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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 11, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Why do bad things happen? Are there evil people? In the “Question Box” sermon a couple of years ago, this was one of the most frequently asked questions.

Call to Worship
– Adrienne Rich

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

Reading
Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom
September 18, 2001

For if they are evil and we are not, if that’s how we see things, then we are committing the same kind of error which led to this tragedy. That’s the problem of evil. Not so much that it exists–in that it’s really just a fact of life, or a force of nature. The problem of evil, as I see it, is that we are so readily tempted to imagine that it’s out there, separated from us over here; that it belongs to them and not us. And that, I believe, is ultimately the root and the design of evil–to make us categorize the world into us and them rather than recognizing our common kinship.

Sermon

This old world is filled with sorrow. All you have to do is stack up some years on this planet and you will face your share. Living in a mortal body brings pain and limitations, children get caught up in addiction, jobs are awful, or they are lost, war sweeps through and people lose their lives, or they lose their humanity. Arms dealers foment unrest so they will have a market for their weapons. Dictators strip their nations of treasure and dignity, pitting people against one another, with truth and fairness the first casualties.

One of the members here was involved in a car wreck yesterday. I went to see her in the trauma ICU. She squinted up at me and said “Why do bad things happen?” Banged up, drugged up and still a smart aleck. A real question for her at this point too. And for me, looking at her. She had done nothing to deserve this.

This question has been debated for at least 20,000 years. We know this from excavations in the Indus Valley which uncovered fragments of Hindu scriptures. The Hindus among us say that evil is a part of God. Shiva is the creator and the destroyer. Kali-Ma creates by destroying. There are demons, but they roar and devour on assignment from the gods. All destruction isn’t bad, after all. Any gardener pulling up leggy, spent plants will tell you that. Destruction makes room for the new. Seeing God in a cancer cell or plague virus is a difficulty for me, but it solves the problem of why do bad things happen. They happen because God did it. For some reason. You are living out your karma. Maybe you were bad in a former life, or maybe you just need to suffer now for some reason.

Buddhism grew out of Hinduism. So the concept of karma is still there. The Buddhists say evil is illusion. If you can see through the illusion, becoming enlightened, you will be free. Bad things happen because people are attached to their picture of how things should be, to the outcomes of certain actions. We desire security, health, good relationships, admiration, long and happy lives for ourselves and our children. Since we are attached to those things through desire, we make ourselves unhappy when they don’t happen the way we want them to. If we could let go of desire we would suffer no longer. If only we could just enjoy our health, our families, our eyesight, our money, our minds as long as they last and let them go with peace in our hearts we would be fine.

One of the oldest books in the Hebrew Scriptures is the book of Job, and the question of why bad things happen to people is what the whole book is about. In that story, Satan is at God’s side, and they are talking like colleagues. “I bet Job wouldn’t be such a fine upstanding servant of yours if he weren’t so healthy and wealthy,” Satan says.

“You go ahead and test that theory,” God says, and Job’s sufferings begin. After he has lost all of his children, all of his possessions and his health, and is sitting on top of an ash heap letting the dogs lick his sores, his three friends come to him and deliver their best religious opinions of why he is suffering. “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” one says. “God corrects and disciplines his people…. God wounds but he also bind up. You have to trust. You are not more righteous than God.” The second friend is shocked at Job’s questioning God. “God is always just. Your children must have sinned against God. Even now, if you become pure and upright, he will restore you. ” Job says “I have done nothing wrong … but how can a mortal be blameless before God? His is powerful and mighty. How can I argue with him? Then he goes on to argue some more … The third friend reiterates the argument that Job must have done something wrong. Even if he didn’t before now, these rude questions and arguments are bad enough to deserve all the punishment in the world. “Job still stubbornly says. “God is wise and powerful, and he is God. I want to talk to God himself about this.” So God comes down. Jung says it’s because God knew that God had done wrong. (In fact Jung talks about the death of Christ as God’s answer to Job.)

Here is the answer God gives in the book of Job. I am God. Who are you? I don’t owe you anything. Then Job repents. God tells the friends that they have not spoken correctly about him as Job has, he makes them repent too. Then he restores all Jobs property and gives him more children. Seven sons and three daughters, to whom he grants and inheritance along with their brothers. We find beauty and sophistication in the arguments of this ancient text. But not an answer.

Is God responsible for evil? Did he create it? Those who say “yes” to that are the ones who believe, if God is Omnipotent, that He is in control of everything. He must therefore be “allowing” evil. The question, for those who want to believe that God is both all-loving and all powerful is best put by Archibald McLeish in his play about Job called “J.B.” He writes “If God is good, he is not God. If God is God, he is not good.”

There are those in the three religions of the Book, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who say evil is a result of the Fall, which is what they call the story of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden, choosing consciousness, choosing the knowledge of good and evil. All pain, all cruelty, all war and pestilence came into being after the Garden.

There are those who believe that all evil is a result of free will. We suffer because we decided to marry the wrong person or didn’t have the skills or the knowledge to work a relationship out, or we were too stubborn or too prideful, etc. People die in floods and earthquakes because greedy or lazy developers continue to build along fault lines or on flood plains. We get cancer because we eat food that’s processed with chemicals or have to breathe air that companies have polluted or because we live too stressful a life. Children are molested because their molesters were molested.

People make bad choices with their free will. Progressives are rooted in the Romantic Era’s philosophy that children are born a blank slate, and that if they have the right nurture they will grow into good people. People would make better choices if they had peace in their homes and neighborhoods, if they had good schools and consistent parenting. So we work to make those things better in order to decrease the suffering in the world. The UU thinking is that we are good in our nature, but capable of doing evil. The Humanist Manifesto of 1933, which was extremely influential in Unitarian thought, asserts that our living conditions and training have a big effect on our ability and tendency to choose good. If we can make these conditions better for people we will see more people choosing to do good.

There are those who say a lot of evil comes from “Natural Law.” Nature doesn’t take our hearts into account at all. If you are a living organism and you stay outside in sub-zero temperatures, you will freeze. Natural Law. If a woman decides to hit someone over the head with a two-by-four, it’s not the wood’s fault. It is, in fact, the wood’s job to be hard and unyielding. Natural law says if one hard unyielding object hits another one, the softer one will get a dent in it. We count on that law on a day to day basis, as we mash potatoes and cut paper. Our world would be chaos if wood were hard when you want to build with it and soft when you try to hit with it. If cars were strong when you load them down with your family and their luggage, but soft when they run into someone on a bicycle.

Nature makes a lot of organisms that are not viable. Other organisms break down and die. Nature doesn’t discriminate. Some of these organisms are microscopic. Others are us or our children. We use our free will to deal with what comes with as much grace, love, and compassion as we can muster. For some people this makes sense, but they feel the loss of a God who can protect and defend us and our children against the heartlessness of Nature.

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age, that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooken rose, my youth is bent by that same wintry fever.”

-Dylan Thomas.

Is most of what we call evil simply an interaction between human free will used badly and natural law, or are there people (or dogs and cats, for that matter) who are just born bad?

Is there a force of evil that exists outside of us, beyond us?

For people who believe in a personification of evil, in a devil, explanations are simpler, and the big picture has a drama and a story line that satisfy. Even if you just believe in some kind of an energy or force of evil, it helps explain a lot. As in most matters of belief, you end up choosing what you believe and acting as if it’s true. Those among us less comfortable with belief in he spiritual realms would say what choices made in the context of cultural and societal influences. Those among us comfortable with beliefs in spiritual unseen forces believe that there is an energy that wants to tear life down.

For us, the decision to be on the side of that which builds up, that which heals, to be on the side of love is our spiritual path. When terrible things happen, we lean on one another for strength and comfort. They will try not to say mean things like “How did you attract this suffering into your life? Or “Everything happens for a reason.” When bad things happen, We keep our kindness, if we can, through the panic and the pain. We look for the helpers.

Our friend in the hospital’s answer. “You have to have the bad so you can appreciate the good.” What’s your answer?

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 4, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

As we begin to look for a new Director of Faith Development, how do we describe their job? What do we want our program to look like?

Call to Worship
Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods

How do you say to your child in the night?
Nothing’s all black, but then nothing’s all white
How do you say it will all be all right
When you know that it might not be true?
What do you do?

Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn

Children may not obey,
but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn

Reading
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,
laughter and tears, musings and deeds.
Love, like a carefully loaded ship,
crosses the gulf between the generations.

Therefore, we do not neglect
the ceremonies of our passage:
when we wed, when we die,
and when we are blessed with a child;
When we depart and when we return;
When we plant and when we harvest.

Let us bring up our children.
It is not the place of some official
to hand to them their heritage.
If others impart to our children our knowledge and ideals,
they will lose all of us that is wordless and full of wonder.

Let us build memories in our children,
lest they drag out joyless lives,
lest they allow treasures to be lost
because they have not been given the keys.

We live, not by things,
but by the meanings of things.
It is needful to transmit the passwords
from generation to generation.

Sermon Exerpt

-Robert Cole, “The Child as Pilgram”

So it is we connect with one another, move in and out of one another’s lives, teach and heal and affirm one another, across space and time — all of us wanderers, explorers, adventurers, stragglers and ramblers, sometimes tramps or vagabonds, even fugitives, but now and then pilgrims: as children, as parents, as old ones about to take that final step, to enter that territory whose character none of us here ever knows. Yet how young we are when we start wondering about it all, the nature of the journey and of the final destination. These are things about which children want to speak, about things they want to think.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 21, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

The cover of Time magazine featured the “silence-breakers.” Why is this movement so revolutionary?

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 7, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

How are those resolutions? Still holding strong? Do you make the same ones every year? What might some good ways be of sneaking change past that mule that wakes up and resists everything different?

Reading
“The Intuitive Body”
Wendy Palmer

Our compost pile needs to be turned over. And at the right time, this rich mixture of broken dreams, pain, and fear and the fermented wisdom of our past seasons is spread upon the ground to enrich the soil and nourish our new crop of insights, ideas, and visions. Birth, growth, change, fruition, death, decay, and rebirth lead to more growth in a continuous, ongoing cycle. All of this happens naturally, whether we like it or not. It is our choice, our human prerogative, to open to life, to appreciate it, be awed by it …. or not. The choice is ours.

Sermon

Here we are at the beginning of 2018, and many of you came to the Burning Bowl service and thought about what you wanted to let go of and what you might want to call into your life. Lots of us use the time after Christmas as a time of reflection and evaluation. Who would we like to be? What would we like to become as the new year blossoms?

Some people still make New Year resolutions. The Zumba classes are full, it’s hard to get a free lane at the pool, people are working on themselves. Most diets last 72 hours, so those are mostly done with. I have a friend who had the same resolution every year when she was young: Grow out her nails, lose weight, get a tan.

I fell into the habit of waiting for a resolution to appear. These resolutions were short but deep. “Be quiet” was one of the first ones. “How can I do that?” I thought. I talk for a living. Yet, as I danced with that thought throughout the year, I realized that there were lots of situations in which I could choose quiet. In groups, I used to be what people call “early dominant.” I would speak my ideas easily, have an opinion about everything, jump into every debate. As it turned out, I didn’t have to express every opinion. I didn’t have to start every discussion. Being quiet honored the other people in the group.

The next one was “Tell the truth.” Well, I’d always told the truth. However, as with the “be quiet” resolution, I found ways in which this idea could have room to grow. While being truthful with other people, I sometimes lied to myself, telling myself something didn’t matter when it did, or maintaining that I was fine when I wasn’t. There were a lot of little lies that smoothed over social situations. I learned to say “Oh yes, that touched me in a way I’m seldom touched.” I was glad when that year was over!

Last year’s was “drink more,” but that didn’t add up to much.

One of the problems with making resolutions is that we humans are made up of many layers: out childhood training, our interests and passions, all of the “shoulds” that rule our thinking, and then, as some wise ones taught, the layers which are below the level of consciousness. Those are the layers from which dreams come, where the elements that drive us without our awareness. Those are the places where our shadow side lives, where the qualities of our personality we aren’t happy with reside. If someone is constantly self-sabotaging, making choices that mess up their lives, where does that come from? St. Paul, in one of his letters, wrote “I do the things I don’t want to do, and I don’t do the things I want to do.” Well said.

Let me talk to you about two elements in the unconscious which operate in your as you try to make changes in your life. One is the critic. People have different names for the Inner Critic, but we all have experience with it. That’s the voice that growls “You can’t dance, why do you even try?” “You look bad in these colors, I can’t believe you thought you could pull this off.” “Why did you just say that to your boss, don’t you realize how it sounded?”

As soon as you start trying to make changes, the critic starts grinding on you. “Why even try?” It lays out all the times you’ve tried to do something before and failed. One teacher suggested that you take your critic and give them a class room with stadium seating and fill it with brilliant UT students who will nod and ooh and ahh and take notes as they speak eloquently about what a loser you are. Meanwhile they are out of your way and occupied.

The other element that awakens when you try to make changes is the resistance. I picture this as the Inner Mule. “I must eat more vegetables,” you say, and the mule wakes up and says “I want pizza!” I was very glad to find a way, not to make change, but to invite change into your life. Author Wendy Palmer is an Aikido master.

Try on different qualities. Not the “should” ones, but something that, when you say its name, you feel some good energy and interest in your body. Not “less of this or that,” but invite in. The way to invite this quality into your life is to wonder rather than to will.

Softness, gentleness, courage, awareness, openness, a sense of enough, playfulness, imagination, confidence

How would this work? Once you’ve chosen a quality to work with, just ask yourself in various moments “What would this moment feel like with more _________”

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 17, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Lots of us are studying our DNA these days, finding out about ancestors. Who are the forebears of Rabbi Jesus, and what are their stories?

Call to Worship
William F. Schulz

This is the mission of our faith:
To teach the fragile art of hospitality;
To revere both the critical mind and the generous heart;
To prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness;
And to witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands.

Reading
Richard Fewkes

We lift up our hearts in thanks for the sun and the dawn which we did not create. For the moon and the evening which we did not make. For food which we plant but cannot grow. For friends and loved ones we have not earned and cannot buy. For this gathered company which welcomes us as we are from where ever we have come. For all our free churches that keep us human and encourage us in our quest for beauty, Truth, and love. For all things that come to us as gifts of being from sources beyond our selves. Gifts of life and love and friendship. We lift up our hearts in thanks this day.

Sermon

Some people call the genealogies in the Bible “the begats,” and they are hard to read. Why would I want to be reading you one? Well, because there are stories embedded in this one. Every name has a story (same with each of our genealogies) and I thought you might be interested in these. Women are hardly ever mentioned in these. This is the genealogy of Rabbi Jesus. Count on your fingers the women in this as I read it.

Matthew 1
THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS

1 A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram,

4 Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon,

5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed,whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse,

6 and Jesse the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,

…. then 24 generations without the mention of a woman, then …

16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

The usual genealogy in the Bible is a list of fathers. The mothers are rarely mentioned. In this genealogy of Jesus, there are a several items of interest. One is that it’s a list of Joseph’s forbears, which leads you to believe that the Virgin Birth didn’t mean the same thing to Matthew that it does to people today, but that’s another sermon. The second unusual thing is that there are four grandmothers mentioned in Jesus’ list of forbears: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah. Not only are they mentioned, but they are women with interesting stories, stories I would like to tell you today.

Matthew wrote this genealogy in a time when the rules for women were narrow and mean. There wasn’t much women who weren’t married to kings or emperors could do to distinguish themselves in the Greek and Roman cultures. The most you could go for was to be really good, stay under the radar, do what you were supposed to do, and not get yourself in trouble. It was easy to get in trouble. If you got pregnant without being married, if you didn’t get pregnant when you were married, if you got raped, if your husband died, all of those things were bad, and they were your fault.

Were these grandmothers of Jesus exemplary church ladies, following all the rules to the letter and making cautious moves so their lives could be free of turbulence and pleasing to those around them? NO. These women did not do the nice thing, pleasing those around them. What they did would now be called risk-taking. Doing the higher right thing, rather than the nice thing. Good rather than nice. These women embody the difference between being good and being nice.

TAMAR

Tamar’s story is in the book of Genesis (38:6-30). It was the custom of the day, if a man died leaving no children, his brother would marry the widow as one of his wives and have children with her to be counted as the children of his dead brother. That way the brother’s line would continue. Tamar’s husband was one of the sons of Judah. Judah was the one the whole nation was named after later.

Judah was a brother of Joseph, one of the ones who sold Joseph to the Egyptians and then told their father that Joseph had been eaten by a wild animal. They gave their father the coat of many colors, dipped in animal blood, as evidence. It wouldn’t have fooled CSI, but it was enough for Jacob, their father.

Anyway, Judah moved away and married, and had some sons and the eldest son married a woman named Tamar. The story says he was wicked in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord killed him. Judah told his next son, Onan, to have intercourse with her and make some children. He spilled his seed on the ground in front of her, refusing to make children with her. The god in the story gets mad at him for that, so he died too. We still have people whose beliefs about solo sex are shaped by interpreting this story wrong, and “Onanism” should be a term for refusing to do the right thing, instead of a term for having sex by yourself. Whew.

This is awkward to talk about, but that’s the scriptures for you. The third son was still too young to fulfill the brotherly obligation, so Judah told Tamar to go back to her father’s house and live there as a widow. He worried that the third son would die too, as it seemed to him that some kind of doom was emanating from Tamar

11 Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, “Live as a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up.” For he thought, “He may die too, just like his brothers.” So Tamar went to live in her father’s house.

12 After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went up to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep, and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went with him.

13 When Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep,”

14 she took off her widow’s clothes, covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and then sat down at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that, though Shelah had now grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife.

15 When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.

16 Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.”

“And what will you give me to sleep with you?” she asked.

17 “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said.

“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?” she asked.

18 He said, “What pledge should I give you?”

“Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him.

19 After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow’s clothes again.

20 Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get his pledge back from the woman, but he did not find her.

21 He asked the men who lived there, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?”

“There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here,” they said.

22 So he went back to Judah and said, “I didn’t find her. Besides, the men who lived there said, ‘There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here.’ “

23 Then Judah said, “Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock. After all, I did send her this young goat, but you didn’t find her.”

24 About three months later Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.”

Judah said, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!”

25 As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. “I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” she said. And she added, “See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.”

26 Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again.

27 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb.

28 As she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand; so the midwife took a scarlet thread and tied it on his wrist and said, “This one came out first.”

29 But when he drew back his hand, his brother came out, and she said, “So this is how you have broken out!” And he was named Perez.

30 Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread on his wrist, came out and he was given the name Zerah. She was good, not nice.

According to the Book of Ruth, this Peretz becomes the great great great great grandfather of Boaz, who is the great grandfather of David.

RAHAB

Rahab was a prostitute who lived in Jericho. The Israelites wanted to conquer that town, and their commander, Joshua, sent two spies to look it over.

Joshua 2
RAHAB AND THE SPIES

1 Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

2 The king of Jericho was told, “Look! Some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.”

3 So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab:

“Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”

4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from.

5 At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.”

6 (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.)

7 So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut. …

She made a deal with the spies for the life of her family. “please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign

13 that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death.”

14 “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the LORD gives us the land.”

15 So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall.

16 Now she had said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way

21 “Agreed,” she replied. “Let it be as you say.” So she sent them away and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

She and her family were spared when Joshua and his troops took the city. She was good to her family, compromised herself for them and saved them.

RUTH

Ruth was a foreigner, from Moab. She married the son of Naomi, who was from Judah, Israel. Naomi’s husband died, then her two sons. She told Ruth and her other daughter-in-law Orpah (where Oprah got her name) to go back to their mothers and find other men to marry.

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Isn’t it interesting that the words many people say at their weddings were originally said between a woman and her mother-in-law?

They got to Judah at the time of the barley harvest, and Ruth went to work in the field of a near kinsman Naomi pointed out to her. He wasn’t next in line for her, but second. Ruth reaped in the fields, and he noticed her. He offered her protection and food, and she stayed with his folks in the field. When the harvest was over, Naomi told her to go to the threshing floor where the men slept and lie down with him. He did not reject her. His mom was Rahab, remember from the genealogy? He was thrilled, but wanted to do the honorable thing, so he went and negotiated with the next in line so that he could take her as his wife. They made it happen the way they wanted it to, and she gave birth to Obed, King David’s grandfather.

BATHSHEBA

King David saw her bathing on the roof, and she was beautiful. Uriah, her husband, was off fighting David’s war. He called her to the palace and she slept with him. She found out she was pregnant, and David called her husband home for R and R. Uriah refused to go home while the war was still being fought. He slept at the gate of the city with his some of his men, like an athlete who won’t shave until the championship is won. David got him drunk and tried to send him home, but he slept with his men at the gate again. Then David placed him in the fight so he would get killed. He was killed, and Bathsheba mourned him, but she went to the palace and became David’s wife, and bore a son. The story says God was mad at David, so the son got sick and died. One of Bathsheba’s next sons was one of Jesus’ grandfathers.

What are these women doing in this genealogy? Commentators have worked for years trying to figure out what they had in common. They all made choices that were risky. They gathered up all the dice and rolled them, changing their lives. Life pushed them one way and another. Loved ones were killed, but they chose life. They put themselves in danger of rejection and harm. They chose life. Especially Ruth and Tamar made a leap, instead of subsiding into resignation and bitterness over their fate. They didn’t shrug and say, well, I got dealt a bad hand, I’m just unlucky, or I’ve been done wrong. They took what power they had and used it to move their lives forward.

The gospel writer is telling the story of Messiah, the Redeemer. In the beginning of his story he embeds five women who chose to do a brave thing, even though it could get them into trouble. Is there something about redemption that takes guts? That takes a willingness to face rejection? Foreigners, a prostitute, a beauty who married King David, but is named in the genealogy as “wife of Uriah,” and Mary, the young woman who was with child before she had been with a man, yet her baby’s lineage is traced through her husband. Mystery comes into the world, redemption comes into the world with its own morality, with its own sense of the good that plays in all shades in between black and white. These are family stories that would not play well in some sweet Pleasantville. They are real families, real choices, real risks, and we learn that you never know how redemption will come to the world .

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 10, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

If our actions are our only true belongings, as we discussed last week, what about the bad things we’ve done?

Call to Worship
– Rabindranath Tagore

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield
but to my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling Your mercy in my success alone;

But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.

Reading
– Frederick Buechner

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks. A good night’s sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 3, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

As the days grow darker, nature’s energy goes to the roots of growing things. The five remembrances of Buddhism direct our attention to the radical (meaning root) question of what in life has lasting value.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Call to worship
-The Rev. Barbara Wells

O Spinner, Weaver, of our lives,
Your loom is love.
May we who are gathered here
be empowered by that love
to weave new patterns of Truth
and Justice into a web of life that is strong,
beautiful, and everlasting.

Readings:

The Summer Day
-Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

When Death Comes
-Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 19, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

The job of preachers and prophets has often been described as “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Elijah’s story tracks his trials, tribulations and triumphs.

Sermon
These are notes only, and may bear resemblance somewhat to what is said. Click the play button to listen.

Ahab was king for 22 years, following a run of kings with shorter reigns, one for only 7 days. He was wicked, and to make it worse, he married Jezebel, who worshipped the god Baal, and he began to worship Baal as well, instead of the God of Israel.

Elijah shows up in the story telling the king that there won’t be any more rain in the land until the prophet says there will be. He went away then to hide in a ravine east of the Jordan River. God sent ravens to bring him bread and meat in the morning and again in the evening, and he drank from a nearby brook.

The brook soon dried up, as there had been no rain, and God said “go to this town and you’ll meet a widow. She will feed you.” He came to the town and saw a woman gathering sticks. He asked her for some water, and for some bread. She told him she only had a little flour and a little olive oil left. Her plan was to make a fire with the sticks, mix the oil and flour, make a bit of bread for her and for her son, and then they would die. Just make me a little loaf too, and then go do what you plan to do.He told her that her food would not run out until the rains came again. He came to live with the woman and her son, and they had enough to eat every day, since the flour and oil did not run out.

One day her son grew ill. He got worse and worse, and finally he stopped breathing, and she was angry with Elijah. Have you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?” she cried. I don’t know what sin she was talking about. Elijah said “Give me your son,” and he took him up to the upper room where he was staying, laid him on the bed, and cried out to God, along the lines of “How could you let this tragedy befall this woman who took me in and fed me? He laid himself out on the boy three times, and said “Let his life return to him!” The boy began to breathe again. He carried the boy downstairs and said “Look, your son is alive!”

Three years of drought passed, and then the Lord told Elijah to go to Ahab and bring the rain again. He met Ahab on the road, and the king said “There you are, troubler of Israel.” The trouble is because of you and your evil ways, O King, said Elijah. This is an instructive moment, I think. When the Black Lives Matter protesters disrupt a rally or a highway, some people tsk at them and say they are making things worse for their cause. Disrupting is so rude. Disrupting is what prophets do, though. It’s the only tool of the powerless. The wrongs being done are the cause of the trouble, not the prophetic voices. No one likes a prophet, though. They are a lot of trouble. They demand change.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 12, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

At times it all gets to be too much. How do we learn to rest rather than quitting?

Call to Worship
Apache blessing

May the sun bring you new energy by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night,
May the rain wash away your worries,
May the breeze blow new strength into your being,
May you walk gently through the world
and know its beauty all the days of your life.

Reading
My Help Is in the Mountain
by Nancy Wood

My help is in the mountain
Where I take myself to heal
The earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
And a stream where the water runs gentle
And the trees which one by one
give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.

Sermon
These are notes only, and may bear resemblance somewhat to what is said.

One of my friends on social media said that she couldn’t feel anything after the shooting at the church in Sutherland Springs. All the usual outrage was posted, all the usual moments of silence and offers of thoughts and prayers went up, but she couldn’t muster any emotional response. So many of us are approaching that level of emotional fatigue. As Masha Gessen writes in the Washington Post, “we have settled into a constant, low level dread: a state in which one can function, but can hardly be creative or look into the future.” Yet we sing:

(sings) -by Holly Near
I am open
and I am willing
for to be hopeless
would feel so strange.

It dishonors
those who’ve gone before us,
so lift me up
to the light of change.

When I read about my friend who couldn’t feel anything, I was reminded of the study I read as a psych major about learned helplessness. I don’t want to describe the studies to you, as they are upsetting, but the conclusion was that if you randomly hurt a being for long enough without giving them any way to influence their situation, they will give up and surrender to the pain. After they give up, you can give them a way out of the hurtful situation and they won’t take it. They’ve lost their sense of being able to help themselves.

Many of us are feeling that way, faced with implacable politicians in thrall to the big donations of the gun lobby. We see former NY Mayor Bloomburg fighting, we see the Giffords fighting, and sometimes their efforts seem useless. Many of us are overwhelmed by the actions of people who seem to be ignoring or ignorant of the Constitution. We wake up in the morning like Captain Picard, asking for the Damage Report.

I’ve heard many of you say that you are having a hard year. You have been shocked, depressed, feeling constantly emotionally battered. Some sprang into action in the Resistance. Some woke up sick every morning, some stopped watching the news, trying to live by just paying attention to health, family, work. But we get tired, and still we struggle to sing

(sings)
I am open
and I am willing
for to be hopeless
would feel so strange.

It dishonors
those who’ve gone before us,
so lift me up
to the light of change.

We get tired. We fight and fight, we make phone calls and write emails, we work on grass roots politics. When I got to Spartanburg SC I was 26; There was no women’s shelter. I went to a meeting about starting a shelter. “I’m too tired, said the social workers. “I’m not tired, I said, and we went to work. We started with people who were willing to shelter women and their children in their own homes, private safe homes. I remember arranging pick ups for women in parks, at the mall, at the police station. I remember one woman yelling “DRIVE!” when she thought she saw her husband behind us. He had a shot gun, she said. I was president of it for four years. During that time we hired a director and rented an old house in an undisclosed location. Now the organization has a huge budget and helps hundreds of people. After four years I was tired. Burned out. I hadn’t known that I could say no to being president. I got so I couldn’t even open an envelope from them. I had forgotten to rest. So I quit.

That is the shadow side of justice work. What do we do with that? It makes us want to withdraw, turn our head, give up, if we have the option to.

Contemplative RC author Thomas Merton writes:

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

Last spring I was felled by something that could not be influenced by wit, intelligence, or force of will. For months I just had to go through it, one day at a time. I love consulting the I Ching, a Chinese book of wisdom. It has been one of my wisdom companions since I was in high school. When I consulted it about the infection in my hip appliance, it said things were not going to go the way I thought they should go. It said I should not have goals, but instead I should give all my attention to process. Just do what I was supposed to do, day by day. That has been valuable in fighting a sense of despair or overwhelm.

(sings)
I am open
and I am willing
for to be hopeless
would feel so strange.

It dishonors
those who’ve gone before us,
so lift me up
to the light of change.

I know some folks who work in politics. Several of them embody the word “Steady,” which I’m reading about in Dan Rather’s new book. Their candidate wins, and they nod and go back to work on what’s next. They lose, and they nod and go back to work on what’s next. I admire that. It is more in some people’s nature to ride the rejoice and lament roller coaster. We need all of us to do what’s next. Then rest, then have a party with our friends, then come back and do what’s next.

Burn out is the shadow side of a big long struggle. The music this morning has been metaphorical, about wanting to be numb, not wanting to feel the tiredness, the overwhelm, the frazzle. It’s ok to rest. You don’t have to keep pushing 24 hours a day. There is no need for guilt if you fall back from the front lines, if you take an afternoon to have fun, if you find a way to laugh and dance in the midst of struggle. As Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” The postlude will be an opportunity to laugh and dance to a statement of truth. Sometimes we want to be sedated. We look that feeling in the face, we look the shadow side in the face and acknowledge its truth. To stay open and willing, we must pay more attention to processes than goals, faithfully stay in the struggle, rest, and we must not forget the joy.

FIRE
– by Judy Brown

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.

Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.

A fire grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

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

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 17 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.