as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, March 22, 2026
Today’s sermon is a little different. I offered it in conjunction with my ministerial intern, Nina Kuzniak.
Part 1 ~ Nina Kuzniak
When I was considering the right place for my internship, I knew the best experience for me would be one that opened my eyes to ways of doing church that were different than anything I’d experienced before. As most of you know, I come from Las Vegas, which operated as a lay-led congregation for most of the time I was there. We were a pretty small congregation with a staff of sometimes one part-time administrative assistant. All services were multigenerational since we had no formal religious education program, which meant the kids played on a big rug with fluffy pillows and boxes of Legos right next to the chancel and every so often a Lego would go flying–across the sanctuary during a sermon. And it was good! That community made so many things possible for me. As an early seminarian, I had lots of pulpit access, the chance to serve on committees, and practice shared leadership with people of all ages. They supported me as I fumbled and learned, we tried many new things together, and that was the congregation that sponsored me for ministry – a critical and required early step in a seminarian’s career. When I practice preaching, leading, serving, innovating, and caring in this community, I feel their hand on my back.
Now, with the clock of my ministerial internship counting down, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the learnings of the past year. As you know, I moved to Houston to be near my family. A couple months into living here, I began reaching out to area ministers in the spirit of collegiality. Coming from Las Vegas with no ministerial mentorship to Houston with such a vibrant ministerial community felt like, well to use some Vegas lingo, hitting the jackpot. I daydreamed about what this vibrant community could make possible for me and my ministry.
Before I was your intern, in my very first email to Reverend Colin, I introduced myself and asked if we could schedule coffee. He replied quickly, copied Ames to schedule a lunch, invited me to attend the upcoming regional ministers’ retreat, and offered me a scholarship. It probably took him, what…, three minutes to type the email? Despite the fact that Reverend Colin, in that one simple email, folded me into a community I had long needed, that wasn’t my favorite thing about his message. My favorite thing was how he signed off, with the word love. I wrote in my cover letter for the internship application, “I am a love person, looking for a love place, to do love work.” Through this year, you’ve each widened the circle of love to include me. And now I move forward in my ministry with your hand on my back. You’ve made so much possible for me.
Part 2 ~ Colin Bossen
We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.
We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.
Together Alberto Alvaro Rios’s words and Nina’s story provide an introduction to what, in my long-standing Dad joke, I refer to as the annual sermon on the amount.
This is stewardship Sunday. It might not seem like it, but it is a sort of high holiday for Unitarian Universalists. It is the day that we commit to make our religious community possible. It is only with your generosity that we are able to make all that we make happen… happen. Sunday worship celebrations, pastoral care, religious exploration, justice work, an internship for a seminarian, it is all brought into being when you dig deep, and with your financial commitments, say, I am going to help sustain–as Nina put it–“a love place” where we can come together “to do love work.”
Love work, we speak of widening love’s circle. This morning, we come together to do a little love work. We gather to remind each other, that no matter how harshly the wicked winds of war blow, no matter how the road be rough and rocky, there is a place that proclaims that that each human being is loved and was born a blessing.
Love work, in this congregation we understand that we are each born with the power to bring more love and greater blessing into the world. Let us do a little of that together right now. As a reminder of our power to love and bless, I invite you to turn to a person near you and say, “you are loved. You are a blessing.” Try it, “you are loved. You are a blessing.”
You are loved. You are a blessing. It is the act of coming together “to do love work” that makes us a religious community. Each year, in my preparation for the sermon on the amount, I reflect on the difference between spiritual and religious practice. Spiritual practice, I think of spiritual practices as breath work–the work of breathing in and out the air that unites us all. Spiritual, from the Latin spiritus, breath, breathing, spirit, it is something that we can do on our own.
Breath, yoga is one of my spiritual practices. Each Monday, after work, I ride my bike to the downtown Y for an evening session. I have been attending those classes about a year and a half. I suspect I am a little stronger, a little more lithe because of them. Certainly, at the end of each yoga class, I feel calmer and more connected to the living breath we share than I did at the beginning.
But I do not feel like I have had a religious experience. In all the time I have been attending, I have had a meaningful encounter with, well, precisely no one. Each Monday we gather, pull out our yoga mats, go through our poses, find a bit of a flow, and then, well, that is it.
If you are here with us today for the sermon on the amount then you likely feel that practicing yoga in a time of rising authoritarianism is not enough. Spiritual practice, be it yoga or something else, is something that we can do on our own. Spiritual practices on their own are not going to provide a counter to Christian nationalism. It does not matter how many downward dogs or sun salutations I do, my yoga class is not going to become a place to bring us together to say, from the union of the crusaders’ cross and the country’s capital, I dissent.
I dissent, yoga in a time of war is not enough. I dissent. In order to make my dissent meaningful, in order to give it strength or transformative power, I need something more. I need to turn from “I dissent” to “we dissent.” We need the religious practice of dissent. Religion, as I have shared in the past, can be understood as what binds us together. Thought to be derived from the Latin word for, “to tie, to bind,” religious practices are what connect each to all. They are things that unite a community in purpose and action. They are the activities that empower us to bring our vision of widening love’s circle into being.
Religious practice, another way in which I think about it from my interactions with the philosopher John Clark. You might remember John. He is a friend of the congregation. We read his book Between Earth and Empire last year. John is a profound political thinker. He has cultivated a powerful presence, which he nurtured from his unique blend of studies in European anarchism, Sufi mysticism, and Buddhist meditation practice and his lifelong engagement with community work and celebration in New Orleans.
Last year, a lot of my conversations with John were about was the importance of and power of liberating religious communities. He believes that some religious communities are blessed–through beauty making theology, through joy giving practice, through good leadership–with the potential to be, in his words, places for “liberation and solidarity” as well as “awakening and care.”
John is not a Unitarian Universalist but he has respect for the possibility we have to be communities of liberation and solidarity, awakening and care. In one conversation, he shared with me the grief he felt over the decision of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans to close their building.
It had once been a thriving congregation. Dr. Mtangulizi Sanyika, another friend of our community, was introduced to Unitarian Universalism there. It played an important role in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s.
But it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. It lost more than half of its membership. A lot of the remaining members lessened their commitments for one reason or another. And so, saddled with a building that its much reduced congregation could not afford, the members voted to sell their campus and become a church without walls.
John told me that when the congregation voted to sell their campus he suddenly became aware of everything that it provided to New Orleans. He had never been a member but he and his family had been in and out of the church’s buildings for more than three decades. He likened them to a tree–an entity sustaining a vast ecosystem of loving activism and spiritual work in its branches. With the tree gone all of the squirrels and chipmunks, birds and beetles, mushrooms and moss, all that religion, that had been sheltered in its branches, was rendered homeless. He wished that the wider community had recognized that it shouldn’t only fall to the members to support the congregation. The congregation supported so many people outside of its slender membership. It made so many things possible. And, now, all of that is gone.
Part 3 ~ Nina Kuzniak
The first time I ever remember stepping into a Unitarian Universalist space, I was in college and attending a Planned Parenthood panel. In the face of yet another round of federal defunding, they were speaking to the comprehensive nature of their services, and how they fill a critical gap in providing healthcare to many under- and uninsured folks. The panel was fine, but I paid more attention to the flags displayed on the walls of the space we were in that said things like, “We respect the inherent worth and dignity of all being,” and “We practice justice, equity, and compassion in our relationships.” After the panel, I approached the organizer and said, “Thanks, but where are we?” On my way home, I called my mom and said, “hey, have you ever heard of Unitarian Universalism?” and she said, “Honey, you were dedicated UU. I always knew you’d find your way back…”
Funny enough, I recently attended Houston’s Planned Parenthood fundraising luncheon and was talking to a First UU member at our table about her path to Unitarian Universalism. She shared that it was also her connections to Planned Parenthood that paved a path to our shared faith. She served as a protective escort at a clinic in Rochester walking back and forth, sheltering those there for healthcare from the vitriol of protestors and ensuring they made it to the front door of the clinic. She shared that a fellow escort, with whom she worked and walked back and forth to the clinic doors for years, finally, after learning more about who she was and how she viewed the world, said, “You really should check out my UU church.”
Like Dr. Battiste sang about, it is the ways that we help and love the world that ensure we don’t spend our lives in vain. The work of helping, building, and loving connects us all.
The conversation we had just a couple weeks ago at the Planned Parenthood lunch drew a line of similarity. Both of our passions for and interests in equal rights and bodily autonomy led to us first encountering Unitarian Universalism. We weren’t necessarily looking for religion, but it found us, and it changed our lives.
It is our use of a space that makes it sacred. To be the squirrels and chipmunks, the birds and beetles, the mushrooms and moss that protect and support the tree that gives us so much shelter and so much life.
In January, the board and staff hosted the annual Leadership Forum, which attracted over 60 of our members and friends for a day of learning and nourishing our shared leadership. It’s important to pause for planning so we know where we’re going. Maybe you’ve heard me talk about the vast horizon – that place toward which we move and work where all beings have peace and love. My leadership mentor, Tyson Casey, says, “While we must always have a horizon in mind, we mustn’t neglect the steps directly in front of us. The next few steps are as important as the horizon toward which we are walking. And the way we make those steps influences the paths we move along. The “knowing and being” of that horizon in each step we make becomes clearer as we walk forward, together—always returning to what is, while at the same time becoming what could be.”
What could be, friends? When you imagine the future of this community, what do you hope is true? What do you feel is possible?
During the leadership forum, I was a part of the Outreach breakout group and heard so many brilliant ideas – all about how to talk to each other and those in the wider community about who we are and what we really mean when we say we widen love’s circle. The strategic plan and outreach goals are unidirectional – they look into the future, they focus on growth, they imagine what could be possible.
I think of stewardship campaigns the same way I think about presidential elections. Instead of imaging the act of voting for one person as an answer to all our troubles, I ask myself, “which candidate will lead and speak for a country that I can organize in?”
Instead of thinking of stewardship campaigns as a time when money talk dirties our customary talk of justice, peace, and love, perhaps we can think about how financial generosity creates conditions and spaces in which we can organize and do the work that’s only ours to do.
When we were talking about our similar Planned Parenthood to Unitarian Universalism experiences, your Board Vice President and I noted that it took both of us a good long while to develop the depth of engagement and commitment to our community that we have now. We both likened our experience to planting a seed that took many years to sprout the roots and flowers that our Unitarian Universalism has today. You never know what seeds that are planted will grow to become.
We never know what will be possible when we plant a seed of love, of hope, of justice, of action deep in someone’s heart. But what we can know for sure is the garden of beloved community that we exist in and tend today is the fruit and flower of seeds planted years, even generations ago.
Okay, Rev. You wanna tell them how much money we need?
Part 4 ~ Colin Bossen
$750,000, that is this year’s goal. It is the same as last year’s goal. We have not quite met that target. As a result the congregation’s finances have been in a bit of a pinch. We have had to leave our Communications Coordinator position open and reduce some of what we offer.
Meeting the goal of $750,000 will empower this congregation to do so much in the world. It will put us in solid financial shape as we continue our search for an Assistant Minister. It will position us to live out dissent as a religious practice.
Dissent as a religious practice, I am going to take us there in a moment. But let me tell you what the stewardship team is asking of the congregation in this year’s campaign “Living our Mission.” They are encouraging a 10% increase in your pledge and hoping for 15 new households to pledge to support First Unitarian Universalist.
A 10% increase, of course, if you can do more than that it would make an even greater difference. Right now, with rising inflation, with a vicious illegal war of choice, some members of our congregation are struggling to make ends meet. I suspect that somewhere in the congregation are a few folks who could double or even triple last year’s pledge to help support our members who cannot do that. I also hope that a few of you who do not pledge will be stirred enough by John Clark’s story of the closure of First New Orleans to recognize the importance of pledging. It takes the generosity of all of us build “a love place” where we do “love work” together.
Now, I am not going to channel my inner Marvin Sapp and close the doors of the sanctuary until everyone turns in pledge cards or makes commitments to increase your pledges. Instead, I am going to remind you that by making a pledge you are saying to the members of the congregation, and the wider Houston community, “You are loved. You are a blessing.” Try saying it to each other again.
You are loved. You are a blessing. Today is the day that, as a religious community, we declare that what binds us together is the knowledge that all have the possibility to love and to bless.
In making our pledges, we proclaim that everyone has the power to love and bless. And we say no to those who would limit love and blessing to a few. We declare that they are universal. In doing so, we collectively dissent from those who would inscribe their reactionary theologies into the legal codes of Texas and attempt to carry them into the halls of Congress. We tell each other, we have the power to dissent from those who would use ancient, sacred, texts, written for other communities and other times, to object to modern medical procedures, limit women’s rights, attack the LGBTQIA community, and justify illegal wars. We remind each other, we have the power to love, bless, and dissent because we commit each year, each stewardship Sunday, to contribute something significant to sustain the life of First Unitarian Universalist.
The name of this year’s stewardship campaign is “Living Our Mission.” We say that our vision is widening love’s circle. Widening the circle of love, bringing our shared dream of building the Beloved Community, both within our beautiful brick walls and without, has committed us to building “a growing multicultural, multigenerational, and multiracial congregation in the city’s diverse urban center.”
Building such a community is something that we can only do together. It is a religious practice. Together we can maintain a place to gather and name for each other the deepest truths in our lives. Together, we can create a community where we say that these truths shall not be held as private, they should, they must, be spoken in public. Together we can learn from, embrace, nurture, each other. Together we can live out the words of our covenant and “encourage one another.”
Encourage one another, I offer the sermon on the amount because it is your financial commitments that make so much possible. They make it possible for people like Nina and our Board Vice President to have life changing experiences. They make it possible for our congregation to bring beauty and justice into the world. They make it possible… I will let you complete that sentence.
Today, please consider making your pledge, increasing your pledge by 10% or more if you can do it. That will allow us to make our goal of $750,000. It will enable us to live our mission. It is one way we say to each other, “You are loved. You are a blessing.”
You are loved. You are a blessing. That it might be so, I invite the congregation to say Amen.
