{"id":141471,"date":"2026-04-06T13:30:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T19:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/?p=141471"},"modified":"2026-04-06T13:30:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T19:30:48","slug":"of-uu-easter-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/of-uu-easter-theology\/","title":{"rendered":"Of UU Easter Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_367\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-141471-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.austinuuav.org\/audio\/2026-04-05_UU_Easter_Theology.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.austinuuav.org\/audio\/2026-04-05_UU_Easter_Theology.mp3\">http:\/\/www.austinuuav.org\/audio\/2026-04-05_UU_Easter_Theology.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.austinuuav.org\/audio\/2026-04-05_UU_Easter_Theology.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/?powerpress_pinw=141471-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.austinuuav.org\/audio\/2026-04-05_UU_Easter_Theology.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"2026-04-05_UU_Easter_Theology.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt<br \/>April 5, 2026<br \/>First UU Church of Austin<br \/>4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756<br \/>www.austinuu.org<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Rev. Chris and Rev. Carrie challenge each other with questions about this time that is so sacred to so many. Join us as we seek to understand and experience Easter in a Unitarian Universalist theological context.<\/p>\n<hr align=\"center\" noshade=\"noshade\" size=\"4\" width=\"300\" \/>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Chalice Lighting<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Introit<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">&#8220;I&#8217;ll follow the Sun&#8221; (Lennon-McCartney) The First UU Children &amp; Youth Singers; Christina Tannert &amp; Chantel Mead, directors<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Call to Worship<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">THE RETELLING <br \/>By Ellen Blum Barish<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">At my seder table, <br \/>I learned that some stories need to be told more than once<br \/>to make us stop, gather together and tell it aloud <br \/>though we have heard it many times before <br \/>so we remember.<br \/>Every spring, we read the same story of our exodus from Egypt <br \/>but it is never the same twice.<br \/>Every spring, someone is missing for work, move, illness or death. <br \/>Every spring, there&#8217;s a new mood or geo-political incident.<br \/>The annual retelling is like the sharing of all hard stories, <br \/>never told the same way twice.<br \/>never heard the same way twice.<br \/>It is a crossing over a desert of shifting sand<br \/>that allows us to see something that we hadn&#8217;t before <br \/>as if for the first time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Affirming Our Mission <\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Anthem<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">&#8220;Here Comes the Sun&#8221; (Harrison). The First UU Intergenerational Singers &amp; Band: Brent Baldwin, Christina Tannert &amp; Chantel Mead, directors<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><b>Reading<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">LOVE BRINGS US BACK TO LIFE <br \/>by Rev. Peggy Clarke<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Easter is a holiday of miracles:<br \/>It is life from death,<br \/>Joy from sorrow, <br \/>Celebration from mourning.<br \/>Easter reminds us that all is never lost;<br \/>That the story continues as long as we are here to tell it. <br \/>So gather up your worries-we are going to bury them beneath the ground <br \/>And watch them transform into flowers of hope,<br \/>Pushing through the earth, reminding us on Easter morning that <br \/>Love brings us back to life, <br \/>Calls us from sadness, from grief, from anxiety,<br \/>Into a world renewed, and alive, and filled with joy <br \/>Once again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Sermon<\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><i>NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.<br \/>Please forgive any omissions or errors.<\/i><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>This time we call Easter as a holy season for many of our faith siblings around the world.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>So Reverend Carrie and I got to talking about what Easter means for us as Unitarian Universalists. We got to asking each other questions about what spiritual issues it might raise in a Unitarian Universalist theological context.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>And so we thought it might be fun for us to pose those questions to one another. and discuss them in worship settings so that we could share our thoughts with y&#8217;all.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>So, Reverend Carrie, my first question for you is, does it even make sense for Unitarian Universalists to celebrate Easter?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>Yes.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>Oh, good. We&#8217;re done. Okay, let&#8217;s go home now.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>So, both our Unitarian and Universalist forebears were Christian. Right. And so this is part of our tradition. This is part of our foundation.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And so for that very reason, that&#8217;s a good enough reason to celebrate Easter. Although let&#8217;s be fair, I&#8217;m not for just keeping traditions because they&#8217;re traditions. The thing I like about Easter is what that call to worship was saying. I think Easter is a story of liberation and community and pain and suffering and joy and all of the beautiful work of liberation. And I think it&#8217;s good and right that we take time every year to kind of pick up our story and look at it new ways so that it might impact us in new ways. Because something doesn&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t have to take something literal for it to be meaningful and powerful in our lives.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>I would 100% agree and also agree that. Even if we don&#8217;t believe the entire biblical story literally, if that&#8217;s not our theology, there are metaphorical truths we can take from it. And the other reason I think it&#8217;s really important for us to celebrate these religious holidays like this is, for instance, Easter, if we&#8217;re going to tell the biblical Easter story, forces us to use language that sometimes not all of us are completely comfortable with, like, I don&#8217;t know, resurrection. Atonement, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, which I&#8217;ll talk more about later.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">I think that it&#8217;s important for us to find a way to embrace and use that language because, one, it points at something that we don&#8217;t have other language that&#8217;s powerful enough to point to, and so I think we miss something if we don&#8217;t allow at least that language to affect us metaphorically. And two, I think there is a danger that in thinking that we know better, that people shouldn&#8217;t use that language, we adopt a kind of certainty, right, about faith that can easily turn into fundamentalism.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And I want to give you an example. A few years back, I was at an anti-racism conference. It was sponsored by&#8230; and hosted by a church in New York that is a multicultural, multiracial, Christian liberal church. It was interfaith, and a bunch of us UUs were there, and some white UUs started a ruckus over all of the Christian God language that was being used in the multiracial Christian interfaith church.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Well, Reverend Jackie Lewis, the minister of that church, was much more gracious than the UUs were being. And she gathered us together and she said, &#8220;look, I really relate to how you Unitarian Universalists sort of see faith in terms of love and justice. So I want you to do something with me. I want you to chant with me. When I say God, you think love. And when I say Jesus, you think justice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Let&#8217;s do that chant this morning. When I say God, you think? Love. When I say Jesus, you think? Justice.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">See, I think we have to be open to this language, and more importantly, we can&#8217;t decide that we know with certainty the right path and the right language that other people could use, because that is not faith. That is fundamentalism. That&#8217;s right. Whether it&#8217;s the fundamentalism of conservative white Christian nationalism or the fundamentalism that can develop within atheistic humanism sometimes. That&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>What parts of the Easter story, do you think we should reclaim?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>I think we can learn from our Trinitarian siblings in a couple of ways because they don&#8217;t just celebrate today, Easter, the resurrection, right? They celebrate Good Friday, the crucifixion.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And I think we have to recognize that all of us move through periods in our life that are difficult. The night of the soul, so to speak. When Jesus was on that cross in the story, he said, &#8220;Father, why have you forsaken me?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">I think it can feel like that for us sometimes when we&#8217;re in a place of sorrow or difficult, and we have to know that we&#8217;re not forsaken, that we have a faith. We know a divine, fierce love that is always with us, always present as we travel through even the difficult times.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">See, we don&#8217;t get the resurrection, the joy, the love without the crucifixion. the times of sorrow and difficulty, and we have to have a faith that will move us through those times in order to get to the times of joy.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The other thing I think we can learn from it is that we Unitarian Universalists sometimes struggle with the concept of sin. Because from our Unitarian forebearers, we got this idea that we humans are made in the likeness of God, which is beautiful. And the Universalist realized that we don&#8217;t always behave in ways that are in the likeness of God, right? So we have inherent worthiness, but we don&#8217;t always act in ways that are worthy.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">So I think we have to understand that like Empire tried to kill God in this story. And like Judas helped Empire kill God in this story, and I think killing God is probably the ultimate sin, right? And like the other disciples turned away in fear for themselves and allowed it to happen, when we act in ways that are not loving, when we help others who are acting in ways that are not loving, when we see injustice and we turn the other way and don&#8217;t do anything about it, We are metaphorically killing God. We are sinning. And I don&#8217;t think without some concept of sin, we ever get to reparation, reconciliation, and redemption. So we have to have some concept of sin.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>Amen. So for me, it is that&#8230; message of our liberation of our salvation will come from the margins. You got four gospels all of them are a little different but that&#8217;s okay because that&#8217;s how storytelling goes each one of those writers that came down to us are preaching in their own context right they&#8217;re telling the story in their own context.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">But the one beautiful thing that I think about that they all have in common is that Mary Magdalene was there she was there at the empty tomb okay Now, she goes, she is, in my mind, the first person to carry the good news. And who does she carry it to? Well, she carries it to the disciples who have been scattered because they&#8217;ve been scared. And no shade on the disciples, but they had been.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The women stayed. And always, Mary Magdalene stayed. And she told them the good news. They didn&#8217;t believe her. And then Jesus shows up and says, &#8220;I sent Mary. Like, why didn&#8217;t you believe the woman?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Now, this is not anything new. I didn&#8217;t come up with this. This is liberation theology. This is black liberation theology. This is womanist and mojorista and queer theology. Our salvation will come from the margins.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>Amen. So Carrie, other than what we&#8217;ve talked about, what are some of the other parts of the Easter story that most resonate with you?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>Yeah, so this year as I&#8217;ve picked back this story back up and I&#8217;ve been looking at it differently, it&#8217;s very similar to what you were saying. This time period of at least Good Friday through Sunday, right? This is a cycle. This instance that we are here today and we call Easter was a man who was put to death by empire because he would not shut up about the truth. Okay?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">But that&#8217;s not the only person that&#8217;s ever happened to. Their empire is constantly, constantly trying to marginalize, trying to quiet, crucify, if you will, those who will not shut up about the truth. In his amazing book, <u>The Cross and the Lynching Tree<\/u>, black theologian, or black liberation theologian James Cone said,<\/p>\n<blockquote>&#8220;Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings. And at the same time, an unquenchable, unpsychological thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning.&#8221;<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>Thank you, Carrie. That&#8217;s beautiful. I think for me, again, learning from our Trinitarian siblings, I love this idea in the story of after Jesus is resurrected and ascends, that he leaves the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is the word, the revelation, the good news, continuing within his followers so that they are able to go out and continue to spread the news of revelation.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Revelation is continuous, as our theologian, James Luther Adams, said. And I think, again, sometimes Unitarian Universalists, we get a little queasy about that word &#8220;spirit&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">But I wonder what would happen if, like those disciples of Jesus, we were allowed to allow what moves within us to move us to a more passionate, embodied, emotional form of religious experience, what that might do for our faith. What if we were to re-embrace living with the Spirit within us and let what moves us move us forward in our faith?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>So all of that was really beautiful, and I love everything we just talked about. But I want to know, Reverend Chris, what grates against you? What really bothers you about the Easter story, if anything?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>What bothers me is when I see folks take that story of crucifixion and how we can learn from it about our experiences of the dark night. of the soul that I was talking about earlier and turn it into a harmful theology called &#8220;Redemptive Suffering&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">That we can only be good human beings if we suffer, that we must suffer, that God sent his beloved child down here in this sort of petty way so that he could be hung on a cross and suffer to atone for God&#8217;s feeling that he had been harmed by human beings. As our former senior minister Meg Barnhouse used to say, &#8220;that is not faith, that is not a loving God, that is child abuse.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And I think redemptive suffering really causes harm because, for instance, it causes In some Christian settings, women who were being abused to be counseled to just suffer the abuse, like Jesus did on the cross. When I was growing up, there was this phrase where people would say, &#8220;well, I guess this is just my cross to bear.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And I think that&#8217;s so terribly harmful, because I don&#8217;t think God wants us to stay in suffering in the here and now. I don&#8217;t believe in that. kind of God, so I don&#8217;t think we can glorify suffering as the story of Easter. I think the story of Easter, as Carrie was saying, is that the divine chose to come among us to show us that though empire will try to kill God, empire will always fail because God is love and freedom and justice and love and freedom and justice are immortal.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Carrie:<\/u><br \/>So for me, and I&#8217;m cheating. I&#8217;m going to cheat a little bit. So for me, it is that this story has been taken. It&#8217;s been mediated, right? It&#8217;s been mediated. People put little pieces of parchments together. They had to choose that. Someone mediated that. Then the interpreters had to mediate what they said and on and on and on. It&#8217;s been mediated a million different times to us.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And what&#8230; me so much is that so many people, the mediated message of the cross of the Easter story is of personal salvation. It is, how do I get to heaven? Which often becomes, either it&#8217;s a pyramid scheme, right? How do I get to heaven and how do I collect all my Amway people with me?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Or it&#8217;s, I&#8217;m going to heaven and you&#8217;re not. Therefore, let me figure out a way to, as we see now, bring down that wrath of God, I assume, so that we can all get to heaven a little bit more quickly.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">I think Jesus would be infuriated. I think he would be flipping all the tables over. To me, again, this story is about community. It is about liberation. for all of us. It can be personal liberation too, but it is also collective liberation. Make no mistake about it. Yeah. It just got worked up.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><u>Chris:<\/u><br \/>Yeah. So I think to sort of sum it up, the Easter story is about being reborn again and again and again. It is not about causing others to suffer, and it&#8217;s not that I get to heaven through me suffering. It is through being reborn to fierce love over and over and over again. And so that&#8217;s part of the meaning of Easter. It has to do with that being reborn, that renewal of life.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Extinguishing the Chalice<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Benediction <\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">From Diana Butler Bass<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Chris:<br \/>There&#8217;s a wildness to resurrection. You can&#8217;t predict it. Life after death doesn&#8217;t behave in any sort of normal way.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Carrie:<br \/>Like Jesus who shows up to tearful Mary and says &#8220;don&#8217;t touch me&#8221; and a week later invites skeptical Thomas to stick a finger in his open wounds. Like a God who sends women out to the world to preach to men who won&#8217;t listen.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Chris:<br \/>Like the breath of peace showing up in a room of those terrified by the possibility of their own arrest and death.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Carrie:<br \/>Resurrection is the work of a feral spirit, as untamed and undomesticated a possibility as we humans can barely imagine.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Chris:<br \/>It breaks the rules, bursts through expectations, and follows only freedom and love.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Carrie:<br \/>May the congregation say, &#8220;Amen&#8221;, and &#8220;blessed be&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Chris:<br \/>We love you fiercely. Go in peace.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<hr align=\"center\" noshade=\"noshade\" size=\"4\" width=\"300\" \/>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/category\/sermons\/indexes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>SERMON INDEX<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Most sermons during the past 26 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.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/podcast\/first-unitarian-universalist\/id372427776\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>PODCASTS<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Rev. Carrie Holley-HurtApril 5, 2026First UU Church of Austin4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756www.austinuu.org Rev. Chris and Rev. Carrie challenge each other with questions about this time that is so sacred to so many. Join us as we seek to understand&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,194,27,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-available","category-carrie-holley-hurt","category-chris-jimmerson","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141472,"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471\/revisions\/141472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austinuu.org\/wp2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}