Your Life Is A Gospel Quotes

“More specifically, the Hebrew Bible tells the story of a people who move away from slavery under Pharaoh—a system that requires many people to produce more and more with less and less for the few with power, that requires them to give their lives to production in order to enhance the wealth of the powerful (in other words, the “rat race”)—into a covenant with their God and with each other. This covenant lifts up the ideal of “neighborhood”—a community in which the members care for one another, share in abundance, acquire no more than is needed, and especially look out for the poorest or the least powerful of those in the neighborhood (in the language of the Old Testament prophets: “the widow, the immigrant, and the orphan”).”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“The desire for moments of transcendence and the work of bringing them into our experience—this is the heart of all religion, really. But, there is a freeness in how we practice it. There’s no book to give us all the answers, no one teacher to feed us the truth. Instead, it falls to us to be aware of “I”—to be aware of ourselves being aware of the world around us, to embrace our experiences, to lift up the ones that move us beyond the ordinary, that humble us and hold us in awe, and to share them with one another. What greater gift could we give each other than to sit down together, carve out this time, and share those rare and wonderful moments of transcendence?”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“no matter the acuity of our senses, no matter how educated we are or how good we are or how much conviction we live our lives with, we can never experience the wholeness of the answer within our own fragile and limited selves. We need one another to achieve a vision of wholeness.”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“Our forebears envisioned a unified and a unifying faith, and yet somehow we have devolved in some corners of our movement into a metaphysical, theological wrestling match (often more pay-per-view style than Olympic rules).”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“People’s experiences of the Holy are filtered through and expressed within the confines of their existing language and culture.”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“The purpose of the church is to say “no” to a world that demands divisions among us, asks us to live in fear of scarcity, tells us to put ourselves ahead of others, and generally devalue everyone and everything around us as if this were a competition to see who could amass more of anything. To that we say “no!” We attempt to live a life together that contradicts what the world would demand of us, and we live that life out loud, in public. Because our fates are all bound together, we are called to lead the world by our example—to model the world we wish to see. In living together this way, we attempt to save the world.”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“Our assignment of worth to others, our unconditional love of even those who would seem most unworthy of it, becomes our response to those who deny us the same. Rather than hating in kind, rather than putting away the other in a box marked “them,” we must choose to grant humanity even to the seemingly inhuman. The work of dehumanization ends at our doorstep. The work of restoring humanity begins in this room.”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“The legacy of our Unitarian forebears is calling us back to the real purpose of the church: To walk together in the ways of God, of the Spirit of life and love, of the interdependent web. To proclaim those ways that are known and seek those yet to be known. To grow a soul. To seek freely in community. And to live out this purpose in public, so that others might see our light, find their own, and enter into community with us so that our search may grow ever broader, ever deeper. So that all souls may grow together in harmony.”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009

“Yes, we are, all of us, bound together in creation. Yes, we are, all of us, worthy of a place at creation’s table. And there is no connection to creation that can be eternally broken. And there is nothing we can do to forever lose our place at the table. Our divisions are the little hells of our own creation, and so neither are they eternal. The only thing eternal is the love of God, or the Spirit of Life, or the web of all existence, or whatever you wish to call that which ties the fate of all humanity together. It has not yet given up on us. So we shall neither give up on it.”
― John Cullinan, Your Life Is a Gospel: Selected Sermons 2007-2009