Rev. Matt Alspaugh For an animal blessing service. Introduction Some preachers always start a sermon with a joke. I thought I’d try that out. Here is the requisite joke: A pastor had been called to a church and on his first Sunday was dismayed to find that one of the lay leaders of the congregation … Continue reading Sermon: May 8, 2017 – “I Believe in Dog”
A series of homilies presented as part of the UU White Supremacy Teach-In, April 30, 2017. Homily: “Receiving and Giving (My Odyssey as a Unitarian Universalist)” Jim Rogers When Molly called me this week about the subject matter today, and asked would I participate, she also mentioned she didn’t want to put me on the … Continue reading Homilies: April 30, 2017 — “Building a New Way”
Matt Alspaugh Reading – from “The Starfish and the Spider” – Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom By 1521, just two years after Cortes first laid eyes on [the Aztec capital city of] Tenchtitlán, the entire Aztec empire … had collapsed. The Aztecs weren’t alone. A similar fate befell the Incas. The Spanish army, led by … Continue reading Sermon: Mar 26, 2017 – “The Starfish and the Spider”
Sermon – Part 1 “One World, Divided” Introduction – Population Risk When we read the responsive reading, “The Body is Humankind” (SLT 651), I asked you to correct the text, to replace four billion cells with seven billion cells, for there are currently about seven billion people in the world. That’s three billion more than … Continue reading Sermon: March 19, 2017 – “One World, Divided”
Sermon “Risk, Change, and Risking Change” Matt Alspaugh March 12, 2017 Introduction There is this story about a monastery in Europe perched high on a cliff hundreds of feet in the air. The only way to reach the monastery is in a basket, which was pulled to the top by monks who reeled the basket … Continue reading Sermon: March 12, 2017, “Risk, Change, and Risking Change”
Matt Alspaugh
Introduction
Last week, Liz and I returned from a two week Spanish immersion program in the Yucatán, in Mexico. The immersion was a lovely mix of several things: language, certainly, but also art, culture, and history. For the first week. our maestra, a local college level language teacher, worked with us in both Spanish, but could explain in English if necessary. For the second week, we had a different instructor who knew little English, or else pretended that he new little English, so we had to communicate in Spanish. and if that didn’t work, he was an actor so we ended up doing a lot of miming and acting stuff out.
Matt Alspaugh – A storm is brewing. Some of you remember the days before weather apps on your phone, before 21 day forecasts, before even computerized weather prediction, maybe even before weather satellites. A time when the prediction from the weatherman was really no more than prophecy.
You’d read the sky for storms, red sky in the morning – sailor’s warning, or the green sky presaging hail or tornadoes. You’d watch the dial of the barometer on the wall, comparing the two needles to discern dropping air pressure. With flags flapping, trees beginning to move in freshets of wind, you might look apprehensively at the line of dark clouds, and do the very few things you could to prepare. For us, it was to put the lawn furniture and the garbage cans in the garage, and then just hunker down inside, to see if this one was just a typical storm, or ‘the big one’.
Matt Alspaugh — “What was I thinking?” I’m asking myself now as I put together this sermon. This is the second of a series on our Seven Principles, this one focusing on the second principle, our affirmation and promotion of “justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.” Fair enough, but our monthly theme is, “What does it mean to be a community of prophecy?” OK, second principle, prophecy, but also this is Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and it seems wrong to leave him out. But King was kind of a prophet, so maybe. But there’s more — our Annual Meeting follows this service, so I ought to at least touch on what is salient for UUYO. And maybe I should tie it all up with that bible verse from Amos that this sermon is named after – “Let justice roll down like a river”. You might put on life preservers – this could be a wild ride!
Sermon – “Every Person Counts”
Introduction
Years ago, I took a pottery class at a local park. We learned the basics of throwing pots, of smashing a lump of clay down on the center of the wheel, then gradually bringing the wheel up to speed as we pushed the lump into a more or less hemispherical blob, perfectly centered on the wheel. That was the first hard thing – get it wrong and nothing else would go right.
Then the next step was to somehow push down in the center and with your other hand on the outside, begin to draw up the wall of a pot. Keeping your hands wet, always keeping your hands wet, moving over this wall, you could gradually elongate and thin the material and give it a graceful form.
Or maybe it would buckle and cave in — as it did for me, again and again. I think I was cursed with genetically too-dry hands. Or my sense of center was off. Or something.
Matt Alspaugh Introduction – My Apple Store Experience Last week I went to the Apple Store in Cleveland to get help. My five-year old MacBook — that’s ancient in computer-years — my five year old computer needed attention. Now if you’ve ever been to the Apple Store, you know it is a temple to technology, … Continue reading Sermon: Nov 29, 2016 – “Thick Stories, Thin Stories”
