Sermon: Hope and Hyperobjects

Call to Worship

As we begin this new year, we come together to reflect on our shared commitment to this community. Today marks the opening of our annual stewardship drive, a time we invite each other to move forward boldly. Stewardship means more than maintaining our church building; it reflects our shared responsibility to nurture a community rooted in Unitarian Universalist values of justice, compassion, and transformation. While last year’s stewardship drive asked for greater bravery in giving, this year brings a significant shift in focus. With our mortgage soon to be paid off, we anticipate the opportunity to reimagine how we invest in our shared mission.

 The work we do as a community is not something that happens passively; it requires us to show up, to offer what we can, and to contribute in ways that support the greater whole. In many Christian faith spaces, funding often comes from external sources such as denominational support, tithes mandated by doctrine, or even large endowments built over generations. However, our congregation relies entirely on the voluntary contributions of our members and friends to sustain our ministries, programs, and operations. This calls us to reimagine what it means to be a church, a sacred community we actively co-create through our shared resources and commitments. 

Generosity, as a core Unitarian Universalist value, calls us to share what we have, our resources, our time, and our talents, in service of creating a more just and compassionate world. Generosity fuels our work of social justice, enabling us to challenge systems of oppression and extend support to those in need. It also sustains the connections between us, nurturing a community and inviting us to see ourselves not as isolated individuals but as interconnected parts of a larger whole, where the well-being of one impacts the well-being of all. It is through acts of generosity that we transform our values into tangible actions, building a church that embodies love, equity, and inclusion. May this practice of giving, in all its forms, become a spiritual discipline, reminding us of our shared commitments, as we prepare to worship together. 

Responsive Reading: Holding The Story

One:
We hold a story.
All:
A story that begins in my heart and shapes my journey.

One:
My story is intertwined with the stories of those around me.
All:
Through our connections, our individual stories grow and deepen.

One:
We share our story, and in doing so, I create community.
All:
Our shared experiences and dreams are a collective narrative, speaking of hope and possibility.

One:
This community extends beyond these walls, reaching far and wide.
All:
The love, justice, and care we cultivate here spreads to our neighborhood, our city, our world.

One:
As my story grows, it touches the past, and those yet to come.
All:
Together, we are part of a story that heals, builds, and transforms the world.

One:
Each act of generosity creates a legacy.
All:
A story of love, justice, and connection that grows and stretches across time and space.

One:
Together, we are creating something eternal.
All:
A story that will be told for generations, ever-growing and expanding.

Sermon: 

Even as we open our hearts and minds to the spirit of generosity, we are aware that discussing money can feel uncomfortable, even taboo. The act of naming it during our call to worship highlights this discomfort; I, too, wrestle in my own body, balancing the sacred and the material. I know that for myself, as someone who has experienced both financial comfort and extreme poverty, my struggle in talking about money from the pulpit relates to the idea of upholding money as an object of spiritual value. 

The pulpit, for me, is a place reserved for the sacred, a space to explore the deepest truths, wrestle with the profound mysteries of existence, and call our community toward collective transformation. Money, on the other hand, does not strike me as sacred. I would not go so far as to call money profane; tools alone aren’t really capable of holding moral value. But to hold money up in the same breath as love, justice, or connection feels dissonant, as though I am asking the holy to share space with the mundane. 

A philosophical concept that helps me untangle the complexities of history, how we as religious liberals have approached both capital and oppression, is the idea of a hyperobject, a term coined by philosopher Timothy Morton in relation to the climate crisis. A hyperobject describes phenomena so vast and interconnected that they defy our usual understanding of time, space, and scale. These are forces we cannot fully grasp or pin down, yet they shape our lives profoundly. The church, in many ways, is a hyperobject. 

Imagine visiting here for the first time and saying, “I would like to see the church.” We might show you the classrooms, the chapel, the tiny houses. and the worship supplies. We look at our worship supplies, our orders of service, our archives. We sing from our hymnal, we sit in our south foyer, we eat together in the social hall. But still you ask, “where is the church?” Because the church isn’t just this building. It isn’t just what we do on Sundays. And it isn’t even our collective actions. Our church is all these things and more, bigger than what we can see or name.

Hyperobjects, such as climate change, systemic oppression, or even the idea of church, disrupt our perception of time by exposing vast forces that extend beyond human scales and comprehension. These phenomena exist simultaneously in the deep past, the present moment, and an unknowable future, challenging the linear narratives we construct to make sense of our lives. This disruption of time, much like what we invoked into our bodies last Sunday, challenges how we perceive ourselves and our place in the world. To become suddenly aware of how large and uncaring time is, how it stretches endlessly before and behind us, can feel disorienting. 

Viewing the church through the lens of a hyperobject helps us grasp its true nature, not merely as a building or set of actions but as an interconnected, evolving presence encompassing the tangible and intangible. Similarly, when we consider the forces of oppression, a hyperobject perspective reveals their omnipresence and their refusal to be confined to specific historical moments. While it is tempting to pinpoint their origins, whether in the 1930s, the 1860s, or as far back as the 1490s, this framing risks reducing oppression to an external or finite phenomenon. 

Within this unsettling awareness lies a powerful truth: if oppression is woven into the fabric of our existence, so too is the potential for liberation. Just as we can feel dwarfed by time’s vastness, we can also find empowerment in the realization that our actions, however small, contribute to the larger story of justice and transformation. Each act of generosity, each commitment to equity, and each step toward interdependence resonates beyond the boundaries of this moment.

I was raised Unitarian Universalist, and throughout my life, I have belonged to or been involved with an array of Unitarian congregations. Each congregation has its own governance model, unique internal culture, and distinctive ways of expressing and embodying Unitarian Universalist values. If I were to take you on a journey to the churches that have shaped my life, you would encounter a distinct story at each stop, a distinct hyperobject. 

This diversity has not only shaped my understanding of our faith but has also deepened my appreciation for its flexibility and resilience. As Unitarian Universalists, our values call us to confront forces of oppression not just as political entities but as deeply ethical and theological issues. For me, this means embracing a theological stance against the ways churches, as institutions, are embedded within systems of colonialism, white supremacy, and other structures of power. This is why our work as a faith community matters so deeply. We are not merely resisting external forces; we are also engaged in the vital, ongoing internal work of transformation. 

This transformation often calls us to hold multiple coexisting truths, even when they challenge us. For instance, we can celebrate the milestone of building ownership, recognizing the greater resources, security, and flexibility it brings. This achievement not only strengthens our ability to build the beloved community we seek but also supports our progression toward economic justice. Our commitment to raising the minimum wage for all staff to $20 an hour moves us closer to providing a true living wage, an act that reflects our understanding of fair compensation as a moral imperative rather than merely a financial matter.

At the same time, we recognize that even as we celebrate owning this building outright, we cannot ignore the deeper context in which this ownership exists This building stands on stolen land, a stark reminder of the American genocide and the ongoing legacies of colonialism and white supremacy. We are both stronger and more complicit than ever, holding the tension between the security of what we have built together and the injustices embedded in the systems that make it possible.

The only way I can talk about money from this pulpit is to tie it to the sacred work we do. Money itself is not sacred, but the work we do together as a faith community is. I recognize that my discomfort comes from not only lifting up money as a sacred object, but also from the tension inherent to the hyperobject that is the society in which I exist. This tension mirrors our larger, collective struggle with pledge season. My own discomfort with how the system of church operates is shaped, in part, by years of poverty. I have often felt that my ability to offer time and talent was seen as unequal to financial contributions. In this space, however, a space we are creating together, offerings of energy are held as equal to donations of money, though they lack the clear, quantifiable value that dollars provide. In many ways, this makes them even more significant. 

This pledge drive is just one piece of the learning I am doing while I am here. As someone in a leadership role, I know my UU experience is not universal. My experience of feeling "othered" due to poverty is not inherent to the UU experience, even if our denomination as a whole struggles with issues of affluence. Despite our stated opposition to oppression and colonialism, colonialism is often the hyperobject that keeps the lights on.

As we enter a new phase of our life as a congregation, adjusting to what it means to own our building, these non-monetary contributions will only grow in importance. Together, we are reimagining what it means to create a community sustained by generosity in all its forms. This doesn’t absolve us of responsibility. In fact, it calls us to greater accountability. Marginalized communities, particularly trans, BIPOC, and disabled individuals, are under increasing threat, as policies of hate and exclusion proliferate, and, I don’t like leaning on the idea that we are just now approaching a time where things are going to be very bad for trans, queer, and BIPOC beloveds. This isn’t new. This isn’t a slow creep. 

It is essential to recognize that milestones like paying off our mortgage exists within the larger context of time and the interconnected systems that shape us. As someone who resides within this hyperobject of church, I am as prone as anyone to viewing time as a snapshot rather than an ongoing process. Paying off the mortgage is undeniably a monumental achievement, providing us with the potential to radically transform how this community engages with itself and the wider world. It marks a turning point in which the financial needs are shifted, creating new possibilities for ministry, outreach, and care.

The truth is, I won’t be here to witness the full extent of these changes. I am a guest in this space. While I see the contributions of interns before me all around me, and I know the presence I bring does not simply vanish when I leave, I also recognize the privilege of stepping into this timeline, participating in the narrative, and stepping back out. In the story of this congregation, I am a chapter, and you, our members, congregants, and staff, are the book. You are the ongoing story still being told.

In this moment, I see a community on the cusp of transformation, equipped with the strength, resilience, and vision to navigate the complexities of its unfolding story. This narrative is rooted in the deep soil of love that transcends boundaries and justice that challenges the status quo. How will the work you do today, your acts of generosity, your commitment to justice, and your embrace of interconnection, ripple outward, touching lives far beyond what any of us can see? This is your story to craft, a story I am honored to witness, and it is one that will resonate long into the future, too vast and complex to fully grasp, forming the beloved community we seek. Amen and blessed be.