I
don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but things are not as they should
be.  Actually, I suspect you have noticed it, but it feels like time
to explicitly name two of the very many ways in which this is true.

First
of all, our society is and has been awash in sexual harassment and
assault.  Many, many men have used whatever power and influence they
have in the world for their own pleasure at the expense of others,
most often women.  This is not news, per say, and yet there is
something happening.  

This
is much like the impact of the #BlackLivesMatter movement on police
brutality, it isn’t that any of the behaviors are new or different,
it is that suddenly people are paying attention to the atrocities,
and calling for accountability en masse.  Important and powerful men
have been removed from the positions they’ve used abusively.  The
status quo is being interrupted, and that’s good.

Yet,
it isn’t good enough.  This week I had the incredible joy of holding
the youngest member of our church family in my arms.  (It is GOOD to
be pastor.)  I wanted to be able to promise her a world where she
wouldn’t know sexual harassment or assault, where she will be safe to
be whoever she is, where-ever she wants to be, no matter who is
nearby, all the time.  The yearning that I had to offer her that
world clarified how very far we are from it, AND how desperately
needed it is.

Secondly,
we live in a country that accepts poverty as a necessary component of
life.  Based on our policies, it is OK if people are hungry –
whether they are working or not, whether they’ve applied for SNAP
benefits or not, whether they are children or adults. Based on our
policies, it is OK if people are homeless, and if a person struggles
with addiction – by our policies – it is almost as if they don’t
deserve to be housed.  Based on our policies, only people who can
afford to pay for it deserve the right to health care.  Based on our
policies, it is acceptable for those without money to be
misrepresented or underrepresented in court, and spend time in jail
for crimes they didn’t commit.  Based on our current policies, not
even children have a right to health care.  

All
of these are choices, choices that we have made as a society about
what we value and who we value.  Budgets are moral documents, budgets
indicate what an organization really values.  Our society values the
growth of the economy, the growth of our exceptional military might,
and the flow of wealth from the bottom to the top OVER the capacity
to care for the vulnerable, the elimination of hunger, the
accessibility of health care, the safety of housing, or the fairness
of the courts.

Things
are NOT as they should be, and those were just two examples.  There
are many ways that things are not as they should be.

This
is not the first time in history that this has been true.  According
to Marcus Borg, the earliest human societies did not have significant
wealth differentiation nor oppression.  The first two types of
societies were hunter gatherer and early horticultural.  About them,
Borg says, “Differentials of wealth and power were minor.”¹
However, once full fledged agricultural societies developed about
5000  years ago,  it became possible to generate wealth.  In the time
of Jesus agriculture was the primary form of wealth.²
Borg calls the system at the time of Jesus the preindustrial
agricultural domination system.³
As far as I can tell, a few
things have changed since the time of Jesus: we’re now industrial or
post industrial and wealth is no longer primarily acquired through
agriculture.  

Domination
systems that have oppressed the many for the sake of the few have
been the norm in the world since the development of full-scale
agriculture.  The pieces of the world that concern me the most are
all parts of domination systems, ways that the systems are rigged
against the majority of the population for the benefit of a small
minority.  David Graeber, in “Debt: A History of the first 5000
years” theorizes that the world’s major religions have all emerged
as a a response to the particular ways that domination systems
existed in their parts of the world.⁴
I’m going to take a stronger theological stance on that and say that
God has been at work in the world to disrupt domination systems as
long as they have existed, and the particular forms of that work have
been formalized into religious traditions.

We
hear in the texts today the same yearnings we know in our lives for
the world as it SHOULD be rather than the world as it is.  These
texts feel familiar to me, to the depths of my soul.  The Hebrew
Bible text doesn’t JUST come from Isaiah, who is my favorite, it
comes from third Isaiah – the last 7 chapters of the book – which
is the very best part of Isaiah.  The prophet speaks of deep yearning
for God’s presence, a presence that would change reality from its
brokenness to its fulness.  The prophet remembers times that God has
felt present and has made things better.  The prophet celebrates that
God is one who cares about how the people treat each other, and yet
bemoans that God feels very far away.  In fact, the prophet worries
that God is angry because the people have so profoundly mistreated
each other, and made peace with a society of deep injustice.  The
prophet suggests that because God isn’t changing reality, they are
stuck living in the mess they made, without God delivering them from
it, and that isn’t OK at all.  

Oh
Isaiah, how can you speak from so long ago truths that can still
sting with truth?  I’m sometimes frightened that texts from 2500
years ago are still so accurate, which means that domination systems
haven’t lost their grip even as they’ve changed their ways.

At
first glance, or first hearing, or for me first 100 hearings, Mark
doesn’t sound like he is saying the same thing.  Luckily, there are
those among you who share things with me when they seem useful, and
one of you sent me a reflection that opened my eyes to this text.⁵

This
passage in Mark appears just before the passion narrative begins,
Mark is using this text as a foreshadowing of the meaning of the
death and resurrection of Jesus.  Like the passion narrative, it will
start in the night and shake the powers of the world.  David Luce
writes, “Mark,
in other words, isn’t pointing us to a future apocalypse
(“revealing”) but rather a present one, as Christ’s death and
resurrection change absolutely everything.”⁶
For the gospel writer of Mark, the yearning represented in Isaiah is
FULFILLED by Jesus.  For the gospel writer, Jesus is the presence of
God in the world changing things from how they are to how they should
be.  At the same time, as Christians today, we know that the work
Jesus did in the world wasn’t completed in his life, but is ours to
continue as the current Body of Christ.

So,
the gospel writer speaks of things being pretty bad: suffering, the
sun and moon no longer giving the world light, the stars falling to
nothingness.  In the midst of that horror, Jesus will break in and
transform it all.  The gospel writer encourages people to be looking
for the signs that hope is about to break into the brokenness.  The
gospel writer, I think, is hoping to encourage people in the midst of
some very bad days, to understand the brokenness itself as a sign
that things were about to change.

It
is hard, nearly 2000 years later, with all the brokenness that has
been between then and now to be as certain that the change is right
on the horizon.  The yearning is easy to connect with. The hope is
imperative to connect with, the but the time frame is harder to buy
into.

I
do think that God is present with us, and that God is ever working
for justice, for dismantling the domination systems, for transforming
the world as it is into the kindom itself.  While we seem pretty
resilient to God’s work, and while many things as are broken around
us, I’m told by historians who have a broader view than I do that big
and amazing things have gotten better.

Some
things aren’t all that new, but are pretty cool anyway.  The
experiment in universal public education that started in
Massachusetts has had a huge impact on the world and its literacy.
All of those hospitals that various churches started over the
centuries have had an amazing impact in global health and longevity.

According
to the annual letter from the Gates Foundation (one of my favorite
reads), in the past 25 years childhood mortality rates for kids under
5 have dropped by 50%!  Most of these preventable deaths have been
prevented because global vaccine access has increased, and 86% of the
world’s kids are now adequately vaccinated.  The Gates Foundation
says that 300 million women in the developing world now have access
to and use contraception, which increases maternal and child health,
decreases childhood morality rates, increases education, and lowers
poverty.  These 300 million women represent over half of the women
seeking to have it, but they’re actively working on it, and the
problem will be cut by over half again by 2020!  As a reminder as
well, since 1990, worldwide extreme poverty (living on less than $2 a
day) has been cut in HALF.⁷

The
news that we hear mostly focuses on the broken, and in the past year
entirely too much of my attention has been on the broken.  We live in
a world of domination systems, and many many things are broken.  At
the same time, God IS at work in the world, working with people, and
together we are making many things better.  

Dear
ones, the world is broken, and things are not as they should be.

AND

God
is at work in the world, there are many things that are getting
better, and the work we do matters.

It
is all true.  And here in the brokenness, we yearn for God’s kindom
to come, just as Isaiah did, just as Mark did, and as God’s people
have through the ages.  May the day come when the yearning is
fulfilled.  Amen

1Marcus
Borg, “Jesus:
Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious
Revolutionary” (USA:
HarperOne, 2006)  79-80. (Quote
on 80.)

2Borg,
80-81.

3Borg,
79.

4David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011), p. 83.

5David
Luce, email/blog  entitled “…In the Meantime” Posted: 27
Nov 2017 07:50 AM PST  Found at
http://www.davidlose.net/2017/11/advent-1-b-a-present-tense-advent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidlose%2FIsqE+%28…In+the+Meantime%29.

6Luce.

7Bill
and Melinda Gates “Dear Warren: Our 2017 Annual Letter”  written
February 14, 2017
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO
accessed December 2, 2017.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

December 3, 2017