Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

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Rachel Mackintosh © 31 March 2024

I preached in this church last year on Easter Sunday. My theme was resurrection — I spoke about the power of love over hate. In the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Knowing that when life is gone, love is left for shining.”

Since then, as most of you know, I have become a widow. My husband and your minister Clay Nelson died last November. In preparing for this year’s Easter Sunday service, I have read all eight of the Easter sermons he preached here in this church. I have seen that he talked about the necessity of experiencing Good Friday if we are to experience Easter.

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

Audio to come

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Rachel Mackintosh © 9th April 2023

At the risk of being grandiose, I begin this sermon a bit like the person who wrote the gospel of Mark. It’s more than 40 years since I read Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time. I have thought about it and talked about it since, but I haven’t relived it. (I didn’t watch the film because I didn’t want to risk my memory being ruined.)

Here is my telling of the bits that have stuck with me, with some interpositions along the way.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 17 April 2022

Sherlock Holmes, the master of deductive reasoning, tells us in The Sign of the Four: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” 

His approach minutely analyses a clue, making huge claims about the information it must contain. From a stocking found in the river he arrives at the height, weight, social class and personal history of the victim.

Dr Watson is an undeclared Unitarian. Being a scientist, he methodically collects the clues that Holmes finds and does the boring tests and legwork to make the case hang together. He is unwilling to accept the conclusion until the weight of evidence supports it. Dr Watson favours inductive reasoning.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 10 April 2022

The Christian world is beginning Holy Week this week. I know that because it always begins the Sunday before Easter with Palm Sunday, the celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. I know today is that day because all this week I’ve been inexplicably humming a song I used to teach the children of my parish on Palm Sunday years ago when my theology was more uncritical. I can’t remember all the verses, being old and all, but here are some snippets.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 4 April 2021

There is no getting around it. Our rationalist faith doesn’t “get” Easter. We get Christmas. Jesus was born. We get Good Friday. Jesus died. We don’t get Easter. If we think about it at all, we struggle with the idea of resurrection. Our first reaction is to dismiss what we don’t understand or can’t relate to. Even if we know the stories about Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem, what Christians celebrate as Holy Week, they can feel old, dusty and irrelevant to our lives. Too much suspension of disbelief is required to take them any more seriously than fairy tales. As a result, many Unitarians find Easter as empty of meaning as the tomb. Why bother going to the effort to roll back the stone? There is nothing to see … or is there?

With Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 12 April 2020

One of the blessings of now being a UU minister, having moved on from Anglicanism, is I don’t have to begin an Easter talk by explaining that the events of Passover and Easter are not history. They are stories, albeit powerful ones. They are not literally true. The blood of the lamb did not protect the Hebrew people from the plague killing Egypt’s first born. The bodily resurrection of Jesus did not take place. That means I can skip right to why the stories have been told for millennia. I can jump in with both feet as to why Unitarians should still tell them, even those of us who are dyed-in-the-wool humanists who have exchanged divinity for reason. Are we open to the possibility that these stories can draw us in and transform us anyway? Are these stories just old, dusty accounts from the past or might they still have some contemporary relevance if we can just shed, even if only for today, our disbelief?

with Rev. Clay Nelson

Due to a brief illness no new talk was prepared for this week, you can find the text of this talk at Roots and Wings of a Unitarian Lent.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Opening Words are We Don’t Know What Happened
by Unitarian minister Daniel Budd.

Clay Nelson © 21 April 2019

I may have told this story on Easter before, but the Easter story has been recounted a couple of thousand times. So, I have precedents.

My daughter had little choice when she was young about being active in church. She went to a church kindy. She went to an Episcopal School for girls her first two years in primary while I finished seminary. She went to Sunday School. She sang in the choir and earned awards as her skills improved. She was an acolyte when girls were first allowed to serve at the altar. She was active in the church youth group. As she was showered with love, affection and attention by the congregations I served, she didn’t seem to mind her life as a PK (a preacher’s kid).

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Rev. Clay Nelson © 1^st April 2018

In one of my last Easter Day sermons at St Matthew’s I opened with how difficult I found preaching on the Day of Resurrection in a Christian context:

Look out! Here comes the preacher walking the Easter sermon tightrope!

Can he balance the life-giving message of joy and hope that the ancient story of resurrection suggests, with the progressive theology and openness St Matthew’s embodies?

Can he make it across safely to the other side without falling into either the dreaded, dogmatic pit of spirit killing, rigid orthodoxy, or the confusing fog of bland generalities that can mean just about anything?

We’ll know in about 12 minutes.

If I thought Easter sermons would be any easier in a Unitarian context, I was a fool. Continue reading April Fools Arise! →