Unity Church-unitarian's Sermon Podcasts

Gardens in spring are easy to love, but what about the times when all your garden reminds you of is mortality? Some thoughts about faded flowers, crispy lawns, and the dog buried in the perennial flower bed.

Come welcome summer Rob, Janne and Karen Hering in the final service of the formal church year. Though not everyone is able to "go to the lake," everyone can make room in their lives for the deep restorative rest that brings us back to life.

This is not a website. It is the sermon title. This is an exploration and a celebration of beauty — an exploration in the sense that we will discover its variety and a celebration in the sense that all of this variety is held in boldest embrace. It is a gentle and difficult journey that beauty takes through our lives. Joining it makes us beautiful as well.

Those who equate the Sabbath with daily spiritual practice misconstrue its meaning. For Sabbath has a communal dimension that transcends the purely personal. Rob and worship associate Jackie Hendrickson will offer a service focused on the communal implications of Sabbath practice.

Jacob wrestled all night with an angel. As the sun rose the angel tried to end the struggle. And Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." This Memorial Day Rob will ask us to consider how we have been blessed by those who have fought for our country.

The whole church family gathers to celebrate the uniquely Unitarian Universalist ritual of flower communion.This year the ministers will be joined by Justin Schroeder who has recently been named the candidate to become Senior Minister at the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis. Justin will be preaching.

We celebrate the challenges and blessings of mothering and mothers. Explore the relationship between our very real mothers and the archetype of the great mother and acknowledge those women in our lives who have been informal but none the less formative mothers.

Rob Eller-Isaacs brings us the final sermon of our redemption theme. We say each child more is one more redeemer. Even when they challenge our assumptions? Even when they make us squirm?

Hankering For a Higher Quality of Life — Michael A. Schuler, Senior Minister, The First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin In his just-released book Making the Good Life Last, Michael Schuler argues that sustainability must become a major consideration as we ponder the future not only of the natural environment, but of our families, finances, communities, and individual physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. In a culture which encourages the pursuit of evanescent "good times" we sorely need a strategy that delivers more lasting benefits.

Includes Kerri Meyer's Story for All Ages. What can resurrection mean for those of us for whom the bodily resurrection is a metaphor at most.

How can we best cultivate those aspects of our character which encourage us to perform redemptive acts in the world?

What is sin in a liberal and progressive faith? Janne will examine how sin has been viewed in Unitarian Universalism and what might be sins in today’s church. Janne is joined by Balazs Scholar Endre Nagy who will explore sin in the Transylvanian church.

Despite history's best efforts at creating commandments and rules of all sorts and sizes, sin can be hard to pin down in specifics. Explore what these ambiguities mean for our ability to wrestle honestly with the definition of sin - and to address it in the world and in ourselves.

From Augustine to Aquinas, from Freud to Matthew Fox, understandings of the nature of sin have shifted and evolved. Though we have rejected the concept of original sin and though many of us have distanced ourselves from shame-based theologies, we can’t ignore the fact that they exist.

Engaging the concept of sin can be a challenge. Confronting the possibility that sin might engage us can be even more challenging. The traces that we leave on the wind, the footprints we leave in the sand... Evidence of our having lived... sometimes wastefully.

What are the ideas which guide th eliving of your life? What are the blessings and assurances that echo in the liminal spaces between slumber and awakening?

We are not the first doubters to struggle with prayer. Our spiritual ancestors thought deeply about many of the same question with which we still wrestle. And they found some answers.

Since Copernicus displaced the earth from the center of the universe, we find ourselves increasingly dwarfed by the infinite creation of expanding space. How, and who, and wher is God in this vastness? Marjorie Suchocki askes, "Can we really believe that creatures such as our sorry selves in the littleness of our histories are invited by the creator of the univers to pray?" We will explore an old image of an ever-present God within a new understanding of space and time.

Prayer is a state of being. Practice is what gets us there. Words can make it hard to pray especially when it matters what they mean.