Elections don’t unite, they divide. Here are seven reasons why we must prepare ourselves to be transformers – and role models of understanding – in the face of conflict. When elections end, the hard work begins to heal and unite the divided, angry, bewildered peoples of our world. Speakers: Rev Justin Osterman, Rev Rob Hardies, Rev Lavanhar, Re ...…

How much does our identity, and not our values, define our politics? In episode 50, I share my own journey to understand my father – a kind and generous person who vents anger on twitter – through the lens of identity politics. Meg Barnhouse explains the divided camps of “radicals” and “respectables” behind all social change movements, and I wr ...…

What did it mean to be a woman in the time of Jesus? A child? a tax collector? A foreigner? Deniece Mason shares three stories about Jesus bringing dignity to outcasts. Their meanings change when read in the original Greek, and when viewed in the context of the times and when looking at what stories they followed in the Gospel of Luke. Listen t ...…

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), shares three life lessons from his time as a lawyer just starting to work with death row inmates – many of whom were later found innocent and exonerated. (Listen – sound quality isn’t great)

This time: Stories about the false promise of empowerment, and how the attitudes of colonialism, imperialism, and empire continue to affect our efforts at creating a more perfect world. The final mini sermon explains how this can be traced back to the moment the purpose of Christianity was twisted by the Roman Empire that adopted it as the stat ...…

Meg Barnhouse tells stories about gender and its ambiguities, about raising children that are not pidgeonholed, and helps us become better listeners when others are expressing their true identity. (Episode 46)

Christ Church (Anglican) Cathedral in Indianapolis, IN decided to cage the holy family in chainlink on their front lawn to prove a point about immigrants and refugees, and remind us about the Gospel message. This is the sermon that accompanied that protest.

In the sermon from the 2018 Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, American Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry gave an impassioned plea to live by the power of love. Inspired by MLK’s sermon about how to love your enemy, Curry reminds us that love could transform the world, if we could just be open to it.…

Rob Hardies shares a personal journey of losing faith in God and calling himself an atheist out of pain, not belief. After coming out, he couldn’t accept that God loved him as he was, and so he stopped believing in God to get back at him. But time and healing brought him back to Life and gave him a new name for God.…

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” is an often spoken idea from abolitionists to civil rights leaders. Martin Luther King used it often. This episode explains and illustrates what this means. This pulls from a 2007 William Schulz sermon – Schulz was a one-time President of Amnesty International and President o ...…

Two sermonlets about the power found in a name. Rev Justin Osterman (UU Raleigh) tells his story of when we served as a translator in Guantanamo. When he entered the prison cell, he did the most natural human thing. In another story Rev Rob Hardies (All Souls UU DC) tells the story of Moses and the burning bush. “Tell me your name?” he asks. An ...…

A core part of effective activism is individual witness – standing up to those who one sees and works with every day. This sermon captures the story of one minister’s behind-the-scenes efforts to cleanse her church’s leadership of sexism and sexual predators and the conflicts that emerged. It reveals how even the most liberal institutions are s ...…

Martin Luther King, Jr was an amazing preacher. Listen to excerpts from one of his sermons on how to love your enemies. He says, “Jesus has become the practical realist… his commandment [to love your enemies] is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization.” He argues it is the only pragmatic way to change the world, and restore u ...…

There are three parts of being an effective activist: (1) To protect and serve the vulnerable. (2) To wake people up to the plight of the marginalized. And (3) to practice individual witness to those who stand against progress as a bridge towards mutual understanding, reconciliation, and restoring justice. This explains is what that third part ...…

“Do you need to be an activist to be a Unitarian?” That was the question posed to Rev Dr Justin Osterman of the Raleigh UU fellowship (http://www.uufr.org/). His answer is the best 20 minute explanation of how to be an effective activist I’ve ever heard.

Two sermons from two Unitarian Universalist churches (Washington DC and Tulsa OK) from MLK Sunday (2018) about courage and the journey towards justice that continues, 50 years later. Both tell the story of James Reeb – a UU minister and activist martyred in 1965 – an event that triggered the signing of the voting rights act a week later. Where ...…

This combines two sermons from All Souls UU Church in Washington, DC 2010. Rev. Rob Hardies and Louise Green speak about grief, and finding a way to express both the pain of loss and the praise for life. Our tears are a lament and a prayer – of thanksgiving for what life offers us every day. “Notice how we try to protect others from the pain of ...…

Reverend Deniece Mason tells two stories: Trekking in the Himalayas as a teenager with friends, and an episode of a woman in a nice neighborhood who noticed a homeless figure sleeping for days on a bench at the bus stop on her street. Both stories are a reminder that Jesus is not high on a mountain; He lives and works in the world, and if we wa ...…

Doug Brown draws parallels between the story of Jesus healing the 10 lepers and how we approach outsiders in our communities today. Jesus was himself an outsider, and that gave him a perspective that revealed more truth. In this story, though all ten lepers were cleansed (cured) as they traveled to present themselves to the priests (to get an o ...…

With news of Trump in Korea this week, and talk of the unlimited potential of human endeavors to reshape the planet as a technology-enabled paradise, this parable of the red cranes offers a different viewpoint. In the DMZ between North and South Korea there live rare majestic birds whose habitat would be crushed by development if the two countr ...…

Deneice Mason tells the story of an early Christian peacemaker who bought an end to the circus of death in Rome, and asks us how are we bringing Peace and fostering dialogue in these times of political strife. Source: Pleasant Valley UMC

“Find a god as you understand God. That was the key to my spiritual liberation,” explains Father Leo Booth. Booth (http://fatherleo.com/ a recording from 2000) shares his story of struggle with addiction and with the essential ingredients of the disease, and his redemption. These feelings mirror those of victims of sexual assault, as Rev Kathy ...…

“The danger for us is to think too small. Buy into other people’s power rather than the power that we have. In every solitary one of us, there is a Martin Luther King.” Father Leo Booth provides makes a compelling case that addiction and recovery are a spiritual journey of becoming aware of our own power. He highlights all the self-doubt and eg ...…

Dear Friends, on the 9th of October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then, out of that silence came, thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my ...…

U2’s singer Bono used to be a believer in Karma but through his journey, he’s grown to be a firm believer in Grace. Most religions are based on Karma. The ancient Israelites believed in Karma (“we are God’s chosen people” and “lepers must have sinned to be diseased”). Hinduism and the caste system is about karma. And most importantly, a large s ...…

Most religions are based on Karma. The ancient Israelites believed in Karma (“we are God’s chosen people” and “lepers must have sinned to be diseased”). This is about how U2’s singer Bono used to be a believer in Karma but through his journey, he’s grown to be a firm believer in Grace.

We have a prophetic vision of peace, not unlike we see in a local nonprofit – they are cutting up military uniforms, pressing the fibers into pulp to make paper, and transforming ex-soldiers into artists. Peace and justice are built around rebuilding relationships. Jesus dismantled the law, the commandments and the ordinances in order to make p ...…

Rob Hardies – The fierce ugency of now (sermon at All souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Washington, DC) is about the Treyvon Martin story and how it relates to the 1963 march on Washington, when a pastor at this very church was killed in Selma Alabama – James Reeb. Lessons for today. http://ia800408.us.archive.org/26/items/uu-fierce-urgenc ...…

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” Pastor Deniece Mason explains what this means in a modern context. She points out that Memorial Day wasn’t a holiday before 1971. And long before that, it’s origins come from women in Mississippi who, while decorating the graves of their ancestors in a cemetery, ...…

This sermon explores what some call the roots of religion: awe and humility. How does our particular faith, Unitarian Universalism, address these two large concepts? Can we learn to say, “We don’t know?” with awe and humility? The Rev. Barbara Wells serves as co-minister (with her husband, Jaco ten Hove) at Paint Branch UU Church in Adelphi, MD ...…

In the days after the 2016 election with a surprising Trump victory, many in the congregation were shocked and horrified and despondent. Rob Hardies’s sermon struck a perfect balance between accepting the results and preparing All Souls Church as a “sanctuary” for the times ahead. He reminded us that the church’s bell, crafted by Paul Revere’s ...…

From the Gospel story of the woman who sneaks through the crowd to touch Jesus’s robe because she believes she can be healed, Deniece Mason explains why there is more to the story of a nameless, sick, ostracized woman than it first seems. This story is about coping with and hoping through tragedy in our own lives. When Jesus says, “Daughter, yo ...…

The burning bush in the desert was not something amazing, but rather something sublime that only a careful observer of the world could have noticed. And Moses, at nearly 80 years old, did not fit the mold of an activist or revolutionary. What mattered was that he was paying attention, and receptive, and didn’t turn a blind eye. Such is the way ...…

“Not a moment but a movement,” has become a popular slogan in progressive circles, a reminder that our social justice work must go beyond mere resistance to the immediate political crisis, and strive to build a lasting movement for justice and equality. As people of faith committed to building beloved community, we understand this. Yet I would ...…

Dr. Martin Luther King’s message is not for the faint of heart. You must BE WILLING TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE, because questioning our laws will make other people uncomfortable. … We must NEVER CONFUSE LAW AND JUSTICE. What is legal is often not just. 100 years ago children were employed in dangerous industries. Women and African Americans could not ...…

As Hurricane Katrina has reminded us, inspite of our ‘melting pot’ national image, race still matters. As we strive to be an ‘evermore diverse’ congregation, how do we see and talk about the differences between us? http://s3.us.archive.org/05.10.02-Choose-To-Bless-The-World-kqj0fv/05.10.02ChooseToBlessTheWorld.mp3 Sunday, October 2, 2005 at 10: ...…

“I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least:’ I believe, ‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” “It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corpor ...…

What’s on my mind these days? What do I see in the world? What does it mean? Sunday, June 6, 2004 at 10:50am: ‘Found in Translation’ — Rev. Robert Hardies

Rev Rob Hardies of All-Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Washington DC shares an open letter to his 5-year old son. Journeying from San Francisco to Chicago on the day after the violence in Charlottesville, a gay dad and his multiracial son board a train for a trip across Trump’s America. Why? In part because his son loves trains, and in p ...…

Unitarian Universalist Megan Lloyd Joiner speaks about America of 2017. A nation just beginning to become the vision set out 200 years ago in documents. An invitation to create a world that offers everyone hope and joy. The original name for God, YAHWEH, is a conflation of the Hebrew words for “I was”, “I am”, and “I shall be.” And like this Go ...…

David Miller Mennonite sermon on loaves and fishes The two best preachers I’ve heard are David Miller (University Mennonite Church, State College PA) and Rob Hardies (All Souls Unitarian in Washington, DC). Here is one of David’s. https://ia601505.us.archive.org/18/items/02062005DavidMillerMennoniteSermonLoavesFishesAndEmpiresThatActInGodsNamee ...…

The beauty and inspiration in this sermon is why I go to church generally, and why I attend All Souls Church UU in particular whenever I can. Susan Neuman, Thin Places, All Souls Church A thin place is a Welsh phrase for a place that speaks to you from “beyond.” However your mind happens to define or perceive the beyond that surrounds us, thin ...…

On March 30 and April 6, our candidate for associate minister will preach. You can meet the candidate after church and throughout the week. On April 6, we will vote on whether to call the candidate. Sunday, March 23, 2003 at 10:50am: The Coalition of the Willing — Rev. Robert Hardies http://s3.us.archive.org/03.03.23-Coalition-Of-The-Willing-34 ...…

We’ve heard a lot of talk this week about a so-called "coalition of the willing." But the coalition that Rev. Hardies speaks about would work to break down the barriers that divide the human family, locally in our neighborhoods as well as in our ever-shrinking and more complex global village. Sunday, March 16, 2003 at 10:50am: ‘The Smooth Stone ...…

The God of Possibility and the Possibility of God How would our understanding of God change if we took the season seriously and understood God not as the cause of all things, but as the possibility in all things? Repeated at the 11:15 service. Quoting Rob Hardies: God says to moses, a slave, “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have ...…

Rev William Barber is the today’s leading moral religious voice for a pluralistic society that provides all people with the rights that Martin Luther King Junior struggled to enshrine through the civil rights movement. Given December 31st, 2016 – In response to a fearful America who is not sure how to respond to the changing political climate u ...…