This was last Sunday's service at church for which I was responsible:

Prelude: One of Us by Joan Osborne

Opening Words: LW

Chalice Lighting (while singing #118)

Opening Hymn: #118 This Little Light of Mine

Joy and Sorrows

Children's Story: King Solomon as remembered by a very young Rosie
Story my mom told us from the very big, very special book, that lived in the octagon coffee table. I couldn’t understand why King Solomon would threaten to do such a terrible thing. He was wise indeed. This was the story of King Solomon threatening to cut the baby in half because 2 women were fighting over it. I took it very literally and was horrified as a child.

Choir Interlude

Reading: #642 from Psalm 23

Hymn: #37 God Who Fills the Universe

"Unitarian Universalism's Christian and Jewish Roots"

Roots. When I hear the word root I think of plants almost immediately. Roots that deliver water and nutrients to a living thing so that it can help sustain life on the rest of this big spinning ball. Roots that anchor enormous trees against the fierce winds that threaten to take them down. Deep root that provide energy from deep within the core during times of drought. Shallow roots near the surface that are easily tripped over.

My dictionary told me that roots are the parts of plants that grow underground and deliver life-sustaining necessities; the parts of hair and teeth that hold them in place; or that which is the source of something. I like to think of our Unitarian Universalist living tradition as all of these things: life-sustaining, holding us in place like an anchor, and a source. Our tradition draws from many sources – our own experiences, the words and deeds of very wise people, the ideas of other religions and spiritualities, Jewish and Christian teachings that call for us to love one another as we love ourselves, and humanist teachings that ask us to use our heads as much as our hearts.

This month, our children and their teachers explored some of the stories of our Jewish and Christian roots. I would like to share with you what they learned.

Our preschool and kindergarten class was led by SH and JW. They First learned about Valentine’s Day, and it’s origins in ancient Rome. The Romans clebrated a festival on February 15^th that honored Juno, the Goddess of women and marriage and Pan the God of nature. During this celebration, animals and birds were said to have chosen their mates. Following suit, young women would put their names on slips of paper in a jar and young men would draw them out to choose sweethearts. Eventually, Roman soldiers carried this custom to England. Years later, the first Valentine card was sent in 1415 y the Duke of Orleans who was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Two martyred Christian saints are also celebrated, both having been executed for their crimes against the churches on February 14^th.
This class also celebrated their pets with a lesson about St. Francis of Assisi, who was born in 1182 in Italy. St Francis is considered to be the caregiver to the animals. Francis had been born to a wealthy family, but gave away all his belongings and even his clothing so that he could help others – people and animals. Many congregations celebrate his memory by having a blessing of the animals day in which members and friends can bring their beloved pets so that they can be included in their family and have blessings bestowed upon them. I have been asked if we will do something similar, as we did a few years ago, and I hope that we can arrange to an animal blessing day, maybe in May.
This group also learned about Easter, and the events that are said to have taken place in Jerusalem that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. The Easter that we celebrate focuses on rebirth, and Spring, but we do our children a great disservice if they do not know that most Christians believe literally that even though Jesus died on Friday, strung up on a wooden cross under a scorching sun, he miraculously came back to life on Sunday, three days later.

Our 1^st thru 3^rd grade class was taught by RW and ML. They too learned about Valentines Day and made valentine cards, a tradition made popular in English Victorian times. The following week they studied Palm Sunday, the day that begins the Christian Holy week, which commemorates the last week of Jesus’ life. One week before Easter is celebrated is Palm Sunday. It is said that this is the day Jesus went to Jerusalem, riding on a white donkey. People were really beginning to know who Jesus was – he claimed to be the son of God on earth and was to be the great leader predicted to lead the Jewish people as their king - and cleared a path for him as he neared. It was very hot so people were fanning themselves with palm leaves, which they placed on the ground in front of Jesus and the donkey so that the dust would not rise up and choke all of them as the donkeys feet fell on the dusty earth. Also celebrated in Holy Week are Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Maundy means holy and this is the day that it is believed that Jesus washed his friends dry, dusty, dirty feet after their long walk to Jerusalem and had his last meal with them, because he was executed on Friday, now celebrated as Good Friday. As a child I thought it was strange that we would call it a Good day when someone was killed, but Christians call it Good Friday because of the Good that they believe came out of the crucifixion of Jesus – their salvation.
Last week the kid in this class learned about the crucifixion of Jesus and how it is said that he came back to life – a big word we call resurrection – 3 days later on a Sunday. They learned a version of The Lord’s Prayer along with a modern UU interpretation from Reverend Barbara Marshman which we would like to share with you now.

Call and response reading of this page…….150 from Special Times

Tim and Tom read back and forth

It is said that God wrote the 10 commandments, or Decalogue, into stone tablets with a finger. Moses took that tablets to the Jewish people, but they had grown tired waiting for him to return with them and had melted their gold into an image of a cow and were praying around the cow. This angered Moses and God and they tablets were thrown to the ground and broken. After a while the people felt sad about ha they had done and God forgave them, and made a new set of stone tablets with t he commandments, or rules, written on them. The first four rules are about how people should relate to god – whom they called Yahweh in their language, and the next 6 had to do with how they would behave with each other. Much later, when Jesus was going around preaching about how Yahweh wanted people to live kindly and lovingly, he added a commandment, sometimes called the Great Commandment. HE said that that people should love Yahweh with their hearts and souls, but that they should also love their neighbors as themselves. The teachings of Jesus were the focus of their second lesson.
Some of the teachings of Jesus that they discussed were the idea of turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, not to judge others, the Golden Rule, and the Great Commandment, that Jesus believed could keep people from going to war ever again if they truly loved their god and their neighbors.
Last week the kids in this group learned about Easter and the events that surround Jesus death. Easter is full of strange concepts that can be very difficult to wrap one’s mind around. It may seem strange to us that a kind man was murdered because of his beliefs, and even stranger still that he came back to life a few days later. Yet good people are punished every day for their beliefs by governments that fear losing control when these people speak out and try to make change for the better. Things have not changed much in 2000 years.

A moment ago I asked you think about how many of the 10 Commandments you could name. They are (read list).

The kids had a good time coming up with more commandments that they would add to the list. I invite you to share with us your own additions to the 10 Commandments. Just shout them out and I will repeat them into the mic.

People offered up great rules such as “thou shalt listen and speak carefully” and “though shalt be open and honest about one’s beliefs”.

I would like to thank all of our religious education volunteers who make it possible for our children to learn about what it means to be in this community. Without you , we could not help grow our living tradition. If you are interested in teaching in March – the first three Sunday, please contact me after the service. We will be learning about evolution and I need three more teachers. Don’t worry – you’ll have materials and support and great kids and adults to work with. I would also like to thank SH for her dedication to the spiritual growth of this community thru music.

Hymn: #123 Spirit of Life

Words to Spirit of Life go like this:

Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea, move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close, wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

Responsive Reading: #639 Love One Another

Let us love another because love is from God.

Whoever does not love God, does not know God, for God is love.

No one has ever seen God; if we love another God lives in us.

God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them.

There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.

Those who say “I love God” and then hate their brothers and sisters are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seem.

No one has ever seen God; if we love another, God lives in us.

1 John 4


Closing Thoughts from Rosie

In our prelude music, Joan Osborne asks some interesting questions that are in tune with my Unitarian Universalist views. You see, I have a hard time believing in the vindictive, cruel Creator-God that is often portrayed in the Jewish testament who let his son die to save the people on earth, even those who didn’t believe in him, and teach them a lesson, and I can’t relate well to the God of the Christian testament either. I find more comfort in believing (not knowing, that is different than believing) that somehow we are all connected, like our 7^th Principle says, in an interconnected web of existence. We are somehow all connected, and that to me is God. For me God is love and the spirit of life. The stories of the Hebrew and Christian bibles serve as fables for me – offering me wisdom through metaphor, and I hope that they are useful tools for you as well as we make our way on this spinning rock together.

Joan asks in her song, what if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.

What if God had a name – would you use it?

What if God had a face – would you look into it if it meant you would have to believe?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

You may not know this about me but I have taken more chemistry than I probably really need to get thru life. I returned to KU to take undergrad classes years after I had already completed a bacherlors degree in Latin American Studies and found myself in the first semester of basic chemistry again. I remember having a talk with my professor about how chemistry is taught. Without going into the details, I remember her talking about how students are not presented with the entire story of how atoms function up front, but rather a simple metaphor is used at first to describe the placement of all the little tiny parts of atoms. Later, the metaphor changed to something else, and I asked what has happened to the old one. “well, you weren’t ready for that one back then so we kind of lie until you’re ready to understand it more fully” was sort of the answer I got. How annoying was that!? I was just supposed to forget the other way I had learned it and suddenly embrace this new metaphor with gusto. I needed time to process this new metaphor, but also the concept of how chemistry teachers thought we learned. I wanted the real story, the second one, up front. I didn’t want to replace my old idea with something else, that I was not familiar with and that also was not comforting. I also didn’t like feeling that I had been tricked!

This experience reminds me of how we grow spiritually. I grew up in a United Church of Christ community that taught us the stories of the bible, and I believed that these events all happened exactly as I was told. Those WERE the days of miracle after all and doubt was for bad people – I had gleaned that much from sitting thru Reverend Best’s sermons. As I have aged, notice I said aged and not matured, I have been able to slowly replace those stories as literal events with an understanding that they exists as stories of wisdom, rather like Aesop’s fables, but I still feel a little tricked by that church. My gut tells me that many UU’s feel tricked by their former religious communities, and they seek solace with us. It is difficult for some of us to acknowledge our past experiences with other faith communities that maybe weren’t so positive, and while we might embrace Buddhist meditation as a spiritual practice to break the karmic cycle of death and rebirth, we find ourselves scowling and growing stiff when people pray in front of us or ask us to join them in communion. My goal is that our children don’t have to relearn as they mature, but that they learn from the ground up, deepening the meaning of the concepts they learn and not having to replace them. I challenge all of us to examine our rich heritage and traditions as a denomination, a Fellowship, as families, and as individuals.

Roots hold me close. Wings set me free. Spirit of Life - come to me. Come to me.

Postlude: Superstar from Jesus Christ Superstar