I chose the Revelation 21
passage for the same reason I usually choose an “end of Revelation”
passage: they’re visions of hope for the future.  And I think we NEED
hope.

This is a good one.  God makes
God’s home on earth, so the people’s lives are no longer (in any way)
separate from the Holy One, and that means that death and pain,
mourning and crying are all over.

I like it.

I’m not sure what it says about
me that it feels like a cop-out.

(Please don’t answer that.)

This whole “the earth goes
away and gets replaced by a better one” thing – that’s what feels
like a cop-out.  I’m pretty committed to working with God on building
the kindom of God on earth, and having the whole thing go away and
get replaced seems like it defeats the whole purpose.

Of course, I don’t think that
all of us working together, even with the Divine, are going to
eliminate pain and death from the human experience, so if that’s
where we are wanting to land, I can see why we’d need intervention to
get there.

And, of course, I can understand
the deep human yearning for connection with the Holy One, and for a
future without a separation from God.

But, while I remain grateful for
visions of hope with enough power to help us through the hard times,
I’m finding myself less inspired by Revelation’s vision of perfect
future than by John’s dream of a loving faith community.

“By this everyone will know
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  That one
sends shivers up my spine.  That one feels like the call on my life.
That one feels like the best I’ve ever seen of people of faith and
faith communities.  That’s the one.

Important note: the commandment
“love one another” was NOT new.  It was central to the faith
tradition of Jesus and his disciples, Judaism.  There are two ways to
think of it as new.  One is “as I (Jesus) have loved you, you also
should love one another,” so it is new in being reflective of
Jesus.  The other is probably more accurate, the commandment is not
“new” but living that sort of love is part of the “new life”
that people of God are called to – a distinct form of life from one
of competition and fear.  But please remember that loving one another
was already a part of the Jewish tradition, and had been for a LONG
TIME.  We do not want to participate in anti-semitism, much less
pretend it is part of our faith.

Now, back to “By this everyone
will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.“  This is both one of the most inspiring phrases I know
of, and one of the most worrisome.  Because, let’s be honest for a
moment, it invites us to ask “is this true?”

It must be true in part.  It
must be or I wouldn’t be here.  I have been inspired by the
here-on-earth expressions of God’s love I’ve experienced in churches,
at church camp, in the Love Your Neighbor Collation, and with Upper
New York for Full Inclusion.  I’ve known people whose very presence
exudes love.  I’ve been in communities that have taught me that I’m
worthy of love, just as I am, no matter how awkward.  I’ve seen the
transformational power of love being offered to people who have
received other stories about their lives: to teenagers with abusive
home lives, to people who are transgender and have been told horrible
things by other churches, to queer clergy people afraid for their
livelihoods, to veterans who fear their traumas makes them
unloveable, and to every day people who just wonder if they’re
“enough” who experience the community of God and learn they’re
loved and lovable.

It is the every day miracle of
the church, and it is why I am a part of the church, and it is
probably the thing I’m most committed to continuing with my life.

And.

And it isn’t the full story of
church.

I wish it was.  I heard an idea
once that it is easier to be a spiritual person outside of faith
community, to commune with God in nature and solitude.  Not just
because God is easy to access in nature and solitude (true for me!)
but because faith communities are full of struggle:  conflict and
personalities and differences of opinion and people behaving in ways
we don’t like.  But this idea suggested that this is GOOD not bad,
because communing with God in nature may help us feel and be
centered, but it is in practicing being loving when it is ACTUALLY
HARD that we GROW.  We need the challenges of community to learn how
to be loving in the midst of real life.

That’s one of the most lovely
takes on faith community I’ve ever heard, and I hold it dear.

Because as much as I’ve seen the
church transform lives with its generous love and welcome, I’ve seen
profound pain too.  There is the glaringly obvious pain of being part
of a homophobic and transphobic denomination.  But there are also the
pains that result when we as a local faith community aren’t as loving
as we want to be.  When someone is forgotten, or unseen in their
pain.  When cultural differences are too big to be overcome.  When it
seems some people are more valued than others.  When values
themselves are violated (or seem to be).  And when it feels like no
one cares about a person when they stop showing up.

There are days when I wonder
about the balance of if all, when I wonder if the love we are sharing
is more than the pain we are causing.  I wonder if “They’ll Know We
are Christians By Our Love” is … well… true.

In the church at large
(annual conference and denomination) I have come to peace with
knowing that much of what happens is about power, and money, and that
fear is used as a means to an end to increase the power of a few over
the needs of the many.  I hold hope that isn’t true on the local
church level, but when there IS conflict, it IS often about power
and/or over the authority over money, and I think based in fear of
what happens if one’s power is lost and one’s vision doesn’t prevail.

But, I also know that’s overly
simplistic.  When it comes down to it, at least on the local level, I
trust that everyone is doing their best and trying to enable the best
sort of loving faith community, and doing that by the means they
believe most effective.  Which means we disagree about HOW, and maybe
WHY, but not WHAT we’re trying to do.  

And I often hope that’s enough
to hold on to to build on love, instead of letting fear drown us.
And I’m willing to keep on spending my life empowering faith
communities as long as I can believe that we are showing love, and
GROWING in love.

So, I want to spend the rest of
this sermon on this central question of faith:  what helps us be more
loving, to share God’s love?  Because I believe we WANT to be know by
our love.  I think we’d be delighted if every time someone
encountered any one of us or a group of us they were astounded at our
love.  But I think that requires us to be attentive to growing
in love.

The basis of love, as far as I
know is… (wait for it)… love.  God’s love is the starting point
for our lives, our faith, our actions.  And, I HOPE, the love of the
people of God has been transformative in our lives too, so we start
our journey to deepen love balanced on the love of God and God’s
people.  

It also helps, a lot, to see
people acting in loving ways.  Having models of what radical love
looks like, and broad and different models at that: to see the love
shared between our breakfast guests, and to see the love shared
between members of Church Council, and to hear stories of support
offered to those who are struggling.  Knowing what love looks like, a
huge range of what it looks like, helps us see how we can live it.
Love lives differently in each of us, and it can take seeing it in a
lot of forms before any of us know how to let it live most easily in
us!!

It also helps, as far as I’m
concerned, to hear people talk about living love. To talk about what
they do with intention, and when they’ve struggled, and how they’ve
overcome barriers to love.  The real, sometimes small, tangibles.
This sort of learning has often happened in Bible Study or small
groups for me, and it is a big deal to talk about the small stuff.

A huge gift in growing in love
is growing in the capacity to know I am loved EVEN when I’m wrong.
John Wesley actually helps me with this.  He said that we’re all
wrong sometimes, but we don’t know when we’re wrong (or we wouldn’t
be), so when we come to a disagreement with another person, we should
enter into it with humility because it may well be one of the times
when we are wrong.  That simple idea has made it easier for me to
forgive myself for being wrong, which helps lower my defenses, which
helps let others in.

For me, one of the greatest
gifts in growing in love is spiritual practice.  That is, when I take
time away from “productivity” to “just be” and that helps me
remember that God loves me for who I am rather than what I can
accomplish.  Also, God lovingly holds up a mirror to me, to help me
see what I’m doing and why, and let me decide as I’m ready to change.

There are also straight up
SKILLS that can help with being loving, particularly in a community,
which means in a group with conflict.  Non-violent communication.
Active listening.  Careful use of “I statements.”  Or, just,
intentional empathy.  All of which are actual skills that can be
taught and learned and developed.  I sometimes think we undercut
ourselves by thinking that if we are simply taught of God’s love,
we’ll become the humans we want to be.  When, in fact, we need other
skills and models and learning as well.  

I  dream that the church we
become might be able to be a source of healing people’s

trauma, that we might become
particularly skilled at sharing judgement-free love, and listening
with empathy so that those who spend time in this faith community
might experience HEALING from being here, and that the healing might
become a part of our story and what we offer our community.

That would require a pretty
serious investment in those skills, and in developing the resilience
to respond to conflict in new and different ways.  SPPRC is working
on some of that, with a hope of bringing opportunities to our church
as a whole as well.  It has become clear in the past 5 years that we
need more skills than we have.  Which doesn’t make us bad, but does
make us responsible for developing together.   For finding the ways
to face our conflicts with love.  For becoming more loving.   For
stepping up so people might see us and be astounded by our love for
one another.  It could even be that these years of conflict could
become a saving grace for us, an opening to a new way of being that
could meet people and the world just where they need us to be.

In any case, growing in love is
what we’re about.  God is with us, encouraging and enabling our
growth.  May we commit to it as well!    Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 15, 2022