As part of EqualityToledo's weekend celebration of the lives and achievements of lesbians and gay males and other sexual minorities, we will be exhibiting at the church a collection of the Shower of Stoles. I will be participating in the afternoon interfaith service at Monroe St. United Methodist Church (details elsewhere in the newsletter). My sermon will deal with the root causes of homophobia-fear and hatred of homosexuals. I believe that only if we understand this assault on certain human beings can we effectively fight against it. I am proud to belong to a religious movement that has been openly and aggressively asserting for full rights for homosexuals for the past quarter century and more. Please join us for our Celebration of Life and for the Interfaith Service at 4:00 that afternoon. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

This sermon grows out of a paper I did for a clergy study group a dozen years ago, a topic chosen by the group because we recognized the central importance in human life of sexuality. It is a two part sermon-based on a very much longer paper-about the attitudes we have regarding sex (Part I) and the sources of those attitudes (Part II-February 3). Please join us for our Celebration of Life! Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

J. Edgar Hoover, then Director of the F.B. I., is the source of that quote. He is talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., and as strange as it feels to agree with Hoover, on that description I do agree with him, though for very different reasons. I will discuss those reasons in our Celebration of the Life of this great moral leader of the 20th century. Please join us! Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

This sermon was originally scheduled for December 16, when snow and ice changed all our plans and no service was held. The sermon deals with the dream of "peace on earth, good will to all" and the wars that seem to smother that dream, and where religion fits into the dream and the nightmare that too often overwhelms it. Please join us for our Celebration of Life. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

What a wondrous creature is man--how like the angels, and yet how savage a beast. In the face of such man-made horrors as war, greed, and hatred, not to mention natural disasters--is there a higher power to whom we can turn? Is there an immutable presence from whom we can draw meaning, comfort and guidance? Are you there, God?

Several Weeks ago I identified seven different attitudes about and understandings of sex. In this sermon I will try to trace the sources of those attitudes. How did we come to think of sex as shame, sin, selling, statistics, struggle, serendipity, and salvation? To grapple seriously with the challenge of human sexuality, so deeply a part of so many of the issues that confront us as a society and as individuals, we must have a sense of where we get our ideas from and why. Please join us for our Celebration of Life. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

February 12 is Charles Darwin Day around the world. He was born on February 12, 1809, the same day as Abraham Lincoln. Influential as Lincoln was and is, he pales into near insignificance when placed alongside Darwin. What Daniel Dennett called "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" has turned the world upside down in many ways, giving humanity a new and powerful explanatory tool for understanding who we are and how we came to be. To say that the idea was and remains controversial, despite its near unanimous acceptance by scientists, is only to state the obvious. As much as any area of human concern, religion has been profoundly affected by Darwin and his thoughts. I want to discuss Darwin, his ideas, and why they matter. UU's celebrate Darwin, and so shall we on this Sunday, his 199th birthday! Please join us, and bring a friend who might want to know more about Darwin or UU's! Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

Some Unitarian Universalists may have a difficult time articulating their faith. Rev. Kerr, Minister of Religious Education at First Unitarian Church of Toledo, examines how we define our religion and challenges us to think about our beliefs beyond explaining what it is that we don't believe.

It's easy to take for granted the miraculous inventions found in our pockets and purses, on our car dashboards, and on our desks at home. What I find interesting is, the more I learn about them, the more amazing they seem! Sunday, February 24, let's stop being highly sophisticated know-it-all U.U.'s for a few minutes, and bask in childlike wonder at the miracles around us. Come for an hour of, "Wow!" "That's amazing!" and "I had no idea!"

Our understanding of the world has changed profoundly over the past several centuries. Because of that, our language has changed too. Terms that once had a rich meaning for people may well not be emptied of meaning. Other terms may still be in use but have come to have quite different meanings. Unbound by doctrinal rules, UU's have the chance to look at traditional terms to see what meaning remains in them and how we might use them. I have devoted a portion of my sermons across the years to looking at terms from our heritage-like grace, prayer, community, heaven, hell, ritual, myth, worship, etc.--to see of what use they may be to us. This Sunday I want to consider transcendence. Please join us for our Celebration of Life. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

One of the hot topics of the past year has been atheism. Half a dozen best-selling books have been published, and talk shows have featured the authors of these books. Numerous reviews and critical essays have appeared defending or attacking these books and the positive approach to atheism they take. Because in UU circles atheism is simply one of the many possible theological options open to us (the UUA once had a pamphlet titled, Can An Atheist Be Religious?, to which the answer was, yes, of course), it seems worthwhile to explore what atheism is and how it has developed, and what it might mean in our times. Please join us for our Celebration of Life. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

Spring is a time of rebirth and new growth. Celebrate the new beginnings in the life of our congregational family, especially the dedication of several babies and young children. Childcare will be available, but all ages are welcome in the service. The service isn't just for kids and will be an interactive experience for all.

Have you had to return an item to a store recently? Has a retail employee ever ignored you? Couldn't we all benefit from living from a customer service philosophy?

This sermon is a meditation on Genesis 22, one of the most troubling passages in the Hebrew Bible. It is a tale of Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac,"as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." It is a cruel and horrifying request from anyone, but from a deity it is particularly odious. Understandably Jews through the centuries have devoted a lot of attention to this awful story. Because the theme of fathers killing sons is too familiar-is not war older men, fathers, sending their sons off to be killed?-it is worth pondering what we might learn from this ancient legendary episode. Please join us for our Celebration of Life. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

There are many different elements needed to make a successful community. None is more important than commitment. I want to share some thoughts about what is involved in commitment and why it is so important. MVUUC is in the process right now of re-thinking its mission statement, of trying to decide how as a congregation it wants to move into the future. Whatever decision is made, the only way it can be brought into reality is through commitment by the whole congregation, of time and energy and money and creativity. Please join us for our Celebration of Life. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

When I was a child, one of my favorite songs was Irving Berlin's Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep. I still like. He was a wonderful songwriter. In this case, he was also expressing what I feel is an important truth of our lives: that it is wise from time to time to count the many ways in which our lives are blessed. I want to talk about why blessings are important and what I think some of our blessings are. Please join us for our Celebration of Life. Click here to download the complete text of his sermon.

On December 14, 1941, my father, a Presbyterian minister, delivered a sermon to his congregation in Nashville, Tennessee about the dreadful events of the previous Sunday and what they meant. I have borrowed his title because we, like him and the world in 1941, are living in parlous times and we need to think clearly about our values, our goals, our hopes, and the means we intend to use to attain our purposes. Please join us for our Celebration of Life.