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This is a full list of sermons presented at UUCCSM since mid-1999. Links to sermon texts are included when made available by their authors. Audio recordings are also available for most sermons presented after September, 2007 by our staff ministers and others directly affiliated with our church (just click the speaker icon next to each sermon where it's available*). Audio from guest speakers is posted only when we have their permission to share it.
Hard copies of sermons by Rev. Jeremiah Kalendae are available in the church office. Contact office assistant Sibylla Nash at office@uusm.org if you have a request.
"Leaving Room for Hope: Sermons for Uncertain Times," a book of Minister Emerita Judith Meyer's sermons, is available here.
**Please Note: Video recordings are available for sermons with a small TV icon showing at the bottom of the sermon listing. Just click the icon to watch the service.**
Once we’re lucky enough to find love and intimacy — with a single person or in community — we then encounter the work of sustaining and protecting that relationship. In her last sermon as UUCCSM’s Acting Minister, Rev. Erika presents her Ten Commandments (...or are they “Suggestions”?) of Love. (Note: our summer schedule continues this week, with one service at 10:00 a.m.)
When does confidentiality turn into secret-keeping? Whose secrets do we keep, and why? How do we discern whether to violate secrecy — especially when the secret belongs to someone else? Join us as we devote some time to considering which of our secrets are sacred, and which ones don’t serve us. (Note: our summer schedule begins today, with one service only at 10:00 a.m.)
Without knowing it, we UUs create and — if we’re not mindful — perpetuate certain myths. From “you can believe anything you want” to “we prize individualism.” Rev. Erika counters some of the most egregious UU myths with (what UU leader Michael Durall calls) Helpful Heresies.
Join us in celebrating our wonderful RE program participants of all ages, and the volunteers who serve as teachers, advisors and facilitators, with a very special interactive story about the courage it takes to stand up for your values and change the world. Each of our children’s RE classes will take part in leading the service, and we’ll also be honoring this year’s crop of graduating high school seniors with a special Bridging Ceremony.
A major national survey shows that 72% of Millennials (18 to 29 years old) consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” Their social economy follows the laws of sharing and recommending brands, and they live via life narration (“If there are no pics, it didn’t happen”). What do the new social media and social economy mean for how we “do” church?
Join us in celebrating the Coming of Age of Jake Brunell, Katy Hoffman, Katie Kinsinger, Mari Nunan, Paice Van Ooyen, Ava Walderman, and Jacob Weiner as they share their religious credos in a worship service of their own design.
We’ve all made mistakes, but some of us live with regrets that we can’t quite shake. How do we escape the ghost of “coulda, woulda, shoulda” to make peace with the ways that we’ve severed ourselves from possibility? Is there freedom from regret? Come consider the spiritual richness of choosing where to orient our hope.
Rev. Erika believes that there must be Something Larger Than Us, or we risk putting ourselves at the center of the universe. Your “something larger” can be the collective unconscious, The Holy, or even creativity. It can be whatever you want to name it — but something shifts when we’re willing to let “it” be out there, beyond our human selves. In this sermon, Erika explores how the act of praying, of opening, isn’t just about living from a place of deep spirituality — it also has everything to do with the freedom of imagination.
In his 2010 book, “God Is Not One,” religion scholar Stephen Prothero argues that religious traditions point to profoundly different realities, and thus each tradition explores a problem and poses a solution to that problem. This morning Rev. Erika will explore his premise, challenging the long-standing but often unexamined notion that all religions are “different paths up the same mountain.”
Happy Earth Day! Although it’s a stereotype that all Unitarian Universalists love nature, you might say that reverence for the natural world is in our religious DNA. The Transcendentalists — our spiritual ancestors — viewed nature as “the face and essence of God.” In Part 2 of her Transcendentalism series, Erika will tell a Tale of Two Trees, inspired by writings of Henry David Thoreau (and others) that reveal a unique legacy: belief in the Divine presence in the natural world.
