The Courage to Commit

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 25, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

One of our new ends priorities for living out our mission at the church says, “We commit to justice in every part of our lives and our church by confronting racism and oppression.” One of our religious values at the church is “courage”. We’ll examine why mustering the courage to confront racism and oppression whenever and wherever we encounter it is fundamental to our faith and our own spiritual transformation.

Welcome

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 we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Anthem

“Hold Fast to Love” (Lynn Harrison) – Brent Baldwin, voice & guitar; Valeria Diaz, piano

Reading

WHAT WE MEAN BY COLLECTIVE LIBERATION
by Enfleshed

Collective liberation is the sought outcome of the wisdom that there can be “No Pride For Some of Us Without Liberation For All of Us.”

It is what we hope for, strive for, aim towards with our lives and spirits and resources. It recognizes that freedom and flourishing ripple outwards from centers of struggle and solidarity.

It’s the eschatology for a theology that claims all life is entangled, inseparable, permeable, eternally woven together. It rejects individualism. Celebrates collaboration. And acknowledges the difficulty of the fact that we need each other.

It is more than inclusion, tolerance, or representation. It’s an altogether different paradigm….

Collective liberation is grit and solidarity, but not suffering for its own sake. It sings. It dances. It weeps. It has good sex. It redistributes resources, tends wounds, tells truths, and hinges on the power of the Sacred that lives and moves in and through us. (And sets free again the Sacred from all religious dogmas and institutions).

Centering

Music for Meditation: Music for Meditation: “Bluebird” (Alexis Ffrench) – Valeria Diaz, piano

Sermon

THE COURAGE TO COMMIT
Rev. Chris Jimmerson

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free”
– Jewish-American poet and activist Emma Lazarus

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Until we are all able to accept the interlocking, interdependent nature of systems of domination and recognize specific ways each system is maintained, we will continue to act in ways that undermine our individual quest for freedom and collective liberation struggle.”
– Author, activist, scholar, bell hooks

“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”
– Anti-Nazi minister Martin Niemöller 80 years ago.

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
– Australian aboriginal rights activist Lilla Watson.

What all of these mostly well known passages are expressing is that we are all interconnected. Our flourishing or flailing depends upon one another.

And this true for us physically, psychologically, communally, and spiritually.

If systems of oppression and injustice are interconnected, as bell hooks wrote, then our liberation is also interconnected. It is collective, and only together may we all be free – all of our lives and humanity depend on forming bonds of solidarity and love that confront and dismantle racism and all forms of oppression wherever we find them.

Recently, the board of trustees here at the church worked with the congregation to establish a new set of ends. You can think of ends as sort of a set of priorities and plans for how we will go about living out our mission and how we will know we are making progress toward it.

This is the third in a sermon series exploring those ends.

If you are new to the church, I think these ends provide a really good understanding of who and what the religious community you are exploring aspires to become

This time, the end we we’re exploring is stated as follows:

“WE COMMIT TO JUSTICE IN EVERY PART OF OUR LIVES AND OUR CHURCH BY CONFRONTING RACISM AND OPPRESSION.”

Now, that’s a huge and important commitment, and I will be working with Rev. Carrie, the staff, and church leadership over the weeks and months to come in a process for describing how we pursue this end through the systems, programs and practices of this church, so you’ll be hearing and experiencing more of what that actually looks like in the, practical, day to day life of the religious community.

The intention of this sermon series though is to talk about the big picture, why the end we are discussing matters – why it is integral to our spiritual development and our practice of Unitarian Universalist faith.

And so in a bit, I will return soon to that theology of Collective Liberation contained within those quotes with which we began.

Quickly though, I do want to take just a little time to talk about a few more practical matters related to this end that I think all of us, the whole of this religious community have to muster the courage to confront.

The first, is that I want to put up our other three ends and propose that this end, making explicit our commitment to confronting racism and oppression, is vital and necessary for pursuing those other ends.

We are a collaborative pluralistic church living our values and mission in the greater world, achieving together what we can’t do alone.
We are an intergenerational church that invests in and prioritizes spiritual nourishment for all.
We commit to the journey of transformative inclusiveness and the lifelong work it requires.

So, one of them is about expanding and deepening our relationships of solidarity with other interfaith and secular social justice groups, and that requires us to bring an antiracist/anti-oppression lens that centers and follows the lead of those most impacted by the justice issues around which we are partnering.

Another end calls us to invest in and prioritize religious education, spiritual and faith development programs and activities that provide spiritual nourishment for all. And that requires programs that are intergenerational and multicultural, both of which then mean confronting racism and oppression wherever we find it, including within ourselves and our practices as a community. More on that shortly.

And the third other end commits us to a lifelong journey of transformative inclusiveness as individuals and as a church community. By definition, inclusiveness must embrace anti-racism/anti-oppression as way of being.

So, we can’t possibly live out these other ends, and therefore cannot possibly live out our mission unless and until we commit to justice in every part of our lives and our church by confronting racism and oppression.

Now, here is a second set of practical considerations that I think the whole church, each and every one of us, has to have the courage to address in order to truly to commit to this end.

We have to ask ourselves questions like:

Who serves in leadership positions in the church?
Who runs our groups, teams, board and committees?
Who is up here on the dais on Sundays?
What range of music and musicians are we willing to feature?
With whom does decision making authority in the church really lie?

My spouse Woodrow recently sent me an article about some research that shows how important it is – in congregations that aspire to be multiracial and multicultural – how important it is for black folks (and by reasonable extension) other folks from oppressed groups to be present not just in the pews or even the pulpit, but in decision- making positions.

Otherwise, the cost of diversity for folks who are not from the dominant culture becomes assimilation.

Otherwise, in this particular study, the cost of belonging for black people became setting aside racial justice and conforming to the dominant norms. The cost of belonging became keeping white church members comfortable.

And at times in this church, the costs of keeping other members comfortable has become too much for some people of color and trans folks, so they’ve left the church.

Now, this doesn’t mean we have a bunch of bad people, or that the antiracism and anti-oppression work we have already been doing isn’t genuine and heartfelt and hasn’t made real progress for justice.

It’s just that we have to recognize that in our society white- patriarchal-hetero-cis supremacy is the water we swim in, and so we have to have the courage to constantly be vigilant about confronting racism and oppression even within ourselves and our own systems and ways of doing things – to be willing to share leadership and authority – to make sure that the costs of the diversity we say we want are not born by the very folks we say we want to include.

Antiracist scholar and author of “How to be an Anti-Racist” Ibram X. Kendi says this:

“The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and be an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race in each moment determines what, not who, we are.”

He includes himself in this. May we have the courage to do so also.

Because our own humanity, indeed our very souls depend upon it.

Because, as bell hooks wrote, systems of domination are interconnected and collective, but so then is our liberation collective.

Because systems of oppression harm those whom they oppress the most greatly, yes, AND they also harm those who benefit from them because they come at a greater cost of losing our own humanity, and they require great fear and sacrifice to maintain.

Just look at the fear our current government is generating to maintain systems of oppression of immigrants, trans folks, BIPOC folks and so many more and what it is costing even those who supposedly gain privilege from such systems.

The murder of a one year old black infant by police – the massacre of immigrants by Immigration Authorities – the killing of activists from all races and backgrounds protesting all of this.

First they came for…

Collective liberation theology says that each of us can only truly flourish when all of us can flourish – that our differences are what make us beautiful and should unite us rather than divide us – that they can be catalysts for growth and discovery when we embrace and celebrate them.

That our interconnectedness contains the seeds of salvation. Our interdependence is the shelter within which the divine resides – a fierce love arising out of the courage to recognize that ultimately, together, through our collective differences, we become one, not separate.

My beloveds, this is why this end matters so much.

We cannot fully live our values, our mission, our faith, we cannot become our fullest potential selves as human beings, spiritually, faithfully, soulfully, under the soul crushing weight of racism and other systems of oppression.

All of the rest of our religious work, building that beloved community, depends upon dismantling them, and that we can only do collectively.

And collective liberation can only happen when we commit to justice in every part of our lives and our church by confronting racism and oppression.

For some time now, in church surveys, focus groups, and listening sessions, this congregation has expressed greater diversity as a goal.

I’d like to suggest that the congregation articulating this new end now represents growth, the potential for transformation – an expanding awareness that diversity for the sake of diversity alone cannot be the ultimate goal.

As the research showed, that can too easily lead to proclaiming racial and other forms of justice on an abstract level out there but missing opportunities to fully practice them on a concrete, internal level.

Our true end then really is confronting racism and oppression wherever we encounter them, in ourselves, within practices we may not have fully examined, and in our larger world.

Diversity remains as a means for and a measure of our progress toward that goal.

Collective liberation becomes our ultimate vision and our spiritual salvation.

Not in some other realm or afterlife, but right here, right now, in this world, in this community, within each of us.

Therein lies each and all of our liberation. Each and all of our soul’s flourishing. Each and all of us rejoicing in the divine love that emerges from within our interconnectedness.

Collectively.

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

IN THE SPIRIT OF SACRED SASS
by enfleshed author delfin w. bautista

We place ourselves in the presence of each other
We are all connected
We are stronger together
We are the hands and voices and bodies of justice in the world
We are responsible for one another and for the earth
We resist like Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and Pauli Murray
We persist like Laverne and Janet and Cece and Miss Major
We write like Maya and Alice and Gloria and Zora
We create like Frida and Audre and Gabriela
May the fiery memories and legacies of our ancestors,
transcestors, and queercestors spark us into action today and tomorrow and always.

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

I love you fiercely.

Go in peace.

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