in Reverend Carie Holly-Hurt to be our assistant minister. Anyone ever notice how sometimes things go better than planned?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how long this church has been in somewhat of a liminal space, a time during which there has been much transition and change and uncertainty. If you’re new to the church, here is a little bit of that recent liminal church history.

Back in 2018, after a successful capital campaign, we ended up tearing up large portions of our church building to complete some renovations and an expansion. And while the result of that is Wonderful and beautiful, it did put us in a somewhat liminal space for a while, literally. And of course, not long at all after that, in 2020, we were forced to close our beautiful, newly renovated church for almost two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And after we were finally able to return to the building in early 2022, our much-beloved lead minister at the time, Reverend Meg Barnhouse, was forced to announce her retirement because of health issues. And so we entered into yet another liminal space, an interim transitional ministry period and a search to call a new lead minister.

I appear before you this morning still grateful to be the one who received that call in late 2023, but not done with living in a liminal, uncertain space. In 2024, the church continued interim ministry after deciding upon a second search, the one I mentioned earlier to consider the possibility of calling a second co-lead minister. Oh, and in the midst of that there was this thingy called an election, which has resulted in a time of great anxiety and uncertainty in our nation, which brings this back to this morning and my not-according-to-plan appearance in this pulpit.

I want you all to know how much it thrills my spirit, nourishes my soul, that this religious community through all of that liminal space, all of that uncertainty, has kept the church and that mission we say together every Sunday alive.

As a result of that election that I just mentioned, though, we find ourselves in a different and almost infinitely more dangerous world where the very core of our faith, the love and sense of interconnectedness that is the essence of our humanity is being threatened like never before. And so, though not entirely according to plan, I also appear before you this morning to offer what IS, I believe the calling of our Unitarian Universalist faith, the calling of this church like never before.

Being in a liminal space by necessity requires a certain amount of internal focus and reassessment And we have done that work admirably, as I said, all the while, also keeping our faith alive in the world.

Now, though, now forces that would desecrate love and interconnectedness have seized power. So we must leave behind that liminal space, even in this time of such uncertainty, we must answer a clear and certain clarion call from the very core of our religious faith.

Love. Yes, really, it is that simple. And that complicated. Because this is not not a sentimental sit on the sidelines feeling all gushy kind of a love. No, it is a fierce love that calls us to first love ourselves and then to turn our attention beyond ourselves and confront actions that subvert love and justice anywhere that we find them. It is a fierce love that calls us to create a love revolution in our world.

Here is how Valerie Kaur, as Margaret said, founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, the source of an adult religious education series the church will be offering. Here is how she describes this kind of love.

Love has been so abused in our culture. Love has been mistaken as a sentimental emotion, a feeling that comes and goes, ebbs and flows, but love is more than a rush of feeling. Think of your deepest relationships. Love is what you do for one another, how you care for each other. I define love as sweet labor, fierce, demanding, imperfect, life-giving, a choice we make again and again. And if love is labor, then love contains all of our emotions. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that we harness to protect that which we love.

 

When we choose to love like that beyond what evolution requires, When we love beyond our inner sphere, then love becomes revolutionary. I define revolutionary love as the choice to enter into labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves.

Revolutionary love begins with the choice to look upon the face of anyone and say, “You are a part of me I do not yet know.” When we do that we expand our circle of care so that we leave no one behind.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that God is love and in order for us to bring that divine love that revolutionary love into our world, we must first recognize the divine within ourselves. We must love ourselves up against the many, many messages we get in our world that can lead us to question our own worth.

Listen. Please listen. You, each and every one of you, you are worthy. You are deserving of love just as you are.

So, practice self-love.

• Stop several times a day to think to yourself just how worthy of love you really are.
• Put a reminder in your calendar.
• Surround yourself with folks who support you and recognize your worth.
• Find what brings you joy and engage in it often.

Now self-love can, and soon will be, a whole other sermon. For now, though, know that self-love is where answering the call to fierce love starts and make self-love a verb, an ongoing spiritual practice.

So next, I think we can answer the call of love, foster it in our world through consciously engaging in small acts of kindness and compassion on a daily basis. My maternal grandparents kept romantic love alive in their relationship throughout the 60 years they were married by doing just this. In fact, the only time I ever saw them argue was over who got to do the next loving thing for the other. My grandfather brought my grandmother coffee in bed every day over all of those years. My current beau and I text each other what are sometimes called sweet nothings throughout the day. We text good morning each day and night night every night.

The thing is, sweet nothings are not at all nothing. They help keep love alive as our story earlier showed us those words matter. And we can offer such loving words and actions to all of the loved ones in our lives, maybe even to our fellow churchgoers.

And out in our daily world we can offer this loving kindness to all those we encounter. We can engage with co-workers, the cashier at the grocery store, restaurant workers, complete strangers. Too often we go about our world completely ignoring and barely acknowledging one another. Maybe if we put our phones down and actually talk to folks as we move through our world, we will create more love in that world.

Once again, sometimes it really is that simple.

Now, here is where it can get more complicated. Fierce love calls us to confront those who have strayed from the path of love, who would use their power to commit grave injustices, thwart love, divide us into those they say are worthy of love, and those who they believe are not.

I don’t have to tell you all the war against basic human dignity and rights. People’s very autonomy over their own minds and bodies being waged in our state legislature right now. Fierce love calls us to confront such anti-love legislative proposals and say no. No in the name of love, as so many of you have already been doing. And far, far too many actions of the Trump administration in their first hundred days defile the very idea of love. And once again, fierce love is calling us, each of us, our Unitarian Universalist religion, this church to confront these actions, to cry “No” in the name of love, to say “These things you will not do in our name.” Fierce love calls us to speak the truth, even when it is hard.

The removal of people, often without any access to even basic legal rights and processes, to place them into a prison in El Salvador, which is nothing short of a concentration camp, is such a violation of divine love that we cannot, we cannot allow this to be done in the name of our country and thereby condone the existence of a concentration camp anywhere in our world.

The forced deportation of a citizen, a four-year-old child with stage 4 cancer without even the medications necessary to sustain their life violates the very idea of love. Fierce love calls us to cry out “No, No, No.”

The administration is aggressively dismantling any and all efforts toward diversity, equity and inclusion as if those are dirty words rather than love and justice in action. Even further, they are systematically attempting to remove the history and accomplishments of BIPOC folks, LGBTQ folks, women, and so many others, they deem less desirable from websites, textbooks, the very historical records of this country. This is an attempt at erasure. It casts certain people as less than. It is domination and abuse and domination and abuse are not love.

The administration recently destroyed a Center for Disease Control program that shared education and data regarding HIV disease that has helped so many, Advanced our knowledge about the disease saved lives. They destroyed that program because they thought it was too truthful about HIV disease and LGBTQ folks, HIV disease, and people of color.

My spouse of 33 years, Wayne, who died last year, was on an advisory group that helped the CDC create that program many years ago. So it feels like they have erased him. And thereby, a part of me.

Our services go out over television and the internet so folks that I love closely may well see this sermon at some point. To those whom I love, who may still support a government that does these things, fierce love calls me to say, “I love you, and I will not be abused. I will not be made less than – I will not be erased.”

Truth-telling, even with or maybe especially with those we love most closely is no longer optional because this is no longer just politics. This is authoritarianism. This is subjugation, xenophobic cruelty, a sacrilege against what makes us human.

What is happening desecrates love and is therefore a blasphemy toward God. It is the very opposite of the divine love toward which Jesus Christ and all of the great religious leaders of our world have called us.

Recently, I have been blessed by romantic love coming into my life again. His name is Woodrow, and I know that he wants our love to support me. Be the impetus and the spiritual practicing ground through which I strive to become the fullest, most creative, best, and purest self and soul I can possibly hope to become. And I know he knows I want the exact same for him. This is the essence of love. This is the essence of the God love we are called to bring into our world and to actively offer to all of humanity and creation.

Sometimes it really is this simple.

We are called as a church to bring into our world divine love, love that only wishes for all of us to thrive, and we are called to confront any forces that would subvert that love. I am so proud of the work for love and justice so many of you are already doing at the state and national levels. I encourage everyone to join in with this religious community to do justice in our world. I’ve posted some information on how you can join in at www.austinuu.org Of course, feel free to talk with me after the service also.

So my beloveds, a fierce love is calling us. The time is here. The time is now. It is our time as a religious community to answer that call, like never before to show up more mightily than ever before, to allow ourselves to be swept into an ocean of love that is the creative source of our universe, to wade in those holy waters, to cry out, even to those who have wandered so far away from love. Come, join us, dive right in, the water’s fine. This water is divine.

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

by Rev. Dr. Jackie Lewis

You want to know what fierce love is? Fierce love is ferocious courage and rule-breaking kindness that can heal the world. Fierce love understands that we are inextricably connected one to the other. Whatever affects you affects me. I’m responsible to make sure that we fix that together. Fierce love will go across the line, all the way to the edge of what’s comfortable, to make sure that we improve the lives of everyone, together.

Here’s what fierce love looks like. It’s buying a ticket and going to the border to stand up for immigrants. It’s marching down Fifth Avenue on Pride Sunday, even if you’re straight. It’s standing up for Black Lives Matter, that are what your ethnicity is. That’s what it looks like.

All the world’s major religions have some teaching about love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you want done unto you. But you can’t love the other unless you love yourself. You’ve got to start with loving yourself. Start there. That’s the beginning of the love and we need to heal the world.

Can you imagine a life where we all show fierce love? I can. When a child is hungry, my stomach growls. If an Asian auntie is being abused on the street, it’s not like she’s kind of like my grandmother, she is my grandmother, so I must stand up against that injustice. When someone is being treated unjustly, my job is to bring justice to the fore. That’s what it looks like. That’s what it feels like. That’s the kind of love that is fierce enough, courageous enough, audacious enough to heal us and the world.

Go with fierce love. Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 16, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We have just celebrated another Valentine’s Day, so let’s explore the practices that help us create healthy, successful romantic relationships and how many of those same practices might also enhance our love for family, friends, and others – and might even lead us to Agape – selfless, unconditional, divine love.

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

Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

– Hafiz

Affirming Our Mission

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

Anthem

DIRAIT-0N (translated as “AS THEY SAY”)
Morten Lauridsen
The first UU Adult Choir; Brent Baldwin, Conductor; Valerie Diaz, Piano

Translation of the lyrics that captures the poetic intent:

Wildness surrounding wildness,
Tenderness touching tenderness,
It is your own core that you ceaselessly caress, …. as they say.

It is your own center that you caress,
Your own reflection gives you light.
And in this way, you show us how Narcissus is redeemed.

The words in French are from a collection of poems about roses by Rilke, a European poet who wrote in the early 1900’s. Rilke often wrote lyrical, mysterious poetry, and often wrote about roses. In this poem, on one level, Rilke is describing a rose. In this interpretation, Rilke sees a rose and its petals as “wildness surrounding wildness,” and yet “tenderness touching tenderness.”

He marvels that the wild and delicate rose petals are caressing the core, the center, of the rose.

Rilke then refers to the sad story of Narcissus, the vain youth from Greek and Roman mythology. When Narcissus saw his own reflection in the water of a river for the first time, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, not realizing it was himself. He was so in love with himself, that he refused to eat, and soon wasted away and died. To help remember him, the narcissus flower grew where he had been.

In some versions of the story, Narcissus’s soul descends to hell, where he is doomed to look at his reflection forever, and may never see another person. In Rilke’s poem (and in this song), the wildness, tenderness, and self-awareness of the rose is contrasted with Narcissus, and perhaps Rilke is suggesting that the rose can show us how Narcissus can be redeemed – that is, freed from his fate of eternally gazing only on himself and not being aware of the world or people around him.

On another level, Rilke could also be describing a lover – a lover who is “wildness surrounding wildness,” and “tenderness touching tenderness.” Again, on this level, perhaps Rilke is suggesting that a wild and tender lover can show us, how to be freed from our own narcissistic self-absorption.

Reading

From STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER
by Tim Robbins

Love is the ultimate outlaw.
It just won’t adhere to any rules.
The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice.
Instead of vowing to honor and obey,
maybe we should swear to aid and abet.
That would mean that security is out of the question.
The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate.
My love for you has no strings attached.
I love you for free.

Sermon

Happy Valentine’s a couple of days after the actual date.

Gretchen shared with us the four types of love earlier, and, of course, Valentines is all about love, particularly the type of love we call Eros or romantic love.

This was my first Valentines without my longtime romantic love, Wayne, so I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about what makes romantic relationships healthy – what makes them work – what made 33 years with Wayne work.

And, unexpectedly, to my surprise and grateful wonder, I have also had a valentine come into my life recently.

So I thought it might be fun, and, actually, soul nourishing, to think together a little bit today on what we know about how we might create and sustain healthy, mutually satisfying and beneficial eros love.

By far, the most common thread I found in the psychological research on the subject, is that the partners in a mutually life-enhancing romantic relationship establish as their shared goal for the relationship that each person in it fully thrive, fully flourish – they strive to support one another’s reaching for their greatest creative potential.

That rings true to me. I don’t think I would have ever become a minister, what I now know is my calling in life, if it it weren’t for Wayne.

That is a true gift he supported me in discovering.

And for each partner to thrive requires a sense of equity within the relationship.

Decision making is shared and communication is open and honest, even when it is hard.

Now, equality and being the same are not, well, the same.

So you might be better at cooking, and I might be better at organizing the kitchen, and that’s OK – we talk up front about who leads what, and we celebrate and learn from our differences, each of us becoming more creative and capable because of the other.

And by keeping communication open and discussing things up front, no one has to keep a ledger – equity is built into the ongoing interaction within the relationship.

Now, of course, there will still be disagreements.

What successful romantic partners do that help them navigate conflict though, is that they fight fair.

No personal attacks. No avoidance. No shutting down. No storming out of the room. No refusal to forgive.

Instead, the focus is on honest communication to identify where the true area of disagreement lies, make it explicit, and then find solutions that each of them can live with – or discover even better, more creative ways of addressing the issue than what either of them had come in with.

Here are some other ways that successful romantic partners support one another’s life-fulfillment:

• They infuse a sense of joy, fun, and playfulness into the relationship.

For example, they have fun, endearing “pet names” for one another. They approach their time together with humor. They schedule time to do things they both enjoy together – to play together. They reward each other with compliments and endearments freely and frequently.

• They recognize that each of us and each situation may be different as regards what might best support the other. So, they make this explicit. Instead of asking, “how can I help?”, one New York Times article suggests asking, “Would helping, hugging, or hearing you feel most supportive?”

The three “Hs”.

Recently, we’ve added a fourth “H” – Halo Top ice cream.

• Thriving romantic partners are creative about how they structure their life together – Marriage and family therapist Stephanie Yates-Anyabwile says that they throw out the relationship rule book.

So, for instance, if two people have very different traveling styles and habits, is it really necessary that their recreational travel be done together?

If they have very different sleeping habits, is sleeping under the same roof, just fine, even if they don’t always sleep in the same bed?

Several years after my stepdad, Ty died, my mom met Paul, who has become a wonderful and loving companion with her.

They decided not to move in together. They spend part of each week at her home and part at his, sometime even apart as their lives demand.

And they love it, and they love each other. Throw out the rule book and get creative!

• Here’s one more thing. Psychologist and relationship researcher John Gottman has found that relationships flourish when we pay attention to what he calls “emotional bids.”

Bids are “Fundamental units of emotional communication’ when we reach out to a partner with a request to connect. They can be big or small, verbal or nonverbal. We can be aware that we are making them or completely unaware.

An example of such a bid for connection might be if an avid birdwatcher, excitedly says to her husband, “Wow, I was just out watering the plants, and the most beautiful hummingbird I have ever seen flew right up to me and just hovered there staring at me!”

Now, her husband may not have much interest in birding himself, but if he recognizes this bid for connection and turns towards it by saying something like, “Really, honey, that’s amazing, what did it look like?”, he enhances their sense of connection.

However, if he turns away – “That’s great, honey, I need to finish this report for work” or turns against – “Why do you always interrupt me when I’m trying to work from home”, the connection is thwarted and the relationship may be damaged.

Successful romantic partners make these bids often, learn to recognize each others bids, and turn toward them the vast majority of the time.

And that requires us to risk vulnerability with each other.

One way Wayne used to make such a bid was to join me if I was on the couch watching TV or in bed reading and lay his head on my shoulder or upper arm.

I came to realize that this often meant he needed to talk about something that was difficult for him, so I learned to say something like, “It’s OK. Tell me.”

And he would.

And so we learn to turn toward each other. And so love goes. And so love grows.

Well, these are just a few examples I have found out there in the “literature on love”.

And it occurs to me that these practices that lead to flourishing eros love, are really spiritual practices that could also aide us in love for our friends and family, as well as that divine, pure, unselfish, and unconditional love for all called Agape love.

Supporting others in coming fully alive.

Equity.

Open communication, creative disagreement, valuing our differences. Joy, fun, and playfulness.

Hug. Hear. Help. Halo Top.

Getting creative about the ways we are in relationship. Making and turning toward bids for connection. Mutual flourishing as the goal.

All of these, it seems to me, are spiritual disciplines that can move us toward greater love in our lives AND living out our core Unitarian Universalist value – that Agape love.

Maybe Eros love is just how soulmates help each other practice Agape love.

Happy Valentines, my Beloveds!

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

Our benediction today is from words by writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin:

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love-whether we call it friendship or family or romance- is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

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

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 9, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught inclusion so rooted in love that it would become liberatory for all. Perhaps reclaiming the collective love and liberation that is at the heart of our UU Christian heritage is how we best counter an ideology of exclusion that has arisen in our state and our country.

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

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

– Audrey Lorde

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

A BLESSING CALLED SANCTUARY
by Jan Richardson

You hardly knew
how hungry you were to be gathered in,
to receive the welcome that invited you to enter entirely
nothing of you found foreign or strange,
nothing of your life that you were asked
to leave behind or to carry in silence or in shame.

Tentative steps became settling in,
leaning into the blessing
that enfolded you, taking your place in the circle that stunned you
with its unimagined grace.

You began to breathe again,
to move without fear, to speak with abandon
the words you carried in your bones, that echoed in your being.
You learned to sing.

But the deal with this blessing is that it will not leave you alone,
will not let you linger in safety, in stasis.

The time will come when this blessing
will ask you to leave,
not because it has tired of you,
but because it desires for you to become the sanctuary that you have found-
to speak your word into the world, to tell what you have heard
with your own ears, seen with your own eyes, known in your own heart:

Sermon

• • Blessed are we when we seek spiritual truths; questions more profound than answers; revelation that is continuous rather than stagnate; mystery over certitude; a sense of our vast and sacred interconnectedness, eschewing the false and shallow reassurances of privilege through the exclusion of difference; the false idol of power through division.

• • Blessed are we when we love beyond our own group – that which is familiar. For though the cost of such boundless love is greater loss, even as we mourn such greater loss, we know a love that sustains and comforts even against injustice, despair, even against death.

• • Blessed are we when we are humble; when we embrace and share our vulnerabilities. This is how we find the courage to truly know others; we live wholeheartedly; we sense our place in the great web of all existence.

• Blessed are we when we hunger and thirst for justice, not just for ourselves and our closest kindred, but for all. For this is how we know the fullness of love and the flourishing of our own spirits. It is how we become tributaries of the divine river of love that flows through our universe and washes away the sorrow of our world.

These are the waters that carry us toward liberation for us all. 

• • Blessed are we when we show mercy with no expectation of reward or return, for this is how we seed showers of compassion and empathy for one another and for all.

• • Blessed are we when we allow that divine river of love to flow through and occupy our hearts because this is how we experience the divine within ourselves.

• • Blessed are we when we work for peace, as peace for all is the only way through which each of us will know peace.

• Blessed are we when we risk persecution by the forces of division and exclusion, oppression and injustice, because the Beloved Community we build together is more than worth such risk.

Because we shall overcome. 

We must shine the light of justice out into our world and among all beings, allow the love that is God and the God that is love to find physical expression through us.

The words I just spoke are a modernization of “The Beatitudes” from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5 though 7 in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus delivers a message of love, compassion, and selflessness. He encourages us to love our enemies, to forgive others. He urges care and justice for the poor and marginalized.

Jesus delivers a message of inclusion and a warning against exclusion and division.

The kind of exclusion and division we are witnessing in the halls of government in Washington, DC and the capitol building right here in Austin, TX.

At the federal level, we are seeing the implementation of Project 2025, a white, Christian Nationalist manifesto and plan created by the extremist right wing organization called the Heritage Foundation – a plan that aims to entirely restructure the levers and systems of our federal government to vest immense power in a cadre of ultra-wealthy, mostly white, mostly cis-gendered heterosexual males who call themselves Christians or at least stake claim to what they falsely call Christian tenets.

They are bent on exclusion – making women second class citizens once more, erasing the rights and existence of LGBTQ+ folks, particularly our trans siblings, destroying all of the rights and protections that had been put in place to try to break apart systems of white supremacy and racism embedded within governmental and societal institutions.

Make no mistake, in our current societal political context, “Make America Great Again”, means take America back to an era when BIPOC folks, LTBTQ folks, women, non-Christians, and so many more suffered even greater inequity, exclusions and oppression than now.

And even though we have yet to see true equity in America, even the gains that have been made are too much, too inclusive, too threatening to an ideology of white supremacy culture, hetero-cis-patriarchy, radical-capitalistic, caste-structured, fundamentalist Christian nationalism.

All in the name of Jesus, praise God!

I don’t need to go through the havoc they have been reeking upon our governmental systems intended to help and protect people, particularly those now targeted for exclusion – the mechanisms being put into place to concentrate wealth and power within a small plutocracy and its enablers, the only folks intended for inclusion.

You all have been watching, and I refuse to add to sense of overwhelm being intentionally created.

I know so many of you are doing what you can think of to try to stop the assault.

Here is something more I think we might do if we are to overcome though. What if we reclaim Jesus’ message of love, justice and inclusion that has so effectively been co-opted?

We embrace the true message of Christianity, out of which, after all, our own Unitarian and Universalist faiths arose – redefine its images and language for ourselves, knowing that we do not have to believe in superstition and irrationality to do so.

We have get over allergies to God and Christian language so many of us carry, often because of having been hurt by the misuse and desecration of that religion and its language in our pasts. Me included.

We have to be able to counter forces that are redefining the Beatitudes for themselves like this:

• Blessed are we who know with certitude that God favors us.
• Blessed is our own small circle of rich white dudes.
• Blessed is our hubris.
• Blessed is false righteousness at the expense of justice – that calls mercy the folly of fools.
• Blessed are we who exclude from our hearts others who are different, even if we must use force, war, genocide and persecution to do so.

These are not the words and teachings of Jesus, and we have to be able to stand in the public square and say so. 

Because right now, right now, this is the ground upon which the struggle for the soul of America is being fought.

Now, I know that I am using strong language today, both to embrace the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and to forthrightly condemn the ideology and actions of a government that defiles those teachings.

I am using strong language because the stakes are that high – the soul of America and by extension much of the rest of our world is at stake.

Now I am not saying we have to embrace a particular theology, accept a creed, or give up a perspective based in humanism, naturalism, science or other theology or philosophy.

I am simply suggesting that we need that comfort level with the language and concepts of Christianity, adapted to our own perspectives, so they we do not exclude folks who otherwise share our values and could be allies.

So that Christianity, our heritage, cannot be co-opted by an ideology that is in direct opposition to our values of love and inclusion, and, in fact the values that Jesus himself spoke.

I wonder how it might be if we were to testify at the state legislature and say something like,

“this bill will cause great harm to trans folks and those who love them, but Jesus said that we are to keep love in our hearts and show mercy to all
– Matthew 5, verses 7 and 8.”

What if we were to call our Senators and say, 

“Elon Musk was not elected by anyone and you have to stop what he is doing because he’s lying about why he is doing it.
Matthew 6: 15, “Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

OK, I am being a bit angry flippant now, but I do think learning to be more open to the same values we embrace being expressed through other religious perspectives can help us be more inclusive, again including in the public square where we need lots more of those allies I mentioned. 

We can turn our anger and rage at what Elon Musk and others are doing doing, not at any person, but at how we can respond in ways that refocus us and help us work with others toward healing, love, justice.

And we can begin right here, in our own religious community.

Are we inclusive enough that people with a wide variety of progressive religious perspectives feel welcomed here?

It starts with us. It starts here.

To express how what we do in our organizations can radiate out into our larger world, adrienne marie brown, in their book, Emergent Strategy; Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, uses fractals, patterns in nature that repeat at differing scales – think of ferns that stay much the same from tiny to large or the spiral patterns we see all the way from the prints of our fingertips to shapes of galaxies in our universe.

Brown writes,

“A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale

Brown continues, 

“The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things:

• one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe,
• and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.”

What we do here at this church and then carry beyond these walls reverberates on the larger scale. 

It starts with us.

If we build a community of inclusive, love and justice, the church we create reverberates into the state, nation and world we hope to create.

The Church-For-All models for us a society for all.

May we bless the soul of America with our modern Beatitudes:

• a sense of our vast and sacred interconnectedness,
• a boundless love that sustains and comforts
• the courage required for humbleness and vulnerability
• a hunger and thirst for justice and a commitment to mercy, compassion and empathy.
• hearts so large the divine river of love floods through them, washing away persecution, oppression, and injustice.

In the words of our poet earlier, beatitudes that become the genesis of a soul of America that says to each and everyone, “You are beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold, and you are welcome and more than welcome here.” 

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

MARGINAL WISDOM (adapted)
by Leslie Takahashi

They teach us to read in black and white.
Truth is this-the rest false.
You are whole-or broken.
Who you love is acceptable-or not.

Life tells its truth in many hues … embraces multiple truths,
speaks of both, and ….

We are taught to see in absolutes.
Good versus evil.
Male versus female,
Old versus young,
Gay versus straight.

Let us see the fractions, the spectrum, the margins.
Let us open our hearts to the complexity of our worlds.
Let us make our lives sanctuaries, to nurture our many identities.

The day is coming when all will know

That the rainbow world is more gorgeous than monochrome,
That a river of identities can ebb and flow over the static,
stubborn rocks in its course,

That the margins hold the center

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 2, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join us for an all-ages service to bless the beloved animal companions in your lives. All friendly, well-behaved creatures, young, old, great and small, furry and scaly, are invited to this cherished annual tradition. In these challenging times, let us honor our animal companions, who are such a vital source of our joy and resilience.

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

DOGSOLOGY
Rev. LoraKim Joyner

From all that dwell below the skies
Let songs of hope and faith arise
Let peace, goodwill on earth be sung
Or barked or howled by every tongue!

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

JOB 12, 7-10

Ask the animals and they will teach you. Or the birds in the sky and they will tell you. Or speak to the Earth and it will teach you. Or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know the breath of the divine has done this. In whose care is the life of every creature and the breath of all humankind.

Sermon

Well, it’s been a challenging couple of weeks, hasn’t it?

How many of us are feeling a little overwhelmed by all of the meanness, incompetence, pettiness, and authoritarianism emanating from our federal government? Raise you hand if you are comfortable doing so. I think I even saw a few paws go up.

How many of us are wondering how in the world we are going to find the resilience, non-anxious presence, not to mention joy and comfort, to make it through the next few months and years?

The cats are like, “yeah, yeah, just don’t forget to feed me.” Now, look around at the beings gathered here for worship today. When we think about the community of love and support we will need to weather the hard times, sometimes we don’t remember to turn to our animal companions.

And yet, they can be such sources of love, joy and support.

I was so moved by Sol’s description of how their Kittan is “a living reminder of love, a promise that no one is ever fully lost.”

All of my current animal companions, all Basenji dogs, are named after well-known Unitarian Universalist ancestors.

Slide

Meet Louisa May Alcott and Benjamin Franklin.

Last year, after my spouse, Wayne, went on hospice care, I can tell you that Ben and Louisa somehow absolutely knew what was happening, or at least that something difficult for us was happening. And they were such a comfort to us.

They were glued to one of our sides almost constantly, except, when, you know, occasionally a squirrel needed running off or something, they are dogs after all – they read the situation and were so loving and affectionate and cuddly.

During the day when I had to be gone, they took care of Wayne for me.

In fact, near the end, when Wayne got really sick and was pretty much confined to one room, I had to put in a gate to keep them out and bring them for supervised visits because they tried to be a little too “cuddly” after he became too fragile for them to do so.

Years, prior, when it had come time to let our older dog, Virgil, go, the hospice vet that came to our house told us it was important for us to let Ben and Louisa be present as Virgil’s life ended.

She said that they would be upset and confused if Virgil just disappeared without them ever knowing why, and that they would know what had happened if they witnessed Virgil’s death. And so we did let them be there, and they did know.

Because of that, Wayne had told me that he wanted me to bring them in after he died, so they would know. And the morning that it happened, I did. And they did know.

Back when Wayne had still been mobile enough to move around the house, I had trained them so that I could say, “Where’s the Wayne?”, and they would go running off to find him and check on him for me.

A few days after Wayne died, and I was still in overwhelming grief, I suddenly found myself crying out, “Where’s Wayne?” They didn’t run off to try to find him.

Louisa came over and sat beside me, laid her head on my shoulder, and looked up at me. Ben came and laid against my leg. They knew, and they helped me through, and they wanted me to help them through.

Slide

And this is the newest member of our pack, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who I am convinced Wayne arranged for him coming into our lives, but that’s a longer story.

Ralph has come in and decided the rest of us all need more fun, joy and play in our lives, whether we like it or not!

And, you know, I joked about cats earlier, but as Sol’s story illustrated, they too are incredibly aware of our needs and will bring us comfort, even if they do it in a different way than dogs do.

So, my beloveds, as we face the challenges ahead, remember and respect our animal companions.

They can bring us such great comfort and joy, no matter their species – fur, feathers, scales, shells or otherwise!

If you for whatever reason do not have animal companions in your life, you can still enjoy them vicariously though other’s people’s pets or the millions and millions of online videos you can find.

And even our animal friends who have left us to go over the rainbow bridge are always still in our hearts.

Our Basenji Dog, Virgil, who I mentioned earlier was so regal and imperious that we called him, “Sir Virgil”.

And I plan to bring some of that Vigil attitude with me as I confront the forces of division and harm at our state capital in the days to come.

Bless the animals my Beloveds and accept the ways in which they bless us.

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

BENEDICTION FOR A PET BLESSING:
SOME WISDOM FROM OUR CAT AND DOG FRIENDS
by Rev. Chris Jimmerson

Show exuberant joy when you first see your loved ones after being apart.
Delight in simple joys.
Play a lot.
Except in the most dire of situations, retract your claws (unless it is all in good, playful fun).
Knock something off the shelf every once in a while, it’s fun
AND it can open up new possibilities.
Never try to persuade humans to be reasonable.
Purr loudly or wag your whole body when you’re happy.
Sometimes a good howl or some hissing can help a lot, just avoid biting, which can get you in lots of trouble.
Nap just for the pleasure of it.
Comfort others: accept comfort when you are able.
Love freely, but never lose yourself in doing so.

May the congregation say, Amen and Blessed Be.

Go in peace.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 19, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously laid out a dream of justice and Beloved Community. January 20 will be both MLK Day and inauguration day. We’ll examine how we might develop the spiritual resilience to keep the dream alive through a time when it seems so threatened.

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 believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some circles today and I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love.

I’m talking about a strong demanding love for I’ve seen too much hate and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love.

And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it. Because John was right. God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

Sermon

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

(Opening film-clip of 1963 MLK’s March on Washington)

That was footage from the 1963 march on Washington. The marchers were singing a spiritual which has become iconic. “We shall overcome,” sung throughout the world for years since by human rights movements of many kinds. The march culminated with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s now also more than iconic speech. “I have a dream,” he called it, a speech. I have to tell you that if I ever give a sermon that magnificent, I think I’ll just retire while ahead right then.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. It is Also the inauguration to a second term of office for a man and an ideology so hostile to and threatening toward Dr. King’s dream of beloved community, that it has many of us holding our heads like this for fear that the dissonance will otherwise cause them to explode. Go ahead, try it. I find it helps.

I know a lot of you are afraid because you’ve told me that. I am too. Afraid for our democracy and whether it will withstand the coming assault. Afraid for the people we love who are being targeted by the onslaught. Some of us are afraid because we’re among those who have already been singled out for the assault. We don’t know what will happen starting tomorrow. We do know that the incoming president, his supporters, and proposed administration are promising what they themselves call a shock and awe campaign. A campaign designed to keep us frightened and feeling powerless.

So today I want to talk a bit about how we might soothe our fears, Claim our power, and resist even turn the assault against the very ideology of separation, division, and scapegoating from which it springs. And that power, our power, is contained in the very words that Dr. King himself spoke,

“Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality, a strong, demanding love, the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.”

As Unitarian Universalists, we have recently centered our faith in that strong demanding love, perhaps starting to catch up with Dr. King after all these years.

Ten years ago, in 2015, I stood in this pulpit on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day and told the story of how in March 1965, over 500 Unitarian Universalists lay people and 250 of our ministers responded to a call from Dr. King nationally for people of faith to join him in a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

The call was in response to what is now sometimes called “Bloody Sunday,” when law enforcement in Selma had brutally attacked peaceful protesters with billy clubs and tear gas. I want to share with you a couple of those Unitarian Universalist folks’ stories today because it’s been long enough that many of you may not have heard them and because I believe that they can inform us of the challenges or about the challenges we face ahead of us.

Reverend Dr. James Reeb was among the first of our ministers to arrive in Selma. His first evening there, Reeb and two other white Unitarian Universalist ministers dined at an African-American restaurant called Walker’s Cafe because they had been told they wouldn’t be safe at a whites-only restaurant.

But as they left Walker’s Cafe, they were attacked by a group of four or five white locals, at least one of whom was carrying a large club of some kind. He struck James Reeb on the head with it, knocking him to the ground. They beat and kicked the other two ministers to the ground also. Soon afterward, James Reeb fell into an unconscious state from which he never awoke. Two days later, Marie Reeb, his wife, made the painful and difficult decision to turn off the artificial support that was the only thing that was keeping his body alive.

Reeb became a national martyr. He was even paid homage to by then president Lyndon B. Johnson and his murder galvanized white Americans, and particularly Unitarian Universalists, to join the effort in Selma even more.

One such Unitarian Universalists who joined the effort and who also did not come back from Selma alive was Viola Luizzo, but she wasn’t lionied in the way that James Reeve was. For many years, her story was rarely, if ever, told because (A) she was a woman. And (B) she was a woman and not a minister. At a time, not a minister because (A) she was a woman. Viola Luizzo was a member of First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit and worked for the NAACP. She was married, had five children. She answered the call to Selma by getting in her car and driving there despite the objections of her family.

She helped out by giving marchers a ride back to Selma from Montgomery after the march. On one of her return trips, a car full of KKK men pulled up beside her and fired shots directly at her, hitting her twice in the head, killing her instantly. Her car careened into a ditch and came to a stop when it struck a fence. After her death, one of her sons described his father’s dark hair turning gray overnight. Her family endured crosses being burnt in their front yard. Her children were beat up at school. They were told their mother deserved what she got because as a white woman, she had no business being there in the first place.

I tell you these stories because I believe that like Viola Luizzo and James Reeb were in their time, we are being called to live our faith even if the cost may be high. And if they could show up despite the environment and risk of their times, despite paying the ultimate price for it, we can answer that call in our times.

We are being called by a divine, strong and demanding river of love that moves us to offer shelter, support, and safe haven to those most targeted by the coming assault against human rights and dignity. Called to speak love and justice to a state government that threatens to defile the very concept of beloved community. Called by a strong demanding river of divine love to resist, revolt against and ultimately repel the ideology of hate and division that has captured our federal government. Called back to love and justice over and over again until the end. We shall indeed overcome.

Back in 2015, I joined some Unitarian Universalists and other folks from across the country in Selma for the 50th anniversary commemoration of those events back in 1965. At one point while we were there, they gathered us in a large fellowship hall and we sang, “We shall overcome” together. And there was so much love and hope and solidarity generated through singing that together that I don’t think a single one of us left that fellowship hall afterwards with eyes that were dry.

Now there are several different stories of the origins of that song, but ultimately they all conclude with what a gift the African-American community has given the world through it. Or better yet, perhaps a loan. A loan with a promissory note that we will join in solidarity to overcome racism and bigotry wherever we find it.

Let us remember that when we sing it together today, later in our service. And speaking of together, we can in the days to come, further develop and talk about the specifics of our social justice efforts as we face this daunting challenge. For now though, before we can answer that call from love in the public square, we are going to need one another right here in the days to come.

We will need to build the beloved community within these church walls more than ever before so that we can then bring even more of it into our world, join in solidarity with others and follow the lead of those most affected by that ideology of division so counter to Dr. King’s dream of beloved community and that means being careful that we don’t turn our fears and anxieties toward one another. Through unnecessary fighting or unkind words and deeds It means loving each other through this. Being even more attentive to offering words and acts of caring, kindness, and support to one another.

Please include your church staff and ministers in all of the above.

And it means getting more creative than ever about finding new ways to offer love, support, and a shelter of as much safety as possible for beloveds who are being targeted.

My beautiful people, do not despair, I love you. We will get through this together, and with the many others with whom we’ll join in solidarity to answer that call from such a strong and demanding love. When we think back to all that has changed since Viola Luizzo and James Reeve answered that call and met their fate all those years ago, we must know that the arc of the universe we are trying to bend toward justice has never really been a smooth and perfect arc. At Yes, it is a jagged and only slowly climbing line, and we dream. We dream of drawing the arc that goes through the center of it. My beloveds, We can keep that dream alive. Hold on to it. Hold on to it together in the ways of love tomorrow and in the days to follow.

I will be with you answering that call from a strong demanding love that Dr. King said is God. I want to close by offering you some of Dr. King’s word about that dream of his all those years ago spoken by Dr. King himself. A bit of it is laced with the male-centeredness of his time, so let us remember the arc we are upon has that jagged trajectory. I offer his voice with his text overlaid so that you can both hear and see their great beauty at the same time. I offer his dreams and his words as the last word today.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friend, So, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the Red Hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama with its vicious racist, With its governor, having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification. One day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope.

Extinguishing the Chalice

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

Benediction

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Power without love is reckless and abusive. And love without power is sentimental and anemic, power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

May the congregations say amen and blessed be.

Go in peace.

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SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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

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Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 12, 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As humans, we make sense of our world by creating stories. Essentially, both as individuals and as groups, we construct ourselves through constructing narratives about ourselves. And those stories not only determine how we feel about ourselves and our world, but they also drive who we are, what we do, and who we are becoming. In effect, they are self-perpetuating. But what if the story we are telling ourselves is harmful and untrue? Can we rewrite or at least reinterpret it in order to create a more life-fulfilling, whole-hearted narrative?

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

EVERYTHING THAT WAS BROKEN
by Mary Oliver Everything that was broken
has forgotten its brokenness. I live
now in a sky-house, through every
window, the sun. Also your presence.
Our touching, our stories. Earthy
and holy both. How can this be, but
it is. Every day has something in
it whose name is forever.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

HOW INVISIBLE STORIES HOLD YOU BACK
by Ozan Virol

We all have stories that we live by that aren’t fixed truths. They’re just old scripts we’ve been following without realizing it. If you tell yourself travel is exhausting, you’ll only notice the hassles, the delayed flights, the cramped seats, and you’ll miss the little joys along the way. If you tell yourself you’re awkward in social settings, you’ll tense up before conversations even begin, missing moments that could have been easy and fun.

The point isn’t to force yourself to love every rainy day or magically turn into an extrovert. It’s about creating space. Space to question the stories you’ve been living by and experiment with something new. You’re not committing to anything forever, you’re just saying, “What if?” When you play with the stories you’ve been telling yourself, you realize they’re just that. They’re stories. And if you don’t like the story, you can change the story.

Sermon

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

There’s at least one story you tell yourself about yourself that isn’t helpful. May even be harmful and probably isn’t even true.” At least if you’re like the vast majority of folks, that’s the case, that’s how the story goes.

• What title would you give your not helpful, maybe even harmful, probably fictional story?
• If you could change or reinterpret the story, what would you like the new title to be?

I’ll let you ponder all that as we explore the power that the stories we tell ourselves have over our lives, our emotions, behaviors, even our futures.

A field called narrative psychology has found that we humans make meaning of our lives and our world. In essence, we construct ourselves, our very personalities and our perspectives on the world through creating these narratives. And what’s fascinating is that we construct these self-stories with the structure of a novel. We give them chapters, birth, school, first love, et cetera. And we give them a beginning, middle, and end. This helps explain their power to affect not only our present, but also our future. If we’re always trying to give our stories an end even while we’re still in the middle of them, we’re likely to work toward an end that fits with the current story, even if that story is inaccurate, limiting, or harmful.

And the research has shown that our stories even affect the very neurochemistry of our brains. So if, for instance, I read about someone kicking a soccer ball. I don’t just create an image of that in my mind. It actually activates the motor cortex area of my brain as if I were actually kicking the soccer ball myself. The same is true for stories we tell ourselves involving our emotions, values, self-worth, capacity in life and on and on and on. Our stories are actually molding our brains to fit the very stories our brains are telling us. That’s why they can be so hard to change sometimes. So in a way we live as stories. They have this huge power in our lives.

Even religion and spiritual practices are filled with ways of creating narrative metaphor that allows us to explore ultimate understandings that are sometimes inaccessible through everyday language and the current limits of scientific inquiry.

Here is how one narrative psychologist puts it. Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone. Instead, they’re shaped by story. The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives therefore make all the difference. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell our stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and ease our sorrows.

Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell ourselves can make an enormous difference in the way that we live our lives. And I would submit that this is not just psychological, it is also what spirituality is all about.

As I mentioned earlier in the service I’ll share how this has played out very powerfully in my life recently. Again what I share may be may bring up difficult circumstances and feelings. Tony and I are available after the service should you need to process something.

I’ve written the story out in case I need the words to hang onto emotionally while I tell it. Many of you know that my spouse of over 30 years, Wayne, died last year after an extended period of time on home hospice. In his final days, Wayne’s disease process resulted in some cognitive decline, he would get confused. And out of that confusion, the panic attacks that had plagued him when he was much younger, but that he had worked to resolve, began to come back sometimes. I ended up needing to manage his medical and hospice appointments, as well as his pain and other necessary medication, of which there were many on a large variety of different schedules, I would sit with him through the panic until it subsided.

Eventually his disease progressed to where he weakened and began to fall a lot. He was no longer strong enough to make it to the bathroom or to shower by himself So I had to learn to lift them without injuring myself. I would help them with these basic necessities of life. And though we brought in some home care help so that I could continue to perform a few church function and take care of household needs like getting groceries, most afternoons and evenings they would leave as soon as I returned. and it would be just the two of us and our pups for the rest of the day and evening. I’d set alarms each night so that I could get up and give him his medications on schedule and put on his mask for the breathing treatment that opened his airways and helped him to respirate more easily.

Eventually, Wayne declined to the point where he began to think about going into an institutional hospice setting called Christopher House, where he would receive the trained nursing care I couldn’t provide and which couldn’t be provided around the clock through home hospice.

We set up an appointment with this hospice doctor for Tuesday, September 3 to discuss that On the Friday before that, while I was making a run to the grocery store, he had a bad fall and couldn’t get back up. I returned to find him that way. I got him back into bed and called for help from the hospice nurses who came right away. They helped me clean up everything where he had fallen and they bandaged the wounds that I didn’t have the knowledge to know how to tend. They told us though that there might be internal bleeding.

Wayne opted to continue only pain management and palliative care. Soon though, He discovered he was no longer able to swallow anything solid, so another hospice nurse came over and showed me how to grind up his medications, dissolve them in water, and then give them to him slowly by flowing the medicated water into his mouth from a syringe. She also had me increase his pain medication and his treatments for anxiety and panic attacks. The nurses offered to go ahead and move him to Christopher House, but Wayne panicked at the idea of not having me and his pups, and so he never went.

The rest of that weekend is still kind of a blur in my memory. I remember having to pick him up and carry him several times. I remember getting up throughout the night to dissolve the medications and administer them to him and give him his breathing treatments. I remember home care workers coming a couple of times so I could take care of some duties here at the church or some household needs and wondering whether I should leave it all, even though they were there. I can remember bringing him the phone several times because he wanted to talk to the hospice folks himself about his own care needs. That Sunday evening he had another panic attack and they increased his meds even more. I remember getting up throughout the night in the early morning hours to check on him and give him his meds.

Early Labor Day morning, Monday, September 2, I got up and put on the mask to start his breathing treatment and went upstairs to make a cup of coffee. When I came back to check on the breathing treatment, he had died.

At first, the story I told myself about those final days was one of difficulty and trauma and self-doubt. I wasn’t trained to provide that level and kind of care, I told myself. Should I have been more insistent that he go to Christopher house, did not going, mean he went through more pain or discomfort. Should I have stayed with him, even when home care was there? The moments of administering his drugs with that syringe or lifting him to go to the bathroom played over and over through my mind as a story of trauma, caught in that story of trauma at first there was no way I could process my grief.

With time and work though, a lot of therapy, help from some wonderful, wonderful professionals and friends, the God of my understanding. I was eventually able to recast the story to one that I think is not only more healthy, I think it is more true.

Here’s how I understand our story of those times now. What a blessing that it was me who picked him up when he fell or needed to go to the restroom that I was the last one who held him that way, that I was the one who loved him through the moments of panic and fear. What a holy act I got to engage in with him, giving him his medications through the syringe, that most intimate of acts of holding it to his lips. It was me who came back to check on his breathing treatment only to discover that he no longer needed it because he had drawn his last breath. I didn’t get a phone call telling me he was gone. I was there for that hallowed moment, and I am so grateful. Wayne didn’t want to die at Christopher House. He wanted to die in the house that he shared with Christopher, and he did.

And so the story has moved from one of trauma and doubt to a story about sacred love that endures all and that is with me always and everywhere. My beloveds, we can rewrite, recast, reinterpret our self-stories.

Now, I wanted to share some tips from narrative psychology about how we might go about doing all that, but my sermon got so long that I had to give you those handouts that you have on the pews.

To summarize very briefly, though, when reviewing yourself’s story, unlike I just did, Get on with it. Be willing to question it and test it with others. Journal about it. See if you can recast it as a story of ongoing redemption. Seeking counseling and treatment when the story is just too strong and won’t let go is more than okay.

I’ll close with inviting you two during the postlude or after the service. Right down on the index cards, we’ve given you the answers to the two questions with which we began. What title would you give an unhelpful, maybe even harmful, probably fictional self-story? If you could change or reinterpret that self -story, what would you like the new title to be? Then I encourage you to spend some time in the days to come on how you might rewrite the story from one of trauma to one that is holy. Or at least from drama to something wholly more heart-centered and life-fulfilling. Rewrite it, then – Go tell it on the mountain.

Amen.

CHANGING OUR STORY HANDOUT

• Ask, is it true? Is it the whole truth or only part of it? Is it a story that helps you live a fulfilled life or does it hold you back? Might it even be harmful?
• What is your emotional state? For instance, depression can strongly influence the stories we tell ourselves, most often turning them toward the negative and self-criticizing. This of course, can further deepen the depression! Studies have found Un!: simply asking ourselves, “is this the depression talking”, can help us halt our negative stories. Therapies for the depression or other negative emotions can help also. Treatments such as ketamine, may help us ‘rewire” our brains with more affirming stories.
• Daily Journaling as a practice can help us uncover self-stories about which we may not have been fully aware. Then, writing down, journaling a story we think is more accurate and/or more helpful can help us activate it within the neurobiology of our minds.
• Rewrite it as story of Redemption. Research has shown that folks who call formulate their stories in ways that are redemptive tend to lead more generative, self-fulfilled lives – for instance, someone who was bullied as child and comes to view the story as about how they learned to set boundaries and protect themselves.
• Cast the self-negative aspects as the villains of the story. The person who was told they were clumsy and unathletic as a child might cast the “clumsy and unathletic” label as the “Clumsy Monster” – “I am going to capture the Clumsy Monster and make it go to the gym with me, where I’ll show that monster exactly what I’m made of!”
• Venting isn’t helpful. Studies have shown that venting about our story with a friend or loved one may actually amp up our nervous system, which in turn may only “further neurologically harden whatever story we are telling ourselves. Asking our loved one to help us process our story instead may be more helpful. Processing involves, rather than retelling the content of our story over and over again (venting), expressing our feelings and judgments about it. Processing also means asking others to help us question our assumptions about our stories.
• Test self-stories only with those whom you know you can trust. This is tricky because it means we need loved ones who we can trust to both be honest and have our best interests at heart. They cannot be invested in our continuing a self-story in some way themselves. With such folks and/or professionals though, testing the accuracy of the stories we are telling ourselves by seeking another perspective can be very helpful and powerful.

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

Fairytales are true not because they tell us monsters exist, But because they tell us monsters can be vanquished.
Amen.

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 25 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

PODCASTS

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