Recently in Sermons Preached Category

What does the making of soup have to teach us about the ministry of a congregation?

This was preached in early March for a Sunday with an International Women's Day emphasis.

I am preparing a sermon on Evil, and on that personification of evil, Satan. Seems like a perfectly ordinary Unitarian Universalist topic to me.

Explore Evil, talk about "evils" and the idea of Evil itself. Introduce the Prince of Darkness and talk about his history in Hebrew Scriptures and early Christianity.

Help the listeners decide whether they believe in an array of evils, or whether their is something to the idea of Evil itself. Contrast this to non Western non-dualisms.

I mention this topic to some of my colleagues and they wondered how I could get away with that topic in a UU church. The devil and Evil, next you'll be preaching about Sin and Redemption. Well Passion 'sunday is coming up, and Easter too.

I do get away with it. I think it is because I use words like "Let me suggest..." and "or you might look at this way."

No witnessing. Much probing.

A Sermon on Global Warming given in Stuart, Florida on March 19, 2006

Sometimes a preacher cuts some material out of a sermon. Perhaps it seems to divert from the intent of what the preacher wants to say, sometimes it is too radical, or too spiritual for the audience, or adds unnecessarily to the length. Here is an outtake from a sermon I wrote in 1996. I don't know why I cut it.

I have preached the sermon in different versions since then, but this is the first time the out take has been made public. It is a peak into my preaching soul from ten years ago.

I'll publish the sermon. I wonder where it was supposed to fit?

Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley writes:

"The year is still new, and I find myself reflecting on 2005 and even the end of 2004. It was a time of disasters-many brought on by nature: the tsunami that hit South Asia and parts of East Africa; Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastating the Gulf Coast of the United States; the earthquake in Pakistan.

These natural disasters remind us that we are all part of the interconnected web of existence. But in some way, natural disaster masks another kind of disaster-the kind that can be prevented: the disaster of social and economic injustice. Hurricane Katrina showed the human face of racism, poverty and its consequences right before our eyes. And yet, in the news media last week, we learned of a plan hatched by rich developers to rebuild New Orleans. It is a plan that does not include housing the city's poor; nor does it call for the poorest residents of the Lower Ninth Ward (most of them Black) to have the first right of refusal to live in the community they once called home. And we learned that several hotels in New Orleans have evicted hundreds of people whose bills were being paid by FEMA; people who lost their homes and nearly everything they owned; people who have no place to go.

Now I know that the corporate sector has to make money if they want to stay in business. But what does it mean when the richest country in the world lets so many people fall through the social safety net.

Unfortunately, we don't need a hurricane or a flood to see poverty, for each day, poverty kills thousands of people in this country. Each day, hundreds of thousands of people go hungry. Every day, too many senior citizens face the awful choice of cutting back on their medicines or on their food. And others-including families with young children-increase the army of the working poor who struggle to make ends meet without a living wage.

So often, we think of Dr. King in terms of racial justice, and certainly, that was one of the issues he championed along with peace (or non-violence)and economic justice. So, it seems appropriate to focus on economic justice as we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Mr. Luther King, Jr. This especially so given that King spent his last days in Memphis preparing to stage a march in support of black sanitation workers fighting for a fair wage.

One sanitation worker on strike at the time, Taylor Rogers, who is now 79 years old remembered how Dr. King "put everything aside to come to Memphis to see about the people on the bottom of the ladder, the sanitation workers."

This was part of King's campaign with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize a Poor People's Campaign to address what he felt was a crisis of economic disparity. He had crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor," had descended on Washington, and was prepared to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience until the Congress enacted a poor people's Bill of Rights.

This poor people's Bill of Rights called for jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. King saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor"-appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

If Dr. King could see that military spending has continued to escalate (far beyond the 1968 level) and that Congress has approved massive tax cuts that benefit the rich, he would not be silent. He was not fighting for fair wages and supporting the organization of unions because he enjoyed this kind of thing, but he did it because justice was central to his theology. In a speech he gave to the sanitation workers the day before he was assassinated, King stated, "You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor."

He knew that he was risking his life by challenging the status quo. He did it because it was one way of acknowledging the value of every person, no matter what job they do. "So often" he said, "we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth."

The inherent worth and dignity of every person was a foundation of Dr. King's theology as it is part of mine. It is the first principle of the faith that we claim as Unitarian Universalists! The inherent worth and dignity of every person-the men who pick up your garbage each week; the clerk at McDonald's, the maid at the Holiday Inn who will change your sheets and towels when you take your next business trip or your next vacation; the hospital worker down the street who empties bed pans; the clerk at Wal-Mart, a store I've never been in, by the way, because of the unfair way they treat their workers.

All these service workers and the work that they do has worth and dignity! In a 1961 speech at an AFL-CIO convention, King stated, "Our needs are identical with labor's needs-decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor."

Elsewhere in his writings, King made the justice issue even clearer, challenging the soul of who we are as a country when he said: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." He then offered a critique of our country as a "thing-oriented society" versus a "person-oriented society."

How do we escape the prospect of spiritual death that is much more real since Dr. King left us? Part of my response is to remember King's words that "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Two weeks ago, I visited my congresswoman to tell her that I do not support the budget cuts from social programs or the tax cuts for the rich--both of which she voted for. My next step is a letter to her. In whatever way you find, let us not be silent about things that matter.

A Luta Continua (the struggle continues)

A sermon excerpt - January 16, 2006, Unitarian Universalist Church of Tampa

I have done my share of child dedications, both as part of the Sunday service and as private ceremonies. Some have been in UU Christian congregations, some have been in pluralistic congregations. I have baptized an adult Unitarian Universalist who had become a Christian.
But this was a first for me, the baptism of a child. It was last night, Christmas eve, after the candlelight service. I celebrated this baptism at the request of Unitarian Universalist Christian parents, one who had been brought up Unitarian Universalist, and the other who had been brought up Roman Catholic and whose understanding of baptism was influenced by that Catholicism. Their daughter was two months old.
So what follows is Christian baptism as understood by this Unitarian Universalist of Christian humanist leanings.

Every religious communities has its high holidays,
those special days when the institution is busiest,
when the faithful are most involved in community rituals,
when the children are most excited.

You have probably heard the line from that old spiritual; it goes like this: Joshua fit the battle of Jericho €¦ and the walls come tumblin' down. In the Biblical book of Joshua, we have the story of conquest by the Hebrew tribes of the land of promise. Cana, the fortress city of Jericho was being attacked. We read: On the seventh day, they rose early, at dawn and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day they marched around the city seven times. And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people Shout! For the Lord has given you the city!"


A little later, the text reads: As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat and the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys.

At the funeral of his very good friend
the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
a very old Ralph Waldo Emerson stood quietly.

Someone approached the great philosopher to greet him
and to offer their condolences.
Emerson looked at Longfellow's grave
and shared these words with his comforter
"that gentleman has a sweet, beautiful soul,
but I have entirely forgotten his name.."
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