Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula Unknown

In this sermon, Jan Briedé will draw on his personal experience from working at a Leprosy Center in Uganda, Africa in 1978 and 1979 to discuss liberation theology, social and economic justice and lay a connection to our UU faith.

Jan Briedé has been a member of the UUFP since 2000. Originally from Holland, he became a US citizen in 1994 and has been married to Donna for forty-two years. Jan has a PhD in Range Science from New Mexico State University and works for the Department of Environmental Quality. As a state employee of a certain age, he is currently in mandatory self-isolation. Early in his career, Jan worked in international development in Uganda, Nepal and Yemen.

This year’s Easter Sunday will feature empty churches as worshipers keep themselves at home to help “flatten the curve”. How will the good news of Easter be celebrated when people can’t gather in person to sing and rejoice? What might we find in the story of Easter to give us hope and courage in these difficult times?

Sixty-five years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a society based on equal justice, equal opportunities and love for our neighbors. However, today we are still trying to live up to Dr. King’s hopeful, transformational moral vision of the Beloved Community. How can we reimagine and recast the vision of the Beloved Community for the times we are living today? What would a reimagined Beloved Community look like and feel like if it became real to us?

The Rev. Sherman Z. Logan, Jr. is Executive Minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond VA and is currently serving as a member of the UUA Board of Trustees. He was ordained to the Baptist Ministry in 2006 and was granted Ministerial Fellowship by the UUA in 2014. Rev. Sherman is married to Franka and they are proud parents to four daughters, a son and two Jack Russell Terriers; they are also doting grandparents to three girls and two boys.

In 1889, Joseph Jordan became the first ordained African-American Universalist minister, and the church he founded became the First Universalist Church of Norfolk. With support from the Universalist General Convention, Jordan expanded the church with a school for African-American children and founded another Universalist school in Suffolk that served generations of African-American families through the 1980s.

As we celebrate this Mother’s Day, a secular holiday thanks to Anna Jarvis, her mother Ann Reeves Jarvis and the Unitarian Julia Ward Howe, let’s consider the older religious holiday of “Mothering Sunday”, a day to visit the church of one’s baptism, to take a break from Lenten fasting, and to gather violets for children to give to their mothers.

We’ll also celebrate the very successful conclusion of this year’s Canvass!

Many of us were never really mainstream or always had unorthodox ways of looking at things. Perhaps we never felt like we “fit in”. For some of us, our occupations turned out to be non-conventional or require “creative” thinking. Does that mean joining Unitarian Universalism — not exactly a “mainstream” religion — wasn’t that much of a surprise? And once we arrived at that unique place, did we embrace it or only worry about our “elevator speech”? Let’s celebrate our individual journeys, our diversity, our uniqueness, and how being so different actually brings us all together.

Steve Kadar became a UU in 1987 and has been a member of the UUFP since 2006. He began his UU journey at First UU in Richmond and was a founding member of UUCC in Glen Allen. Steve currently serves on the Policy Board, the Real Estate Task Force and the Membership Committee.