Sermon: God Taught Me How To Gargle
God Taught Me How To Gargle Ana Levy-Lyons May 4, 2014 First Unitarian, Brooklyn A few weeks ago, I was folding a sheet and I asked my 3-year-old daughter, Miriam, if she wanted to help me. To my...
View ArticleSermon: Honor Your Mother And Father
To make a baby, you need three ingredients according to the ancient Near Eastern understanding of the reproductive process: you need the mother’s seed, the father’s seed, and God. The mother and...
View ArticleSermon: The Expediter
So I’m at a dinner party chatting with the guy sitting next to me who I’ve never met before. He asks me what I do for a living and I tell him, and he’s very interested in that, and we talk for a...
View ArticleSermon: Milk In A Hardware Store: The 7th Commandment, Do Not Commit Adultery
Sigmund Freud says we joke about the things that are most important to us to reduce the tension created by that importance. There are probably more jokes about sex than about anything else in the...
View ArticleSermon: The Triangle Player
Please note: the podcast for this sermon only includes part 2. You may read the entire sermon below. Part 1: The late George Plimpton was famous for being a “participatory journalist.” This means...
View ArticleSermon: Universalism Ain’t Fair
The parable of the workers in the vineyard in the book of Matthew in the Christian Scriptures: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his...
View ArticleSermon: The Greenest House
In 1961 Hannah Arendt went as a reporter for The New Yorker to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was a Nazi lieutenant colonel who had been responsible for the operations side of the project of...
View ArticleSermon: Put Me In, Coach
One Yom Kippur a Rabbi imagined he stood before God and had the following conversation: God asked him, “Have you studied all you should?” The rabbi said “No.” Then he was asked, “Have you prayed all...
View ArticleSermon: Invitation to the Banquet
I’ve heard that some of us in this room, if we’re invited to something that we don’t want to go to, have been known to get out of it by making an excuse. I personally have never done that but I’ve...
View ArticleSermon: Moderation in Moderation
Back in the old days, people used to pay for the privilege of sitting in particular pews here. The better pews, front and center, went for more money and the less desirable ones, maybe in the back...
View ArticleSermon: Halloween Unmasked
If an alien came down to earth at Halloween time, it would probably be really confused. Halloween is such a strange holiday. Not typical of earthling holidays. Most holidays are fun happenings about...
View ArticleSermon: Citizens Of Heaven
Citizens of Heaven Ana Levy-Lyons November 9, 2014 First Unitarian, Brooklyn A rabbi I know tells a story of when he was just starting out in the rabbinate, he visited a maximum-security prison to...
View ArticleSermon: Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor
When Dr. Craig Spencer took his temperature a few weeks ago and saw that it was 100.3, he went to the nearest hospital and was diagnosed with Ebola. You probably know the story: he had recently come...
View ArticleSermon: The Parable Of The Yeast
I have two children and they are both 4 years old. They’re twins named Micah and Miriam. They love each other a lot and they also fight a lot. They want everything to be exactly fair. If you give one...
View ArticleSermon: A Great Miracle Happened There
A kid comes up to her dad and says, “If you don’t believe in God, why do you go to synagogue all the time?” He says, “Oh, people go for all kinds of different reasons. Take my friend Garfinkle. He’s...
View ArticleSermon: Prodigal Son, Prudent Son
Prodigal Son, Prudent Son — Ana Levy-Lyons If life is going to be anything but excruciatingly boring for someone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, he or she is going to need regular doses...
View ArticleSermon: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
When the first Malaysia Airlines plane, flight 370, disappeared last March, it created a feeding frenzy for bloggers, tweeters, and conspiracy theorists. No one could understand why the pilot hadn’t...
View ArticleSermon: Doorman
Doorman Ana Levy-Lyons January 25, 2014 First Unitarian, Brooklyn A few weeks ago my family and I moved into a doorman apartment for the first time. I’ve become fascinated by the idea of the doorman...
View ArticleSermon: Seeing Your Shadow
Seeing Your Shadow Ana Levy-Lyons February 1, 2015 First Unitarian, Brooklyn On a Saturday back in 2002, Dr. Bennet Omalu pulled into the parking lot at a Pittsburg coroner’s office to do a routine...
View ArticleSermon: The Parable Of The Talents
The Parable of the Talents Ana Levy-Lyons February 8, 2015 First Unitarian, Brooklyn As modern day religious liberals, I think we’ve been finding that some of the parables of Jesus go down a little...
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