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, 2009

SOLE Food

January 25, 2009 at 3:08 pm · Filed under All

January 25, 2009 — by Rev. Lisa R. Schwartz

That is, Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical. How do our choices at the dinner table affect the rest of the world? What does it mean to be able to make choices about food in the first place? In the summer of 2008, delegates to the General Assembly of the UU Association voted to take on food, a fundamental issue, for study and action. In this sermon, Rev. Schwartz introduces the topic. The Social Justice Committee will solicit members’ comments for the purpose of providing feedback to the national process.

Listen to the “raisin communion,” music by Erin Frost Cook, and the sermon: SOLE Food

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Sacrificing Blindness: The Pain of Seeing Clearly

January 18, 2009 at 4:46 pm · Filed under All

January 18, 2009 — Rev. Lisa R. Schwartz

Rev. Mark Morrison Reed, a black UU minister, says: “During the fifties and sixties, as social mores liberalized and racial intolerance became stigmatized, white liberals chose color blindness. Not seeing race at all proved – to themselves at least – that they were not prejudiced…” President-elect Barack Obama has asked Americans what we would be willing to sacrifice so that our children might see a dramatic advancement of human liberty in our time. Are we willing to give up what Morrison calls the “willful naïveté” of color blindness? Rev. Lisa Romantum Schwartz explores the question.

Listen to the sermon: Click here

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The Secret of Happiness

January 13, 2009 at 1:45 pm · Filed under All

January 11, 2009 — Rev. Lisa R. Schwartz

Is the search for peace and satisfaction in this life a worthwhile quest? Perhaps it might be, if you start the search at a basic level – with yourself, a human being (i.e., not a “human doing”). This is part two of Rev. Lisa Romantum Schwartz’s sermon series on the philosophy of the modern mystic, Eckhart Tolle.

Listen to the sermon: Click here

Read the “story for all ages”: Click here

Read the “centering moment”:  Click here

Read the sermon:  Click Here

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