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 January, 2008

Faith, Freedom, and the Flame of Righteousness

January 27, 2008 at 11:16 pm · Filed under All

January 27, 2008 — by Rev. Lisa R. Schwartz

From John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon in 1630, written for the Pilgrims as they prepared to set foot on North American soil, to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s religious foundation for the civil rights movement in the 1960s, religion has profoundly shaped the American consciousness. Today, religious extremists strain the uneasy marriage between spiritual ideals and American public life and policy. Is the answer to take religious values out of the mix? Or can we recover a place for faith in the public square? Rev. Lisa R. Schwartz ponders the questions in this sermon.

Listen to the sermon: Faith, Freedom, and the Flame of Righteousness

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Harmonious Prophet

January 13, 2008 at 4:20 pm · Filed under All

The Life and Thought of the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman

January 13, 2008 — by Rev. Lisa R. Schwartz

Dr. Howard Thurman was the first black dean at a white university and co-founder of the first interracially pastored US church. He was an inspiration to and a major influence on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thurman believed that social questions were inextricable from the spiritual life, and that truth could most often be found beyond the confines of convention and dogma. On matters of race, he spoke of “the harmony that transcends all diversity and in which diversity finds its richness and significance.” Rev. Lisa Schwartz will explore how Thurman’s prophetic voice can help us live creatively and faithfully, calling into existence the future we now only dream about.

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The Way of the Trickster

January 7, 2008 at 5:17 pm · Filed under All

January 6, 2008 — by Rev. Lisa R. Schwartz
What do Bugs Bunny, Prometheus, and George Carlin have in common? They are all examples of the trickster. Deep winter is the traditional time for Native people to tell tales of the ancient trickster God, the sacred clown with a bag full of chaos that both upsets human apple carts and holds amazing creative potential. The trickster is open to the puzzles and paradoxes of life, he/she breaks all the rules of the gods and humans. Ancient tradition holds that the trickster is essential to new beginnings, and to any human contact with the sacred, since the trickster brings laughter and opens us up and frees us from rigid preconceptions.

Listen to: The Way of the Trickster

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