A sermon is an oral presentation by a live speaker to a live congregation. It always involves a bit of interaction, even if it’s just eye contact and facial expressions. Reading the text of a sermon, then, is like reading the script of a play to yourself. The live, communal experience is gone.

Nevertheless, please enjoy reading these text versions of sermons and other presentations made at the UU Fellowship of Topeka during our worship services. You may find that there are additional notes and/or commentaries to the original text.

Archive for August, 2007

The Absurdity of Race

August 27, 2007 at 5:06 pm · Filed under All

The Absurdity of Race

By Rev. Lisa Romantum Schwartz

August 26, 2007

(This sermon was preceded by the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes and by the song, “Carefully Taught,” from South Pacific, by Rogers and Hammerstein.)

When I was a little kid my family lived in Taiwan for a couple of years, and the Chinese people there told this creation story to their American guests: In the beginning of time, when God created humans, the process was a lot like • baking cookies. There was only one kind of cookie dough, but God was still experimenting with details like the oven temperature and baking time, trying to perfect the recipe, so some superficial variations were to be expected. God formed the cookie dough into little human shapes, with some interesting variations on size and shape, and then carefully placed them on cookie sheets.

Hear the sermon: The Absurdity of Race

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The Way of Love

August 8, 2007 at 5:23 pm · Filed under All

The Way of Love
Rev. Lisa Romantum Schwartz
August 5th, 2007

This sermon begins with a story for all ages, a retelling of an ancient par-able. The title of this modern version is…

The Story of the Completely Unacceptable Foreigner

Flannery O’Connor wrote: “A story is a way to say something that cannot be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. …A story isn’t really any good unless it…hangs on and expands in your mind.”

Once upon a time a man was traveling on a dark and deserted road through a rough part of town. Car trouble had forced him to walk, and he found that he was in a place with no cell phone reception. He was afraid, because gangs of young thugs were known to lurk in the area.

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